‘Just leave it Ruth,’ Heather said quietly, before putting her hand gently onto Mary’s shoulder. ‘Tea? Toast?’
‘What a lot of secrets today!’ Ruth carped. Surely the taunt would sting someone into speaking? She looked from one to another of her sisters, at her mother and even at Ellie but no one was prepared to enlighten her.
‘Just tea please,’ Mary said quietly, giving Heather’s hand a squeeze before pouring cornflakes into a bowl for Robert.
But Robert pushed the bowl away from him. ‘Porridge,’ he said firmly.
Mary, Heather and Belinda exchanged significant looks. ‘I’ll do it Mum,’ Heather said. ‘Starlight doesn’t seem to like Marmite after all. She’ll have some porridge, too.’
Whatever was going on, clearly they were all determined to exclude Ruth from it. ‘Suit yourselves then. Be secretive if you must. But don’t say I didn’t ask,’ she scowled, going back to her book.
James sat down next to her and tried to take her hand, but she snatched it from him and steadfastly read on.
Presently a general hullaballoo announced the arrival of the footballers. They were hot and flushed with exercise and they brought into the kitchen a manly, spicy musk. They clamoured around the fridge and poured out cold juice which they guzzled thirstily, all the while reliving the highlights of their match. They all looked ridiculous, wearing one another’s football shirts. Simon was squeezed into one which was so small it left his tummy bare. Todd’s on the other hand, came down to his knees.
‘Oh dear, have you given up on me? I am making the coffee,’ Muriel cried, indicating the coffee cups she had made ready on the table.
‘Lovely Muriel! Thank you. You’re a star!’ Simon called out. He mopped his face and neck with a large handkerchief.
‘Humph,’ June ejaculated, folding her arms across her bosom. ‘Making coffee is hardly rocket science!’ Defeated in her attempts to get Les’ attention she sat down heavily on the chair by the Aga.
Ben struggled onto Ruth’s knee. She unbent sufficiently for him to squirm between her body and the table. ‘I scored three penalties!’ he said proudly. ‘Uncle Jude tried to save them but he couldn’t. Look! He got all muddy.’ Jude smiled ruefully across the kitchen. One side of his jeans was smeared with mud.
‘You’re all very muddy,’ June remarked critically. ‘You shouldn’t be in the house at all in that state, I don’t think.’
‘We took our trainers off June,’ Simon pointed out, indicating them in a heap outside the back door. In the miniscule football top, with his bare tummy, his righteous indignation was less than compelling. June sniffed.
‘It doesn’t matter!’ Muriel cried, spooning coffee grounds into a cafetière. ‘I’ve got the measure of that washing machine now. You can all peel off and I’ll see to it later.’
‘Am I going to get any breakfast?’ Robert roared, so suddenly that Starlight jumped and started to cry. Simon’s lips blanched a bloodless white, remarkable against the flush of his face. He threw a steely glare across the kitchen at his father.
‘It’s coming, Daddy,’ Heather sang out from the Aga.
‘And this is his football shirt, look,’ Ben prattled on. ‘He says I can keep it. Mum, it’s a real Man U one! Not even a replica! Look! It’ a number 7 shirt. That was Beckham’s, and before him someone called Cantona.’
‘I thought you didn’t like football,’ Ruth said, smoothing Ben’s ruffled hair down.
‘Uncle Jude says I’m good at it!’
‘Does he now? Oh well, if Uncle Jude says so...’
‘Yes, and later, we’re going to finish our song.’
Rob looked rude with good health, his hair tousled. He kept throwing triumphant looks over at Ellie and laughing, like Simon, too loudly. ‘This will be the shape of things to come,’ he seemed to be saying, ‘when little-princess-perfect has toppled off her throne!’ He had really enjoyed the football. The men had treated him as one of themselves. They had winked at each other while allowing the younger boys to make passes and score goals which they could easily have intercepted. He and Simon had made blatant fouls in the area so that Ben could shoot penalties and Jude had made comedy dives in the goal-mouth to let them in. At full-time they had made a great show of asking the younger boys for their shirts, like real footballers. Simon had looked so funny squeezing into Todd’s top! Toby had been thrilled when Rob asked for his. His new-found ascendency amongst the grown-ups and especially over Ellie was quite intoxicating.
‘I’m famished,’ Simon declared, ‘aren’t you, Rob? Shall we make lunch?’
‘Porridge is ready! Yummy brekkie!’ Heather called brightly. It was unclear whether she was addressing her dad or her daughter. They looked up with equal eagerness at her voice.
‘I think it’s still breakfast time,’ Rob grinned.
‘Oh sack that!’ Simon exclaimed expansively. ‘Breakfast can move seamlessly into lunch.’ He rummaged in the fridge.
If Belinda had been shocked at the appearance of her daughter, she was appalled to see how the appearance of her son had made Ellie’s pallor, if possible, more pronounced. She seemed hardly able look at him and yet unable to look at anything else. Something Heather had said a night or two ago came back to Belinda. Something was very wrong between her children and she had been too preoccupied to get to the bottom of it.
‘Do you mind if we finish this ham?’ Simon was waving the packet at her across the room.
Belinda dragged her eyes from Ellie. ‘No,’ she said, ‘I don’t mind at all. I’m having a bit of a day off today. Elliot has gone in to the office and...’ she took another step towards Ellie, preparing to suggest that the two of them have a walk, or go shopping.
‘What?’ Rob interrupted her. He stood by the open back door, a butter knife in one hand and a slice of bread in the other. ‘Dad’s gone home?’ People began to look around them. They hadn’t remarked Elliot’s absence but it explained Belinda’s slightly unusual demeanour this morning.
Miriam, arriving in the kitchen at that moment said, with hollow concern, ‘Elliot’s gone home? Oh dear, I am sorry.’
A few people stifled sniggers. Belinda made a moue. ‘Just for the day, I think. To sort out whatever the crisis was yesterday.’
‘I could have gone with him!’ Rob blurted out. He couldn’t believe that his dad had gone home without him. After all the times he had asked!
‘I wish you had,’ Ellie said under her breath. Tansy gave her arm a squeeze.
‘But you wouldn’t want to, would you?’ Simon took up a position next to Rob and began laying ham on the slices of buttered bread. He sent Toby off to find plates. ‘Go home, I mean?’
Rob shrugged. ‘I did,’ he said, ‘yesterday and the day before. I asked him to take me.’
‘Why?’
Rob shrugged again. ‘It all seemed so pointless. ‘Happy Families. I could have stayed at home for half term. Seen my mates.’
‘No one asked you if you wanted to come?’
‘Oh God, no! We don’t get asked, we get told.’
‘Hmmm. Shall we have mustard on these?’
‘No thanks.’
‘Do you still want to go home now? If you want to, and if your Mum agrees, I’ll take you.’
Rob looked up from the sandwiches. ‘Would you?’
Simon nodded. ‘You’re a big boy now. I bet you could survive home alone for a few days. Anyway, I believe in letting people make their own choices. Then, if it turns out badly, they have only themselves to blame.’
Rob hesitated. ‘I don’t know now.’
Simon stacked their sandwiches onto plates, ‘Have a think about it. See how you feel at the end of today. I’m going to sit with Toby and Todd and eat these. Then I’ll get showered. Then we’ll have a look at that game. If you want to. Coming?’
They walked over to the table and sat down. Ellie gave a faint, pained mew and got to her feet. She and Tansy left the room together passing Mitch in the passageway. He stared after them, afte
r Ellie, more struck than ever by her altered, care-worn face.
✽✽✽
The beach was empty, wide, with multi-coloured shingle sloping gently down to the silver sea. Drifts of crisp seaweed laced its upper reaches and petrified lumps of driftwood punctuated the swathe like weird, tortured sculptures. Here and there an anomalous deposit - an oil can, a supermarket trolley, a rubber glove - made allusion to the modern world but other than that the scene was without a reference point in time. The sea sparkled like mercury. Above it seagulls soared and wheeled in the pale sky. They seemed so free, without a care. Rachel, standing at the edge of the pine forest, on the top of the sandy slope which ran down to the shingle, wished that she herself could be like one of the seagulls, just run across the pebbles and launch herself into the air and swoop far away across the sea. She did not think that she would be much missed.
It was still fairly early. There had not been time for anyone back at the house to miss her yet. When Ellie and Tansy woke up and found her gone they would assume that she was just in another part of the house. No doubt they would take advantage of her absence to pick over her betrayal. How could she have done it? After everything they had said, about trust and secrets?
And, indeed; how could she have?
She stepped away from the trees and the cold air met her; a chill shroud which lay over the beach and the sea. The raw iciness of it pricked at her eyeballs and placed an iron cap on her head. She gasped and the frosty air reached like fingers down her throat and into her chest. It hadn’t felt as cold as this in the woods. But she marched with determined steps into the teeth of it, over the pebbles and down to the seashore. She didn’t care if it was cold. She didn’t care if she died of the cold, and no one else would care either. She waded into the sea until it was almost at the top of her wellington boots. Insistent tears flowed down over her face, into the cut on her cheek and dripped off her chin. She mopped them away with the sleeve of her jumper, sobbing and snivelling aloud now there was no one to hear her.
She cried for the loss of everything; friendship with the girls, belonging in the family, the dream of Rob. Especially, especially, the hopeless, fleeting dream of Rob.
The sea, even through her boots and two pairs of socks, was ice-cold and her toes began to ache with it. She retreated to the shore and set off along the tide-line. She still cried for the stupid, romantic feelings she had harboured about Rob, which could never, ever have been returned. ‘Look at yourself! Just look at yourself!’ she shouted. ‘How could he ever have thought that you were pretty? You’re fat! And ugly! And so stupid!’ They were truths she had always considered about herself and yet she had allowed herself to believe for a few delirious, oh such heady, wonderful moments that he could, that he did have feelings for her. The wonder of it had taken her breath away and with it any vestige of common sense she might have had. The sight of her, she told herself, bitterly, must have made him almost retch; her ugly bruise and stupid hair and fat stomach and wobbly thighs. She stopped and looked down at herself, swathed in layers of nasty clothes and yet still the lumpiness of lardy fat was undisguised. She wished she had a knife to cut it all away. There on the seashore, to hack away the loathsome flesh and leave it in blubbery lumps to be taken away by the tide or carried off by the birds. Suddenly her hands were clenching and tearing at her flesh, her legs, her stomach and her face, pinching and wrenching, until the cut on her cheek split open again and blood mixed with the salt of her tears and the waxy stream from her nose to coat her sleeve with pinkish silver strings of misery.
She walked to the very end of the beach, where rocks slippery with mustard-coloured seaweed tumbled into the water. The rock was black and deeply grooved, sharp and difficult to negotiate. She followed its line back up the beach until she found the sandy slope once more and a place where the ledge had collapsed onto the beach, leaving a sheltered notch just big enough for her to sit in and offering a little shelter. Hiding in its cleft she drew her knees up to her chin, gathered her arms around herself and cried and cried.
✽✽✽
James found Ruth in the library, sitting, alone with her book. She looked up as he entered and then continued reading as though her attention had been caught by no more than a fly hitting a window. He closed the door softly behind him and drew a stool up in front of her chair. It was a small stool, a footstool, and his bulk spilled over its edges. Of all the seats in the room it was the least suitable and he chose it so that he would look ridiculous. He lifted her foot on to his knee, gently peeled off her thick sock and began to rub her toes. She did not resist him, neither did she respond. For quite a while he said nothing. Ruth’s eyes continued to scan across the lines of text but he could tell that she wasn’t reading. She was chewing the inside of her cheek, a well-known sign of inner distress. He rubbed his soft fingers over the sole of her foot, kneading the pads underneath her toes, pressing occasionally at points underneath the skin. He kept his eyes on her face but she looked resolutely down at her book.
Presently he said, ‘I believe Mary will wish to speak to you today – to all of you. She has something on her mind.’
Ruth turned her page. ‘Nobody wants to tell me anything at all,’ she said archly. ‘I don’t suppose I shall be required.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Oh! A number of things. Lots of things seem to be happening that are to be kept secret from me.’
‘For instance?’
Ruth removed her spectacles and rubbed at them ineffectually with hem of her t shirt. ‘This morning there was something about Dad. Heather and Mum both refused to tell me about it.’ She replaced her glasses and focussed once more on the page of her book.
‘Oh well, that was just not a nice thing to talk about at breakfast. Your dad had had an accident on the toilet, that’s all. He was in a mess. I expect they wanted to spare everyone the details.’ James replaced Ruth’s sock. ‘Do you want me to do the other foot?’
She shrugged. ‘I don’t care.’
‘What about a fire?’
‘No. I suppose you know what Mum wants to talk about?’
James stood up from his stool and stretched his back. ‘Well yes, she mentioned something yesterday...’
‘There you are then! I told you. I’m always the last to know anything!’
‘She feels she needs more help with your dad,’ James said mildly, ‘and she wants to discuss the financial implications.’
He pretended to examine the books on the shelves. Lovely tooled leather; complete sets of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and P.G. Wodehouse and Dorothy L Sayers. They looked as though they might be quite valuable but it was hard to imagine that anything of great value would be made available to holiday guests. From the games room the sound of the piano floated on the air into the room, a Mazurka. A tiny hand clutched at a place below his diaphragm, making his chest enlarge.
‘I was wondering,’ Ruth said suddenly, closing her book and looking up at him for the first time, ‘I was wondering if there is anything you’re not telling me?’ She gave him a hard look through her spectacles.
‘What do you mean?’
Her gaze remained straight for a while, her eyes steely as flints. Then she sighed, looked away and said with a deceptive casualness, ‘I wonder how Les felt when he realized he’d married the wrong sister.’
James frowned, perplexed, wrong-footed by her question. ‘I suppose he knew right from the start...’
‘Perhaps you all do.’
‘We all?’
‘You men who marry McKay girls. You all seem to get the wrong ones. I bet Elliot kicked himself when he met me. I was the one he should have had if he’d wanted a business partner. I’m sure that’s all he really did want.’ She sighed theatrically, ‘But it was too late by then.’
James stepped away from the book shelves and stood once more in front of Ruth’s chair. ‘Has Elliot said anything to you? Has he been..?’
‘Trying to get off with me?’ Ruth gave a hoot of laughter, shrill
and hollow, eerily reminiscent of June’s habitual tick. ‘Good God, no! But,’ she was suddenly coldly serious, ‘you wouldn’t like it if he did, would you?’
‘I wouldn’t think you would like it much, either.’
She ignored him. ‘You can see he’s not right for Belinda though, can’t you? Just look at her today, with him out of the way! She’s a different woman! Soft, dreamy – she’s wearing trousers!’
James hesitated. He couldn’t tell Ruth what he knew; it would only make things worse. She would hate him to know something - a family something - that she didn’t. But before he could think how to extricate himself from the awkward corner Ruth went on, ‘Really, Belinda would have been a better wife for you. God knows, she’d have more patience with you than I do. In fact I told her only the other evening that she was welcome to you.’
James was so hurt that his eyes filled with tears. The place near his heart which only a moment before had swelled with emotion now felt eviscerated, as though he had been stabbed. He remained perfectly motionless. Then Ruth crumpled back into the chair and began to cry. Blindly, she reached for a handkerchief from her pocket. It was empty of course and James, like an automaton, passed her his. She removed her glasses once more and pressed the handkerchief to her eyes.
When the words came, they were punctuated by sobs and hiccoughs. ‘Is that,’ she said indistinctly, ‘is that what you want? Is it, James?’
There was no reply. When Ruth looked up she was alone in the room.
✽✽✽
The roar of vehicles hurling themselves through junctions and over roundabouts and, just as frequently, across grass verges and over pavements reverberated around the study. Rob was at the controls. He had picked a metallic blue Subaru Impreza WRX and was racing it through the streets of some non-specific city centre with reckless disregard for traffic signals, other road users or the Highway Code. The more cars he hit the more points he notched up. Pedestrians didn’t earn you any points but there was a certain satisfaction in watching them bounce off the bonnet. Another vehicle, an Audi TT, was in close pursuit, tail-gating, cutting him up and generally being annoying. The idea of the game was to cause the Audi to have a crash or to close down on it until you could force it to stop, then to beat its occupant to a pulp. Suddenly his game came to an end when he drove his car off a pier and it disappeared into a marina.
Relative Strangers Page 42