Читать книгу The Hungry Ghosts - Anne Berry - Страница 9

I never really grasped why Jillian made such a fuss about boarding school.True, it was a bit of a blow the parents choosing Gran’s school, it being Roman Catholic and we being…well, heathens. But it didn’t really worry me. I knew we would have a laugh. I told Jillian so, as she sat on her bed, in the flat on The Peak. The Easter holidays were drawing to a close, and she was red-cheeked and wretched. She was flying back to England the next day and I was helping her to pack.

‘In September I’ll be joining you,’ I told her with a grin. ‘We’ll shake things up, Jilly.’ She managed a weak smile.

‘I hate it there,’ she said brokenly.‘I’m miserable.’ She took off her glasses and I saw her eyes were swimming with tears. ‘The nuns are bitches!’

I tossed in a T-shirt with a picture of kittens on it, shunted the case along the bed, and sat down next to my sister. I put an arm over her shoulder. This was an awkward gesture for me. I am not a touchy-feely person. It is nothing personal but I experience a kind of revulsion when things get sloppy. That day there had been a scene at lunch, a spectacular scene. It was a roast dinner. We generally have a roast on the weekends. Jillian, already feeling as if she was fading away, as if she was only half visible, with her return to England imminent, was upset even before we sat down. Alice kept asking her silly questions. What was it like at boarding school? Did she have a boyfriend? Was she excited about the flight tomorrow? That sort of thing. Jillian loathed Alice. She had told me late one night that she would like to slap her, that she could not bear her enthusiasm, her eagerness, her desire to please.

‘She can afford to behave like that,’ Jillian had said bitterly, screwing up her eyes behind their lenses, as she watched Alice chatting to one of the amahs.

I sympathised with Jillian. From time to time Alice got on my nerves too. But it was plain to me that my elder sister hadn’t thought this through. Anyone could see that Jillian’s vendetta against Alice did not work in her favour. For a start it maddened Father, who seemed to feel he had to keep riding to Alice’s rescue, like some paternal knight in shining armour.

‘Why not make a friend of Alice, then make that friendship work for you,’ I suggested reasonably to Jillian.

But to no avail I’m afraid. Jillian’s revulsion for our little sister knew no bounds. She gave long-suffering sighs when Alice walked into a room. On car journeys she insisted on winding up the window, claiming the draft was blowing her hair out of shape, knowing full well that Alice was prone to travel sickness. And she would stoically ignore our little sister when she bounded up to her full of adoring compliments. How lovely Jillian was looking, Alice would say. How she wished her brown hair was fair like Jillian’s, and would Jillian help her pick out some new clothes because she had no idea what was fashionable in London at present. It astonished me that Alice did not seem to realise she was antagonising Jilly. But then she can be a little obtuse sometimes.

So when we all trooped into lunch that day, I had an idea that something was going to happen. Father carved the meat. It was roast beef. Jillian wanted an outside cut and so did Alice. Neither of them liked bloody meat, whereas I liked mine nearly raw. I was happiest with a middle slice, all pink and oozing blood. Father served Alice before her older sister, and Jillian clearly felt the snub. She made up her mind that all the best bits had gone to Alice, and that the cut she was dished up was undercooked. She took Father to task over this, complaining that Alice always got the choicest pieces of meat. Mother piled in.As a matter of course,Harry,son and heir,had been taken care of first. Now he looked perturbed by the delay. Catching his mother’s eye, he was given the go-ahead to start his meal. So while hostilities were breaking out, Harry was slowly masticating a mouthful, like a cud-chewing cow. All the while, his eyes focused hypnotically on two black and silver angelfish, gliding about in a tank, set up on the dresser behind the dining-room table. Then Alice made matters much worse by offering Jillian her meat.Typical.Why couldn’t she just shut up?

‘Here Jillian,we can swap plates if you like,’Alice suggested,lifting her plate and offering it to her sister.

‘I don’t want it now you’ve touched it,’ Jillian cried, shoving the plate back towards Alice, so hard that the piece of crispy outside meat was launched off it, orbited briefly in the air, before landing with a ‘plop’, quite fortuitously as it happened, on Harry’s plate. Harry’s eyes rolled from living fish to dead meat, and stayed glued to the unexpected arrival, his jaws temporarily locked.

‘That was uncalled for,’ Father said angrily, hurriedly flipping over the joint, carving a slice from the other end, and delivering it to Alice’s plate.

‘No,’ pleaded Alice. ‘I don’t mind really. Jillian can have it.’

‘Didn’t you hear me the first time?’ Jillian shrieked, shooting a slaughterous look in Alice’s direction. ‘I don’t want anything of yours.’

Alice began protesting that she hadn’t touched it, so it couldn’t be called hers yet.Then Mother, who kept running a thumb up and down along the blade of her own knife, where it lay at the side of her plate, told Alice to be quiet and to get on with her dinner.The colour was draining from Alice’s face now, and she began clearing her throat as if she had something stuck there. Father wanted to know if she was okay and would she like some water.

‘Oh for goodness sake, if you’re feeling sick,Alice, leave the table,’ Mother snapped.‘You’re ruining everyone’s dinner.You are making us all lose our appetites.’

As Mother spoke, I saw she had taken up her own knife and fork. She was grasping them about their middles as if they were weapons, and then suddenly she threw them tetchily a little way from her, across the table. Her fork struck a serving dish full of vegetables, and her knife clanged against the metal gravy boat.Alice rose slowly from her chair. She looked bewildered, unsure if she should go or stay. Father smiled kindly at her and told her to stay put. Mother looked livid. Jillian slid malevolent eyes towards her sister, but her head remained motionless. Staying calm amidst the storm, Harry was moving his fork imperceptibly to snag Alice’s slice of meat, all his concentration focused then on edging it towards the centre of his plate. At last Alice moved away from her chair and backed out of the room, bumping into the dining-room door once, before turning, opening it and disappearing through it.

‘Come back as soon as you feel better,’ Father called after her.

Alice closed the door with infinite care, as if terrified she would disturb a sleeping baby. After Alice’s departure, I had thought things would improve, and was just tucking into a succulent morsel of red meat when father placed two fat roast onions on Jillian’s plate. Now, if it was a fact known to one and all in our family that Jillian and Alice preferred outside cuts of meat, it was also virtually printed on Jillian’s birth certificate that she hated onions, that no earthly force could induce her to swallow what she described as a single slimy mouthful of them, that even God would have his work cut out if he wished Jillian to polish one off, let alone two. Jillian eyes were riveted on the onions.Mother made a squeaking noise.Harry jumped, and then started mashing up a roast potato with admirable intensity. Father sat back in his chair, and with immense care loaded tiny portions of meat, potato, vegetables and onion onto his fork, patting the whole into a small, sausage shape with his knife, inspecting it for a second, popping it into his mouth, and chewing energetically before washing it down with a glug of red wine. Mother had more than a glug, polishing off nearly her entire glassful. The appearance and following inquiry from one of the amahs as to whether she should clear away, and were we ready for dessert, was met with sour faces, and she quickly scurried off again.

‘I will not eat an onion,’ announced Jillian in a voice of reinforced steel.

This was ignored by Father who made a great drama of having forgotten to say grace, something he hardly ever remembered anyway. He bowed his head piously.

‘Dear God, we thank you for your bounty, for the food on our plates, for the meat, the roast potatoes, the gravy, the vegetables and the onions—’ Father broke off.

He opened one eye. It rotated, taking in Jillian’s raised head, her own eyes held wide open, flashing with defiance, and her folded arms. I ensured Father observed my willing participation in the rare ritual by making quite a drama of unclasping and re-clasping my hands. The fingers of Harry’s hands were plaited together as well. His eyelids fluttered as he snatched sneaky peeks at his food, clearly distressed that the serious business of eating was being held in abeyance for the present. Mother’s head drooped, but I had my doubts that she was lost in prayer.

‘Why were you not praying, Jillian?’ Father demanded, when at last grace was over.

‘I am not thankful,’ Jillian retorted.‘I don’t want to be a hypocrite.’

Mother refilled her glass, and took several gulps in quick succession.

‘I am just going to have a quick word with them in the kitchen,’ she said gaily, her eyes a little too bright, her cheeks inflamed. She rose unsteadily to her feet. ‘These servants need their hands held if they are going to produce a meal that is half decent you know.’ She gave a shout of raucous laughter. No one seemed to share her hilarity. ‘You will sit there until you eat those onions,’ Father decreed to Jillian.

Mother scratched the palm of one hand with the fingers of the other, a nervous habit of hers I’d observed countless times, then made a dive for the kitchen door and was gone.To her credit Jillian slowly ate up everything on her plate…except the onions. Mother reappeared carrying another bottle of wine, hugging it to her under one arm. The remainder of the meal played out in silence, but for the ‘pop’ of the cork. One by one we were excused from the table, all but Jillian. At four o’ clock Jillian was still sitting at the dining-room table, together with her two onions. By now I thought they looked a little dried out. Hovering in the hall, I shot her a sympathetic look through the open dining-room door, which she acknowledged with a flicker of her eyes. Father strode up and down the long corridor seething.Why, he demanded, couldn’t Jillian just eat her onions? They were good onions. They had cost money, money that he worked very hard to make. Perhaps Jillian would like to go out, work hard and make money, so that other people could waste the onions she had bought, he thundered.

Alice was nowhere to be seen. Harry was out on his bike. Mother had passed out on her bed, snoring intermittently. And I was watching the Flintstones in the lounge, and feeling levels of anxiety uncommon to me, occasionally dashing out to check on Jillian. I would have scoffed the onions up myself if I could have reached them, but sadly Father was still patrolling the No Man’s Land of the corridor, beady eyes scanning the hall. Finally, when the tension had reached a pitch that was unbearable, Father marched Jillian and her plate of onions to her bedroom, and said she was to stay there until she had eaten them. He slammed the door and stood vigil outside. At this point something must have exploded in Jillian, because she chose to take the two onions and fling them out of her window. Although I didn’t actually see her do it, I certainly witnessed the aftermath.The onions must have gathered momentum as they fell. Beneath Jillian’s bedroom window was the much-prized garden of the Everard family, attached to their ground-floor flat. Mr Everard was gardening that afternoon when the onions came hurtling down from above, he told Father later, decapitating several of his prize orchids in the process. He stood on our doorstep, the crushed pink flowers in one hand, the beige mess of onion pulp in the other. I had heard the front door and was peeping out of the lounge.

‘Really, Ralph, this is too bad.’ Mr Everard looked deeply offended. ‘This is not what you expect from your neighbours when you settle down for a pleasant afternoon of gardening.’ Mr Everard very nearly wiped his perspiring brow, but then he caught sight of the squashed onions nestled on his open palm. Mr Everard had a bald patch over which he arranged his nut-brown hair, disguising it carefully. Now his hair was all mussed up and a shiny pink patch of scalp exposed. ‘Luckily I just happened to look upwards and I saw them. I saw them come flying out of a window from your flat, Ralph. I leapt out of the way just in time. Imagine that! You simply do not expect onions to start raining on your head on a fine afternoon. I could have been hurt, Ralph, seriously hurt, not to mention the damage done to my orchids.’

I nearly burst out laughing when Mr Everard said this. I imagined Mrs Everard wailing to Mother that her husband had been minding his own business, when he had been flattened by two onions and rushed to Queen Mary’s Hospital.

‘I’m sorry, Peter,’ Father said, wisely in my opinion opting for brevity.

Mr Everard looked down dejectedly, first at his flowers, then at the onion mush. Mother appeared, walking blearily up to the front door.

‘Hello, Peter,’ she greeted our neighbour, her words just a touch thick and sticky. ‘To what do we owe this unexpected pleasure?’ She smiled graciously, dipping her head. Her bun had come undone and her plait was beginning to unravel. Her hands went automatically to her hair and deftly she pinned it up again.

‘I was gardening, Myrtle, when two onions landed in my garden, just inches from my head,’ Mr Everard said without preamble, his tone piqued. A drip of sweat made its way slowly down the side of his face. It trembled on his lower jaw before falling.

‘Really!’ exclaimed Mother, not batting an eyelid. ‘How dreadful for you, Peter.You must have been very shocked.’ Father looked as if he had been winded. He caved in slightly, and I saw that his cheeks were suddenly glowing.‘I do hope you weren’t hurt?’ Mother asked solicitously.

‘Luckily no, Myrtle. But I might well have been,’ Mr Everard reported peevishly, while Mother gave her appearance a quick once-over in the hallway mirror.

‘Well, thank goodness for that,’ Mother declared fervently, her expression one of immense relief. She snatched a little look heavenwards, as if touching base with God, and expressing her personal thanks to him for looking after her people.As her gaze left the celestial sphere, and returned to the tarnished world of mortals, she became aware of Mr Everard’s hands, held aloft and brimming with onion paste and petals.

‘Peter, won’t you join us for a drink?’ she invited smoothly. ‘It’s a wee bit early I know, but after all it is a weekend, and you’ve had a terrible scare.’ She gave her most beguiling smile and winked at Mr Everard. Mr Everard hesitated. ‘Ralph, tell Peter I shall be desolate if he doesn’t join us.’

My father, lost for a moment in Mother’s consummate performance,roused himself and reiterated her invitation.Mr Everard wavered a second longer and then gave in. The day was won.

‘Do let me show you to the bathroom, Peter, to wash your hands,’ Mother said, leading the way, Mr Everard, now fully tamed, trotting after her.‘Ralph,be a dear,and fix the drinks.’She paused and waited for Mr Everard to come alongside. ‘Don’t tell me, Peter…let me see, if my memory serves me right your poison is G and T, ice no lemon.’ Mr Everard was duly flattered. ‘When friends are important to me,I make a point of remembering these things,Peter,’she breathed. Then, as I watched, she tucked her arm through Mr Everard’s, careful to avoid contact with the squashed onion, and they ambled down the corridor towards the bathroom. Pausing outside the door Mother leant in to him, and whispered in achingly manicured tones,‘This is such an unlooked for pleasure, Peter.’ She was magnificent.

Father never spoke of the matter again. And the next time Jillian returned to England, I went with her.