by Amanda Craig
There’s a fashion for calling children Devon, as there used to be for calling them India or Africa, he’s written in his column. No wonder. Devon is a foreign country. The only thing you can be absolutely certain of, as in India and Africa, is that you’ll live in a state of permanent frustration.
This morning, he has had a particularly nasty row with Xan.
‘Why don’t you get up off your arse and do something?’
‘Why should I?’
‘You’re eighteen. You don’t even empty the dishwasher.’
‘I’ve just finished twelve years of fucking education. I’m entitled to a fucking rest.’
‘No you are not, and how dare you swear at me! Who do you think you are?’
‘Who do you think you are?’ Xan retorted. ‘Why don’t you piss off?’
Actually, that is precisely what Quentin is doing. He will go insane if he has to spend another week at Home Farm. As the temperature drops, it’s increasingly infested with mice. The first they’d realised it was when the soap in the basin showed signs of being eaten. Next, a pillowcase emerged from the airing cupboard looking like lace, and Stella spotted a furry grey blur shooting across the kitchen floor. It is he, of course, who has had to buy traps and position them strategically around the house. At night he lies awake listening for another ‘clang!’ which means there will be a tiny corpse to dispose of before the girls get up. It’s really the business of their landlady, Mrs Tore, to sort the problem out, but his main aim is to get through this year with as little contact as possible with yet another local yokel. Quentin goes round dutifully refilling little bowls with poison, which is guzzled down to no effect. This morning, he’d come downstairs to find three mice running round the hearth rug in a circle, like something out of the nursery rhyme. When even mice fail to fear you, he thinks, that’s when you have problems.
Stuck behind the kind of small turquoise car always described as ‘nippy’ for mile after mile of narrow, twisting road, he rocks back and forth in his seat in his desperation.
‘Come on, you stupid hag, move your arse!’
Eventually, two short, peremptory blasts of his horn announce he is preparing to overtake. Why should he be impeded by some cretin sticking to 40 mph through tiny, straggling villages lacking any sign of a speed camera? Why should he be forced to inhale the weeping smoke from bonfires, the bitter reek like the guilt, sorrow and fear which he refuses to let in. If the car ahead doesn’t give over, he’ll be late for seeing his parents, which in turn means missing the train to London.
‘Get out of my way!’
When she does give over, awkwardly cramming into a shallow lay-by in the hedgerow, he shoots ahead, good temper restored.
‘Viv’il buon vino! Vivan le femmine! Viva le glorie d’umanità!’ he sings along with Don Giovanni on the radio. So how has he come to be married to Charlotte Evenlode, of all women?
As with everything, it was partly a matter of timing. To be a bachelor at twenty is normal, at thirty is sensible, and at forty prudent; but to be single at forty-five smacks of failure. Quentin had never found children interesting until the row of small shoes lined up in the front hall of his friend Ivo Sponge’s house became strangely affecting. The next instant, it seemed, he was gazing into the large brown eyes of his future wife, and talking about wanting a family of his own. Biology, it was all biology – or perhaps it was property.
How could he have done this? And yet, how could he neuter himself just because he’s a father?
Up until Stella was born, she’d been so keen, and after she’d lost all interest. There had been the traumatic C-section, and then Stella never stopped crying. It seemed simpler while Quentin was ejected to sleep in his daughter’s room, surrounded by smirking soft toys.
The moment Lottie got Stella to sleep through the night, he was back and everything had been delightful, but a month later she became pregnant with Rosie and the whole business began again. On the whole, Quentin thought, he deserved a medal for not having an affair until Stella was three. He worked in an office surrounded by lovely young women. If you were an editor, adultery was almost part of the job description.
‘Sorry, I need to go to this conference in Madrid,’ was all he needed to say, and Lottie seemed to find it, if anything, a relief. He’d even told himself that he was doing her a favour: she could have two uninterrupted nights, and he could slake his libido on someone who was actually enthusiastic. Thinking of Tina, his latest girlfriend, made him feel quite hot.
‘Slow down,’ he tells himself; ‘slow down, or you’ll miss the turn-off.’
Dartmoor looms over him like a headache and so does the prospect of dropping in on his parents.
To his parents, Devon is not a county so much as a kind of separate, shamanic space. Hugh is obsessed by its wildlife and history, which is all very well in a poet who was actually born in Trelorn, but his mother will come out with ridiculous statements like, ‘Do you know, Devon has more cheeses than the whole of France?’ She even takes pride in the way that, living in a place of prevailing westerly winds, they usually experience any change in weather a day before London. Most Jews hate the countryside, for perfectly understandable historical reasons, but when they don’t they seem to love it more than the English. His mother is one of these. Quentin sighs, and turns off the main road into smaller and smaller lanes that narrow like ageing arteries.
Just as he has to slow down for a herd of alpacas wearing flowery wreaths, his mobile rings. It’s Ivo, now not merely his friend and rival but his only regular employer.
‘Excellent piece,’ says Ivo, briskly.
‘Thanks.’
Ivo clears his throat.
‘I don’t suppose there are many Chronicle readers in Devon, are there?’
‘Not as far as I can see.’
Ivo sighs. ‘Good. Let’s keep the identity of the Questing Vole a mystery. More fun.’
Quentin says, ‘Actually, I am still a Name—’
But Ivo has already rung off. Quentin hates writing under a pseudonym. To be a columnist is the difference between being a celebrity and a civilian, and he hopes his style is sufficiently distinct for the people who matter to know he’s the Vole. Still, it’s an easier way of earning a living than many – if only a living were to be made from it.
He has even had to have his hair cut locally, an agricultural shearing that has turned him into a cartoon of himself. Alas, it’s not just barbering.
‘Daddy, why do you look so sad when you’re not smiling?’ Stella asked him this morning.
‘Do I?’
The thing is, he does feel sad almost all the time. He longs to lose himself, and not only in hot sex with Tina. He wants his life back.
His mobile rings again.
‘Hello? Hello?’ His father’s voice is so loud he almost jumps.
‘Fa?’
‘Just wondering when we’re going to see you.’
‘I’m almost there.’
‘Fine. I’ll get your mother to put the kettle on, then.’
Off the main road, the landscape is so quilted as to resemble a green velvet eiderdown draped over a giant recumbent body. Once inside Devon’s Golden Triangle, as estate agents call it, people are visibly wealthier, with fewer bungalows and more pretty cottages, mostly immaculate. The one that belongs to his parents is an anomaly, with patched thatch that flexes around the top windows like bristly eyebrows. Several implements are rusting beneath a cacophony of ceramic wind chimes. Raffles, his parents’ blind, malodorous Staffordshire terrier, waddles over, drooling.
‘Piss off.’
Quentin rings the familiar iron bell, and lets himself through the unlocked door into a multiplicity of small, dark rooms, crammed with books and his mother’s work. To him, these look like glazed mud, but Naomi has built up quite a following, and even exhibits in the craft galleries of Dartington and Tavistock.
‘Hello, dear.’
His mother is wearing her usual uniform of smock, trousers, wellin
gton boots and a pair of glasses on the end of a long necklace of large lumpy glass beads. Quentin kisses her soft, round, crumpled face. She smells of verbena soap.
‘How are you, Ma?’ Quentin asks.
‘So-so. Tea?’
‘Coffee, please,’ says Quentin, remembering too late that this will mean Nescafe. ‘How is he?’
‘Declining,’ she says.
His father doesn’t rise from the cane chaise longue where he lies all day long, looking down the sloping garden and its fading tapestry of foliage. Quentin says with false enthusiasm, ‘Hello, Fa.’
Hugh is shockingly wasted. They’d dropped by after first seeing Home Farm, and he must have lost another stone since then. A mossy jumper bulks out his upper body, but his legs in their worn fawn corduroy are half the size they used to be. He grunts a greeting.
‘Still unemployed?’
‘I’m self-employed.’
‘Ah, freelancing.’ Hugh pronounces it with the emphasis on the latter word, as if Quentin were a knight in a tournament. ‘Better than nothing.’
‘It’s not easy, no. The money is terrible.’
‘Everything’s bad. I keep telling your mother to turn up the heating, but she’s penny-pinching as usual.’
Quentin has already noticed that the room is hot to the point of discomfort.
‘Have some tea.’ Naomi wheels in a tea trolley. It’s the kind of thing which he finds most mortifying about his parents, calcified in the 1970s.
Quentin glances surreptitiously at his watch.
‘Look at that view,’ his father murmurs. ‘You know, there isn’t a day goes by that I’m not grateful for the beauty of nature.’
‘It’s age,’ says his mother. ‘Young people are too busy to stop and notice.’
‘Grateful to who?’ Quentin asks.
‘Life, maybe.’
‘Ah, life. Personally, I’d like to give life a kick up the arse right now.’
His parents exchange glances. ‘It’s a shame you can’t bring Lottie and the girls again. It’d be good to get everyone together.’
‘Lottie will probably have you over for Christmas.’
He has no idea what Lottie plans, of course.
The latest row is over his hiring a woman, Janet, to do his share of the cleaning. Lottie is outraged because he’s supposed to be doing penance by cleaning out the toilets himself, but it’s worth £100 a month not to do it, and Janet also irons his shirts. She’s an odd woman, and Quentin had taken one look at her false teeth, and nearly told her to go away. Then he remembered how much he hated housework and welcomed her with enthusiasm.
‘Do come in, and bring your friend too.’
‘Dawn’s my daughter. She’ll be quite happy in the car,’ Janet said.
‘You’ve cleaned for other houses in the neighbourhood, I gather?’
‘I’m housekeeper for Mrs Tore.’
It was clear he was supposed to be impressed by this. ‘Who?’
‘Our landlady at Shipcott Manor. Xan,’ Lottie said before he could stop her, ‘why don’t you take a mug of tea out to Dawn in the car. Milk? Sugar?’
‘Both.’
‘It shouldn’t take too long,’ Quentin said.
Janet sniffed. ‘It’s how long is a piece of string with housework, isn’t it?’
‘Yes, sorry about the smell,’ said Lottie. ‘There’s a stray tom around and it keeps coming in and spraying.’
‘I like cats,’ Janet said. ‘Though my awful Ex couldn’t abide them.’
‘Well, we don’t want to let this one in. My son is allergic.’
They had gone round the house, and he’d almost relished having a new audience to complain to about it.
‘Unbelievable. No loft insulation and no central heating. We’re going to bloody freeze. If you’re coming to us from the village, do you think you could pick up a couple of pints of milk, a loaf of bread and a newspaper on the way? We’ve got an account with the village shop.’
‘Quentin, that really is extravagance.’
‘No, it’s not. Just because you’re on the long trudge to martyrdom doesn’t mean I have to be.’
The sound of music came from the next room. An odd expression crossed Janet’s face.
‘Who’s that?’
Lottie said, ‘My son. He’s at a loose end.’
‘Be wanting a job, then.’
‘Yes, if he could find one. He might like helping on a farm, if you know of anyone.’
‘The pie factory in Trelorn is always looking for people.’
‘It sounds like something out of Peter Rabbit.’
She took no notice. ‘My Dawn works shifts.’
Quentin could hear the piano was being played remarkably well. Maybe all Xan needed was someone his own age to hang out with, though Janet’s blobby daughter would not have been his own first choice. Just then, the girls came running up, carrying something wrapped in a bit of cloth.
‘Mummy, Mummy, look what we found!’
Stella held out a small, muddy body.
‘It’s a dead baby, Mummy. Poor little thing.’
Janet’s hand flew to her throat, and she blurted out, ‘Jesus!’
She looked almost green, and Lottie said sharply,
‘Don’t be ridiculous, Stella! It’s only a doll, for heaven’s sakes. Here, sit down Janet, you look as if you’re about to faint.’
Janet swallowed. ‘It’s nothing – I never could abide dolls. My awful Ex kept buying them for Dawn.’
‘It’s not a doll, it’s a baby,’ Rosie said obstinately.
Lottie sighed. ‘Well, give it a bath or something.’
Quentin’s thoughts return to The Hovel. ‘Sorry?’
‘How are the children getting on in their new school?’
‘Too young to know the education that they’re missing,’ he answers gloomily.
Hugh frowns. ‘I heard Shipcott was pretty good. Tiny, but well run.’
‘What about the house?’
‘Lottie only lets me stay indoors if I chop logs for her.’
‘Well you do need it for the wood-burners,’ Naomi says. ‘I don’t imagine chopping logs is easy for a woman.’
‘Oh, I don’t know. Those axes are weighted so that almost anyone can split a log with one.’
His parents exchange a glance, as if debating whether or not to say something. He knows they will be siding with his wife.
‘She’s not what you think, you know.’ Quentin feels he’s entitled to sympathy from his own parents, at least. ‘She’s got so hard.’
‘Ah.’ His mother sighs, and looks away. ‘Maybe she has reason to be.’
‘Love is not love/ That alters when it alteration finds/ Or bends with the remover to remove. I’ve always thought that bollocks, myself,’ adds Hugh.
His parents are chalk and cheese, and yet they have somehow stuck it out.
‘So what’s the secret?’ he asks his mother, helping her wash up in the stainless-steel sink. The kitchen is in a lean-to, and astoundingly primitive – one blue Formica surface to chop on, an electric cooker with four hobs, an ancient, rattling fridge whose services are barely needed, and a store cupboard. Yet somehow, from these unpromising surroundings, his mother conjures wonderful meals.
‘Of what?’
‘Marriage.’
‘You have to not look too closely, and never forget your manners.’
Quentin gives an exasperated bark of laughter. ‘What’s gone wrong with me and Lottie goes far beyond such superficial matters.’
‘Why do you think manners are superficial?’
‘Woman!’ Quentin can hear his father bawling from next door. ‘Where are my glasses?’
Naomi walks over and finds them, then returns.
‘Anyway, Fa’s manners are appalling. You just put up with it.’
She looks at him quizzically.
‘Is that what you think? He puts up with me, too.’
‘You’re a saint, he’s a shit and I must get go
ing, or I’ll miss the London train,’ he says.
His mother comes to the door.
‘Don’t stay away,’ she says softly. ‘He isn’t going to last another year, you know.’
‘I’ll come as often as I can,’ Quentin lies.
‘Good. Bring the girls, too.’
As she kisses him, he can feel her put something in his pocket.
‘What’s this?’
‘Just a little something.’
Surely, they can’t afford to spare £100? Guiltily, he thinks of handing it back. But then they don’t seem to need much to live on, whereas he does.
‘Thanks,’ Quentin says, with more warmth.
He parks at Exeter St David’s next to a rusting black Ford with a sticker announcing in Gothic lettering, THIS CAR IS PROTECTED BY WITCHCRAFT. In a different mood it might have made him laugh, but all he wants is to get back to civilisation.
Outside, a huge speckled cloud of starlings streams out across the sky then gathers in a swirling mass over the sodden fields of the Exe Valley. For a single moment, in which the flock keeps pace with the train, they coagulate into a succession of forms – a dog, a wave, an axe, a giant skull. Quentin can’t help but shudder. These are purely random shapes, to which his brain has given a meaning, so why is he filled with foreboding?
5
Sally and Baggage
There’s no doubt about it, she’s stuck in the ditch.
As Sally’s wheels spin uselessly, she wonders how people can be so selfish. That bloody grockle in the Golf who chased her for miles, flashing his lights and making rude gestures so that he could overtake, must have known how badly he was behaving. Far from being ashamed, however, he seemed triumphant when he finally forced her into the ditch.
‘Poop-poop!’ she murmurs. Behind her, the dog whines in sympathy. ‘Never mind, Baggage. Whoever he is, he’ll learn.’
Sally shakes herself. Road-hogs are a fact of life; perhaps the real thing to wonder at is the number of good people she knows: people who give way when meeting another car in a narrow lane, with a smile and a wave, and who if they find £10 on a pavement, don’t think twice about handing it in to the police.
