A Change of Climate: A Novel (30 page)

“Yes,” Robin said. “Ask Dad. He’ll know.”

“For goodness sake,” Anna said. “Listen to your father and stop being so slick.”

“Ah,” Kit said. “Mum doesn’t like the thought that he’s got a secret life.”

“My problem is this,” Ralph said. “Melanie. She might inhale it.”

“Dad, look.” Kit held up her hands, “I am a stranger to the manicurist’s art.”

“Oh, good,” her father said.

“Not very observant, are you?” Robin put his chin on his hand and watched his father.

“I’m not,” Ralph said. “It’s a fault of mine.”

“People are just problems to you,” Kit said. “Problems on two legs. That’s why you don’t notice things.”

“Well, I—you may be right, but in my line of work—if you think about it—I don’t meet people without problems.”

“That’s not my point,” Kit said. “My point is that you don’t see—what’s her name, Melanie—you see ’persistent absconder, multiple addictions’—whatever the jargon is at the time.”

“Do I? Well, I yield to you in charity, you are my superior. The problem is that the nature of what I do is so contentious, so risky— wading into children’s lives and trying to put them right—that I’m always glad if I can identify a pattern of behavior. And there are such patterns, you see.”

“Everyone is unique,” Kit said. “Surely.”

“I used to think so. But then I see how they—my clients— behave or react in the same way as others who have gone before— or, let’s say, they have a small range of possible reactions.”

“Don’t they have free will?”

Ralph looked at his daughter appraisingly, as if to judge her seriousness. “I used to think that was the single question,” he said. “I used to think, of course they have free will. But then after a few years I saw these patterns repeat themselves, as if people were born into them. I read case files all the time, and sometimes, quite often really, I get one client’s story mixed up with another. People use certain drugs, perhaps, or drink, or whatever—they are as they are, and that is much as their parents were—they beat their children or neglect them, they go into prison and come out and go in again, and you feel that you could write the next page in the file, you know what their future is going to be, and their children’s future too. Nine times out of ten you’d be right. It depresses me, how seldom people do the unexpected. They start off down a path and they stick to it.”

“In my opinion,” Robin said, “stupidity has a lot to do with it. I know people can’t help being thick, but if they’re so thick that they can’t control their lives properly I don’t see how it matters if they have free will or not. That’s just theory. In practice they don’t have choices.”

Rebecca kicked her brother’s shin, under the table. “I asked you half an hour ago to pass the sweetcorn.”

“Shut up, Becky,” Kit said. “But Robin, you can be quite bright and not have choices. Take love, for instance.”

Anna sat back in her chair, putting her fork down. “Take love?” she said.

“Sorry,” Kit said, “I know I’m contradicting what I said earlier, but I do see your point, Dad. Love, you know, it’s a chemical thing. When people say they’re in love it’s just a set of physical reactions, there are all these substances whizzing around your brain, and hormones making you obsessed—”

“Very scientific,” Robin said.

“—and that’s why although everybody thinks that nobody in the world has ever felt like they do, they all listen to these schmaltzy songs and write poems and feel at one with the universe. They’re all going through the same process. We’re programmed for it.”

“You may be right,” Ralph said. “Are you in love, Kit?”

“No. I’m sure that if I were, I wouldn’t talk about it with such a lack of respect.”

“You’d be like everyone else,” Robin said. “You’d think you were unique.”

Kit made coffee. As if on cue, Daniel came to the front door. “How are you, young man?” Ralph said. He liked Daniel, he had decided, because he seemed to have evolved; in the present casual optimist, in his new stiff tweeds, you could seem to see his grandfather, the snappy dresser so slick on the dance floor and free with ginger beer.

“I came to thank Julian,” Daniel said. “Shame he’s not here. Peace is much better than war, isn’t it? Oh,” he looked around, “don’t you know what I’ve been up to?”

“Barn conversions?” Ralph suggested. “That’s the usual bone of contention, isn’t it?”

“Not anymore. You know Julian’s girlfriend? I’ve been over to their farm. Mrs. Glasse has this outbuilding that Julian wants to demolish because it’s falling down anyway. Mrs. Glasse was very mysterious about it and made objections, she said, ’I use it to keep buckets in.’ Anyway, when I had a look at it, I came in and told her what I would pay for the roof tiles, which are beautiful, absolutely beautiful—and she said, quick, Sandra, let’s all go and lean on the bugger, it cant come down soon enough for me. I said, ’What about the buckets?’ and she said, ’They can be rehoused. Or get foster homes. Ralph knows all about it. He’ll get them a social worker if I ask him.’ “

“Oh,” Kit said, “so you’re best mates now, you and Jule?”

“He still says I’m a vandal, but I think he’s glad to find a way of reducing the damage. By the way,” he said to Anna, “have you met Sandra’s mother? She’d interest you.”

“In what respect?”

“She’s not what I expected—quite a clever woman, I’d think, very sharp, very, what’s the word, droll—but just absolutely content to stay on her patch. No wider ambitions, none at all.”

“You mean she’s like me?” Anna said.

“Oh no—I didn’t mean that.”

“You needn’t blush. She sounds an admirable type.”

“She’s so young,” Daniel said. “Of course, you know her, Ralph. I was amazed, she’s so attractive—I mean, Sandra’s not much to look at—don’t mention to Jule I said so—but Mrs. Glasse is quite stunning, in her way.”

“Did you tell her so?” Anna said.

“God, no,” Daniel said. “Mrs. Glasse? I wouldn’t dare.”

“I don’t see why not. She leads a solitary life, from what I hear. She probably goes short of compliments.”

There was a fine disgust in Anna’s voice. Ralph’s pulse rate rose when he heard it. Daniel looked covertly at Kit, to see if he had made her jealous. But Kit only smiled her placid smile.

It was a chilly evening, for August. Daniel’s pullover had a suggestion of cashmere, a certain Burlington Arcade air about it. Ralph was wearing an army-style sweater, with fabric elbow and shoulder patches, which Rebecca had given him last Christmas. Ralph disliked it, because it was shoddy, militaristic, and already fraying; but Becky had saved up for it, and thought it dashing, so he wore it to please her. Daniel seemed to be eyeing it—not covetously, Ralph thought. “How’s your car running, Daniel?” he asked. He lunged into the conversation as if at a runaway horse, trying to catch it and lead it away from Amy Glasse.

Ten o’clock—Daniel on his way home, Kit washing up—he went out to attend to the boiler. This brute occupied its own hot little room—in the depth of winter, it was a popular meeting place for the family. The air was dry, calcified, osseous. He would have let it go out in the summer, except that it supplied the family’s hot water too. When the children were babies it had seemed quite natural to dunk them in and out of each other’s bath water; when they were older, he had expected them to exercise economy. One Easter holiday long ago, Kit had a friend to stay. “You can have first bath,” Kit had said, “but leave me your water.” Her friend had stared at her. It’s like the middle ages here, she’d said. And telephoned her parents to be collected next day.

All these thoughts were running through Ralph’s mind—to block out certain other thoughts—as he drove the scuttle vengefully at the coal, felt the coal rattle in, felt the dust fly up and sully his cuffs. He straightened up, and Julian was there, in the doorway, leaning against it.

“What do you think you’re doing?” Julian said.

“The boiler,” Ralph said.

“Don’t be funny. It’s not funny,” Julian said. “I’ve just come from Sandra’s. I’ve been covering up for you so far, but why should I go on doing it? Why should I? You’re going to wreck up everything for me and Sandra, and that’s only the beginning of the damage you’re going to do.”

Ralph said, “This is neither the time nor the place, is it?”

Julian leaned forward and took a handful of his father’s sweater, somewhere around the shoulder patch. He shifted his grip, seemed uncertain whether he had his father or not. “Look, what the hell are you doing?” he said.

Ralph said, “Give me an inch of space, Julian. What am I doing? I don’t know.”

Melanie, their Visitor from London, arrived next day. The children always hung around to see a new arrival, but they were disappointed by this one. She was wearing an ordinary pair of jeans, black lace-up boots with domed toe caps, and a leopard-skin print T-shirt with a hole in it. “Very conventional,” Kit said. “Almost Sloane Square.”

“Boring,” Rebecca agreed.

Melanie had a nylon hold-all, but it seemed to be empty. “What’s happened to her clothes?” Anna said.

“She burned them,” Ralph said shortly. It was clear that he didn’t mean to enlarge on this.

Anna sighed. “We’ll have to get her kitted out, then. That will be a battle.”

She took Melanie upstairs to settle her in her room. “Have you got any tablets, my dear?” Anna said. “Anything you shouldn’t have? Needles?”

Melanie shook her cropped orange head. Anna felt that she was lying, but balked at a body search. The girl slumped down on the bed and stared hard at the wall. She was here against her wishes and she meant to make this clear. Anna looked out of the window, over the fields. Fields, fields on every hand, all choked with snares for the urban young. To Melanie—who had broken out, sooner or later, from everywhere she had ever lived—it must feel like a Siberian labor camp. The permafrost on every side; searchlights and razor wire. As if catching her thought, the girl said, “Is there bulls?”

“In the fields? No, not usually. We don’t have that kind of farming. In the fields we grow things.”

“What, like bloody grass?” the girl said.

“Oh, sweetheart,” Anna said. “Don’t swear at me. It won’t make you any happier.”

“But it does,” Melanie said balefully.

Anna went downstairs, and checked that anything Melanie might inhale or swallow was locked away. Not many women have to padlock their oven cleaner, Anna thought. They had tried to exclude from the house any substance with a potential for abuse, but you could never be sure; a boy who’d stayed last year had a predilection for a certain brand of suede cleaner, and had ransacked the kitchen cupboards and her dressing-table drawers on the off-chance that she might have some lying about. Again, these children were given to what are known as “suicidal gestures”—drinking bleach, for instance. Some of their experiments were so unlikely that it was only later, when they got out of hospital, that you could find out from them whether they’d been in search of euphoria or oblivion—a temporary exit, or a permanent one.

“Ralph,” Anna said. “I’m afraid Melanie is a Sad Case, a very sad one indeed. You’re not going to leave me with her this afternoon, are you?”

“I have to go out,” Ralph said, “for three hours.”

“Can’t you cancel? I don’t think I can be responsible.”

Ralph wavered. “I’m expected,” he said. He thought, how easy it is to lie. “Robin’s locked the bikes away. She’ll not run off, I don’t think. Nowhere to run to. She seems dazed, doesn’t she? It’s odd, because she was all right at Norwich station when the volunteer handed her over. But then as soon as we got out of town she seemed to go rigid. In the end she shut her eyes and wouldn’t look out of the window.”

“I’m not worried about her running away,” Anna said. “I’m worried about what she might do if she stays here.”

“We’ve had worse than Melanie.”

“I know—but Ralph, I know we’ve done this for years, had these poor things here in summer, but I’m beginning to wonder if it’s fair on them—they hate it so much. And we hate it, too.”

“We’ve had this out before,” Ralph said. “And I really do believe it does some good. They get good food, they get at least a bit of fresh air, they see something different from what they’ve seen all their lives—and there are people around who are willing to spend time with them and sit and listen if they want to talk.”

“Let’s hope she doesn’t want to talk this afternoon, then. Because you’ve gone and fixed some meeting, which will probably go on into the evening.”

“No. I’ll be back for five. I promise.” He was already on his way out of the back door. I have to see Amy, he was thinking,
I have to.
He felt nauseous at the lies he was telling, at the thought of his duties neglected; felt almost sick enough to turn back. But
I promised I’d see Amy, I have to.
He drove away, cherishing the comforting belief that he was under a compulsion.

Anna was annoyed with herself; she hadn’t meant to get involved in a debate about the philosophy of Visitors, she’d really meant to get a phone number from him, so that if there was any crisis with Melanie she could get him out of his meeting. She went into his office. His diary was in its usual place, top right-hand drawer. From his pewter frame Matthew Eldred frowned at her, hand on his watch chain; Uncle James, in his tropical kit, squinted into the sun. And Ralph was there, too; Ralph on the stoep at Flower Street, one hand in his pocket, leaning against the wall. It was the only photograph they displayed, of their life in Africa. It was there because Rebecca, a couple of years ago, had begged to see some; she had taken a fancy to this, saying, “Oh, Dad, weren’t you handsome, you’re not a bit like you are now.” Ralph had decided the picture should go on his bureau, to remind him of his present imperfections. It was a photograph devoid of associations; he did not remember it being taken. He saw a smiling, insouciant boy, a lounger with curly hair; a broad-shouldered boy, who looked—if only momentarily—at ease with the world.

Anna took out the diary, found the week, page, day.

9 A.M.: Meet Red Cross about Home-from-Hospital scheme. DON’T FORGET—ring the bishop. 11 A.M.: Collect Melanie Burgess from station.