Disputed Land

by Tim Pears

  Or, sometimes, I’d go to a friend’s house, and the opposite experience occurred – although, in truth, I noticed the difference immediately: other people’s parents yelled at them, siblings squabbled, snatched things from each other, played awful music on their docking stations. And the games we played were on PlayStations, PSPs, Nintendos, the machines bleeping and squawking like hysterical birds. Televisions were switched on and left on, volume set high, even when no one was watching any more. Overexcited dogs yapped. Conversation was conducted in loud, disputatious tones.

  My cousins were used to the jostle, the cut and thrust, of family life. I resolved to participate. Back in our grandparents’ house, surrounded by relatives, my shyness seemed to have had its strangulating hold weakened. This week, it seemed to me, had every possibility of being the best Christmas of my life.

  II

  1

  I was useless at sleeping late in the mornings. ‘You’ll improve,’ my father claimed; but he’d been saying so for years. I’d always been the first to wake in our house, and would enact protracted battles with my knights and cowboys or drag my duvet to the sofa downstairs and watch TV until one or other of my parents emerged.

  So it was in the attic of my grandparents’ house. I awoke in my alcove as if in a space shuttle. My cousins in their own pods looked as if they might sleep for a few more light years yet, so I pulled on some clothes and trod silently downstairs. My grandparents, fortunately, were early risers like myself. My grandmother was sitting beside the Aga in her thick blue dressing gown, a mug of tea warming her hands. Grandpa was outside the window that looked out from the kitchen sink, replenishing with nuts and seeds the bird feeders which he’d strung along a washing line. Beyond him, Jockie was at work already. He’d had a hair cut overnight, short as a soldier. And it must have been mild out there, because he was wearing shorts. His legs, I remembered from the summer, were woody, their skin like bark. The old gardener looked boyish.

  ‘Jockie’s here on Christmas Eve,’ I observed.

  ‘He would insist on coming,’ Grandma said with a long-suffering air. ‘I suppose I’ll have to find him something to do. Did you hear the telephone ring in the early hours?’

  I told her that I hadn’t.

  ‘Matt,’ she said. ‘Left me a message on the answerphone. He’s not sure he can get here today, it’ll probably be tomorrow, but even so he’s going to make every effort.’

  ‘That’s good,’ I said.

  ‘Poor boy,’ Grandma said. ‘Organising the entire production with no help whatsoever. Make yourself a cup of tea, Theo. You know where things are. I’m glad you’re up. I want to ask you something.’

  Rather than wait until I’d made my own weak mug of sweet tea and could give her my full attention, Grandma addressed me as I moved around the kitchen.

  ‘My car,’ she said. ‘I don’t want it any more, you see?’

  I had the idea that Grandma’s butterscotch Range Rover was older than I was. Certainly I could not remember a time when she drove a different vehicle.

  ‘Don’t you need it?’ I wondered.

  ‘I don’t wish to need it,’ she said.

  Everyone knew how much Grandma loved her Range Rover. She drove that majestic vehicle around the Shropshire Hills, sovereign of her domain, to point-to-point meetings, animal breeders, remote plant nurseries. Often there’d be a trailer attached, with a pony inside. That last summer I’d gone with her to Presteigne as she delivered a rescue pony she’d nurtured back to health to the grateful granddaughter of friends of hers. Another day we collected a problematic gelding she’d agreed to stable while she diagnosed its psychological shortcomings. She was known, it seemed to me, to everyone. ‘How are you, Mrs Cannon?’ they’d ask. ‘Fine, thank you,’ she’d reply – without ever mentioning their name, I noticed. ‘Now, where is this troublesome beast?’

  ‘I simply don’t have the time or the patience, Theo,’ she’d confided in me, ‘to remember everyone’s name around here. But don’t worry, I know whose family everyone belongs to.’

  She liked to pay occasional weekend visits to us in Oxford, or the others in London, pretty much unannounced. ‘I’m on my way,’ she’d declare on her mobile, somewhere on the M40, and soon that distinctive, mud-splattered vehicle of hers would cruise into the city, and park outside our house. Grandma always brought a box of home-made jams, pickles, bottled fruit; eggs, mushrooms picked by Grandpa out walking the dogs on the hill that very morning. ‘Gifts from the country,’ she’d say, handing the box to her daughter-in-law, as if we were the victims of urban deprivation, she the generous representative of rural plenty.

  My grandmother never stayed the night. She’d join us for lunch then turn back for home. ‘Better get back before dark,’ she’d say. ‘Need to shut the hen house.’ Or, ‘You know how much I hate driving at night. Modern headlights dazzle me.’ If the weather was dreadful Dad would beg her to stay, but she never did; would head for home through torrential rain, back to her own bed; her mug of tea beside the Aga in the morning; the house she’d lived in all her life.

  ‘No married couple requires two cars,’ she told me now. ‘Certainly not old fogies like us. Your grandfather or Jockie can ferry me around. I know your uncle probably has three or four vehicles,’ she said, holding her hand, palm out, towards me, as if I were about to bring up Uncle Jonny myself. ‘I’m not interested. I’m talking about the lead one takes around here, and having two cars gives quite the wrong message.’ She cleared her throat, and said, ‘Do you want it?’

  I gulped a mouthful of hot tea, which I had then to swallow, scalding my mouth and throat.

  ‘I’ve offered it to the girls,’ Grandma said. ‘They’ve declined. Good for them. How about you?’

  Was this a riddle? I had no idea whether my grandmother wanted me to say yes or no. ‘I’m only thirteen,’ I said. ‘I can’t drive.’

  ‘Really?’ she said, genuinely surprised. ‘By the time he was your age your father could handle pretty much any motor vehicle you gave him. Learned to drive in Jockie’s Mini van, up and down the drive, endlessly.’

  We drank our tea in silence for a while.

  ‘I’m certainly not giving it to the twins,’ Grandma said, for reasons apparently too obvious to require spelling out. She raised her eyebrows at me, in such a way as to suggest we’d been competing to crack a code, and she got it before me. ‘I suppose I could give it to the chickens,’ she said.

  The dogs were sniffing around the coach house. I found Grandpa loading logs into a wheelbarrow, and I volunteered to take them round the side of the house and in through the French windows of the drawing room, to stack in the box to the side of the fireplace. I returned the barrow to the coach house, and loaded it up with more logs, ready for the next day. When I looked outside, I saw that someone else was up: dressed in black running tights and top, black gloves, trainers, Aunt Lorna was performing warm-up exercises, using as apparatus the wooden picnic table on the patio. She placed her left heel on one of the benches, and with both hands on her left thigh, just above the knee, and her spine straight, she tilted her torso towards her left leg. Lorna stayed in this position for some seconds, then relaxed, stood up, and did the same with her right leg.

  Aunt Lorna was stretching the muscles beneath her skin. She was also demonstrating, to anyone who happened to be watching – to her thirteen-year-old nephew – in what precise way a woman’s body was beautiful: like this, placing her left foot now up on the table, putting her hands on her left knee and leaning the weight of her body forward. The muscles of her curved buttock stretching. Like this. Lorna swapped legs. Relaxing, she gazed around. Her eyes rested, for a moment, on mine. I didn’t think she could see me, in the coach house, but I took a step or two backwards just in case, deeper into the shadows.

  Now, feet back on the ground, Lorna lunged forwards onto her left leg, knee bent, her right leg extended behind her. Her hands placed just above her bent left knee. Her groin stretching. I gazed open mouthed,
enthralled, suffused with the realisation that there was nothing comparable to the beauty of a woman; an attraction that was sticky, and prickling, but also, in this yard where proud horses used to prance and neigh, was noble, animal, aesthetic. The beauty of this woman. What an incredible coincidence that was! That my aunt was possibly the most divine woman in the world. I felt what I could only identify as happiness, in my swooning heart, my melting bones. I gazed, enraptured.

  By the time I got back inside, my parents were up, and along with Uncle Jonny and Auntie Gwen and Melony, had joined my grandparents at the dining-room table. Everyone had assumed the same seats as the night before, gaps between them.

  ‘Kids getting up already, are we?’ Uncle Jonny boomed at me. ‘This is breakfast, not lunch, you know.’

  ‘Been up hours,’ I mumbled.

  ‘Believe him, Jonny,’ Dad said, his downtrodden tone suggesting that what his brother should realise was that a child getting up too early was even less agreeable than twins who got up too late.

  The air was yeasty with the smell of freshly baked bread, a loaf of which had just emerged from the Aga. Grandma kneaded dough last thing each evening, always using slightly different quantities from the day before, and it was always the tastiest, chewiest bread you ever had. Even though Grandma let Bronwen do increasing amounts of cooking, there was still magic in those gnarled and wrinkled fingers. The bread was so good most people didn’t even toast it for breakfast. Steam rose when Auntie Gwen cut it; butter melted; we helped ourselves to Grandma’s home-made jam. Raspberry, plum. Crab apple and greengage jellies.

  Not that Grandma ate any herself. ‘You’re losing weight, Ma,’ Uncle Jonny told her, but she dismissed him with a wave of her hand, and sipped her tea.

  Outside, the bird feeders were besieged by grateful posses: blue tits, great tits, coal tits, a couple of nuthatches, a greenfinch. A robin hovered, and pecked up seeds that had fallen to the ground.

  Grandpa had given me a book of birds with beautiful coloured drawings, and helped me to identify them. In the summer a pied wagtail nestled under the eaves of the stables. Swallows and house martins swirled about, while starlings strutted on the ground. A wood pigeon had a nest in the sycamore tree from whose branch the swings hung. It was a summer of white lilac.

  ‘A great spotted woodpecker pays us regular visits,’ Grandpa explained to Melony. ‘Next time he deigns to, I’ll let you –’

  ‘Leonard,’ Grandma interrupted, from the opposite end of the table. ‘The children are here, now’s as good a time as any to tell them.’

  ‘The sooner the better,’ Grandpa agreed.

  People stopped eating, prepared for a surprise announcement, no idea what to expect. A feeling of dread spread tangible as some indoor mist over the table.

  Grandma cleared her throat. ‘We asked you all to come here this Christmas,’ she said, ‘for one reason.’ She said no more, but looked to Grandpa, and nodded – whether deferring to him, or rather ordering him to speak, it was impossible to tell.

  Grandpa coughed, swallowed, and said, ‘Your mother believes the world is doomed.’

  There was a pause, before everyone’s head turned back as Grandma, as if accepting the return volley, said, ‘Well, of course it is. That’s perfectly obvious. But the reason we had you here is to sort out the furniture.’

  My father, uncle and aunt looked quizzically from one to another.

  ‘The last thing we want,’ Grandma said, ‘is for our children to squabble over their inheritance. Leonard’s sorted out the money, of course. What you do with the property’s up to you to decide when the time comes, although I believe Jonny’s got some ideas.’

  ‘What does any of this have to do with the end of the world?’ my father asked. Mum was sitting across from me, next to Grandpa, at the diagonally opposite end of the table from Dad. I saw her glance at him, their eyes meet. ‘Where’s the logic?’ he asked.

  ‘Don’t argue with Ma,’ said Uncle Jonny.

  Auntie Gwen was shaking her head. ‘You need the house, you need the furniture,’ she said. ‘As for a time when you don’t need it, I don’t want to think about it.’

  Grandma screwed up her face. ‘Don’t get sentimental, Gwen, for God’s sake. All we’re talking about are objects.’

  Grandpa, meanwhile, turned round and reached for a pad on the dresser behind him.

  ‘What your father has there,’ Grandma explained, ‘are coloured stickers. Red ones for Jonny, blue for Rodney, yellow for Gwen. It’s all very simple.’

  ‘There are sixty pieces of furniture of any value in this house,’ Grandpa continued, as if they’d rehearsed alternate lines of dialogue. ‘Here’s a copy of the list of those items for each of you.’

  ‘I want you to choose the thirty items you most want,’ said Grandma, ‘and put your coloured sticker on both the item of furniture and beside its name on the list. In addition, I want you to prioritise: write the number 1 on the stickers of your ten favourite pieces, number 2 on the next ten, and number 3 on those you like the least.’

  ‘Amongst those we like the most,’ said Dad.

  ‘Is that quite clear?’ Grandma asked.

  I don’t know what Melony made of all this. Auntie Gwen had been shaking her head the whole time Grandma was speaking. ‘This is a macabre plan,’ she said, standing up. ‘It’s a morbid conversation. I don’t want any part of it.’

  ‘Oh, don’t be a bloody idiot,’ Jonny told her. ‘Sit down. What’s wrong with you?’

  Gwen neither sat back down nor left the table, but stood there, looking bemused.

  ‘What happens to the lists?’ Dad asked.

  ‘We’ll make copies,’ Grandma said. ‘Leonard’s got a colour camera thing downstairs.’

  ‘Scanner,’ Grandpa nodded.

  ‘You can each take a copy home, and we’ll send one to the solicitors. And then,’ she said, turning to Auntie Gwen, ‘you can forget all about it.’

  No one spoke for a moment, until, to my surprise, my mother said, ‘Rosemary’. Turning to Grandpa, she said, ‘Leonard’. And back to Grandma, ‘What a really intelligent and thoughtful idea. I think it’s brilliant, and next time I see my parents I’m going to suggest they consider doing the exact same thing.’

  Grandma didn’t smile, exactly, but she made a sound, neither a grunt nor a hum but an amalgam of the two: she had no need of Mum’s approval, but was happy to accept it – although, one should understand, she very much doubted whether her daughter-in-law’s family had sixty antique pieces of furniture in any way comparable to the collection in this house.

  Mum’s positive appreciation did, though, get discussion going. Uncle Jonny said he reckoned it was partly having nothing concrete from her own past that had inspired Lorna to take up interior design, both of their own house and others; Dad said he’d put stickers on things if that’s what his parents wanted.

  I followed the conversation for a while, then my attention strayed to my grandmother. Unnoticed, she’d dropped off to sleep. Looking at her, sat in her chair, eyes closed, I had the sudden impression that her body was run on electricity, and that her energy source had become erratic, was being used up too fast, like a faulty battery.

  2

  My cousins eventually traipsed downstairs, looking worn out by the extra sleep they’d inflicted upon themselves. Having eaten her breakfast, Sidney slumped on a sofa with a new book. Holly claimed her sister was revising, but I doubted it: she never took notes, for one thing; and she read too fast; and anyway it looked more like pleasure, a dismal addiction, than duty.

  Holly said she’d catch up with me outside. By the open boot of Uncle Jonny’s rhino-like vehicle Grandpa was showing the twins how to press a shotgun against your shoulder, to absorb the kick; Xan and Baz were going Christmas shooting too, for the first time. ‘Ready to be bloodied, are we?’ their father declared.

  I wasn’t envious. Grandpa had taken me out once. I hit a rabbit, but failed to kill it outright. We came up and found it lying o
n its side, twitching, blood seeping from its mouth. Grandpa picked up a fallen branch and finished the poor creature off with a single club to the neck. ‘Put it out of its misery,’ he said. All I could think of was that a living animal was now lifeless, because of me. It wasn’t squeamishness, exactly; I was less bothered by blood than revolted at my having extinguished an animate being, and I declined further invitations to go shooting thereafter.

  The high pressure continued: beneath a light-grey sky, an incredible stillness. As if everything was in a state of suspension; of perfect poise. ‘The calm before the storm,’ my father had said at breakfast, with his customary life-affirming optimism. There wasn’t the slightest murmur of a breeze. I thought of one of those ancient maps where a windy terrain is indicated by a man – a wind God? – blowing a cloud across the landscape. It seemed to me that this God was asleep. I could hear sounds from far away, across the valley: the cawing of crows; a dog barking. Smoke rose from the chimneys of isolated homesteads. The smell of damp woodsmoke emanated from Jockie’s bonfire.

  The garage was at the end of the stables. I went in and sat on Grandpa’s quad bike, waiting for Holly. The air inside was fumey with the smell of petrol, metal, hot oil cooled down. A faint odour of grass. Outside, Uncle Jonny was now on his mobile phone, pacing about the yard, nearer to me than to the others beside his car, just coming into earshot.

  ‘Yes, of course,’ he was saying. ‘Couldn’t agree more.’ There were pauses between phrases, as Jonny moved closer to the garage. ‘I’ll be glad to give whatever assurances you require, of course.’ His head was bent, his body in a fixed posture, being moved stiffly around by his legs. ‘Shall we say by the twentieth? I see. Of course, but the tenth, I mean, it’s cutting it a little fine, I’d have thought. I assumed you’d extend the loan without … No, no, I quite understand. Look, let’s talk after Christmas. Yes. Really? Good for you. I’m just taking my boys shooting, actually. Enjoy the holiday.’