Relative Strangers Read online

  James, left alone at the back of the car, surveyed the contents of the boot. For such a large man – he was easily six foot four or five and wide of girth – it was amazing how frequently he went completely unnoticed. It didn’t perturb him at all. ‘Anonymous’, he liked to say, in that quirky, humorous way he had, ‘is my middle name.’ He began to touch the handles of bags, cases and carriers, tentatively lifting coats and shifting boxes. Inevitably, whichever he chose to bring in first would be wrong. There would be a design, a scheme, some obvious way to proceed which, to Ruth, who had packed the car, would be self-evident, but to James, now, remained a riddle.

  Suddenly Ben was by his side, then in his arms, propelled by excitement, rendered almost to tears by intensity of feeling. He was a flurry of skinny arms and legs and big, emotional eyes. ‘Dad! Dad!’ Ben wheezed into his father’s ear, ‘you must come and see. It’s magic, Dad! There’s a piano, a grand piano, and stairs, and scones and secrets and everything!’

  James squeezed his son in sympathy. ‘Everything!’ he echoed, breathlessly, ‘will you show me?’

  ‘Yes I’ll show you. It’s quite alright. There’s nothing creepy at all.’ Ben slithered out of his father’s arms and grabbed the meaty hand in his own Doulton-delicate grasp. ‘And can you bring Rachel’s things up? She wants to get changed immediately, in case the others come.’

  Together they began burrowing into the boot, James shouldering bags and grabbing boots, Ben manfully struggling with the box of board games and toys. Once in the hall they dumped everything except for the old suitcase which contained their clothes. Taking only a cursory look around James followed his son up the wide staircase, along a corridor and through a narrow door. At the top of a slender flight of spiral stairs they were just in time to see Rachel, dressed only in her underwear, disappear shrieking through one of the bedroom doors. James noted, with some surprise, that his daughter was wearing a bra, and, with less surprise, that the elastic of her knicker-legs had disappeared into the cleft between the cheeks of her bottom.

  ‘Ben! Ben! Is it them? Is it them?’ she was shouting urgently through the closed door.

  ‘No, it’s only me and Dad,’ replied Ben, pushing at the door and indicating to James that they should slide the suitcase into the gap.

  ‘Unpack your things carefully, Rachel. Try not to crumple all the rest. All our clothes are in that case. I’ll come back for it in a while, love. Alright?’ James spoke through the doorway, waiting patiently for a response from his daughter before turning back to Ben, who was hopping impatiently from one foot to the other. ‘Right Ben. Come on. Show me everything. Everything! But especially the piano, right? And the scones.’

  ✽✽✽

  Simon guided the people-carrier through the Buckinghamshire lanes. It was a journey he could make on auto-pilot, now. He navigated it every Friday afternoon and Sunday evening. The children seemed happy at the school but Simon felt guilty every time he dropped them off. They ought to be at home with him and April, but life had not allowed him such simplicity.

  He had their bags stowed in the rear of the car. They had packed them the previous weekend. He had helped them, of course, but the responsibility of it has been theirs. It was a policy he had evolved even with little Todd since April’s death had left him to cope alone two years before. Her death had impressed him again with the fickleness of people. In the end, he found, you could only rely on yourself. It was a lesson he had learned the hard way but he would teach it to his children gently if he could. So he had casually suggested to twelve year old Toby that perhaps three pairs of underpants might not be sufficient for a whole week and patiently explained to six year old Todd why he could not take his bicycle even though he had just learned to ride it without its stabilisers. ‘It won’t go in the car, Todd, and no one else will have one, so it won’t be fair.’

  ‘I’d share,’ stammered Todd, his eyes swimming.

  ‘I know you would, son,’ said Simon, ruffling Todd’s hair. He was so like his mother that it hurt Simon to look at him sometimes.

  ‘These swimming trunks, though,’ he said, tucking them into a corner of Todd’s hold-all, ‘are an excellent idea. We can find a local pool, or perhaps we might even try the sea.’

  Tansy had needed no assistance. She was capable and responsible; old for her thirteen years.

  They had gone out and bought new walking boots and assorted outdoor gear and had clandestine burgers and chips for lunch while Miriam was at the gym. The children were surprisingly enthusiastic about the holiday, about seeing their cousins, and their sense of anticipation overcame to a certain extent his own reservations. Family was something he had learned was safest kept at arm’s length. He knew Miriam was dreading it, coming along under sufferance and likely, even at this late stage, to find a reason why she could not, after all, accompany them.

  ‘The whole family thing is a foreign language to me,’ she had said. She had played no practical role in the holiday preparations, dismissing Belinda’s emailed list of the provisions she requested that they supply and sent him with her own to Fortnum’s. She had undertaken only to be at High Wycombe station at a certain time so that he could pick her up before they got onto the M40.

  The thing had been arranged for months but now it was upon him he quailed at the ordeal to come. The idea of spending a week with his father was not appealing; it brought back too many memories of miserable, queasy journeys in Lorries and heated arguments about his future. His failure to go into the family business had created a rift between him and his father that time had not healed. His father’s rage had filled their house for years, like a terrible stench; he had been quite out of control. His mother had wept and wrung her hands, and crept between them, begging and pleading with Simon to reconsider in order to placate his father’s wrath. Belinda had cowered and kept her distance, Ruth had escaped to University. Only Heather had seemed unaffected by the turmoil; she would sit up in her room cutting shapes out of empty cereal packets, snipping and sticking and sellotaping intricate models together, humming gaily to herself as she worked. She alone had been immune from his father’s anger. How Simon had envied her his father’s unconditional love.

  He knew that Mary harboured a fiercer love for him than she had for the three girls, a love which had not been quenched by the years - almost ten years - he had spent incommunicado wandering in the States, or by his failure to invite her to his wedding. The birth of Tansy and Toby had taken place without the benefit of Mary’s support, but she loved them, too. All this she had forgiven him, along with his occasional appeals to her for cash in times of straitened circumstances. Christmas and birthday cards, finding their way to him sometimes months late had reassured him that he was remembered by his mother even if his father’s signature never appeared on them. Finally, in the early nineties he had been swept up in the wave of new e-commerce ventures, a wave he had managed to ride out and up and over to success. Only then had he returned home in a smart car, wearing expensive clothes, with a beautiful and devoted wife and two cherubic children in tow. His sense of justification upon entering the old house and finding everything the same and only himself so much more confident and self-assured had been saved from becoming an insufferable crowing triumph only by the sight of his mother, so much aged, by the tearful way she embraced April and the children and not least by the heart-rending joy with which she enfolded himself back into her arms.

  Simon had been careful to re-establish Mary back into his family fold. Before Robert’s retirement she had been regularly invited to stay with them at times when the business prevented Robert from coming too. He had encouraged April to call on Mary for advice over childhood ailments and when April’s own health had begun to give cause for concern it had been Mary who had become their mainstay of support. His father, however, he had kept at arm’s length and even now, unmanned as Robert had been by his stroke, and rendered utterly harmless, yet still Simon was unable to trust the man with a single ounce of tenderness. But to his mothe
r, he felt, he owed it. There was an element of duty about it which was dry and distasteful but he would make the best of it.

  The children were waiting for him in the lofty hallway. They clamoured around him and he wrapped the three of them in his embrace before ushering them out to the car. Matron was supervising the departure for the holidays of the pupils and she ticked the three McKays off her list.

  ‘Isn’t Miriam coming?’ Toby asked as they approached the empty car. Simon tried to ignore the tone of hopefulness in his voice.

  ‘Of course she’s coming!’ he replied, perhaps more forcefully than he had intended. ‘We’re going to collect her from the railway station.’

  But they had some time to kill before she would be there. She was not due out of court until four, then she would have to go back to chambers before getting onto the tube. They would get snared up in all the weekend traffic and be late arriving at the house. His suggestion that she might, like him, take the afternoon off had been summarily dismissed.

  ‘Who’s hungry?’ he asked, as they pulled through the gates of the school.

  ✽✽✽

  On their madcap helter-skelter from room to room James and Ben passed Belinda and Ruth emerging from one of the first floor rooms.

  ‘Oh the whole I thought she’d prefer it,’ Belinda was saying of the room she had allocated to Heather, Jude and the new child. It was the largest room in the south wing, plenty big enough to accommodate all the baby paraphernalia, with an en suite bath. Ruth nodded a little absent-mindedly. Belinda tended to witter on so and Ruth had stopped listening to the mantra of practicalities after the first few minutes, wishing she could walk through the house with a more sympathetic companion pointing out its architectural fineness, speculating as to its occupants in times gone by. Such input would be wasted on Belinda, though.

  Even as the tour continued and the wonders of the house unfolded, Ruth was conscious in herself of a rising tendency to criticise. It was almost as though the better the place turned out to be, the more imperative that she pick holes and find fault. It was a characteristic in herself that she knew caused offence and yet could not be curbed. And so, inwardly, she allowed it to romp roughshod over Belinda’s triumph. The house was so gratuitously large, for a start. There were twice as many bedrooms as necessary, nice as they all were – her own, indeed, was lovely, easily the one she would have picked for herself, down a mysterious corridor and up a neglected stair – and a superfluity of rooms downstairs which might facilitate division and cliquishness. It was extortionately expensive. Ruth, who had blanched at the amount of money named as their contribution to the holiday, was certain that something smaller and cheaper could have been located. It was alright for her more moneyed brother and sisters - they could all afford it without blinking, whereas she and James and the children had positively gone without a holiday during the summer in order to afford their share of this one. Much had been pinned on its success, only a week, to cram in all the relaxation and recreation normally enjoyed during three peaceful weeks’ camping in the Loire. This being the case, and mean as she felt, Ruth was considering how, as her opening gambit, she could get Heather, Jude and a child who, presumably, would still not be sleeping through the night, moved further away from her own room.

  ‘Don’t you think Heather would like to be nearer to Mum? In case, you know, the baby is wakeful?’ she said.

  ‘I’m sure Heather might prefer it,’ said Belinda, leading the way down the stairs, ‘but I want Mum to enjoy the rest. I’ll be on hand, and so will you, if there’s a problem.’

  ‘And Miriam,’ Ruth put in. ‘I believe they’re very close.’

  ‘Oh yes, and Miriam. But I don’t think she’s had much experience with babies.’

  There was a pregnant pause. They surveyed the boxes and baggage dumped on the hall floor by James. The subject of Miriam, Belinda knew, was very dangerous territory with Ruth, and she was aware already that even the surer ground of the house and the arrangements was beginning to shift under her feet.

  Ruth clamped her jaws tightly shut. She could not allow herself to be drawn into a discussion on that subject just now, when Miriam might, at any moment, arrive. It was clear that she would have no ally at all and would have to make the best of things, although the feeling that she, a real family member, should defer to such a Johnnie-come-lately, was galling.

  The subject of Miriam left in abeyance, the two women began to tidy up. Belinda carried the boxes of provisions brought by Ruth and James through to the kitchen, trying to ignore the name of the inferior discount supermarket on everything. Ruth hung up coats and arranged Wellington boots in the cloakroom alcove. From down the gallery the strains of a Mazurka played with gusto and confidence could be heard. James, dancing, a snooker cue in his embrace, appeared briefly in the hall in order to communicate that Rachel was changing upstairs, seemed anxious about the arrival of her cousins, ought to be persuaded to eat and drink something quite soon, and - unnecessarily - that Ben had found a piano. Ruth assimilated this information with a nod, and noted with distaste the crumbs adhering to James’ pullover. Evidently, just in his way, he had found food. But Ruth forbore to say anything and in any case he was off again, surprisingly light of foot, down the gallery and into the music room.

  Half an hour later, the delicious aroma of a rich stew emanated from the Aga and hung in the kitchen air like a promise. Belinda hovered over the pans of peeled and prepared vegetables and dithered about whether it was time to start cooking them.

  ‘Twenty minutes, that’ll make it half-past,’ she kept saying to herself, looking anxiously first at her watch and then at the huge clock over the mantelpiece.

  Ruth sat in the carver at the end of the long refectory table and felt useless. Rachel had made a brief visit into the kitchen and despite the tempting prospect of warm, fresh, homemade scones – something rarely, if ever, available at home – and fresh tea, had drunk only a glass of water before announcing her intention of going back upstairs. She seemed unsettled and Ruth supposed that James must be right; she must be anxious for the arrival of her cousins Ellie and Tansy. This was not in fact what James had said but in her own anxiety about the arrival of Miriam, as indeed at other times, Ruth was ignorant of the depths of her step-daughter’s insecurities and unfortunately her abrasive persona did not invite confidences. She noted only with extreme annoyance that Rachel had put on the outfit brought for the evening of the anniversary itself, leather-look trousers and a long cream jerkin with tasselled belt. Worse, although practically new they looked tight and rather uncomfortable. It was just typical, Ruth fumed inwardly, for Rachel to grow out of the damned things now. It was becoming more and more difficult to get clothes to fit Rachel from the children’s ranges in any of the department stores and Ruth absolutely refused to be drawn at this early stage into any of the teenage boutiques. In any case, clothes in those shops were outrageously expensive and made for thin girls; something poor big-boned Rachel would never be.

  ‘Have you put those on to show Aunty Belinda how nice you’re going to look for the party?’ Ruth ventured, pointedly.

  ‘You do look lovely, Rachel. Very with-it,’ Belinda chimed in, helpfully. But Rachel simply shrugged and muttered something about wanting to look nice now. Ruth was prevented from making her meaning clearer by the arrival of Ben and James, exhausted from exploring.

  James’ eyes lit up at the sight of the scones as though he had not already eaten two of them, which everybody knew he had. He went on, to his wife’s disgust, aided and abetted by an oddly gregarious Belinda, to devour a further two, thickly spread with butter and jam, before going out through the kitchen door into the gathering gloom with Ben for further adventure.

  The kitchen fell silent on their exit. Forty years of shared family history stretched back from this moment: childhood toys (Belinda’s dolls always immaculately dressed and cared for, Ruth’s naked, and abandoned buried head first in the compost heap); beach holidays (Ruth had teased Belinda with lon
g fronds of seaweed); Christmases glowing with expectation and then dampened with actuality (one year Ruth had pried in all Belinda’s parcels in secret, and spoiled her surprises by revealing their contents); school, (Ruth always top of the class, Belinda a plodding pupil). And yet as two adults sharing McKay blood, and so much history, there was scarcely anything tangible which really bonded them together. Ruth surveyed her sister as she fussed and flapped in front of the cooker. Belinda’s life bored Ruth, peopled as it was by WI members she had never met and charity events she had not attended and she could not think of a single question to ask which might begin something like an interesting conversation between them.

  Suddenly, without asking, Ruth began to clear away the tea things, deciding that tea was over and that even if someone were to arrive right this moment tea and scones would not be required, but whisky or gin and tonic or wine instead. Indeed she was quite desperate for a drink herself and having stacked the dishwasher in the face of Belinda’s palpable disapproval – Belinda was a strict adherent of Fairy Liquid and rubber gloves – she began to open cupboards in search of glasses and bottles.

  ‘What time are they arriving?’ Ruth asked, slicing lemon. ‘Shall I ‘phone? They’re sure to have their mobiles switched on.’

  ‘Better not,’ Belinda said, ‘Elliot only gets annoyed if I telephone him in the car. I’m not sure of the children’s numbers off the top of my head.’

  ‘Rob and Ellie have mobile phones?’ The extravagance of this appalled Ruth although it should not have done; all the children at school carried mobiles.

  ‘Oh yes,’ Belinda shrugged. ‘They’re pay-as-you-go ones. I buy them a top up card every month. To be honest it’s more for my own convenience. Rob’s out such a lot and I like to know that I can contact him, and that he can call me, if, you know, he needs to. And Ellie… well, all her friends have them.’ Despite this rationale Belinda felt vaguely uncomfortable with her explanation; it wasn’t indicative of good family communication, she thought.