A Change of Climate: A Novel (17 page)

Ralph said, “He’s always been like that. Anyway—is there any point in knowing what you want to do with your life? There are so many things that can go wrong.”

Anna’s voice was strained. “So you just drift with the tide?”

“Remember when he was little,” Ralph said. “We thought he would never learn to read, never do anything. But we cured him just by letting him be. Those few weeks of peace cured him. If we’d have left him at school, with ignorant infant teachers bawling at him, he’d never have made anything. As it is, he got to university—”

“And passed up his chance,” Anna said. “And what will happen to him if he gets tied up with Sandra?”

“He could do worse.”

“I’m aware,” Anna said, “that Sandra is a charity case of yours.”

Ralph said gently, “I hope we can be charitable. Now that the need exists.”

“Hasn’t it always?”

“I mean, in our own family.”

“I suppose I’m not charitable,” Anna said.

Ralph didn’t answer. But he thought, I will never be party to bullying and hectoring my children as my father bullied and hectored me.

Julian explained to Sandra and to Mrs. Glasse what he had not felt able to explain at home. As he talked, he remembered the place in which he had been stranded, this Midlands place, where mean slivers of sky showed between tower blocks. “Homesick,” Sandra said. “Wouldn’t you get over it in time?”

She was not vain; it did not seem to enter her head that—partly, anyway—he might have come back for her.

“You don’t know anything about it, Sandra,” Mrs. Glasse said. “You’ve never been away. It’s like an illness, that’s why it’s called homesickness. People don’t realize. Are they blaming you, your mum and dad?”

“I couldn’t give a reason like homesickness,” Julian said. “They’d think it was feeble. They weren’t that old when they went to South Africa.”

“Did they?” Sandra said. “I didn’t know that.”

“Some people just aren’t cut out for traveling,” Mrs. Glasse said.

Ralph said to Anna, “You are right, of course. About Julian. I apologize.” She stared at the spectacle: this sudden attack of public humility. “I probably ought to find out more about the whole thing,” he said. “I think, after Easter, I’ll go over and see Mrs. Glasse.”

The week after Easter the winds were so violent that they seemed likely to tear up small trees by the roots. There was never a moment, day or night, when the world was quiet.

Mrs. Glasse had no telephone, so Ralph couldn’t contact her to arrange a time to meet. “Should I drive over with you?” Anna said.

“No. It would look like a deputation. As if we’d come to complain about her.”

“You wonder what sort of woman she can be,” Anna said. “Strange life they lead.”

His car joined the coast road at Wells. The sky was patchy, clouds moving fast, rushing above him as he skirted the dusky red walls of Holkham Hall: parting now and then to reveal a pacific blue. The sea was not visible at once; but as the road turned he saw on the broken line of the horizon a strip of gray, indefinite, opaque.

It was ten o’clock when he rattled down the stony incline to the Glasses’ house. The door opened before he had switched off the engine. Mrs. Glasse stood waiting in the doorway.

His first thought: how young she is, she can’t be more than thirty-five, thirty-six. She was pale, straight-backed, red-haired: the hair a deeper red than her daughter’s, long and fine. The wind ripped at his clothes as he stepped out of the car, billowing out his jacket like a cloak. “This weather!” Mrs. Glasse said. She smiled at him. “Hello, Julian’s dad.”

It was a low house, old; its bones protested, creaked under the onslaught of the weather. He heard its various sounds, as she stood hesitating inside the door; he thought, it is a house like a ship, everything in movement, a ship breasting a storm. “On your left there,” Mrs. Glasse said. “Go in the parlor. There’s a fire lit, and the kettle’s on.”

“You might have been expecting me,” he said.

He sat by the fire, in a Windsor chair, waiting for her to bring them tea. The wind dropped; it was as if a noisy lout had left the room. In the sudden silence he heard the mantel clock ticking. She returned. Handed him a mug. “I didn’t put sugar in. Did you want it? No, I didn’t think you were the sugar sort.”

“Goodness,” he said. “What does that mean?”

She pushed her hair back. “Sugar’s for comfort,” she said.

“You think I don’t need comfort?”

Mrs. Glasse didn’t reply. She pulled up a stool to the fire. Ralph half rose from his chair; “Thanks, I’m comfortable here,” she said.

“That clock up there.” Ralph shook his head. “We had one just like it at home when I was a boy. It was my father’s. His pride and joy. He wouldn’t let anybody else touch it.”

“You’re not going to tell me,” Mrs. Glasse said drily, “that it stopped the day he died?”

“No, not exactly. My mother threw it out.”

“That was extreme.”

“For her, yes, it was. She couldn’t stand the chime.”

“Did she ever mention it? In his lifetime, I mean?”

“I shouldn’t think so. She was a self-effacing woman. At least, she effaced herself before him.”

She had fine hands, Mrs. Glasse; the calloused hands of a woman used to outdoor work, but still white, long-fingered. They were hands that rings might adorn, and that one did adorn: a plain red-gold wedding band, an old ring, one that might have been in a family for generations. Her skin had begun to line a little round the eyes: so many years of looking into the wind. All this he saw in the vibrant light that spilled into the room, morning light: sliding over the cream walls, turning them the color of butter.

He said, “We have a problem about Julian. Well, not a problem.”

“A problem, but not a problem,” Mrs. Glasse said.

“We thought, Anna and I—Anna, that’s my wife—that perhaps he talked to you. He doesn’t talk to us.”

“Do you see a reason for that?”

“There’s no reason, I hope. It’s just his nature.”

“Well then,” Mrs. Glasse said placidly. “If it’s his nature, what is there to be done?”

Ralph leaned forward, to engage her attention. “You see, Julian’s never been communicative. And a bit of a drifter—you could call him that. Still, we believe in letting him work things through for himself, at his own pace—we always have pursued that policy.”

“Sandra is the same,” Mrs. Glasse said. “Resistant to direction. Not that I try.”

“Yes … so we wondered, Anna and I, if he had said anything to you, about his plans.”

“Plans,” Mrs. Glasse said: as if the word were new to her. “He’s not mentioned any. He’s done a lot for me, around the place. I don’t ask him, he just does it. You can’t say he’s not industrious. He fills his time.”

“But where’s it leading?” Ralph said. “I can’t help but worry.”

There was a pause. They looked into the fire; the flames now were pale as air, the sun drawing their color out. Only the flicker held their eyes. Tinny, grating, the clock struck the quarter hour. Ralph looked up at it in wonder. The sound seemed to tremble in the air. She laughed. “You can have it,” she said, “if it means so much to you.”

He shook his head. “It’s very kind. But no—on the whole I think I share my mother’s opinion.”

“Was he a Norfolk man, your father?”

“Oh, yes. From Swaffham originally—but we moved to Norwich when I was a child.”

“A city boy,” Mrs. Glasse said. “Imagine. I’ve never moved much.”

“Did it belong in your family, this house?”

“Oh, no.” She seemed puzzled. “Nothing like that.”

“It is a very nice house. Very peaceful. I’m not surprised Julian wants to spend his time here. The dairy, he said—”

“Yes—would you like to look around?” Ralph protested, politely. She got to her feet, put her mug down on the mantelpiece by the clock. She led him into the kitchen, where she and Sandra spent most of their leisure time, their chairs set one either side of the range; led him from there to the dairy, its chaste stone slabs, its chill. The tiles were cracked, and the turning world had stopped beneath their glaze; cows trod forever through squares of blue grass, through fields of blue blossom. She turned to him and smiled. “Make our own butter is one thing we don’t do,” she said, “but I did have a cow, at one time. Daisy, she was called—that was original, wasn’t it? I’d sell milk up at the top of the track there. It’s against all the rules, so I had to stop.”

“You’re very enterprising,” Ralph said.

“I have a couple of ponies in my top field now, look after them for weekenders. We didn’t know anything about horses when we took them on. But they couldn’t, we thought, be as complicated as people.”

“And it’s worked out?”

“Yes—Sandra has her talents.” She took him back through the hall, up the low-rising stairs. There were four bedrooms, each of them square and neat, each with the same cream walls; and the furniture of dark wood, chests and tallboys, massive and claw-footed. “All this furniture was my grandmother’s,” she said. “This is Sandra’s room.”

“It’s like a room in a picture book,” he said. “Do you know what I mean? The bed.”

“Yes, Sandra made that quilt for herself, it was the first she ever made, I taught her. She’s a careful worker, she’s slow but she’s neat enough. The trouble is, people don’t want them. Or they want them, but they won’t pay the price, there’s months of work in a quilt, People go for something cheap, something run up on a machine. They can’t tell the difference. But there is a difference, if you look.”

Downstairs she put the kettle on again. They sat in the kitchen waiting for it; “I’m a woman who drinks a lot of tea,” she said, as if in apology.

“It occurs to me,” Ralph said, “it must be worth a bit, this place.”

“I’d never thought about it.”

“Prices are rocketing. You’d be amazed. Would you be interested? I know a good firm of estate agents, old friend of mine but he’s dead now. If you follow me.”

“Of course,” she said. “He’d give me a price from beyond the grave?” She turned her head to him: such pale eyes.

“Actually, he has a son—Daniel, he’s an architect, a nice lad, he sees a bit of my daughter Kit. He’d probably come out here for nothing, give you a rough figure, he knows the market as well as anybody. He’d be interested to see the place.”

“But then where would we live?” Mrs. Glasse said.

“I thought … well, I don’t want to intrude, of course, but I know money’s a problem. You could buy yourselves a cottage, and you’d have a tidy sum left to invest, and it would give you an income.”

“I could live like a duchess,” Mrs. Glasse suggested.

“Well, not quite that.”

“If I had a cottage, I might have to get rid of my ducks and hens. I wouldn’t have eggs to sell. Not to mention vegetables.”

“You could get jobs. It would be more secure for you.”

“Oh, we do get jobs sometimes. In the high season. Hun-stanton, Burnham Market. We might go and waitress for a week or two. Not that we’re good waitresses. We’re not used to it.”

He was struck by the slow and thoughtful way in which she spoke, as if she weighed every word. Struck too by how she spoke of her daughter and herself as if they were of the same generation; as if they had one opinion between them, and what one felt, the other felt. She said, “Sandra and me, we don’t mind hard work, nobody could say that. But we prefer to keep each other company at home.”

“You’re very close.”

“Aren’t you close to your children?”

“I don’t know. I like to think I am. But there are so many other things I have to do.”

“I think that parents ought to take care of their children, and that children ought to take care of their parents. That’s the main thing, that’s what comes first.”

“I’ve said too much,” he said. “I didn’t mean to interfere. I’m sorry.”

“No, that’s all right, you can’t help it. You’re used to putting people’s lives to rights, aren’t you, and giving them advice?” She looked up, full into his face. “God knows, nobody has ever advised me, it might have been better if they had. The thing is, me and Sandra, we manage. Hand to mouth, I know. But there’s always something you can do. Sometimes we’ve gone out housecleaning. And I know where the best blackberries are. At Brancaster—I could get you some this year. We get basketfuls, we bake pies, blackberry and apple, use our own apples, sell them up there on the road.” She shrugged. “There’s always something.”

“I admire you, Mrs. Glasse,” Ralph said. “You live the kind of life you believe in.”

She looked down, and blushed. “What is it, Ralph? Don’t you?”

The Easter holidays ended. Kit went back to London for her last few weeks. Robin began the term at his day school in Norwich; early mornings still so chilly, getting up in blue light to walk a mile to the crossroads and wait for the first bus. His efforts would be rewarded, his parents thought. Robin wanted a place at medical school, and would get it. Yet he seemed to have no humanitarian concerns. He marked off the seasons by a change of games kit; now, spring having arrived, he tossed his hockey stick up in the attics and packed his cricket bag. Weekends saw him bussed about the county, playing away. Sunday nights he bounced, or trailed, back: sad tales of full-length balls on the off-stump, or glory sagas that put color in his cheeks and made him look like his father when his father was young: sixty-five off the first twenty overs, he would say, and then we accelerated, run-a-ball, finished it off just after tea with five wickets in hand. “Do you know what Robin’s talking about?” Anna would say—deriving a pale routine gratification from the child’s health and simplicity, from his resemblance to the other boy she had once known.

“Good God, I was nothing like Robin,” Ralph would say. “My father thought cricket was High Church. Do you think he’ll ever do any work when he goes away? Suppose he became a heart surgeon, and he had to do a transplant, and there was a Test Match on?”

But Emma would say, speaking from experience, “Robin will make a good doctor. Only half his mind will be on his work. That will limit the damage he can do.”

And Rebecca? She rode off on her bike, on the first day of term, to her school two or three miles away; a flouncy, sulky, pretty little girl, who had reached the stage when her family embarrassed her. Soon her embarrassment was to be compounded.

On the Monday morning, the week after term began, Julian came down to the kitchen with his car keys in his hand. “I’ll run you,” he said to her. “Put your bike in the shed.”

Rebecca dropped her spoon into her cornflakes, spattering milk on the table. “Suddenly so kind,” she said. “But how will I get home, sir?”

“I’ll collect you.”

“In your so-called car?”

“Yes.”

“But I don’t want you to.”

“Beks, life’s not just a matter of what you want.”

Rebecca sat up and looked pert. “Yours seems to be.”

Julian was not drawn. “Hurry up now, finish your breakfast,” he said. “Don’t argue.”

“What will my friends say when they see me turn up in that thing?” She popped her eyes and pointed, to show what her friends would do. “They’ll take the piss all week. I’ll be a social outcast, a—what is it? Not a parishioner—you know what I mean.”

“A pariah,” Julian said. “Come on now, girl.”

Rebecca saw that he was serious; about what, she didn’t know. She turned to her mother, wailing. “Mum, I don’t have to go with him, do I?”

Anna was loading towels from a basket into her temperamental and aged twin-tub washing machine. “Let Julian take you. It’s kind of him. It’s a nasty morning, very cold.”

Sulking, Rebecca zipped herself into her anorak and picked up her lunchbox and followed him out. “When we get there you can stop round the corner, out of sight …” she was saying, as the back door slammed behind them.

When Julian got back, Ralph was on the phone to London, defusing the latest crisis at the hostel. The office door was ajar, and Julian could hear snatches of the conversation. “What occurs to me,” Ralph was saying, “is that she won’t be able to buy much with our petty cash, with the street price what it is, so what will she do to get the rest of the money?” An anxious babbling came back down the line. In the kitchen the washing machine rocked and danced over the flagstones, in a creaking thumping gavotte.

Anna was sitting at the kitchen table. She looked up from the
Eastern Daily Press.
“What was all that, Julian?”

Julian began to cut himself a slice of bread to make toast. “It’s been on my mind,” he said abruptly. “That little girl in Devon, Genette Tate—do you remember, it was in the papers?”