Close Relations

  Jamie had inherited his father’s restlessness. His leg was jiggling under the table. His grandmother was talking to him.

  ‘So what are you going to do in your year off?’ she asked.

  ‘Try to find a job.’

  ‘Should be easy, with your A levels.’

  ‘Not round here.’

  Jamie was bored with the country; he had grown out of it. His days of tadpole-collecting were over and though he sometimes joined the local youths in the bus shelter they seemed like bumpkins to him. Like most adolescent boys he was unwillingly drawn into family gatherings and looked as if he would rather be doing a hundred other things. The question was: what?

  Louise came in, carrying a platter. It contained a large salmon strewn with herbs.

  ‘Look at that,’ said her father. ‘Is there nothing this girl can’t do?’

  ‘Woman, Dad,’ said Louise. ‘I’m forty-two.’

  ‘A moment’s silence.’ He tapped his fork. ‘Let us gaze upon this masterpiece.’ On these occasions Gordon was inclined to grow flushed and jovial. It embarrassed his daughters but amused his grandchildren, who were at one remove. Louise sliced into the flesh of the salmon. Gordon raised his glass to Imogen. ‘To the birthday girl. Sweet sixteen! You’ll be giving me a grandchild before your aunties, unless they pull a finger out.’

  There was a silence. Louise glanced at Pru, then she laughed hastily. ‘I thought I was starting the menopause last week. Then I realised I’d just left my diaphragm in, all through my period.’

  Prudence laughed. Dorothy indicated the teenagers: ‘Louise!’

  Robert turned to his father-in-law. ‘Some potatoes? So how’s the business doing?’

  ‘Worked off our feet,’ said Gordon.

  ‘I wish he’d take it easy. Haring around London like a twenty-year-old. He won’t admit he’s getting older.’ Dorothy turned to Louise. ‘You tell him. He never listens to me.’

  ‘He never has,’ said Louise.

  ‘And what’s that supposed to mean?’ demanded her father.

  ‘You’ve never listened to Mum,’ said Prudence, joining in.

  ‘Oh-oh, they’re ganging up on me.’ Gordon turned to Robert. ‘Same as always.’

  The doorbell rang.

  ‘Shit,’ said Louise. ‘Send them away, whoever they are.’

  Robert left the room. They heard murmurs in the hall, the surprised tone in Robert’s voice. There was the bumping, dragging sound of luggage being brought in.

  A woman came in. Though she was thirty-seven she looked younger. She had a no-nonsense, tanned face. It was bare of make-up. She wore jeans and a T-shirt and when she entered the room she paused, startled, as if she had emerged from the darkness to popping flashbulbs.

  ‘Aunty Maddy!’ cried Imogen.

  Forks clattered onto plates. Her sisters hugged her.

  ‘When did you arrive?’

  ‘I’ve come straight from the airport.’

  ‘Why didn’t you tell us?’ asked Louise.

  ‘Are you all right, love?’ asked her mother. ‘You look so thin.’

  ‘Wicked tan.’ Jamie grinned at his aunt.

  ‘We would’ve come to the airport,’ Louise protested.

  ‘She always was a law unto herself,’ said her father.

  Maddy looked at the teenagers. ‘You’re so enormous!’ She hadn’t seen them for four years.

  Robert dragged forward another chair. Maddy, who didn’t like kissing, who shrank from any show of affection, turned to Imogen and said gruffly: ‘Happy birthday. See? I got back in time.’ She looked around. ‘I didn’t know it was going to be, well, everyone.’

  ‘Shall we go home then?’ asked her father.

  ‘Gordon.’ Dorothy shot him a warning look.

  ‘A letter would have been appreciated,’ he said. ‘Just one.’

  ‘Dad.’ Prudence frowned at him.

  Louise gave Maddy a plate of food and a glass of orange juice – her sister didn’t drink alcohol. They asked her questions: why had she decided to come back to England? How long was she here for?

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Maddy. ‘I just wanted to come home.’

  Maddy had been working for an aid organisation in Nigeria. She had worked in a remote village helping to drill bore-holes and teaching women to read. Her letters had been infrequent and her life there was mysterious to her family. Like all people who have returned from living abroad she didn’t know where to start; the experience was both too familiar and too amorphous to be made digestible for others. Besides, she was not by nature a talkative person and she felt exposed with her parents there. For years she had lived in places that were incomprehensible to her family and she felt grateful that even her sisters’ curiosity was limited and would peter out after a few days. She needed to keep something to herself, otherwise her family consumed her. That was one of the reasons she had had to get away from them in the first place.

  They gazed at her. Dorothy was right; she was thinner. Her face had sharpened; her arms looked muscular. Though far from a glamorous person, to the teenagers she was exotic – only yesterday she had been sweltering under an African sun.

  Maddy couldn’t eat. She was still living in another time-zone and was filled with airline food. She got up and pulled a wooden object out of her baggage. She gave it to Imogen. ‘Happy birthday.’

  ‘Gosh,’ said Imogen. ‘What is it?’

  ‘An Ibo fertility truncheon.’

  Imogen paused. ‘Wow.’

  Robert burst out laughing. ‘So if they don’t shag you, you can beat them to death.’

  Maddy said: ‘I thought – you could make it into a lamp or something.’

  ‘Thanks, Aunty.’

  ‘Don’t call me Aunty,’ said Maddy. ‘It sounds so . . .’

  ‘Auntyish,’ agreed Prudence.

  Louise pointed to the salmon. ‘Eat up.’

  Gordon indicated her plate. ‘Bet you didn’t eat that in Wogland.’

  ‘Dad!’ said Prudence and Louise together.

  Gordon raised his hands. ‘Only joking. I employ one of them myself. First-class chippie –’

  ‘For God’s sake –’ said Maddy.

  ‘– very sunny disposition.’

  ‘Nothing’s changed, has it?’ said Maddy.

  ‘– and he’s got a lovely sense of rhythm,’ said Gordon.

  ‘Can’t you stop him, Mum?’ demanded Maddy. She turned to her father. ‘We’re human beings, Gordon –’

  ‘So I’m Gordon now? What’s wrong with Dad?’

  ‘Know your problem?’ said Maddy. ‘It’s ignorance and fear –’

  ‘He’s only winding you up,’ said Louise.

  ‘Forgot the Thought Police was back,’ said Gordon. ‘Better watch what I say –’

  ‘Anybody different from you –’

  ‘Jesus, Maddy!’ Robert raised his voice. ‘It’s Imogen’s birthday. Can we postpone the lecture about race relations?’

  There was a pause. It reminded them of the debris settling, after a minor explosion. The grandfather clock struck three.

  ‘I’m sorry.’ Maddy turned to Imogen. ‘I’m terribly sorry.’

  ‘It’s all right,’ replied Imogen. ‘You sound just like Mum, with Dad.’

  ‘What?’ said Robert.

  ‘They’re always having rows.’ Imogen looked at her father. ‘You’re incredibly racist.’

  ‘I’m not!’

  ‘Sexist too.’ Jamie joined in. ‘When Janet Jackson came on TV –’

  That wasn’t racism,’ said Robert. ‘That was lust.’

  ‘Shut up, everybody!’ shouted Louise.

  There was a silence. In the hush, they heard the sound of a lorry arriving.

  There is something about a horse that stills the heart. She was a grey mare, heart-stoppingly beautiful. She pricked her ears and gazed at them with her liquid brown eyes, could she really be as intelligent as she looked? She was 14.2 hands high, the perfect height – just taller than a pony,
just a horse but not alarmingly so. She was six years old, still darkly dappled like a rocking horse. In the years to come she would grow whiter.

  The lorry had driven away. The horse stood on the gravel, her nostrils expanding like sea anemones as she breathed in the air of her new home. Louise held the rope of her head-collar. She put out her hand and stroked the horse’s muzzle; it felt velvety, like a raspberry.

  ‘Where’ll we put her?’ asked Louise.

  ‘In the kitchen,’ said Maddy.

  ‘What? Robert’ll have a fit.’

  ‘Don’t be a sissy.’

  Louise laughed. Suddenly the years fell away. After all this time one word could reduce them to giggles.

  The others waited in the dining room. Robert called out: ‘What’s happening?’

  ‘Wait! Don’t come in!’ yelled Louise through the kitchen door.

  ‘We’re not ready!’ called Prudence.

  Their mother smiled. ‘Nothing’s changed, has it.’

  ‘Instant regression,’ said Robert. ‘How thin is the veneer of maturity. They’re always like this when they get together.’ He knocked on the door. ‘What on earth are you doing in there?’

  Suddenly they heard the muffled neigh of a horse. They jumped. Louise opened the door.

  It was a large kitchen. The horse stood in the middle of the floor. Her tail and mane were plaited with red ribbons.

  ‘Happy birthday, darling,’ said Louise. ‘She’s called Skylark.’

  Imogen stepped up to the horse. She looked as if she were sleepwalking. Her mother passed her the rope. For a moment she was beyond speech.

  ‘She’s the most beautiful . . . the most . . . oh, Mum . . . Dad . . .’ She gazed at the horse. Her eyes filled with tears. Just then there was the sound of soft thuds.

  ‘Ugh, gross!’ said Jamie.

  ‘Her first dung.’ Imogen gazed at it, entranced.

  ‘Want to embalm it?’ asked Robert. ‘Louise, I really think –’

  ‘We’ll clear it up,’ said Prudence.

  Imogen flung her arms around the horse’s neck. She buried her face in the fur, breathing the scent.

  ‘Love at first sight,’ said Gordon.

  ‘Steady on,’ said Robert. ‘Any closer and we’ll have to call the Horse Helpline.’ He went to get his camera.

  Imogen lifted up her face. It was radiant. ‘This is the most wonderful day of my life.’

  The shutter clicked. It was a moment of pure happiness – pure, distilled joy. For months afterwards, whenever she smelt horse dung, Louise would remember it. Later she would frame the snapshot and put it in her bedroom. When their lives had changed out of all recognition she would look at it and feel a blade through her heart.

  Maddy, standing apart from the rest of them, felt confused. One minute they were quarrelling, the next laughing. She had forgotten the tumultuous ebb and flow of family life. She felt buffeted one way and another like a stick in a stream. She had forgotten how to cope with it. How peaceful it had been to live abroad, even in a war zone. For years she had been amongst people to whom she was not related, with whom codes of manners and distance applied. Most of them didn’t even speak the same language as she did; apart from the Nigerians, her closest European colleagues had been a French doctor and a Swedish project manager. She watched Louise sweeping up the droppings. Thrust back, jet-lagged, into the intimacy of family life she wanted to crawl away and pull a duvet over her head.

  Gordon’s heart swelled with pride. Imogen led the horse outside. Through the window he watched her saddling up with casual expertise. He had a granddaughter who could buckle a bridle, who could talk with authority about fetlocks and gymkhanas. The sun shone on the yellow, rag-rolled kitchen units. Here he was, in the autumn of his years, surrounded by the fruits of his loins. For over forty years he had worked all the hours God had given him to arrive at such a moment. It was worth the wait.

  His heart thumped. Pain shot along his arm. He sat down heavily on a chair.

  Dorothy looked at him. ‘What’s the matter, love?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  Gordon took a breath – once, twice, breathing deeply. At the time, he just thought his heart was bursting with pride.

  The three sisters sat on the lawn eating birthday cake. The sun was sinking; clouds were building up over the church spire. At the end of the garden was a vegetable patch, its poles trousered with runner bean plants. Beyond it lay the paddock. Imogen cantered round on her horse. Her hard hat rose and fell as she passed the brick wall. She wore the new hacking jacket her grandparents had given her.

  A ladder had been erected against the house. Gordon stood on it, fixing something or other. He could never sit still. At the foot of the ladder stood Dorothy. From time to time she passed him a tool.

  Maddy lay on her back, looking up at the clouds. ‘I’m sorry. I’ve forgotten how to do this.’

  Louise said: ‘It comes from being amongst all those savages.’

  Prudence listened to their father whistling. ‘Nothing’s ever going to change him.’

  ‘Or her.’

  Prudence licked her fingers. ‘Wouldn’t it be interesting if something happened which really shook them up?’

  ‘It won’t.’ Louise, lying on her back, turned to Maddy. ‘Where are you going to live?’

  ‘Somebody’s lending me a flat.’ Maddy’s friends were mostly unknown to her sisters. Maddy was not a social sort of person; neither Pru nor Louise could remember her ever holding any sort of party, or if she had, she hadn’t invited them. From what they gathered, her friends worked for the sort of good causes that made Pru and Louise feel guilty.

  ‘How’s work?’ Maddy asked.

  Pru said: ‘We were taken over in the spring. Maybe I wrote to you about it. A big German media group.’ She didn’t bother telling her sisters the name; neither of them would have heard of it. ‘They’re going to move us into a state-of-the-art monstrosity down by the river. It’s all accountants now, they keep talking about the bottom line. Everybody’s very jittery.’ She lay back and closed her eyes. ‘Mmm, it’s so peaceful here.’

  ‘Everybody says that,’ said Louise. ‘They come down from London and fill up here, like a garage. Robert does too. Then the next morning he buggers off again.’

  ‘He always wanted to live in the country, didn’t he?’ said Maddy.

  ‘That’s because he’s hardly ever here.’

  The three women lay on the grass. The sun slipped behind a cloud.

  ‘How are you two getting on?’ asked Prudence.

  ‘Oh, fine,’ said Louise. ‘It’s just . . .’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Nothing. We’re fine.’

  Her sisters were silent. A long marriage is closed to outsiders, even to sisters. It seals off a couple from the world. It is only when the marriage is in trouble that the curtains open for a moment and people glimpse the astonishing drama that has been playing on the stage all those years. At that moment they can step inside with their consolation and advice – ‘To be honest, I never liked him’, or ‘I always thought she was selfish’. Two things can then happen. The marriage can split apart for ever, baring its soul and loosening its secrets into the world, or the couple can make it up. When this happens the curtains are closed again and those who have offered their advice feel foolish, especially when they have been frank about the person’s spouse. The words hang embarrassingly in the air, everyone tries to pretend they have never been said.

  Prudence was a discreet woman; she didn’t like to pry. Besides, she had never lived with a man and felt unqualified to offer advice. Maddy, on the other hand, wasn’t that interested anyway. She turned on her side and pressed her ear to the ground. She could hear the faint, rhythmic thuds of the horse cantering around the paddock. It reminded her of the village where she had lived. The old men could remember when messages were sent, miles through the bush, by their fathers banging their staves on the earth. How simple, how satisfying, this method of communication seeme
d. How preferable to words, so treacherous and prone to misunderstanding. In Maddy’s opinion, if people communicated with knocks the world would be a better place.

  ‘Imogen says she’s never going to get married,’ said Louise.

  ‘Don’t worry, she will,’ Prudence replied automatically. Then she thought: why should she? We all want people to marry. We think it will solve them. We have been brought up to think that this is the end of the story. In fact the entire romantic fiction list at her publishers, one of the few imprints that made a healthy profit, was based upon this lie.

  She thought: I want to marry Stephen more than I have ever wanted anything in my life. I want it so much I feel sick.

  It was cold. Maddy went into the house to find a jacket. She glanced through the front door. Robert was washing his car in the driveway. The dog stood watching him. Suddenly Robert swung round, grinning. He turned the hose on the dog. Monty yelped and ran away. Maddy watched as the dog shook himself in a glittering cloud of spray. As she turned back Robert caught her eye. He smiled.

  Maddy glared at him. How dare he? She moved away, abruptly, out of his line of vision. Upstairs she could hear the thump of music. She went up to Jamie’s room and knocked on the door. She had always been fond of her nephew and niece; in fact, she preferred teenagers to adults.

  Jamie was taping a cassette for one of his friends.

  ‘Can I borrow a sweater?’ she asked. ‘I’m freezing.’

  He opened his cupboard. His room was the usual adolescent chaos but Maddy didn’t notice; she was blind to her surroundings and she could live in chaos herself. She could live out of a suitcase, it made no difference to her.

  Jamie passed her a sweater. ‘Africa sounds great. I want to go there.’

  ‘You’d like it. You’re the only person here who would.’

  ‘Why did you come back now?’

  Maddy pushed her head through the sweater and pulled it down over her shoulders. ‘Because I needed to start my life.’