Getting Home

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• Celia Brayfield
  
• Dedication
  
• Epigraph
  
• 1. The Healthiest Place in the World
  
• 2. Annual Death Rate Under 6 Per Thousand
  
• 3. Weekly Lectures
  
• 4. Ladies' Discussion Society
  
• 5. Masquerades
  
• 6. The Vigilance Committee
  
• 7. Hot and Cold Water to Every House
  
• 8. A School of Art
  
• 9. Plenty of Greenery
  
• 10. A Club for Ladies and Gentlemen
  
• 13. The Tudor Theatre
  
• 14. A Natural History Society
  
• 15. A Garden to Every House
  
• 16. Cozy Comfort
  
• 17. Regular Dances
  
• 18. Tennis Courts
  
• 19. Only Twenty Minutes from the City Centre
  
• 21. Peace Assured
  
• 22. A Green Location
  
• 23. Good Gravelly Sub-soil
  
• 24. The Most Approved Sanitary Arrangements
  

Celia Brayfield is a novelist and cultural commentator. She is the author of nine novels. The latest,
Wild Weekend
explores the tensions in a Suffolk village in homage to Oliver Goldmsith's
She Stoops to Conquer
. To explore suburban living, she created the community of Westwick and explored mid-life manners in
Mr Fabulous And Friends
, and the environmental implications of urbanisation in
Getting Home
. She has often juxtaposed historical and contemporary settings, notably eighteenth century Spain in
Sunset
, pre-revolutionary St Petersburg in
White Ice
and Malaysia in the time of World War II in
Pearls
. Four of her novels have been optioned by major US, UK or French producers.

Her non-fiction titles include two standard works on the art of writing:
Arts Reviews
(Kamera Books, 2008) and
Bestseller
(Fourth Estate, 1996.) Her most recent is
Deep France
(Pan, 2004) a journal of a year she spent writing in south-west France.

She has served on the management committee of The Society of Authors and judged national literary awards including the Betty Trask Award and the Macmillan Silver PEN Prize. A former media columnist, she contributes to
The Times
, BBC Radio 4 and other national and international media.

For Chloe

The more I'm with you pretty baby
The more I feel my love increase
I'm building all my dreams around you
Our happiness will never cease
But nothing's any good without you
Cos baby you're my centrepiece

I'll buy a house and garden somewhere
Along a country road apiece
A little cottage on the outskirts
Where we can really find release
But nothing's any good without you
Cos baby you're my centrepiece

‘Centrepiece':

Lyrics by Harry Edison and Jon Hendricks

The sun rose upon Westwick with respect. The pure glow of dawn approached the tree tops, discreetly penetrated the canopy of leaves and invited the sleeping community to wake up and enjoy the day.

The light falling through the cherry trees on New Farm Rise dappled the empty street. The-white porches were virtuous with fresh paint; the cropped grass blades prickled in the damp earth. Stephanie Sands woke at 5.38 am, anxious because her husband was away but content because he was going to telephone at 6.00, her son was sleeping and her garden was growing.

All Stephanie could do was grow things. In thirty-two years she had obediently acquired other skills but felt no joy in practising them. Stephanie had raised plants, she made gardens and now she was raising a family. She had not considered that what one person grew another could then cut down.

That innocent morning in early summer, Stephanie went out to her garden, barefoot in her bathrobe, taking the telephone. The air was cool and sweet, nourishing as milk. She breathed deeply. Her young crab apple tree was blooming, its branches thick with dark red petals, casting long ruffled shadows across the grass. All around, her life was as good as she could possibly have made it.

Half a mile away in Maple Grove, the leaves of the old trees smothered the tentative early sunlight. A grey glow revealed the empty gardens. At the corner of Church Vale and Grove End, a front door opened and a fat black dog hurtled down the front path. After it came a call hoarse with the universal terror of a citizen of the suburbs, the fear of annoying the neighbours: ‘Moron! Come back here!'

At the end of the path, the animal cannoned nose first into the white gate. Westwick architecture was big on story-book details: picket fences, Dutch gables, Rapunzel turrets, hanging balconies. The dog yelped, fell on its rear, rolled over, crushed half a lavender bush and bounded back up on its paws, its blubbery body agitated by its frantic tail.

A man in running shorts appeared on the porch. He was lean and long-legged, and if his shoulders had not sloped he would have looked athletic. Gently, considerate of his neighbours, he shut his front door. Then Ted Parsons turned his back on most of the disappointments of his life, opened the gate and jogged into the street.

Start slow. No problem with that. The dog stormed ahead, joyfully delinquent, oblivious of other people's turf; Moron the labrador, named by his son. It takes one to know one. No, that was unfair, Damon was not that bad. Ted had two secret vices and fairness was one of them. The time was 5.55 am.

His blood was sluggish and his legs were still cold. There was a band of pressure around his chest. He had a flashback to the age of 14, stumbling after the rest of the boys on shaking knees, hoping at least that no one would notice him. Well, that had been football and this was life. In the real game. Ted Parsons was a player, and those scrappy kids who years ago stuffed mud down his shorts in the changing rooms, where were they now?

As he turned into The Broadway, he felt his stride lengthen and the blood begin to pump. ‘It ain't how you start, it's how you finish,' he said aloud, rounding the graveyard wall of the Church of St Nicholas.

St Nicholas's had a white bell tower with fretwork flashings topped by a little green copper cupola. A cocktail of creole, gothic and renaissance, it marked the southwestern boundary of Maple Grove; if Westwick was the most desirable neighbourhood in the whole conurbation, Maple Grove was its green shady silent heart.

St Nicholas's stood on the site of a much older place of worship dedicated to St Werberga. It was quite a few centuries since Werberga had been a good commercial name. Jackson Kerr, the developer who had caused Maple Grove to be built, had commissioned a new church and arranged the rededication of the parish in 1912. All that remained of the old building were some blistered headstones set back against the churchyard wall for the convenience of the grass cutters. Moron halted and cocked a stumpy leg to piss on one of them.

Ted set off along The Broadway. He raised a hand to Mr Singh, who was taking down the shutters of the Kwality Korner Store. He considered his route: northwest through the New Farm estate or south towards the river along Alder Reach?

Gemma Lieberman lived on Alder Reach. Gemma Lieberman might be in the shower, drops of water rounded on her olive skin, drips falling from her nipples. Or she might be in bed, warm and tousled and.… lonely. His thighs drove him on like pistons. Or she might be standing in her kitchen eating toast, in a T-shirt that did not quite cover her backside so that gorgeous dimpled half-moon portions of flesh were almost asking to be grabbed.

He turned south. Anyway, the New Farm area had a bad association – that dingbat of an architect. Who could understand a man like that, what went on in his head? Young but dumb. Big project, mega profit, quantum leap in your business profile – or putter along with the contracts you've got and in two years'time you'll be dead. Was that such a difficult choice? Ted Parsons shook his head. New Farm was off the map now. Here be losers. He turned into Alder Reach at 6.07 am. Knowing what to expect, Moron followed his master with reluctance.

In New Farm Rise, Stephanie Sands felt the dew between her toes. Aphids were crusting the buds on her
Souvenir de la Malmaison
, crawling three-deep around the sepals, insolently waving their antennae. In a well ventilated jar in her shed she had been collecting ladybirds to combat the aphids. Now she fetched the jar and, careful of their tiny legs, pushed the ladybirds with her fingertips on to the encrusted stems.

‘Feeling lucky, punks?' She watched the ladybirds advance on their meal. ‘You don't know what this is, do you? This is a rose named in memory of the Empress Josephine. If you little beasts give it a break it's going to be pink.' Oblivious of their doom, the aphids kept their wings folded and crawled up the stems on microscopic feet. ‘
Souvenir de la Malmais
has been in cultivation since eighteen thirty-something and I have wanted to grow it all my life. I am not growing it to feed you guys. This is not a soup kitchen, you've made a big mistake. Now get off my patch or you're toast.'

Was that the telephone? She was talking only because she was anxious. People said Westwick was exquisitely peaceful but in the early morning in summer the birds made such a racket you could miss the piping of a telephone.

Below the bird calls, to Stephanie's ears, her garden emitted a kind of green noise, the continuous bustle of vegetation going about its business, leaves reaching up for light, roots siphoning water, tendrils casting about for anchorage. This morning, however, she was not listening with her imagination. She could hear from the far distance the thin growl of cars streaming into the city on the 31. Close by, the thrush in the flowering crab was hopping from twig to twig, trying out his throat. Yes, the telephone was switched to ring. It was 6.13 now.

Get a grip, woman. When Napoleon went to Egypt, did Josephine fret if his letters did not come? No, she pinned up her hair and went out getting into trouble with Therese Tallien. So why should I worry if my husband doesn't call from wherever he is? He called yesterday. The lines from Eastern Europe are always bad. Business is like war; men have to think about glory and fortune and victory, not their wives being pitiful back home.