Relative Strangers Read online

  ‘Room alright?’ Jude asked, presently.

  ‘Fine thanks.’

  ‘I hope so,’ Jude said. ‘You might need somewhere...’ His uncompleted sentence articulated all the awkwardness inherent in the difficult family gathering and acknowledged that for Mitch, not even nominally related, a safe haven might be necessary.

  It was true that family association was unexplored territory for Mitch. He hadn’t a single blood relative that he knew of. Family had always been the kind of thing that other people had, like cancer. Everyone he had trusted - foster-parents, social-workers - had come and gone and he had developed a species of fierce self-sufficiency as a defence against disappointment. Even in the face of Jude and Heather’s child-like ingenuousness he still kept a part of himself aloof, at a safe distance, a characteristic that Jude, perhaps subconsciously, recognised now. ‘No reason why you should put up with all this crap,’ he said, glumly.

  They had been, from the start, touchingly open with Mitch, hiding nothing of their weird, whimsical lives while asking nothing about his buffeted, dysfunctional past. He, like a one-way valve, had assimilated them, a watchful, impassive sentinel, an alien come to earth. At first he had though Heather was an odd-ball, full of daydreams and peculiar enthusiasms, girlish and a bit spoilt, and indeed she could be selfish at times. But it was the selfishness of a child; an unconscious, almost natural self-absorption. It had gradually awoken in Mitch a protective, avuncular instinct; she must be indulged. Jude had awed him at first, of course; the great man, spangled and wild-haired star of the seventies pop group, now a successful producer and songwriter with his own company, famous for his altruistic embrace of charitable causes. People thought it a stunt – Mitch, indeed, had cynically anticipated it to be no more than a veneer - but now he knew better. Earlier in the year he had seen for himself Jude cross-legged on the concrete floor of a bush clinic cradling a tiny baby while its life ebbed away. There had been no cameras, no journalists; his anguish had been real. They had hidden nothing from him but Mitch, in an instinct of self-preservation, had retained a degree of distance, an emotional obduracy, which they, in their turn, respected.

  ‘Well, I might be glad of it,’ Mitch concurred now, thinking of the room, but in fact he didn’t think so. He was already picking up on the tension amongst the family; the moody boy, the inebriated, snappish sister, the bumptious, weasel-faced brother-in-law, the interloping aunt. To his own surprise he was finding it all quite entertaining, like watching a play on a stage, and from the silent, watchful space he had created for himself he rather looked forward to seeing the drama play itself out. It couldn’t touch him, of course, and he wouldn’t let it touch Jude or Heather either, or the child, but it interested him. And anyway, it wasn’t all bad. There was the pleasant, motherly woman who had cooked the dinner and the amiable outsized man, and the girl, Ellie.

  Yes, there was the girl.

  The front door opened and closed and James strode across the gravel towards them, his features and even huge form being quickly absorbed by the black night.

  ‘Evening, gents.’ James distributed brandy balloons amongst them.

  ‘Ah!’ they all sighed appreciatively, the vapour from the spirit mingling with the chill air to bring water to the eyes. Mitch wiped his eyes with his sleeves, James with a handkerchief which glowed faintly like disembodied miasma. Jude allowed the tears to gather on his lower lashes and then to meander down his life-worn cheek. When the brandy was gone James reached into his capacious pocket and produced the bottle, topping them all up again.

  For the first time since they had arrived James felt as though he wasn’t in the way and nothing was expected of him or was being left to him. It was such a relief to be out in the dark, in the quiet, where conversation was superfluous. He liked Jude; he was easy and comfortable, with an utter absence of ego. The sky above them was a riot of stars, lifting away like a dome and the enormous trees reaching up to them, and the wide landscape of the park which he had briefly explored with Ben earlier all seemed to be the right fit for him. There were not many places where a man like him could stretch his arms wide and not knock into something or someone.

  ‘Nice out here’ he said, eventually, summing up eloquently the absence of the chattering women and the pompous, effusive Elliot, June’s hyena-like laugh and even the high-pitched noise of the children, much as he loved them.

  ‘Yeah,’ Jude and Mitch agreed. Tiny threw himself down on the gravel at their feet with a contented sigh.

  Silence reigned between them. They sipped their brandies and smoked and gazed at the stars and took deep draughts of the air. Then, above them, a bedroom light snapped on sending a yellow shaft out into the darkness and bathing them uncomfortably in its glow. By common but unspoken consent they moved out of its pool so that when a figure came to the window, looked out and then opened the window nothing could be seen except the empty drive and the row of motorcars parked neatly on the sweep. But in the stillness of the night the three men couldn’t help over hearing the conversation which ensued.

  Inside the room, June was busy unpacking her suitcase.

  ‘Really, I’m not tired at all, Les. I don’t know why you should be so insistent about us going to bed so early.’

  Les, by the window, drew his pullover over his head. When he emerged his thin, iron-grey hair was mussed and untidy. ‘We needed to leave the family alone for a bit, June. We’re intruders.’

  ‘We are not intruders, Les, and I won’t have you say so. They’re my flesh and blood, remember. And we’ve been invited.’ June opened the wardrobe and began to hang up a number of skirts and several blouses and jackets. ‘I don’t know where you’re going to put your things,’ she lamented. ‘There’s hardly room in here for mine. I don’t know why Belinda gave us this inconvenient room. There were better ones, after all.’

  ‘She doesn’t want us to stay! That’s why. She didn’t invite us, poor girl. She didn’t know where to put herself.’ Les bent down to remove his shoes. ‘Anyway,’ he said, tucking them neatly under a chair, ‘I didn’t bring many clothes, so it won’t matter.’

  ‘I should think she was embarrassed! What a social gaffe! She ought to have invited us from the beginning, and she knows it.’ June was unpacking her toilet bag; jars of cream and tubes of make-up, eye-shadows and lipsticks and pencils, brushes and heated rollers. The dressing table was soon covered.

  ‘Nonsense.’ Les placed his razor, comb and toothbrush on the bedside table. ‘This was always going to be a family do.’

  ‘I keep telling you, Les, I am family.’ June insisted. ‘This house is quite big enough for all of us; it was sheer selfishness to exclude us. When I think of our Sandra, and Mother...’

  ‘June! What do you mean?’ Les, half in and half out of his trousers, smelled a rat. ‘What has it got to do with them?’

  ‘Never you mind, Les. I know what’s due to family even if she doesn’t, that’s all. That girl needs teaching how to carry on and there’s no point expecting Mary to do it. She never had an idea of what was right when it came to entertaining. Mary’s idea of a buffet is a plate of sausage rolls and corned beef sandwiches, and if she’d ever had a dinner party, which I don’t think she ever did, she’d have served up meat and potato pie, like as not.’

  ‘There was nothing wrong with that dinner tonight and anyway, I like meat and potato pie,’ said Les.

  ‘Exactly!’ crowed June, making him feel, uncomfortably, that he had unwittingly proved her point.

  The three men on the gravel sweep avoided each other’s eyes. When Jude swallowed a mouthful of brandy, the noisy closing of his throat made them all gulp to hold back their laughter.

  Up in their bedroom, Les sat on the bed and unbuttoned his shirt slowly.

  ‘We’ll be going home tomorrow. I don’t know why you’re bothering to unpack.’

  ‘We certainly will not be going home, Leslie.’ June set her mouth in a hard line.

  Les stood up and mustered what authority he
could; in his socks and underpants, however, it didn’t amount to much. ‘We can’t stay, June, you must see. They haven’t catered for us. They all brought boxes of groceries; we didn’t bring anything. They’ve had this place booked for months and we haven’t been incorporated into any of their plans. We haven’t paid. We can’t stay if we haven’t paid our way. We’re not wanted, June.’

  ‘You might not be wanted, and who can blame them? You never have anything to say for yourself, you’re a social liability, Les. Go home if you like, I don’t care, but I won’t be coming with you. Now for God’s sake, put your pyjamas on. You look like an oven-ready chicken standing there like that.’

  Les put his pyjamas on and got into bed. The sheets were good quality and crisply laundered, but cold. ‘You can’t mean to stay all week?’

  ‘Certainly I do.’

  Les sighed his defeat. The hard-shelled insensitivity of his wife staggered him. June, sitting at the dressing table, had applied fresh lipstick and was tweaking her hair.

  ‘Aren’t you coming to bed?’ he asked quietly.

  ‘No. I told you, I’m not tired. I’m going back downstairs to join in the fun.’

  The three eaves-droppers heard the bedroom door close and soon afterwards the window was slid shut and the curtains closed. Then the light was extinguished and they were swamped once more in impenetrable darkness. Unconsciously they had been holding their breath but now they breathed out and gave each other mischievous looks, discernible only by the enlarged glow from the whites of their eyes. Mitch lit another cigarette, James replenished the brandy glasses. The rattle of the bottle on the rims of the glasses was the only audible sign of his laughter. Then they all began to shake. Suddenly the tension created by the journey and arrival, the meal and the baby, the overbearing behaviour of Elliot, the over-wrought anxiety of the women all evaporated into the night air. Doubled up, they shuffled quickly away from the building and onto the lawn. Tiny hauled himself to his feet and ambled after them. Arriving blindly at the fountain they perched on the cold stone of its parapet and hooted to the skies.

  In a remote corner of his conscience, James felt sorry for Les; he knew how it felt to be out-manoeuvred by a McKay. But it seemed to him that the family was like a jig-saw which had been pulled apart and stored in a box in a damp place for too long. The pieces had warped and buckled and on reassembly had failed to key into each other in a comfortable fit. The genetic chain which linked them together had become all but obliterated by life’s experiences and by their choices. And yet just here and now, the three of them had made what seemed like a connection which went far beyond the fleshly. These three, linked however remotely to the main family puzzle, had achieved something more intimate than chromosomes alone could create.

  ✽✽✽

  Tansy, Rachel and Ellie had changed into their nightwear. Ellie and Tansy had picked beds adjacent to each other and Rachel gratefully accepted the third, furthest away from the bathroom, it was true, but she put that thought out of her head in her pleasure that they had chosen to share. She hastily re-stuffed her clothes away in the small chest of drawers but left the soft toys in obscurity behind the curtains.

  Tansy, used to dormitory living, had stripped off her clothes without hesitation, only turning her back to the others to remove her bra and shrug into her pyjama top. Her pyjamas were thick brushed cotton, yellow, warm and attractively cute, bearing pictures of puppies and kittens gambolling together in assorted poses. They came with a matching dressing gown which she laid carefully over the wrought iron foot of the bed. Ellie’s pyjamas were expensive, sophisticated; velour, baggy-legged and strappy-topped, in lilac and pink. Passing on her way to the bathroom, Rachel despaired at the over-washed and shapeless cotton-jersey pyjamas she clutched under her arm, knowing full well that the legs were too short, the sleeves frayed and that her stomach would prevent the top and bottoms from meeting properly. She hoisted herself up onto the toilet seat in order to see in the small mirror the enormity of her grossness, taking the roll of her midriff in her hands and trying to fold it inwards, and wondering whether it would hurt beyond her ability to endure if she was to cut it off with a sharp knife. Rebelliously, at the thought, her stomach gave an inward lurch of hunger, and Rachel sat heavily on the toilet seat to delay the awful moment of her emergence. In the bedroom, she could hear the other girls as they nattered brightly.

  Tansy had chosen one of Ellie’s CDs and a velvety voice crooned softly in the room.

  ‘How late can you phone your friend?’ Tansy asked, folding her clothes up carefully and shaking open a white scented laundry bag for her discarded underwear.

  ‘Oh anytime. She has her mobile on all the time.’

  ‘So if we go down soon, and check out the hall, you could do it?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Tansy sat on the bed next to Ellie. ‘I wish you could tell me what the problem is. Is it very bad?’ Despite the three year age gap between them Tansy felt herself slipping into the role of older and wiser cousin; it was something about Ellie’s air of vulnerability which made it natural, along with Tansy’s adoption of a motherly role towards her brothers after April’s death.

  ‘Rob’s the problem. He’s pretending to fancy Caro, that’s my friend. She knows things about me, that is, she thinks she knows things that I just don’t want him to find out.’

  ‘Surely, if she’s your friend..?’

  ‘You’d think so, wouldn’t you? But I just can’t be sure of her.’ Ellie found herself relieved to confide in Tansy, who couldn’t possibly understand the complexity of the situation or the potential gravity of it, but seemed, at least, to care.

  ‘We could get some things together for a sort of midnight feast. Make hot chocolate, maybe? It’d be fun and… a good excuse for going downstairs.’

  ‘Yes alright. Shall we go now?’

  ‘We ought to wait for Rachel.’

  ‘Oh. Yes. I suppose so. She’s taking a long time though.’

  Tansy dropped her voice to a whisper. ‘Poor thing. Such horrible clothes. Did you notice?’ Ellie nodded. ‘I’ll give her a knock. Rachel? Rachel, are you alright?’

  ‘Oh, yes,’ Rachel replied, jumping up and pulling the toilet chain. ‘Just coming.’ She splashed water noisily in the basin to denote the washing of hands and then, with a deep breath, unlocked the bathroom door. ‘You’ll never guess what Mum has done!’ she cried, as though the whole thing was a hilarious joke. ‘She’s only packed my old pyjamas! I don’t think I’ve worn these for years!’ Tansy threw Ellie a look. Neither of them was fooled for a moment.

  ‘What is she like?’ Tansy said, quickly. ‘I expect it’s because she works full time. Things are bound to be a bit disorganised.’ Tansy knew that her remark sounded hollow; Miriam worked full time but their lives were organised to the nth degree.

  ‘It’s nice and warm in this room. I don’t think you’ll be chilly,’ Ellie offered.

  ‘No, I don’t suppose so.’ Rachel made towards her bed. The sooner she could hide under the sheets, the happier she would be.

  ‘We thought we’d go and make some hot chocolate,’ Tansy said. ‘Are you coming?’

  ‘Oh.’ Rachel hovered, half in and half out of bed. ‘Isn’t that very…’ she stopped herself from saying ‘fattening’ and instead said, ‘I mean, do you think we ought to check that there’s enough milk?’ At home, milky drinks or bowls of cereal were never allowed at night. Ruth insisted that what Daddy called ‘the sacrosanct pint’ be kept intact for the morning.

  ‘Oh, I suppose so. I hadn’t thought. I’ve been longing for some hot chocolate since the moment I arrived,’ Ellie said.

  ‘It’ll be fine. I’m going to put my hoody on over my pyjamas. Rachel, do you want to wear my dressing gown?’

  ‘Oh yes, thank you.’ Rachel beamed her gratitude as she put it on. The material wrapped all the way round her and fell down to her feet, hiding her half-mast pyjamas and her exposed belly. ‘You are kind, Tansy.’

  The thre
e of them made their way along the attic corridor. The door with Rob’s name on it stood open. The light from the landing showed his bag, still packed, upon his bed, but no further sign of occupation. Ellie toyed with the idea of slipping back upstairs and having a rummage through his things; maybe if she could find something to hold over him… But she hated herself for the thought, and in any case, illicit telephone calls were enough to be dealing with, for now. Further along the corridor, noises from behind a closed door indicated that Ben and Todd were heavily involved in some game. Ben was shouting at the top of his voice, a narrative of blood-curdling deeds involving a variety of sharp weapons and an unfortunate victim.

  ‘And then he stuck the sword in him, like this, and he twisted it round in his guts, like that, and he took his axe out and he chopped off his arms, chop chop, like that.’

  ‘Like that,’ echoed Todd.

  ‘Ahhh!’ sighed Tansy, ‘Bless!’

  The cacophony of a highly mechanised war emanated from the study. Rob’s forces were massed in a wood and were hurling mortars and ballistic missiles across an improbably green sward of grass onto the enemy troops, who cried out in authentic agony. Toby looked on, aching for a turn, but unwilling to ask again since his previous request had been less than graciously received. In fact, Rob’s ‘Oh, fuck off, will you?’ suggested forcefully that the chances of using the computer were seriously small.

  Tansy put her head round the door.

  ‘Hello you two,’ she said, brightly, ‘midnight feast?’

  ‘Yeah!’ Toby yelled, cheering up. Rob snorted derisively. Toby jumped up from his chair and made for the door. Unfortunately he caught his foot in one of the trailing wires and the screen went ominously black.

  ‘For fuck’s sake,’ Rob snarled.

  ‘I’m sorry, Rob.’ Toby blanched. ‘I didn’t see the cable.’

  ‘Level twenty-three!’ Rob was incandescent with fury.