Silas is ready to come out of hospital. They have “stabilised” his condition, but apparently not cured it. Silas tells us that the only permanent cure lies in an operation, and seems disappointed that his condition’s not considered serious enough to merit one for the time being. But never mind. He has a wonderful range of new tablets — heart tablets, water tablets (‘not water tablets. Diuretics,’ says Silas, who hates to be patronised) and blood-thinning tablets with a name which even Silas has trouble remembering.
Eric fetches him home.
It is only now, seeing the newly stabilised Silas, that I realise how ill he must have been. It’s a long time since I confused him with his brother — in fact, now, I wonder that anyone could confuse them at all — so I have become accustomed to seeing him as an individual. And if he’s been a bit paler and thinner than Eric, then I assumed that was the way it’s always been. But since he’s been in hospital, Silas has put on weight and his colour’s improved, and he looks, literally, a new man.
We all tell him how well he looks, but his feelings about this are obviously ambivalent. While he appears to feel fitter and stronger, I know that he hankers after the attention and the drama which accompanied his admission to hospital, and we are not allowed to forget that he has been ‘very ill, you know, Ruth. Very ill indeed.’ Yes, Silas. We know.
Although he’s anxious to get back into the swing of things, we try to prevent him from overdoing it. Light duties only, we tell him, and point him in the direction of his half-finished weasel. In this, he’s more than happy to comply, and while the weasel has suffered from being abandoned at a crucial stage, Silas doesn’t appear to mind. As he tells us, very few people know what a weasel looks like anyway, so if this one deviates a little from what nature intended, it’s unlikely that anyone will notice. Meanwhile, Lazzo stays on to help, but we can no longer count on Kaz. She’s being taken on by a new club, she tells me, and she has acquired a small car, so she no longer has to rely on buses and trains. She’s happy to lend a hand when she can, but we mustn’t rely on her.
‘A mobile dancer is a busy dancer,’ she tells me cheerfully, as she drives round to show us her new wheels. ‘The manager won’t pay for taxis, and I can’t afford them.’
Kaz has painted her car buttercup yellow and decorated it with neat turquoise daisies.
‘What do you think?’ she asks me.
‘Well, it’ll certainly stand out,’ I tell her.
‘That’s what I thought. You can borrow it if you like,’ she adds.
‘That’s kind of you, but I think the Land Rover is more — me.’
‘You’re probably right.’ Kaz climbs back into her car and winds down the window. ‘Well, I’m off to see a man about a pole.’
‘Good luck.’
‘Who needs luck?’ Kaz shouts, as she bounces off down the track.
Sometimes I wish I had Kaz’s confidence.
It would appear that during the winter, my uncles’ activities die down, and they enjoy a period of relative quiet. They close their market stall, selling what little produce there is to private customers, who come and collect it themselves. I have no idea what they live on, since even in the summer, their income from what they sell wouldn’t even heat the house, but then this has always been a bit of a mystery. I know they have various investments from their inheritance, and Eric at least enjoys dabbling on the stock market, so I assume most of their income comes from that.
Outside home, their needs are few. They rarely travel anywhere, and as far as I can see, never take holidays. Most of their clothes are falling apart, but then as Silas says, what does it matter? Hardly anyone sees them and they certainly don’t mind what they look like. They do occasionally buy new shoes and wellingtons, and they make a monthly trip to the barber’s; a filthy establishment, cluttered with old newspapers and magazines, with unsightly heaps of greying hair in every corner and a ceiling stained yellow by bygone years of cigarette smoke. Here Lennie, a wizened man of indeterminate age, dispenses haircuts and gossip for a fiver a time. Eric and Silas consider this excellent value, and wouldn’t dream of going anywhere else.
Mum and I both pay our way, but my savings are dwindling rapidly, so I return to my busking, but on different days now that Eric and Silas no longer have their market stall, driving myself and sometimes travelling further afield to give myself (and the punters) a change. Mr. Darcy, who has his own fan club, now loves these outings, so I still take him with me, and while I’m finding it all increasingly tiring, in my present situation, needs must. My burgeoning pregnancy attracts plenty of interest, not to mention increased revenue, and people come up to chat and give advice. I’ve even made one or two friends.
Mum, however, hasn’t changed her views since I was a busking student, and while she sometimes lets me borrow her car, she doesn’t hesitate to tell me what she thinks.
‘I don’t know how you can stand there in the street like that, with everyone looking at you, Ruth,’ she tells me.
‘But that’s the whole point, Mum. I’m a performer. That’s what performers do.’
‘An orchestra is one thing,’ she persists (that’s not what she said at the time), ‘but hanging round street corners collecting money.’ She gives a delicate little shudder. ‘It doesn’t seem right.’
‘I don’t hang around anywhere, and I don’t collect money. People pay me. I’m not pretending to be homeless or even particularly poor. And if my playing gives people pleasure, and they’re prepared to pay, what’s the problem?’
‘I don’t know what your father would say.’ This, as always, means she knows exactly what Dad would say, as do I. What Dad would say in almost any circumstance is usually entirely predictable.
But the phone call we receive from him two days after this conversation isn’t predictable at all. The call brings tidings of unexpected disaster, for apparently Dad has had an accident with the chip pan, and the resulting inferno has succeeded in destroying two thirds of the house.
Mum, needless to say, is beside herself.
‘The house burnt down. Our home. Burnt down.’ She is inconsolable. ‘And chips! Your father’s never made chips in his life. He doesn’t even like chips!’
‘Is he all right? Is he hurt?’ I want to know.
‘Oh, yes yes. He’s fine. But the house. And chips. What was he doing making chips?’
I recognise the preoccupation with chips as some kind of displacement anxiety, and it’s probably fulfilling its purpose, for isn’t it better that Mum should worry about my father making chips than the fact that she’s probably lost almost everything she possesses?
‘Of course, he must come here,’ says Eric at once.
‘Oh, could he?’ Mum says. ‘He’s nowhere else to stay. He’s had offers from the church, of course, but I don’t think he’ll want to take them up. He hates to be beholden.’
‘Of course. He’s more than welcome.’ This is nice of Eric, since my father has never been especially polite to my uncles, and wouldn’t have relished having either of them to stay.
‘I haven’t mentioned it to him yet. I hope he’ll agree to come,’ Mum says. ‘He can be so — well, he may not want to...’
‘I think he’ll come,’ I tell her, because of course this is the perfect excuse for Dad to bring about a reconciliation without the necessity for a climb-down. In a way, for my parents’ relationship (if for nothing else) it’s a win-win situation.
Sure enough, Dad accepts the invitation, but typically refuses all offers of transport (both Eric and I offer to fetch him), insisting on driving himself. When he arrives a few hours later, subdued and bedraggled, I am shocked at the change in him. Gone is the confidence and the self-control; the air of pious sobriety. He looks somehow shrunken and vulnerable, like the little old man he will no doubt one day become. He is unshaven, and wearing a dirty cardigan with the buttons done up unevenly, and funnily enough it is this which I find most touching.
‘Dad!’ I give him a hug, and for once he barely resists. ‘Are you all right?’
‘A little shaken, of course. But no real harm done.’
‘That’s good.’ I take his small suitcase, wondering what can be in it. Does he still have any clothes, or did they all go up in flames?
Mum comes into the hall to meet him. She looks shy and awkward, her hands twisting together in front of her as though involved in some private battle of their own.
‘Brian.’ She starts to walk towards him, and then seems to think better of it.
‘Rosemary,’ Dad says, but makes no move towards her.
‘Tea?’ I ask quickly, hoping to oil the wheels of this very awkward reunion. ‘I’m sure you could do with a cup of tea, Dad.’
‘Yes. Thank you. Tea would be very nice.’ My father follows me into the kitchen. ‘Where are Eric and Silas?’ He sounds apprehensive.
‘They’re outside with the vet. They may be a while,’ I tell him.
He looks relieved. ‘Oh. Right,’ he says. ‘Nobody — nothing too ill, I hope?’
‘Just a couple of castrations.’
Mum blushes, and I feel a wave of exasperation. She has lived here for some weeks now, in the course of which there have been a number of births and a variety of couplings, none of them particularly discreet and one or two in full view of the house. Will she never get used to the idea of sex?
‘Well,’ says Dad, some time later, as he sits at the table stirring his second cup of tea. ‘We are very blessed.’
‘How do you make that out?’ I ask him.
He turns a reproachful gaze on me.
‘The Lord has been good to us, Ruth. Our home is almost destroyed, and yet no-one has been hurt. Yes. The Lord has been very good.’
Mum nods her agreement, although she is still red-eyed from crying.
This is one of the things I shall never understand about my parents’ faith. Their home of nearly forty years almost razed to the ground, many if not most of their possessions destroyed, and here they are, praising the Lord; the same Lord, presumably, who could have stopped the fire if he’d had a mind to. It seems to me that my parents’ God cannot lose; he gets all the credit when things go well, and none of the blame when they don’t. This is not the right time to raise the matter, but I would dearly like to hear how they can explain this (to me) extraordinary dichotomy.
‘How much — how much is — gone?’ Mum asks now.
‘Well, the kitchen, obviously,’ Dad says. ‘And most of the rest of the ground floor. Upstairs, things are a bit better. The fire only managed to get as far as Ruth’s room. The rest is more or less undamaged.’
‘Is my room — completely destroyed?’ I ask carefully.
‘Pretty well,’ says Dad, reaching for another biscuit (his spirits seem remarkably improved). ‘But you didn’t use it much, did you? And there was only a lot of old stuff from when you were a child. Nothing you’ll miss.’
Nothing you’ll miss. How typical of Dad that even now he’s incapable of putting himself in anyone else’s shoes; of trying to understand a situation from any viewpoint other than his own. I feel a sudden ridiculous surge of grief as I think of the room which I slept in all my life until I left home, and which is still officially mine; the room which was my refuge in times of trouble, where I nursed my teenage sulks and (oh, delicious danger!) shared my first bumbling kiss with the minister’s son while, through the floorboards, we could hear the faint sounds of our parents’ voices as they prayed together in the room below.
Of course, all the stuff I really need has long been removed, but there are all those other things; all those bits and pieces of my childhood. The swimming certificates and posters on the wall, and the rosette I won in my brief equestrian career (it was for fourth place, and there only were four competitors, but I carried that rosette round with me for weeks). Then there are the books; among them Heidi, The Wind in the Willows, the Secret Garden, and my favourite of all, Charlotte’s Webb. The baby might have enjoyed those. There was the patchwork quilt stitched by my grandmother, the only person who I felt really understood me. She and I used to call it the “crosspatch quilt” because I could never remember the word “patchwork”. I remember her arthritic fingers stitching away at that quilt while she told me about her early married life and my mother’s childhood. There was a particular patchwork square — pale blue brocade roses — which I remember especially because it was a one-off, and she was sewing it the day her beloved cat was run over.
And then there were the drawers full of mementoes: my first tiny pink ballet shoes, my music certificates, old school books, letters and photos; and the usual dross of foreign coins, broken pencils, buttons, ancient pots of dried-up cosmetics, hair clips and odd earrings. Someone once said that everyone has a broken wristwatch in a drawer. I had two.
‘Of course, I got in touch with the insurance people straight away.’ Dad is still talking. ‘They’re getting back to me tomorrow. I gave them this phone number. I hope that’s all right?’
‘Of course,’ Silas says. ‘And now perhaps you’d like to get yourself settled? Will you be sleeping — I mean, where would you like to sleep?’
‘Oh, with Rosemary of course.’ Dad appears unfazed by the question. My mother’s opinion obviously doesn’t count, but she nods her acquiescence.
As I carry Dad’s suitcase upstairs and find extra pillows and towels, I wonder what kind of reconciliation my parents will have (I assume they will be reconciled. It must be hard to stay separated in the same bed). Will they talk things through? Touch each other? Make love? Like most people, I find the idea of my parents’ sex life hard to envisage, but there’s no reason why they shouldn’t still have one.
I shall probably never know.