Getting On: Chapter 2

2
Verity was a daughter and her world had been handed down to her, constructed, fabricated for her. There were no facts, only the mentioned and the unspoken. What had Verity managed to find out? She knows her grandfather’s name was Robert, that’s all. She had not managed to enlarge the picture she’d been given at birth but all those visits and the ferreting and rummaging and the frame had begun to warp and bulge.
Edward stood in the kitchen doorway watching Pamela making their after-dinner pot of tea. He couldn’t remember noticing before that the hair on the back of her head, a perm every month since Verity’s birth, is now grey streaked with faded brown. When she turned around, he saw that the curls framing her face were all grey. “Is this your doing, these relatives of mine and this visit?”
“No not exactly.”
“Kettle’s boiling. Not exactly?”
Pamela’s shoulders lifted and dropped down in a silent sigh of resignation. “Irene phones from time to time. Just keeping in touch with the family, you know.”
“I didn’t know.”
“You’ve forgotten. She mentioned we hadn’t gone together since Verity was tiny. I couldn’t not invite her.”
“And does Frank keep in touch too?”
“No, of course not. In fact when I first invited her, Irene didn’t seem that keen, she was a bit vague, didn’t say yes or no. But then she rang back and asked if Frank could come and talked as if it had always been a firm fixture. In fact she said she was looking forward to it and that Frank had something to say.”
“Whatever does the old boy mean, something to say?”
“I don’t know why you expect me to know. It‘s your family, not mine.”
“Surely you asked? Didn’t you?”
“No, of course not. It didn’t occur to me that it could be so important. Probably wants to give Verity something.”
“Give Verity something?” Edward snorted, “You mean, you think she has expectations?” he laughed.
“Don’t be ridiculous. You know I don’t mean that. I don’t suppose he has penny to his name…”
”Seeing as he’s my uncle you mean…” Edwards’s arms were folded and there was an edge in his smile.
Pamela’s shoulder lifted and fell again. She clenched her back teeth and turned away from the counter with the tea tray in her hands and faced her husband,
“Don’t let’s get into all that. You know that’s not what I meant. It’s just that I don’t like to pry into family business, your family business. I wouldn’t want anyone asking questions about my family, if I had one that is, you know what I mean.” Her voice tailed away, she looked down at the tray and then lifted her head with a tiny smile on her mouth and started for the door.
Edward paused, arms still folded, pebble blue eyes locked with Pamela’s and they exchanged empty looks before he stood back to let her through and then followed her out of the kitchen.
Pamela crossed the corridor into the living room. Edward paused to turn off the kitchen light and found himself in the empty corridor. He stood still wondering what on earth Uncle Frank could have to say, to him of all people. When there had been a chance to talk to each other they had quickly discovered it was better to stay out of each other’s way. Edward could feel the old enmity stirring up the pit of his stomach and tried to think it away. From his mother’s point of view, he reminded himself, it was a sensible idea to share a house with your brother, if you were going to have to bring up two children on your own.
He saw that Verity had made her way upstairs to her bedroom leaving a blaze of electric light behind her. All the doors into the corridor were open and light shone from each room, the lavatory, the dining room, the living room and the hall and the stairs at the far end were all lit up like a fairground.
His father had liked fairs. Edward remembered that from where he had stood in the hallway outside the kitchen door so had been able to hear his mum and dad.
“There’s a fair on the green Mary. Let’s go to the fair. Get your coat, come on now. We’ll have some fun.” His Dad speaks quickly.
“The baby’s sleeping and I’ve a pie in Mrs Stout’s oven. I have to fetch it.”
Edward peeks into the kitchen. His mother stands with her back to the kitchen sink, solid and still, nearly as tall and as broad as his father, and looks him straight in the eye while his father taut and muscled, hands deep in his jacket pockets, rocks up on to his toes and back down on to his heels. Edward can’t see his face.
“I’ll take the boy then and Irene.”
“He’s got homework Robert. And the fair after dark is no place for a little girl.”
“The fair, it’s just a bit of fun. All right then just Edward. He’s a clever boy, he’ll get to the grammar school, don’t worry. ” Robert turns and Edward scuttles to the bottom of the stairs.
“And what will we eat tomorrow?” Edward’s mother’s voice reaches out into the hall.
“I’ll bring you back something nice, Mary. Come on Edward put your books back upstairs. We’re going to the fair. Get your coat.”
The fair is all it promises to be, noise and shouting and swing boats to make you giddy, the smells of roasting pork and burning sugar, ladies with painted faces and bright dirty clothes. Edward trots to keep up with his father as he moves from place to place joking and calling to everyone he sees. At last they find themselves at the shooting range. Robert gives Edward his jacket to hold and looks through every gun sight before making his choice. As he takes aim, Edward calls out to him to show him the man on stilts coming their way.
“Quiet son. If you want to shoot straight, you have to think straight. Pick the prize for your mother.” Robert pushes a handful of curls off his forehead.
Edward looks over the prizes, rag dolls with squashed features, toy soldiers with blank faces, white vases painted with pink roses, and a glass punch bowl with a ladle hanging by the handle. He chooses a plain blue glass jug.
“What if you don’t win?”
Robert’s answer is three shots in the dead centre of the target.
“Take the jug home to your mother. I’m off to the Crown. I’ll not be long.”
Edward brought to mind electricity bills so he would remember no further. He strode briskly down the corridor, closed all the doors and visiting each switch in turn, extinguished the lights then stepped into the living room and closed the door behind him with a loud snap. Pamela looked up at him.
“Overcast with thundery spells,” On the television set a man in a dress suit was summarising the Christmas weather.
“I suppose the advantage of having no surviving relatives, is that they can’t spring surprises on you like this.” She tried a sprightly tone.
“And you can say anything you like about them and no one can contradict you.” There was a paper-knife edge to Edward’s voice.
“I’m not sure I know what you mean.” Pamela spoke slowly and peered into the teapot, “Is it strong enough?”
“Yes, thank-you. I just meant that I can’t simply say that I’d rather not have anything more to do with Frank and that I have nothing at all in common with Irene. Verity would get the wrong idea. Family duty. Honour thy mother and father and all that,”
“But it isn’t your mother and father we’re talking about here, is it?”
“Family then. You’re splitting hairs” Edward pushes a hand into a curly fringe that refuses to be subdued and grips a handful. “I imagine what Frank’s got to say concerns my mother. I can’t think of anything else he would want to speak to me about. If it weren’t for my mother, we would never have had anything to do with one another.”
Pamela watched her husband gripping his forelock; his knuckles turning pale with effort she always expected his hand to come away leaving a bare patch. “I just thought as it was Christmas, a gift, some memento of your mother’s.”
“As I said, we were hardly the sort of family to have mementos, trinkets, souvenirs. And surely it would have all gone to Irene, her daughter. Frank wouldn’t have had anything. He and mum were just brother and sister, that’s all.”
“I just thought…”
“I mean, it all went to you, didn’t it. Your marvellous mother’s bits and pieces? They didn’t go to your aunt Hilary did they?”
“I just meant... Well, I was obviously mistaken that’s all. “Pamela took a large swallow of her tea.
Edward looked at his wife, alerted by the loudness of the gulping sound. Her eyes were wet. A desire to be cruel snaked up through his body but as he opened his mouth to speak Verity came into the living room.
“S’ok if I watch Monty Python?”
“Fine” Pamela sounded breezy.
“For goodness turn the light out behind you Verity!” Edward put unnecessary force into the words and sunk behind his newspaper. With skill gained from years of practice he began to read and shut everything out but the columns of print. But that evening he found that he could only read the word interim over and over without understanding what it meant. His mind drifted back. He put a hand over his eyes and gave up the struggle.
After pub closing time Edward had lain in bed listening to his father’s singing floating up through the floorboards. Then he hears him climb the stairs, collapsing into the walls and swearing at the steps.
Edward puts his head under the pillow so he won’t hear what he knows will come next. After a few moments he came up for air and heard his father’s sobbing s he weeps at the top of the stairs and asks God, Mary, his own mother and his children for forgiveness. Edward gets out of bed, he pats Robert’s shoulder.
“Quietly Dad. Let’s get you down stairs,” he leads his father down the stairs and puts him in a chair to sleep.
“Quiet, Quiet always, quiet. I don’t want to be quiet. All I want is to have a bit of fun.” Robert shouts and with a sweep of his arm pushes Edward to his knees and he slides down the stairs.
“My god, what have I done, I’ve killed the boy.”
Edward sits up in the midst of all the hullabaloo of opening doors and shouts and crying.
“I’m all right. Really. It was just an accident.”
“Headache dear?” Pamela’s voice brought him back to the present day.
“Yes bit of one,” he lied. He hadn’t realised his eyes had been closed.
It was all too long ago, it should all be left in the past Edward told himself and turned over a page of the newspaper and tried again on the letter’s page.
Pamela watched Verity watching the television. It was some sort of comedy programme that all the young people watched. Pamela admired the way that, now Verity was a teenager, she effortlessly picked up on the latest things. Pamela often felt all at sea with the world as it was now and she remembered, even when she was a teenager, she had never really felt what people used to call with it. After all she had barely been out of her teens when she had married Edward.
But, something would have to be done about this visit. She wasn’t keen on having all this stirring about happening right before Christmas when things, people, tended to get a bit overheated anyway, lack of routine did it. She was going to have to find out what Frank intended, she’d have to do something with Verity. It wouldn’t do, to have too many cats out of bags. It was already unsettling Edward, no need to involve Verity too. He had never said much about his family at all. Nothing about his father. Munitions Engineer, died. Edward had done the right thing by his mother. Decent sort, she was. Can’t be scandal about her surely?
And good Lord, there would have to be a Christmas present for Frank and Irene too. Something edible was easiest, most acceptable. She glanced at her watch. Twenty to nine. Too late to do anything tonight. It would have to be the puddings.