‘Coral got stinking drunk while you were away,’ said Wolf. ‘She fell down the back stairs and twisted her ankle. It was quite funny, really.’
‘Well, Aunt Tab had a heart attack. She went purple in the face just like that man you told me about in the street. They told me it wasn’t a heart attack-she was just ill or something. But of course, I knew.’
‘Course. They can’t fool you about a heart attack.’
‘What does Coral do when she’s drunk?’
‘She’s absolutely revolting. She sways about and drops things and nobody can understand what she’s saying very well, though it seems to be the same thing over and over again. Then she’s inclined to take her clothes off. She starts tugging at her scarf and undoing the buttons of her shirt. That drives my father really mad. He starts to pull her from the room so that I shan’t see, so she hits him and they have a real old ding-dong.’ Wolf paused. ‘In a way it’s quite funny, except that my father usually comes off worse. He’s not as strong as Coral.’
‘Poor him,’ said Emily.
They sat on a bale of old hay in the barn loft. In the last few months they had tidied it up a bit, and stored a collection of secret things on the one shelf : a tin of biscuits, a knife, a pen that wrote with invisible ink, and Emily’s spasmodic diary, which she sometimes let Wolf see. They had left the carpet of chaff and straw : it dulled their footsteps and hid the rotting floorboards. They had tried but failed to open the small window in the sloping roof. Its glass was matted with cobwebs and dirt, and through it a shaft of dun light speared the brown gloom. The place smelt of must and old apples – a persistent smell that didn’t, like more sophisticated scents, fade with familiarity. No one ever disturbed them in the loft, and they revelled in the warmth of its privacy.
‘I once saw Coral in the bath by mistake,’ said Wolf.
‘Did you?’
‘She was lying back with these two sort of mountains sticking out of the soapy water.’ He giggled. ‘She was absolutely revolting. As a matter of fact, I don’t think even my father goes for her that much without any clothes on. Sometimes, when she comes in, I’ve seen him turn his head away when she just takes off her hat.’
‘Aunt Tab hadn’t got any clothes on when she fell off the bed,’ said Emily. ‘She was pretty revolting, too.’ They both giggled again, quietly, not looking at each other. Then Wolf caught Emily’s eye.
‘I suppose we’ll all become like that in the end,’ he said.
‘What, you mean all fat and squidgy?’
‘Yuh.’
‘We won’t. Not if we’re careful.’
‘You bet we will.’
Emily glanced at Wolf’s bony knees straining against his jeans.
‘I can’t imagine you fat and disgusting,’ she said, ‘ever.’ More boldly, Wolf let his eyes run over Emily.
‘Can’t really imagine you, either,’ he said.
They heard someone moving about in the barn beneath them. Wolf leaned over to look through the trap door, which they had fastened back. Usually, fearing no disturbances here, they only shut it on ill-defined but special occasions.
‘It’s your mother,’ said Wolf, and leant back against the wooden wall again.
They listened as she climbed, hesitantly, the ladder: watched as her head emerged through the hole in the floor, the edges of her hair shifting with quiet colours in the winter loft-light. Then her neck, muffled in a long woollen scarf of multicoloured stripes, and finally her bosom, taut under a sloppy dark satin shirt that flickered like her hair. When her waist was floor level she stopped, lifted her hand and buried her face in a bunch of snowdrops she held. In the poor light they were a solid lump of white crystal. My mother is a mermaid, said Emily to herself, she’s come up from the bottom of the sea, white rock in her hand.
‘Just the first,’ said Fen. ‘There are going to be masses and masses in the orchard. It’s going to be absolutely white.’ She waved the bunch in an arc through the gloom, and guided them to swoop down, together, a clutch of falling stars, on to the floor once more. Through the permanent hay and apple smell they had cut a small trail of some lighter scent, which vanished in a moment.
‘Hope you didn’t mind my coming up without asking permission,’ Fen was saying. ‘I just wanted to show you.’
‘That’s all right,’ said Wolf. ‘You can come any time.’ From the tone of his voice Emily knew that he meant what he said, and what he had left out was that Coral could never come. ‘Why don’t you get right in?’ he added. ‘It’s not terribly warm or comfortable, but we like it.’
Fen appreciated the compliment, but shook her head, smiling. Her skin was still brown from the French sun, her teeth as white as the snowdrops.
‘Heavens, no. I won’t disturb you any more. I’m just going in to put these in water. Then I’m going to cook you an amazing tea. Sweet corn with poached eggs and sausages.’
‘Fantastic,’ said Wolf.
‘Aunt Tab’ll be putting snowdrops on Phoebe’s grave,’ said Emily.
‘What?’ said Fen. She was already slipping away from them, head only left now, a final smile that conveyed some uncontainable happiness.
‘She’s a smasher, your mother,’ Wolf said, when she had gone.
‘I know,’ said Emily.
‘Where’s your father this weekend?’
‘Working in Brussels. He’s always working.’
‘That’s men,’ said Wolf. ‘It’s bad luck they have to work so hard. I wish your mother’d stayed for a bit.’
Emily lay back more comfortably on the bale of hay. Now that Fen had gone the loft seemed darker than it had done before her arrival.
‘Perhaps in the summer,’ she said, ‘we could make a kind of restaurant up here and invite the grown-ups. They’d have to pay of course, but we’d make them menus and things.’
‘There wouldn’t have to be any candles,’ said Wolf, ‘or the whole place’d go straight up in flames.’
‘Course not, stupid.’
‘Well, they have candles in real restaurants.’
‘You wouldn’t think it a soppy idea, though ?’
‘Not really. Men work in restaurants.’ Wolf was chewing a piece of hay. ‘We’d have to ask my father but not Coral. We couldn’t have her falling about in here spoiling it all. How could we manage that?’
There was a long silence between them.
‘We’ll think of a way,’ said Emily. They fell back into easy silence, each thinking of a way. They listened to the purr of a couple of pigeons in the barn beneath them, a lulling accompaniment to their concentrated thoughts, dissipating them almost immediately. Then, abruptly, they heard the noise of a car swinging into the drive. At once they were both alert, craning their heads through the hole in the floor. Emily began to climb down the ladder.
‘Perhaps it’s Papa home early for a surprise,’ she said.
Wolf followed her. At the bottom of the ladder they saw instantly that the car was a strange one. Kevin’s.
‘Oh, him,’ said Emily, quietly. ‘He hasn’t been around for ages.’
They stayed where they were, in the shadows of the barn, without moving. Kevin hooted the horn, an ugly blare in the shrill quiet of the afternoon. He got out of the car and looked about, much as he had the first time he came. Almost at once Fen came running from the house, the ends of her long scarf flailing behind her, laughing, shouting something they could not hear. Kevin caught her in his arms and lifted her up so that for a moment she was raised right off the ground. She was standing again, but they still clung to each other. Kevin’s face was buried in her hair, her scarf: his hands pried about her shoulders.
‘Whew!’ Wolf breathed quietly to Emily. She sensed his body, close to hers, was stiff. ‘Everyone seems to love your mother so much,’ he said.
‘Oh, they do.’ For her part, Emily felt a sudden ache behind her eyes. She watched, unblinking, as her mother and Kevin went up the path to the house, arm in arm. ‘We might as well go in too.’
‘You’d never see Coral hugging anyone like that, she’d be afraid of untidying her hair, silly old bag,’ said Wolf.
They followed the grown-ups into the house. In the kitchen Fen and Kevin still had not separated. They leant against the Aga, Kevin’s arm around Fen’s waist, laughing at some private joke. They were unaware for a moment that the children watched them silently from the door.
‘Hello, Kevin,’ Emily said eventually. Kevin immediately moved away from her mother. His apparent pleasure in seeing Emily and Wolf was not reflected in Fen’s face. In fact, she looked suddenly annoyed. But she made an effort.
‘Look who’s here,’ she said, ‘after all this time. Isn’t that a lovely surprise?’
‘We need you to help finish our bird town,’ Emily said to Kevin. ‘We got a bit bored of it.’
‘Of course. Where is it?’ Kevin seemed enthusiastic.
‘Not now,’ said Fen. ‘Later. For heaven’s sake. Kevin’s only just arrived.’
‘After tea, then,’ said Wolf. ‘I’m ravenous.’
‘So’m I. You said you’d make us an amazing tea today, Mama.’
‘Oh, darling.’
‘You said in the loft.’
‘I know I did. But we didn’t know Kevin was coming then, did we ?’
‘What difference does that make? He’d probably like some too.’
‘Emily,’ Fen’s voice was sharp, her head high, her satin shirt a solid sheen over her breasts. ‘Sometimes, you’re the most selfish child. You never think of anyone else. You only think of what you want.’
‘Don’t.’
‘And don’t argue.’ Fen sighed, restraining herself. ‘Listen, why don’t you two go – ?’
‘ – why don’t you two go off and play?’ chorused Wolf and Emily together, interrupting.
‘Just for a while,’ continued Fen. ‘I haven’t seen Kevin for such ages.’
‘Just before Christmas, not all that long.’
‘Oh, Em. Go on, please. And then you can have sausages, whatever you want. Promise.’
‘Are you staying the weekend?’ Emily asked Kevin.
‘Heavens no. Back to the north.’
‘Poor you,’ said Emily.
She started upstairs, Wolf following her, their footsteps heavy with protest.
‘Can’t think what grown-ups have to say that’s so private,’ Wolf grumbled, when they were out of earshot. ‘It seems to me their conversations are so boring.’
‘Terribly boring,’ agreed Emily, ‘but I suppose they don’t want to be interrupted.’
‘I’d have thought they’d have been grateful to have some of their boring conversations interrupted.’ They sat on Emily’s bed, kicking its sides with their heels, disconsolate. ‘I mean Coral, on the telephone, she’s awful.’ He put on a squeaky voice. ‘ “Oh, darling, and do you know what she said to me and I said to her and she didn’t? Honestly? Bla bla bla …” I can’t think. Hours of rubbish on the telephone. I’d rather listen to the guinea pigs chattering.’ Emily giggled. Wolf stood up. ‘Anyhow, let’s go and listen to their boring talk,’ he said. ‘There’s nothing else to do.’
‘Why not? Come on, cissy. They’ll never know. If it’s too boring we’ll come back.’
‘Oh, all right.’ Emily was reluctant. But not wanting to appear unwilling in Wolf’s eyes and lose his respect, she followed him back to the top of the stairs. There they stopped, rigid with quietness, certain they could not be seen. They could hear easily enough.
‘It was torment,’ Fen was saying.
Emily raised her eyebrows questioningly to Wolf. He ignored her. She leant over to him, and whispered in his ear.
‘What’s torment?’
‘Torment’s torment, silly. Shut up.’
Abashed, Emily rejoined him in listening.
‘Absolute.’ Fen’s voice was quieter.
‘Aren’t you being over-dramatic?’ Kevin.
‘Probably.’
‘At least you look better.’
‘There was sun!’ Fen was scornful. ‘There was plenty of sun. But what did we do? He spent most of the time on the telephone, long distance calls to Africa. In his mind, he never stopped working for a moment. He can’t ever stop working. He’s afraid to.’ There was the noise of some heavy china thing being dumped on the table. ‘We can’t talk to each other any more. Well, only domestic things. He has no idea, no idea what’s going on in my mind, these days. Perhaps he doesn’t care. He used to.’
‘Perhaps it’s just a bad patch.’ Kevin’s voice was louder than Fen’s. ‘Don’t marriages have cycles?’
‘It’s a bad patch all right, for me. I don’t suppose he’s had time to notice anything’s wrong. And it’s not really helped by you.’ Her voice was smiling.
‘Shall I be off?’
‘Silly. All I mean is, my energy to make things work is no longer directed towards him, is it?’
‘I don’t know what exactly you want. I seemed to drop into your life by accident, and felt compelled to entertain you a little, to take your mind off things. If I can be of some help, that would be good. But you won’t ever bank on me for guaranteed assurance, will you? Or, I don’t know, positive things. I’m no good at all that.’
‘Kevin!’ Fen’s voice full of alarm. ‘You’re miles away! Where are you? Why are we talking like this? Here. Come here, please.’ In the long pause that followed Emily could hear Wolf’s distinct, regular breathing. Then her mother’s voice resumed more softly. ‘Of course you’re a help, in one way. I don’t know what I was saying. It’s all this waiting business, the guilt, the expectation, moment to moment. It – ungrounds me so.’
‘You got that from The Dark is Light Enough.’
‘Of course I did.’ Pause. Laugh. ‘Quite right, entertainer. Why aren’t you still just an entertainer? That was how we meant it to be, wasn’t it? But somehow it isn’t like that any more.’
‘How is it, now?’
‘How do you think?’ Fen’s voice was scarcely audible. Then, the swish of her skirt, the small shuffle of shoes on the floor, and more silence. Wolf stepped a cautious pace forward. Emily followed him. They peered down the stairs. They saw Fen clasped to Kevin, her arms thrown high round his shoulders, her head on his chest. He was kissing her hair, her eyes.
Emily stepped back, pulling at Wolf’s shirt.
‘I’m going,’ she said. Her mouth was a downward line. There was a chill over her skin, a fine dew of sweat down her back. Wolf followed her back to the bedroom. He flung himself on to the bed, all-knowing, impervious to her distress.
‘So he’s your mother’s boyfriend.’
‘He’s not.’ Emily stood by the window looking out at the church, her face away from Wolf.
‘What were they on about, then?’
Emily shrugged. She thought fast.
‘Kevin’s still an actor,’ she said at last.
‘They were rehearsing part of a play. All those things they were saying – they were just their lines.’
‘Don’t believe you.’
‘Really. It’s true. Mama often helps him with his lines …’ Emily turned slowly towards Wolf, her face a mask of honesty.
‘And does she often have to kiss him to help him with his plays?’
‘Sometimes. Not often, actually.’
‘Well, she’s a pretty good actress is all I can say.’ Wolf seemed almost convinced.
‘I told you, she’s good at almost everything, Mama.’
They stayed silent for a while. Then Wolf said:
‘I hope they’ve finished rehearsing by now because I’m hungry. I’m going down.’ Mischief in his eyes.
‘You don’t still believe me,’ Emily said.
‘Oh, I do, if you want me to.’
‘You should, because it’s true.’ Behind her back, she crossed her fingers.
‘I’ll ask them about the play.’
‘Don’t do that.’ New panic stirred within Emily. ‘Because it’s a secret about their rehearsals. I shouldn’t have told you. Mama’d be furious with me.’ Emily looked directly at Wolf’s doubtful expression. She made one final effort to quell his suspicion and to suppress his curiosity. ‘I tell you what, when the play comes on, I’ll get you tickets. We’ll go, even though it’s a grown-up play and probably very boring. Then you’ll see if I’m not right. You’ll hear the bit about torment, or whatever the word was. Promise.’
Wolf got up.
‘What’s the play called ?’ he asked.
Some months before, Emily had written a play herself. Its title now did her a great service.
‘It’s called Will You Fall in Love?’ she said.
‘All right.’ Wolf rubbed his hand all over his face, a gesture which Emily had learned was his sign of agreement. ‘Let’s go,’ he said.
Fen kept her promise and cooked them a good tea, but her spirit seemed to have gone out of its production. Her shoulders slouched, her head was bowed. It seemed difficult to believe that the enthusiasm that inspired her so short a time ago, her wonderful smile and laughter in the barn, had existed. Her body was sad, the cheerfulness in her voice a hollow thing. Emily, realising something was wrong but not knowing what to do, sat silently at the table. Wolf, less sensitive to atmosphere, made patterns with matches by his plate.
Kevin, too, was subdued. Maybe because he had to go back to his horrible flat in the north, Emily thought. Anybody would be depressed if they had to return there. It was understandable, really, that he should sit in a corner, reading a paper, legs crossed, mouth bent downwards. One of his huge feet twitched regularly – up down up, every few seconds. He said no more about the bird town.
As soon as they had finished eating, Emily suggested to Wolf they should go out again. But he was in an unresponsive mood.
‘Whatever for? It’s freezing.’
‘I want to see the stream.’
‘It’s almost dark. You won’t see much.’
‘I’ll take a torch. Can we go, Mama?’
‘If you put on coats.’ Fen didn’t seem to care.
‘Come on, Wolf.’
‘Oh, all right.’ Wolf rose to follow her. What an adventure.’ Emily winced at his sarcasm, but reached for her coat with determination.
Outside they stood on the garden path a few yards from the house.
‘What do you want us to do now?’ Wolf asked.
Emily wondered. What should they do in the winter dusk? She suggested looking at the stream again, not that she had any real desire to see the stream. The only thing she knew, quite positively, was that it was essential to be out of the house for a while. She led the way to the field. Wolf, muttering complaints, followed her.
They stood on the banks of the stream in the long grass, wet with a cold evening dew. They looked down into the dusky waters.
‘Very interesting, listening to stream water, I’ll say.’ Wolf had his hands in his pockets and his shoulders hunched up. He was frowning.
‘Oh, Wolf. Shut up. What’s the matter with you?’
‘What’s the matter with me? What’s the matter with you, more like?’ He turned to her. His face glowed damply, the freckles all blurred. ‘Ever since Kevin what’s-his-name arrived you’ve been mooning about. Couldn’t get a thing out of you. At one moment I thought you were going to cry.’
Emily paused.
‘Well, I wasn’t,’ she said. ‘Don’t be so silly.’
‘Anyhow, I’m bored out here. And cold.’ He stamped one of his feet, desultory thuds in the grass. ‘I’m going.’
Emily knew she couldn’t ask him to stay. She shrugged.
‘All right. If that’s how you feel. I don’t mind.’
Wolf moved away. She watched him. He only went a few paces, then stopped and turned back to her.
‘And anyhow I don’t believe that silly story about them rehearsing a play,’ he shouted, and turned away again. Above the mist that crouched on the ground his words spun in a solid ball, dropped, split the mist, disappeared, leaving a hole in the grey vapours. Leaving holes, threads, everywhere. Emily kicked at the greyness. Wolf was running up the hill, now. She wasn’t looking but she knew he was running. He’d probably go home and tell his father she was a soppy date and he didn’t want to play with her any more. He’d probably find another friend in the village – perhaps a whole gang. All because of this. All because of Kevin coming. It was all his fault. All Kevin’s fault. He was an interfering old nuisance, Kevin, coming to things he wasn’t asked to, turning up when he wasn’t expected, sitting in Papa’s chair, making Mama either laugh too wildly or almost cry. Emily stamped the ground, wishing it was Kevin she had trod upon. He should stay in the north in the future, or she wouldn’t speak to him any more. She would tell Mama and Papa and Tom to keep him out of the house, because it was his fault Wolf had run away.
Emily climbed the hill to the orchard. There she stopped again, very cold, undecided. The trees were indistinct shapes in the thickening gloom. Under the hedge the first snowdrops were a thin scum of white, shining in the darkness of the ground cautiously as the first stars in the premature night sky. Lights were on in the kitchen : two squares of golden light in the black mass of the house. Comforting blocks of warmth and brightness, they were, in all this damp and cold and increasing darkness. Emily moved slowly towards them. When she came level with the first window she stopped and looked in. Kevin had not moved from his chair by the fire. Fen sat on the floor by his feet, her head thrown back on to his knees. There were flames in the dark satin of her shirt, and she was smiling, sleepily. Kevin was stroking her hair. He always seemed to be stroking her hair, or kissing it.
Emily stood watching them for a while. Once, Fen lifted her hand to Kevin’s face, and rubbed his nose. This must have tickled him, because he laughed, and pushed it away. Fen laughed too, then, opening her mouth wide and showing all her teeth. But the laughs, from where Emily watched, were noiseless. She could hear no sound, and the silence of the laughter made her shiver. She realised that her hands and feet were very cold, and the hair round her face hung wetly from the damp. I must go in, she said to herself. I must go in, I must go in, I must go in. Perhaps they won’t notice me. I can slip up to bed and when I wake up in the morning Kevin will have gone for ever and Wolf running away from me will all have been a dream. She turned to go into the house, her feet horribly sluggish. Perhaps it was the cold.
‘You look like a ghost, Em,’ said Fen, in the kitchen. ‘What on earth have you been doing outside ?’
‘Where’s Wolf?’
‘Gone.’
Kevin’s hand was still rummaging gently through Fen’s hair. Emily stared at it, but it didn’t stop.
‘Had a row, you and Wolf?’ he asked in a laughing voice. Kevin had a funny way of guessing things accurately. Emily drew herself up.
‘Not exactly. He was cold, that’s all, so he went home.’
Fen stood up, slowly, sleepily, as if the act of rising was in itself a luxurious gesture. She went next door and put on some music. Chopin. The notes very fragile, very precise, winging into a frail melody that inspired Kevin’s twitching foot to move with some kind of rhythm. Emily flung off her coat and sat in her old place at the kitchen table.
‘When are you going?’ she asked.
‘Why? Am I bothering you?’ Kevin stopped twitching his foot and kicked at the logs on the fire.
‘Not particularly.’
‘I won’t be long.’ He didn’t look at her. He drank from his glass of wine and shifted nearer the fire, as if he owned it. Fen came back and resumed her old seat beside him on the floor. He put his free hand on her shoulder.
‘Don’t you want to watch television, darling?’
‘No.’ Emily looked her mother straight in the eye.
‘Done your prep?’
‘Yes.’
‘Are you just going to sit there looking cross?’
‘I’ll go up to bed when Kevin goes. Will you read me a story tonight?’
Fen sighed.
‘Tell you what, I’ll read you the story. I’m the actor. I’ll read to you both.’ Kevin was being very friendly, considering. For a moment Emily felt guilty about her hostility. She said nothing.
They sat there, the three of them, almost without moving, listening to the music. Watching the fire. The flames split and flickered like sun through the branches of the apple tree. Last summer. Mama stood under the lower branches calling to Emily. Emily ran to her. Looked up, like Fen. Sunbeams dazzled the leaves, burning out their edges. Mama, head tilted back like it was now on Kevin’s knee, had screwed up eyes to search among the greenery for a bullfinch. Where was it? Had it flown away? She hadn’t seen a bullfinch since she was a child. Would Emily climb the tree, try to see it? Oh yes. Eagerly. She hoisted herself up, branches warm and scratchy under her hands. She thrust her head into a cloud of sparkling green. No bullfinch. She turned, looked down. There was Papa, suddenly, close to Mama, looking too. Very seriously.
‘Jump, Em.’
She jumped. He caught her with a huge safe grasp. She slid to the ground, aware again of the smell of warm grass. Papa’s arm went round Mama’s waist now, and a couple of white butterflies flirted about her head. Then, a simultaneous shout from them both.
The bullfinch,’
The bird spun away above their heads, his breast the briefest flash of scarlet, like sun on a cluster of falling rain, before he disappeared into the blue. Mama laughing, so pleased. Saying she knew she’d been right. Papa murmuring: ‘I like you excited by such funny things.’ Fen wasn’t really listening. She held Emily’s hand. Her eyes still followed the speck of bullfinch.
Papa was looking down at her, amazement in his eyes. Then he began to shout.
‘My God, Kevin, what are you doing here? What the bloody hell are you doing in my house?’
In a split second Emily fought to realise that her father was no longer the man in her daydream, but here in reality, unexpected, shocking them all with the surprise of his return, and very angry. Never had she heard his voice so fierce. Never had she seen his face so contorted, almost to ugliness. While he shouted, Kevin and Fen leapt up simultaneously, startled as new flames on the fire.
‘Idle …’ Kevin held up his hands.
‘Oh, Idle …’ Fen clutched at the neck of her shirt, surreptitiously doing up the top button. Emily was forgotten. She remained quite still, watching. Her father, in the doorway, seemed to sag. He ran a hand through his troubled grey hair. With reluctant eyes he looked at his wife and Kevin.
‘I’m sorry, forgive me. I thought the arrangement, though … I thought the arrangement?’
‘It was,’ said Fen, quietly. ‘It was.’ She walked over to Idle, her back very straight, her face flaming. She stopped a couple of feet short of him. The music had come to an end. There was a moment’s absolute silence. Then Fen said :
‘I’m sorry, Idle. We broke the arrangement this afternoon.’
Idle gave a kind of smile.
‘Well, arrangements get broken. I’m sorry I shouted. It was the shock … I wasn’t expecting.’
‘I’ll be on my way,’ said Kevin, moving towards the door. But the door was blocked by Fen and Idle.
‘It was the first time, honestly,’ Fen was saying. ‘Just tea … He was passing by. It’s a pity he has to be in Oxford so often.’
‘Quite,’ said Idle. ‘I can quite see the temptation.’
‘All the same, we’ve broken our word and I apologise.’ Kevin sounded more confident now Idle had calmed down. Idle straightened himself. His face had resumed its normal calm.
‘Well, that’s all right, old man. That’s all right, really. Might as well stay now you’re here – mightn’t he, darling? Dinner or something. Perhaps we better talk it all over a bit further.’
‘Really, Idle, there’s no need for you to behave so bloody well … I can go.’ Kevin shifted himself unconvincingly.
‘No, no, get me a drink. Get me a drink, if you will.’
The three grown-ups scattered. Fen ran upstairs without looking at Emily, her hand over her face. Kevin left the room, taking with him a glass. Idle came up to the kitchen table. He bent down to kiss Emily. The kiss turned into a prolonged hug.
‘Darling Emily girl.’
‘Papa …’
‘I got away early to give you a surprise. I thought…’ He seemed to have to stop. His blue eyes were far away, concentrating just as they’d been when they followed the bullfinch into the sky.
‘It’s lovely you’re back. Why did you shout at Kevin?’
‘I was jumpy, tired. You know how grown-ups get. I was expecting just you and Mama. The sight of Kevin gave me quite a fright. Silly, really. I’m sorry.’ He ruffled her hair, attempted a smile.
‘That’s all right. Everyone’s been bad tempered today.’ Emily paused. ‘Wolf ran away from me in the field. I’ve never seen him cross before.’
‘I expect he’ll come back.’
‘Do you? Why?’
‘People come back. They get used to people. Even if you get quite cross with someone, you know, it’s hard to leave for good.’
‘Is it really? Perhaps he’ll come back, then. If he does, tomorrow, will you play something with us?’
‘Of course.’
Emily led her father to the chair by the fire so recently occupied by Kevin. He sat down, leant back, let his hands lie dead on the arms, the fingers spread a little, blue veins running through the white skin. They were smaller, older hands than Kevin’s. His face was far more handsome, though : his hair silver in this light, his eyes deeply hooded and his face a cobweb of lines that turned into surprising crinkles when he smiled. Emily sat on his knee and swung her foot against his leg. Although her heart was still pounding fast, she felt more cheerful. She tried to recall the angry words Papa had shouted at Kevin, and the quiet things they had all said to each other. But her memory of them had gone. She could only recall how they had looked : her mother wild and confused, Kevin foolish, her father bowed and sad. But he seemed to be all right now. The good thing about grown-ups was that they often recovered quickly.
‘You go away too much, Papa,’ she said. ‘I wish you were here more often.’
‘I know, my love, I know. Perhaps I will be, one day. When I’m old and retired.’
‘You’ll never be old!’
‘Oh yes I will.’ He closed his eyes. ‘But next week I’ll be here for a few days. I’ll get Marcia Burrows to come down and help me, then I won’t have to go to London. How about that?’
‘Really? Do you really mean that?’
‘I really do.’
Emily gave a whoop of delight.
‘Shall I go up and tell Mama?’
‘She’ll be down in a moment. You can tell her then.’
‘She’ll be terribly pleased, I bet. Every night, Papa, you know, we try to imagine what you’re doing. We talk about it before I go to sleep. Mama says you’re doing awfully dull things, but I imagine you making speeches in your coat with the tails and people clapping you and giving you all the wine you want and things like that.’
Idle smiled.
‘You’re both right. I usually am doing dull things, like making dull speeches. I had to make one last night, as a matter of fact. At the Russian Embassy. They gave me a lot of vodka – that white stuff that makes your ribs feel on fire. In fact they gave me so much I made rather a good speech.’
‘Were you all by yourself there? I mean, did you know anyone?’
‘I took Marcia Burrows. She’d been working very hard all day for me, and I thought it might amuse her. She doesn’t have a very gay life.’ Emily giggled. ‘What’s the matter?’
‘I can’t imagine Marcia Burrows at a party, that’s all. She’d wear such old woman’s clothes.’
‘She didn’t look too bad, as a matter of fact. She’d had her hair puffed up in some way. I took her to dinner afterwards at a Japanese place. We ate raw fish. They served it up very prettily with its tail in its mouth.’
‘How disgusting, raw fish, I mean.’
‘Marcia wasn’t at all squeamish. It made her laugh.’
‘I’d never eat raw fish. I don’t think Marcia Burrows is too bad except she looks so sort of stiff next to Mama.”
‘She’s a good secretary. Now, why don’t you go and take a torch down to the cellar to Kevin? He’s been ages. Probably can’t find the light.’
Emily got up. Her heart was back to normal.
‘Oh, all right. Was the raw fish alive? Mama’ll laugh when she hears about it.’
Idle looked suddenly tired.
‘I shouldn’t say anything about it, actually,’ he said. ‘Because the funny thing about Mama is that she can’t bear even the thought of raw fish.’
‘All right, then.’
‘You’re a sensible one, sometimes, Em. Hurry up and get my drink, will you, my love?’
Emily marvelled at the cleverness of grown-ups. On occasions when it was necessary, they were very good at hiding things. Much better than children. At school, if any of them had a row, they were inclined to sulk for several hours after it was over, or continue to be quietly nasty to each other, or simply to ignore each other. Grown-ups, or at least the grown-ups Emily knew, took care to disguise their feelings, and she admired that because it made things easier for everyone.
There was no doubt in Emily’s mind that her parents and Kevin had had some kind of bad row, a serious row, by the looks on all their faces, though what exactly it was about Emily was at a loss to know. They had all appeared shocked : equally, they had all masked their shock, and returned to their customary faces and voices with impressive swiftness. And in fact the evening had gone very smoothly. Only a couple of things confused Emily. When she and Kevin had come back from the cellar with a bottle of whisky, Papa had stood up and shaken him by the hand before taking the bottle. The shake had gone on for a long time and then Papa had given a kind of rough pat, almost a shake to Kevin’s shoulder. Kevin had looked surprised, and poured himself a neat whisky – normally, he only drank wine. Then Fen reappeared, and Kevin, whose eyes usually followed her everywhere, didn’t look at her for a while. She had changed into a dress Emily had never seen before. Its dullness surprised her-some kind of grey wool stuff with a high neck. She smiled a lot, tossed her head about, and joined the others in drinking whisky. Then she set about cooking spaghetti with unusual concentration : every time she picked up a saucepan or cut a slice of butter or emptied a packet, the gesture seemed to be curiously important. If Papa and Kevin noticed anything strange about her, they didn’t show it. Papa, still in his own chair, told the best of his safari stories, spinning them out, adding bits that Emily, who knew them all by heart, hadn’t heard before. But he was much interrupted by Fen, who asked a lot of the kind of questions she would never normally ask : where was the tomato ketchup? Did Idle know whether there were any more peppercorns? She addressed each question specifically to Idle, who seemed confused by them, but politely made himself out to be an ignorant old fool for not being acquainted with the contents of the larder. At one moment, when Fen had complained three times that she couldn’t find the rock salt, Kevin quietly got up - Papa continued with his story – went to the dresser and took it down from behind one of Emily’s paintings. Fen snatched it quickly from him, laughing at her own stupidity, her hand shaking a little.
At dinner, everybody seemed suddenly and curiously interested in Emily. Papa asked her a lot of questions about Berlioz, whom she was studying in Musical Appreciation, and Papa had never been a musical man. They all listened seriously to her answers: their concentration upon her was almost unnerving. Then Mama went on to talk about poetry at school, what a bore it was, how it might put off anyone for life. In her day, she said, the entire school had been made to chant Ode to Autumn every Saturday morning, till each one of them had every inflection quite perfect according to the histrionic ear of the drama teacher. Pushing back her plate of spaghetti, Mama had then quoted the whole of the first verse in the extraordinary fashion she had been taught to recite the poem, and Kevon and Papa laughed properly for the first time. The poetry conversation over, Kevin began to ask Emily about Wolf. But on that subject Emily wasn’t prepared to be drawn, and suggested she might go to bed. She was still hungry, but the spaghetti had stuck in her throat : like Mama and Kevin she had not been able to eat it. Also, she was suddenly very tired, the kind of tiredness after a hard race, as if a long skein of energy had been drawn out of her. All she wanted was to sleep.
But in bed wakefulness came to her again. Eyes open in the dark, she reflected quite clearly on the events of the afternoon and evening. It seemed to her strange that such happiness (the hour in the barn, Mama beautiful and gay with snowdrops) and such sadness (Wolf being cross and leaving her, the grown-ups’ row) could come so close together. Change was constantly, confusingly fast, sometimes. Mama’s moods, Papa’s sudden departures and returns, even the weather. You couldn’t rely on anything, really, or anyone. Not even a friend like Wolf. In the end even he couldn’t understand things you were unable to explain. So he wouldn’t think twice about leaving, just when he was most needed, because he’d probably no idea what he was doing. Would he ever come back?
Emily alarmed herself by the question. She sat up, pulling the two Patricks towards her. What should she do to make him come back? The adrenalin of urgency breeds swift ideas, positive in their comfort if not always brilliant. Desperate, Emily became inspired. That penknife, the one in the village shop with lots of gadgets and a picture of the Tower of London on its side-for ages Wolf had been wanting that. Coral wouldn’t give it to him because she thought that penknives, even for boys, were dangerous – ally old bag. His father said he had to save his pocket money – 10p a week. The penknife cost £1. Emily knew Wolf had at least eight weeks to go - for ever. She knew, too, that if she explained the situation in the right way to Papa, he would lend her a pound. Delighted by the skill of her idea, Emily was now impatient for the next day to put it into practice. She went to the window to look for the dawn. But the sky was still densely black except for a scattering of lemony clouds that netted the moon. The church clock struck midnight.
She had heard Kevin’s car drive away some time ago: now, she heard her parents coming upstairs. Not knowing exactly why, she crept to her own door and down the few stairs that led from the landing to her attic room. Hidden by the darkness, she sat down. It was just possible to see, through her parents’ half-open door, that Idle was lying back on the bed, feet up. He hadn’t bothered to take off the cover.
Despising herself as she did so, Emily prepared herself to listen. Eavesdropping was something she had never contemplated apart from the one occasion with Wolf. At school, it earned wrath and scorn. But now, she reasoned to herself, she would not be hearing anything important or private. Simply a few words of innocent talk which would mean the row was all over, forgotten, and they were happy again.
‘I don’t know. I just don’t know.’ Fen’s voice was muffled. She was hanging things in a cupboard, perhaps.
‘Well, there’s still time for us to do something.’ Idle, flat.
‘Oh! We could do something. We could put on a good face for Emily’s sake, lead our own lives and be horribly civilised.’
‘If we did that, for my part, there wouldn’t be any women. Don’t you see, darling? Don’t you see I don’t want any other woman, ever? Only you.’
‘You haven’t been with me much, in that case.’
‘I know, I know, I know.’ An audible sigh from Idle. ‘Yet what can I do till I retire? I can’t change the nature of my work. You don’t want to come with me on trips. I’ve offered to take you often enough. But you’re quite right. They’d bore you dreadfully.’ A long silence. Then : ‘What’s happened, exactly, do you think?’
‘Simple. Kevin. You were away and I …’
‘But I thought … At Christmas you admitted it was just an infatuation. A passing thing, you said, soon over if you didn’t see him any more. I quite understood, didn’t I? Wasn’t I understanding? I meant to be. I did understand how it was, after all. My being away so much. You lonely, in spite of all your protests. Kevin attractive, gay. And you so responsive. You’ve always been so damn responsive. No wonder people fall in love with you. I don’t think you’ve ever known how dangerous you are. You sit there responding – I’ve seen you at it, a million times – wonderfully innocent, never knowing what you’re doing to some wretched man’s heart. But until Kevin, it was always something we could laugh about. Heavens, I could tease you. It was never a worry, really. Till Kevin.’
‘I’m sorry.’ Fen sat on the bed too. On the edge beside Idle. Emily couldn’t see her face, just the skirt of her brown dressing gown. ‘I can’t lie to you. It’s got out of hand. We missed each other. Much more than we foresaw. I suppose we love each other. Irresponsible, I know. But it’s happened. What can we do?’
‘Things only happen if you want them to. Things can only have happened because of some lack, here. Well, we know the lack. For my part,’ Idle coughed, ‘there are two alternatives.’
‘Yes.’
‘Can’t we try again? Harder? Please. I’ll cancel my next trip. I won’t go on any more trips for six months, and damn the government.’
‘We could go back to the old arrangement.’
‘What arrangement? We never really discussed it. Do you mean that I should accept Kevin as your lover and in return you won’t leave me ?’
‘Perhaps we could try that.’
‘I don’t think I could bear it, darling.’ Idle’s voice was so low Emily had to strain to hear it. ‘I’m not a very sophisticated man that way. I could even be a jealous man.’
‘If only you could! If only you could explode at me sometimes, be outrageously angry instead of so bloody tolerant all the time! That might clear the air. Your reasonableness is a terrible incentive to my destructive whims. How far can I go, I think, before you show you positively care ?’
‘But we all either show or disguise our caring in different ways. You’ve always known I was a mild man. I love you, which means I must give you freedom to do whatever makes you happy. I cannot rage at you because I love you. I’m not a raging man.’
‘Please! Don’t look like that.’ At the frightened note in Fen’s voice Emily dug her fingernails harder into her knees. ‘It’s not that I don’t love you. You know that. I’ll always love you in a way. It’s all my fault–’ Her voice seemed to be breaking.
‘It’s both our faults. Don’t, please darling. Don’t cry. I hate to see you … You never cry, Fen. Listen, we’ve just got ourselves into a muddle. We’re lucky not to have done so before, in twelve years.’
‘And Em! What would she do? This house, everything. I’ve been driving myself crazy thinking what to do. Then I get so weakly nostalgic for the past, knowing it can’t ever be like that – unsullied, I suppose – again. All those heavenly years we had. And you the best husband in the world, in a way …’
Idle gave a small, comforting laugh.
‘Couldn’t we be a little nostalgic for the future? Wouldn’t we do better that way?’
A pause, then a sob.
‘Why do I have to destroy the things I love best? Why do I sit watching myself doing things I have no wish to do? Caught up in a sort of terrible compulsion. And there’s a nice bit of self-pity for you …’
‘Don’t … let’s talk any more about it tonight. Please. Here. Blow your nose.’ His voice quiet and kind, the voice he used to Emily if she fell down and hurt herself when she was younger.
‘And all the time you’re so reasonable, so good, so understanding, so uncondemning.’
‘How could I possibly condemn the thing I love most on earth? Love isn’t about condemnation, silly thing. Oh my darling love. Please stop crying.’
A silence. Emily saw Idle’s legs swing off the bed. He crossed the room and shut the door. The landing and Emily’s stairway were now in total darkness. For a while Emily didn’t move. She rested her head on her knees, shut her eyes. Any moment she expected that she, too, would cry. She waited, but the tears didn’t come. Only a picture in her mind, curiously bright in all the darkness : the day they had made the bonfire. Mama and Papa laughing at her apples that had fallen to pieces in the hot ash. Marcia Burrows looking puzzled. There had been nothing to be puzzled about : just Mama and Papa laughing, laughing, laughing.