Moonshine

‘I’ll get a taxi from the station.’

‘This is not the time to start throwing money about when I’ve the fruits of your mother’s confounded carelessness to pay for. That damned clinic charges the earth.’ Nor were reports of the general standards of hygiene of the Cutham Down Nursing Home encouraging. But my father presumably thought it was worth paying for a superior sort of dirt.

‘I’ll come tomorrow on the ten-fifteen.’

‘You’ll come today, my girl, or I’ll know the reason why!’

There followed an unpleasant exchange which bordered on a row. A compromise was reached and I went down to Sussex late that afternoon.

‘How are you, Mummy?’

A temporary bedroom had been made of the morning room, ill chosen as such for it faced due north and was perpetually in shade.

My mother opened her eyes and sighed. ‘Terrible. Can’t sleep.’

‘Were they kind to you in the nursing home?’

‘They were harridans.’ Her voice was alarmingly weak but she managed to get a little emphasis on the last word. ‘Ill mannered. Coarse and stupid. Like being nursed by a gang of Irish road-menders.’

‘What a good thing you were able to come home early.’

‘They said I ought to stay in at least until the stitches were taken out. But your father insisted on my being discharged. It’s ninety pounds a day.’

Her skin was lined and greyish. Her gooseberry-green eyes were reproachful and her mouth quivered with resentment.

‘Poor Mummy.’ I bent to kiss her and stroke her once pretty, fair hair from her forehead. ‘Does it hurt very much?’

‘Don’t pull me about.’ She jerked her head away. ‘You know how I hate it. It’s perfect agony, if you want to know.’

I looked around the sickroom, noticing that the grey and white-striped paper was beginning to peel at the cornice, that the Turkey carpet had a hole in it and the bed on which my mother lay was propped up at one corner by a stack of books.

‘This is such a dismal room.’ I put an extra brightness into my voice to compensate. ‘We must see what we can do to cheer it up. I’ve brought you some flowers.’

She looked at the bunch of exquisite pink and green-striped parrot tulips I held out, then turned her eyes away. ‘I prefer to see flowers growing out of doors where Nature intended them.’

My eye travelled through the window to where Brough was hacking with uncontrolled fury at some spotted laurels, growing in a landscape of dank shrubbery and sour grass.

‘I’ve brought you some chocolate. Walnut whips. Your favourite.’

My mother closed her eyes and screwed up her face. ‘It’s easy to see you’ve never been ill. In the state I’m in, rich food is simply poison.’

‘I’ve also brought the latest Jeanette Dickinson-Scott.’

‘I expect I’ve already read it.’ Her eyes opened. ‘What’s it called?’

I looked at the cover on which was a painting of a Regency belle in a low-cut purple dress, with powdered hair and a loo mask. ‘Amazon in Lace.’

‘Who’s in it?’

I flicked through the pages. ‘Someone called Lady Araminta. And her guardian Lord Willoughby Savage. He’s got sardonic eyebrows, long sensitive fingers and a jagged cicatrice from cheekbone to—’

‘You may as well give it to me.’ My mother’s hand appeared from beneath the bed cover. When I looked in, half an hour later, she was reading hard and sucking the top of a walnut whip.

After that the days had crawled by at an invalid pace. There was plenty to do but only things of a most unrewarding kind. Cutham Down, once a village, now a small town, was in a part of Sussex that had a micro-climate of bitter east winds and exceptionally high rainfall. After my maternal great-grandfather had amassed a fortune bottling things in vinegar – ‘Pickford’s Pickles Perfectly Preserved’ was the slogan – he had sold the factory and applied himself to the serious business of becoming a country squire. In the 1880s Cutham Hall had been a pleasing two-storey Georgian house with a separate stable block set in the middle of forty acres. This had not been grand enough to suit my great-grandfather’s newly acquired notions of self-consequence so he had added a top storey and thrown out two wings, at once destroying the elegant façade and making the house unmanageably large.

Cutham Hall had ten bedrooms, most of which had not been slept in for decades, and a number of badly furnished rooms downstairs in which no one ever sat. My father lived in what he called his ‘library’, a room of mean proportions which housed the remains of the various hobbies that he had run through. There were drawers of butterflies and beetles pinned on to boards. There was a sad red squirrel with a crooked tail, his first and only attempt at taxidermy. In a cupboard were his guns and fishing rods. On the walls were photographs of meets at Cutham Hall from the period when he had been enthusiastic about hunting. No books, of course. He was really only interested in amusements that involved killing things.

Oliver and I spent most of our time in the kitchen where there was an ancient lumpy sofa by the Aga and a television, ostensibly ‘for the servants’. We had no indoor servants unless Mrs Treadgold, our daily, counted as one. She had a twenty-eight-inch colour television in her tidy, warm, watertight bungalow and would have scorned to watch anything on our tiny flickering black-and-white set with its bent coat-hanger aerial.

For about three days after my return home, Mrs Treadgold and I diligently dusted and vacuumed the ancestral acres of mahogany and carpet. I could tell by the quantities of cobwebs and dead flies that they were unaccustomed to so much attention. Then, by tacit agreement, exhausted by labour that was as dreary as it was pointless, we closed the doors on the unused rooms and allowed them to sleep peacefully on beneath a fresh film of dust. I took over the cooking and shopping while Mrs Treadgold cleaned the few rooms we lived in. Between us we looked after my mother.

My chief duty was to keep her supplied with books and, as she read all day and half the night, I was constantly on the road between our house and the four libraries in the county to which she was a subscriber. Her taste was for romantic fiction. I had my name down for every novel that had the words ‘love’, ‘heart’, ‘kiss’, ‘bride’, ‘sweet’ or ‘surrender’ in the title.

‘I’ve read this,’ my mother said during the second week of my servitude, casting my latest offering aside. ‘Don’t you remember? You got it out last week.’

‘Can’t you read it again?’

‘I know what happens in the end.’

‘Of course you do. The handsome titled hero subdues the heroine’s pride and spirit until she loves him so much she’s prepared to let him do unutterably filthy things to her despite her natural disinclination. That’s always going to be the ending. She’s never going to go off with the good-natured wall-eyed coachman or decide she’d rather run a dress shop.’

But my mother affected not to be listening. ‘You can ask Treadgold to bring my tea now. And tell her not to slop it in the saucer. That woman’s so clumsy, she could get a job at the nursing home easily. You’d better go and see what Brough is doing. Now I’m lying here helpless I suppose the place is falling to rack and ruin.’

‘It looks fine,’ I lied. ‘You mustn’t worry about it. Just concentrate on getting better.’

My mother threw me a sidelong glance of annoyance. It occurred to me then that she much preferred lying in bed and being waited on to the unremitting slog of trying to run a large decaying house with severely limited funds. I could sympathize with this. I went to see Brough as instructed.

The forty acres my great-grandfather had begun with had shrunk to four as parcels of land had been sold piecemeal during the last hundred years to prop up a pretentious style lived on an insufficient income. Most of the remaining acreage had been given over to shrubbery which required little attention. Brough had a comfortable arrangement in the greenhouse with a chair, a radio and a kettle by the stove where he sat for hours on end, no doubt brooding over his thralldom. On this occasion I found him actually out of doors, spraying something evil-smelling over hybrid tea roses of a hideous flaunting red.

‘Wouldn’t they look rather better if they had something growing between them?’ I suggested, hoping to strike a note of fellowship with this remote, furious being. ‘Perhaps some hardy geraniums or violas—’

‘This is a rose-bed.’ Brough’s angry little eyes were contemptuous.

‘Yes, but it needn’t be just roses …’

‘The Major wouldn’t like it.’

The Major was my father.

‘How do you know he wouldn’t?’

‘Because he told me. He said, “Brough, whatever you do, don’t go planting anything between them roses. Over my dead body.”’

One cannot call someone a liar without disagreeable consequences. I walked angrily away and set myself the task of weeding the stone urns on the terrace. A harvest of bittercress shot seeds into the cracks between the stones as I worked, there to take ineradicable root and, just as I finished, the handle of one of the urns dropped off and smashed, leaving two large holes through which the sandy earth trickled on to my shoes in a steady stream. I went indoors.

My brother Oliver, the fourth inmate of this unhappy house, threatened daily to shake the plentiful dust of home from his feet. He was twenty, nearly six years younger than me, and could certainly have done so without anyone objecting. I think my father might even have been willing to drive him to the station himself, had he been convinced that Oliver would board the train. Oliver was currently an aspiring novelist. He was working on something satirical about a Swiftian character who, like the fortunate Dean, was adored by two equally desirable women. Despite having completed a mere ten pages Oliver was convinced that this was to be his passport to success and a new life. I loved my brother dearly and to see him struggling to maintain a fragile self-confidence was painful. I already knew the plot of Sunbeams from Cucumbers backwards and it seemed promising.

‘It’s all in the writing, you see,’ he explained, lying full-length on the sofa after a lonely afternoon of creation, while I peeled potatoes for supper.

It was three weeks after my return and my mother had not yet managed to totter further than to the commode set up for her in the corner of the morning room. I was sinking into a lethargic despondency at the prospective length of my term of servitude.

‘You know the saying “kill your darlings”?’ Oliver went on. ‘I think it was Hemingway who said it. Well, as soon as I write anything that seems any good, I have to destroy it immediately. So, naturally, it takes a while to get a page done.’

‘You’re sure you aren’t taking it too literally?’ I put the saucepan on to boil. ‘I mean, if you only keep the bits that aren’t any good, isn’t that defeating the object?’

‘It means you must cut out the showy, self-conscious passages.’ Oliver licked out the bowl in which I had made a batter for apple fritters. School and the army had bred in my father a taste for nursery food which meant that solid English puddings, of the kind that require custard, were obligatory at lunch and supper. ‘My problem is that to lose self-consciousness I have to be drunk. But not so drunk that I can’t hold the pen. It’s a delicate balance. You’ve no idea what a serious writer has to suffer.’ As he said this at least twice a day I felt I was beginning to get a pretty good idea.

It was unfortunate that alcohol did not agree with Oliver. He had tried beer, whisky, wine, sherry, even crème de menthe, but they all made him wretchedly ill. He was a handsome boy with dark, almost black hair, a large, slightly bulging forehead, which gave him the appearance of a solemn child, a sensitive, girlish mouth and my mother’s green eyes which, because of the drinking, were matched by his complexion. On bad days his skin was the colour of a leaf.

‘I think this place is part of the trouble,’ he went on to say as I cut corned beef into cubes for a hash. ‘How can one be inspired when living in an atmosphere of intellectual aridity and Pecksniffian hypocrisy? That tosh Mother reads is atrophying her brain. She’s so miserable with Father that she can’t bear to live in the real world. I sometimes wonder where Father’s getting his spiritual nourishment. I can’t believe being beastly to his children and kicking Brough around is quite enough even for a man with the mental acuity of a wood louse.’

‘I can answer that as it happens. I drove into Worping this morning to see if Bowser’s had any new romances and afterwards I stopped at the Kardomah for a cup of coffee. While I was there Father came in. That was strange enough but what made it even odder was that he was with a woman.’

‘No!’ Oliver swung his legs round to sit up, his green face lit by excitement. ‘What was she like? And what did he say when he saw you?’

‘I was sitting in the corner behind a sort of trellis screen covered with plastic ivy. I could see them quite clearly by peering between the leaves but he never knew I was there. I heard every word they said.’

‘Go on!’

‘She was asking him about Mother. Father said she’d do a lot better if she put some damned effort into it, instead of lolling about, filling her head with rubbish. He never let illness get him down, he said. If he had anything wrong with him he always went out for a brisk walk over the Downs and blew it away. I don’t suppose a brisk walk would do Mother’s broken hip any good at all.’ I paused in the act of chopping onions to wipe my stinging eyes.

‘Don’t stop now!’

‘She said something about being sure he was a brave man. He couldn’t have done what he did in the war unless he’d been really courageous.’

‘So he didn’t tell her about being sent home with a bad case of Tobruk tummy to a desk job in Devizes. What was the woman like?’

‘In her fifties, plump, hennaed hair, a lot of make-up and jewellery. Her name’s Ruby. Not his usual type. Apparently they’re having dinner on Friday at the Majestic in Brighton. She was quite excited and giggly about it. She must have had a sad life if dinner with our father is her idea of fun.’

Oliver gave a bitter laugh. ‘So he’s got a bit of rough on the side. How drearily unoriginal. I wonder if he pays her?’

‘Actually I thought she was rather too good for him. She spoke kindly about Mother. She seemed concerned. And when Dad ticked her off for saying “serviette” – he’s such a hideous snob – she looked crushed. I felt sorry for her.’

‘The old bastard! And when I think what a fuss he made about Gaylene!’ Gaylene was a girl who had worked the petrol pumps at a garage in a neighbouring village of whom Oliver had been much enamoured. ‘He had the nerve to call her a draggle-tailed slut. I’ve a good mind to leave tomorrow!’

I seized the moment. ‘I think you should, darling, though you know I’ll miss you like anything. I’ll ring David this minute and ask him if you can come and stay.’ David was an ex-boyfriend of mine, with a flat in Pimlico, who had offered this boon when last I had discussed the problem of Oliver with him.

We sat up until one in the morning detailing plans for Oliver’s escape. David professed himself willing to harbour the son of Hemingway, provided I would have dinner with him the following week. This was no hardship as I was still fond of David, though only in a sisterly way. I went to bed feeling glad that this depressing episode of my life would not be entirely unproductive of good after all.

When I knocked on Oliver’s door the next morning, having got up at the ghastly hour of six to drive him to the station, there was no answer. I went in. The alarm clock was on its back in the farthest corner of the room and Oliver had both pillows over his head. He became almost violent when I tried to drag him out of bed. He came down to lunch in his dressing-gown and was bathed and dressed by four. By this time he had decided that as he’d had a brilliant idea for the novel he had better spend the rest of the day working and go up to London the following morning. This became the pattern for the next three days.

After that I cancelled the arrangement with David, except for the dinner as this would have seemed unattractively opportunistic. I tried to resign myself to the fact that I was powerless to help Oliver. The only good I could do him was to encourage him to go on writing. I made myself available for any amount of pep-talking and amateur psychotherapy. I bought him vitamin pills and sent him out for walks to catch whatever daylight was left. But all my efforts amounted to little. The novel proceeded at a rate of a couple of sentences a day. The truth was that Oliver was afraid to go. Some part of him clung desperately to home, hoping that even now he might be blessed by some vivifying drops from the fount of parental love.

‘Mm … Kit?’ I muttered thickly, my mouth crammed with doughnut. ‘If you’re a literary agent, I suppose you help novelists get published, do you? I mean, I happen to know someone who’s written this absolutely brilliant book. It’s practically finished, and I can assure you it’s quite exceptionally good, only he needs some professional help. You know, whom to send it to, what to say in the letter, perhaps even a friendly eye cast over the text and a few constructive hints?’

Kit was silent for a moment or two and something like a sigh escaped him. It occurred to me that probably a great many people had approached him with just such a request.

‘It’s a cheek to ask, I know,’ I said humbly, ‘and of course I’ll pay you, but … Well, it’s my brother, actually, and of course you’ll think I’m prejudiced—’

‘Your brother? In that case, the services of Roderick, Random and Co. are yours, willing and gratis.’

‘Oh, how kind!’ I felt a gush of enthusiasm for this stranger who had not only plucked me from the verge of shipwreck, warmed me and fed me but now offered to help rescue my darling brother with at least an appearance of eagerness. ‘I don’t know how to thank you. He’ll be so grateful.’

‘You can start by telling me your name.’

‘Certainly. It’s Bobbie.’

‘Bobbie? Don’t tell me, your parents wanted a boy.’

‘It’s a nickname. Not elegant, I know, but it’s what everyone calls me.’

Except for Burgo. He disliked abbreviations. I had, he said, a perfectly good name that suited me perfectly.

‘So what’s the other bit?’

‘Oh, let’s not bother with formalities, as you said.’

‘What a mistrustful girl you are. Who would have thought that beneath that angelically fair exterior there ticks such a suspicious mind?’

I stiffened and drew away from him. ‘How do you know what colour my hair is? It was already dark when we left Swansea.’

‘I was speaking poetically. Fair meaning pretty, you know. I hope you’re pretty. I’m prepared to bet that you are. But I’ve no idea whether you’re as blonde as a Viking or as dark as an Ethiopian.’

‘I’m sorry.’ I relaxed. ‘Things have been … Lack of sleep is making me neurotic.’

‘Actually the name Bobbie makes me think of someone with a pudding-basin haircut, red cheeks and a punishing serve. A sister to all men, always willing to make the cocoa, a jolly good sport.’ I felt a tug on one side of my head. ‘But your hair’s long and you say it’s fair. I’m awfully glad. I’ll be happy to make the cocoa every time.’

‘We’ll have to do without it tonight. It must be at least ten o’clock.’

Kit shone the meagre beam of his torch on to the dial of his watch. ‘Half past. Are you ready for your berth, Bobbie? Shall I escort you to the door or will that give rise to impertinent gossip, do you think?’

‘I don’t think I can face it. I went to look at my cabin when I came aboard. It’s several floors down. Horribly claustrophobic. I booked too late to get a single berth. My bunkmate was jolly and friendly but smelt penetratingly of the stables. Apparently she’s going to Ireland to buy horses. I’m not sure my stomach can stand being tossed about all night in a miasma of manure. Anyway, it’s rather lovely up here and I’m not cold now.’ And it was, in truth, lovely – if rough. The wind seemed to be blowing hard, or perhaps that was the motion of the ship, but the moon, three-quarters full, suffused the drifting clouds with silver. ‘But you must go to bed. You’ve looked after me beautifully and I’m grateful. I shall be perfectly all right.’

‘I’m not at all sleepy. Why don’t you put your feet up and I’ll tuck you in. Here, rest your head on my coat. Don’t worry,’ he said as I made noises of protest, ‘the steward’s keeping us under observation from the saloon window. He’ll be the perfect chaperon. And as soon as I’m the least bit weary I shall leave you to it. Will it bother you if I smoke?’

‘Not at all.’

The delicious smell of a Gauloise mingled with the tang of salt. The stars rolled languorously to and fro above my upturned face as the giant cradle rocked beneath me. It was strange to be lying with my head almost in the lap of a man I had known for two hours but at the same time it felt companionable. I began to relax. For ten days now I had slept patchily, always with a sense of foreboding. My rib cage stopped aching; my eyelids ceased to twitch.

‘Marvellous, aren’t they?’ Kit blew out smoke. ‘Impossible to believe they’re indifferent to our joys and sorrows, isn’t it?’ I realized he was talking about the stars. ‘There’s one that’s definitely winking at us. No wonder people make wishes by them.’

‘If wishes were butter-cakes, beggars might bite,’ I said drowsily. At least I thought I had said it, but it may just have been part of my dream.

THREE

Something brushed against my cheek.

‘Sorry. I didn’t mean to wake you.’

I opened my eyes. The sky had paled mysteriously. It took me a second or two to realize that this must be the dawn. I twisted my head and saw someone – Kit – looking down at me, smiling. Something hard pressed against my ear. I put up my hand. It was a coat button. I struggled to sit up, encumbered by blankets, my muscles unresponsive with cold. ‘How long have I been asleep? What time is it?’

Kit looked at his watch, squinting in the grey light. ‘Ten to five.’

‘It can’t be!’

‘You were terribly tired.’

‘I hope I didn’t snore.’

‘You were as quiet as a little cat. From time to time you purred and once you shouted “No!” quite fiercely. That woke me up.’

‘Have you been here all night?’

He nodded.

‘You must have been so uncomfortable. Really, you should have gone to bed.’

‘I’m as stiff as an ironing board,’ he admitted, ‘but I managed to doze. I’m one of those lucky people who can get by on not much sleep. I’ll just walk about a bit and I’ll be fine. We’ll be in Cork in less than an hour.’

‘Cork!’ I felt a rush of emotions, predominantly apprehension.

‘Where did you think we were going?’

‘Well, there of course. It’s just that I’ve never been to Ireland before. And everything was arranged at the last minute. Oh, Lord, I can’t move my fingers! And my neck’s broken, I think.’

‘Come on.’ Kit pulled me up from the bench. ‘We’ll get our circulations going.’

We strolled about together until the blood had returned to our hands and feet. There were no other passengers on deck, only members of the crew who gave us particular looks and pointed smiles. Probably they assumed we were lovers who had preferred a romantic consummation beneath the stars to a struggle within the confines of a narrow bunk in a prosaic cabin. We stood at the stern rail, drank brown tea and ate tasteless white rolls filled with hard-boiled eggs and mayonnaise. We watched the sky blush with gleams of coral, salmon and rose. Slowly it flooded with gold.

‘Lovely, isn’t it?’ said Kit. ‘Doesn’t it make you glad to be alive?’

‘Mm … yes,’ I said, more decidedly than I felt. Foam streamed in the wake of the ship. Gulls slid up and down the grey-green waves and quarrelled over the last crumbs of my breakfast. I wished the ship would sail on and never come to land.