A Dry Spell Read online

  ‘Garden’s looking nice,’ said Guy, taking a few steps towards the French windows. Out on the lawn stood a wheelbarrow of box-clippings – evidence of work in progress.

  ‘Plum tree’s diseased,’ said his father. ‘Needs chopping down. Perhaps you’ll give us a hand after lunch.’

  ‘Of course,’ said Guy, who had no time for such chores in his own home, and barely got around to cutting the grass.

  ‘And there’s a little concreting job I’ve been saving for you,’ Mr Bromelow laughed jovially.

  Don’t know why he bothers to put on clean clothes to come here, Jane thought. Don’t know why he doesn’t just come in his overalls.

  From the kitchen came the sound of pan lids crashing. Jane ventured in to help. Mrs Bromelow was standing at the hob on one leg, skimming fat from a spitting pan of roast lamb.

  ‘Can I do anything?’ Jane asked. Her mother-in-law looked at Jane’s white silk blouse. ‘No dear. Just get everyone sitting down.’ As well as her House Shoes, she was wearing what Jane took to be a House Dress – once smart and evidently expensive but now frayed at collar and cuffs and coming apart under the armpit. It was what she always wore indoors, unless company was expected, in which case she would disappear upstairs and change into one of several navy suits. Jane longed for her to be caught out by an unexpected visitor, but this would never happen: the Bromelows didn’t mix with the sort of people who dropped in. Jane watched her forking eight roast potatoes into a serving dish. Guy’s mother was a good cook, but portions were miserly. Jane had meant to suggest to Guy that they stopped at a service station on the way down for a pre-lunch snack, but time had been short and Guy would sooner starve than be late for his parents so she had kept her mouth shut. And, besides, the implied criticism would wound him. Not that he didn’t enjoy a good moan about them himself now and then, but when Jane pitched in with her own observations he tended to go quiet.

  ‘Oh there you are, Stilton,’ said Mrs Bromelow to a fat spaniel who waddled in at that moment, and made straight for Jane, sneezing violently. That’s right, Jane thought. We all have to take our shoes off, while the dog is allowed to spray his germs all over the kitchen. He always greeted her with enthusiasm, as if he could scent the one dog-hater in the crowd and was bent on converting her. Usually he’d come bounding in from the garden, mid-shit, and throw himself at her, but he was a bit subdued today, his breath sounding even more laboured than usual. He collapsed at her feet, chest rattling, and gazed up at her with a pool of slime in the corner of each eye.

  ‘I think it’s emphysema,’ said Mrs Bromelow, peeling a piece of lamb from the bone and letting the dog eat it from her fingers.

  Jane watched her wipe the slobber from her hand on Stilton’s straggly coat before turning back to make the gravy. ‘I’ll tell the others to sit down,’ she said, feeling suddenly queasy.

  ‘So how’s school?’ asked Mr Bromelow, when they were all finally seated. The table was set with white linen and the best crystal and china – the stuff that didn’t go in the dishwasher, so half the afternoon would be spent washing up. Jane watched her father-in-law carve two minute slices of lamb from the joint and lay them on a plate beside one small roast potato, and was about to say that Harriet would have no broccoli, thank you, when she realized that the plate was destined for her. Really, it was inconceivable how Guy and his brother had managed to reach six foot on such rations, she thought. It must have been all that boarding-school stodge: bread pudding and gypsy tart.

  ‘Not too bad,’ said Guy. ‘We’ve got an inspection coming up.’ He didn’t bother to go into details; his career was something of a disappointment to them. Mr Bromelow had reached the rank of brigadier in Her Majesty’s Armed Forces. Whole rows of grown men had had to salute him as he passed. Ticking off under-elevens seemed very small beer by comparison and not altogether a job for a man. And if he didn’t actually have a class to teach, what on earth did he find to do all day?

  ‘One of the children brought in some frogspawn a month ago,’ Guy was saying, at the same time trying to feed Harriet, who was having trouble manipulating the heavy silver cutlery. ‘We’ve got this nature area behind the caretaker’s house, with a pond and wild flowers. So then all the other kids started bringing jam jars of the stuff to school and now the whole pond is like jelly. We’re going to have a plague of frogs in a few months’ time.’

  ‘Is that true, Daddy?’ asked Sophie, suspiciously. She was used to Guy spinning her a yarn.

  ‘Do frogs bite?’ Harriet wanted to know.

  ‘No, they stick their tongues out like this,’ said Guy, pulling a face and waiting for her to copy him. As she opened her mouth he went to pop in a piece of carrot, but she was too quick for him and snapped her teeth shut so that it fell untasted on to the creamy white napery between them.

  ‘The chair of governors is retiring,’ said Jane, feeling that this, if anything, was the sort of information Guy’s parents were after, not tales of children and frogs.

  ‘Oh really?’ said Mrs Bromelow. ‘The one you like?’

  ‘Yes. The woman who appointed me. I hope her successor is as nice. Now that school governors have so much power it’s vital to get on with your chair.’

  A vision of Guy, conversing gaily with an elegant Chesterfield, rose up before Jane’s eyes.

  ‘This is bisgusting,’ said Harriet, loudly, laying down her fork.

  ‘Disgusting not bisgusting,’ Guy corrected her. ‘How many times?’

  ‘It’s delicious,’ said Jane, firmly. Her own plate was empty but her stomach still felt cavernous and unfilled. She would be forced to hang over the children’s plates like a buzzard, clearing up their leavings. The rest of the joint stood steaming on the sideboard, prompting her to a fantasy of second helpings, but she knew that any minute now it would be borne away to the kitchen, never to reappear. It was a mystery to Jane where such leftovers ended up. She couldn’t see Daphne mincing it up for rissoles, somehow. She glared at Stilton, comatose beneath the sideboard. Privately she suspected him of being the beneficiary of her unassuaged hunger.

  ‘Sit up, Harriet, and eat your dinner or there’ll be no pudding,’ said her grandmother severely. ‘Does she always fidget this much?’ Harriet, bored with adult conversation, had slid down on her seat so that the top of her head was now level with the table. Every so often she would fling out a foot to try and kick Sophie, jogging the gate-leg and setting the plates and glasses jangling.

  ‘Oh, fidgeting’s the least of her vices,’ said Jane.

  Mrs Bromelow pursed her lips.

  ‘Quite,’ said Guy. ‘Only the other day she pinched something from one of the shops in town. What was it?’ he went on, ignoring agonized signals from his wife. Fortunately his memory for details was poor. ‘I forget now, but I think it proves that a life of crime has begun.’

  ‘Well, I should think half of the children I see going around the supermarket will end up in Borstal. The mothers don’t seem to have any control.’

  ‘Supermarkets and children don’t mix,’ Guy agreed, trying to make the conversation more general, and less obviously about their own children.

  ‘Well, I think modern parents have got it all wrong,’ said Mrs Bromelow, as if Jane and Guy could conceivably be some other breed, and therefore not take what followed personally. ‘They’ve read all this rubbish by sociologists and they’re afraid if they tell a child off it’ll end up repressed or some silly nonsense. When I had you we didn’t have any books. We just got on with it.’

  Not have books? thought Jane. What period of prehistory could Daphne possibly be referring to? It was only here that she was made to feel like a caricature of a slack, liberal mother. The rest of the time she worried that she was rather too short-tempered and free with her slaps – indeed something of a tyrant.

  ‘Any news of William and Caroline?’ Guy asked. William was Guy’s younger brother. He did something on Wall Street: Jane had never grasped precisely what, and neither, she suspected, had her mo
ther-in-law, but it seemed to hold true for Daphne that the less she understood, the more impressed she was. His phenomenal wealth and success were often discussed at the Bromelow table, and Jane found herself disliking this mythical William for being so evidently and unfairly the favourite son. The real William was, in fact, perfectly amiable and on the few occasions when they’d met Jane had enjoyed his company. His wife, Caroline, on the other hand, was, in Jane’s view, snobbish, materialistic and humourless – therefore a natural ally of Mrs Bromelow.

  ‘I spoke to him the other day. He said he’d received your birthday card,’ Guy’s mother replied.

  Guy, unaware that he had ever sent one, shot Jane a grateful glance. ‘Oh. Right.’ Although he had always got along fine with William their worlds no longer converged. They weren’t great letter writers – it just wasn’t something busy men did. And Guy wasn’t a great phoner either. In his experience a ringing phone usually heralded trouble: complaints from parents, problems with pupils or staff, imminent visits by inspectors, or, at home, unwanted guests. As a result they tended to exchange news of each other via their parents, with the odd call at Christmas or New Year to say hello, and the even less frequent visit.

  ‘It’s terribly sad. He was telling me their last go at IVF was unsuccessful so they’ve got to go through it all again.’

  ‘Oh dear,’ said Jane, a small, mean corner of her soul rejoicing at their misfortune. Fertility was the only area in which she and Guy outperformed them: as soon as Caroline conceived, their one advantage would be lost.

  ‘So unfair,’ Mrs Bromelow went on. ‘They’d make such marvellous parents.’

  ‘Yes, they would,’ said Guy, generously. Jane, inferring from the previous remark that her mother-in-law considered her to have been undeservedly blessed, remained tight-lipped.

  While Mrs Bromelow collected the plates and brought in a bowl of trifle from the kitchen her husband took the opportunity to move the conversation away from the subject of child-rearing – something that had never interested him in theory or practice. Instead he began a long and involved tale about the laziness and uncouthness of the decorators who had just finished work on the guest bathroom. This was a familiar theme: Guy’s parents’ house was large and in a state of perpetual refurbishment. Jane could recall many afternoons before the children were born when visits to the Bromelows would entail driving miles into the Sussex countryside to track down a rare shade of quarry tile, or some bespoke doorknobs.

  ‘He brought his twelve-year-old son along as plumber’s mate, if you please,’ Mr Bromelow said, a vein throbbing in his temple. ‘It wasn’t even the school holidays. When were the holidays?’ he asked Guy. This digression was interrupted by a distant ringing.

  ‘Someone go and see who that is,’ ordered Mrs Bromelow, laying a scant tablespoon of trifle in a bowl and passing it to Jane. ‘I can’t go.’

  Guy glanced at her foot. ‘No, of course not,’ he said, standing up.

  ‘In this dress.’

  ‘Oh, I see what you mean.’ He left the room, closely followed by Harriet and Sophie, who seized the chance to slip down from the table.

  ‘How’s your house coming along?’ Mr Bromelow turned on Jane. ‘Done much to it yet?’

  ‘No. Not so’s you’d notice,’ she replied. They had only been in the place seven months. There were piles of boxes in the spare room still to be unpacked. She couldn’t think what they contained – no one seemed to be missing anything. She was half tempted to take the whole lot down to the tip unexamined. The only room they had tackled was the loft conversion, which had been abandoned by the previous owners before it came to putting in a staircase, and had to be reached by means of a flimsy ladder. But it had carpet and electric light and shelves and skylight windows through which Guy could examine the heavens with his telescope, so he had appropriated the room as his study, and would retreat there to work or stargaze as the mood took him. When the need for privacy became overwhelming he would pull the ladder up after him.

  The rest of the house was much as they’d found it: not to their taste, exactly, but too recently decorated to be redone on anything but frivolous aesthetic grounds. At present it was what Guy called ‘Suburban Grand’ with plush carpets and brass fittings and flowery wallpaper with contrasting borders everywhere. Ideally Jane favoured more austere surroundings: white walls and bare boards, perhaps, or rough sisal carpets which would skin the legs of anyone who dared to slide down the stairs.

  ‘Well, it’s perfectly adequate for your purposes, isn’t it?’ said Mrs Bromelow, as if there were other purposes less humble than merely living in the house to which they might one day aspire.

  ‘Anyway,’ Jane said. ‘Now spring’s here we’ll live in the garden.’ As she said this a few fat raindrops hit the French windows, and there was an ominous roll of thunder. ‘There goes the concreting,’ she added, in as neutral a tone as possible.

  ‘Oh, it’ll keep,’ said Guy’s father. ‘Till next time.’

  The meal proceeded a while in silence, Jane shaving minute layers of sponge and custard from her trifle to make it last. ‘What can Guy be doing all this time?’ his mother asked. ‘Do you think he’s been kidnapped?’

  ‘Shall I go and find him – and the girls?’ Jane volunteered.

  ‘No,’ Mrs Bromelow replied. ‘Let’s enjoy the peace while it lasts.’

  Harriet and Sophie came panting in, giggling. They had been trying to play pony rides with Stilton, who had wedged himself under the telephone table in the hall and refused to come out.

  ‘Where’s Daddy?’ asked Jane, lifting Harriet back on to her chair.

  ‘Talking to a man and a lady,’ said Sophie.

  ‘What about?’

  ‘God.’

  ‘Jehovah’s Witnesses!’ said Mrs Bromelow in horror, flinging down her napkin. ‘If he shows the slightest interest we shall never be rid of them. I hope to God he hasn’t taken any of their literature.’

  ‘Oh, he’ll be there for hours, politely debating with them,’ said Jane, whose doorstep technique for seeing off unwanted callers of all types was more abrupt: a cheerful, but utterly inflexible ‘No thank you’, followed immediately by withdrawal of eye-contact and then a slow smooth closing of the door. It was hesitancy which was fatal in these situations. Only a few weeks ago someone had called selling a little laminated sign to put in the front window which read: No free newspapers or door-to-door salesmen! Guy had bought one, of course, to be nice. ‘Isn’t that rather like sawing through the branch you’re sitting on?’ he’d said to the man.

  A moment later Guy himself reappeared, tract in hand.

  ‘Oh you haven’t,’ said his mother.

  ‘You took your time,’ said Jane. ‘Don’t tell me they’ve converted you.’

  ‘I think they might have done – to atheism,’ said Guy, with a troubled frown, taking his place at the table and failing to join in with the burst of laughter that greeted this remark.

  ‘You’re very quiet,’ said Jane on the way home. The children were asleep in the back, heads lolling, exhausted by the two-hour tramp through the West Sussex countryside which Guy’s mother had suggested as a means of prolonging the life of her furniture. Naturally she herself had stayed at home, warm and dry, to rest her foot. The china alsatians were in the boot, wrapped in coats to stop them clanking together. Guy was driving, as usual. They had stopped for Jane to pick up some chips and she was full now, and happy. Guy hadn’t wanted anything to eat: visits to his parents always took away his appetite.

  ‘I was just thinking about those Jehovah’s Witnesses,’ he said. The copy of Watchtower was sticking out of the glove compartment, where it would remain for several weeks, unread, before being thrown out with the old crisp packets and lolly sticks. When he had opened the door to a smiling, well-dressed, middle-aged couple, he had taken them for friends of his parents – neighbours locked out of their house, perhaps – and had treated them to one of his lip-splitting PR smiles. When they had whipped out a
pamphlet and asked him if he didn’t think that there was a lot of misery and wretchedness in the world, he realized his mistake, but the moment for slamming the door was past, and they had him there, squirming like a worm on a hook.

  ‘I am a Christian myself,’ Guy had said, politely, hoping they would take the hint and push off in search of the heathen, but this seemed only to encourage them.

  ‘Are you?’ said the man, still holding out the pamphlet. ‘That’s very good to hear. Because so few people are nowadays. It’s a tragedy that so many people still haven’t taken Jesus into their hearts. Wouldn’t you agree?’

  Guy sensed a trap. ‘I can’t help feeling that it’s a matter of conscience for every individual, rather than an idea that can be sold on the doorstep like dusters,’ he said. ‘Perhaps that’s because I don’t share your sense of urgency.’

  The man affected astonishment. ‘There is every reason for urgency. Salvation is an urgent business.’ He offered Guy the pamphlet. ‘You might find this useful. It answers some of the questions people like yourself ask.’

  ‘No thanks,’ said Guy. ‘I prefer to go straight to the Bible itself if I need help with any . . . er . . . spiritual dilemmas.’ This wasn’t entirely true. Guy hardly ever picked up a Bible, unless he happened to be reading in church, and didn’t find it particularly helpful in strengthening his faith. Rather the contrary, in fact. The deeper he probed, the less he understood.