Come and Tell Me Some Lies (16 page)

‘Amelia will be there, won't she?' I strained with the effort to sound casual. ‘She seems to spend a lot of time with her cousin Tom, doesn't she?'

Imogen was painting her tiny mouth pale pink with a delicate brush and a pot of gluey lip gloss. ‘She's very keen on him,' she mumbled. ‘And she knows it makes her more popular to be with him, because all the girls have crushes on Tom.' Absorbed, she didn't see the prickly flush spread across my face. We went downstairs to find Edward, who was driving us.

The party was in a small flint barn sunk deep into a fold of curving pasture, two miles from the nearest road. A paint-spattered sheet draped over the door was the only attempt at decoration; the rest of the barn was bare. A friend of Edward's sat on the floor, a screwdriver and a tape recorder
in his hands. ‘The music has packed up,' he said gloomily as we entered.

Imogen and I stood by the door and looked across the hazy summer fields. An occasional car lumbered towards us, depositing brightly clad partygoers who tripped giggling into the barn, and then stood like a disconsolate herd of cows in the corner by the barrel of beer. Intermittent squawks and groans issued from the tape machine; the only other sounds were nocturnal twitterings from sleepy birds and the neurotic, ceaseless whisper of wind in the trees. Tom and Amelia arrived in a tiny, grunting mini-moke. This confirmed my high opinion of Tom. Very few others found the barn. At midnight, bored and sober, Edward decided to leave. Tom and Amelia followed us. We skidded over shorn hayfields back on to the road. I sat in the front with Edward, my feet up on the glove compartment of the car, and leaned back looking out of the sun-roof at pale stars in the deep purple sky.

‘Tom is really messing around,' said Edward, as the mini-moke zoomed past us on a bend. I sat up as we rounded the corner. There, squat and stationary, music blaring and lights flashing, was the mini-moke.

‘We're going to crash,' said Edward, trying to swerve, but we were going too fast and I watched with curious detachment as we smashed into the mini-moke. My head hit the windscreen and cold glass splintered in my hair and on my face. My shins were thrust into the dashboard as the car spiralled into the roadside.

‘Get out! For Christ's sake get out!' yelled Edward. ‘There's another car coming.' Imogen scrambled out from the back and I tried to open my door. It was buckled and stuck. I did not dare
to move, or even look round. Blood oozed warm on my face; if I moved, I knew the slow sticky bleeding would burst into a torrent. Motionless in heaped dead metal, I watched through the hole my head had made in the windscreen as the others ran and stopped in shocked, uncertain circles.

Edward and Tom pushed the cars off the road and pressed themselves back on the bank. A sweep of headlights came towards us. Imogen was still trying to let me out. ‘Are you all right? Oh, God, she's got blood on her face. Edward, come here quick!' Edward came just as the door yielded. He sank back on the verge. ‘Oh God, what have I done?' he whispered. And finally I cried, terror at his expression pumping tears until I heaved with breathless, hysterical sobs.

Daddy came to collect me from Imogen's house the next morning. He looked very angry until we got into the car. Then he said, ‘Darling heart, thank God you're not hurt. That tiny cut on your face will be gone in a week.' I wept, and he took my hand. ‘Look at me.' I did. He was smiling. ‘My love, it will not spoil your beauty, so don't cry.'

Two weeks later my face was healed, and after a series of lengthy, tiring telephone calls and visits, I finally persuaded Edward that it was not his fault. Secretly I enjoyed my role as most damaged victim of a car crash. I stayed at home, craving comfort and receiving it in cups of hot chocolate and rolls of loo paper to cry into. Mummy was furious, feeding my sense of martyrdom by shouting in bouts lasting a few minutes every day. ‘How can you be so idiotic as to let yourself be driven by drunken louts?'

I said nothing, bowing my head, bearing my undeserved haranguing. Maimed and misjudged, I thought to myself.

Daddy intervened. ‘Eleanor, I think she's learned her lesson. Let's hear no more of it.' Mummy fumed and humphed for a while longer, but eventually gave up, distracted by Poppy, who, aged eight, had decided to become a vegetarian.

Va Va woke early and looked up at the ceiling, focusing her eyes to make faces emerge from the wavering pattern of cracks. She raised her arms, fingers reaching out, twisting in the little puffs of smoke which sailed above her bed. The smoke thickened dull grey, and she got out of bed to turn the light on. ‘It looks like a lighthouse,' she thought, climbing back into the warm hollow and lying flat, concentrating until the ceiling cracks metamorphosed into boats and waves on the ocean.

Brodie sat up, coughing. ‘There's a fire. Quick, we must tell Mummy.' He scuttled out of the nursery holding his sagging pyjamas up with one hand. Va Va followed, speechless at her own stupidity and her missed opportunity to be the heroine of the hour.

Patrick came running down the landing, a jersey tied like an apron around his waist. The study door was shut and from beneath it woolly strands of smoke unravelled.

‘Open the door!' yelled Patrick, and Va Va remembered that a man with a crinkled yellowing beard had come to stay. He had said he was her godfather. ‘Let us in, Kevin. Let us in!' Va Va was anxious to see the fire before it was put out.
When Kevin opened the door, his face was black and he had a blanket wrapped around him. A cheery blaze crackled in the waste-paper basket.

‘You fool, you're supposed to put the blanket over the fire.' Patrick tugged a flapping corner of Kevin's shroud and sent him spinning across the room. Wielding the huge folds of blanket, Patrick threw himself on to the burning basket, groping and wrestling until he had a clumsy parcel. He stood up, bellowing, ‘Watch out, children!' and charged out of the room and down the stairs. Va Va and Brodie ran after him, but he was already outside, his naked limbs catching the sunlight on the river where he splashed, trying to drown the flames.

It was nearly the end of the summer holidays, and I had to make a skirt for the sixth form. I sat, as I had done every day since the accident, composed but forlorn on the sofa in the playroom, cushioned by Honey's plump sleeping form. Louise tacked my skirt together for me, and I began to hem it, struggling with unyielding tweed. Staring mindlessly at the television I moved my tongue around the inside of my mouth, feeling for the hundredth time the rough bump of the inside of my cut. Music blared out as the local news programme began.

‘The headlines tonight. Dereham protests against bypass plans. Norfolk beaches are under threat from litter-lout tourists, and Tom Letson, elder son of Robin Letson the racehorse trainer, has been killed. The tragedy occurred when his horse fell while he was competing at the Byborough County Show this afternoon. The horse, Dancing Rainbow, was also injured, and had to be shot.'

Excitement at hearing Tom's name on television turned to cold horror as the reporter completed his announcement. Dead. Killed. Tragedy. Shot. The words swarmed in my head. I stood up, limbs heavy and stomach contracted, and turned off
the television before stumbling through to the kitchen. I tried to tell Mummy, but no words would come out. Instead I was sick, coughing and sweating over the sink. Mummy bathed my face with an old floorcloth which smelt of cat pee. I spluttered, she led me to a chair.

‘Darling, what is it? Are you hurt? What has happened?' She leaned over me, stroking my hair. ‘It's delayed shock from your accident. I must ring the doctor. Sit there and sip this water.'

I grabbed her arm and shook my head, another wave of nausea rising. ‘No, not me. I'm fine. It's Tom, Amelia's cousin. He's been killed. I saw it on television. I can't believe it. It's not fair.'

I bent forward and rocked in the chair, trying to focus the thoughts swarming in my head. Mummy wrapped her arms around me, murmuring.

Daddy appeared. ‘What's the matter in here?' Mummy told him. He went out, and came in a moment later with a glass half full of brown liquid. It smelt bitter and pungent. ‘Drink this, love, it will steady you.'

His gentleness calmed me. I drank the brandy, shuddering again at the hot taste. It stopped the whirling thoughts and filled the emptiness of shock. I wiped my eyes, and Daddy gave me a cigarette. ‘I know you are not supposed to smoke these things,' he said, raising one eyebrow, ‘but needs must when the Devil rides.' I began to feel safe again. ‘Now tell me what has happened to this young man.' Daddy took my hand and sat down next to me.

‘I saw it on television – he's been killed at a horse show. I didn't know him well, but he was the one we crashed into the
other day. He was very handsome.' I began to cry. Big splashy tears chased down my nose and dribbled on to my hand and into my glass.

Daddy took his red handkerchief and dried my eyes. ‘I must tell you something serious; it offers no comfort, but is beautiful. “Whom the gods love die young.” Your friend was a special young man, and he will remain that for ever. You will not forget him, nor will he ever become less than he is to you now. And he will never change. Do you understand me?' Daddy's voice splintered harsh in the silent kitchen. Mummy gave me another cigarette, and brought in the bottle of brandy.

July 1989

When I was twenty-four, Mum told me she and Dad were getting married. ‘So that's why there aren't any wedding photos,' was all I could think of to say. And she explained how Dad had never been able to divorce Nancy, his first wife, whom he hadn't seen for thirty years. Now poor Nancy had died, shrivelled into senile dementia by her bitter angry life. She had resented him too much to free him. I was shocked, and surprised at my shock. When the boys and Poppy were told, Mummy laughed till tears ran down her face, apologizing as she choked, because each one of them said, ‘So that's why there aren't any wedding photos.' Mum wrote a list of friends and family to invite to the wedding and I looked on in silence. Dad came in and kissed the top of my head. ‘Scandalous, isn't it?' he mocked, and I suddenly felt moved and thrilled. To be at one's parents' wedding was a rare privilege, I decided.

The weeks before the wedding were fraught. While banns were read each week at the Catholic church in Sallingham, we made late-night phone calls to California, trying to track down Nancy's death certificate. It arrived at last, and we celebrated with a bottle of red Martini. For once, Dad shared.

The garden was blooming; tangles of roses struggled across walls, petals like drops of blood where tendrils had paused on the grey flint. Dad wore a white suit, his bootlace tie secured with a silver eagle stolen from Brodie. His feet were large and pneumatic in a pair of pumped-up Reeboks which belonged to Dan. Dad was very pleased with them and spun a football on the lawn. The boys watched gravely, terrified that he might hurt himself but unable to dent his pride by stopping him. Mum wore black, her dress sprigged with white flowers and comfortingly familiar. It was the one she wore for all godly events, from carol services to funerals, and she would consider no alternative.

At the church, Action Priest waited, preening in his ceremonial robes. Flook named him Action Priest when he saw the boyish figure, head close-cropped, features lean and muscular, getting out of a sports car one day at Mildney. He had come to hear Dad's confession. While Mum and I skulked nervously in the house, Action Priest went out to the lawn where Dad was sitting. ‘He hasn't been to confession once since I've known him,' Mum whispered. ‘I hope he's not going to say something disgraceful.'

One and a half minutes later Dad appeared, leaning heavily on Action Priest's arm; they walked towards the arbour for an absolving drink. Smiling and joking, they passed us peering out of the back door. Dad pretended not to see us, but he looked back and winked, curling his lips back to utter a triumphant ‘Hah' at his lurking, incredulous family. We allowed a decorous interlude to pass, then crept round to the arbour. They were talking about football, Dad's arm around Action Priest as they moved goal by goal through the League table.

Squat and new, the church hung over Sallingham's white cliffs, high above wheeling gulls and a glittering black sea. Dad refused to sit on the chair placed for him in front of the altar. We heard his breath coming heavy and slow as he performed his role. Mum shook as she made her vows, her voice trembling, almost swallowed by the rustle and creak of the congregation. Afterwards we threw confetti over them and Dan pulled up in his rusting white Vauxhall car. It was wet with sequins and hearts hastily daubed that morning over Dan's Bob Marley emblem. He drove Mum and Dad away, leaving the scent of smouldering rubber on the road behind him.

Back home in the garden, guests queued up to salute Mum and Dad while Brodie, Flook, Dan, Poppy and I stood behind, smiling proudly, as if we were the parents.

The next day, Dad and Poppy flew to Italy for the honeymoon. Mum went on the train. ‘I want to enjoy our honeymoon,' she insisted, ‘and I won't if aeroplanes are involved.'

It was August. Italy sweated and scorched under a blistering sun. Dad became ill, his throat parched and closed against the hot air. Late one night he was rushed to hospital in Siena. He stayed there for a month.

Poppy returned to England, white and thin. I met her at the airport and she fell crying into my arms. ‘It was terrible. I found Dad collapsed in the bathroom,' she gulped. ‘I thought he was dead, his skin was cold. He had to go to hospital on the third day we were there, and since then all we've done is drive to Siena to sit in his little hot room with him. Mum won't come
back until he's let out, and the doctors don't know how to make him better.'

I was terrified that Dad would die. On his honeymoon, in Italy, the place he loved, with Mum, the person he loved. Hysteria rising, I knew that this was how the gods had destined it to be. A day later, Mum rang from a hospital phone. ‘You might have to come,' was all she said when I asked how he was. ‘Let's give it another day.'