When I come down to breakfast, I find that my uncles have already eaten, and I am invited to help myself to ‘whatever takes my fancy’. At the moment, nothing much takes my fancy, especially as the idea of trying to find something edible amid the chaos is more than a little daunting (Eric and Silas appear to have breakfasted on the remains of the soup).
‘Goat’s milk,’ they advise, when I explain about the morning sickness. ‘It never fails.’ How on earth do they know? Silas pours me a generous glassful.
The milk is obviously fresh as it’s still warm, and as I struggle to swallow it, I wonder why the thought of milk warmed by a goat is so much less appetising than milk warmed in a saucepan. It’s somehow too intimate, like sitting on a seat recently occupied — and warmed — by a stranger. Maybe it would help if I were acquainted with the goat in question. But wherever the milk came from, it appears to do the trick, for while I’m still not up to breakfasting on soup, I eat two slices of bread and honey and some of yesterday’s cherries.
‘There.’ Eric and Silas regard me with satisfaction, as though I am a child who has finished up her greens. ‘Not so bad, was it?’
I agree that it wasn’t bad at all, and also have to admit that I’m feeling considerably better.
‘Would you mind if I did a bit of — well just a little bit of tidying up?’ I ask them. ‘Just so that I feel I’m doing my bit.’
My uncles roar with laughter.
‘She wants to sort us out,’ says Eric. ‘That’ll be a job and a half. But help yourself if it makes you feel better. Just don’t throw anything away.’
I try not to feel offended. After all, my offer was intended to help them, not me. I shan’t be staying for long, so it’s not my problem if my uncles want to live like pigs.
Three hours later, I am totally exhausted, but I’ve found (and cleaned) most of the kitchen floor and some of the surfaces. Things which are obviously rubbish are piled in one corner; things which may be of some use in another. The washing machine (Snow White may have found her prince, but she didn’t have a washing machine) is whirring merrily away, and the cats have gone out into the garden to sulk as I’ve removed their cosy little nest of old jumpers from the draining board. When Eric and Silas come in for lunch, I have found bread and cheese and pickled onions, and laid them out nicely on the table.
‘Goodness.’ Eric goes over to the sink to wash his hands. ‘You didn’t have to do this, you know. You’re our guest. Besides,’ he adds, ‘Blossom comes in tomorrow.’
‘Blossom?’
‘Our cleaner. She doesn’t really do much housework —’ I’ll say she doesn’t — ‘but she needs the money, and she’s magic with the animals. That’s really why we keep her on. We couldn’t manage them all and the garden on our own.’
Blossom. I imagine a lovely cuddly woman with a wide welcoming bosom and equally wide smile; someone I can talk to, and maybe even someone who will know something about babies, even if she’s lacking in the cleaning skills department. I look forward very much to meeting her.
How wrong can I be.
When Blossom arrives next morning, she turns out to be a small skinny woman, with eyes like darting black beads in a face taut with disapproval.
‘What’s all this, then?’ she asks, before she’s even taken off her coat.
‘Our niece has come to stay,’ Eric/Silas tells her (I still can’t tell them apart from behind). ‘Blossom, meet Ruth.’ He disappears into the garden, leaving Blossom and me to get acquainted.
‘How do you do?’ I hold out my hand.
‘Hmm.’ Blossom ignores the hand. ‘How long you staying?’
‘I don’t really know. Not long. Just until I find somewhere else.’
‘What have you done to the kitchen?’
‘I tidied it a bit.’
‘Hmm. They won’t like that.’
‘They didn’t seem to mind. And at least we can find everything now.’
‘They could find everything before. That’s the way they like it. I don’t interfere in the kitchen.’ (Now there’s a surprise.)
I try to overcome the temptation to ask what it is that Blossom actually does, and wait to see. She fetches brooms and brushes from under the stairs, and clears a kind of runway through the clutter in the hall, thus giving easier access to the stairs, various doorways and the downstairs lavatory. The coats and caps she leaves where they’ve fallen, presumably because she isn’t tall enough to replace them. She shakes the doormat, polishes the door knocker, and then repairs to the kitchen to make herself some coffee. She doesn’t offer me any, so I make my own.
‘Where do you live?’ I try to make conversation.
‘Village.’ Blossom slurps her coffee, and adds more sugar.
‘How do you get here?’
‘Bike.’
‘And — your husband?’ I notice her wedding ring. ‘What does he do?’
‘Dead.’ Blossom wipes her mouth on the back of her hand.
‘Oh, I’m so sorry.’
‘Don’t be. Miserable bugger, he was.’ There is the ghost of a smile. ‘Well rid of him.’
‘And — children?’
‘Son. And daughter. No better than she ought to be.’
‘Oh dear.’ I suspect that in Blossom’s book that probably applies to me, too. ‘Do you see much of her?’
‘Nope.’ Blossom gets up from the table and deposits her empty coffee cup in the sink. I notice that she doesn’t wash it up. She picks up a bucket and opens the back door. ‘You expecting?’ She turns, her hand still on the door handle.
‘Yes. Yes, I am. How did you know?’
‘Can always tell.’ Blossom looks pleased. ‘Knack,’ she explains.
‘Oh. That’s — handy.’
‘Can tell you the sex, and all.’
‘Really?’
‘Stand up and turn around.’
I do as I’m told.
‘Boy,’ she says, and goes out into the garden, banging the door shut behind her.
‘How did you get on with our Blossom?’ Silas asks when they come in at lunch time.
‘I don’t think she likes me very much.’
‘Don’t mind Blossom. She doesn’t like anybody.’ He laughs at my expression. ‘You’re wondering why we have her, aren’t you?’
‘Well, it did cross my mind.’
‘Sometimes we ask ourselves, don’t we, Eric? I suppose she’s become a habit. And she doesn’t chatter or expect us to look after her.’
‘How on earth did she come to be called Blossom?’
‘She doesn’t look much like a Blossom, does she? I believe it was one of those baptismal mix-ups — a deaf priest, a mother who didn’t like to point out a mistake. Something like that. Her father was Welsh and wanted her to be Blodwyn, but it wasn’t to be.’
‘She told me my baby would be a boy.’
‘Then that’s what it’ll be. Blossom’s always right.’
‘How does she do it?’
‘I’ve no idea.’ Silas cuts himself a slice of bread. ‘She says it’s a knack, but she won’t tell us her secret. She does it with piglets, too.’
‘What, all the sexes?’
‘No, but she can tell us how many there will be. She says Sarah’s going to have thirteen, and she’ll be right, give or take a piglet or two. Thirteen’s a lot, though, poor old girl. Sarah’s getting on a bit. We may have to drown a couple.’ He butters his bread. ‘I might stuff one,’ he adds thoughtfully.
‘Stuff one?’
‘It’s a hobby.’
‘Stuffing things?’
‘Taxidermy. I’m teaching myself,’ he says, through a mouthful of bread and cheese. ‘I’ve never done a piglet. It might be rather fun.’
‘Do you — stuff things too?’ I turn to Uncle Eric.
‘Good Lord, no. Not my kind of thing at all.’
‘No. He’s much too busy disproving Noah’s Ark,’ Silas says.
‘Noah’s Ark?’ This conversation is becoming weirder by the minute.
‘The Creationist theory,’ Eric says. ‘Noah and the Ark; animals going in two by two; all that. Some people actually believe it. Every word of it. So I’m doing some research.’
‘Gosh. My parents wouldn’t approve of that at all,’ I laugh. ‘Do they know?’
‘Certainly they know. And you’re right. They don’t approve. But there’s not a lot they can do about it. Your father asked me “not to pollute your mind with my theories”, but I said you were old enough to decide for yourself.’
‘To be honest, I haven’t given it a lot of thought,’ I said. ‘Well, not since I left home, anyway.’
‘Well, do. It’s very interesting. I started with Adam and Eve. That bit was quite easy.’
‘And the talking serpent and the apple?’
‘Ah.’ He looks pleased. ‘It wasn’t an apple, for a start. You have another look at your Bible. There’s no mention of an apple. Just the fruit of the tree of knowledge. It could have been an apricot, or a fig.’ He cuts himself more bread, and offers me a slice. ‘I like the idea of mankind being seduced with a fig. They’re so much more sexy than apples. We’ve got a marvellous fig tree in the garden.’ He takes a large bite of his bread. ‘There’s nothing to say it was an apple.’
‘I never thought of that.’
‘People don’t. And then there’s Jonah and the whale. If you look at the physiology of whales, you’ll find that Jonah would have been destroyed by its gastric juices within twenty minutes, and that’s if he could find any air to breathe while it was happening. He certainly wouldn’t have lived to tell the tale.’
‘And Noah?’
‘Don’t get him started,’ Silas says, peeling a rather mottled banana. It reminds me of the hide of a giraffe, but maybe that’s the Noah’s Ark effect.
‘Noah’s the best of all,’ Eric says. ‘At least, it’s the most interesting — and by far the most impossible. Just imagine. All those creatures, all that fodder, all the extra animals to feed to the carnivores, all that mucking out. Quite impossible. Pass the pickle, please. But I’m having this discussion with a — friend, and he wants proof, so I’m going to prove it.’
‘How?’
‘Research, Ruth. Research. He wants facts and figures; he shall have facts and figures.’ He smiles at me. ‘You can help if you like.’
‘I think I’d better not. My parents would never speak to me again. Besides,’ I add carefully, ‘isn’t it possible that someone’s done all this before.’
‘Done all what before?’
‘Disproving the Ark. You could look it up on the internet and find out.’
‘We haven’t got a computer. Besides, I’d like to do it myself. It makes it more fun. Computers may be wonderful things, but I think they tend to make people lazy.’
‘You’re probably right.’
We finish our lunch, and I make coffee.
‘Give us a tune, then,’ says Silas.
‘What, now?’
‘Why not?’
So I get out my violin and tune it, after which I play them a Bach gavotte. I realise with dismay how out of practice I am, and resolve to put in at least two hours every day. My uncles, however, are delighted, and applaud enthusiastically.
‘That was wonderful, Ruth,’ Silas says. ‘I’d no idea you were so good.’
‘Not good enough, though.’ I put my violin back in its case. ‘You have to be exceptional to get anywhere these days. I didn’t even manage to stay in the back desk of the seconds in a third-rate orchestra.’
‘But you love it.’ It was a statement rather than a question.
‘Oh, yes!’
‘Well then. How many people find — and do — something they really love? That’s what matters.’
‘What about you? Do you both love what you do?’
My uncles exchange glances and smile.
‘I think we’ve always been happy,’ Eric says. ‘We love this place, our animals, our way of life. We’re very lucky to be able to do it.’
‘And you — get on?’ For a moment, I wonder if I have overstepped the mark, but they don’t seem to mind.
‘We have the odd tiff, but yes. We get on,’ Silas says. ‘We’ve never been apart for more than a night or two. People think we’re odd, but then I suppose we are a bit odd. It doesn’t bother us what other people think.’
‘I don’t think it’s odd. I think it’s wonderful,’ I say with feeling. And I mean it. To live your whole life with someone you really care about, doing something you love; what more could anyone ask?
‘What will you do now, Ruth? What are your plans?’ Eric asks.
Oh dear, that question again.
‘I don’t know. I still haven’t got used to the idea of the baby yet. But I won’t be under your feet for long, I promise. I’m going to start looking for a place to rent, and then get myself some pupils and start teaching.’
‘But we thought you were staying here,’ Silas says.
‘Is that what Dad said?’
‘Well, no. But we assumed you would. As you’ve nowhere else at the moment.’
‘I couldn’t possibly —’
‘Why not? We’ve got plenty of room, and you’re more than welcome.’
‘But my teaching. What about that?’
‘There must be people around here who need violin lessons. You could advertise.’
‘Well ... you’re awfully kind.’ It’s certainly an attractive proposition. On the other hand, I don’t want to take advantage of my uncles’ generosity, and with no mobile signal or internet (the house is surrounded by thick woodland) I would be terribly cut off. ‘Can I think about it? In the meantime, I’ll pay my way, and do what I can to help.’
‘You think about it, then. No hurry.’ Silas picks up his plate and dumps it in the sink. ‘But you’re very welcome.’
So it would seem. And if this particular Snow White has to wait a little longer for her prince, then the way I’m feeling at the moment, it seems a small price to pay.