Next of Kin (28 page)

‘Taking it on. Dealing with your parents.'

‘I said,' Robin said, with a touch of his old weariness, ‘I said I'd help you.'

‘Will you? Will you really stand by me?'

‘Why else do you think I've come? Why on earth, with about a million things screaming to be done, should I come all the way into Stretton unless it's to see you and prove I meant what I said?'

‘It would make a difference,' Lyndsay said. ‘But I don't know—'

‘I know,' Robin said, ‘and you're not selling those shares.'

‘You could buy them.'

‘I can't. And I don't want them. I don't want all that arable.'

He stood up. She stood, too, more slowly. Behind them, Hughie crawled up onto the sofa and lay across the cushions where they had been sitting.

‘But you must come home,' Robin said. ‘You must come back.'

‘Yes,' Hughie said.

‘Soon. Tomorrow or the next day.'

‘I could,' Lyndsay said, looking up at Robin. ‘I could, now I know you'll help me.'

‘I
said
—'

‘I know. But I was so emotional then, you could have said anything, just to pacify me. But today is different. I believe you today. It was nice of you to come.'

He stooped to kiss her cheek. She put her arms up and held him for a moment.

She said, ‘Is Zoe still there? At Tideswell?'

He stiffened slightly under her hands.

‘Yes.'

‘Is she a nuisance?'

‘No,' Robin said. His voice sounded odd, slightly constrained. ‘She's actually been pretty good with Mum.'

‘So I heard.'

Robin stepped back, to release himself.

‘You give me a call. About coming home.'

‘I will.'

He looked down at Hughie, on the sofa.

‘You keep her to it, old son. OK?'

Gareth, in the store beside the milking parlour where Robin kept all the drugs and foot-treating equipment for the cows, was testing a balling gun. He hadn't used it for a year almost, since the herd was last out at grass, but Robin had left instructions that the heifers were to be dosed with an anti-worm bolus before they were turned out. Half a dozen boxes of the bolus were stacked nearby, clean and white and medical-looking in the cobwebby muddle of the store. Robin never threw anything away. There must be stuff up there on those shelves past their use-by dates by a decade. Gareth slapped the gun against his palm. He could do with another pair of hands, shooting the pills down all those reluctant throats. Maybe Zoe could help. He'd ask her when he went over for his mid-morning break.

‘
Well
,' Velma said from the doorway.

Gareth turned round. Velma was standing there, hands hanging down, in her usual uniform of leggings, daps, and tunic jersey.

‘What's up then?' Gareth said.

‘I went up,' Velma said. ‘I went up to make Robin's bed and all, and there she was.' She sounded out of breath.

Gareth's face lit up.

‘Zoe?'

‘In his bed,' Velma said. ‘In Robin's
bed.
Fast asleep and mother naked.'

Gareth grinned.

‘Robin there, too?'

Velma said vehemently, ‘She didn't stir. She didn't even flicker an eyelash. I knew it. I
knew
it would happen. I saw it coming a mile off. Who does she think she is?'

‘Young,' Gareth said. He felt oddly stirred by the news. ‘Willing.'

Velma snorted.

‘Willing, all right. Set her cap at him from the start.'

Gareth struck the balling gun into a pocket of his overalls.

‘Takes two to tango.'

‘You men—'

‘Give him a break,' Gareth said. ‘Will you? Just give him a break.' He stepped forward and thrust his face at Velma. ‘Debbie and I came here when Kevin was a baby, eight years ago, and I can tell you Caro was in her own bedroom by then. Eight years ago. Maybe she'd moved out of his room years before that,
years
. What's he had to put up with then? And you ever heard a word about him locally? One word? All these years.'

Velma looked at him. She drew a huge breath.

‘Well, they're going to hear now.'

‘Not from you, Velma Simms—'

‘It's my
business
,' Velma said. ‘I work here. I've been looking after Robin and this house since long before you came.' She put a finger up to Gareth. ‘Don't get me wrong. I've no objection to Robin settling down. Fact is, I'd like it. I'd like to see this house with a woman in it again, I'd like to see him looked after. But it's this little bitch. Who is she, I'd like to know? Just someone Judy's picked up in London. I knew she'd be trouble, I knew it from the beginning. And I'm right. Robin'll make a fool of himself, you see if I'm not right, you just
see
.'

Gareth turned away and began to fiddle with the boxes and bottles on the dusty shelves of the store. It occurred to him to say that Zoe wasn't trouble, that she wasn't playing games, that in an odd way there was far less malice to Zoe than there was to Velma or any of the other women in Dean Cross, or even to his Debbie. But there wouldn't be any point saying such things. No point at all. Velma would just say he'd got an itch for Zoe himself and in a way, she'd be right. To look at, Zoe was nothing, nothing at all. But there was something about her you couldn't help fancying, something free, a bit oddball. It had occurred to Gareth once or twice that, if you were involved with Zoe, she'd stay free, somehow, she wouldn't start clinging and making demands. In fact, in any kind of relationship with Zoe it might well be the other way about.

‘You leave them alone,' Gareth said. ‘You leave them be. She'll do no harm and he deserves a bit of nookie.' He paused and then he said, surprising himself, ‘She probably makes him laugh.'

‘Laugh?' Velma said. ‘Laugh? What's laughing got to do with it?'

‘A lot,' Gareth said. He had a sudden vision of all those recent sessions at home, all those half-tearful pleadings from Debbie to find a new job, to get away from Tideswell, to escape what she increasingly insisted was a curse. His voice rose to a shout. ‘A lot! A whole bloody lot, you interfering old cow!'

On the way back to Dean Place Farm, Rose went to sleep in her baby seat. Lyndsay could see her in the driving mirror, bright pink with warmth and drowsiness, her big pale-curled head bobbing and lolling, and her arms stuck straight out sideways, like a rag doll. One arm brushed Hughie every so often as the car swayed round corners, and as he was strapped into his own car seat, he couldn't avoid it. Lyndsay saw him pressing himself away from Rose into the far side of his seat, away from the possibility of being touched by her. Even asleep, she was confident, and her confidence quite simply offended him.

Lyndsay's parents had been very surprised at her sudden decision to go home. In fact they'd been slightly shocked, as if she was behaving discourteously and ungratefully after all they'd done for her and for the children. Lyndsay's father had said, looking at Hughie, ‘But we were planning to go swimming, weren't we?'

‘Another time,' Lyndsay said. She said that Robin's visit had made her feel she was making everything worse for Joe's family, that decisions had to be made and they were decisions that couldn't be made without her. Her father had asked what Joe's shares in the farm were worth. Robin had said a lot.

‘But they don't own the farm,' Lyndsay's father said, ‘do they?'

No, she had said, they didn't. She didn't understand it. Robin had said several things she didn't understand. He said he really needed over a million pounds of capital to farm comfortably the way he did, which was why he was so in debt and why he couldn't buy any of Joe's shares. She had gazed at him. It meant nothing to her. Money in millions was not compassable, especially when they lived so decently, modestly even, compared with the kind of lives one usually associated with having millions. In farming, she supposed, the millions didn't go on anything a wife and children could see; they went on land and machinery and buildings and stock which then all ended up belonging to the bank anyhow. Yet whatever she did or didn't understand, Robin had made her feel she must go back and decide something, face to face. It was referring to Hughie that had done it, Hughie and Rose.

‘Are you asleep?' Lyndsay said to Hughie.

‘No.'

‘Are you pleased to be going home?'

Hughie nodded. He wondered whether to ask if Daddy would be there and decided against it, simply because Lyndsay always said no, he wouldn't, and Hughie didn't much want to hear her say it again, for the hundredth time. He waved Seal in the air.

‘Seal, too.'

‘You can go to playgroup in the morning.'

‘Perhaps,' Hughie said.

‘Maybe Mary will be there. Maybe Mary'll have come to welcome us home.'

Hughie looked out of the window. There were fields out there again, fields and some sheep. At Granny Sylvia's house there were no sheep, and when you ran about in her garden, you had to run quite carefully. It was difficult to be an aeroplane in that garden.

‘There,' Lyndsay said, ‘the church and the shop.'

Rose's swinging arm caught Hughie lightly on the shoulder.

‘Ow,' he said loudly, right at her, to wake her up.

She opened her eyes very slowly and looked at him, adjusting herself from sleep. Her expression was as it always was, whatever she looked at, full of calm and determination. She rubbed a hand across her face, squashing her nose. Then she gave a little shout.

‘Home!' Lyndsay said, mistaking her.

The car turned off the road down the lane towards Dean Place. Across the field to his right, Hughie could see his house, looking as it always did, always would.

‘Out!' Rose yelled, tugging at the webbing straps of her baby seat. ‘Out, out, out,
out
!'

‘In a minute—'

Mary had hung some washing out, Lyndsay could see it, sheets and a towel or two, and a row of yellow dusters. How kind of her, how kind when she was only ever supposed to babysit once in a while, once in a blue moon when Lyndsay and Joe went out, really out . . . Lyndsay bit her lip and changed down a gear to drive up the smooth ramp towards the house, parking where she'd always parked for years, sometimes several times a day, after going to the village, going to Hughie's playgroup, going to Dean Place and Tideswell, going to the supermarket, going to see Caro in hospital, going out, coming back, going out, coming back, and now coming back in a way she'd never even contemplated, a way that was so hard that she thought for a moment she mightn't be able to get out of the car.

‘Out!' Rose bellowed.

‘Let her,' Hughie said, turning his face away. ‘Oh just let her—'

Lyndsay climbed slowly out of the car and then stooped in through one of the back doors to release Rose. Rose, breathing heavily, kicked and thrashed, desperate to be on the ground, to be independent.

‘Careful,' Lyndsay said. ‘Wait—' She propped Rose on one hip and put her key into the lock of the back door. Inside the back door was the little lobby they had designed so carefully, a lobby for boots and coats and shovels, and fishing rods. Joe's boots still stood there, his old boots, the ones he'd said were leaking round the foot welt. He'd been wearing his newer ones that day, of course, and then they'd gone with him, to the police station, to the morgue, and then to wherever Joe had gone after that, to the empty place where Lyndsay couldn't follow.

She opened the door to the kitchen. It was tidy and shining. Lyndsay put Rose down on the floor and went back for Hughie.

‘Seal likes you,' Hughie said.

‘Oh good. I like Seal, too.'

She unbuckled his straps and lifted him onto the ground beside the car.

‘In you go.'

He put his face up, sniffing like a little animal, recognizing familiarity. She watched him trot into the house ahead of her, suddenly full of purpose, almost of certainty. The telephone was ringing. Lyndsay leaned into the car to retrieve her handbag and then ran into the house, stumbling over Rose to get to the telephone before it stopped.

‘Hello?' she said. ‘Hello? Dean Place Cottage.'

Rose stopped taking potatoes out of the vegetable rack and looked up, her attention caught by the eternal potential of a telephone call.

‘Oh,' Lyndsay said. ‘Velma. Yes, yes, I've just walked through the door, just this minute—'

She paused. Rose put a potato in her mouth and then took it out again, frowning. Her mouth was smudged with earth.

‘Oh dear,' Lyndsay said. ‘Oh heavens, oh
dear
—'

Rose put the potato down and began to crawl rapidly towards the sitting-room door.

‘Dear, dear!' she shouted. Her fat hands slapped on the floor. ‘Dear, dear, dear, dear,
dear
!'

Chapter Fifteen

Judy sat on a bench in St James's Park, holding a plastic bottle of mineral water. At the other end of the bench, an old man was asleep, a rather seedy and shabby old man whom Judy had already resolved she would abandon if he woke up and became conversational. She had not come into the park for conversation; she had come into the park to think.

Ahead of her two willow trees were brushing the grass with their long soft fronds, and beyond them was the flat shine of the water. It was a prospect Judy knew extremely well since the park was only fifteen minutes' walk from the edge of Soho, where her office was, and she often came there because it was green and you could breathe. When she had first come to London, she had avoided the parks, almost elaborately, as if defying all rural associations of any kind, but gradually, she had found herself in them, and noticing the trees, almost without meaning to be there. She had got to know St James's Park very well, and the best-placed benches and the regular people who came there. But today, sitting on her second favourite bench – a boy with an immense red backpack was stretched out asleep on the best one – nothing, however well known, looked familiar. She might, she thought, have been looking at it all for the first time.