Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine 03/01/11 (20 page)

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Fiction

The Last Days of The Hols

by Robert Barnard

In September of 2010, a large-print edition of Robert Barnard’s much-praised novel
A Stranger in the Family
(Scribner, June 2010) was released by the Wheeler Large Print Book Series. Also new from the Cartier Diamond Dagger Award winner is his podcast for
EQMM
of his story “Rogues’ Gallery” (March 2003), which can be accessed from iTunes, from PodOmatic (http://eqmm.podomatic.com), or from our website (www.the mysteryplace.com/eqmm)
.

Miss Trim, the English teacher and form mistress of 6A, looked around at the eleven-year-olds staring stolidly back at her. “The essay topic for your Easter break,” she said, then paused solemnly. She had begun to sense a giggle going through her class every time she set the inevitable “How I spent my school holidays” as the vacation task. This time they were going to get a surprise: “is ‘How I spent the last day of my holidays.’ ”

She was disappointed, because she sensed an identical giggle going around the class. She frowned like a disappointed fish, her protuberant eyes glaring through the rimless spectacles until she noticed that Morgan Fairclough was already setting down the odd note on a piece of rough paper. She did not ask herself how Morgan could be making notes for an essay on the last day of his holidays when the holiday had not yet begun. She approved of Morgan: solid and hard-working, though these virtues were tinged with arrogance when he talked to his less gifted classmates. But his estimable qualities were so much better than brilliance or flair that she looked forward to reading his account.

Morgan began his account two days after the day in question. He knew it was going to be hard to get the facts and angle right. He was, after all, the son of a writer. And he had to use mostly fact. There were still so many around who knew the facts: Mum, Deirdre, Timothy, Samantha . . .

Morgan licked the point of his Uniball and began.

HOW I SPENT THE LAST DAY OF MY HOLIDAYS

Morgan Fairclough, aged 11.

Please excuse all spelling mistakes. My dad has not tought me to use a dictionery as he promised to do in the holidays.

While she was clearing away breakfast things my Mum said: “Are you planning to have one almighty row over lunch, or would you prefer this time to have a series of minor explosions going off throughout the day?”

My father stretched, smiling a narsty smile.

“I think the latter, all things considered. Or maybe it would be fun to have no row at all. Have them waiting nervously all the time for something that never comes.”

“Oh, very suttle,” said my mother. “Anyone would think they were not family but enemies.”

“Can’t they be both? I must say that’s how I regard them.”

All this I’d heard over and over in previous years. By now it sounded rehearsed, like a play. One of my dad’s plays. Rows were an everyday occurrence in our house, and the terms of the rows never really altered.

“You only regard them as enemies because they’re my family,” said my Mum.

“They can be your family and still be your enemies,” said Dad. “In fact I remember when you and I were courting, you and Deirdre were constantly at each other’s throats. Both of you were feisty girls, after all.”

“Now you’re being ridiculous,” said Mum. “Of course I love Deirdre, and did then.”

But I noticed Mum disappeared into the kitchen and began the washing up. Running away from a fight—that’s how I saw it.

“Anyway,” said my mother ten minutes later, coming back with her arms white from soapsuds, “after all these yearly rows they won’t come expecting a good time.”

“I don’t know why we don’t stop asking them,” said Dad. “They don’t ask us to Greenacre Manor. Probably afraid we’ll use the wrong knives and forks.”

Deirdre’s husband Timothy had sold his father’s car hire companies when he inherited them and bought into traditional bricks and mortar, playing the squire to the point of ridiculousness (these are my dad’s words—he can be very spiteful). Uncle Timothy is Head of Religious Broadcasting at the BBC. Dad says his religion is tweed-suiting, pipe-smoking and Brideshead Revisited.

“I think you’re right,” said Mum. “Just make a row big enough to justify it and I’ll put my oar in and suggest we call it a day. It will follow naturally if we do that.”

“Hmmm. Not a bad idea,” said Dad. But I could tell he was having second thoughts about his proposal. He always gave the impression of enjoying himself in these annual rows, and I must admit I thought they were quite fun.

“I like Uncle Timothy,” I said. “Some of the things he says make me laugh.”

“They make me laugh, too,” said Dad. “Like his pretending to be still in love with Deirdre after all this time.”

“So the row is still on the schedule,” said my mother. “Is after the walk the best time for staging it? Because that’s what it is: a little play, stored away for when, if ever, you write your own
Who’s Afraid of Virginia Wolf
.”

“If that’s what I’m aiming for, the rows would have to be with you, Lois.”

“Well, God knows, you’ve had enough experience of them. Oh shit—that’s them now.”

My father cast an eye at the window, the Rolls outside, and the path that led from the front gate.

“Oh, God Almighty!”

For a household containing not one Beleiver we were very free with God’s name. When I wrenched my eyes away from Auntie Deirdre, who looked as if she was carrying a shopping basket in front of her under her dress, I caught a look on Dad’s face that was a mixture of relish and foreknowledge. He’d known in advance!

Exclamations took up the first two minutes of the visit.

“Well, this is a surprise!”

“Exactly what it was to us, too.”

“How far are you gone, Deirdre?”

“Do you know what it is?”

“Samantha, are you looking forward to having a brother or sister?”

This welcome on the front doormat was quite convincing. It was led by my Dad, who, being a playwrite of sorts, knew what people tended to say on all kinds of occasions. Mum hugged her sister, perhaps to hide the horrid display of jealousy on her face. Whatever Deirdre had, Mum had to be jealous of, even if she would have died rather than be pregnant again.

“No, we weren’t ‘trying,’ as they say,” said Deirdre, her voice high and a bit strident, “and yes we are delighted, the feetus is five months old, we’re doing all the right things that doctors and nurses recommend. All right? Sensation over?”

And she steamed ahead into the sitting room as if her shopping basket gave her all the rights of the lady of the house. There was a sparkle in her eye that suggested that she, like me, had something up her sleeve.

“Tim? What will you have?” gushed my father. “And Deirdre, what can you have?”

“I’ll risk a gin and tonic,” said Uncle Timothy. “We go on the principle of ‘one off, all off’ in our household, but I’m on leave at the moment. Deirdre will have pineapple juice, won’t you, darling?”

“Yes, darling, and so will you. The fact that we are away from our own household doesn’t let you off the ‘no alcohol’ regimen.”

Timothy sighed.

“I would swear if the children weren’t here. All my abstention valued as nothing if I have one little lapse.”

“Go away, children,” said Dad, waving an artistic hand towards the garden. “Your uncle doesn’t like being found out, Morgan.”

When we got outside in the hallway I put my finger to my lips and we listened for a minute or two to the conversation.

“So, then, you’re happy are you?” my father asked. “Not just putting a brave face on a nasty accident?”

“We’re over the moon! We talk baby talk all the time, and discuss colours for the nursery. We’re even more delighted than Samantha.”

“Maybe she’s too old to be totally pleased. At three—yes. At thirteen—no. They feel they’ll degenerate into the resident babysitter.”

“I didn’t realize you knew so much about growing families, Bernard.”

“I have a creative writer’s understanding of how people think and feel, Timothy.”

Same old dialogue. Dad, as a scriptwriter, ought to have been able to think up something better, or at least different. Samantha and I shook our heads and moved over towards the kitchen door, where Aunt Deirdre and Lois my Mum were well away.

“I’m not going to pretend it didn’t come as a shock,” said Auntie D. “We didn’t take out all our old Noddy books and Paddington Bears and look forward to reading them at bedtimes over and over again. But when all is said, Catholics are right about abortion. It is murder, and just thinking about it we felt like murderers. I’ve settled down to all the rules and the deprivations . . . This martini is heaven, though.”

“You’re a bit mean not letting Tim off his oath of abstention, I feel.”

“Timothy has nothing to complain of. Do you think he hasn’t got a cash of booze somewhere in the house, if only I could find it? . . . But really, sis, you ought to try a late pregnancy.”

“I can’t think of a single reason why I should.”

“You wouldn’t believe how different pregnancy is in the twenty-first century. And almost always for the better. We had Morgan and Samantha at pretty much the same time, didn’t we?”

“Yes, we did. Almost as if there was some kind of competition.”

Deirdre waved away the suggestion with a well-manicured hand.

“Oh, we were silly about some things then. But pregnancy is not what it was—it’s easier, more straightforward. I tell you: you should try it.”

“Not on your life,” said Mum.

“Don’t you dare!” I shouted.

“Morgan—vamoose,” called Mum. “This is girls’ talk.”

We didn’t vamoose, and they started up again immediately. I waited until I was sick of the anatomical details (many of which I knew already) and I made off towards the garden. I was rather surprised (because I count her even lower than the earthworm) when Samantha followed me. She started in on why she had come out—she felt in a position to give advice.

“Don’t let my mum persuade yours to have another baby,” she said.

“She won’t,” I said dismissively. “I was more than enough for her.”

“I was quite pleased at first. Not delighted, but quite pleased. Then I thought that this is the age when I should be getting more freedom. What shall I get in fact?”

“Twenty-four-hour slavery.”

“Right. Unpaid babysitter. Changing nappies nonstop. They’re indescribably smelly and nasty, including the instantly disposable ones. I know she’ll be poohing the whole time.”

“She?”

“Mummy pretends to Daddy that she doesn’t know, but she does. It’s a she. And Daddy does desperately want a son and hier. Greenacre Manor will be as dust and ashes without someone to inherit it—and of course to Daddy that means a male. He’s often said he’d like to adopt you.”

I pricked up my ears.

“You’re joking, of course. He hardly notices me.”

“He notices. If he had his way you would be son and hier.”

I considered this.

“Your daddy’s not that rich. It wouldn’t be worth my while. I’ve never really considered him when I’ve dreamed about being adopted by a filthy-rich man or woman.”

“Daddy is high up in the BBC. The BBC is run by families. Dinnersties they call them: the Magnusens, the Dimblebies, the Michelmores. Being child of a BBC person is a passport to a good, cushy job, well-paid and with lots of presteege. And jobs for your kids as well.”

“He’s got you. Why should he need a son?”

“He’s horribly old-fashioned.”

“Well, England has had queens since fifteen fifty-something. You’d think even Uncle Timothy could have got used to the idea by now . . .”

“He did once condesend to ask me if I wanted to work at the BBC.”

“What did you say?”

“I said I wanted to do a degree in the History of Western Art, then go and work in the Queen’s Gallery at Buck House.”

“Beats the corridors of the dear old Beeb.”

“It just occurred to me as he spoke. I’m going to keep all my options open, but those options certainly do not include the Beeb. I said: ‘Give the job to the newcomer, Daddy. He or she is probably thick as pigshit.’”

“How interesting. Come on—that’s Mum calling for lunch.”

“Oh God! Rack of lamb and tiramisu.”

I will slip quickly over what we had for lunch, apart from the lamb and the tiramisu. There was a lot about babies, a lot about the power structures and the behavioural disharmonies (their words) at the BBC, and quite a lot (from my Dad, of course) about the creative urge, and how it needed to be stimulated, not crushed. After lunch Dad and Deirdre did the washing up while Tim and Lois talked in the living room. Tim had a stiff tumbler of white wine concealed between his chair and the wall, and kept taking quick surreptitious gulps. Mum, for some reason, was asking whether he saw a big change in Dad, whether he looked older and whether the nonstop creativity (he’d had a half-hour play on Armchair Theatre on Radio Four in the last two years) wasn’t taking it out of him. When Dad and Deirdre came back in they all four (juniors were not consulted) agreed on a brisk walk up to Trevelyan Cave, and they were just rugging up and putting on walking boots when Deirdre dropped her bombshell.

“Oh, I’ve been meaning to tell you since we arrived, but there hasn’t been a convenient opening. In one of Bernard’s plays there would have been one, but he just forgot to provide one for real life.”

“Deirdre—”

“So I’ll just have to tell you at an unsuitable moment. Bernard and I go back a long time, as all of you know, and we have been meeting up again over the last six months. In grubby little hotel bedrooms hired by the hour. We were taking things up where we left them off twelve or thirteen years ago. This” (patting her stomach) “is Bernard’s. He’d quite like a daughter in place of that little know-all in short pants he has already. He thinks we are going to get married as soon as the divorce goes through. Think on, Bernard. Marriage has outlived its usefulness. So far as I’m concerned sex is a short-term affair, with plenty of swapping. So it’s bye-bye Tim, bye-bye Bernard. And welcome anyone young, fit, and into it for the laughs.”