‘She drowned in the river at the bottom of the garden,’ said Vivian in a distant voice. ‘He sold the house and no one heard anything from him again. They were using it as a nursing home. It had lifts on all the stairs.’
‘You make it sound awful!’ said Jilly. ‘It’s not awful,’ she added, to me.
‘Then one day Nigel’s mother came and bought it. It turned out that her father had finally died and when she got his money the first thing she did was come back and buy that dreadful house. It’s rather sad, don’t you think?’ said Vivian forlornly. ‘Don’t you think it’s sad?’
‘She probably paid five times what her father sold it for,’ said Adam.
‘She’s got thousands in the bank,’ said Jilly, ‘and she won’t use a first-class stamp. Can you believe it? She won’t pay the money for a first-class stamp.’
‘When you think of the people who must have died there!’ said Vivian, distressed.
‘It would be a drop in the ocean to her,’ said Jilly. ‘What we need for the roof. It’s Nigel’s money, anyway. It’s his inheritance.’
Adam said: ‘She might live till she’s a hundred.’
‘That’d be just like her,’ said Jilly. ‘Can’t you do something about those dogs?’ she added, turning around in her chair to address her mother. The dogs had started scratching at the door again. ‘What’s wrong with them?’
‘I don’t know,’ shrugged Adam. ‘They’ve been like this since dad went.’
‘I can’t imagine Paul in hospital. I can’t even imagine him being ill,’ Jilly said wonderingly.
‘You should go in. He’s desperate for visitors.’
‘I don’t think I could,’ said she, shaking her head. ‘I don’t actually think I could. I’d find it too upsetting, seeing him like that.’
‘He’s bored stiff lying there on his own. He isn’t actually that ill, you know — he’s just waiting for the operation. He looks completely normal. I think they said they were doing it this afternoon.’
‘I can’t imagine what they make of him, the nurses and doctors!’ cried Jilly. ‘Do they all think he’s disgustingly rude? You know,’ she said, to me, ‘all my friends were absolutely terrified of Paul. You’d be sitting there dreading the moment when he singled you out and yet wanting him to, because you felt so invisible if he didn’t. Do you remember the time he threatened to kill Nell because Alice Beasley said she was allergic to dogs?’ She laughed. ‘He even got the gun out. Alice went completely white. I don’t think she ever came back here again!’
‘It isn’t as though he’s actually going to die,’ said Vivian in a strange voice.
‘It’s a routine operation,’ Adam agreed. ‘There’s nothing unusual about it at all.’
‘But sometimes,’ Vivian persisted, ‘people are in the operating theatre having the silliest things done, like plastic surgery, and they just — die.’
There was a pause. Vivian was looking slightly wildly at us through her long black fringe.
‘Why don’t you come in with me later?’ Adam said to her. ‘Then you can see for yourself. There’s no point sitting at home worrying about it.’
‘I don’t like hospitals,’ said Vivian, to me. ‘I always think I’m not going to get out of them.’
‘What’s wrong with you, mummy?’ said Jilly crossly. ‘You’re being silly.’
‘Look, why don’t we go together?’ said Adam again. ‘We can go together in my car.’
‘Have you ever noticed,’ said Vivian, to me, ‘that when you don’t do what people want you to do they start treating you like an imbecile?’
‘I’m only trying to help,’ said Adam imperturbably. He stood up from the table. ‘Let me know if you change your mind. We should be getting back.’
‘I’m going too,’ Jilly said. ‘I’m expected at the Wattses. I’m helping Sarah move house.’
‘Do they pay you?’ said Vivian sharply.
Jilly laughed. ‘Of course not!’
‘It’s just that I wanted to know if she paid you.’
‘Why would she pay me?’ Jilly put her coat on. As well as the loose hem, it had several buttons missing and a tear in the arm. ‘She’s a friend!’
‘Why can’t she move house herself — why does she need you to do it for her?’
‘Friends help each other,’ said Jilly, shrugging, as though she regretted this maxim but couldn’t alter its truthfulness.
‘I don’t suppose she’s anywhere to be seen when you need help. I don’t suppose she’s moving house for you — you probably can’t see her for dust!’
Vivian opened a drawer and removed a chequebook, with which she sat down at the table. She proceeded to write with a shaking hand.
‘At least if she paid you the relationship would be clear.’
‘All you think about is money!’ cried Jilly, even as her mother carefully tore out a cheque and handed it to her. She looked at it and put it in her pocket. ‘Thank you,’ she said. ‘Nigel and I are so grateful for this.’
She bent down and kissed her on the cheek with pursed lips. Vivian stayed sitting at the kitchen table. The rest of us left the house together. When we went out into the passage the dogs threw themselves against our legs. Startled, I half-stumbled over their writhing bodies. The air was full of grey, rank-smelling fur. Outside in the light Jilly gave us a fast smile.
‘It works every time,’ she said, indicating her ragged coat. She gave a little laugh and strode off across the courtyard. ‘See you!’ she called over her shoulder.
The dogs came part of the way with us across the yard. Then they turned together and ran back towards the house.
*
We crossed the sloping courtyard, where clumps of grass came through hillocks in the old cobblestones and numerous grey stone buildings were subsiding, showing their black, vacant interiors through the jagged gaps of missing planks and panes. Sheets of sunlight fell brilliantly on the uneven roofs and shattered. At the front the house was imposing but behind, where no one could see, it lapsed into a succession of flaws and pragmatisms. The side and back were harled and painted white and stained with mud and water. An assortment of doors and windows cluttered the rear wall. Puddles collected in the concavities of the courtyard floor.
We passed through a narrow stone archway out of the courtyard and down the steps to the track. The twin ruts meandered away across the hill. The cold blue vista of the sea stood in the distance. Earlier, at dawn, it had been the colour of mud. Now the light was very clear. The sea was like a staring pair of blue eyes. The hill stood out as though electrified, each tiny spear of grass differentiated from the next, the branches of the trees fretful and naked. I could see the crenellated mud around distant gates and the boundary of the Hanburys’ land as though it had been cut from a pattern, with the two pyramidal hills lying mysteriously at its centre. All around it the brown fences cast little heavy blocks of shadow. It looked miniature, like a scale model. The grey road looped up and over the hill and down the other side. Far below, shiny cars moved noiselessly around the streets of Doniford. Beyond that, towards the harbour, the old town met the sea with a certain ramshackle grandeur. Some of the houses there had been painted bright colours. Earlier, in the rain, the effect was slightly demented, but in the sun it had a cheering radiance. Beyond the town, along the coast, I could see the pale brown frill of sand that edged the great folds of land as they knelt down into the sea.
‘You can see our house,’ said Adam.
He pointed to the right, where the tiny grid of streets fanned out into a big red delta of new housing that had spread east from the compact centre of the town like something slowly being disgorged. I followed the direction of his finger through the ranks of little boxes, each neatly summed up on a square of green. From a distance it looked like a circuit board. I couldn’t distinguish Adam’s house from the others, though I wanted to: I had left Hamish there with Adam’s wife Lisa and their baby. I hadn’t intended to do this. My plans for Hamish had been vaguely incorporeaclass="underline" I had imagined him following me around, unbodied, free of want, but as soon as we arrived Lisa had placed him implacably under her own jurisdiction, like an empire appropriating a small, suitable colony. It interested me to see how eagerly Hamish surrendered himself to her highly regulated household, giving the unmistakable impression that his was a life criminally devoid of norms.