Before All Else Read online

  Her phone rings, muffled within the layers of clothing required for the unpredictable spring weather. “Hold on. Hold on. Give me a minute.” Tilly thrusts her hand inside the torn pocket of her jacket and snags it on the belt of her jeans. “Wa-a-a-i-t.” She reaches into her jeans pocket and grabs the phone. Cecily. “Hiya. Not far off now. Can just see the sugar factory. So, what, thirty-five minutes? OK.”

  It is a roundabout way home but she’s been wanting to see Cecily for ages, having missed Mr Green’s funeral in the winter.

  Tilly takes the last few bends into the village carefully, her mind full of Amelia. It seems all wrong that she is out there in the world, so far from her family, so out of touch. Would anybody think to contact the family if anything was amiss? She pulls onto the cobble frontage outside the house and waits, hazard lights flashing, for a number of cars to pass her. “Come on. Get a move on,” she mutters under her breath. The pace of traffic is slow and considered. The four new ewes start up a protest of their own, baaing loudly, the steel trailer acting as a kind of boom box. The trailer jolts and jostles and Pip barks in alarm. “Quiet, girl. Enough now.” The dog emits a little squeak and lowers her muzzle onto her paws, every small correction a massive telling-off. “It’s alright, Pip. Not cross with you. Just hush now.”

  The traffic clears and Tilly swings a sharp right to straighten out the Land Rover and trailer, nudging her nose towards the cars parked around the market cross, before starting a careful and slow manoeuvre backwards, repeatedly checking both outer mirrors. There is about six inches to spare between the alleyway walls and the sides of the trailer. One wrong move and she will be wedged.

  A flash of white catches her eye. Someone shouts, “Watch out!” Tilly stares, mesmerised, as a large white van hurtles towards her, the driver remonstrating, both hands, alarmingly, off the wheel.

  “What you doing in the middle of the road?” he shouts through his open window.

  “Naff off,” Tilly shouts back. The bonnet of the van is mere inches from her door. He mouths something inaudible in reply.

  Cecily comes down the front steps onto the road and waves cheerily at the driver.

  “Who the heck is that? He nearly hit me broadside. What you doing waving to him? He’s a danger.”

  “Oh, don’t worry, it’s only Ned Gallagher. He rarely actually hits anything. He’s always in a rush.”

  Tilly takes in the wheelbarrow logo on the side of the van. Gallagher’s Garden Services. “Bloody menace he is.” The van’s engine has cut out; the driver folds his arms and stares sullenly at the two sisters. “Quick. Help me back. Want to get out of this maniac’s way.”

  She continues her slow passage backwards down the cobbled alleyway until lined up with the wooden gate the colour of verdigris, the colour it’s always been, in the brick and flint wall. Climbing out of the back of the Land Rover, Tilly jumps down to position Cecily and Pip. The van driver seems to be having trouble restarting the van which, finally, thrums and judders as if sharing the driver’s impatience and clatters on its way.

  Tilly opens the back door of the trailer and whooshes the sheep into the back garden. They jump and slide down the ramp, barging and knocking, propelled more by the urge to move rather than any actual endpoint. Within minutes they are contentedly tearing at the long, lush grass as if all life before had been but a dream.

  Tilly sees Cecily glance anxiously towards the borders. It would not do if they chowed down on the prize hostas. But then maybe it would be worth it, just to see the look of horror on Cecily’s face. Tilly swallows down this unworthy thought and sends up a silent prayer that the sheep confine themselves to the grass. Cecily is too easily upset, far too easy to tease.

  The sisters go into the house through the back door, straight into the kitchen, leaving Pip in the garden to alert them of any misadventure concerning the sheep.

  Tilly walks through the downstairs rooms, scanning for the subtle changes. A picture added or removed. New fabrics. A rearrangement of the furniture. Cecily’s taste is not dissimilar to Mummy and Daddy’s, who were themselves skilled at matching period to, say, Terence Conran. Perhaps they all share the same taste; she is aware of some features repeating in her own house too – the deep-seated sofas, rough-cut shelves heaving with treasured books, a well-chosen painting or bronze, kilims, musical instruments, objets trouvés, family photographs. Different clutter. Different mementoes. But definitely a familial style.

  There must be some sort of memory creep, Tilly supposes. Each time she goes ‘home’, she has to reconfigure it from the enduring images of before she left Hingham House as a young bride, to the present day. Home is the arena for childhood experiments, dark dens, dressing up, hide and seek. Home is the repository of so many hopes and ambitions and memories. Home, strangely, now belongs to Cecily. There is a necessary adjustment to this fact, to the here and now, every time she walks through the door and smells the beeswax polish, hears the syncopated tick and chime of the long-case clocks, sees the old coats, dusty round the shoulders, hanging in the hallway, like the discarded skins of the departed.

  She shivers when she sees them. Horrid to think of Mummy and Daddy gradually diminishing from the giants who could pick apples out of the trees, rescue stunned birds from the gutters, retrieve catapulted socks from the top of wardrobes, to the stunted, needy little gremlins they became. Horrid to think of Henry gone, and Cecily’s almost unbearable grief and loneliness.

  Cecily calls through, “Coffee’s ready.”

  “Coming.”

  Tilly walks through to the kitchen and hesitates momentarily. Should she wait to be invited to sit down? Gone is the automatic tenure she had as a child. Children don’t think, do they? They just walk in, expecting the house to be just the same as when they left it that morning. How does it work nowadays? Does she have the same right to flop in the armchair with her feet up the wall as she did when she was fourteen? Or should she wait to be invited to sit and then take the less comfortable seat?

  “What are you waiting for? Sit down, for goodness’ sake!”

  Cecily

  While Cecily waits for the kettle to boil, she is conscious of Tilly wandering from room to room. It is a little unnerving. And a little irritating. Of course Tilly has every right to be here. It is her childhood home after all, but why does she have to pick everything up, touch everything, like some visitor to an interactive museum? She will have to go round later and put things back in their place. What’s mine, she asks herself? What’s really mine, mine alone? She elbows away her vexation.

  She always said Tilly had the blessings of the third child, their parents having thrown away the rule book by the time she and Melly were past the cradle and the potty. After a sulky first child and a rebellious second child, there was little time or energy left over to trouble Tilly greatly. So she had been left to enjoy so much more freedom, so much more self-determination. Tilly, carefree and joyous, had just got on with things. Cecily told her once how jealous she was that Tilly just knew how to be happy. That Tilly, being happy, led a happy life.

  “How did you do it, sis?” Cecily asked her. “You marry the first man you sleep with. He turns out to be totally gorgeous, he worships the ground you walk on, two gorgeous blonde-haired talented kids, nice house. The works!”

  “Dunno. Just luck I guess.”

  “And Mother and Father just adore everything about your life because it’s what every parent wants for their child.”

  “Don’t give them sleepless nights, you mean?”

  “You mean I do?”

  “Well, you used to.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “OK, where do I start? You go off to uni and rarely come home, let alone phone or write. No. No. Let me finish. You marry straight out of uni and that marriage lasts eighteen months, tops. Amelia has to tell them you’re getting a divorce because, for whatever reason, you won’t come home
to face the music. Then you disappear completely off the scene for about seven years and no one really knows where you are. Then you pop up with another husband. He’s given a bit of a run for his money and is dropped just as suddenly. Then we are introduced to Darling Henry.”

  “But it isn’t all my fault that I wasn’t around. I just didn’t match up to what they wanted or expected of their eldest daughter. There was just too much expectation to be well turned out, have impeccable manners, leave nothing on the plate, have excellent school reports, Grade 8 piano. It was like their model daughter was supposed to be modest, charming, helpful, vivacious, polite and never flirtatious, sentimental, overbearing or clumsy. I never really matched up. And they made it known. Well, Mother did. Daddy was a bit more easygoing. They were no better at keeping in touch with me.”

  “Fault’s not really the issue when it comes to apportioning blame though, is it? Doesn’t matter whose fault it is. That’s the way it went. Then you pull an absolute blinder, turning yourself overnight from black sheep into holy cow. Turning up with Henry, like that. Tall. Handsome. Educated. Successful. And loaded. And with the kindest heart in Christendom. Suddenly all Mummy and Daddy’s little money problems are over. Henry buys Hingham House. We all get a nice cash injection. Mummy and Daddy live out their days in the annexe.”

  “And I get to be Head Girl again!”

  “It was quite a pill for the old folks to swallow.”

  “Whereas you, Tilly, get things right first time. A lot less bother. It all comes so naturally to you, and to Sophie and Lizzie. Anyway, it’s lovely to see it all working out so well for you. Couldn’t happen to a nicer person.”

  “Now you’re being mawkish. Shut up.”

  “OK.”

  Tilly

  Conversation ceases for a few minutes while they devour a large pot of coffee and a plate of home-baked cookies round the kitchen table.

  “Bit like the sheep, aren’t we?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “In the way we’re going at the food.” The two sisters laugh. Ahead of them, at least a couple of hours to be together, in the company of someone of the same blood. “It’s funny,” Tilly eventually says, scraping a stray chocolate chip into her mouth.

  “What is?”

  “I don’t know, really. It’s just funny being here.”

  “In a good way?”

  “Oh yes, definitely in a good way.”

  “Good. Anyway, Tils, fill me in on all the news. Haven’t seen you for ages. What’s the goss?”

  “Where shall I start?”

  “Edmund.”

  “Yeah, Edmund’s good. Still trying to make a go of it with the Shepherds’ Huts.”

  “And the two of you still good?”

  “Oh, you know me and Edmund. Hopeless without each other.”

  “And the girls?”

  “Well, as you might expect, there’s more to tell there. How long have you got?”

  “Forever. More coffee?”

  “Thanks. Well, Sophie’s fine. One more year at sixth form, then she’ll be off on an art and design course somewhere. Did I tell you she’s saved up enough to go to New York in the summer? Going to do all the galleries and museums. Got a nice boyfriend. He seems to spend all his time writing poetry for her and giving her the big calf eyes. So she’s OK.”

  “It’s Lizzie you’re worried about then?”

  “Yes. She seems to have lost her way a little bit. She’s talking about dropping out of college. Said she isn’t ready or it isn’t for her. She’s missing so many lectures.”

  “So what’s she doing instead?”

  “She’s working in the kennels.”

  “Sounds OK. She’s only young. Be good experience for her while she decides what she’s going to do.”

  “Well, that part of it’s OK. I agree, she’s got time to look around and find something better that suits her. Trouble is, she’s met this guy called Billy.”

  “Is that his only offence? His name?”

  “No, silly. It’s not his name we object to. He’s eight years older than her. Again, not a crime, but it’s quite an age gap for a twenty-two-year old. She says they met at a festival in Somerset. He just seemed to follow her home.”

  “Are they both living with you?”

  “No. They live in a caravan on the kennel yard. Honestly, Cecily, I’ve been there. It’s absolutely rank. She’s out all hours at work, and occasionally college, and as far as I can see, he just sits on his fat arse, well, skinny arse actually, in the caravan, buying and selling vinyl on the Internet all day.”

  “Does he make any money out of it?”

  “Who knows? He doesn’t tell Lizzie if he does. She’s borrowing money from me to pay for food. He’s not contributing a penny. He wants a baby. I’m so worried that she’ll just go along with it or it’ll just happen by default. Apparently he’s had a child with about three different girls.”

  “What does she say when you talk to her about it?”

  “Nothing. She just clams up. But I honestly can’t see what she sees in him. He’s, like, got this hair.”

  “Well, that’s not so unusual.”

  “Be quiet. No, this hair,” and Tilly screws up her face, “it’s like rolls of orange and purple cotton wool, which he ties up behind him or shoves in this sort of crochet hat.”

  “A rasta then?”

  “No, no, nothing like that. He eats sausages and drinks like a fish. He doesn’t look cool, he looks like some kind of psychedelic nightmare. He’s a self-avowed skip rat, never buys anything new, just wears other people’s discards, so his clothes are rags. And none too fresh-smelling either.”

  “Kind of the eco-warrior look then?”

  “I wouldn’t say he’s any kind of warrior. Don’t think there’s a principled bone in his puny little body. Do you know what he’s actually done! I don’t know if it’s illegal but it’s certainly a rotten thing to do. He’s got some kind of ugly Staffordshire terrier which somebody abandoned at the kennels. He’s only gone and got it tattooed. On its rump. It’s got this balled fist and ‘England Expects’ underneath. Vile!”

  “You’re beginning to paint quite a picture. What does Lizzie see in him?”

  “God knows! I think she’s got into this bind that some girls get into. A guy comes along who is so arrogant, so full of himself that he, momentarily at least, convinces the impressionable that there really is something about him.”

  “They usually get found out in the end.”

  “Do you know just how arrogant he is? He actually suggested to me that…”

  “What?”

  “Oh, I can’t even tell you.”

  “You mean he made a pass at you?”

  Tilly nodded, pulling a face of absolute disgust. “Except ‘a pass’ has a sort of old-fashioned, roguish quality to it. ‘Lunge’ would be a better word.”

  “Did you tell Lizzie?”

  “Nah! She’d somehow say it was all my fault or I’d imagined it and then I’d lose what little of her that’s still connected to her old world.”

  “What did you do?”

  “I slapped him. Hard. And, do you know what, the little rat, this gleam came into his eye and he came at me. Bloody hell, Cecily. I’m twenty-five years older than him.”

  “No barrier for some.”

  “Disgusting.”

  Cecily puts her hand over Tilly’s. “I’m sorry, love. I’m sure it will sort itself out, though.” Tilly snatches her hand away.

  “And, another thing! He tried to blackmail me. Said that I should give him five hundred pounds or else he would tell Lizzie. I told him to get lost. But then three days afterwards, Lizzie comes to me and says that Billy needs money, to buy stock ostensibly, or else he would have to leave. I refuse. She rows with me and says she’s given him all the money she�
�s saved for college. She earns precious little as it is. I just cannot believe what an exploitative, manipulative bastard that man is. Or what Lizzie sees in him. He’s not even that good-looking. He’s got a fat belly, weak eyes and small feet. And heaven knows what germs and parasites he’s harbouring in his busy little cock.”

  Tilly sighs and reaches for another biscuit. “I just want her to be with someone who shows her some love and respect. Somebody who…I don’t know…somebody who hangs his clothes up at night in a wardrobe.”

  Cecily laughed. “That sounds a bit bourgeois. But I know what you mean. Somebody like her dad.”

  “Isn’t that what every girl wants?”

  “Well, only if they have a fab dad.”

  “It just breaks my heart to see her give her love away so easily, like it’s not worth anything.”

  “Haven’t we all got to do that at least once, give our love away to somebody completely worthless?”

  “I don’t know. Did you?”

  “Yeah. I guess.” Cecily stands abruptly and rinses the cups out under a fast stream of cold water. Droplets spray out in the sun shining through the window, forming fleeting rainbows. Tilly watches her back. Is Cecily on edge? By moving to the sink, it feels as if Cecily has moved a stone out of the magic circle. “Sheep are OK.” Cecily wipes her hands on a towel and returns to the table. “But you never know if you are going to reach the stars or not. If you knew you were, you might not stop off at the lesser planets on the way. You know, if you were Lizzie’s age and knew that sometime in your twenties or thirties or fifties, or whenever, you were going to meet the one person who made your life complete, you might live a very different life. If you knew you weren’t ever ever going to meet that one special person, then you think to yourself that at least you might pick up some moondust, if you can’t have the stars.”

  “Don’t know what you’re talking about, Cess.”

  “No, neither do I really. So, go on, Tils, who was your undesirable love?”