Victoria Clayton - Moonshine

‘Wouldn’t they look rather better if they had something growing between them?’ I suggested, hoping to strike a note of fellowship with this remote, furious being. ‘Perhaps some hardy geraniums or violas—’

‘This is a rose-bed.’ Brough’s angry little eyes were contemptuous.

‘Yes, but it needn’t be just roses …’

‘The Major wouldn’t like it.’

The Major was my father.

‘How do you know he wouldn’t?’

‘Because he told me. He said, “Brough, whatever you do, don’t go planting anything between them roses. Over my dead body.”’

One cannot call someone a liar without disagreeable consequences. I walked angrily away and set myself the task of weeding the stone urns on the terrace. A harvest of bittercress shot seeds into the cracks between the stones as I worked, there to take ineradicable root and, just as I finished, the handle of one of the urns dropped off and smashed, leaving two large holes through which the sandy earth trickled on to my shoes in a steady stream. I went indoors.

My brother Oliver, the fourth inmate of this unhappy house, threatened daily to shake the plentiful dust of home from his feet. He was twenty, nearly six years younger than me, and could certainly have done so without anyone objecting. I think my father might even have been willing to drive him to the station himself, had he been convinced that Oliver would board the train. Oliver was currently an aspiring novelist. He was working on something satirical about a Swiftian character who, like the fortunate Dean, was adored by two equally desirable women. Despite having completed a mere ten pages Oliver was convinced that this was to be his passport to success and a new life. I loved my brother dearly and to see him struggling to maintain a fragile self-confidence was painful. I already knew the plot of Sunbeams from Cucumbers backwards and it seemed promising.

‘It’s all in the writing, you see,’ he explained, lying full-length on the sofa after a lonely afternoon of creation, while I peeled potatoes for supper.

It was three weeks after my return and my mother had not yet managed to totter further than to the commode set up for her in the corner of the morning room. I was sinking into a lethargic despondency at the prospective length of my term of servitude.

‘You know the saying “kill your darlings”?’ Oliver went on. ‘I think it was Hemingway who said it. Well, as soon as I write anything that seems any good, I have to destroy it immediately. So, naturally, it takes a while to get a page done.’

‘You’re sure you aren’t taking it too literally?’ I put the saucepan on to boil. ‘I mean, if you only keep the bits that aren’t any good, isn’t that defeating the object?’

‘It means you must cut out the showy, self-conscious passages.’ Oliver licked out the bowl in which I had made a batter for apple fritters. School and the army had bred in my father a taste for nursery food which meant that solid English puddings, of the kind that require custard, were obligatory at lunch and supper. ‘My problem is that to lose self-consciousness I have to be drunk. But not so drunk that I can’t hold the pen. It’s a delicate balance. You’ve no idea what a serious writer has to suffer.’ As he said this at least twice a day I felt I was beginning to get a pretty good idea.

It was unfortunate that alcohol did not agree with Oliver. He had tried beer, whisky, wine, sherry, even crème de menthe, but they all made him wretchedly ill. He was a handsome boy with dark, almost black hair, a large, slightly bulging forehead, which gave him the appearance of a solemn child, a sensitive, girlish mouth and my mother’s green eyes which, because of the drinking, were matched by his complexion. On bad days his skin was the colour of a leaf.

‘I think this place is part of the trouble,’ he went on to say as I cut corned beef into cubes for a hash. ‘How can one be inspired when living in an atmosphere of intellectual aridity and Pecksniffian hypocrisy? That tosh Mother reads is atrophying her brain. She’s so miserable with Father that she can’t bear to live in the real world. I sometimes wonder where Father’s getting his spiritual nourishment. I can’t believe being beastly to his children and kicking Brough around is quite enough even for a man with the mental acuity of a wood louse.’

‘I can answer that as it happens. I drove into Worping this morning to see if Bowser’s had any new romances and afterwards I stopped at the Kardomah for a cup of coffee. While I was there Father came in. That was strange enough but what made it even odder was that he was with a woman.’

‘No!’ Oliver swung his legs round to sit up, his green face lit by excitement. ‘What was she like? And what did he say when he saw you?’

‘I was sitting in the corner behind a sort of trellis screen covered with plastic ivy. I could see them quite clearly by peering between the leaves but he never knew I was there. I heard every word they said.’

‘Go on!’

‘She was asking him about Mother. Father said she’d do a lot better if she put some damned effort into it, instead of lolling about, filling her head with rubbish. He never let illness get him down, he said. If he had anything wrong with him he always went out for a brisk walk over the Downs and blew it away. I don’t suppose a brisk walk would do Mother’s broken hip any good at all.’ I paused in the act of chopping onions to wipe my stinging eyes.

‘Don’t stop now!’

‘She said something about being sure he was a brave man. He couldn’t have done what he did in the war unless he’d been really courageous.’

‘So he didn’t tell her about being sent home with a bad case of Tobruk tummy to a desk job in Devizes. What was the woman like?’

‘In her fifties, plump, hennaed hair, a lot of make-up and jewellery. Her name’s Ruby. Not his usual type. Apparently they’re having dinner on Friday at the Majestic in Brighton. She was quite excited and giggly about it. She must have had a sad life if dinner with our father is her idea of fun.’

Oliver gave a bitter laugh. ‘So he’s got a bit of rough on the side. How drearily unoriginal. I wonder if he pays her?’

‘Actually I thought she was rather too good for him. She spoke kindly about Mother. She seemed concerned. And when Dad ticked her off for saying “serviette” – he’s such a hideous snob – she looked crushed. I felt sorry for her.’

‘The old bastard! And when I think what a fuss he made about Gaylene!’ Gaylene was a girl who had worked the petrol pumps at a garage in a neighbouring village of whom Oliver had been much enamoured. ‘He had the nerve to call her a draggle-tailed slut. I’ve a good mind to leave tomorrow!’

I seized the moment. ‘I think you should, darling, though you know I’ll miss you like anything. I’ll ring David this minute and ask him if you can come and stay.’ David was an ex-boyfriend of mine, with a flat in Pimlico, who had offered this boon when last I had discussed the problem of Oliver with him.

We sat up until one in the morning detailing plans for Oliver’s escape. David professed himself willing to harbour the son of Hemingway, provided I would have dinner with him the following week. This was no hardship as I was still fond of David, though only in a sisterly way. I went to bed feeling glad that this depressing episode of my life would not be entirely unproductive of good after all.

When I knocked on Oliver’s door the next morning, having got up at the ghastly hour of six to drive him to the station, there was no answer. I went in. The alarm clock was on its back in the farthest corner of the room and Oliver had both pillows over his head. He became almost violent when I tried to drag him out of bed. He came down to lunch in his dressing-gown and was bathed and dressed by four. By this time he had decided that as he’d had a brilliant idea for the novel he had better spend the rest of the day working and go up to London the following morning. This became the pattern for the next three days.