Away From It All (27 page)

‘Sam, can I ask you some things?' Grace found her cousin round at the back of Harry's polytunnels, attaching bits of wire to a long slim branch.

Sam looked up at her, suspicious. ‘What things?'

‘Nothing bad, just family things.'

Sam sighed and grinned at her. ‘I thought you were going to ask me stuff I might have to keep quiet about,' he said. ‘I'm good at lying but I think you might be good at knowing when I am.'

Grace laughed. ‘I'm flattered! I think. Do you mean you thought I was going to ask you about what Harry's growing in there?' She pointed to the plastic tunnel where the elegant leafy plants had grown almost as high as the roof and the smell could have attracted
nostalgic ex-hippies from miles around. ‘Because I'm not stupid. You wouldn't have needed to lie. I wouldn't run off to the police.'

‘No, s'pose you wouldn't. Specially after the carp . . .' He sniggered.

‘Did you know they were worth that much?' Grace asked, watching carefully for signs of non-truth.

‘Course not!' Sam looked indignant. ‘They was
fish
! It's a bit like going out to catch a rabbit and then finding you've brought home the only solid silver bunny in the whole world! If we'd known, me and Chas would've just gone round to Chapel Creek and nicked a few lobsters from the tank at the back of the Mariners pub instead. What did you want to ask me?'

‘Well . . . it might sound stupid but have you got any more family? Aunts, uncles, any other grandparents?'

Sam screwed up his eyes, concentrating. ‘Yeah. Mo's got a dad over in Padstow. Sometimes we go and see him. We call him Grandad, not Jim. Joss said that was . . .'

‘Commonplace.' Grace supplied the word for him.

‘That's the one. Commonplace. So it is. For most people, just normal. Nothing wrong with normal.'

‘She always says “commonplace” is the worst thing you can say about anyone. I was just asking, because I don't seem to have anyone else. My dad's folks are in America and Mum doesn't have any contact with them, so it's just Harry and Jocelyn and you and Sam. You're the whole of my family.'

‘Aah! Bless!' Sam teased. ‘You've got Theo and Noel,' he pointed out.

‘Not really, we're not
related
. And they've got a whole fleet of relations of their own, enough to make a football match. You should see Theo's birthday
cards, all Aunty this, Aunty that. Mum says that Joss says that when you're born,
you're
the future. You shouldn't go looking back or sideways. Doesn't stop you wanting to know things about what you're coming from.'

‘Suppose not.' Sam had gone back to his stick and wires now.

‘Stopped Mum wanting to, though,' Grace continued, suspecting Sam had lost interest. ‘She's not got the titchiest bit of curiosity about where she comes from.'

‘That's because she comes from here,' Sam said, threading a piece of cord down the loops along his stick.

Grace laughed. ‘Yeah, that'll be it.
Here
makes you weird. Er, Sam? What are you making exactly?'

He tied a slip knot in the end of the cord, leaving a loop about a foot deep. ‘A running noose,' he told her, holding it up. ‘You creep up to a place where the birds are roosting,' here he stood up and demonstrated on a nearby plum tree, ‘at dusk, then you sneak this in through the leaves, get the loop round a bird's neck and PULL!' He tugged the cord and a plum fell to the grass. ‘See?' he said, delighted with his handiwork.

‘Ugh, horrible. But yes, I see,' Grace said.

Alice was dizzy from the stench of cleaning products. The kitchen and bathroom in Cygnet were now gleaming and sparkly and the stubborn turquoise marks in the bath, where deposits from the blue elvin rock that the spring water ran through had stained it, had at last been erased by an hour of determined scrubbing. Mo had stopped complaining that Alice seemed to be taking over, and had surrendered into simply being glad that there was another pair of hands helping to
keep Penmorrow under control. It had taken some persuading: how many ways were there to tell someone that you weren't criticizing their housekeeping standards but merely sympathizing that there wasn't time to give it any extra attention? And what, Alice wondered, though sensibly did not say to Mo, would happen when she went back to Richmond? It wouldn't be long before the lack of enough domestic input became a problem again.

It was time now to take down the horrible maroon Dralon curtains. Mo had a sewing machine in working order, and Alice had bought twenty metres of cheap unbleached calico in Falmouth and intended to make some new, simple drapes for Cygnet's sitting room. She tested one of the dining chairs to ensure it would take her weight and climbed up to reach the wooden curtain pole and unhook the dusty fabric. It smelled musty, old like dead air and many years' worth of rotting insect carcasses.

The room itself was potentially fabulous – long and airy with huge windows on one side and French doors leading to a beach-view garden and the cliff path on the other. It was a pity, she thought, that there didn't seem to be any likelihood that the suggestions she'd made to Harry about updating this little house would ever happen. She caught herself thinking, ‘If I lived here . . .' meaning Penmorrow, the whole of it, as she daydreamed just a bit about what she'd do to renovate and update the whole place. She felt deliciously excited at the prospect. She could make a difference here. Give or take a lottery win, of course.

Alice folded the first set of curtains and stuffed them in a binbag, trusting that Jocelyn wouldn't get weepy over this fabric as she had over the Gosling kitchen daisies. Then she crossed to the other side and
climbed on her chair again. Through the window she saw Katie and Noel sitting at the orchard table, close to Penmorrow's kitchen door, heads bent together over a magazine. They'd found something in it that was funny and Katie's dark hair was shaking as she laughed and wriggled about. The strap of her little vest top slid down her shoulder and as Alice watched, Noel put out his hand and gently replaced it, leaning down at the same time to kiss Katie's arched neck. Katie's smile barely slipped, but, like the teenage girls at bus stops Alice saw daily joshing with trying-it-on boys, she gave Noel a small shove in the chest.

Alice stood rigid, clutching the loosed half of the curtain in one hand and steadying herself against the pole with the other. Noel wasn't giving up and took hold of both Katie's hands in his, leaning forward again to have another nuzzle at his prey. This time Katie stood up, still grinning but pointing a warning finger at Noel, before stalking off into the house, her short skirt flicking this way and that.

‘God, he's an idiot,' Alice sighed to herself as she clambered down to the floor lugging the heavy fabric. She wasn't surprised. Nothing changed. He'd been seeing another woman for several months at the time Alice had met him, and only much later did Alice realize he'd been enjoying the thrill of a spot of two-timing for the first several of their dates. And then, she recalled, there'd been Theo's piano teacher on her weekly visits: a nervy, twenty-something ex-child-prodigy who'd accepted, with too much shining-eyed enthusiasm, a lift home from Noel the time that her car had broken down. Amazing, Alice had commented sardonically, how many times after that the car seemed to be mysteriously out of action for one reason or another.

This Katie though, well she'd be gone in a day or two. And Alice could just as easily have not seen what she did. She wouldn't, she thought, bother to mention it. She smiled as she thought of what her mother would say: ‘Sexual jealousy, my dear? Oh how drearily
commonplace
.'

And there was the other thing Joss often said. She'd use that one if she then found out about Alice and Aidan in the woods. There'd be the knowing smile and the single, well-deserved checkmate word: ‘Karma.'

JOCELYN HAD BEEN
keeping an eye on Grace from the hexagon window. She'd watched her sitting by herself, cross-legged on the meadow at the feet of Big Shepherd, idly picking daisies and threading some of them into her chakra bracelet. Grace looked as if she had things on her mind and didn't quite know what to do with herself. Perhaps she was bored, Joss thought at first, but Grace wasn't the sort to mope about with nothing to do. She was a reader, for one thing, and readers were never bored. Free time was a God-given chance to luxuriate in a book.

Joss picked up her sturdy stick, left the house and found Grace had moved to the pond on the far side of the track. The girl was peering into the murky, weed-strewn water as if looking for something she'd dropped. Jocelyn hadn't seen much of her in the past week. Even when they were all together at meal times, Grace was always at the far end of the table with Theo and the twins and didn't seem to want to get involved in talking with the adults. Who could blame her, Jocelyn thought, envying her granddaughter her careless youth, for what tedious things the adults chose to discuss. Patrice bragged about his past career
successes as if he was trying to impress with his CV (‘bigging himself up', as Chas had so acutely put it), Noel tried and failed to outdo him by boasting of his golf trophies and – surely unethical, this – famous clients. Alice talked of ghastly events (apparently the highlight of her afternoons) like anointing all the bathroom taps with lemon juice to get rid of limescale and about where to hire a sander for Cygnet's floorboards.

So dreary, this domestic obsession of hers, though she conceded Alice meant well enough. The floorboard idea was actually rather a good one; Joss had a trunk in the attic containing a stunning collection of kelims she'd been given by a poet who'd brought them back from India. They'd look wonderful on the polished boards. What a sweet man he'd been, she recalled now as she approached Grace, one of the few who understood that communal living meant just that: that you put something back into the household in return for hospitality. Some people, far too many of them really, had assumed that if they fetched a pint or two of milk from the shop and peeled a potato once during their stay, then everything else was theirs for the taking. There'd been occasional House Meetings about it when, say, the cooking rota had completely broken down, but that had resulted in the ludicrous sight of grown-up and otherwise successful people sobbing as they took their turn on the Beef Bag, expressing overdramatic devastation that their inadequate contributions to the household were criticized. That was artists for you; Joss had found it less hassle to give in. They had other things on their mind beside taking the garbage to the tip and putting bleach down the loo. It became her role to accommodate and facilitate. And she'd done it so well for so long.

Jocelyn was becoming bored by Patrice and his entourage. Patrice's phoney fawning over her was rather wearing. She especially wanted the Katie girl off the premises. Noel padded around after her like a dog scenting an in-season bitch. She'd seen what she'd seen, the two of them out on the verandah that first night, and much as she'd prefer Alice to have teamed up with a man less dull, she also didn't want her daughter to be put through a lot of pointless grief. As far as Joss was concerned, sexual adventuring was not in the slightest bit important – ironically, it seemed that Noel and she at last had something in common there – but Alice wouldn't see it that way and would make a rumpus if she caught him dipping into that particular honey jar.

‘Grace? Have you lost something?' Joss was right next to her before the girl noticed her. Grace looked alarmed; her eyes were fierce and defensive.

‘Goodness child, what on earth's the matter? You look as if you're seeing demons. Come and walk with me down to the woods and tell me what's wrong.'

‘I was just looking to see if we had any fish in there. Are there some?'

‘Oh I doubt it. We have frogs though. Only good for kissing and turning into princes. When you are a little older you must try.'

Grace felt trapped. She'd avoided being alone with Jocelyn ever since she'd finished reading
Angel's Choice.
There were things she wanted to ask, but at the same time didn't want to know. It was confusing. Lacking an excuse to refuse, Grace took her grandmother's arm and the two walked slowly down the path into the shade of the trees. Jocelyn sniffed at the air, reminding Grace of Monty in the mornings
when he trotted out through the Gosling cat flap to see what was what in his territory.

‘There's been a good dew,' Jocelyn commented, poking her stick at the ground beside the path. ‘Look how the leaves are damp and shiny on the top but dry beneath. Autumn isn't far away.' She sighed gently. ‘We haven't even celebrated Lammas this year. That is the time to stop and do some blessing-counting. We all need to do more of that. I shall talk to Mo.'

Grace didn't know what to say. She knew a little about the year's festivals; her mother mentioned them as they came and went, even if she didn't always do anything fancy to mark them. Alice did make a bit of a thing about Yule though. She always brought plenty of holly into the house before the shortest day – but then most people did for Christmas. She also made a Yule log, which had to have the same number of candles on it as there were people in the house to eat it. Grace had brought Sophy home on the Yule-log afternoon the year before, and Alice had refused to let them eat any of it till she'd found and lit an extra candle to represent Sophy. Noel had been a bit snide about that, declaring it was all superstitious nonsense, but Alice had snapped back at him, saying, ‘You didn't say that when the bishop blessed the new bar at the golf club. Don't pretend there's any difference.'

‘I'll mention it to Mo,' Joss said again, almost talking to herself. ‘Perhaps she can do something a bit special tomorrow night and we can have a bit of a ceremony. Patrice could put it in his silly film. Now Grace,' Jocelyn stopped at the foot of an oak tree and turned to face her granddaughter, ‘there's something I want you to help me to do. But first, I want to know what is troubling you. Let's sit down here, on these dry leaves.' With the tree supporting her hand, Joss carefully sank
to the woodland floor and sat cross-legged opposite her granddaughter.