‘His port-drinking days are over,’ Adam grimly observed. ‘The doctor put him on a strict diet of white wine and shandy.’
‘Now that I can’t imagine,’ said Caris. ‘Dad drinking — what did he call them? Women’s drinks. Do you remember that about dad, Michael? Women, poofs and Jews. The unholy Trinity.’
‘How did you get here?’ asked Adam.
‘How did I get here? Let me see — I took the bus to the tube station, then I took the tube to the railway station. Then I took two different trains to get to Taunton. Then I took the bus to Doniford, and I was about to walk the rest but Clifford spotted me and gave me a lift in his taxi. I rather liked the idea of arriving on foot, like a pilgrim, but he wasn’t to be put off.’
‘Lisa would have picked you up. She wouldn’t have minded.’
‘I found out the most extraordinary things about Clifford! Did you know he used to live in a castle? He grew up on the west coast, somewhere near Braunton, and apparently there was this big castle on a hill that he always used to look at when he was a child. He decided that when he was older he’d buy it, and one day it came on the market and he did. He was a builder at the time, he said. He raised an enormous mortgage and scraped together every penny of his own, and he and his wife moved in and installed some kitchen units!’ She sat back in her chair and laughed rousingly. ‘I think that was all they could ever afford to do. Then a couple of years later the market crashed and the mortgage company took it away from him. He lost all his money, so he came to Doniford because his brother lived here and they started a taxi company. And do you know what he did as soon as he’d made a thousand pounds? He bought a little field, right in the middle of Doniford. Apparently it’s now worth a million pounds to a developer, but he can’t sell it because there’s a right of way across it, which the council are always on the verge of overturning and then don’t. I got the impression he doesn’t actually want them to. If they did he might have to go and buy another castle. He’s still haunted by his kitchen units. He built them himself, he said.’ She looked for someone to whom to address her next remark and settled on me. ‘This is the sort of thing you find out when you don’t drive a car.’
‘Don’t or can’t?’ I said.
‘Won’t,’ she replied triumphantly. ‘Can, but won’t. I used to drive. I was a very dextrous driver. I especially liked going fast. I used to come right up behind people and flash my lights at them.’
‘At least you admit it,’ I said.
‘Oh, I admit everything,’ said Caris. ‘I’ve made a full confession. I despise my former idolatry. I used to love cars, and now I can hardly bring myself to get in one. They disgust me — the smell disgusts me, the smug moulded seats, the seatbelts, that great big idiotic steering wheel, the whole phallic enterprise. I feel as though I must have had an early traumatic experience in a car but in fact it was only that I liked them. Work that out,’ she said, lifting her palms upwards. ‘In London I tap on people’s windows and wave at them. I can’t help it. When I see them sitting all in a row staring straight ahead I can’t help it. People get so frightened when you touch their cars. It’s as though you’ve put your hands down their trousers.’
‘Do you do that too?’ I joked, nevertheless making it clear that I had forgotten the pale, superior nymph-Caris who lived somewhere in this trenchant Caris.
‘No, Michael.’ She gave me a sour look. ‘No, I don’t do that.’
‘Oh, you’re all here,’ said Vivian from the door. She smiled rather rakishly, with one side of her mouth. The other side remained downturned, as though half of her were perpetually reminding the other half of occasions on which an optimistic approach to things had not paid off. ‘I wasn’t expecting you to come up for another half an hour or so. I don’t know why I wasn’t,’ she said, in a rambling manner, shuffling out of a large brown garment that was half coat, half cape. ‘It’s silly of me in a way to expect you always to come up at the same time. There’s no reason why you should, is there? I don’t know why,’ she continued, so that it was impossible not to form the impression that she was slightly drunk, or in some way afflicted, ‘I always think that everything has to happen according to a sort of timetable. I suppose it’s all the years of following what the men were doing. There is such a timetable, that’s the thing, on a farm — other people simply aren’t flexible, so I suppose in the end you become rather like that yourself.’
Having shed her cape, Vivian retained a hat with a drooping brim that almost obscured her eyes, which were themselves shielded by her large brown sunglasses. She did not look particularly like she had spent her life adhering to a timetable. She looked distinctly cavalier.
‘Beverly needs to go somewhere later,’ said Adam. ‘She asked if we minded breaking a bit earlier so she can get away.’
‘Well, I do think she could have told me,’ said Vivian from beneath her hat. ‘She obviously thinks I just sit here all day waiting for people to go in and out. I know the lambs are important, but other people have lives too.’
‘Oh, the lambs!’ cried Caris. ‘The little lambs! I must come down and say hello to them — do you remember how dad used to take the old record player out to the barn and play music to the ewes? It was the funniest thing — do you remember, Vivian?’
‘He claimed it took their minds off it,’ said Vivian, giving us her rakish smile again. ‘I suppose there was no way of knowing whether it did or not.’
‘Of course,’ continued Caris, ‘it was a different thing altogether when it came to human beings. Dad was notoriously unsympathetic,’ she said, to me. ‘His own capacity for pain is enormous. I once saw him put a pitchfork through his own foot. He went completely white. Then he just pulled it out again —’ she imitated this manoeuvre with her robust arms ‘— and walked back to the house.’
‘I don’t remember that,’ said Adam.
‘You weren’t there,’ said Caris. ‘I was the only one there.’
‘I suppose I never really believed that a sheep had the capacity to know its own suffering,’ said Vivian. ‘I suppose that was it, really.’
‘They make a lot of noise,’ I said. It was a noise my head was still full of. ‘But they don’t seem to suffer much.’
‘I don’t see how you’d know,’ said Caris. ‘Anyway, the noise suggests they do suffer. Why would they make it otherwise?’
‘Yes, it would help to sort of drown it out, wouldn’t it?’ said Vivian. She was holding a frying pan out in front of her as though preparing to hit a tennis ball with it. ‘The music. Perhaps that’s why he did it.’
‘They all make the noise,’ I said, to Caris. ‘Communally. At the same time.’
‘I imagine they’re frightened,’ she replied presently, giving me a wide-eyed look that accused me of some unspecified tyranny.
Adam said, ‘Vivian, is that the dogs upstairs?’
Vivian was now at the stove, breaking eggs into the frying pan. She did this by holding the egg high above the pan and then crushing it amidst her shaking fingers, creating a long, glaucous fall of matter. She did one and then picked up another and held it what seemed to be rather too far to the left. As I watched, the innards of the egg fell not into the frying pan but all the way down to the floor with a flop. Vivian appeared not to notice.
‘Vivian?’ Adam repeated. ‘Are the dogs upstairs?’
‘What did you say?’ said Vivian, apparently startled. She turned her head and I saw that she was still wearing her sunglasses.