Relative Strangers Page 18

  ‘Ruth was devastated when April died, as devastated as Simon, really. At the funeral she behaved very oddly – as if she was the chief mourner.’

  ‘I know April was an amazing person and I probably ought to be flattered but I’m not April and I like to choose my own friends and, to be honest, some of the stuff Ruth wanted to talk about was so intimate. I just wasn’t ready for that level of relationship.’

  Heather nodded, sympathetically. ‘Mmm, I see. In Ruth’s defence, I think she’d invested a lot in Christmas. I don’t mean money, I mean that she’d planned and prepared and she really wanted it to be a good visit. And when you all upped and left, I think it left things very flat for them.’

  ‘I can understand that, and I tried to explain at the time,’ Miriam picked at a mark on her trousers with a flawlessly manicured nail. She sighed. ‘I suppose I’m going to have to have it all out with her.’

  Heather shook her head. ‘I shouldn’t think so. It isn’t the way we do things.’

  ‘But at the end of the day, what I can’t understand is that she should expect me to put her and her family, above my own mother.’

  ‘She fell ill, didn’t she?’

  ‘Yes, and when we got the news, of course, I had to go to her.’

  ‘Perhaps Ruth thinks it was just an excuse.’

  Miriam considered. ‘I’ll admit that in a nasty, selfish way that I’m not proud of I was glad to have an excuse to get away. Even without it, perhaps I couldn’t have lasted the distance. But the illness was quite genuine and while I’m not close to my mother, of course I know where my duty lies. What would you have done, in my shoes? What would Ruth?’

  ‘You didn’t take the presents they’d bought for you.’

  Miriam flicked this away as an irrelevance. ‘That was an oversight.’

  ‘Ruth feels it keenly, I think. She inferred from the fact that you left them behind that you expected them to be worthless.’

  ‘Oh dear. Yes, I see.’ Miriam sighed.

  Heather looked at her watch. ‘Nice as this is, I think we ought to make a move. If we go home without Belinda’s groceries, there’ll be trouble, and the shops may close early in the country.’

  Miriam began to gather her bags and parcels together.

  ‘Yes. I mustn’t alienate another McKay sister, must I?’ she laughed, ruefully.

  ✽✽✽

  Calm descended at Hunting Manor. Starlight and Mitch slept, the effects of their disturbed night and the morning’s exertions catching up on them. Robert, too, after a shower and a change of pyjamas, a light meal and two of his tablets, had gone back to bed. He had complained querulously all the while to Mary, that he had been left cruelly alone, had got lost in a strange house, heard angelic music and finally freed a statue from a fountain. Mary supervised his toilet in silence while Les and James between them washed, dried and dressed the frail, trembling body of her husband in some clean pyjamas. Belinda fetched his breakfast and Les sat patiently by Robert’s side while he ate the meal with a shaking hand. Then the curtains had been drawn on the bright midday and Robert had composed himself to sleep, Les remaining in faithful attendance in the blue armchair, both men as still and as silent as corpses.

  Downstairs the boys and the men prepared for their expeditionary journey to the sea. They gathered in an assortment of inappropriate clothes, before being sent away by Simon for long trousers, stout shoes or boots, waterproofs and water containers.

  ‘Oh Uncle Simon! Must we? Waterproofs? It isn’t even raining!’ complained Ben, stumping back up the stairs. Once reassembled - appropriately attired - they were dispersed again for ‘provisions’, arriving together pell-mell in the kitchen to beg for fruit, biscuits, packets of crisps and slices of cake to sustain them on their excursion. Elliot, from his place at the table, frowned up at them all as they gathered around Belinda.

  ‘Going to join us, Elliot?’ asked James, good-naturedly, slipping two chocolate biscuits and an apple into his good pocket. ‘Big expedition. Derring-do and the like?’

  ‘I don’t seem to be required,’ Elliot replied, huffily.

  ‘Oh, come on!’ James laughed, but Elliot returned to his computer. James and Belinda exchanged a look.

  Finally, in a frenzy of excitement, they set off. Simon in an ankle length green waxed cattleman’s coat and a matching sou’wester set as a rakish angle, James in his ordinary trousers and an old blue anorak whose zip was broken and which had one pocket hanging off, Jude in a denim jacket and baseball cap. Toby and Todd were smartly dressed in matching thick twill breeches, ski jackets and expensive new walking boots. Ben wore pilled blue tracksuit bottoms, a yellow cagoule and Kermit Wellingtons bearing the name Chelsea Witherspoon in permanent ink on the sides. Tiny lumbered behind them without enthusiasm. He viewed any kind of exercise as a tiresome bore.

  ‘What a sight we are!’ laughed Simon as he herded his troops across the sweep and round the back of the house towards the woods. The day was clear and bright but a brisk wind whipped in from the sea. The tops of the trees clashed and shivered as it passed, making a noise like a distant round of applause, and showers of golden leaves cascaded down onto the lawns, glinting as they caught the sun.

  The party stopped briefly to argue over the map. Ben knew the way, having explored the previous evening with his father, but Toby wanted to plot their course and was laboriously working out the scale in order to calculate their ETA. Ben hopped and jumped around him impatiently, pointing to the path and squeaking with excitement and frustration. Todd practised his fighting moves in case they were set upon by bandits. Finally Toby was allowed to hold the map as he was the oldest, but Ben was entrusted with the compass, and Uncle Simon even promised to show him how to use it, later. Todd went puce and opened his mouth to roar his objection but Jude quickly gave him a long stick and told him its use would be imperative in order to ward off attack from bears.

  ‘Now men,’ Simon said as they set off down the lawn, ‘I want you to keep your eyes peeled, in case we find something momentous and important.’

  ‘What?’ Todd practiced peeling his eyes by lifting the lids with his fingers.

  ‘The family tree, of course!’ James said. ‘It’ll be somewhere round here, mark my words.’

  Back in the house, silence reigned. The house seemed to settle and relax on its ancient foundations, the peace and stillness ebbing out into every corner, to take back possession. Tension exhaled from every room; furniture rested, draperies drowsed, even the boiler slumbered. Mary fussed and tutted as she mended Robert’s torn pyjamas in the warm kitchen. Belinda prepared vegetables for the evening meal and worried that Miriam might fail to return with the extra lamb steaks she needed.

  ‘They won’t be as nice, anyway,’ she moaned. ‘They’ll hardly get any time at all in the marinade.’

  ‘You haven’t stopped all morning,’ Mary chided, gently. ‘I don’t know how many sittings of breakfast you cooked, and now you’re straight on to dinner.’

  ‘The family has to be fed, Mum,’ Belinda said, ‘you know that.’

  Ruth, supposing she ought to do something useful, toured the children’s rooms and collected together two wash-loads of travel-stained clothes, grubby socks and underwear. There was chaos in the boys’ room. Clothes were flung about anyhow, pyjamas discarded on the floor, books and toys strewn everywhere, and the debris of a midnight feast crumbily evident. One of the beds was wet – a drink had been spilled. She stripped off the sheet and threw back the duvet to air. The whole room smelled musty and stale, of sweaty, excited boy. The windows were painted shut so she walked along the corridor and opened the door onto the roof terrace to let in the breeze.

  She stood for a while looking out over the countryside, breathing the sharp damp autumn scents. She knew that she could easily stand here for hours, lost in her own thoughts. She could allow them to spiral her down into a morbid depression, pressing the weight in her chest down through strata of hopelessness and waste, of poverty, of loneliness and wr
etchedness. And deep in her core there fermented a scalding cauldron of angry disappointment. All she had wanted, as a child, was to be allowed to be part of the business. Her father’s world - of trucks and motorways and greasy rags and long hours in the cab - had seemed so inviting to her; a big, important, wide world. She had clamoured to be allowed to accompany him on trips in his lorry during the holidays. She would be good, she had promised, not get in the way, not ask for anything, pass him his sandwiches. She had asked to be allowed to go to the yard on Saturdays, longing to potter in the tiny cubicle of the office, to swivel in her father’s chair. But he had brushed her aside, had never even known her dream - to be his son in all but gender. Not the reluctant son that Simon became but an eager son, a capable, competent son, who could learn from him and take her place at the helm of McKay’s Haulage. But he had dismissed her. The yard was no place for a girl. She would be better off at home with her mother. Simon, on the other hand, was hauled off to the yard when he could barely walk, was taken on day jobs up and down the M1, had slept in the cab and been shown how to load and secure a cargo before he started secondary school.

  How she had envied him; then, and since. Wanted - fiercely coveted - everything he had.

  It wasn’t fair, she considered, when you looked at Simon and her sisters. Out of them all she was easily the most intelligent, the most dynamic, and yet they had left her utterly behind. All her efforts and struggles had achieved absolutely nothing.

  Still clutching at the armful of laundry, she perched on the wide stone parapet and looked miserably down at the gravel path which circled the house and the roofs of the single story outbuildings below, and felt completely alone.

  June crept around the bedrooms assessing their relative sizes and facilities, nosing and prying. She pondered the collection of tablets and treatments, supplements and suppositories which cluttered the dressing table top in Ruth’s room. She noted that one of the twin beds was immaculately made, almost as though it had not been slept in. The other was tumbled and askew and a grey, shapeless t shirt evidently relegated to sleeping duties was scrumpled on the pillow. She wondered which bed belonged to whom, or if they had both squashed into the one. It would explain why Ruth had slept so badly. In Heather and Jude’s room she remarked with disapproval the disorder of clothes cast everywhere, untidy baby paraphernalia and the extremely tangled bed. The idea of the two of them locked together in a knot of limbs and long hanks of hair made June shudder slightly. Then, proceeding quietly in the direction of Mitch’s apartments she found what she was looking for; two single rooms, former nurseries, one with barred windows, not en-suite but close to the master bathroom, and prettily furnished. One of those would be fine, she thought. Finally, returning to the main landing, she opened another bedroom door to discover a nicely proportioned double room with shower and toilet. It was unoccupied and while she couldn’t help fizzing with indignation that this superior accommodation had not been offered to her, yet she was glad to think that her own flesh and blood would benefit from it.

  She ascended to the attics. There were two large unoccupied rooms and at least three spare single ones on the top floor. It was clear as day there was plenty of space left in the house and Belinda was only to be condemned for her small-minded selfishness.

  The girls and boys were all impossibly untidy; their mothers ought to be ashamed of them. Rob was still in bed, at well past lunch time! He groaned and turned over when she opened his door and switched on the light. He wore no pyjamas and directed an expletive at her which had to be heard to be believed.

  ‘You’re a very rude boy,’ she said, vehemently, as she closed his door.

  Her voice in the corridor roused Ruth from her reverie. She stepped back through the doorway. ‘What are you doing up here?’ There was more challenge in her voice than she had intended. June looked momentarily discomfited before spying the laundry in Ruth’s arms.

  ‘The same as you: looking for washing. I thought I’d help out.’

  ‘Hmm.’ Ruth breathed, doubtfully, turning back to the view. June stepped out to join her. ‘Looks like we’re needed here after all,’ she crowed. ‘Les is sitting with your father while the rest of you are all out enjoying yourselves.’

  ‘There are plenty of people willing and able to sit with him,’ Ruth re-joined, acidly. ‘Les doesn’t have to sit with Dad if he doesn’t want to, I’m sure. God knows we’re not short of people here, are we?’

  ‘Well there weren’t enough people on hand to stop him wandering off, were there, dear? Ha ha ha!’ June laughed. ‘It seems to me that it should be a case of ‘the more the merrier’.’

  ‘It seems to me that that isn’t for you to decide.’ Ruth kept her eyes on the vista.

  June sniffed. ‘Far be it from me to criticise, but common politeness would suggest that we should have been included from the beginning. Thankfully Elliot has made good the deficit of some people’s bad manners.’

  ‘Elliot isn’t the head of this family,’ Ruth said, ‘although he may act as though he were.’

  ‘He’s the head of the family firm, which is much the same thing,’ June said mildly, smoothing her hair against the breeze. ‘I’m the only genuine McKay still working there, protecting the family interests. I think I’m owed something for that, don’t you? He does, anyway, and where I feel that I can be of use to the family I’m prepared to suffer any kind of rudeness and insult. I know my duty, even if no one else does.’

  ‘Family isn’t about duty,’ Ruth retorted, but June had marched off down the corridor, bristling with self-righteousness.

  Ruth fumed as she filled the machine with the first load, throwing in Starlight’s sodden clothes and the wet sheet. As though she needed a lecture from June about the meaning of family, she seethed.

  As a history graduate Ruth was familiar with the sociological origins of family. At one time, in ages past, it had been about security and mutual protection, clans living and touring the hunting grounds together, or, later, working the land. Later men and women made judicious choices for the furtherance of titles, trades and traditions; a blacksmith’s son would become a blacksmith in his turn. A blacksmith’s daughter might marry a carter or a woodsman, someone who would shore up the blacksmith’s business. The family formed the hub of economic security. But industrialisation, and the romantic movement, had interrupted the trend. People worked outside of the family at repetitive and unskilled labour. The mill, factory and shipyard became the economic centres and people became dependent on them, and on their employers and workmates rather than on their families for security and for society. At the same time young people began to marry for love, through choice rather than through expediency, sometimes alienating their families. The welfare state came to mean that no child need carry the financial burden of their parents. They were, as she had said to June, entirely free from duty of that sort. Family, now, was about choice, not necessity, and needed so much more than just tradition to hold it together. But the question presented itself to Ruth as she sorted the remaining laundry into heaps according to colour: what else was it than tradition that had brought this family together now? The McKays traditionally made much of anniversaries and birthdays, the celebration of feasts both religious and pagan; Christmas, Easter, Halloween, Bonfire Night. It was expected, like so many other ways they did things, stained into them, like indelible dye in wool. The McKays did the ‘done’ thing; wore poppies for remembrance and hats in church, and clean knickers in case they got knocked over. They ate Parkin on November 5th, pancakes on Shrove Tuesday, and fish on Good Friday. They closed their curtains on the day of a neighbour’s funeral. She’d despised it all and tried not to comply with all their silly customs, had tried, recently, to distance herself from them all. But doing things differently made her feel too uncomfortable, as if she was wearing somebody else’s underwear. She felt awkward, out-on-a-limb and friendless and her body would respond with a bout of illness as though it had been infected in her attempt to cut part of it away. It wa
s as though myriad familial threads connected her and pulled her inexorably back. Then she would cravenly buy Parkin, or make pancakes, and despise herself.

  She could barely contain herself as she entered the kitchen. ‘That woman!’ she spat out. ‘Do you know she had the front to suggest to me that we weren’t capable of looking after dad without them?’

  Elliot tapped busily at his laptop. The table was strewn with papers and files. Mary sighed and tucked her needle for safety through a fold of the material. ‘Your father’s like a wayward child,’ she said. ‘He doesn’t know where he is, most of the time. It is wearing, a constant responsibility. Frankly, I am grateful for help, from any quarter.’

  ‘Exactly my thinking,’ Elliot said, an edge of triumph to his voice.

  ‘Pity we’re not mind-readers, then,’ Ruth muttered.

  ‘What are you making, Belinda?’ Mary tried to change the subject.

  ‘Meringues. I’ve heard that there is no better way to cook them than in an Aga, so I thought I’d give it a go. We can have them for dessert with raspberries and cream.’

  ‘Delicious. Raspberries are James’ favourite soft fruit.’ Ruth said with a brightness she didn’t feel.

  ‘I know,’ said Belinda.

  ‘I don’t like raspberries,’ said Elliot, ‘or meringues.’

  ‘Good. All the more for us.’ Ruth said sharply.

  ‘Meringues were a McKay Sunday treat.’ Mary smiled. ‘And baked egg custard, rice pudding...’

  Ruth sighed.

  ‘Very cosy,’ Elliot said, under his breath.

  Belinda changed the subject again. ‘How were things upstairs, Ruth? Any sign of my son?’

  ‘No, still sleeping. One of the boys’ beds was wet. We ought to ban drinks upstairs.’ She suddenly felt wretched and hollow.