by Abigail Dean
‘It sounds like you’re having quite the evening,’ he said. He held a fuse box in his hands. There were crevices of muscle along his forearms, and bright deltas of veins. The new, strange country of him.
‘Yes. I shouldn’t have agreed to it. I have this friend – an old friend, I suppose. It was her idea.’
He didn’t yet deign to look at her.
‘Where is she now?’
‘With some guy, I think.’
‘She doesn’t sound like such a good friend.’
‘I suppose not.’
He conjured a spotlight, which travelled down along the balcony, and rested on her face.
‘Your hair,’ he said. ‘All of the lights land in it.’
(All of the lights land in it: an excellent line. While I try to deny it, there were times – when I was younger – when this would have impressed me, too.)
‘Is this how you usually spend your Saturday nights?’ Mother asked.
‘No. Sometimes. I like the technology, you see. And I like to help out.’
Mother leaned against the railing alongside him. She let her hair fall against his arm.
‘I’ve never had company before,’ Father said, and smiled. ‘This makes things much more interesting.’
‘I’m not that interesting at all,’ Mother said. ‘I mean, I’m pretty boring. Actually.’
‘I don’t believe you. What’s the best thing that’s ever happened to you?’
‘What?’
‘Tell me the best thing that’s ever happened to you. Nobody’s boring when they tell you the best thing that’s ever happened. Go.’
Mother thought of her princess dress, and the faces of the villagers watching the Harvest Festival. In her mind, they multiplied, so that she led the parade through a crowd of hundreds – thousands – of well-wishers. ‘Fine,’ she said. She knew exactly how she would tell it.
‘See,’ Father said, at the end. ‘That wasn’t boring. But it wasn’t the best thing that ever happened to you, either.’
‘It wasn’t?’
‘Of course not,’ Father said. He concentrated on the fuse box, passing it from one great palm to the other. He was smiling, close to laughter. ‘That’s tonight.’
‘This is a boring story,’ Ethan said, whenever it was told. ‘I don’t know why you like it.’
‘Do you think it ever happened?’ Evie asked me, when she heard it for the first time. ‘Or did they just meet at a Sunday service?’ I was surprised by her cynicism, then surprised that I had never questioned the story myself. The fact was, I wanted it to be true. It cast my parents in a dark, glittering light: the lovers poised on their balcony at the very beginning of the tale. This was the version of them that I liked the best.
Ethan had his own plans for the house on Moor Woods Road. He kept them to himself through dinner on Friday night, and during Ana’s artistic tour of Oxford on Saturday morning, but by lunchtime his opportunities were running out. Ana had made a Greek salad and found a garden umbrella, and we ate outside, talking about Ethan’s work. ‘Would you like to go for a walk after lunch?’ he asked me, pointedly. I imagined him striding into the staffroom at Wesley to propose the same thing to a colleague, and how the connotations of that suggestion would linger when they had gone: a walk with Mr Gracie.
‘Sure,’ I said.
We walked out to University Parks, past the cricket pitches and the flower beds, and found a shaded path to the Cherwell. The open grass was a dull, desert yellow, but underneath the trees and by the river, it was still green. The sunshine snatched a little of Ethan’s dignity. His skin was a shade thinner than white, and his more caustic lines – on the forehead, and between the eyes – no longer retreated when he smiled, but stayed, poised, on his face.
‘Your hair’s even darker,’ Ethan said. ‘I don’t know why you do that.’
‘Don’t you?’ I said. ‘Really?’
‘You look better blonde.’
I knew Ethan well enough to appreciate that this was a battle cry: a few notches out of the enemy’s wall before he launched the main offensive.
‘I have no desire to see Mother in the mirror,’ I said. ‘Besides, it’s not in my direct financial interests.’
‘Unlike mine, you mean?’
‘It can’t hurt,’ I said, ‘with lectures about your personal trauma.’
‘Overcoming personal trauma. And I’m not trying to judge you, Lex, I’m really not, but you should come along. The feedback’s been unbelievable. Everybody gets something out of it, I promise you. I’m in New York in the autumn. It could really help you out.’
My face was hot. I paused and swallowed, but Ethan didn’t notice. A stride ahead of me, now.
‘It’s a great platform to talk about education,’ he said.
‘And about yourself.’
‘Education in the context of ourselves. Do you even remember how happy we were to go back to school? I want all children to have that enthusiasm. To be able to rise above their circumstances. You should have seen the children I taught in my twenties, Lex. They were already shells. It’s our kind of enthusiasm that I’m promoting. I don’t know why you have a problem with that.’
‘Please, Ethan,’ I said. ‘Everybody knows you start with a slide of the mugshots.’
‘Sure. You have to get people’s attention.’
We had reached the river. Punts trundled past between the trees. I sat down in the grass.
‘With that in mind,’ he said. ‘I want to talk to you about the house. Eleven Moor Woods Road.’
I closed my eyes. ‘Really,’ I said.
‘I think that this is a good opportunity for us. For all of us. A unique opportunity.’
‘Well, it’s certainly unique.’
‘Listen. It’s not so different from what you’re suggesting. With a few changes. A place for the community, yes. But we need to put our name on it. The Gracie Community Centre, Hollowfield. If you do that, you get the newspaper articles, the opening ceremony. You get access to more public funding. You help more people. Think about it. Shouldn’t part of that place be dedicated to our family? Whether that’s a speaker series, or some kind of memorial. We could – we could keep one room of the house as it was, so that people could understand what we went through. I don’t know. I haven’t finished thinking it through.’
‘A museum.’
‘That’s not what I said.’
‘Nobody in that community is going to want a shrine to yesterday’s news.’
‘They might do – if it brings other things with it. Attention. Investment.’
‘We didn’t exactly glorify Hollowfield the first time round,’ I said. ‘No, Ethan. It doesn’t need our name on it. Just a community place, with a decent purpose. What’s wrong with that?’
‘It’s a waste. I could do a lot with this, Lex. At least consider it.’
‘There’s no way.’
‘You need me to consent to your plan, too, remember. It works both ways. Who else have you even spoken to? Delilah? Gabriel?’
‘No. Just Evie.’
Ethan laughed. He waved his arm at me, as if dismissing a particularly frustrating schoolgirl, committed to failure whatever he might do. ‘Of course,’ he said. ‘Of course.’
I told Ethan that I would walk back alone, and when he had gone I found a quiet patch of sunshine and called Bill. He didn’t answer. I expected that he was at a zoo or a barbeque, with children attached to his limbs. Still sweating. Ethan had left me savage, and I called again.
He answered on the third try. ‘I’ve given it some thought,’ I said, ‘and I accept.’
‘Alexandra? Is that you?’
His voice was surrounded by music, and he was walking, as if searching for a quiet corner. I felt a worm of embarrassment in my gut. The Gracie girl, he would mouth, to his extended family. Sorry.
‘I’m happy to hear from you,’ he said, catching up on his minor triumph. ‘And your mother – she’d have been happy, too.’
Mo
ther’s happiness: threadbare, like wearing rope. ‘I wouldn’t be so sure,’ I said. ‘Anyway. My sister and me – we have an idea—’
I walked him through the community centre, room by room. At the garden (daffodils, for the most part, and a patch of vegetables managed by children from the primary school), he laughed, and almost dropped the phone.
‘It’s perfect. Perfect, Lex. The other beneficiaries – do they agree?’
‘It’s a process,’ I said. And, when he didn’t respond: ‘It’s ongoing.’
‘Ongoing’ was a word from Devlin’s Temporal Dictionary for Clients, alongside ‘shortly’, and ‘as soon as possible’.
‘We’ll need to request funding, too,’ I said. ‘For the conversion. It’s a lot more than you could have expected, Bill. You don’t have to help with any of this.’
‘I know. I know that, Lex. But I’d like to.’
I was to secure the beneficiaries’ agreement. He would investigate the documentation. He mentioned planning applications, grants of probate, executor’s deeds. A whole new language of death and houses. We would have to think about the best way to pitch the application to the council, he said, bearing in mind where the money had come from. Perhaps – if I fancied an adventure – we would travel to Hollowfield, to deliver it in person.
‘The prodigal daughter returns,’ said Bill, who, for all of his time with Mother, had clearly never read the Gospels.
After dinner, Ethan went out. He had a late appointment with some of the Wesley governors at a hotel in the city centre, and we shouldn’t wait up for him. ‘They loathed me, at first,’ he said. ‘Too young. Too high profile. Too – what was it, Ana? – too revolutionary. Now they want me to sup with them at the fucking weekend.’ All dinner, he had been sullen, criticizing Ana’s cooking and pouring wine with deliberate zeal, so that it slithered down the stems of the glasses and stained the wooden table.
‘Thank God he’s gone,’ Ana said. ‘Sorry, Lex.’
In silence, we cleared the table. Ana had painted the plates, so that olives and cypress trees emerged as you ate. ‘Leave the glasses,’ Ana said. ‘I’ll open another bottle.’ I took a cloth from the sink and wiped the red rings from the table.
We sat outside, cross-legged and facing one another, like children about to clap hands. ‘So,’ I said. ‘Tell me about the wedding.’
It was only three months away, now. They would marry on Paios, in Greece, which had its own airport, not much more than a shack and a concrete strip. Ana had holidayed there when she was a child, and had told her father, in no uncertain terms, that this was where she would get married. She liked the little white church in the main town, high on a hilltop, which she had believed, then, to be the top of the world. At nightfall, you could see every light on the island, be it a car or a house; she would contemplate a couple driving home from dinner, midway through an argument, or a widow, in bed, reaching to turn out her bedside light.
‘Always such sad imaginings,’ she said. ‘I was such a melancholy child.’
She looked down from the sky, as if remembering that I was there. ‘Of course,’ she said, ‘I had no reason to be.’
‘I’ve booked my flights,’ I said. ‘I can’t wait.’
‘You’re still welcome to bring somebody – if you would like.’
I laughed. ‘I’ll see if anything develops. I’m running out of time.’
‘You’ll be fine, anyway. Delilah will be there.’
‘Well. That’ll be an interesting encounter.’
Even in the dark garden, I could feel the flush of Ana’s discomfort. She would have liked all of us to be there, matching in chiffon and joy, on Ethan’s side of the church. Instead, Evie and Gabriel hadn’t been invited, and Delilah and I didn’t talk. Evie and I had spent some time speculating about the guest list, and the extent of Ethan’s self-service. We concluded that her place had probably gone to an MP, or the chairperson of an international charity. ‘Somebody useful,’ she said, ‘whom you would never want to sit next to.’ She paused to shrug. ‘It’s not like we were ever close.’
‘Lex—’
Ana combed the air with her fingers, as if she might find the words there.
‘Sometimes,’ she began, ‘I just wonder—’
She stared hard at the kitchen, empty under elegant lights, at the other end of the garden. At last it was cool. The oak branches above us tipped and collided in the wind, drunker than we were. Ana set down her glass and caught the tears at the corners of her eyes. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said.
‘That’s OK.’
‘Ethan has been difficult. Everything must be a success. The school, the presentations, the charities. The wedding. You know – don’t you – that he sleeps badly. Right from the beginning, I would get up in the night, and see him reading, or at work. But now – I hear him, walking through the house. In the daytime, there is a barrier, when he’s like this. Between us. I can’t get behind it. I can’t understand him. As long as we’re happy, I’m happy. But he doesn’t see things in this way.’
‘Success at all costs,’ I said.
‘Yes. Quite. And behind this barrier, I worry that I don’t know him at all. Sometimes he will look at me – let’s say I ask a stupid question, or suggest that preparation for an assembly can wait until the next morning – and it’s like I’m speaking to a new person, a different person, with his face. And’ – she laughed – ‘not one that I like all too much.’
‘Does he ever talk to you,’ I said, ‘about our childhood?’
‘He’s told me some things,’ she said. ‘But not others. And, you know, I respect that. I’ve attended his presentations. I know how he’s suffered. It’s just – if there is anything that would make me understand. Whether I should try to make him talk. Any suggestions at all—’
Leave him, I thought. I could taste the words; I could hear precisely how they would sound when they left my mouth. Try to understand, I would explain, which of these two people – the person you met, and the person you perceive to be new – is my brother. I thought, too, of the aftermath: of Ethan walking into the rubble of all that he had built.
‘Wait for him,’ I said. ‘When he’s like that – I think he goes somewhere you wouldn’t want to follow. He’ll always come back to you.’
‘You think so?’
‘Of course.’
She tilted forward, onto her knees on the grass, and took my hands. ‘Thank you,’ she said. A tear dawdled on her face, but she was smiling. ‘A new sister,’ she said.
When I was old enough to understand where Ethan went each day, I would wait for him and Mother by the door, clutching a pillow in anticipation. He had been only an eight-minute walk up the road, at Jasper Street Primary School, but to me it seemed that he had traversed the world, and returned each evening triumphant and willing – if, at times, begrudgingly so – to impart all that he had learnt.
In Ethan’s third year at school, when he was seven, his teacher was Mr Greggs, who implemented Fact of the Day, Word of the Day, and News of the Day. Each pupil in the class took turns to present their three items. These were the first things that Ethan taught to me when he returned home from school, while Mother fed Delilah. The presentations, Ethan said, were of mixed quality: Michelle, for example, had informed the class that she had come second in a gymnastics competition, as if that was news. Each time it was his own turn, Ethan left for school on the balls of his feet, fizzing with excitement, and I shouted the items after him as he went. I was quite sure that he was the cleverest person in the world.
I still recall some of Ethan’s own facts; once, in a pub quiz and sitting beside JP, I took the pencil and paper and noted the capital of Tuvalu.
‘Funafuti,’ JP said. ‘Well, you couldn’t make that up.’ We received a free tequila for the only correct answer, and as I set down the glass, JP shook his head. ‘Funafuti,’ he said. ‘I’ll be damned.’
Before joining Jasper Street Primary School, Mr Greggs had spent a year travelling the worl
d, and Ethan described the contents of his classroom to me at teatime, with eyes like globes. He had a set of Russian dolls, which lived inside one another, and a little bronze model of the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco. He had a kimono from Japan, which you could try on – both boys and girls, because in Japan, anyone could wear them – and a cowboy hat from the actual Wild West.
Father had returned home from work and joined us in the kitchen. It was a dull Friday evening, February, and he was still wearing a coat, which smelt of the cold. He took four slices of bread from the freezer and slotted them into the toaster. ‘That isn’t a place,’ he said.
‘What?’
‘The “Wild West”. This Mr Greggs is having you on, Ethan. He can’t have been there, because it isn’t a real place.’
I looked at Ethan across the table, but he was fixated on his hands, which were pressed together, as if in prayer. Father smeared butter across his toast and shook his head.
‘I didn’t think that you would be so slow,’ he said, ‘as to fall for something like that.’
Father had rarely taught us facts, but he had taught us philosophies. One of these was that no person was any better than another, however educated or wealthy he or she might appear to be; specifically, no person in the world was any better than a Gracie.
‘Who is this person?’ Father called. ‘Deborah?’
Mother came arduously from the living room, bearing Delilah in her arms and Evie in her belly. ‘What?’
‘Mr Greggs,’ Father said. ‘Ethan’s teacher.’
‘What about him?’
‘Is he peculiar?’ Father asked. He bent the final piece of toast in half and folded it into his smile.
‘He was a bit delicate,’ Mother said, ‘at parents’ evening.’
Father snorted. Pleased with that. He wore a blue boiler suit, which couldn’t contain his laughter; his body bulged against the material, like magma at the crust of the earth. After his dismissal by Mr Bedford, Father worked as the electrician for a Victorian hotel in Blackpool, right on the seafront, and wore the same uniform required of the hotel cleaners.
