‘Good men.’
‘And their rough wives,’ Margaret added.
‘Not necessarily. Hard-working women like us.’
‘Of course they are. What else could they be but poor, struggling? Watching annuities shrink until each time you draw you see yourself looking deeper and deeper into the jar, scratching round the bottom, licking your fingers to taste the few remaining crumbs. Remembering what it was like, once.’
‘Edward loves Matthew. He could be a father for your boy.’
‘But not a husband. He’s too risky. If I marry again it will be for safety.’
‘You made one mistake, Margaret.’
‘And you think I’m going to make another? Not likely.’ And she got up and strode out of the kitchen.
Mr Werther visited. He brought a pot of honey with a tiny honeycomb house in it, a delicate wax structure in a sea of honey like a ship floating in a bottle. Margaret brought him into the kitchen. He bowed to her and offered his gift and his commiserations. Matthew loved that word, stepping daintily and elegantly off his tongue. He bowed to Gran and offered her his sympathy. Gran smiled at him and brought out her best English teapot and cups as Margaret excused herself and returned to her room.
‘She is distressed. Yes? Poor lady.’
‘Yes,’ Gran lied.
Later Matthew heard her say to his mother, ‘He is so kind, so gentle.’
‘A German visiting here. What if the Goodmans saw?’
‘And if they did?’
Gran rarely threatened but now her voice had an edge which indicated an end to her tolerance.
‘They might …’ Mother retreated then rallied. ‘You know what they say about Huns. You should have heard them at Rundles.’
‘Them. They. Who are them and they? Am I to be ruled by them and they? Are Matthew and I to be ever the victims of your character misjudgements?’
Margaret burst into tears. ‘I don’t know what you want me to be. My life is impossible.’ Matthew went into the garden. It was peaceful there. Perhaps he should visit old Peter. People didn’t confuse old Peter.
Several days later the man in the cigar-brown suit called. Matthew opened the front door and froze into silence.
‘What is it? Who? Oh!’ Margaret exclaimed. She glanced quickly at Matthew. ‘Off you go.’
‘No.’
‘Matthew.’
‘No.’
‘Do as I say! At once! Now!’
He ran. ‘Gran!’ he shouted. ‘Gran! That man who was unkind to Mr Werther. He’s at the door. Gran tell him to go away.’
Gran hurried out. ‘What a to do,’ she said. ‘Heavens, Matthew. Be quiet.’
Margaret’s voice came from the parlour: ‘… too much this time. Deserves a spanking.’
‘Don’t you dare, Margaret,’ warned Gran.
‘Can’t anyone come here to sympathise with me? Surely I need a little consideration sometimes.’
‘Of course,’ the man’s voice now. ‘Of course you do. May told me—look at you, so alone, so much in need, so brave.’
Gran came out snorting. ‘Let’s go into the garden, Matthew. I must get outside.’ And she hustled him in front of her out the door.
‘Gran,’ he asked, kneeling by her side to pull weeds, ‘does Mother have a key to the shades? Will she speak to Father?’
‘No.’
‘Why not?’
‘Your mother does not set great store by the past.’
‘But she talks a lot about it.’
‘It’s not the same.’
‘Why does she cry so much? It makes me sad.’
‘She has many things to worry about. Her youth was blighted.’ Matthew considered ‘blighted’. He remembered that when frost shrivelled flowers in the garden, Gran had complained they were blighted.
‘Was it her fault?’ he asked.
‘No, not really.’
‘But you said—’
‘Yes, I know you’ve heard me blame her but sometimes I am too hard a judge. Your mother was only a young pretty girl who loved unwisely.’ She ruffled his hair. ‘But now she often forgets her sadness and is happy. You’ve seen that, Matthew.’
He thought and nodded. ‘Then she did love Father.’
‘Once.’
‘Did you love Grandfather?’
‘Yes.’
‘What happened to him?’
‘He died when we were at sea. On the way from Ireland. Many years ago.’
‘Then he is buried in the sea, not in the ground?’
‘Yes.’
‘That’s nicer.’
‘Yes, I think so, too.’
‘When people die, Gran, they can’t come back? Can they?’
‘No.’
‘Then how do you speak to Grandfather?’
‘I don’t know. Perhaps because he is buried in the sea. Life came out of the sea. Maybe Grandfather’s life force has been reshaped there. Maybe water and time are the same: always there somewhere in the universe, flowing, shaping, creating, but never disappearing. Grandfather is always there because water is always there. And time is the same, always there. We change its meaning when we call it past, present and future but time itself does not change. So,’ she laughed, ‘why should I be a prisoner in the prison we’ve made for ourselves? Perception is just a prison if we never question it.
‘There now, that’s confusing enough for any little boy. You’ve got a silly old Gran and a poor silly mother but we both love you. And Grandfather would have loved you, too.’
‘Do you tell him about me?’
‘Of course.’
Matthew felt pleased.
Matthew took refuge in his derelict sandstone cottage, a windowless roofless husk of human habitation that lay like a shell roughly blasted, full of holes and half-filled with sand, in the dunes. In one corner an ant mound, dry and warm and bubbled with balls of dirt, protected a hive of small black creatures. Occasionally heads and frantic antennae popped from holes or dashed out frenetically to run up and down, round and round and back into the hole again.
In another corner a round dark hole housed and sometimes concealed a neat brown hairy spider with shiny pincers. Crouched near his hole, all parts fitted together like a tiny machine, he could unwind and run with mechanical precision on high fast extended legs. Sand filtered through the door and window spaces into mounds and slopes hot from the sun. The wind scuffled and sucked outside. Occasionally it entered through a door, blowing dirt and
