There’s a dead fish, shouted Benjy excitedly. They waited and, sure enough, it floated past, huge and silvered, milky eye skyward.
Overhearing their conversation, Richard realised too late why Angela had asked him about stillborn children. He felt bad for not having pressed her further, and with this guilt came a longing for that armchair, the solitude, the empty mind.
What Angela finds is not My Name Is David or The Log of the Ark but The Knights of King Arthur, a book her mother had been given when she was a child and which she in turn gave to Angela when Angela was eight or nine. The memory is so strong that when she finds the words To Kathleen from Pam, Christmas 1941 written in crabbed fountain pen on the endpaper she feels a sense of real grievance and trespass. 40p. She’ll buy it and read it as a kind of penance.
Scampi, shepherd’s pie, a stuffed pike in a glass case, polished copper bedwarmers.
You should try it sometime, said Alex. Waking up under canvas.
If you built a log fire and gave me a bottle of whisky, maybe, said Louisa. And some very thick socks.
So, said Dominic, where would we end up if we just carried on paddling?
Hospital, said Alex.
Richard could see that he was flirting with Louisa, but he had no idea how to stop it without causing grave offence, possibly to everyone around the table. He held up a spoonful of crumble. This is surprisingly good. His marriage to Jennifer had been a contract with explicit and renegotiable terms. He was belatedly realising how uncommon this was. There was an art to marriage, which depended not just on skills and rules but something more nebulous. That image of the gull and his father laughing. Why did it trouble him so much?
The path was not as clear on the ground as it was on the map, the mud was surprisingly deep in places and Melissa wasn’t really getting into the countryside thing after all. I am going to get an apartment in Chelsea and the only time I am ever going to look at a field is from the window of a fucking plane.
They crossed the little stream and worked their way up the hill and were nearly at the road when Melissa slipped and spun and landed on her arse with such perfect comedy timing that Daisy laughed out loud. She offered Melissa her hand but Melissa grabbed it and yanked and Daisy yelped and found herself lying on her back next to Melissa staring into a canopy of horse chestnut leaves with damp seeping into her knickers. She imagined grabbing Melissa and rolling over, wrestling, like she might have done with Benjy.
Sod this for a game of soldiers. I’m heading back.
Ten more minutes. Daisy got to her feet. We’re nearly there.
I need a hot shower.
Come on, said Daisy, you can cope with a wet arse. She began walking up to the fence and when she opened the gate onto the road she turned briefly and saw that Melissa was following and it gave her a pleasure she hadn’t felt all week.
Queen Guinevere lay idly in bed dreaming beautiful dreams. The sunny morning hours were slipping away, but she was so happy in dreamland that she did not remember that her little maid had called her long ago.
But the queen’s dreams came to an end at last, and all at once she remembered that this was the morning she had promised to go to the hunt with King Arthur.
He walked to the edge of the car park to listen to Amy’s message. Dom. It’s me. She was crying. I’m really sorry. I know I said I wouldn’t ring but Andrew’s been taken into hospital with pneumonia and I’m frightened, Dom. If you get a chance, can you ring me, please?
Episode 39 of the Mother and Son show. He deleted the message. The truth was that she disgusted him, something moist and wretched about her, a child at forty-two. He couldn’t remember her once expressing real unadulterated joy, only that desperate hunger when they made love (fill me up … push it right inside me …) which was thrilling at first but which now sounded like a need to be crushed out or used up. If it wasn’t him it would be someone else. Deep down she wanted things to go wrong. If she was happy she would have to face up to all those things she hadn’t done, the law degree, the second child, New Zealand, those precious hypothetical ambitions stolen from her by a string of bad men. He loved his family. Why had he risked losing them for this?
He heard a rumbling clang and turned to see Mike’s Transit coming into the pub car park, the trailer bouncing and yawing behind it. He turned the phone off and slipped it into his back pocket.
Angela assumed at first that her mother had started drinking again, the dirt and clutter, the mood swings, but there were no bottles and no alcohol on her breath. She might have realised earlier but their conversations had never been intimate and you didn’t ask someone to name their grandchildren or do their five times table as her GP finally did that freakish Saturday morning, the cloud so low and thick it felt like an eclipse. She expected him to set in train some boilerplate process, health visitor, social worker, nursing assistant, leading gradually towards residential care, but they stepped out into a biblical downpour with nothing more than an invitation to return when things got worse, and in two hours her mother’s terrified incomprehension had become a vicious anger at everyone who was trying to interfere in her life, Angela, the doctor, the neighbours.
She rang Richard who said there was nothing they could do. Something would happen, an accident, a stroke, something financial, something legal, and the decision would be taken out of their hands. She thought, You selfish bastard, but he was right. An icy pavement outside Sainsbury’s. Lucy at school said she should sue and Angela laughed and said, I should pay them. Hospital threw her mother completely. Who are all these people? Her mind held together only by the scaffolding of a familiar house and a routine she had followed for ten years. Two weeks later she was in Meadowfields. Beckett meets Bosch, said Dominic, and it was true, there really was screaming every time they visited. A couple of months later she was transferred to Acorn House. Grassy quadrangle, actual menu, two lounges, one without television. The previous occupant of her room had left a framed photograph of a cocker spaniel on the bedside table. Mum was insistent that it had been their dog which had recently passed away, though they had never had a dog and she was never quite able to remember its name.
They crossed the little car park and began climbing the Cat’s Back, a rising ridge of grass and gorse and mud. Sweaty now, Melissa had tied her shirt and Puffa jacket around her waist and was walking in a blue vest, her freckled shoulders bare. Daisy was embarrassed to find herself in second place. You do secret sport, don’t you?
Hockey. Melissa’s enjoyment had caught her by surprise. Middle-aged people did this stuff, but she felt like a kid again. The mud, the effort, Daisy’s uncomplicated company, except that she’d never been that kid, had she, because Mum needed counselling if you spilt coffee on the carpet. Hence Dad fucking off, possibly.
The spine of the hill flattened out, the grass and mud giving way to a rough path weaving its way around little rocky outcrops, the slopes on both sides falling away so steeply that you could glance up and think for a moment that you were flying.
OK, said Melissa. This is as far as I’m going. End of argument.
They turned round, breathing heavily. All that wheeling space. The cars were Dinky Toys. Miniature sheep and miniature cows. There’s the house, said Daisy, pointing. She imagined opening the hinged front so you could rearrange the furniture and the model people.
You win, said Melissa. This is pretty cool.
Angela sat in Shepherd’s eating a bowl of ice cream with chocolate sauce. She hadn’t pictured herself alone at a table when she was at the counter and only when she sat down did she see herself from the point of view of customers at the other tables. Discomfort eating. She’d bought Notes on a Scandal but it refused to hold her attention. There was an exhibition of framed watercolours hung around the room which looked as if they’d been done by a talented child, a poppy field, a lighthouse. It was her, wasn’t it, the person who couldn’t be alone, who married the first man who came along because they were scared of going back to an empty house. At home
she moaned constantly about the chores she had to do because everyone else did them badly or not at all. For once I’d just like to put my feet up. But she was doing that right now and hated it. She looked up at the clock. Twelve minutes past two and sixteen seconds, and seventeen seconds, and eighteen seconds. She was in Maths with Mr Alnwick again, each minute a rock to be broken.
She picked up the bag of books she’d bought for Benjy, to replace that terrifying Two Worlds thing, and opened the Tintin.
Blue blistering barnacles …
What is it, Captain?
We should be getting back. Melissa puts her hands on her knees, preparatory to standing.
Wait, says Daisy. She wants this moment to continue for ever. She turns and looks at Melissa. Those freckled shoulders, sweat cooling in the wind. She can see it all so clearly now and she is both surprised and relieved. Her whole life has been leading towards this moment. She has turned a final corner and seen her destination at long last. Is time slowing down or speeding up? She puts her hand on Melissa’s forearm. And with the juice of this I’ll streak her eyes. Like being on a rollercoaster, no way of getting off now. She puts her other hand around the back of Melissa’s neck and pulls her close. The barn roars in the night. Daisy kisses her, pushing her tongue into her mouth, but something is wrong because Melissa is shoving her away and shouting, What the fuck …? She’s on her feet now. Get off me, you fucking dyke.
No, says Daisy. I didn’t mean …
What the fuck do you think you’re doing?
I only … Crashing back into the bright light and the hard edges of the day.
Just … Melissa takes four steps down the hill, backwards, keeping her eyes on Daisy, as if she is holding a gun. Just … stay the fuck away from me, OK? She rips the shirt from round her waist and fumbles it on, covering her flesh as quickly as she can, then the Puffa jacket. You’re weird and your clothes are shit and the only reason I was even spending time with you was because it is so fucking boring here. She turns and strides away till she is swallowed by the curve of the hill.
Daisy sits rigid. For two, three, seconds everything is very clear and quiet, as if she has dropped a china plate on a tiled floor. If she stands very still and concentrates hard she will be able to find the matching fragments and put them all together again. She got carried away. For the briefest moment she lost any sense of where she stopped and Melissa began. When Melissa has calmed down she will be able to explain everything.
Then she realises that Melissa will tell Louisa and Richard, Louisa and Richard will tell Mum and Dad, Alex will find out, everyone at school will find out and they won’t understand that it was a mistake. Because it isn’t a china plate, it’s her life and there are too many fragments and they’re too tiny and they don’t match. A woman is standing in front of her wearing a blue cagoule. Are you all right? Daisy stands and turns and runs, further up the ridge, away from the woman, away from Melissa, away from the car park, away from the house, hoping that if she runs far and fast enough she will find the edge of the world and the beginning of some other place where no one knows her and she can start all over again.
Economics, History and Business Studies, says Alex.
Why History? asks Richard.
Because I like it, said Alex. And because I’m good at it.
Richard finds it reassuring, the swagger. It makes Alex seem like a boy again. Of course he’s flirting with Louisa. It’s only natural. Richard feels jealous, almost. Because he never had it, did he, the swagger. That sudden spurt of growth just after he arrived at university. Rugby, judo, 400 metres. Turning suddenly into a person that was never quite him, waking in the night sometimes, convinced that he was trapped in someone else’s life, heart pounding and throat tight till he turned on the lights and found the family photographs he kept in the back of the wardrobe like passports, for the route out, the route back.
Dominic is sitting up front with Mike. So, what’s it like living out here? Because he is still enchanted by the idea of the cottage and the garden and the job in the bookshop. Mike bridles slightly at the metropolitan presumption of out here so Dominic tries to be more conciliatory and asks how easy it is to make a living. Mike sucks his teeth and says he does a bit of tree surgery in the winter, and some other stuff, in a tone which suggests that the other stuff might not be legal.
So do you live up in them thar hills?
And freeze my bollocks off? They go over a bump and the trailer clanks and shakes. Got a flat in Abergavenny.
Dominic realises that he has misread the ponytail and the workboots. He isn’t Davy Crockett after all, just a chancer who props up a saloon bar and sells pills to bored kids on a Friday night.
Louisa is sitting next to Benjy. Did you enjoy that?
Enjoy what?
Did you enjoy the canoeing?
Yeh.
What did enjoy about it?
Just, you know … He shrugged. Being in a canoe.
You’re not very chatty today, are you?
No, not very.
Sorry, that was a mean thing to say.
It’s all right.
How hard it was to talk to children. They made no effort to ease your discomfort. But it was hard to talk to Melissa sometimes and at least Benjy wasn’t going to swear at her. What do you want to be when you grow up?
Don’t know.
Boys always wanted to be train drivers when I was little. What did girls always want? She can’t remember now. Married to one of the Bay City Rollers, possibly.
Some boys in my class want to be footballers, but I’m not very good at football.
What are you good at?
He shrugs. Perhaps he wants to be left alone. It’s because I don’t know you very well.
What is?
Not being chatty. Even though I know you’re meant to be my aunt.
The word moves her in a way that catches her by surprise.
Is it OK to be quiet?
Yes, she says, it’s OK to be quiet.
Melissa wanted to walk back via the road but she had absolutely no idea where the road went so she had to retrace the path back through all the fucking mud. Christ. She wanted to ring someone at home. Tell them about Dyke Girl. Except they’d laugh, because if she told them about the kiss they’d be, like, How did you let it happen? And if she didn’t tell them about the kiss, then what was she being so horrified about? Just some girl fancying her. Which sounded like showing off. Because the truth was that it wasn’t the kiss that made her angry, it was the way she’d reacted. She was cool with people being gay, even getting married and having kids, and she rather liked the idea of another girl fancying her as long as the girl wasn’t ugly. So she kept rerunning the moment in her head except this time she gently pushed Daisy away and said, Hey, slow down, I’m not into that kind of thing. But she’d said all that other stuff, and now they were going to have to spend the next three days in the same house. Jesus, this fucking mud.
Daisy couldn’t run any further. She came to a halt and fell to her knees, lungs heaving. She had sinned. She had wanted everything Melissa had. Now she was being punished with exquisite accuracy, that envy pushed to its poisonous extremity. For I know my transgressions and my sin is always before me. People would be disgusted. She would be mocked and reviled. She looked around. Bare and bleak, no fields visible now, just high empty moorland, the further hills black under the massive off-white sky. Where was her coat? You could imagine hell being like this. Not the fire, nor the press of devils, but a freezing unpeopled nowhere, the heart desperate for warmth and companionship, and the mind saying, Do not be fooled, this is not a place.
You’re weird and your clothes are shit. Melissa, of all people. So vain, so nasty. But the fault was hers alone, Melissa merely an instrument. She had never pretended to be anything but what she was. It was Daisy who had deceived herself.
The image of Melissa telling Alex. She rolled over onto the wet grass, curling up, as if she had been punched in the abdomen. Oh please, God, he
lp me. She was crying now, but God wasn’t listening, He had never been listening, because He knew, didn’t He? It was why the Holy Spirit hadn’t come. He had peered into her soul from the very first and seen the pretence and the false humility.
She was lying in muddy water. Cursed is the ground. Thorns and thistles and coats of skins. She rocked back and forth. She imagined stepping off a tall building or standing in front of an oncoming train, head bowed, eyes closed, and it was the sweet pull of these images which revealed her cowardice. She had to remember. The hurt was her only way out of this place, the long walk through the flames.
The taste of Melissa’s mouth, the freckles. Diamonds and pearls. How cruel time was. The future turning into the past, the things you’ve done becoming your testimony for ever. I think being yourself is punishment enough. Where had she heard those words before?
Angela carries the shopping into the kitchen and starts to put everything away, sausages, cheese straws, pears. The house is silent. Melissa and Daisy must be out somewhere. £26 for the taxi, tiny round man, Punjabi Sikh. She didn’t catch his name. Talked about his sister being married to a drug addict, how he and his brothers were forced to take him in hand. She didn’t press him for details. Plastic Taj Mahal swinging on the mirror, Bon Jovi on the radio. Half an hour later and the explorers return. Benjy runs for the living room, shouting, Can I watch a video? and vanishes before anyone can countermand him. So, says Angela, did you reach the source of the Nile? Richard laughs. Not at the speed we were going. The blare of the Robots theme tune. Benjy, can you shut that door, please? Alex picks up the paper. Audrey Williamson has died. Silver in the 200 yards at the London Olympics, 1948. Melissa sweeps into the room, cleansed and fragrant. Where’s Daisy? asks Dominic. Oh, says Melissa breezily. I think she went out for a walk.