‘But I shouldn’t have said it. I hoped you might say that it was OK. That we can be friends. It’s been nice today, hasn’t it?’ She held her breath. His words were like an inhalation of aromatic incense. ‘Rachel? Won’t you say something?’
‘Oh yes! Of course it is. It has. And we can, if you really want to. I’m sorry, it’s just that, you see, for someone like me, that is so... unreal.’ Somehow it was easier to talk in the dark. She heard him smile.
‘Someone like you?’
Rachel shrugged her mantle of self-deprecation into place. ‘No one cares about someone like me,’ she said, with forced levity. ‘What I think, what I feel. I don’t...’ she groped for the word, and when it came to her, she found it was accompanied by the threat of tears, ‘...I don’t fit.’ Perhaps he heard the threat too as it caught in her throat. Rob moved up the settee towards her. She could feel his warmth, his breath, see the glint of light in his eyes. He smelled like a man; spice overlaying musk. His voice, when he spoke, was low, concerned.
‘What do you mean?’
Her voice too dropped to a whisper. ‘Well, I mean, for a start, physically,’ involuntarily one hand moved to her abdomen, the roundness of her tummy, the folds of flesh underneath her pyjamas and the quilt. The other touched her round face, the side away from the bruises and sterastrips, not wounded, but none the less ugly. ‘I’m not what you’re meant to be.’ Rob made a noise with his mouth, like a tut, but without a hint of exasperation. ‘And here, in this family, I don’t fit in. I don’t belong. Not really.’
‘You do.’
‘No. We were talking about it yesterday in the kitchen. When you’re family, I mean, really related, then you’re loved no matter what. It isn’t a choice. Like you were saying earlier about Ellie. It hasn’t anything to do with whether you like Ellie. You love her. Full stop. She’s your sister and that’s that. Blood is thicker than water.’
‘Yours is. It took Mitch ages to clean it up!’
‘Very funny. But you see, I’m not family. So I’m not loved no matter what. I have to earn it, like friendship and trust. It’s a gradual thing. We talked about putting it to the test, telling secrets and seeing if we could keep them.’
‘Secrets?’
‘Yes.’
‘So you all told each other secrets?’
‘No. Well, Ellie did, later.’
She could see Rob nodding. ‘Well, that will be alright. You’re good at keeping secrets. You told me so. They’ll soon find out what a friend you are.’
‘That friend of Ellie’s - Caro? She’s no friend at all, is she? She told Ellie’s secret.’
Rob moved his head, the slightest nod. ‘Mmm.’
‘And Ellie’s very worried about it. But you see that’s because she hasn’t understood about family, that you’d never use it to hurt her, because she’s your sister. She cried last night. I heard her.’
Rob reached for her hand, which was lying on the quilt. His breath, like hers, was quick and shallow. For a heady moment Rachel thought that he might kiss her. His lips were so close that she could see the glint of their moistness in the small light which filtered in from the gallery. ‘Did she? Maybe you could help?’
Rachel was aware of talking too quickly, of words spilling out of her mouth, half willing them to go on forever to put off the kiss, half wishing she could stop them up, to hasten its beginning. ‘I’d like to. I thought that to myself, yesterday. That I’d like to help. It was upsetting, seeing you two fighting like that...’ Rob nodded again, as though he felt the shame of it. He was scarcely breathing. The closer he leaned to her the faster the words flowed out, as though he were a magnet drawing them out of her, until she wondered if he would have to stop them with his mouth, or if his mouth on hers would simply make a siphon, extracting them from her brain and implanting them on his, so that speech between them became unnecessary and he would always instinctively know whatever she was thinking and feeling. ‘...I wanted to do something which would make it stop. I imagined me doing it, and you and Ellie being grateful and glad, and loving me for it. And the most ridiculous thing is,’ Rachel concluded at last spilling out the very last thing she had to say on the subject, pulling it out by its roots, ‘the most ridiculous thing of all is that it isn’t even true!’
Rob’s head jerked. ‘It isn’t true?’
‘No! Ellie made the whole thing up! She never had an affair with that teacher at all!’
Rob’s surprise made his voice catch in his throat. ‘An aff..? Which... which teacher?’
‘I can’t remember now... Philip? I think she called him Philip. A student-teacher. But it doesn’t matter, does it?’
‘No, no I don’t suppose so.’ Rob was shaking. At first Rachel thought he was crying, or angry. But then he started to laugh.
✽✽✽
The atmosphere in the car was as angry as an ulcer. Ruth and Heather had begun to argue on the way across the car park and the close confinement of the jeep had not inhibited them from continuing. Starlight, the hapless cause of the disagreement, had fallen asleep in her car seat almost straight away, oblivious to everything, gobs of clay still sticking to her skin and a small plaster on her leg where a shard of flying glass had cut her. Against the darkness of her skin the plaster looked anaemically pink. Heather had complained to the first-aider because an ‘ethnically appropriate’ plaster could not be supplied. Ellie and Tansy gave each other looks but said nothing. Miriam, in the back with the buggy and the nappy bag, also remained silent for the most part, looking disconsolately out of the window.
‘It isn’t the money,’ Heather said for the third or fourth time. She had had to pay over three hundred pounds for the broken glass ornaments, ‘and it isn’t the embarrassment although I am glad that Jude wasn’t with us, just because you can bet your bottom dollar the press would have been there before you could say paparazzi.’ She reversed from her parking space and the jeep jolted over the rutted surface of the car park.
‘I know you’re not bothered about the money, Heather,’ said Ruth, snapping her seatbelt into place. ‘It’s the fact that you’re not bothered about it which shocks me. I could feed my family for two months on three hundred pounds. I think you’ve lost all sense of the value of money. That’s what I think you should be embarrassed about.’
Heather eased the car between the narrow gateposts of the site and accelerated along the lane. ‘Well I’m not. I don’t give a stuff about it. Compared to the fact that Starlight could have been seriously injured, scarred for life, what’s three hundred pounds? I bet you couldn’t put a price on your children; well, not on Ben, anyway. Or perhaps you could?’
‘What do you mean by that? Take the second left, here.’
‘Yes, I know. I can read the signs.’
‘Oh! I’m sorry!’ Ruth folded the map away in a huff. ‘I thought you couldn’t navigate.’
‘Don’t be ridiculous, Ruth! Going home’s always different, isn’t it? And besides, the motorway’s pretty clearly marked. I expect I will need some help when we get onto the small roads.’ They sped down a slip road onto a dual carriageway.
‘Slow down, Heather. There’s a speed camera up here,’ Miriam called from the back seat.
‘Perhaps someone else had better drive,’ snapped Heather, braking sharply.
‘I don’t care. But I thought a speeding ticket would just about put the icing on your cake, that’s all.’
Heather threw the jeep into third gear. ‘I’ll tell you what has annoyed me again, and it’s that this family has once more failed in its responsibility to my daughter! Why wasn’t someone watching her? For God’s sake, I can’t be everywhere! I found out about the place, I drove us there, I paid the potter, I queued for the food, I paid for that...’
‘Thank you Aunty Heather,’ Tansy chirped.
‘That’s the thing about being a parent,’ Ruth said archly, ‘in the end, you’re responsible. You can’t ever assume that someone else is in charge.’
‘I just
don’t accept that!’
‘Then you’re just not ready to be a parent.’
Heather stepped on the brakes and swerved into a lay-by. She opened the car door and rummaged in the door pocket before slamming it and stalking off. At the end of the lay-by she lit up a cigarette and smoked it, one hand under the other elbow, shaking her head. She stared out across the landscape. Directly in front of her was a hawthorn hedge, leafless, with only a few brown and wizened berries still clinging, and long, cruel thorns. Over the hedge was a brownish, spent pasture, its surface ragged and kicked about by careless, dissatisfied hooves. Past that a river, running fast and brown, and more fields beyond. In the distance, over the sound of the turgid river and the disgruntled wind across the sky she could hear the roar of cars on the motorway. At her feet, against the kerb and strewn in the verge of the lay-by, litter clung in greyish shreds, rusty cans, a pile of soggy dog-ends emptied from someone’s ashtray, ribbons of plastic. She stared morosely at them.
‘I always thought the countryside was a clean, wholesome place,’ she said to herself gloomily.
‘I didn’t know Aunty Heather smoked,’ Ellie said.
‘I wish I did,’ Miriam muttered darkly.
Ruth scrambled out of the car and marched up to her sister. ‘Don’t take it personally, Heather. Of course it’s an adjustment. None of us is ready to be a parent at first.’
Heather turned her back.
‘Oh for goodness’ sake!’ Ruth circled Heather so that she was in front of her once more but Heather stared resolutely over her head at the dun fields. ‘Look, all I meant was that, well, you’ve heard the sayings - ‘you need eyes in the back of your head,’ ‘an extra pair of hands,’ – they’re all true. But we don’t grow them instantly, none of us do.’
‘You take the biscuit, Ruth,’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Handing out advice to the rest of us, as if you don’t need help...’
Ruth sagged visibly, the wind taken out of her sails. ‘I don’t mean to imply that I’m the perfect parent...’ she muttered, turning and staring, like Heather, across the bleak landscape.
‘Good! You certainly aren’t. Have you looked at your children recently?’
Ruth reddened. ‘It was very kind of you to take Rachel shopping.’
‘Kind?’ Heather lowered her gaze to look Ruth in the eye. ‘That’s just it. It wasn’t kind - it was family: sharing the load, looking out for one another. Just what didn’t happen today and on Saturday. Miriam and I did it without thinking. You might be interested to know that it cost us rather more than three hundred pounds on that occasion but it doesn’t matter. We did it for you, because we’re family and because we can.’ Heather lit another cigarette from the glowing tip of the first. That Rachel had had three hundred pounds spent on her shocked Ruth. She didn’t really look that awful did she? Or did she? For that amount of money she could have re-clothed the entire family! But that was the last thing she could say now, so she only observed, ‘I didn’t know you smoked.’
‘There’s a lot you don’t know about me.’
There was a pause. Then Ruth said sullenly, ‘Miriam didn’t have to spend money on Rachel.’
‘Why?’ Heather leapt onto her remark like a dog on a rabbit. ‘Because Miriam isn’t really family? Or because Rachel isn’t? Perhaps that explains why you didn’t feel you needed to keep an eye on Starlight today: because she isn’t really family.’
Ruth shivered. She had left her cardigan in the car. Her eyes began to water; she didn’t know if it was the wind or if she was crying. She took off her glasses and smeared a ragged tissue across her eyes.
‘To be honest Heather, I feel so confused about the whole issue. I’m beginning to think it’s me who isn’t really family.’ She turned away and walked slowly back to the car.
‘Don’t try and make this all about you! This isn’t about you!’ Heather shouted after her, but her voice was snatched away on the wind.
✽✽✽
Elliot was yelling into the telephone in the hall. He had managed to get through to the manager of the sorting office where the company mail was taken. The man was being obstructive.
‘I tell you I’m the chairman of McKay’s Haulage. That mail belongs to me and I want it back. You have no right, no right to withhold it from me, do you hear?’ The manager explained for the fourth time that all mail, once posted or collected, ceased to be the property of the sender. Elliot wasn’t having it. He raised his voice and spoke over the manager, interrupting, drowning him out, his voice like caustic, designed to sear away any resistance. ‘Put me on to your supervisor. I want to speak to the organ-grinder, not his fucking monkey... Give me his home number then. I insist on speaking to your superior...’
Heather and Miriam stepped into the hall. Heather carried Starlight sleeping in her arms. She motioned urgently to Elliot, indicating the sleeping child, putting a finger to her lips. Elliot turned away from her, dismissing her with an impatient wave of his arm. ‘That’s outrageous!’ he bellowed down the phone, his face turning purple, the force of his voice almost lifting his feet from the floor. Starlight awoke with a start and began to cry.
✽✽✽
Rachel was back in bed when the girls arrived home. She had developed a headache and the place between her legs was sore. But what troubled her more than either of these things was a niggling, gnawing anxiety that she had made a grave error. She hadn’t – she hadn’t, she kept reminding herself, betrayed the secret. Rob had already known the secret; he had acknowledged as much – hadn’t he? Caro was the false friend. All she, Rachel, had done was to uncover the happy truth that Rob would not reveal it or use it in any way that might harm Ellie. So why, why, she asked herself, as she cowered under her quilt listening to the approaching footsteps of her two cousins, did she feel reluctant to share this good news with them? Surely Ellie would be delighted, relieved, and so grateful? Wouldn’t it qualify her, wouldn’t it prove beyond question that she belonged?
And yet something held her back, something she just couldn’t put her finger on, a combination, perhaps, of oddities. First: Rob’s sudden and total transformation of character and demeanour. For days he had skulked and frowned and grunted and shrugged, joined in under sufferance, determined to make himself as unpopular and disagreeable as possible. And then today, with her, he had been open and charming and helpful and relaxed. Why? Second: his complete U turn with regard to Ellie; all callousness one day, angry, violent and frightening; all kindness the next, his concern as genuine and irreproachable as a woollen blanket. Why? Then, thirdly, as much as she didn’t want to look on it for fear that observation would tarnish its lustre, there was the fact of his particular and tender attention towards herself. Bringing her drinks, sorting out the DVD and the music, helping with the shopping, the comfortable familiarity of his legs against hers under the quilt, the touch of his hand on her foot, the way he had spoken her name. As precious and breath-taking as these things were to her, and as carefully as she cradled them to herself, it was almost too much, too incredible to hope that they had been inspired by herself alone. Everything in her experience screamed at her that it could not be; nobody, and especially not boys, and above all not boys like Rob took that kind of notice of Rachel.
And finally, now that she considered it, the oddest thing of all was his question, weird beyond anything; ‘which teacher?’ Why had he needed to ask? Surely, surely, Caro would have told him. That question irritated like a splinter, festered like a foreign body, causing all the circumstances around it to inflame and suppurate, infecting her wonderful afternoon, her sense of bonding with Rob, her hopes of proving herself to Ellie, with sepsis. She put her head under the quilt and as the girls entered the room she closed her eyes and feigned sleep. Immediately they lowered their voices and crept around the room. Rachel breathed in and caught the lingering scent of Rob. Surreptitiously, she slid her hand under her pillow and felt the thick, slightly damp material of his sock. She clutched it, ti
ghtly.
✽✽✽
Elliot had set his laptop up on the kitchen table again and surrounded himself with the same spread of documents and files he had been using on Saturday afternoon. It was as inconvenient as possible. Belinda, in response to Simon’s request for ‘a simpler meal’ was busy making a buffet spread of salads, cheese, slices of cold meats and hard boiled eggs. She had two flans, some garlic baguettes and the remains of the previous night’s lasagne in the Aga. She needed the table for the prepared dishes; the worktops were getting cluttered and she was feeling flustered. James pressed a tall gin and tonic into her hand. She took a sip of it; it was just as she liked it, he had smeared the lemon around the rim of the glass before plopping it in with the ice. She smiled at him gratefully.
‘It’s more of a stew than a salad day, really,’ she said, more levelly than she might have done a moment earlier. ‘I do hope this will be alright for everyone after all their exertions.’
Elliot snarled. ‘I need to get to the bottom of this if it’s the last thing I do.’
Simon was making real mayonnaise in the food processor; a complicated process requiring raw eggs and other ingredients added in a strict sequence. He shouted over the whir of the mixer, ‘For God’s sake, Elliot! Chill! You look like you’re about to bust a blood vessel.’
‘I’ll be busting something when I find out who’s cocked this up,’ Elliot muttered menacingly.
‘Whisky, Elliot?’ James asked smoothly. ‘Ice?’ Elliot nodded, scrolling manically through his spreadsheet. Over his head, James and Belinda exchanged a knowing look.
Todd was making a complicated Lego model. He had reluctantly allowed Starlight and Mary access to some of the bricks.
‘Don’t dribble on them, though,’ he had warned, as though either one of them might be as likely to do so as the other. Mitch and Muriel had taken the dogs out for a walk. Roger had not appreciated spending the afternoon cooped up in Muriel’s room; he was snappish and disagreeable. Muriel too was a little out of sorts. She had looked forward to telling Les all about her afternoon and especially the delicious tea and she was put out that he was not at the house. Also he had promised to look after Roger and she could not imagine what circumstances might have arisen to make him abandon the poor dog.
Relative Strangers Page 36