The Great Godden

by Meg Rosoff

  I watched for a while, but Mattie had her back to me and Kit was behind the sail so I wandered off to Malanhope to tell them about my exciting new career.

  Mal was delighted. ‘All the greats started with shelf stacking.’

  I looked at him. ‘Alfred? Alexander? Catherine?’

  ‘Not those Greats,’ he said, waving a hand dismissively. ‘The industrial giants.’

  ‘Rockefeller? Henry Ford? Steve Jobs?’

  ‘Sure. What I mean is, it’d be good if someone around here made a living.’

  ‘Excuse me,’ Mum said. ‘Some of us work bloody hard …’

  ‘Including me.’ Mal gave us four different emotions in a row, as if caught in a strobe light.

  ‘Hmph,’ Mum answered, which could well have meant Get a real job.

  By the time Kit and Mattie got the boat back in, we were halfway through dinner and they had to squeeze together into a single chair at the end of the table. Mattie hooked one leg over Kit’s and they ate like that, twined up, sharing bits and pieces from each other’s plates, whispering and giggling. Mal and Dad were manning the barbecue, or they’d have put a stop to it. As it was, I caught Hugo staring at them with dead-eyed loathing and Alex stuck his fingers down his throat and made gagging noises. Mum told him to cut it out and Hope pretended not to notice. It was a joyless meal for the rest of us, the sense of general camaraderie wrecked. And then, just when I thought I’d get up and take everything back to the kitchen to escape, Kit met my eyes with a smile so knowing, so self-mocking, that I couldn’t help smiling back, just a little.

  His game, his rules.

  10

  The shop was never really busy but I liked the regular ripples of arrivals: tourists from the campsite down the road, riders tracking manure across the floor in search of Polo Mints, locals buying ready meals.

  ‘Have you got any mozzarella?’ The woman asking was polite and somewhat diffident, but it didn’t charm Lynn, who could barely suppress a sneer. ‘Or parsley?’ asked the woman, with fading hope.

  ‘Not today,’ Lynn said, in a tone that unmistakeably declared Not ever.

  ‘Sorry,’ said the woman. ‘Thank you.’ She seemed ashamed to have admitted to liking something so humiliatingly middle-class as pizza cheese, and I wanted to tell her the shop in the next village sold mozzarella and Parmesan. And fresh ricotta and olive oil imported from Italy and home-made cinnamon buns and spanakopita and sausages they made themselves. And parsley.

  Lynn didn’t like summer people, despite the fact that they spent more money than locals. Her other part-time, Denise, agreed. I was firmly ensconced in the enemy camp, but had special dispensation due to being cheaper to hire than anyone else who’d answered the ad.

  Most of the people who came in, locals or imports, knew me by sight. Hey, they’d say. Or, Wotcha? And boys of a certain age almost always asked whether Mattie was here, unless they were horsey, in which case they’d tell me they’d seen Tamsin.

  Of course they’d seen Tamsin. If they’d been anywhere near a horse, they’d seen Tamsin lugging buckets of water from the hose or cleaning tack or taking beginners out for their first rides on leading ropes. There were always five or six girls her age, their sexual development arrested by saddle soap, dedicating every waking hour to pony care.

  Like other parents of horsey girls, our parents sighed and paid for endless kit and lessons, telling themselves that horses were a nice safe pastime and at least they didn’t have to worry about her joy-riding around the countryside with a car full of underage drunks.

  This made me wonder if they’d paid any attention at all to the horse world.

  Two summers ago, before Tamsin’s first show, I walked past a young girl brushing her pony’s tail and before I could blink it kicked her square in the chest with both metal-shod back feet. I can still hear the awful thud. It must have broken all her ribs but I never found out because she was taken away by air ambulance. Another time Tam was waiting her turn at a jump when the boy ahead got his stride wrong and somersaulted over his horse, landing in a crumpled heap on the other side.

  There were broken bones that summer, a spiral tibia fracture and a separated shoulder. There were concussions and sprains and a teacher kicked in the face by a new livery. The staff seemed to take it all with a measure of benign indifference but the injuries horrified me, as did the size and power of the animals being led around by troupes of fearless infants. Tam would probably have been safer joyriding in the back seat of a dodgy Corsa.

  Once on the way home from work I stopped at the barn and caught Tamsin at the end of a long day, drinking tea in the office with the other pony girls. I envied their solidarity, the endless conversation on subjects no one else cared about, the sense of belonging. She always looked happy.

  ‘Don’t bother,’ she told me, when I said I might like a few lessons. ‘You don’t have what it takes.’

  What it takes?

  I protested, but she stuck to her verdict and for all I know, may have been right.

  The job at the shop gave my week a bit of structure, and I appreciated the money. I intended to go to art college and move away from home the minute I finished school – not because I hated my parents particularly, but because I found living with so many opinions and so many competing streams of anxiety exhausting. Exams, sex, body image, food, grades; someone was always in crisis. Sometimes in a big family you needed to claim something to make a mark. Eating disorder, anxiety, narcissism, ponies. Anything would do.

  Mal was on the phone ordering a hog roast when I got back from work. He told us he’d always wanted a hog roast. I’d always wanted a Celestron Nexstar computer-driven telescope to see into deep space, but a hog roast? He’d found someone to do it for the wedding and now I could hear an edge of panic in his voice.

  ‘Could you hold on a minute please?’ He put his hand over the phone and hissed at me. ‘Do we want a Saddleback, Tamworth, or Sandy and Black pig?’

  I stared at him. ‘You’re going to kill a pig to order? They’re practically as smart as we are.’

  He went back to the phone. ‘Could you tell me which is most delicious?’

  There then came a long explanation with lots of uh-huhs and ohs, and in the end he said he’d get back to them and hung up. If it had been me, I might have asked which seemed least human or had lived the happiest life.

  ‘I’ve changed my mind,’ he said.

  ‘No hog roast?’

  ‘No hog roast. You’re right. It’s a horrible thought. Maybe I should buy the one they were going to kill and keep it as a pet. Would that make me a better person? Or just an annoying hipster?’

  I shrugged. ‘You’ve done the right thing,’ I said. ‘Let your conscience guide you from here.’

  ‘We could give it a name and take it to the park with Gomez,’ he mused. ‘I hear they’re easy to train. Maybe Hope wouldn’t mind.’

  ‘Kit wants a sheep-pig.’

  He sighed. ‘OK. No pig.’

  Hope had chosen a date for the wedding at the end of August, based on when the chapel was available.

  Chapel?

  ‘I know, I know,’ Hope said. ‘Neither of us is exactly godly, but where else are we going to get married? On a fishing boat? In the town pond?’

  ‘How about the beach,’ Malcolm said, ‘barefoot with flowers plaited in your hair?’

  Hope ignored him. ‘The chapel on the estuary is perfect.’

  She was right. It had started life as a lookout tower for marauding Vikings about a thousand years ago, only turning into a church tower as an afterthought. A lookout tower seemed way more appropriate to their union.

  ‘And it happens to be beautiful,’ Mum said.

  No one else wanted to get married that day, so they were in. Mum planted sweet peas for the bouquet and said there might still be roses if we were lucky.

  It was obvious that Mum would make Hope’s wedding dress. Not that we ever let her make our clothes, but she’s actually brilliant at anything f
rom a Yeoman of the Guard with acres of gold braid to Ophelia in a plain white smock. She and Hope were in the next room talking dresses. Hope, in fact, was talking, and Mum was listening.

  Half an hour or so later she went off to her studio and, after rooting around for some time, returned with a bulky package wrapped in faded brown paper. Inside was a softly folded pile of blue-grey French linen she’d been keeping for something special.

  ‘How wonderful,’ Hope said. ‘I’m going to look like a love bird.’

  ‘A pigeon more like,’ said Alex.

  It was such a beautiful colour, like the sky before sunrise, and Hope held the linen up under her chin so we could see how it looked. The dress Mum drew had a full skirt with lots of soft pleats and a scoop neck top. It was so simple and elegant that we all just sighed.

  Hope said at least she wouldn’t look like some freakish plastic doll, which was unlikely for all sorts of reasons. She has long legs and what people call a womanly figure, with broad hips and a big chest, not to mention wide expressive eyes and piles of thick dark hair. She moves gracefully, which Mum says is key.

  ‘You should have seen the soprano I had to dress once,’ she told us. ‘Body of an angel, gait of a three-legged dog.’

  Alex, Tamsin and I stayed to watch Mum take measurements and drape fabric and then take photographs, and Tam said it was just like Project Runway and why couldn’t she have a dress like that, and Mum said ‘Because you’re fourteen’ and Alex added ‘And you stink of horse’, which was fair enough, but Tam chased Alex off shouting and three minutes later we heard Malcolm’s car pull out, and Mum and I looked at each other and both thought: Stables. Tam always managed to get lifts up to see Duke with appeals to non-immediate family like Mal. He said he didn’t mind, but I did; no one gave me a lift to work every time I was in a bad mood.

  I liked hanging around Hope’s house just listening to the talk and preparations for the wedding. Hope wanted trestle tables set up in the garden decorated with wildflowers and plain candles in jars. If it rained, we’d all have to cram into the house, she said, or just stay outdoors with umbrellas. We’d done that before, dinner all set up on the table when the rain starts and no one wanting to shift the whole production indoors. ‘Only English people would eat outdoors under umbrellas,’ Dad said, but we didn’t see what was wrong with it. The idea that there might be whole countries where you could count on summer weather didn’t ever occur to us.

  Hope bought a notebook and marked pages out for Guest List, Menu, Drinks, Decorations and Technical Details, like the chapel. She filled the pages with bullet points in her small neat handwriting, resisting all Dad’s attempts to create a spreadsheet and ‘organise it properly, for God’s sake’.

  There was something soothing about a wedding, a confirmation that Victorian social order hadn’t completely broken down; that it was possible to find your soulmate and live happily ever after like in some cheesy romcom, unlikely though it seemed.

  Hope asked if I wanted a cup of tea but I didn’t so I headed home.

  In the kitchen, Alex was editing a bat zombie film on his laptop. ‘So we meet again,’ he said.

  ‘Yup,’ I said.

  ‘KABLAM!!’ he shouted at a zombie bat, and I went upstairs.

  11

  I’d only been working in the shop a few days when Kit made his first appearance, wobbling up on Mal’s ancient bike to get a packet of rice and some lemons for Hope.

  ‘So this is your office,’ he said.

  I was at a distinct disadvantage, sprawled on the floor with my date gun, marking down yesterday’s baked goods.

  I felt momentarily sick with surprise. My hands shook and I was relieved when he turned his attention to Lynn, who was eyeing him while pretending to stack egg cartons.

  ‘Could you please direct me to the rice?’ He had on his good-boy voice, without the suggestive undertones.

  I scrambled to my feet, knowing that crumpled and foreshortened wasn’t my best look.

  ‘I’ll show you,’ Lynn said, which was not her usual policy, and led him to a shelf, from which she pulled a plastic pouch of instant-cook rice and handed it to him with a pleasant expression, which was also not her usual policy.

  He accepted it graciously, though I could see him searching the shelves behind her for basmati, brown, Arborio, organic, anything.

  After he paid he appeared by my side. ‘I have new respect for your career prospects,’ he whispered, very close to my ear.

  ‘Yeah, right,’ I said, trembling a little, despite myself.

  ‘No, really,’ he said, his lips almost touching my ear. ‘There’s something about this whole set-up that’s strangely arousing.’

  ‘Just bugger off,’ I said, but he was already halfway out the door, grinning.

  Lynn and Denise tried to be casual but they knew he was Florence Godden’s son, and besides, you didn’t even have to be a movie star’s son around here if you looked that good.

  ‘So what’s he like?’ they asked, and I didn’t say he was a mind-fuck who haunted my dreams. I just kind of shrugged and said, ‘He’s OK.’

  Which didn’t satisfy them almost as much as it didn’t satisfy me.

  After his first visit I waited every second of my workday for the next, but I knew he wouldn’t come till I got tired of expecting a visit and stopped waiting.

  The only other interesting part of my job was noticing who from the village came through the door, and whether they were with a person they shouldn’t be, or maybe buying something they shouldn’t. After a while I could read people’s entire lives by the contents of their wire basket or what they took to the post office window. Some people spent the whole week’s budget on energy drinks and sweets. One guy bought three pizzas a day.

  Then there was the post office. Alice down the road returned an average of nine packages a week to ASOS so we figured she was a shopaholic, and everyone knew she could barely afford milk. Another woman was supposed to be on a strict diet or the hospital wouldn’t approve her gastric band. She bought cabbages, onions, carrots and Weight Watchers bread, but sent her kids in just before closing to stock up on Doritos and chocolate.

  When I got home from work, I found Mum in the kitchen threading kebabs on to skewers. Dinner was the big event of the day. Everyone spread around the beach between sunrise and sunset but we all migrated back home for dinner. You had to be careful though; wander anywhere near the kitchen and you were roped in to help.

  Tamsin arrived a few minutes after I did.

  ‘Good day, sweetheart?’

  Like you had to ask.

  ‘Amazing,’ Tam said. ‘I took Duke out on the cross-country course.’

  ‘See anything exciting?’

  ‘Two hares, young ones. Just where I saw them last time. One’s head is nearly black so I’m sure it’s the same one.’

  ‘I hope you were careful.’

  ‘Course I was.’

  Uh-huh.

  Alex arrived, tossed some onions in the air and juggled for about three seconds before they all dropped and rolled around the floor.

  ‘Alex!’

  ‘Saw a bunch of horses I didn’t recognise,’ Tam said. ‘It’s pony camp. The tents are up in the back field.’

  Mum nodded absently. ‘Pass me the big platter, please.’

  ‘You know they’re trapping birds up behind the pig farm.’

  ‘Are they? How do you know?’

  ‘I ride back there sometimes.’

  Mum looked at her. ‘There’s a bridle path through the pigs?’

  ‘It’s not exactly a bridle path. I sort of strayed on to it by mistake.’

  Horses hate pigs. Even I know that.

  ‘You be careful. The farmer doesn’t like trespassing. Especially on horseback.’ She collected one of Alex’s onions from the floor. ‘What sort of bird trapping do you mean?’

  ‘Larsen traps. The wire ones. I saw a bunch of magpies flapping away in there. It was horrible.’

  ‘You’ll be
in big trouble if the gamekeeper finds you skulking around.’

  Tamsin stuck her chin out. ‘I wasn’t skulking.’

  ‘OK. Dinner in half an hour?’

  But Tam wasn’t finished. ‘Apparently the magpies peck the eyes out of baby pigs. That’s why they catch them.’

  I looked at Tamsin. ‘Are you sure? Pecking out a living eyeball doesn’t seem the easiest way to get a meal.’

  She shrugged. ‘They also land on live sheep and eat the maggots out of wounds. Then when the maggots are gone, they keep on eating. That’s what Dolly says and her whole family are farmers.’

  ‘Cool,’ Alex said. ‘I bet eyes are nice and chewy. Yum-yum.’

  ‘You’re disgusting,’ Tamsin said, and went upstairs to change her clothes. Tam never helps; does bugger-all, in fact, except saddle and unsaddle ponies.

  Malcolm and Hope strolled up around seven, looking freshly showered and clutching a huge bowl of salad from their garden. Some distance behind, Gomez trotted to keep up, panting as usual. Just as he reached them, he stepped on one of his ears and executed a spectacular flip. With a little yelp, he picked himself up and continued trotting with dignity as if nothing untoward had happened.

  Kit showed up ten minutes later, and the only people missing by the time food was ready were Tam and Hugo. About five minutes before Mum started serving, Tam came down wearing an actual sundress and Alex pretended to faint. Hugo arrived after everyone had been served, so he got to take home that summer’s brinkmanship cup. Go, Hugo.

  ‘Hey, Hugo,’ I said. Greeting him had become almost a sport.

  He glared at me.

  Everyone on my side slid down the bench to make space and I found myself crammed up next to Kit.

  ‘You smell delicious,’ he whispered.

  ‘Thank you,’ I whispered back. ‘You smell like a squid.’

  Kit laughed. Mattie looked daggers at me. Next to her, Hugo appeared ill at ease and droopy. Hope claimed he was better looking than everyone thought, though not yet, she said, maybe in a few years. I could see he had the Godden cheekbones, a good chin and large greyish eyes. His uneasy expression wasn’t exactly alluring – but still, there was something. He caught me looking and turned away.