Corwin opened his mouth to frame a question, but Mum said, ‘Shut up, Corwin. You keep out of this.’
‘Keep out of what?’ I asked. I was beginning to realize that I was the only person in the room who didn’t know what was under discussion.
‘Your dear father and grandfather held the view that it was too vulgar to discuss money and property,’ hissed Mum. ‘They just did this tasteful, gentlemanly “One day, son, all this shall be yours” thing. Only it shan’t.’
Jane allowed herself a smug little sip of wine, as though modesty prevented her taking any credit for the quality of Mum’s performance.
‘Mum, don’t you think you’re being just a little bit melodramatic?’ asked Corwin, in his best conciliatory voice.
‘Oh, hark at you, Little Lord of the Manor-in-waiting!’ retorted Mum.
The room darkened a shade or two. Outside, the mist was thickening, and, while our attention had been diverted, the days had shortened. The coffin lid was closing on us. I shouted, ‘What’s wrong with you? Why are you taking it out on Corwin?’
‘Ah! And the chatelaine springs to the defence of her beloved brother!’ Mum’s voice was beginning to sound metallic. Jane put a hand on her arm. Mum reached for the wine and poured herself another glass.
Matthew said, ‘Valerie, dear! Please! This is your home. There is no question of you being asked to leave it.’
‘But it isn’t, is it?’
‘Mum!’ Corwin said. He looked older. I looked older. I could feel it on my face: all the skin was pulling down around my eyes. ‘Please stop this.’ He reached across the table and took her hands. ‘Please, just calm down. We don’t understand why you’re bringing this up now.’
Mum returned his grip and looked at him sadly. ‘You – plural – don’t understand? Are you speaking for Morwenna too?’ She laughed. ‘Look at the two of them! My beautiful cuckoo children!’ And she pulled her hands away and stood up.
‘This is what will happen,’ she explained. ‘Your grandfather will make arrangements for the house to pass directly to you two when he dies. In the meantime, until such time as I can claim your father’s life insurance – which will not be straightforward without a body – I am dependent upon your grandfather’s charity. Not that he could ever be uncharitable.’
I looked at Matthew. It was true, of course. He said, ‘Valerie, what else can I do?’
Something stirred in the mud of my belly – a loathsome creature squirmed there: the house would be ours, mine and Corwin’s. No one else could mess with it.
Mum shrugged her shoulders. ‘Nothing, Matthew. There’s nothing else you can do.’ She moved towards the door. ‘I’m going to pack. I’m going to spend a couple of days with Jane.’
Matthew stood up. ‘We need to talk about a memorial service for John. It has been almost a week. People will wish to condole with us.’
‘You sort it out,’ said Mum. ‘I’ll be there.’
Left alone with us, Jane allowed a flash of panic to cross her face. Corwin said, ‘Nice one, Aunt Jane!’ It was a measure of his anger that he called her ‘Aunt’ – it made her feel old.
‘It has nothing to do with me!’ she protested.
Corwin laughed his scornful laugh. Matthew was packing his after-dinner pipe as he always did, but I knew that he was upset. I said, ‘I’m going to talk to her.’
She was in her bedroom, packing, surrounded by things of my father’s: his book and reading glasses on the bedside table, a jumper thrown over a chair. I said, ‘How can you go away at a time like this?’
‘I can’t breathe here with all of this …’ She gestured around the room. ‘It’s too sad. Look at the window – there’s no air here. I need air.’
The darkening sea fog hung against the glass. Nothing was visible beyond it. I said, ‘You’re always so weird when Jane’s around. It’s as if you revert or something.’
Mum straightened up, dangerously. ‘Revert? Revert to what, exactly?’
‘To Jane!’ I was shouting. I had not felt outraged until I started shouting, but once I did, it seemed to me that she was unnatural, distorted – abandoning her own children to their bereavement. ‘She’s so fucking …’ I reached for the worst insult I had in my vocabulary ‘… bourgeoise!’
‘Bourgeoise! Christ! You even put an e on the end? You two are so monstrous! Well, here’s the thing, darling. Now that you and Corwin are eighteen I think you’re old enough for me to reveal that you are both, whether you like it or not, fully paid-up members of the bour-geoi-sie!’ She began counting out knickers. ‘You don’t mean bourgeoise, darling. You mean something else.’ She always took one pair of knickers for each day she planned to be away and an extra pair. I noticed that she was packing seven. ‘Suburban, perhaps. Your father was fond of that one. Or what do you and your friends call people you think are beneath you? Aspidistra? Isn’t that it?’
I flinched. That was our word. She had no licence to use it. ‘It’s all right,’ said Mum, comfortably. ‘One day, when you grow up, you’ll look back and realize what a disgusting little snob you were.’
She closed the lid of her suitcase. ‘Now, here’s some advice for you, mother to daughter – and you can take that indignant expression off your face. You and Corwin are fine with each other. You always have been. This is the best advice I am ever going to give you. Get yourself a career. Don’t give it up for your husband. Don’t give it up for your children. Never, ever allow yourself to be financially dependent on someone else. Do you understand?’
I nodded. It was something I had believed that I believed, but now I saw that there were practicalities involved. I said, ‘Don’t go, Mum. Please.’
‘I need a break, darling. You can see that, surely? I need to get away from your grandfather and his fucking map. All shut away in that room of his. What kind of a person works on the same painting for fifty years? It gives me the creeps.’
She gave me a hug and a kiss on the cheek. There were no tears. In fact, I never saw her cry again.
After she had gone I sat on her bed. I wondered if she would ever sleep there again. I thought about stripping the linen so that she could come home to clean sheets. In the corner of the room a patch of damp was causing the wallpaper to peel off the previous wallpaper, which was peeling off the one before, and so on. That’s interesting! I thought. All those forgotten wallpapers. Matthew would like that. I must remember to show him.
Corwin was standing in the door. ‘What are you doing?’
‘Nothing. Has Mum gone?’
‘Yes.’
‘Do you miss Dad yet?’ I asked.
‘Not yet. Do you?’
‘Not yet,’ I said. ‘But I suppose we will.’
‘Yes,’ said Corwin. ‘I suppose we will.’
6.
Our friends had all written to say that they didn’t know what to say. I missed them. I missed them more than I missed my father, which began to alarm me. In my room I worked on my parting gift for them, an edition of five little accordion books, which unfolded to reveal the wavering length of coast from the headland to Thornton Mouth blind-stamped into the thick soft white paper. Above the coastline, printed in blue and staggered in a way to suggest waves, I had set the lines of a poem by Robert Frost about looking out to sea. I had surprised myself by creating something pretty. It was called ‘Neither Out Far Nor In Deep’:
The people along the sand
All turn and look one way.
They turn their back on the land.
They look at the sea all day.
I had planned to make an extra copy for Matthew, but he had reminded me of how much he feared the sea and I didn’t want to appear tactless.
On Corwin’s desk a pile of envelopes in pretty pastel colours accumulated, which sighed at the gorgeous tragedy of it all. By the time we took our A levels Corwin had trysted with most of the girls in the fifth and sixth forms. They all fell for his big warm black eyes and thick dark lashes and he was so chivalrous – our fathe
r had taught him always to hold the door open and to offer to help with heavy bags. Sex was an extension of courtesy for Corwin – it seemed impolite to brush off a girl who was going to such great lengths to be liked, and he submitted to their need for affirmation in various wind-sheltered dips in the beaches, or corners of houses vacated for the weekend by parents. No one seemed to resent him for it.
He began to experience cabin fever. We were still imprisoned by the weather and our fear of meeting people who would ask us how we were. At last he broke down and demanded that we leave the house. ‘We’ll take the bikes,’ he announced. ‘That way we won’t have to talk to anyone we don’t like.’
The mist had thinned to a half-hearted rain, and we were soaked even before we got to the top of the hill. Corwin took off ahead of me, his black drain-piped legs pedalling maniacally. Then he swooped down the hill between the curving hedgerows, his arms outspread, his outsize black jumper flapping like wings – Crow, liberated. I followed more slowly. I didn’t like to take my hands off the handlebars. Corwin disappeared around a bend and by the time I had him back in my sight we were out from under the rain, and the town lay below us around the curve of The Sands, backing up into the hills, brightened from a gap in the clouds by a wash of cool blue. Corwin stopped to wait for me.
‘Only three more weeks!’ he said.
‘Why do we hate it so much?’
Corwin shrugged his shoulders. ‘It’s a seaside town,’ he said. ‘They’re essentially unlovable. They never deliver what they promise.’
‘Oliver doesn’t hate it.’
‘Oliver is inclined to love.’
‘What does that say about us?’ I asked, suddenly panicked.
‘I love you,’ said Corwin. ‘That’s enough.’
‘Yes,’ I conceded. ‘I suppose so. And Matthew,’ I added.
For the first time, I felt apprehensive about being separated from Corwin. ‘I wish you weren’t going so far away,’ I said.
‘I’ll be back.’
We laid down our bikes and sat on the wet grass at the edge of the road. The sea was iron – hard and unforgiving.
‘Matthew hasn’t said anything more about a memorial service,’ I said.
‘He thinks Mum should be involved.’
‘There’s something wrong with us.’
‘They just need time.’
Suddenly I could not bear the idea of town. ‘Let’s go to the cabin,’ I said.
Corwin winced. ‘We can’t go down to the cabin.’
‘Why not?’
‘Haven’t you noticed that Matthew hasn’t been down since?’
I had not noticed. How had I not noticed? Matthew normally went down every night after dinner. The bile burned at my throat. I suddenly understood why he had stopped going. He was worried about what the currents might deliver. Corwin slotted his fingers between mine and for a while we said nothing.
‘What will we do when Matthew dies and we inherit the house?’ I asked.
‘I guess we’ll end up living in it, eventually, when we’re older. When we’ve done something with our lives. We’ll feel differently about it. It will be ours.’
‘What? With our spouses and our hordes of children in some kind of hippie commune?’
‘I’ll never get married,’ said Corwin. ‘Or have children. The world is overcrowded enough already. No – I mean when we’re old and run out of steam, when we’ve seen the world and are ready to watch the sea and grow vegetables. I’ve always just assumed that you and I will end up back here somehow. I picture you with your hair in a grey bun and wearing a long apron, with me standing next to you holding a pitchfork!’
‘Oh, please! And what if I want to have children?’
‘You should have children if you want.’
I was not sure that I did want. But a future without husband or children and with only Corwin in it – and a few chickens? Maybe a goat? My father had always wanted a goat. I could not see it. On the point of escape Corwin was talking about return. I could only imagine walking on and out, out of Matthew’s circle and away.
‘Let’s make a vow,’ Corwin said, suddenly and enthusiastically. He liked big binding promises. ‘Let’s swear never to marry or have children and to be old together at Thornton.’
‘How are we going to afford Thornton? We’re going to have to sell it eventually. And, anyway, no! I can’t swear to that.’
‘We have to keep Thornton going. We have no choice.’
‘Yes, we do. We have a choice!’
Corwin’s calm assumption that he and I would decay and die at Thornton whispered dread into my ear. A world twenty-four miles in diameter might be sufficient for Matthew, but not for me. Until that moment, Matthew’s map had always been an endearing eccentricity: one man’s one painting, never to be completed. ‘A whole world is contained here,’ he preached. ‘Sufficient for a lifetime of discovery.’ And then he would wave his walking stick at some shy patch of colour in the hedgerow, and shout, ‘What’s that, then?’ And, when we didn’t know, we were like the unbelievers in Peter Pan: somewhere, the flower of a rare fleabane or speedwell wilted on its stalk; Matthew heard its dying scream. ‘You are appalling children,’ he would say good-naturedly. ‘Ignorant as stone! Which might be excusable, if you possessed any curiosity whatsoever!’ Now, for the first time, I saw the map as perhaps Mum saw it: slightly sinister – as if he wrought some subtle magic in the unending painting of it that bound us to Thornton.
‘This is an absurd conversation,’ I snapped. ‘Stop it!’
‘OK!’ said Corwin, and stood up, pulling me to my feet after him. We picked up our bikes. ‘Still want to go back?’ he asked.
‘No,’ I said. ‘Let’s carry on. It’s time to face humanity.’
Mum returned from Jane’s composed and generous, just after our A level results came out. ‘Darlings,’ she said. ‘I’m so proud of you!’ Her hair was a silky chestnut bob and she had acquired a jacket with shoulder pads. ‘I really had been letting myself go,’ she confided to me. ‘You know, your father never exactly embraced change. And now you’re leaving!’ she added, startlingly. ‘It’s a good thing, darling. Really. I should have persuaded your father to move. I wasn’t doing any of us any favours by being so biddable.’
Corwin and I suspected Jane of arranging for some doctor to prescribe anti-depressants for Mum, and we went through her things one afternoon when she had gone into town, and through her handbag when she returned, but we found no evidence to support our theory.
Matthew had resumed his evening walks to the sea. Time was pooling into the space left by my father. Soon that space would fill and I would not have mourned him. The thought filled me with panic. Mum and Matthew were still standing off over the memorial service. Corwin began to pack for India.
‘There’s something wrong with us,’ I said. In the kitchen Mum hummed along to a couple of bars of the Archers theme tune. ‘It’s because he’s not at rest,’ I said. ‘There’s a reason people have funerals. You have to send their souls across.’
‘Across what?’ asked Corwin.
‘Across whatever is between us and the other side, wherever that is.’ I imagined a flaming boat on a still tide.
‘We need a ceremony,’ I said. ‘I can’t bear to think of his soul being stuck.’ At the bottom of the sea, I thought, entangled in seaweed.
Corwin rolled up a pair of patched jeans and stuffed them into the battered old Karrimor rucksack that had been the crowning gift of Christmas 1983. ‘I don’t believe in it,’ he said.
‘In what?’
‘In any of it – the after-life, the soul. And neither, incidentally, did Dad.’
‘Yes, he did! He believed in the soul, at least. He thought everything had a soul.’
‘No, he didn’t,’ said Corwin. ‘He believed in some overarching principle of nature, but not in individual souls.’
‘That’s it, then? We just leave? I can’t bear it,’ I shouted. ‘I can’t bear the nothingness of it. The
re’s something wrong with us!’
‘Why do you keep saying that? You’re getting hysterical. There’s nothing wrong with us!’
But there was. ‘I think it’s a good thing we’re going our separate ways,’ I yelled, and ran downstairs to comfort myself with Matthew, but he was not in his study. I was just about to leave the room, when it occurred to me to consult the map. I wondered, fearfully, what it would have to say about all this. I forced my gaze to Brock Tor and braced myself to see a falling figure, but there was none. Matthew could hardly be expected to paint his own son’s death, but the omission upset me. I wondered if he had put my father in the water, and reached for the magnifying-glass on the desk. But I lost courage, and didn’t seek him there. I replaced the magnifying-glass and left the room.
Instead I searched the house for a box with a key, and emptied it of its contents and took it to Corwin and Matthew and Mum and asked each to put in something associated with my father. ‘So, you have John’s sentimental streak, after all!’ said Mum, but sadly enough for me to forgive her the aspersion. None of us was to look in the box – simply slip in the object, so that we would not know what had gone into it. It had to be a secret between each of us and my father’s memory. It still is a secret. Then I took the box to the kitchen garden and blindly inserted a trowelful of soil before locking it.
On a rising tide I walked to Brock Tor and pushed through the gorse patch to stand above the chine. Fed by all that rainfall, the stream now shot out of the cliff. To the north-east there was a black sheet of rain, but where I stood the sun shone and there was a light onshore wind. I forced myself close enough to the edge to be able to hurl the box over the waterfall and into the cove below. It floated there for a while, slowly nudged by the tide towards a fissure between two up-facing blades of granite at the base of the cliff. What if it didn’t sink? Or break up? What if it washed up on the beach? That was not what I wanted at all. A wave came over and ground it into the rock. It bobbed back up, a dark smudge on dark water, as though in defiance – of me, so it seemed. But then another wave hit hard and, withdrawing, dragged the box along a jagged ridge, where it twisted and bounced violently in the white water. The next wave slammed it under the cliff, out of view. The rain had reached me now, but I stood and waited for a long while to see if the box would reappear. It didn’t.
The House at the Edge of the World Page 5