Ben hummed the phrase back to him, ‘Like that? Oh yes please. Can, I? Really?’
‘Sure. How are you with lyrics? It’s those that stump me usually.’
‘I don’t know. I could try.’
Jude took the last pull from his cigarette and ground the butt under his heel, then wound his hair through an elastic band into a ponytail. ‘Now then, make sure those straps are tight. I don’t want to get wet when we do one of those arctic rolls.’
‘Arctic rolls! You mean Eskimo!’ Ben chuckled.
‘Well. I knew it was something cold!’
✽✽✽
Rob met June and Granny in the hallway. He was on his way to the kitchen in search of food. His heart drooped when he saw them emerging from the downstairs cloakroom.
‘Here’s your father rolling in from the pub,’ sneered Granny pointing a gnarled finger in his direction.
‘Don’t start that again,’ Rob scowled.
‘He once threatened to kill me you know,’ Granny said brightly.
‘I’m not surprised,’ June muttered. ‘Oh Rob. If there’s a Tesco delivery, you can see to it, can’t you?’
‘I suppose so. What is it?’
‘Food. Only we want to go out.’ Rob shrugged. ‘Your cousin will help you. She’ll know where to put things - the freezer, fridge and so on.’
‘Whatever.’
Rob proceeded towards the baize door, but an after-thought made him say, ‘June. Which cousin is it?’
June bridled. She wanted wanting to correct his appellation to a more formal ‘aunty’ but decided, since she did need a favour from him, she would let it go. ‘Well, frankly, I’m not sure that she counts as a cousin at all. The one who fell over yesterday.’
‘Rachel?
‘Yes, that one.’
✽✽✽
James and Belinda walked slowly around the formal gardens. The display of salvias was quite breath-taking. Spikes of indigo, pinkish blue fronds, clusters of purple and palest lilac made an ultra-violet haze in the weak autumn sun filtering through the high clouds. Small plant labels explained the plants’ provenances and culinary uses. Mary, a pace or two behind them, bent and read them carefully. Muriel, not a gardener really, contented herself with the occasional exclamation, ‘Oh that’s a pretty one!’ and ‘very nice!’
The gardens sloped down to an ornamental lake. Beyond that, rising up a dappled hillside, an avenue of lime trees lead the eye to a massive stone mausoleum built by a former aristocratic resident to house the remains of his dearly loved and tragically lost wife.
‘Imagine someone loving you enough for that,’ Belinda mused, gazing at the imposing testament to love and loss.
‘Can you?’ James followed her gaze and her train of thought, in that intuitive way he had.
‘Imagine anyone loving me enough for it? Oh no. Not me. And anyway, love like that isn’t an ordinary thing. I doubt one person in a thousand experiences it.’
‘And what do you, me and the other nine hundred and ninety seven people experience?’ He pulled her arm through his and they wandered along one of the formal beds. Belinda felt something rising up inside her, like a tide.
‘We settle, we compromise, we make excuses.’
‘Because we haven’t found the right person. It isn’t,’ he turned to her, to emphasise his point, ‘it isn’t because we can’t inspire that kind of love. It isn’t because we aren’t intrinsically lovable.’
Belinda allowed herself to be held by his eyes for a moment, doubtfully.
‘Look at that little white flower over there, behind that shrub,’ James pointed. ‘It’s lovely, isn’t it?’
‘Yes,’ Belinda agreed, thinking he had changed the subject. ‘What is it? Phlox?’
‘I don’t know. The point is, if we hadn’t seen it, or stopped to appreciate it, would that have made it less beautiful?’
‘No, I suppose not.’
‘Our failing to appreciate it would have reflected on us, not on the flower. See?’
Belinda nodded, understanding. ‘But, the thing is, you could wait forever, to be seen, to be recognised, by that special someone. They might never find you, or they might find you and then circumstances might conspire for you to lose them...’ she looked over her shoulder at Muriel, and she thought of Simon, and of herself. ‘Or... perhaps, to make them unattainable. It sounds very splendid and romantic but in the end you’d just spend your whole life – like that flower – in the shadows, being lonely.’
James gave a sad smile and they walked on for a few paces. ‘We do accept substitutes – and pale imitations they are too, sometimes. But we mustn’t beat ourselves up for being human.’
They ambled for a time without words. Presently James spoke again. ‘That feeling, I’m sure you know; it isn’t romantic. It’s deeper. It transcends romance and passion. It’s almost spiritual.’
‘Does it have a name?’ Belinda asked, after a few moments.
‘This relation? Between people? I’m not sure. I’ve heard of people talking about being ‘connected’, soul-mates, as though they’re part of the same being. That’s how Ruth talks about April. Ruth said they were kindred.’
‘Isn’t that like family?’
James laughed, ‘And what’s that like?’
‘I hardly know. I thought I did before this week. I thought it was security and belonging – all good things. But now it feels like obligation…’
‘Because of June?’
‘Because of all kinds of things.’ She had Elliot’s behaviour in her mind and her obligation to put up with it. But there was nothing kindred in that relationship.
‘Kin is family isn’t it,’ James pursued his line of thought, ‘and kindred must be an extension of it, possibly. I think kin is blood and bone and genes, and history and tradition, and habit. But yes, as you say, it has issues like loyalty and duty wrapped up in it. But kindred, or what Ruth means by it, goes further than that. It’s a kind of affinity, a closeness based on something other than blood. It’s spirit and intuition and a sort of subliminal correlation.’
‘It sounds very powerful,’ Belinda mused. ‘I wonder,’ she stopped for a moment, ‘I wonder which is stronger?’
‘Oh goodness. I hope it never gets put to the test.’
✽✽✽
Rob had showered and got changed into clean clothes. He carried two mugs of tea into the games room, their handles clutched together in one hand. One of the mugs had slipped and was pressing onto his knuckles. It was hot and in his hurry to put the mugs down on the table he slopped some tea onto the wooden floor. In his other hand he had a plate with two slices of chocolate cake.
‘Shit,’ he said under his breath and wiped at the floor with his foot, allowing his sock to soak up the tea. Then he smiled at Rachel. ‘Hello,’ he said brightly. ‘Here you are! I’ve been looking all over for you. I brought us tea and cake.’ Rachel was stunned. She hardly recognised the person before her. Dressed, washed, smiling and acknowledging her existence. She folded the corner of her page down to mark her place and wriggled herself up into a sitting position before holding her hands out for the cake.
‘Gosh Rob. That’s nice of you,’ she stammered.
‘I can be nice,’ he laughed, sitting on the opposite end of her settee. ‘This sock’s wet now.’ He peeled it off and laughed at himself. ‘Mum used to sing me a song about that,’ he said, wiggling his toes. They were, Rachel noted, very elongated and the nails needed cutting.
‘Diddle diddle dumpling, my son John
Went to bed with his trousers on.
One sock off and one sock on
Diddle diddle dumpling, my son John.’
Rachel smiled and took a tentative bite of the cake - a small bite - and wiped her mouth with her fingers to make sure there were no crumbs.
‘Did your mum sing nursery rhymes to you?’ Rob took a slurp of his tea.
Rachel swallowed cake and ran her tongue round her teeth to make sure there was no cake stuck to them.
‘Well. No. Not my mum – my real mum – she isn’t well, you know. My dad looked after me when I was a baby. He sang rhymes, lots of them. He made some up.’
‘Do you ever see your mum?’
‘No. There’s no point. She has a kind of dementia. She wouldn’t know who I am.’
Rob reached for his cake. ‘I never think about you as not being one of us – a real McKay, I mean.’
‘Don’t you?’ Rachel left unspoken her sense of being entirely alien.
‘This cake is alright. I don’t know why there was so much fuss about a new one yesterday.’
Rachel made a moue. ‘Aunty Muriel’s dog ate it, in the end.’
Rob grinned. ‘Yes. In all the uproar. I must say: I thought you hurling yourself at the kitchen table was a bit over the top, as a diversionary tactic, I mean. I wouldn’t have actually murdered Ellie, you know! What’s that you’re reading?’
Rachel showed him the book. His anger and violence the previous day had shocked her. It had seemed irrevocable and final at the time - a wound which would never heal. ‘Ellie lent it to me.’
‘I’ve seen the film. I took a girl – she wanted to go, it wasn’t my kind of thing. But the scrap at the end was pretty good.’
‘There’s a scrap?’
‘Oh yes. But don’t let me spoil it for you if you haven’t seen the film. Sorry. I just assumed you would have done.’
‘Oh no. I think it’s a 15, isn’t it?’
‘And aren’t you, yet?’
‘No! I’m not even fourteen until December.’
‘Really? You should have gone. You would have got in. You look fifteen, at least.’
There was a kind of explosion of pleasure inside Rachel at his compliment. It rippled like a physical tremor across the strings of her heart. She sipped her tea, thinking, even as she did so, that a trill of pure joy might sound from her throat through her parted lips. The tea was like nectar - he had even remembered the sugar. ‘It isn’t allowed though,’ she said quietly, making a desperate clutch at reality.
Rob shrugged. What was ‘allowed’ or ‘not allowed’ played absolutely no part in anything he did. ‘My feet are cold now. Can I put them under your quilt?’ Rachel nodded and moved her legs across. Rob slid his legs under her quilt and allowed them to lean comfortably against hers. ‘You’re hogging all the cushions! Pass me a couple.’ He thumped them into submission and stuffed them behind him. ‘This is cosy,’ he said.
✽✽✽
Starlight was larded with clay. She had made a gloopy puddle on the wheel and was slapping it with the flat of her hand, sending grey splashes everywhere. She sat on Heather’s knee. They were both swathed in capacious aprons but their bare arms, starkly in contrast - one fair and freckled, the other like glossy dark chocolate - were elbow deep in mud; their faces and hair were spattered. They were both in their element.
‘Clever girl! Clever girl!’ Heather encouraged. ‘Splat splat splat! Isn’t that a lovely sound?’ Starlight chortled and beamed. The potter kept giving them sidelong glances from the kiln where she was removing fired pots.
Miriam had had no success at the potter’s wheel. Her ewer, an ambitious project, had collapsed and she had stamped off in a huff to get cleaned up and find a coffee. Ruth had made a passable plate, a bit wonky but at least recognisable. She had gone outside to collect leaves and sticks. She wanted to make impressions in the clay which she could paint. Ellie and Tansy were at the painting table. They had both made bowls; Ellie’s was a bit squashed at one side and rather thick, heavy and ugly. ‘Rustic’ the potter had commented, judiciously. Tansy’s was quite symmetrical and she had managed to get the edge fine and smooth. Recognising a deft hand the potter had shown Tansy how to use the wheel and a tapered stick to make decorative ridges around the outside of her pot. Regarding her own, Ellie remarked, with some perspicacity, that Starlight could have made it. ‘I don’t think I’ll even bother to paint it,’ she said.
It was the first time they had been alone since the previous evening. ‘You were very upset last night,’ Tansy said, her head low over her pot. ‘I heard you crying. I didn’t know what to do, if you’d rather be left alone. And I didn’t want to wake Rachel.’
‘Yes.’ Ellie threw down her etching tool. ‘I don’t know what it is about me and birthdays. They’re always a disaster. I dread them.’
‘Did Rob get you into trouble?’
‘He tried! Oh God, he suggested... well, I can’t say, but it was just awful.’
‘Has Caro told him your... secret?’
‘Oh yes, I’m sure she has. But he didn’t mention that. This was something else. Something he’d done and then tried to blame on me.’
Tansy had whittled a delicate stem into the inside of her pot. Under her hand it grew leaves and sprouted flowers. ‘Had he done it on purpose, do you think?’
Ellie considered. ‘No, I think he’d done something stupid, been careless and got caught out. He tried to shift the blame onto me. He always did when we were children. I should be used to it by now. You know,’ she put her head on one side, regarding Tansy’s work, ‘that’s really lovely, Tansy.’
‘Thanks.’ Tansy sat back and looked at it critically. ‘I love doing anything like this. Mum and I used to make things together; salt-dough models, origami, things with lentils and pasta. Perhaps Rob didn’t really want to get you in to trouble at all. Perhaps, as you say, he’d got himself into a mess and was trying to wriggle out of it. I’m not saying that was right, but...’
‘No. I wriggled him out of it in the end. I thought of an alternative explanation for... the thing... one which let him off the hook.’
Tansy applied herself to her pot again, adding a bunch of berries to her trailing vine. Presently she said, ‘Either way, sounds like it could have been worse.’
‘What do you mean?’ Ellie was using the etching tool to pick clay from underneath her fingernails.
‘Well. Suppose he knows your ‘secret’. He didn’t tell it, did he? That makes me think that he doesn’t want to. Or, that he doesn’t know it at all. You know what it’s like when you’re in trouble. You think of the first thing to defend yourself, there isn’t time to think up complicated stories. Telling about you would have been the most normal thing to do. So either he doesn’t want to tell, or he doesn’t know anything to tell.’
‘Hmmm,’ said Ellie.
✽✽✽
Les eventually agreed to take them out for a drive. June was like a caged lion, Robert querulous and flustered, Granny as mad as a hatter. He put his head into the games room.
‘You’re sure you’ll manage the Tesco thing?’ he asked. Rob and Rachel were watching a film. They had drawn the curtains across the windows and were snuggled under a quilt. ‘I feel bad. I promised your mother. But your granddad’s very unsettled. I think a drive might soothe him.’
‘Yeah, yeah! Don’t worry,’ Rob waved his hand, dismissing them.
‘I’ve put Muriel’s dog in her room. He’ll be fine in there.’
Rob waved again.
‘What’s the Tesco thing?’ Rachel asked when he had gone.
Rob shrugged. ‘Some delivery. When they’ve gone, shall we have a drink?’
‘More tea?’
Rob snorted. ‘To hell with tea!’
✽✽✽
The boys thrashed around in the shallows of the lake. Simon and Todd spent a good deal of time going round in circles. Simon, in the stern, shouted ‘left, right, left, right’ to try and get them into a rhythm but it was clear after a while that Todd had no idea which was which. Jude paddled alongside them and tied a piece of string around one of Todd’s wrists.
‘String, no-string,’ he said, pointing to each of Todd’s hands in turn.
After that they got on much better, and the instructor soon sent them up a course of buoys which bobbed about twenty metres from the shore. Simon could be heard yelling, ‘String! No string!’ right across the lake.
Toby and Ben made a poor start. The ca
noe was bigger and more unwieldy than either of them had anticipated. They had struggled to carry it between them the couple of hundred yards from the boathouse to the shore. Toby had slipped climbing into the canoe and his trainers were soaking. He quailed to think what Miriam might say when she found out. The canoe rocked alarmingly when either of them made any sudden movements. Ben, in the bows, gripped the gunwales, white round the gills. Toby felt clumsy and embarrassed and angry. Ben’s whingeing was beginning to annoy him.
‘Perhaps you should have gone potting with the girls,’ he said nastily.
Ben made a lunge for his paddle but it slid into the water and the instructor had to retrieve it.
‘For fuck’s sake,’ Toby said under his breath. The expletive shocked Ben and he felt tenser than ever.
Out on the water a bunch of scouts about Toby’s age were having a whale of a time. They had got their canoes alongside each other and were taking it in turns to walk across the bows. Toby kept throwing them envious glances.
Jude paddled up to them.
‘Alright lads?’
‘No,’ Ben said, his voice high. ‘It’s too wobbly. I don’t like it.’
‘What’s the worst that could happen?’ Jude said soothingly. ‘You could fall out and get wet.’ He dipped his paddle into the water. It was about three feet deep. ‘Look, you wouldn’t drown, you have your life jacket, and we brought spare clothes.’
Just then one of the scouts fell into the water. There was a whoop of laughter. Two others jumped in deliberately. ‘Look,’ Jude said, ‘they’re not bothered. Try and relax.’ With his encouragement they made their way slowly up the course.
It turned out that Jude was extremely competent in a kayak. Their instructor mentioned it specifically.
‘Did quite a bit in the Rockies one year,’ Jude said.
Relative Strangers Page 34