by Unknown
‘But appearances must be maintained. We don’t want something like a dead body to get in the way of a great Martello weekend. Or else something serious might go wrong. You know, like serving the wrong wine with the wrong mushroom.’
Claud turned serious. ‘Robert, stop this now. Natalie’s disappearance happened before you were born, it’s hard for you to understand. We gradually realised that Natalie was dead. Your grandmother – my mother – never really did. She always tried to believe that Natalie might have run away and that she would turn up one day.’ Claud put his arm round Robert. He was tall enough to be able to do it. ‘Today is bad for her – it’s bad for all of us but it’s especially bad for her – and we’ve all got to be strong and help her. If anything, it’s good that this happened when we were together. We can support each other. And above all support Martha. There’s lots to talk about, Robert. And not just about Natalie, about everything. And we will, I promise. But maybe today is just a time for us to be together. Remember that she hasn’t officially been identified yet.’
‘And isn’t it good for us to eat together?’ I said. ‘Come here, my darling.’ I pulled Robert to me and hugged him, hard. ‘I feel silly only coming up to your chin.’
‘So will you help me, Rob?’ asked Claud.
‘Yeah, yeah, Dad, all right,’ said Robert. ‘We can all be mature about this. Perhaps we should make a feature of the hole. Mum, could you redesign your cottage around the hole, the way you did with that tree once?’
‘Is that a yes or a no?’ Claud asked with that touch of steel he could suddenly bring into his voice.
Robert raised his hands in mock surrender. ‘It’s a yes. I’ll be good,’ he said, and backed out of the kitchen. Claud and I gave each other mirrored shrugs of helplessness. We were getting on better than we had when we’d been together. I realised that I had to guard against misleading nostalgia.
‘Thanks,’ I said. ‘That was good.’
Claud leant over a bubbling casserole. ‘That smells delicious,’ he said. ‘Like you said, we’re still good friends, aren’t we?’
‘Don’t.’
‘I didn’t mean anything.’ He paused. ‘I thought we’d eat at nine. Will that be all right for you?’
He looked me over. I was wearing tracksuit trousers and a man’s shirt that had once belonged to Jerome. I had pulled on the first clothes I’d been able to lay hands on after my scalding shower. I’d wanted to wash everything away: the sweat of hard labour, the tears, the muddy soil that had held the body.
‘That’ll be fine, as long as I put the meat on now.’
I crumbled rosemary over the lamb and slid the joint into the oven. Then I turned up the heat under the haricot beans and poured rice into the mushroom pan, stirring vigorously. As always, Claud had lots to do but now he seemed unwilling to leave. He leant against the work surface and toyed with the remnant of a parasol mushroom that I had rejected.
‘They think we’re mad, you know.’
‘Who?’
‘The people around here. The only ones they’ll eat are the ones that look exactly like the kind you get in boxes at the supermarket. But you can see what repels people, can’t you? They’re a little like flesh, don’t you think? Not quite wholesome.’ Claud picked up a field mushroom and stroked it with one finger. ‘They have no chlorophyll, you see. They can’t make their own carbon. They can only feed themselves on other organic material.’
‘Isn’t that what all plants do?’
‘It sometimes worries me that you can say things like that,’ he observed in the mournful tone that, I suddenly realised, I didn’t have to bother about any more.
‘How’s Martha? Have you seen her?’
‘Mother is being wonderful,’ said Claud.
There was a tone of exclusion in his voice that chilled me and I was going to snap something back when Peggy stormed into the kitchen, her cheeks flushed, the soles of her woollen socks stained black from the garden. She picked up a tumbler and a bottle of whisky and marched out of the kitchen again.
‘Peggy,’ Claud called after her retreating back, ‘remember we’re eating in an hour or so and there’ll be lots of wine.’
‘Claud!’ I hissed in rebuke but Peggy could take care of herself. I heard a snort that may have been a response as she thumped up the stairs. Claud turned back to me and said, very kindly, ‘Are you all right, Jane? Is there anything I can do for you?’
Erica gusted into the kitchen, all perfume and purple nails and copper curls.
‘Claud, there you are. Theo wants you to help him move some beds around upstairs. Jane, you angel, what can I do to help?’
She had already changed for dinner, her long slit skirt trailed the ground, her aubergine silk shirt swelled over her large breasts (well, bigger than mine), bangles clanked at her wrists and long ear-rings hung from emphatic lobes. She giggled and I remembered how much, in spite of everything, I liked Paul’s young wife, who flowered so exotically beside poor Peggy’s weary, ostentatious shabbiness.
‘I’ve just seen Peggy’s little girls sneaking into the outhouse. Oh, to be fifteen and smoking in a shed again. Christ, what a weird foul day. Poor Natalie. I mean I assume it is Natalie, and not some archaeological relic. I suppose it must be, and you’re all quite right to feel dreadful. My views about children dying have changed completely since Rosie, you know. Not that I was ever in favour of it, of course. I’d kill myself, I think. Frances was saying that she and Theo think it’s probably a relief for Martha, but I wonder if that’s true.’
She dipped her taloned fingers into a bowl of olives and popped a few absentmindedly into her avid red mouth.
Claud started methodically pulling corks from bottles, till eight of them stood in an open-mouthed row. I grated Parmesan cheese into the steaming pan of mushroom risotto and added a knob of soft unsalted butter, not from the fridge but from the larder, as butter ought to be. I’d always wanted a larder. Theo and his wife, Frances, walked past the window, tall and elegant. She was speaking animatedly, her eyes hard, but I couldn’t make out the words and I couldn’t see Theo’s face. Then my brother-in-law turned his head and looked straight into my eyes. The years reeled back. He gave an embarrassed half-smile but Frances said something else. He turned his face back towards her and they walked on.
When I’m at the Stead I stay in the room I’ve had since I was a child. More like sisters than best friends, Natalie and I used to fight over who would have the bed nearest the window, and she’d usually win. It was her house, her bedroom, her bed. After she disappeared, I couldn’t sleep where she had always slept. I would lie at the other side of the room, under the sloping roof, and hear the grandfather clock down the hall, and occasionally the hoot of the owls which nested in the woods. Sometimes I’d wake in the middle of the night and for a few seconds, until I had remembered all over again, I would see her shape under the blankets. Martha hadn’t got rid of any of her things; she’d always been waiting for her to return. So every year, when we came here for our holidays, I’d have to put my clothes among Natalie’s, mummified in polythene, which gradually became less and less familiar to me, until I realised they were the clothes of a young girl from whom I’d grown away without realising, into adulthood. One day they were gone.
Now I pulled back the curtains and looked out of the window at the garden, which was disappearing into night. Evening mist rose like smoke from the wet grass. The sky was nearly dark, but the horizon was pink. It’ll be a nice day tomorrow, I thought to myself, as I stared out. Heaps of leaves lay in strange shapes round the lawn, waiting to be burnt. Away to the right I could see another, lower shape, the police canopy. Is there a company somewhere that manufactures tents for erecting over places where dead bodies have been found? There must be. It was very quiet. Paul’s girls, down at the edge of the woods, sat in a conspiratorial triangle, now little more than a three-peaked shadow in the gloom. Voices floated up from downstairs, though I couldn’t catch what they said. A pipe gurgled, there w
as a splashing in a drain outside, footsteps passed by my door and I imagined Jerome and beautiful Hana, pink as a prawn, scuttling down the corridor wrapped in towels. I thought I heard a quiet sob.
I opened my suitcase and lifted out a Victorian jacket, high at the neck and tight at the wrists, sexy-severe. Wearing it made me feel a bit more in control. I dabbed perfume behind my ears, and put on my ear-rings. I thought of Natalie that last summer, trying on purple lipstick, staring at herself steadily in the mirror, like a cat, with her blue eyes like my blue eyes. I thought of the pathetic bits of bone I’d seen in the clay this morning. What was I doing in this house, with Claud whom I was divorcing, and his parents whom I was hurting, and his brother Theo, with whom I was exchanging knowing glances through the kitchen window, like a teenager?
‘Jane, Hana, Martha and Alan.’ It was Claud calling up the stairs. ‘Come on everyone. I’m about to open the champagne.’
Three
Martha and Alan made their entrance like important guests. Alan came in on a crest of conversation, broad hands gesturing, belly hanging generously over his belt, beard untrimmed and grey hair touching his rather worn collar. But the tie was fashionably garish and his tweed jacket was unexceptionable. Always the bohemian who didn’t care about clothes, but a rich bohemian. He hugged Frances, who happened to be standing near the door, and clapped Jerome heartily on the back. Jerome, his hair cut short in a Keanu Reeves crop, dressed in jeans and a black T-shirt, looked depressed and ill at ease. He was speaking only to Hana. She was also dressed entirely in black which emphasised her slavic features. Jerome glared at Alan who didn’t notice.
‘Here we all are then,’ Alan cried, ‘I’m dying for a drink.’
Beside him Martha looked pale, thinner than I’d remembered, her skin softening into old age. I could tell that she’d been crying steadily; she had that bright, fragile look about her. Jonah went and kissed her on the cheek: he was a beautiful man, I thought, dark-haired and blue-eyed. Why had I never found him or Fred attractive, the way I had Theo through that long hot summer? The summer. Perhaps each of them seemed one half of a man; I still thought of them as one word, Jonah-Fred, the twins. And I still found their identical appearances a bit comic, or absurd. Their hair was receding a bit now, their beauty had begun to crack. They wouldn’t age well, I thought. But even their separate wives, families, jobs, homes hadn’t been able to carve out their separate personalities. I wondered if they still played jokes on people.
Claud started easing off the first champagne cork, and everyone stood with their glasses held forward expectantly. There was a murmuring in my ear. Peggy was standing beside me.
‘I’m not sure that champagne is quite the thing in the circumstances,’ she said.
I gave a shrug in response that could have meant anything. There was a harsh clinking. We all looked around. Alan was rapping his cigarette lighter against his champagne glass. Once he had all of our attention, he stepped into the middle of the room. There was a long pause and he looked reflective. If I had not known Alan, I might have been alarmed or embarrassed by this excessive silence. But I was reminded of a television programme I had seen about another megalomanic showman, Adolf Hitler, who had always begun his own great speeches with these lengthy, diffident pauses in order to secure the complete attention of his audience. When Alan spoke, his voice was at first so quiet that we all had to lean forward to hear what he said.
‘You know how I like to welcome you all here with a joke or two, but this has become a different sort of occasion from what was planned. You may all be interested to know that I have just finished talking on the telephone to Detective Superintendent Clive Wilks, who is the head of the CID at Kirklow. He was being cautious, quite properly, but when I asked if the remains were consistent with them being of a sixteen-year-old girl, he said they were. Which, of course, is no surprise.’ He gave a thin smile. ‘And I’m afraid that Jane’s wonderful house will have to be delayed for the moment.
‘This mushrooming dinner is our tradition. It’s very precious to me, the coming together of our two families and all their children and loved ones.’ Here the group shifted uncomfortably. What was he going to say? ‘But tonight’s dinner is one that I will remember for the rest of my life. Twenty-five years ago our daughter Natalie disappeared. For some time we believed, or tried to believe,’ this last with a glance at Martha, trembling on the edge of tears, ‘that she had run away and would return to us. That hope faded, but it didn’t die. Waiting for someone who never comes is a terrible thing, a terrible thing. Today, we have found her and at last we can properly mourn her death and celebrate her life. She can be laid to rest. I feel I should say something about her. Describe her, my only daughter. I don’t know quite what to say.’
He was suddenly a sad old man at a loss. There was a boozy whisper in my ear.
‘What a bloody showman. He’s loving it, isn’t he?’
It was Fred. He was already very drunk. I told him to hush.
‘She was clever and beautiful and young; her life was just beginning.’ I heard a stifled sob, but couldn’t tell from whom it came. ‘She was stubborn and she was bolshie.’ Tears were rolling down Alan’s cheeks now; he didn’t bother to wipe them away but continued steadily. ‘She never liked goodbyes – even when she was a tiny little girl, she would push me away if I tried to hug her outside school. She would never wave from a bus; she always used to look straight ahead. That was my girl, she never looked back. But we can say goodbye to her now.’ Alan looked down at the glass in his hand, and then, more composed, he continued. ‘This is a new era of our life,’ he put an arm around Martha’s narrow shoulders, held rigid against grief. ‘Perhaps I can even write a proper book again,’ he added, with a half-laugh. ‘Anyway, I wanted to say to you that I am glad we are all here today. You all loved Natalie, and Natalie loved you.’ He raised his champagne glass, bubbles winking in the firelight. ‘I’d like to propose a toast. To Natalie.’
People looked at each other. Was this in good taste?
‘To Natalie.’
Before I could get the champagne into my mouth, half of it was spilled as Fred emotionally clutched me to him.
‘I’m sorry about your marriage, Jane,’ he said thickly, ‘and I’m sorry about your building. I’ve never seen one of your buildings and I was looking forward to sleeping in that one. But there’ll always be a ghost in it now, won’t there?’
‘I wouldn’t say that.’
‘I would. I would say that,’ said Fred. ‘But the real question is this.’ Here he paused so long that I thought he had finished. I would have moved away if he had not been clutching my sleeve. ‘The question is, is it a happy ghost or a sad ghost?’
‘I don’t really know,’ I said, looking for a means of escape.
‘And what secrets does it have to tell?’
‘Yes, but it’s supper now,’ I said and raised my voice.
‘Supper, everybody.’
It was over. Pulpy rice with chewy-soft mushroom; pink herby lamb; chocolate soufflés puffed at their rims. Candlelight softened everybody’s faces; voices rose and fell like a rhythm. Even the young people, playing Boggle by the fire, spoke softly. Even Alan, twiddling the stem of his glass and declaiming on the state of the contemporary novel (rotten, of course, in his absence), didn’t raise his voice. Fred had buttonholed me again and told me that Claud and I should both hire his wife, Lynn, to arrange our divorce, but his development of this scheme was interrupted when Lynn realised what was going on and took him up to bed.
‘I must be pushed before I fall,’ he said as Lynn sternly led him up the stairs.
‘Is he all right?’ I asked Lynn when she came back down, alone.
Lynn was a handsome assured woman, immaculately turned out in a dark velvet skirt and jacket.
‘He’s involved in a restructuring of the trust,’ she said. ‘It’s been rather stressful.’
‘Sackings?’
‘Downsizing,’ she said.
I
hoped she would elaborate but she started offering sympathy and I lost interest. As soon as I could, I left Lynn and joined Jerome, who was still looking sullen, and Hana. He responded to my questions in monosyllables. I moved across to Theo who was staring into the fire. I touched him on the shoulder and he started.
‘Sorry,’ I said.
He turned but hardly seemed to see me.
‘I’m thinking of the silliest things,’ he said. ‘When she was younger, eleven or twelve, we used to do cartwheels, in summer, when the grass was dry. The only way I could ever do cartwheels at all was to do them really quickly. She used to laugh at me and say that my legs weren’t high enough. She would do them and her skirt or dress would fall down, over her head sometimes, and we – I mean the boys – would laugh at her. But she could do them slowly, the way they’re meant to be done. Down on your hands, then one leg slowly up, then the other leg following it, like two spokes in a wheel. Then down. They were perfect and we were too proud to tell her.’
‘I don’t think she minded,’ I said. ‘She always knew what she was good at.’
‘And I remember when she used to sit reading, over there in the window seat, she always looked cross. That was what she looked like when she was concentrating. Cross. It was funny.’
I nodded, unable to speak. I wasn’t ready for all this.
‘You know that old cliché of coming back from school and finding your little sister has turned into a woman? It was a bit like that when she was fourteen, fifteen, sixteen. I’d come back from school in the holidays and she’d be going out with people she used to play with. And then Luke, remember?’ I nodded. ‘I felt strange about it. Not good, in a way. It was the first time in my life that it had occurred to me that we’d all be growing up. And that I’d see Natalie grown up and a mother and all that and I never did.’
He turned towards me. His eyes were wet. I took his hand.
‘I remember that cross look,’ I said softly. ‘That awful summer when it rained all the time and she said she was going to learn how to juggle and she spent day after day with three of those bloody beanbags or whatever they were. She had that cross look and her tongue out of one corner of her mouth, day after day, and she did it.’ I was just inches away from Theo now. We were murmuring to each other like lovers. ‘I remember her lying in front of this fire. The flames in her eyes. I was next to her, right close up. And we’d giggle if anybody said anything to us. God, we must have been irritating.’