Ernest Wiseman should have been a teacher. A long, lean, stooped but nimble old man, waiting to start his lecture. Younger than Grace, but looking older, in his owlish way, with his half-glasses perched on his nose. There was something about those two which made Rachel think they were still lovers. The way they touched, perhaps, or more aptly, the way Grace touched him in passing behind his back to the stove, quickly pressing his shoulder as if to let him know he was never forgotten, making him smile in acknowledgement. Maybe it was merely a code, an affectionate giving of signals, or just an expression of some sort of delight in one another. Maybe it was just the joy of the feeder and the being fed. The food, should Rachel have noticed it, was casually excellent. The outside light seemed to die, leaving them sweetly marooned around the anchor of the candlelit wooden table, full and contented, too lazy to move. It was quite appropriate for Farmer Wiseman to be called Ernest. He was, rather. There were just the three of them sitting round the table at the end of the meal, completely at ease. Ivy had gone to the pub: the invitation had been extended, but nobody else wanted to go.
‘Ah, the lake,’ Ernest said, squinting at Rachel with his sweet smile. ‘You wanted to know about the lake. Well, when you and Ivy find a hilltop and look down, you’ll see a landscape which looks as old as time. But it isn’t that old. What you see is only what’s emerged in this decade, never mind this century. Much further back than that, you’d have seen an estate, this farm and the next farm all serving a big house, with a river landscaped into a series of lakes as part of the grounds. No more house, only one farm, and a single lake in limbo. Recent history, too. My lifetime, anyway. It was the war changed it more than anything else, far more than the decay of a dynasty. There are half the trees there were.’
He crumbled a piece of cheese, picked up the crumbs with his forefinger and swallowed delicately. The cheese lay, waiting to be picked at, an invitation to linger where they were. It was a part of their hospitality, Rachel thought, not to rush food away from the table, but always to leave something there to nibble.
‘Towards the end of the war,’ Ernest said, ‘there were more Germans here than English. Prisoners, you see. A camp built round the big house, which had been used as an army billet and came to serve as HQ for a prison settlement. You wouldn’t have recognised the landscape then. Nissen huts and wire, although they hardly needed that. Where were they to go, poor sods? Not that people round here thought of them with pity. I was told when I was five that they were better fed than we were, and what with rationing, I could believe it. But then my father, who farmed this farm, got to like them. One or two, anyway, because they worked the land. We got more free labour then than ever since. And that was when you realised that while they weren’t actually starving, they were always hungry. Well, the ones who worked here were.’
Grace coughed, and touched his arm. ‘Rachel was asking about the lake.’
His hand hovered over the cheese, and took an apple instead. ‘Oh, yes. Not much choice then. At the start of the war, before the family in the house gave it over to the army, or were forced to, the lake was a place for swans. All swans were once registered to the Crown you know. Preserved for beauty and for eating, latterly only for decoration. Fat chance of that in wartime. People roasted crows, for God’s sake. So the swans went, German prisoners always suspect, but they didn’t have guns, so it probably wasn’t them. So the lake was empty, got fouled up and polluted. You need birds to keep a pond clean. Birds and fish. Both dead. And the water level rose.’
‘Rose?’ Rachel asked.
‘Soldiers. Soldiers and guards, going into town – well, not much of a town, and only a village without a shop now, but a town with three pubs and girls then. As well as the sea for swimming. On the way back they’d pinch every bicycle in sight and dump it in the pond. A car, once, and God bless us, even a tractor, and both of those things like gold dust, as well as petrol. The river silted up. The thing became a stagnant pond.’
He bit into the apple.
‘My father told me that farmers like him came to reckon they were better off with German prisoners of war than bloody soldiers. They did a deal less damage. And some of them really felt for the land. My dad said we were lucky to have them. Well, we were lucky with Carl, and he reckoned he was lucky with us.’
‘Humph,’ Grace snorted.
He touched her hand. ‘That was later, sweetheart,’ he said. ‘That was Carl the younger. We weren’t so lucky with him. Where was I? Oh, yes.’
He seemed to tire suddenly, then brightened. Rachel loved the way Grace listened to him so intently, when she must have heard this dozens of times before. This family had the habit of listening. Ivy listened as if every word counted; Rachel listened now.
‘Carl was a German, from Berlin. It took a while after peace broke out before all these Germans could be got back, and Carl, who seemed old to me – I was only ten, but he was scarce more than twenty – found out that his whole family had died in the bombing. He was at home with us, billeted in the outhouse. We needed him; he stayed. And he made a start on the pond. He loved to work, that one.’
He finished the apple, including the core.
‘I found him there one day, dragging a bike out. We made that lake a project, him and I. My dad used to say, fancy him caring, but he did. Said he wanted to see swans on it again. So there’s the history of the lake. We owe its survival to a prisoner of war who left when he finished, fifty-five years ago. Shows you can honour what you don’t own.’
‘Did he ever come back? This … Carl?’
Grace stiffened. Then she moved and began to clear the table, surreptitiously. The place where Ivy had sat was comfortably empty, her absence as natural as her presence. They were well-mannered, without strict rules. Each evening would vary. Rachel hugged the thought that there would be more evenings like this, this time and the next. She knew there would be a next time.
‘Oh yes, he came back. I don’t think he ever wanted to go. I know I didn’t want him to: he was a sort of big brother to me, but I don’t suppose there was any money or future for him here. He went to London, worked his balls off, married, had a son, and came back, in the summer usually, year after year. Haymaking, he loved making hay. Then he brought his son. We were his family, you see, or as close as it got. Summer holidays … it was always hot, wasn’t it Grace?’
‘When we were first married,’ Grace said, ‘child bride that I was, sharing a house with my in-laws, I used to resent this big, silent bloke and his son pitching up for two weeks at a time, and every other weekend. Especially the little boy. I resented the fact that my husband adored him, and they spoke a language all of their own. One does, at that age.’
‘He wanted his son to know about things other than smog,’ Ernest said. ‘He wanted him to know about the land.’
‘God knows what they wanted,’ Grace said sharply.
She had been moving deftly between sink, stove and fridge, putting away, wiping down and organising with an almost deferential quietness. Rachel realised that she was not always noisy. Even with the bracelets, she could be as quiet as a fox. Ernest’s head drooped.
Grace stood behind him, kneading his shoulders. ‘To be continued,’ she said, kissing the top of his head. ‘Tomorrow is always another day.’
‘Boring you, am I?’ Ernest asked.
‘No, no, quite the opposite,’ Rachel said, truthfully.
‘He doesn’t need much encouragement really,’ Grace said. ‘You’ll have much more of it in the morning. Time for bed, I think.’
He nodded agreement, rose, flexed his knees before leaving the room, his mellow voice drifting back. ‘Good night, sleep tight … a good night.’
There was a comfortable silence after he left. Grace took his seat and sighed happily. ‘Bugger me,’ she said. ‘There’s a bit of wine left. That won’t do, will it? We can’t go to bed sober in case Ivy comes home pissed. Here …’
Bottles had appeared, wine had been drunk. Rachel did not know how much; she felt mellow. It crossed her mind to wonder if she was being nicely manipulated. No, that was the wrong word: manoeuvred, so that she was left without Ivy in the company of Ivy’s parents together, and then her mother alone. If there had been an element of calculation about it, she certainly didn’t mind. She was utterly charmed by both of them; she wanted to listen for hours. She was being trusted, that was all. Ivy really wanted her to know them, and it was a very flattering thought. It felt like midnight and was only half past ten. She wanted to be here on the longest day of the year and every day before it. She was excited by the thought of the morning.
‘Well,’ Grace said. ‘This is nice. Not that I don’t like the pub, but I’d rather have a person to myself. Must be my age. A little bit of deafness. I can only hear one person at a time. Ernest says it’s deliberate. He says I must have deafened myself.’
In this light, she was pink and flushed. Definitely apple-cheeked in the way of a russet apple. Her strong fingers stroked the stem of her glass affectionately. A bottle a day keeps the doctor away, she had said earlier. Plus an apple.
‘Do you talk to the paying guests?’ Rachel asked impulsively. She thought it was a rude question. It sounded possessive, jealous, as if wanting to know if others were as welcome and as trusted as she felt herself.
‘Oh yes, if they want. We only have one or two at a time. Some of them love to talk. Some of them want company, book dinner every night. Some of them are lonely and silly, and … oh, never mind. Some need introducing to the pub. Some want mothering. Talking at them makes them relax. It’s the only way to get them to talk. If they don’t like it, they can always run away. You can too, you know.’
Another question hung in the air, like a light shadow of the first. It said, are you a true friend of my wayward daughter? Can I trust you?
Rachel laughed. ‘I love people who talk,’ she said. ‘And anyway, you don’t fool me. You talk to make people talk. You got the whole story of my life out of me while we were making the salad. Ivy’s the same. She could get blood out of a clam, and she talks nineteen to the dozen without ever missing a single thing anyone else says. I suppose it’s an inherited talent.’
Grace grinned. ‘You’ve rumbled us. Nope. It’s entirely accidental. The result of curiosity. I’m not clever enough for anything else. I’m not like you. Not educated, apart from reading. Ivy’ll mislead you. She blows my trumpet for me. She thinks I had commercial foresight to do what I did with this house and the old pigsties. It was nothing like that. I just wanted Ernest to go on doing what he does, and to have a home for Ivy.’
Rachel pushed away her wine. She wanted a clear head for the morning, but she did not want to move, either.
‘Tell me about Carl the younger. And how Cassie drowned in the lake.’
‘Whoah,’ Grace said. ‘Did Ivy give permission for this?’
‘Yes. She’s told me some of it.’
Grace lit a cigarette from the burning stump of a candle. The multicoloured wax clinging to the sides of the old Chianti bottle which held it bore tribute to the dozens of candles this one had supplanted. Grace breathed smoke through her nostrils like a dragon. Rachel was absolutely sure this was not what she talked about to the paying guests.
‘Of course she must have told you. Carl the younger, son of Carl the pond-maker, was the man Ivy married. At seventeen, I ask you. He and his father came here first when he was a mite, and Ivy not even a twinkle in the eye. And then, in another twinkle of the eye, he was a teenage boy, and she was a little girl who adored him. And then, in another fucking twinkle of an eye he was a man a decade older than her, the bastard, coming back to lay claim. I wanted so much for her. She was destined for art school.’
‘She got there in the end,’ Rachel said.
Grace sat back, letting out an indignant whoomph. Then sat forward, bracelets jangling, noisy again.
‘I wanted a wild child who wanted to experiment, like I did. You know, go native, take to art and everything. Not get bogged down far sooner than me, even. Not a pregnant teenager, with a child begotten behind a haystack by a man ten years older, and just as much of a control freak as his fucking father. I ask you. You still had to get married in those days. There’s a hell of a difference between then and now. Anyway, he wanted it. That was what it was all about. It was part of his master plan. He was always clear about what he wanted. Establish a career; get a wife, in that order. Preferably one with a lineage he could prove. That’s the German in him.’
She was holding the stem of her glass as if she wanted to crush it.
‘And then they came back, with their children. He wanting for them what he had had as a child, and Ivy a mother of two before she was even twenty. Unbearable. But lovely for me, as well.’
Grace put out her cigarette in the spluttering wax, and looked at it critically.
‘The boy and the girl, fifteen months apart. Chalk and cheese as they grew. Ivy, always wanting to bring them back, because she never really left. She wasn’t grown up enough to leave. Never settled there. They fought like cat and dog, Ivy and Carl, over everything. Cassie was part of the game. Every inch her mother’s wayward child. Ivy threw her in the sea when she was four. She simply started swimming.’
‘She’s certainly a city person now,’ Rachel said.
Grace released the stem of her glass and waved her hand at the smoke.
‘Oh, you are a lovely creature, for wanting to know.’
‘She told me to ask you. I do want to know.’
‘Tomorrow, if you still want. My sweet child, you’re dead on your feet. We won’t wait up for Ivy. You know what she’s like.’
‘Yes, I do. Night-owl Ivy. Works and plays all hours. Has to be independent and not questioned. Free agent. Blithe spirit.’
‘Can you cope with that when she moves into your flat? All those jobs, all those funny hours?’
‘No problem. I’ll love it. We aren’t in each other’s pockets. She’s taken some persuading, though.’
‘You are the most wonderful girl,’ Grace said. ‘The most beautiful thing on the planet.’
She really wants them to know me, and me to know them, Rachel thought wonderingly as she splashed water on her face. I’ve never been treated like this. She would not have let her own contemporaries near her father. Tucked into her high bed, she thought of her London flat, as she might have done of some distant, grubby planet, to be congratulated for being so far away. I shall tell them, she told herself, thinking of the office where she worked, that I slept beneath the eaves and below the stars, and they will not believe me. I am mended by knowing Ivy and her kind.
Now, it really was silent. There was the selective deafness created by food and wine and then there was her own, delightful exhaustion from the doing of nothing much really, other than driving, being loved and cared for and the lake, and listening, and everything. And then a deafening sound from the tiny bathroom which was between her room and Ivy’s room on the top floor. Water, gurgling away with a sound, in that silence, like the end of the world. Whirrrup, bang shcush, gargle gargle spit.
She got out of bed, lifted the latch on her bedroom door, and moved sideways over the half-landing. The door to the shared bathroom was open. Ivy was there, as Rachel had first seen her, naked as stone, bent from her slender waist over the basin. The taps gushed, noisily. The pipes gurgled, without rhythm. The room was whiter than white, the tiles white, the paint white, the bath white, white white, and the water flowing into the basin from Ivy’s big, capable hands ran pink as she washed. The tufty blonde hair stood up in spikes. The face in the mirror was deathly pale. Ivy had seen her, gave a fleeting smile.
‘Oh Christ. I forgot what a noise the plumbing makes. Sorry I’m so late. You been OK with Mother?’
‘Your hands. You’re bleeding.’
Ivy looked at her hands, then stretched towards the also white towels and began to wipe them dry, shaking her head.
‘Me?’ she said. ‘No, it’s not me. I’m not bleeding, just a bit bloody. Some car on the road hit a bird, and left it thrashing. Had to finish it off.’
She finished drying her hands. The towel remained white.
‘Country life, honey. Road kill. Mercy killing. Had to be done. Sorry I woke you. Go back to bed.’
Rachel did as she was told, sleepy and reassured, leaving the door ajar. The latch was cold to the touch. She did not know how much later it was when she woke again into shivering consciousness. Footsteps on the stairs, the abrupt ending of screams, which dwindled away into muffled noises. Almost silence. Rachel did not know from where it had come, outside or inside, animal or human, only knew city sounds, stood by the door of her room, shivering and indecisive, listening to noises now minimal and human. She slipped round the open door and stood on the landing.
Light streamed from the room which was Ivy’s. Through the half-open door, Rachel could see the shape of Grace, with her back turned, leaning over the bed in which Ivy was huddled and mumbling. Grace made hushing, soothing sounds with skilful ease. It was something they had done before.
‘Only road kill, darling. You mustn’t let it upset you.’
‘No, Mummy, no. Mustn’t.’
‘There, there.’
‘Can’t do it. We’ve got to get him here. Here.’
‘Yes, darling, yes, yes. Shhh.’
‘Gotta get him here. So he can see. He’s got to come here.’
‘Bogey man dead, bang, bang,’ Grace’s voice teased softly. ‘There, there.’
Rachel withdrew, as quietly as she could. The instinct for diplomatic self-effacement was always there. Eavesdropping was contemptible, her own father had told her. She was half in love with them all, and she wanted to belong; she knew nothing and wanted to know what it was like to be them. Silence fell, as if there had never been noise. All Rachel knew was that Ivy should not live alone.
You are coming to share my empty space, Ivy. I don’t want to be your keeper. I just want to give you a base. I want to make things better for somebody, the way I never have.
Grace would like that. They were already allies.
The boy stood looking at the London river before going indoors. He was either a boy or a man, depending on the eye of the beholder. So what if the wing of the other car got smashed when he parked downstairs? The wall had come up and hit it; underground car parks confused him; it was a crap car. Not his; his father’s. Everything was his father’s. The damage to the other car would not be noticed for days – the owner rarely used it – but his father would notice because his father always did, and would, if necessary, own up on his behalf, like the bloody bully he was.
There were rats in the car park. He would say he was distracted by a rat. They came out at night, he would say, to and from the river at low tide.
He went back into the underground space, kicked some of the broken glass under the front wheel of the other car, then went up, via the steps, and stood by the door of home, feeling as if he was going back into prison. Sam. Nineteen. Scared of his dad, sneaking into his own home as if he was a thief. Well, that was how his dad made him feel. Own room, everything a student could want, DVD, mobile, laptop, so it made economic sense to live with Dad at Canary Wharf, even if it meant living with a tyrant. Key in the door, reminding himself to be up early enough to get to the post before his father, post never arrived now before ten, good, no problem, plenty of time to get rid of anything he didn’t want him to see. The credit card bill, another of those whingeing letters … Why should he want to see her? She was the one who left.
Tiptoeing through the apartment to his own room, he could recall the last sodding lecture, word for word, na na nanana … Dad by the window, him by the door. We’re different generations, Sam, stands to reason we get on one another’s nerves. Time you moved out, broke your own things and learned the value of them, instead of this ridiculously privileged and private way of life which exposes you to nothing.
He mimicked himself in the bathroom mirror. There are rats in the underground garage, Dad, isn’t that real enough? I’m not going anywhere, and don’t give me that old lecture again. That old aren’t-you-lucky theme. Brought up in peace and plenty, as if I’m supposed to do penance for that. Remember again that I can’t take anything for granted, because you couldn’t and your father couldn’t. Why not, Dad? Why can’t I take it for granted? Other people do. Isn’t that progress? Why do I have to be so grateful all the time? For fuck’s sake, you even expect me to be grateful for the generation I was born into. Well, I’m not. I didn’t choose it, and I think it sucks. And I’m not moving out. Or do you just want me to go so you won’t be blamed for something I’ve done? You want me to leave for my own safety? Get lost, that really is stupid.
He would turn his back so he could not see the expression on his father’s face. The expression, or lack of it, anger, sadness or nothing, his best blank face, the face of an inscrutable judge, talking the way he talked in court, the old hypocrite. An echo of his dead grandfather’s verdict, Er ist richtiger Junge. Or face him to hear him say, We all have issues, Sam. Don’t you think it would help if you would …
No, he would say. No. Leave me alone. Why should I? Just all of you, leave me alone.
It’s your fault I’m scared to go it alone. You’ve done too much.
Fuck you, Dad.
And then, getting into bed, Are you awake, Dad? I didn’t mean it, Dad. I just go into one when I’m ashamed of myself – and scared.
We both need a bit of looking after sometimes, don’t we, Dad?
Oh, and I heard this really good joke, I’ve got to tell you in the morning. Don’t let me forget, you’ll love it.
I wish you were awake.
I need to talk. You’re not so bad when you laugh.