Where We Belong

by Anstey Harris

  Back in my new room, I write Simon a long email. I write for over an hour. I tell him everything that happened and how scared I was. I tell him of Leo’s bravery and my, rapidly improving, injuries. I tell him that I dreamed he was beside me as I slept.

  When I hear Leo calling me from the corridor, I rush out to meet him. As I pass, I can hear Araminta crying softly in her room.

  Chapter Nineteen

  I cannot bear to look at Araminta when I get down into the kitchen in the morning.

  There is a loaf of wholemeal bread on the breadboard but neither of us can cut it with one arm and I’d rather go without toast than offer to help her.

  I can hear her teacup tottering in its saucer beside me. There is a silence as she puts it down on the side.

  ‘It’s not what you think.’

  ‘I don’t want to talk about it, Araminta.’

  ‘If I could tell you, I would. I promise you that.’

  I turn round and face her: she is less important in the light of everything I’ve been through and survived. There was a moment there where we could have been friends, but I am not prepared to accept her change of heart predicated on nothing more than mine and Leo’s accidental survival. I simply can’t.

  ‘As soon as you’re ready to explain, I’m all ears.’ I put two cups of coffee on a small tray and challenge her to comment on it. Moving into the proper bedrooms of the house changes so much, makes me so bold, so family. I don’t understand why we couldn’t do it before, why we had to be part of Araminta’s sackcloth-and-ashes lifestyle.

  I invited Patch here last night on my terms: to my home. I felt no need to apologise to Araminta for it – or to ask her permission.

  When he got here, when I finally saw him, I started to believe – for the first time in ten years – that everything might come right again in the end. He kissed my face, over and over, and I cried until I lost track of time.

  ‘I want you to stay.’ I said it before I could let go of him. The words were going to burst out of me, drumming and pulsing behind my eyes, swelling at the top of my nose, pushing out of my throat until my face hurt. ‘I want you to stay tonight.’

  ‘Of course.’ He kissed the top of my head. ‘I’m not going anywhere.’

  ‘We have to talk to Leo.’

  Patch nodded, his face serious.

  ‘It’s the same as the way he sees his dad’s death: with Leo, things “are” or they aren’t. The length of time it’s happened for or over isn’t part of his process. It wouldn’t make any difference to Leo if we discussed it for months and then you stayed, or if you . . .’ And I held my breath as I said it. ‘If you stayed tonight.’

  ‘Thinking in the moment is an enviable power.’ Patch’s hands are smooth on my back.

  ‘I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve thought that.’

  Leo was rearranging the furniture in his room, making space for his few clothes, for his games console: making it his own. I made a note to bring his posters down for him if we can sponge the smell of smoke from them.

  ‘Patch is going to stay the night tonight.’ I said it without any fanfare. Leo didn’t even pause his game to ask: ‘Where will he sleep? He’s too big for the sofa.’

  ‘He’s going to sleep in my bed. With me.’

  Leo turned and stared at Patch, his brow wrinkled. ‘Sometimes I need to get into my mum’s bed in the night. If I have a nightmare or if I’m scared of something.’

  Patch touched him lightly on the arm. His voice was so gentle. ‘That’s okay, buddy. You can still do that. Anytime.’

  This is the morning after that night. The newborn day. Araminta – and whatever her plans might be or might have been – will not ruin it for me. This is a new life.

  *

  I put the tray down on the bedside table. I am learning to manage with my bandaged hand – it is certainly less trouble than sending Patch down to the kitchen when Araminta has no idea that he’s here.

  Patch lifts up one arm and waits for me to slide back into bed underneath it. We fit together well.

  The smoke did come for me in the night, weaving and winding into my dreams, but Patch was there to blow it away, to squeeze life back into my laboured lungs.

  ‘Now what?’ I ask him. ‘What do we do now?’

  ‘We begin again,’ he says. ‘We put everything back together. We build on what Curtis started and we move forward.’ His skin is soft against mine.

  ‘Curtis? Looking after Leo?’

  Patch reaches a long arm out to nudge the curtain from the window. The sun fills his side of the room with a bold yellow. ‘I saw Leo on Monday at Art Club. He didn’t seem to need much looking after. They’re mates, hanging out. I mean about Curtis and the fire.’

  I push myself to a sitting position, my good hand flat against the linen sheet below us. ‘Sorry?’ I could not bear it if I was right about Curtis all along, if my terrible cursed thoughts came true.

  ‘What he did. Now everyone – the whole town – knows that he’s not who a lot of them always assumed he was, he’s not his dad.’

  ‘I don’t know what he did.’ I need to make this clear. ‘Did he do something good?’

  Please let it be good.

  ‘Curtis ran from house to house, all through the streets, waking everyone and getting them to the galleries. He saved the animals from the smoke. It’s why nothing’s irreparably damaged.’

  ‘I don’t understand. How do you know this?’

  He pulls me back down again, strokes my back calmly. ‘It’s a small town, word travels fast.’

  I think about the fairground of that night. The strange smells and shouts, the swimming swirling lights, and the people – calling, running, shouting: old men heaving huge chimpanzees between them; sturdy women staggering under the weight of a tiger, taking a leg each and co-ordinating its movements; the chain of people almost as long as the drive, passing bats and birds and trays of flightless insects one to another.

  ‘I didn’t see the people.’ I whisper it into the room. ‘I thought it was the house.’

  ‘Perhaps it was,’ says Patch and he means it. ‘Perhaps it was.’

  *

  By the time we’ve finished our coffee, I know the whole story. Curtis and Leo were playing a game online – out of hours and out of bounds – when the smoke first appeared. Leo had gone offline at a crucial moment and Curtis knew it was out of character.

  With no one to pay any attention to where he went or at what time, Curtis ran up to the house and saw the fire engines. He was there long enough to see that Leo was safe and then he ran, at full pelt, back through the village, banging on every door and waking everyone. It was Curtis who led a charge into the galleries, when the firemen said it wasn’t going to be allowed, and Curtis who’d gone through the back of the exhibits and started pulling the animals out of their cases.

  ‘But how did he know to do that? How did he know how to get into the cases?’ I ask Patch.

  Patch shrugs his shoulders. ‘I don’t know. I don’t think anyone’s asked him.’

  I think back to those early hours in the hospital, to Leo with his fingers across his lips, refusing to answer questions about that night, back to Araminta’s first gallery tour – so long ago. ‘I think I know,’ I say.

  Below us, the gardens roll away from the house. Atalanta and Hippomenes point up towards us, unconcerned, unafraid. For them, nothing has changed: there are people in the house – there always have been. There are animals and books and artefacts. For them, everything is as it should be.

  *

  I only realise that we’ve fallen back to sleep when the chatter on the path below my window wakes me up. I have slept in for an uncharacteristically long time. In my half-asleep state, before I drifted off, I meant to ask Patch where he was, why he wasn’t at Pear Tree Cottage when Curtis came screaming through the town. It is on the tip of my tongue when I wake up but I am immediately distracted by the noise.

  There is a definite buzz of conver
sation downstairs. This floor is quiet – no whirring and clanking from Leo or Araminta’s bathrooms, no thrash metal from Leo’s bedroom.

  I pull on my T-shirt and pants and kneel on the window seat to look down. There are people moving about in the garden – they are laughing and calling out to each other. There must be ten people there, easily. The museum hasn’t reopened since the fire and, even if it had, it wouldn’t open until ten. I check the time on my phone: 9.15. I don’t know who these people are or why they are here.

  I walk quickly down the stairs. I have done up the zip of my borrowed jeans as I walk but the button is beyond me: I pull the edge of my T-shirt over it.

  Something is going on, something is wrong. Maybe not wrong, it doesn’t have that kind of feel to it – something is different.

  I go through the hallway and into the kitchen. There is no one there either but, when I stand still, I can hear people; a buzz of conversation, footsteps. The heavy front door still has all its night-time ironwork in place, bolts shot securely, the big black key turned.

  Sunshine blasts into my face when I open the door, the smell of summer is strong – its swansong before it gives in completely to the autumn. The conversation is a stream that ripples up the drive.

  *

  I cannot count the people outside. They look for all the world like an angry mob, come from the village to storm our castle. Except that they’re all smiling: they’re chattering and laughing. And they are all carrying buckets and mops and ladders and cloths in place of swords and maces and clubs.

  The line marches down the drive towards me. I can see Malcolm near the front, obviously instrumental in this tide of people.

  He smiles and winks. ‘Open the door, then,’ he says. ‘Let’s get on with it.’

  And they walk down the drive, two-by-two, into the house. Just as the animals did before them. I stand, open-mouthed, and yet to brush my hair or my teeth, as they pour through the front door and into the building.

  The ladies from the WI, as varied in size as the countless antelope inside the museum – just as bright-eyed, just as neat in their dun jackets – are at the front. An army of smaller animals, Cub Scouts and Girl Guides, carry buckets almost as big as them – nimble mountain goats with over-sized horns balancing their way through the rocky outdoors. I see giraffes and bison, zebras and secretary birds, trying to control legions of wayward monkeys – monkeys who run backwards and forwards, squealing with excitement at being part of something so huge. A pair of colourful parrots, young and in love, walk in front of two old bears who have gruff low voices and long ladders on their shoulders. They mean business. I recognise one of the parrots as Poppy from the art class, her blue hair a mascot in the sun.

  The people are dogs and meerkats and tortoises and cheetahs, they are butterflies and snakes. They are crocodiles and chimps and the kind of capable octopi who will use all eight arms to make short shrift of anything.

  And they march, two-by-two and two-by-two, until there are more than a hundred of them in the house. People who love the museum, people who want to help. An army of soldier ants, of worker bees: hyenas to clean up the things we don’t need any more, beavers to build and repair – bags full of tools on their backs.

  The WI ladies are invaluable. What they don’t know about how to get rid of soot, how to chip soaked paper off parquet flooring, could be written on the back of a postage stamp. They split up and take a room each, advising all their underlings in how best to sweep, how not to rub. They have potions for portraits and poultices for curtains and the smell of smoke recedes as if it is as awestruck by their industriousness as everyone else is.

  I recognise Jess from the supermarket by the ticket office. She is on her knees, polishing the front side of the wooden booth. ‘How . . . ? What is this? What’s going on?’

  ‘A new broom,’ she says, soot on the tip of her nose. ‘We’ll have you ready to open again before you know it.’

  ‘But, why, how? You’re all so kind.’

  ‘We owe it to him,’ she says, sitting back on her heels pointing at the portrait of Colonel Hugo posing with his rifle. ‘He did more than his bit for this community – and now it’s our chance to pay him back.’ She goes back to scrubbing at the panel of the ticket office as if it were the most normal thing in the world.

  *

  When Leo comes downstairs, he seems to know far more of these visitors than I do. Many of them greet him by name and he isn’t at all shy with them.

  ‘Have you seen Sophie?’ he asks me.

  ‘From Art Club?’

  ‘She’s coming with her mum. Me and her are going to cook lunch for everyone.’

  ‘Oh.’ I’m taken aback. ‘When did you organise that?’

  ‘On Monday. I went to Art Club when you were in the hospital.’ He knits his brow. ‘I didn’t like thinking about you being in hospital – Curtis said it was better to think about Art Club.’

  ‘Ask Patch, he might have seen her.’ I ought to get this in perspective for him. ‘There are over a hundred people here, Leo. You can’t cook for all of them.’ But he is gone, wadering into the crowd to look for Sophie.

  *

  By the time I have got properly dressed, and gone around thanking the volunteers, Leo and Sophie have already begun a vat of soup, tray upon tray of quiche. The WI ladies did the kitchen first of all and it shines like new: at least, parts of it still do – the rest, Leo is cooking in.

  ‘Where did all this come from?’ I ask Leo.

  ‘We made it.’ He makes it clear that was a stupid question.

  I point at the bowls of salad, the baked potatoes ready to go into the range. ‘I mean where did you get the ingredients?’

  He points at Sophie, chopping vegetables on a board, and at himself, elbow-deep in washing up. ‘We went to Mr Maitland’s shop and got it.’

  ‘But how did you carry it all?’

  ‘We couldn’t. He had to give us a lift. But he said it didn’t matter that he’d shut the shop because most of the town are up here, cleaning.’

  ‘We didn’t actually have enough money,’ Sophie says. ‘Not for all of it. But he said that didn’t matter either.’

  ‘Hatters wants to take care of you,’ the ghost Richard whispers into my ear and I squeeze my hand tight, pretending that his is in it. There is happiness that hides here: in the commitment of the local people – our neighbours – to help us, the kindness of people who were mostly strangers until they walked down our drive today.

  *

  I try to meet all of the volunteers. I offer them cups of tea where I can and then Leo tuts at me that I’m in his way while I make it. I’m not much use to anyone with this dressing on my hand – I unwind the outer bandage: the smaller dressing stuck across my fingers leaves me much more useful.

  It must be an hour since I last saw Patch. ‘Look at you,’ he says, a wide grin on his face. ‘Quite the lady of the house.’

  ‘I think we both know that’s Araminta.’

  ‘It’s a big house,’ he says. ‘Maybe there’s room for two. Maybe she’s ready to be the dowager duchess and make way for new blood.’ He takes hold of my hand, peers at the palm. ‘That looks so painful.’

  ‘It’s really not. Not if I keep busy.’ I carry the teas outside to the group of people I was last talking to.

  Araminta is sitting in a fold-up deck-chair. Malcolm is standing next to her: he greets me warmly. Araminta is silent, looks at her feet. She has the decency to blush, pink guilt climbing her cheeks.

  In front of them, there must be a hundred people dotted across the lawns and benches, eating lunch.

  ‘Leo and Sophie can’t have cooked for this many people.’ I shake my head. ‘It’s not possible. How is there enough food for everyone?’

  Malcolm smiles, ‘Loaves and fishes, Cate. Loaves and fishes.’

  *

  Everyone works for hours. I distribute water and effusive thanks as I go, it’s little in exchange for their incredible efforts, but it’s pretty much
all I can do.

  The results are incredible. The animals have been put back into the dioramas in – more or less – the same spots that they left. There is the odd baboon who won’t stand up straight and a couple of mongooses who look distinctly out of place but, on the whole, it’s not too bad. The untrained eye probably couldn’t even tell.

  I take an hour out to track down a taxidermy specialist in London who says he will come and assess the damage. I will use some more of my redundancy money if I have to: we have a duty of care to these animals. The man on the phone explains that, as they’ve been outside, they will need specialist treatment to get rid of any potential bugs or mites they could have picked up from the grass. It’s nowhere near as bad as it would have been if they’d been choked by the smoke. It makes me think of Curtis: the only person missing from today.

  I go and find Leo.

  ‘If I call a takeaway up tonight for you, me, Patch and Sophie, do you think Curtis would come and eat with us? If I begged him and if I said how sorry I am that I’ve misjudged him? How grateful I am for everything he’s done?’

  ‘I’ll ask him but I don’t know.’ Leo stands, solemn, and takes a few steps away from me. He dials by pressing only a couple of buttons so he’s obviously been talking to Curtis very recently. He walks towards the trees, the sun making a halo around his head as he waves his free hand in conversation. His voice is low and I catch nothing of the negotiations.

  He turns back towards me. ‘Indian?’ It’s clearly a vital part of the arbitration.

  ‘Definitely. With poppadoms.’

  *

  It’s not so easy when I tell Patch that we’re having dinner on the lawn and he’s invited. ‘You have to invite Araminta,’ he says.

  ‘You are kidding me? The woman who tried to get us forced out of the house? To make Leo homeless?’

  He holds my arms, makes me look right into his face. ‘Firstly, you don’t know that – not for certain. And secondly, she didn’t. In the end she didn’t. Hold on to that.’ He kisses me on the mouth so that I can’t voice my objections. It feels like minutes later when he lets me go and says, ‘You – we – have to get on. We’re all in this together and we need a happy home.’