Kehua! (6 page)

Meanwhile the kehua hung unseen, folding and unfolding their shadowy wings like fruit bats, from the branches of the palm
tree that exploded its fronds in Nopasaran’s atrium, and chattered in excitement. Something was happening in the McLean hapu,
for whom they had responsibility. Louis was at his office wondering if he should call Scarlet or let her stew, and the widower
Gerry, Beverley’s erstwhile sweetheart – whom we have yet to meet – was on the Faröe Islands, wondering whether a man would
be wise to woo a woman who, however charming and wealthy, had already been widowed three times. Desire calls so often, yet
practicalities and prudence intervene.

Find your writer fresh and rational this Monday morning, after a good night’s sleep and in charge of her material. Alas, it
becomes apparent, those who hover around the brickwork, the old kitchen range, the wine cellar and the laundry tubs are also
in fighting form, determined to make their presence felt.

Rex dismisses what I hear as ‘auditory hallucinations’ and I daresay he is right. There is nothing other-worldly to be seen,
just rather a lot to be heard. I am not saying any of these sounds exist in actuality; it’s just that I – defining ‘I’ as
the sum of my senses, and how else can it be done? – hear things for which there is no obvious explanation. The laundress
is back with a vengeance. I denied her existence last night and she is determined to make her point. I suspect that a hundred
years ago or so she used to turn up on Monday mornings and has no intention of stopping, though a long time ago lost her corporeal
form. I think she
liked
doing the laundry. I hear the sound of whooshing water and taps running – she is late enough in the house’s history for there
to be taps, though there will have been many visiting laundresses before and I daresay a few after – and hear the sound of
bristle brush on fabric and the squeak of a wringer as the handle revolves and the rubber cylinders turn. There’s also the
fitful sound of what could be a woman singing. But then again it might be the plumbing of the house above or the
central heating radiators down here – they are turned up high; it is very cold today – and it’s true one interprets sound
as one does sight, in accordance with what one expects.

I get up as smoothly as I can from my desk – I find I do not want to draw attention to myself, almost as if I am according
her more right to be here than I have, which is absurd – scuttle to the wall, turn the knob of the central heating panel to
off, and get back to my desk as quickly as possible. I don’t want to disturb the status quo, lest I stir something up even
more unsettling. The panel cools, its gurgling and hissing stops. But that leaves the other sounds, clearer than ever. What
I’m hearing is what I heard vaguely last night, but now in detail: someone wetting the clean dried sheets, applying the iron
– heated on the range – so the steam rises, hissing, and then the heavy hot weight smooths the damp, newly boiled white laundry:
the sheets, the embroidered pillowslips and tablecloths, the aprons, and the master’s shirts. The folding is being done to
perfection, edge to exact edge. I reckon somebody who once worked here was so proud of their work they never quite wanted
to go away. I prefer this comforting version of servant life, rather than the alternative – that past misery keeps their spirits
trapped down here. Life may be hard but people have a great gift for enjoying it.

A house this size – substantial but not too grand – would have had a cook, a nanny when the children were small, a maid and
perhaps a tweenie to assist; a manservant, a gardener’s boy, and a groom. The cook would have slept down here near the kitchen,
female servants would have slept up in the attics under the eaves, two or three to a bed if necessary – where now my husband
has his office and plays his piano. The outdoor staff, the men, slept above the stables. No one was necessarily unhappy, and
they certainly weren’t lonely. At least they were safe, warm and fed, which was
more than could be said for many.

The Yatt House staff would have a Saturday afternoon off once a month if it could be organised – looking after the gentry
was a 24/7 affair – and a jaunt to Evensong every Sunday afternoon, when Sunday lunch was cleared away and a cold Sunday evening
supper for upstairs had been prepared and laid. It isn’t far to go; All Saints’ Church, designed by Pugin, is just across
the road. Once a year staff would have a weekend off to visit their families.

‘There now, that be a good job, quist,’ I hear a woman say, in my head or out of it. I also know I cannot believe the evidence
of my own ears, since someone told me the other day that ‘quist’ in these parts was once used much as ‘innit’ is today. I
have somehow got this notion of a wicker basket piled high with fresh, ironed, folded washing, and am all too likely to dredge
my mind for convenient evidence.

The room is getting noticeably colder, but at least the sounds from the time-slipped world are diminishing, fading back to
their proper place in, I imagine, somewhere around 1900. According to the local directory of that year a Mr and Mrs Bennett
and their three sons Ernest, William and Thomas lived in this house. At any rate it feels safe enough for me to get up, turn
the heating on again, listen to the gentle hissing and gurgling as hot water in the here-and-now world flows back into the
pipes, and get back to my laptop.

Unfortunately it is now my characters’ turn to take offence at my neglect of them; they will not come easily to mind, other
than that Alice née McLean, daughter to Beverley McLean, is up in Chester on her knees praying for her daughters, christened
Mary and Joan (now Cynara and Scarlet, the ingrates), and for funds for a new church building. I am tempted for some reason
to make Alice a member of the Minnesota Light of the Divine Canyon Church,
but this is what I mean by characters getting out of hand. She will be simply Church of England and devout. Someone brought
up by Beverley will quite reasonably seek stability, faith and respectability in their middle age. I’m having trouble enough
getting Scarlet out of Robinsdale and into Jackson’s arms as it is, without involving an evangelical church in Minnesota.

‘Are you running
to
someone,’ asks Beverley, ‘or just running away in general?’

‘To someone,’ says Scarlet, automatically, though she had meant to tell no one. ‘Actually, it’s Jackson Wright, you know,
the film star?’

‘No I don’t, I’m sorry,’ says Beverley. ‘I don’t go to the pictures very often. Films are so noisy nowadays.’

‘He’s rather like Russell Crowe.’ Scarlet refrains from adding ‘with vampire teeth’, in case it gives Beverley the wrong impression.
Jackson is the gentlest man.

‘I’m afraid that doesn’t help. Is he expecting you?’

‘How do you mean?’

‘I just remember the shock your poor Uncle Richie had when your Aunt Solange came knocking on his door with a suitcase in
either hand, saying she had run away from her husband and children and was moving in with him. He wasn’t expecting her at
all. In fact he could hardly remember her name, but she had red hair, which he remembered from various art film festivals
in the Rocky Mountains. It is so easy in these exotic locations for girls to get the wrong end of the stick. Your Uncle Richie
thought he was passing the time every now and then, but she was a nice girl and assumed it was true love, just because he
said it was. He let her stay – he had a film to finish and no time for domestic issues – and they are still
together to this day and so far as I can see perfectly happy. I am sure it will work out okay for you too.’

Scarlet wonders why no one in her family takes her seriously. Perhaps if she could get out of fashion and into current affairs
it would be better? As it is, in Cynara’s eyes she is a traitor to the feminist cause, in Louis’ eyes she is devoid of aesthetic
understanding; in Lola’s eyes out of touch and over the hill; and her own grandmother dismisses the very idea of a ‘career’
– saying there was no such thing, only a bunch of self-styled feminists fooled by capitalism in the name of divide and rule,
lured on by the idea of promotion to keep them working harder and longer than one another to the point of exhaustion. And
her mother Alice hadn’t even cared enough about her to come to her wedding to Louis, saying ‘she didn’t have the time’. Which
Cynara tactlessly reported to Scarlet as Alice thinking Louis and the whole fashion world was made up of homosexuals and druggies
and she didn’t approve.

Scarlet had reacted by throwing a hissy fit, saying, very well then, Louis and I will live in sin if that’s what you prefer,
calling off the wedding, and having the party without the ceremony, which few realised had not happened, they having gone
straight to the reception in Nopasaran’s concrete garden. A good compromise. A marriage is a piece of paper; a wedding party
the real thing. Who cared about parental approval anyway? That had been years back. Scarlet had since made it up with Alice,
who had even quite come round to Louis, and looked forward to grandchildren. Now Alice would have Jackson Wright to contend
with.

‘And you’ve known this film actor some time?’ enquires Beverley.

‘I went to his place three weeks ago to do an interview, and that was that,’ says Scarlet. ‘We’ve seen each other every day
since then, except Sundays.’

‘I can see explaining this to Louis could be quite difficult,’ says Beverley. And she goes on to say that some warning before
leaving home is customary, if only an e-mail or a fax, if anyone uses the latter any more, before saying goodbye. ‘Your sister
Cynara at least e-mailed her husband out jobhunting in Dubai to say he was out on his ear and D’Dora was moving in. I’m afraid
the whole thing has rather upset Lola. How is poor Lola? Are you leaving her at home with Louis? Is that quite wise?’

Scarlet observes that this is the twenty-first century and a male and a female can be in a room together without actual sexual
congress occurring, and besides, Lola is family.

‘Not blood family to Louis,’ says Beverley, and Scarlet goes off to text Jackson and says to make that tea, not lunch. She
is obstructed by family matters.

‘I hope you understand, Scarlet,’ says Beverley, ‘that Lola only came to stay with you in the first place to get back at her
mother. And that you took her in to spite your sister, steal her toy. Children go to great lengths to be revenged on their
parents, and siblings are almost as bad: they spend their time trying to drive the others out of the nest. Obviously Lola
will now make as much trouble as she possibly can. Nature did not build happiness into the system, only the urge to survive.’

It occurs to Scarlet that Beverley is losing her marbles, retreating into some obscure Freudian fantasy about sibling rivalry.
Is her brain going? Will she soon be sitting dribbling in a corner? Had not she, Scarlet, done everything she could not to
take Lola in? If anyone had put pressure on her it was Louis.

‘This running away habit can get compulsive,’ says Beverley. ‘I am the first to admit it. But you younger girls seem to do
it for fun. You look for excuses to go, not reasons to stay. Alice uses Jesus,
Cynara uses D’Dora, you’re using Lola. At least Cynara has the sense to stay in her own home and ease poor Jesper out. Louis
is a perfectly nice man. If you want to have affairs, have them. But don’t leave home.’

‘He’s dull,’ says Scarlet.

‘It’s not a crime to be dull,’ says Beverley. ‘There are worse faults.’

‘And anyway,’ says Scarlet, ‘we aren’t legally married so he isn’t my husband.’

‘Another cop-out,’ says Beverley. ‘If you had married him you would be safer from Lola. That’s how it works. Other women take
a partnership as an invitation to mess things up, a marriage as a warning not to. Women without men are unhappy.’

Scarlet bites back the retort that Beverley was one to speak: she has married three men and buried three, and seems happy
enough. Bad enough to have a sister who is a mad lesbian feminist, a mother who is a mad Jesus freak, and now a grandmother
who, having started out as a mad Marxist, has ended up as a prim moralist. Why couldn’t she, Scarlet, have come from a normal
family? Perhaps she was switched at birth? The more she thinks about it the more likely it seems.

‘Extremes, like murder, run in the family,’ says Beverley. ‘The whole lot of you have a talent for acting out. Cynara became
a feminist to annoy Alice, Alice took to religion because I was a Marxist. You, Scarlet, have reacted by becoming the most
non-aligned person I have ever met. Perhaps it’s an advance. I dread the moment when Lola discovers the joys of alignment,
joins animal rights and starts planting bombs.’

‘Extremes, like murder, run in the family.’

Scarlet had been startled when Beverley said this, but it came as no surprise to Lola, who already took pleasure in the fantasy
that her great-grandmother was a serial husband killer. When asked by Scarlet to take over the mercy food-runs to Robinsdale,
Lola had looked astonished and responded, ‘On my own? No thanks. I’d be shit scared.’

Scarlet could point out as much as she liked that by the time any woman reached eighty the odds were that most of her husbands
would have gone before to the grave, but reason cut no ice with Lola. The price Lola demanded if she was to fetch and carry
for Beverley on her sickbed was to be allowed to drive Scarlet’s little Toyota Prius, green as green can be. She was a good
driver – Lola was good at most things, other than getting on with her family – the problem was that she was too young to have
a licence. Scarlet reckoned it would be okay, Louis was determined that it was not. Louis won, Scarlet capitulated and Lola
sulked. Scarcely a day had gone by since Lola had moved in that was not marked by some such emotional and unnecessary storm.
Occasionally Louis won, as on this occasion, sometimes Scarlet, but mostly Lola.

The deaths of Beverley’s husbands were certainly dramatic, though hardly suspicious. The first to die was Winter Max, in 1967.
He was a Marxist believer with private means, who disappeared on his way to join Che Guevara in the jungle and was presumed
dead. The second was Harry Batcombe, the Architect Laureate, who took his own life after being involved in a homosexual scandal.
The third was Marcus Fletzner, a right-wing journalist and notable drunk, who fell beneath an Underground train. Foul play
was not suspected. The feeling in the family has always been that Beverley was pleased enough to see them go, but that Lola
went too far in supposing murder. Beverley did not like being bored, that was all; the men she chose were at least seldom
boring, and not likely to die peacefully in their beds in the first place.