‘Great, isn’t it?’ he mused, reading me. ‘A priest who can’t get involved. Father, I have sinned, and let me tell you how – no, no, my son, I’m afraid I don’t do feelings. Can’t advise you.’ He smiled ruefully. ‘At least I’m not Catholic. Don’t actually have to preside over confession. Saint Augustine would not be impressed.’
He knocked back the glass of water. Then set the empty glass on the draining board; gazed bleakly at it.
‘You do listen to your parishioners,’ I said quietly. ‘I know you do. Give great comfort.’
‘Do I?’ He shrugged. ‘Not sure. I mean, yes, I listen, but most of me shrinks from it, deep down. Always has done.’
‘I know.’ In self-defence. ‘I’m the same, Kit.’
‘No you’re not,’ he said softly. He turned his back on me and looked out of the window. ‘You feel everything very keenly. You just can’t express it to others. Can’t tell them how you feel. I don’t even feel it.’
‘Feel what?’ This was surely the deepest my brother and I had ever got.
He shrugged. ‘Love? You know. Stuff everyone else feels. I’m deficient in the Emotive department.’ He made ironic quotation marks in the air; gave a wry smile. ‘But, hey, why be gloomy? Not everyone’s got all their faculties, have they? Look at Luca, poor guy, without a proper arm. Or Sheba.’ He nodded at the cat dozing on the window sill. ‘Stone deaf. It’s only a minor disability, the one I have.’
‘What about God?’
He frowned. ‘You mean, do I love him?’
‘Yes.’
He pursed his lips thoughtfully. ‘Yes.’
‘Well, there you are then. Eminently capable.’
He smiled. ‘Yes, here I am, then. Although, he might quite like me to love others, don’t you think?’
‘Not if you have to force it. Dissemble. You’re true to yourself.’
He looked at me properly. ‘You make it sound very noble, Hatts, but actually, it’s more to do with fear. I can protect myself this way. I know what it will cost me in equilibrium, you see, and I’m aware I’m not robust enough. Know there’s not much to spare. So I’m economical with myself.’
There was a silence.
‘Kit, can I ask… well, what d’you think made you like that?’
He raised his eyebrows, and implicit in that look was – you have to ask? In that moment I knew. Sarajevo. Which we’d never talked about. But where I knew, in that incarcerated city, at that time, in those few months, he’d witnessed terrible atrocities. Like speeded-up film, snippets of things I’d heard about rushed through my head: the massacre at Markale marketplace, where I knew Kit had been, with friends, some of whom were killed as they lined up for water; the old man he lived with, Lyjodo, a Muslim, beaten to death in front of him; the rape camps no one talked about; the ten thousand killed in one city, most of them civilians. Ten thousand seemed to shriek at me as the last few frames snapped by: then silence. Darkness. In the quiet, a pilot light was lit within me. I waited for the flame to steady, then took a breath. Dug deep.
‘Kit, I know you don’t do feelings, emotions, have shut yourself off from all that, but I just have a hunch you’re the one person who can help me right now. The one person I should tell – must tell – before I talk to anyone else. And I want you to be totally honest with me. Tell me what you – or God, if you like – would think. Whether I’m damned to hell and damnation for ever.’ I swallowed. ‘It’s about Seffy.’
He met my eye. ‘I know about Seffy.’
I stared. ‘You know about Seffy?’
‘Yes.’
‘That he’s mine?’
‘Yes.’
I felt the breath being sucked out of me. Kit’s eyes were steady.
‘You mean… you’ve always known?’
‘No, only recently. You did a very good job, Hattie. No one knew. But Seffy told me.’
I felt the kitchen move slightly; the walls shift.
‘He came to see me last summer, at Blenheim. Came from school, on a Sunday. Slipped into the back of a service I was taking. Gave me quite a shock.’
I collected my jaw, licked my lips. ‘And… and what did he… what did you…?’
‘Oh, we walked back to the vicarage together and he explained it all very matter-of-factly. He’d known by then for a few months. Had grown accustomed enough to the idea to explain without too much emotion.’
‘But why didn’t you tell me?’
‘He asked me not to. But he did ask me to tell Mum and Dad.’
I shaded my eyes with both hands as if the light coming through the window was too bright for them.
‘We’ve known for some time, Hattie.’
I moved from my stool, groped for a chair. ‘Why not, me?’ I didn’t recognize my voice. Also, I knew: Hal had already told me. ‘Because I hadn’t told him for fifteen years?’
Kit hesitated. ‘A bit. Perhaps. But no, mostly… I think he still sort of hoped you might…’
‘Tell him,’ I finished in a whisper.
Kit was silent.
‘Thought that his mother might, if he was very lucky, claim her son, in time. Given time. But I never did.’
Why, then, should I be the first to know? Why should I presume that privileged position, when I hadn’t afforded it to him? How very presumptuous of me.
‘And Mum and Dad…’ The walls of the kitchen were closing in now, like my humiliation.
‘Were joyful, to use a biblical word.’
‘Joyful?’
‘Of course. Why not? He’s ours. Seffy’s ours. Oh, stunned and shocked to begin with, naturally. But then, given time… yes, really joyful.’
I nodded. Understanding. Slowly.
‘As you must be,’ he said gently.
‘Have always been,’ I said brokenly. ‘Have always known he’s mine, you see. Always been quietly joyful.’ My mind was racing in circles, like a dog after its tail. I tried to imagine the scene, Kit, sitting my parents down – what, here?
‘I had a chat with Dad first, in London,’ Kit said, reading me, ‘who told Mum. Not Laura, because Seffy knew she’d have to tell you. But he did tell Christian. He was the only one who already knew, incidentally. Said he’d suspected from the very beginning.’
‘Christian?’
Kit frowned. ‘Who you worked with?’
‘Yes, I know who Christian is!’
My mouth wouldn’t close. I dropped my head in shame. What must they think? Me again. See?
‘That you’ve had a tough time, Hattie.’ I’d said it out loud. ‘A sad, lonely old time of it.’
Suddenly I was in Dubrovnik hospital, giving birth, in terrible pain. All around was noise, confusion, mayhem; shelling in the street, the school opposite hit: people running for cover, windows shattering. I remember thinking as I pushed, as I gripped some strange hand, I can take the pain, but I can’t take the confusion; can’t take the terrible chaos. Please, please, make it go away. I just want some shush. And then Seffy was out in moments, and in my arms, and the ward I was taken to was full of people, sitting on the floor, on my bed, wrapped in soggy, bloodstained bandages, eyes blank. I remember the man bursting in with the child; I remember getting off the bed where Seffy was wrapped in a blanket, backing away in horror. Remember stumbling to the door, and once outside, vomiting in a sink. Then being physically incapable of going back in. Just groping blindly down the crowded corridor, down the stairs, out into the dusty street, and away. Still bleeding heavily. Getting a lift on a lorry, part of a convoy, just having to get away. How odd. I’d never gone there before, in my head. Never remembered actually abandoning him.
Kit seemed to be sitting beside me now at the kitchen table. His hand closed over mine, and I realized, in that gesture I had more than I could ever have hoped for. Shocked and horrified, initially, this family of mine, but they wouldn’t totally condemn me. There had been moments along the way when I’d had to wrestle with the feeling that life hadn’t been altogether kind to me. Could it be my family felt that way too?
Felt I’d been dealt a rotten hand? If they did, I knew it was down to Kit, who, like Hal, would have smoothed the way. Shed a little light on what had happened to us out there.
‘If you’re such an emotional cripple, Kit, how is it everyone turns to you in a crisis, hm?’ My voice was unsteady. ‘How is it that Seffy sought you out first, as I did? Riddle me that one, Batman.’
He gave a small smile. ‘Perhaps it’s because I’m always hanging around like a bad smell. Perhaps it’s the dog collar. Perhaps they think I’ve got a hot line to God. Or maybe it’s because I don’t have the usual appendages – a wife, children – so they see themselves filling some shoes. It could also be,’ he said lightly, ‘that they know I’m careful with myself, ipso facto I’ll be careful with them.’ He got to his feet and walked to the window. ‘It could be any number of reasons, Hattie, but one thing I can tell you with absolute certainty. It’s got nothing to do with me being some kind of life authority. Some kind of Solomon. I haven’t got anything figured out. I’m no wise man.’
He ran the tap, filled his glass again, and drank it down quickly. Perhaps, I thought watching him. But perhaps not.
29
Luca came out of hospital a few days later and there was something parabolic about his return. This prodigal young man with his Ferrari, his Armani clothes, his Rolex watch, his savvy, cunning ways, the biting tongue, the caustic remarks that could cause Laura and the girls to dissolve and Hugh to rush around performing damage limitation; this sharp young blade, when he walked into the kitchen with Daisy that day, just looked different. Granted he was heavily bandaged, his arm in a sling and his head in a white turban like a First World War hero, but it wasn’t just that. It was his eyes. Where previously they had been wont to flash at one before slithering away, now they were steady and… what was the word, I wondered, as we all got up from the lunch table to exclaim, embrace him – but not too hard, Daisy warned… yes, humble. The eyes were humble. And vulnerable. His guard seemed to have slipped, and when he sat down to join us, Mum, Dad, Seffy, Hugh, Laura, Biba, Hal and Cassie – oh, yes, Hal and Cassie – and when we made polite, gentle enquiries, that guard didn’t go up again either. He didn’t shy away as he usually did, or give evasive answers. In fact, when he’d assured us he was feeling much better, he cleared his throat and said the whole episode had been entirely his fault. That he’d been a fool to hand Daisy his gun in the first place, that it had been an arrogant gesture, and he’d compounded the insult by telling her, ‘In Italy I have a loader.’ In other words, he was unused to such parochial shoots. In short, he’d provoked her, and was entirely to blame. This, in his heavily accented English, to his entire stepfamily, when historically two words were an achievement. Our mouths were open, but Daisy wasn’t having it.
‘Bollocks, it was entirely my fault, as I’ve told him a million times. I’ve been brought up in the country, I know about guns. And I certainly know it’s a heinous crime to mess around with one, to dig it in the ground and—’
‘You didn’t know it was dangerous,’ he interrupted.
‘OK, I might not have known that, but Daddy’s always said, you never ever treat them with anything other than total respect.’
‘But you don’t shoot, like Biba.’
‘That’s got nothing to do with it. If I’d got just a fraction more mud in it I’d have killed you.’
‘And if your aunt had balls she’d be your uncle,’ remarked Dad.
‘What?’ Daisy was flummoxed, but Luca grinned, understanding.
‘If if if – the fact is, I’m still here, eh?’ He widened his eyes at her and prodded his chest. ‘So shudda your face, as they say in Firenze.’
‘Yeah, shut it, Daisy,’ agreed Seffy, as Biba laughed.
Lunch continued then in a relaxed fashion, and as coffee appeared, the younger element drifted off into the playroom to play Ping-Pong or watch television, taking Luca and Cassie with them.
‘How extraordinary,’ Mum was the first to exclaim quietly once they’d departed. ‘He seems to have completely mellowed. It’s almost as if the blow to the head has done him some good.’
‘It’s Daisy,’ Hugh said simply. ‘She’s reached something inside him, I’m convinced. She hasn’t left his bedside these past few days, and even when he drifted off to sleep she kept talking to him, weeping a bit, too. It’s almost as if something’s thawed.’
It was true. Even when Hugh and Laura had come home at night, Daisy had insisted on staying at the hospital, talking a nurse into letting her sleep in two chairs pushed together, claiming she could sleep anywhere. But not sleeping; holding his hand, waiting for him to wake up, getting him water if he needed it. And boy, had they talked, according to Hugh.
‘I’d slip away,’ he admitted to us now, ‘or hide, embarrassed behind my newspaper. It all got far too heavy for me.’
‘What kind of things?’ Mum urged.
‘Oh, you know. Daisy asking him all about how he felt growing up. Being part of this family, but not, if you see what I mean.’
‘And what did he say?’
‘That he’d felt hugely jealous. Had done all his life. This big, happy scene that he wasn’t really part of, but would have been, if his parents had stayed together, had more children. Said he resented Laura for being so maternal when Carla wasn’t, that he took it out on her by being surly and difficult. Oh God, you’ve no idea what Daisy got out of him.’
I could imagine, though. An open, warm-hearted girl, one of a pair, whom, as Luca had so rightly observed, Laura had done a brilliant job with. Charlie too. Children didn’t grow up on their own, they were brought up. And Luca had never had the benefit of that with Carla and a string of nannies. Resented his half-siblings who had.
‘When she said she wanted him to be a proper brother, and not just some random guy who appeared from Italy now and then, I got stuck firmly into the crossword, I can tell you.’
It didn’t escape any of us, though, that, despite Hugh’s protests, he’d misted up somewhat.
‘Good for her,’ said Dad, gruffly.
‘I’m amazed you stayed so long, Hugh,’ observed my mother, gently. ‘And you mustn’t blame yourself, you know. You and Laura have always bent over backwards to make him feel one of the family.’
They had, but there was no disputing how the young Luca must have felt: damaged, both physically and mentally, with the rest of the Pelham clan always before him, as a shining, undiminished foil.
‘And then they talked about the house,’ prompted Laura, who clearly already knew this story. I realized Hal was being included as family around this table, and if part of me found that faintly unnerving, as if events were running away with me, I dismissed it instantly.
‘Oh, the house,’ groaned Hugh, sinking his head in his hands. ‘At that point I very nearly legged it to the fire escape. But Daisy made me stay. “No, Dad,” ’ he straightened up, aping his daughter, eyes wide, ‘ “We need to do this.” And Luca, with practically no prompting, sat up in bed, and looking heart-rendingly vulnerable in his pyjamas and his bandaged head, his poor arm lying on the blanket, explained falteringly that he’d always felt it was his trump card. His only card. These Pelhams, these half-siblings of his, they had everything – looks, good humour, loving parents, a beautiful home – but oh boy, not for long. He, Luca, the cuckoo in the nest, but the oldest cuckoo, could turf them out in a few years’ time, and would too. Would inherit and become Lord Many Acres, marry a beautiful English girl, re-create the Pelham dynasty. Only this time, on his terms.’
Dad inclined his head thoughtfully. ‘And why not? It’s his birthright.’
‘Except his heart wasn’t in it, he said. He didn’t want to live in a freezing, rattling Victorian abbey, be squire of all the dank misty landscape he surveyed. It wasn’t in his genes. His heart was in Italy, which he loved. Florence in particular, the Tuscan hills, which, let’s face it, are hard to beat. But as you know, the Abbey can’t be sold. That’s the deal from the trustees. It has to be p
assed on. So he’s passing it on to Biba.’
‘Me?’ Biba appeared in the doorway, Ping-Pong bat in hand. She looked astonished. ‘I wasn’t listening, I just came to get some balls from the drawer.’ She went pink.
Hugh held out his hand to her. ‘Come in, darling.’
‘Why me?’ She stayed stock-still where she was.
‘Because you’re the eldest.’ Hugh let his hand fall.
‘Yes, but Charlie—’
‘It doesn’t have to go down the male line, that’s not in the brief. This is 2009, my darling. It’s to be yours.’
‘I shall give it to Charlie,’ she said fiercely, colouring up. ‘Honestly, Dad, it’s lovely, but there’s no way.’
‘We’ll see. We’ll think on it,’ her father said gently. ‘It may be that Charlie doesn’t want it either. The important thing is, the here and now. No one’s to be turfed out. It’s to stay as our family home for the duration. Thanks to Luca.’
‘And I shall make it up to him,’ said Laura suddenly, after a brief silence. She looked fiery. Determined.
‘There’s nothing to make up,’ Dad assured her. ‘You’ve always done your best by him.’
‘Yes, but if I’m honest, Dad, I always felt he had his finger on the trigger. Was always a bit scared. But now, oh, now it’ll be so much better. He’ll never feel insecure again.’ Her eyes shone.
‘Oh Lord. She’s on a mission,’ groaned Hugh, shaking his head.
‘Let the poor lad up for air occasionally, eh, love?’ remarked my father, reaching for The Times and shaking it out to read over his coffee. He rattled it noisily and disappeared behind. ‘Let him take a breather from the bosom of the family now and again, hm?’
Hal and I smiled about it later as we strolled in the garden by the river, hand in hand.
‘Funny, isn’t it?’ I said, shading my eyes over the stream at the mallards splashing and flapping off into the hazy autumn sunshine. ‘To the casual observer, this family has got everything. But for a long time, it hadn’t. Everyone’s been frightened of Luca, tiptoeing around him. But if everyone had just been a bit more honest with each other, it might have saved a lot of heartache over the years.’
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