Tessa Hadley: The Past

She saw that the others had arrived. The French windows were open onto the terrace and a young man was established there on one of the deckchairs, fetched from an outhouse. Ivy, emerging from the sitting room, was bringing him a glass of what looked like gin and tonic, held aloft carefully in two hands; Arthur, following, carried a bowl. Harriet was more shy than anyone knew, and quailed at the necessity of re-entering this peopled world. At first she thought the man must be a new boyfriend of Alice’s, though she hadn’t heard of there being one. Closer up, she recognised him.

— I know who you are, Harriet said, holding out her hand, startling Kasim because he was finishing reading, attentively contemptuous, the Metro he’d picked up on the tube in London. — You must be Dani’s son. We met at Alice’s birthday a few years ago. You were only a boy then. I’m Alice’s sister.

— I’ve grown up.

— Stupid thing for me to say. Of course you have.

Kasim stood up, he tried to make Harriet take his seat, and then his gin and tonic, and the salted cashews, which were what Arthur had brought.

— This one’s yours, said Ivy sternly. — She can have one of her own.

As soon as Kasim saw Harriet he did remember meeting her, because she looked like a more tragic Alice — though her cord trousers and old tee shirt showed that she didn’t care about clothes as Alice did. Her face was more haggard than Alice’s, though less expressive, like a mask of calm, and her short hair stuck up in a stiff crest and was pure white.

Harriet said she wasn’t ready for gin yet, she had better change out of her walking boots first, and then unpack. Arthur asked if he could come.

— He loves women changing their clothes, Ivy explained.

— I’m only changing my boots, Harriet apologised.

Fran, washing salad in the kitchen sink, saw Harriet and Arthur bringing Harriet’s luggage — not much of it — to the side door opening into the scullery, which opened in turn into the kitchen. Arthur was solemn with the importance of being slung across with his aunt’s binoculars. He couldn’t help, with that hair, having a page-boy look: Fran had seen this when she gave him the cashew nuts, and she felt with a pang that she must cut it, but not yet. At least her oldest sister talked to the children as if they were sensible adults — Alice did exaggerate sometimes.

— So you’ve been for a walk already? she said, kissing Harriet.

— I didn’t want to be the first inside, Harriet confessed. — For some superstitious reason.

— I wish I had your energy. No wonder you’re so thin.

Harriet sat in the scullery to unlace her boots, while Fran explained about Jeff not coming, and how unfair it was. — We don’t know what time Roland’s lot are getting here, but I’m making supper anyway and we’ve started on the gin. We thought we’d better be fortified against the new wife.

— I met Kasim in the garden.

— Dani’s son. He’s supposed to be very brilliant. But then all Alice’s friends are supposed to be brilliant, aren’t they?

— He seemed very nice.

Fran dropped her voice. — Alice never thinks about the practicalities. Because she’s brought him, I’ll have to be in the bunk-bed room with the children.

Harriet bent her hot face over her bootlaces, skewered with guilt because she knew she ought to offer to sleep with the children instead, to give Fran a break, and yet she couldn’t do it. Her aloneness last thing at night was precious to her: at home she lived mostly apart from her partner, Christopher, because they both preferred it. Then Alice came into the kitchen, hands bundled full with knives and forks — she was laying the table in the dining room. — Hettie, you’re here! Did you have a good walk? So wise, to get straight out into the lovely day. You haven’t brought much luggage, to last three weeks. Aren’t you austere! It’s so like you, to be sensible about clothes. After all, no one’s going to see us, are they? Except each other, and we don’t care, we’re family. And Kasim and Pilar.

— That’s her name, Fran said. — I knew it was something architectural.

— I’m only here for a week, Harriet said. — I couldn’t take more time off.

Fran whirred the salad spinner, to cover up the blow of Alice’s disappointment. Alice’s whole demeanour altered exaggeratedly. She dropped the cutlery noisily on the kitchen table. Harriet had promised, she cried. Hadn’t they all agreed, to save up their holidays and have three full weeks together, because this might be the last time?

— I didn’t promise, Harriet said. — I warned you. I said that it would be difficult, to take time off work for so long.

— I wanted you to be here. It’s supposed to be a special occasion. I wanted us all to be here together like the old days.

— She’s here now, Fran said. — Let’s not quarrel on the very first night.

Upstairs, Harriet found the little posy on her chest of drawers; it seemed to communicate Alice’s reproach as she unpacked. Her bedroom was above the kitchen and she could hear her sister’s voice rising in continuing indignation downstairs, though she couldn’t hear her actual words; when she stomped deliberately heavily on the floorboards, Alice shut up. A chiming of glasses and scraping of chairs came pointedly from the dining room. It wasn’t fair of Alice to blame her for spoiling things. No one had protested that she shouldn’t have turned up with Kasim, if she wanted this to be a family occasion.

Arthur sat on the bed swinging his legs, watching absorbedly as Harriet put her clothes away. — Are those your best pyjamas? he asked with earnest interest, and she had to admit she only had two pairs and they were both the same — one green check and one red. She regretted not having anything more thrilling to show him than the neat pile of clean tee shirts and the spare underwear and spare pair of trousers, a jumper in case it got cold. Putting away her hay-fever pills and her hairbrush, she slipped her diary under the tee shirts in the drawer. Tonight, when she was alone, she would write in the diary about the quarrel with Alice, and would try to put down both points of view with scrupulous fairness. Then Alice climbed the stairs with a peacemaking gin, and Harriet accepted it, although she didn’t like gin much.

— You don’t mind being in this room? Alice said, turning away quickly from catching sight of herself in the age-spotted swing mirror, though she couldn’t help her hand going up to adjust her hair.

— I don’t mind. Why should I?

— Because you have to come through my room, and that’s a nuisance for you. You can’t go through Roland’s room because of Pilar.

— I don’t mind.

Arthur asked whether Harriet would like to take his picture and when she said she’d love to he put on an assured, equivocal smile for her camera. Then Alice, also camera-natural, sat beside him on the bed, arm around him, for another picture. Arthur offered to take one of the sisters together, but they wouldn’t hear of it. They both had a horror, not ever acknowledged, of how closely alike they looked, and yet unalike. In family groups they made sure they were always one at either end. Harriet’s hair turning white had made the resemblance more startling.

They went ahead with supper although they hadn’t heard from Roland: pasta in a tomato sauce with olives and capers, sourdough bread, salad dressed with olive oil and sea salt. Alice had made the table lovely with more flowers and the tarnished heavy silver cutlery which had been their grandparents’ wedding present. She’d found a damp-spotted lace tablecloth that smelled of its cupboard. The sash windows on the side of the house were thrown up and the slanting late sunshine rebounded from the mirror above the sideboard; they ate in its dazzle and the whole scene had something commemorative about it. None of them had dining rooms in the rest of their lives or ever used tablecloths, let alone lace ones.