The Last Kings of Sark (5 page)

Pip frowned when he was working, and rubbed at his lips (they got dry because of this, and Sofi gave him her Vaseline, which she applied with her own finger). His foot metronomed the floor. I'd make him stop because the speed changed, so you could never relax into it.

More and more often we started to spend time with Sofi in the kitchen, We'd bring our work with us, past papers and lists of equations. Sofi's clattering and swearing and singing made just enough noise for us to concentrate. She called the kitchen her office. The cupboards were red, and she wiped the doors meticulously clean, even though inside there was soy sauce on the spines of spice racks and crumpled curls of garlic paper.

Mid-morning, the dishwasher from breakfast stopped. When Sofi opened it, steam would flood out that smelled like hot tomatoes and breathing. We'd watch her cook. Slapdash, like her shopping. Sometimes she'd make it into a performance – she'd use the pot of paprika to knock cumin into the sauce and then vice versa; she'd chop fast and all the rounds of carrot would come out different sizes. She'd lick cake-mix off the spoon then put it back in the bowl. She grated her fingernail into the dauphinoise once (that was an accident). And she used scissors a lot, for snipping broccoli, chopping through meat, cutting the hard, creamy fat off bacon. I didn't like that; there was something wrong about snipping flesh. It's the clip, and the way the scissors bounce back, and how they make you think of paper and garden hedges.

We always ate lunch with Eddy, but only very occasionally – three times, perhaps? – with Esmé. They were different types of deeply unpleasant. Pip wasn't used to having his father there. When it wasn't summer, Eddy worked during the week – ‘and weekends,' Pip said into his soup – in London. Eddy didn't know where everything went; he asked questions which gave it away. At least he made noise, but he'd go on and on about Pip's new school, talking about fagging through fat chunks of bread. I was hopeless, hopeless, ever-smiling. I'd be the first to see if Eddy wanted the salt passed. I'd ask if he wanted more potato salad – ‘could I tempt you?' I'd say. I can hear myself saying it.

When Esmé was there, the only thing I remember her eating was radishes. That harsh crunch they make. If Eddy told Pip he wanted him to be in the first fifteen for rugby or something like that, Esmé would say, with her thick accent, ‘
Plizz.
Let the boy eat.' The few words she uttered would be in English if she spoke to Eddy, and French if she spoke to Pip (though he always responded in English). She never said anything to me or Sofi.

I don't like to think about those lunches. I suppose I blocked them out. That's the thing about summer, when you think back to it, the sunlight bleaches out the bad, and you don't remember it ever raining. Those first lunches though … Salads, soups, cold meats; all of it bitter as rocket.

But afterwards, when Esmé had retreated to her room, when Eddy was away again, sailing or emailing, Sofi and I began to stay on at the table and talk. One day, Pip gave up waiting for me in the study, and came back to the kitchen.

‘Are you having tea?' he asked.

Sofi pointed at our mugs.

‘Can I have one?'

She changed the direction of her finger to point at the kettle.

Pip started to walk towards it but she sprang up, blocked him and pushed him onto her seat. ‘Only joking. I'll do it, knobber.'

While the kettle boiled, she stood behind Pip's chair and absent-mindedly massaged his neck.

‘How's it going then? Is he learning a lot?'

I felt a prickle on my cheeks. ‘Tea's hot,' I said and blew into it.

Sofi knocked on Pip's hairline with bony knuckles. ‘Oi, are you learning? I'm doing an investigation. Ofsted.' She went back to massaging. Sofi couldn't see it, but he was wincing with each squeeze.

‘Ahh – Sofi – ahh, in a nice way … it really hurts.'

‘Poof.'

He shrugged away from her. ‘Not a poof. Your nails are long.'

She looked at them, couldn't really argue, and walked back to the kettle.

‘I'm giving you the mug with the crack,' she said. And she blew into the bottom to get rid of the dust.

We all sat round the table, hands cupping, but not quite touching, our mugs, like you do round a campfire.

‘So this is nice,' she said. We both looked at her. ‘No, it is! Why does everybody always have to be sarcastic all the time? I
like
this … Let's have
biscuits.
' And she flared her eyes like she was suggesting something exotic.

‘Whereabouts in Poland are you from?' Pip asked as she hoisted herself onto the work surface to get to the top shelf of the cupboards.

‘Fuck's sake. Ealing.
Ea
-ling. Haven't you told him anything? It's just the z's and c's in my surname.'

‘Oh. Right. That … how do you say it?'

She turned so she was facing us. ‘Try.' She was standing in the sink now, Converse soles on enamel.

He shook his head.

‘No, I'm serious,
try,
please.' She did praying hands. ‘It's my favourite game.'

He thought for a second, then said something that sounded like ‘leek soup'.

‘No.' She started laughing. ‘Try again.'

He refused and looked at me instead. ‘What about you, Jude? Where are you from?'

‘The country.'

‘Where?'

‘Just – the countryside in the country. But I went to uni in a city called St Andrews.'

‘I thought it was just golf there,' Pip said. ‘Golf and tea shops.'

How did he know about St Andrews? ‘There is golf there. Some golf. But also a lot of nightclubs.'

He looked confused. ‘And shopping,' I added. ‘Shopping malls.'

‘Biscuit?' Sofi said. ‘Am I the only one eating? Don't you like jaffa?'

Pip said he wasn't hungry.

‘You don't eat because you're
hungry.
We're not in Africa. Jaffa –
now.
'

Pip picked up the packet and said he'd never had one before.

‘Tell me you're joking,' Sofi said, putting both palms flat on the table.

‘No.'

‘He doesn't joke,' I said.

‘Infidel! Like this.' And she showed him how to chip off the chocolate, peel off the orangey bit and then suck the base till it stuck to the roof of your mouth and turned to paste.

‘Do you like it?' she asked him, tongue battling against clags of cake.

‘Not really.'

‘Well, you're going to learn. You are going to learn a lot.' She scraped a finger round the back of her molar and looked contemplative for a second. ‘Have you seen
Mulan?
'

‘No.'

‘
Jesus.
What's wrong with you? Watch
Mulan.
' She turned to me. ‘
You've
seen
Mulan,
haven't you?'

I said yes, but I hadn't. She started singing ‘We'll … [dramatic pause] make a man … out of you.' She mimed a sword fight and tried to get me to join in. Obviously I didn't know the words, so just repeated ‘out of you' slightly after she'd finished.

‘They're OK actually,' Pip said. ‘They grow on you. Do you want one?' and he scooted the packet across the table until it knocked into my teacup.

*   *   *

That became what we did after lunch. Jaffa Cakes and talking. We asked one another questions. What ifs, and would you rathers. What we were scared of, and where we wanted to be in ten years. Brothers and sisters (none, we were all only children), and how we felt about that.

There's a moment when you realize you're going to spend a lot of time with someone, that it's worthwhile to ask questions, and all right to answer. We asked the same questions more than once and the answers changed, because they do when you're young. We'd start with a story, then move forwards, backwards, sideways, between us. You'd get scraps of grandparents and never remember which side they were on.

I have no chronology for either of them. We dealt in moments. Mostly Sofi's: running away at Christmas and spending it at a McDonald's; a nipple-piercing which got infected. After her stories, ours seemed drawn in the dimmest pencil. Pip told us about breaking his leg harbour-jumping at low tide, I said I'd run a half marathon in Leicester. I just couldn't tell stories in the same way as Sofi. She told us about when she was eleven – puppy fat, pyramid hair and polio shoes – or about the time her period leaked during a presentation at college. I did say some things, but I couldn't use my hands like Sofi, or tell stories against myself the way she did.

The one advantage I had, was that I was older. The magic of being in the year above at school. They asked me different types of questions, and they asked me like I'd know the answers. Sofi: How much does a chicken cost? Like, a
raw
one (alive was what she meant). Pip: Did I think a great painting could go undiscovered, or did I think that after enough time, it would be found?

It's not a choice whether you bluff or not, it just happens. I said chickens were cheap and that art was arbitrary. Arbitrary and reductive, I used those words a lot. Sofi asked me how I knew this stuff, so I said you learned as life went on; you hit a certain age and then you just know.

When I talked, Pip listened intently. Maybe he'd already worked out that I didn't know much about maths or science – and that if he was going to learn anything from me, it would be about other things.

Most of the time, though, we listened to Sofi. She
adored
things or
hated
them (either one accompanied by a burst of her fingers). But there was more
adore.
Pip spoke too, sincerely, seriously; usually, I was quiet. But quiet was fine, because Sofi would be julienne-ing carrots, or giving us potatoes to peel, or she'd sing, and all these things would fill in the gaps. I wondered what my listening face was like. I thought about it, and tried different ones. I don't know if these faces worked, but
it
worked, it somehow worked, the three of us, tea after tea, tale after tale at the table.

8

On the eleventh day, everything changed. When we got to the house for breakfast, Eddy was already in the kitchen looking for a teabag. Sofi found one in a cake tin (she sniffed it, nostril touching, before putting it into a cup). When the kettle had boiled, Eddy announced he was off. Business trip,
had
to go, three weeks, Monaco and some other place.

Once again, it was difficult to know what to do with my face; did he want me to look sad that he was leaving, or sufficiently capable to be left in charge?
Was
I being left in charge? I didn't know. I did a bit of both: sad, capable.

Eddy was blowing into his tea to cool it, but took an overambitious glug and scalded his throat. He looked at his watch, face battling against the burn.

‘Today?' I said.

‘Yup. Ferry's in five. Suppose we better do
au revoir bisoux.
' His French accent was like Pip's – unsinkable English in that way Churchill had.

He kissed our cheeks – Sofi on one side, me on both – and left on the first boat, before Pip had come down for breakfast.

‘Must have a new intern,' Pip said over amber eggs – they'd all been double-yolked that day. ‘A pretty one.' He put down his fork. ‘Also explains why he put
this
under my door.' He pulled a scrap of magazine paper out of his pocket and laid it on the table. It was a timetable for the Rugby World Cup championships on the television. Eddy had written
IMPORTANT
in fountain pen on the shiny paper, and the ink still hadn't dried. Pip smudged it into a navy blue blur with his finger.

After his eggs, Pip announced that he wanted to spend the morning reading (I'd lent him the orange Hemingway; it was hard to get into so I said I'd finished it). I said that that was fine, because it meant I could spend the morning in the kitchen with Sofi. I sat with her while she had her ‘ten-sies' – yesterday's cake flicked with milk and heated in the microwave. When she went to the shops, I opened cupboards and looked in them, because you're not supposed to do that in other people's houses. Eddy must have left on a Tuesday, because it was also the day Sofi met the Czech boys.

‘They – were –
great,
' she said when she came back, fingers flaring out like fireworks. ‘Three of them, builders or something, kind of grubby.
Friendly.
They said we have to come out with them.'

‘Not “we”,' I said. ‘You. They haven't met me.'

‘I told them about you. I said you were sweet. That's not the point. It's a free country.'

‘It's an island,' I said. ‘Come out where?'

‘A place called the Mermaid. You've seen it … have you seen it? We've cycled past it, it looks hideous.' She said it like that was a good thing. ‘We have to go. They were Czech, Jude. They had
dreadlocks.
'

The first night without Eddy, we stuck to the routine. Sofi had dinner on the table at seven. Esmé's miniature meal went up on a tray. I ate alone with Pip, and for some reason he lit a candle. Sofi sat in the kitchen, though she talked to us through the wall and put her iPod on speaker. ‘What's Love Got to Do with It', and ‘some heavy stuff from Bristol'. After the meal, I helped with the washing up. We'd had lamb, and when I tried to wash up the tray there was so much fat it splintered into glitter.

Sofi took out the Mâcon Eddy had opened the evening I arrived.

‘It's nice, isn't it? It's a good one, isn't it? Eddy only drinks good ones.'

It was days old now, eleven days old, and tasted of olive rather than grape. But it was so cold it fogged up our glasses, and Sofi drew a heart on hers and we clinked. She said I had to look into her eyes: otherwise, it was seven years bad sex luck. Sofi slurped, I started slowly, but we both felt the way the first sip sears. That light, lifting prick in the chest: possibilities, maybe it's all possible.