‘It’s really the house watching over me,’ I say. ‘Anyway, you’re all dead.’
‘When are you going to understand?’ asks Catherine, shaking her head.
‘What’s wrong with staying here?’ I say.
‘Please,’ says my mother.
After a while they leave, one by one, as they always do. My mother and Catherine give me a gentle kiss on the cheek. It’s surprising how you can distinctly feel the kiss of someone who is dead. My father once surprised me by taking my head between his hands and kissing me on the forehead. He would never have done that when he was alive, and he hasn’t done it since. Michael and Sebastian subject me to more claps between the shoulder blades. They all turn and wave modestly before they fade away not far from where the bonfire always used to be. Only Gerald stays a little longer. He winds himself around my legs a few times, and reaches up to touch a claw to my hand, as he used to when he suspected that it contained a morsel of Cheddar cheese. Eventually he wanders away after the rest of them.
I don’t understand why they keep coming back. I am glad to see them of course, but they’re dead. I keep telling them, but they don’t seem to be able to take it in. They don’t seem to understand why I won’t go with them. Perhaps death makes you less perceptive.
Anyway, I am perfectly contented, sitting atop this rockery by moonlight. I love it here. I love this beautiful house, I love the way it holds me as if it had hands and I was cupped inside them. I sit here and it watches over me, I feel absolute happiness, and there’s nothing I’d rather do.
TALKING TO GEORGE
THE MIST HANGS above the paddocks and molehills, and the horses snort and nod their heads, their breath condensing in the cold air.
The girls inhale the scent of leather and saddle cream; their world consists of the creaking of girths, the sweet smell of horses’ sweat, the seduction of straw and the clatter of hooves on the cobbles of the yard.
The gardener turns into the drive, his pipe stuck into his mouth, the smoke flaring behind him as the motorbike rattles along with its chair bolted on to the side. He has kept the bike in a secret shed for thirty years and more, and his wife knows nothing about it; it is the mistress and lover he never did have, the secret friend, the last connection with youth. It is to him what the horses are to the girls.
John switches it off and it pre-ignites, reluctant to stop. ‘Bloody thing,’ says John to himself, irritated and perplexed.
John twists the key in the lock, and the door creaks, the bottom scraping the floor, and, ‘Bloody thing,’ says John again.
‘Boy not here,’ he says, ‘gettin’ later every day, he is. Never mind, ’snice to have the place to yourself, first thing,’ and he takes his provisions from a knapsack and opens a tin. He approaches the corner, tweaking the threads of a web, calling, ‘George, George, here, George, I brought you some flies, good boy, look what I’ve got. Bluebottles, two of ’em, yes, yum yum,’ and John leaves the flies for George on his web, turning away to make the tea. The kettle hums, and John hums too ‘… There’ll always be an England, while there’s a busy street …’ John puts four sugars in his mug, and a drop of milk. He lights his pipe for the umpteenth time and is alerted by the sound of a bicycle being propped against the shed and then falling over as it always seems to do. ‘Bloody thing,’ says Alan, outside.
‘Morning, John,’ says Alan, coming in, compensating with cheeriness for his fractional lateness. ‘Tea on the brew?’
‘Just about boiled. You make it and I’ll watch.’
‘Is that the baccy you grew yourself?’
John offers his pipe and raises his brows. ‘Have a puff. I say it myself, but it’s all right.’
Alan is unsure, but he takes the pipe and draws, and tries to restrain his coughs. ‘Blimey, it’s like cigars,’ he exclaims, ‘but it’s kind of sharp, a bit of a bite in the throat.’ He shakes his head, as if in regret, and says, ‘Try as I might, I wasn’t cut out for the weed.’
‘You accustom yourself,’ says John, and Alan suggests, ‘You could soften it up with honey, you could try brandy,’ but ‘That’s for nancy boys,’ says John.
The door scrapes and Sylvie comes in, with a ‘Hello, boys. Kettle on? What’s a girl got to do for her cup of tea?’
‘Hello, Sylv,’ say the males, and John’s got a question, a provocation, a pertinent enquiry. ‘’Bout time you got your own kettle, innit? Whoever heard of a stable without a kettle?’
Sylvie knows that John knows that there is a kettle in the stable. ‘Don’t you want me then?’ she mock-protests. ‘I’ll go away and sulk. Can’t a poor girl get a cup of tea any more? You’re brutes. And anyway, I’m only coming in to say hello to George,’ and she walks across the cracked concrete of the floor, with its patches of ragged matting. Her hips sway without her knowledge, her body speaking the language of enticement without her explicit permission. Alan looks at the hair that flows down her back to her waist, and the hips that are speaking.
‘Hello, Georgie boy,’ says Sylvie, peering into the web.
‘Hello, Sylv,’ says Alan in a squeaky voice, and then, dropping it down to normal, ‘He gets fatter every day. You know, it occurs to me that he’s probably female. Aren’t the females big, and the males a bit small?’
John blows smoke from his cheeks, and pretends to growl. ‘I hope he in’t female, ’cause if he is, I’ll chuck him out. Females in the potting shed, I don’t hold with it.’ And here Sylvie puts one hand on her eloquent hip, and pouts in reproof, and John’s eyes sparkle. ‘’Cept for Sylv, of course, and anyway, he can’t be female, ’cause what female would put up with a web like that, all covered with dust? She’d be out and at it with a feather duster, spider-sized.’
‘You’re out of date,’ says Sylvie. ‘Nowadays we give the duster to the bloke and off we go to karate classes.’
‘Females is females,’ John asserts. ‘You know what I think? I think men are closer to nature. Here we are,’ (and he gestures with the stem of his pipe) ‘drinking tea with a sodding great web up in the corner, an’ we don’t care. In fact, we like it. Now, I bet if my missus or your mum came in here and saw George, she’d flip her lid. There’s things that women just don’t understand. Like spiders, and motorcycles, and beer. And did you ever see a woman shoot a catapult? Course not.’ John sucks hard on his pipe. Point proven, but the pipe’s gone out.
‘I like George,’ says Sylv, ‘and I like motorbikes.’
Alan supports her, he wants her to smile. ‘There’s a woman near us who plays cricket, smokes a pipe and shoots squirrels with a twelve-bore.’
‘Well, she in’t a woman then, is she?’ says John, and he strikes a match on the floor. Sylvie and Alan exchange a glance.
‘What am I up to today?’ asks Alan. ‘Weather forecast says fine.’
‘The weather forecast in’t got a gardening nose. You stick your head out of that door and sniff. It’s going to rain, you can smell the crackle and spark.’ John can’t resist a dig. ‘That’ll be a good trick to impress the other nobs with when you go to that university.’
‘I’m not a nob,’ Alan protests, although he knows that he is.
‘Course you’re a nob … posh voice, mum and dad a car each, nice big house. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t care if you are, it’s all right wi’ me as long as you do your work, but this place’ (he waves his pipe) ‘is all my life, and for you it’s a stop on the way.’