Kitty banged the back door open. ‘Mum,’ she yelled. ‘Daddy says let’s eat at seven thirty, OK?’
‘No shouting, Kitty,’ her father yelled back.
‘Yes, Daddy.’ Under her breath she muttered: ‘Stinking hypocrite.’
We stood in the blessed cool of the corridor, breathing slowly. My eyes fell on the carved oak coffer, a box on legs, in effect, the varnish black and so covered with pockmarks, holes, scratches, carved words that had then been varnished that it seemed tacky, like treacle, gleaming in the weak light. It was too large for the cool, narrow hallway.
Above it was the portrait, which I’d thought about often recently, I didn’t know why. The odd young man, with the hooded eyes. I found myself staring at it, as Kitty stared at me with irritation. The man’s long face was expressionless, thin lips pursed – actually his lips may not have been thin, it was the way his mouth was clamped shut.
‘I can turn it on if you want.’ She pulled at a cord beside it and a light went on above the painting. I jumped. The man gleamed in the gloom and I stepped back.
THE REVEREND CARADOC DIVER,
RECTOR OF VANES, 1789
read the small black capitals carved or stamped into the frame at the bottom.
‘Who was he again?’
She shrugged. ‘Hah. No one important, believe me. Come on.’ She pulled the cord and it twanged, the picture plunging into gloom again.
‘I can take my bag up by myself, Catherine.’
‘It’s still Kitty. Call me Kitty.’
‘Call me Jo,’ I said, trying to make a joke.
Suddenly she stopped and held out her hand to me. I shook it. My bony, nail-bitten fingers rested on her cool, soft, white skin, her thumb pressing gently onto the back of my hand.
‘That’s the Bee box,’ she said, nodding as she saw me looking at the large box. ‘Do you remember what he keeps in there?’
‘Bee box?’
‘Things for the Collecting. This stupid ceremony. He keeps it locked. Don’t bother looking.’
Then she lowered her voice, her hand still in mine, tightening, hard, so her squeezing my bones was painful.
‘Listen,’ she said, her eyes raking my face. ‘I don’t want you here. You should leave.’
I felt as though I’d been slapped. ‘I don’t want to be here either, actually.’
‘Then why the hell did you come?’ With every shake of her head, the shingling shimmer of hair rippled around her shoulders like a honey-coloured cloak, protecting her. ‘You’re a nobody. I don’t care what they said to get you here, what they promised you. You don’t belong here.’
‘It’s none of your business,’ was the only pathetic reply I could think of. Girls were mean at my school, but it was the punching in the face, yanking your bag from behind kind of mean, not this sustained verbal knifing that left you tingling with pain.
Kitty’s fingers tightened around mine.
‘Oh, it is my business.’ She smiled, but she wasn’t really smiling. ‘My advice to you is get out as soon as you can. Otherwise you’ll see why.’
She dropped my hand and turned, stomping upstairs, and I trailed behind her, casting one last glance at the unsmiling, angular white face in the curious frame. Up, up, two flights of winding wooden stairs cut into the heart of the strange old house till we emerged at the top and she led me down an uneven corridor.
‘I’m there,’ she gestured to a shut door. ‘That’s the linen cupboard. There’s the bathroom. Joss is at the other end, you understand? This is your room. Mum says you had it last time.’ She opened the door, which had one of those iron latches, and dropped the unwieldy Gladstone bag on the floor. The old zip was coming away at the seams, and there was a battered old bear, one eye missing, poking out of the top, and the Penguin Atlas of Europe, about to fall out of the gap in the side. I saw her staring at them. A teddy bear. An atlas. Weirdo. ‘Supper’s in half an hour, don’t be late.’ And she left.
There was a view of the terrace, the garden, the wild clifftops beyond the boundary walls, and the sea in the distance. Just the other side of the wall was what I thought must be a pile of rubble, until I looked more closely and saw that most of it still stood. It was shaped like a hexagon, each side perfectly straight, but half the roof was missing, the stones piled up at the side. The contrast, between the heather-flecked wilderness one side of the stone wall and the pleasingly suburban stripes of the vast lawn, was jarring.
I sat down on the bed and rubbed my scalp.
I’d had friends from school who’d changed over the years. Maybe Kitty was just a nasty person. I began lifting out my paltry possessions: my books, my sundress, my notebook, my pad and paper to write to Claire and Ems, my address book, my Walkman, a few tapes, not many: Like a Prayer, Soul II Soul, a mix tape Claire had made me, a blank tape, a few T-shirts, my denim jacket, my penny loafers, some shorts, two skirts and a small bottle of vodka that I had taken from the drinks cupboard, last night. I’d lain in bed, with the bag packed beside me, eyes blinking in the dark, listening to the sound of the A40, and the barking dog down the road, and the hum – of life, going on around me. Inside, the almost-empty house was deadly quiet. It was the only home I’d ever known and yet I’d always known it wasn’t my home, that it wasn’t where I was meant to be. I can’t explain it. Already, last night seemed ages ago, another life.
I took out Wellington Bear, still with the bedraggled Harrods ribbon around his neck, the pendant long gone. His soft fur was matted from years of my nuzzling him in bed, last thing at night. I didn’t know if Sylvia would remember. I laid him on the bed, and he stared at me curiously. One ear was slightly wonky. It always had been, but it had fallen off soon after we’d returned home when Sylvia had given him to me. Dad had sewn the ear back on with black thread, not well, it has to be said, but I loved it.
‘Well,’ I told him. ‘We’re back again.’ I swallowed. ‘Yep.’ I looked down into the bag. The last item, Daddy’s letter. I knew now I was here I had to read it again, though I didn’t want to.
‘I came,’ I said to him quietly, looking around me. ‘So there.’
I opened the envelope. The neat curls of his script, the fountain pen he’d had since the war. He’d put the letter in his breast pocket afterwards, and it had been there when I found him in the garage. They always say ‘dangling’. He wasn’t dangling. He was perfectly still. The only movement was the other end of the rope, swinging in the breeze from the open door, and the liquid dripping from his heavy, lifeless body.
Darkness swooped across my vision, and the vice feeling gripped my forehead and neck. I opened the folded paper, gritting my teeth.
Darling Janey
I’m so sorry. I really can’t face it all any more. I thought there’d be a way out, for years, and now I see there isn’t.
I am so proud of you!
Work hard. Do your best! Please take what chances you can.
I will always be by your side; you don’t even need to look for me. I’ll be there.
And remember what have I always told you:
‘All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well.’
I’m so very sorry. I wish I could stay. It hurts too much.
Daddy
And on the back, written in long, shaking letters that filled the whole page, landscape style:
RESCUE SYLVIA
My damp fingers pinched the thin paper, feeling the grooves of the pen strokes. His touch, his actions, him, the hands that squeezed my shoulders as we sat in bed reading together when I was little, the fingers that wriggled when I made him laugh, his whole body juddering in joy. I knew, had known since the funeral in an anonymous Victorian church next to the North Circular road, that I would never be happy now, couldn’t feel that the way others did. I had made lots of promises to myself in the four months since his death. I would study harder, I would be organised, I would dye my hair blonde, I would be bolder. I would write to prisoners, I would read more, w
atch less TV, see the world, change myself. As if by becoming a different person I could offset his suicide, even things out.
A movement above my window made me jump – I saw it was swifts, nesting in the eaves, but it was frightening, as though I was being watched. I stared at the birds, swooping and rising in the pale lemon-blue of the evening light, and my eye was drawn down to the terrace. The Hunters had regathered. They were sprawled around the table below. Once, Joss half looked up, then back down again.
I suppose it began then. I had spent the last few years thinking how nice it would be to be a Hunter. Now, I just wanted to stop being Janey Lestrange, to walk into this closed circle, this secretive, effortless, golden life, to become them, and not be me any more.
Chapter Twelve
We sat outside, on the terrace. ‘A special meal for your arrival, what what?’ Charles said. He looked different; I wondered if he’d brushed his hair, but as I looked around I realised all of them had changed for dinner. I had never done this in my life. People did in Upstairs, Downstairs (another favourite of my mother’s), but here, now, in 1989 I was still in the sweaty and crumpled T-shirt and skirt I had worn in the train. Merry’s plaits, which had been firmly bound up, were loosened, her hair around her shoulders. Joss was in a new patterned shirt and smelled delicious. When he leaned over towards his mother, his arm brushed my bare skin, and the contact was like a jolt.
A damask tablecloth was spread over the wooden table. There were tablemats, ancient maps of the area printed on them, edged in gold. The family crystal, cut-glass tumblers that caught the evening light, small and delicate glasses for the wine. Giant pink willow-patterned serving dishes and platters and dinner service, the pattern itself, I saw afterwards, worn away, faded with thousands of grey square cracks across the delicate paintwork.
‘We’ve had it for years, and Sylvia has to wash it by hand now, unfortunately,’ said Charles with a note of regret. ‘It was my mother’s dowry. Along with the jewellery.’
‘She doesn’t wash that,’ said Merry solemnly, and they all laughed, indulgently, as though Merry were a precocious four-year-old, not fourteen, and I laughed too.
Merry was the only one who seemed not to have altered. The others – this place – seemed so different from my only previous visit. Back then, I hadn’t noticed the isolation, the sense of being on the edge of the world – it had been autumn, and rainy, and it was cosy to be there, I’d thought. I hadn’t noticed how absent Sylvia was – she’d fall silent for long periods, eyes vacant, but in between she had chatted to Daddy, her face alight, laughing, asking me about school, cajoling the children, humming as she washed dishes. I hadn’t noticed how much I didn’t like Charles – Daddy had been there, Daddy, my buffer between me and the world, polishing it up, making it magical for me, and now I was alone.
We ate the ratatouille, which was not at all what I expected (what did I expect? Either a complicated pudding or, at the back of my mind, something rodent-based) but tomatoes and peppers, sweet, silky, tasting of herbs, garlic and warmth. It came with chicken sweetened with honey, in a wide, brightly coloured dish, the caramelised sugary skin studded with scattered tart, plump shards of lemon and smoky oregano leaves. Sylvia’s cooking was extremely good. Everything tasted of something – I know that sounds silly, but back then and in my world food was mass-produced, there were no farmer’s markets, or organic produce, no interest in where it came from. That summer, I realised chicken had flavour – deep, brothy, silky, meaty flavour. And that potatoes could taste of earth and butter at the same time, and that a peach, plucked and eaten on exactly the right day, has the most softly luscious, raspingly sweet-sour taste imaginable.
The Hunters ate mostly in silence. I, not used to sitting at a table with others for months now, did the same. There was wine and I had a glass. Charles poured his son one too. Kitty, who appeared late and sat down, scraping her chair loudly on the flagstones, held out her glass after me.
‘None for you, Kitty,’ Charles said, covering the neck with his hand as his daughter reached for it then sat back, as if winded. ‘Here, Jane. Have a little more, come on. Good, isn’t it? Hm?’
‘Yes,’ I said, enjoying Kitty’s look of fury, her gritted teeth and folded arms. ‘It’s lovely. Fruity.’
The wine was red and heavy, and it was much nicer than the last wine I’d drunk – a bottle of £2.99 ‘Italian Wine’ from the Spar down the road which I had hastily necked down with Claire before our school ball, back at the beginning of July.
‘Oh! Do you know a lot about wine then?’ said Kitty, looking at me in amusement.
‘Yeah, sure. There was a wine tasting at our leavers’ ball,’ I said, surprising myself with the fluency of the lie.
I didn’t mind wine, actually, especially red wine. Daddy had let me have the odd glass. I hated white wine. And spirits. It was, however, true to say that the leavers’ ball had been the last time I’d had anything to drink. I had utterly disgraced myself, and the next day had decided I had to go to Vanes, even if I didn’t want to.
Claire and I had met in our usual place, the bridge. We’d exchanged presents – we hadn’t agreed beforehand, but both of us knew it was the last time we’d meet there. That was one of the things I loved about her, that we thought the same way, just about small, unimportant things, that Rizzo was better than Sandy, that Wham! were better than Duran Duran, and that Golden Wonder were the best crisps. I gave her a hardback copy of The Princess Bride, which was a book based on our favourite film, and a purse embroidered with plastic beads like little dots of colour I’d found in a junk shop and which I knew she’d like. She gave me some White Musk perfume from the Body Shop and a mix tape.
Claire had given me someone to play with, to share my secrets with, someone to love unconditionally. I had given her my friendship, the quiet of my house. She had loved my dad too: Daddy had helped her with her UCAS form. At the funeral, it was Claire who sat next to me.
After we’d unwrapped the presents, we hugged, tightly, on the bridge, and walked to the town hall, swigging our bottles of cheap white wine and feeling so grown-up, world-weary even. I had hopes of getting a boy I liked called Paul Rolles to notice me. He was a kind, gangly, shy youth who was in a jazz band at St Luke’s, the boys’ school, and we’d smiled at each other a few times over the past year, but I was far too hopeless to do anything about it, and so, it seemed, was he. But I wanted to kiss Paul Rolles – badly – and so to give myself Dutch courage I carried on drinking the wine.
‘Cutch dourage,’ I’d said as we got to the town hall, and Claire had looked at me in concern.
‘That’s the fourth time you’ve said that,’ she said, patting my cheeks. ‘You sure you’re OK?’
‘I’m OK!’ I said. The wine was great – it made it seem like you were swimming away from everything.
I didn’t do anything outrageous, like pulling down my dress or slapping a teacher – that would have been a badge of honour of sorts. No, I disgraced myself by sitting alone, having no one with me once Claire picked up Elliot, Paul’s best friend, and retreated to a corner with him. All the other girls were resplendent in either tight-fitting black Lycra numbers that skimmed their skinny bodies, or pouffe-balls of joy in flouncing fake or real Laura Ashley and hair, hair flowing everywhere, being tossed around, shimmering down backs, corn-rowed, sprayed into place, framing faces dripping with sweat. I was always cold, since mine had fallen out and been shaved off and so I sat and shivered there in my patchy hair and uncomfortable dull, claret-coloured, ruched, fake-silk ball dress, bought from Next on a sale rack, the boning of which caused me to stoop forward slightly like a hook. I was left alone, the object of pity, of scorn, leaving me free to drink the two cups of wine I’d stowed under my chair. I knew by this stage anyway that people don’t want to help someone in pain. It’s easier if they can blame you in some way, for being ignored, shunned: it makes them feel better, of course, if they can shift the blame for a crap situation that upsets them back onto you. ‘
Her dad was mad, Mum said,’ I’d heard Amy Shipman tell her best friend Cheryl the day we left school. ‘He never got over her mum dumping him, she always said he was a wrong ’un. Poor Janey. But you can’t help wondering . . .’
I got up periodically and wandered round, stealing drinks out of people’s glasses. At about ten thirty I realised I couldn’t really see that much, and that tears were filling my eyes, running down my cheeks. I wanted to be at home – I hated home, where Daddy’s clothes still hung in the wardrobe and where the absence of him was everywhere, but, still, anywhere was better than here. I walked through the bodies grinding to the Fine Young Cannibals – everyone the same, all in black, all conforming.
I walked home alone. Along a quiet side street a man walked behind me and asked me if I was all right. Daddy had taught me always to trust my instincts, and here blind instinct punched its way through my blind drunkenness. ‘If they make you feel bad for saying no,’ he’d say, ‘get away from them.’ I knew, from the way this man was too chatty, that I did not like him.
‘I’m going to meet some friends,’ I lied. ‘Bye then.’
‘But I’m just being friendly,’ he said, with contempt, angrily scuffing at the ground. ‘I’m just trying to talk to you.’ Heaven knows what would have happened, but misery and hunger and, of course, the wine meant that I was then sick into a hedge, and when I turned around he was gone. I went home feeling rather lighter than at any point in the evening.
I thought of that walk home, of the smell of sick, the patches of it on my fake black suede pumps. I missed Claire already, with a gut-wrenching twist that made me think I might be sick again. She was going away the next week then right off to university. No doubt with Claire about whether she’d get the grades. She had no doubts, about anything. But I didn’t know who I was any more. As I stood on the bridge, our bridge, I tried to tell myself I could turn things around, make Daddy proud of me. Then I remembered – I must have blocked it out before – writing a joke on the empty page of my Economics exam paper. Something about a crab. And the wine really hit me then, like falling into a pool. I staggered home: I lost a shoe on the way and didn’t notice.
The Beloved Girls Page 14
