Sun Child

by Angela Huth

  ‘Really, Idle, there’s no need for you to behave so bloody well … I can go.’ Kevin shifted himself unconvincingly.

  ‘No, no, get me a drink. Get me a drink, if you will.’

  The three grown-ups scattered. Fen ran upstairs without looking at Emily, her hand over her face. Kevin left the room, taking with him a glass. Idle came up to the kitchen table. He bent down to kiss Emily. The kiss turned into a prolonged hug.

  ‘Darling Emily girl.’

  ‘Papa …’

  ‘I got away early to give you a surprise. I thought…’ He seemed to have to stop. His blue eyes were far away, concentrating just as they’d been when they followed the bullfinch into the sky.

  ‘It’s lovely you’re back. Why did you shout at Kevin?’

  ‘I was jumpy, tired. You know how grown-ups get. I was expecting just you and Mama. The sight of Kevin gave me quite a fright. Silly, really. I’m sorry.’ He ruffled her hair, attempted a smile.

  ‘That’s all right. Everyone’s been bad tempered today.’ Emily paused. ‘Wolf ran away from me in the field. I’ve never seen him cross before.’

  ‘I expect he’ll come back.’

  ‘Do you? Why?’

  ‘People come back. They get used to people. Even if you get quite cross with someone, you know, it’s hard to leave for good.’

  ‘Is it really? Perhaps he’ll come back, then. If he does, tomorrow, will you play something with us?’

  ‘Of course.’

  Emily led her father to the chair by the fire so recently occupied by Kevin. He sat down, leant back, let his hands lie dead on the arms, the fingers spread a little, blue veins running through the white skin. They were smaller, older hands than Kevin’s. His face was far more handsome, though : his hair silver in this light, his eyes deeply hooded and his face a cobweb of lines that turned into surprising crinkles when he smiled. Emily sat on his knee and swung her foot against his leg. Although her heart was still pounding fast, she felt more cheerful. She tried to recall the angry words Papa had shouted at Kevin, and the quiet things they had all said to each other. But her memory of them had gone. She could only recall how they had looked : her mother wild and confused, Kevin foolish, her father bowed and sad. But he seemed to be all right now. The good thing about grown-ups was that they often recovered quickly.

  ‘You go away too much, Papa,’ she said. ‘I wish you were here more often.’

  ‘I know, my love, I know. Perhaps I will be, one day. When I’m old and retired.’

  ‘You’ll never be old!’

  ‘Oh yes I will.’ He closed his eyes. ‘But next week I’ll be here for a few days. I’ll get Marcia Burrows to come down and help me, then I won’t have to go to London. How about that?’

  ‘Really? Do you really mean that?’

  ‘I really do.’

  Emily gave a whoop of delight.

  ‘Shall I go up and tell Mama?’

  ‘She’ll be down in a moment. You can tell her then.’

  ‘She’ll be terribly pleased, I bet. Every night, Papa, you know, we try to imagine what you’re doing. We talk about it before I go to sleep. Mama says you’re doing awfully dull things, but I imagine you making speeches in your coat with the tails and people clapping you and giving you all the wine you want and things like that.’

  Idle smiled.

  ‘You’re both right. I usually am doing dull things, like making dull speeches. I had to make one last night, as a matter of fact. At the Russian Embassy. They gave me a lot of vodka – that white stuff that makes your ribs feel on fire. In fact they gave me so much I made rather a good speech.’

  ‘Were you all by yourself there? I mean, did you know anyone?’

  ‘I took Marcia Burrows. She’d been working very hard all day for me, and I thought it might amuse her. She doesn’t have a very gay life.’ Emily giggled. ‘What’s the matter?’

  ‘I can’t imagine Marcia Burrows at a party, that’s all. She’d wear such old woman’s clothes.’

  ‘She didn’t look too bad, as a matter of fact. She’d had her hair puffed up in some way. I took her to dinner afterwards at a Japanese place. We ate raw fish. They served it up very prettily with its tail in its mouth.’

  ‘How disgusting, raw fish, I mean.’

  ‘Marcia wasn’t at all squeamish. It made her laugh.’

  ‘I’d never eat raw fish. I don’t think Marcia Burrows is too bad except she looks so sort of stiff next to Mama.”

  ‘She’s a good secretary. Now, why don’t you go and take a torch down to the cellar to Kevin? He’s been ages. Probably can’t find the light.’

  Emily got up. Her heart was back to normal.

  ‘Oh, all right. Was the raw fish alive? Mama’ll laugh when she hears about it.’

  Idle looked suddenly tired.

  ‘I shouldn’t say anything about it, actually,’ he said. ‘Because the funny thing about Mama is that she can’t bear even the thought of raw fish.’

  ‘All right, then.’

  ‘You’re a sensible one, sometimes, Em. Hurry up and get my drink, will you, my love?’

  Emily marvelled at the cleverness of grown-ups. On occasions when it was necessary, they were very good at hiding things. Much better than children. At school, if any of them had a row, they were inclined to sulk for several hours after it was over, or continue to be quietly nasty to each other, or simply to ignore each other. Grown-ups, or at least the grown-ups Emily knew, took care to disguise their feelings, and she admired that because it made things easier for everyone.

  There was no doubt in Emily’s mind that her parents and Kevin had had some kind of bad row, a serious row, by the looks on all their faces, though what exactly it was about Emily was at a loss to know. They had all appeared shocked : equally, they had all masked their shock, and returned to their customary faces and voices with impressive swiftness. And in fact the evening had gone very smoothly. Only a couple of things confused Emily. When she and Kevin had come back from the cellar with a bottle of whisky, Papa had stood up and shaken him by the hand before taking the bottle. The shake had gone on for a long time and then Papa had given a kind of rough pat, almost a shake to Kevin’s shoulder. Kevin had looked surprised, and poured himself a neat whisky – normally, he only drank wine. Then Fen reappeared, and Kevin, whose eyes usually followed her everywhere, didn’t look at her for a while. She had changed into a dress Emily had never seen before. Its dullness surprised her-some kind of grey wool stuff with a high neck. She smiled a lot, tossed her head about, and joined the others in drinking whisky. Then she set about cooking spaghetti with unusual concentration : every time she picked up a saucepan or cut a slice of butter or emptied a packet, the gesture seemed to be curiously important. If Papa and Kevin noticed anything strange about her, they didn’t show it. Papa, still in his own chair, told the best of his safari stories, spinning them out, adding bits that Emily, who knew them all by heart, hadn’t heard before. But he was much interrupted by Fen, who asked a lot of the kind of questions she would never normally ask : where was the tomato ketchup? Did Idle know whether there were any more peppercorns? She addressed each question specifically to Idle, who seemed confused by them, but politely made himself out to be an ignorant old fool for not being acquainted with the contents of the larder. At one moment, when Fen had complained three times that she couldn’t find the rock salt, Kevin quietly got up - Papa continued with his story – went to the dresser and took it down from behind one of Emily’s paintings. Fen snatched it quickly from him, laughing at her own stupidity, her hand shaking a little.

  At dinner, everybody seemed suddenly and curiously interested in Emily. Papa asked her a lot of questions about Berlioz, whom she was studying in Musical Appreciation, and Papa had never been a musical man. They all listened seriously to her answers: their concentration upon her was almost unnerving. Then Mama went on to talk about poetry at school, what a bore it was, how it might put off anyone for life. In her day, she said, the entire school had been m
ade to chant Ode to Autumn every Saturday morning, till each one of them had every inflection quite perfect according to the histrionic ear of the drama teacher. Pushing back her plate of spaghetti, Mama had then quoted the whole of the first verse in the extraordinary fashion she had been taught to recite the poem, and Kevon and Papa laughed properly for the first time. The poetry conversation over, Kevin began to ask Emily about Wolf. But on that subject Emily wasn’t prepared to be drawn, and suggested she might go to bed. She was still hungry, but the spaghetti had stuck in her throat : like Mama and Kevin she had not been able to eat it. Also, she was suddenly very tired, the kind of tiredness after a hard race, as if a long skein of energy had been drawn out of her. All she wanted was to sleep.

  But in bed wakefulness came to her again. Eyes open in the dark, she reflected quite clearly on the events of the afternoon and evening. It seemed to her strange that such happiness (the hour in the barn, Mama beautiful and gay with snowdrops) and such sadness (Wolf being cross and leaving her, the grown-ups’ row) could come so close together. Change was constantly, confusingly fast, sometimes. Mama’s moods, Papa’s sudden departures and returns, even the weather. You couldn’t rely on anything, really, or anyone. Not even a friend like Wolf. In the end even he couldn’t understand things you were unable to explain. So he wouldn’t think twice about leaving, just when he was most needed, because he’d probably no idea what he was doing. Would he ever come back?

  Emily alarmed herself by the question. She sat up, pulling the two Patricks towards her. What should she do to make him come back? The adrenalin of urgency breeds swift ideas, positive in their comfort if not always brilliant. Desperate, Emily became inspired. That penknife, the one in the village shop with lots of gadgets and a picture of the Tower of London on its side-for ages Wolf had been wanting that. Coral wouldn’t give it to him because she thought that penknives, even for boys, were dangerous – ally old bag. His father said he had to save his pocket money – 10p a week. The penknife cost £1. Emily knew Wolf had at least eight weeks to go - for ever. She knew, too, that if she explained the situation in the right way to Papa, he would lend her a pound. Delighted by the skill of her idea, Emily was now impatient for the next day to put it into practice. She went to the window to look for the dawn. But the sky was still densely black except for a scattering of lemony clouds that netted the moon. The church clock struck midnight.

  She had heard Kevin’s car drive away some time ago: now, she heard her parents coming upstairs. Not knowing exactly why, she crept to her own door and down the few stairs that led from the landing to her attic room. Hidden by the darkness, she sat down. It was just possible to see, through her parents’ half-open door, that Idle was lying back on the bed, feet up. He hadn’t bothered to take off the cover.

  Despising herself as she did so, Emily prepared herself to listen. Eavesdropping was something she had never contemplated apart from the one occasion with Wolf. At school, it earned wrath and scorn. But now, she reasoned to herself, she would not be hearing anything important or private. Simply a few words of innocent talk which would mean the row was all over, forgotten, and they were happy again.

  ‘I don’t know. I just don’t know.’ Fen’s voice was muffled. She was hanging things in a cupboard, perhaps.

  ‘Well, there’s still time for us to do something.’ Idle, flat.

  ‘Oh! We could do something. We could put on a good face for Emily’s sake, lead our own lives and be horribly civilised.’

  ‘If we did that, for my part, there wouldn’t be any women. Don’t you see, darling? Don’t you see I don’t want any other woman, ever? Only you.’

  ‘You haven’t been with me much, in that case.’

  ‘I know, I know, I know.’ An audible sigh from Idle. ‘Yet what can I do till I retire? I can’t change the nature of my work. You don’t want to come with me on trips. I’ve offered to take you often enough. But you’re quite right. They’d bore you dreadfully.’ A long silence. Then : ‘What’s happened, exactly, do you think?’

  ‘Simple. Kevin. You were away and I …’

  ‘But I thought … At Christmas you admitted it was just an infatuation. A passing thing, you said, soon over if you didn’t see him any more. I quite understood, didn’t I? Wasn’t I understanding? I meant to be. I did understand how it was, after all. My being away so much. You lonely, in spite of all your protests. Kevin attractive, gay. And you so responsive. You’ve always been so damn responsive. No wonder people fall in love with you. I don’t think you’ve ever known how dangerous you are. You sit there responding – I’ve seen you at it, a million times – wonderfully innocent, never knowing what you’re doing to some wretched man’s heart. But until Kevin, it was always something we could laugh about. Heavens, I could tease you. It was never a worry, really. Till Kevin.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’ Fen sat on the bed too. On the edge beside Idle. Emily couldn’t see her face, just the skirt of her brown dressing gown. ‘I can’t lie to you. It’s got out of hand. We missed each other. Much more than we foresaw. I suppose we love each other. Irresponsible, I know. But it’s happened. What can we do?’

  ‘Things only happen if you want them to. Things can only have happened because of some lack, here. Well, we know the lack. For my part,’ Idle coughed, ‘there are two alternatives.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Can’t we try again? Harder? Please. I’ll cancel my next trip. I won’t go on any more trips for six months, and damn the government.’

  ‘We could go back to the old arrangement.’

  ‘What arrangement? We never really discussed it. Do you mean that I should accept Kevin as your lover and in return you won’t leave me ?’

  ‘Perhaps we could try that.’

  ‘I don’t think I could bear it, darling.’ Idle’s voice was so low Emily had to strain to hear it. ‘I’m not a very sophisticated man that way. I could even be a jealous man.’

  ‘If only you could! If only you could explode at me sometimes, be outrageously angry instead of so bloody tolerant all the time! That might clear the air. Your reasonableness is a terrible incentive to my destructive whims. How far can I go, I think, before you show you positively care ?’

  ‘But we all either show or disguise our caring in different ways. You’ve always known I was a mild man. I love you, which means I must give you freedom to do whatever makes you happy. I cannot rage at you because I love you. I’m not a raging man.’

  ‘Please! Don’t look like that.’ At the frightened note in Fen’s voice Emily dug her fingernails harder into her knees. ‘It’s not that I don’t love you. You know that. I’ll always love you in a way. It’s all my fault–’ Her voice seemed to be breaking.

  ‘It’s both our faults. Don’t, please darling. Don’t cry. I hate to see you … You never cry, Fen. Listen, we’ve just got ourselves into a muddle. We’re lucky not to have done so before, in twelve years.’

  ‘And Em! What would she do? This house, everything. I’ve been driving myself crazy thinking what to do. Then I get so weakly nostalgic for the past, knowing it can’t ever be like that – unsullied, I suppose – again. All those heavenly years we had. And you the best husband in the world, in a way …’

  Idle gave a small, comforting laugh.

  ‘Couldn’t we be a little nostalgic for the future? Wouldn’t we do better that way?’

  A pause, then a sob.

  ‘Why do I have to destroy the things I love best? Why do I sit watching myself doing things I have no wish to do? Caught up in a sort of terrible compulsion. And there’s a nice bit of self-pity for you …’

  ‘Don’t … let’s talk any more about it tonight. Please. Here. Blow your nose.’ His voice quiet and kind, the voice he used to Emily if she fell down and hurt herself when she was younger.

  ‘And all the time you’re so reasonable, so good, so understanding, so uncondemning.’

  ‘How could I possibly condemn the thing I love most on earth? Love isn’t about condemnation, silly thing
. Oh my darling love. Please stop crying.’

  A silence. Emily saw Idle’s legs swing off the bed. He crossed the room and shut the door. The landing and Emily’s stairway were now in total darkness. For a while Emily didn’t move. She rested her head on her knees, shut her eyes. Any moment she expected that she, too, would cry. She waited, but the tears didn’t come. Only a picture in her mind, curiously bright in all the darkness : the day they had made the bonfire. Mama and Papa laughing at her apples that had fallen to pieces in the hot ash. Marcia Burrows looking puzzled. There had been nothing to be puzzled about : just Mama and Papa laughing, laughing, laughing.

  Eight

  The next morning Emily borrowed a pound from Idle and went down to the village shop. In spite of her lack of sleep she felt no tiredness, but a sense of tremulous exhilaration that comes some mornings in early spring, shaking the spirits into the happy awareness that the seasons, for all their reliability, are always surprising. The bare trees and hedgerows were ruffled with the beginnings of green: a cool sun was high in a cloudless sky. Omens, perhaps.

  She bought the penknife and set off down the road to Wolf’s house. Halfway there she met him coming towards her. They stopped, both cautious, a few yards from each other. Wolf rubbed the whole of his face with his hand.

  ‘I was just coming up to your house to see if I could have lunch with you,’ he said. ‘My father and Coral are going out. They said I could come too if you couldn’t have me, but it’ll be awfully boring.’

  ‘Of course,’ said Emily. Her heart, for some reason, was pounding. She took a step towards him, but there still seemed to be great distance between them. She held out the paper bag. ‘I’ve bought you this, ’she said.

  ‘What’s that?’ Gruffly, Wolf took the bag. Took out the penknife. Lay it on his hand, turned it over and examined each side. Incredulous. ‘I’ve been wanting that like anything,’ he said.

  ‘I know.’

  ‘Where’d you get the money?’