✽✽✽
The cloud lifted part way through the afternoon and Elliot and Mitch played their round of golf in pleasant, watery sunshine, chilled by a stiff breeze. It was clear from the off that Mitch, in spite of his youth, was an accomplished player. Elliot fussed with his clubs and his gloves, prevaricated over tees and complained about the greens. He lost a ball in the rough on the third and another in the water on the seventh. He fluffed an easy putt on the eighth. The course was wet, still soaked from the heavy rain of Saturday night and Sunday. Caddying was heavy going. By the twelfth hole Mitch was a good number of shots ahead of him.
‘I’m afraid I’m not giving you a very good game. These hired clubs are useless,’ Elliot muttered.
‘Don’t worry about it,’ Mitch shrugged.
‘Patronising little oik,’ Elliot fumed, under his breath.
✽✽✽
The Tesco van arrived early in the afternoon. Rob stopped the film and he and Rachel unpacked the twenty or so carrier bags begrudgingly carried to the kitchen by the delivery man. He was especially vociferous about the driveway, ‘A positive hazard,’ he said. ‘Full of pot holes, steep and slippery.’ When he had gone Rob and Rachel restocked the fridge and put dried and tinned goods into the storeroom. Rachel was intensely self-conscious, in her pyjamas, thinking that she probably ought to go and get dressed, but didn’t want her disappearance to be misinterpreted. But Rob seemed oblivious. He laughed and joked as they sorted the shopping. His nearness made her abdomen clutch at feathers.
When the shopping was away Rob brought them orange juice heavily laced with vodka.
‘I’m sure this isn’t allowed,’ said Rachel, but sensing in herself a shift about what ‘wasn’t allowed’ from fear to fascination. She sipped gingerly. ‘Oh,’ she cried, ‘it doesn’t really taste of anything!’
‘I hardly put any in yours,’ Rob said untruthfully. ‘I’ve been left in charge and I say it’s allowed. It’ll settle your tummy.’ Rachel’s tummy flipped at the thought of him thinking of it. ‘Open the crisps. Don’t you drink at home?’
Rachel shook her head. ‘I don’t. Mum and Dad have wine. Mum makes it. It’s horrible.’
‘But when you’re out with your mates, at parties and things, you don’t drink?’
Rachel shook her head again. She was never invited to parties. ‘Shall we finish the film?’
‘Do you want to?’ Rob asked. ‘I thought that maybe it was getting a bit gory.’ Certainly the film had been the most blood-thirsty thing Rachel had ever seen. People had been tortured and maimed, savaged by tigers, pushed off cliffs, drowned, burned, gouged, speared, slashed, stabbed and hacked.
‘Well, it is a bit gory,’ Rachel put her drink down on the table. ‘But if you want to see the end...’
‘Oh! I’ve seen it a dozen times. There’s a huge battle at the end; total carnage. We can just chat, if you like. Ellie drinks like a fish given the chance. She got herself in trouble on holiday.’
‘She told us.’
‘Did she? Been getting quite pally, have you, you girls?’
‘Well...’ Rachel drank some more of her juice and helped herself to a crisp. Her tummy was beginning to feel warm and delicious. ‘Actually what she did tell us was that you offered to sort that creepy waiter out for her. I thought that was very,’ she searched for the word, rejecting ‘heroic’ as being too transparent, ‘nice and brotherly of you.’
Rob shrugged. ‘I would have done. She is my sister, after all.’
‘You don’t seem to like each other very much.’
‘What has that got to do with it? Do you have to like your sister? It doesn’t make any difference whether I like her or not. She’s still my sister.’
‘Do you mean you feel responsible for her?’
‘I was always made to feel responsible,’ Rob mimicked his mother, ‘‘Look after your sister, Rob, you’re the big boy.” She can be a pain. She wraps Mum and Dad round her little fingers, it’s always ‘poor Ellie,’ like she’s helpless or something. But,’ he sighed, ‘I’m stuck with her. I don’t have any choice in the matter.’
Rachel took a tentative step towards the crux of the question. ‘You’d never do anything to hurt her? Or to get her into trouble?’
‘God no,’ Rob stretched his arms above his head and yawned, widely. ‘Not really. I tease her a lot,’ he said, through his yawn. ‘She’s easy to wind up. We shout and scream at each other. Like yesterday. But it’s only noise. It doesn’t mean anything.’
✽✽✽
Les found an out-of-town shopping complex. There was a DIY warehouse, a garden centre, an electrical store and a supermarket with a cafeteria. They wandered around the supermarket for a while on a fruitless search for suspenders then, between them, Les and June managed to get Granny and Robert shuffled into a corner table of the cafeteria. Les bought sandwiches, cake and tea, precariously balanced on a tray.
‘This isn’t what I had in mind at all,’ June complained, eyeing the cellophane-wrapped goods disdainfully.
Granny wriggled on her seat. ‘My bottom stings!’ she said irritably, in a voice which carried to neighbouring tables. A security guard approached.
‘Excuse me madam,’ he said, addressing Granny. ‘I’ll have to ask you to accompany me to the manager’s office. I have reason to believe you have goods about your person which have not been paid for.’
‘Oh for God’s sake, mother!’
✽✽✽
The pottery was part of an arts-and-crafts co-operative housed in some converted farm buildings comprising a wood-turners, a glass workshop, a quilting studio, a gourmet chocolatier, a candle-making studio, a jewellery workshop and a man who made interesting things out of driftwood. Miriam wandered from one to the other, watching groups try their hands at the different disciplines, lone artists absorbed in their work. She felt peripheral and restless. It was beginning to be a habitual feeling for her, recently. She was finding the family milieu quite a burden, the incomprehensible chords of tribal history underscored by dissonant strains of tension and resentment. She was fond of Simon and had taken on his children to a certain practical if not emotional extent; they were part of his packaging. She quite enjoyed time spent with Heather and Jude, especially away from the children. But she was beginning to feel her anomalous status; she wasn’t family in any sense, legal or natural; she wasn’t a wife or a daughter or a mother, an aunty or a sister or a cousin, she wasn’t even an in-law. Like Mitch, like Rachel and like Starlight, like poor old Mr Burgess, she had no official position at all and didn’t really belong.
The girls met up in the gift shop and café, housed in a stone barn. The café was upstairs, in what had presumably been, at one time, the hayloft. It was thronged with half-term holiday-makers. They trooped up the stairs to find a table, but had to hover for a while until one became vacant. Eventually Ruth grabbed one when it was vacated by a group of Japanese tourists. Ellie and Tansy eyed the tourists’ debris with disgust.
‘Don’t be silly, girls,’ Ruth said briskly, marshalling dirty plates and wiping the table with a spare napkin.
Miriam and Heather queued for food and drinks. ‘Let’s just get a selection shall we?’ Heather said, stacking a tray. ‘It’s all going well, isn’t it? Everyone’s enjoying it, even Ruth. What do you think? Tea? Coffee?’
‘Oh I don’t know,’ Miriam sighed. She would have preferred somewhere quieter, quainter. All the food was pre-packaged and mass-produced, non-organic, and looked very unappetising. The staff was barely coping with the rush of customers. There was squashed food on the floor, too many noisy children and the queue for the Ladies was snaking out of the door and around the tables. The door was open and she could smell the warm, womanish waft from within.
Below them, in the gift shop, there was a crash as a quantity of fragile, expensive glass ornaments were swept from a display shelf by an unsupervised black toddler.
✽✽✽
Rachel felt relaxed and languorous. Rob had brought them more drinks.
‘I’m sure I oughtn’t to,’ she had said.
‘Oh go on,’ he had laughed. ‘Let your hair down.’ He flung himself onto the opposite end of her settee, sliding his legs under her quilt. She wished he had got in beside her, put his arm around her; suddenly, anything seemed possible. It was like a dream, so easy and inexorable, requiring no effort on her part at all. His legs felt heavy and comfortable against hers. He had put some music on; it wasn’t the violent, aggressive music he had been playing in the study. A woman with a voice like caramel sang to a mellow guitar. ‘This is one of the albums Jude’s produced,’ Rob said. ‘I like it. But don’t tell anyone. It wouldn’t do my street cred any good at all if it was to get out.’
Rachel smiled. ‘Don’t worry,’ she said lethargically, ‘I’m good at keeping secrets.’
Under the quilt, he reached for her bare foot and rubbed it absent-mindedly. He threw his head back against the cushion. ‘Wow!’ he breathed. ‘I’m wasted, are you?’
‘Mmm.’ Rachel nodded, dreamily. ‘I think I am.’
✽✽✽
The canoe instructor guided his party around the shores of the lake and into a narrow inlet, overhung by rocky cliffs and precariously clinging trees. The day had turned quite sunny and here, in the cove, they were protected from the brisk breeze which was combing the surface of the silvery lake surface into shining peaks. Toby and Ben had become quite competent at paddling and steering their canoe. They had raced Simon and Todd up a course of buoys and beaten them to the finish quite easily. Disillusioned, Todd had given up with his paddle and leaned over the side of the canoe looking for fish and treasure while Simon rowed. Jude had paddled out into the lake and engraved easy lines through the water with deft, strong strokes.
‘Look Daddy!’ Todd shouted, pointing into the water at some dully glinting pebbles, ‘I can see gold.’
‘Wow, son. That’s great. Just great!’
‘Just great!’ Toby sneered under his breath.
Now the instructor pointed out a tiny shingled beach and a narrow path leading out to a high rocky promontory at the mouth of the cove.
‘The water there is very deep,’ he said. ‘You can jump off that rock and your feet won’t touch the bottom. Anyone want to try?’
In the end, they all did. First Simon had hurled himself off the rock, emerging gasping and splashing only moments later. Toby had gone next, making a blood-curdling yell that he hoped all the scouts would hear as they pulled their canoes onto the shore. Jude and Ben followed; they leapt from the rock hand in hand.
Finally, after tears and much encouragement, Simon and Todd jumped together, Todd’s sharp cry of fear as his father leapt with him in his arms turning to yells of pleasure as they bobbed quickly to the surface in the cold water.
‘That’s the kind of thing you’ll remember when you’re old men, lads,’ Jude had said sagely, as they’d paddled back to the shore. ‘The kind of memory money can’t buy.’
The instructor let them use the staff showers - it didn’t seem right to ask Jude Dewar to shower with a pack of scouts. The boys went in first while Simon and Jude stripped off their wet clothes.
‘I’ve been meaning to talk to you Jude,’ Simon said a little awkwardly, stuffing the boys’ wet things into carrier bags.
‘Oh yes?’
‘Not just now, but later?’
‘Whenever. What’s up?’
Simon sighed. ‘Nothing specific. Family stuff. Just want your opinion, really.’
‘O oh! Dangerous waters for a non-McKay.’
‘I know. Strictly ‘without prejudice’, you know.’
‘Fair enough. After supper, perhaps?’
‘Thanks.’
✽✽✽
The rooms of the stately home were sumptuously decorated and furnished. Each piece and painting carefully labelled and described. Belinda passed from room to room, borne on a diaphanous carpet of happiness. Even as she examined and read and exclaimed she went over and over the things James had said to her; affirming, encouraging things which had fed her soul like spring water in a parched land. She felt just like that sole white flower at the back of the border, suddenly seen and appreciated, recognised, named at last. Belinda felt as though she had been woken up, like a princess after a hundred years of sleeping; or like a prisoner released into the light after a lifetime in semi-darkness.
Suddenly Mary was beside her; she seemed to sense Belinda’s mood and to share it. ‘Isn’t this lovely,’ Mary smiled, taking her daughter’s arm. ‘I feel so free!’
James and Muriel joined them from the library, where they had been examining an enormous embroidered family tree displaying the relationship of the aristocrat whose seat Hunting-in-the-Forest had been, to the royal family.
‘I think it might be time for a cup of tea. Don’t you?’
They ate scones and jam in the tea shop. James made them all laugh by making them pronounce ‘scone’. The McKay women pronounced scone as though it rhymed with ‘stone’, whereas he said it as though it rhymed with ‘gone’. They each insisted, with an inverse snobbishness, that the other pronunciation was ‘posh’.
‘If only,’ James laughed, pouring more tea, ‘if only we could hear Her Majesty say it, just once, then we’d all know.’
‘We’d better ask Granny,’ Belinda quipped happily. ‘She will have heard the queen say ‘scone’ a hundred times!’
Mary stirred her tea thoughtfully. ‘You know,’ she said, dabbing her mouth with a napkin, ‘today has been a real tonic for me. And it’s made me realise something I’ve been wondering about for a while now.’ She looked around the table.
‘What is it, Mum?’
‘It’ll need talking about, and lots of thought,’ Mary preambled, ‘and maybe this week we can all have a think about it. But the fact is,’ she paused and rummaged in her handbag for a handkerchief to wipe away the tear which glistened at the corner of her eye.
‘Oh Mum!’ Belinda cried, ‘what’s the matter?’
‘Well, the fact is, I just don’t think I can cope with your father for much longer. I hate to say it, but he’s just getting too much for me.’
‘Oh Mum,’ Belinda took Mary’s hand, all concern. ‘We don’t help you enough.’
Mary shook her head. ‘You all have your own lives, your own families. You do what you can; especially you, Belinda, you do more than anyone.’
‘I’d be happy... happy,’ Muriel began, but Mary stopped her.
‘Neither of us is getting any younger, Muriel.’ They were in fact the same age.
James rested his elbows on the table. ‘What do you have in mind, Mary? Anything specific at this stage?’
Mary nodded. ‘I have wondered about the Oaks.’
Belinda had been thinking about home-help, meals on wheels, day-centres, not full time residential care. ‘The Oaks?’
‘Oh goodness,’ Muriel gasped. ‘Isn’t that very expensive?’
‘Yes Muriel, it is,’ Mary looked at Belinda and James. ‘That’s why I need the whole family to agree. I know that some of you are better placed financially than others, and the Oaks will make a big hole in your inheritance.’
The word dropped like a corpse onto the tea table. Belinda felt her bubble of happiness burst. If there was any word calculated to divide families, it was ‘inheritance.’
✽✽✽
Mitch drove Elliot’s car home. They had spent an hour on the nineteenth and Elliot had had two double scotches. He had been beaten hollow at golf and was a poor loser. He had paid their green fees and for the drinks with very bad grace. Frankly he was embarrassed to be seen in the clubhouse with Mitch, who was, Elliot considered, inappropriately dressed for such a venue – in denim, and without a stitch of lambs’ wool, let alone cashmere. Plus they had been given some sidelong glances by the members, leaping, no doubt, to unsavoury conclusions on the nature of their unequal relationship.
But the day, bad as it had been, deteriorated further when Elliot switched his phone on
and it emitted a series of bleeps; he found he had missed a dozen calls. He just caught Carole leaving the office. She was beside herself with anxiety. She had done the quotations he had asked for, a number of them for existing clients and some for new ones, including a very big pan-European prospect. She had copied and pasted the figures from his spreadsheet. But she feared some error; the bottom lines were too low. But he had been so insistent that the quotations should go out in today’s post, she hadn’t known what to do for the best. There was no one else to ask, everyone was away on holiday. In the end, she had sent them off, trusting that she, and not he, was in the wrong.
Elliot had her read the figures back to him. He paled; something was seriously amiss. He needed to get home and check the spreadsheet. But oh God, if she was right, he’d under-quoted some massive jobs by thousands of pounds.
Mitch drove in silence. Elliot, in the front seat, was white, and did not speak.
✽✽✽
‘Rachel?’ Rachel opened her eyes. Had she been asleep? Rob was looking at her from the other end of the settee. The room was in semi darkness. The curtains were still closed from when they had been watching the film and anyway the afternoon was drawing in. She couldn’t see his face very clearly, just the outline of his head.
‘Yes?’
‘I wanted to say, you know, I’m sorry, for what I said that first night.’
She waited, to see if he would say anything else, to convince herself that she was awake, to see if he was teasing her.
‘Did you hear me?’
‘Yes. I did. I just don’t know what to say. It was true, I suppose,’ she looked away into the dark corner of the room, shame shifting inside her again. She felt his hand move against her foot - his palm against her skin. Something else fluttered into life in her belly. The silhouette of his head dropped.
Relative Strangers Page 35