Eggshell Days (10 page)

“Virtually all medieval buildings were constructed with lime. Lime was slower to build with, and required skill and patience, but produced durable, attractive and healthy results. Damp was allowed to evaporate away harmlessly, and the soft but tough lime worked in harmony with seasonal changes in humidity and temperature.”

He thought about the quick-fix culture they had lived in in London and felt a new rush of achievement in their efforts to leave it behind. He brushed his hands over the wall and bits fell out, down his sleeve and onto the floor.

“Cement sets very hard and is impervious to damp. Any moisture finding itself drawn in will be trapped and will cause problems. If it is used in a building whose underlying structure is of the more flexible lime, problems will undoubtedly occur.”

He looked carefully at the internal pointing of the stones round the altar and along the sides. His angst with Sita and his jealousy of the others faded away. He thought of Emmy and Niall by the bonfire, leaping around with the same intensity as the flames, and he no longer cared. He was more interested in a large, clumsy patch of ugly gray cement.

“Repairing lime-based buildings with lime-based materials is the answer. There is little mystery involved: a grasp of the basic principles combined with common sense and perseverance is all that is required. After using lime, most people realize just what a marvelous and invaluable material it is, become ‘converts' to the cause and start to encourage others to try it for themselves.”

A convert. He liked the sound of the word. His hand went automatically back to the crumbling mortar and his fingers rubbed the crevices. Grit fell easily out, and the more it fell, the more he dug.

He didn't know how long he dug and scraped and picked, but by the time he walked back past the bonfire Emmy and Niall had retreated to the house and the flames were just a gentle flicker.

5

Somewhere, it had been rashly written down that everyone had their say at Bodinnick, and when it got to the stage of choosing paint colors the children took it upon themselves to put such political indulgence to the test.

Jay wanted the universe on his ceiling, glowing dark stars against a midnight blue, but Asha wanted fluffy white clouds and a rainbow. Maya, as she had stated in the manifesto, wanted purple.

“No, not that sort of purple,” she said every time Emmy showed her a paint chart. “That's too Barbie. Too royal. Too light. Too dark.”

“God help their future partners,” Sita said as she stepped over the pots in the hall in the first pair of shoes with heels she had worn since they arrived. A threadbare Turkish rug was rolled to one side and the black and white tiled floor was covered in damp flattened cardboard—old boxes from the store that Toby used to ship his art sales in. “Lawyers, the lot of them. Particularly Asha. I call a nine-year-old persuading her parents she needs a cot a serious result.”

She couldn't conceal her disapproval at Jonathan's capitulation over the outlandish request, and he couldn't conceal his disappointment that indulgence was definitely not on his wife's list of personal tendencies anymore.

“You look nice,” Emmy told her. She could see the effort Sita had made with her gray boxy linen jacket and skirt. The jacket wouldn't do up and the skirt was tight over her post-natal tummy, but then the suit had been bought fifteen months ago when she was at her slimmest ever, just before she discovered she hadn't done with childbirth after all. At least it was getting its wear now. Three weeks' cover for a local GP had landed in her lap sooner than any of them would have chosen.

“Do I? Is it a bit smart? I don't know.”

“You look lovely,” Emmy repeated. Jonathan could have stopped pretending he was too busy stirring emulsion and joined in, she thought.

“I don't know. I don't want to look too London.”

“You don't.”

“You don't even look too Cornwall,” Jonathan said to Emmy. She was wearing a very old chambray boiler suit that had never seen a hardware store in its life and she had one of Toby's ties round her waist.

“Good.”

“Why
are
we building her this ridiculous cot, for God's sake?” Sita snapped when she stumbled over a plank of wood.

“If that's what it takes to make her feel safe, what's a bit of MDF?” Jonathan replied equally tersely. “We all have our props.”

He was defensive about Asha's lack of confidence. He knew it came from him. But Sita wasn't feeling confident either, and she went over to Jonathan with the intention of apologizing by way of a hug. The old shirt he had on smelled of the City, something to do with the over-ironing and stress that had resigned it to the dump bin in the first place, and because he only returned her insecure squeeze with a dutiful pat, she said, “Ugh, that shirt smells.”

“Well, we all lean on something from time to time, don't we?” Emmy said, levering off a lid with a screwdriver.

“What do you lean on?” Jonathan asked. He was pouring a watered-down creamy glue from a two-liter plastic container into his tin of emulsion, and even that made his wife cross. Why couldn't he just slap up some straightforward matte like the rest of them? Why did he have to pay so much attention to detail all the time?

“Can I lie?” Emmy asked.

“No. Rule 465. No lying.”

“Well, okay, Maya. I lean on Maya.”

Jonathan looked embarrassed. He hadn't expected an honest answer, and he hadn't wanted one, either. He added water from a kitchen jug with more concentration than necessary.

“Serves you right for asking,” Sita said, putting the lid on her lipstick and throwing it in her bag. “I'll take the girls. Oh, and Emmy, don't lean on Jonathan in my absence, will you? You'll end up on the floor.” The door slammed.

Emmy said, “Are you two all right?”

“Of course,” Jonathan said, as if she were mad to even ask. “What do you want, a brush or a roller?”

*   *   *

“That was my mum and my sister,” Jay told Scott at the bus stop, as Sita gave him a hoot from Emmy's rusty old car. “It's her first day at work.”

“Up the abattoir?” his new friend asked, as if it went without saying.

“The what?”

“The abattoir. There's loads of jobs going up there at the moment. My dad's thinking about going for one but my mum don't want him to.”

“Why not?”

“Her boyfriend works there.”

“Oh, right,” said Jay, sliding off the curb. “No, not there.”

“Where, then?”

Jay kicked the toes of his new school shoes against the granite shelter. “In the village, I think. She's a doctor.”

“Nurse, you mean, you div!” Scott told him.

“She's not a nurse, she's a doctor.” Jay looked at the ground, hoping Scott wouldn't mind. He liked him, and not just because it meant he wasn't the smallest in his class anymore.

“Oh. I never knew you could have lady doctors. I thought they had to be nurses.”

“So who's the div now?”

“I am.” Scott laughed, stamping on his friend's feet with his filthy trainers.

“Cor-rect. You are the weakest link. Good-bye.”

“Good-bye.”

They barged each other with their backpacks and Jay felt his flask leaking through the nylon.

“Is your dad a doctor, too?” Scott asked.

“No.”

“What's his job, then?”

“He hasn't got one,” Jay said proudly.

“You should tell him to go up the abattoir.”

“I will.”

“Do you want to come fishing later?”

“I haven't got a rod.”

“Nor have I.”

“What do you fish with, then?”

“A stick.”

“A stick? Do you ever catch anything?”

“No.”

They fell against each other, laughing so loudly that the bus driver had to sound his horn to tell them he was waiting.

*   *   *

Sita sat in her blue swivel chair looking at the framed studio shots of some other doctor's chubby blond children on the mock-leather surface of her new pine desk. Above the desk was a blown-up photograph of a sailing boat called
Kontiki
, with the same two children in matching life jackets waving from her deck. Under it was a pair of smart black leather court shoes two sizes smaller than Sita's, and hanging on the back of the door was an equally small stone-colored mac which she recognized as from the Gap because she had nearly bought one herself. She felt replicated but different. The same model in a different finish.

“I bet you'll be the first Asian doctor Cott has seen,” Niall had said at breakfast, at which she had been the sole topic of conversation. “Make sure you give them the full works.”

She wished he hadn't said that. She felt like a fish out of water as it was. The practice manager had popped in with a truly terrible cup of filter coffee which tasted as if it had been sitting on its hotplate for days, and just as she was tipping it down the small steel sink the woman had appeared from nowhere again, saying, “Just leave it if you don't want it.” It wasn't a good start.

In the drawers she had found three packets of eucalyptus chewing gum, a tube of honey-and-lemon hand cream and a nautical-clothing mail-order catalog. There was a box of toddler-friendly toys on the floor, full of the kind of discarded bits and pieces that could be picked up at school fêtes all over the country. It was every doctor's surgery everywhere, and yet it was all utterly foreign. She felt like phoning Asha and telling her it was okay to be homesick.

Her first patient was a woman with short dark hair and glasses. She was wearing floral jeans, a denim jacket and flip-flops and she made Sita feel ridiculously overdressed.

“Oh!” the woman said, failing to disguise a double take.

Sita's hackles were up before she could stop them. Yes, an Asian doctor, she felt like saying. What are you going to do now?

“I, er…” the woman said. She neither moved forward nor backward.

Sita stayed sitting and smiling. Inside she began to burn.

“I … I thought…”

The woman clearly didn't know where to look. How about in my face? Sita thought.

“Is there something wrong?” Sita asked eventually. “Apart from whatever it is you have come to see me about?”

“Er … I'm sorry, I didn't realize you were…”

Sita looked down at the woman's notes but couldn't focus on a single thing. She was already back in the kitchen at Bodinnick, telling Emmy.

“This is … I think, um,” the woman began, “I…”

“Sorry, were you expecting someone else? I'm Dr. Dhanda, covering for Dr. Bryant for three weeks.”

“Yes, yes, I know. They told me that. Perhaps I should…”

The woman was clearly flustered. Her face was pink and behind the lenses of her spectacles, her eyes darted everywhere but in Sita's direction.

“Do you want to sit down?” Sita asked. She'd been expecting a certain rural suspicion, but not this. The fish out of the water was in its last dying spasms. London seemed more attractive than ever.

“I … well…”

“Would you prefer to see someone else? Dr. Hall is back from his holidays today, I think.”

“No. I asked to see a female doctor. It's just that you…”

“Are Asian?” Sita heard herself say.

“No!” the woman cried. “Oh, no, not that, not at all.” She was even redder in the face now, but Sita stayed sitting, her head tilted slightly to one side. She tried not to look as nervous as she felt. In fact, she thought she might have cricked her neck.

“Oh good, because there's not much I can do about that.”

They both gave small uneasy laughs.

“It's just that, well, your daughter has just started at Cott school, hasn't she? She's in my son's class. I've seen you in the car park.”

“That's right, she has.”

“Miss Davey's lovely with the kids.”

“It seems like a nice school.”

“Not that she stands much nonsense, mind.”

“Good.”

They stopped. The woman looked as if she wanted the floor to swallow her up. “My problem is a bit delicate,” she murmured.

“Don't worry,” Sita said, feeling her neck ease. “Doctors are used to delicate problems.”

“What about seeing you in the playground? Won't we feel…?”

“Not in the slightest. What is said in these four walls—”

“No, it's not that, I just … well, I came here because I promised my husband I'd talk to someone about … my … my, er…”

Sita waited. Her neck felt normal again. Slowly, she tried to right it. “Take your time.” She had never said that in London.

“My, er, my lack of interest,” the woman said. She stared at the floor. “I don't really know why I'm here, except I promised him I'd try. I don't know what you can do to help. I don't know what anyone can do. I've just gone off it, that's all. It's not him, it's me.”

There was a brief mutual sigh.

“I understand,” Sita said.

“Do you? Do you really?”

“Yes,” said Sita again, “yes, I really do.”

*   *   *

Jonathan didn't understand much of what was going on, even though he could hear every word from his bedroom.

“It's not purple, it's Real Indigo. Jaysus, it even says so on the side of the can.”

“Oh, and I suppose you're painting your shelves Memory, and not just gray, are you?”

“That was yesterday. Would ye keep up!”

“Anyway, who said you could look at my paint charts?”

“Kat did.”

“Well, she's not here, so she doesn't count.”

“It
is
purple.”

“It's Real Indigo. Anyway, where's the dog?”

Niall was at the foot of a ladder in Maya's bedroom, looking up at Emmy's dripping brush. He waved a paint-slopped copy of the
Manifesto.