Next of Kin (36 page)

‘Maybe she never felt it.'

‘Zoe,' Robin said, turning his face and kissing the side of her neck, ‘you've been like a holiday.'

‘When did you last have one?'

‘I never did.'

‘And will you have another?'

‘Maybe. But not immediately. I don't need one for a while.'

‘Good.'

He put his hands under her arms and held her away from him.

‘Where will you go?'

‘London,' Zoe said, ‘back to London.'

‘What will you do?'

‘What I was doing. But more. I'll travel next. I'll go and find things I've just thought about before and I'll look at them and take their pictures.'

‘Drifting—'

‘No,' Zoe said, ‘not that. I've learned about that. I know I can't get rooted yet, but I know I can't drift either. I'll find people who need me.'

‘Lucky them.'

She held his ears, lightly.

‘Are you going to go forward now?'

He nodded.

‘Yes. Don't quite know how, but yes.'

She leaned towards him, still holding his ears, and kissed him.

‘I've liked it,' Zoe said. ‘I've really liked it. Being here, with you.'

Judy heard Robin's bedroom door close. And then silence. The whole house was suddenly drenched in silence. While he had been in Zoe's room, she thought she could hear murmuring, steady, quiet, private murmuring, but she couldn't be sure. Maybe they hadn't been talking anyway. Maybe they'd . . . Stop this, Judy told herself, stop this. None of your business. That's what Dilys had said to her that day, quite plainly. It had amazed her.

‘It's your father's life,' Dilys had said, ‘and you're not a child any more. You've made it plain you wanted nothing to do with him, ever since you were little, and if you've changed your mind now, and you find you don't like what's going on, that's your problem. Not his.'

Judy had been very startled. She had gone to Dean Place to tell them she had decided to give up her job in London, and was coming home, and she expected a welcome due to the return of a prodigal daughter. But they had been preoccupied and fretful, and had told her there was nothing to come home for.

‘We're moving on,' Dilys said. ‘We're moving into Stretton. Lyndsay's informed us she's coming here. Says she's going to farm. I don't know what your father will say.'

‘He won't say anything much,' Judy said spitefully. ‘He's too busy—'

Dilys had looked at her sharply.

‘If you mean Zoe—'

‘I do.'

‘There's nothing wrong with Zoe,' Dilys said.

‘She's changed him—'

‘She's put a bit of heart back in him,' Dilys said, ‘if that's what you mean.' She had given a little laugh then, a short, barking sound as if she wanted to take the edge off what she was about to say. ‘Heart,' she said. ‘We could all do with a bit of that round here.'

Judy turned now, on her side. She han't pulled the curtains across properly and she could see a slice of early summer night sky, dim but not quite dark. Out there, the farmyard lay, and the cows, some in the barn, the young ones in the field below the house, and beyond them still was Gareth's house where Gareth might even now be awake as she was, thinking about his future, anxious that he was doing the right thing, afraid of change.

‘He had no choice,' Robin had said. ‘He didn't want to, but Debbie did. He never said so, but you could tell. He didn't want to move.'

But he was moving, and so were Gran and Grandpa, and so was Lyndsay, amazingly, away from the dependency she had always known, away from waiting for someone else to make the choices, away, indeed, from some of the strongest bonds of the past, gripping bonds that had done as much harm as good. Like me, Judy thought, like me. Or, at least, as I must make like me.

Chapter Nineteen

‘Come in here,' Lyndsay said.

She pushed the door open, and Hughie could see a big room with windows and a bed. He stood in the doorway and looked at it. There were photographs on the walls, lots of them, and a cupboard thing and a bee droning about on the windowsill. Hughie didn't like bees.

Lyndsay stepped into the room past Hughie and began to walk about in it, slowly. Every now and then, she stopped near one of the walls and looked at a photograph. They appeared to be full of lines of people, Hughie thought, lines all standing behind one another with the smallest in the front, like the Christmas play photograph at his playgroup. He held Seal, and waited.

Lyndsay went on looking at the photographs. She walked very slowly about the room, very softly, and her skirt swung behind her. It was blue. Hughie knew what it would feel like if he grabbed at the folds of it as Rose had done just now, just before she'd been put down for her morning rest, leaving a smear on one side. Rose always left smears. Her hands had always been somewhere else, first.

‘Come and look at this,' Lyndsay said.

Hughie came forward very slowly.

‘Put Seal down.'

Hughie gripped him.

‘No,' Lyndsay said. ‘Put him down. I want to show you something for a boy. A real boy.'

Hughie hesitated.

‘Seal is for bedtime,' Lyndsay said, ‘not for all day, too. There are going to be other things for all day now.'

Hughie turned and began to walk back towards the door. Lyndsay waited until he had almost reached it, and then she said, ‘There's a picture of Daddy here. I should think he was a bit bigger than you but not much. He's got a cricket bat.'

Hughie stopped, but didn't turn.

‘This room was Daddy's room. All the time he was a boy. When he was a little boy and then when he was a bigger one. All these pictures have got Daddy in them.'

Hughie half turned and stood with one profile to her.

‘This can be your room,' Lyndsay said. ‘This can be your bedroom now. Just yours. You can have all the pictures of Daddy and you can put your own pictures in here, too. You can have that bed.'

Hughie looked at it. It seemed very high, and it had black legs and the bedspread was made of caterpillary stuff.

‘Or,' Lyndsay said, ‘we can bring your own bed over from the cottage and you can have it in here instead and we'll put this bed somewhere else.'

‘Take the bee away,' Hughie said.

‘Please.'

‘Please.'

Lyndsay opened the window nearest to the bee, and scooped it out into the air quickly with her hand.

‘It's gone. It was very sleepy.' She looked at Hughie. He was swaying slightly, as if he was thinking, pondering.

‘Do you like this room?' Lyndsay said.

He was silent.

‘I'll be next door, you see. I'll be in Granny's old room. I'm going to put my bed in there. And Rose can have the room beside the bathroom.'

Hughie went over to the nearest wall and looked up. There were four photographs up there, four blocks of men in rugger clothes. They all looked the same. Hughie couldn't see which one was Joe, but he was in there, being a rugger man like all the others. Next to the rugger pictures was the window, a big window that didn't have bars across like his little window did now. The glass in this window looked very empty and clean. He turned round. Lyndsay was standing quite still, watching him. He walked quickly up to the bed and climbed onto the chair that stood beside it, a bare wooden chair with no cushion on it. When he was kneeling on the chair, he paused, just for a moment, and then he reached across and put Seal down, on the pillow. Then he scrambled off the chair again and ran out of the room onto the landing.

Zoe was packing. Her clothes, her few clothes, lay in dark piles on the floor and she was kneeling beside them taking forgotten things out of the bottom of her rucksack, socks and rolls of spare film and an out-of-date coach timetable, before she put everything else back in.

‘Oh,' Judy said.

She stood in the doorway, holding two mugs of coffee.

Zoe sat back on her heels. She said, without resentment. ‘Were you coming to tell me to go?'

Judy swallowed.

‘Yes.'

‘Well, here I am, going.'

‘I wasn't going to tell you. I was going to ask you. I thought—'

‘What?'

‘I thought that we couldn't live together like this. Now that I've come back.'

‘No,' Zoe said, ‘I know. I knew that before you did.'

‘Don't,' Judy said with some edge, ‘always be right. Please.'

‘I'm not always right. I'm just not fixed.' She looked at Judy. ‘Are you still going to want your father when I'm gone?'

‘Shut up—'

‘Well, are you?'

Judy put both coffee mugs down on the little chest by the bed, spilling some as she did so. She took a grip on her temper, and said carefully, ‘There was a lot I didn't see.'

‘You're bloody lucky,'Zoe said, ‘to have a father at all.' She reached out and picked up a handful of T-shirts and lowered them into the rucksack. ‘In fact,' she said in a voice which lacked its usual composure, ‘you're bloody lucky anyway. You're a bloody lucky spoiled bitch.'

Judy lowered herself, very quietly, onto the edge of the bed.

‘I haven't taken anything,' Zoe said, and her voice was still ragged. ‘I said I wouldn't, and I haven't. But that doesn't mean I didn't want some things. Things you've got. Things I'll never have. You can tell yourself you don't need this stuff, this family stuff. You can tell—' She stopped and turned away abruptly, putting one arm up across her eyes.

‘Zoe—'

‘You shut up,' Zoe said. ‘Don't make it worse by trying to tell me it'll be OK.'

‘I won't,' Judy said. ‘But I'm sorry—'

‘Of course you are, of course. You never meant this to happen. Nor did I. Nor did your dad.' She shifted her balance to extract a paper tissue out of her jeans pocket, and blew her nose hard. ‘Well, it's happened and now we've got to do the next thing.'

Judy leaned forward.

‘Have you got any money?'

‘No,' Zoe said, ‘but it doesn't matter. I don't mind about money. I'll get some—'

‘You can have the flat, if you like,' Judy said diffidently. ‘I've given a month's notice. I've paid the rent. So it's all there, if you want it, for a month. And – and, well, your herons are there. And your quilt.'

Zoe picked up a grey sweatshirt and held it against her eyes.

‘Thanks.'

‘And I can let you have some money—'

Zoe shook her head.

‘Robin's done that.'

Judy closed her eyes.

‘Are you in love with him?'

‘Probably,' Zoe said, ‘I don't know. I've got nothing to measure it by.'

‘No.'

‘He's been good to me. I've been good to him.'

‘Yes.'

‘And it's hard to leave that.' She looked up at Judy again and her face was pinched and small. ‘But I'm going to.'

Later, Judy offered to take her into Stretton to catch the London coach but she said it was OK, thanks, Gareth was taking her. Robin was lending Gareth the Land Rover because there were various things that needed picking up in Stretton anyway, and he would take Zoe to the coach station. If he wasn't back to start the afternoon milking, Robin said, then he, Robin, would start it himself. Robin had then looked at Judy, as if considering whether to ask her to help, but had plainly decided against it. Judy then went back into the house to let them say goodbye to each other without her there, watching.

When she heard the Land Rover go out of the yard, she went upstairs and into Caro's bedroom so that she could watch it drive up the track to the lane, and then turn left towards the village, and after that take the road to Stretton. She felt no relief at seeing it go, only a strange small pain, and a sense that she owed Zoe more than she had acknowledged, that it was too late, now, to unstitch what had happened and try to smooth her responses.

She turned from the window and looked at Caro's bed with its red-and-white American quilt. It was just a bed. Extraordinary, after all these obsessive years, that the bed in which Caro had slept and been so sick should simply have become a bed, and no more. Maybe, Judy thought, I'll sleep in it. Maybe I'll come in here and turn all the furniture around and sleep here. If Dad – if Dad doesn't mind.

From downstairs, the telephone was ringing. Robin clearly hadn't plugged in the extension by his bed. Judy waited, counting the rings. He hadn't, it appeared, switched on the answering machine either. Judy leaped forward and raced down the stairs to the kitchen, seizing the receiver.

‘Hello? Hello? Tideswell Farm—'

‘That Judy?' Velma said.

‘Velma—'

‘You home then?'

‘Yes.'

‘You home for good?'

‘I've only been back three days,' Judy said. ‘I haven't even talked to Dad. Not yet.'

‘Not while she was there,' Velma said. ‘Madam.'

‘What?'

‘I knew she'd go,' Velma said, ‘I knew it. I've just seen Gareth driving her out, not three minutes ago. Going to London, is she?'

‘Yes. Yes, I think so—'

‘And not coming back?'

‘Velma,' Judy said, ‘it isn't really anything to do with you.'

‘I didn't ring to speak to you,' Velma said, ‘anyway. I rang to speak to your father.'

‘He's out in the yard—'