Oliver was wearing a butcher’s apron over a faded denim shirt, and was pushing cloves of garlic under
the skin of a chicken on a roasting tray. Edward was kneeling on the floor, his beetle inside a rectangular enclosure of Lego bricks. On the table, among the debris of Sunday papers, cereals and jams, there was an untouched place that she presumed had been set for her.
‘Hi.’ Oliver exchanged a conspiratorial grimace with her.
Edward did not look up. Inevitably the boy’s presence made her feel subdued. Was it because she hadn’t worked out whether he was friend or foe? But he was only a child, she reminded herself. And now his dog was dead. ‘Feel up to some breakfast? French toast is the chef’s speciality today.’ Oliver was putting on a good act.
‘Yes please,’ Edward said, cheerily.
‘Hey, you’ve already had some!’
‘Can’t I have some more? Please?’
‘You really want another piece?’
Edward nodded. ‘Daddy, would it be all right if I took Frannie riding this afternoon?’
Frannie looked at the boy in amazement then glanced at Oliver, uncertain whether the boy knew about Captain Kirk or not. He must, she thought, otherwise he’d be looking for him.
The telephone began to ring. ‘You’re going to a party this afternoon.’
Edward’s face screwed up with disappointment. ‘What party?’
‘Jamie Middleton’s ninth birthday.’
‘God, Jamie Middleton.’ He made a series of mock vomiting sounds. ‘Do I have to go?’
‘Yes, you’ve accepted.’ Oliver picked up the receiver, covering the mouthpiece with his hand. ‘I thought you liked him. You wanted him to come and stay a few weeks ago.’
‘He’s really silly, Daddy. He hasn’t grown up at all.’
Oliver and Frannie exchanged a glance. Oliver removed his hand from the mouthpiece. ‘Hello?’ he said. ‘Clive!’ His voice became serious. ‘I tried ringing you a couple of times yesterday evening. What’s the news?’
Frannie watched him in silence. He said very little, listening mostly, then hung up glumly. Some of the morning brightness seemed to fade from the kitchen with his expression.
‘Dominic,’ he said. ‘They stitched one finger back, but they’re not very hopeful. They couldn’t save the others – the bones were too badly crushed.’
Edward tapped the floor as the beetle moved towards a wall.
‘Poor chap,’ Frannie said.
‘It would have been better if it was his left hand, wouldn’t it, Daddy?’ Edward said without looking up.
‘You said that yesterday. It would have been better if it hadn’t happened at all.’ He turned to Frannie. ‘Tea or coffee?’
‘Coffee, please. Can I get it?’
‘Sit and relax, read the papers. Have some cereal?’
Frannie poured herself some cornflakes, which she hadn’t eaten for years, feeling hungry in spite of her distress, as if aware that she somehow had to stoke herself up for what was to come. Oliver dropped a knob of butter into a frying-pan.
‘Daddy, are you making me another piece? I’m still hungry.’
‘I’ll make you another piece of French toast if you promise to go straight after breakfast and pick some plums for a crumble.’
‘Can Frannie come and help me?’
‘Frannie might just want to have a sit down.’ He winked at her, rocked the butter around, then broke
two eggs into a bowl, beat them, dunked two slices of bread in them, dropped them into the frying-pan.
‘Frannie,’ Edward said. ‘Will you?’
‘Yes, sure.’
She found herself smiling at his antics, being cheered by them, as he watched his father and mimed his hunger, hunching his shoulders up mischievously, then smacking his lips greedily.
Oliver served the toast up and poured maple syrup on top. ‘Ready.’
‘Daddy, look! Frannie!’
As the beetle approached one corner of the Lego enclosure Edward dropped a dried pea in its path. The insect pushed it forwards. ‘He’s going to score a goal!’ Edward said, excitedly.
The beetle changed direction. ‘No, stupid!’ He blocked its path with his hand. ‘That way!’
‘Toast’s getting cold!’ Oliver said, putting the pan in the sink and turning on the tap.
Edward stood up. ‘Bye-bye, Mr Bean,’ he said and crushed the beetle flat with a single stamp of his foot. Then he sat on his chair and nonchalantly picked up his knife and fork.
Frannie looked at him in disbelief, then down at the beetle’s remains. Oliver was rinsing out the frying-pan and had not noticed. Edward cut a piece of his toast, pushed it through the pool of syrup, then raised it to his mouth, a trickle of syrup running down his chin. He chewed enthusiastically, cutting his next piece before he had swallowed.
She looked back at the boy’s open, freckled face; at his warm brown eyes and his springy ginger hair. ‘Why did you do that?’
He continued eating without replying.
Whatever the reasons for it, his habit of not answering
tended to make her feel a fool. She cut her toast half-heartedly, her appetite gone, and forked a piece into her mouth. The sweet taste perked her a little. She tried not to look at the beetle but her eye was drawn back to it. ‘Why did you do that, Edward?’ she repeated.
Edward began to leaf busily through the pages of the
Mail on Sunday
, scanning the columns without reading them, as if he was searching for something.
Oliver frowned. Edward continued turning the pages in silence, shovelling his food into his mouth until he had finished, and put his knife and fork down, then he concentrated his full attention on the paper.
Oliver raised his eyebrows questioningly at Frannie and she pointed at the beetle’s remains. When he realized what it was his face darkened. ‘Edward, did you tread on the beetle?’
Edward ignored him and turned another page.
‘Edward?’ Oliver sounded angry. ‘What did you do that for? Why kill it?’
‘Beetles are vermin, Daddy.’
‘They’re not all vermin. And you shouldn’t torture animals.’
Edward simply looked at Oliver as if it were he who was the child.
Frannie saw in the boy’s face the same expression, the same power, that had made the dog tremble and back away yesterday, just as it now silenced his father. It chilled her. In Oliver’s eyes she read both anger and bewilderment.
‘For heaven’s sake, Daddy, I wasn’t torturing him; I was teaching him to play football. Frannie, have you finished? Shall we go and pick some plums now?’
Edward went to the scullery and brought out two wicker baskets with shoulder-straps. He held one for
Frannie. She swallowed the rest of her coffee, fetched her boots, then followed him outside.
They walked down a recently mown track beside the brick wall of the vegetable garden. The sun was hot, but the breeze was back, stronger, sucking and releasing the bushes and the leaves in the trees with a sound like distant waves. The grass had been left where it had fallen and had turned to hay in the dry weather; the air was tainted with its sharp, peppery smell and the more acrid reek of the cow-parsley that rose untamed either side.
‘Captain Kirk’s gone away,’ Edward said suddenly, rather offhand.
‘Gone?’ she said, wondering what Oliver had told him.
‘He’s gone away,’ he repeated, then lapsed into silence.
Frannie tried a different tack. ‘Edward, in your photo album in the attic there’s a newspaper cutting about someone called Jonathan Mountjoy, who was killed in America. Did you know it’s there?’
‘Yes.’
‘Did you cut it out?’
He nodded.
‘Why?’
‘I don’t know,’ he said guilelessly.
‘Do you cut out other things from newspapers?’
‘Sometimes.’
‘What sort of things?’
There was no reaction. She looked at him. ‘Edward?’ Still no reaction. He had sunk into silence, leaving her thrown as usual.
She walked on beside him into a large, hopelessly neglected orchard. There were rows of trees laden with fruit, their branches weighted down, some almost
touching the ground. Plums and greengages lay all around in the long, weed-strewn grass – wasps, bluebottles and flies crawling over them, burrowing into them. She trod on a plum, felt it squelch beneath her and looked at the mess of brown, overripe flesh. Through a gap ahead she could see rows of apple trees, similarly laden, the fruit looking less ripe.
Edward jumped up and grabbed a low branch and swung down on it, then released it. The tree shook and plums thudded down all around them. One struck Frannie’s head and fell beside her. She picked it up, wiped it on her jeans and bit it. It was soggy and had a faintly rotten taste.
‘The Victorias are the best, Frannie,’ Edward said, and took her hand. ‘Let’s pick those!’
‘What’s the Latin for them?’
Edward did not reply as he walked on, suddenly taking her hand and holding it tightly, hurrying her as if afraid the fruit might disappear. He led her to a cluster of trees laden with large, egg-shaped plums, some green, some yellow with red streaks. ‘These!’ he said.
Frannie picked one and bit it. It was hard and sour.
‘They ripen much later than the others,’ Edward said. ‘You have to look carefully to find the ripe ones. I’ll get one for you!’ He released her hand and scampered ahead, his eyes scanning the branches of the next tree. He looked carefully at one large plum that was a deep yellow colour, curling his fingers around it gently as if worried it was fragile, and then pulled it very slowly, his face puckered in concentration. ‘Here you are!’ He held it out.
‘Thanks!’ She took it, raised it to her mouth and bit into it. As she did so, something tickled the inside of her lip. There was a strange fluttering sensation in her
mouth, then a fierce pain on her inner lower lip. She opened her mouth, spitting frantically. There was a stab like a red-hot needle in the base of her tongue. She tossed her head, spitting again, then again something was flicking backwards and forwards in her mouth; it stabbed her ferociously a second time.
She spat again, then again, tiny fragments of plum flying out. A dark thing came out too, fell, dipping, then rose. A wasp; it flew away unsteadily.
She clamped her hand to her mouth, the pain almost unbearable, pinched her lip between her fingers, then her tongue, to try to ease the excruciating agony. She called out from her throat as another wasp buzzed around her, shaking her head in sudden panic. ‘Edward! Help!’ She pinched her tongue harder with her fingers, pressed her lips tightly together, stumbled forward, her vision blurred with tears. ‘Edward!’ A branch struck her face. ‘Edward!’ Another branch hit her in the eye.
Ammonia for bees, Vinegar for wasps. Her father had said that when she was stung as a child. AB. VW. The thought repeated itself. AB. VW. It became a chant in her head as she stumbled out of the orchard, and back along the path beside the walled kitchen garden, heading as fast as she could towards the house.
AB-VW-AB-VW
Sarson’s vinegar. She visualized the bottle. AB. VW.
Sarson’s vinegar. There was a bottle on each table at her parents’ café. Vinegar and HP Sauce. The pain seared her mouth. She fought back more tears. It was worsening every second.
AB. VW. The words buzzed like a wasp in her brain. Willing herself on, she repeated them over and over in case she got to the house and did not know
what to do. Edward was somewhere. She was still carrying the basket for the plums. A keening cry came from deep within her. She pulled her handkerchief out of her pocket and stuffed that into her mouth and stumbled on.
In the orchard, Edward shook another tree, and busily picked the best plums off the ground, checking each one carefully for insects, then laying them gently in the basket, careful not to bruise any, working methodically, remembering he must not fill the basket too much otherwise it would be too heavy to carry.
The house stood ahead beyond the beech grove. The pain would be better after she reached it. The house would stop the pain. Oliver would stop the pain. She ran in front of a young woman posing for her husband’s camera as the shutter clicked. ‘Sorry,’ she said, but no voice came out and the word echoed, trapped inside her brain. Sorry. Sorry. Sorry.
She shook her head from side to side as if this might ease the burning in her mouth. She chewed on her handkerchief. Her lips felt like swollen bladders. Pain ate its way up behind her eyes, down into her gullet.
She opened the front door, charged into the hallway that was pitch dark after the brilliant sunlight, saw Oliver hunched over the kitchen table, phone pressed to his ear, in deep concentration. An egg whisk leaned out of a white china bowl on the table in front of him. The radio was on, the Archers weekly round-up.
‘Eleven?’ he was saying. ‘The eleventh last night?’ He gestured a greeting at Frannie with his left arm, barely acknowledging her, tapping the table thoughtfully with his right index finger. ‘The same symptoms? Does the vet still reckon it’s milk-drop syndrome?’
She turned to Edward for help and was surprised to
see that he was not behind her; she thought he had been following her. She opened a cupboard. It was full of china and glass bowls. She shut it and opened another, which was stacked with plates. Then another and stared through tears of frustration at a wok and an assortment of frying-pans. The pain in her tongue became unbearable. She squeezed it between her finger and thumb.
‘Surely the vet must have some idea?’ Oliver said calmly.
She yanked open another door, her eyes misting. The shelves contained a food mixer and various attachments. She clenched her mouth even tighter over the balled handkerchief, and managed an inarticulate sound.
‘Charles, hang on,’ Oliver said. ‘Frannie – what was that?’
She was desperate, wondering why on earth he couldn’t see her distress. ‘Vrrngigr.’ The handkerchief blotted up her words.
He looked at her properly and stood up, anxious suddenly.
‘Vringar,’ she repeated and lurched towards a cupboard. She turned back towards him, pleading with her eyes.
‘Christ, Charles. I’ll call you right back.’
She was trying all the cupboards, leaving the doors open. China … glass bowls … frying-pans … and then one full of bottles. Pickles, ketchup, Worcester Sauce, soy sauce, olive oil. Vinegar. She reached in. There were three different kinds: light vinegar, cider vinegar, dark brown vinegar. She took the dark one out, pulled the handkerchief from her mouth, unscrewed the top of the bottle and shook vinegar on to it, soaking it, then pushed it back into her mouth.