‘I’ll skip the last class at college on Wednesday so we can have dinner together. I feel I’ve hardly seen you in the past few weeks.’
‘I know, I’m sorry. Sleep well, Cee.’
‘I’ll try. Bye.’
The call was ended abruptly at the other end and I sighed as I made my way into the drawing room to make sure the fire was not likely to set us alight in the night – another golden rule of Pa’s. I switched off the lights and made my way up to bed. Checking on Rory, who was blissfully asleep, I thanked the heavens that I had been granted two more nights in this wonderful, wonderful house.
21
I was up early the next morning, woken by Rory, who pounced on me in bed and said he was hungry. By the time Mouse arrived in the kitchen to collect my shopping list, we were sitting down to breakfast.
‘Something smells good,’ Mouse said, to my amazement. It was rare to hear him utter a positive comment.
‘Would you like some? It’s only eggy bread.’
‘I haven’t had that since I was a child. Yes, if it’s not too much trouble.’
‘There’s fresh coffee in the pot on the table,’ I indicated.
Rory patted Mouse’s arm and signed to him. ‘Can I come out on the tractor?’
‘What?’ Mouse had barely glanced up to look at him.
‘Rory wants to know if he can come out on your tractor,’ I said as I put down the plate in front of him with slightly more force than necessary.
‘God, no,’ he said as he began to devour the eggy bread with a hunger that had been noticeably lacking the past couple of times I’d cooked for him. ‘This is so good, I love nursery food. Right.’ He swigged his coffee back, stood up and grabbed the list from the table. ‘I’ll be back to drop this off when I can.’
And with that, he was out of the door.
‘No tractor?’ Rory looked up at me with a plaintive expression that tore at my heart.
‘Not today, Rory, no. But how about you get dressed, and then you can have a cycle on that bike of yours?’
Rory cycled to the orchard and there we collected as many apples and damsons as we could carry. The ancient trees were in desperate need of pruning, but I knew it would have to wait until late winter.
‘We’ll never eat all this,’ Rory signed as we trundled the fruit back in a squeaky wheelbarrow I’d found.
‘No, but they’ll taste good in pies and jam.’
‘You make jam?’
‘Yes,’ I laughed at his surprise, realising he must have grown up believing that most things he ate came from an invisible supermarket fairy.
I spent the afternoon making pies, and Rory asked for his habitual Superman movie. Having put in the DVD for him, I went back to the kitchen to make a cup of tea and check the progress of the pastry in the range. My fingers itched to reorganise the pantry and cupboards, but I desisted, knowing it wasn’t my place to do so.
I looked at the clock and saw it was nearing six, and time for Rory’s supper. Given there was no sign of the promised shopping, I went to see what I could find.
I was just taking the last pie out of the oven when the back door opened and Mouse appeared with two plastic bags full of shopping.
‘There you are,’ he said as he dumped them on the kitchen table. ‘Are you planning a party here?’ He pointed at the pies.
‘Just using up the windfall from the orchard.’
He took out a beer from one of the bags and opened it. ‘Want one?’ he offered.
‘No thanks.’
‘Rory okay?’
‘Fine,’ I said, as I dived into the shopping bag and pulled out some sausages. I tipped them onto a baking tray and put them in the oven to cook. ‘I’m making homemade chips,’ I added as I opened a bag of potatoes and fetched a peeler from the drawer. ‘I hope Rory likes them.’
‘Given that he and Marguerite live mostly on eggs and cans of baked beans, I’m sure he’ll be fine. As would I, if there’s enough.’
I smiled a secret smile at his sudden enthusiasm.
‘Of course.’ I indicated the big bag of potatoes. ‘I’ll go and tell Rory you’re here.’ I made towards the door.
‘Just before you do . . .’ His tone held me back, and I turned to see his face suddenly sombre. ‘I want to ask you truthfully whether you have that Fabergé figurine here with you. Either you really haven’t, or you simply don’t want to show it to me. I understand why you may not feel you can trust me,’ he continued. ‘After all, I’ve hardly been very welcoming. I wouldn’t worry, Star, everyone thinks I’m a shit. And they’re not wrong. I am.’
So now we were back to self-pity. And if he expected me to contradict him, he was mistaken.
‘Anyway,’ he continued in the face of my silence, ‘how about we make a deal? I’ll tell you the rest of what I’ve found out about our family history, and you show me the cat. Because if it is a Fabergé, I’ve got a good idea of who gave it to Flora MacNichol.’
‘I—’
‘Mouse!’ Rory arrived in the kitchen and the moment was gone.
Over supper, Mouse was definitely cheerier than I’d seen him before: whether he was doing his best to lull me into a false sense of security before snapping back into his usual morose self, or it was the homemade chips that had done it, I had no idea. But I was happy for Rory that Mouse was at least making an effort to engage him. I suggested they play a game of noughts and crosses, which Rory had never heard of. After I’d shown him how to play, he took to it with gusto, shouting with happiness every time his crosses won. I knew Mouse was letting him win, and that too was an improvement.
‘Time for bed,’ Mouse said suddenly.
I looked up at the clock and saw it was only just after seven, but Rory had already stood up, like a rookie soldier who had just been given his marching orders by a sergeant major.
‘I’ll take you upstairs for a bath,’ I said, holding out my hand to him.
‘Night, Mouse,’ Rory said.
‘Night, Rory.’
Having filled the bath, Rory splashed around, then lay back and closed his eyes as I shampooed his hair. He plunged himself under the water, then emerged and opened his eyes.
‘Star?’
‘Yes?’
His hands came up out of the water to sign. ‘Don’t think Mouse likes me very much.’
‘I think he does, but he’s rubbish at this.’ I indicated our hands.
‘Not hard. We will teach him.’
‘Yes,’ I said, and held out the towel in front of me so he could step out and maintain his modesty. I helped him put on his pyjamas and took him along the corridor to his room.
‘Now, do you want me to read you a story, or am I too bad at it?’ I teased, tickling him gently.
‘You’re much better than Mouse, so yes please.’
Rory turned before I did to see Mouse standing in the doorway, and I was grateful he didn’t understand the language our hands spoke.
‘Want me to tuck you in, Rory?’ Mouse asked.
‘Yes please,’ he said dutifully.
‘Night, night.’ I kissed Rory on the forehead and left the room.
‘You’re very good with him,’ Mouse said later, entering the kitchen as I was just finishing the washing-up. Of all the modern conveniences I would wish for at High Weald, the first would be a dishwasher.
‘Thank you.’
‘I presume you’ve worked with deaf kids before?’
‘No, never.’
‘Then how . . . ?’
I explained to him briefly how I’d come to learn to sign. He took a beer out of the fridge and cracked it open.
‘It’s interesting that you and Rory have met and bonded, as you’re certainly a woman of few words. He doesn’t miss the absence of them as a hearing person would. You don’t give much away, do you?’
Neither do you, I thought.
‘You live with your sister, is that right?’
So he’d remembered. ‘Yes.’
‘Boyfriend? Si
gnificant other?’
‘No.’ Not that it’s any of your business. ‘You?’ I rounded on him.
‘I’m fully aware no one would have me, and that’s fine.’
I wasn’t going to be goaded into a response. In the silence, I stowed away the plates and cutlery.
‘As a matter of fact,’ he said eventually, revealing – as everyone did after a long silence – more information than he’d originally intended, ‘I was married once.’
‘Oh.’
‘She seemed to think I was okay.’
Again I said nothing.
‘But then . . .’
I continued my silence.
‘She died.’
I knew I was beaten. There was no way I could not reply to that statement.
‘I’m sorry.’ I turned around to see him standing awkwardly by the table.
‘So was I. But that’s life . . . and death, isn’t it?’
‘Yes, it is,’ I said, thinking of Pa Salt.
There was a slight pause before he glanced at the clock on the wall and said, ‘I should go. I have three months’ worth of outstanding accounts to tackle. Thanks for supper.’
Leaving his half-drunk beer on the table, Mouse left through the back door.
That night, I couldn’t sleep. I felt dreadful about his abrupt departure, which I knew had been engendered by my cold response after he told me his wife had died. However rude he usually was, he had confessed an emotional confidence. And I had given him an unemotional platitude in reply.
In essence, I had allowed myself to sink to his level.
Eventually, exhausted from being exhausted, I staggered up with the sunrise at half past six, put on my layers, and went down to the kitchen.
Then I did the only thing that I knew would calm me – I baked a cake.
After breakfast, I asked Rory if he could take me to Mouse’s farmhouse, to which he nodded eagerly.
‘I was thinking that maybe we could take this cake to him as a present,’ I said.
‘Yes.’ Rory gave me a thumbs up. ‘Mouse is lonely.’
With Rory on his bike and the cake nestled in a tin between my palms, we headed up the drive and from there across the lane. Rory led me along the narrow grass verge and I inhaled the evocative and unmistakable scent of deep autumn in England: the rich smell of fermentation as the countryside discarded the remnants of another summer, ready to renew again in spring.
‘Here.’ Rory pointed to a sign, which led us to an overgrown driveway. He hared off as I followed more sedately with the cake. Finally, the farmhouse came into view – a sturdy red-brick building without any of the embellishments of its neighbour across the road. If High Weald was aristocratic, Home Farm was workmanlike and cosy.
In the centre of the farmhouse stood a large door – once painted a cheery red, but now a peeling, faded version of its old self. Growing along the front of the house were lavender bushes that were way past their best and needed replacing, but their calm scent still filled the air. Rory raced around the side of the house and headed straight for the back door.
‘Can you knock?’ I indicated, and he thumped it, enjoying the vibrations. There was no response.
‘Knock again,’ I suggested.
‘Always open. Go in?’
‘Okay.’
Feeling like a guilty trespasser, I followed Rory inside and found myself in a kitchen that was a miniature version of the one we had just left. Except this one was even more chaotic, the pine table almost invisible under used coffee cups, newspapers, and what looked like account ledgers with receipts and bills spilling out from their pages. The breeze from the door closing behind us sent a couple fluttering to the floor. Putting down the cake, I stooped down to pick them up, just as Mouse entered the kitchen from the inside door.
He stared at the receipts in my hand and frowned.
‘They were on the floor,’ I said wanly, as I put them back on the table. ‘We brought you a present. Rory, give Mouse the tin.’
‘Star baked it,’ he signed. ‘For you.’
‘It’s lemon drizzle cake,’ I added.
Mouse stared at the tin as if it might contain a bomb. ‘Thanks.’
‘It’s okay.’
As we stood there uncomfortably, I shivered in the chill of the room. The range was not turned on, and the cosiness promised by the exterior of the house was clearly not present inside.
‘Everything all right?’ Mouse said.
‘Fine.’
‘Good. Well, if you’ll excuse me, I have to get on.’
‘Okay.’ Rory and I retraced our footsteps to the back door. I paused with my hand on the doorknob, deciding I had to be the bigger person. ‘We’re having shepherd’s pie for supper, if you want to join us.’ Then I opened the back door and released us into the relative warmth of the freezing October day.
Rory and I spent the afternoon playing endless games of noughts and crosses. When he grew bored with that, I taught him how to play Battleships. I wasn’t quite sure if he’d grasped the concept; instead of putting a cross for his ship in the specific square, he drew the ships instead, which at least whiled away the time as he insisted on making each miniature picture perfect, rubbing it out when it wasn’t.
Having switched on his cherished Superman DVD, I yawned as I put the kettle on to boil. Not just from my lack of sleep last night, but from my first experience of entertaining a child non-stop.
I thought back to Atlantis, and what we girls used to do to amuse ourselves during the holidays, marvelling at how Ma had coped with six of us, each at different stages of our development. I realised I couldn’t remember ever being bored – I’d always had CeCe and the rest of my sisters. As an only child, Rory had no one to play with. And if there’d ever been a tiny part of me that had felt resentful about being in the middle of our huge female nest, and the lack of one-on-one attention, I now felt blessed.
Having assembled the shepherd’s pie, I left it in the range to finish cooking, then went upstairs to make Rory’s bed and my own. Sitting down on mine, my fingers stiff from the bitter cold, I retrieved the box containing ‘Panther’. As the lemon drizzle cake didn’t seem to have mended the rift, and I still felt guilty for letting anger replace empathy last night, I slid it into my back jean pocket and went downstairs, knowing it was the one thing I could offer Mouse that might redeem me.
Seven o’clock, then eight o’clock came and went. I bathed Rory, then tucked him into bed, and walked back down the stairs to clear away supper. I was just about to switch off the kitchen lights and sit in front of the fire to read when the back door opened.
‘Sorry I’m late. I got held up,’ said Mouse. ‘Any shepherd’s pie left?’
‘Yes.’ I went to the pantry to retrieve it, then put it in the range. ‘It’ll take a few minutes to warm up.’ Not sure what to do with myself, I hovered by the kitchen table for a moment.
‘I could murder a beer. Do you want some wine?’ he asked.
‘Okay.’
Mouse fetched the drinks. ‘Cheers.’ He clinked his beer can against my glass as we sat down.
‘Thanks for the cake by the way. I had some for lunch, it was fantastic. I also came to tell you that I won’t be around tomorrow. I’m off to London to tackle Orlando about selling the shop.’
‘It’ll break his heart,’ I said, aghast. ‘It’s his life.’
‘Do you think I don’t know that?’ he snapped. ‘But we can’t go on like this. As I said to you – and him too – the business can be run online. The money from the sale of the building can at least clear the debts we’ve accrued. And I have to buy some new machinery to keep the farm going. I understand your sentiments, but I’m afraid life is cruel, Star, and that’s the way it is.’
‘I know,’ I said as I bit my lip to stem the tears that were threatening to form.
‘Sadly, one of us brothers has to live in reality, and to be frank, if I don’t do something now, we’re in danger of the bank declaring the business bankrupt and
seizing the shop as an asset against our debt. Which would mean they’d sell it for a tenth of what it’s actually worth, and we’d see precious little of the funds that would be left over from the sale.’
‘Yes, I understand. But you must see what a loss it is. It’s a legacy—’
‘Legacy?’ he said with a derisive snort. ‘This family has never had much luck – or perhaps I should say sense – when it comes to money. We’ve only held on to High Weald by the skin of our teeth. Not that it’s my concern but I know that Marguerite is in it up to her neck too.’
‘Oh dear,’ I said lamely, and rose to retrieve the shepherd’s pie, uncertain of what else to say.
‘Anyway, not your problem, I know. Other than the fact you may have to look for another job in the next few months. Just our luck there’s a downturn in commercial property because of the world economic situation. It never rains but it pours, as they say.’
‘Don’t worry about me, it’s Orlando who will suffer.’
‘You’re very fond of him, aren’t you?’
‘Yes, very.’
‘As he is of you. There aren’t many people who can deal with his eccentricities. These days he’d probably be diagnosed with some syndrome or other – OCD and the like – and that’s aside from his determination to live his life as a throwback to a hundred years ago.’ He shook his head. ‘When we were little, it was always Orlando who had our mother’s attention. He was her darling; she home-schooled him from the age of nine because his asthma was so severe. The two of them would be holed up in the library, reading their precious Dickens. He’s never had to live in reality. As he always says, the past was a much more civilised and gentle time.’
‘Apart from the continual horrific wars,’ I said. ‘And the lack of antibiotics or any healthcare for the poor.’
He looked at me, startled, then gave me the present of a sudden laugh. ‘True. Not to mention the debtors’ prisons.’
‘Orlando wouldn’t do so well in one of those.’
‘No Sancerre and starched shirts in the poorhouse.’
We shared a wry smile as I placed his plate down in front of him, thinking how different these two brothers were, rather like CeCe and me.
‘A lot of people – not just Orlando – want to glamorise the past. I certainly do,’ he muttered with feeling as he picked up his fork to eat.
The Shadow Sister Page 23