The Forrests (27 page)

‘I’ll go straight through to the back.’

Dennis frowned. ‘The pool man’s coming today as well.’

‘Don’t worry. I won’t let any clippings fly in.’

Dorothy cut back the box hedges until her back and arms ached and the ridges of the secateurs’ handles were imprinted in her hands. The garden was full of exotics; this was how Dennis liked it, the anachronism, wearing his coloniser heritage with pride. She deadheaded roses and picked the flower heads off the last of the zinnias and marigolds and put them in her basket to store. An attack of breathlessness hit. She sat for a while beneath the umbrella of the willow tree, looking through the overhanging leaves at the sunflowers on the other side of the garden, ungainly freaks leaning against the fence. She stared at the sunflowers for a long time. The seeds would be ready to shake out and dry. A white sheet spread out on the grass. Cracked feet. Her father’s bewildered squint, Lee emerging from the bush, Ruth in Daniel’s arms.

The pool guy vacuumed the bottom corners of the pool and
stroked the water’s surface with his long unwieldy poles. Dorothy waited till he was in the pool house before she crawled out from under the willow branches, so as not to startle him, or look like some kind of creature. She spread chopped leaf mulch under the new shrubs and found a small brown lizard on one of the potted plants and flicked it into the bushes. Some of the plants needed to be shifted indoors to Dennis’s conservatory. She checked the undersides of the leaves for bugs. The old terracotta pots were so crumbly it was hard to wipe dirt from their bases without gravel-sized pieces of orange clay coming away on the cloth.

‘Are you free tonight?’ she asked Dennis, who was sitting at his dining-room table eating a sandwich.

‘Yes.’ Dennis’s head swung side to side as though he was saying no. He grasped for the linen napkin that sat in front of him on the table, his hand batting the table twice before his fingers curled and gripped it, brought it to his pursed, trembling mouth.

Dorothy rode her bike slowly home along the unmarked road, suede hills on her right, that twinge in her knee shooting sciatically up to her hip. A vanload of German tourists stood where the tourists always stood, taking the necessary photograph of the sea nestled between those hills across the valley, hot blue in the afternoon sun. When they first moved here Dennis had talked about putting in a swimming pool at their place but then he needed more medical care and the expense was too great. Sweat ran down the backs of Dot’s knees.

She rested in the corner doorway of the closed butcher’s shop, where the blinds were drawn. The triangular junction was free of traffic. Two rental cars sat parked outside the deli and aside from that
evidence of human life an atomising bomb could be dropped and you would know no different. A tree with polymer-lace bark like camouflage, and knobbled, amputated branches, stood in front of a second-storey sash window, which was open, the slight breeze up there sucking the filmy curtain in and out, in and out. Geraniums, fluorescent splats of red paint, clustered in the window box. As in a puppet show, a pair of hands appeared on the window ledge, the room behind them darkness. She couldn’t take her eyes off the gripping fingers, the zigzagged light on the raised glass, the bright flowers. What was that, a couple in the afternoon, fucking.

In the welcome shade of the house Dorothy made some calls then spread out on her bed by the open window and slept for most of the afternoon. Hank and Ruth were still sightseeing when she woke, and showered, and put the chickens on to roast and made the salad and rice. She was lighting candles on the outdoor table when Andrew came through the back door, arms raised above his head, cracking his shoulders.

Dorothy shook out the match between her fingers and walked slowly towards her husband. His bristled cheek felt unfamiliar to her lips. ‘Will you be home for dinner?’

‘What’s going on?’

‘I’ve invited half the neighbourhood. I don’t know what I’ve done. Is it the last thing you feel like?’

‘Go for it.’ Andrew tugged at one end of the wrought-iron bench seat, which made a harsh scraping noise along the patio. ‘What are you wearing?’

Dorothy smoothed her hands down the front of her dress. ‘I found it in the back of the cupboard. Too young for me?’

Halfway through dinner she leaned back in her chair and felt as though a flower, a peony or hibiscus, was blossoming inside her. The wine maybe, or the toke on Andrew’s cigarette that she leaned over for, feeling his fingers against her lips as she quickly sucked, the hot prickle of the smoke on her tongue. How amazing to see her sister in the glow from the tea lights, powerful in her way, purring into Jim Wang’s neck. Music played from the speakers that Ruth had shifted to stand in the French doors. Down the other end of the table Hank and his screenwriter friend were deep in conversation. It amazed Dot that people had these lifestyles, that you could own a holiday house a twelve-hour flight away from home, but she supposed it shouldn’t. Hank smoked like a demon – like an American photographer. The screenwriter’s wife was pregnant, and had eaten none of the cheeses that Hank and Ruth brought back from the market, and Dorothy shook the bread basket at her. ‘Everything’s pasteurised. But I understand. No point taking chances. Have some bread, you must be starving.’

The girl thanked her and almost shoved the roll into her mouth, just as Dennis asked her a question, his illness making it look as though he really cared for each word and struggled to find it precisely, ideas brimming in him before the body would allow them out. Dorothy carved and plated chicken for Dennis, Ruth, Hank, Hank’s friend, Hank’s friend’s wife, Terry from the bookshop, the Hansens, the Wangs, Mareta and her teenage daughter, Andrew and herself.

‘If I wasn’t here,’ said Destiny, the teenager, ‘you’d be thirteen at the table.’

‘Do you think that’s dangerous?’ Ruth laughed.

‘All teenagers believe in that BS,’ said Mareta. ‘I’ve had a houseful of Ouija boards and spirits and creepy little rune-y relic-y things all summer. I’m over it.’

‘Don’t say over it,’ Destiny said.

‘Whatever.’

Hank nodded his head towards his friend’s wife. ‘What about her? She’s pregnant, does that count as another person?’

Pontoon lights hung in the trees behind the table. The golden-whiteness shining from them made the sky look darker than it really was, and the stars couldn’t be seen. Night-blooming jasmine opened its perfume onto the courtyard. There was a pause in the music, between tracks. Andrew was telling Ruth an anecdote, a piece of history Dot had heard a gazillion times before, and Ruth was laughing. The scent of the flowers was so elusive, there one moment and then gone. Dorothy gestured to her husband, twiddling her fingers to ask for another rolled cigarette. The compromises and frustration and loss were worth it, she thought, her eyes meeting his – if they could only stay in
this
.

A new song started and Mareta pushed her chair back and held her hands out to Terry and he bowed his head, rose from his chair and they started dancing. ‘Shame, Mum,’ Destiny called, but as Dorothy crossed the courtyard to the kitchen, everyone was getting up to join them.

She poured more water into the large earthenware jug. Hank appeared in the kitchen with the glass one from the table. ‘Great minds,’ he said. Dorothy asked how he was getting on and he said fine and leaned against the sink bench, the water radiant in his hands through the blue glass, and, ‘You?’ And she said yes. Yes. Hank
poured a glass of water and held it out to her and as she reached for it she looked through the open doors at Dennis being led around the courtyard by Ruth. Hank’s fingertips brushed hers as they released the glass and she turned in surprise, jolted.

In the heat of the day Ruth stayed indoors to protect her face. ‘The light here is unbelievable. For sure it’s stronger than when we were kids. I mean like, what fucking ozone layer?’ Hank wanted to record Dorothy and Andrew. He showed them examples of his work in a black-leather portfolio; in the glaring afternoon of the garden the photos seemed stagy and stiff, and the people in them looked as though that was probably not how they imagined themselves. Andrew said, ‘Not for me. I’d crack the lens.’

‘You’re a good-looking couple,’ Hank said. ‘Something for the future grandkids? Get a record before your teeth fall out.’

Andrew barked a laugh and headed back into the house, calling over his shoulder, ‘Long gone, buddy, long gone.’ Not strictly true; his teeth were mostly bridge but they were still in his head, they didn’t come out at night, thank God.

‘Where in the States are you from?’ Dorothy asked.

Hank shrugged, and turned the heavy pages of his portfolio to the very back. ‘Connecticut. There’s the house.’ A wooden mansion, with numerous windows, that must have been enormous, but he’d taken the photograph from far away or with a clever lens so that it looked like a model, a trick of perspective enhanced by the child he had placed in the front of the frame, looming hugely, his hand out as though to pat the roof. On the facing page was a picture of the
same boy, wearing a striped T-shirt, a woman with long blonde hair, a golden retriever, and a younger version of Hank.

‘Wow,’ said Dorothy. ‘Your family.’

He nodded. ‘Yep. Actually, my son’s in London now, studying. I’m going to see him in the winter. He’s a great kid. You’ve got girls, right?’

‘And a boy, yes.’ It had always amazed her when people spoke of their children in this detached way –
London, I’m going to see him
– but now she knew that was what happened as they got older, just as her children now were all adult-sized and the family had changed shape, become a model of six people on the same scale. In fact the children looked bigger than the adults even though they weren’t, their features yet to settle, hair abundant, full of life. ‘How did you and Ruth meet?’

‘In a French dentist’s, believe it or not. We were both on summer holidays and we got talking in the waiting room. So I’m in Paris and my wisdom teeth are giving me hell, so a friend gets me an appointment with her dentist, and I’m sitting there in the worst kind of pain, you know it feels like someone is fucking me in the ear, and then there’s some changeover with the receptionist and the new one doesn’t speak English, et cetera et cetera, and thank God this woman comes to my rescue.’

‘Why was she there?’

‘Teeth whitening.’

‘No, in Paris.’

‘Oh. I don’t know. Antiquing? The twins are in school, right, boarding? Anyway, I was in there for hours, they only got one tooth, told me I was going to have to come back the next day and go to
some kind of terrifying overnight dental hospital, have a general et cetera, so I head downstairs, there’s a bar. It’s Paris, right? I’m going to drown my sorrows, a little preliminary numbing, and there, also drinking, white wine naturally, is your sister. And you know this year we thought we may as well do it again, only head south.’

‘Is photography your full-time job?’

‘I’m always a sort of editor at large for some website or other. They keep me in train fares and cappuccinos.’ It was a practised line.

Perhaps it wasn’t so strange that he and Ruth had found each other, two people on holiday from their lives. She was burning to ask if Ben, the banker husband, was cool with funding the trip, but instead said, ‘I’ve tried for a long time not to be vain and now my face is falling off and I’ve just given into it. I can’t have my photo taken. Sorry.’

He shrugged. ‘That’s fine. I would have given you free copies, for having me to stay.’

‘Oh, there’s no need.’ A crestfallen moment. She’d been fishing, she discovered, for a compliment.

‘And you, Ruth said you’re a teacher?’

‘Yes. I was full-time in schools but the admin nearly broke me. The constant testing. Now I work at a home for pregnant teens, doing art classes. Sort of therapy.’

‘OK, I’m going for a run. Can you take this back into the house?’ He passed her the portfolio.

‘Now?’ They’d been drinking sparkling wine in the sun. The lawn smelled of the new high-nitrogen fertiliser. ‘Don’t go now.’

But already he was jamming his feet into his running shoes, screwing ear-buds into the side of his head, touching his toes a
couple of times in the cursory way he said ‘et cetera et cetera’, and gone, taking the curve of the road like a piece of film running on double speed, swallowed by the corner. Dorothy pulled her knees up and tucked her skirt around her ankles to keep from being bitten, and thought about getting a cardigan from the house, and rubbed at the goosey flesh on her soft upper arms, and pushed her forehead into a knee to press the alcohol burn away, and looked at the pink cotton of her skirt in the dark shadow made by her head and the way it lost its colour and became grey. There was a touch to the nape of her neck, the line drawn by a single finger. She raised her head and looked around, but nobody was there. Shouting came from the house.

It had stopped by the time she got inside, then started again – a sound that she followed to the living room, where Ruth and Andrew sat in front of the set watching football. Dorothy recognised the All Whites, but not the other team.

‘Come on!’ Andrew yelled, his voice gravelly. Neither he nor Ruth looked up from the screen.

‘My girls play soccer,’ Ruth said. ‘At college.’

‘I’m just going to make dinner.’

Dorothy carried the portfolio through to Donald’s room. She knocked on the door, although she knew that Hank was running and Ruth was watching TV. In the pause after her knock, a feeling of dread beset her. Someone absent, returned silently. A clotted shadow. Sitting on the bed. She turned the handle and opened the door fast. The room, postered with ancient Communist propaganda, was empty. The stretcher at the foot of the double bed was neatly made up, looking like no one ever slept in it, and the novel
she’d left out for Ruth splayed face downwards on the floor next to a spread treasure of discs without cases, tiny silver coins. She crossed the threshold to set the portfolio on the mattress; leaving it on the stretcher seemed somehow pointed. A red-and-white plastic wallet on the chest of drawers bore the words
Travel Documents
. The exit strategy, a plan to move on. Dorothy sat on the bed and reopened the portfolio. The dark-paper backing pages were thick between her finger pads and thumb. Her parents, in black-and-white, stared at the camera, airbrushed, their teeth neat, a page Hank had skipped over out in the garden. She last saw them – it must have been ten years, alive. After their accident, everyone agreed closed caskets were for the best. This handsome old man had been her father, with thinning white hair and Photoshop space where his wrinkles would be. Her mother’s high forehead.