Before All Else Read online

  Before All Else

  Epigraph

  Before all else, live together in harmony, being of one mind and one heart on the way to God.

  Rule of St. Augustine, Ch. 1.2

  Winter

  Epigraph

  The salt air creeps further and further inland from the soft-edged coast, the dewy mists captured by fewer and fewer mighty oak sentinels. The land is gradually cleared, dug, heaped. A deep rotation begins. Hand-size is no longer enough. Flint is joined with worked wood to find more flint to work more wood. No need now to outrun the wolf, the other Neolithic animals, for now we have shelter, fire, food. The dead are put without the palisade, their bones worn clean by wind and rain and rodents, the bones of them brought together in mounds. Shapes begin to form upon the landscape – rectangular, circular, man-made.

  A mere hundred generations ago.

  Metal works alongside flint for tools, hunting and adornment. Spaces widen between the thinning trees; wood smoke travels horizontally in the gaps, pulling towards its source traders, marauders, the curious. The collective begins. Tribes are formed. The individual good becomes the common good. Hill forts rise high, refuge is sought behind mounting earthworks; both embattled and invader have Latinate names, the prerogative of the victor. Dung.

  M. Blatt

  1

  Cecily

  Cecily closes the heavy front door behind her and breathes in the warm, familiar scent of flatulent dog, overblown hyacinths and damp spores.

  Trueman, the black Labrador, creator and disperser of the worst smells in the house, ambles sleepily into the hallway. “Hello, True-bie.” Cecily bends to stroke his patrician head. He wags his tail and returns to his bed in the kitchen. If he were in human form he would surely rattle his newspaper and enquire if she’d had a good night, if Mrs Green were holding up and whether she wanted him to lock up. Trueman’s eyes are so similar to Henry’s. A caramel brown, inclined to dart hither and thither, fringed by long dark lashes, beneath such a worried forehead.

  It had been a trying day, on several counts. Funerals are always funny affairs. Shiny trousers, an unnatural humility and piousness brought on by the religious surroundings, the sense of mortality brought on by the prospect of a later-than-usual lunch, and a chill feeling on the back of the neck of one’s own position in the queue advancing, of being ushered up the line faster than one would wish.

  Mr Green, their old gardener, had been despatched with little fuss yet it was the sadness on the faces of the family that would stay with her. Mark, Mr Green’s son, had steered her to the front door. He shook her hand, thanking her volubly for coming today. “You’ll look after your mum, won’t you?” She placed her hand on his arm, regretting instantly the unintended patronising tone. Occasionally it seems as if Mother’s mantle has been flung about her own shoulders.

  “Of course,” he answered. “There’s lots of us. She won’t be lonely.”

  Mark had spoken movingly of his father at the lectern, his own young son standing solemnly by his side. As the mourners filed out of the church, the entire family stood as one to thank them for their kind thoughts in their time of darkness. Seeds blown from the one seed head.

  Tilly

  It’s a shame she couldn’t go to Mr Green’s funeral. After all, the family had known him for nigh on thirty years. When Cecily phoned a few days earlier to see if she wanted to attend, she’d declined. “Can’t come, darling. Good of you to let me know. Lambing. A hundred ewes. None of them with less than twins. About twenty with triplets and a few with quads. Can’t leave them.”

  “You sound shattered.”

  “I am. It’s a twenty-four-hour operation. Don’t get much sleep January to March.”

  “Couldn’t Lizzie help?”

  “Don’t ask.” Lizzie, all the compassion of a saint and none of the wisdom. Working long shifts at the kennels, studying for her Diploma in Animal Welfare, living in a thin-walled caravan with that idle, good-for-nothing slug of a boyfriend.

  “Oh?”

  “Don’t get me started. Anyway, funny to think of Mr Green gone. Do you remember when you thought he was the most gorgeous creature that ever walked this planet?”

  Cecily chuckled, a laugh that rolled down the decades.

  “Remember when Mother caught you and Melly ogling him?” The two elder sisters had been entwined together on the window seat, shrieking and ducking as he passed to and fro in front of the library window. “She was furious. Said it was no way for young ladies to behave.”

  “Bit unfair. We were only about twelve and fourteen at the time. And you, Tilly, must have been eight. Probably playing with your Ark under Daddy’s desk, innocent to what all the fuss was about.”

  “Well, he was ancient even then.”

  “Must have been about forty.”

  “Gross!”

  “We were placed under the strictest instructions to avoid fraternising with him—”

  “Sexy Simon, as you used to call him.”

  “Sexy Simon! Yes! I’d forgotten. Mother banned us from speaking to him after that little episode.”

  “Anyway, Cecily. Thanks for letting me know. I’ll come and visit as soon as lambing’s over.”

  Tilly had put the phone down before she realised she hadn’t asked Cecily if there was any news from Amelia – Melly. She considered quickly phoning her sister back again, but decided against it, fairly confident that the answer would be a resigned no. Rarely did they ever get any reply to their texts or emails.

  Cecily

  The house is empty, other than Trueman of course, yet she cannot escape the feeling of eyes watching her. Ghosts, if there are such a thing, must be crowding out this house. Not just the faint echoes of lives known to her – Mummy, Daddy, Darling Henry – but all those who had tenure in the past five hundred years. This feeling of being crowded out is always strongest at night. She has strange dreams where she is the shade, the insubstantial one. A stiff drink, that would put them all to sleep.

  It’s unsettling to think of Mr Green gone.

  He had been a small but regular feature of their growing up. The shout of, “Can someone take Mr Green a cup of tea?” would go up from the kitchen when Mother put the kettle on. For a brief, ecstatic period, at the height of her and Melly’s infatuation, his cups were festooned with handmade daisy chains, the rim held close to the breast when the empty cup was returned to the back door at the end of his shift. Yet this period was short-lived. Within the briefest time, even despite Mother’s edict, he was more likely to be given a cup with the contents sloshed over or, more cruelly, left where he might find it or might not.

  For it had not taken long for the girls to become fastidious in their chosen objects of desire.

  By the time she and Melly had started their school exams, Simon had become a troll at the bottom of the garden. With his paunchy belly, his stooped shoulders and necrotic nose, his allure had quickly vanished. Like a once common garden bird now on the endangered list, he was only rarely and fleetingly observed, tying up the runner beans, pruning the rambling rose, washing algae off the glasshouse.

  Had their infatuation been real or just a facsimile of an infatuation? A try-on? For, truly speaking, just how attractive are middle-aged men, overalls wound down, pasty skin exposed to the sun, huffing and puffing behind a recalcitrant lawnmower?

  Cecily pulls a brandy balloon with a dusty bloom from the back of the display cabinet and pours herself a large drink.

  Strange to contemplate that she herself has transformed from young Miss Cecily of Hingham House to Mrs Marchant, wife and now widow of Darling Henry, still of Hingham House, in the same way that Sex
y Simon had mutated into Old Mr Green and then, ultimately, into compost.

  Madge

  While the fiery brandy courses its way down Cecily’s gullet, Madge is sitting with her feet up on Mrs Green’s pouffe, commenting on the day’s events, most gleefully on Mandy’s outburst.

  “That woman’s not right in the head.”

  Mrs Green is stacking small bowls, emptying the crispy corn snacks and cheesy balls into one large dish, thinking the hens will enjoy them tomorrow. “What woman?”

  “That Mandy, who else?”

  “Well, there’s a few burrows short of a bunny around here.”

  “Did you hear her going on about ‘Mr Marchant, Henry Marchant’?”

  “Cecily’s husband?”

  “Yes. You should have seen her face too. She looked livid.” Madge leans back against the spongy sofa, exhaling a plume of minty tobacco smoke. She’d seen Cecily shake Mark’s hand and head down to the church. What time of night is that to be traipsing through a churchyard? “If you ask me, that woman spends far too much time moping at the graveside.” But Mrs Green is now in the back kitchen roughly washing the pots and borrowed mugs, muttering under her breath about how a little help around here wouldn’t go amiss.

  Cecily

  The house is growing chilly, the heating having clicked off some time ago; it is becoming ice fast. If she closes her eyes she can almost hear the click of each ice crystal as it interlocks with the next. Only she and the dog pulse warmth within the coldness of the kitchen.

  She turns a gas ring on and waits while it click-click-clicks itself alight. The rising heat is barely enough to stir the air. She puts a pan of milk on to warm through and watches the bubbles rise slowly through the whiteness, like tapioca beads. “Sod it,” she says out loud. Trueman thumps his tail on the kitchen floor. It is freezing. It has been a hell of a day. Old Mr Green has shuffled off. There’d been near uproar at the wake when Mandy had wobbled in from the back garden and started on like she had. Cecily is jolly well going to have a cigarette to go with the cocoa and the brandy. There must be some in the back of the cutlery drawer, left over from Amelia’s last visit three years ago.

  There are two left in the soft packet. She puts one between her lips and bends to the naked flame under the saucepan. A combination of burning milk, burning hair and burning tobacco assails her nose. The side of her cheek stings.

  Mandy

  That cow, Cecily. No better than she ought to be. Her and her sisters. Remember how they used to sit there, on the school bus, all prim and proper, terrified that the boys would rampage down the aisle and pull their hats off?

  Mum used to go up and help at the house. Why did they always need ‘help’? More of them, so more hands to do the work. Not like when it was just Mum and her, in the flat.

  Cecily

  They’d brought Mandy in from the back yard, walking on the balls of her feet like the very inebriated do, held upright by Mr Green’s son, Mark, and one of Ned’s workmen. Ned had wanted to take her home but she refused. When Cecily caught sight of her again, she was sitting at a cloth-covered table, morosely and mechanically filling her mouth with maize snacks.

  Their eyes locked. Holding her gaze, Mandy had shouted out into the room, spraying bright orange crumbs, “Henry Marchant, anyone?” As always happened whenever she saw Mandy, the dummy’s head loomed large, its grotesque face leering at her, a torrent of filth about to pour from its mouth.

  “Hush, Mandy,” someone called from the hallway. “Stop there!”

  “Does anyone know Henry Marchant?”

  Cecily stood stock still as if Henry had suddenly been conjured up right in front of her, as if he were about to read the whole sad, sorry, awful, shaming truth in the dead eyes of this marionette.

  “Know him, like I know him, I mean.”

  Cecily had the briefest notion to march up to the foul woman and slap her hard. It was an unbelievable liberty to voice his name. But to pluck his name out of thin air, scrunch it up and lob it fast and direct over the heads of all those in the room, was an insult too far. Mandy looked about her, her head moving in short, staccato bursts as if seeking validation from everyone around. The dummy’s head swivelled maniacally, following the direction of her wild eyes. It seemed to be in cahoots with Mandy.

  “Ned? Where’s Ned? I think Ned should take her home.”

  Cecily felt herself being steered out of the room into a less-occupied lounge and made to sit on the flat, wide sofa.

  Mandy

  Ned shouldn’t have left her like he did. He’d gone back to work after the funeral. “I’ll just check on how everyone’s getting on. I’ll be back in half an hour.” She knew he wouldn’t be just half an hour. Knew he’d be longer than that. That he was leaving her to her own devices at the wake. Unreliable. Unreliable and late. So it was all his fault. Mostly. As per.

  The family had squeezed a few tears out and shaken everyone’s hands on the church steps and then the hearse had driven the coffin and the principle mourners to the crematorium ten miles away. She was one of a little huddle round the back of the Greens’ house, all shivering in the bitter wind, waiting for the family to return and take the wrappers off the sandwiches.

  “Funny. You’d never think Simon was a gardener, would you, looking at this garden,” someone had observed. She’d stubbed out a cigarette and kicked the flattened butt into the long grass, long desiccated grass bending itself against the cold, a rusting barbecue and garden furniture tangled under a flapping tarpaulin. She’d laughed at this comment. Perhaps she wasn’t the only one whose life was essentially a pile of shite.

  “Hurry up,” she muttered under her breath, stamping her feet and pulling her thin coat about her, wondering if anybody had thought to try the door. Then again, it hadn’t seemed quite right to occupy a dead man’s house. Ned should have taken her with him. She could have sat in his office, next to the paraffin heater, and kept warm and out of the way until it was time to go back together and toast the old git’s passing.

  She must have drunk a litre of that cheap white wine before Ned had finally come back. Tasted like maiden’s water, it did. Loosens the tongue too. Apparently.

  Ned had that firm set of the jaw he has when he’s cross. He didn’t say much.

  Cecily

  Cecily cradles the mug of cocoa between her two hands, stiffening in the chill air. Trueman has his chin on her knee, his front paws slipping on the tiled flooring, eyebrows triangulating as if trying to assess her mood. What is her mood? An image comes to mind of a disco ball revolving slowly in a darkened space, car headlights passing occasionally over its faceted surface causing it to throw out brief spots of coloured light. How can you truly be said to exist if there is no one in front of you on whom to radiate your colours? The dog doesn't quite count.

  Someone had offered to make her a cup of tea while Ned – who had arrived just after the incident – controlled his thrashing wife out of the front door. The tea never came but someone else had patted her hand. It was too dark to see who it was. She had left shortly afterwards, kissing the grieving widow, now slightly consoled for her loss by drink. A few voices called “Goodnight” as she made her way out of the small, crowded room. Old Boy Crowther set up a wheezing cough and she slipped away under the distraction of fetched towels and a tactfully proffered bowl, hastily emptied of its peanuts, should the hacking cough lead to something altogether more productive and technicolour.

  Cars were bumped up pell-mell on the pavement circling the four-sided patch of grass opposite the house. Mr Green was a popular man and his family certainly plentiful. She wondered what it must be like to be buttressed by so many people.

  Mandy

  She pretends to be such a Goody Two Shoes.

  Cecily

  Her cigarette spits and sizzles in the darkness of the kitchen. It tastes revolting, so she stubs it out in a saucer, re
gretting her moment of rebellion. Small flecks of burning ash rise into the air in a firefly moment, sinking back down again into grey oblivion.

  “Come on, old friend,” she calls to Trueman, who follows her to the back door. She leans against the door jamb and watches fast-moving clouds wipe the face of the bright moon. Trueman disappears into the undergrowth and re-emerges a few moments later with wet paws. He brushes past her on his way back into the kitchen and his bed under the stairs. She is comforted by his touch. It’s on nights like this that it doesn’t seem right to leave the hound to sleep downstairs.

  Mandy

  Ned puts her to bed. “There’s a bucket and bog roll by the side of the bed.” It’s about all he’s said to her since he collected her from Mr Green’s house.

  “Aw, don’t be like that, love. Come here.”

  Ned ignores her and leaves the bedroom. From the bulb on the landing ceiling, she can see that the back of his shirt is crumpled and half-untucked. He pulls at his shirt to loosen it and unbuttons his cuffs.

  “Go to sleep. You’ll feel better in the morning,” he replies as she calls out his name. His voice descends down the stairs. “I’m going to lock up.”

  Cecily

  It is an old, old secret but still it gnaws away. Is it even that important now? Maybe not at all or maybe only at the Final Reckoning when we are called to account for ourselves in both the good times and the bad times. Really it’s nothing to do with Mandy, but she has this way of making it hers.

  Cecily knows it is guilt that drives the mechanism that twists the wooden spoon that operates the dummy’s head from left to right. That over-varnished face with its mechanical jaw and parodied gaiety. It feeds on silence and grows fat on guilt. She should break its neck. Drown its splintered shards. Hold its fat, greasy face under water until the bubbles cease and its eyes pop.

  But what to do with the puppet-master, Mandy?

  Within her icy bed, her vaporous lover trails his long fingers along the back of her neck. He pushes his fingers between hers till they leach all heat. He blows his frozen breath on her cheek, on her eyelids, across her feet. She swaddles herself with the bedclothes and waits for him to leave.