Away From It All

by Judy Astley

  ‘Ugh, horrible. But yes, I see,’ Grace said.

  Alice was dizzy from the stench of cleaning products. The kitchen and bathroom in Cygnet were now gleaming and sparkly and the stubborn turquoise marks in the bath, where deposits from the blue elvin rock that the spring water ran through had stained it, had at last been erased by an hour of determined scrubbing. Mo had stopped complaining that Alice seemed to be taking over, and had surrendered into simply being glad that there was another pair of hands helping to keep Penmorrow under control. It had taken some persuading: how many ways were there to tell someone that you weren’t criticizing their housekeeping standards but merely sympathizing that there wasn’t time to give it any extra attention? And what, Alice wondered, though sensibly did not say to Mo, would happen when she went back to Richmond? It wouldn’t be long before the lack of enough domestic input became a problem again.

  It was time now to take down the horrible maroon Dralon curtains. Mo had a sewing machine in working order, and Alice had bought twenty metres of cheap unbleached calico in Falmouth and intended to make some new, simple drapes for Cygnet’s sitting room. She tested one of the dining chairs to ensure it would take her weight and climbed up to reach the wooden curtain pole and unhook the dusty fabric. It smelled musty, old like dead air and many years’ worth of rotting insect carcasses.

  The room itself was potentially fabulous – long and airy with huge windows on one side and French doors leading to a beach-view garden and the cliff path on the other. It was a pity, she thought, that there didn’t seem to be any likelihood that the suggestions she’d made to Harry about updating this little house would ever happen. She caught herself thinking, ‘If I lived here . . .’ meaning Penmorrow, the whole of it, as she daydreamed just a bit about what she’d do to renovate and update the whole place. She felt deliciously excited at the prospect. She could make a difference here. Give or take a lottery win, of course.

  Alice folded the first set of curtains and stuffed them in a binbag, trusting that Jocelyn wouldn’t get weepy over this fabric as she had over the Gosling kitchen daisies. Then she crossed to the other side and climbed on her chair again. Through the window she saw Katie and Noel sitting at the orchard table, close to Penmorrow’s kitchen door, heads bent together over a magazine. They’d found something in it that was funny and Katie’s dark hair was shaking as she laughed and wriggled about. The strap of her little vest top slid down her shoulder and as Alice watched, Noel put out his hand and gently replaced it, leaning down at the same time to kiss Katie’s arched neck. Katie’s smile barely slipped, but, like the teenage girls at bus stops Alice saw daily joshing with trying-it-on boys, she gave Noel a small shove in the chest.

  Alice stood rigid, clutching the loosed half of the curtain in one hand and steadying herself against the pole with the other. Noel wasn’t giving up and took hold of both Katie’s hands in his, leaning forward again to have another nuzzle at his prey. This time Katie stood up, still grinning but pointing a warning finger at Noel, before stalking off into the house, her short skirt flicking this way and that.

  ‘God, he’s an idiot,’ Alice sighed to herself as she clambered down to the floor lugging the heavy fabric. She wasn’t surprised. Nothing changed. He’d been seeing another woman for several months at the time Alice had met him, and only much later did Alice realize he’d been enjoying the thrill of a spot of two-timing for the first several of their dates. And then, she recalled, there’d been Theo’s piano teacher on her weekly visits: a nervy, twenty-something ex-child-prodigy who’d accepted, with too much shining-eyed enthusiasm, a lift home from Noel the time that her car had broken down. Amazing, Alice had commented sardonically, how many times after that the car seemed to be mysteriously out of action for one reason or another.

  This Katie though, well she’d be gone in a day or two. And Alice could just as easily have not seen what she did. She wouldn’t, she thought, bother to mention it. She smiled as she thought of what her mother would say: ‘Sexual jealousy, my dear? Oh how drearily commonplace.’

  And there was the other thing Joss often said. She’d use that one if she then found out about Alice and Aidan in the woods. There’d be the knowing smile and the single, well-deserved checkmate word: ‘Karma.’

  Fourteen

  JOCELYN HAD BEEN keeping an eye on Grace from the hexagon window. She’d watched her sitting by herself, cross-legged on the meadow at the feet of Big Shepherd, idly picking daisies and threading some of them into her chakra bracelet. Grace looked as if she had things on her mind and didn’t quite know what to do with herself. Perhaps she was bored, Joss thought at first, but Grace wasn’t the sort to mope about with nothing to do. She was a reader, for one thing, and readers were never bored. Free time was a God-given chance to luxuriate in a book.

  Joss picked up her sturdy stick, left the house and found Grace had moved to the pond on the far side of the track. The girl was peering into the murky, weed-strewn water as if looking for something she’d dropped. Jocelyn hadn’t seen much of her in the past week. Even when they were all together at meal times, Grace was always at the far end of the table with Theo and the twins and didn’t seem to want to get involved in talking with the adults. Who could blame her, Jocelyn thought, envying her granddaughter her careless youth, for what tedious things the adults chose to discuss. Patrice bragged about his past career successes as if he was trying to impress with his CV (‘bigging himself up’, as Chas had so acutely put it), Noel tried and failed to outdo him by boasting of his golf trophies and – surely unethical, this – famous clients. Alice talked of ghastly events (apparently the highlight of her afternoons) like anointing all the bathroom taps with lemon juice to get rid of limescale and about where to hire a sander for Cygnet’s floorboards.

  So dreary, this domestic obsession of hers, though she conceded Alice meant well enough. The floorboard idea was actually rather a good one; Joss had a trunk in the attic containing a stunning collection of kelims she’d been given by a poet who’d brought them back from India. They’d look wonderful on the polished boards. What a sweet man he’d been, she recalled now as she approached Grace, one of the few who understood that communal living meant just that: that you put something back into the household in return for hospitality. Some people, far too many of them really, had assumed that if they fetched a pint or two of milk from the shop and peeled a potato once during their stay, then everything else was theirs for the taking. There’d been occasional House Meetings about it when, say, the cooking rota had completely broken down, but that had resulted in the ludicrous sight of grown-up and otherwise successful people sobbing as they took their turn on the Beef Bag, expressing overdramatic devastation that their inadequate contributions to the household were criticized. That was artists for you; Joss had found it less hassle to give in. They had other things on their mind beside taking the garbage to the tip and putting bleach down the loo. It became her role to accommodate and facilitate. And she’d done it so well for so long.

  Jocelyn was becoming bored by Patrice and his entourage. Patrice’s phoney fawning over her was rather wearing. She especially wanted the Katie girl off the premises. Noel padded around after her like a dog scenting an in-season bitch. She’d seen what she’d seen, the two of them out on the verandah that first night, and much as she’d prefer Alice to have teamed up with a man less dull, she also didn’t want her daughter to be put through a lot of pointless grief. As far as Joss was concerned, sexual adventuring was not in the slightest bit important – ironically, it seemed that Noel and she at last had something in common there – but Alice wouldn’t see it that way and would make a rumpus if she caught him dipping into that particular honey jar.

  ‘Grace? Have you lost something?’ Joss was right next to her before the girl noticed her. Grace looked alarmed; her eyes were fierce and defensive.

  ‘Goodness child, what on earth’s the matter? You look as if you’re seeing demons. Come and walk with me down to the woods and tell me what’s wrong.
’

  ‘I was just looking to see if we had any fish in there. Are there some?’

  ‘Oh I doubt it. We have frogs though. Only good for kissing and turning into princes. When you are a little older you must try.’

  Grace felt trapped. She’d avoided being alone with Jocelyn ever since she’d finished reading Angel’s Choice. There were things she wanted to ask, but at the same time didn’t want to know. It was confusing. Lacking an excuse to refuse, Grace took her grandmother’s arm and the two walked slowly down the path into the shade of the trees. Jocelyn sniffed at the air, reminding Grace of Monty in the mornings when he trotted out through the Gosling cat flap to see what was what in his territory.

  ‘There’s been a good dew,’ Jocelyn commented, poking her stick at the ground beside the path. ‘Look how the leaves are damp and shiny on the top but dry beneath. Autumn isn’t far away.’ She sighed gently. ‘We haven’t even celebrated Lammas this year. That is the time to stop and do some blessing-counting. We all need to do more of that. I shall talk to Mo.’

  Grace didn’t know what to say. She knew a little about the year’s festivals; her mother mentioned them as they came and went, even if she didn’t always do anything fancy to mark them. Alice did make a bit of a thing about Yule though. She always brought plenty of holly into the house before the shortest day – but then most people did for Christmas. She also made a Yule log, which had to have the same number of candles on it as there were people in the house to eat it. Grace had brought Sophy home on the Yule-log afternoon the year before, and Alice had refused to let them eat any of it till she’d found and lit an extra candle to represent Sophy. Noel had been a bit snide about that, declaring it was all superstitious nonsense, but Alice had snapped back at him, saying, ‘You didn’t say that when the bishop blessed the new bar at the golf club. Don’t pretend there’s any difference.’

  ‘I’ll mention it to Mo,’ Joss said again, almost talking to herself. ‘Perhaps she can do something a bit special tomorrow night and we can have a bit of a ceremony. Patrice could put it in his silly film. Now Grace,’ Jocelyn stopped at the foot of an oak tree and turned to face her granddaughter, ‘there’s something I want you to help me to do. But first, I want to know what is troubling you. Let’s sit down here, on these dry leaves.’ With the tree supporting her hand, Joss carefully sank to the woodland floor and sat cross-legged opposite her granddaughter.

  Grace felt caught out. How clever of Jocelyn to have noticed she wasn’t entirely comfortable. Joss was difficult to fob off and Alice often commented that she was a great mind-reader.

  ‘Let me guess.’ Jocelyn put a hand each side of Grace’s head, resting her fingers lightly on her temples. Grace could feel her cool rings against her skin.

  ‘You like it here, don’t you?’ Joss smiled at her, knowing she didn’t need an answer.

  ‘I’d say you don’t really want to leave. You don’t want to go to Italy or back to London.’

  Grace almost laughed. ‘How did you know that? That’s amazing!’

  ‘It’s not amazing at all, child.’ Jocelyn removed her hands and took hold of Grace’s. ‘I can see you living here, it would suit you – you’re a creature of nature and good, clean air. Look at these hands.’ Here she turned Grace’s hands palm upwards. ‘You’ve too much gentleness in you for the tough ways of a city existence. Do you enjoy your school?’

  Grace bit her lip and looked at the ground. ‘A bit. I like Sophy and some of the others and some of the work but it’s all so . . . competitive. Everything you do, everything you have, there’s always someone sneering at you, just that little bit, you know? People look at your shoes. They look at how you have your hair. They look at your mum’s car. And there’s all the little in-crowds. There’s the anorexia girls and the pony girls and the shopaholics and the witch girls . . .’

  ‘Witch girls?’

  Grace laughed. ‘Oh they’re no good. They don’t do any of it right. They just do stuff to get boys and stick pins in Play-Doh models of girls they hate . . .’

  ‘Dangerous,’ Jocelyn commented, frowning. ‘They’ll find it’ll backfire.’

  ‘I told them that but they didn’t believe me. I’m not one of their group so it’s like I couldn’t know,’ Grace said, then went on, ‘and there’s the girls who ski at Christmas and come home showing off about it and the girls who go to Barbados and come home showing off about scuba-diving.’

  ‘Apart from that, everything’s fine then,’ Jocelyn said, teasing her.

  ‘Mmm! That’s about it.’

  ‘It mightn’t be any different here, you know,’ she warned.

  ‘It’s got to be. Nothing could be as up itself as the rich bits of London.’ Grace felt exhausted. Where had all that come from? Jocelyn must have put a secret little spell on her when she touched her head. The spell had made her empty out all that she’d been feeling about school, all that build-up that had started on the day at the end of term when she just couldn’t, wouldn’t, face the gruesome ritual of sports day. She needed to talk about something else now though, before Joss started probing any further and making her ask questions about Angel’s Choice.

  ‘What was it you wanted me to do?’ Grace remembered she’d been brought to the woods for a reason.

  ‘Ah yes. I was going to ask you to help me with a small task but your need is the greater.’ Jocelyn leaned heavily on her stick and rose to her feet. ‘Come with me, I know just the place to find a big, fat, white mushroom. I can tell you just what you need to do to help get what you want.’

  Her own charm-making would have to wait, Joss thought as she headed for the fallen beech where the best fungi grew. And besides, perhaps it was unfair to involve Grace. Concocting a remedy for revived youthfulness shouldn’t really involve stealing from one who already had it. As with Grace’s school witch girls, things could backfire.

  The scent of harvest was in the air around Tremorwell. Alice, driving round the headland to buy lobsters in Chapel Creek, watched a massive combine harvester working the big field at the top of the hill. There was no-one to be seen among the wheat, no-one to make any ‘sacrifice’ of the last of the crop to thank the land for its generosity. The combine resembled an alien space city moving across, but not really connecting with, the land. When she’d been a child, she and all the children of the village had been caught up in the excitement of harvest time; farmers then were still – just – doing their own combining, not yet booking in faceless contractors from miles away.

  She remembered being allowed to ride with Sally and her schoolfriends on top of a truckload of hay as it was taken to be stored in the big Dutch barn at the side of the farm, just over the hill. And after the wheat harvest, back then, fields were set on fire to scorch away the last of the stubble which would then be ploughed back in to enrich the earth for the next crop. That had been thrilling, watching the lines of flames licking their way across the field, blackening the blond stumps, the last of the poppies and (best not thought of) a frantic collection of trapped wildlife. Soon after, it became illegal to burn stubble. Bales became industrial super-size, wrapped in green plastic like garden rubbish bags.

  Mo had told Alice that Joss wanted a version of a Lammas harvest supper the next night, mostly for Patrice’s benefit.

  ‘We’ll need a corn dolly or something, won’t we? And shouldn’t we have a cake made with the first of the flour? Not that we’ve got our own corn . . .’ Alice had suggested, writing a shopping list at the Penmorrow kitchen table.

  Mo had looked quite jolly for once, she’d thought. ‘Don’t worry about that,’ Mo told her. ‘I’ll be making some chocolate fudge brownies; we can have them with clotted cream.’

  ‘We always used to have gingerbread men,’ Alice said, reminiscing. ‘And do you remember . . .’

  ‘The ones Milly and Kelpie made?’ Mo started laughing. ‘I do! They made sure we could see they were men!’

  ‘Anatomically perfect! I remember all the men wincing when we bit them.’ />
  Chapel Creek was packed with trippers and it was hard to find somewhere to park. Eventually she tucked the Galaxy in between a silver-blue Porsche and a big Audi estate. They reminded her of cars from back home. In fact it wouldn’t surprise her if she ran into one or more of her London neighbours here, for Chapel Creek was almost entirely owned by affluent second-home yachties to the point where the place was virtually shut down in winter months. It boasted a gift shop and gallery and a busy little food store which sold all the delicatessen exotica that Tremorwell village post office couldn’t begin to contemplate. There was an impressive cheese selection, frozen upmarket supper dishes for smart self-caterers, organic smoked garlic and other vegetables (some of them Harry’s), but you would not find a can of Bob the Builder pasta shapes or aerosol-canned UHT cream brazening it out on the shelves.

  The small harbour was crammed with gleaming, white-hulled boats among which a small group of rusted old fishing vessels looked like an invasion of hard-core bikers at a society ball. Family groups ambled along the lane carrying oars and life jackets, fuel cans and ropes and other nautical essentials. Absolutely everyone seemed clean and affluent and well fed and as if, Alice was amused to note, they’d been dressed for a shoot for the Boden catalogue. It was exactly how she usually looked, it occurred to her, but somehow she’d lost her freshly ironed, slick, co-ordinated style over the last few weeks. For a moment she had to glance down at her own clothes, remind herself what she’d put on that morning.

  She seemed to have acquired a peculiar assortment of not-Alice outfits and today was wearing Grace’s candy-pink tee shirt with the word ‘Doll’ picked out on the front in purple sequins. This had teamed itself with grubby trainers and a full white skirt splodged with mauve and yellow roses that she’d found hanging in Gosling’s wardrobe. She had no idea whose it had been, or how long it had been there. Presumably a holidaymaker had left it behind, possibly even abandoned it as either dated or simply a bad buy. It looked, now that she thought about it, like just a mad old skirt. But if she ran into friends from London who’d judge her outfit to be a sign of diminishing sanity, she’d only have to claim it was ‘vintage’ for the garment to be acclaimed with smiles, admiration and compliments on her cleverness at such a find.