We Are Family

by Emlyn Rees

  Rachel jolted upright in the chair and clutched the phone with both hands.

  ‘I don’t know if I’m doing the right thing . . . I mean, I must be crazy . . .’ Laurie’s voice sounded agitated and Rachel tried to visualise her, but couldn’t. All she kept seeing was a younger version of herself. ‘I don’t even know you. You’re a complete stranger. I shouldn’t be speaking to you at all, but I’ve decided to come to the funeral . . . if you want me to?’ Laurie blurted out.

  ‘Of course I want you to!’ Rachel exclaimed. ‘What . . . what about your father? Did you tell Bill I called?’

  ‘I’ll explain about Dad when I see you.’

  ‘But . . . but you’re coming? Oh . . .’ Rachel said, smiling for the first time in a week. She couldn’t believe she was having a conversation with her niece. She felt as if she’d been given a second chance.

  When the short phone call was over, and Rachel had managed to persuade Laurie to agree to coming to stay the night before the funeral, she bowed her head and put her lips to the phone. ‘Thank you,’ she whispered.

  Laurie’s call gave Rachel just the boost of energy that she needed and helped to blast Tony’s presence from the forefront of her mind. By the next morning, she’d bounced back to her natural state of hyperefficiency and had sorted out the best spare room for Laurie, organised all the flowers, taken a host of calls and had even spent several hours playing with Thomas so that Lucy could get some sleep.

  A steady stream of respectful visitors descended on Dreycott Manor in the morning – family friends and well-wishers from the village. Rachel dealt with them all with a quiet grace, but their grief failed to touch her. She knew that everyone was eyeing her suspiciously, especially Christopher who seemed to be hovering in case she slipped into yesterday’s ‘difficult’ mode and she offended someone.

  Rachel was early to meet Laurie’s train. She parked her Mercedes coupé in the small car park at the village station and turned off the engine. She pulled out the tiny silver compact from inside her handbag and checked her face, smoothing her dark red lipstick.

  She’d tried to pretend to herself that Laurie coming here was no big deal. She was just another name on the ever expanding guest list for the funeral tomorrow, but as Rachel sat in the car, she knew that meeting Laurie was a huge step towards healing her past. Everything rested on being able to forge a relationship with this unknown young woman. If she could win over Laurie Vale, then perhaps she could eventually win over Bill. And if she could win over Bill – well, then everything might make sense.

  She felt her pulse racing as she saw the train pull into the small platform and she got out of the car. And for the first time since Tony had died, Rachel felt truly alone. With each step she took towards the platform, she felt as if she were stepping along an unknown path, further and further away from everything she’d ever shared with Tony. For one second, she looked round towards her car. But it was too late to turn back. She had to go through with this, whatever the consequences might be.

  And then she spotted Laurie, standing alone by the entrance to the car park. Her resemblance to Bill, even from a distance, made Rachel gasp. She was wearing a long, shapeless multicoloured wool coat, a long scarf twisted around her neck and big black lace-up boots. She had red hair, cropped very short, so that her high cheekbones and huge almond-shaped eyes were striking, even from a distance. Rachel could feel her heart in her throat as she raised her arm to wave.

  She’d been expecting Laurie to be tall, but Rachel stood above her as they came face to face in the middle of the path.

  ‘Hello, Laurie,’ Rachel said, not sure whether to hug her, or to shake her hand. ‘I’m Rachel. Your aunt . . .’

  Rachel had been planning on covering her nervousness by launching into a friendly conversation and asking about Bill. But something about the way her niece was staring at her made her feel tongue-tied and exposed, and Rachel felt herself blushing for the first time in years.

  And then, to Rachel’s surprise, Laurie laughed, breaking the tension.

  ‘I’m so sorry,’ Laurie gushed, obviously flustered. ‘I always laugh when I’m nervous. It’s just that . . . you’re so not like Dad! I mean, I don’t mean to be rude, but I was expecting a little old lady with grey hair.’

  Rachel laughed in return, mostly with relief. She now comprehended the huge risk she’d taken asking Laurie to her home. What if she’d been mousy, or insecure, or demanding? What if she’d been aggressive, or annoyed? Now she wanted to hug this strange young woman for being so normal.

  ‘Believe me,’ she said, ‘there’s a little old lady with grey hair inside.’

  ‘Oh, I’m sorry. I’m being so insensitive. I’m sorry about –’

  ‘Don’t be,’ Rachel interrupted quickly. ‘You didn’t know him, and besides, I’m so sick of everyone treading on eggshells around me. Listen, we’ve got a bit of time before we’re due back at the house. Shall we go to the pub and not be sorry for a while?’

  Rachel hadn’t been to the village pub for several years, but it seemed to make sense to bring Laurie to the thatched-roofed old cider house. As much as she wanted to show off the picture-perfect village, she also wanted to get to know Laurie on neutral territory, to put her at her ease.

  Tony used to come here to drink with his sons when they came home for Christmas, or to play a game of pool. As Rachel pushed up the latch and stepped down on to the worn old step, the smell of cigarette smoke, mixed with the wood fire and smell of beer, reminded her so strongly of the essence of Tony that, for a second, she couldn’t breathe.

  ‘So? Am I what you expected?’ she asked Laurie, as they sat at the small table by the fireplace. They’d been chatting easily on the way to the pub and Rachel had learnt all about Laurie’s life in London. Now she wanted to steer the conversation around to more urgent matters.

  ‘I didn’t know what to expect,’ Laurie said. ‘Up until a few days ago, I didn’t even know that you existed.’

  Rachel took a sip of her white wine. ‘And how’s Bill?’ She tried to make it sound conversational, rather than desperate, but she failed at both. She’d been longing to ask Laurie about her father since the moment she’d seen her, but it was only now that she found the courage.

  Laurie sighed. ‘Very angry and upset. I’ve never argued with him before. He forbade me to see you. He said that you would ruin my life, like you ruined his. I’m sorry if that sounds harsh, but I might as well tell you the truth.’

  Rachel nodded, feeling something crush inside her. But it was no more than she suspected, she reminded herself. She mustn’t be too disappointed. After all, there was still hope. There was still Laurie, this brave young woman who Rachel found herself instantly drawn to.

  ‘But you came anyway?’ she asked.

  ‘I was curious,’ Laurie confessed. ‘I always wanted a family, you see. There was only ever me. No cousins, no siblings, no one. Not on my mother’s side, either. I can’t get over the fact that Dad kept you from me. That he kept you a secret. He made out you were some . . . I don’t know. But clearly you’re not what he thinks.’

  Rachel smiled gently, feeling for Laurie and her obvious confusion. ‘I guess Bill had his reasons for being angry with me.’

  ‘What reasons, though? What did you argue about?’

  ‘Mum mainly. He’s got issues about our mother’s death. And so many other things, I’ve lost count.’

  ‘But your mother – my grandmother – she died in the village you both grew up in, didn’t she? In the flood. Or is that a lie as well?’

  ‘No, that’s true. He told you that much at least.’

  ‘He showed me the newspaper clippings. Grandma’s name was down on the list of fatalities.’ Laurie paused. ‘Oh my God!’ she said.

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘I remember now. The newspaper. It said my grandmother died, but her son and daughter survived. Dad told me it was a misprint. But it wasn’t. It was you. I’ll never forgive him for this.’

&nbs
p; ‘Oh, Laurie, don’t say that. We all have to keep hold of the ability to forgive.’

  But Laurie wasn’t listening.

  ‘You’re the only one, aren’t you? There aren’t any other brothers and sisters – I mean aunts and uncles – he hasn’t told me about?’

  ‘No, there’s only me.’

  ‘And what about my grandfather, Edward? Dad said he died in the war.’

  ‘During the war, yes . . .’

  ‘Dad said that he was shot. He never said any more about it.’

  ‘No, neither of us ever did like to talk about it.’ Rachel drew a full stop to the conversation then lightened up with a smile. ‘Don’t worry. Your father will come round, I’m sure,’ she said.

  ‘He won’t. I know him. I saw his face. He’d kill me if he knew I was here.’

  Rachel bowed her head. ‘I didn’t mean to cause you any heartache, Laurie. Believe me. And just for the record, I’m not going to ruin your life.’

  And then the conversation moved on and Rachel began to fill Laurie in on the details of her family. She found it odd having to describe people she knew so well. She wanted to present everyone in the best possible light. She wanted Laurie to like her and her family as much as she found herself liking and admiring her niece.

  ‘And Tony? I don’t mean to pry, but how . . . how did he die?’ Laurie asked, eventually.

  ‘He had a heart attack. It was very quick.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘We were on holiday.’ Rachel hadn’t told anyone this, not even Christopher and Nick. ‘I thought he was joking. I thought he was fooling around at first. And then . . . then suddenly he was gone.’

  Why could she tell Laurie this, when she couldn’t even begin to express any of her emotions to her own children? Why was it easy to be honest with this stranger half her age? With Tony gone, she hardly had anyone to confide in, but somehow Laurie seemed distanced enough from her family for her to be able to tell her the truth. It felt like a huge relief just to be talking. Just to be herself for the first time since Tony had gone.

  ‘Were you close?’ Laurie asked.

  Rachel stared at her, amazed that she could ask such a question.

  ‘Oh, Laurie,’ she said, feeling her chest contract with pain and tears unexpectedly swamping her eyes. ‘You have no idea . . .’

  Chapter IV

  Stepmouth, March 1953

  Wiping the perspiration from his pale, freckled forehead on the back of his hand, Bill Vale angrily scratched his fingers through his shaggy dark auburn hair. He was a big, burly man and his shirt was stretched like a tarpaulin across his broad shoulders and back, glued there by a slick of sweat.

  He drove the hoe hard into the heavy allotment ground, then went through the motion again and again, inching forward, slicing through bramble roots, decapitating nettles, churning over the lugubrious soil for planting, pausing only occasionally to bend down and pick out rocks and stones as they sparked off the hoe, before slinging them into the nearby hedgerow.

  His face was kind and approachable, with sharply defined cheekbones, a short straight nose and a dependable square jaw. Only his eyes stopped him from being handsome. Light brown in colour, where they could have been doe-like and soft, instead they appeared hard and as tough as teak.

  When he reached the end of the rectangle which he’d marked out with four rows of canes and a length of parcel string, he stood up straight. He stabbed the hoe into the ground and watched it quiver there like a spear. He was exhausted but, even so, there was a crease of a smile at the corner of his mouth. He liked being up here alone, away from the town and the shop, responsible for no one but himself.

  The allotment was one of thirty council-owned plots of land into which this field on the brow of Summerglade Hill had been divided during the war. A few weeks ago, it had been nothing but a thatch of weeds and thorn. All Bill’s own fault. He’d let it go to seed following his father’s death. But now he’d cleared it and only the planting was left to do.

  As a reward, he took a thin flat square of Nestlé’s milk chocolate from his pocket, peeled off its foil wrapping and slipped it into his mouth, savouring every second of its luxurious sweetness as it melted on his tongue.

  Bill’s father had taken on the allotment when the army had sent him home to his family in time for Christmas of 1944, after a piece of German shrapnel had torn a four-inch gash in his face and melted his right eye like ice. He’d never made use of the glass eye he’d been given, electing instead to wear a brown leather eyepatch.

  ‘Makes me look more like a pirate and less like a freak’ was how he’d explained it to Bill as they’d sat up here talking one sunny Sunday, as the war had raged on across Europe. ‘Stops people from staring so much.’

  Bill had always worshipped his father. ‘They stare because you’re a hero, Dad,’ he’d answered. ‘Because it’s thanks to you and other people like you that we’re going to win the war.’

  They’d been resting on a fallen tree, the two of them, after a long afternoon spent pulling up beetroots, potatoes and onions. Distorted snatches of conversations from the other townspeople tending to their allotments drifted towards them on the breeze, and gnats and flies buzzed lazily in the warm currents of air.

  ‘When you consider how lucky I am, it’s funny that I give a damn for what people think,’ Bill’s father continued, as if his son hadn’t spoken, ‘but I do.’ He was dressed in scruffy brown cords and a worn red pullover (‘The Pope’s pullover’, as he’d always called it, on account of how holey it had been).

  ‘Why lucky, Dad?’

  ‘Because the two lads I was with when that shell hit never made it out.’

  Thinking of his dad lying bleeding and covered in rubble and dust in a bombed-out farmhouse was something Bill had never been able to get a grip on. Bill had never hurt anyone in his life, but he wanted to hurt the bastards who’d hurt his dad. He wanted to hurt them bad. He’d turn eighteen later the next year, but the war would be over by then, everyone said, and then there’d be no one left to fight.

  ‘I wish I could have been with you, Dad,’ Bill said. ‘I wish I could have been there to help.’

  ‘I don’t, son.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Because someone needed to be here to take care of your mother and sister.’

  ‘But –’

  His father looked up at him sharply. ‘I mean it. And if it’s help you want to give me, then that’s the best there is. To always look after them. To watch over them when I’m not there. To be there when they need you. No matter what.’

  ‘But you’re back now, Dad –’

  ‘I said no matter what.’

  ‘All right, Dad,’ Bill told him. ‘I always will. No matter what.’

  The smell of burning foliage reached them, along with the crackle of twigs. A hundred yards away, a stick-thin figure was busy flapping a blanket over a bonfire, drawing the flames up high. Bill stared at the tiny grey clouds accelerating towards the sky, the gaps between them growing wider and wider as they went. Like smoke signals, he thought, from a Red Indian’s fire.

  ‘You’re a good lad,’ his father told him as he stood up.

  Bill’s mother was leaning over the raspberry canes, with her bare arms outstretched and her bright white apron strings glinting in the sun. Eight-year-old Rachel was sitting at her feet, with hair like the flames of the bonfire, licking all the way down to her waist. Bill watched his father walk towards them. At Rachel’s side was a cloth-lined wicker basket from which she was sneaking handfuls of raspberries whenever their mother’s back was turned. Mid-mouthful, Rachel spotted their father and squealed and leapt up and scampered away.

  ‘Stop thief!’ their father roared dramatically, before giving chase.

  Their laughter was contagious, and Bill grinned at them darting between the raspberry canes and around the lettuce patch.

  But now their laughter was gone.

  Nine summers had past by since that day. The falle
n tree on which Bill had been sitting had long since rotted into the ground. He stared across the desolate patch of ground where he’d once watched his family play.

  ‘No matter what,’ he said aloud.

  He turned round and gazed into the distance.

  The view from up here on top of Summerglade Hill was like an aerial photograph. Below and straight ahead – to the north – was Bill’s home town of Stepmouth and, beyond that, the Bristol Channel. Watercolour green and watercolour brown, the moors rolled out along the coastline to the east and west.

  Summerglade Hill itself was flanked by the two deep, steep, wooded valleys of the East and West Step Rivers. The sum of a myriad tributaries which had drained off the heights of Exmoor behind, these rivers had already dropped two miles in altitude by the time they’d got this far. Usually slow-running, they were temporarily heavy from the recent rainfall, and as their gradients grew steeper still, they began cascading from one short waterfall to the next, as if running down a flight of steps.

  Some eight hundred feet below, near the foot of Summerglade Hill, the twin rivers converged at Watersbind, where the hydroelectric power station harnessed their power. A single river, the Step, emerged from this bubbling, frothing pool, flowing beneath the great stone arch of Watersbind Bridge, and over another hundred-foot stretch of rapids, before finally levelling out and rumbling through the Step Valley and into a deep-carved channel which ran clean through the centre of Stepmouth.

  The estuary town spread out both east and west from here, contained to the north by a grey eyelid of rocky beach and the great green eye of the sea. Two bridges connected the two divided sides of Stepmouth: South Bridge crossed the river where it entered the town and Harbour Bridge where it fanned out into the sea.

  A jumble of crooked houses and hotels crowded out over each side of the river channel, like beasts seeking to slake their thirst, and among them was Vale Supplies, the grocery store where Bill lived and worked. A two-storey, semi-detached brick building, it was one of the first shops you encountered on the main road into town. Bill had been born there twenty-six years before in 1927.