Hopping behind Ken’s chair, crutches wobbling under her elbows, she pulls the half-scone off Ken’s plate.
‘Come on, that’s enough!’
He shoves what’s in his fingers into his mouth post-haste, shoulders high in alarm. She puts a slice of bread on to his plate and reaches round him for his knife; she plunges it into the jam jar she’s holding and spreads something dark, thickly.
‘Taste that.’ They all look.
‘Go on, taste it.’
He brings it to his nose, sniffs first. A smile starts on his mouth before he bites into it. He chews with obvious pleasure.
‘I never thought I’d taste that again in my life.’
‘You won’t. That’s your lot. Too good for you,’ she says, with a sideways grin, and Nick and Dave laugh.
‘Don’t be like that, Pearl,’ says the old man. ‘I’n’ she awful to me? She always was ’orrible to me, you know,’ he confides across the table to Matt.
‘What is it then, Dad?’ asks Dave.
‘It’s what my old mum used to make. Elderb’ry jam.’
Pearl puts a forefinger where the knife went and tastes it herself. ‘Too much sugar, but it’s a devil to set without it.’
‘You’re being spoilt, Dad,’ says Dave eagerly.
Pearl sits back in her place. ‘Help yourself to cake, girls. And you, Matt.’
‘It’s a lovely tea, Mrs Goodyew,’ says Laura.
‘Yes, it’s all worked out all right in the end, hasn’t it?’ says Pearl. When she smiles, she’s a different person. She looks young. ‘I was worried about the scones, but they’re not bad.’ Her big cheeks rise and she helps herself to another of her scones. When Nick looks at her, he sees winter setting in too, as with his father. They are being run down by nature and time, the white in her hair taking over from autumn colours, yet their eyes are lights, they flicker and crackle; it was these lights that set alight most of the other lights around this table, that set certain eyes seeing.
He swallows. He looks around the table and sees Dave’s eyes on Emily, Astrid’s on Laura’s. He swallows again; there is nothing he has lit. Catching his eye, Astrid gives him a full happy smile.
After tea, the children go off to explore the orchard that’s now full-grown, with Laura asking Matt about bands and websites. While they are dubbing this rapper cool and that girl band uncool, Emily suggests they play hide and seek. And though Matt pooh-poohs the idea at first, when Laura agrees he says that Emily should do the seeking. They go into the chestnut wood and Laura finds a bower that she dubs an igloo, and the two of them squat inside it and tell each other the most outlandish stories they’ve heard, forgetting all about Emily. After a while Emily, discovers them and, standing outside, knees level with their eyes, she says several times with increasing hostility, ‘I could hear you. I could so hear you.’ But they have forgotten the game. She stands awhile with her arms folded and her chest rising and falling, hurt to hear their laughter and be outside of it.
When she gets back to the table, it’s just the four of them sitting there: her dad, her grandfather, her grandmother and Uncle Nick. Her mother and Astrid have wandered off to see the magnolias. She goes to the car and gets her recorder. When she comes back, she offers them a tune. Nobody seems keen.
She begins earnestly piping, going from one of the five notes she has to the other, giving each one all of her puff, and roughly conveying ‘Lord Of All Hopefulness’ and though they clap and praise her and thank her after every chorus, she makes sure they get the full song.
As a final flourish, she makes a shape in the air with the butt of the recorder.
‘That’s the one, that is!’ says her grandfather, and he slaps the table. ‘That’s the one I was after! That’s the one I’ll ’ave,’ Ken says, fixing her with a squint as if he’s seen something important in her, ‘. . . “’oose presence is balm”.’
‘For your funeral, I suppose,’ says Dave, rolling his eyes.
‘That’s right. Got it all planned, a’n’ I?’
‘Got your rig out, have you? Got it on the bed waiting?’
‘Naargh. Nothing wrong with this suit, is there?’
‘You’ve come oven-ready then, have you, Dad?’
‘I’m always ready.’ He throws a meaningful look up at the sky.
‘Come on and I’ll show you something, Ken,’ Pearl says to him. Dave jumps up to help and misses the chance. The pair of them go in under their own steam.
‘’Ere, Nick, right, you don’t think they’re going to rekindle any of the old magic, do you?’
‘He told me himself those days are gone.’
‘Thank Christ for that. I thought he was going to proposition that undertaker woman.’
‘Did I tell you I’d proposed to Astrid?’
‘No, mate, no, you didn’t. Bloody hell.’ He runs his hand over his head. ‘Seriously, mate, that’s great news. She seems like a nice girl.’
‘She’s not.’
‘Even better. Listen, mate – seriously, though.’ Dave moves forward and speaks out of one side of his mouth. ‘Best tell you while I can. Dad’s only had Matt looking up how to top yourself on the Internet. I think he’s a bit doolally. That, or he’s ill, or something. He said anything to you?’
‘No, nothing. He does bang on about it all, the grand finale and that, but no, I don’t think he’s going to end it himself when he can get it for free.’
‘True.’
‘Christ, he’s not going, not while he’s in the limelight. No, listen, Dave, it’s just a way of getting attention.’
‘But he shouldn’t be getting a kid to sort him out with arsenic on the Internet, should he?’
‘Arsenic?’
‘He got him researching death drugs. It’s not right, getting a kid to do that. I could kill ’im.’
‘Problem solved.’
‘Yeah. There is that.’
‘It’s not working, him living on his own.’
‘I know. He’s on the blower all the time. He still calling you?’
‘All the bloody time. He’s being nice as pie, though.’
‘Christ, he must have seen the Angel of Death.’
When the women come up from the garden, they see the two brothers at the table in cahoots; Dave is up close to his brother, his hand gripping a spindle on the back of his brother’s chair. ‘Right, Nick? Right?’