✽✽✽
Belinda and James re-entered the house through the front door, having blundered their way by a circuitous route through the garden and round the house. Reluctantly, she handed him back his fleece.
Simon, running through the hall, stopped long enough to ask Belinda to finish frying off the burgers for him. ‘Just seal them on each side and then finish them in the oven. Or watch over Rob while he does it – he’s quite capable – but just hold the fort for me, will you, for a few minutes? There’s something I have to sort out. I’m sorry, I’d ask Ruth but she’s three sheets to the wind already.’ He disappeared down the gallery towards the games room.
James took off his wet shoes. ‘I’m going to search the house for Rachel,’ he said. ‘If she isn’t inside we’ll have to have a search party.’ He strode off after Simon.
In the kitchen, Toby and Rob were clearing away the debris of their cooking. Simon had abandoned the first batch of burgers in a skillet on the warming plate and Belinda wearily tied her apron on before lifting the pan back onto the hotplate. Ruth remained in the armchair by the Aga. She raised her eyes to Belinda but they were bleary.
‘You’ll suffer for that, tomorrow,’ Belinda cast a significant look at the almost empty wine bottle by the chair.
‘I suffer every day,’ Ruth said indistinctly, with incongruous hauteur. ‘How long have you been back inside?’
‘Oh, a little while. We were looking for Rachel but there’s no sign. James is looking inside the house for her, now.’
‘Looking for Rachel,’ Ruth repeated, ‘I see.’
Belinda glanced round the kitchen. Ruth sounded the only gloomy note. The boys had made a huge bowl of coleslaw and set the table. The rest of the burgers were floured and ready for cooking, laid neatly on a board. The wonderful aroma of jacket potatoes rose from the baking oven. Rob was quite unrecognizable, laughing and being useful, she watched him wipe down the work surfaces and then rinse his cloth. While he had his hands in the sink he flicked suds at Toby. They both laughed and dodged about. Then they had a game of tea-towel whipping which made them wince and shout. Watching him, she just couldn’t believe that he was the cause of Ellie’s unhappiness. It was as though he’d come out from under some cloud which had claimed him for the past eighteen months. She balanced between her children, the misery of one and the sudden release of the other as she turned the burgers on the skillet. Then Rob suggested a game on the computer and he and Toby went off together, helping themselves to beers from the fridge on the way, leaving the kitchen quiet except for the sizzle of the burgers.
The smash of a glass breaking on the stone floor broke the silence. Belinda gathered herself mentally before turning round to see Ruth rising unsteadily to her feet.
‘I’ve broken a glass. It fell off my knee,’ Ruth stated, through woollen lips. She stared down helplessly at the shards of glass on the floor.
Belinda sighed and slid the skillet across to the warming plate again. ‘You’d better sit down or you’ll stand on a piece. You haven’t got any shoes on. We can’t have poor Mitch clearing up any more McKay haemoglobin.’
‘I don’t want to sit down,’ said Ruth petulantly. ‘I don’t want to stay in this room with you.’
‘Don’t be silly. It won’t take me a minute to sweep the glass up. I’ll get the broom.’ When she came back from the boiler room Ruth hadn’t moved, but her eyes glittered like the glass on the floor.
‘When I said, the other day,’ she enunciated carefully, ‘that anyone was welcome to my husband, I didn’t mean it.’
Belinda, squatting, using the dustpan and brush to gather the fragments of glass, looked up at her sharply. ‘Of course you didn’t. You weren’t talking literally anyway.’ Belinda continued to sweep efficiently around Ruth’s bare feet; they were white and vulnerable. ‘You were making a point about June and Muriel, if I remember correctly. You said that you didn’t think sisters should ever fall out, and you were right.’ She swept the last of the glass into the dustpan and stood up. She looked Ruth square in the eye, or as squarely as Ruth’s restless, unfocussed eyes and slightly askew spectacles would allow. Ruth blinked at her, trying to grasp hold of the words, but they were all slithering away from her and she couldn’t be sure any more about anything. There was nothing, not a hint of guile, no shred of guilt, in Belinda’s clear, steady gaze.
‘Now go and try and pull yourself together, Ruth. At the very least you’ll need to be there to hear Ben’s song, and you might have to go out looking for Rachel if she doesn’t turn up somewhere in the house. And Mum wants to talk to us all later; you’ll need to be clear-headed for that.’ Belinda turned from her and went to the draining board. She wrapped the glass shards up in a piece of newspaper and buried them deep in the waste bin like the fragments of a shattered dream.
✽✽✽
Simon held Todd on his knee and rocked him backwards and forwards. Todd had stopped crying but his breaths still came in heaving, shuddering gasps. No one had ever hit him before. There was a nasty red weal on his cheek but his face was pale and his eyes were frightened. He was frightened of his granddad now, and frightened too of the anger which he could hear hammering away in his daddy’s chest, held back in his throat by the bars of his carefully controlled voice saying, ‘Dad, we will be talking about this, in a minute, Dad, when Todd’s calmer.’
Tansy was brought down and after a little while Todd was persuaded to go upstairs with her for a very deep bath. He began to cry again, thinking he was being sent to bed, but Simon hugged him and said the he wasn’t to be silly, he hadn’t done anything wrong and anyway it was burgers and pancakes for tea and he’d made about twenty thousand because he knew they were Todd’s very favourite.
Uncle James asked if Ben could share the bath and Todd nodded, and while Tansy went ahead to turn on the taps he scooped the two boys up onto his massive shoulders and they clung to each other while he mounted the stairs, beginning to laugh at the giddiness of it and at a funny story Uncle James was telling them about going out into the mist and getting lost in the garden. On the landing they met Rachel, cold and twiggy from a day spent in the woods, and Todd said that she could share the bath too if she wanted. Uncle James said that Rachel was a big girl now and had to have baths on her own, but that in the morning, if they asked her nicely, she might show them her den. He put the boys down on the landing and stroked Todd’s cheek and, very tenderly, Rachel’s, and said that a facial injury was plainly this holiday’s ‘must-have accessory’ and soon everyone would want one. Rachel smiled a little and went away, muttering about getting changed for tea.
Simon and his father remained in the lounge. Robert was stuck on the low settee. He wanted, with an instinctive, aching need, Mary to come. But she was nowhere to be seen. Simon stood and looked down on him, across the coffee table. His hands were shaking and he clenched them in an effort to control it.
‘You hit my son,’ Simon said. ‘You hit my son!’
Robert looked up at him. He wanted to explain about the game under the table and the television and the noise and the green peppers and red tomatoes; it all made perfect sense, but the words wouldn’t come. His own feebleness infuriated him. Then Mary was in the room and he turned to her and barked out her name. What emerged was an inarticulate grunt.
‘Oh Simon, I’m sorry. Poor Todd. Is he alright?’ To Robert’s increased ire, Mary ignored him and went to stand next to Simon.
‘No, Mother, he isn’t alright. He’s been hit. He’s got a bruise and he’s shocked and frightened. He’s never been smacked, never, not once, and he doesn’t understand.’ Without meaning to Simon was taking his anger out on Mary. He found he was shouting at her and that wasn’t fair. He struggled again to get himself under control. Robert made a small, faltering noise and they both turned to look at him, stranded on the settee.
‘I’m sorry, love. I’m so sorry,’ Mary went on, speaking to Simon but looking helplessly at Robert. ‘I couldn’t make him have his tablet and I l
eft him alone too long. It’s my fault,’ Mary rummaged in her cardigan pocket for a tissue. ‘He’s been so difficult today and I just wanted a little break.’
Robert forced his tongue to form words; they tumbled and stumbled and jostled against one another, impeded by his uncooperative lips. It was quite useless. They stared at him, uncomprehending. The only words they could make out were ‘fucking imbecile.’ The effort of it exhausted him and he crumpled back against the cushions Les had placed for him. The countdown music for Ready Steady Cook had started and the audience was counting backwards from ten to one while the chefs scurried round the kitchen and finished off their cooking. The music and the counting filled his head and when Simon spoke again his words were double-dutch, like a language Robert had once spoken but which had become meaningless to him.
Simon took a pace towards him, a floodgate opening in some deeply suppressed part of him. ‘Don’t you dare speak to Mum like that!’ he yelled. ‘You’re a bully, Dad. You always were.’
‘Oh, Simon, please,’ Mary began, her voice in ribbons, but Simon could not hold back the ancient tide. ‘But look at you! Just look at you. You’re old and weak and we’re not afraid anymore.’ Robert stiffened; especially his weak leg and arm seemed to be in some kind of spasm beyond his control. He looked across at Mary but speech was lost to him. His eyes were angry. Simon leaned over the table and spoke vehemently into his father’s face. ‘You have no power over me and no power over my children and you will never lay a finger on any of us again.’ He stared into the cold grey eyes. ‘I am not afraid of you,’ he enunciated slowly, and realised at last that it was true. The freshness of the revelation made him step backwards, and the freedom of it flooded him like an in-rushing tide and made his eyes well. He raised his hand and pointed squarely at his father. ‘I am not afraid of you,’ he said again, louder, and his voice broke. Mary reached her arms around him and he allowed her to hold him.
Robert sat mute on the settee and observed them, his only response to his son’s outburst a slight flicker in one eye and a grimace at one side of his mouth.
✽✽✽
Ruth found herself on the tiny roof terrace looking out into the dense whiteness. Everything became more muddled in her mind the more she thought about it; swirling and bewildering, like the mist. In the past she had noticed in James a general preference for Belinda above her other siblings. It was not surprising. They were alike in many ways, two of life’s plodding, reliable types who liked to make themselves useful in practical if unspectacular ways, leaving the centre stage available for more charismatic personalities. It hadn’t bothered her in the slightest; indeed often it had been convenient to foist James onto Belinda so that she - Ruth - could spend time with April. But Elliot’s words yesterday evening and, last night, the sight of them together on the terrace… And the look, the look on Belinda’s face had cast things in a completely new hue. An affair was unthinkable for a McKay and in any case, Belinda didn’t have the imagination or James the energy for such a thing. And yet… And yet.
She needed something real to cling on to, amidst the doubts and uncertainties; something shocking and sharp and sobering. She looked longingly down at the shard of glass she had picked up off the kitchen floor. It glinted dully in the light from the landing. It would answer in so many ways; the pain of it would bring her round, like a slap to a woman in hysterics, it would shock her sober. It would be reassuring to see the McKay blood flow from her, unassailable DNA evidence of her kinship. Finally, when James found out, it would be the entry code to the quiet sequestered ward of a hospital, the cool hands of concerned nurses, the blessed oblivion of drug-induced sleep.
She settled the glass into her palm as though it were a precious jewel and closed her fist around it but a step on the landing behind her made her jump. In one movement she swung around to face whoever it was, flinging her hand out wide so that the guilty crystal splinter spun out into the mist. It was Rachel. They regarded each other silently for a few moments.
‘Come on inside, Mum,’ Rachel said, at last. ‘It’s cold with the door open.’
Ruth took a deep breath. ‘Yes, alright. I will.’
They stood on the landing together while Rachel bolted the little door.
‘Is there anything you want to talk about, Mum?’ Rachel asked. But Ruth just shook her head and walked away.
To Rachel’s relief Ellie and Tansy were not in the bedroom. The room was a bombsite, especially around Ellie’s bed; clothes were strewn everywhere, the bed was unmade, makeup littered the crumpled coverlet and sheet along with screwed up sweet wrappers and ten pound notes. The floor was covered with discarded dirty underwear and cups and plates. Tansy’s bed was tidier; her laundry was in a scented bag and her clothes were folded, but the girls had evidently been listening to CDs during the day and these were spread across her bed in a disorganised way, out of their cases, their surfaces scratching against each other. Rachel’s dad had a comprehensive collection of CDs, mainly jazz, and she had been taught at an early age how to handle and store the disks so that they wouldn’t become damaged. Almost without thinking Rachel began to restore the disks to their cases and to arrange them in the box in an organised, alphabetical way. Then she picked Ellie’s dirty underwear up and found a carrier bag from their shopping trip to put it in. She folded up the clothes neatly and placed them on the little chest of drawers adjacent to Ellie’s bed. She put the rubbish in the bin and straightened out the money and put it in the drawer. Then she made the bed. Finally she gathered up the cups and plates and stacked them near the door. She surveyed the room. It wasn’t quite enough. She closed the curtains and switched on the little bedside lamps by each bed, and, recalling that Aunty Belinda had done something similar when she had come to look after them once, she turned down the quilts a little, to make an inviting opening, and laid their pyjamas out on the beds with their arms jauntily crooked at the elbow and one knee bent to the other ankle. They looked like people who had been surprised in the act of dancing an Irish jig by a steam-roller. It still wasn’t enough but then, she knew, it never would be. She went into the bathroom and began to run herself a bath.
When she came out a little later Ellie and Tansy were there, sitting on Tansy’s bed, painting each other’s toe nails. They looked close and companionable and Rachel felt like an intruder. Little Todd, like her, pink from his bath and, also like her, with a blooming rose of bruise on his cheek, was playing quietly with Rachel’s collection of furry animals which he had discovered behind the curtains.
‘Hello, Rachel,’ Tansy said, brightly enough. ‘Where have you been all day?’
‘Oh,’ Rachel busied herself folding up her clothes, ‘I decided to spend the day outside.’ She wanted to add some self-deprecating remark about not being in their way, about understanding that she didn’t belong with them and that they would be glad to be rid of her, but she couldn’t quite bring herself to it; she hoped that her intention would be clear enough to them.
‘She made a den. Uncle James said so,’ Todd remarked.
‘Oh.’ Tansy said. ‘That’s nice. And you’ve been busy in here too, haven’t you?’
‘Well,’ Rachel hesitated. ‘I thought...’
‘We thought that a house-elf had been in, didn’t we, Ellie?’ Ellie nodded.
‘Like Dobbie!’ Todd laughed. It suddenly occurred to Rachel that whereas she had intended to demonstrate a sort of self-conscious inferiority by tidying up their things, they might have considered it as meddling, or even as judgmental.
‘I hope you didn’t mind,’ Rachel said, looking anxiously at the two girls.
Before they could answer Todd cocked his ear and said, ‘Oooh! Supper! I can hear Dad calling, come on!’ He abandoned the toys and raced out of the room.
‘I suppose we’d better,’ Ellie said listlessly. She and Tansy climbed off the bed, careful to avoid smudging the varnish, and made for the door.
Tansy said, ‘Are you coming, Rachel?’
‘Yes, in a
minute,’ Rachel made a great fuss about folding her towel. ‘You go ahead.’ When she came back in from the bathroom she noticed that the girls had left their nail varnish things on the bed; small bottles and some remover pads blotched with red. They had been sitting on Tansy’s pyjama person. It looked tortured and spoiled where they had squashed it and the red pads made it look as though it was bleeding.
✽✽✽
The table was all set and the candles had been lit. The family took their places. It was like a stage, Mitch thought, and was suddenly glad to have no role to play. The complex web of relationship was a snare, too easy to trip up on; the script too full of ambiguity and nuance – words, once spoken, could not be taken back. There were false notes in the lively hum of conversation, an enforced gusto in some to cover the broodingly subdued demeanour of others. Something had kicked off in the games room. Todd was the centre of attention. His father and brother and sister were all making much of him, letting him sit in the big chair at the head of the table and giving him first pick of the food. Simon, in fact, was soaring, charged up by some new energy. He seemed to have taken control - directing the service of the food, getting people seated, flamboyantly juggling cooking utensils and looking deliberately ridiculous in Belinda’s apron. He seemed to be trying to generate a festive atmosphere by the force of his own will. Toby and Rob were bobbing in his wake. In the intervals of meal preparation the two of them had been playing a computer game and drinking beer; plainly it was not their first of the day. Toby, only eleven years old, was getting decidedly giddy and, encouraged by Rob, he kept acting the goat. They hooted with laughter and engaged in mock scuffles and threatened food-fights which made Todd and Ben helpless with mirth. Scarcely less voluble was Granny McKay. Someone had been dispensing drinks, or perhaps Granny and June had been helping themselves; they each carried glasses into the room with them. They were flushed, even June’s usual high colour increased by several shades. Granny prattled on and on, not quite in control of her newly restored dentures. She was virtually incoherent, making up in volume what she lacked in clarity. Heather appeared with the baby in tow, rolling her eyes ruefully at Mitch - bedtime had been abandoned again. Starlight, slotted into her high chair, embarked on her own garbled tirade of gibberish. The noise eddied and flowed around the stony statues of Ellie and Ruth, and of Mary and Robert, who all sat in morose silence, and of Rachel, who arrived in the room last of all and slipped unobtrusively into a seat at the far end of the table, as far as possible from the other girls.
Relative Strangers Page 46