‘It’s ridiculous,’ says Beatrice. ‘I’m not having it.’
‘How can he stand there and tell us that?’ demands Mary. ‘These people … they think we’re made of money. We can’t raise that sort of cash overnight.’
‘Don’t be stupid, Mary,’ says Tilly. I’ve noticed that she has started talking back a lot more since Lucy was born. I don’t know if it’s the hormones, or the independence of having a house of her own, or some primal motherhood protectiveness thing, but I like it. The girl’s got spunk, after all. ‘He’s not trying to pull a fast one: he’s just telling you the truth. And anyway, let’s be realistic. We can’t raise that sort of cash, full stop.’
Mary rounds on me. ‘I’ll bet your father’s laughing in his boots,’ she says.
I raise my hands, palms forward, at her, say: ‘Don’t bring me into it, Mary. I didn’t undermine your precious house. And nor did my dad.’
Edmund simply stands up and helps himself to a large gin.
‘Well, we’ll just have to …’ says Mary.
‘Have to what?’ asks Tilly.
‘Well, I don’t know. And don’t speak to me like that. I won’t be spoken to like that.’
‘No,’ says Tilly. ‘Someone’s got to talk some sense into you. All of you. You’re behaving like schoolchildren. Sticking your fingers in your ears and thinking that if you go “la la la” loudly enough then you won’t have to hear it.’
‘We’ll get a second opinion,’ says Beatrice. ‘We know what they’re like. Just trying to get his hands on our house. Eaten up with envy, the lot of them.’
‘Get a grip, Beatrice,’ I hear myself saying.
Rufus raises his voice above the bedlam, shouts: ‘SHADDAP!’
We all close our mouths at once, like geese when a barn door slams.
‘I don’t have the energy for fighting today,’ says Rufus. ‘Please, just stop it.’
‘I’m not fighting,’ says Mary.
Rufus quells her with a look. ‘Sit down. Everyone,’ he says.
Edmund is already sitting. Gradually, we all drift into chairs and wait for Rufus to speak.
‘Mummy. Daddy. Granny. I know this is tough, and I know it’s hard to get your heads round, but we have to make some plans and we have to do it now.’
‘Well, obviously,’ says Mary. ‘We can’t be here when it’s swarming with builders.’
Rufus sits down himself, heavily, as though someone’s kicked him in the back of the knees. Rubs the back of his neck. ‘I don’t think you’re getting it, Mummy. I don’t think there are going to be any builders.’
‘Don’t be silly, Rufus. You heard what the man said.’
‘Yes, Mummy. I heard exactly what he said.’
‘Well, then. I’m sorry. I can put up with a lot, but if you think—’
‘Mummy, where do you think we’re going to get this sort of money from?’
‘The bank. Obviously,’ she says as though this is the most natural thing in the world.
‘No. No, Mummy. Did you hear what I said? Did you hear me at all? Did you hear anything I said? Banks aren’t charities. They don’t just hand out money because you want some. They need paying back. And besides: what sort of collateral are we going to offer them?’
No-one answers.
Rufus speaks softly, dejectedly. ‘If this house was in good nick, it would still only be worth maybe ten million on the open market. And that would be without the loans we’ve already got on it. It’s not going to work.’
‘Well, someone can …’ Mary sounds bewildered more than anything. ‘A sheikh …’ she says.
Rufus closes his eyes, grits his chompers. ‘There is no sheikh, Mum. There’s no sheikh and there’s no fairy godmother and there’s no benevolent banking family who want to throw money at us because of their reverence for history.’
‘You are not,’ says Beatrice, ‘selling this house. It’s unthinkable.’
‘No, Granny,’ Rufus says, ‘you’re right. We’re not selling. It’s too late for that. Don’t you see? While we’ve been treating the place as a pearl beyond price, it’s become completely worthless. The house, the park: all of it, worthless. The only thing it’s good for now is landfill.’
‘B—’ begins Mary.
‘Shut up, Mummy. Tilly’s right. It’s over. There’s nothing left. We’ve got to make plans for how we’re going to salvage what we can, and we’ve got to do it fast. Do you understand?’
Edmund speaks. ‘I’ve lived here all my life.’
I glance over at him. He suddenly looks very, very old. Beaten.
He raises his glass, drains half of it in a single draught. ‘My whole life. I’ve never been away from it for more than three months at a time. It’s sat here on my shoulders and never let me go for seventy-four years. And now you’re telling me it’s all been for nothing.’
‘We all had a duty, Edmund,’ says Beatrice. ‘Do you think I enjoyed it, maintaining your inheritance while your father attempted to drink it away? Keeping the barbarians from the gate?’
‘I wanted to sell it in nineteen fifty-three,’ he says to his mother, ‘and you wouldn’t let me. I wanted to be a doctor, do you remember? I wanted to help people and save lives, and you persuaded me that it was my duty to stay. And when petrol went sky-high in the seventies and the heating bill cost more than the entire estate income, and that Beatle, what’s his name, wanted to buy it, and you said it would be a betrayal. You said I would be betraying you and betraying my children and no one would ever forgive me. And you –’ he turns to Mary – ‘you said if I gave up you’d leave me and take my son with you. You said only a weak man would betray his descendants and you would never allow Rufus to be raised by a weak man, so I stayed and passed the whole bally curse on to him instead. And now I see it was weakness that made me stay. I’ve spent my life keeping up appearances and it was all absolutely bloody pointless. I stayed because my son would never forgive me if I did, and now I wouldn’t blame him if he never forgave me for not. Look at it. We have nothing. Rufus has nothing.’
‘Hold on a mo, Edmund,’ I say, ‘I wouldn’t say you were living on the streets quite yet.’
Beatrice is purple with rage. ‘Your father would be turning in his grave …’
Edmund shouts, possibly for the first time in his life. ‘MY FATHER HAS BEEN DEAD FOR FIFTY-FIVE YEARS. MY FATHER WAS A HOPELESS DRUNK AND SO WAS HIS FATHER BEFORE HIM, AND NOW I’VE FOLLOWED IN THE FAMILY TRADITION. LOOK AT ME. LOOK AT ME. I’M NOTHING. NOTHING. ANOTHER WORN-OUT DRUNK IN A LONG LINE OF WORN-OUT DRUNKS WHO’S WASTED HIS LIFE FOR THE SAKE OF A WHITE ELEPHANT, AND I WILL NOT LET MY SON DO THE SAME! LISTEN TO HIM! IT’S OVER! THE CALLINGTON-WARBECK-WATTESTONES ARE NOT AN EMANATION OF THE DIVINE WILL, THEY ARE A FAMILY OF BANKRUPTS, CLINGING ON TO THE RUINS OF THE HOUSE THAT DESTROYED US! I HAVE GIVEN MY LIFE UP TO A PILE OF STONES!’
Edmund’s blue eyes are watery with age and distress. He finishes his drink, places the empty glass on a wine table by his left elbow. Says no more. Tilly gets up, crosses the carpet and perches on the arm of her father’s chair. Lays a hand on his shoulder and kisses the top of his head.
‘You’re not thinking clearly,’ says Beatrice.
‘Stop it, Mummy. Just stop it,’ he says, wearily.
I glance at Mary. I don’t know what to expect: some sign of sympathy, I suppose. Some uxorial concern. Instead, she’s looking at him with a face of stone. She’s looking at him with the contempt of a Tory wife looking at a dero in the doorway of Harvey Nick’s. And in a flash I see how Edmund’s life has been; how their lives together have been. What Rufus was so desperate to avoid when he hid his world from me: a loveless bargain for the sake of bricks and mortar and the status that went with them. Heir production. The respect of the world’s sad little snobs your only sense of self-worth. It makes me angry. It makes me so angry.
‘I’m sorry, Daddy,’ says Rufus. ‘I’m really sorry that it had to end with me.’
‘No,’ says Edmund. ‘I’m sorr
y. I was weak and I inflicted it all on you.’ He pats his daughter’s hand. ‘Your mother wanted me to get out, you know,’ he says. ‘I let her down dreadfully.’
‘Oh, Daddy,’ says Tilly.
Mary has a face like an approaching tornado. She is trying to ignore this exchange, but its effect on her is all too evident. ‘So what do you expect us to do?’
‘I’ll do what I can,’ says Rufus, ‘but in all honesty, I think it’s too late. I don’t see any way we can raise the money and, even if we did, it would be debatable whether it would be worth it.’
‘You ungrateful little shit,’ says Beatrice, sugar-plum surface dropping away to reveal the evil fairy beneath. ‘Do you have any idea of the sacrifices that have been made on your behalf?’
Rufus colours, but he doesn’t fight back.
‘It always comes down to the women in the end,’ continues Beatrice. ‘It always has. For generations and generations. Useless, Wattestone men. Always have been. Useless and feckless and spineless. It’s always come down to the women to keep it going. Me, my mother-in-law, your mother. It’s we who have kept it going. We have held it all together while you whined and grizzled and chased your foxes. I thought you were different, Rufus, but you’re not. Just like your father. Just like him. Always more interested in chasing skirt than facing responsibilities.’
I have to interrupt: jump to my husband’s defence. ‘Hold on one moment. There’s responsibility,’ I say, ‘and reality.’
‘Oh, why don’t you just go away?’ she snaps. ‘It’s all your fault. Selfish and irresponsible: he was never like this until you came on the scene.’
‘I’m not even going to dignify that,’ I say. Well, snarl. I can’t believe these men just take it. I’m not going to be able to for much longer.
‘You wouldn’t even know the meaning of the word,’ she snarls back.
I can’t help it. I toss my hair at her. Address Rufus and Edmund and Tilly. ‘It’s not all over, by any means. This place is crammed with valuable stuff. Even if we lose the house, you won’t be bankrupt by any stretch. God, the Caravaggio must be worth a pretty serious townhouse by itself.’
‘We can’t sell the Caravaggio!’ cries Mary.
‘Why on earth not? Is that mortgaged as well?’
‘It’s an asset!’
I can’t stop a ‘d’oh’ escaping from my mouth. ‘Well, sorry to burst your bubble, but what do you think that assets are for?’
‘It’s not just our asset. It’s an asset to the whole country. Think of the loss!’
‘Yuh, I’m not suggesting you burn it,’ I say sarcastically. ‘I’m suggesting you sell it.’
‘There we go,’ says Beatrice. ‘The vulture circling. You can’t wait to get your hands on the cash, can you?’
‘I’m just saying—’
‘Oh, I know what you’re saying. What do you want? Walk-in shoe wardrobe? Candy-pink leather corner sofas? Five-thousand-dollar perfume? I know your sort. I know all about you. You see people like us and all you see is dollar signs. No values. No respect. No understanding of history—’
‘Granny!’ barks Rufus.
A red mist descends over my vision. ‘And what are the things that really matter, Beatrice?’ I ask. ‘Go on. Tell me. Let me in on the secret. Tell me what you represent that’s so valuable. Go on. What? Snobbery? Sneering at people for holding their cutlery wrong? Talking like you’ve had your jaw sewn up? Thinking you’re a cut above a Lottery winner because you won your jackpot at birth? Pretty fine achievements, I must say. I can’t wait to learn at your knee.’
‘Melody!’ barks Rufus. But I’m too far gone.
‘You’re a leech, Beatrice. I know you think that the word you’ve been hearing people say all your life is “élite”, but it ain’t. You’re a bloodsucker. A big bundle of selfishness. You go on about the dolies and the socialists, and you don’t see that someone like you is the worst kind of scrounger. People like you – you live in your own tight little world, and you maintain your belief in your own importance by making sure you never mix outside it. Wake up. Your world is over. You’re nothing, just like your son said. The world’s moved on around you and your precious assets are nothing in the end: nothing but bricks and stone and wood and canvas and cloth, rotting and degrading like everything in the world does in the end. Don’t you see? In the end, we’re born, and we reproduce, and we die, and all the stuff in the middle is just the struggle. In the long run, nothing any of us does will really change the world, but you – you’re nothing but an irrelevance. An irrelevant anachronism. And you know what else?’
I know I shouldn’t be saying it. I know, even as I do it, but I’ve exhausted my self-control. I face the evil old witch, the destructive, tyrannical old hag, and spit the words at her with all the built-up rage of my months here.
‘You’re still going to die. You’re going to die, and you think your bloody heritage is going to buy you a ticket to heaven, but it’s not. You’re going to die and the only people who are going to notice are your family, so you’d better make bloody sure that they don’t hate you as much as I do.’
Chapter Sixty-Three
Losing Rufus
The moat has filled up again. I’m not sure this is a good thing. What it must mean, after all, is that whatever’s down there has finally filled up with water. And the house has got louder. I hear it as I lie awake beside Rufus, groaning like an animal in pain, muttering to itself like a behemoth disturbed in sleep.
I’m losing him. I know that. And I know it’s my own fault. He is still angry with me for the way I spoke to Beatrice, and rightly so. I know I shouldn’t have spoken that way, that Beatrice is an old woman and I hadn’t the right. But it’s more than that. It was that I called him a Judas. I was betrayed by him, but he feels betrayed, in turn, by me. I can feel him drifting. He doesn’t come running to me at the end of the day any more, doesn’t lay his head on my bosom and take comfort. And though he’s still nice to me, still sweet, it’s with the sweetness of a well-mannered stranger, and sometimes I catch a speculative expression on his face when he looks at me and he doesn’t think I know. My fault. I know it’s my fault. My bad.
Darling, darling, darling, don’t leave me. Please don’t leave me.
I am at a loss. Mary, of course, couldn’t wait to get up to the pharmacy in Stow to fill the prescription, no doubt choosing a moment when the little shop was crowded with her acquaintances, and then making a show of protecting my privacy in her loudest undertone, but I’ve not been taking tablets. I tried one, once, the night she brought them home, but the hangover was worse than the lack of sleep. So we lie, wakeful, side by side, and stare at the tester in individual pools of silence. And I long to reach out to him, apologise, make it better, but I don’t have the words.
No one meets my eye in the house. I’ve given up the pretence of family mealtimes, pick at scraps in our room while he’s down there, sipping wine among the candles. They come and go, break bread without me: the neighbourhood passing through to say goodbye to Bourton Allhallows, and in the corridors they lower their eyes and scuttle past as though I were a ghost.
The house swarms, in the daytime, with technical types carrying echographs and swinging leads and things on tripods to measure the tilt of the roof beams. But the family doesn’t seem to be making any efforts about leaving. They seem to be frozen in their refusal to face the inevitable. They’ve not even made a start on moving the furniture, getting the pictures to a place of safety – anything. I would have at the very least expected someone to get the Caravaggio out of the way of falling roof-beams, but they’re acting, instead, as if it’s holding the wall up. Men in hard hats and reflective jerkins scratch their ears and shake their heads as they contemplate the crumbling walls, but there have been no removals quotes, no auctioneers, no academics down from Leeds to put a value on the armour. Nessa no longer smokes behind the bush in the courtyard. Not since they discovered the mineshaft lurking inches below the leaf-mould. Sometimes I catch si
ght of her wheeling Beatrice around the knot garden. She raises a hand to wave at me, but we don’t get to speak. Tilly’s happy in her little house, never comes down to the big one if she can help it: she seems to be the only member of the family who is making any effort to disengage from the past. Mrs Roberts no longer simply ignores me. These days she treats me with open contempt. Twice now, she has barged past me, catching me with a swinging elbow or a well-aimed knee, as though she knows I won’t dare to complain. I’ll take a lot of pleasure from seeing the old cow on the dole.
But the wall – a glass wall has gone up between Rufus and me, and I can’t get through to the other side. I don’t know what to say, how to attract his attention, make him hear me. He comes in dusty and sweaty, and as low as low, but I can’t make it better.
It’s the house. This damn house has come between us. He knows how much I hate it, but his own emotions are far more complex: love and loathing, regret and resentment, the way you feel towards a neglectful parent. So he brushes my enquiries aside because he suspects the half-truth, that I’m anticipating with relish the day when we can leave. That I feel the house poisoning us, and I want to be free.
I’m losing him. I can no longer see my golden boy. Where his hands were rough and gentle, they’re now distracted. The man who delighted in lying against me, face to face, thigh to thigh, now reclines on his back on the pillows and stares blankly at the great black nothing.
Don’t leave me, Rufus. Don’t leave me. It was meant to be for ever. Don’t you remember? You and me against the world, protecting each other with encircling arms. And you look at me sometimes, and I see you see a stranger: you see the angry woman, the bitter one with the stinging words, the one who cries and shouts and rails against the elements. And that is what I am, but it’s not all that I am, remember? I’m the girl who walked with you through the Silent City, the girl who screamed with joy at festa fireworks, who wrapped herself around you in the moonlit water at Ghar Lapsi. I kissed you deep and warm, and you told me you loved me.
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