Our Tragic Universe (33 page)

I made a cup of tea, wiped my eyes and sat back down on the sofa with the flower remedy book to see what it said about the combination that Vi had chosen for me. Gentian was for sceptics who had no faith. Holly was for those who were hard-hearted and joyless. Hornbeam was for people who were exhausted and couldn’t see the point of life any more. Sweet chestnut was for people who had lost hope. Wild oat was for people without specific ambition who couldn’t settle or make up their minds about anything. And wild rose was for people who had become unable to pick up the right ‘cosmic life energies’. I flicked back to the entry for Gentian. ‘This is a person who wants to believe but cannot,’ it began. ‘He or she
feels the need for faith – in something – but will need this remedy in order to begin to embrace it.’

I switched on the radio and started to mix a new batch of my remedy. The Beast of Dartmoor was now the main story on the local news. A woman from Postbridge claimed that she had seen it prowling around her garden. She described it as a black wolf, twice the size of an Alsatian, with yellow, ‘glowing’ eyes. ‘I just didn’t want to go out there,’ she said. ‘I’ve never seen an animal that big outside of a zoo. I’m staying inside from now on until it’s caught.’ I looked at B, lying on the chair in the sitting room. It sounded like an enormous version of her, although her eyes were brown. There were a couple of interviews with the local police and Paignton Zoo. B came and curled up on the sofa next to me, and I carried on knitting until the scratching sound started up again, this time at the front door. B wasn’t bothered by it, which meant it was nothing. But I still went to bed and put my head under the duvet and tried to think about work, and daylight. I knew it was probably a seagull, a rat or even a badger, but I didn’t want to think about why it would be scratching at my door rather than someone else’s.

On Saturday when I woke up there was an unfamiliar bird singing loudly outside. I lay there for a while just listening, but then I got up to look for it. All I could see out of the window were the usual rooftops, with the sun dribbling a thin, brothy light onto them. I couldn’t see the bird, but I wished I could; it sounded like an imitation of an arcade game.
Bing, bing, bing,
brrr, brrr, dip, dip, dip, woo, woo, bing, bing, bing, dip, dip, ping, ping,
ping, brrr
. And then the same, or roughly the same, again. I’d read somewhere, or maybe someone once told me, that the older birds are, the more complex and beautiful are their songs. This song was complex, but not exactly beautiful. Was it a young bird trying out all the possibilities of its voice, or an old bird having a mid-life crisis? I was still standing by the window wondering about this when Christopher came and stood behind me and pressed his body against mine. His right hand dangled uselessly by his side, but he stroked the top of my thigh with his left hand. He smelled of unwashed hair.

‘Come back to bed, babe,’ he said, his voice thickened by morning.

I suddenly felt as if someone was offering me sand to eat, or sea to drink.

‘Oh, sweets, what about your hand?’

‘You’ve got two hands.’

‘I know, but …’

He dropped his left hand from my thigh. ‘Fine. Forget about it.’

Minutes passed. The bird had stopped singing. Christopher was back in bed. He was under the covers, not moving. The air felt dense. This was probably the first time I’d ever rejected him sexually, but he was an adult, wasn’t he? He rejected me all the time. He’d spent the last seven years rejecting me.

‘You know we’re due at Libby and Bob’s tonight?’ I said.

There was a muffled reply from under the duvet. ‘What?’

‘Libby and Bob’s? Tonight. I didn’t know if you’d remembered.’

‘Oh, fuck.’ He sat up. ‘Fucking hell.’

‘Why are you swearing? Is it your hand?’

‘No, it’s not my hand. I just don’t want to go and play happy families with Libby and fucking Bob, of all people, especially when she’s shagging someone else. We can’t afford it anyway, buying wine and stuff like that. I haven’t got anything to wear. Can’t you just make an excuse?’

‘No,’ I said, an edge appearing in my voice. ‘I’m going. I just wondered what you were doing. I can afford it, as it happens. And I’m not into morally policing my friends. Or my family, for that matter.’

‘What …’ He ran a shaking left hand through the top of his tangled hair. ‘What the
fuck
did that all mean?’

‘Nothing.’ I folded my arms and looked out of the window. The bird still wasn’t singing and the soupy sun had been all soaked up by doughy clouds. ‘I’m sorry. Look, there’s some money. It came in yesterday. I wanted it to be a surprise, but I’ve messed it up a bit. I wondered whether …’

‘No, what was that about friends and family?’

I sighed. ‘I saw Milly yesterday.’

‘Oh. That fat cow. I’m not surprised she’s behind all this somehow.’

‘For God’s sake, Christopher. You can’t call her that. And no one’s behind anything.’

‘She’s messing up my family.’

‘No. You and Becca are messing up your family. Josh is fine with it. Why can’t you just let your dad be happy?’

‘Oh, I see. Now it’s even clearer. This is about how wonderful Josh is.’

‘Don’t be ridiculous.’

‘Anyway, me and Becca are half the family. The other half’s mad. It’s down to us to keep an eye on Dad and make sure
he’s not screwing up his life. He’s been vulnerable ever since Mum died.’

‘So while you and Becca live your lives, you expect your father to be doing what, exactly? Just waiting for you to phone, or for Becca to come for a few weekends a year, usually not even to see him, but because she’s found out Ant’s fucking another London barmaid or he’s found out she’s been sending more naked pictures of herself over the Internet to another guy in Florida? Apart from that you’d have him just working in the café and watching TV on his own in the evenings and waiting for his boring life to be punctuated by another one of Josh’s psychotic episodes?’

‘My father has nothing to do with you. Neither has my sister. I wish I’d never told you any of that stuff now. I knew you’d find some way of using it against them. Why can’t you keep out of it?’

‘If you want me to keep out of it, then don’t expect me to come to the bloody hospital with you in the middle of the night, and don’t have a go at me because I don’t do it perfectly. And don’t ask me to change any more of your bandages. I wish I wasn’t involved in your family, but I am, especially when you go around punching walls because you can’t cope with the simple fact that your father loves someone who isn’t you, and isn’t your dead mother.’

Christopher put the duvet over his head.

‘That’s very grown up,’ I said, half-thinking he might laugh at this, but not knowing quite what I’d do if he did.

‘Fuck off,’ he said.

‘OK. Fine. I’m going out. I’ll probably be back after the dinner party.’

Nothing.

‘Christopher?’

‘Do what you like,’ he said.

The day was in ruins, should have been in ruins. But in a sense it had been ruined all along. I felt quite calm as I drove out of Dartmouth the Warfleet way, past the road to the castle and Rowan’s house, and out towards Little Dartmouth. The sky was the colour of cobblestones as I drove through Stoke Fleming and past the entrance to Blackpool Sands, where I walked B most mornings. She made her usual little whimpering sound as we approached, and then breathed all over the back window as we passed it. She would probably realise that we were going to Slapton Sands, but not how long we might be staying. The road ribboned along the cliffs through Strete, lined with a haphazard stone wall beyond which there were mimosa trees, wild primroses and pink sheep grazing in fields. The road jagged round, and down, and soon I was on the straight road between Slapton Sands on the left and Slapton Ley on the right. Torcross village was at the end of this, like the head of a tadpole. I parked by the Second World War tank and then walked along the esplanade to Seashell Cottage. Turning the key in the lock felt like breathing in after spending a long time underwater. Christopher could simmer and stew all day. I wasn’t going back until midnight at the earliest. Or maybe I was never going back, or only going back to pick up my stuff. I wasn’t sure.

The desk in the bay window looked inviting as a place to sit and contemplate the rest of my life. There was nothing on the desk, of course, and all I could see beyond it were the yellow and blue stripes of shingle, sea and sky, dotted here and there with sea-birds busy with their fishing. But I couldn’t settle. If
I sat there now, with so much life to contemplate, I felt that I might just watch the sea for ever, and freeze with no fire and starve with no food.

I let B sniff around the house while I nipped out to the local shop. Even though it was off season, there was a limited range of buckets and spades, as well as laxative powder, shoelaces, doorstoppers, paperclips, postcards, local pamphlets on nature and ghosts, string, firelighters, logs, milk, cheese, sandwiches and about a thousand other things. The shelves were a bit dusty and it was pretty gloomy, but I still managed to buy a campfire kettle, some firelighters, bread, a tub of fresh prawns, a dusty packet of penne, a lemon, black peppercorns, coffee, an assortment of herbal tea-bags and some local honey. I put a can of dog food and some dog biscuits in my basket as well, walked around the shop for a bit and then went back and added two more cans, a big rawhide chew and a tin bowl. Then I went to the cleaning section and picked up some dusters, bleach, cream cleanser, J-Cloths, furniture polish and a bucket. After I’d put everything on the counter the woman behind the till raised her eyebrows.

‘Anything else?’ she said.

I glanced behind her to yet another rack of local publications. There were tide-tables, birdwatching manuals and nature diaries about Slapton Ley. There was also a slim paperback called
Household Tips
, by Iris Glass. That must be Andrew’s aunt, whose cottage I had taken over. ‘Can I take that book as well, please?’ I said. She sighed and reached it down for me. ‘You on holiday, love?’ she said.

‘Sort of.’

When I got back to the cottage B’s eyes seemed full of questions, which I half-answered with the rawhide chew. I put all
my cleaning stuff in the bucket and left it in the kitchen. Then I went round the side of the pub and got some logs. I came back and started building a fire while my new kettle boiled and my grill heated up.

I’d learned to build fires back at Becca and Ant’s place in Brighton. After Drew’s drama series had gone into post-production he’d returned to London, the idea being that eventually I’d move there to be with him, or he’d move to Brighton to be with me. In the meantime we spent every weekend at Becca and Ant’s place, because we both knew my little flat was cold and depressing. One Sunday morning we were in the four-poster bed together in ‘our’ room, overlooking the pond in the back garden, when Drew looked at me seriously and said he loved me, and wanted to marry me. I remember looking around at the perfect bedroom and thinking how the wallpaper – which showed scenes from contemporary Brighton – was more tasteful and eccentric than anything I’d ever manage to buy. There was an Aga downstairs, and I knew that Ant would probably be cooking us breakfast on it already. Becca would be lighting the large open fire in the sitting room, as she always did on cold weekend mornings. After breakfast we’d all read the papers together in front of the fire, and talk about things we’d found in the review and style sections. Becca dominated these discussions, and would often go up to London on a Wednesday afternoon when her shop was shut to buy something she’d seen in the paper the week before. While this was going on I’d glance at the crossword, but I wouldn’t start doing it until that evening when I got home. Before lunch we’d all have a swim in the indoor pool, then a sauna, and after lunch Drew and I would go upstairs for more by-numbers sex. It felt
a little as if my external life had gone from being something the size and colour of a white handkerchief to becoming several yards of beautiful fabric, printed with complicated colours and patterns. The only problem was that Drew was the dull background on this fabric, not the pattern. And I wasn’t sure what you could really make out of this fabric, and whether whatever it was would really suit me. But on that Sunday morning I blushed and said I loved Drew too, and even though I didn’t really believe in marriage it would probably be a good idea for us to make our relationship official and permanent.

That had also been the day I’d first met Christopher. When Drew and I eventually emerged, newly engaged, from our room, wearing tracksuit bottoms and old hoodies and big smiles, there was no breakfast downstairs and no fire in the sitting room. The kitchen smelled of cigarette smoke, presumably from Becca, who still hadn’t managed to give up, because she wasn’t yet over her mother’s death. But instead of Becca, there was this thin, jaggedly beautiful, blue-eyed guy in ripped jeans sitting at the kitchen table with a
£
20 note in front of him. When we walked in he picked up the money, stood up, pocketed it, clapped Drew on the shoulder and said something like, ‘All right, mate?’ Drew introduced him as Christopher, Becca’s younger brother, then Ant came in and told us that Becca had gone ‘somewhere’ to calm down and asked us if we would light the fire while he made breakfast. So the three of us went into the sitting room and pooled our knowledge, which didn’t amount to much. Christopher and I started joking around immediately, but Drew took it all very seriously, arranging three logs in the shape of a wigwam and then looking for firelighters and matches.