Next of Kin (15 page)

Oliver encouraged her to talk about Caro. After films they'd seen, or pictures they'd stood in front of in galleries, he'd say, ‘Would your mother have liked that? Did she have modern taste? Mine doesn't. Mine got stuck about 1965. It's quite endearing, really.'

Judy liked the game. It was better, easier, to think of Caro with this small degree of objectivity that Oliver brought to her, Judy's, memories. It made Caro more of a person, somehow, less of a mother, and that was a relief.

‘Is it,' she said to Oliver, ‘easy to please your mother? To live up to her expectations?'

‘Oh yes,' he said, ‘easy as anything. She thinks my sister and I are wonderful. She can't believe that we've actually managed to walk and talk at the same time on our own. She's amazed by us.'

‘But then, perhaps, she isn't a disappointed person.'

He glanced at her.

‘No,' he said carefully, ‘I don't think she is.'

‘Rare—'

‘Very.'

‘So you can't really fail her.'

‘I think,' Oliver said, taking her hand, ‘that you should stop thinking about failure.'

‘Like Zoe.'

‘Zoe doesn't think about success or failure. Zoe just lives.'

Zoe had been in Birmingham for over a week. The course she'd gone to – perspective in photography, she'd said – had lasted two days, but she'd been gone for ten, nine of which had now been occupied for Judy by Oliver. She'd sent Judy a black-and-white postcard, of a line cf pylons across an empty stretch of moorland, and on it she'd written, ‘Going missing for a bit. Will ring. Course grim but good people.' And then a row of kisses half an inch high and a big Z. The inference was that she had gone off with some of the people on the course for a few days. Judy propped the card on the sitting-room mantelpiece above the wooden herons, one of whom Oliver had adorned with a baseball cap. He had offered to help redecorate the sitting-room.

‘I'd like to. Really. Promise. I'm no good at wallpaper, seem to get paste on both sides, but I am a
wizard
with a paintbrush. You'll see.'

‘Should I wait till Zoe gets back?'

‘No. Why?'

‘She lives here, too.'

‘Not like you do. You don't even know where she is, do you?'

Judy said, looking at the herons, ‘No. But I don't need to, it isn't any of my business. Anyway, I expect she'll ring.'

Zoe rang Judy, on the eleventh day after her departure, in the office. Judy was working on a directory of craftsmen, a list of gilders and restorers and French polishers which was going into the July edition of the magazine under the heading ‘Five Star Remedies'. When the telephone on her desk rang, Judy expected it to be a two-woman team of easel-painting conservators who had been doubtful that they could take on any more work just now, and it was Zoe.

‘Hi!' Judy said, at once, in a tumult of surprise and of remembering that Oliver was now hers, and not Zoe's. ‘Where are you?'

‘At Tideswell,' Zoe said.

‘What?'

‘At Tideswell. I've been here since Friday.'

‘What the hell are you doing at Tideswell?'

‘Staying,' Zoe said.

‘But you never said, you never told me—'

‘I didn't need to. You live in the flat. I'll tell you when I'm coming back to the flat.'

‘Listen,' Judy said, incredulous and angry, ‘what are you playing at? You can't stay there with my
father
—'

‘He doesn't mind. I hardly see him anyway.'

‘Why did you go there?'

‘I wanted to. I told you I liked it here. I just saw a bus that said Stretton, so I got on it.'

‘Zoe—'

‘What?'

‘You can't do this, you can't just go to my house—'

‘I've been to see your gran. She was fine. She just said I wasn't to get in Robin's way, but I'm not. You couldn't if you tried. He wouldn't let you. I was just ringing to say I'll probably be back after the weekend.'

‘You owe me rent,' Judy said in revenge. ‘Two lots of seventy-three quid.'

‘OK.'

‘Is Dad there?'

‘No. He's been out since six. Shall I get him to call you?'

‘No,' Judy said. ‘
No
. He's my father and I'll call him when I want to.'

‘Judy,' Zoe said, ‘cool it. Just cool it, will you? I'm not taking anything that's yours. I'm just here, having a look, being here.'

‘But it's weird—'

‘No, it's not,' Zoe said, ‘it's your attitude that's weird. I'll see you Monday. Or Tuesday, maybe.'

Judy heard the receiver go down the other end, on the Tideswell telephone in the Tideswell kitchen, below the poster of the Golden Gate Bridge that Judy had given Caro seven years ago, when she was only sixteen. Caro had had it framed, in dark-green stained wood, and now Zoe was standing beside it, looking at it, touching the telephone, touching the table and chairs and wooden spoons and mugs and plates, being familiar with everything in that kitchen, the kitchen Judy had known all her life. She picked a black felt-tipped pen out of her pen mug and drew a grotesque shape on the nearest piece of rough paper. Then she gave the shape eyes and huge ears and big crude teeth and stubbled hair, like an old-fashioned convict. Then she threw the pen down and reached for the telephone to ring Oliver at work in the gallery a friend of his owned, specializing in modern lithographs and woodcuts, and where she had never, as yet, telephoned him.

‘Oliver?' a laconic voice said at the other end of the line. ‘Oliver Mason? Sorry, he's gone out to lunch.'

‘I don't know,' Velma said, rinsing dusters, ‘what you think you're doing here.'

‘Everybody says that,' Zoe said. ‘Everybody asks.'

Velma drew the dusters out of the bowl in a dripping mass and twisted them into a clumsy rope, squeezing out the water.

‘It's not as if you were any
use
—'

‘No,' Zoe said, ‘but I'm not any trouble either. And I'm company.'

‘He never was one for company,' Velma said. ‘Always been a loner, all his life.'

‘You can tell that,' Zoe said, taking no notice of Velma's tone. ‘You can tell by the way he speaks. Like you were a dog or something. Kind but a bit distant.'

‘Well,' Velma said, shaking out the damp dusters and draping them over the nearest radiator, ‘mind you
keep
your distance. That's all.' She looked at the clock. ‘He'll be in for his dinner in ten minutes.'

‘I'm going back to London in a few days,' Zoe said.

Velma grunted.

‘I put a pasty in the larder. No point buying two with you being funny about meat.'

‘I only eat peacock,' Zoe said, ‘and swan. Stuff like that. Do you want me to take your picture?'

Velma stared. She pulled down her yellow acrylic jersey, as if to protect herself from the prying eye of the camera.

‘Not bloody likely! What would I want my picture taken for?'

After she'd gone, Zoe opened the great refrigerator and took out a paper bag of tomatoes and the huge yellow cube of cheese that seemed to be a staple for Robin. She had bought them at the village shop, with guidance from Gareth's Debbie, who had found her there, standing lost in thought in front of the cardboard boxes of cabbages and carrots.

‘He said tomatoes,' Zoe said. ‘But I wonder how many? Two? Twenty? If I want a tomato, I just buy one and then I eat it.'

The thought of buying tomatoes for Robin made Debbie too feel she was on unfamiliar territory. As did this odd-looking girl with her ears and fingers loaded with silver rings and her red hair, not red like nature intended, but red like a beetroot. Gareth said there wasn't any funny business going on between her and Robin but the very fact that she'd come and not been sent packing seemed to Debbie quite funny enough without any extras. And she wasn't sexy, this girl. Debbie eyed her covertly. She was thin and flat, like a boy; there was nothing pretty about her, nothing feminine.

‘I should get six,' Debbie said, looking at the tomatoes. ‘And two pounds of cheese. Gareth says cheese is about all he eats.'

Now, Zoe put the cheese on the table in the waxed paper she'd been handed it in, and the tomatoes, in their brown-paper bag. She paused, looking at them both. Then she picked up the paper bag and dropped the tomatoes into the sink and ran water over them violently, splashing her clothes. Then she turned the tap off and picked the tomatoes out of the sink and made a little pile of them on the tabletop, like a miniature cairn. They looked good there, on the table, with drops of water hanging roundly on their tight, shining skins. Two of them still had their little curling green tops on. She thought she might take their picture.

The back door to the yard opened and Robin came in, boiler-suited and in his socks. He was carrying a newspaper, a 200-millilitre blue plastic bottle of anti-parasite fluid, and a dosing gun. He dropped the bottle and the gun on the table beside the cheese and the tomatoes.

‘I'd got eleven to go,' Robin said, ‘and I ran out of bloody needles.'

Zoe looked at the dosing gun.

‘What's it for?'

‘Worms,' Robin said, ‘lice. Mange mites. Should stop them scouring. I should have done it before the winter but—'

He stopped. He wondered for a moment if Zoe would say, ‘Caro was too ill?' but she didn't. She said, ‘Velma's left you a pasty.'

Robin ripped open the poppers down the front of his boiler suit and began to extricate himself from it.

‘Thanks. I'll just have bread and cheese.'

‘I rang Judy.'

He grunted.

‘And I borrowed Gareth's bike and went to Dean Place. Your mum gave me a hot cross bun.'

Robin glanced at her. He threw his boiler suit into a corner, and the house cat, who had heard the word ‘pasty', settled herself on it, to wait.

Zoe put a sliced loaf on the table, upright in its tailored plastic bag, and a plate and knife for Robin. He went past her and began to wash his hands at the sink, splashing water onto his face and hair. If Dilvs had given Zoe a bun, that meant she had asked her in, not left her on the doorstep as she did with vagrants now and the poor half-witted boys who came around selling flimsy dusters and badly made clothespegs. In the old days, Dilys had had her pet tramps, who'd visited annually and regularly, like the gypsies, and she'd kept old clothes and shoes of Harry's for them, and given them a hot meal in the poultry-feed store. But not now. ‘It's got nasty now,' Dilys said. ‘I'm not risking more than the doorstep now.'

Robin went back to the table and sat down.

‘Did you see Dad?'

‘Yes,' Zoe said. ‘He said he'd heard you'd got two cows calving and he said that was a bit late, wasn't it? He said you should have done it by January.'

Robin said, pulling bread out of the packet, ‘Dad likes to have a go.' He paused, and then he said, ‘Everything got a bit late this year.'

Zoo offered him a lump of cheese on a knife.

‘Because of Caro.'

‘I thought you were going to say that five minutes back.'

‘I thought of it.' She leaned forward. ‘Have you been up to her grave?'

‘No.'

‘Why don't you? Why don't you come up with me?'

He looked at her briefly. She wasn't looking eager, more matter-of-fact.

‘You men,' Zoe said, without rancour. ‘You men. As long as things look all right, you never bother to find out if they really are. Did you ever try and imagine what Caro felt like, what it was like to be her?'

He put the bread and cheese he had halfway to his mouth down on his plate.

‘I couldn't. I tried, and I couldn't. If it's any business of yours.'

‘I can't help thinking about her,' Zoe said, entirely unoffended. ‘I keep trying to imagine what it was like for her here, what she was like.'

Robin said, without meaning to, ‘Nobody knew.'

There was a little pause. Zoe picked up a tomato and bit into it.

‘I wondered,' she said. ‘I wondered that.'

Robin got up and went back to the sink, picking two tumblers out of the draining rack and running water into them. He put one down beside Zoe.

‘You've still got to say goodbye,' she said. ‘When you lose things, that's what you have to do. Otherwise you don't go on. It's like all those graves up at the church, just pretending all those people are sleeping. Well, they're not. They're dead and they're not coming back.'

Robin said, still standing, holding his glass of water, ‘Sometimes, pretending it isn't final is the only way you can stand being left behind.'

‘Do you feel that?'

‘I don't know.'

‘You do,' Zoe said. ‘You do know. Even if you just feel confused, you know you feel confused. Why don't you want to talk about it?'

He said, almost shyly, ‘I never have. It isn't my way.'

‘But don't you want to ask her things?'

He swallowed his water in two gulps and put the tumbler down.

‘Maybe.'

‘I want to ask my dad stuff, all the time. I want to ask him why he left us, why he went to Australia, why he stayed there, whether he regretted it. I get so angry he went and died before I could ask him. He's got away with it, you see—'

‘Maybe he hadn't,' Robin said slowly. ‘Maybe he never had the chance.'

Zoe stood up.