have to face up to a few things.
But what Jean actually heard herself saying was, ‘Oh yes, how lovely. I can just picture it. I wonder what Miranda would think- she’d be thrilled, wouldn’t she?’ She knew no way to point out that buying paint was out of the question, to tell her that there was hardly any money even to buy more food; to suggest that actually, they might all have to learn to manage with less to eat. Nor could she mention that even if they had the money, it would have to be Steph or Michael who would have to get up the courage to go shopping, because Jean herself could not.
But she could not point any of this out because to do so would amount to saying that life could not be lived in this way. And how could she suggest that when life together here was now, for them all, a simple necessity? Jean was protecting them all by saying nothing. Things would sort themselves out. In the meantime it was still true (in a way) that whether or not they could buy the paint Steph’s mural sounded lovely. And since it would never happen, Jean would not have to say anything heavy-handed about not touching the seventeenth century oak panelling. It could not matter, then, that she said again, ‘She’d be thrilled, wouldn’t she?’
Steph was now laying out flabby bacon slices over the bread, murmuring that she thought they’d be a bit crisper than that after this long in the top oven but she was too hungry to wait. Jean rested her elbows on the table and tried to think seriously about what else she might give them with the sausages that evening, knowing that by luxuriating in this immediate but comparatively small problem she was displacing temporarily the huge, intractable one. They could not live forever on the contents of the freezers, but in the meantime, until she absolutely had to decide what to do about it, there were a couple of onions and a tin of tomatoes. Jean brightened. And she would see if Michael could find anything more in the garden. He had already found some potatoes in the large walled garden that Jean had never explored properly. She would ask him to dig it over again, there were always a few more. Everything would be all right.
Steph was finishing her sandwich and Jean was sifting through a collection of jars of dried herbs when Michael came in, bringing a blast of outdoor air with him. He strode over to the Aga, crouched over the temperature gauge and groaned. ‘Thought as much,’ he said, straightening up and turning to them. ‘I’ve just been out and checked the tank and it’s practically empty. We’re out of oil.’
Just then there was a wail from over their heads. ‘That sounds like a hungry cry,’ Steph said informatively. Her desperation over her daughter’s feeding had vanished, and in its place was a kind of contented weariness which was easier on them all. But she was wrong, Jean was thinking, about the cry. Miranda cried very little and was never hungry. It was not a hungry cry, but a cry of bewilderment and despair, and it grew louder. It was then that Jean burst into tears, sank her head into her hands and sobbed almost hard enough to drown Miranda’s yells.
I had almost put my desire for a tree to one side, knowing that there simply was no money for such things, but when Steph announced that she was after paint for a mural, I found myself thinking that I did want my tree, and why shouldn’t I have it? I wanted a magnolia to plant in the spot where I’d buried the afterbirth, but I had contented myself with just the wanting of it and had not hankered much after the getting. Old habit. But why shouldn’t I get, too? I really wanted that tree. Still I didn’t say so, because on that very same day we had the business of the oil to deal with. It put other things out of my mind. Things rather came to a head, and I had to face the fact that even here, life can only go on with a certain amount of involvement from the outside. The oil was a shock to me, I admit.
Michael was wonderful. He sent Steph up to feed Miranda and then sat quietly with me until I was able to speak. He got it out of me at last that I wasn’t quite the owner of the house, a thing I had never really spelled out. I don’t think he was altogether surprised. But we both felt such distaste for this fact that, without having to say so, I think we both resolved to get the practical difficulties of the oil and the money situation dealt with without delay, and ever afterwards to refer to such things only when absolutely necessary. I told him what the owners’ notes had said, which was that the tank was full and wouldn’t need refilling. But Michael pointed out at once, being good at these things, that there would have been enough if I had been here alone because then I wouldn’t have been heating the whole house day in day out since January. It was obvious, of course, and not the sort of thing that I would ordinarily miss.
Of course I didn’t know how to get hold of more oil. Then he asked if there might be any papers kept anywhere, to do with the house, that would tell us. For example, what happened about the post? I explained that I had been picking the post up first thing before he or Steph could see it, and that I put it in the library desk, as instructed. But then I remembered the study upstairs, and I told Michael that there were lots of papers there, and filing cabinets. He took it out of my hands, told me not to worry about another thing, he would deal with all of it. He and Steph together, he added, and I could tell that he felt he needed her help. So I gave him the key to the study, and knew I trusted him to do as he said. And he did, of course. Steph too- she’s a clever girl, easy to underestimate a girl like that. They took care of all the money matters. In fact, until I started coming up here to use the typewriter to write all this down, I had no call to come in here at all. They have saved me from having to worry about that kind of detail.
I suppose I never have been very skilled with money; I mean look at me and Father’s clock for a start. I found myself wishing that somebody like Michael had been around all those years ago to help me with the business of Father’s clock. Not Michael, of course, how could it have been? I was only sixteen myself. I mean somebody older than me at the time, who would have known what to do. Mother was useless, not that I would have consulted her in any case; we had by then set out our positions about me and university and I knew she would have done nothing whatsoever to help me get there. She did not single out that one thing to be useless over, she was useless in everything from that point on, because when Father died Mother simply declined to be of any further use. She declined even to get up much any more. I think at first it was mainly to make sure that I didn’t go off to college or indeed anywhere else. Whether or not she was actually ill at that point I cannot say, but she kept to her bed. Not
I went to Hapgood’s in the High Street. It sold jewellery and clocks and also mended them, so I thought they would know about my clock, even though mine was an antique and they sold mostly new things. Mr Hapgood was about thirty, I suppose. He had a wide face, not like a grown-up’s at all, but even so I thought of him as old. He had sandy hair and sharp little teeth, and very careful hands, and he was kind. He asked me how a young lady like me came to have an antique longcase clock in the first place. It was only two weeks since the funeral and the question made me cry, and Mr Hapgood took me behind the counter and into the back of the shop. It was quite dark except for the space over the two long benches that were lit by angled lamps, and very warm, with the smell of an oil stove. He sat me down on a torn leather sofa, surrounded by boxes of bits of metal and cogs and sharp- looking tools, and made me a cup of tea. And he said he would come and see the clock if I gave him my address. I was grateful.
Steph and Michael shut themselves in the study, leaving Miranda, newly fed, with Jean in the kitchen. Now alone, they assumed the authority of the young taking responsibility for the supposedly incapable old. Michael could hardly admit to enjoying the slight sense of crisis that Jean’s collapse had brought, but there was something uniting in the idea that he and Steph were now being relied upon.
In the filing cabinet under
It did sound easy, but would they take an order by telephone from Michael? Could just anyone ring up and order oil for any address?
‘Say you’re the handyman,’ Steph suggested, but frowned. It might work, and it might not. What if the oil supplier would deal only with the customer direct? There were receipts going back five years, so presumably the suppliers knew Mr Standish-Cave, even if only as a voice on the telephone. ‘No, better not. No, you’ll have to say
