Rosie Thomas - A Simple Life

They continued in silence for perhaps a hundred yards. There were birds singing, and silverbarked birches with their leaves turning butter-gold.

‘It’s very beautiful here,’ Dinah said quietly.

‘I hate it.’ Milly’s voice was so low that it was barely audible.

Dinah waited, walking with her head bent and her eyes fixed on the path in order not to intrude on Milly.

‘I hate it,’ Milly repeated more loudly after a minute.

‘Why?’ Dinah ventured.

Milly stopped walking. She half turned and made an eloquent gesture of spreading her hands an inch, opening her hunched shoulders, twisting her head against the backdrop of gilded trees and china-blue sky. And at once Dinah had a sense of her isolation in this calendar landscape, sullen and strange, adrift from the chains of healthy high-school kids she had seen dismounting from the dog-nosed yellow State of Massachusetts school buses. Milly fierce and freaky. Lost and longing to be found. And yet, she was not so different from hundreds of kids in London. She was only so different here.

To Dinah’s surprise, Milly suddenly smiled.

Her teeth were white and even, startlingly so as they appeared between the dark-painted lips. Her eyes slanted upwards, giving her a completely new expression of sceptical merriment.

‘See?’ Milly asked.

Dinah nodded. ‘Yes. I suppose I do.’

It came to her that she recalled the familiarity of London and home for Milly, just as Milly did for her. They had recognised the exile in one another. They walked on, the distance between them perceptibly lessened.

‘It will start snowing soon,’ Milly remarked.

‘Not that soon. Another two, maybe three months.’

‘Then everyone will put on their ski-suits and start poling around the trails like these clockwork people, arms up and down, two, three, legs going like stupid machines.’

Milly’s spidery black limbs jerked in cruel imitation and Dinah laughed at the image she conjured up.

‘Cross-country skiing is harmless enough,’ she protested mildly.

‘It isn’t just that, is it? It’s the woods and the empty fresh air and the kindness and health and shitty peace and beauty of it all.’

‘What would you like instead?’

Milly’s second shrug was as expressive as the first.

‘Decay,’ she murmured gothically.

Merlin appeared ahead. He scuffled back towards them through the leaves and then stood in the middle of the path.

‘What are you talking about?’ He looked from his mother to Milly with a hint of jealous accusation. His round face was shadowed. Milly ignored him, simply waiting for Dinah to deal with the interruption so they could resume their conversation. She was entirely focused on what interested her, and what was of no interest did not exist. Dinah reflected on this as she dealt with Merlin, and guiltily encouraged him to run on again to look for the men. She wanted to prolong this talk.

As soon as he was out of earshot Milly greedily reclaimed her attention. ‘Why don’t you like it here?’

‘How do you know that?’

‘Well, you don’t , do you?’

Dinah sighed. ‘I miss … threads, connections. Nothing very specific.’ She could not explain, particularly she could not think of explaining to this child. Associations began to pile up, like nerve impulses behind the blocked synapses of denial.

‘Just plain homesickness,’ she offered lamely.

Milly walked with her hands in the pockets of her long coat. Her bottom lip stuck out; her expression was a young-old hybrid of disappointment and dismissiveness. Dinah saw that she had given an inadequate answer. ‘So what is it you miss?’ she asked.

‘Nothing. Well, everything. People, you know. Mates. That you can just be with and, like, not have to pretend to be someone else for half the time just because they think you ought to be different from the way you are. I’ve got friends in London, in Camden, who know me all the way through. Better than Sandra and Ed ever will. I’d rather be there with them than stuck here.’

The tone of her voice was withering.

‘School friends?’ Dinah asked. She felt sorry for Milly, cut off in the glass castle from children of her own age, with only her UMass tutor for company.

‘God. I told you. I got expelled from Camden bloody School.’

‘Why?’

Milly sniffed in exasperation. ‘The usual shit. Smoking. Language. Defacing school property. Bunking off. Violence to a member of staff. Actually it was only a ruler I smacked her with. Should have been an iron bar, really. Only I didn’t have one in my pencil case.’ There was a distinct note of pride in this recitation.

Dinah nodded. ‘I see,’ she said mildly.

Milly’s voice softened. ‘No, my mates are nothing to do with school. I met them down the Lock. I used to hang round there in the day, not being at school. They just do stuff, like, their own way. They’ve got a place they live in, near Chalk Farm. Caz, that’s one of them, he’s fixed it well up so there’s water and heating and everything, not like some stinking squat. I’ll move in there, soon as I’m old enough.’

‘You aren’t old enough yet.’

‘Yeah. Thanks for the reminder. All I’m old enough for is either being towed round while Ed researches his crap books, or being left behind with some pain in the arse housekeeper. It’s no wonder nothing worked out in school, really. I was always being taken out to go somewhere else, that they wanted.’

Dinah contemplated this opposing perspective on Milly’s life.

‘I can see that would be difficult.’

Milly shrugged. She stuck her hands deeper in her pockets and walked on, looking straight ahead, as if she had already given too much away.

Dinah tried one or two more conversational openings, but Milly did not respond. They walked the rest of the way in silence, but it was a companionable silence.

When they came back to the house, having made a wide arc through the unrelenting woodland, Ed was already waving at them from the deck, the bow-saw hanging over the other arm. Sandra was watching too. Her eyes flicked from Milly to Dinah. Milly veered away from Dinah.

‘See you,’ she muttered.

It might have been a threat or a promise. Her face was closed up again, admitting nothing. She went up the steps, looking at no one, and vanished into the house.

The Stewards were ready to leave. The boys were already inside the Jeep and the adults gathered in a loose group beside it to exchange their goodbyes. Sandra stood beside Dinah.

‘Thank you for taking such trouble with Milly.’ The thanks sounded oddly formal.

‘I liked her,’ Dinah said. ‘Did you?’

It was less than the truth, but even the mild assurance seemed to displease Sandra.

‘She doesn’t often go out for a walk. You were honoured,’ Sandra told her.

‘Great, great, we must do that,’ Ed was saying to Matthew. ‘I’ll call you and we’ll fix it.’ He crossed in front of the Toyota to Dinah’s side, taking something out of his wallet as he did so. Dinah watched him, noting the set of his head on his neck and the forward thrust of his chest and shoulders. He was a bully, she thought. An amiable one, but still a bully. She wondered how the Parkeses lived together when there was no call for the polish of hospitality.

Ed was talking to her. ‘Di, you said you were thinking of looking for a job of some kind? Sounded like a good idea …’

They had discussed it, only very briefly, over lunch.

‘Well …’

Ed had taken out a card. He passed it to her now through the open window. ‘This woman’s a good friend of mine, an employment consultant. Now, don’t look like that. She’s the best, and I’ll call her about you. Go see her, won’t you? Can’t do any harm.’