I can hear her Hoovering up Pete’s mud.
Chapter Four
Lizzie
It’s a short drive to Sand Martin, but a steep one – up the hill behind the village, left beyond the caravan site, over the brow of a wide field – and I regret coming more with every change of gear.
Murphy and his entourage are leading the way in a long black saloon car with tinted windows. I am driving with the Samuels in a dented people carrier. Tim Samuels has saggy pouches under his eyes, and a forced cheerfulness. On the way up, he tells me he is a chartered accountant – ‘deadly dull I’m afraid’ – who has been out of work for eighteen months. ‘Still hopeful!’ Sue trills from the back. Tim makes a face more expressive of doubt.
Through a pair of wrought-iron gates, the Murphys’ house rises, square and white, with tall Georgian windows and a pitched grey slate roof. It looks like a house in a children’s book, or a novel by Mary Wesley, very different from the tight suburban scrabble of the seaside resort below.
We slam shut the car doors and walk along the gravel path to the click-clocking of jackdaws. Rhododendrons line the drive, the large lawn is edged with box trees, and lavender grows in pots on the terrace. Leaves cover the surface of a large trampoline on a rough stretch of grass between the cars and trees. The black safety netting is bowed in places, full of holes. Two smallish bikes lie, felled, beside it.
A cluster of white doves flaps off the grass and alights on the roof. Howard pulls away from Grace and careens after them, and then, diverted, dives into the undergrowth. He’ll have smelt a rabbit.
‘He’ll be OK,’ Murphy shouts. ‘Won’t go far.’
The front door, through a porch on the side of the house, is on the latch and he pushes it open. The rest of us funnel into a wide hall with a sweeping carpeted staircase to one side. The walls are faded pink and dotted with small framed watercolours. A stuffed fox on hind legs holds out a wrought-iron umbrella stand filled with tennis racquets. Murphy ushers the Samuels through a door into a drawing room – ‘Make yourselves comfortable’ – but he grabs my hand and, throwing his coat over the curled arm of the bannister, yells: ‘Darling! Chuck another spud in, will you? I’ve brought Lizzie Carter home for lunch.’
‘WHO?’ The voice comes from another room.
‘You know, lovely Lizzie Carter from—’
‘NO. I fucking don’t.’ The voice gets suddenly louder. ‘Fucking HELL, Alan. There’s a fucking DOG in the kitchen.’
‘Oh God.’ I’m on the move and almost collide with Victoria as she emerges, wiping her hands on a butcher’s apron, from the door at the far end of the hall. ‘Sorry. That’s mine. I’m so sorry!’
Howard bounds from behind her, lead trailing, causing her to buckle slightly at the knees. I catch him, but she swings her arms with the exaggerated force of someone gaining her balance and wanting you to know it. She is tall and willowy, with long ash-blonde hair. She’s wearing skinny jeans and a man’s grey cashmere jumper, frosted pink lipstick. One front tooth slightly crosses the other. Her forehead is puckered from her frown.
‘I’m so sorry,’ I say again.
Murphy puts his hands on my shoulders. ‘Vic – you remember Lizzie? Poor Zach Hopkins’ wife? Terrible accident. Did you know?’
I glance back at Victoria, expecting, I don’t know, a softening, but if anything her expression has hardened into one I can’t read: curiosity or contempt. ‘I did,’ she says. ‘I’m sorry for your loss.’
‘Thank you,’ I say.
‘Zach and I had fallen out of touch, but I used to know him when we were younger.’
‘Yes. On the Isle of the Wight, wasn’t it?’
‘I had friends at Benenden who spent summers there. We tended to hunt in packs. You know what boarding school’s like.’
When I don’t answer immediately, she turns to Murphy. ‘Where are the others?’
‘I’m about to get them a drink.’
‘The beef,’ she says, and goes back through the door into the kitchen.
Murphy shrugs. ‘Bit of tension flying around this morning. Vicky’s column for the Sunday Times has been edited to buggery.’ He lets out a shout of laughter in the direction of the door. ‘Bloody copy-editors,’ he says more softly.
Taking my arm, he leads me into the drawing room where the Samuels are sitting on a stuffed floral sofa, their hands on their knees. There are more watercolours on the walls in here, and a lot of fringed armchairs. A complicated spiral arrangement of brass fire-tools sits by the hearth. I move to the window and stare out at a horizontal expanse of sea, stippled, gunmetal grey, framed with trees, the sky lowering above it. I feel so lonely, I want to cry.
Murphy is making a fuss of fetching a bottle of champagne and glasses, smacking open packets of peanuts. He wanders to the door and shouts. ‘TOM! PATRICK! VIC! Come and get a drink!’ Tom appears. He is dressed in brogues and a buttoned-up Fred Perry, the kind of ironic geeky style you see in the richer year thirteens. ‘My son, down from Oxford,’ Murphy says, unable to conceal his pride. ‘He has brains.’
‘At least someone in this house does,’ Tom replies.
‘Talking of which – or not as the case may be – where’s Onnie?’ Murphy moves to the door to shout again. ‘ONNIE! PATRICK! What’s the point of having a right-hand man if he’s never at your right hand?’
There’s a sense that the house is full of people I can’t quite see. Movements I miss in the corner of my eye.
‘I’m not staying,’ I say quietly. ‘It’s so kind of you, but I’ve got so much to sort out . . . honestly, I’ve got to get going.’
Through the doorway, in the hall, I catch sight of Victoria talking to Patrick. His hands are clasped behind his back and he’s bending forward, priest-like. Their heads are close together.
‘At least have a drink,’ Murphy says. ‘We’re on holiday. And someone make Onnie come down.’
‘I’ve tried,’ Victoria snaps, stalking in and throwing herself into an armchair. ‘I can’t do anything with her. It’s your turn.’
‘I’ll go.’ Patrick, who is wearing neatly pressed blue trousers and a pristine white shirt, disappears up the stairs. His shoes – smart leather trainers – squeak on each step.
Under her breath, Sue whispers, ‘Poor Onnie. Going through a difficult patch. Just got back from a short stint at a school in Switzerland.’ She winces. ‘Bit of a black sheep.’
Murphy bellows, ‘Your husband helped Onnie out with her art GCSE. One of the many tutors I appear to have paid for, on top of private-school fees. Not that it made much difference. Only thing she’s ever breezed through is her driving test. In my opinion—’ he raises his arm in a gesture of surrender and looks around ‘—it’s that namby-pamby school’s fault. She’d have been much better off at a tougher school, doing more rigorous subjects.’
Tom, in the armchair closest to the fire, stretches out his legs, and puts his arms behind his head.
‘Was that recent?’ I ask. ‘The tutoring?’
Victoria smiles tightly. ‘Two years ago – summer before last, was it? She’s had a number of stabs at GCSEs: the initial stint at Bedales, followed swiftly by Esher College, a sixth-form college at Bodmin, and lastly and most expensively La Retraite in Lausanne – an establishment that is not, it turns out, keen to continue the relationship. My daughter tends to leave chaos in her wake. Which is not ideal when your father might be the next leader of the Conservative Party.’
‘Darling! Sssh.’
I stare at a small cigarette burn in the carpet. Two years ago. The summer before he died. He’d spent some time down here on his own then. He was optimistic, working hard. A gallery in Bristol had promised him wall space in a show, though it hadn’t come off in the end. He always insisted we told each other everything, but he had said nothing to me about tutoring a teenage girl. I feel a small and ironic prickle of betrayal.
A split in the clouds allows the sun to slide into the room. A square of light flickers in the centre of the rug. Patrick i
s descending the stairs with a tall young girl with long dip-dyed blonde/brown hair. Her entire body is concealed in a pink and white fluffy onesie, but I think at once that it’s the girl I saw hovering in the lane outside Gulls.
‘What the hell are you wearing?’ Victoria says. ‘It’s Sunday lunch.’
Onnie shoots her a look and sits down on the chair opposite me with a defiant thump that tells the room she is here under duress. She begins to pick at her cuticles, carefully, with little nail-pecks, one and then another. No one introduces us.
Victoria and Murphy exchange glances.
‘A onesie,’ Sue says. ‘The twins are obsessed with them.’
‘I can think of nothing nicer,’ I say, ‘than spending a Sunday all cosy in a onesie. Tell me honestly – am I too old to get one?’
Onnie looks up. She considers me carefully, from my uncombed hair to my wellie boots, but doesn’t answer. After a minute, she says clearly, ‘I’m, like, amazed Mother let you bring a dog in here.’
Howard has been lying at my feet, but he knows the word ‘dog’ and he stands up and knocks at a round side table with his tail. It’s covered with a chintz cloth, which I grab to secure before it slips. Tom, still sprawled at the fireplace, says, ‘Onnie, you can be such a bitch when you want to be.’
Onnie flushes. It occurs to me she meant the comment as a joke, but no one here gives her the benefit of the doubt. The conversation in the room resumes noisily without her. She stops tearing at her cuticles and instead takes a single peanut on the end of her fingertips and dabs it on her tongue. After a bit, she lays the desalted peanut down on a copy of The Economist beside her, lining it up precisely inside the cross on the ‘T’.
‘Did I see you over the other side of the village this morning?’ I say quietly.
She doesn’t look at me but the skin on her neck mottles. She shakes her head.
‘Are you sure? I was getting something from the car outside my house and I saw someone who looked just like you.’
‘I might have gone for a walk down there earlier.’
‘Oh, OK.’ I pause. I don’t want to push too hard. I know how teenagers hate being interrogated. It isn’t that they are private, so much as painfully self-conscious. ‘Did you get to know my husband quite well?’
She doesn’t look up. ‘A bit.’
Despite her height, her face is small, her features neat. Finally her eyes lift and she looks directly at me, her tongue probing the corner of her mouth. ‘Do you miss him?’
I can feel the blush creeping up my neck. ‘I do. Yes. Very much.’ My voice catches. Trying to cover myself, I say, quickly, ‘Is art what you’re interested in? Is that your favourite subject?’
She is picking at her eyebrows. ‘I’m not like my brother Tom, brilliant at everything. I haven’t even done my A levels. I’ve got stuck on GCSEs. They’ve all given up on me.’
‘I never did very well at exams,’ I tell her. ‘My sister was always the clever one. I ended up leaving education and getting a job, but it wasn’t a bad thing.’
‘I like fashion,’ she says. She studies her nails – a self-consciously casual gesture that makes me feel even more sorry for her. ‘A girl at La Retraite – her aunt works for Shelby Pink and she says I can do an internship. But they won’t let me go because it’s in London. My dad’s got a flat in Kennington but it’s only one bedroom.’
Leaning against the fireplace, Murphy is deep into an anecdote, or possibly a lecture.
‘Could you stay with a friend?’ I ask.
‘They won’t let me.’
‘Perhaps you could live with a family,’ I say. ‘You could help out, do babysitting, in return for a room.’
Zach used to say I had a compulsion to solve other people’s problems.
Onnie is looking straight at me. ‘You live in London, don’t you?’
‘Yes. I could ask around. My sister, she has children. She might know someone.’
‘Do you have a spare room?’
‘I’ve got a sofa bed.’
‘So maybe I could stay with you?’
‘Me?’ I say.
‘I mean, you’re all on your own now. You’d probably like the company.’
‘Well, I suppose . . .’ I’m so taken aback, I don’t know what to say, but I am spared my confusion when Victoria chooses this moment to cut in loudly from across the room, flashing a cold smile: ‘That’s very kind, but Onnie needs to work out her priorities. She has a lot of thinking to do.’
Murphy has reached the end of his story and the others are all laughing. Onnie, driven back into herself, lowers her head and starts working at her nails again. I imagine myself standing up and saying thank you for the drink. I imagine it so clearly I wonder if I have actually done it, but I still seem to be sitting. Murphy, over by the fireplace, says ‘Very good’ to a comment Tim has made, as if marking it with a verbal pen.
‘Is it awful being a widow?’
Onnie is looking at me. I am not sure if it is a statement or a question, but I say, ‘Yes. It is. It’s very sad. I went to the scene of his accident yesterday to leave flowers.’
‘Did you?’
Her eyes are fixed intently on me, and I find it hard to look away. I feel a flush of yearning, an overpowering sense of loss, and at the same time, madly, an overpowering sense of Zach’s presence. The combination of these impressions dizzies me and, in the outer edges of my vision, the walls of the room begin to bend in and I wonder if I might be about to pass out.
I stand up blindly and say, to no one in particular, ‘Do you have a bathroom?’
Murphy leaps to his feet. ‘We do have a bathroom,’ he says. ‘In fact, we have several bathrooms. And they are all at your disposal.’
Next thing, he’s leading me into the hallway. ‘Posh upstairs, or bog standard through there, first right.’ He points to the door at the end of the hall, then brings his hands together in a single clap. ‘Make yourself at home.’
Immediately beyond the hall isn’t the kitchen, as I had supposed, but a scullery, full of coats and muddy shoes, cricket bats, a set of boules. An air rifle leans against one wall. It’s warmer in here. I can hear frantic sizzling from the oven beyond. I tie Howard to the boot rack – how organised some people’s lives are, how rich with contraptions it would never occur to me to need. Then I push open the door and sit on the loo with the seat down. I lean my head against the wall and breathe deeply. Eventually I realise I am staring at a framed cartoon of Murphy: a winking Fred Astaire tap-dancing on a table, with various members of the Cabinet in his top pocket. Above the basin is a matriculation photograph from Brasenose College, 1986. I expect if I look hard enough I’ll find the prime minister.
I put my head between my legs and close my eyes. I can smell pine disinfectant and a lower tang of ammonia. I feel concussed, wrong for company, out of place in the world. I feel as if I have no perspective on anything. I have a sharp sense of panic, as if I’m supposed to be doing something important, that I’ve abandoned it halfway through, that I should be somewhere elsewhere.
Quiet footsteps approach the door, pause, and then move away. A door slams.
I force myself to stand up and open the door into the scullery. I lean against the wall for a moment and try to pull myself together. Howard is still sitting by the boot rack: a row of inverted wellingtons. The last pair of wellies on the rack, half hidden under a beige mac, are green Hunters. As I unhook Howard’s lead, my heart gives a small lurch of recognition – absurdly. They’re just boots. Not Zach’s. Not here. Why would they be here?
Upside down, the soles of this pair are spotless, unlike the others in the row – the mud has been brushed off; the treads are clean and definite, the rubber size stamp unobscured by soil. Size 43.
I step forward. My hands are shaking. I move the coat. I unslot the left boot from its wooden stand, and turn it over. There, at the top, are some marks and a snaggling line of rubber glue. And on the side a splatter of paint.
I leave through
the back door without saying goodbye and run down the hill, Howard bounding beside me, jumping up, tugging the lead to one side, like this is some kind of game. We follow the farm lane down to the caravan site, across the field to the road below.
The keys to Zach’s studio, in the old garage next to Gulls, are under a terracotta pot at the bottom of the garden path, and I tip the pot on its side, spilling earth and knotted bulbs. My hands are shaking. I can hardly fit the key into the door.
I push the door and a bottle of methylated spirits rolls, skids into the middle of the floor. Zach, as in everything else, was meticulous as an artist. He needed silence and clarity, white spaces, no mess. His brushes would be laid out in size order, his tubes of paint lined in neat rows, the labels facing up. The floor had to be clean, nothing in his line of sight to distract. When he worked, he placed his easel in the centre of the room and turned any other paintings in the room to face the wall.
The scene inside takes a moment to process – tubes, brushes, rags, glue, newspaper. The cupboard is tipped on its side. The table where Zach laid his tools is bolted down, but his chair has been upended and the beechwood easel, the one he would rub and oil before starting, is missing. No, not missing – pulled apart, snapped into pieces like firewood. And the walls . . .
The walls are splattered with blood.
I freeze in the doorway, my hand at my mouth. There is a ringing in my ears and a rawness at the back of my throat. One canvas is propped on the table, facing me directly. I know this painting well. It’s an oil of the sea – gunmetal grey, horizontal, the horizon black, clouds low – his favourite view, his screensaver. A dark shape in the foreground – an empty fishing boat, unpiloted, setting out into the unknown. It’s a picture of loneliness. ‘My life,’ he once said, ‘without you.’
But the picture has been vandalised. I hold on to the door frame to stop myself from falling. I can feel the truth burning on me. In a scrawl of charcoal, he’s added a raw figure to the front of the boat, facing into the horizon: a man, with his back to us, in a hat and a heavy coat.
Remember Me This Way Page 5