A Change of Climate: A Novel (31 page)

Then nothing. So he had left the afternoon free, and something had come up at the last minute. Why didn’t he say so? Anna put the diary back in the drawer. She thought no more about it.

Ralph left Amy’s house at half past four. As he reached the top of the track he saw a police car, apparently waiting for him. He stopped the engine and waited in his turn. He recognized the officer who got out first; it was one of the men he had seen previously at the same spot, one of those who, Amy said, were always watching the house.

Ralph wound his window down. “What do you want?”

“Could I have your name, sir?”

“Eldred, Ralph Eldred.”

“And your address?”

He gave it.

“Is this your car?”

“Yes. Unfortunately.”

“Can you tell me the registration number?”

He told it.

“Would you have your driver’s license on you?”

He took it out of his pocket. The policeman looked at it, handed it back; clean, not a penalty point, nothing to be done there. “We’ve seen you round here before.”

“Yes. I’ve seen you.”

“Been calling at the farm down there?”

“Yes.”

“Reason for visiting, have you?”

“No,” Ralph said. “I just drive about Norfolk at random, calling at farmhouses whenever I feel like it.” He swung open his door and stepped out. “What is it you want? To look in the boot, is that it?” He walked around and unlocked it. “Okay. There you go. Get on with it.”

The officer didn’t know what he wanted, really; but he ferreted about in the boot of the Citroen, found a pair of Wellingtons, a jack, a toolbox, a bundle of old newspapers. “All right?” Ralph said. “It doesn’t make much sense, this, does it? If you think I’m supplying stolen goods to the people down there, why didn’t you search the car on the way down?”

“We might just go and check out the farm, now,” said the other constable, who was leaning against the police car.

“You are harassing Mrs. Glasse,” Ralph said. “You know perfectly well that all her market-trading is legal and aboveboard, but you like the thought of tormenting two women who can’t torment you back. But I can, and I will, because I know the procedure for making a complaint against the police, and I know when to make one and I know how to make it stick.”

“Had many dealings with the law, have you?”

“God’s my witness,” Ralph said, “I don’t know how you blokes keep your front teeth. Finished with me, have you?”

“Oh yes, sir. We’ve got your name and address.”

“Oh no, sir, you mean.” Ralph got back into his car, slammed the door, spoke through the window. “Right, so we’ll be seeing each other again, will we?”

“Look forward to it,” one of the policemen said.

At the Red House next morning, Melanie did not appear for her breakfast. “Leave her,” Ralph said. “Let her get some rest.” He sat at the breakfast table, trying to argue sensitivity into his younger daughter. “Be kind to Melanie,” he said.

“Why?” Rebecca asked.

Ralph looked at her in exasperation. “Because it might achieve something. And the opposite won’t.”

“Melanie,” Rebecca said, “is filthy and foul.”

“Perhaps,” Ralph said. “Maybe. But how will she get any better unless people treat her kindly? And you must ask yourself, before you start, if any of it is her fault. Melanie has what we call a personality disorder.”

“Oh, come offit,” Robin said. “She can’t have. She hasn’t got a personality. She just sits there with her mouth half open, staring at her boots.”

“If that were true,” Ralph said, “there wouldn’t be a problem. But I’m afraid she’s not really like that. Come on, Robin, I don’t expect much of your sister, but you ought to have some sense at your age. Melanie has barely been under this roof for twenty-four hours, you can’t know anything about her. Don’t tease her and don’t provoke her, because she can be violent.”

“Oh, we won’t stand for violence,” Kit said. “Robin will bring her to the ground with a flying tackle.”

“You don’t understand,” Ralph said mildly. “The violence would be against herself.” He paused. “When she comes downstairs, look carefully at her arms, the inside of her arms. You’ll see she has old scars there.”

“She cut herself,” Anna said. “Did she use a razor blade? Or something else?”

“You noticed, did you?”

“Of course I noticed,” Anna said, annoyed. “Do you think I’m as heedless as the children?”

“I’m sorry,” Ralph said.

“So you should be. You went out and left me with her yesterday afternoon, and you warned me about things she might sniff or inhale but you didn’t warn me about knives and scissors. When I noticed her arms I had to slide away, and then run around the house hiding anything sharp.”

“You’re right,” Ralph said, “I should have warned you, but it was a long time ago she did the cutting, she seems to have other means now of relieving the stress. She was bullied at school, that’s where it started, and so she played truant and then she got in with a gang of older girls, and they took her shoplifting.”

“The usual story,” Robin said.

“True,” Ralph said. “But with one piquant variation. She was taken into care, and after three months she was allowed back home. Her parents had sold her record player and her records, and they’d given away the toys she’d had as a baby, and her clothes. Anything they couldn’t sell or give away they’d just put out with the rubbish. Maybe the social workers hadn’t done their job properly, or maybe the family hadn’t listened, maybe they didn’t take in what they were told, because it was quite obvious that they never expected to see her again.”

The children were quiet. “So what did she do?” Robin said in the end; his tone respectful now.

“There’s some waste ground near her family’s council flat—she found some of her clothes there. In a black dustbin bag, she told me. She went around for a bit trying to find out who they’d sold her things to, and knocking at their doors trying to persuade them to give them back, but naturally as they’d parted with cash they thought they had a good title, as the lawyers would say. After that I don’t know what happened, it’s a blank, she won’t tell anybody. She turned up in London about ten days later. She hadn’t a penny on her when they brought her to the hostel. She had the dustbin bag, though.” He sighed. “We bought her some clothes, but she wouldn’t wear them. She wanted the originals, I suppose. She went out at the back and had a bonfire.”

Kit had stopped eating. “It seems a terrible thing,” she said. “That a child could be worth so little to its parents.”

“What do you expect?” Anna pushed her plate away. “We live in a world where children are aborted every day.”

“Hush,” Ralph said. He did not want Rebecca to start asking questions. Or anybody to start asking questions, really. He had not seen Julian since their confrontation two nights ago. His son had gone back to the coast and not returned. He, Ralph, wanted so badly to see Amy Glasse that it was like a physical pain. He didn’t want to drive to the farmhouse and run into Julian again, but what could he do? I am going to have to speak, he thought, tell Anna— or break this off—break it off now, because it’s already too serious—how could it not be? All these years I have never looked at another woman, never thought of one, my life in that direction was closed, there was no other woman in my calculations.

If only Julian would come home, he thought. Then I should make some excuse, get into the car, drive.

He looked up. Melanie was standing in the kitchen doorway, staring at them. “Come on, my dear,” Anna said. “There’s plenty of food left. Pull up a chair.”

Melanie recoiled: as if she had been asked to sit down with tribesmen, and dine on sheep’s eyes. For another minute she studied them, poised as if for flight; then her big boots pounded up the stairs again, and her bedroom door slammed.

Summer heat had built up. White sky and a smear of sun. No wind. Heaven and earth met imperceptibly in a straw-colored haze, and the outlines of trees were indistinct. Through this thick summer soup Julian and Sandra walked together by the footpaths, tacking inland. There was thunder in the air.

“You can come and live with us, if you want,” Sandra said. “My mum would be glad to have you. And then—though you’d have to see Ralph—you wouldn’t have to go home and face Anna.”

“My father,” Julian says, “actually believes that you don’t know what’s going on.”

“There he’s wrong. The first thing I noticed, he was always there when he thought I was away.” Sandra raised her hands, and tucked her red hair modestly behind her ears. “He doesn’t see me, so he thinks I don’t see him. But I do see him—because you know my habit of coming home across country.”

“Through hedges and ditches.”

“If need be.” Sandra stopped, and looked directly at him. “I

brought this on you, Jule. If I’d never come to your house, this would never have happened.”

“But you did,” Julian said. “You did come. So what’s the use of talking like that?”

“I don’t know. It’s no use. But it’s a point of interest, isn’t it? If you hadn’t come to North Walsham that day, when I’d gone out with the motor bikes. Or if it had rained before, five minutes before, you’d never have seen me. You’d have turned up your coat collar and gone striding off back to your car, and I’d have taken shelter in the church. And your dad would be at home with your mum, and everybody would have been happy.”

“No, not happy,” Julian said. “That’s not how I’d describe us.”

They were heading toward Burnham Market. But before they reached the village she said, “Come in this church.”

“Why? It’s not raining.”

“No, but there’s a thing in it I look at. I want to show you.”

An iron gate in a grassy bank, a round tower; their shadows went faintly before them over the shorn grass. Inside, an uneven floor, cream-colored stone; silence, except for the distant hum of some agricultural machine. Light streamed in through windows of clear glass. “The old windows blew out in the war,” Sandra said. “So my grandmother told me.”

“I didn’t know you had a grandmother.”

“I called her my grandmother. She lived at Docking.”

“But who was she really?”

Sandra shrugged. “My mother, she never talks about her life. I don’t know who my dad was, so I’m not likely to know much about my grandmother, am I?”

The chill of the floor struck through his thin rope-soled shoes. He looked around. A square, massive ancient font, of the kind he had been dipped in, he supposed; he found it easy not to examine it. But there was something here worth attention; he saw a wineglass pulpit, delicate and frail. “Is this it?” he asked Sandra.

He stood before the pulpit: I should not touch it, what if everyone touched, it would dissolve. He made himself an exception: his fingertip grazed the outlines of church fathers in their mitres and cardinals’ hats, their quills inscribing scrolls: deep green and crimson scratched and flaking away to show the wood beneath, so that the faces were half of paint flake, half of the wood’s grain. On the walls he could pick out the curve of a halo, a line of color faint as thought; he would not have seen it if Sandra had not traced it for him with her finger.

Then she touched his arm. “But look, Julian. Come here. This is what I want to show you.”

She led him away from the pulpit to the south aisle, turned him with his back to the altar. She pointed to the flags at their feet, and to one stone, gray-black, mottled, scarred: yet each letter perfectly incised and clear. “This one,” she said.

In Memory of Mrs. Theaophila
Thurlow, Daughter of the
Reverd Mr. Thos Thurlow
Rector of the Worthams in
Suffolk, descended of the
Thurlows of Burnham ulpe
She departed this life 18th of
Iune 1723 aged 24 yeares.
And Frances Hibgame her Niece,
Daughter of Tohn and Catherine
Hibgame of Burnham Norton, who
died 19th of Decemr 1736 aged
10 yeares, 5 months, 2 weekes and 1 day.

They stood for a moment without speaking. Then Sandra touched his arm. “They say that people in those days didn’t love their children, but it can’t be true, Julian, can it?”

“No.” He dropped his head. “Of course they must have loved her. Because they counted up every day.”

Again, silence. Sandra said. “Listen, this thing about Becky—

you must stop. It’s cruel, you see. It’s cruel to your mother and father.”

“Cruel to
them?’

Unwanted knowledge lay inside her like a stone. “Just let it go,” she said. “Let her grow up, will you? You talk about them being unhappy, but can’t you see? What you’re doing, it’s like putting a knife in them.”

“Why? You mean, because I say they can’t look after her?”

“Yes, just for that reason.”

“I’m frightened for her,” Julian said. “Such evil things happen.”

“I know. I know you’re frightened. But let it go now, will you?

They walked away down the aisle to the back of the church, and again their shadows moved before them, merging and melting, their limbs like those of giant animals, their shapes outlandish; but soft, very soft, shades reflected, shadows seen through glass. The machine in the distance had cut its engine; the thunder in the air had killed the bird song, the insect hum. They touched hands as they came out of the porch—just the back of their hands brushing against each other. Sandra did not dare look into Julian’s face; he did not look at her. In the distance, imaginary no doubt, the undisturbed pulse of the sea.

Julian telephoned home from a call box in a pub on the coast road. “Mum, is everything all right at home?”

“Where are you?”

“In the Ship,” he said, confusing her.

“When can we expect to set eyes on you?”

A pause. “In a day or two.”

“Robin seems to think you’ve moved out for good.”

“He’s no reason to think that.”

“Julian, is there some problem over there?”

Another pause. “We’ll have to have a talk sometime. But not just … not just yet. Till I know what’s happening here. But look, don’t worry. It’s just that I can’t come home at the moment.”

“Julian,” she said, “if you are trying to reassure me, stop now. All you are achieving is to alarm me wildly.”

“Mum, don’t tell Dad I called, okay?”

“Why ever not?”

“I only wanted to know if you were all right.”

“Julian …”

No answer. The line went dead. I’ll drive over, she thought, see what’s what. It occurred to her that she wasn’t entirely certain

where Mrs. Glasse lived. Still, she could find it, it wasn’t beyond her capacities … but then, she thought, there’s Melanie, and it’s getting urgent to find some clothes for her, I ought to take her shopping; and even if I put it off for another day, I can’t leave Kit at home with her while I go chasing after Julian, it’s not fair. What does it matter if he doesn’t come home for a few days? It’s not like him to make mysteries, but perhaps it’s something to do with Sandra’s mother, family business, something he doesn’t want to talk about. Not trouble with the police again, surely? Another thing went through her mind, that goes through the mind of every woman with a grown-up son on the loose: could Sandra be pregnant? Probably I’m being melodramatic. I wonder … would Ralph have time to drive over? She looked at her watch. I’ll catch him at Mrs. Gartree’s, she thought.

Mrs. Gartree was an old woman, very deaf and vague. She had been a friend of Ralph’s parents, and a great churchgoer in her prime, and Ralph had taken it upon himself to call on her once a month. Mrs. Gartree liked to discuss parish politics in her strident bellow, and was assiduous in filling out forms for obscure state benefits to which someone had told her she might be entitled. She had a fortune in the bank, Ralph said, but he helped her with the forms all the same; she had few pleasures left in life, he said, just this one and planning her funeral.

Mrs. Gartree’s voice: indignant, very loud. “My telephone flashed at me. Who are you? What do you want?”

“It’s Anna. ANNA. ANNA ELDRED. Ralph’s wife.”

“Oh yes.” Mrs. Gartree sounded mollified.

“Is he there?”

“Mrs. Gartree dwindled into vagueness. “Oh, I don’t think so.”

“Has he left?”

“What?”

“Have I missed him? Has he been and gone?”

“Missed him? Oh, I’m sure I would,” Mrs. Gartree said skittishly. “But he was here last week. I think so. Within the month.”

“But today?” I should have known better than to get into this, Anna thought. “Today—he said he was going to call on you.”

“No,” Mrs. Gartree said. “You called me. I haven’t spoken to Ralph. No, not for many a moon.”

Anna turned up her eyes. “Okay, Mrs. Gartree. Sorry to have bothered you.”

“I wouldn’t, except I’m deaf,” Mrs. Gartree said.

“Goodbye,” Anna said.

“Toodle-oo,” said Mrs. Gartree.

Anna went into Ralph’s office and found his diary. He really is beginning to move in mysterious ways, she thought. In the afternoon, at two o’clock, he was due for another meeting in Norwich about the Home-from-Hospitals scheme. The Trust was funding a project to create networks of helpers for the old and chronically sick; discharged from hospital to isolated cottages, or to homes in villages with no shop or chemist, they needed failure-proof rotas of visitors if they were to be kept free from anxiety, hypothermia, and the risk of falls.

She flicked through Ralph’s address book; the Norwich number came to hand. “Pat? It’s Anna. Ralph’s wife.”

“Oh, yes. How are you, Mrs. Eldred?”

“Look, when Ralph arrives for your meeting, would you ask him to ring home? I’d like a quick word.”

There was a silence. “Just a minute.” A pause. Then “Mrs. Eldred? I think there must be a mix-up. We haven’t got a meeting today.”

“Are you sure?”

“No—yes, I mean—I’ve just checked my diary.”

“I’m sorry,” Anna said. “I must have got the dates confused.”

“That’s okay.” The woman sounded relieved. “For a minute I thought I’d made some awful mistake. I’d hate to make a mistake about a meeting with Mr. Eldred, he’s always got so much to do.”

“Yes, hasn’t he?” Anna said. She put the phone down. Well now, she thought. But she did not like what she thought. Mrs.

Gartree could be discounted, as a witness; but it was strange that Pat Appleyard wasn’t expecting him. It was agreed between them that he would always leave his diary for her, and update it each evening, in case there was an emergency at the hostel, in case she needed to contact him; and he had always stuck to that diary, he was known to be reliable and punctual and to save his severest strictures for people who were not.

I am not quite an innocent, Anna thought. I have read a novel or two, in my time. A disappearing husband—unless he’s a drunk or a criminal—means another woman; yet there’s something farcical about it, isn’t there, if a disappearing husband covers his tracks so badly, or doesn’t try to cover them at all? But no doubt, if Ralph took to lying, he wouldn’t be very proficient at it. Not at first. As far as she knew, he’d had no practice.

Anna sat down in the hard chair at Ralph’s desk. Her mind moved slowly, cautiously. Opportunity? He had plenty. He met hundreds of people in the course of his year, clients, social workers, journalists. Routine to fetter him? He had none; each week was different, and the diary was all that constrained him.

Anna tried to smile—as if there were someone in the room to see her effort. You are being ridiculous, she thought. Yes, he meets women, but so he has done for years; he meets women, but if he were interested in one of them, who in particular would it be? No answer suggested itself. I would have imagined, she thought, that though you cannot know people, not really, I would have imagined that I did know Ralph.

She felt very cold, and went upstairs to fetch a cardigan.

The day must continue, though the cardigan somehow failed to warm her. She said to Kit, “Are you doing anything this afternoon?” Silly question; when was Kit, this summer, ever doing anything? She sat around, she slept, she made herself intermittently useful. “Because if you’re not, would you come shopping for

clothes with Melanie and me? I thought, you see, as you’re nearer her age—”

“Sure,” Kit said. “We’ve got a lot in common.”

“Where do you think we would do best?”

“Depends what she wants. If she wants another leopard-skin-print T-shirt, we could try Woolworths in Dereham.”

“Such snobs, my children.”

“Okay,” Kit said grudgingly, “I’ll come. What does she need?”

“She needs a coat of some sort. And some shoes to wear in the house.”

“To spare us the clatter of the boots.”

“A sweater, as well, in case it turns cold.” She pulled her cardigan around her. “And another pair of jeans, perhaps, and a couple of shirts or T-shirts. And underwear, I feel sure—I’ve not inspected, I don’t feel up to it.”

“She doesn’t wear any,” Kit said.

“Who says so?”

“Robin.” Kit sighed satirically. “He’s of an age to notice. Well then … we could go to Norwich, and catch up with Dad after his meeting. We could make him take us out, for tea and iced buns, so Melanie can see us behaving like a family in a picture book. We could have anchovy toast, and dote on each other.”

“No,” Anna said. “Not Norwich. I tell you what we’ll do—it’s a nice day, let’s go to the seaside. Get some fresh air. We’ll go to Cromer. She might like it.”

“She’ll be crying for cotton candy, and to ride on the donkeys, I suppose,” Kit said. “Honestly, you do have a strange idea of what constitutes a treat for a person like Melanie.”

“You know what your father said. Try to be kind.”

Anna went upstairs. She stood outside the closed door for a moment, gathering herself. Then she tapped on it. No answer. Softly she turned the handle. “Melanie?”

The curtains were drawn, and the room was dark and close and tainted; no one, so far, had seen Melanie wash. She had hauled her mattress onto the floor, and heaped the sheets and blankets and pillows into the middle of it. At first Anna thought that the bed was empty, and Melanie had somehow escaped; but then there was a slight movement at the center of the heap, and the girl stuck her head out. “Do you prefer to sleep on the floor?” Anna asked.

Melanie stood up amid the wreckage. Sheets fell away from her body. She was wearing a pink T-shirt that belonged to Becky. It was painfully tight under her arms, and rode up to show the frail rack of her ribs. “Where did you get that?” Anna asked. She wondered if it had been on the washing line, but thought not. “You shouldn’t go into Becky’s room without telling her, you know. She won’t like it.”

“She won’t like it,” the girl mocked, aping her tone.

“You’re welcome to borrow anything. Anything you like. But you should ask.”

“Why?”

Because, Anna thought. Because … for a thousand reasons. Because it is what civilized people do. She heard the flat anthropologist’s tone of the question: why? Passing no judgment: just, why?

“Besides, you’re a big girl, Melanie, Becky’s things won’t fit you. Would you like Kit to lend you something?”

“Borrow. Lend,” the girl said. “Snobby cows.”

“I was thinking we’d go out.” Anna tried to make her tone easy. “Go to the seaside.”

“For kids,” Melanie said.

“Yes, but a shopping trip. To get you some clothes.”

“I had clothes.”

“Yes, but you burned them.”

“Before that. My own clothes.”

“I know you did. Don’t pick your fingers like that.” Melanie’s fingertips were raw: the skin peeling, the nailbeds inflamed. She constantly tore at them, tormenting each one with her other nails and her teeth; it was a habit she had picked up in her amphetamine phase, it was something that these children did. And it hurt; Anna remembered—memory like a needle under the skin—her own

fingernails, cropped to the quick. And then a picture flashed into her mind of Enock standing in the compound with a scythe in his hand, wasted nature at his feet: the torn-out blossom that would only have annoyed him, anyway, for a few hours before the sun killed it.

“What’s the matter with you?” the girl said. Anna looked up and met her eyes. What she saw shocked her; almost evidence of humanity.

“It’s nothing,” she said.

But the girl persisted, her tone cold. “Did you think about something you shouldn’t have?”

“Yes.”

“What sort of thing?”

“I can’t say.”

“I can’t say.” Again the imitation, cruel and strangely exact. “A bad thing, was it?”

“Yes … if you like.”

“How bad?” The girl’s face was intent: for once, she was asking a proper question. She needed evidence of iniquity, Anna thought, of fallibility at least. How not? She needed comparisons and juxtapositions, if she were ever to find her own place in the scale of things. “Like killing somebody?” Melanie inquired.

“Yes.”

“Have you ever killed somebody?”

“What a question! I’d be in jail.”

“Have you ever been in jail?”

“Yes.” The answer surprised Anna. “I have.”

“For nicking things?”

“No. Not that.”

“You’d have no need, would you? You’ve got everything.”

“You may think so.”

“You’ve got a house,” Melanie said.

“Yes, that’s true.”

“I haven’t got a house. I’ve been in homes.”

Anna’s face softened. “Yes … they shouldn’t call them that, should they? Homes. Look, Melanie, your mum and dad … how long is it since you saw them now?”

At this question, Melanie’s eyes dulled; but behind her locked-and-barred expression Anna sensed a small movement of mind, the dawn of a precarious desire for cooperation: saw the mind moving, vaguely, around the months and years. Perhaps she was trying to come to terms with an alien chronology, the dates of court orders and social inquiry reports. “I’ve forgot them,” she said.

“No. You can’t have.”

“I can. I have.”

“So, now … what about this day out we’re going to have?” She smiled with a professional brightness. She had learned from Ralph to talk in this way: to presume assent to any initiative, to state always the positive, never to consider the possibility of no for an answer.

“Are we? Us? Going out?” Melanie’s eyes were like two big gray pebbles; she rocked back on her heels, as if Anna might try to haul her by force into the open air.

“Yes. Why not?”

“I like it here.”

“You do? That’s something.”

Melanie saw that she had lost an inch of ground. “And these clothes, I like these clothes, I don’t want any others.”

“I’m sure you know why that is quite unreasonable,” Anna said. “You’re clearly not without intelligence.” Ralph’s tone was less evident; she was cool, at the end of her patience. “You know perfectly well that you can’t spend the rest of your life wearing a T-shirt that belongs to a child two or three years younger than yourself, so it’s only a matter of when you get new clothes, isn’t it, not whether?”

They surveyed each other: level ground. Anna calculated that Melanie might hit her: it would not be unprecedented, in a Visitor. She weighed the prospect: the pale stringy arms below the tight sleeves, arms laced with cuts, and the torn hands, the right middle finger with its cheap heart-shaped ring. She knew that she should step back a few inches, beyond Melanie’s reach. The girl’s arms hung at her sides, and Anna—who had seen men fight—imagined that she might jerk one fist up, straight-armed, to catch the point of her jaw. But I will not step back, she thought. I will not give way. Melanie whispered, “Tell me what you thought.”

“What do you mean, what I thought?”

“Before. When you thought about killing somebody.”