The Memory Game

Two

The knife slid through the spongy layers into the beige flesh. I peeled off some slimy skin, tossed an edible chunk of cep into a large bowl. Peggy came in with another bucket full of mushrooms; she smelt of the woods, the mulchy earth. Her khaki trousers were stained; she’d taken off her boots in the hall, and now padded in thick grey socks.

‘Here you are,’ she said.

With my fingertips, I gently lifted the yellow, gilled chanterelles lying like waxy flowers at the top, and sniffed at their curved trumpet shapes. Apricots.

‘Who found these?’ I asked.

‘Theo, of course. Are you all right, Jane?’

‘You mean about Claud?’

‘No, about today.’

‘I don’t know.’

In the bucket there were warty, bulbous puffballs, horse mushrooms with a faint whiff of aniseed about them, and delicate white ink caps, fraying around their skirts. The kitchen smelt damply fungoid; wormy parasol mushrooms blocked up the sink, tatters of woody stalks lay on the working surfaces. I wiped my hands, which were still trembling, down my apron and pushed back my hair. The kitchen was brightly lit, but nothing seemed quite real to me – not the horror in the garden, nor this parody of normality in the clutter of the Martello kitchen, heart of their large house. Were we all insane, a houseful of shocked people trapped in ritual? I was losing myself in activity.

‘You did well,’ I said to Paul, who was passing through the kitchen clutching dusty bottles of red wine to his chest.

‘You should have seen them all: we could have picked twice as many. Some of them are useless though.’

He glanced at Peggy furtively on his way out. He looked harassed. We were each of us alone with our thoughts and private alarms. He had the additional burden of being stuck in a house with his ex-wife, current wife, and a sister who was divorcing his best friend. There was a necessity not to think too much.

I started chopping the mushrooms into thin slivers; the flesh was spongily resilient. I turned them and cut them smoothly along the grain. Pots bubbled. The effort of coordination soothed me. I opened the door of the oven and touched the oily red peppers with a fork; their skins were blistering. I drew in a deep breath.

‘Jane? Claud told me to give you these.’ My father held out three plump garlic bulbs. Turning to go – back to the crossword by the fire, probably – he suddenly said, ‘It’ll be all right, won’t it?’ and I saw that his eyes were puffy, as if he’d been weeping. I squeezed his shoulder.

‘It’ll be fine,’ I said, meaninglessly.

I peeled six garlic cloves and crushed them into a large pan on the stove. Peggy, who was stooped over the sink, patiently stripping the spongy layers off the remaining ceps, sung a snatch of song under her breath and then said abruptly, ‘I’m really sorry. It must have been horrible for you, finding it – her.’

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I suppose so. But no worse, really, than for everybody else.’

I didn’t want to talk. I was saving up my emotions, I didn’t want to expend them here, while making dinner. Not with Peggy, but she was unstoppable.

‘You were all very brave. It’s funny really: for the first time, I feel excluded from this family. You all know how to deal with each other.’

I turned to her and took her hand. ‘Peggy,’ I replied wearily, ‘that’s not true. You know that we never exclude anybody. We’re the great extended family that starts with Alan and Martha and doesn’t end anywhere.’

‘I know all that, maybe it’s just that I never knew Natalie.’

‘It was a long time ago.’

‘Yes,’ said Peggy, ‘a part of the great legendary idyllic Martello childhood. You all share that, don’t you? It always reminds me…’ She stopped as she caught sight of something out of the window. ‘Look at them! I’ll kill them! Why can’t Paul deal with them? He is alleged to be their father.’

She hurtled from the room. Out of the window I could see her daughters standing conspiratorially behind a bush smoking cigarettes. They must have thought they were invisible. Peggy jogged noiselessly towards them, still shoeless. Jerome and Robert used to smoke in their bedroom, with the windows wide open, then come downstairs smelling of toothpaste, and I’d say nothing. I, too, was surreptitiously smoking, in the garden, late at night when I couldn’t sleep for pondering about my life. Later, they’d learnt to smoke in my presence, even to offer one to me. I’d been itching for a cigarette all day, fidgeting on the edge of the hole, wandering round the garden, waiting for everybody to get back and learn what I had learnt. I stirred the pale yellowing garlic around the pan. A little manageable span of time, a way of measuring out the evening ahead.

‘How are you doing, Mum? Do you mind being left to do all the cooking?’

Robert was standing over me, my tall, handsome son. His lank, dyed blond hair hung straight down over one pale eye. He was clothed in torn jeans, an old blue sweat-shirt that was worn almost grey and a checked shirt pulled roughly over it, cuffs unbuttoned, everything unbuttoned. His feet were bare. He looked good.

‘It’s all right. It helps me, in fact. Could you wash the lettuce?’

‘Not as such,’ said Robert, opening the fridge and peering inside. ‘Is there anything I can eat?’

‘No. What are all the others up to?’ I asked.

‘God, where shall I start.’ He started counting theatrically and sarcastically on his fingers. ‘Theo’s playing chess with Grandpa Chris; Dad’s basically co-ordinating the seating plan and delegating the laying of plates; Jonah and Alfred and Meredith have gone for a walk, probably to try to sneak a look into that tent thing; Hana and Jerry are in the bath, the same bath; and much, much more. I haven’t seen Granny and Grandpa. They must be up in their room.’

There was a pause. Robert looked expectant. I tipped the mushrooms into the hot oil. He was waiting for something.

‘Yes?’ I said.

My knees felt wobbly and my stomach suddenly lurched. He cupped his hands over his mouth and began to speak as if through a megaphone; his voice blared into the kitchen, bitter and angry. ‘Hello, hello, is there anybody out there? This is Rob Martello speaking, a visitor from the real world. I’d like to announce that a body has been found on the premises. The only daughter of Mr and Mrs Alan Martello has been buried outside, about three feet from the back door and about two inches deep, for the last twenty-five years. The management regrets that as a result of this discovery, dinner may be served a minute or two late. We trust this will not interfere with your evening.’

I gave a tired laugh, I couldn’t help it.

‘Robert!’ It was Claud. He had come in behind Robert but he was smiling too. ‘I know it’s awkward…’ Claud began, but Robert immediately interrupted him.

‘What? Awkward? The body of your sister dug up in the garden? Why should that be awkward? And anyway, it was a few hours ago now, wasn’t it? And the police have taken the bones away. Perhaps Alan should have asked them to fill the hole in before they left, while they were at it. The way it is now, there’s a chance that somebody may fall into it tomorrow morning and be reminded of it. On their way to another fucking mushroom hunt.’

Claud tried to look stern but failed and gave a resigned smile. ‘You’re right, Rob, we’re probably not handling this very well but…’

‘But appearances must be maintained. We don’t want something like a dead body to get in the way of a great Martello weekend. Or else something serious might go wrong. You know, like serving the wrong wine with the wrong mushroom.’

Claud turned serious. ‘Robert, stop this now. Natalie’s disappearance happened before you were born, it’s hard for you to understand. We gradually realised that Natalie was dead. Your grandmother – my mother – never really did. She always tried to believe that Natalie might have run away and that she would turn up one day.’ Claud put his arm round Robert. He was tall enough to be able to do it. ‘Today is bad for her – it’s bad for all of us but it’s especially bad for her – and we’ve all got to be strong and help her. If anything, it’s good that this happened when we were together. We can support each other. And above all support Martha. There’s lots to talk about, Robert. And not just about Natalie, about everything. And we will, I promise. But maybe today is just a time for us to be together. Remember that she hasn’t officially been identified yet.’

‘And isn’t it good for us to eat together?’ I said. ‘Come here, my darling.’ I pulled Robert to me and hugged him, hard. ‘I feel silly only coming up to your chin.’

‘So will you help me, Rob?’ asked Claud.

‘Yeah, yeah, Dad, all right,’ said Robert. ‘We can all be mature about this. Perhaps we should make a feature of the hole. Mum, could you redesign your cottage around the hole, the way you did with that tree once?’

‘Is that a yes or a no?’ Claud asked with that touch of steel he could suddenly bring into his voice.

Robert raised his hands in mock surrender. ‘It’s a yes. I’ll be good,’ he said, and backed out of the kitchen. Claud and I gave each other mirrored shrugs of helplessness. We were getting on better than we had when we’d been together. I realised that I had to guard against misleading nostalgia.

‘Thanks,’ I said. ‘That was good.’

Claud leant over a bubbling casserole. ‘That smells delicious,’ he said. ‘Like you said, we’re still good friends, aren’t we?’

‘Don’t.’

‘I didn’t mean anything.’ He paused. ‘I thought we’d eat at nine. Will that be all right for you?’

He looked me over. I was wearing tracksuit trousers and a man’s shirt that had once belonged to Jerome. I had pulled on the first clothes I’d been able to lay hands on after my scalding shower. I’d wanted to wash everything away: the sweat of hard labour, the tears, the muddy soil that had held the body.

‘That’ll be fine, as long as I put the meat on now.’

I crumbled rosemary over the lamb and slid the joint into the oven. Then I turned up the heat under the haricot beans and poured rice into the mushroom pan, stirring vigorously. As always, Claud had lots to do but now he seemed unwilling to leave. He leant against the work surface and toyed with the remnant of a parasol mushroom that I had rejected.

‘They think we’re mad, you know.’

‘Who?’

‘The people around here. The only ones they’ll eat are the ones that look exactly like the kind you get in boxes at the supermarket. But you can see what repels people, can’t you? They’re a little like flesh, don’t you think? Not quite wholesome.’ Claud picked up a field mushroom and stroked it with one finger. ‘They have no chlorophyll, you see. They can’t make their own carbon. They can only feed themselves on other organic material.’

‘Isn’t that what all plants do?’

‘It sometimes worries me that you can say things like that,’ he observed in the mournful tone that, I suddenly realised, I didn’t have to bother about any more.

‘How’s Martha? Have you seen her?’

‘Mother is being wonderful,’ said Claud.

There was a tone of exclusion in his voice that chilled me and I was going to snap something back when Peggy stormed into the kitchen, her cheeks flushed, the soles of her woollen socks stained black from the garden. She picked up a tumbler and a bottle of whisky and marched out of the kitchen again.

‘Peggy,’ Claud called after her retreating back, ‘remember we’re eating in an hour or so and there’ll be lots of wine.’

‘Claud!’ I hissed in rebuke but Peggy could take care of herself. I heard a snort that may have been a response as she thumped up the stairs. Claud turned back to me and said, very kindly, ‘Are you all right, Jane? Is there anything I can do for you?’

Erica gusted into the kitchen, all perfume and purple nails and copper curls.

‘Claud, there you are. Theo wants you to help him move some beds around upstairs. Jane, you angel, what can I do to help?’

She had already changed for dinner, her long slit skirt trailed the ground, her aubergine silk shirt swelled over her large breasts (well, bigger than mine), bangles clanked at her wrists and long ear-rings hung from emphatic lobes. She giggled and I remembered how much, in spite of everything, I liked Paul’s young wife, who flowered so exotically beside poor Peggy’s weary, ostentatious shabbiness.

‘I’ve just seen Peggy’s little girls sneaking into the outhouse. Oh, to be fifteen and smoking in a shed again. Christ, what a weird foul day. Poor Natalie. I mean I assume it is Natalie, and not some archaeological relic. I suppose it must be, and you’re all quite right to feel dreadful. My views about children dying have changed completely since Rosie, you know. Not that I was ever in favour of it, of course. I’d kill myself, I think. Frances was saying that she and Theo think it’s probably a relief for Martha, but I wonder if that’s true.’

She dipped her taloned fingers into a bowl of olives and popped a few absentmindedly into her avid red mouth.

Claud started methodically pulling corks from bottles, till eight of them stood in an open-mouthed row. I grated Parmesan cheese into the steaming pan of mushroom risotto and added a knob of soft unsalted butter, not from the fridge but from the larder, as butter ought to be. I’d always wanted a larder. Theo and his wife, Frances, walked past the window, tall and elegant. She was speaking animatedly, her eyes hard, but I couldn’t make out the words and I couldn’t see Theo’s face. Then my brother-in-law turned his head and looked straight into my eyes. The years reeled back. He gave an embarrassed half-smile but Frances said something else. He turned his face back towards her and they walked on.

When I’m at the Stead I stay in the room I’ve had since I was a child. More like sisters than best friends, Natalie and I used to fight over who would have the bed nearest the window, and she’d usually win. It was her house, her bedroom, her bed. After she disappeared, I couldn’t sleep where she had always slept. I would lie at the other side of the room, under the sloping roof, and hear the grandfather clock down the hall, and occasionally the hoot of the owls which nested in the woods. Sometimes I’d wake in the middle of the night and for a few seconds, until I had remembered all over again, I would see her shape under the blankets. Martha hadn’t got rid of any of her things; she’d always been waiting for her to return. So every year, when we came here for our holidays, I’d have to put my clothes among Natalie’s, mummified in polythene, which gradually became less and less familiar to me, until I realised they were the clothes of a young girl from whom I’d grown away without realising, into adulthood. One day they were gone.

Now I pulled back the curtains and looked out of the window at the garden, which was disappearing into night. Evening mist rose like smoke from the wet grass. The sky was nearly dark, but the horizon was pink. It’ll be a nice day tomorrow, I thought to myself, as I stared out. Heaps of leaves lay in strange shapes round the lawn, waiting to be burnt. Away to the right I could see another, lower shape, the police canopy. Is there a company somewhere that manufactures tents for erecting over places where dead bodies have been found? There must be. It was very quiet. Paul’s girls, down at the edge of the woods, sat in a conspiratorial triangle, now little more than a three-peaked shadow in the gloom. Voices floated up from downstairs, though I couldn’t catch what they said. A pipe gurgled, there was a splashing in a drain outside, footsteps passed by my door and I imagined Jerome and beautiful Hana, pink as a prawn, scuttling down the corridor wrapped in towels. I thought I heard a quiet sob.

I opened my suitcase and lifted out a Victorian jacket, high at the neck and tight at the wrists, sexy-severe. Wearing it made me feel a bit more in control. I dabbed perfume behind my ears, and put on my ear-rings. I thought of Natalie that last summer, trying on purple lipstick, staring at herself steadily in the mirror, like a cat, with her blue eyes like my blue eyes. I thought of the pathetic bits of bone I’d seen in the clay this morning. What was I doing in this house, with Claud whom I was divorcing, and his parents whom I was hurting, and his brother Theo, with whom I was exchanging knowing glances through the kitchen window, like a teenager?

‘Jane, Hana, Martha and Alan.’ It was Claud calling up the stairs. ‘Come on everyone. I’m about to open the champagne.’