Relative Love (14 page)

‘Have you? Have you really?’

‘Of course, dear.’ She leant over and patted Alicia’s hand. ‘Belinda’s been playing with Penelope who, as you know, is quite hopeless – lost
all
her marbles, in my opinion, but there we are.’

Alicia, who might once have encouraged Mavis in an acerbic analysis of the failings of someone on the fringe of their group, found herself changing the subject. God knows what they had been saying about
her
in her absence. And Penelope, though she repeated things and dyed her hair the most ridiculous shade of auburn, always had the best of intentions.

‘I’ve brought these, which I’ll leave here.’ Mavis fished out a small brown bag of grapes and set them carefully on the bedside table next to the lilies – now somewhat droopy and pungent – which Charlie and Serena had very sweetly sent the week before. ‘And your post, which Beryl
asked me to bring when I dropped by yesterday. She said you’re going home soon, which is nice,’ she added, plucking off a grape and popping it into her mouth.

‘Yes, very nice,’ murmured Alicia, unequal to the task of admitting to her terror, how safe she had come to feel in hospital. She studied the letters instead. There was a gas bill, an offer for cut-rate health insurance and a letter in spidery writing which turned out to be from the biographer Pamela had mentioned during the course of her several kind letters and phone-calls.

Dear Mrs Morrell
,

I believe you may have been forewarned of my writing to you by your brother, John, whom I have lately had the pleasure of meeting. I am researching a book, which I hope will include a chapter on your eldest brother, Eric, focusing on his many achievements during the war. The book is to be called
Unsung Heroes
and (with any luck!) will be published next autumn by Greaves and Maple. I am writing on the off-chance that there might be anything – any thoughts or memories of that time – that you would like to contribute. I want to build up as detailed a picture as I can, so anything would be of interest. If you would like to call or maybe write to me, my address and telephone number are at the top of this letter. There is, of course, absolutely no obligation on your part to contribute. Your brother and sister-in-law have already been incredibly helpful
.

I hope this letter puts you to no inconvenience
.

Yours sincerely
,

Stephen Smith

‘Anything interesting?’

‘The man writing about Eric. He wants to know if I have any thoughts or memories to contribute.’

‘Oh, my, how exciting. And do you?’

‘Heavens, I don’t know. I can’t possibly think about it now.’ Alicia quickly slipped the letter back inside the envelope. She had memories, all right, but wasn’t sure either that they were appropriate or that she would like to hand them over to some strange young man. She had been nineteen when Eric went to France, old enough to know and share the numbing agony of waiting for news. As her elder brother he had been her hero and she had made many private pacts with the Lord for his safe return. Yet after the war he was so obviously restless and keen to take off again that it was as if they’d all lost him anyway.

‘Can I have one of those as well?’

‘No, Edward, you cannot.’

‘But I’m starving.’

‘Darling, you can’t be. You’ve only just had breakfast and I really think one double chocolate muffin is enough. Besides, they cost about two pounds each. Are you sure you don’t want anything, Clem? Okay. And, Maisie, you’ve got a Danish and you, my little sausage, can share mine, can’t you?’ Serena bent down to squeeze the nose of her youngest, who was wriggling furiously in her pushchair. ‘Stop teasing her, Ed,’ she scolded mildly a few moments later, delving into her purse for a crisp twenty-pound note and catching sight of her son making a threatening lunge at his little sister.

Ed, his teeth clogged with chocolate muffin, waited till Serena had returned her attention to the girl at the till, then lunged again at the pushchair. This time he made an ogre face, not one of his funny ones but a Dracula-style grimace, and Tina whimpered in confused dismay. It was Saturday morning of half-term and they were at Victoria station, about to be packed onto a train to Barham so that their mother could have lunch with their aunt Elizabeth, who had already dropped Roland at Ashley House and was on her way up to London. Both women would return to Sussex that evening, with Charlie who was spending the day at Twickenham with a work colleague. The whole thing, in Ed’s view, was a thoroughly stupid plan, since it meant being at the mercy of his sisters for two solid hours and with no prospect of anyone decent to play with once they got to Ashley House. Roland didn’t count as decent and Chloë and Theo were skiing, which was something his parents had said they weren’t going to do again until Tina was old enough for ski-school. Which would be years, reflected Ed bleakly, ramming the hefty remains – a good half – of his muffin into his mouth, then attempting vainly to close his lips round it.

‘You are disgusting,’ said Maisie.

‘I quite agree,’ echoed Clem, still light-headed at her own saintly strength in resisting the array of baked goodies in the glass cabinet next to them.

Ed, his mouth spurting soggy chocolate crumbs, mouthed, ‘Fuck off,’ and strolled back to the table where Serena had instructed them to leave their coats and bags. He got out his PSP and began feverishly to work the buttons. He wished he hadn’t wolfed his food and he wished his sisters liked him. He had had a deadly week doing the St George’s entrance exams. It was a relief the exams were over, of course, but not a nice sort of relief because they had gone so badly. ‘Describe and illustrate four types of weather patterns, giving named examples.’ Just thinking about his answer, the sketchy drawings, badly copied from over the elbow of the boy at the next desk, made Ed feel quite sick. ‘Was Henry VII a good or a fortunate king?’ Ed knew things had gone more or else all right for Henry VII, but had no factual recollection as to why. Henry VIII was the only Tudor monarch he had done any revision for: he was reasonably interesting, being fat, a spendthrift and having had so many wives. And he knew a bit about King John, how he was weak and bad and got all the barons to sign the Magna Carta. But there hadn’t been any questions on Henry VIII or King John so he might as well have not known anything at all.

Serena got the girls to carry the drinks and food to the table so she could wheel the pushchair. The plan to meet Elizabeth had been hers, but it had been postponed and reorganised so many times that some of her initial enthusiasm had waned. She liked Elizabeth and wanted to be kind because she was Charlie’s sister and clearly somewhat unhappy, but there had never been much real affinity between them. On the phone that morning – to finalise the arrangements, which, with all the ferrying of children, had grown unbelievably complicated – Serena had sensed, too, that Elizabeth was wondering why they were bothering. It didn’t help matters that two out of Serena’s four children (Ed and Tina) had chosen that morning to be impossible, Tina because she had a cold and Ed because … Serena looked at her son, who was scowling into the tiny screen of his Game Boy, chocolate smeared across his chin, and felt a gust of tenderness. Because, she decided with a sigh, he was fast becoming a teenager. Because with his exams over he felt that some sort of VIP treatment was called for rather than another half-term flopping at his grandparents. Because – and here she really did pity him – he had three sisters.

‘We’ll get your friend Garth over, shall we, Ed, when we get back to London? Go and see a movie or something? The new James Bond, perhaps.’

‘James Bond sucks.’

‘I’d like to see it,’ put in Maisie.

‘And me,’ chimed Clem, both of them playing the easy-to-win game of Outshining the Ungrateful Sibling.

‘I want to go to Alton Towers,’ snapped Ed, flicking off his PSP.

‘Well, that might not be so easy,’ said Serena, working hard now to maintain her patience, ‘because it takes a whole day and Tina —’

‘Yeah, yeah, yeah, Tina can’t cope with it, like she can’t cope with anything yet, not even skiing.’

‘I’m sorry you find your little sister such a burden, Edward.’ Serena spoke very quietly, having learnt from years of practice that it was a far more effective way of shaming a child than a raised voice. ‘Now, get your things together, all of you, or you’ll miss the train. Maisie, keep your mobile on, won’t you? And if Granny isn’t at the station when you get there, don’t, for heaven’s sake, wander off. Ed, could you push Tina, please, while I dump this lot in a bin?’ She scooped up the bits of Cellophane and polystyrene and crammed them into an overflowing plastic barrel. Maybe a day off for shopping and lunch with only her youngest to worry about was exactly what she needed after all.

Roland felt self-conscious at Ashley House on his own. When Elizabeth drove away his stomach had tightened and his throat had knotted even though he knew it was stupid because she was coming back that evening. It had made him wonder how Theo could bear to be away for weeks at a time and not be sad every minute of every day. His grandparents were kind but at first rather preoccupied, Pamela with getting things ready in the kitchen and telling Betty which beds to make up, and John with the door from the music room on to the cloisters; it had warped in the rain and wouldn’t close properly. Roland, riding round the garden on one of the old bikes that lived in the garage, kept half an eye on his grandfather’s progress, veering away in ever-wider circles at the mounting evidence of anger in the way John banged and scraped his tools. At one point he stood up and swore, saying the F-word with such venom that Roland, his cheeks burning with a combination of horror and fascination, felt duty-bound to hide inside the pergola. Grownups weren’t supposed to behave like that, especially not grown-ups like his grandfather who said ‘bathroom’ instead of ‘toilet’ and ‘would you be so good’ instead of ‘please’, and who was generally about as ancient and polite as it was possible to be. Peering through the thicket wall of rose briars he saw his grandmother emerge through the doorway and say something about Sid taking a look, which made his grandfather bark even louder, though not a swear-word this time. Grown-ups, it seemed to Roland, wheeling the bicycle back to the garage, were always cross these days. After a dinner party the other night he had heard his parents talking in such loud, fierce voices that he had crept out on to the landing to investigate. He craned his neck to listen, almost getting his head stuck between the banisters. But after a few moments the voices stopped. Almost as if his parents had known he was there. Then the sitting-room door opened and he scampered back to bed, where he lay shivering and worrying that they were cross because of something to do with him.

Back inside the house his grandmother asked for his help in peeling mushrooms, which was boring but then asked him to carry a box upstairs, which was a bit better, even though the dust made him sneeze.

‘Somewhere over there will do,’ she instructed, pointing across the attic, which was huge and poorly lit, with great slanting ceilings so low that his grandmother had to stoop to protect the
grey pincushion of her bun. ‘I’d ask Granddad only he’s busy with the door and you’re so strong now. We got it down for the man who wants to write about Uncle Eric.’

‘Is that Great-uncle Eric, the soldier?’ Roland picked his way across the room, his eyes widening at the bulging boxes and laden shelves, all thick with dust. The attic at his house contained a couple of broken dining-chairs and some empty suitcases. This was an Aladdin’s cave of a place that made him itch to explore. He would tell Ed about it, he decided, the moment he arrived from London.

‘It is.’ His grandmother looked pleased. ‘And this man’s going to put him in a book, which is
very
exciting. Can you manage?’

‘Oh, yes. Easy-peasy.’ Roland had set the box down for a rest, but picked it up again the moment she spoke, feeling Herculean and important. ‘Where did you say I should put it?’ He sensed a sneeze coming and stopped, closing his eyes in expectation, but it went away again, which was curiously disappointing. ‘Granny?’ Pamela had moved deeper into the attic, where the eaves forced her to bend almost double, and was examining a small leather suitcase. ‘Granny, where shall I put it?’

‘Oh, darling, sorry.’ Pamela pushed the suitcase back into its place and manoeuvred herself to a position where she could stand upright, which she did with a sigh, looking suddenly so old and worn out that Roland felt it was just as well he was there. ‘In that corner would be lovely. And then it’ll be time for me to go and meet your cousins at the station. Would you like to come too? We could stop at the village shop on the way to get an ice-cream, but only if you promise to keep it as our secret and still eat up all your lunch.’

Roland beamed his acquiescence, thinking his grandmother was actually quite cool and wondering why he hadn’t noticed it before.

The airport lounge was hot and smelt faintly of bodies and fried food. They had rushed to get there, worrying through traffic jams on the M4 and queues of people at the baggage check-in desks only to find that their plane was delayed. Peter was using the extra time to make a long phone-call to his number two, hopping from one place to another in search of relative silence and a good signal. Theo was reading a book, absently chewing the skin off his fingers and picking at a large crimson lump on his chin. Chloë was sprawled dramatically across the hand luggage, hugging a huge purple kangaroo called Bindy, which she had insisted on selecting as her companion for the holiday from the array of furred creatures with whom she shared her bed.

Helen tried to read a paper, but found she was too tired to care about ricocheting share prices or debates about north sea oil and closed her eyes. She had been up till very late the night before, first attempting to clear her desk at work, then to create order at home, tidying, packing, emptying the fridge and the bin, dead-heading and watering plants, writing instructions to the milkman, the paper boy, the au pair … No matter how many things she did there always seemed to be ten more left to do. And, these days, she kept almost forgetting things too. Important things, like collecting the ski-suits from the dry-cleaner’s. And gloves.
Gloves
. Of all things. Not exactly an optional extra and yet it was only at the last minute that she had remembered to get them out of the drawer. The countdown towards any holiday was always stressful, but this year it had definitely been worse than usual. Much worse. And that was for a number of reasons, Helen reminded herself, seeking solace in being rational: because of Theo not being around to pack his own stuff or try on clothes that she knew were almost certainly too small; because of Chloë
sulking and Peter looking baffled. Because she, who never cried, felt for some reason like crying all the time.