Close Relations (46 page)

When she replaced the receiver Louise immediately regretted the message. How abrupt it had sounded! But she couldn't undo it now.

Two days passed before April could bring herself to listen to the answerphone. She replayed the messages. They rolled off her like drops of mercury. What did any of it matter now? She paused for a moment. Then she pressed OGM Play.

‘
Gordon Hammond here. We're not home . . .
' She thought: typical Gordon, putting himself first. Her eyes filled with
tears. She pressed Eject. She took out the tape and put Gordon's voice into her pocket to keep for ever.

The coffin slid into the furnace. The curtains closed the little show that was Gordon's life. They paused halfway, as if hesitating; then they made up their mind and swished together, swinging gently. Gordon had not been a religious man, he hadn't had time to believe in God. He slid into the unknown to a recording of
Bali Ha'i,
his favourite song from
South Pacific.

His daughters, to their surprise, shuddered with tears at this point. Until then they had coped. They sat squashed together, passing each other tissues. Robert, who had arrived late from work, sat behind them. Afterwards, they drove back to the house in Wandsworth, where, in the half-decorated dining room, April had laid out food and drink.

It was a strange gathering, for they had regressed back a step. Eric and Deirdre were not present; nor were Stephen and Erin, ghosts who had briefly entered their lives and vanished. Their family had reverted to its original cast of characters, to how they'd been before everything had changed. Yet the room was filled with people-shaped spaces – those from the past and those who would be the future. And the largest space of all was the space that had been Gordon.

They stood around awkwardly. Louise passed Robert a glass of wine. ‘How's Dollis Hill?' She looked at him warily. ‘Are you happy there, in your own little way?'

‘Can we be friends?' he asked. ‘Please?'

Prudence, munching a chicken leg, was talking to her mother: ‘What sort of little business?'

‘Something in the country. Something Eric and I can do together.'

Imogen said: ‘Why don't you take over the village shop?'

They turned and looked at her.

Outside, the sun came out. Buttercups were flowering
amongst the tall grasses that nobody had cut. April opened the french windows. Dorothy came up to her. ‘I was just wondering – did he hear my phone message? Was he upset?'

April shook her head. ‘No, it was me who killed him. By asking him to dance.' She refilled Dorothy's glass. ‘Shall we get pissed?'

‘Shall we?'

‘One day he told me he wanted his ashes to be scattered in the Lake District,' said April. ‘Where you courted. He said you would know the place.'

‘Did he?'

April nodded.

Just then there was the sound of hammering. It came from upstairs. They fell silent.

‘It's Gordon,' said Robert. ‘He just had to finish fixing that skirting board before he left.'

‘No,' said Jamie, ‘he's knocking at the Pearly Gates.
Let me in! I've been hanging around here for bloody hours
.'

‘I think he's in heaven already,' said Imogen, ‘and he's starting to sort it out.'

‘You're right,' said April. ‘That was his idea of heaven.'

‘He's saying
I'll get the lads in
. . .'

‘Got a nasty damp patch there, must be all those clouds . . .'

‘Roll over, Beethoven, got to get to work . . .'

They laughed. The atmosphere thawed, for funerals can be surprisingly boisterous occasions. April explained that it was a local plumber hammering away upstairs, but Imogen, her head cocked, was listening to the tattoo of her blacksmith, who in her case had died whilst creating life.

April put on some music. Robert pushed back the table and took his daughter in his arms. Frank the foreman grabbed Dorothy and April kicked back the rug and led Jamie into the middle of the room. They danced, and then the song changed and Robert took Louise into his arms. They had always danced well together. Robert pushed Louise's hair back from her face, which weeping had washed bare, and after a while she relaxed in his arms and moved with him around the floor.

And then they all stopped and drank a toast to Gordon, who had had the last dance of all. April tapped her glass for silence. Later, when they thought of her, this was the image they remembered – April ablaze in a red satin suit, her hair pulled back with silver clips; a woman who radiated life.

She said: ‘I just want to tell you I'll be packing up tomorrow. You can have the house, it was never really mine, to tell the truth, it never felt like it. I've got this friend, you see, she's matron at an old people's home, it might sound funny but I prefer nursing old people –' She stopped. ‘Maybe it's not so surprising. Anyway, she's asked me to join the staff so –' She pointed to the table. ‘Eat, drink and be merry – be merry, please, Gordon would have wanted that.' She smiled. ‘And one day, who knows? If you need me, I'll be waiting for you.'

A YEAR HAD
passed. It was a cloudless Saturday in May and Maddy was working in the garden. Neither she nor her sisters had liked the shrubs; they had seemed sooty and lifeless, atrophied in somebody else's past. She had pulled them out and now she was planting a herbaceous border. She lifted the plants from their pots, cradling their matted roots. Each plant she willed into its new home. A blackbird sang from the flowering cherry; the petals drifted onto the grass like snow.

At the end of the garden stood the caravan. Inside it, Allegra sat doing her homework. The caravan was her secret place, its dwarfish furniture absorbed her hopes and dreams as it had absorbed those of her almost-aunts. She was happy here, living in Wandsworth with her almost-family. For they had earned her love through loving her, rather than bearing her, and it was her mother now who arrived on Sundays, as Aziz had used to do, to take her out.

Aziz considered it Chekhovian; the three sisters living in a house that sopped up outsiders like a sponge. People drifted in and out – Jamie's friends from York, Aziz, who spent most evenings there. He and Prudence had a tender, cautious understanding; they treated each carefully, like breakable china. Maybe one day they would move out and live together but this present arrangement seemed charmed for they were alone, yet not alone, and the presence of children released them from their spinsterly habits.

Imogen and her baby were lying on the grass. Imogen, like Allegra, was doing her homework. In a month she would be
taking her A levels. Aziz was drawing up plans for their new kitchen and Prudence was unpacking her weekend's pile of manuscripts. This studious atmosphere was broken by the baby's yells. Louise dumped down her shopping, went outside and scooped up the baby in her arms. She held her, swaying in the sunshine.

Prudence picked up the manuscript.
Home Truths
by Erin Fox. She sat down in the armchair and turned to the first page.

‘
Once upon a time there were three sisters – Isobelle, Effie and Vida
. . .'

Prudence looked out of the window. Louise twirled the baby round and round in a snowdrift of petals.

‘
Isobelle was the sweet one, the pretty one, the good little girl who wanted to grow up and have babies
. . .'

Outside in the garden the little Louise sat playing with her dolls. How gold her hair shone in the sunlight! She tucked up her favourite doll, Mary-Belle, in a tea-doth and laid her on the grass . . .

‘
Effie was the bookworm, the clever one. And Vida? Vida was the tomboy
. . .'

The blackbird's song echoed down the years. Out in the garden, Maddy, square and determined, trundled her bulldozer across the grass. She drove it over Pru's open Enid Blyton book – how Prudence yelled! She drove it over Lou's doll, except it wouldn't go over, it pushed the doll along the ground – how Lou screamed! . . .

On the green, the kids were playing football. Their yells drifted through the open door of the General Stores, where Eric was serving a customer four portions of his salmon and spinach roulade. The shop was thriving because the inhabitants of Wingham Wallace were busy, achieving people; they commuted to London, they worked in PR, they had Agas but no time to cook in them and so they flocked to the shop, where they purchased Eric's delicacies and served
them at dinner parties, passing them off as their own, or ate them, exhausted, in front of the TV and washed them down with one of his New World sauvignons, for he had an excellent stock of wine. At last they had a shop which understood them, they said.

Dorothy was selling stamps to the new occupant of Louise's house, a woman to whom she had taken an instant dislike. The woman asked: ‘Tell me, did your daughter have any trouble with rabbits?'

‘Rabbits?' asked Dorothy, giving her some change.

‘We're simply overrun with the things. Had the garden done, cost a fortune, and they're eating it down to the ground.'

‘As I remember, she did have a troublesome buck,' replied Dorothy, ‘but God knows what happened to him.'

It was dark when Prudence finished the manuscript. Supper was over. Aziz had lit the fire and the others were sprawled around the living room watching TV.

‘
. . . So the three sisters lived happily ever after. Or so they thought, for they didn't realise that this was just the beginning
.'

She laid down the last page. Maddy looked up. ‘What's that you've been reading?'

‘Erin's new novel.'

‘Is it any good?'

Prudence shrugged. She got to her feet and went over to the fireplace. She fed the manuscript, page by page, into the fire. The flames leaped, illuminating her sisters' faces as they turned, briefly, to watch. Then they turned back to the TV. Monty, lying on the hearthrug, thumped his tail.

Read on for the first chapter of Deborah Moggach's brilliant new novel
Something to Hide

I'll tell you how the last one ended. I was watching the news and eating supper off a tray. There was an item about a methane explosion, somewhere in Lincolnshire. A barn full of cows had blown up, killing several animals and injuring a stockman. It's the farting, apparently.

I missed someone with me to laugh at this. To laugh, and shake our heads about factory farming. To share the bottle of wine I was steadily emptying. I wondered if Alan would ever move in. This was hard to imagine. What did he feel about factory farming? I hadn't a clue.

And then, there he was. On the TV screen. A reporter was standing outside the Eurostar terminal, something about an incident in the tunnel. Passengers were milling around behind him. Amongst them was Alan.

He was with a woman. Just a glimpse and he was gone.

I'm off to see me bruv down in Somerset. Look after yourself, love, see you Tuesday.

Just a glimpse but I checked later, on iPlayer. I reran the news and stopped it at that moment. Alan turning towards the woman and mouthing something at her. She was young, needless to say, much younger than me, and wearing a red padded jacket. Chavvy, his sort. Her stilled face, eyebrows raised. Then they were gone, swallowed up in the crowd.

See you Tuesday and I'll get that plastering done by the end of the week.

Don't fuck the help. For when it ends, and it will, you'll find yourself staring at a half-plastered wall with wires dangling like entrails and a heap of rubble in the corner. And he nicked my power drill.

Before him, and the others, I was married. I have two grown-up children but they live in Melbourne and Seattle, as far away as they could go. Of course there's scar tissue but I miss them with a physical pain of which they are hopefully unaware. Neediness is even more unattractive in the old than in the young. Their father has long since remarried. He has a corporate Japanese wife who thinks I'm a flake. Neurotic, needy, borderline alcoholic. I can see it in the swing of her shiny black hair. For obvious reasons, I keep my disastrous love-life to myself.

I'm thinking of buying a dog. It would gaze at me moistly, its eyes filled with unconditional love. This is what lonely women long for, as they turn sixty. I would die with my arms around a cocker spaniel, there are worse ways to go.

Three months have passed and Alan is a distant humiliation. I need to find another builder to finish off the work in the basement, then I can re-let it, but I'm seized with paralysis and can't bring myself to go down the stairs. I lived in it when I was young, you see, and just arrived in London. Years later I bought the house, and tenants downstairs have come and gone, but now the flat has been stripped bare those early years are suddenly vivid. I can remember it like yesterday, the tights drying in front of the gas fire, the sex and smoking, the laughter. To descend now into that chilly tomb, with its dust and debris – I don't have the energy.

Now I sound like a depressive but I'm not. I'm just a woman longing for love. I'm tired of being put in the back seat of the car when I go out with a couple. I'm tired of internet dates with balding men who talk about golf –
golf
. I'm tired of coming home to silent rooms, everything as I left it, the
Marie Celeste
of the solitary female. Was Alan the last man I shall ever lie with, naked in my arms?

This is how I am, at this moment. Darkness has fallen. In the windows of the flats opposite, faces are illuminated by their laptops. I have the feeling that we are all fixed here, at this point in time, as motionless as the Bonnard lady in the print on my wall. Something must jolt me out of this stupor, it's too pathetic for words. In front of me is a bowl of Bombay mix; I've worked my way through it. Nothing's left but the peanuts, my least favourite.