Relative Love (30 page)

‘We can all fit in the Range Rover, then, if Chloë doesn’t mind sitting on someone’s lap.’

Chloë believed herself way past the age where she should have to sit on anyone and her face burned; but then her grandmother said she could be in charge of the egg – now a huge shiny gold package – which made her feel a little better. It was still a squash. Ed, after some discussion, was allowed to take his football and just as they were leaving Theo raced back inside to fetch his camera. They sat in the back with Cassie and Clem, while Elizabeth took Chloë and the egg on her lap in the front, with all the women’s handbags wedged by their feet.

Eric was parked in a wheelchair in the garden between a lavender bush and a wooden bench with a plaque on it, saying, ‘In memory of Edna Greaves’. He had a green tartan rug across his knees and looked lopsided – as if, Clem decided, placing a wary kiss on his leathery cheek, he wanted to topple sideways and crawl into the shrubbery. He smelt of medicines and soap and looked so slack-mouthed and unresponding that she wondered how on earth her grandmother, briskly shifting the chair to face the bench and tucking the blanket more tightly round his stick legs, could chat to him so normally. The egg was presented with much aplomb, then unwrapped by Chloë. Everyone had some (Eric chewed the little pieces fed to him by Pamela with sudden and astonishing vigour, brown dribbles seeping from the corners of his mouth), but the enticing sugar chicks inside proved too sickly sweet even for Chloë, who put two into her mouth at once, and then spat them into the flowerbed. Theo, after the fuss of taking his camera, ignored it and began, inexpertly, to kick the football with Ed instead. Clem, watching them, decided boys were a pathetic and fickle breed. She had been quite excited about seeing Theo, what with their exchange of letters and the producer business, but when she had asked him about it that morning, he’d been very offhand, saying maybe later on in the weekend.

With the grown-ups taking up the bench, Clem found herself in charge of Chloë. She took her for a wander round the gardens where they encountered several other residents, in wheelchairs or tottering with sticks, until Chloë said she needed the loo and Clem had to keep guard while she squatted behind a tree. The sight of her cousin crouched with her pants round her ankles, chattering nonsense, made her think suddenly of her little sister and the red potty (on which she liked to sit, grinning importantly, with no idea of its purpose) now gathering dust in the cupboard next to the basin in the bathroom. So she told Chloë to hurry up, her voice sharp with sadness and then, because Chloë looked so dismayed, tried to make up for it by pointing out two fat squirrels quarrelling about something on a branch.

Clem could feel the sugar from the chocolate burning a hole in her stomach. She had only eaten it to be polite and because it was clear from her grandmother’s beady glare that she was expected
to. In fact, she only ate anything these days because she was expected to. Obligation rather than hunger. At school she asked for ‘smalls’, then spread the food around her plate. At home she waited until her mother’s back was turned – which was often, these days – and scraped what she didn’t want into the bin, deftly hiding it under something else (preferably something sludgy and safely untouchable) to reduce the likelihood of discovery and recrimination. Half the time it felt like a game, getting away with it and being one up on everybody else. But at other times, when she was forced to eat something she didn’t want, like the chocolate, a huge rage would burst inside – a terror almost – at having to do something so against her will. It was like handing over the reins of her life to people who didn’t care or understand. The chocolate episode had made her even crosser with Maisie for being let off the visit, cobbling together that cheap story about having to work and looking after Roland when it was obvious she had no intention of doing any such thing. Why couldn’t the grown-ups see it? Why were they so bloody dumb? Maisie had had on her new skin-tight hipster jeans and enough makeup to start a beauty salon. It was perfectly plain to Clem that she was going to try to see Rosco again; as plain as the glint in her twin’s eye that had alerted her to the first visit. Perched, agog, on the end of her bed in London a few days later, she had teased all the details out of her, torn in equal measure between admiration (Rosco – a truly
famous
pop star – had given her twin sister a
cigarette
) and trepidation on Maisie’s behalf. This was dangerous, uncharted territory and she wasn’t sure her sister was equipped to cope with it. Being told the secret was thrilling – made her feel less left out – but it had proved a burden too. A huge burden. So huge that sometimes, like that morning, Clem earnestly wished that Maisie hadn’t told her so that she could have been as duped as the grown-ups and less weighed down with this weird mixture of being envious and worried at the same time.

‘Clem, everything all right?’

‘Yes, thanks, Aunt Elizabeth. I’m just taking Chloë inside to wash her hands.’

Elizabeth called, ‘Good girl,’ after her, then turned to her sister to remark that their niece was looking rather thin.

‘They all are,’ murmured Cassie. ‘Look at Ed, he’s a bean-pole. Even Charlie’s in danger of getting svelte, although he is trying to, of course, with all that running … Poor loves, it must be so hard.’

‘They grow so at that age,’ put in Pamela, breaking off from telling Eric about Ashley House’s leaking tiles and peering at her daughters over her spectacles. She had brought her new tapestry – a cover for a scatter cushion – and had been sewing fast and furiously, remarking on the magnificence of the natural light and holding the emerging patterns of fleur-de-lis and roses for her brother-in-law to admire. She felt energised and buoyant sitting in the spring sunshine with her girls, her grandchildren playing sweetly, the goose greased and ready in the pantry, Eric sucking sweets like a baby. The needles of silky gold and blue threads gleamed as she wove them deftly through the hessian. Her fingers, so stiff and inept at the piano on the day of Stephen’s visit, felt powerful and full of mastery once more. So much so that she found herself able to look back at the day itself without a trace of fear. ‘That biographer, Mr Smith,’ she said brightly, addressing Cassie, ‘said he might visit Eric, but when he called last month he had changed his mind. Maybe we’ve seen the last of him. Until the book comes out, that is. What do you think, Cassie? Have we seen the last of Stephen Smith?’ She beamed at her youngest, thinking how radiant she still was, how in her prime and deserving of true love.

‘Hm?’ Cassie had her hand round the mobile phone in her pocket even though it was switched off. Her letter to Dan’s wife would arrive the next day. Saturday. He would call then. It would all happen: the explosion, the result. Messy but necessary. ‘Maybe,’ she replied dreamily. ‘Maybe.’

‘You didn’t meet him, did you, Lizzy?’ continued Pamela. ‘Such a nice man. A book on Eric will be a nice addition to the study shelves, won’t it? Our very own Harrison hero, all of his exploits recorded for posterity.’ She patted Eric’s shoulder, then slipped her tapestry frame into the large much-patched floppy sewing-bag that had belonged to her mother. ‘I think we should love you and leave you, Eric dear. Lizzy, could you help me with the wheelchair? Cassie, perhaps you could round up the children.’ Both women, converted in an instant to obedient-daughter mode, leapt to their feet and began to gather up their things.

‘Does he … Did you tell him about Tina?’ ventured Elizabeth, gesturing at her uncle, whose head was bouncing slightly from the motion of the wheelchair being propelled across the lawn.

Pamela pressed her finger to her lips, her blue eyes flashing with some of the brilliance that had made her so striking as a young girl. ‘Honestly, Elizabeth, I saw no need,’ she whispered, ‘absolutely no need at all. Why cause pain unnecessarily? What the heart doesn’t know it can’t grieve over, can it?’

‘No, I suppose not.’ Elizabeth gripped her allocated handle of the wheelchair more firmly, wondering if her mother had meant to snub her or whether, as Cassie would no doubt say, she was being oversensitive. ‘Though personally I prefer to know things,’ she ploughed on, in her own mind laying the ground for the question she really wanted to ask, which was about the stillbirth of her unknown sibling. Colin thought she was silly to care but she couldn’t help it. It was an omission, a missing piece in the jigsaw of family history, not as grand, maybe, as Eric’s soon-to-be-celebrated exploits on the battlefield, but hugely poignant none the less. A lost sibling, for heaven’s sake, with her very own name. They would have been five not four. How could her mother not have told them? Elizabeth glanced sideways, tempted to let her curiosity explode out of her, but with the wheelchair safely back in the television room, Pamela was busy with farewell rearrangements of Eric’s legs and hair, which had been blown into tufts by the breeze. She would find the right moment, Elizabeth told herself, when they were alone and Pamela in a gentler, less organising mood, not clicking her fingers as she had been all day, getting them all to jump to her tune.

Clem could see at once from Maisie’s glowering expression that the planned excursion into the village had met with disappointment. She was so relieved she almost hugged her. She was sitting at the kitchen table surrounded by notes, glue and pictures of castles and queens. Roland was opposite her, making great throaty sniffs and working on a picture – an astonishingly good one – of Boots. The dog was slumped on the floor next to them looking tired and mournful, his head resting on Theo’s trainers, which Pamela had made him change out of for the visit to Eric. ‘Blimey, that’s good, Roll, didn’t know you could draw like that. Have you seen this, Maisie? It’s fantastic.’

‘Yep, I have … really good.’ Maisie began to pack up her things, ramming them into her satchel.

Chloë stood silently on the other side of Roland, torn between awe at the revelation of such a skill and jealousy because the sketch was so life-like and because it was of Boots, whom she considered more hers than anybody’s (except her grandfather, who had only to make a tiny low whistle for the dog to come loping to his side). ‘Wow,’ she said eventually, her voice breathy, ‘Roland, could you help me do one of Samson? Then Granny could put them in frames and hang them on the walls.’

‘Which I would love to do,’ interjected Pamela, coming into the kitchen and clapping her hands. ‘But for now I need that table clearing and you lot out of the way. Jessica is outside. It might be
nice if some of you went to play with her. She’s staying with Sid for Easter. You could get the bikes out – you haven’t done that for ages. There’s a pump hanging on a hook in the garage if you need it.’ The children dispersed, the twins fleeing upstairs, while Roland and Chloë trudged outside to find Sid’s granddaughter.

‘So you didn’t see him?’

Maisie shook her head. ‘But I’m going to try again, not this weekend, maybe, but when we’re down next half-term for Uncle Peter’s party. He was so cool, Clem, and really
nice
… You’ll never tell, Clem, will you?’ Maisie, who had been standing by the window, running her finger up and down the lead latticework that divided the glass into sixteen neat little rectangles, came to sit on her sister’s bed.

Clem shifted to one side, making room for her. ‘Of course not.’

‘Promise?’

‘Promise.’ Clem found a loose thread in the candlewick counterpane and began picking at it furiously.

‘Cross your heart and hope to …’

Their eyes met as they realised that the next word wasn’t one that either could say. Clem snapped the thread free and chewed one end of it. It tasted stale and salty. ‘I said yes, didn’t I?’

‘Clem, is there anyone that
you
like at all?’ Maisie stared hard at her sister, who had now pulled a chunk of hair across her face and was sucking the ends of it along with the loose thread. She was thinking of Jonny Cottrall, of course, but couldn’t say so. Since reading Clem’s diary she had felt bad about him, but not bad enough to stop their occasional furtive meetings in the alleyway between the gym and the science block.

‘No, there isn’t,’ said Clem fiercely. ‘Anyway, no one would like me because I never say the right thing and I’ve got a crap body.’ She tugged at the sleeves of her black sweatshirt which, like all the current items of her wardrobe, was several sizes too large.

‘Don’t be silly,’ Maisie muttered, but not terribly convincingly, because it had become apparent during the course of the year that in the muddled race to grow up she had somehow nosed ahead. She loved being fourteen, wearing a bra, keeping, the boys at school on their toes, deciding how to split her modest allowance between new clothes and vouchers for her mobile phone – it was all so exciting. Clem saved most of her money – apart from investing lately in the occasional ugly tracksuit – and only used her phone in emergencies to call home. In fact, the only thing they really seemed to have in common, these days, was being sad about Tina. But there wasn’t much more either of them could say on that subject and – for Maisie at least – it was impossible to be sad for every minute of every day. ‘Sorry I jacked this afternoon, by the way,’ she continued meekly, as a tide of guilt – about Jonny, being prettier, happier and everything else – washed over her.

‘ ’S all right.’ Clem spat out her hair. ‘It wasn’t great, though,’ she admitted. ‘I had to look after Chloë and – I know it’s mean to say it – Uncle Eric is kind of …
gross
.’ She made a face and Maisie giggled.

‘So is Roland. He kept licking his nose like this …’ Maisie rolled on her back to demonstrate, sticking her tongue out and crossing her eyes in a vain attempt to touch her own nose until Clem was laughing, too, and they were both flopping hopelessly round the bed.

Cassie, hearing the mirth on the way down the corridor to her own bedroom, thought how wonderfully resilient children were to misfortune. She was thinking of Tina, of course, but in a trice her thoughts had raced to Dan’s children and the belief that they, too, would quickly adapt to their now imminent new circumstances. Divorce wasn’t nearly as bad as death. And in time they could come and visit, maybe even get to like her. She went into her bedroom and sat down in the little faded velvet Queen Anne armchair by the fireplace, with its dusty cave of a hearth, filled these days with a pot of dried flowers instead of coal. She tipped her head back and stared up at the familiar contours of the sagging beams as she took several long, slow, deep breaths. This time tomorrow it would be over. This time tomorrow the next and most wonderful phase of her life would begin. Inspired by the example of her parents’ union, she had waited many years for the right man to come along. She had been patient. The circumstances weren’t perfect, but few circumstances were. Down the corridor she could hear her nieces, still laughing. Cassie smiled, nervous but excited. The best was yet to come.