Next of Kin (22 page)

‘OK.'

‘I'm gonna see my dad.'

Debbie flinched. She couldn't look at Lyndsay.

‘My dad,' Eddie said to Hughie with emphasis, ‘drives
tractors
.'

‘That's enough,' Debbie cried sharply. ‘Enough. Go on home, go on, go before I belt you one—'

The kitchen door slammed, and then the outer one, to the yard.

‘Sorry,' Debbie whispered.

Lyndsay said, ‘He couldn't know. How could he know?'

‘He shoudn't have said it. He shouldn't have said it anyway—'

‘It doesn't matter,' Lyndsay said. ‘He was just being normal. It's good for us to see people being normal, it's what we need.' She stooped over Hughie. ‘Are you going to eat your crisps?'

He took one, the size of a small shirt button.

Lyndsay said, ‘We aren't very good guests. It's so kind of you to be here. I think Robin—' She stopped, and then she said in a rush, ‘Nobody knows what to do with us,' and then in almost a whisper, ‘We don't know what to do with ourselves.'

Debbie waited, clenching her hands in her lap. The sight of them made her want to cry again, she could feel the tears bunching up in her throat, hard and uncomfortable. She wanted to say she'd do anything to help, anything, but she couldn't trust herself to open her mouth or the tears would burst out and then they'd all be at it. She shook her head helplessly instead, and crushed her fingers together until the bones shone white through the skin.

‘Try another one,' Lyndsay said to Hughie. He chose a second crisp, even smaller than the first. Lyndsay said to Debbie, ‘We left his sister with Mary today. Didn't we, Hughie? Sometimes we like just being the two of us.'

Debbie said unsteadily, ‘Rebecca was wild with jealousy when Kevin was born. I couldn't leave them alone together, not for a minute. She had him once, with the fire tongs.'

‘Rose is just a bit noisy,' Lyndsay said. ‘Isn't she, Hughie? And sometimes we need a bit of peace and quiet. But she's only a baby—'

Debbie leaned forward, releasing her hands from one another.

‘I'll help you with her. I'm only up at the school dinnertimes. I'll help. You only have to ask, I'd like to, I'd like to help.'

‘Thank you,' Lyndsay said. ‘You're really kind. Thank you.' She looked across at Debbie. ‘I – I don't know what I'm going to do. Maybe a job. I don't know, I can't think. Not yet.'

‘No—'

‘Dr Nichols says it's shock. He says it was shock for – for Joe's father, too, that's what did it. He called it a blow to the nerves.'

‘How is he?'

‘Still in hospital,' Lyndsay said. ‘They'll let him come home when he's eating again. He won't eat yet.' Her voice shook. ‘I don't blame him. We none of us want to eat. There doesn't seem any point, somehow.'

Debbie said, glancing at the clock and reminded of Gareth's tea, ‘I'm ever so sorry, but I ought—'

‘Of course,' Lyndsay said, ‘of course. You go.' She stood up, slowly. ‘We'll clear up. Won't we, Hughie? We'll clear up and then we'll wait for Uncle Robin.'

‘I meant what I said,' Debbie said. ‘About the baby, about helping with the baby—'

Lyndsay put a hand on Hughie's head. He shrank down from under it, pulling Seal up to hide his face.

‘Thank you,' Lyndsay said, ‘I won't forget.'

‘Take Hughie home,' Robin said. He had on a jacket and tie, the knot loosened below the open collar of his shirt.

Lyndsay paused in her slow wiping of the plates the children had used. Hughie, sitting beside the house cat on the newspaper pile, sucked his thumb and watched.

‘Why?'

‘Is Mary there?'

‘Yes, but—'

‘I want you for half an hour. I want you to do something with me.'

‘What?' Lyndsay said.

Robin glanced at Hughie.

‘Come into the yard a moment,' he said to Lyndsay. ‘I've something to show you.'

‘Will you wait there?' Lyndsay said to Hughie. ‘Will you stay there just for one minute with the cat?'

Hughie said nothing.

‘I'll only be a second. Just one second and I'll be back. Don't move.'

She followed Robin out into the yard. His car, the battered estate car Caro had used as an alternative to the Land Rover, was parked close to the yard door. Its back seats were folded down flat, to give the maximum carrying space, and Lyndsay could see a coil of rope and some old newspapers and a roll of pig wire and an empty gas cylinder. There was also a small neat cardboard box.

Robin went round to the tailgate of the car and lifted it. He pulled the box towards him and opened the flaps. Inside, Lyndsay could see a container, like a big square instant-coffee jar, made of bronze plastic with a screw-top lid.

Robin said, ‘I went to the undertakers' in Stretton this afternoon.' He made a sketchy gesture towards his tie. ‘As you see.'

Lyndsay gazed at the container. Robin lifted it out of the box and held it in his hands, not quite holding it out to her.

‘Joe's ashes,' Robin said.

She swallowed.

‘Not all of them, of course,' Robin said. ‘All of them would have been—' He stopped. He looked at Lyndsay. ‘We have to scatter them,' he said. ‘It's what he wanted. He wanted them scattered in the river. I think we should do this together unless – unless, of course, you'd rather do it alone.'

She shook her head. Her eyes were filling again. Robin put the container back in the box. He straightened up and put his hands on Lyndsay's shoulders.

‘It's what he wanted. I heard him. We have to do it. I can't leave him – them – here in the car.' He paused, about to say that driving Joe's ashes back to Dean Cross had been unbelievably hard, one of the hardest things he'd done in all these long, hard months, but he refrained. ‘Take Hughie home,' he said. ‘Take him home to Mary and meet me down by the river in half an hour.'

He dropped his hands from her shoulders. She raised her eyes to his for a second and he saw she was about to run away. He raised a finger to her and she flinched.

‘Lyndsay,' he said angrily, not caring. ‘Lyndsay,
do
it. Stop thinking of yourself and bloody
do
it.'

She was there before him, waiting. She had parked her car fifty yards up the track from the river and had walked down to the bank and now stood there beside a willow tree that Judy had played on as a child, which had grown out so horizontally from the bank that it made a natural saddle to bestride.

‘Hughie OK?'

‘I think so,' she said. ‘I mean, as much as he can be. Sometimes I wish he wasn't so quiet, so good. Sometimes I wish he'd just yell so I knew what he was thinking.'

Robin grunted. He had the container of Joe's ashes in the crook of his arm. Lyndsay looked at it.

‘Should we have asked your mother?'

‘Not unless you wanted it—'

‘I don't,' Lyndsay said. ‘I expect I shouldn't say it, but I don't.'

‘There's no should or shouldn't,' Robin said, ‘there's only what is. For the moment anyway.'

He took the container in one hand, and gently unscrewed the lid. He held it out to Lyndsay. He was still, she noticed, wearing his tie, a dark-red tie with a small tidy pattern on it, very conventional. It was probably one of not more than three or four he owned altogether. Joe had hardly owned any ties, either, only the ones she had given him for parties, frivolous ties in bright patterned silks, and a black one. There was something odd, and touching, to see Robin standing there on the river bank in his tie. She looked, with apprehension, at the open container.

‘They're very soft,' he said. ‘I felt them. They're softer than wood ash.' He held the container a little closer to her. ‘Put your hand in. Put your hand in and take some.'

‘I can't—'

‘You can,' Robin said. ‘You must.'

She dipped her hand into the neck of the container. What was inside was indeed soft, almost silky. Her fingers went down into it, into . . .

‘It isn't Joe,' Robin said. ‘Don't think that. It isn't him.'

‘It
must
be—'

‘Then let him go!' Robin shouted suddenly. ‘Throw him on the river and let the poor bugger go!'

She snatched her hand out of the container and a plume of ashes, pale pinkish grey, streamed out after it and blew away like smoke across the water.

‘More,' Robin said.

She dug her hand in again and flung it wide across the river, and then again and again, letting the arcs of ashes melt into the air above the water. She thought she was screaming. She saw Robin put his hand into the container and take out a lot, a big handful, and then he set the container down on the ground and moved to the water's edge and stooped down, so that his hand almost touched the water and the ashes slid away from him into it, quite silently and swiftly, and were gone. She heard him murmur. She cried out.

‘What did you say?'

He turned.

‘Just goodbye.'

Lyndsay bent and picked up the container. It was still half full. She carried it down to the river and knelt beside Robin on the muddy grass. Then she leaned forward and let the remaining ashes pour smoothly from the jar, vanishing into the water as they touched it.

‘That's it,' Robin said. ‘That's the way.'

He stood up. Lyndsay stood up, too. For a moment, they stood side by side, watching the water, this unremarkable small brown river full of pebbles and soft mud and chub where Joe had asked to be scattered. And then Lyndsay turned to Robin and put her arms around his neck.

He held her back. She could feel the surprise in his arms, in that they were not quite relaxed. She pushed herself against him.

‘
Hold
me.'

‘I am.'

‘Properly,' Lyndsay said.

He felt different from Joe, the same height but more wiry, less solid, less permanent. She turned her face so that it lay against his shoulder and moved her arms to hold him across the back.

‘He knew I needed him,' Lyndsay said. ‘And he left me. He knew I'd blame myself and he's let me do it. He knew I can't live alone, he
knew
it. He made me lean on him, he let me do it.' Her arms tightened around Robin. ‘You mustn't let me down, Robin,' Lyndsay said. ‘You mustn't.'

She felt his arms loosening.

‘Don't,' she said.

‘I'm the wrong person to talk to like this—'

‘What d'you mean?' she demanded, looking up. ‘What d'you mean, the wrong person?'

Robin said awkwardly, ‘I'm his brother, and in any case—'

‘What?'

‘I don't know about – love.'

‘Nonsense!' Lyndsay cried. ‘Absolute nonsense! Everybody knows about it! It's the one thing everyone knows about!'

Without warning, she moved suddenly and kissed him on the mouth. It was a hard kiss, a startling one, and he felt her tongue fleetingly against his lips. He dropped his arms. He was shaking slightly.

‘Time you went home—'

‘No!' she shouted.

‘You must get back to the children.'

‘What do you know about it? What do you know about children, about what I should and shouldn't do? What do you bloody know?'

He took her arm, gripping it.

‘Nothing,' he said. ‘I told you. I never said I did.'

Lyndsay began to cry.

‘Sorry,' she said, sagging against him. ‘Sorry, sorry, I shouldn't—'

He put an arm round her.

‘No shouldn't,' he said. ‘I told you that, too. No should.'

‘I want to kill someone,' Lyndsay said. ‘I want to make someone pay for this.'

He began to propel her slowly up the track back to her car.

‘Robin—'

‘Yes?'

‘I'm sorry about just now. I'm sorry I gave way like that—'

‘It doesn't matter.'

‘I don't know what I feel. Or think. Or anything.'

She stopped walking and turned to face him, her hair in the light evening wind blowing about her in a cloud.

‘You'll stand by me, though, won't you?'

He looked at her.

‘You will, won't you, Robin? You'll help me sort myself out, what I do, where I go? You won't leave me to deal with – with, well, with your parents alone, will you? You'll stand up for me?'

He sighed. A feeling of dread slid abruptly into his chest like a small cold knife.

‘Of course,' he said.

Chapter Twelve

Dilys stood in the bedroom that had been Joe's, all his life, until he had left it to marry Lyndsay six years before. It was an odd room, L-shaped because of the big airing cupboard that jutted into it and contained the house's hot-water cylinder, but Joe had liked it because it had a double view. He had done his homework here, and collected his model aeroplanes and had had measles and chicken-pox. On the walls still hung team photographs from his schooldays, framed in black against the cream emulsion paint. He'd been a rugby player at school, the best scrum-half Stretton Old School had had in a decade, and his strip still lay in the bottom drawer of the big chest between the windows, laundered by Dilys and then put away and left there. There were some things from the past you couldn't touch; there was still too much life left in them.

Dilys came into Joe's room every day, sometimes twice. She brought a duster with her and gathered up the spinning half-dead flies that collected daily on the windowsills, and polished the small looking-glass – she still felt a thrill of pride that it had had to hang so high on the wall, to accommodate his height – and smoothed the bed, as if someone had rumpled it since her last visit, by sleeping there. She allowed herself five minutes, ten at the most, and then she would stand just inside the door for a moment or two, quite still, eyes wide open, before she went out and closed the door behind her.