Past (9 page)

— But he's not supposed to have it yet. It's for later when he needs things.

— I need them now.

Ivy, knowing he was only counting to seven then starting over again, had kicked at her brother with the point of her shoe, whose patent shine was scuffed almost to greyness. She was dressed in an old cream nylon petticoat with a lace hem, full-length on her; Alice had found it in a cupboard and tied one of her scarves around the bodice, flattening the stiff breast-shapes. For a while Ivy had walked around with a gliding motion, gazing far away, imagining being watched; the silky fabric against her bare legs had made her feel ethereal. Now the petticoat was stained green from where she had been rolling on the grass, and her jack-knifed knees were sharp points straining its fabric.

They felt as if Molly condescended, returning to their world, when she made her way at last down the field towards them: her contact with what was beyond had left its traces in her expression, skeins of amusement and connection that did not connect her to them. She hummed to herself, some tune they didn't recognise. Dropping to sit beside them on the grass, in her shorts and red bikini top she was all long limbs, awkwardly graceful; her arms and legs were dusted with fine gold hairs, glinting in the sunlight.

— You're addicted to that phone, Kasim accused her disdainfully.

Cheerfully Molly confessed it.

— Doesn't it worry you that you're being fobbed off with second-hand substitutes for actually living? You might be missing out on something. Like reality.

— You're addicted to horrible cigarettes. At least my addiction won't kill me.

Hollowly he laughed. — That's what you think. Wait until they prove the links between phones and brain cancer.

Molly, set-faced, was learning how to negotiate with his intransigence. — What links? If there were any, they'd have told us by now. Everyone uses phones.

Kasim marvelled at her. — I've never met anyone so trusting before.
They?
Who d'you think
they
are? Your kindly uncle? And as it happens I could give up smoking tomorrow.

— I bet you couldn't.

— Only I can't be bothered.

— Like I said, you're addicted.

Superbly, hardly stirring from where he lounged back on his elbows, Kasim picked up the half-full packet of his cigarettes and lobbed it into the stream. It scarcely splashed, bobbed vaguely in a circle, then washed up against a stone where it suddenly just looked like litter, polluting the scene. Looking up from his money, with a small smile to himself, Arthur admired the largesse of the gesture. Ivy, shrieking, jumped up and wanted to wade in and rescue the precious packet, but Kasim held her back by the stretchy skirt of her petticoat.

— I'd have given that fag a bit more thought, he said regretfully, if I'd known it was the last one I'd ever smoke.

— I don't believe you, Molly said, impressed despite herself. — I'll bet you buy more, next time you're in town.

He scowled at her, all his handsomeness in play. — In my country, he said, — a man's promise is a point of honour. I'd rather die than break my word.

— All right, she said. — That's good then.

— It really does give you cancer, Ivy assured him earnestly. — So this is a good thing.

Then in one fluid movement Kasim sprang to his feet. — And now, Miss Molly, I think you ought to give up your phone, if I've given up smoking. My tit for your tat, so to speak.

Before Molly even understood what he was saying, he had snatched her iPhone up from where she had put it down on the grass. Holding it high, he teased her, dancing backwards when she came after him, protesting, across the garden. The children stood up too, thrilling to the anarchy in the others' excitement; Kasim threw the phone to Arthur, calling his name sharply. Exceptionally, Arthur succeeded in catching it, snatching it with both hands to his chest.

Molly pleaded, running towards him. — Please, darling, give it to me.

— To me, to me! Kasim called, urgently.

Carried away by the game and his own treachery, Arthur threw wildly askew, but Kasim dived and saved the phone, scrambled back upright. — Ivy, Ivy! Catch!

The phone sailed through the air in a perfect easy arc that ought to have ended between Ivy's proffered hands – but, tripping over her petticoat, she fumbled it. The phone went past her and fell with an undramatic small wet noise into the water.

— Fuck, Kasim said.

— You shouldn't
swear,
Ivy shouted at him.

Wailing with real grief, Molly waded into the water in her sandals to snatch out the phone, then stood drying it off desperately on her shorts while the stream parted in tiny wavelets around her ankles.

— It will still work, Arthur said firmly.

— It won't! Molly was despairing. — My friend dropped hers in a pub toilet and it was only in there for one second and it never ever worked again. No, see! It's not working! It won't come on.

When she stepped out on the bank they were all four united around the phone, staring at the black screen, willing it to give them any sign of life.

— I'm going to be in such big trouble for this. It was my birthday present. And it's all your fault. Why did you ever do such a stupid thing?

— Ivy dropped it, Kasim said.

Ivy bawled, rubbing grubby fists in her eyes like a child in a book. Molly's outrage was mature and even stately. — It wasn't Ivy's fault. How can you blame your own stupidity on a child? You should be ashamed of yourself.

— At least I didn't drop it, Arthur said.

Arthur worked his hand into Molly's and she didn't shake him off. She said they ought to go inside and try to dry the phone, though she didn't think it would help. Arthur was still hopeful that it might. They all four trooped inside the house and up to Molly's room, huddled in solemn procession as if one of them had been taken ill. Kasim had not been inside her bedroom before – it was surprisingly untidy. He had imagined that everything in here would be as neat and orderly as Molly was in her physical person, but it looked as if she simply took her clothes off at night and dropped them on the floor and left them, then dropped wet towels from the bathroom on top of them. Plates smeared with egg and mugs half-full with cold tea or coffee were on the windowsill and the floor and the bedside table. On the bed, the duvet was kicked to a mound and the bottom sheet was untucked, twisted into a rope across the naked mattress. Molly didn't seem to feel any need to apologise for the mess as she hunted through it for her hair dryer.

— Do you think this might work? Or is it too hot?

Cautiously they turned the iPhone in the warm air from the dryer – but it refused to come to life. Then Molly sat in despondent silence on the edge of the bed, Kasim beside her, the children crouched at her feet on the floor. Her silence was more awful than if she'd cried. Arthur began to stroke Molly's knee, making soothing noises – then Ivy joined in, stroking the other leg. The glossy wing of Molly's hair, scented with shampoo, hung down very close to Kasim, hiding her face from him – he seemed to feel her trembling behind it. Cautiously he put an arm around her bare shoulders. Then, as if he was simply joining in with the children, he began to stroke her head; under the silky, slippery hair he could feel the small, exact shape of her skull. Molly said she would wait until the next day before she told her father what had happened, in case the phone recovered after all.

— Are you really so afraid of him? Kasim asked. — He seems like a teddy bear. I should have thought he was pretty easy to handle.

— I'm not afraid of him. My dad's really good to me, he never gets mad. But I didn't want to let him down. I promised I'd look after it.

Kasim was pierced with remorse and tried to deflect Molly's attention, exaggerating how awful his own father was. — He does drugs, he's an egomaniac, he goes off his head if he thinks you're taking the piss or wasting his time. He's always taking up with different women, he used to bring women back to the house when I was a kid and I had to put my headphones on, so I couldn't hear them.

— Hear them doing what? asked Ivy.

— Never you mind, Molly said.

She was shocked and sorry for him. — I know my phone doesn't really matter, she said. — It's only a thing.

Roland and Pilar, when they got back, sat with the newspapers in the garden – she had hers open at the financial section but wasn't reading it, she was dozing in the slanting late yellow sunlight. Her eyes snapped open when Alice emerged from the drawing room to stand at the top of the terrace steps; the French windows behind her seemed to open onto a pit of darkness, as if she came from excavations in an underworld. Roland and Pilar – sitting at a disadvantage below, low-slung on the lawn in deckchairs – were irritated immediately, co-opted into her stage show. Fran was topping and tailing gooseberries on the terrace steps with a pair of scissors, Harriet was reading her book on a blanket on the grass. All the young ones were somewhere upstairs. Alice was dazzled in the brightness, blinking away tears which, because of her theatricality in that moment, seemed like false tears. Her voice was ripe with feeling.

— Listen to this, Roland. Look what I've found. These are letters you wrote to Mum when she was in hospital.

— I doubt it. I don't remember writing any.

— But you did! They're just beautiful.
Dear Mater.
Do you remember, you used to call her that? It was kind of a joke, against that old public school thing, but you sort of also wanted to be like one of those boys, and you were having after-school lessons in Latin.
Dear Mater, Things go on here much the same, except that without you they're not the same, they're pretty dreary.

Roland lowered his paper warningly. — Don't read from them, please.

— But why not? Don't be ashamed of having feelings.
I expect you're very sorry for yourself in hospital. I know I would be. So here are some little gems from family life to entertain you. Dad makes us tea but it's quite awful, he doesn't have your woman's touch. Even your baked beans, it turns out, are a manifestation of your culinary genius. He burns the toast and then puts too much butter on. Sometimes when I'm in bed I think I can hear your voice downstairs.

Her brother and sisters sat blenched in the stark light, rigidly still, as if something passing through the garden harrowed them. — You're really insufferable, Alice, Roland said.

—
Mater, I wish you knew …

Getting to her feet, Pilar crumpled her newspaper violently in her lap, then stepped up onto the terrace, snatching the letters out of Alice's hand almost before she had time to flinch. — You can't take them from me, Alice cried indignantly. — They're my mother's letters.

— I'm afraid they're Roland's, in a court of law.

The two women glared, Pilar hugging the letters to her chest. Against the darkness behind them their attitudes seemed frozen, their faces like masks, the light wiping out all nuance in their expressions. — But this isn't a court of law! Alice exclaimed. — It's a family, perhaps you hadn't noticed.

— I noticed all right. Families are always the worst, the most litigious. I prefer the law.

— Well, we're different. We don't live by a set of rules. Perhaps you find it difficult fitting in.

Roland sat uncomfortably, accepting the letters when Pilar thrust them at him but not looking at them. She fished her shoes out from under the deckchair and put them on, then strode past Alice into the house; helpless, they all attended to her footsteps, hollow on the uncarpeted stairs. — Well, that was well-managed, Roland said. Smiling only to himself, he put away his glasses and folded his newspaper and then the letter, returning this to its envelope without reading it. He wouldn't look at his sisters and only conveyed, by the sagging of his shoulders when he followed his wife inside, his patience and resigned tedium at this eruption of stupidity.

— Oh Alice, said Fran. — For goodness sake!

— How could you? said Harriet.

Alice was wounded. — I don't know why everyone's so angry with me. Wasn't it a lovely letter?

— It's your lack of tact. It was Roland's letter.

She seemed genuinely bewildered. — Was I tactless?

Both windows were wide open in Roland and Pilar's bedroom. The sisters couldn't help overhearing what went on up there: they hardly needed to understand what Pilar was actually saying, in her torrent of outraged exclamation in Spanish. They couldn't spare much surprise, in the heat of the moment, at Roland's turning out to be perfectly fluent in Spanish, responding to her – how come he hadn't showed this off to them before? What galling restraint for the couple to have always spoken in English in front of his family, how annoyingly considerate of them. And comically, his Spanish was so English: so placatory and reasonable. Harriet grabbed her book and the blanket, Fran her colander of gooseberries: they wanted to retreat away from the consequences of what Alice had done. Then Roland – it was his only vehemence – pulled down the sash windows, making them shudder in their frames, muffling the voices abruptly. But still they could hear the drawers rattled in the dressing table, the wardrobe door banged open on its hinges.

— Is she packing? Harriet was horrified. — You'll have to apologise, Alice. Go up and speak to her. Go now.

— But I can't, because I'm not sorry.

Fran bore her gooseberries off into the kitchen to make crumble; Harriet lingered, pained, eavesdropping but uncomprehending, in the garden. Alice fled through the keyhole gap into the churchyard and then even went into the church to hide, where she wouldn't usually go – she was afraid of it, superstitiously, because of the succession of funerals there had been inside it: her mother's, then her grandfather's seven years later, and then her grandmother's. Behind her she closed first the mesh gate, to stop birds flying in, and then the ancient heavy door; the dimness and coolness inside swallowed her. Sounds resounded around its quiet, like stones dropped in a well: she refastened the loud latch, then stepped into her own echo, crossing the nave to huddle against the whitewashed, clammy, powdery, green-stained wall at the end of a pew, where she'd be invisible, she convinced herself, if anyone came after her. She wouldn't – couldn't, ever – look at the brass plaque with her mother's name on it, and the dates of her birth and death, and the line from her grandfather's poem. Her grandmother hadn't been able to forgive him that vanity, choosing the words from his own poem.