Next of Kin (9 page)

‘Three's a little boy,' Joe said. ‘Not a baby.'

Hughie tucked the seal comfortably under one arm, and put his thumb in.

‘Hughie—'

‘I must,' he said, round his thumb.

‘Daddy won't be pleased.'

He looked at her, still sucking, then he turned and went steadily out of the room. She heard him go along the short landing to his own bedroom, and then the sound of the flimsy door shutting decisively behind him. He would then, she knew, sit on his bean bag under his paper hat, pressing Seal to his side, and suck and suck.

Rose, bored with protest, struggled now to get down. She was a big baby, a big square baby with Meredith colouring, Meredith build. Dilys had a photograph of Joe, taken on his first birthday, dressed in a romper suit with a sailor collar, which looked astonishingly like Rose. She looked especially like him when she smiled, which was often. Bright sunshine, or thunderstorms, that was Rose. If only, Lyndsay thought, getting up to clear away Rose's dirty nappy and discarded clothes, there was a bit more sunshine about Joe these days, just a little lightness of heart, a gleam of humour. But he seemed unable to shake something off, something that dogged him and dragged him down, made him inert and silent at home, lumpy.

It was as if he had a great preoccupation, something bitter and unresolvable, that ceaselessly stalked his mind. She had tried, occasionally, asking him – diffidently because she knew nothing about farming – if there were business problems, money worries, debts.

‘No,' he'd said, flatly and firmly. ‘No. Nothing like that.' He'd sounded almost angry. ‘Nothing like that at all.'

Lyndsay left Rose crawling busily along the landing towards the gate which prevented her from falling downstairs, and which she liked to shake and shout at, and went into the bathroom to find some make-up. She looked at herself in the mirror above the basin, and caught her anxious eyes before they remembered to change their expression to something more optimistic. Well, she
was
anxious. Being married to Joe had given her far more cause for anxiety than she had ever imagined; indeed, she'd supposed that marrying a man fifteen years her senior would be a good insurance policy against anxiety. He'd seemed so certain, so calm, so big and reassuring and adult. ‘Strong and silent,' Lyndsay's mother had said, meaning it as a compliment.

It was the silence now that was the trouble. Lyndsay let her hair down and brushed its pale masses, and then piled up the top half again with combs. They'd only had one conversation that was even remotely to the point in the last few weeks, and that had been so unsatisfactory, almost surreal, that it had merely added to Lyndsay's concern. She'd said, confronting him in the utility room while he put his boots on after lunch two days ago, ‘Joe. Joe,
please.
What is the matter?'

He'd grunted, tugging at the laces.

‘What's eating you? What's getting at you?'

‘Nothing.'

‘Yes, it is. It
is.
You'll hardly speak to us and you sit staring at the telly in the evening like a zombie. Is it the farm?'

He shrugged and stood up. Lyndsay darted past him and stood with her back against the outside door. She said again, ‘Is it the farm?'

Joe pushed the poppers together up the front of his boiler suit.

‘Maybe.'

‘Oh Joe, tell me. It doesn't matter what it is, but
tell
me!'

He put his hands out and took hold of her shoulders. Then, very gently but firmly, he moved her away from the door.

‘I've always had it too easy,' Joe said, not looking at her. ‘Always. And now the farm is hard.'

She cried out, ‘Because of Caro? Because of Caro dying?'

He looked at her penetratingly for a moment, and then he put his hand on the door handle and turned it.

‘I don't know,' he said impatiently. ‘Why should I know a thing like that?'

And then he had opened the door and gone out, almost running.

Lyndsay opened the bathroom cupboard and took out a pot of grey eyeshadow and a brush. She'd been trained as a beautician, with dreams of opening her own salon, when she met Joe. She'd never been so attracted to anybody in her life – she wouldn't have cared what he did for a living. Farming, about which she knew nothing, seemed a wonderful idea; he was so good at it, the first farmer in their district to get three and a half tons to the acre, he'd be around all day, she'd see him, be with him. But the reality was different. He was never around. She felt, almost from the beginning, that she had no claim on him. Their first Christmas Day, their very first Christmas together, he'd gone top-dressing all the daylight hours, because the weather and the soil conditions were right. When she had protested, he'd said, ‘I can't waste it, Lyn. I can't waste the time and the money.'

She took another brush out of the cupboard, for lipgloss. It was comforting, doing this, performing this practised ritual of painting and shading and blending. Along the landing Rose was bellowing and banging the stairgate, but she was loving it, loving the noise. Lyndsay's mother said Rose was out of control. She was right, Lyndsay reflected, drawing the brush round the curve of her lower lip, Rose was out of control, quite a long way out, but then so was Joe, her wonderful Joe, who was, quite simply, her world – and she didn't know in the least what to do about either of them.

From her kitchen window, Dilys watched Judy drive into the yard at Dean Place Farm, in Robin's car, and stop it, rather awkwardly, by the shed where Dilys used to keep the poultry feed. The yard at Dean Place had been full of poultry once, forty or fifty rare breeds like Welsummers and Leghorns and Old Dutch Bantams. Dilys had won prizes at poultry shows, notably with her Black Orpingtons. But those busy times were long gone. The yard lay swept and bare these days, ornamented only, in summer, with two tubs of geraniums in municipal scarlet, ferocious both in colour and regimented tidiness.

Judy's friend looked to Dilys very odd. She got out of the car and stood looking interestedly about her, her cropped head turning this way and that. She wore those legging things that Dilys so lamented seeing the village people in, and a peculiar top, partly a jacket and partly a sort of tunic, that put Dilys in mind of a drawing of the Pied Piper of Hamelin she'd had in an illustrated poetry book when she was a child. Judy had on black jeans and a long green sweater with a gauzy-looking scarf wound high at the neck. Dilys liked to see Judy in green. In her opinion, green was an appropriate colour for redheads. It was nice to see Judy with a friend, too, and even she, Dilys, had learned that in the modern world you couldn't judge by appearances as you could in the old days, you just had to wait for people to reveal themselves. That is, if they chose to.

She went to the back door and opened it, joined by Harry's old springer spaniel, now promoted to house dog since his shooting days were over.

‘Granny,' Judy said. She bent forward to kiss Dilys and caught the scent of laundry and flour that had been Dilys's for as long as Judy could remember. ‘This is Zoe.'

‘Hello, dear,' Dilys said. She held out a hand.

‘Hello,' Zoe said. She was smiling. She had smiled most of the weekend. ‘It's great here,' she kept saying to Judy. ‘Isn't it? Why don't you think it's great?'

‘Come on in,' Dilys said. ‘I've got the kettle on.'

‘We've just had tea,' Judy said. ‘With Lyndsay.'

Dilys shot her a look.

‘Did you see Joe?'

‘No. He was working. Why?'

Dilys said, ‘He's a bit down in the dumps. That's all.' ‘I'm worried sick,' she'd said to Harry the night before, making their bedtime tea. ‘I really am. He's miles away. It isn't natural.'

She put the lid on the teapot.

‘It isn't as if there's anything to worry about. Not on the farm. I do the books, after all. I should know.' She lifted the pot. ‘The books balance nicely. Like they always have.'

She led the way into the kitchen. A blue-checked cloth had been laid at one end of the long table, and on it was a plate of shortbread, arranged in a fan.

‘Granny, I don't think—'

‘I'm sure you can manage another cup of tea,' Dilys said. She looked at Zoe and then gave a little nod in the direction of the shortbread. ‘I made that this morning.'

‘Brilliant,' Zoe said, ‘I'm eating all day here. I had two breakfasts so I don't see why I shouldn't have two teas.' She sat down at the table and put her elbows comfortably on the blue-checked cloth. ‘I never had tea to eat in my life before anyway.'

‘How did you find your father?' Dilys said to Judy, pouring boiling water into the brown-glazed teapot banded with flowers on a cream background that was so familiar to Judy it almost hurt to look at it.

‘I don't really know,' Judy said, ‘it's so difficult to tell. He's pretty thin.'

‘I send a hot meal down there every day,' Dilys said reprovingly. ‘And he gives it to the cat. Velma finds the plate on the kitchen floor in the morning.'

Zoe helped herself to a piece of shortbread, biting into it and scattering crumbs.

‘Why should he eat,' Zoe said, ‘if he's grieving?'

Dilys's lips tightened. This was speaking out of turn.

‘He's a working man,' she said to Zoe, putting the teapot down on the table on a mat of linked wooden beads.

Zoe said, quite undismayed, ‘Doesn't mean he isn't a feeling one, too.'

‘If you're a farmer,' Dilys said firmly, ‘you can't give in. You can't give way to things. Time and tide wait for no man.'

Judy, taking a chair opposite to Zoe's, tried to catch her eye and motion her to shut up.

‘He isn't giving in,' Zoe said, ignoring Judy, ‘he is going on. But he's suffering. You can see it.'

‘Zoe—' Judy said.

‘You should know,' Zoe said, turning her big gaze on Judy. ‘You should sympathize with him.'

Judy looked down. Dilys began to pour tea out of the brown pot into cups patterned with Indian pheasants that had been part of her wedding service. She disapproved of mugs. Harry was only permitted a mug mid-morning, when he came in from getting in Joe's way about the place, and arguing about modern methods of doing things. ‘You mustn't upset Joe,' Dilys said to him, over and over again. ‘Joe knows what he's doing. Joe thinks long-term which is more than you've ever done.' She didn't want Harry's elderly obstinacy being a clog upon Joe, or a trouble to him. Dilys had always been able to bear trouble for Harry or for Robin, but trouble for Joe made her flinch, as if the skin of her feelings had been flayed.

‘We don't talk of suffering here, dear,' she said. ‘We don't indulge our feelings. We're practical people.'

Zoe looked round the kitchen, shabby but spotless, crammed with objects all in order, each cup and jug upon its appointed hook.

‘Yes. I can see.' Her voice was quite neutral.

‘It may be the farm,' Judy said quickly. ‘He had a bad day at market on Thursday. He had to bring three calves back because they were scouring. Or so the auctioneer said.'

Dilys clicked her tongue. She pushed the shortbread towards Zoe.

‘Do you work with Judy, dear?'

‘No,' Zoe said, ‘I'm a photographer. At least, I'm learning to be.'

She'd got up at five-thirty that morning to take pictures of Gareth in the milking parlour, the double line of great black-and-white bodies with the snaking hoses of the milking machine and the big glass jars filling visibly with milk, warm and off-white. Gareth had liked having her there, had been perfectly happy to pose when she asked him to, fitting on the clusters, spraying the teat afterwards, driving the column of cows back out into the yard and the pale new morning light. She'd worn a boiler suit like his; she'd just found it outside her door when she went to the lavatory at five-thirty-five, folded up on the floor with a pair of thick marbled wool socks, the kind her father had worn with the heavy shoes he preferred. She supposed Robin had left them there. If so, it showed a real but minimal approach to human relations that Zoe appreciated.

She said now, to Dilys, to soothe Judy, ‘I took pictures in the milking parlour this morning. And some of Lyndsay's little kids just now. That's a lovely little boy.'

‘He is,' Dilys said. ‘Takes after his mother to look at. Now Rose is a real Meredith. A Meredith through and through.'

Judy picked up her teacup and bent her face into it. She wanted to go, wanted this strange and awkward little occasion to be over, to get Zoe away to a place where she couldn't break the rules she didn't even know existed. You could see Dilys was disconcerted by Zoe, and therefore did not care either for her appearance or her outspokenness. Lyndsay had warned her it would happen.

‘Don't alarm Granny,' she'd said.

‘I can't help it. We've got to go.'

She said now, her face still bent into the warm steam of her teacup, ‘Where's Grandpa?'

‘Hedging,' Dilys said. ‘The ten-acre. He wanted to pull the hedge up to make ploughing easier right across but Joe wouldn't let him. Says he's got to put the headlands back, too.'

Judy put her teacup down and stood up.

‘Maybe we'll go and find him.'

‘He'd like that,' Dilys said. ‘You can take him a new flask of tea. He'll have drunk his.' She looked across at Zoe. ‘Nice to meet you, dear.'

Zoe looked back.

‘You, too,' she said.

‘Jesus,' Judy said, turning the car out of the yard. ‘Sorry about that.'