Blenheim Orchard

by Tim Pears

  No, Minty didn’t understand! And she couldn’t interfere. When she’d tried oh so tentatively Ezra retreated into his diffident modesty. Sheena laughed it off like it was her problem but she was dealing with it as best she could. Yes, indeed: setting up that stupid business of hers (wasn’t there something distasteful, Minty reckoned, about all these female entrepreneurs nowadays?) Not to mention throwing herself into one environmental campaign after another – Simon happily roped into this last one. ‘An architect protesting against house-building!’ he’d chirp. ‘Isn’t that marvellous? Aren’t I just woefully paradoxical?’ The perversity of it positively erotic for Simon; another sublimation, poor man.

  Minty stepped into her black Pradas, with their heels that would elevate her eyeline from an inch below to an inch above Sheena’s. Took a last look at her reflection, gave a deep sigh: the unfair mystery of other people. If there was one thing her mother had taught her, Minty thought, it was to expect nothing.

  Yet hope for everything, her ambition thin and boundless.

  Sheena and Ezra Pepin strolled along the fresh pavements of Blenheim Orchard hand in hand, and through to Bainton Road. Ezra turned right. The Carlyles’ house was the third one along. He anticipated Sheena’s voice, ‘Does she think we don’t all want peace?’ Ezra prepared to mollify his wife, so that the evening did not begin with antipathy amongst them. But then he saw that the rainbow flag – horizontal stripes overlaid with the word PACE in white – had been taken down from the upstairs window.

  There was a builders’ skip outside the house next door. One of a multitude these last two or three years along Bainton Road, whose Edwardian houses had looked appealingly faded and comfortable until, four years earlier, there rose behind them the bright, hard fake-Victorian dwellings of Blenheim Orchard, coltish, mocking, and the houses on Bainton Road were suddenly exposed for what they were: scruffy, tired, down-at-heel.

  One house after another had been besieged by scaffolding. Small men clambered over roofs, repointed brickwork, painted windows. Then they disappeared inside, came out like robbers stealing carpets, sofas, radiators, which they threw into their getaway skips. The Carlyles must have filled half a dozen with their makeover. The house had been Simon’s parents’ home, he’d lived there all his life, and it enveloped first Minty and then the boys with little need to change. When Simon’s mother moved to a nursing home on Moreton Road, contemporaneous with the Pepins moving into Blenheim Orchard round the corner from their old friends, Simon applied his skills to his own dwelling, designing a kitchen extension and a basement conversion. They had wooden floors sanded, walls stripped of dark wallpaper and painted white. Minty decluttered the house of gloomy furniture, faded paintings, thick curtains; bought white lampshades and bright Iranian carpets.

  ‘Minty!’

  ‘I’m here,’ she growled.

  ‘There you are, thank God! Where the hell have you been?’ Simon was beating potatoes that he’d already mashed in a large saucepan on the sideboard. Around it a fork, a manual whisk and an electric one lay rejected; globules of the off-white mixture were scattered across surfaces, objects, Simon’s apron with a food-stained picture of the Colosseum. ‘I was calling you!’

  ‘And how often have I asked –’

  ‘How the hell do I know when this is supple and light? She doesn’t say, damn the woman.’

  ‘Let me see.’

  ‘And where’s the nutmeg? I asked you to get me one when you went shopping.’

  They heard their guests’ voices, with Ed’s, in the hallway: by the time the Pepins reached the kitchen Simon had accomplished a swift change of persona, covering his frustration with the mask of a buffoon. And within a further minute he had them all, not just Sheena but Ezra, too, and yes, Minty as well, laughing at his hopeless tomfoolery, as he dragged them into a whirlwind of panic to lay the table, you won’t believe this salad, get the plates, quick, quick, not those ones, they’re hot, Ezra pour that wine, girls you grate, you squeeze, thirty seconds, help, Minty, where the hell’s our pie dish, the ceramic one, no, enamel then, yes whatever, for the fish pie?

  Until the implements and the crockery, the friends and the first course all arrived more or less together at the dining-room table, breathless and middle-aged and giggling, Simon still playing the fool as he mixed up lemon juice with salad dressing and pretended to pour a glass of Ostertag Pinot Blanc over Sheena’s lap. What a ridiculous dexterity he had! And Sheena was hooting with laughter, Ezra chuckling, the salad had iron and wit, the wine was as chilled as it needed to be. There was something worthwhile in this room, Minty conceded: a true conviviality. If she had to make do with this, if this was the sum of it, then she would. Be here with these friends, be this close to Ezra, put up with Sheena with good grace, discover she could still feel some kind of fondness for this overgrown boy of a husband.

  It wasn’t until they’d finished a bottle of Brouilly and another of Pinot Blanc with three delicious and companionable courses, and Minty had stubbed one cigarette out in the remains of chocolate mousse on her plate, and leaned over to light Ezra’s rollie, and Simon had carried in a tray of coffee and After Eight mints the Pepins had brought, that Sheena said, ‘Listen. We’ve got something to tell you.’

  ‘Yes,’ Ezra said, twisting his head to blow smoke away from his companions, then turning back to face them. ‘We’ve got something to share with you chaps. We haven’t told anyone else yet.’

  ‘You’re the first,’ Sheena emphasised. ‘You tell them, Ez.’

  ‘Me? You sure, darling?’

  ‘Yes, you go ahead.’

  It struck Minty all of a sudden, from the way their upper bodies were leaning slightly towards each other, that Ezra and Sheena were holding coy hands under the table, like a couple of teenagers.

  ‘Don’t you want to?’

  ‘No, you go ahead.’

  Good lord, Minty realised: Oh no. Surely not. Not another Pepin baby. Incredible! Can you believe the selfishness of that –

  ‘We’re going to Brazil,’ said Ezra, smiling, looking pleased with himself for having said so.

  There was a pause. The announcement was too facile to make any sense. Except that Sheena turned to Ezra, and her face appeared to reflect a painful stab of indigestion.

  ‘Well,’ she squawked. ‘I’m certainly glad I asked you to tell them. Context, a little? Background, maybe?’

  ‘No, no,’ Simon rallied. ‘Why, what a marvellous idea. We’ve not been on an adventurous vacation in years, have we, Minty? Always go to the same island. As you both know. That same bloody villa!’

  ‘Especially brave of you,’ Minty joined in, relieved by Simon’s deciphering of Ezra’s statement, ‘for people who rarely holiday anywhere further than the Lake District.’

  ‘I haven’t been to South America in years,’ Simon admitted.

  ‘Amazing resorts, aren’t they?’ Minty said. ‘I was reading in the travel section. Bermuda at half the price. That is Brazil, isn’t it? In the north, right?’

  ‘Bloody long flight,’ said Simon. ‘Wouldn’t just go for a week or two. Make it a month, I should.’

  ‘We’re going to live there,’ Sheena grinned.

  Again it took the Carlyles some moments to respond. Minty frowned. ‘You’re going to live there? Are you, in … ? In Brazil?’

  ‘But your business, Sheena?’ Simon queried. ‘The children? Blaise,’ he said. ‘Hector!’ Suggesting with each name in turn a mounting incredulity. ‘Little Louie!’

  So then the Pepins took the Carlyles through their scheme, and the Carlyles raised objections like lawyers, which the Pepins answered patiently, the Carlyles occasionally shaking their heads.

  ‘And you see the best thing,’ Sheena said, ‘is that Ez can go back to that tribe and complete his work with them?’

  ‘In Paraguay?’ Minty said.

  ‘What?’ said Sheena.

  ‘It’s very close to the border,’ Ezra clarified. ‘Which, after all, as you can imagine, is a bit of
an abstract concept out there in the middle of rainforest.’

  ‘But seriously, Sheena, what about Blaise?’ Simon asked. ‘I mean, she can’t be too happy about it, can she?’

  ‘Why on earth not?’

  ‘Well, with this young man of hers.’

  ‘Oh, it’s nothing serious,’ Sheena assured him.

  ‘Really? Oh.’ Simon blinked. ‘Wasn’t Ed telling you, Minty?’

  ‘Don’t take school gossip too seriously,’ Sheena advised. ‘Puppy love: of course they think it’s for ever.’

  Notwithstanding their caveats and questions, the Carlyles expressed admiration and approval for the enterprise, much as Sheena had once done for the refurbishment of their house. Simon opened a fourth bottle of wine, a Château de Sours rosé with a tight cork which he grappled and cursed at in an Arthurian trial of strength. The others broke into a round of applause when he passed it.

  After they’d made another toast to freedom and adventure, Simon said, ‘But really it’s not a bad intoxicant, is it, the fruit of Bacchus?’

  ‘I’ve forgotten, Ezra,’ said Minty. ‘Did you take stuff with those people? Those Indians of yours? Ayahuasca and whatnot?’

  ‘A similar substance,’ said Ezra, groggy with wine. ‘Yes, I did.’

  ‘Often?’

  ‘They performed a ritual half a dozen times a year. Though no one took part every time. It would have been overwhelming.’

  ‘It’s been years since I took anything,’ Minty said.

  ‘I say, that’s not entirely true, is it?’ Simon corrected her. ‘You were puffing away on that thing at the Fleggs the other week.’

  ‘Pot, sure. I mean something trippy. And if I don’t take it again soon I never will.’

  ‘I know what you mean,’ said Ezra.

  ‘Ha!’ said Sheena. ‘You have something every time you go to London with your workmates.’

  ‘No, I mean literally,’ said Minty. ‘I’m giving up when I’m forty.’

  ‘You’re giving up what you no longer indulge in?’ Sheena asked. ‘That’s admirable, Minty. It really is.’

  ‘She’s going to quit drinking,’ Simon said, shrugging extravagantly to make clear it was all Minty’s own idea. ‘Cigarettes, too. Dope. You name it, she’s going to abstain. Totally. Not a drag, not a drop.’

  ‘A bit extreme, isn’t it?’ Sheena asked. ‘I mean, surely you’ll indulge a little. Like at weddings and new years and …’

  ‘Oh, don’t underestimate this woman, Sheena,’ Simon laughed. ‘What she resolves to do, Minty does, I can assure you.’

  ‘In that case,’ said Ezra, ‘you deserve a final splurge. Don’t you think?’

  ‘Why, yes, sport,’ Minty agreed. ‘Would I not?’

  ‘When’s your birthday again?’

  ‘You don’t know it?’ Sheena demanded. ‘That is just so typical,’ she told Minty. ‘August, Ez. The 17th.’

  ‘It’s a Sunday this year,’ Minty said.

  ‘Perfect,’ said Ezra. ‘We’ll make it a farewell blowout. There’s a gang at work I sometimes tag along with, they know the best stuff –’

  ‘Stuff?’ Simon asked.

  ‘I’ll find out from them something happening somewhere that Saturday. We’ll go. All of us. Leave it with me.’

  Instead of the perfunctory ‘have a good week’ farewells of their social Sunday evenings, it took the Pepins and the Carlyles till after midnight to let each other part on the porch.

  ‘We’ll miss you so much, you know that,’ said Minty.

  ‘Are you kidding?’ said Ezra. ‘You chaps are going to be the one most difficult thing to leave behind.’

  ‘Jack’ll be devastated,’ said Simon.

  ‘Hector insists he come out to visit,’ said Sheena. ‘And that goes for all of you.’

  Eventually the Pepins stumbled away, and the Carlyles retreated inside, and Simon turned off the porch light and locked the door.

  Since Simon had cooked the meal, it was Minty’s job to load the dishwasher, scour pans, rinse wine glasses. But Simon hovered near by, not helping but talking.

  ‘I don’t care what you say, Minty,’ he said, scowling. ‘Ridiculous thing to do. Taking the children out of a perfectly good school that people pay thousands to buy into the catchment area for, away from their friends, not to mention the boyfriend about whom they seem to have not a clue.’

  The last thing Minty needed was the boozy drone of Simon’s voice. She needed to be alone, so she banged pans and rattled cutlery to shut him up. But he just maundered on a little louder.

  ‘No, you have to admit, Minty, it’s very odd. All right: if there was a reason. But does it make sense, him going back into the jungle after all these years? I mean, he didn’t have the spunk to write the bloody thing in his twenties, with what? A grant, a supervisor, a college behind him. How’s he going to do it alone, in his forties?’

  As, finally, Minty laid the table for Monday morning, Simon disappeared abruptly from the kitchen. Turning off lights, Minty made her way upstairs and to the blessedly vacant bathroom. She’d just sat on the loo when Simon burst in, and made for his toothbrush.

  ‘But really,’ he said, squeezing Colgate on to the brush, ‘when you think about it …’ Then he began to scrub his teeth, which crunched and mangled his words into gobbledegook. So he ceased. Simon finished brushing his teeth, fed himself water from a cupped hand, gargled noisily, and spat a froth into the sink. He then hawked, slurped and tasted on his tongue whatever had come up, before repeating the gargling process.

  Minty removed her tights and knickers, tore off some loo paper. She didn’t want to despise him, for goodness sake. But how could she avoid it? How could disgust not turn into repulsion and on into contempt? Unless their bodies led entirely separate lives.

  But he’d still talk, wouldn’t he?

  Simon splashed water on his face, buried it in a towel, rubbed vigorously, and re-emerged saying, ‘No, it’s an amazing project, actually, you really have to hand it to her, you know. Bloody brave. And they don’t have to do it, you see, Minty, that’s the thing. Sheena’s taking a chance. If you ask me, it’s rather heroic.’

  They swapped positions, Minty with her electric toothbrush that she hoped might shut him up. Not to mention the sound of him peeing, which only made him puff out his chest and take a deep breath and speak louder.

  ‘It’s making me rethink, sweetheart, we’ve been too bloody conservative. I know it’s too late now for this July, but let’s not go to Greece next year. Let’s go somewhere different. Like Turkey. What? Or Crete.’

  She knew she’d not have solitude until Simon had gone to sleep. Sure enough, within minutes of turning out the light he dropped off, and before long commenced a cautious, grumbling snore.

  Minty slipped back out of bed, pulled on her silk dressing-gown and crept barefoot downstairs. Down, away from her three boys left hanging up there on the first floor, safe from the tamed animals of Albion. Up in the branches while she climbed silently down to the ground and out of the back door to the garden.

  1 a.m. Monday morning. Cars from the ring-road were isolated insects in the silent summer night. The click of her lighter much louder. Minty looked up to the sky, but there was nothing to see above the urban glare. She lowered her gaze, and an idea came to her: she imagined walking in a straight line west towards Port Meadow. Over the side fence and through their neighbours’ garden. Jumping over their hedge and on over Gladstone Lane and through the rest of the gardens, vaulting the fences, until she got to the canal. And leapt in one easy bound across it.

  On in the same way through the Waterways estate and then up spring-heeled over the chainlink fence, levitating across the railway line, floating over the fence on the other side. Then she would run like a girl across Burgess Field, jump the stile by the gate, and walk on, barefoot, her nightdress cool in the warm night. Treading over the mint and the fading buttercups, past the cows sleeping like statues and the tired horses, out to the empty centre of the gr
eat Meadow.

  Maybe there, Minty thought, she’d be able to see the stars, and get just a little perspective. Beyond the limits of her life closing in around her. Ezra Pepin was leaving the neighbourhood. He was leaving the country. There was to be no more consolation in proximity; no longer the tantalising possibility of one day something too good and wrong and dangerous to ever hope for happening. He was going to another continent. Might as well be another planet. A little perspective was what she needed.

  But a trek to the Meadow was only going to happen in her mind. Instead Minty walked past Simon’s deckchair and over to the middle of the lawn. She sank down, stubbed her cigarette out on the dry grass, put her forehead to the hard earth, and wept.

  10

  The Pitt Rivers Museum

  Monday 7 July

  ‘It won’t be open,’ Akhmed said, a little out of breath. Every half-dozen strides or so Blaise began to edge ahead of him, and he had to trot three or four quick steps to catch up with her. Whenever he did so the books in his black plastic rucksack jiggled against his back.

  ‘Museums are always closed on Mondays,’ Akhmed gasped. ‘Everyone knows that.’

  Blaise walked at a medium pace. The warmth and movement made her skin bristle and tingle, the outer reaches of her body fully inhabited and grateful to be so. Each footstep on this hot afternoon took her further away from school. She’d begun skipping dull lessons when her senses disengaged like cogs inside her head, and she’d lose herself for stretches of time in the sight of the sun decoding a prism of colour on the white wall. She never used to dream so much at school. A sign of age, perhaps; she was growing old.