The gamekeeper’s cottage smells of mildew and apples stored over winter. It is damp, with thin windows knocking in their frames. It was never meant nor made to welcome guests. It was not conceived for ‘entertaining’. It was made to provide recourse from extremes of weather, but not the basic cold which is the birthright of the Englishman and certainly the due of a game-keeper. It was built proud and pretty enough to make coming home across the fields an agreeable end to the day. It’s grandfatherly Victorian exterior with its gabled eyebrows and finger-to-lips front door seems to say: Come in, eat and go quietly to bed.
Its construction didn’t reckon on any untoward physical activity. The floorboards resent agitated footsteps. Under Pearl’s regime, with its thin curtains and carpet, its pine furniture and its piles of precarious bric-a-brac, it is not the sort of house that could brook much jumping about.
They never had friends come and stay when they were kids. Even now, there are no guests, there are only trespassers. The dog sees off those who stray from its brick pathways. Pearl doesn’t admit anyone to the interior. Today, the most they each get is a peek into the living room, over the stable door at the kitchen. Heading them off, the great mongrel bouncer swings saliva in a sort of rope chain. They drag their feet, crane their necks for glimpses, like paying visitors to a country home keen to see ‘where the family live’, until Pearl pulls the upper half of the door to and gets them to do as she asked, which is to carry the trays into the garden.
She seems eager to get it over with. She greeted them with no more than nods. On her crutches, with a lower leg in plaster, she still manages to keep a hand on the dog’s collar, holding it back, and scolding the mutt with such colourful rage as to make the three children hang back in trepidation.
‘Stay back, sod you!’
Whatever social manners Pearl might have had, have been left long ago in built-up places.
‘Mad,’ whispers Matt with a note of reverence.
On the long drive up the unmade track to the house, which is now almost entirely grown over with chestnut trees and rhododendrons, Laura pointed out dolls hanging from the trees.
Nick braked. ‘Decoration?’ he offered uncertainly.
As the Range Rover moved forward again, the four of them looked through Astrid’s window, safari-faced. From every other tree there were plastic baby dolls, suspended by a leg, or upside down, or more often squashed into the crook of a branch, one eye stuck closed. Naked, they were ghastly in a way, green-haired from the weather or bald and threadbare. Made originally for the delight of maternally minded little girls, their once cooing expressions seemed creepy here in the woods; they were like vulgar harpies jeering at the traffic.
‘Grim,’ said Astrid.
In the middle of the back lawn, on a trestle table covered with a lace-edged tablecloth, there is an assortment of plates of cakes and scones. There are a few odd glasses and there’s an enamel jug. The chairs are ranged about the table on the lawn uneasily, some upholstered, some wicker, and at the head of the table is a broad oak dining chair with a patchwork cushion in its seat.
The garden is tropical today, wet and lush and redolent of honeysuckle. The wisteria weeps. The roses are pressing for the birth of their blossoms. In dank gutter-grates toads hunker down, waiting for frightful things to pass them by.
Pearl takes the oak chair and is the first to serve herself. She does so generously, slathering her scone with margarine before passing anything to anyone else. She chews, only half listening to Ken’s fawning words. The others help themselves one by one to seats then scones.
Marina pours the tea.
With his high-pitched noises, Ken goes between simpleton and naughty schoolboy, whimpering and simpering, complimenting the garden, complimenting the spread, thanking her and commending her.
‘She’s a wonderful woman, your mother, i’n’ she? Always was.’
At the far end of the table, Laura stands to pour squash into cups. The children taste the drink and show each other their tongues. ‘What is it anyway?’ Emily whispers.
‘LSD or something,’ says Matt, then with all eyes on him, looks dashed.
‘This garden ’ere’s a paradise, Pearl. I don’t know how you keep it up,’ says Ken.
‘You never did know anything about gardening.’
Dave does the best he can. ‘Well, Dad used to help a bit, didn’t he? I remember we all did a bit. I used to get a penny a dog turd, didn’t I? Well, I got a ha’penny actually, after I’d given Nick his share.’
‘Oooh?’ barks Ken. Under his breath Matt mimics the crazy sound and Emily shows the yellow crumbs in her brace.
‘Nick,’ says Pearl harshly. ‘Nick, he said.’
Her eyes fall on her elder son for a moment, as he slices his scone open and tries to make sense of the butter that’s hard as cheese. Having crumbed the stick of butter and left the scone unscathed, he catches her eye in his moment of failing – just as when he was a child. But she passes no comment. Her face is obscured by weather and age now, like the bricks of the house; her cheeks are no longer coral but ruddy and her face is crowded by unkempt hair and large glasses.
When Emily upsets her glass, Pearl sighs heavily and lifts herself up with difficulty, hoisting herself on to her crutches, going in to get a cloth, ignoring the protests of both her sons. The two couples and the three children dare to look at each other. This is no picnic, much less a tea party.
‘I could murder a drink,’ says Dave.
Nick rises and follows his mother out to the kitchen where the dog is getting the rough side of her tongue for having ventured out of its bed again.
‘Didn’t I tell you to stay there? I don’t want your sodding hair all over the place . . .’ The more the dog cowers, the more her voice rises. And outside, with clouds gathering overhead, her family sit, shoulders hunched and uncomfortable.
‘Mum,’ Nick says.
‘I’m bringing the cloth now!’
‘Never mind the cloth, Mum, it’s only a drop she’s split. Why don’t you come and sit down and enjoy yourself ?’
‘It’ll spoil the table.’
‘Mum.’
‘What is it now?’
‘Mum. I am so sorry.’
Her back rounds over the crutches, her head dips. ‘What are you sorry for,’ she says, not turning, ‘you got nothing to be sorry for, you done nothing to be ashamed of, have you?’
He comes behind her, and looks at the hands on the counter and the strong short fingers that grip all the time now, with arthritis in them. Those hands were his first toys, followed by her feet, on winter’s evenings when he’d call the hands crabs and the feet lobsters and invent seaside stories with her cackling at the tickling. She’d flinch and jerk and hoot and it would end in her getting him by the ribs and poking him savagely, making him scream and threaten to wee himself.
‘Mum. I am so sorry for everything.’
When she turns round, her mouth is loose and her eyes are briny and she says to him, ‘Why shouldn’t I just carry on living without you?’
‘Because I’m sorry.’ His lips blurt, ‘I’m so sorry, Mum.’ His eyes are hot and tears come and he puts his arms around her and kisses the crown of her head. ‘I’m so sorry.’
He wants to say sorry again and again to relieve the pain but she is holding him fiercely and saying into his shirt, ‘No, no, don’t say it. I’m proud of you. It was what I wanted. I wanted you to do well. I’m proud of you.’
They are gripping each other tight when Dave pokes his head in the kitchen.
‘Everything all right?’
Nick releases her and turns round and his mother hides her face with her sleeve, wiping it. Dave is standing at the back door with big anxious eyes, not daring to come in.
‘Come in, Davie,’ she says, sniffing. ‘Where is that bleeding cloth? Will you please go in your bed, dog!’
‘Sorry to interrupt.’ Dave evades Nick’s eyes as he ducks in under the door frame. ‘Shall I take the cloth out for you, Mum, and wipe it up?’
‘Yes, you do that, thank you, Davie,’ she says and hands him a grey string cloth.
Dave gives Nick a look, then retreats.
‘The prodigal son, you are,’ she says with a short laugh, wiping her glasses.
‘Something like that.’
‘Any chance of a cup of tea, Mother?’ comes Ken’s voice from the garden. This was his catchphrase back in the old days, and the request that was most likely to get Pearl into a lather. The response was reliable: ‘Do it yourself, fuck you.’
But now, Pearl says, ‘Ask the daft old shit if he still has sugar.’
‘Two sugars, Mother!’ comes the voice, and there’s laughter from the table. ‘If you don’t mind!’
Pearl takes the dirty teaspoon from inside the sugar jar and measures a level teaspoon of sugar into the cup. ‘One’s enough for him,’ she says.