Now I’ve taken charge, Deirdre doesn’t resist. We straighten the bed. Then we start on the clothes, folding them, or putting them on hangers. She’s got some classy looking stuff. Linen jackets, silk blouses, bits of flimsy underwear lying on the floor like pressed flowers. A surprising number of useless strappy shoes. There are three pairs of riding boots that look as if they’ll keep the weather out, and a couple of waxed jackets.
Deirdre says, ‘When did he die, your dad?’
‘I don’t know – it must be thirty years ago,’ and I shrug because it was an ordinary death, after all.
‘Oh, you must have been young.’ She sits suddenly on the bed. I see the energy go out of her. ‘This is pointless. So many more important things to do. The wallet’s gone, and what use is it to me anyway?’
‘It’s unsettling to lose things.’
‘Yes, but you lose one thing after another that you thought mattered and you’re still alive. And maybe all that matters is water, enough food to keep you from starving, shelter from the cold. But you’re not an animal. You cling to something that tells you that you’re not, not only an animal at least, not yet. We’re the lucky ones, that’s what Abigail says. We made it through. Through to what, though? To wash at a trough without soap. To grub for vegetables in gardens abandoned by the dead. She guards the tinned food like gold. Keeps it locked in the cellar and hangs the key round her neck. Did you know that? Drink your milk, she tells me, as if I’m a child. And I do, though it feels like an assault on my stomach – the richness of it and no substance to fill you up. I’m hungry and bloated all at the same time. Aren’t you?’
‘Not that hungry. There’s something off with my appetite since I was sick.’
‘I’m ravenous. I’m constantly ravenous for something. And even the milk is a luxury we won’t have for long. We don’t even know if the cows will make it through the winter. Have we found them enough hay and silage?’
We sit side by side staring out the window towards the yard and the scrubby hillside.
‘And we’ll never get milk like it again anyway, whatever happens.’
‘Why not?’
‘They’re milkers, Jason. We’re not likely to find a Friesian bull round here. The only bull we’ve found so far is a Welsh Black. Maybe there’s a Hereford somewhere, or a Charolais, but we wouldn’t want a Charolais.’
‘Why not?’
‘Too big. Too many birthing problems. Either way, the next generation’s going to be some kind of cross. Better for beef, not so good for milk.’
‘Beef sounds good.’
‘Yes, and there’ll be calves to eat, if the cows are healthy and things go right, and rennet for making cheese. But so much uncertainty. No antibiotics. I’ve never helped a cow in labour. Have you? And next summer we’ll need to make our own hay or they’ll all die anyway before we see another spring.’
The jackdaws are gathering on the stable roof.
‘At least you’ve still got your house, Jason. What have I got?’
‘You’ve got my house too. For as long as you want.’ I’m surprised to hear myself say this.
I’m back sorting bricks. Maud and Deirdre have brought the cows into the yard for milking. The cats appear, one squeezing under the stable door, another padding, lean and furtive, from the kitchen. Someone will put a saucer down for them, or they’ll balance on the rim of a bucket to lap up the cream. No one knows where they came from, what kind of lives they’ve had. They just moved in, like Deirdre and Django and Aleksy. Soon someone will give them names and they’ll be part of the family. It comes to me with a jolt that this isn’t so far off what I imagined. A gathering of people – children, friends, whoever shows up. It’s what this house was going to be for. Like the Jesus bus of my childhood but with indoor plumbing and no Jesus. It was the one thing they got right on the Jesus bus – that there was more to life than mum and dad and two kids watching TV in a semi.
From the age of fourteen I had an idea of how I wanted my life to be and it started with this house. The first time I saw it, it made some claim on me.
The bus was parked on the side of the road and the grown-ups had sent us out to pick blackberries, five or six of us, straggling along the verge. This was a few years after dad died. Three years, it must have been. I had the saucepan. The girls had plastic bags or held their skirts up. I saw the orchard and thought of blackberry and apple pie. For us lot, food wasn’t something that appeared in the fridge by magic. It took effort. Vegetables came out of gardens and allotments. Not ours, obviously, but somebody’s. A few quid for mowing someone’s lawn meant a pack of sausages or a frozen chicken. Some copper piping pulled off a skip had a price if you knew where to take it. We didn’t steal. Stealing was against the Eighth Commandment. Shoplifting was a sin. If you came back with money you hadn’t earned there’d be trouble. It never occurred to us to break into someone’s house, or try the door of a parked car. But a handful of carrots with the mud still on them? All part of God’s bounty. No different from mushrooms found growing in a wood. The Lord was providing and we weren’t asking awkward questions. We were townies, travelling on the Jesus bus, in search of the land of Canaan. We knew what derived from man and what derived from nature. Beyond that, subtle distinctions of ownership went over our heads. So the hedge gave us blackberries and, when we scrambled through the hedge, there was a wilderness of apple trees, boughs bending towards us, the sun reaching down through the leaves, and so much fruit we didn’t know where to start.
We spread out but Penny stuck with me. She was a clown when she was young – all grins and scabbed knees – and she’d have followed me anywhere, and I should have given her more time, but she was my kid sister and I thought she was a pain.
There was another girl too. Tiffany. She couldn’t have been more than five – a chubby thing all bundled up in a bigger kid’s jumper. She kept hold of Penny’s skirt and set up a whine. ‘Wait, Pen, wait.’
Penny was saying, ‘We haven’t got all day, Tiff,’ all bossy, as though we had somewhere to get to.
That’s when I saw this house, and people round a table on the lawn. I told the girls to shut it. We’d reached the edge of the orchard. I was reeling. Was it the people that had this effect on me, or the building? Or what the building added to the people – a sense of solidity? I knew about eating outdoors – we did it all the time, as long as it wasn’t too cold or tipping down. But this wasn’t squatting on a kerbstone or huddled on the steps of the bus. These people had real wooden chairs and a wooden table and reached for sandwiches from a china plate. The front door was wide open and the lawn was just another part of the house, a room with invisible walls.
Penny had started kicking the trunk of a tree as though she could make it rain apples. After each kick she’d hop about clutching her foot and muttering, ‘Broody Judas’. She was performing for my benefit, but I couldn’t take my eyes off the house – how rooted it was, nature creeping up its stonework, sending tendrils up the drainpipes and along the sills. And I said, ‘That’s what I want.’
Something in my voice got Penny’s attention. ‘What Jase, what? What d’you want?’
‘That house. I’ll have it an’ all.’
‘You gunna steal it, Jase?’
‘I’m gunna buy it, and I’m gunna live in it. Like those people. And have my tea on the lawn.’
Little Tiffany was staring up at me, awestruck. ‘Can I come?’
‘How do you mean?’
‘When you buy it, Jase, and it’s yours, can I live in it too, with you and Pen? Can I, Jase? Please?’
The two of them looking at me like that, wide-eyed and earnest, made it seem real, like I’d sworn an oath.