Next of Kin (26 page)

‘Never heard of it.'

‘Or iron a shirt?'

Zoe shook her head.

‘I suppose,' Dilys said, ‘you have these ideas that women shouldn't keep house any more.'

‘No—'

‘That it's all careers and so on.'

‘I don't do it,' Zoe said, ‘because I don't need to. When I need to, I should think I'll learn.'

Dilys had been over by the sink in her kitchen during this conversation, rinsing the dark heads of purple sprouting broccoli under the tap. She lifted her gaze and looked out of the window above the sink, and then said, in quite a different voice, ‘When Harry comes home, maybe I could use some help. Maybe I could do with an extra pair of hands then.'

There was a pause.

‘I see,' Zoe said.

She got off the edge of the table where she had been perching.

‘That's different. I mean, if you need me to learn ironing, I'll learn.'

Two days later, Dilys had taught her to scramble eggs. It had been fine, Zoe thought, except for washing the pan. Washing the pan made you see the point, abruptly and forcefully, of sandwiches and plastic cartons of noodles and hamburgers in take-away boxes. She looked down at Robin's jersey in her lap. It had bits of straw caught in it, and frayed cuffs and a ragged hole. She picked it up and put her face in it. It just smelled of wool, dust and wool. She had been sorry when Robin shouted; not frightened but just sorry, plain sorry she'd made him shout. She didn't want to do anything to make him shout but rather the reverse instead. She picked the jersey up again and shook it out, as she had seen Dilys shaking out the laundry before hanging it on the clothesline, and then folded it and put it back over the passenger seat, patting it into place.

‘What place,' Zoe thought suddenly. ‘What place? What am I
doing
?'

‘What's she doing here?' Debbie said. She had put Gareth's tea on the table. The children were eating theirs in front of the television. Debbie disapproved of this but today she had had enough of the children. She didn't care where they ate their tea, she didn't even much care if they ate tea at all, particularly Eddie. Eddie had discovered the bleach bottle which she had mistakenly left in the bathroom after cleaning, with the top insufficiently screwed on. He had filled his water pistol from it, and then aimed the pistol at his bedroom curtains, which Debbie had only made six months before, out of dark-blue cotton patterned with aeroplanes. Eddie had been fascinated by the effect of the bleach trails on the dark-blue cotton, so fascinated that he had returned to the bathroom to refill his water pistol where Debbie caught him.

‘I dunno,' Gareth said. He bent over his plate. ‘I gave her a driving lesson on the tractor this afternoon.'

‘Gare
th
,' Debbie said. ‘Don't you damn well start—'

‘Wasn't much good—'

‘That's not what I mean.'

Gareth put in a forkful of chips and winked at her.

‘Not my type. Looks like a boy.'

Debbie sat down opposite Gareth and poured herself some tea.

‘What about Robin then?'

‘What about Robin?'

‘Robin and her?'

Gareth shrugged.

‘Nothing as far as I can see. He gave her an earful this afternoon. He doesn't care who's here and who isn't right now. He doesn't notice.'

‘I notice,' Debbie said.

‘You and who else?'

‘Velma,' Debbie said. ‘Half the village.'

Gareth shook tomato sauce liberally over his plate.

‘So what are you going to do about it?'

‘You know what,' Debbie said, ‘I want us to leave.'

Gareth sighed.

‘I thought we'd been through all that. I thought you were going to help Lyndsay with the baby.'

‘She's gone to stay with her mum.'

‘She'll be back.'

‘Gareth,' Debbie said, ‘that's not the point. The point is, it's all changing. It isn't like it was once.'

Gareth took a swallow of tea.

‘Look,' he said, ‘I've got a good job. I don't mind the boss, this is a decent house, the kids are doing all right at school, you've got a job, we're settled.'

‘I don't feel settled any more. I keep thinking something's going to happen. I think something will happen if we stay.'

‘It's been nasty. A nasty patch, that's all—'

‘
No
,' Debbie said. ‘No. Things have
changed.
It'll never be the same again.'

He looked at her. Her blonde hair, which he'd always liked her to wear loose, was pulled back behind her head and tied with something, and it hardened her face, aged it. She was still good-looking, Gareth told himself, still a bit of a looker, but she'd changed, too, like her body had, and her mind and her attitudes. Ten years ago, she'd never have been like this. But then, ten years ago, she'd hardly had any kids, only Rebecca as a baby. She'd been chuffed to bits with that baby, she was like a doll to her with all her little clothes and stuff. But she got worried now. Those three kids had made her worried. They'd changed her, just as having them had changed the way she looked. He put his hand out across the table.

‘Can we wait?' he said.

‘What d'you mean?'

‘Can we wait a bit before we think about it seriously? Can we wait a few weeks?'

She looked at his hand. It never did, she had discovered, to think in too much detail about where Gareth's hands had been that day.

‘You mean until something else happens—'

‘Maybe.'

She sighed. She picked up her mug and looked into it.

‘All right,' she said.

When Robin came in, in the evening, Zoe had decided she wouldn't say anything much. She wouldn't sulk, but she wouldn't emphasize her presence either. She would just be there. In fact, when she heard the kitchen door slam, and then, almost immediately, the murmur of the television, she was upstairs in her bedroom, clipping her nails where they'd been broken heaving the straw bales. It didn't matter. They'd been too long anyway. She'd taken to growing them too long to emphasize to herself the admirable fact that she didn't bite them any more.

When she went down to the kitchen, Robin was standing on one leg, half out of his boiler suit, staring at the television. He turned slightly as she came in.

‘Hi.'

‘Hi,' Zoe said.

Robin pulled off the leg of his overalls and bent to pick them off the floor. He said, over his shoulder, ‘Sorry I bawled you out, earlier.'

‘It doesn't matter,' Zoe said. ‘I asked too many questions. At the wrong time.'

She moved over towards the cooker where she had left, on instructions from Dilys, two baked potatoes and a casserole.

‘I think,' Zoe said, ‘I'd better go. Back to London. I didn't mean to be in the way but I think I am.' She opened the oven door and reached gingerly inside. ‘Would you like me to go?'

There was a pause. She heard Robin move a chair and sit down on it, to put on his shoes.

‘We start making silage on Monday, dawn to dusk, all hands to the plough. We – we could use all help.'

Zoe straightened up, shutting the oven door.

‘But I don't think I'm very useful.'

He looked directly at her, for the first time since her arrival.

‘No,' he said. He was grinning. ‘But you could be.'

‘Did Gareth tell you about the tractor?'

‘No, but I can imagine. Better next time.'

Zoe leaned against the cooker.

‘You don't have to be kind. I came uninvited and I can go away the same way. I only want you to be honest.'

‘I'm not being kind,' Robin said. He stood up, and leaned across the table to turn the television off.

‘I'd like to be kind,' Zoe said. ‘I'd like to help. I'd like to make you feel better.'

Robin sat down again, half turned away from her, riffling through some papers at his elbow.

‘You'd have a job on. Quite apart from everything else, I've now had a fine imposed by the River Authority. Twelve hundred pounds and instructions to improve the slurry disposal within six months. Or else. Legal summons and all that.' He put his hand up and ruffled his hair. ‘Sometimes I think—' he said, and then he stopped.

‘It's a bugger,' Zoe said. ‘Isn't it? A complete bugger.'

‘I can't think where it all comes from,' Robin said, his voice almost inaudible. ‘It seems now we've turned the tap on, we can't stop it, I can't—'

Zoe straightened up. Very quietly she moved across the kitchen and stood very close to Robin's chair, not touching him, but almost.

‘I think,' she said, and her voice was quite matter of fact, ‘that you haven't turned it on for years.'

He looked up at her sharply. She herself looked as she always looked, and not remotely sentimental.

‘When did you last have sex?' Zoe said.

He blinked. Startled into frankness, he said, ‘Last year.'

‘Where?'

‘After the Smithfield Show. In London.'

‘With a hooker?'

‘No,' Robin said, amazing himself, ‘with a girl from the Ministry. Fisheries Department if I remember correctly.'

Zoe moved very slightly and then lowered herself on to Robin's knees. She put her arms around his neck. He didn't move. He simply let her.

‘I could be useful.
There
, at least.'

He was almost laughing. He was also, he noticed, putting his arms tentatively round her in return, shaking.

‘Why—'

‘I'd like to,' Zoe said. Her face was inches from his. ‘Wouldn't you?'

‘But I'm old,' Robin said.
‘Old.
Too old for you. I'm old enough to be your bloody
father
—'

‘So?'

‘So it's indecent.'

‘For you?'

‘No, stupid, no—'

‘I'll decide, thank you,' Zoe said, ‘what's decent for me and what isn't. On the whole, what isn't is going to bed with crap boyfriends. Age doesn't come into it. You're shaking.'

‘Of course I am,' he said. He tightened his hold on her, pulling her in so that their faces were pressed together, cheek against cheek. Damn, he thought, I need shaving, I need a shave—

‘You had a bad time,' Zoe said, over his shoulder, ‘didn't you? All those years. A bad time.'

‘Not her fault—'

‘Not yours either.'

She moved a hand up into his hair. He said, ‘This is crazy.'

‘Not as crazy,' she said serenely, ‘as separate bedrooms.'

‘I don't want to be a dirty old man—'

‘I'll be the judge of that.'

‘Hell,' Robin said. ‘Oh
hell
—'

He dropped his face so that he could push it into her shoulder, into the dark grey wool of her jersey over her young and bony shoulder. The tears were coming, thick and fast and unstoppable.

‘Sorry,' Robin said, gasping. ‘Sorry. Oh Zoe, sorry—'

She said nothing at all. She sat there on his knees with his arms around her, and hers holding his head and neck, and waited while he wept. Then she got up and went over to the roll of kitchen paper patterned with smudgily printed mushrooms that Velma had bought in the village shop, and tore off a long strip.

‘Here,' she said, holding it out.

He blew his nose ferociously.

She said, ‘Don't say anything. There's nothing to say.'

He blew again. She waited until he had finished and then she sat down on his knees again.

‘Where were we?'

‘God knows,' Robin said, putting his arms around her. He was laughing weakly, ‘God knows—'

She regarded him.

‘Your nose is red.'

He nodded. He closed his eyes. She leaned forward and licked his nose and then kissed him slowly and softly on the mouth.

‘Luckily,' Zoe said, ‘it isn't your nose I'm much interested in.'

Chapter Fourteen

The ambulance came into the yard at Dean Place Farm and stopped by Dilys's flower tubs. There was in it, besides the driver in his precisely ironed pale-blue shirt, a nursing auxiliary, also in uniform, and Harry. Harry was in a wheelchair. He was dressed in clothes Dilys had taken in the day before, except for his feet which were in bedroom slippers. Dilys couldn't think why the sight of his slippers was so offensive. She'd taken his shoes in yesterday, his brown brogue shoes which she'd polished. Why couldn't they have put his shoes on, instead of slippers?

‘Hello, dear,' she said.

She stood at the foot of the ramp they had let down at the back of the ambulance. Harry looked very small to her, smaller than ever.

‘There we go,' the auxiliary said to Harry, releasing the wheelchair brake. ‘Ready for the ride?'

They needed the bed at Stretton Hospital, they'd said to Dilys. Harry had stopped losing weight, had actually gained a pound or two, and he'd gain more once he was up and about. It wasn't good for him to be in bed any longer. It was time for him to come home.

‘That's OK, isn't it?' Zoe had said to Dilys. ‘I'll come up when he comes back. I'll be here when the ambulance comes.'

But she wasn't, and Dilys's pride had forbidden her to ring Tideswell and ask why not.

‘You'll need help,' Zoe had said. ‘You'll need help getting him out of that wheelchair. I'll help you.'