Torn (52 page)

Another Edward? Probably not the deceased's brother then.

‘We're grateful to you,' Jane said, grasping her hand in turn. What had Danny been saying?

‘Oh? Grateful for what?'

‘For befriending him. Coming here today.'

‘It was no hardship. I was glad to be able to be here for him. By the way, I do hope you'll come to the house? They're expecting all the family back.'

‘I'm sorry,' Eddie said. ‘You've got me confused with someone else. We're not family, just neighbours. Eddie and Jane Earl. Don't suppose Helen or Pete expect us, look.' He glanced towards his wife and an unspoken agreement that it was time to go passed between them. They nodded goodbye and moved away. James had followed Jessica and now spoke over her shoulder. It seemed he'd not noticed the striking resemblance.

‘Who are they?'

‘They're the nearest neighbours. Eddie Earl and his wife, Jane.'

‘Earl? Ah, yes,' James raised his eyebrows then repeated the name, as if something had just clicked into place. ‘I've heard them spoken of … Jane's not his wife, she's his sister.'

‘Just shows how dangerous it is to make assumptions,' Jessica said, reflectively. ‘So, what about the woman with the nuns? Is she the mysterious mother?'

‘Yes. That's Constance Bowman. She's in a nursing home.'

‘I gathered that much, but why?'

‘Hasn't Danny told you? No. I suppose having a loopy mother is not something you like to broadcast.'

‘What do you mean? She was a deputy head teacher, for heaven's sake!'

‘Alzheimer's has no respect for the intellect, sadly. It was diagnosed about five years ago.'

‘When Ted Bowman got out of farming?'

‘He needed a more reliable income to pay for her care. She might have gone into the home five years ago but the condition was coming on for far longer than that, apparently.'

‘And Danny bore the brunt of it,' Jess said. ‘There're ten years between him and Helen. To all intents and purposes she left home when he was only eight or nine, to go to university. He was the only child left in the house, no wonder he had a difficult time with his mother.'

‘Wasn't just the Alzheimer's.'

‘What do you mean, Jay? What else was going on?'

‘I can't tell you. It's not my story.'

‘This isn't fair. I have an interest in this family. I care about Danny.'

‘I know you do.'

‘I feel like I'm floundering about in the dark here.'

The three siblings had approached the woman in the green coat. She suddenly appeared animated, and her cloud of hair bobbed and bounced. She accepted a hug from Helen and then Piers, but when she came to Danny she stiffened, turned away, and began shuffling in the direction of the exit. The two nuns trotted after her to keep up. Jessica abandoned James again and crossed the intervening ground.

‘Are you all right?'

Danny had been watching the green-clad woman as she made her surprisingly rapid getaway, the two attendants hurrying after. He turned in swift response to Jessica's voice.

‘Yeah.' He swallowed and smiled. ‘I'm fine.'

‘Your mother?'

‘You spotted the likeness? Must be the hair.' Jessica slid her arm under the jacket around his waist, and they moved away from the clumps of people who still lingered by the grave.

‘James just told me. She's got Alzheimer's. I didn't know. It must be very hard for you to have a mother who treats you like a stranger.'

‘She always did, like I was some kind of interloper who didn't really belong in the family. Piers said she was sickening for years, but …' He shrugged. ‘I don't know that makes it any easier to accept, look.'

‘I spoke to your neighbours.'

‘Yeah, I saw you talking to Earl. He's a good bloke. He's always been a friend to me … so has Jane. Like a second family, a place to escape to.'

‘I could tell they're fond of you.'

They continued to pace slowly along one of the many walkways that intersected the graves. The warmth of his body permeated through the fabric of the shirt. Without a top coat Jess had grown chilly and she became hyper-aware of this small, yet infinitely seductive focus of heat between them. She stopped walking and looked back, clamping her teeth into her bottom lip. James stood alone, watching them. He now turned away and fumbled in his pocket. Lighting a cigarette he began to follow the drift of other mourners back towards their cars.

‘We'd better get back. It isn't fair to keep people hanging about in this cold.' With regret she withdrew her hand.

Over the next few hours Jessica stuck close to Danny's side; she was introduced to more aunties, uncles, and cousins than she could possibly ever recall. The proceedings grew a great deal jollier than expected. Perhaps it was natural that old friends and relations should enjoy meeting up, and Piers' largesse with the alcohol helped smooth out the tensions of the occasion. By the time the party was at last breaking up, and the disparate members of the Bowman clan were departing, Jessica was beginning to wish she'd been stronger willed. She and Danny accompanied an elderly aunt and a cousin to the front door. On their way through the hall the aunt turned to her daughter.

‘Who did you say he was, Sand?' she asked, without lowering her voice.

‘Your nephew Danny, Mum. Connie's youngest.'

‘Oooh! I didn't recognise him. Danny did you say? Where are his woolly pigtails?'

‘I've had them cut off, Aunty,' Danny said loudly, as he walked them from the house to their car. Flo's voice drifted back.

‘So who's that girl, then? Someone should tell her she's got cress stuck on her nose!'

Jessica sat down on the stairs, leant her head against the Newel post, and began to laugh. James emerged into the hall from the sitting room, where the majority of the party was still gathered.

‘What are you laughing at?'

‘Relatives! I've just said goodbye to Aunty Flo and cousin Sandra. They're about to head back to their own little twig on the family tree.'

‘Ho ho. I'm about to ring Gilda. Have you made up your mind?'

‘About?'

‘Life, the universe, and everything! What do you think?'

‘Just a minute. I know the answer to that one. Forty-two!'

‘Are you driving home tonight? If you are, you can give me a lift, if you're stopping then so am I. And I'll hitch a lift with you or Imo in the morning.'

‘You don't care which?'

‘I'd be taking Imo out of her way a tad, so you're probably favourite.'

‘I'm honoured. But a please and thank you would be especially nice?'

‘Please and thank you. It would have simplified matters for me if she'd agreed to travel down in the Land Rover, but she wouldn't, so I'm stuck.'

‘You didn't have to come together. You could have brought two cars.'

‘I know you think Danny is the paragon of all things eco-friendly, which must make me, being the villain of this melodrama, the opposite, a rabid despoiler of our green and pleasant land. In reality I am well aware of my responsibilities to society and the environment. I recycle. And I share a car journey when it makes sense.'

‘Well done, that man!' Jessica said.

James looked at her critically. ‘On second thoughts, I don't think you ought to drive back tonight. I suspect you've drunk at least as much as me. You'd better stop over.'

The front door was pushed opened and Danny re-entered the house. The white shirt was damp across his shoulders and there were droplets of rain on his hair. His look flicked from one to the other in enquiry.

‘We've decided Jessica'd better take up the offer to stay tonight, so I'm sorry Dan, that means there's only one other available bed. Fight you for it!'

Danny looked thoughtful, as if considering a serious proposition. ‘I don't mind the sofa. You probably need the bed more than me. Age before –'

James' eyes narrowed. ‘You've been getting a bit fucking uppity since you turned twenty, Daniel Bowman.'

For the first time since he'd shared a bath with Rory Jess saw an unconstrained grin on Danny's face.

Few guests remained, now. Helen had begun, ostentatiously, to clear away. She stalked back and forth from dining room to kitchen and energetically clattered the dishes.

‘I'll help,' Jessica offered, and lurching only very slightly, jumped up and joined her in the kitchen. Danny offered his help, but Helen sent him away, instructing him to get rid of the hangers on.

‘How am I supposed to do that, Hel?'

‘I don't know! How about giving them your theories on the imperialism of corporate global capitalism?'

At last the plates and dishes were packed away in a carton for Grant to load into their car. And the only glasses not washed and returned to the box were those still clamped in people's hands in the sitting room. Jessica resumed her position at the bottom of the stairs. Still in the kitchen with Piers, Helen grew increasingly agitated and short tempered.

‘What's up, Hel old love?' he enquired. ‘Pre-menstrual? Leave the rest. Ray and Sheila off soon enough. Giving Aunty Rose a lift.'

‘But it's getting late and I wanted to talk about the will. Before I go! This evening!'

‘What's to talk about? You don't like it, but wishes made fucking plain. Can't argue.'

‘What about Mum? Her share of the property?'

‘He had power of attorney.'

‘But surely that's lapsed with his death? Can't the provisions of the will be challenged?'

‘Farm inherited. Mother's name not on deeds. Dispose of it as he wanted, far as I know. Not like she's un-provided for. We didn't know about the insurance. But there's plenty, properly invested, to see her out. Don't worry about Mother!'

‘I'm not worried about Mother, I'm worried about me. I thought at the very least the property would be shared.'

‘I don't fucking want any of it!'

‘You might not, but … Danny! Why's he left it all to Danny? What's he going to do with it?'

As the voices rose in the kitchen Danny came out into the hallway. Perhaps he'd heard his name. His eyes met Jessica's briefly.

‘Come on, Hel! Be fair! You know how Dad felt about this place. He knew Danny loved it. He's the only one who's followed in Dad's footsteps, who's got a feeling for the land. And he's the only one who hasn't got any-fucking-thing else!'

‘But can you imagine? Daniel? Trying to cope with running a farm … on his own! Farmers with bloody honours degrees in agriculture can't make a living out of farming these days!'

‘What did you think was going to happen?'

‘I thought he'd leave it to you and me. Then it could be sold and the money split.'

‘I don't need it!'

‘I bloody do!'

James had now come out into the hallway. He shut the door firmly behind him. Danny was standing transfixed, eyes on the half open kitchen door.

‘Bit unseemly.' James said in a quiet aside to Jessica. ‘Piers always did have a voice that carried, and she sounds a tad too close to hysteria for comfort.'

‘The expression “not cold in the grave” comes to mind,' Jess contributed.

In the kitchen Piers continued in a quieter, more placatory tone.

‘Dad loved him, brought him up as his own. I swear Danny hasn't the faintest idea!'

‘That he wasn't even related to Dad? Just proves what a div he is! Laughable really, he's been the most miserable of us all about his death. Yet he scoops the jackpot! And he was just a bastard by-blow of Mum's! She must've already been going into early-stage dementia. Deputy-heads of girls' schools don't usually go around seducing their neighbours.'

‘I'm stopping this,' James said, pushing past Danny. ‘Shut up, you two!'

‘We don't know who seduced who, do we?' Piers continued, despite the intervention.

‘Don't bloody want to know! And she bloody paid for it, didn't she? If the dementia hadn't already started by then, having the moron tipped the balance.'

‘Shut the fuck up! Both of you. The whole fucking house can hear you! Is that what you want?' James roared at them, and silence fell at last.

There was the slight yet characteristic aroma of Danny's scent still clinging to the sheets. When Jess had come up to bed it had simply been easier to tumble in, ignoring the clean linen piled on the bedside table. Lying awake in the dark she might have enjoyed the imprint his body had left, might have found it lulling, comforting, if only … Instead every sound zipped through her like an alarm. Was that the front door? No, it was just someone going to the bathroom. Yet, despite everything, she must have slept for it was gone two in the morning and the rain still splattered against the window unremittingly.

Looking pale and pinched, Helen had left the house soon after the row, and close behind her, a carton of crockery clutched in his arms, her husband, Grant. They were followed by Ray and Sheila and Aunty Rose and the last stragglers. In the confusion of people leaving, hand-shakes, hugs, and resolutions not to leave it so long next time, no one noticed that Danny had disappeared. It was only when Piers brought through the good cognac to be shared among the remaining company, that his absence was noticed.

‘Fucking innovative!' Imogen was saying. ‘I mean, who'd have thought of mashing up cold egg, combining it with cress, and serving it between two slices of inferior bread?'

‘Did her best, old love.' Piers handed round the mismatched wine glasses he had generously charged with cognac.

‘There's got to be an art to getting the crusts to curl just so.'

‘Hel not quite up to crostini topped with prosciutto … rocket, shaved parmesan … drizzle of cold-pressed, estate-bottled, extra extra virgin …'