by Tim Pears
‘These are just from the little orchard over there,’ I said, pointing through the wall. ‘Next to the drive. The most sheltered spot here, apparently. Grandpa planted his favourite varieties after he retired. The business was down south, he had hundreds of acres, in Herefordshire mostly. The standard layout was a hundred and thirty-four trees to an acre. Thousands of tons of apples a year, boxes driven on lorries all around the country every week.’
‘Where to?’
‘Markets, I suppose,’ I conjectured. ‘Shops. Supermarkets.’
We climbed back down the stairs. ‘What happened to the business, anyway?’ Holly asked. ‘Why didn’t your dad or my mum or Uncle Jonny take it over?’
I shrugged. ‘I’m not sure,’ I admitted. ‘But Grandpa said the whole industry died on its feet. We eat apples sent in refrigerated ships from all over the world now. South Africa. America. New Zealand.’
Holly and I crossed the yard. Behind us, my father and Aunt Lorna were having a stroll in the riding school, the dogs stretching their legs around them. ‘What are they doing?’ Holly asked.
‘As long as they’re not planning another football match,’ I said.
On the way back into the house we were ambushed in the hallway by the twins, who leapt out from beneath the stairs like a pair of trolls.
‘Where have you two been?’ Xan demanded.
We showed him the fruit we’d collected.
Baz was staring at us. ‘I know what you two have been up to,’ he said in a sinister tone of voice.
‘Urgh,’ said Xan. ‘Yes, you’re right.’
‘Kissing cousins,’ said Baz.
Holly pushed past them with the basket, and made for the kitchen, but I had a failure of nerve and stood where I was, loath to validate their insinuations.
‘That’s incest,’ said Xan.
‘It’s sick,’ Baz agreed.
‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ I stuttered.
‘He’s gone red,’ said Xan.
‘No, I haven’t,’ I said, feeling my cheeks suffuse with heat.
‘Why are you blushing, Theo?’ Baz wondered, all innocence.
I was saved by our grandfather, coming up from his study into the hallway. ‘Where’s Rosemary?’ he said. ‘I’ve got an email from Matt. Happy Christmas to everyone, especially his grandmother. Still stuck in Bristol, poor fellow. Seems he has a final English essay to finish off now. Joining us tomorrow.’
4
We ate lunch in a hurry, but by the time everything had been cleared away, the dishwasher stacked and switched on, then preparations for the main meal made – potatoes peeled, cabbage cut, the stalks of a hundred sprouts nicked – and we’d cajoled and herded everyone into the drawing room, it was two p.m.: we only had an hour before the Queen’s speech, and I was as anxious as the twins to open all our presents. I needn’t have worried. Xan and Baz piled each person’s gifts in front of them and, following a mealtime etiquette, as soon as Grandma picked up one of hers so we were all free to unwrap our own. Ten minutes later all of my generation – and two or three of our parents’ – had ripped open their Christmas presents in a communal frenzy. No sooner had each of us identified a gift, and hurled the wrapping paper into a pile in the middle of the room, than we grabbed the next, pausing only to say a fleeting thank you to whoever in the room had bestowed it. We took neither pleasure nor interest in any item but laid it aside at once and seized upon the next like crows who, Grandpa told me, do not consume whole fruit but peck a bite from one cherry or raspberry and move on to another, creating havoc with their greed.
The refuse of scrunched-up wrapping paper filled the middle of the large room. Those who resisted this mass hysteria could only watch from the side and complain in plaintive tones. ‘But I want to see what everyone else has got,’ my mother lamented, while Aunt Lorna said, ‘Xan, please, I’m trying to make a list. Baz, who gave you that iPod Touch?’
Afterwards we went back through our new possessions and tried to identify who they were from. My cousins had given me a camera.
‘Sorry it’s digital,’ said Xan. ‘Mum got it.’
‘It is eighteen megapixels,’ his brother pointed out. ‘With a telephoto lens.’
‘We thought you might like to be a paparazzi,’ Xan told me.
‘Paparazzo,’ his brother corrected. ‘Yes, you’ve got that sort of lurking quality, Theo.’
‘Shifty,’ said Xan.
‘Just the type to take embarrassing photos of celebs.’
‘For magazines,’ Xan agreed. ‘Coming out of the gym.’
‘Underarm bristle.’
‘Damp crotches.’
‘The shots the stars don’t want us to see.’
‘Heat,’ Xan said.
‘Nuts,’ said Baz.
My grandfather gave me a secondhand book: The Stories of the Greeks. ‘Tracked it down on the Internet,’ Grandpa told me. Greek myths, from Ovid, Homer, Virgil and the plays of Euripides, retold by Rex Warner. This book would turn out to be, in actual fact, the single volume that got me reading, in the car on the way home, two days later (when I would discover that reading while being driven no longer made me sick). The creation, or recreation, of an inner world, intense and vivid as the real one, prompted by small symbolic marks on paper. This miracle. I’ve read that book many times; more than once each decade since.
* * *
‘Christmas is a time for celebration,’ the Queen began her speech. ‘But this year it is a more sombre occasion for many.’
‘Very true,’ Auntie Gwen agreed.
Holly and Sid were boycotting the broadcast, as were my parents, who were both ardent republicans, although Dad professed a soft spot for the future king, Prince Charles, whose inappropriately expressed opinions – about architecture, farming, education – my father tended to agree with.
‘Those who have seemed to me,’ the Queen said, ‘to be the most happy, contented and fulfilled have always been the people who have lived the most outgoing and unselfish lives, the kind of people who are generous with their talents or their time.’
‘Hear, hear,’ said Grandma. Uncle Jonny, beside her, turned to his sons, and nodded agreement.
We were invited to dress up for dinner. After some nagging from my mother I consented to iron my best T-shirt and jeans. We set up the ironing board in their bedroom. Mum was in the bathroom along the corridor. Dad had a fancy shirt with ruffs down the front, which I ironed for him. He put it on and then spent ages trying to push a cufflink through each set of sleeves one-handed, instead of doing so with two hands before he put the shirt on, an act of basic incompetence typical of my father.
There was a knock at the door and Auntie Gwen came in. ‘There you are,’ she said, and sat on Mum’s bed, facing her brother.
‘Are you okay?’ Dad asked, in a voice that suggested she’d not been earlier, and it occurred to me that I may have been unfair on them: while I’d been to church with my grandparents perhaps everyone else had been at home sharing the news of our grandmother’s illness with my cousins; explaining her prognosis.
‘I wish they weren’t such a long way from London,’ Gwen said, which seemed to me an odd way of putting what she wanted to say. It was she, and her brothers, who’d travelled away from the Marches. But I said nothing, only sprayed some water from the iron on to my T-shirt.
‘We’ll all be coming to and fro,’ Dad said, as he pressed the stud laboriously through a sleeve.
‘Let me help with that,’ Gwen said, and she reached forward and took over. ‘Do you know what Lorna told me just now?’ She said they’d got next term’s school fees covered, but she had no idea about the future.’
‘What on earth is she talking about?’ Dad said. ‘Their house alone must be worth millions.’
‘I don’t know,’ Gwen shrugged. ‘That’s what she said. You realise, of course, he has plans for this place?’
‘Jonny?’ Dad said. As Auntie Gwen threaded his cufflinks so they leaned closer together. I could barely m
ake out what they said. ‘We can fight that battle when the time comes. Who knows what the landscape will be then? Just so long as he leaves it alone while Pa’s around.’
‘I’m not sure. I get the feeling Pa’s contemplating moving out.’
‘What do you mean? Don’t be silly, Gwen. Neither Ma nor Pa would ever leave here, not of their own accord.’
‘There you go,’ Gwen said, patting Dad’s wrist. He thanked her. ‘That’s a very nice shirt,’ she said. ‘Rather chic for my big brother.’
‘One has to splash out now and then,’ he replied, shrugging.
‘Where’s it from?’ Gwen asked.
‘Animal Sanctuary Shop in Summertown,’ Dad said, gratified his sister had taken the bait. ‘Two pounds fifty. Well, you know how it is: the family clothing budget goes on Theo’s gear. Costs a fortune to look that scruffy.’
I ignored them, pretending to concentrate on the ironing.
‘How’s Melony?’ Dad asked. ‘You’ve been in touch?’
Auntie Gwen nodded. ‘We spoke just now.’
‘Have you told her about Ma?’
‘Yes.’ Gwen shook her head. Her ringlets shivered. ‘I shouldn’t have. She was angry before. Now I’ve made her feel guilty as well. I mean, I tried to tell her Ma could be just as snippy and imperious before she was ill, but it’s hard to believe if you don’t know her.’
‘Amy would have gladly taken the train, too,’ Dad said, smiling.
It was my turn to bang the gong, six times, for Christmas dinner. Each peal resounded through the house and seemed to die in corridors, in empty rooms, but presently people came forth, in their finery, and we gathered at the dining-room table. Holly and Sid had set it with our grandmother’s fancy willow-pattern china. The only lighting was from candles, set on the table and the window sills.
Aunt Lorna wore the most elegant black dress I’d ever seen. I suspected it must have been made especially for her by some designer, who wanted us to see her bare, olive-skinned shoulders and arms, and to not see but somehow imagine we knew even better the gorgeous rest of her. It was some sort of magic of tailoring, I supposed. I felt the urge to reach over and hug my aunt, but Sidney, after helping her Mum serve everyone at the island, flopped her skinny self down between us.
To my right, Holly sat next to me. She wore a tight red top and another short skirt, this time with tights like a Harlequin’s, different coloured diamond patterns shaped to her legs. She and Sid were also wearing make-up for the first time that I’d seen; Holly’s cross-eyes seemed a little wider; her lips shone.
Grandpa and Uncle Jonny wore dinner jackets with bow ties, as did the twins; they looked like they were attending a film premiere in Leicester Square. But as soon as we opened the crackers and put on our crêpe crowns, the effect was spoiled, and the men all looked like drunken buffoons. The women fared better, somehow; though not a great deal.
We ate turkey with rolled bacon, roast potatoes, parsnips, sweet potatoes, green cabbage and Brussels sprouts, and a delicious stuffing everyone congratulated Grandma on. ‘The pièce de résistance, Ma,’ cried Uncle Jonny. There was nut roast for the London vegetarians from south of the river, made by Auntie Gwen, but Melony had gone and Holly seemed to have become a part-time carnivore, which left Gwen and Sid eating it on their own.
‘What do you call a rhino with a funny face?’ Uncle Jonny read. He’d bought the crackers at Harrods, but the jokes were just as bad as cheap ones. ‘Sir.’
Gwen sat next to Grandpa, where Melony had been. Our grandfather told us the story of an old family holiday. ‘It might have been the last one we all took together. We stayed in that villa on the hill up above Menton, remember?’
‘Rod wanted to play ping-pong the whole time,’ said Uncle Jonny. ‘Nagged us all, one after the other.’
‘It was worth it,’ Dad said, with a modest shrug. ‘Without those hours of altitude training I might never have achieved an international ranking.’
‘Owned by that crazy Russian woman,’ Auntie Gwen recalled.
‘The Countess.’
‘We were invaded by huge ants,’ Gwen laughed.
‘Ma dealt with them,’ my father said. ‘She found a blowtorch in the basement.’
Grandma sat at the end of the table, an unreal smile on her thin lips, looking bemused. Auntie Gwen looked more relaxed than she had since we’d arrived. She’d wept, and she’d drunk some fine wine, but it was also clear that there was less tension for her without her partner here. It would have been easier for Dad, too, if Mum had gone home earlier, or even not come at all; perhaps for Uncle Jonny, as well; Aunt Lorna’s presence inhibited him to some extent. Without their partners these siblings, our parents, could have reverted more easily to the way they were. The in-laws were the interlopers. The rest of us were blood: there were connections between us, whether we liked it or not.
‘Anyhow,’ Grandpa said, and, as each of us finished our main course, placing knife and fork on the plate, we settled down to listen to him. ‘What I remember most vividly from that holiday is how Gwen here, who couldn’t have been any older than you two,’ – he nodded towards Holly and myself – ‘took to swimming.’
‘Oh, yes,’ Dad said. ‘That’s right, Pa.’
‘I suppose she must have been a decent swimmer, but I wasn’t aware of it. We got to the French coast and Gwen simply,’ – Grandpa raised his right hand, and watched it float off into the air away from him – ‘swam out to sea. Further, and further, until she was no more than a speck, disappearing. Your mother and I tried to hide our anxiety; from each other, as we discovered afterwards, as well as from the rest of you.’ We glanced at Grandma, as she was included in the reminiscence, but she appeared to have no recollection, only gazed blankly in Grandpa’s direction. ‘We conspired to ignore Gwen’s disappearance,’ he continued. ‘But I’d keep looking out to sea, and not be able to spot her. Sometimes I couldn’t help myself from asking one of you boys whether you could make out her tiny head, bobbing way out there in the deep distance. And you always could. My own middle-aged eyesight deteriorating. Gwen did this long-distance swim every day of the holiday. Each time my little girl swam a bit further out, was gone from my sight that little bit longer.’
The room was silent in the candlelight. All of our attention was on Grandpa, who paused at this point. Auntie Gwen put a hand on his, and he looked at her and smiled, and then around at the rest of us.
‘When she reappeared it was like a miracle. She swam slowly back towards land, coming gradually closer, until she rose out of the sea, and walked towards us through the shallows, the water lapping around her ankles, a different person than she had been. Not a stranger, I don’t mean. A child no longer. A young woman now, I suppose.’
Dessert was another of Grandma’s specialities: chocolate roulade with fruit as well as cream inside the rolled log; along with Christmas pudding and brandy butter.
‘Your grandmother made Christmas pudding last week, boys,’ Uncle Jonny told the twins. ‘But not this one. This one she made the week before Christmas last year. The one made last week is in the larder for next year.’
I didn’t know whether everyone else realised the implications of what Jonny had said, but some of us surely did. My mother came over from the Aga with a pan and poured hot brandy over the pudding, which my father ignited with a lighter from his pocket, and our attention was distracted by the fragile purple flames.
Party games were played after dinner, Adverbs and Charades; the less said about them the better. I managed to keep a low profile while everyone else made fools of themselves. Grandma released me for a while by asking me in a whisper to polish her riding boots. I assumed, from what Grandpa had said, that this was the kind of small eccentricity to be expected all the time now, and I did as I was asked. The shoe-cleaning box was in a cupboard in the pantry. The dogs watched me apply the brown polish with a cloth, relishing the smell of wax and turpentine as I did so. Then I brushed and buffed the old boots until they shone. I left
them on a sheet of newspaper on the side, a pair of rescued trophies.
Back in the drawing room Grandpa offered everyone sloe gin he’d made: it conspired to taste both sickly sweet and horribly alcoholic, like all liquor; I poured mine into my father’s glass when no one was looking.
By the time we got up to the attic it was clear that the twins had been knocking back their allocations of gin. Baz climbed into his alcove and asked why it was spinning, it was like being at a fairground. Xan asked Holly whether or not she had a G-spot.
‘It does exist,’ Baz affirmed.
‘Our Dad told us,’ said Xan.
‘But not every woman’s got one.’
Holly told them to mind their own business.
‘Some women can have a vaginal orgasm and some women can’t,’ Baz said.
‘What about you?’ Xan demanded.
‘Leave me alone,’ Holly told them. She got up and turned off the main light; returning to her alcove she turned the one off in there. I did the same.
‘You must know,’ Baz said in the darkness, his voice a little higher than his brother’s: Xan’s was beginning to break.
‘Unless she’s a virgin,’ Xan suggested.
‘Don’t be funny,’ Baz told him. ‘You know what kind of school she goes to.’
‘Of course,’ Xan agreed. ‘Bog-standard.’
‘Leave her alone,’ I heard myself tell them.
‘Ooh,’ Xan cooed. ‘Big Theo’s standing up for his kissing cousin.’
‘I mean it,’ I said, emboldened by the fact that no one could see me.
‘That’s very gallant of him,’ Baz said.
‘Very butch,’ said Xan.
‘You know the dormer window up here?’ I asked.
There was silence. Eventually, Xan asked, ‘What about it?’
‘If you two don’t shut up and go to sleep I’m going to turn on the light and throw your iPod Touches out of that window.’
