The Forrests (26 page)

Doggedly positive, Andrew approached unemployment in his
mid-fifties as a self-improvement project. T’ai chi at the community centre; a men’s book club; canvas frames. ‘Now’s my chance to really paint.’ Their neighbour, Dennis, was a local noble, and Dorothy supplemented her practically voluntary job teaching art at the maternity home with work in his garden. A bit extra.

When he wasn’t working on his paintings, Andrew spent most of his time in the library, researching the area and reading books by middle-aged men who had found a new meaning for life through their dog, or their father’s diaries, or their dying football coach. In a few months he finished a series of local portraits in gouache. No mainstream dealer was interested, but he soon met Jennifer from the local art gallery, a community powerhouse in chunky necklaces and a smoker’s growl, a woman who moved and shook. She turned him on to the neighbourhood giveaway guide and got him sketching, unpaid, for that. ‘Promise you, darling, if we get our grant covered again next year and no counting chickens in these times, I’ll give you a show. Or you could hit up Dennis for some sponsorship? God knows we all need a bit of philanthropy.’ And she winked at Dot from beneath her pale-pink beret.

A postcard from Ruth adorned the fridge door, next to Grace’s latest from Guatemala. Ruth was coming to stay in the brick house behind the green hedge, the house flanked by dark cypresses like thick green flames. Soon she would appear on their driveway, suitcase in hand. The late summer holidays were perfect for a visit: long afternoons and less likelihood of rain, the sculpture park still open to the public.

Dot mowed the lawn and hassled Andrew to fix the stuck
window in their son’s bedroom and thought about a range of books – Dennis’s catalogues of pioneer watercolours, local poetry, a novel – to place on the wooden chair next to the bed. There was plenty of time, a day to go. But then, when she was making space inside the refrigerator for crocus and hyacinth bulbs, came a crunching sound from the drive and she ran to the door, feeling red-faced and oh, breathless and wild, and saw the car – not the airport shuttle which Ruth had insisted she would take, declining Dorothy’s offer to collect her, but a taxi. A woman got out and a man followed and at first she thought it was the driver, that the driver had emerged to help Ruth with her luggage, but then the bags were on the path and the taxi pulled away and the man and the woman both remained.

As Dot walked down the steps towards the couple who frowned at the house, at the cypress trees, the camellia bushes and clay roof tiles, it became clear Ruth was ageing in reverse. At the funeral she had been strung-out, dry-handed, efficient and too thin, and she now looked younger, the layer of dewy plumpness in the skin of her face at odds with the cage-bones above her unlikely breasts. The man at her side – it wasn’t Ben – could have been a younger version of Daniel, at least how Dan might have looked if he never took the drugs or hadn’t fucked off overseas and acquired the terrifying agelessness of the constant traveller. All of this registered while Dorothy was being embraced by Ruth and this American, kissed once, twice, three times. There was a tussle over the suitcases, which Dorothy won.

‘We weren’t expecting you till tomorrow.’ Andrew marched up the hallway towards them. He would think he was being welcoming
but Dot cringed at his tone. He kissed Ruth and clasped hands with the man, whose name was repeated –
Hank –
what a relief because it had flown straight out of her mind the first time she heard it, down there by the garage, and she could just see herself getting the name wrong, or never saying it for the duration of his stay, falling mute when the time came to introduce him to anyone else, Hank, Hank, and now they were not in the hallway any more but in the kitchen where she was pouring glasses of water from the jug in the fridge, which needed refilling, so she and Andrew had their glasses warm, from the tap. Ruth picked up the brown-paper bags of bulbs from the kitchen table and peered inside. She’d been confused by the hemisphere change. She often messed up dates, Hank laughed, it was tiresome, most of their friends were used to making allowances.

‘Just last week we arrived at a cocktail party, all,’ he gestured elegantly down the front of his shirt as if to say
gussied up
, ‘and the host and hostess are sitting there in T-shirts and jeans, super relaxed, feeding their two-year-old grandchild her dinner. Well, are we early, we ask? No. We’re a day late. A whole day. Because she doesn’t ever pay attention.’

Everyone laughed. Hank was nervous, Dorothy realised, and the tension in her chest relaxed a little. She showed them the shared bathroom and Donald’s room, the small view across the vege garden. She had been going to put lavender in a vase. ‘Are you happy sharing? There’s Hannah’s room but we’re painting it, sorry, I thought we’d be finished by now. The fumes.’ The house must be modest, compared to what they were used to.

‘Do you have a stretcher bed?’ Hank asked.

‘Yes, of course.’

They dragged it out from under Hannah’s bed, and wiped the metal bars free of dust and a few long blonde hairs. Eve’s daughter, Louisa, had used it last, when she’d begun nursing college. Now she lived at the hostel. Getting in to classes from here every day cost too much in gas. ‘I hope you’ll be comfortable.’

‘How many kids do you have?’

‘Four, just the younger two live here and they’re off camping with friends. We’re on our own!’

‘Practice run for the empty nest, hey?’

But it was too late, she had disappeared down the hall to rescue the bulbs and chill them.

She took a pot of cottage cheese from the fridge and misjudged the lid’s grip and it fell to the floor, splattering white globs up the freezer door and over the orange tiles. Andrew would say good riddance to high cholesterol but the waste made her so frustrated. Her hand as she wiped it up looked like somebody else’s, the skin cellophane-shiny in places and spotted, the fingers red and swollen at the knuckles, the nails beginning to ridge. The bench-top helped her heave upright. That cut in the crease of her right index finger had opened up again. She ran tap water over it, stingingly. Good.

They ate outside, as the light faded, and the clustered ox-eye daisies closed purple undersides to the day. Turned out Hank had a friend here, an American screenwriter who spent summers in the suburb across the valley, where house lights were gleaming through the dusk. Dot forced herself to meet Ruth’s eye when either of them were talking but even then she quickly
looked away, and everything existed flat at the front of her face: normality as a performance.

‘Where’s Andrew?’ asked Ruth.

‘Oh, he’s about somewhere, sorry, he gets a bit brusque when he’s on an illustration deadline.’ That was how he called it, although the deadlines were self-imposed.

‘He’s still in IT?’

‘No.’ He was never in IT. She let it go. ‘Last year he was made redundant. Fifty-six, you know? I mean it’s happened to plenty of people we know but it’s meant to stay in that category of things that happen to other people. Turns out we didn’t have the magic password.’

‘That’s the thing with the unexpected knocks,’ said Hank. ‘They’re unexpected.’

‘Yes. Redundancy’s pretty awful. That quiet exit.’

‘Well.’ Ruth slapped at a mosquito on her calf, and Dorothy passed her the repellent. ‘I’m sure he has his hobbies, no?’

‘He wouldn’t call his painting a hobby! I mean, he will make money from it eventually … it’s hard for everyone.’ She felt a constriction of guilt. ‘He has to lock himself away. Don’t take it personally.’

‘Of course not.’

‘How are your girls?’

‘Horsy. Twinsy.’

Over the hills the air was yellow, a floating yellow cloak. ‘Have you got photos? I’d love to see.’

‘Your kids?’

‘Great.’ Dorothy drank some more wine. ‘The usual teenage stuff. I spent last Saturday night driving round Hannah’s
friends’ houses to find what party she was at, had to haul her out of a bedroom with some boy. You know what she says to me? “Romeo and Juliet were fourteen.” ’

‘Smart kid,’ said Hank.

‘Not by any stretch.’

Ruth smiled. ‘I remember Lee waiting up for you and Daniel to come home. She’d sit in the kitchen and run upstairs to bed when she heard the car pulling up.’

‘Really?’ Her body reacted before her mind caught up. God, the rush dizzied her. It felt fantastic.

‘Oh yeah. Doing those fucking crosswords.’ She mimed stab-scratching at a page with a pen.

‘She knew that we went out in the car?’

‘Yeah.’

‘You knew?’

‘I knew everything you did. I’m your kid sister, I was obsessed with you.’

‘I didn’t think anybody knew about that.’

‘Well, doh.’ Ruth scratched the inside of her ear. ‘Lee worried about you guys all the time. You, Eve, Michael. She always thought the sky was going to fall in, you know? I think that’s partly why she never came back here … Darling.’

Tears spilled from Dorothy’s eyes. ‘Sorry, Hank,’ she said.

‘Oh come on.’

‘I think it was a kind of love,’ said Ruth, clutching her hand across the table. ‘That fear. And then when Eve died, oh you should’ve seen her. Almost like she’d been waiting for it. The worst. Like she knew all along.’

‘I did see her. She was medicated.’

‘Yes. Of course. Oh, fuck it.’ The tip of Ruth’s nose was red. ‘Fuck.’

‘What?’ In an ideal world her nose wouldn’t run in front of Hank, but it was too late, and now she was dabbing under her eyes with a paper napkin, checking for traces of mascara. ‘Are you OK?’

Ruth gathered herself, breathed deeply. ‘So, darling, I’ve got to tell you, you don’t feature in the will, all right? Ben and I tried to find an earlier version, but.’ A turn of the wrist, the wine tilting.

‘Ruthie, it’s fine.’ Dot glanced at Hank, who had discreetly become invisible as he ground pepper onto his salad. ‘I didn’t expect anything. You did it all, you were there for them for years in a way Michael and I just weren’t.’

Ruth’s head shook like a little bell. ‘It’s all just a bit,’ palms out, the brightness in her voice, a clear attempt to keep it together, ‘just bullshit, isn’t it. Bastards. Anyway I’m going to split my inheritance with you and Mike. It isn’t much. But that’s what I’ve decided.’

Smoke twisted from the table candle. Dorothy’s eyes smarted. ‘Oh. That’s very sweet. That’s very kind of you.’ She didn’t want the money, desperately didn’t want it, but to say so would be to ruin this moment.

‘OK. That’s done.’ Ruth’s phone beeped and she drew it from the inside pocket of her linen tote bag and said, ‘Oh, it’s Ben.’

In the pause that followed, while she texted back, there were the sounds of Hank’s cutlery tapping his plate, an air bubble glugging in the wine bottle as Dorothy refilled their glasses, and then Andrew’s car starting, driving away from the house.

*  *  *

They’d all gone to bed by the time he came home. Dot lay listening to the shower in the bathroom down the hall, wishing the shimmery sound of falling water would go on for ever. Once he’d climbed in beside her she whispered, unsure whether Hank and Ruth had left their door open, ‘She dyes her hair.’

‘So do you.’

‘And she’s had face work.’

‘You think?’

‘Her skin is so smooth. Look at my crow’s feet. She hasn’t got any, she hasn’t got any lines. There’s a picture of her in an attic somewhere, crumbling.’

Andrew rolled over. ‘Do you want me to find them a motel tomorrow?’

‘No.’ Dorothy wiped at her temple, where what she had started to think of as ‘old lady tears’ had slid from the corner of one eye. ‘Where were you?’

‘Sorry. Late night at the library.’

I don’t believe you
. The words clogged in her throat. She woke at three, full of adrenalin.

As always the morning was better, the replenishment of faith that came with sunlight, and now in music – not hers, not Andrew’s or the kids’ – some fusion thing of Ruth’s that filled the house and bore her on a wave of sound in her nightie, through the open doors to the garden where there was enough air for all this drumming, the horns, the astonishing upbeatness of it like an announcement, music to accompany a spontaneous dance number on a promenade, umbrellas twirling, striped T-shirts, full
skirts. Ruth contemplated the vegetable beds, a coffee bowl in her hands. ‘So,’ she said. ‘This is a lovely place.’

‘Thank you.’ Dorothy slung a wicker basket over her elbow, pushed her other arm into the sparsely bristled leaves and weighed a tomato in her palm, twisted it off the dark-green stem. ‘Do you still have your house in LA?’

‘Of course, Ben’s there now.’

‘Oh, I just wasn’t – sure – about you and Hank?’

Ruth nodded and blew at her coffee.

‘Sorry,’ Dorothy said. ‘If it’s private.’

‘Oh, yes.’ Ruth laughed. Her voice was moneyed and sounded like a lifetime of polished floors. ‘No problem, darling. No problem.’

Dorothy didn’t think Hank had been at the funeral. Perhaps that was another reason for Ruth’s antsiness at the time, her stress. She resisted asking.

‘Hey.’ He arrived by the pepper plants wearing gym shorts, a tank top and a baseball cap. ‘I’m going for a run. Then we’ll hit the markets, et cetera?’

Dorothy loosened her nightie away from the middle of her body, where it slightly clung in the heat of the morning, and fanned her face with her hand. ‘Be careful on the roads round here. There isn’t much traffic so people drive like dicks.’

‘You drive on the left, right?’

They watched him jog away.

‘I have to go to work,’ Dorothy said. ‘Will you be OK here?’

Ruth smiled. ‘Of course.’

‘So is that your music?’

‘Oh yeah, take it off if you don’t like it.’

‘Maybe just Andrew. The distraction.’

Dennis opened the door in his dressing gown, surprised to see her. ‘It’s Tuesday. I thought you were coming tomorrow.’

‘Is it all right? We’ve got houseguests, I thought I’d give them some space.’ She blushed at this self-serving lie. A whole day with Ruth would have killed her.

He took the bunch of sweet peas with wavering hands and kissed Dorothy on both cheeks. ‘These smell divine.’ He inhaled the flowers. A petal dropped, gone, to the cool slate floor.