Going Home (2 page)

We passed the track that led down to the ivy-covered tunnel of the long-neglected railway, along which the steam trains had ferried my father and his brothers to school, and my grandparents to town. It had been closed down long before I was born, and replaced with belching, unreliable buses, crowded and sticky, especially in summer, and thoroughly unsatisfactory.

‘Nearly there,’ said Tom, as he swung off the main road, the sound of wet leaves mulching beneath the car. ‘Can’t believe it. I thought I’d die of alcohol poisoning before I made it to Christmas Eve.’

I knew what he meant. I find the lead-up to Christmas so
exhausting that it’s sometimes a struggle to preserve some energy for the holiday. Some of the stores on Oxford Street put their Christmas lights up two weeks before Hallowe’en. It’s ridiculous. I remembered the slanting glass toothpick-holder and shuddered, resolving that next year I really would do my shopping before Bonfire Night.

‘So, who’s going to be there when we arrive?’ Jess asked.

‘Mum will, because we’re staying at yours,’ Tom said. Kate lived in a cottage down the road from my parents.

‘And Mike’s definitely not coming?’ I asked.

‘Mum spoke to him a week ago. He’s obviously knackered, and he has to be back in the office on, like, the twenty-seventh to finish some deal.’

‘What if he’s just lying, doing an Uncle Mike joke?’ Jess said hopefully.

‘Don’t get your hopes up,’ Tom said. ‘He’s not coming, and that’s that.’

Mike was Dad’s eldest brother and everyone’s favourite. He’s the funniest man I’ve ever met. He did a lot of the work necessary to earn that title when I was about five years old and fairly easy to impress, but he somehow knows exactly what will please you most, or cheer you up when you need it. Who else would forget his godson Tom’s tenth birthday, then arrange, a week later, for a pair of remote-controlled toy cars, complete with flashing lights, proper gears and red enamelled bonnets to be delivered from Hamleys by a man in full livery? Who, for my thirteenth birthday, took charge of the party when Mum was ill with flu and escorted me, with ten of my friends, to the cinema, where we saw a ‘15’ film (
A Fish Called Wanda
) then went to Pizza Express where he let us all have a glass of wine and tipped the waiter to go and buy me a proper birthday cake from the patisserie next door? Mike.

Actually, more often than not he’s useless. He never turns
up, he has no idea how old you are or what you’re doing, he’s late, he’s disorganized, and when he’s there he often has no idea what’s going on, but I suppose that’s part of what makes him so fab – you never know what he’s going to do next.

Mike is a high-powered lawyer, like Tom, and lives in New York where he works even harder than Tom does and has an infrequent succession of girlfriends. ‘The law is my mistress, Suzy,’ he’d say, in answer to Mum’s hopeful enquiries about his love life.

‘I don’t care who your mistress is, you stupid man,’ Mum would reply crossly. ‘Have you got a girlfriend?’

Tom negotiated the crossroads through the village. A Christmas tree covered with twinkling lights shone through a cottage window, and in another I could see the glow of a television. The rain had stopped, and the temperature had dropped sharply.

‘Mum told me yesterday that Chin’s bringing her new man,’ Jess said.

‘I didn’t know she was seeing someone.’ Tom was obviously nettled by this information.

‘Wait! It’s not that Australian guy…Gibbo? She’s bringing
him
?’

‘Apparently,’ said Jess. ‘It must be more serious than we thought.’

‘Must be, if she’s willing to expose him to Christmas at home,’ I said.

Chin was Dad’s youngest sibling by a mile, and more like a cousin to us than an aunt. She was a designer: some of her scarves had been sold in Liberty and she also made necklaces and little bags. She lived in London too, but I hadn’t seen her for a while, although she had a flat not too far from me, in Portobello Road. Even now she seemed the epitome of
chic Bohemian glamour, without even trying; the kind of woman who could walk into a junk shop and say, ‘Wow, what a delightful eighteen-century French armoire for fifty p! I’ll take it please,’ while if I’d been in there three seconds earlier I’d only have spotted a rusty old baked bean tin for four hundred pounds.

She’d been seeing Gibbo for a few months now and all I knew about him was that he had long hair and wore flip-flops in November. Jess had bumped into them in Soho one evening, and Chin – who normally goes out with worldly Frenchmen or devastatingly handsome record executives who break her heart, rather than dishevelled young Australians who punch her jovially in the arm and say ‘Let’s get going, mate!’ – couldn’t get away fast enough.

‘That’s it, then,’ Jess said. ‘That’s everyone.’

‘You’ve forgotten your parents,’ said Tom. ‘Perhaps they don’t count, though. I mean, it’s their house. They’re always there.’

It was my parents’ house, but it felt like home to all of us. The home of the Walter family. It had been for over a hundred years, pretty amazing when you think about it. My great-great-grandfather, Sir Edwin Walter, had been a successful society artist who painted Victorian ladies who lunched. Elise was the dark-eyed eighteen-year-old daughter of a paper manufacturer. They had fallen in love when he painted her. He asked her father if he could marry her, and her father said no, that Edwin was a flaky London painter without roots, living in a shambolic studio in Hampstead, of all places.

So my great-great-grandfather, who until then had never thought about anyone but himself, went looking for somewhere to settle down, and found Keeper House. The owner had just died: his family had lived there since it was built in 1592, and he was the last of the line. Just one family, for three hundred years. It was small, dilapidated, unloved and scruffy, but my great-great-grandfather looked out over the valley, at the meadows, the fields and the stream, and up into the twinkling windows, and knew immediately he would live there with Elise. When he persuaded her father to bring her down to see it, family legend has it that all three stood
in the hallway and toasted Elise and Edwin’s future happiness. I’ve always loved that story.

Keeper House is built in a mellow golden stone that gleams in summer and glows in winter. It’s L-shaped, with high, leaded windows whose casements jam in wet weather, long, rambling corridors with uneven floorboards, and evil hot-water pipes that rarely work and sound like the Edinburgh Tattoo when they do. It’s a beautiful house, and we were lucky to have grown up there. It is encircled by a wall, and at the front there is a terrace of flagstones, worn smooth with age, where tiny white flowers spring up in the cracks each spring. At the back there is a long lawn and a walled garden, where rows of lavender stretch from the kitchen door, punctuated by tumbling, sweet-smelling roses, mustardy lettuce and the tastiest potatoes.

In summer it’s the best place in the world to live. In winter, it can be a nightmare: freezing, draughty, prone to break-downs and temperamental behaviour, but we never mention this out of politeness to the house – at least, I don’t. I once found Mum hugging the ancient boiler and banging her head against its red-painted curves, moaning, ‘Why do you do this to me?’

Tom took the last corner and we veered left down the driveway. Jess and I craned our necks like a couple of five-year-olds. ‘There’s Chin, and that must be Gibbo,’ Jess said. I could see them all through the big leaded bay window as Tom brought the car to a halt – Mum, mug in hand, half standing, smiling, Dad beaming as he walked towards the front door, Chin and Gibbo following him, then Kate.

They filed out one by one. ‘Hello!’ we cried. ‘Hello!’ I hugged Dad, shook hands with Gibbo and kissed Chin.

‘Darlings, you’re here!’ My mother was holding a stodgy-looking piece of cake, which she waved at us. ‘Oh, I’m so
glad to see you. You made good time, didn’t you?’ She kissed me and Jess, then Tom. ‘Come inside, we’re having a Bavarian
stollen
I’ve made.’

Jess and Tom rolled their eyes, just as Kate appeared. ‘Hello, Tom,’ she said, and gave him the kind of hug that the Rock would have been proud of.

As we entered, the smell of home flooded over me, a potent blend of damp old flagstones, burning logs and something baking in the Aga. Then I caught the scent of the Christmas tree in the hall and the boughs of pine that were laid along the windowsills throughout the house.

‘I’ll make a fresh pot of tea,’ Mum said. ‘Why don’t you shove your bags upstairs so we don’t fall over them?’

Jess and I lugged our suitcases up the carved staircase that curved over the hall, along the galleried corridor, from which you could drop things on the heads of new arrivals, past the alcove with the worn-out rocking chair and a bookcase crammed with green Penguins and cheap old cloth hardbacks, past our parents’ room, to the corner of the L where my bedroom was, a long low room with windows on both sides.

I threw off my shoes, flung my bags of presents on to the bed, then went to open the corner casement. Out beyond me stretched the sloping valley, with the lights of Wareham in the distance, smoke curling from the occasional chimney. The clouds had cleared and the stars were out, shining in clusters above the fields. The mulberry tree on the terrace had been festooned with white lights that shone like magic in the dark. I could hear Mum talking to Kate in the kitchen. An owl hooted in the woods behind me.

‘I’m home,’ I said, and hugged myself.

There is a tradition in my family that on Christmas Eve we drink sloe gin. This is one of the many traditions that
characterize the yuletide period of joy, which starts in October when we pick the sloes in the hedgerows above the house. Armed with plastic bags and hats, because it always rains, we all set forth from the house searching for the plump, blue-black berries that nestle between the thorns.

It’s not easy, sloe-picking. A film executive from LA took me out to lunch in a glassy Soho restaurant this year and peered quizzically at my scratched hands, which looked rather dramatic against the white linen tablecloth. ‘I do all my own stunts,’ I said, then told him how I’d spent Sunday afternoon. He evidently thought I – and my family – was completely mad.

When Jess was little she looked like a monkey, not facially but in physique. She could climb anywhere, once Mum smacked her for climbing on to the roof at home and playing her recorder there (a bit like Brian May at Buckingham Palace, but smaller and with less hair). She used to put up the lights in the mulberry tree, scampering among the branches until she had nearly garrotted herself. When our late cat Seamus climbed up to the highest bookshelf in the study and refused to come down, Dad handed Jess a fiver and a ladder and left the room. She was brilliant at sloe-picking – small and lithe, she would have located lots of berries while the rest of us were crying, ‘Ooh, where’s the bag? I think I’ve found one!’ This year she had excelled herself, so there was a lot more gin than usual to drink.

Later that evening we all gathered in the sitting room to taste the results of our hunter-gathering, and wish each other a happy Christmas. If I’d been at home in London, I’d have been settling down with a large glass of red wine and a plate of pasta mixed with butter and Marmite (don’t knock it till you’ve tried it) in my bobbly old socks with my hair pushed back in a bobbly old hairband. But at home in Keeper House
the formalities of another age lingered: although no one dons white tie and tails or dusts off the tiara, I had still felt it necessary to run a brush through my hair, change my top and put on some more lip gloss. Mum and Kate, both creatures of habit, were modelling Marks & Spencer’s festive collection – a riot of burgundy crushed velvet and elasticated palazzo pants.

Mum had put ivy along the sitting-room mantelpiece and around the lamps, and sprigs of holly on top of the paintings. She was pouring the sloe gin into little glasses and singing along to a Frank Sinatra CD, while Dad was handing round crisps. Gibbo, who had endeared himself to us by calling Chin ‘mate’ and giving her a fireman’s lift up the stairs, was standing by the fire. He’d smoothed down his extraordinarily curly long hair with water and now wore a plaid shirt buttoned to the neck and a confused expression.

‘No sign of Mike, then?’ asked Kate, as she came into the room.

‘He could still turn up, you know,’ said Dad. ‘He booked his flight and the car ages ago. Perhaps he’ll call.’ He looked hopefully at the phone, as if he expected it to suddenly say, ‘He’s on his way, sir, just passing Membury Services now in fact.’

‘When was the last time you spoke to him?’ Tom asked.

‘Not sure – Kate, he rang you last week, didn’t he?’

‘Yes,’ Kate said. ‘When did he phone you?’

‘Last week. But he left a message yesterday – it didn’t make much sense. I think he was a bit the worse for drink, unfortunately. Still, I got the impression he hated work and wouldn’t be able to make it.’

‘How?’

‘Well, he said he hated work, and that he wouldn’t be able to make it.’

‘Take a glass,’ said Mum, distributing drinks. ‘Ah, Chin,
don’t you look lovely?’ she continued, as Chin appeared in the doorway, wearing a beautiful black velvet skirt and a skinny wool top printed with roses and studded with little sequins – which Jess was staring at enviously.

‘Thanks, Suzy,’ said Chin, helping herself to a glass. ‘So, young Lizzy, how’s work?’

I cannot tell you how much I hate that question when I’ve just stopped thinking about work for the first time in weeks. I work as a scout for the film company Monumental, searching for books, magazine articles, TV programmes and, of course, scripts that would make good films. Then I develop these projects, and it’s a sign of how totally stupid my job can be that I’ve been doing it for three years and only one film has come about as a result of my work. Two near misses one that got to casting stage but fell through for lack of money and a bastard American producer who pulled out, and the one I’ve just started working on, but that’s it. ‘Work’s fine,’ I said firmly. ‘It’s lovely to be on a break now, though. I’m exhausted.’

‘I know what you mean.’ Chin nodded. ‘But I’m practically the only person I know left in the country. All my friends have buggered off to get some sun.’

I could well believe this since most of Chin’s friends seem to be trust-fund millionaires who either run crusty cafés serving green tea in Notting Hill, design jewellery, write screen-plays or check into Promises rehab centre in Malibu. ‘Gibbo seems nice,’ I said casually. ‘Where did you meet him?’

Chin looked around. Gibbo was talking to Dad.

‘Oh, here and there.’ She said. Chin is always secretive about her love-life. ‘He’s a carpenter, so I thought he’d like to see the house. Especially the staircase,’ she added unconvincingly.

I tried not to laugh. Very brave of you to bring him along.’

‘Well, you know.’ Chin took a swig of gin and briskly
changed the subject. ‘So, we’ve done work. How’s your love life?’

I didn’t run away screaming ‘Help!’ at this question because Chin is very good with relationships – not because she wants to see everyone settled down and going to B&Q at weekends but because she is obsessed with the detail of people’s lives.

‘What happened with Jaden, the film writer?’

‘He was called Jaden,’ I replied.

‘Nuff said. It’s over, then?’

I wanted to get this bit of the conversation wrapped up as quickly as possible. ‘It was never really under, if you know what I mean. We – well, I saw him a couple of times when he was in London. I might be seeing him when I go back. He’s nice but he’s bonkers.’

That, at least, true. I knew what she was going to ask me next. There was a brief pause. Then—

‘So…have you heard from David lately?’

I shook my head vigorously and looked away.

‘Your mum’s been asking me. She’s worried about you. But she doesn’t want to ask
you.
You know how it is.’

‘I don’t want to talk about it,’ I said.

‘Don’t you know where he’s going to be for Christmas?’ she persisted.

‘No,’ I said. ‘And I don’t want to.’

Chin squeezed my arm. ‘I know, darling, I know.’

Embarrassingly I felt tears squeezing into the back of my eyes, and my throat constricted. I stared at the portrait of my great-great-grandmother and thought about how she would have celebrated Christmas in this house, nearly a hundred years ago. Had she loved her husband so much it almost hurt? Had she been afraid of her own happiness when she moved into this beautiful house? I looked at the non-committal dark eyes, at her hand on her silk lap with one
finger marking the page of a book. She met my gaze, as she always did.

‘Ooh, crisps!’ Chin exclaimed, and passed me the bowl as Mum clinked two glasses together.

‘I can hear the carol singers coming,’ she said.

‘Wha-hey!’ Gibbo yelled.

We stared at him, and Jess peered out of the window. ‘Yes, they’re at the gate,’ she said.

We processed outside and stood in the porch. The night was bitterly cold and a frost was creeping over the lawn. The carol singers, several of whom I recognised from the church in Wareham, stamped their feet and called greetings to Mum as she hurried forward to open the gate and let them in. We could see their breath rising in the air, wispy in the torchlight, as they formed a little knot, the children in front, muffled up with hats and scarves, eyes shining with the excitement of staying out so late.

They started with my favourite carol, the one that sums up Christmas for me, especially Christmas Eve and arriving home.

‘It came upon the midnight clear,

That glorious song of old,

From angels bending near the earth

To touch their harps of gold.

“Peace on the earth, goodwill to men,

From heaven’s all gracious King.”

The world in solemn stillness lay,

To hear the angels sing’

‘Nice carol,’ I heard Gibbo inform Chin in a stage-whisper. ‘Look at the bloke on the left with the big brown beard – it sticks out from his chin at like forty-five degrees! What a guy!’

Having been a little nostalgic and sad – in the way that happy family occasions can sometimes make you feel – I was suddenly overtaken with a fit of the giggles.

‘And that old girl there. Look at her! She’s mad as a bag of snakes.’ Gibbo nudged me now, his eyes on Mrs Thipps, the organist’s wife, who opened her mouth incredibly wide on every word and shut it with a snap as she sang.

When the choir struck up with ‘Whence Is That Goodly Fragrance Flowing?’ and Gibbo said rather loudly, ‘What the hell are they singing about now?’ Kate turned and said, ‘Be quiet, you fool.’ Amazingly, Gibbo smiled, said sorry, and was as quiet as a mouse for the rest of the recital. At the end, Mr Thipps came forward with a velvet cap and we all put in some money while Dad stepped forward with a tray of paper cups filled with sloe gin.

‘A Nice Change From Mulled Wine,’ enunciated Mrs Thipps, as she gulped hers down.