by Alex Marwood
‘Are you lost?’
‘Nope,’ I say pleasantly. ‘I’m eating a delicious goat’s cheese and tomato tartlet.’
He regards me with an assaying eye. I suspect my paisley ra-ra skirt, animal-print boots and shearling jacket are not the sorts of clothes you see often on this high street. ‘As long as you’re not lost. Visiting people, are you?’
‘Nearby. I’m a bit early so I thought I’d take a break. This is a nice village you have here.’
‘Thank you,’ he says, and thrashes at a patch of gnarly nettles growing out of the bottom of a signpost with his walking cane. ‘Who are you visiting?’
‘Do I need permission?’
‘Just asking.’
‘My ex-stepmother and my half-sister,’ I say.
‘Name?’
I raise my eyebrows at him. ‘No need to take that attitude,’ he says. ‘I’m just curious.’
‘The Jacksons. A place called Downside.’
‘Thought so,’ he says. ‘We really don’t like journalists around here, you know. Why can’t you leave those poor people alone?’
‘Um – because they asked me to come?’
‘I’ve not seen you before.’
‘No,’ I say. ‘It’s my first time.’
He gives me another of those country-people looks. You’re down from That London, it says, but I’ve got your measure. ‘Well, enjoy your tartlet,’ he says.
‘Thank you,’ I reply, and take another bite.
The village road leads on down to the gates of the big house, then veers off to the right into some woods and starts to climb the hill. It’s one of those little trickling roads that people pay extra for with their holiday cottages. Even with the leaves off the trees, the wood is dark and enveloping. I’m surprised to find a place like this here, a place that feels this ancient. Sussex is ancient, of course; but I had thought that the witchy, druidic feel had long since been overrun by the onward creep of suburbia.
I emerge on to the lower grasslands that edge the Downs and the road turns to run parallel with the headland. On the other side of the hill is the sea, vast panoramas looking out to France, but here it feels as though we are sunk deep in the centre of the country. A farm passes by on the right. Must be the Colbeck farm they mentioned in the Mail. Not neat and chichi and gloss-painted on every window frame like the properties bought up by fleeing Londoners, but a proper farm with a stack of giant straw-rolls wrapped in black plastic towering over its chimney pots and bits of several vehicles scattered along the verge and a splendid smell of cowpat. Three hundred yards further on, the road comes to an end at a gate. Beyond, an unmetalled track dips back down into the treeline. DOWNSIDE, says a pokerwork notice on the fence. PRIVATE ROAD.
I stop and think. Get out of the car and lean on the gate. I decide to have a cigarette to calm my nerves. I never gave her an exact arrival time, and there’s still plenty of daylight left, and if I can’t procrastinate on a day like this I don’t know when I can.
To my right is a mailbox – literally, a box, big enough to take a case or two of wine. The lid is open and nothing sits within. I lean against the gatepost and roll my fag. Light it and look at the sky.
I’m still not convinced that this is a good idea. My mother has told me that it is, India has told me it is, Maria has said that I will ‘earn my place in heaven’ by doing it, but that’s easy for them to say. They don’t have to do it, after all. I dread the next five days, but I dread tonight most of all. She says we should get to know each other before we set off on a road trip together, and I see the logic, but oh, God, that means spending my first night with Claire in twelve years.
There are fungi by the ton growing on the trunks of the beech trees, among the moss. I think they might be Chicken of the Woods, but I wouldn’t want to hazard my life on it. The cigarette tastes great in the cold damp air, as all cigarettes do when you know it’s going to be a while before your next one. If I know Claire at all, the entire property will be a smoke-free zone. Daddy used to deliberately light up his cigars within feet of the windows at home, just to annoy her. As a result I’ve always rather liked the smell of cigars; they smell to me like the fight for personal liberty.
‘Ah, there you are,’ says a voice, and I whirl round. A woman stands twenty feet away on the drive. Small and skinny, middle-aged and dressed in a fleece and wellingtons and heavy-duty jeans. If I saw her in London I would think lesbian, God bless me for my stereotyping, what with the greying cropped hair and the zippered weather gear. It takes me several seconds to recognise my stepmother.
‘Claire?’
‘I was expecting you a bit sooner,’ she says. ‘Tiberius rang to say you were on your way – well, to warn me about some journalist lurking in the village – twenty minutes ago. I was beginning to think you must have got lost, or I’d forgotten to take the chain off the gate or something.’
‘No, sorry,’ I say. ‘I was just —’ I gesture shamefacedly at my cigarette, a teenager once more.
‘Oh, you never grew out of that, then?’ She advances, and gives me a smile. Then she’s at the gate and I can’t dither over how to greet her any more. We kiss, awkwardly, one cheek only, over the top bar to avoid having to work out what to do with our bodies. Her skin feels rough against my cheek. Claire Jackson’s days of Crème de la Mer and weekly facials are clearly long since passed.
‘You look great,’ she says, looking my clothes over. ‘Ruby will love you. You always were inventive with your clothes, though. You nearly gave Tiberius an aneurysm.’
‘Is he really called Tiberius?’
‘The Strangs have been calling their eldest sons after emperors since the 1680s,’ she says. ‘His father was a Julius and his elder son is a Darius. Rumour has it he had to be talked out of calling him Khosrow.’
She unhooks the gate and swings it open. It’s old but well maintained, the hinges well oiled and firmly set in the post so that it doesn’t need dragging even when it reaches the verge.
‘Come on in,’ she says.
I drive us back down to their house. Soon after it enters the trees, the track swings back uphill again; the kink is there for extra privacy, she says. And then we’re out in the field and I’m stunned. It’s all so… un-Claire. Well, not the Claire I remember. But of course, she was living in my father’s houses back then. There’s a big shelter where I can see a stack of hay bales and several dustbins and, beyond the fence, two paddocks. In one, a donkey and two goats stare at us from the dark interior of the field shelter. In the other, two smiling Tamworth pigs loll around in the mud outside a mini Nissen hut. A flock of chickens flaps away squawking as I creep through them, bolting into a large vegetable garden that has little at the moment to show for itself other than kale, early-sprouting broccoli and a few last heads of cabbage.
‘This is so good of you,’ says Claire. ‘I really do appreciate it.’
I try to work out how to reply. Convention would demand that I dismiss the whole enterprise as nothing, as a pleasure, but I’m really not feeling myself there yet. ‘That’s okay,’ I say.
‘She’s calmed down quite a lot since you said you’d do it. Just your saying yes has been a real help.’
‘Good.’ I can’t think why. I can think of few prospects less enticing than going to a funeral with a stranger, but there you go. It takes all sorts.
‘She remembers you, you know.’
I blush. Oh, God, we were so horrible to them. ‘Oh, dear.’
‘No, it’s good. Don’t worry. It’s one of the few memories she has of Coco, too. Down on the Studland beach, I think. She says she went there in a boat, which I guess must have been the chain ferry. It’s a bit of a weird memory, actually.’ She laughs. ‘Actually, now I think about it, it might not be a memory at all.’
‘What?’
‘She says you found a jellyfish and cut a slice out of it like it was a cake.’
I remember it suddenly and with great clarity. The day before that dreadful row with Dad, when w
e went back up to London and had a party at home while Mum was up in Scotland at Granny’s. If it hadn’t been for Coco we probably would never have got busted, either; it’s not like they ever compared notes with each other. As it was, we ended up phoneless and cashless and under curfew for an entire month while the search parties were scouring the Purbeck coast and flotillas of boats out of the Isle of Wight were scanning the sea. The last time I ever saw Coco. Another thing I’d forgotten. Indy found some boys on the beach and we ended up on a houseboat tripping off our tits. I got off with some boy called Josh that India had her eye on, but I was so wasted that I can’t remember if I fucked him or not. Jesus, I got away with murder when I was a teenager.
‘Oh, yes!’ I say. ‘I remember! That was a fun afternoon.’
‘Yuh,’ says Claire. ‘I’m sorry you never really got to know each other.’
And whose fault is that? I think, and shut up.
We round several ranks of naked bean canes and the house comes into view. Another surprise. Again not what I would have thought of as a Claire sort of house. Squat and red-brick, it looks as though it’s been knocked together from a pair of farm workers’ cottages. Outside, a rusty Datsun and a mini tractor, an array of things you can hook up to the back of a mini tractor, and several sheds. An oil tank the size of my bedroom desultorily camouflaged by some trellis and what looks like a leafless grapevine. A patch of rough lawn dotted with early crocuses, tubs of winter pansies either side of the front door and a handful of withered hanging baskets. ‘Here we are,’ she says. ‘You’re not seeing it at the best time of year, I’m afraid.’
‘No worries,’ I say. ‘After Clapham North everything looks glamorous.’
The Claire I knew never let any living thing more chaotic than a single white orchid clutter up her space. She was a hundred per cent natural stone and feng shui ringing bowls. Then again, you’d never recognise my mother’s cosy Persian-rug-and-cushioned-window-seat set-up with Barney in Sutherland as belonging to the same woman who was married to my father.
There’s a dog. A big, bouncy black Lab who tumbles from the front door as though he’s not seen her in days. He dances around her wellingtons, wagging and panting, then walks over, looks up at me and simply leans against my leg. ‘That’s Roughage,’ she says. ‘He likes to lean.’
Roughage gives me a big grin, which widens when I chuck him behind the ear. ‘Hello, Roughage,’ I say.
‘I got him for burglars and journalists,’ says Claire, and elbows him with a knee. ‘Always important to have someone around to welcome them in and offer them a nice cup of tea, I think. Come in.’
The lintel is weathered and the light inside is dim. Despite the greyness of the day, Claire walks past the light switch as though it doesn’t exist, and winds her way up the passageway. She has to wind her way, because the hall is full of boxes. But not like Tom’s cardboard box collection; not Xbox packaging she’s forgotten to throw away: boxes that are neatly stacked and sealed with parcel tape. The hallway is quite wide, I see, but the route along the length of its flagstone floor is no more than a couple of feet wide, and it bends in the middle. Boxes are piled up on either side. Boxes and those plastic crates you buy in pound shops, and somewhere beneath them some tables and a couple of chairs, a couple of rugs rolled up and stacked against the wall, dog bowls, a collection of wellington boots so large it’s as though they’re breeding down there, and, thrown down seemingly at random on top of the boxes, piles of coats and scarves. Enough to clothe the population of a homeless shelter, and none of them suitable to be worn even in a public space like the village.
‘Excuse the clutter,’ says Claire, casually as though she’s referring to a few coffee cups and a pair of shoes. ‘We’re having a bit of a sort-out.’
No, you’re not, I think. That’s what I say every time I can’t avoid having a visitor round at mine. I’m in the middle of a clearout. It’s at the worse-before-it-gets-better stage. I’m going to take these books, boots, belts, bags, to the charity shop. And everyone knows it isn’t true; everyone plays along with it because they know I will never change.
I play along too. ‘Don’t worry about it,’ I say. ‘You should see my flat.’ Because that’s what everyone says to me as they skirt around the empty wine bottle collection and gather up my bath towels to make a space on the sofa.
I glimpse a sitting room and a dining room as we pass, spaces left between the boxes to allow access to the doorways. The dining-room walls are lined with shelves and the shelves are filled with jars. Great big Kilner jars all the way down to little tiny ones that must have once held fish eggs, each jar neatly labelled and each label written on with black Sharpie. Ranks and ranks of them: ‘tomatoes’ ‘peppers’ ‘green beans’ ‘cannellini’ ‘butter beans’ ‘sauerkraut’ ‘chutney’ ‘rhubarb’ ‘gooseberry’ ‘redcurrant jelly’ – there must be at least twenty of these – ‘stewed apple’ ‘mushrooms’ corner to corner, floor to ceiling. I catch a glimpse of the interior of one of the cardboard boxes where the lid has been left open and see that it, too, is replete with jar lids. Claire, it seems, is preparing for the zombie apocalypse. But in an organised way, at least.
‘Sorry,’ she says. ‘I can’t bear to waste all that spare produce. We thought we’d sell them at a farmers’ market or something, but… well. I thought maybe I’d give the land a rest this year. You know, Jethro Tull style. I try not to use too many chemical fertilisers, so it could probably do with a rest. I collect the donkeys’ droppings and the sweepings from the chicken coop, and compost everything, but… you know… it’s probably not enough, in the end.’
‘How about the pigs?’
‘Oh, no, not for vegetables. Parasites.’
‘Looks like you’ve easily got enough to last you out a year,’ I say, generously.
Claire turns round and looks at her hallway as though with newly opened eyes. ‘I guess so. Oh, dear. Come and have a cup of tea. Or a drink. Would you prefer a drink? After your drive?’
I would love a drink. Love one. But I think I’d better pace myself. It’s going to be a long few days. ‘Tea will be fine,’ I say.
‘I’ve got a lot of gooseberry wine to use up,’ she says. ‘And rhubarb and blackberry and elderflower.’
A proper little liver-off-the-land. I can’t believe that this is the same woman. The one I knew got in a state if she broke a fingernail. Now her hands are rough and red and the nails are clipped to the quick.
‘Do you buy anything at all?’ I ask.
‘Not if I can help it,’ she says. ‘There are so many chemicals, you know. And additives. Colours. Even the stuff you think is really simple. Shop bread’s full of other stuff, did you know? I’d grow my own wheat, really, but it’s just not practicable. I get organic flour delivered and we make our own. I won’t have Ruby exposed to that stuff.’
She stops at the bottom of the stairs, calls up. ‘Ruby! Milly’s here!’
‘Mila,’ I say. ‘I go by Mila these days.’
‘Oh!’ she says. ‘When did that happen?’
‘University,’ I say. Not the entire truth. I changed it just before I went up, but never got round to the going-up part. Too many mentions of ‘Coco’s sister Milly’ in the press over the years for my liking. And besides: Millys are chirpy. They have things like jewellery rolls and they colour-code their underwear. They work in Human Resources and aspire to living in Tunbridge Wells. With a name like Milly you either change it or you abandon all hope.
A sound of movement far away in the house. A faint ‘Coming!’ drifting along the landing. ‘I’ll make the tea,’ says Claire. ‘Why don’t you go and sit in the living room and I’ll bring it through?’
‘Sure,’ I say.
‘It’s mint,’ she says. ‘Is that okay? I’ve got ginger in the freezer if you’d rather.’
I wonder if it’s too late to change my request to coffee. Think about the additives and decide that there’s no hope she’ll have it. ‘Mint’s great,’ I say, and start won
dering how quickly I can claim to need to top up my petrol and stop at a garage in the morning.
I go into the living room. Low ceilings, a faded carpet that was once patterned with flowers, two low chintz sofas and an armchair. Roughage leaps on to the nicer-looking sofa, the one near the fire, which is lit and provides the only heat I can feel in the house. Flops down among the cushions and sighs.
No food stores in here, but the room, away from the seating area, is full to the brim. More shelves, this time stuffed with knick-knacks and souvenirs. A shell, a feather, a piece of salt-bleached wood. A teddy bear, a pair of tiny pink shoes, a christening cup, a My Little Pony. And more, odder things. A sippy cup. A spoon and pusher, made for tiny hands, with red plastic handles. A hair bobble with small plastic pandas. Some alphabet building blocks. Some Lego. Baby sunglasses. A tiny floppy hat. I know what it is. On a table in front of the shelves, a church candle, one of those six-inch-thick ones that lasts for weeks, burns in a saucer, surrounded by framed photos. Of Coco.
The walls are covered in them, too. Coco smiling, Coco on a white rug on a cold stone floor surrounded by Christmas wrapping paper, Coco on a beach, Coco and Ruby, identical in the sorts of gauzy dresses she would take any opportunity to dress them in back then, Coco in an inflatable rubber ring by a paddling pool, Coco at the top of a slide in a pom-pom hat, Coco and Ruby as tiny babies, wrapped around each other in a cot, an echo of how they were in the womb. Scrawled childish drawings – a wobbly flower, a scribble, a stick person – framed up in gold and glass as though they were precious art.
The room is a shrine.
I hear someone walk along the landing above my head and thunder down the stairs. I feel strangely guilty, staring at this evidence of Claire’s loss, the plastic tat that should long ago have been thrown away. I move over to the fireplace and squat down to talk to the dog while I wait for my sister to appear.
Chapter Twelve
