Quick, quick, get going. She was being shaken awake. Come on, Rachel, there’s a love. It’s a gorgeous day. Let’s go, if we’re going to go, before we get stuck in traffic. If we go now, we can get to the sea first. Sorry, were you dreaming?
Rachel had been asleep when Ivy got home, whenever that was. There was a mug of steaming tea in front of her eyes, and Ivy, imploring her to move, like an impatient child waiting to be taken on holiday. Ivy, who coasted on four hours’ sleep and ten hours’ work, brimming with infectious energy, because life was good, life was rich and you had to enjoy every minute. That was her gift. She could give away some of that energy even at six in the morning. She was nobody’s victim in the mornings and took no prisoners.
Rachel had been dreaming of the farm again. Imagining the figure of Grace and being hugged by her in the kind of embrace which said, nothing else matters, you’re safe here. Carl, hugging Grace.
Once on the road, it was singing all the way. Whizzing through the deserted streets of London as if they owned it and everything had been cleared and cleaned for their benefit, and even the traffic lights deferred to them, the skies lifting as they hit the motorway stretch and left it all behind. The first hour was nothing. The radio blared and they sang to that.
The lane going towards the house; the joy of it. Bluebells in May, Ivy said, blossom in June, every shade of green in July. August is for yellows. Snowdrops in February. Ivy said, Ivy said, Ivy said.
Grace was tending the tubs of lavender and herbs outside the kitchen door, but really waiting. The purple hair complemented the shocking red of her pelargoniums and the pink of her cotton shift, which looked as if she had sewn it the night before. She was barefoot and jangling with multicoloured beads. Follow the noise. The shriek of welcome could have woken the dead, and it was Rachel she hugged first, Ivy next, then both together. You made it, she kept saying, you made it, as if it was a miracle. I’ve been reading the newspapers, she said. I’ve been so worried about you. All those terrible things happening in London. It isn’t safe. You can’t queue for an autograph, or get in an ambulance, awful.
‘I had a plan,’ Ivy said, interrupting the flow.
‘To go to the sea,’ Grace finished. ‘I’ve been craving it all week.’
‘That’s why we’re early,’ Rachel added.
‘Party time for Mother,’ Ivy said. ‘The sea and the pub today. We’ve all been working too hard. Dad can make hay while the sun shines. We’re going to bring Rachel’s dad to keep him company next time.’
That had been discussed in the car. Ivy had suggested it.
‘Just to warn you, darling,’ Grace said to Ivy, as they bundled back into the car, Rachel relieved that she was designated driver, ‘I mustn’t be out too long. We have a slight problem at the moment. Because of the hay, they always arrive when he cuts the hay. Not to worry. The man’s coming sometime, with the dog.’
‘Is this code?’ Rachel asked. ‘Or can anyone know?’
‘We’ve got a rat in the house,’ Grace shouted from the back seat, yelling as loudly as she would in her own, deafening Volvo. ‘Ivy’s never liked them much. Oh look, we’re nearly there. This bloody thing goes so much faster than mine.’
‘I can’t go into the house if there’s a rat,’ Ivy said. ‘I can’t.’
Rachel paused at the mention of a rat. Such a nasty word. She was not going to tell anyone, not about yesterday, or anything, not yet, and it felt like being a rat, all dispelled by responding to the instructions they yelled at her to take a different route, no, right, I mean left, did I mean left? No, I meant that way, to a different stretch of the coast which was over there, the five miles separating it from the farm and the fields like crossing the Gobi Desert, the same difference as the City and here. Another secret place they knew, reached by a series of back doubles, hidden under cliffs, with a railway line snaking above their heads into a tunnel. The City was another country, and the railway, hugging the coast, was only a reminder that there were people unfortunate enough to be going somewhere else. A tiny cove, hidden beneath a mysterious cliff, which hung above it more like a guardian than a threat. Mid-morning, empty, and still the same old glorious sea. This was the precise point where I learned to swim, Grace was saying, but then again, I’m not sure. We knew every scrap of this coast, Grace said, when we were kids. We cycled for miles. We were shoved out in the morning with jam sandwiches wrapped in greaseproof, and told to come back when we were tired. I thought we might try it. The sandwiches, I mean. There is really nothing quite as disgusting as a jam sandwich made with margarine and red pulp with woodchips in it.
‘Golden syrup on toast,’ Ivy said. ‘Treacle sandwiches. Butter and sugar on fresh white bread.’
‘Go on,’ Grace said. ‘You were way too young for that.’
‘I know, Mum,’ Ivy said. ‘But old habits die hard. That’s what you fed me.’
There were no waves like before, simply a breeze which ruffled the surface of the water so that it mimicked a smooth lake. It was like approaching a different, friendlier animal, which would embrace softly, rather than a rough, challenging hug. It was markedly warmer than the week before, a different stage of summer. There was the same rushed changing into swimwear, although Grace and Ivy had no shame. Grace simply stripped naked, hauled on the baggy swimsuit; Ivy did not bother with changing and reached the shoreline first, clad in her bra and knickers, ran straight in with a noisy splash. Rachel followed, wading gingerly to waist height, testing the ground for the way back, automatically looking on the way for jellyfish and monsters, laughing at herself for doing it, while Grace squealed and flopped and decided it was best to go in backwards, tripping and splashing, yelling, watch out, it’s fucking freezing, Oh bloody hell fire. They were there to play, Ivy to swim. She outranked everyone as a swimmer; she moved away from them with natural speed in a graceful crawl into the distance, and only turned back to shore when Rachel and Grace were sitting in the warmer shallows, feeling virtuous, kissing the last week goodbye.
Grace did it again as they were towelling dry, dropped a small stone of conversation into the flurry of movement, as if tossing it into the sea and getting rid of it. It was directed at Ivy.
‘You remember that paying guest, Joe his name was, the one in May who got drunk all the time when you were here that week? Well, he died. PC Plod had to bestir himself and come and tell us.’
‘Oh, what a pity,’ Ivy said with careless politeness, wrapping her head in a towel, then balancing to pull on her jeans over bare skin with the ease of practice.
‘One of your guests?’ Rachel asked. ‘How awful. Wasn’t your food, was it?’
‘Don’t think so,’ Grace said. ‘Though he ate enough of it. No, he went and drowned somewhere after he’d left. Remember him, Ivy love? He wanted to swim in the lake and we told him he couldn’t. Because of the swans still nesting.’
‘Yes, that’s right. Anyway, he preferred the pub. He was bloody rude to you. He was always trying to do things he couldn’t do, wasn’t he? Probably took up sailing next. He never could see the need to practise. Like that lot.’
She pointed to the horizon, where a small flotilla of yachting dinghies with yellow and pink spinnakers tacked about like waterborne butterflies, chasing each other. Grace shielded her eyes with her hand, and sighed.
‘I wish I could do that,’ she said. ‘But perhaps not. I’d rather be in it than on it. God, I feel better for that. It’s like taking the cure. What time were you up? You must be bloody starving.’
No unpleasant news was going to disturb this day; that had been decided. No paying guest stayed long enough to form himself into a ghost.
‘Poor Jack the Lad.’ Ivy finished it, picking up towels and bra. ‘You know who he reminded me of, Rache? That Plonker in the life drawing class. They could’ve been twins. He’s one of Rachel’s fans,’ she explained to Grace. Rachel laughed.
‘One of yours, you mean.’
Grace threw her hands into the air. ‘And what about me? Where are mine? Any left over for a woman in her prime? I don’t care if they’re stupid.’
‘She can still pull them, you know,’ Ivy said, ‘The ones who want mothers. And she can swim better then me when she tries.’
‘Here she is,’ Ernest said to Rachel when they got back. The salt had dried on their skin from the air blowing through the open windows of the car. ‘Here’s my favourite girl. Are you coming out to make hay with me this afternoon?’
‘Food,’ Grace said. ‘Food first. Followed by no decisions at all.’
There was smoked ham, a salad of herbs, raspberries with yellow cream, eaten in the garden. Ivy would not go into the house.
‘The lake’s murky today,’ Ernest said, with a mouth full of food. ‘You were better off with the sea. When’s the rat man coming, love?’
‘You never know with him,’ Grace said. ‘We may as well all sit in the sun. You never know how long it’s going to last. You see to him, will you? I hate it. Ivy hates it.’
‘My little phobia,’ Ivy said. ‘Bloody rats.’
Rachel and Ivy lay on blankets on the unmowed lawn, listening to the humming of insects, and Rachel drifted into sleep. The sea did that. There seemed to be all the time in the world for everything; it was an excuse for saying nothing and she was pleasantly tired. Before she slept, listening to the buzz of the semi-silent life which went on all around her at ground level, regardless of human beings, she was thinking, solutions find themselves for insects, why not for us? The solutions to dilemmas were often so much simpler than the problems themselves. The bees and the flies went on fine without much obvious thought. It was wonderful here. All she needed to do, surely, was to get Judge Carl Schneider. Get him to come back here. Him first, then the son … Yes, that would work. She felt a twinge of excitement. Get him to come to this place, be charmed by the goodness he had forgotten, and then everything would follow. He had loved them all once. He and his children and his father …
She woke, warm and heavy, the sun still hot on her back, her chin level with the long grass, her mouth dry and the salt on her skin itching. Something crawled on her calf; she twisted round to slap it. Ernest was sitting beside her, slumped in a very old striped deckchair. Half asleep, she noticed that the visible stripes of the cloth around his head were as faded as the wood of the chair, bleached into the colour of a pale mushroom, and he was wearing a vest, and he and the chair suited one another. Old man in deckchair, wearing vest and knotted handkerchief, like a postcard from the 1950s, still dressed the same, better in sepia. The weeks of sun, however intermittent and easy to ignore in the City, had turned his face, neck and forearms deep brown, with a sharp demarcation point above his elbows and below his chin, showing the precise point to which his shirt sleeves had been rolled up and his collar left open when he was out and about. Farmers did not care about nice even tans. Rachel thought of the builders seen from her high office window, stripped to the waist with evenly brown backs and builders’ bums, a perk of the job, and then, looking at Ernest’s milky-white shoulders, had a stark image of her father on holiday. She should have tried to phone him again; she tried to remember where she had left her mobile.
Ivy’s blanket was empty. The lawn was small but seemed vast.
‘Oh, hello,’ Ernest said. ‘You’re awake then. I was sitting out here waiting for him to do his business. They had to go, Ivy and her mother. They can’t stand it. Don’t know why, when they’re so good at killing things. Maybe they don’t like to defer. But the rat man’s indoors. I thought you might be interested. Shall we go and see?’
He began to haul himself out of the deckchair, the seat of which sagged ominously, and then gave up the attempt. The bottom half of him was still clad in his baggy canvas trousers, without boots or socks, showing feet the same milky white as his shoulders. He retrieved his shirt; the demarcation lines of white and brown disappeared. Rachel thought of a model in the life class. Saw through the wrapping to the way he might have appeared, stripped of his clothes and his role, emerging as a gnarled old tree trunk, already struck by lightning, discoloured by fungus, growing weaker.
‘He’s a very clever beast, Vernon. If he were half as sharp as the ferret, they’d have made a mint.’
She had been disconcerted to be found asleep in her shorts and cropped top, beneath Ernest’s innocent gaze. She sensed that he had been willing her awake, simply because he wanted company, and she was slightly hurt to have been abandoned by Ivy and Grace, her chosen companions for the afternoon, and then she could hear them saying, she’s sleeping, poor lamb, leave her, and thought, yes, that would be the reason.
‘No rush,’ he said. ‘It’s not the best time of day for it.’
‘For what?’ she asked, still fuggy.
‘Flushing out the rat.’
‘Why’s Ivy so scared of them?’
‘Got locked in the cellar with them once. Don’t have a cellar any more. It spooked her.’
Rachel sat up, reached for her bottle of water and drank, resisting the urge to pour it over her head. Then she put on her hat and felt as if she had rejoined the world and looked around from a new angle. The garden was more like a meadow, left to run wild, apart from the lavender and flowers by the back door, and the obtrusive row of rubbish bins. It had resisted any kind of makeover. The back of the house was creeper-covered, mellow red brick. It seemed timeless.
‘Tell me what it was like here, oh, twenty years ago,’ she said.
‘That’s not long,’ he said finally. ‘I remember much further than that. Not much changes, only the way we use things. The way it was. All those people, all that company. That’s what I miss. Used to be everyone in on it when we harvested hay. A gang of us, always a gang. Grace was feeding the whole lot. That’s the difference. The company. Three of us for the pigs, four for the milking, ten for the hay. Now it takes me and a machine to make hay, all by myself. A farm gets run by one man and a Polish cowhand who can’t speak English. It’s lonely, that’s the difference. Now most days are the same and always will be. Unless Carl comes back.’
He began to struggle out of the deckchair again. Deckchairs like these were traps for the unwary, lessons in indignity; his efforts were almost comical. He was not used to sitting anywhere for long except on the upright chairs of the kitchen, or perhaps in the comfortable armchairs in the living room which Grace told her only really came into its own in winter, when on wet days Ernest would watch wildlife programmes on the TV.
‘Come on,’ he said. ‘Let’s see how he’s doing.’
Still mystified, she followed him back through the ever-open kitchen door, through that room, down the corridor which bisected the house. The living room faced the front of the house, next to the front door no one seemed to use. It was as if the kitchen entrance was the mouth of the house, through which everything and everyone passed, where everything was prepared and digested, debated and decided until it was time for bed. The living room door was closed. Ernest knocked very softly, entered on tiptoe, ushered her in behind him and closed the door, nodding to the man who sat at his ease by the dead fireplace with a dog at his feet.
‘That’s Vernon,’ Ernest whispered, pointing at the dog. No one else required an introduction. They sat on a sofa, in silence. The room was cool; she shivered. It was odd to be sitting still and silent with two men and a dog on a glorious day; it made her want to giggle. The dog raised its head and cocked its ears. The strange man in the chair played with a soft leather pouch, squeezing it between his hands like a man with worry beads, keeping his fingers occupied. It was all rather peaceful.
It was then that she began to hear the sounds, at first from above her head, then from one corner of the room, then another, then almost under her feet. Scrabbling, scratching sounds, the pitter-patter of ghostly feet, a series of minute thuds, the sound of running, which made her turn her head to try and follow, detect the weird, unseen source. Then more silence; then the sounds resumed, scritter, scratter, running, bumping, something twisting and growing behind the skirting boards or under the wooden floor. She was struck dumb by the sounds.
Ernest leaned towards her and whispered, ‘He’s got him on the run.’
‘Who’s he?’
‘The ferret. Look at old Vernon.’
The dog sprang to its feet and stood, quivering. The sounds grew louder, echoing into the room, a race coming closer and closer until it was focused on the furthest corner, where the old skirting board failed to meet the floor. It was a crooked room, she remembered, full of gaps and draughts, warped into its own shape, the dark side of the house.
She imagined something screaming, saw a brown shape squeeze through the hole and catapult into the room, a live creature running. Until the dog sprang, snatched it up mid-flight, shook it and tossed it twice, let it drop broken-necked, then picked it up and carried the trophy to his master’s chair with the sedate, brisk movements of a well-rewarded servant. The dead rat was deposited with dignified indifference. The man patted the dog. The efficient brutality of the death took her breath away.
Again they waited. She followed the direction of Ernest’s gaze to the same corner of the room where the rat had emerged. A sinuous, slinky animal, almost ash blond, emerged into the light and began to wash itself. The man crossed the room in his stockinged feet and picked it up with one enormous hand around its neck, so that its head protruded from his fist and its legs dangled. The man came back towards them, proffered the ferret in his fist for Rachel’s admiration.
‘You can stroke him if you like,’ he said. ‘Just the back of him, like. Not his head. He bites.’
She touched the spine of the thing gingerly, with a single finger, feeling shiny silk.
‘He likes a good hunt, this one,’ Ernest said admiringly.
He picked up the dead rat by its tail, moved out of the room, down the corridor into the kitchen. She watched him fling it into the ever-burning fire of the Rayburn, without ceremony.
‘It’s a lot more humane than making the poor bugger eat poison and die in agony. At least he gets a fair fight. Anyway, that’s what happens to rats in this house. Doesn’t work quite so well in the barns.’
There was no ceremony in the brief exchange of a note, taken from Ernest’s pocket, palmed by the man and tucked into his own. He grinned a toothless grin, whistled for his dog and went out of the back door. She could think of nothing but a character from a film, utterly believable at the time of watching, but better never seen in real life. The strong smell of animal remained behind him. There was an insignificant sound from the Rayburn, as if it had belched. Ernest ambled around from sink to stove, filling and placing a kettle for tea, chatting as he went.
‘Don’t take it unkindly that Grace and Ivy upped and left you asleep,’ he said. ‘Grace said you looked so sweet it was a shame to wake you, and Ivy can’t be around the rat man. They’ve only gone to the farmers’ market. Not that they needed anything, just to get out the way. But I took the liberty of waking you because I know you like to know how things work.’
She began to relax a little, realising that she had been wound up by the shift from the sun in the Garden of Eden to the relatively dark, animal-smelling area of the silent living room, with its gap-filled skirting boards and the hollow floors and walls with conduits to all parts of the house. A rat could come and go and hide as it pleased in a house like this. Her father would have stopped up those cracks, those holes, years ago. No rat would ever be allowed in. He would have covered every board with carpet, fitted every hole and crack with plaster and wood cement, made everything smooth. The making of tea reminded her of all those things for which she felt gratitude. Maybe it would not be such a good idea to bring him here, as Ivy had suggested, after all, although he would revel in a certain kind of superiority which he might enjoy. At least his humdrum little house was hermetically sealed against draughts and pests, down to the smallest fly, and he did not have to take in paying guests in order to finance his pigs and cows. Grace would charm him, Ernest would reassure. It would be fine.
Ernest made the tea, handing her a mug already laced with milk and sugar, and it seemed churlish to ask for another without it. Nice to have sweetness, once in a while. She found her voice at last, heard it sounding clipped in this quiet, ticking, humming room, which was always warm, never hot, even with the Rayburn always about its business of heating the water, the oven, the whole house. The sunshine outside no longer appealed. How lovely it would be in winter. She was already thinking of the pleasures of winter.
‘Well, fancy Grace and Ivy being scared of the rat man and the ferret. I thought those two weren’t frightened of anything.’
Ernest grinned and scratched his head. ‘Reckon it’s pride. They could neither of them kill a rat. They’re too quick. Target’s too small, however you practise. Me, I can’t kill anything. So them two had to learn, but they never could manage a rat. That’s why they scare them. You can only get it right with practice. Like that ferret. No finesse, my girls.’
‘Wouldn’t a cat be better?’ she said.
He shook his head. ‘Maybe. We don’t have cats or a dog any more. Can’t risk it. That’s where Ivy got her first practice.’
‘Got her what?’
‘Practice, I said. What did I say?’ He shrugged and drank his tea, forgetting where he was, drifting away and coming back.
‘Not that there’s any choice, you know. There never is. If the beast’s got to go, it’s got to go. Like road kill. Kinder to everyone in the end. He shouldn’t have killed the swans and made such a mess. Would you like some more tea? What time is it? They said they’d buy a leg of lamb for supper, that’ll be nice. Crazy that we can’t eat our own cows.’
There was the sound of the car, heard from a distance, stopping noisily outside. Slamming doors, laughter, a flurry of footsteps over the gravel, the omnipresence of Ivy and Grace laden with bags, coming in with a chorus of apologies, chirping like the sparrows which had started their own early evening chorus in the creeper round the door. They exploded into the kitchen, bringing in colour and warmth and noise. Trailing behind them, as if uncertain whether they should, were two blond young men with knapsacks. Paying guests.
‘Oh Lord,’ Grace said. ‘We thought we’d only be an hour, and the pair of you would still be asleep. Sorry. The rat man’s gone, hurrah! Saw him on the road. Just as well we’re late, because we picked up these two in the lane. They came in late last night, and they’ve been walking since dawn and they’re shagged out. They’re German, by the way,’ she added.
Ernest beamed at them.
‘Guten Tag. Ich hoffe Sie hatten einen schönen Tag. Aus welchem Teil Deutschlands stammen Sie?’ he said slowly.
‘I got some organic wine,’ Ivy said, flourishing a bottle. ‘Therefore entirely harmless. Anyone?’
‘Do you have beer?’ the blondest of the two asked. ‘We are from Berlin.’
Ernest clapped his hands, looking delighted.
‘Berlin ist eine sehr schone Stadt,’ he said.
‘Do we have beer?’ Grace said. ‘Do pigs have wings?’
‘What …?’
‘Never mind,’ she said. ‘Sit down, sit down.’
‘Berlin people are very nice,’ Ernest said.
A party atmosphere was prevailing, as if the departure of the man and his dog was an excuse. Not that Grace or Ivy ever needed an excuse to celebrate. Ernest needed company and they had brought it home. He was lit with smiles. Rachel wanted to join in, wanted to please. One of the paying guests was looking at her shorts with frank appreciation, and it was that and the remembered smell of the ferret which made her murmur she must have a shower before a drink. She went upstairs to her room, washed in the tiny bathroom, and found a clean shirt in the bag she had dumped on the bed. Her mobile phone lay accusingly beneath it, reminding her that she must check on her father.
Two messages. The surprise was that the first was from her father. He hated leaving messages, hated mobile phones and refused to have one. The sound of his stuttering voice alarmed her as much as the fact of the message itself.
Been a bit poorly, his voice said. Someone picked my pocket on the train. I had a turn, had to go to hospital. I was there all night, or was it two? Can’t remember. I’ll be all right. Just wanted to let you know before anyone else does. ’Bye.
He never told her when he was ill. Rachel checked the number. Number not available. She pressed out his home number: no reply. He was not at home; where the hell was he? She was furious with him. Typical to leave a message to worry her sick, without giving her any opportunity to do anything about it. Maybe he was at his neighbour’s; he had one good neighbour; they went shopping on ebay for fun. They would shop for a bag of nails. She did not have the neighbour’s number. It was in a book, in the flat in London. Damn, damn, damn. Maybe the second message would explain, but the second message was not from him. It was from Carl Schneider.
Any evening next week would suit him fine, for dinner or drinks or whatever she wanted. Please.
Rachel sat on the bed with the phone in her hand, hearing sounds of laughter through the open window, wishing she had not touched the thing, wanting to go back downstairs and join in and knowing she could not. She found herself shoving the phone out of sight. Ivy stood in the doorway, proffering a glass of wine.
‘What’s the matter, love? We’re missing you down there. Dad’s embarrassing everyone with his little bit of German. He’s probably going to give them his version of the war. We thought we might take a stroll to the lake, but it’d be pointless without you.’
‘It’s my father. Left me a message. He’s ill, or he wouldn’t leave a message at all.’
Part of Rachel wanted to ignore it. Then she remembered how he had looked when last she saw him. Old and grey. She had forgotten everything else. He was her father.
‘What exactly did he say?’
‘Something stupid. He said someone picked his pocket on the train. He must mean the other night, going home from us. Says he went to hospital.’
Ivy slumped against the door, then came and sat down beside Rachel.
‘On the train? Oh, poor thing,’ she said. ‘Are you sure he said the train? He didn’t say anything else?’
‘No.’
‘But he’s all right? He must be, surely, to phone at all.’
‘He probably is. It’s just that I can’t get the number he called from. I’ll have to go back and find out where he is. He’s not at home, probably at the neighbour’s and I don’t have the neighbour’s number with me. If he’s in hospital I don’t know which hospital. If I go now I’ll be back at the flat by nine. Sorry, sounds like I’m missing a party.’
Ivy handed her the wine. Rachel shook her head.
‘Wait until the morning and I’ll come with you,’ Ivy said.
‘Shit, I forgot that. How will you get back tomorrow without the car?’
Ivy put her arm around her. She felt hot from the sun and there was the dry sweetness of wine on her breath.
‘Same as I always do without you. Lift to the station, train. Are you sure he said he was pickpocketed on the train?’
‘Yes.’
‘The bastards. The fucking parasites,’ Ivy said, sounding somehow relieved, and then hesitated. ‘I could come with you now, if you like.’
Rachel felt grateful for that, but shook her head. She had heard the hesitation and that was enough.
Your father is yours, and mine is mine.