In the evenings he watched his tiny TV. One day, he said, he might switch it on, see Farida and think: good God, I was married to her once.
The thought of Torren, in retrospect, seemed even more unlikely. He’d left the area some months earlier. Phoebe had heard the news from her neighbour Abbie, who was in the Memorial Hall car park nailing up a sign for her Weight Loss Support Group. By the way she casually brought up the subject, Phoebe realised that she had been one of Torren’s conquests and suspected that she, Phoebe, had been one too. ‘Gone, just like that,’ Abbie said. ‘But then he’d always been a free spirit.’ By the dreamy look in her eyes, Phoebe could tell she knew nothing about Croydon, and she didn’t disabuse her.
A few days later she drove into Torren’s wood. She passed the rusting motorbike entrails, smothered in brambles. The totem pole, now leaning at an angle. She drove down the track and parked in the clearing. Tyre tracks were scored in the grass and the door of his hut hung open. Either he’d left in a hurry or couldn’t be bothered to close it, because there was nothing worth stealing.
Inside it was the usual mess. It looked as if he’d just stepped out for a moment; he seemed to have taken nothing with him. So much stuff, as Robert would say, even for someone living the simple life.
Phoebe sat on the bed, its springs creaking, and looked around for one last time. Soon nature would reclaim Torren’s rural shagpad where once she’d spun her fantasy life. On the wall, his Pink Floyd poster had loosened from the wall and lolled like a tongue. A bird must have been nesting in the ceiling because broken eggshells lay on the floor, and a smear of yolk. She wondered if she would ever have sex again.
Before she left, she went down to the stream. Maybe, at last, she would see that otter. But all she found was a freshly dug grave and a wooden cross saying Ziggy.
Robert
Robert had erected a yurt in the orchard for when his children came to stay. It was never too late to get the hippie vibe. Unlike his sister he’d missed it the first time round. He had been a conventional youth and anxious to please his parents, but now he was of mature years this hairy, earthy lifestyle, waking up to birdsong and digging his vegetable patch, filled him with contentment. He’d even enrolled in a Yin Yoga class with somebody called Philomena Hodge. His old world was a world away, and what a messy, corrupt and distracting world that was! He didn’t watch the news. Farida’s crimson lips no longer distracted him. Terrorists came and went, so did ghastly American presidents and mad dictators with even madder hairstyles.
People who live in the country had always known this. The earth turned with the seasons and there was always planting to be done. Who cared if it rained? There was no such thing as bad weather, just the wrong clothes. Robert whistled as he strode through the mud and flung branches onto the bonfire. Soon he would get a dog. Heaven knew why he gave his Radnorshire chaps such a hard time.
It still made him blush to think about his novel. When his sister was young she used to play the guitar and sing ‘I Ain’t Got Nothin’ but the Blues’ in her piping middle-class voice. She even wore a harmonica harness, for fuck’s sake. When he wanted to mortify her he brought this up. However, he too had his humiliations. Thank God his sister hadn’t read his book; he’d never have lived it down.
And now he was 6,000 words into his second opus. Who said that writing a novel was like banging your head against your computer until your forehead bled? But he had to persevere, just to restore some self-respect. The world didn’t need another book but when did that stop anybody? And this time the subject was closer to home.
It was called Vaguely With Lorna and it told the story of Buffy’s ex, the woman who put newts into a pond to stop a bypass being built. When speaking her name, Buffy’s voice became golden syrup’d with love. He was an old ham, of course, from his days on the stage. But he did seem to be on excellent terms with most of his exes. Robert considered this the mark of a stylish man and had followed his example in his dealings with Farida.
To be frank, his wife had made this easier by admitting she’d been having an affair. This emerged when he told her he wanted a divorce. The bloke was half her age, a grip at the TV studios, and it had been going on for a year.
‘You really think I didn’t know?’ he’d said. That was a lie, of course; he hadn’t the faintest idea. It was gratifying, however, to see the confusion on her face. Between the two of them, he could feel that familiar tidal pull – just for a moment, he was the winner.
It hadn’t been a pleasant sensation. His heart seemed to be swallowing itself, a lurch deep in his chest. He and Farida had been sitting in an Uber, on their way to a party in Clerkenwell. Tears sprang to his eyes – shameful tears. He lowered his head and gazed at her satin cargo pants. Oh, waist down I just wear my knickers. He remembered Mandy’s incomprehension; how he and Farida exchanged glances. The Uber passed some smokers, huddled outside a pub and laughing soundlessly. Their own jokes, his and Farida’s, had long since drained away; they were the first thing to go when a marriage was dying. Now it was truly dead; Farida’s words had given it the knock-out punch. He hadn’t seen those cargo pants before, with their useless satin pockets halfway down the thigh. They must have been new. From now on, his wife would be buying clothes with which he’d be unfamiliar.
He couldn’t start thinking about that sort of thing. He had to concentrate on the here and now. A party to get through, with this disappeared woman at his side. The yawning chasm of the years ahead.
But he couldn’t get his brain to engage. Since, drunkenly in their kitchen, he’d brought up the subject of divorce, events had gathered their own momentum and slipped out of his control. Tonight a new person had popped up, Ivan. Of course he’d be called Ivan. Ivan the grip – what the hell did grips do?
The weird thing was that, despite his distress, Robert had felt only the mildest jealousy. Instead, he’d felt a sick lurch of superiority – a feeling so rare it had taken him by surprise. The party was held in a cavernous loft – the obligatory brick walls; kitchen units salvaged from a butcher’s shop. Though bleached and scrubbed, the wood was soaked in the blood of blameless cows, thousands of them. How thin was the veneer of good behaviour! He’d gazed at the guests, knocking back the Bellinis. QCs, captains of industry. They were Farida’s friends, not his, but for once she didn’t mingle. She’d stood at his side like a faithful wife, foraging, with her painted nails, into a tiny cone of fish and chips. The two of them chatted about politics, her voice over-bright. He found this strangely touching.
And her guilt did ease the weeks that followed. She didn’t do dote – it didn’t go that far – but she became gratifyingly solicitous, sometimes downright humble. Humble.
In fact, the death of their marriage brought them closer than they’d been for years. They crept shakily around the house nursing cups of strong sweet tea, as if they’d been in an accident, and stayed up late, talking. Amongst the revelations, he told her he’d never liked their house. He could admit it now. ‘It’s got no past,’ he said, ‘no memories.’ The children weren’t brought up there, it was like living in a show home. A nowhere place, all polished steel and digital control panels pulsing and bleeping – God knew what they all did. ‘To be honest,’ he said, ‘I was happier in my shed.’
To their parents’ mortification, Jack and Alice said they’d seen it coming for years. They rallied round the two of them, helping them pack up their marriage like the most understanding of removal men. And throughout it all Farida behaved remarkably well. Like Edward Heath, she was at her best when leaving office.
Since then Phoebe’s friend Buffy had become Robert’s confidant. Buffy was something of an expert in these matters. Towards only one of his exes did he bear any ill will. She was called Jacquetta and was apparently one of those vague, arty women who were two a penny in Knockton. The moment she and Buffy split up, however, the vagueness vanished and she hired a red-hot lawyer who screwed everything out of him, even his beloved Ivon Hitchens painting, a cause of bi
tterness to this day.
Robert saw a lot of Buffy because his father had moved into his hotel. The old man lived in an annexe overlooking the garden, with a carer visiting twice a day.
In truth, he should have been in a proper Home, but they were all in denial about this. The very word ‘Home’ spelled finality whereas, as his father said, the word ‘hotel’ was full of possibilities. He sat in the lounge nattering to Buffy and Monica. He drank martinis and talked to the other guests. Sometimes Phoebe or Robert wheeled him down the High Street to have lunch in Angie’s Bistro. He was a lucky old sod – what had he done to deserve it? But then he’d been lucky all his life. And who said that life was fair?
Robert, recovering from his own Sturm und Drang, had grown more tolerant of his father. Over the past few months the dad-ness had disappeared and the man was revealed – charming all right, but pretty spoilt and self-absorbed. In fact, downright ruthless, as they had discovered. A man highly intelligent when it came to his incomprehensible work, but less so when emotions were involved. An absent father but, what the hell, the man had been in love. In other words, just a normal, faulty human being, like everyone Robert had ever known. Like, of course, himself.
Phoebe, however, was still angry with their father. She was sixty-one now and should have got over it. When Robert told her this, however, she snapped at him: ‘It’s all right for you, you’re a bloke.’
What was that supposed to mean? Were they really regressing to that old Men-are-from-Mars stuff? He’d thought that the two of them had forgotten their old squabbles and drawn together, but she flared up when he tried to defend their father.
Maybe she felt invaded, with the two of them moving into her town. Robert couldn’t remember who’d suggested it but it seemed an ideal solution for them all. Wasn’t that what families were supposed to do? Pull together, support each other? Farida’s words had hit home.
And he’d been trying to respect his sister’s privacy. He always phoned before he visited. He hadn’t joined her choir even though they were desperate for a baritone. He didn’t want to encroach. He wasn’t an insensitive chap. He was a writer, for Christ’s sake.
Then suddenly the clouds would open and peace was restored. Robert was used to this. He’d lived with Farida for thirty-five years, he should have got the hang of women by now. Phoebe would tramp across the orchard with a bottle of Rioja and they’d sprawl together on his midget sofa and watch his midget TV. God, he loved her. She would tell him the local gossip. How a woman called Lulu Baines, who ran the Knockton Bat-Watching Club, was having an affair with a man she found drunk in a skip. Someone had discovered a donkey in their living room. That sort of thing. All good material for his novel.
‘And they gossip about you,’ said Phoebe. ‘A mysterious man in a caravan.’
‘I thought there’re loads of them around here.’
‘They’re not as clean as you.’ She looked at him, her head tilted. ‘Anyway, some of the women are desperate.’
They laughed. Phoebe looked at the plywood walls. ‘Are you sure you can stick another winter in this ghastly place? There’s no insulation.’
‘I’m as snug as a bug in a rug.’ He shrugged. ‘If it was good enough for Dad, it’s good enough for me.’
‘But he had his mistress to keep him warm.’ She looked out of the window. In the gathering dusk, apples lay scattered under the trees. ‘I think we should go there.’
‘Go where?’
‘To Crickhowell. To the caravan park.’
He stared at her. ‘Why?’
‘My therapist says I need closure.’ She raised her eyebrows. ‘Anyway, I’m curious.’
Robert told himself it was just a jaunt. That was how Mandy would have described it, if she were still alive.
In a strange way, however, she was still with them. This was the place where she came into the world, and another little girl disappeared from it. It seemed too momentous for somewhere as humdrum as a caravan site. Toilet block, clock golf. Tupperware. That sort of thing. Maybe a row of those dispiriting leylandii to act as a windbreak against the howling Welsh gales. Anything less conducive to a love affair would be hard to imagine.
Robert had pictured it so often that it had assumed its own reality. His father had told them nothing except, for some reason, its proximity to a row of abandoned garages. Maybe he was trying to defuse the romance of the place. If so, it had the opposite effect. Surely it was a tribute to their passion that it could flourish in such depressing surroundings.
At first Robert resisted the idea of going there. The thought of his father’s other life made his stomach churn. He was feeling stir-crazy, however, in his own particular caravan, and wanted to support his sister. It was a beautiful autumn day and he’d never been to Crickhowell, though it was only ten miles from Hafod. On holiday he and Phoebe just mucked about in the woods.
So they drove there and discovered a market town very like Knockton – farmers and beardies, arty women looking like Phoebe, elderly ramblers. There was no sign of a caravan park and the couple of people they asked had never heard of one.
The butcher’s, however, had a sign saying it was established in 1920 so that looked promising. They went in and asked the man behind the counter. He wore a bloodstained apron and looked encouragingly ancient. He pointed them in the right direction but said the park had long since gone.
In his heart of hearts Robert had suspected this. In fact it was something of a relief. Now they’d arrived, however, they decided to walk there.
It wasn’t far. They passed the electricity substation and a row of garages. A few yards down the road they stopped. Ahead of them stood a row of flagpoles and a sign: The Palisades: 80% Sold.
It was a development of starter homes. The two of them wandered aimlessly down a cul-de-sac. Each garden was surrounded by close-board fencing. Children’s voices could be heard on the other side. Behind one fence there must have been a trampoline because, above it, a little girl’s head rose and fell. She had bright red hair; it floated up and down, up and down, fiery in the setting sun.
For some reason Robert and Phoebe were seized with high spirits and sang all the way home. They used to sing in the car when they were little. They sang ‘Fatty Bum Bum’. Then Phoebe sang the Tom Paxton love song that she used to play on her guitar, ‘The Last Thing on my Mind’. Over the years her voice had slipped from soprano to a cracked alto.
When they arrived back in Knockton they saw an ambulance parked outside the Myrtle House Hotel. This time they wouldn’t be fooled. It would be one of the guests who’d broken their leg tramping along Offa’s Dyke. The path ran through the woods nearby, sinking into ditches gnarled with roots and then up onto the hills where it was studded with rocks.
But they were wrong, of course. The ambulance was for their father.
After the funeral they sorted through their father’s stuff. Their mother used to organise his filing system, but since her death it had descended into chaos. Nowadays the bulk of his paperwork was filed under M for Miscellaneous. His will was there – he had indeed left some money to Mandy. His pension documents and modest investments were all stuffed into that bulging file.
Phoebe was sorting them into piles when she found a letter.
It was from their mother, to their father.
Anna
To be opened after my death.
Dearest love,
Death does solve those difficult conversations, doesn’t it? Rather a radical solution, I grant you, but we all have our secrets. You had yours and I had mine. The difference is that I knew yours from the very beginning, whereas mine has been locked away in my heart for many years, from a time long before you came into my life, bicycling down Clarendon Street, laughing like a hyena, with your gown billowing behind you.
I fell in love with you straight away. You were so brilliant and charming and you oxygenated my brain. God, you made me happy. Life came so easily to you, whereas for me it’s always been a struggle, you know that better
than anyone, but your love transformed my life, and so we started on our long adventure. First, the bedsitter in Green Street, the lorries trundling past, and Oxford’s nosiest landlady downstairs, but what did we care? How we laughed and how we talked, the words spilling out, the lilac tree outside our window frothing into blossom, spag bol for supper and your arms around me every night. And how hard we worked, sitting at opposite ends of the table with our papers spread out in front of us. When you looked up, there I was, and when I looked up, there you were, just like Gabriel Oak. We were going to do such great things in the world.
But our little idyll was over in a flash, because along came the babies and bang went my career. You never really understood what that meant to me, did you? In those days it was the norm that women looked after the children. You had no idea what it was like, the grinding boredom, the atrophied brain, the mind-numbing domesticity, the countdown till bedtime. Every day, like millions of men all over the country, you did your disappearing act. I saw the spring in your step when you closed the front door.
To be perfectly frank, they weren’t the easiest children to love. I tried to, truly I did. But Robert was such a whiney little boy. Moan, moan. He could even grumble while sucking at my nipple. And Phoebe was so difficult. Not with you – oh, both of them were so sweet with you, they worshipped you, the absent father who swooped into their life when he felt like it and spoiled them rotten – something I had to rectify, much to their resentment, when you’d disappeared back into your career. It’s no fun being the bad cop.
I thought we’d produce two prodigies but no luck in that department either. We never mentioned it, did we? But neither of them was as clever as you. Or, to be perfectly frank, me. It didn’t help that Robert was so lazy, and Phoebe was so contrary.
The Carer Page 17
