Before All Else Page 23

  16

  Amelia

  There is no one about. She moves slowly from her bedroom across the wide landing to the top of the stairs, her bare feet warmed by patches of sunlight on the carpet. The house seems to be holding her close. Yet, at the same time, it seems to be surveying her, measuring her, comparing her against the young woman who left all those years ago.

  The house isn’t quite as she remembered it but, in essence, beneath the changes, it is the same. Home. So different from the concrete flat she shares sporadically with Enzo. Images of home used to flash randomly into her mind during her long years away. For no apparent reason she might recall the shape of something, the sound of something, the feel of something, the memory fading as quickly as it arrived. Other times, usually low times, she would hug a treasured memory close to her breast – of her sisters, of her younger self.

  There is comfort in being on her own here. A strange feeling of privilege, of being the sole trustee of a rare gift, overtakes her. When was she ever in this house alone? Probably never. She stands at the top of the stairs and reaches out into the quiet depths.

  Although colours have changed, the light is the same; although objects have moved or been replaced, the sense of solidity, of holding a stake in the life of this house remains. And the house holds a stake in Amelia’s life too, as if it whispers to her, I know you; I know the real you; I have watched you grow up; no one else knows you better. Come home.

  Amelia slides her heels, tah-dum, tah-dum, tah-dum, down a few steps. “Don’t bump down the stairs. Come down properly.” as if Mother is still in the kitchen scraping carrots, stirring sauce.

  Amelia, cautiously and less defiantly, reaches the bottom step. A familiar band of steel begins to coil around her chest. Is it the evocation of Mother’s voice? Is it the crushing familiarity of the place? Is it, actually, true that she is her most perfect self when here, or is that an outright lie? Is she more the Amelia she wants to be when cut loose, wandering, on the move?

  After all, look what’s happened to Cecily. Bored, lacklustre, unoccupied. One foot in the past, too tentative to take the next step. For Cecily, this house has become a sentimental trap.

  The thought of being trapped – anywhere – pulls the band tighter round her chest. Inevitably a house can do nothing other than outlast its occupants as it hurtles through time, callously leaving those who loved it and cared for it behind.

  “Oh shit.” Amelia stands at the door to the kitchen. “Forgot,” she speaks aloud. Cecily had asked her the night before to lend a hand with finishing the cakes for the fair and taking them down to the field. She will be mad that Amelia hadn’t helped.

  Empty, streaky mixing bowls are stacked precariously on the kitchen table, dive-bombed by spatulas and scrapers, the sticky buttercream parted by a probing tongue. That would be Tilly. She always popped up like an opportunistic terrier whenever there were treats, fully and knowingly exploiting her status as the youngest to get the best leavings. Rounds of greaseproof paper stiffened by baking and cake parings. Floury glasses. Raw pastry rolled and folded in upon itself like a bloodless lifeform. A black fly makes its way around the top edge of a creamy bowl, each leg waving in turn to its audience. Others hang in the air by the back door as if waiting for an invitation to come in.

  “Cigarette first.” Amelia sits down at the table, running a dry finger round a bowl of chocolate cake mix. It tastes bitter.

  An ancient reflex sends her free hand beneath the table top. Her mind elsewhere, blowing smoke towards the window pane, her nail flicks against consecutive edges of tightly folded paper. A note! Isn’t that just what they did as sisters, so many, many years ago? Write each other covert notes and stuff them between the planks of the underside of the kitchen table. She bends double under the table to pull it out. “Hi sis. Knew you’d find it. Left you sleeping. Again! See you later xxx”.

  A tidal wave of emotion washes over her. She has not been part of this for so long. That basic tribal feeling of being where one’s inside colours match one’s outside colours, of being made of the same clay as the earth one stands on. Anxiety and displacement leave her in great gouts; relief is sucked up in great mouthfuls.

  Nothing more tribal than three sisters.

  It’s not what you know. It’s the things you don’t know you know.

  It is a beguiling prospect. If she came home again – surely Cecily would let her stay – then she could swing through life again with all the ease of a de Mare sister.

  Amelia pulls her phone out of the back pocket of her jeans to text Cecily to say she’d found the note and to ask whether she would earn more Brownie points cleaning up the kitchen or coming over to the field to help set up. As she switches it on beep follows beep. After the message from the service provider welcoming her, again, to the United Kingdom, text after text from Enzo fills the screen. Why hadn’t she made it clear that she was going somewhere? Why hadn’t she filled in the holiday rota in the staff room? Why didn’t she let him drive her to the airport, mi cara? Didn’t she know she was the most precious thing to him? Had he done anything to offend? All he wanted to know was that she had arrived safely. How is he to know where she is if she doesn’t contact him? What kind of game is she playing? Does she want to mess with his head? How can he concentrate on anything if she doesn’t speak to him? It’s been forty-eight hours now. Darling? Hey, you bitch. What is this? The massive brush-off? Is this how you treat someone who has been more than good to you? Fuck off.

  She groans. What a mess. She can hear his voice as he scrolls through the cadences of surprise, amusement, indignation, self-pity, anger. There is one more stage to go. Their rows always finished on a tone of petulance, a kind of cute-boy moue that might work with Mama but which fails to cut much ice with Amelia any more.

  She’ll text him later. No, she had better do it now. Get it over with. “Arrived safely. Sorry. Phone broken. Just got replacement. Chat soon.” She knows it will do nothing to placate him – more likely rake over the coals of his resentment. Best to keep it short.

  He will either reply immediately or make her wait several hours before revealing the tenor of his response. She counts to ten and sharply switches the phone off.

  “Damn.” She’d forgotten to text Cecily for instructions.

  She’ll tidy up, have a shower and get down to the field in time for the start of the fair. Give Cecily time to simmer down.

  Village

  The bunting that zigzags above the street flutters sharply in the early afternoon breeze marking the route of the procession from the church to the Town Field. In the fore, a brass band, ten or twelve musicians from the sugar factory in royal purple uniforms, beat and blow their way down the street. Cars and people bump up on the verges to watch them pass. The band marches in step, except the boy bugler who runs and halts and scurries, a mouse compelled to follow the feet of a slow-moving elephant. Members of the crowd laugh as his prompts flutter out of their clip. “Melt down your instrument for buttons,” someone remarks too loudly.

  Next comes the May Queen sitting sullen and ignored atop a flat bed trailer, her three attendants giggling into a mobile phone. The tractor jolts its impeded way through the market square. A small child throws sweets into the crowd with deadly force and accuracy.

  Bringing up the rear of the parade, anyone with an interest to promote and a banner. The WI, the Catholic Mothers, the Great Yarmouth Corporation Tramways Appreciation Society, Gay Marriage and Rock Against Racism.

  Amelia

  Amelia pulls the front door closed behind her and stands on the steps looking down onto the passing parade.

  “Hey, Amelia. Heard you were back.”

  She looks to see who is calling her, blinded and confused by the busy melee.

  “Amelia! Over here!” spoken in a soft, Suffolk burr. Such a long time since she’d heard her name uttered thus, in anything other than the emphatic, punc
hy, commanding Sicilian way. The crowds move past her as she steps down into the road. A man pushing a buggy catches the back of her heels. “Sorry, love.” His companion, presumably the baby’s mother, stares at her malevolently. The musical strands of the band unravel themselves the further down the street they go so that, by now, the steady one-two-three notes on the euphonium are gobbling up the reedy, vulnerable notes of the cornets.

  “Here. Hop in!”

  The long snout of an open-topped vintage car advances into view, its burgundy paintwork gleaming in the sunlight. Her eyes sweep from the mascot to the driver holding the wide, slender steering wheel in one hand and opening the passenger door with the other.

  “Quick. Get in before I run anyone over.”

  The car thrums and jiggles and then stalls. “Blast this damned thing.” Bob, dressed in blue button-down overalls and a Formula One racing cap, lets go of the door’s strap to slide levers on the wheel and pump a pedal on the wooden floor.

  Amelia tentatively grasps the chrome door handle and, stepping up onto the running board, lets herself down onto the smooth, scuffed, overstuffed black leather bench seat. The seat is hot against the back of her bare legs.

  “Cursed thing. Never idled well.”

  She sits there, looking fixedly ahead, bemused by her state of capture, watching the last of the town process towards the fairground, leaving her, the car and Bob behind.

  The moment explodes into a thousand different impressions, questions, flashbacks. Which should she chase after first?

  Seconds pass as the car fails to respond to Bob’s pugilistic efforts to get it started. He leans back in his seat, removing his cap. “Give it a few minutes and try again. How are you? Been ages.”

  She can see his features now. “Good thanks. You?”

  Shards, confetti, fall about them, each piece glinting with snatches of memory. Bob at sixteen, playing his heart out on the football field to impress Amelia, standing for him on the sidelines. Smoking behind the cage with the gas tanks at the garage. A kiss. A thousand kisses. Hanging out on the church wall into the dusky summer nights, watching the bats above their heads against a darkening sky. Waiting at the bus stop outside school. The death of his mother. Watching his life fall apart. Saying goodbye at Bremen station. Hating his father, Old Bob, for his breakdown. They were going to see the world together. They promised they would come home. Just give them a year. Two years max. Then Bob would help his dad out in the garage and Amelia would run the shop, do the accounts, probably a few kids by the time they were both thirty. Dad could have done what he wanted.

  “Well,” Amelia laughs, looking around at the empty street. A drinks can rolls towards the gutter. The bunting flutters in the breeze. “Here we are again. What do we do now?”

  “It’ll be alright in a minute.”

  The hot metal engine clicks as Amelia counts their seconds together.

  “Listen. I was really sorry to hear about your mum. And your dad.”

  “That’s OK. It was…” but she can’t remember how long ago it was and, anyway, what was she saying? Fine? They were old? Didn’t need them in her life anyway? Or is it his sympathy that she doesn’t need?

  “And Cecily’s husband, Henry.”

  “Of course. Yes. Thanks. Not been easy.” More platitudes. But a conversational lull of over thirty years has to stop somewhere. “What about you? What’s happened in your life?”

  “Oh, you know.” Bob shrugs. “The usual. Married. Two kids.” Why doesn’t he look at her?

  “I’m pleased for you.” But her response is drowned out by the roar of the engine coaxed back into life.

  A few minutes later, thin tyres slipping on the coconut matting between the gateposts, they head down the flattened grass tracks to join the rest of the local car club. There is a screech as the music on the PA stops mid-track and someone coughs loudly and repeatedly into the microphone prior to welcoming everyone to the start of the Twenty-Ninth Annual Bullenden Fair.

  “Thanks for the lift.”

  “Any time.”

  “See ya.”

  “See ya.”

  Marcus

  After the kerfuffle with the druids or Celts or pagans or however they styled themselves, Marcus positions himself at the entrance to the chapel. Someone had brought blue twisted rope from the church and strung it between knee-high posts. He could clip and unclip one end to allow entrance and exit. He feels rather like St Peter, although doubts that St Peter would have need of a clipboard to record visitor numbers. That vicar was quite impressive. He liked the way she handled the interlopers.

  A pile of his factsheets flutter in the faint breeze under a weighty stone. He hopes that nobody will ask anything too complicated or erudite. After all, he is only the amateur historian, even if he has acquired minor celebrity status after his piece to camera on local TV a few nights ago.

  A small group of people dislodge themselves from the slow-moving current around the stalls and make their way towards him. “Just give them a quick story,” Chris Eveans had briefed him. “Something to take away with them. They’re not bothered if it’s 3rd century bc or 34th century intergalactica time. Tell them about the pilgrims’ bandaged feet. Give them a few beheadings and throw in something about ghostly monks walking abroad under a moonlit night. Give them a burning bush story if you’ve got any godly types. Just get them in and get them out again. Got it?”

  Marcus nodded, his throat suddenly as dry as sand.

  “Good afternoon. This way to our newly discovered sunken chapel. Can I take a few minutes of your time to tell you about St Winifrede, a local devout woman and her talking cat…”

  Bob

  Well, that was a turn-up for the books. Seeing Amelia again, after all these years. Since Bremen. Over twenty years ago.

  She had been scrupulous in dividing up the money. He’d wanted her to keep it all with just enough to get him home, but she didn’t want it. He’d escorted her out of the train station to pick up a taxi. She’d turned to him, kissed his cheek and told him she’d be back.

  That was the last he saw of her, in the two-dimensional, dim light of pre-dawn as she strode up the pavement away from him. She opened the door of a taxi idling a few hundred yards up the hill. The overhead light came on; she leant in to speak to the driver. After a brief exchange, the car drove off. He waited and waited, breathing the acrid fumes of the car’s exhaust, long after the brake lights had disappeared from view.

  Bob pulls his attention back to the here and now. The guys are standing around their cars, polishing, drinking tea, sharing sandwiches and a joke. Bit of a farce being here at the fair, but it might raise the profile of the garage and the restoration business. Dad does most of the chat. He loves these days. Loves having his son beside him. Dad doesn’t have a single worry in the whole world.

  Amelia

  There were times in Sicily she felt like one of those pine trees that grow in the scrubby sandy margin between the town and the sea. A displaced native. Shallow roots. Standing stock still while all activity flows around. Kids playing, the onshore breeze, sleeping tramps, a foil for others’ energy, taking the knocks, sighing softly, pushing back.

  Cecily

  Quite frankly, Amelia is being less than useless. She casts her eye over her sister slumped into the folding chair at the edge of the shade cast by an oak tree. Tilly is walking towards the stall, the Strong Man’s hammer in her hand, a little boy running after her. “Miss. Miss. Can we have the hammer back please, miss.” Tilly turns and graciously returns the overlooked item to him.

  Marcus beckons from the corner of the field, miming that his throat has been cut. “Listen, Tils, be a love and take Marcus a drink would you?”

  “You go. I’ll mind the stall.”

  “Sure?” She was reluctant to leave her sisters in charge of the cake stall, one looking as if she’s getting by on 500 c
alories and 40 fags a day, the other sweaty and flushed from an hour’s sheep-shearing demonstration. “OK. Well, just don’t touch anything. That’s all.”

  “Oh, Cecily. Stop it!”

  Marcus

  Mercifully Cecily is walking towards him with two large bottles of water. “How’s it going?” His throat is so dry he has almost lost the reflex to swallow. His hand round the cool, blue, moist bottle feels hot and oafish. Is this the effect of the heat or of Cecily standing so close to him in her short bright skirt, crinkled top and garish sandals? Doesn’t she have big feet! A strand of her piled-up hair keeps catching at the side of her mouth. As she speaks to him, she pushes it abstractedly away. Each time she releases hold, a sprite of nature, a sylph perhaps, disarmingly places it back in the crease at the side of her mouth.

  “Had many visitors?”

  The water slides down his throat. It feels like a benediction. “Yes, quite a few. Most people haven’t got a clue what they are looking at.” He coughs. “Excuse me.” He takes another long draught, aware that Cecily is standing close and watching him. She swallows in unison. “Want some?”

  She shakes her head.

  “Some have got what it’s about. Others have just looked in, made some comment about the walls not being straight, and pulled their heads out again.”

  Cecily laughs, “Probably the same people who ask if my cakes are selling like…hot cakes.”

  “Like Marley’s doornail.”

  “Mm?”

  “Well, Dickens said that he would have thought that a coffin nail was the deadest piece of ironmongery but the ‘wisdom of our ancestors is in the simile’, so doornail it shall be.”