‘That cream the doctor gave me for my bottom is useless,’ Granny said, wriggling.
‘Has anyone actually looked?’ Mary asked, stirring scrambled egg in a saucepan. Her face was flushed.
Les and Muriel gave each other appalled glances and shook their heads. ‘At her bottom?’ Muriel mouthed, voicelessly, wide eyed.
Mary shook her head. ‘No! At the cream! To see what kind it is.’
‘Mary!’ Robert barked suddenly. It was intolerable that she should ignore him in this way. He shot his arm out swiftly and knocked Mary’s cup of tea over. It spilled across the table and began to run off the edge onto his mother’s lap. Les leapt to his feet but he wasn’t quick enough to stop the scalding tea from soaking into Granny’s dress.
‘Ow! Ow! It’s hot!’ Granny cried, flapping her hands in her lap.
Rachel had been standing on the step for the past few moments waiting for someone to notice her. She hurried to the sink and soaked a tea towel in cold water. ‘Here,’ she said, ‘put this on your legs, Granny. It will take the heat away.’
‘What a clever girl,’ Mary beamed. ‘Where did you learn to do that?’
Rachel spread the tea towel onto Granny’s thighs. They were as white and fleshless as sun-bleached bones. ‘Press that on, that’s right,’ she said. ‘We do a thing called Life Skills at school. They showed us first aid. Can I have one of those sandwiches?’
‘Of course you can darling,’ Mary cried. ‘Silly old Granddad spilled his tea. Where have you been? Playing out?’
‘Yes,’ Rachel said, fighting back the emotion which rose into her throat at her grandma’s praise and affection. If only she knew the truth. ‘I’ve been playing in the woods.’
‘How lovely,’ Granny sighed. ‘I used to play in Bluebell woods for hours and hours. Then Minnie Walsh said a man had messed with her down there and I wasn’t allowed to go any more.
‘Down in the woods?’ Les raised an eyebrow.
Granny shook her head and pointed to her groin. ‘Down there. But I did. I think I’d like my ashes scattered in Bluebell woods,’ she said dreamily.
‘They built houses on it, Mother, years ago,’ Muriel said. ‘Now come on, eat that sandwich up. Where do you usually see the chiropodist?’
‘Tuesdays.’
‘Where are the other children?’ Rachel enquired carefully.
‘Oh gosh, all playing in the house, I think, except the other two girls, they went shopping.’
‘Oh. I think I’ll take these back to the woods and eat them... in my den,’ Rachel extemporised, getting up and taking two more sandwiches from the plate.
‘Oh, alright dear.’
‘If you see my dad, or Ruth, would you tell them that I’ve had lunch?’
‘Of course, Rachel. You run along and have fun.’
Rachel carried her wellingtons through the house and used the little toilet off the hall. She could hear her brother and Uncle Jude playing the piano, a song she hadn’t heard before; their two voices were singing but she couldn’t make out the words. Uncle Jude’s voice was gruff and deep, like a grizzly bear in a cave, Ben’s as high and clear as a bird in the sky. If it wasn’t so wonderful it would have been silly. Along the corridor Todd and Starlight were playing a game which involved hurling soft toys to see how far they would slide along the polished wooden floor. Nearer at hand, in the study, Toby and Uncle Simon were playing a game on the computer - not the war game, a different one. They were cheering and laughing in their excitement. Somewhere in this house her dad would be sitting, reading perhaps, and if she just went to find him he would open up his huge arms and snuggle her onto his lap and she could rest her head on his chest and listen to the comfortable flop of his heart as she poured out all her troubles. He would say ‘There now, there now,’ and stroke her back and it would all be alright. The pull of such balm was so strong that for a moment she almost gave in to it. But then, from the study, she heard Rob’s voice.
‘Is Toby allowed a beer?’ The sound of it in her ears made her heart tighten. He was close behind the door. It was so disorientating - to be so drawn towards something and at the same time so afraid that it was not trustworthy. Frantically she began to wrestle with her wellingtons, stuffing her feet into them, awkward with her layers of socks. In her haste she dropped the sandwiches and almost trod on them.
Uncle Simon said, ‘Yes, why not. Just one. We’re on holiday after all.’
‘I won’t be a minute,’ Rob said. Rachel grabbed her sandwiches and yanked open the front door just as the study door opened and Rob appeared.
‘Hello Rachel,’ Rob was right behind her, standing so close that she could feel his breath on her hair. ‘Mmm. Cheese sandwiches? Can I have one?’ he took one from her hand, and bit into it. ‘Mmm. Nice.’
‘Have them all,’ Rachel stammered, pushing them into his hands. ‘I don’t want them.’ She ran down the steps and round the house.
✽✽✽
James sat in the village café and ordered a second pot of coffee. He hoped he had enough money left in his pocket to pay for it. When he had set out he hadn’t had a clear idea of where he might go or considered whether he would need any money. He had exited the house, grabbing his disreputable anorak off the peg, and walked up the driveway. It was thickly carpeted with a layer of golden leaves, crisp on the top, where they were still frosted and where they lay in shadow, but slimy and wet and turning to mush in the rarer patches of sunshine. The drive was quite steep. James had soon been breathing heavily as he strode along it. It didn’t make easy walking - deeply rutted, made of loose gravel and ancient hard-core. There was only room for one car at a time. Idly, as he walked, James had wondered what would happen if a car leaving met another arriving. He supposed that one would have to reverse; there was certainly no room for them to pass. The stumpy trunks and pointed limbs of the cut-back shrubs crowded the banks on either side and, now he came properly to look, on one side of the drive the ground actually fell away quite sharply.
At the top of the drive he’d paused between the grand gate posts and considered. To the left the road quickly narrowed and lost itself on a coarse-grassed common. To the right it led eventually into the village, where the church was, and the pub, and, he recalled, a tea shop. That’s where he would go. He’d turned right and kept to the right on the road, facing any oncoming traffic, but no cars passed him at all and he began the walk to Hunting Wriggly.
He had liked Belinda the first time he had met her, at a family gathering one Christmas. He and Ruth had been seeing each other for some months but it was before he had moved in with her. He had liked Belinda’s softness, her quiet voice, the calm and capable way she had gone about cooking lunch, the way she included Rachel in the arrangements for her own children. Like him, she had preferred to remain peripheral while louder voices – Elliot and Ruth and old Robert – had vied for dominance in the lounge. He had also admired her understated smartness - a considerable contrast to Ruth’s flamboyant dishevelment.
The craft barn had been doing a slow trade. Two cars were in the car park. James had entered and heard the shop bell toll forlornly above him. After the bright sun, the barn was gloomy. Haphazardly arranged shelves held scented candles and jars of pebbles, strongly smelling soaps, art and craft kits for cross stitch and tapestry. There were sticks of rock and bottles of homemade preserves, tiny watercolours in frames studded with seashells, picture books with views of mountains and lakes. Necklaces and other jewellery dangled from a many-branched chrome stand. There was a rail of hand knitted woollies, socks, scarves and hats, and below, them, a row of psychedelic wellington boots. The other customers, an elderly couple, were browsing amongst the postcards. The second car must belong to the lady behind the counter, a middle aged woman who knitted furiously, glancing up from time to time to survey the stock with a jealous glare. James had wandered around, his hands in his pockets, where he was surprised to discover two twenty pound notes he had forgotten about. Ruth had reluctantly parted with the
m on Sunday, the night the men had gone to the pub, but in the end he had not had to buy a round of drinks. The following day Belinda had insisted on paying for their entry to the stately home and for their tea with her platinum credit card so the notes remained intact. He’d returned to the jewellery stand and at length chosen a lovely necklace, sterling silver with nuggets of amber interposed at regular intervals along its length. The lady behind the counter had put her knitting to one side while she placed the necklace into a box for him and wrapped the box in coloured tissue paper.
Now the box nestled in his fleece pocket and he patted it occasionally while he drank his coffee. He liked buying presents but it was a pleasure he could rarely indulge.
Belinda’s kind efficiency in times of family trauma had been like a welcome salve on a wound. Once, when Ruth had been in hospital – he couldn’t recall which of her myriad health issues had been in the ascendant - Belinda had cleaned the entire house and cooked for them, and bathed the children. During April’s illness, while Ruth wailed and wrung her hands Belinda had calmly provided meals and taken the children on outings. Later, in the quiet corridors of the hospice, hour after hour, they had waited together while Simon and Ruth sat at each side of the bed and measured April’s shallowing breaths.
It was after Robert’s stroke when James had first discerned the cause of Belinda’s sadness. Up to that point Elliot had veiled his ambition and true character in layers of obsequious amiability. But once attaining the Chair he seemed to come out in his true colours. He was not a nice man; mean-spirited, selfish, cold. It became plainer to James each time he saw them that Belinda’s soft and gentle qualities were wasted on Elliot Donne. Her name and her family connection had been her only attraction to him. And each time he saw Belinda he had been unable to ignore the calm courage with which she bore the truth of it.
Two Easters ago they had been invited to Belinda and Elliot’s for the long weekend. It had been their first visit to the McKay-Donne’s new house. Belinda had gone to infinite trouble; lovely meals, an egg-hunt in the garden for the children, baskets of cheerful spring flowers in the bedroom. But Ruth had been sour-mouthed right from the beginning, her mood utterly curdled by envy. She had complained about everything from the stuffiness of the bedrooms to the richness of the food but it had been obvious that what she could not stomach was the size and splendour of the house. It was in a quiet, fashionable cul-de-sac location, the furnishings were elegant and the hospitality sumptuous. Discerning the cause of Ruth’s angst Elliot had made it his business to lay it all on with a trowel, telling her how much everything had cost, and letting the names of high-class stores and fashionable designers drop like cyanide into a bucket of water beside her chair. Elliot and Ruth had proceeded to get rather drunk and after James had helped his incapacitated wife to bed he had come back downstairs to find Belinda and Elliot in the midst of a terrible row. Elliot had been raving in that incoherent way he had when drunk and at first James had intended to go back up the stairs, but the sound of breaking glass had taken him into the dining room where Elliot was hurling heavy lead crystal brandy balloons at his wife. She had dodged them easily and they had landed explosively on the slate hearth, but one thing had been immediately clear to James; this, or something like it, had happened before. Belinda’s face betrayed fear but absolutely no surprise.
That night, after James had manhandled Elliot into bed, and after they had cleared away the glass and put the room to rights he and Belinda had really talked. She had talked and he had listened and they had established a deeper, more vital bond of understanding and sympathy. She had sworn him to secrecy; he must never, she had insisted, breathe a word to anyone, not even Ruth.
His anger was subsiding, gradually. It was an unusual emotion for him and not one he enjoyed. Of course he would forgive Ruth. He was used to her occasional cruelty and unpredictable mood swings but it was hard to excuse. She would not ask for his forgiveness but spend the next few days looking lofty and self-righteous and giving him the cold shoulder as though he, and not she, had been in the wrong. The McKays didn’t do rows, they did moody silences as enormous and arctic and proud as glaciers. They gradually thawed and retreated until things went back to normal but leaving erratic boulders of unspoken words where they didn’t belong which would have to be stepped around for evermore.
In the psychiatric unit where James worked, even the most damaged patients were encouraged, with infinite gentleness, to confront their issues. But where he was so successful at work he routinely failed at home, despite constant effort. Ruth could never get over her disappointment at her sex; that she was not a boy, had not been considered as the successor to her father in the business; was only a girl, was not Simon. What Simon had, Ruth wanted. Her envy of her brother had manifested itself most obviously in her relationship with April, and when April had died Ruth’s grief had been as abject as any spouse.
James paid for his coffee, left the premises, and ambled slowly through the village, looking at the houses and breathing deeply, steadying himself for the ordeal to come. He tried the round handle of the old church door and was surprised that it yielded. The interior was utterly silent and bathed in gentle, numinous light. He bowed his head and prayed for the strength to carry his cross.
✽✽✽
They were all back for tea. Miriam unloaded the shopping and Simon set about marshalling the supplies.
Ben and Jude were full of their new song, promising a world premier gala performance after supper. Ben was solemn with the excitement of it, his skin as translucent as porcelain, his eyes as round as saucers. Ruth, looking pale and listless, eyed them all sourly from the chair by the Aga.
‘You don’t look so good, Ruthie,’ Simon said. Her mouth was pursed as though she had sucked on one of the lemons he was stacking onto the fruit bowl.
She smiled at him wanly. ‘It’s nice of you to notice.’ She allowed her eyes to flicker across at James. She had refused tea and was drinking wine defiantly.
James looked flushed and healthy. ‘An excellent walk,’ he declared, when someone asked him how he’d spent the day. ‘Has anyone seen Rachel?’ His hand strayed to his pocket where the parcel nestled in its tissue paper.
‘At lunchtime, yes,’ Mary said. ‘She wanted you to know that she’d eaten. She said she’d been having a lovely game in the woods.’
‘Oh?’
‘Yes. She said she’d built a den. Didn’t she?’ Mary turned to Muriel.
Muriel nodded. ‘Oh yes, a super den. And she took some of my cheese sandwiches to eat in it.’
‘I think I’ll go and look at it, after tea.’
‘I’ll come with you,’ Belinda said nonchalantly.
‘You’ll have to hurry up or it will be dark,’ Ruth muttered gloomily, ‘although that might suit you better.’
Rob was in his element. His had so enjoyed his day; playing football and then the game this afternoon, even when Toby had been allowed to join them. Now Simon was unpacking the shopping and showing him how to chop an onion, and sprinkling herbs into a bowl. The rest of the family milled around and got themselves cups of tea and wedges of cake. Rob had had a few beers during the course of the afternoon, and he felt loose and energetic. Without the menacing annoyance of his father, he felt as though anything was possible.
Presently, in a hiatus of activity, he stepped out of the back door and joined Jude on the bench. They sat together in the gathering darkness of the autumn afternoon. Rob took huge draughts of the cold air. He felt inflated and potent. Whether it was the fun he’d had, or the power he had over Ellie, or Simon’s attention, or the beers, or just the absence of that lowering cloud which his father always seemed to cast, he didn’t know, but he felt new and revived. Inside the kitchen they could hear the chatter of the family and it was as though he’d successfully tuned into a radio station he had only been able to hear through the muzz of static before. Suddenly he felt related. It felt good. Rob grinned and looked at Jude.
‘You hear that?�
�� he asked.
‘Yes,’ Jude said.
After a while he stepped back into the kitchen. Ellie and Tansy were huddled at the end of the bench. Ellie looked atrocious; pale and ill. Every so often she lifted her huge eyes up to him and they were liquid. They made a dismal and unwelcome connection with his heart, a connection he didn’t want to acknowledge, and suddenly all this new-found compatibility was too much, with too much potential for pain. He seized the knife and chopped onions with gusto while Simon added ground beef to the bowl, raw eggs, a hefty squeeze of some red tomato stuff, salt and pepper. His euphoria of only moments before had evaporated, leaving a shallow grave of unwelcome guilt.
Without looking at his sister Rob fetched two more beers from the fridge and placed one of them significantly in front of Toby. Then they rolled up their sleeves and delved into the mixture.
Granddad Robert had refused his blue tablets. He was fractious and unsettled. Todd, under the table, was playing with his little cars, making incessant driving noises and running the cars round and round his granddad’s feet. It felt like a mouse tickling his ankles.
‘Mary! Mary!’ he said, but Mary was at the other end of the table.
‘What’s the matter, Daddy?’ Heather bent over him. He pointed mutely under the table. ‘Yes, poppet, it’s Todd. Isn’t he playing nicely?’
Mitch sat at the table and drank his tea. Ellie’s trip to the shops had not cheered her, it seemed; she was still pale and distressed, and cast frequent glances over to her brother where he kneaded something meaty in a bowl. His actions were frenzied and overdone and Mitch knew that he was all too aware of his sister’s unhappiness. He could almost see the strands of emotional connective tissue stretched tautly across the room between them. Another lassoed Ruth and James. A third formed a triangle comprising June, Muriel and Les. Like someone given a glimpse into the intimate centre of a sacred thing Mitch was able to see right through them all, into the heart, and the heart was livid and bursting with things unsaid. It enraged him, their determination to ignore the elephants.
Relative Strangers Page 44