by Amanda Craig
‘I just don’t understand why everything is so expensive!’ Quentin keeps saying.
‘It’s called the cost of living. I can’t feed a family of five on less than £60 a week.’
Lottie knows this because she is good at budgeting. It’s a dismal thing to be proud of, given that Quentin is the one whose meals they all look forward to. He has his mother’s gift for being able to throw a few leftovers together and make food that is, as he says smugly, nutritious and delicious.
Another ten months of this with him will drive her mad.
She has been applying online to every architectural practice within fifty miles, but there are so many outstanding, prize-winning firms in the South-West that, even with her two decades of experience in commercial building for a top developer, she won’t stand a chance.
‘Maybe I’ll get a job stacking shelves or something,’ she says to Marta. ‘It’s not as if I ever made much before.’
‘No, you are a professional, with qualifications. Something will turn up.’
The two-mile trek into the village is punctuated by what become familiar sights: an old grey horse which comes to the gate to nuzzle them for a mint; a view down the valley towards a pair of white wind turbines under the vast, refulgent sky; brown birds and bright berries. As they trudge along, the girls chat to her about their small doings and she answers their questions, which she has rarely had time for before. Perhaps I can teach them myself about some of the things they might be missing at school, she thinks. She encourages them to speak German; they look for mini-beasts, pick autumn leaves and berries to put in jugs at home. It’s more enjoyable than she would ever have thought, if also deadly dull.
Her daily walk usually includes a visit to the village shop, a Portakabin crouched in the church car park. The design makes her wince, but just to talk to another adult who doesn’t hate her is a relief.
‘Home-made?’ she asks, pointing to pasties, keeping warm in front of the counter.
‘Oh yes. We don’t hold with Humbles.’
‘It’s good that Shipcott still has a shop.’
‘It doesn’t make a profit,’ the woman says, shyly. ‘We volunteer, though we all worry about being held up at gunpoint.’
‘Do you really?’
‘You’d be surprised. There’s crime here, my lovely, just like everywhere else. But how else are pensioners without cars going to get their food and money once a week?’
She has never known people like this, with their terrible teeth and terrible clothes and kindness. That’s what astonishes her the most: the kindness. In one month, she’s had more invitations to drop by for tea than she ever had in eighteen years of motherhood before. Maybe it’s true what people say about Londoners being unfriendly, she thinks, but after experiencing her daughters’ private school system, rammed with snotty bitches who ostracised her because she couldn’t come to charity coffee mornings, she’s relieved.
These women all work, too. There’s a nurse who works for Marie Curie, and a farmer’s wife who is run off her feet with bed and breakfasts, and two who run a care home for the elderly, and one who is a hairdresser; there are mothers who do all kinds of jobs, not only in Trelorn but as far away as Bristol and Bude. Her newfound popularity is not, however, due to any quality of her own.
‘We’re so pleased you came, because it means the school won’t be closed down,’ says one.
‘Do two pupils make such a difference?’
‘Oh, yes. If the numbers fall too low, they’d all have to be reallocated and this village would die just like so many others.’
‘I’m so glad we helped, then.’
That she is unemployed is nothing out of the ordinary, even if any expenditure over £1 has to be justified. Most people here are considerably poorer than those they knew in London, and it’s like driving along a road without suspension: you feel every jolt. Yet still her husband insists on having a cleaner.
‘I really don’t like having Janet around. Why can’t you clean up your own mess?’
‘It’s my money, and I’ll do with it as I please.’
That’s the maddening thing: she has always earned less than her husband. She says to Marta, ‘I spent ten years qualifying to become an architect, and still got paid less for designing buildings than Quentin gets for writing rubbish in a newspaper.’
‘Be patient. This too will pass,’ her mother says. ‘Will it? It doesn’t feel like it will ever change. It’s always a struggle to be a woman architect, you know. Less than a fifth of us make it through their degree.’
‘Can’t you set up on your own?’
Lottie gives a bitter laugh. ‘With what?’
‘You aren’t poor,’ Marta keeps insisting. ‘You have no idea what real poverty is like. Millions of people would envy your situation, not pity you.’
‘You’re right, I know, I just can’t feel it yet.’
The leaves on many trees flush amber, umber and bright gold. The swallows have left, and now the birds flocking together are starlings. Winter is coming, and the cold glare of the energy-saving lights is driving her mad.
‘Red lamp shades, red cushions,’ she mutters. ‘That’s what we need, to counteract the sodding green.’
She searches on eBay the moment the first rental payment comes through. It’s worth £30 on her credit card, just to make the living room look less miserable.
‘It’s horrible, no matter what you do,’ is Quentin’s only response.
‘I’m not doing it for you.’
‘You’re doing it because you’re incapable of not controlling things.’
‘Well, at least I try.’
The odd thing is that the more she does try, the more she feels an odd affection for the place. The furnishings are atrocious, the insulation non-existent, and yet each time she wipes over surfaces, it’s like stroking an animal whose rough, matted coat is gradually turning soft and smooth. She likes the cob walls despite the dreary magnolia emulsion of all rental properties. Perhaps I can paint it, she thinks; after all, there will be a tiny bit more to spend next month. The big pleather sofa and armchairs are much less obnoxious when draped in Indian cotton bedspreads, and the energy-saving bulbs are replaced by brighter, warmer halogen ones. The light from the small deep windows is redoubled by putting up a large mirror on the wall opposite, speckled with damp and age but still reflective. A ratty old kilim enlivens the brown carpet. Little by little, as she unpacks, it feels more like home. She finds two plain red interlined curtains, and splits them into four to replace the short, thin ones in the living room.
‘You are completely crazy, Lottie. It’s not ours. Stop all this obsessing.’
Once, in the early days, Quentin gave her a row of mugs with letters on which, when hung up in order, spelt out: I DO NOT HAVE OCD.
‘I bother because, unlike those disgusting drapes, the new curtains will keep out the cold.’
He gives an exasperated sigh.
‘Do you still wipe the basins in aeroplane toilets?’
Lottie disdains to answer.
Apart from the pig-slaughtering place below Xan’s bedroom, now used to store the vacuum cleaner, mop and buckets, the saddest space in Home Farm is the kitchen. At right angles to the house, it must once have been some kind of small barn, but is badly converted. If only the ceiling had a skylight! If only there was a window at the far end … To be able to always see how things should be is a particular curse of her profession.
Stella is also miserable. When asked to admire Rosie’s friend’s pony, she commented on its ‘well developed gluteus maximus’. Predictably, this led to teasing, and tears.
‘They’re all potato-heads here! Why can’t we go home?’
Lottie says, ‘Sweetheart, it’s like The Railway Children.’
‘Is Daddy going to prison?’
If only, Lottie thinks. ‘No. We just don’t have much money for a bit. When we sell the house in London, each of us will buy a really nice flat, I promise.’
‘C
an’t you and Daddy not divorce?’
‘No, I’m sorry darling.’
Stella bursts into tears. Then she shouts,
‘This is all YOUR fault, your fault! You are a horrible woman and a bad mother.’
Shocked, Lottie tries not to cry herself. Quentin has never explained to the girls that she’s the innocent party in all this because he wants to stay being their hero. She is the drudge, resented by them for doing the dull nagging that responsible parenthood involves.
‘Remind me how men came to rule the world?’
‘Women have children,’ Marta says.
Stella continues to be miserable, and rude, which leads to a call from the head teacher. It’s not the first time she’s been called in on account of her elder daughter’s behaviour, and Lottie braces herself for intrusive questions when she goes to the school office. She has had all kinds of suggestions made about Stella’s behaviour in the past, and is prepared to do battle with the usual patronising cow in charge. However, what Miss Anstey says takes her by surprise.
‘Stella is a very nice, intelligent child, and it’s inevitable that she’ll take longer to settle. I expect she’s used to doing more activities outside school, isn’t she?’
‘Well, yes,’ says Lottie, cautiously. ‘She’s musical … I don’t suppose you can recommend a teacher?’
She can’t afford one, but asking can do no harm.
‘We used to have somebody, but he died. Actually, he lived in your house before you.’
‘He did?’ Lottie feels a brief quickening. ‘That explains the piano. We’re glad to have it.’
‘Perhaps Stella and Rosie might like to join the choir on Tuesday lunchtimes, then.’
Lottie says she’ll think about it. She can see Miss Anstey’s shrewd eyes seeing the doubts she isn’t expressing.
‘It’s difficult, adjusting,’ she says.
‘You might like to be more involved too, Mrs Bredin. We’re always looking for volunteers.’
‘I could help with reading.’
Miss Anstey nods. ‘As long as you don’t mind helping boys whose only interest is football, it does make a real difference.’
‘Sure,’ Lottie says, her heart sinking.
‘Good. Your predecessor volunteered too. Nice chap. Such a shame.’
‘Why, what happened to him?’
Miss Anstey seems to start. ‘I’ll be in touch soon.’
Another irritant, literally in Xan’s case, is the ginger tom. The creature appeared one day, walking delicately across the grass with a discreet air made more notable by his insanitary habits indoors. They do not feed him, but it’s clear that the cat, which Quentin dubs McSquirter, is determined to extract food and admission from them. The Bredins are equally determined not to give any.
‘Out, damned cat!’ Quentin bellows whenever McSquirter, with a trill, dances up to the door the moment it is left ajar. ‘Spread your infernal lusts elsewhere!’
McSquirter’s mate, a tabby, is pregnant.
‘Can’t we have just one tiny kitten when they’re born?’
‘No, absolutely not.’ Lottie seizes a broom. ‘Shoo!’
‘Don’t you like pussies?’ Janet asks, pausing. ‘Who’s a beautiful boy, then?’
Janet never speaks like this to her daughter, who usually sits slumped on the sofa while her mother cleans. Lottie can’t but recoil at the glutinous adoration in the other woman’s voice.
‘My son gets such bad asthma from cats, he could die if one comes in. Keep it out, please.’
‘Shame, they’re good at keeping mice down. I’ve heard a few scuttling about.’
‘Mice!’ Xan laughs, with an edge of hysteria in his voice. ‘As if this place weren’t bad enough!’
At times, Lottie is tempted to agree. Yet the astonishing thing is, everyone she meets is convinced that life in the country is better than life in the town.
‘Aren’t you glad to be out of the city?’ they ask; and one says, ‘From London, are you? I went to London once. Did my head in.’
Xan is the most miserable of them all.
‘I’m so BORED and there’s NOTHING TO DO,’ he says a dozen times a day.
What will become of her daughters here? Will they end up like Janet’s Dawn, swaddled in sugar pink and without a trace of animation?
‘You know, Mum, there’s something odd about Dawn,’ Xan says when they are alone.
‘In what way?’
‘When she first came, do you remember that I played on the piano for a bit?’
‘Yes, I heard you. The Goldberg Aria.’
‘No. That wasn’t me you heard, it was her. I was fiddling about, and then she just sat down beside me and played it. Honestly, Mum, it was weird. She’s good.’
‘Maybe she’s autistic.’
Xan looks doubtful. ‘But why isn’t she at school? She’s younger than I am.’
‘I don’t know. Maybe she needs the money. She does seem lonely.’
Nor is Dawn the only one. The wind howls round the roof and down the chimney, devouring logs. It sounds like somebody moaning, or crying, a word she can’t quite catch. When she looks in the darkened glass of the windows, she jumps.
‘You should come down for a weekend,’ she urges Justin and Hemani, but they say, ‘When are you back again?’ or, ‘Perhaps in summer.’
It would be easier if I did live in another country, Lottie thinks.
7
Xan Gets a Job
Getting a job isn’t half as hard as people make out, Xan thinks. Keeping going at it, however, is another matter. He wonders if it’s the same with marriage.
Lottie and Quentin are making a reasonable job of maintaining civilised relations, at least in front of the girls; with him, they don’t pretend. He’s shocked by how two people who presumably once felt closer to each other than to anyone else could be so nasty. He takes Lottie’s side, of course, because there’s no question but that Quentin is in the wrong and has destroyed the family through his actions – and yet, she is so scornful, so harsh, that Xan finds himself wincing.
He doesn’t want to hear them quarrelling, and has been finding it harder and harder to wake before afternoon. How, even with Lottie and an alarm clock shrilling in his ears, had he managed to be out of the house by 8 a.m. to get to school? He has no idea, but why should I get up, he thinks, when there’s nothing to get up for? All he can do in the country is either look at the rain, or else walk for miles until he comes to the village, which has precisely one shop and one pub, then walk back. He doesn’t want to read all the classics he told himself he’d power through this year, and he’s given up looking on Facebook to see what other people are up to, bitterly hurt that none of his mates have bothered to get in touch.
The only other person his age is Janet’s daughter. They have nothing in common, and she has not repeated her astonishing performance on the piano, but he tries to be friendly.
‘Have you always, like, lived in Devon?’
‘No.’
‘Where were you before?’
‘London.’
Xan felt a slight quickening of interest. ‘Which part?’
‘I dunno. We lived with my dad.’
‘Oh. Where is he now?’
‘He’s dead,’ she said, and her eyes filled with tears. She has remarkable eyes, navy blue, though it’s easy not to notice them. She seems to be getting fatter each week, and although he feels sorry for her he wonders why she doesn’t take more care of herself. Still, he’s even more of a freak than she is, here.
Occasionally, he has gone into Trelorn with Lottie just for a change of scene, and he can always feel people staring. Once, a little girl came up to him and asked if he were made of chocolate. Her hopeful tone made it impossible to be angry, but both Xan and Lottie had been depressed. The locals don’t even know how racist they are.
‘Honestly, I’d be better off getting a job in London.’
‘How? You don’t have any qualifications or experience.’
‘I could get work in a bar or something.’
‘The only person you could ask to stay with is Oma, and if she hasn’t invited you I don’t think you can invite yourself,’ Lottie said. ‘Look: your problem is that you have to get a job to get a job. As soon as you have a bit of experience, you’ll be employable.’
‘Do you know what they pay someone under twenty-five, Mum? It’s not even the minimum wage, it’s £5.25 an hour. Why should I do some shit job for shit pay just because I’m stuck in the fucking country with nothing to do?’
‘Please stop swearing.’
‘I’ll swear as much as I fucking well want. You got us into this mess with that tool you married.’
‘Xan, we’re talking about you, not me. But I did babysitting from the time I was thirteen, and saved up enough from that to travel round Italy by your age. You’ve never even washed a car.’
‘You didn’t ask me.’
‘Well, I could really do with some help now. Not just with housework, but because I really, really need more money. Winter is here, and just to fill the oil tank for the Rayburn costs £600. I’m trying to find another job, but as of next month, I don’t have enough for the weekly shop. That’s how poor we are now.’
‘All RIGHT! Jesus, there’s no need to lay on the fucking guilt.’
Xan expected nothing, but when he slunk into the employment agency they almost bit his hand off to get him to sign up at the food factory. This was, the agency interviewer said, the busiest time of the year because of the run-up to Christmas; they couldn’t get enough shift workers. He emerged beaming.
‘I do night shifts from 6 p.m. Even though the agency and tax takes a lump of that, I can make £150 a week.’
‘Is it a zero-hours contract?’
‘They text me to say whether they need me the next day, but that’s cool.’
In his old life, he had enjoyed an allowance of £200 a month. It never seemed much – some people at school often got that every week – but now it seems immense.
Lottie, characteristically, seems more worried than pleased at his news.
‘I don’t like the idea of you cycling there at night in winter. You won’t forget your inhaler will you?’
