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  ‘What a shame,’ I murmur.

  ‘What was that?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  Two days later, I have finished clearing out my flat, packed up those things I want to take with me, said a fond (and unreciprocated) farewell to the cat, and am on my way. The Norwegian invasion is just hours away, and I don’t trust myself not to tell my new tenants all the things which are still fuelling my indignation. Suffice it to say that I hope the boiler makes its early-morning howling noise (an occasional but very alarming occurrence) and that the neighbours throw one of their more boisterous parties. After their uncharitable behaviour, the Norwegians do not deserve any consideration from me.

  My father drives me the forty miles to my uncles’ house (I sold my car to help pay for the gap year). It is not a comfortable journey.

  ‘So,’ he says, after about fifteen minutes. ‘What plans do you have?’

  Plans? I haven’t had time to plan anything, and my parents seem to have taken care of my immediate future.

  ‘Well…’ I hesitate.

  ‘I thought as much.’ The car veers violently to the left. ‘You haven’t given this much thought, have you, Ruth?’

  ‘I need time,’ I tell him lamely.

  ‘You don’t have much time.’

  ‘I believe these things take about nine months,’ I say, in a weak attempt at humour.

  ‘Not funny, Ruth.’

  ‘I never said this was funny.’ My father’s not the only one feeling angry. ‘But it’s happening. It’s a done deal. I’m having a baby. Lots of people have babies, and yes —’ because I know what’s coming next — ‘many of them are out of wedlock. Dad, it’s not the end of the world!’

  ‘It’s the end of your reputation.’

  I can’t believe I’m hearing this. ‘I’m a violinist, Dad. My reputation — such as it is — rests on my musicianship, not on my virginity!’

  ‘Well, really!’ The car screeches to a halt at traffic lights.

  ‘I’m only saying what you’re thinking.’

  ‘I think we’d better end this conversation before one of us says something we regret,’ my father says, as the car starts up again.

  And I think he’s right. Looking at his stern profile, his neat collar and tie, his highly polished shoes, I find it hard to believe that this man is related to me at all. Parents are supposed to love their children unconditionally, but where my father is concerned, this seems to be very much in doubt.

  Will I love the seahorse/rabbit unconditionally? Only time will tell.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  We arrive at my uncles’ house late, since my father has had to stop the car twice for me to be sick. My copious vomiting took place without comment from either of us, which was probably just as well. My father has never felt comfortable with illness of any sort.

  It always amazes me that the open countryside inhabited by my uncles can exist so near to relative civilisation. It is hard to believe that these sweeping hills and wide skies and lack of any neighbouring habitation are a mere three miles from a respectably-sized town, but so it is. The house itself, known as Applegarth, is situated at the end of a rutted track. It is well-built but run down, with a wilderness of a garden adjoining a paddock occupied by what look like several broken-down agricultural implements and a variety of livestock. Eric and Silas call it a smallholding. My father calls it a mess.

  ‘What would their dear mother say?’ he mutters, as he drives cautiously round bumps and through puddles. ‘She was so fond of this place.’

  ‘I expect Silas and Eric are fond of it too, in their own way,’ I say.

  ‘In that case, they should look after it.’ My father stops the car so that I can get out to open a gate, causing several chickens to run squawking into the bushes. ‘I suppose that’s what you call free range,’ he remarks. ‘It’s a wonder they don’t get stolen or run over.’

  ‘They’re more likely to be eaten by foxes here,’ I point out.

  When we reach the house, Eric and Silas greet us on the doorstep.

  ‘Welcome, welcome!’ They kiss me and shake my father’s hand. ‘Come on in. We’ve made soup.’

  ‘Ruth probably won’t have any. She’s got an upset tummy.’ Dad has obviously decided not to acknowledge the cause of my indisposition. He scrapes something unpleasant off his foot and then, after hesitating for a moment, takes of his shoes.

  ‘I’m fine now, and I’d love some soup.’ I deposit my case in the entrance hall, and look around me. Coats and caps hang several deep on hooks inside the porch and some, having given up the unequal struggle, are lying in heaps on the floor. There are wellingtons and walking boots, sticks and galoshes, and even a rifle propped up casually in a corner.

  ‘Is that safe?’ Dad asks, indicating the rifle.

  Silas (or Eric) laughs.

  ‘It’s not loaded. And we only use it for rabbits.’

  ‘How comforting,’ my father mutters.

  In the large kitchen, every available surface is occupied with clutter. There are unwashed pots and pans, old newspapers, tools, clothes and bags of animal feed. A large dog is sleeping by the very grimy Aga and two cats are curled up on the draining board. Something which could be soup is bubbling away in a kind of cauldron. It smells interesting.

  ‘I’ll have to say no to the soup,’ Dad says, backing away nervously, as though he might catch something. ‘Rosemary’s expecting me home.’

  I know this isn’t true since today is Mum’s day for doing meals on wheel, and I’m surprised. Dad glances at me, and there is mute appeal in his eyes. He looks out of place and rather pathetic standing there in his stockinged feet, and I take pity on him.

  ‘Yes. She did tell him to hurry home,’ I say. My father looks at me suspiciously, and I smile at him. ‘Mustn’t keep her waiting.’

  ‘No. No. I’d best be going.’ He hesitates for a moment. ‘Thank you for having Ruth.’

  ‘No problem.’ Eric/Silas grins. ‘It’ll be nice to have a woman around the house.’

  I walk back down the track to open the gate for Dad, and he winds down the car window.

  ‘We’ve done the right thing.’ He hesitates. ‘Take care of yourself.’ This is the nearest he gets to an endearment, and I’m touched.

  ‘You too. Love to Mum.’

  As I watch the car making its cautious way back down the track, its usually gleaming paintwork now generously splattered with mud, there’s a lump in my throat. Poor Dad. While I find his attitude hard to understand, I am his only child, and such a disappointment. Perhaps families are destined to disappoint each other; all those expectations, those cosy stereotypes, those impossible hopes. How can anyone begin to live up to them?

  Back at the house, Eric and Silas are glowing with good cheer. They introduce me to the dog (‘we call him Mr. Darcy’) who opens one eye in acknowledgement, and the cats, who appear to have no names and who ignore me. The soup (‘Nettle and rabbit. Don’t worry — it’s much nicer than it sounds!’) is delicious, and I have two helpings. Afterwards, we eat early cherries from the garden and slices of rather stale bought cake, after which I’m taken on a tour of the grounds.

  When I was a child, I used to stay regularly with my uncles. My parents’ apparent ambivalence about the domestic set-up was countered by their need to pursue various church activities for which at the time I was considered too young. Since my only grandparent lived two hundred miles away, Eric and Silas were the obvious people to have me, and they were always more than willing. They didn’t put themselves out or make any special arrangements; they simply absorbed me into their way of life, treating me as an equal (and expecting me to behave like one), and I adored my visits. Free from any injunctions to keep my clothes clean, wash my hands before meals or go to bed at seven, I ran wild (as much as one little girl on her own can do such a thing). I helped with the animals and the cooking, I climbed trees and paddled in the stream and rode the one-eared donkey in the orchard before returning home with a healthy suntan, scr
atched and bruised knees, filthy clothes and a head full of interesting information. I may not have known where human babies came from, but the provenance of piglets and kittens was no longer a mystery to me, and if my parents objected, there wasn’t much they could do about it. As I once heard Silas explaining to my mother, ‘The child sees what she sees. It’s only nature.’ And they had to put up with it.

  The grounds surrounding the house haven’t changed much, although the quantity of livestock has increased. There is now a pretty doe-eyed jersey cow, two goats, some sheep and several pigs, including a very pregnant sow called Sarah. There are also at least two dozen chickens, four beehives, some ducks in a very muddy pond and a peacock. The peacock just arrived one day, I’m told, and is ornamental rather than useful. A selection of ramshackle sheds and outhouses provides shelter for the animals, and while their surroundings leave a lot to be desired, the animals look well-cared-for.

  The garden is a riot of flowers, weeds and vegetables, all coexisting in apparent harmony. There are cabbages and nettles, broad beans and nasturtiums, roses and tomatoes. The white bells of bindweed can be seen flourishing among the raspberry canes and there are fruit trees and brambles in the orchard.

  ‘It’s like the Secret Garden,’ I say, as I pick my way across this jungle while Mr. Darcy, who has woken up and joined us, chases exciting smells among the bushes.

  ‘Yes. It’s a bit of a mess,’ admits Silas/Eric.

  ‘Oh, I didn’t mean that.’

  ‘We don’t mind.’ He pauses, ‘One day we’ll have to sort it all out, but we always seem to run out of time.’ They both laugh, as though at some private joke. ‘I hope you’ll be able to put up with us.’

  Back at the house, I feel a bit like Snow White entering the home of the seven dwarfs. She didn’t have to do all that cleaning (although with a merry band of Disney rabbits and birds to help her she seemed to make light work of it), but I can understand why she did it. I have a feeling that I shall have Snow White urges before I’ve been here long, for while I’m not a particularity tidy person, I think I’ll find it hard to live in this chaos. Will my uncles mind if I do a bit of tidying up? I’ll leave it a day or two before I suggest it, since I would hate to do anything which implied criticism of my hosts.

  ‘Oh, you’ve brought your violin with you!’ Eric/Silas cries, as we re-enter the house. ‘How lovely! We’ve got an old piano, but we can’t play it. Silly, isn’t it? But you will play for us, won’t you, Ruth? We love a bit of live music, don’t we, Silas?’

  His brother nods and smiles, and I notice again the slight dimple in Silas’s chin and the way Eric’s eyebrows sweep up at the corners, and resolve to make sure that from now on I shall remember who is who.

  When I am shown up to my room, I find that I have been promoted from the tiny attic bedroom I slept in as a child to the big front bedroom, with its heavy dark furniture, worn carpet and ancient brocade curtains.

  ‘We were born in this room,’ Silas tells me, as he brings up my suitcase. ‘In this bed, actually.’

  The bed is huge, with an elaborately carved headboard and great sunken mattress which dips alarmingly in the middle. It has probably hosted the couplings and births of whole generations of my mother’s family, and I try to look enthusiastic.

  ‘We thought about buying a new mattress,’ he adds. ‘But I’m told the this one’s quite cosy.’

  The mattress certainly turns out to be cosy, for once I’ve given up any attempt to climb out of the dip in its middle, I find that it envelops me like a womb, and that first night I sleep better than I have in weeks. It occurs to me that it would have been very hard to keep up even the most severe of marital disputes if the protagonists had to retire to this bed afterwards, because close — not to say intimate — physical contact must be unavoidable if both parties were to get any sleep. Maybe all beds should be like this, in the interests of domestic harmony.

  When I awake the next morning to the sounds of birdsong and the insistent crowing of a cockerel, I wonder whether I shall ever have someone to roll into a dip with me; someone to cuddle up to at night and laugh (or cry) at the day’s happenings; someone to share my life, and be a father to the baby. Even Snow White got her man in the end, and with very little effort on her own part. I, however, am unlikely to find myself a prince (or anyone else, come to that) so long as I remain hidden away in this outpost of civilisation.

  I determine that at the earliest opportunity, I shall start looking for a more permanent place to live.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  When I come down to breakfast, I find that my uncles have already eaten, and I am invited to help myself to ‘whatever takes my fancy’. At the moment, nothing much takes my fancy, especially as the idea of trying to find something edible amid the chaos is more than a little daunting (Eric and Silas appear to have breakfasted on the remains of the soup).

  ‘Goat’s milk,’ they advise, when I explain about the morning sickness. ‘It never fails.’ How on earth do they know? Silas pours me a generous glassful.

  The milk is obviously fresh as it’s still warm, and as I struggle to swallow it, I wonder why the thought of milk warmed by a goat is so much less appetising than milk warmed in a saucepan. It’s somehow too intimate, like sitting on a seat recently occupied — and warmed — by a stranger. Maybe it would help if I were acquainted with the goat in question. But wherever the milk came from, it appears to do the trick, for while I’m still not up to breakfasting on soup, I eat two slices of bread and honey and some of yesterday’s cherries.

  ‘There.’ Eric and Silas regard me with satisfaction, as though I am a child who has finished up her greens. ‘Not so bad, was it?’

  I agree that it wasn’t bad at all, and also have to admit that I’m feeling considerably better.

  ‘Would you mind if I did a bit of — well just a little bit of tidying up?’ I ask them. ‘Just so that I feel I’m doing my bit.’

  My uncles roar with laughter.

  ‘She wants to sort us out,’ says Eric. ‘That’ll be a job and a half. But help yourself if it makes you feel better. Just don’t throw anything away.’

  I try not to feel offended. After all, my offer was intended to help them, not me. I shan’t be staying for long, so it’s not my problem if my uncles want to live like pigs.

  Three hours later, I am totally exhausted, but I’ve found (and cleaned) most of the kitchen floor and some of the surfaces. Things which are obviously rubbish are piled in one corner; things which may be of some use in another. The washing machine (Snow White may have found her prince, but she didn’t have a washing machine) is whirring merrily away, and the cats have gone out into the garden to sulk as I’ve removed their cosy little nest of old jumpers from the draining board. When Eric and Silas come in for lunch, I have found bread and cheese and pickled onions, and laid them out nicely on the table.

  ‘Goodness.’ Eric goes over to the sink to wash his hands. ‘You didn’t have to do this, you know. You’re our guest. Besides,’ he adds, ‘Blossom comes in tomorrow.’

  ‘Blossom?’

  ‘Our cleaner. She doesn’t really do much housework —’ I’ll say she doesn’t — ‘but she needs the money, and she’s magic with the animals. That’s really why we keep her on. We couldn’t manage them all and the garden on our own.’

  Blossom. I imagine a lovely cuddly woman with a wide welcoming bosom and equally wide smile; someone I can talk to, and maybe even someone who will know something about babies, even if she’s lacking in the cleaning skills department. I look forward very much to meeting her.

  How wrong can I be.

  When Blossom arrives next morning, she turns out to be a small skinny woman, with eyes like darting black beads in a face taut with disapproval.

  ‘What’s all this, then?’ she asks, before she’s even taken off her coat.

  ‘Our niece has come to stay,’ Eric/Silas tells her (I still can’t tell them apart from behind). ‘Blossom, meet Ruth.’ He disappears into the
garden, leaving Blossom and me to get acquainted.

  ‘How do you do?’ I hold out my hand.

  ‘Hmm.’ Blossom ignores the hand. ‘How long you staying?’

  ‘I don’t really know. Not long. Just until I find somewhere else.’

  ‘What have you done to the kitchen?’

  ‘I tidied it a bit.’

  ‘Hmm. They won’t like that.’

  ‘They didn’t seem to mind. And at least we can find everything now.’

  ‘They could find everything before. That’s the way they like it. I don’t interfere in the kitchen.’ (Now there’s a surprise.)

  I try to overcome the temptation to ask what it is that Blossom actually does, and wait to see. She fetches brooms and brushes from under the stairs, and clears a kind of runway through the clutter in the hall, thus giving easier access to the stairs, various doorways and the downstairs lavatory. The coats and caps she leaves where they’ve fallen, presumably because she isn’t tall enough to replace them. She shakes the doormat, polishes the door knocker, and then repairs to the kitchen to make herself some coffee. She doesn’t offer me any, so I make my own.

  ‘Where do you live?’ I try to make conversation.

  ‘Village.’ Blossom slurps her coffee, and adds more sugar.

  ‘How do you get here?’

  ‘Bike.’

  ‘And — your husband?’ I notice her wedding ring. ‘What does he do?’

  ‘Dead.’ Blossom wipes her mouth on the back of her hand.

  ‘Oh, I’m so sorry.’

  ‘Don’t be. Miserable bugger, he was.’ There is the ghost of a smile. ‘Well rid of him.’

  ‘And — children?’

  ‘Son. And daughter. No better than she ought to be.’

  ‘Oh dear.’ I suspect that in Blossom’s book that probably applies to me, too. ‘Do you see much of her?’

  ‘Nope.’ Blossom gets up from the table and deposits her empty coffee cup in the sink. I notice that she doesn’t wash it up. She picks up a bucket and opens the back door. ‘You expecting?’ She turns, her hand still on the door handle.