The Frances Garrood Collection

by Frances Garrood

  The Virgin herself looks if anything more lifelike than she did before she was moved. Her outline is sharp and well-defined, her robe flowing, the stars — and they really do look like stars — form a halo round her head. I find myself wondering whether Blossom might have touched her up a bit when we weren’t looking, but everything is true to the original grain of the wood. Even Blossom can’t interfere with nature. Blossom herself maintains a small vase of flowers beneath the apparition, and while these are regularly consumed by Sarah and her brood, they add to the hen house a touch of the roadside shrine which reminds me of a long-ago Austrian holiday.

  Do I believe in the Virgin of the hen house? Once I would have said categorically that I did not, but now, I’m not so sure. I’ve never been the kind of person who looks for (or wants) signs or miracles, but I have to admit that this is, if not miraculous, then certainly a rare kind of curiosity. Mum watches me anxiously, and I know she harbours a secret fear that I shall “go over to Rome” (I heard her confiding as much to Silas), but I certainly have no intention of doing that. Not for me the trips to the confessional, the collection of indulgences and the weekly attendance at Mass; I had far too much religion when I was a child to be tempted back into any kind of church. But I have a growing respect for our pilgrims; for their apparently unquestioning faith and their readiness to accept proof of the existence of God, while having no actual need of any such proof. And I envy them. It must be wonderful to be able to place oneself in the hands of a deity, and trust that everything will be taken care of.

  Eric and Silas take little interest in the Virgin. Now that they know that their chickens are safe and that Blossom is being kept sweet, they apparently feel they can get on with their lives. Silas is still working on his whippet (‘I think it’s my best yet, Ruth. I do hope no-one wants it back.’ Since it no longer bears any resemblance whatever to a dog, never mind a whippet, I think he can rest assured that this is unlikely to happen). And Eric’s researches are becoming increasingly complicated.

  ‘Take the bettong,’ he says at breakfast.

  ‘What’s a bettong?’ Mum asks.

  ‘A small Australian marsupial.’

  ‘How interesting.’ Mum reaches for the marmalade.

  ‘And the possum,’ Eric continues. ‘And the wallaby, and of course the kangaroo. And all the other marsupials. I’d no idea there were so many of them. Would Noah have taken two of all of them, do you suppose?’

  ‘You don’t believe in Noah,’ I remind him.

  ‘That’s not the point, Ruth.’

  ‘No. Of course not. Sorry.’ I have a vivid mental image of kangaroos (and bettongs) leaping over the side of the ark into the boiling waves. ‘Can kangaroos swim?’

  ‘Why?’ Eric looks at me suspiciously.

  ‘It doesn’t matter. No. I’m sure Noah would have taken just two kinds of marsupials. A big one and a small one.’

  ‘Ah.’ Eric looks relieved. ‘It’s just that all the working out takes so much time. I’ve given up with all the insects. I’m keeping those to a minimum. Not that they take up much room, but there are literally millions of them.’

  ‘I know.’ I have the flea bites (courtesy of the cats) to prove it.

  ‘Sad about the marsupials, though. I liked the sound of the bettong.’

  ‘Something would probably have eaten it.’

  ‘Ruth, I wish you wouldn’t persist in treating this whole thing as a joke.’

  Mum excuses herself and gets up from the table. Ark conversations always make her uncomfortable.

  ‘And bees,’ Eric continues (he loves it when we pay attention to his research).

  ‘What about them?’

  ‘Big problem, bees. Did you know that without bees, life on earth would die out in two years?’

  ‘Then you’d better take more than two.’

  Eric looks at me in exasperation.

  ‘Of course there’d have to be more than two. But how would they survive, without flowers?’

  ‘Don’t they hibernate in the winter?’

  ‘Yes. But the flood didn’t subside until the ‘tenth day of the tenth month’. It would be difficult to persuade a hive — or even several hives — of bees to sleep for ten months.’

  ‘Pot plants? You could take lots of pot plants.’

  ‘Now you really are being silly.’

  ‘Yes. I doubt whether the Noah family would have the time to look after pot plants as well as everything else.’ I myself have never managed to keep even one pot plant alive, and I don’t have an Ark full of animals to take care of. ‘So without the bees, the whole thing falls apart?’ I ask him.

  ‘You’re missing the point, Ruth. What I’m trying to do is not so much prove that Noah didn’t build his Ark, as showing exactly how big and how much of everything there would have to be, and therefore he couldn’t have done it. I’m designing an Ark which could take everything, but showing that it would have to be far too big to be remotely possible. So we have to have bees, even if it means an even bigger Ark.’

  ‘Bigger than the Isle of Wight?’

  ‘Quite possibly.’

  ‘Ah.’ I start clearing away the breakfast things. ‘I think I ought to get going,’ I tell him. ‘And it seems clear that you’ve got a few more calculations to do.’

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Meanwhile, Mum is still fretting about Dad.

  ‘How does he seem when you speak to him?’ I ask her.

  ‘Not too bad. But he keeps asking me when I’m coming home. He doesn’t seem to understand that I can’t. Not yet, anyway.’

  ‘And you’ve told him that?’

  ‘Yes.’ She hesitates. ‘Ruth?’

  ‘Mm?’

  ‘Would you do me a favour?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Would you go and see him? Just to make sure he’s looking after himself?’

  ‘Mum, of course he’s looking after himself. The reason he’s usually no good in the house is that you do everything for him. He’s perfectly capable if he’s got no-one else to wait on him. Why don’t you go and see for yourself? You don’t have to stay.’ But even as I speak, I know that my mother can’t do as I suggest. I know as well as she does that if she goes back, she’ll stay there. My father has such a hold over her that she would never be able to, as it were, leave him twice. It’s a miracle that she’s managed to do it at all.

  ‘Okay,’ I tell her. ‘I’ll go. Just this once, mind.’ I’m still smarting from Dad’s treatment of me. ‘I’m not making a habit of it.’

  ‘Thank you. And I won’t ask you again, I promise.’

  I set off the following morning in Mum’s car, feeling like Little Red Riding Hood, with my basket of eggs and cream (courtesy of Eric and Silas) and a casserole and a cake from Mum. Silas is desperate for me to take his whippet (‘see if he thinks it’s real, Ruth. I haven’t tried it on anyone new’) but whatever I feel about Dad, I wouldn’t go so far as to subject him to that.

  There are long delays on the motorway and a diversion, and the journey takes me twice as long as it normally would. When I arrive at my parents’ house, I am not in the best of humours.

  Neither is my father.

  ‘Your mother said you’d be here in time for lunch,’ he says, without preamble, as he whisks me through the front door (presumably so that prying neighbours are spared a glimpse of my shameful new shape). ‘Lunch is at one o’clock in this house, as you well know.’ There seems to be a lot of smoke, and a strong smell of burning. The smoke alarm is ringing merrily in the background.

  ‘Sorry. The roads were horrendous.’ I wipe my feet carefully on the doormat and make as though to kiss him, but he backs away as though fearing an attack, covertly eyeing my bump.

  ‘Well, the lunch is ruined now.’ He leads the way into the kitchen, and I resist the temptation to tell him that a delayed meal doesn’t have to be a burnt one.

  The kitchen table is laid for two, and on the side is a baking tray containing four sad little black
smoking bundles.

  ‘What is — was it?’ I ask.

  ‘Sausages.’

  ‘Anything else?’

  ‘Mashed potato.’ He lifts the lid off a saucepan, revealing a grey viscous mass which could once have been potato. I also notice a recipe book opened at “Braised Sausages with Onion Gravy”. I decide that it would be pushing my luck to enquire about the gravy.

  ‘We could go to the pub?’ I suggest. ‘My treat.’

  Dad looks shocked.

  ‘You know my feelings about pubs, Ruth,’ he says. ‘Anyway, this food is perfectly edible. Waste not, want not.’ (This is one of his favourite mantras.)

  ‘We wouldn’t have to waste it. I could take it back with me for the pigs. They’d love it.’

  This is not the right thing to say, and I am given a short lecture on my lack of gratitude and my shortcomings as a guest.

  It is one of those meals where you have to concentrate all your energies on forcing the food down while trying hard to think of something else. As I swallow crunchy morsels of sausage (my father has contrived to burn them so thoroughly that there is barely any sausage at all remaining inside the crisp carbon shell) I try to imagine that they are pork scratchings, potato crisps, peanut brittle — anything crisp and delicious. Anything but burnt sausage. There is no alcohol to anaesthetise the taste buds, and the potato is if anything worse than the sausages. Mercifully, there is ketchup, and I smother my food with that.

  ‘I thought you didn’t like ketchup.’ Dad says.

  ‘Craving,’ I explain, patting my bump. ‘With some, it’s coal. With me, it’s ketchup.’ In a way it’s a pity I don’t crave coal, since burnt sausages might well be the next best thing.

  ‘No pudding, I’m afraid,’ Dad says, when we’ve finished. ‘I’m not much good at that sort of thing. But I’ve got some fruit.’ He produces a bowl with three freckled bananas and a rather tired bunch of grapes. There’s a fly sitting on the grapes (will there be flies on Eric’s Ark?). Dad shoos it away.

  ‘No thanks. I’m fine.’

  ‘Coffee, then?’

  ‘Coffee would be great.’

  As Dad fusses over cups and percolator, we make small talk: Dad’s allotment, the people at church, the weather.

  ‘And — your mother?’ he asks eventually. ‘How’s she?’

  ‘Fine, She’s fine.’

  ‘She should be here, you know. With me. That’s where she should be.’

  ‘Do you miss her?’

  ‘Miss her?’ Dad looks puzzled. ‘Well, yes. Of course I do. But it’s more than that. People — talk.’

  Ah yes. How could I forget? People talk.

  ‘I expect they’ll get over it.’

  ‘First — you, and now your mother,’ Dad continues, as though Mum and I have been playing a game of tug-of-war with his reputation. ‘It’s very difficult.’

  ‘It’s been difficult for all of us,’ I say evenly.

  ‘Has it? Has it really? You and your mother seem to be having a wonderful time cavorting about in the country.’

  ‘Actually, we’re working very hard.’

  ‘So you’ve got her working, have you? Looking after all of you? I bet you have. I should think Eric and Silas are delighted to have your mother running around after them.’

  ‘She’s not running around after anyone. She’s just doing her bit.’ I spoon sugar into my coffee. ‘We both are.’

  ‘So when’s she coming back?’

  ‘You’ll have to ask her that.’

  ‘Well, I’m asking you.’

  ‘Dad, I don’t know when she’s coming back. Mum’s a grown woman. She makes her own decisions.’

  ‘But she sent you here, didn’t she?’

  ‘She wanted to make sure you were okay.’

  ‘And what will you tell her?’

  ‘That you seem to be coping pretty well.’

  For I have a feeling that all is not as it seems. When I went to fetch milk from the fridge, I noticed half a shepherd’s pie neatly covered with cling film, a whole cooked chicken and what looked like a compote of dried fruit (so much for there being no pudding). Either Dad is a better cook than he lets on, in which case the burnt sausages were some kind of ruse, or he’s being fed by someone else.

  ‘You had a visitor,’ Dad says now.

  ‘A visitor? When?’

  ‘It must have been a couple of weeks ago. A man came looking for you.’

  ‘What sort of man?’

  ‘Big bearded chap. Looked a bit like a tramp. He said he was a friend of yours.’ Dad pours more coffee. ‘Carrying some kind of instrument. A trumpet or something.’

  ‘A trombone?’

  ‘Could be. It was in a case.’

  Amos! Dad has found Amos! Or rather, Amos has found Dad. I don’t have any other big bearded friends, and Amos never goes anywhere without his trombone. I remember that I once gave him my parents’ address, and he’s obviously kept it.

  ‘Oh Dad, that’s wonderful! What did he say? What did you tell him?’ I can hardly contain my excitement. ‘How did he seem? Was he well?’

  ‘I’ve no idea. I didn’t ask him. He appeared to be well enough. He was only here for a few minutes. Seemed to think you were abroad — a gap year, I think he said — and asked if we’d heard from you.’

  ‘You told him where I was, of course?’

  ‘I did no such thing. Chap looked most unsuitable.’

  ‘Someone came looking for me, and you didn’t tell him where I was?’

  ‘No. I just told him you’d gone away.’

  ‘So he could still think I’m abroad?’

  ‘Quite possibly.’

  ‘Dad, you had no right! You had no right to send him away without telling me!’

  ‘It’s not my responsibility to put you in touch with strangers who turn up on our doorstep. He could have been anyone.’

  I am so angry, I’m shaking. How could he? How could Dad have taken it upon himself to send Amos away like this?

  ‘You might at least have phoned me to let me know, then I could have decided what I wanted to do. Have you any idea what you’ve done?’

  ‘The responsible thing, I should hope.’

  ‘You’ve sent away the father of my child. That’s what you’ve done. I’ve been looking for him for weeks, and you’ve sent him away without even telling me!’

  ‘Well, I’m telling you now.’

  ‘But it’s too late! How am I supposed to find him now? Did he leave an address?’

  ‘He said something about going abroad. Yes, I’m sure that was what it was. He said he was going on a cruise. It’s all right for some,’ he adds sourly, which is rich coming from Dad, who doesn’t approve of holidays, and certainly wouldn’t dream of going on a cruise himself. ‘Going on a cruise, when he has — responsibilities.’

  ‘He won’t be going on a cruise. He’ll be working on a cruise. He’s a musician. He has a living to earn. As for the responsibilities, he can hardly be accused of neglecting them if he doesn’t know anything about them, can he?’

  ‘You mean — you mean he doesn’t know about — about your condition?’

  ‘That’s exactly what I mean. And now he may never know, thanks to you.’

  ‘If you go around behaving like an alley cat, then you have only yourself to blame,’ Dad tells me. ‘Don’t you start blaming me.’

  ‘How dare you!’

  ‘The truth hurts, doesn’t it?’

  ‘I can’t believe you’re saying this! And you call yourself a Christian!’

  ‘It’s because I’m a Christian —’

  ‘No. No, Dad. You’re not a Christian. Christianity is about love and forgiveness and tolerance, and —’

  ‘If you’re such an expert, how did you manage to get yourself into this mess, Ruth? You tell me that.’

  ‘This is not a mess!’ I yell at him. ‘It’s a baby! My baby. And it’s your grandchild too. Like it or not. Nothing I say or do can change that. And if I’m trying to do
the right thing by finding Amos and making some kind of life with him, then you should be with me, not against me.’

  ‘I think you should go, Ruth. Before you say something you regret.’ Dad gets up from his chair, and prepares to see me out. He is calm and unruffled, glowing with churchy self-righteousness, and at this moment, I really hate him. I can’t believe that a couple of hours ago I actually felt sorry for this lonely man and his burnt sausages; that I was touched by the promise (albeit unfulfilled) of onion gravy. Now, I can’t wait to be on my way.

  ‘Don’t bother to see me out,’ I tell him. ‘I know the way.’

  ‘That’s all right, then.’ He gives me the pitying look of one who is looking down on a sinner from the cosy perspective of the moral high ground. ‘Give my regards to your mother.’

  ‘You can give her your — regards — yourself.’ Regards? After forty years of marriage? No wonder poor Mum’s had enough. ‘And it might just help if you were to do the phoning from time to time, instead of leaving it all to her. If you want her back.’

  As a parting shot this is unworthy of me, and I experience a brief moment of shame. After all, Dad is on his own; he has no-one to complain to or take his side, for he’s got far too much pride to confide in anyone outside the family. On the other hand, he’s scuppered what I currently see as my one chance of happiness, for as far as Amos is concerned, I too could be anywhere. We could chase one another round the world until kingdom come, and never find each other. And since Amos was merely trying to look me up, probably on the off chance, and is unaware of the urgency of the situation, from now on, any real effort is going to have to come from me. By now, he has probably forgotten all about me, and is happily bobbing about on the ocean waves playing smoochy dance music to rich, over-fed tourists.

  On my return journey, a lorry driver winks at me as we stop alongside each other at traffic lights. He has a beard and a kindly face, and his big, capable-looking hands rest lightly on the steering wheel. He reminds me of Amos.

  I cry all the rest of the way back to Applegarth.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  When I arrive back, tired and disillusioned (I had set out willing to bury hatchets and offer at least one small olive branch), Mum is naturally anxious to know how things went.