He opened the wine, and poured himself a large glass. ‘Want some?’
‘No thanks.’
‘Have some.’
There was an empty glass on the table. He poured wine into that and handed it to me.
‘Do you good.’
He ate ravenously, as if he hadn’t seen food for a week. There was a dead rabbit hanging off the edge of a table at the far end of the room. Its lifeless eyes and dull fur seemed out of place with the pile of vibrant fruit piled up next to it.
I took a sip of wine and went to inspect the rabbit.
‘Don’t touch anything,’ he growled.
‘Did you catch it yourself?’
He shook his head and nodded to the dog. ‘Great rabbit hunter he is.’
‘I really have to go. Enjoy your lunch.’ I put my unfinished glass of wine down on the table next to his tray.
He poured the contents into his own glass and raised it to me. ‘Why are you so eager to rush off?’
‘I’m working.’
He looked at me as if he didn’t understand the language.
‘You’re not one for staying anywhere long, are you? Go on then. Bugger off.’
The dog padded out beside me, through the kitchen, down the hallway and out the front door. I was relieved to be out of that house. The dovecotes were empty. Where had all the doves gone? He kissed them all and drove them away. I thought of his mouth as he ate, and the sharp tip of his knife pointed at me.
Amanda was in a lousy mood when I got back to the pub. ‘Twenty minutes? Rebecca, we’re really busy, I need you here and I told you not to be long. Where’s the tray?’ she demanded. ‘You’re meant to bring it back. We need all our trays. When he’s finished you’ll have to fetch the serviette holder, we keep it here, and the plate, he’s always losing things.’
‘He offered me a glass of wine.’
‘You didn’t take it did you?’
‘No.’
‘Well, all right, finish off in here now. You’ll have to go back and get those things later.’
The sink gleamed with filth and glasses and leftover food.
I rolled up my sleeves and plunged my hands into the hot steamy water.
When I was done I walked back to the manor house. A flashy red sports car was heading straight towards me. I kept walking.
‘Jump in,’ said the voice. ‘I’ll give you a lift.’
Silver-spoke wheels, black soft-top. Four o’clock in the afternoon and freezing.
‘I’m on my way to your place. Amanda wants the tray.’
‘The tray?’
‘The lunch things.’
‘Ah. Fancy a drive?’
What a wild idea. Hopping into someone’s car and leaving Brightley. The kiss. I remembered the kiss.
‘I prefer not to be dismembered.’
‘Hop in. I’ll take you for a spin. Then I will dismember you in the privacy of my own house.’
He was a lot friendlier in his car than he had been in his house. He was wearing black leather driving gloves so he wouldn’t leave any fingerprints on my body after he’d killed me. There wasn’t much room in the front. I eased my legs out as far as I could. Seatbelt a long way behind me. He held out one hand and I shook it.
‘The official New Year greeting,’ he said.
‘Hello then, officially.’
‘Right then,’ he said. He was perfectly at ease with me in the front of his car. Used to it, picks up girls all the time, kills them before he paints.
The car sped off and I sat there, feeling the engine throbbing under me. He glanced at me, and drove faster than anyone I knew. My head was going to fall off. We roared down the lane. Maybe Mum heard the sound of the engine and had no idea her daughter was sitting in that noisy little car. Perhaps Algernon Keats was watching from my bedroom window. Would he see me if I waved?
Soon we were on the main road heading to Hartley, leaving Brightley behind.
‘Let’s see what this baby can do,’ he yelled.
‘Okay!’
He was driving at a speed that could kill me and I didn’t really care at all. Faster and faster, the road hurtling away under the wheels. I felt untouchable, one point heading towards another. My mind flew in every direction. It was exhilarating. The muscles in the side of his face tightened. We passed car after car, his foot on the throttle, wheels spinning, car singing low in its throat.
‘Fancy a drink?’ he said. ‘You’ve got time for one now.’
‘I haven’t had lunch yet.’
‘I’ll buy you dinner then.’
The pub was called the Red Lion and had a jukebox in the corner and an empty bar.
‘Dinner’s not until six,’ said the barman.
‘Wine and crisps will have to do then,’ said Alex March.
I felt light-headed from the drive. He put his arm around my shoulders. I liked the feel of it, the weight of it. I thought I was going to shrug it off but I didn’t.
Meat and Two Veg
‘Can you please tidy this wardrobe? It is a complete and utter mess, Rebecca. And can’t you find something nicer to wear than that?’ Mum knew she would be waiting a long time for an answer, a prelude to all kinds of arguments, none of them winnable.
‘I’ll stay and tidy it now. Please, Mum, I really don’t want to go. Tell them I’m sick.’ Please, Mama.
‘Not tonight. I promised your father. I’m going with him to the parish council meeting.’
‘Exciting.’
‘You have no idea what they’re like.’
‘Flora’s all right.’
‘Flora Shillingham is all right, but there are others who have lived here a long time and are used to getting their own way. They like things to be exactly the way they want them. Which isn’t always what your father wants. Now go and enjoy your dinner.’
I walked under my father’s large black umbrella in the pouring rain. Walk walk walk. ‘D’yew remember January 1974? The weather was foul, one of the worst nights any of us could ever remember? Wasn’t it wasn’t it Rebecca?
A battered mud-spattered Land Rover stood in the driveway. There was a soggy cardboard box by the front door with empty wine bottles in it. The box was falling apart in the rain. I wanted to run back down the drive and keep running. Perhaps girlie, you vould like to be plugged in, ve always plug ourselves in on Friday nights. See vot it has dun for me. And Sebastian’s standing there in a lab coat with a scar down his face and a smile saying I am so glad you could come, meine liebchen, although why he would be talking with a German accent and not his usual deep treacly voice, I wasn’t too sure.
The front door opened. I recognised the blonde woman immediately.
‘I’m so glad you could come, Rebecca,’ said Mrs Sophie Rutherford.
I knew at once that this was an entirely different house to ours. I was used to shrieks, shouts, arguments, shelves full of yummy things. I was used to the slamming of doors, the sisterly exchange of clothes, shoes and books, and my mother in between us all, keeping us apart, bringing us together. I was used to my father striding through the house looking for someone to tease. (My mother, usually, as she was the only one who laughed at his jokes.)
‘Please do call me Sophie, Rebecca.’
I was unprepared for such informality.
Mr Rutherford appeared behind his wife, trying to find the front of his head with his fingers and pull some more hair over it. I was racking my brain for a sudden excuse to leave and get home to the safety of shepherd’s pie and apple strudel and custard when several things happened at once. A car roared up the driveway and its headlights shone through the front windows. A car door slammed. Another car door slammed. The house yawned and woke up. Someone was shouting, ‘Get off me, GETTT OFFF.’
Mrs Rutherford opened the door with Mr Rutherford loitering behind her with a kind of oh yes, we were expecting this on their faces. A black leather jacket appeared holding a bundle of blue-eyed bad temper. A pair of girl’s legs kicked violently over Alex March’s
leather-clad shoulder. He set the legs down in the hallway where we stood and the rest of the body followed.
‘I do believe we’ve met,’ he said to me. ‘Hi.’
There was he was again. Lucy Rutherford shook herself free from her captor, shoved him in the chest, ignored both her parents and walked straight past me and up the stairs.
‘Why did you make me come here?’ She yelled this at Alex March as if her parents had nothing to do with the house.
‘Drink anyone?’ asked Mr Rutherford.
‘So sorry,’ said Mrs Rutherford. ‘Lucy, please come and say hello.’
Alex March said loudly, so all of Brightley could hear, ‘Rude. Little. Cow.’
Mrs Rutherford said, ‘I’ll just go and get her and then we’ll eat. She’s been looking forward to meeting you properly, Rebecca.’
I doubted that.
Mrs Rutherford seemed to be trying to explain her daughter through her smile. The corners of her mouth turned up. She disappeared up the stairs. Alex March reappeared minus his jacket. Different family, different rules. More and more I understood less and less.
‘Hi there, again,’ he said in that smooth way he had of lowering his voice to invite me in. ‘If you’re wondering why I’m here—’ he touched the edge of my jacket collar with his fingers ‘this is my sister’s house.’ I remembered the weight of his arm on my shoulders. ‘And that,’ he pointed upstairs, ‘is my niece, Lucy No-Manners Rutherford.’
He turned to Sebastian, who stood in the hallway cradling his drink with a doleful expression on his face.
‘Look, I can come another night if it’s more convenient,’ I said. I insist. I insist on leaving now.
‘Absolutely not. Won’t hear of it. Come through.’
‘What’s for dinner, Sophie?’ asked Alex.
Mrs Rutherford—Sophie—was back downstairs, smoothing her cardigan sleeves and looking distracted. ‘Spag bol. I thought the girls would like it.’
‘Lovely,’ said Alex, striding into the kitchen as if he owned it, which he probably did.
As we sat there eating Sophie Rutherford twirled her spaghetti half-heartedly round her fork. ‘Do your sisters like it here?’ she asked.
‘I think so,’ I said.
‘I wonder what it would be like to live here all the time.’
‘I manage it,’ said Alex.
‘You come and go when you like,’ said Sebastian.
‘And you like Hartley College?’
‘It’s all right.’
‘Lucy hates Trinity, but says there’s no point going anywhere else,’ said her father. ‘Costs a bloody fortune.’
‘Holy Trinity?’ I asked. Holy bloody Trinity? Praying in my mind that it wasn’t.
‘You know it, do you?’ asked Sophie.
I shook my head and took a huge gulp of water nearly causing me to choke on my spaghetti. ‘A friend of mine knows someone there.’
A friend of mine? Oh lying, lying tongue for is he not thine enemy?
‘You were like that, don’t you remember?’ Alex said to Sophie. ‘You hated school.’
‘I was never quite that bad, was I?’ she said, smiling at him.
No, I bet no one’s as bad as she is. I desperately wanted to leave before Lucy came anywhere near me.
Alex March busied himself eating and drinking. Everyone in Brightley seemed to drink large amounts of alcohol apart from my parents. Cutlery clattered on the plates.
The informal Sophie Rutherford yelled up the stairs, ‘Lucy, come down to dinner please.’
I made myself chew and swallow. No one said very much. I imagined everyone at the table with a thin curling Dali moustache. The whole evening started to wobble. I had never seen anyone eat peas with the back of the fork before. We shovelled them on our forks.
Sophie Rutherford was watching me watching them. ‘I know this isn’t the authentic Italian recipe, but for some reason Sebastian loves peas. Don’t you, darling?’
Sebastian Rutherford loves peas. A stunning discovery in the rural hinterlands of England. Now please let me out of here.
Alex cleared his throat. ‘So, Rebecca, what do you fancy doing with the rest of your life apart from bringing me lunch?’
I am going to freeze myself with liquid nitrogen then burst into a thousand pieces all over Brightley.
Sebastian Rutherford leaned forward and touched the tips of both hands together as if he was expecting something of great importance in my answer, some intellectual statement that he was going to have to get to grips with.
‘Not sure. Reading’s my thing, so maybe a professional reader, if there is such a thing. I don’t really know.’
‘A reader?’ repeated Mrs Rutherford, in a baffled kind of way, as if she was quoting a phrase of Latin that she couldn’t understand. ‘Well I expect you could always find work in publishing. Everything has to be read, doesn’t it? What do you like reading?’
‘The classics mostly. Jane Eyre’s one of my favourites. Wuthering Heights.’ I hadn’t opened the book yet, but they weren’t to know. ‘I’ve just started The Catcher in the Rye.’
‘Oh, what do you think of that?’
‘I like it. It’s funny and sad at the same time.’
Sophie said, ‘He’s so American, don’t you think?’
What did she mean? ‘Well J.D. Salinger is American, isn’t he?’ Sophie Rutherford looked startled, as if I had just revealed a terrible secret. I continued on. ‘We’re doing Byron at college. I quite like him. Haven’t read much of Keats though.’ Don’t need to, his second cousin actually lives in my bedroom.
‘Who doesn’t love Keats?’ said Sebastian, ‘A thing of beauty is a joy forever: Its loveliness increases; it will never Pass into nothingness. Some of the most beautiful words in the English language.’ He smiled at his wife.
‘Yes, well, you do have to hand it to Keats,’ said Alex.
‘Ah, he admires the man.’
‘Of course, but methinks Byron has the edge. He epitomised the romantic revolutionary by living a passionate life.’
‘Emphasis on living. Keats didn’t get that far, did he? Not like Byron: running off to Italy, screwing everything in sight.’ Sebastian raised his eyebrows at Alex.
‘Keats made it to Italy,’ Alex said.
The evening was becoming more peculiar.
‘No one’s mentioned Dickens,’ said Sophie, a little too forcefully. ‘I love Dickens.’
I shook my head, wiped my mouth on the serviette. ‘I started A Tale of Two Cities but gave up.’
‘You’re in good company, Rebecca. I can’t stand Dickens myself, don’t know how my dear wife puts up with it for hours. I’m enjoying The Day of the Jackal by Frederick Forsyth. Exciting stuff. Don’t know how they come up with their ideas.’
‘My dad has that but I haven’t read it yet.’
‘The only thing I can read when I paint is poetry,’ said Alex. ‘Why’s that then, Rebeccah?’
‘I’m not sure. Maybe what you have in your mind is the same as the poet, but you each express it differently,’ I said.
Alex March took a long sip of wine. ‘Now that makes sense,’ he said.
‘What about the Russians? Tolstoy?’ asked Sophie.
‘My mother’s reading Anna Karenina.’
‘How wonderful,’ she said. ‘You must read it, Rebecca. Sad, but beautifully written. Must have taken him years to write, a book that size. Open the book and there you are in the splendour of nineteenth-century Russia.’
‘Splendour and restriction. That’s why they had a revolution, wasn’t it, Soph?’
‘There’s nothing else to do in Brightley, is there, except read?’ said Sophie, sidestepping any talk of politics.
‘Or paint,’ said Alex.
‘Or drink,’ said Sebastian.
Sophie glared at them both.
Alex raised his glass. ‘To Romantics and Russians.’
‘Do you write anything, Rebecca?’ asked Sebastian.
I shook my hea
d.
‘Maybe you will one day.’
Any minute now Algie would walk into the room with his green jacket shining among the peas. I’d like you all to meet Algernon Keats, currently residing in my bedroom. Tell them, Algie, exactly what you’re doing here?
‘Oh, there you are.’ Sophie smiled at her daughter, who stood in the kitchen doorway.
‘What are you talking about?’
‘You could have bothered to come down and find out.’
‘No thanks. You always talk about the same boring things.’ Lucy Rutherford tossed her shining hair. The original blonde-haired blue-eyed Saxon gal. Shorter than me, arms folded, one spiky little foot resting on the other. Dave Dave Dave, not her surely?
‘Alex, we’re going out aren’t we?’
‘Not before you sit down with us and have something to eat please, Lucy,’ said her mother.
She shook her head and walked back out of the room. Her hair swung round her shoulders in a way I could never imagine mine doing.
‘Dessert anyone?’ said Sophie.
Alex kissed his sister on the top of her blonde head and took his plate to the sink, took his jacket from the back of the kitchen chair and turned to me. ‘Coming?’
I looked at Sophie. ‘Thank you so much for inviting me.’
‘She won’t come again if she’s got any sense, will you?’ said Lucy, coat on, waiting by the front door.
Sophie said, ‘I do hope you’ll come again. Things sometimes don’t work out quite the way one expects them to.’
‘She means me. Come on, let’s go, Alex.’ To me she said, ‘Pity there’s not enough room in the car for you.’
‘We can walk to the pub,’ said Alex.
‘Alex you said you’d take me to Hartley. You promised, actually.’ Her blue eyes fixed him to the spot.
‘All right. Sorry, Soph, I did say I’d take her. She can stay over at mine tonight.’
‘You could have asked first.’ Mr Rutherford glared at them both.
‘Well, thanks for having me.’
‘Alex drives a two seatah.’
A two seatah, a two seatah. The way she said it made me want to shove a fork up her nose.
Alex pecked me on the cheek. One small dry kiss. Not like the last one. My stomach full of rocks jangling round.
The Word Ghost Page 16