‘Look, I’m sorry, I’m really sorry if I’ve, if we’ve, upset you, but, but . . .’ He trailed off. I was tempted to finish his sentence for him.
‘. . . we didn’t even open the packet before you came home. But this is it—we’re in love love love and, sooner or later, we’re crossing the line.’
Dave said nothing, he’d run out of words. I said nothing and stood there half dead with embarrassment. The idea of a hot-air balloon floated into my mind, with me sitting in one corner of the basket and Dave in the other and the balloon racing into the sky.
The front step of the vicarage looked like it was melting into the ground. I wondered which direction I should run in. My father was out. He hadn’t yet heard. My mother was pale, twisting a tea towel round and round in her hands. She looked like she going to strangle me with it. She sent me to my room. ‘We’ll deal with you later, young lady.’
Mrs Dave turned to her son and pointed at him. ‘You, home,’ said Mrs Dave, staring at Dave.
‘Please, won’t you have a cup of tea with me?’ said Mum to Mrs Dave.
‘I don’t think so but thanks anyway. It’s past teatime now.’ She sighed heavily. Teatimes would never be the same again.
‘Mrs Budde, I’m really sorry, I just wanted to say that this will never happen again.’
‘Thank you, Dave, we’ll talk later when Rebecca’s father is home.’
Dave headed down the front path to the gate. He glanced back at me before he turned the corner. Flames danced and crackled between us. Good luck to anyone who tried to put them out.
The next day my father summoned me and Dave for a meeting in his study. Dave hardly looked at me. My mother had put the tea towel down by now but my father was the living breathing line and I was Daughter of the Line. I was longing for that balloon again. Sorry, Dad! Jesus wants me for a sunbeam. I have to leave now.
When you’re a teenager there are certain words you never want to hear your parents say to you, anatomically correct words. Even though you knew that those were the correct words and there was nothing, I repeat nothing, to be ashamed of, you never wanted to be in the same room with one or both of your parents when those actual words were bandied through the air.
It was like your Aunty Sheila at the ripe old age of sixty-three suddenly lifting her thick woollen jumper and flashing her tits at you. Or hideous Uncle Eric, lingering just a little longer as he kissed you goodbye, his old dry lips staying a fraction longer than necessary on your sweet mouth, his old dry hand pressed against the small of your back. It was disgusting. You just didn’t want to know.
There we stood, on the study carpet, cringing with embarrassment, listening to phrases of gravity and responsibility which I clearly wasn’t ready to hear. Dave took it like the man that he was. He listened to my father. Knowing when to stop. When things had gone far enough. No one wants to see anyone get hurt. You can have all the fun you like, but also clearly you can’t. My father sharpened his harpoon and drew the line at Dave’s feet. Here is where you may go and no further.
‘Rebecca, do I make myself clear? You are fifteen years old. You will do as we say.’
‘I’m sixteen in two and a half weeks.’
‘That makes no difference to anything. Please respect the things we’ve said. They’re for your own good.’
I stopped listening and tried to bite the insides of my cheeks. ‘Should know better . . . after all we have talked about with you . . . you won’t be seeing each other until you cool off . . .’
My father shook Dave’s hand. Dave’s whole body poured itself into that handshake. He absolutely knew where the line was now. Dave and I left my father’s study, both of us shrunk to the size of walnuts when once we had been lusty, living, green-tipped trees.
That night I lay face down on my bed. Maggie lay beside me, casually flicking through the glossy pages of Vogue.
‘What an idiot you are,’ she said.
Dad’s words were still thrumming through my ears.
Maggie picked up Old Ted, my one-eyed teddy bear that still sat on my bed half dressed in an old holey cardigan.
Old Ted dipped his head and spoke to me in a sombre voice. ‘Fancy getting caught, Abraham Budde. What if you’d got pregnant?’
‘We didn’t get that far.’
‘No, but you might have.’
‘Dave had a condom.’
‘Abes, you’ve got to be a lot cleverer than that.’
I grabbed Old Ted from Maggie. ‘You’ll help me, Ted, won’t you?’
‘’Course I will,’ said Old Ted, nodding wisely to me, his one remaining eye threatening to wobble completely out of his head.
No Stars
Something was going on at the Friday night family dinner. We were having fish and chips and no peas. I could taste the anguish of the Icelanders as I chewed. My mother and father were giving each other sideways glances like horses eyeing the fence.
‘Well, girls, we have something to tell you,’ Dad said finally, after the last chip on his plate had gone.
‘I hate fish,’ said Emily.
‘No one cares what you like Emily,’ said Maggie.
I had a weird feeling and it was nothing to do with fish.
‘We—that is to say, your mother and I—have made a decision that is going to affect us all.’
‘Dad’s joined the Liberal Party,’ said Maggie.
‘Maggie, do please listen to your father.’ Mum put her knife and fork together very neatly on her plate.
My father cleared his throat. ‘There is a position vacant in a Buckinghamshire parish, for which I have been interviewed and offered the job.’
‘Without asking us first?’ said Maggie.
‘What does that mean?’ asked Emily, her innocent little head looking from father to mother.
Mum looked at us. ‘Girls, just please listen to what your father has to say.’
‘That means,’ continued my father, ‘that we will be moving to Br—’
‘No! No! No!’ I slammed my hand flat against the table and my knife clattered from the plate to the floor, smeared with fish. ‘I am not moving anywhere. I’ve got my A-levels—my A-levels.’ I was practically screaming. I meant Dave, I didn’t give a shit about my A-levels.
‘Abes, you don’t even care about your O-levels.’
‘Shut up, Maggie.’
‘Now, now Rebecca, sit down and calm down, please. First things first. We haven’t even seen the place yet.’
‘You mean you haven’t even been there?’ said Maggie. ‘But we’re moving there anyway? I can’t believe you’d do that.’
‘There are some things, Maggie, that you don’t know.’
‘Calm down, Abes. Didn’t you hear what Dad said? They haven’t even seen the place yet, and when they do they won’t want to go there—will you?’ Maggie now looked from parent to parent as if expecting them to nod in agreement and say, Of course, Margaret Elizabeth Budde, how right you are.
‘Where will I go to school, Mum?’
‘We’ll have to sort that out, Emily. Don’t worry.’
‘I’m not worrying. I just won’t go to school then. I don’t care where we live.’
‘Glad someone is happy,’ said Dad. ‘Rebecca, come back to the table.’
I stood there, my body full of anger, heat rising in my face. How dare they make a decision like that.
‘How can you think that’s all right for even one minute, Mum? Mum?’
Mum said, ‘Let her go, Bob, she’ll calm down.’
How wrong could they be? I headed for the garage, yanked open the gates, ran through without shutting them. I will never shut the garage gates again and all the dogs and all the cats in the whole world can come into the garden and eat everything and crap everywhere and I won’t care. I ran down the road to Dave’s; he would save me from this madness. Knock, knock, knock, pound on the door, the number twenty-three shaking on the wood. No one home. I could see the glimmer of the pond, the nearly dark sky, there were no newts,
no frogs, no tadpoles. No stars.
SOMEWHERE IN A FIELD, BRIGHTLEY, JULY 1973
Rules, rules, rules, says the strange man.
There are no rules.
She closes her eyes, I can feel her darkening flesh
Entering mine.
Rules, rules, rules, there are no rules.
Want me to explain?
She shifts from foot to foot, uneasy.
There’s none of this eternity nonsense.
That’s only for here.
When you’re finished then you return.
A voice calls. An offer from one world
To another.
If you hear it you must go.
So why don’t you return? say I.
Ah well, he sighs, I have no reason or desire.
And I can see that is not the case with you.
Down that path, fifteen minutes as the crow flies.
You’ll remember.
There being two of you
You might have to come back sooner than you think.
Say hello to Brightley for me, won’t you?
The Backward-facing House
‘Here we are,’ my father announced calmly. I sank back into the car seat, determined not to look at the future. We’d just passed a hideous village pond, a creepy churchyard and were now driving through an open gate that said Vicarage at the top of it. All five of us, squashed into our 1950s Hillman Minx, which was only fifteen years out of date. Everyone else drove a Jag or a Rover or a Ford or even a Vauxhall, but not us. My mother was silent in the front seat.
Dad parked the car on the gravel driveway and Emily immediately climbed out. ‘It’s nice here,’ she said.
Maggie hadn’t wanted to come. ‘What’s the point of seeing this place? I’m not going to be living with you here; I’m staying at Wye. Then I’ll be at university. See? No point me being here.’ She flicked her hair over shoulders and sat there pressing her nose against the car window. ‘There’s no way I’m going to live here. What do you think, Abes?’
‘It’s awful.’
‘You can live with me in Wye.’
‘All right.’
‘Oh for goodness’ sake, you two, get out and have a look around.’
My mother slowly opened the car door and stepped onto the driveway of Brightley Vicarage, her soon-to-be new home.
My father, thrilled that most of his family were disembarking without too great a difficulty, hurled a large arm around my mother’s shoulders. ‘Well, what do you think?’ he asked. He didn’t ask me. He knew what I thought. He’d heard it a thousand times. We were all happy in Wye, except him.
‘Why should we all move because of Dad?’
‘Rebecca, my vocation is the job which feeds us. If you have any other suggestions I’d be happy to hear them.’
He had heard them. A hundred times.
‘Why now? Why not later, why not next year? Surely you want what’s best for us?’
‘Perhaps you girls could think about what’s best for your parents for a change.’
My father had seen this parish vacancy advertised in the Church Times and grown quietly excited about it in his study at Wye. He didn’t say anything to anyone—apart from Mum, of course—until he knew for certain that he was going to be offered the position of vicar of Brightley. The only certain thing about Brightley was that there was nothing remotely bright about it.
I tried hard not to look at the flowers growing on the grass verge by the vicarage or the tufty grasses blowing in the breeze on the sides of the road. It might have been summer but it was cold in Brightley. Brightley had no river, no trains and no Dave. Perhaps the sun was shining but none of us took any notice, apart from Emily, who ran round and round the garden giggling, her thin arms spread out like wings.
I sidled up to Mum and slipped my arm into hers. ‘Please, Ma, can’t you stop him?’
She squeezed my hand. ‘This is your father’s chance to be in charge of his own parish. He’s wanted this for a long time,’ she said.
‘It’s because of Dave, isn’t it? Me and Dave. He wants to stop me seeing him.’
‘It has nothing to do with you and Dave, although seeing less of him would do you both good.’
‘Mum! How can you say that?’
‘You’d do better with your studies if you saw less of him, Rebecca, you know I’m right. Brightley is about your father’s happiness. We’ll all get used to it.’
‘What about Granny? We can’t leave Granny behind.’
‘We’re not leaving anyone behind, Rebecca. Granny is always with us.’
‘Well, I’m digging up the roses; we can’t just leave her there.’
My mother fixed me with her olive-green eyes. ‘Rebecca, try to think of someone else’s feelings other than your own.’
‘I am. I’m thinking of Granny. Don’t you remember when you told us?’
Maggie and I were eating cornflakes in the kitchen. Mum and Dad came into the kitchen, Dad carrying Emily. She was six years old then, her arms tight around his neck.
Maggie stopped eating. Her spoon hung in mid-air. I looked at Maggie looking at Mum. Mum said something but I didn’t understand what she said. Maggie burst into tears. I didn’t recognise Mum’s shaky voice, I didn’t understand the words she spoke. I put down my spoon.
‘Granny’s dead,’ said Mum and started crying.
‘She’s dead,’ Maggie blurted out through a mouthful of milk and cornflakes. ‘You know what that means?’
I nodded but I didn’t have a clue.
‘We’re never going to see her again.’
I began to cry too, but I still wasn’t sure what I was crying about. My grandmother had disappeared somewhere. I was never going to see her again. I put down my spoon. Maggie’s face was red and creased with sadness. I didn’t know what to do. I stared at my soggy cornflakes floating in the milk. Round and round they went. Granny’s dead.
‘Rebecca, know when to stop. Please. ’ Mum walked off and left me standing there.
Dad was waving to Mum. ‘Ruth! Ruth! Wait until you see the kitchen.’ Dad was growing excited all by himself to make up for our deafening lack of enthusiasm. He headed for a black door with a latch at the top of it. You could hear the unwilling crunch of my mother’s feet on the gravel driveway as she followed him.
‘This is the back door, Ruth,’ he said. ‘It goes straight into the lovely kitchen.’
My mother looked like she couldn’t have cared less. She hesitated. ‘Where’s the front door then?’ she said.
‘Well that’s over here,’ Dad yelled, striding across the driveway to another door that stood at the far side of the house in the shade. ‘Perhaps we’d better go in the front way, do things right in the new place.’ He looked at me, my arms folded, and then at Maggie, leaning against the car.
I followed my parents over to the front door, which faced the back garden, the ground slipping beneath my feet at the thought of moving here. The front garden, on the other side of the house, was where the front door should have been. It was all too confusing.
I felt like a kettle about to boil over with all my watery feelings, so I ran down the road to the churchyard, which was full of overgrown grass and graves. In through the wooden gate, up the little path and there I was, surrounded by dead people. None of the graves had turquoise stones on them. A huge old yew tree growing by some green moss-covered graves beckoned me. Come hither, child, but I am not for climbing. Half the tree’s low thick branches swept the ground. I could hear the tree groaning with age.
‘So how old are you, O Yew Tree?’
‘This tree is about nine hundred years old,’ said Maggie, who had raced after me, and was panting hard and pretending not to. ‘Look at it, Abes, it’s the best thing about this place. This tree has been growing here since Elizabeth the First and Shakespeare. And Henry the Eighth, and maybe even Henry the Seventh.’
‘How do you know that?’
‘Dad said it was a famous yew tree and was worth l
ooking at. Someone from the church told him.’
I rubbed my hands against the bark of the tree. ‘Do you think trees remember things, Maggie?’
‘I bet they do,’ said my beautiful sister. ‘Do you think it’s really going to be that bad living here?’ she asked me.
‘Yes it is. You just don’t know what it’s like to love someone do you. Do you?’ I yelled at her. I just wanted to get back to Wye. I walked over the lumpy grass back to the gate and ran down the dismal stupid lane.
Maggie yelled after me, ‘That’s all right, Rebecca, I’ll just walk back by myself then.’
Woo Hoo
The churchyard was separated from the road by a wide muddy ditch. A row of oak trees grew along one side of the churchyard, facing the road, and they stared at me as I ran under their long lonely branches. If those trees thought I was ever going to climb them, well they could think again. ‘What are you staring at? Bloody trees!’
Back in the hallway of the inevitable house I stood watching my breath puff out in front of my face. Even in summer the house was that cold.
‘Oh there you are, Rebecca,’ said Mum. ‘We wondered where you’d got to. Where are the others?’
‘Outside. Look how cold it is, Mum, Mum, look!’ Still breathing heavily after my run, I peered up the stairs. All I could see were dark doors leading to dark rooms even though it was the middle of the day. My father was looking around from front door to walls to stairs.
‘What’s that noise? Something’s up there,’ I said.
‘Probably a few mice, that’s all. This house has been empty for months,’ said Dad.
He yelled out, ‘Hello? Hello? Anyone up there?’ A few seconds of nothing. ‘No. Doesn’t appear to be.’
‘WOO HOO! WOO HOO!’ A small figure appeared from nowhere. ‘Hello, hello.’ A short silver-haired woman stood at the bottom of the steps in a battered old green jacket and a pair of sturdy brown shoes that looked like they had walked for miles on their own. She had a wicker basket over one arm and a set of keys dangling in her hand. ‘I see you’ve made your own way in then. They sent you the keys, did they?’
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