King of the Badgers. Philip Hensher

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СКАЧАТЬ adultery had long since run its course, though the Chaucer expert was now not a waif-like youth with a tied-back swatch of black hair falling over deliciously lickable olive skin, but a grizzled boyfriendless ancient with bags under his eyes and a badly advised combination of balding top and pepper-and-salt ponytail, given to looking at himself in the mirror and mouthing the never-to-be-forgotten words ‘Deliciously lickable’ to the reflection. The book on the Parliament of Fowls and the long-awaited reunion with the big-cocked Kansas aesthete would both have to wait until he retired, the year after the year after next. Since then, the visiting Quincunctians had by tradition set up shop in Hanmouth. The letting agency kept a three-bedroomed red-brick Edwardian villa for each arriving American family, and they usually liked it. Since her own arrival Miranda, too, had kept a place in her book club for an American. This one had written twenty-three articles and a book about Sylvia Plath, and was a recovering alcoholic. She had turned down the offer of a drink at her very first social outing in Hanmouth, and in the same breath asked if anyone had the number of the Barnstaple AA. It was important to keep in touch, she had said, sipping brightly at her sparkling water.

      ‘I hope you don’t mind,’ Sukie, said, coming through the door. She was talking about the figure with her, her elder son.

      ‘Of course not,’ Miranda said. She did think that the boy—Michael, was it?—could probably be left on his own. He was fifteen, six foot three, ripely and malodorously pubescent. What was wrong with him? Was he a pyromaniac, not to be trusted with an empty house that contained a box of matches in a drawer and a desk full of notes on… Rossetti, was it? ‘Does he want to sit with us—no, of course you don’t, Michael. I’ll get my daughter Hettie down.’

      There was something in Michael’s demeanour as he was led into the hallway that suggested that he knew Hettie already. His posture, as he walked forward, was curved and bent, as if actually backing away. Sukie went into the sitting room confidently, greeting the others. ‘And this is Michael—Michael, come on in.’

      From upstairs the noises of insistence and complaint could be heard joining in response. They all looked upwards for a moment at where the floorboards creaked. Before the sounds could turn into specific and probably embarrassing words, they all started talking at once.

      ‘How are you finding—’

      ‘Are you at the same school—’

      ‘I’m sure Miranda would want you to have—’

      ‘Goodness, isn’t this nice—’

      Michael himself stood in the doorway, not allowing himself to come further into the house. The doorframe grazed his temples. His mouth hung slightly open to show his perfect American teeth. ‘I don’t see why…’ the voice from above cried, the last word turning into a wail. There was a brief Miranda-ish rat-a-tat. Her words were unclear but the commanding tone put an end to the argument.

      ‘And here’s Hettie!’ Miranda said, from the top of the stairs. Behind her Hettie made some kind of yodelling groan. Hettie was thirteen, and a well-built girl. Her face seemed organized around a newly huge nose. Her knotted hair fell about her features. She came to the bottom of the stairs holding her right elbow in her left hand, pressing her broad bosom into one mass. With her other hand, she pulled at her hair. Some experiment had been taking place this afternoon with green eyeshadow and rouge, placed centrally on her cheeks.

      ‘Hello, Hettie,’ Sam said. Hettie spent enough time in the shop demanding free samples and slivers for him to greet her. The others followed suit raggedly or heartily. She muttered something in response.

      ‘Have you met Michael?’ Sam said.

      ‘Well, why don’t you go upstairs?’ Miranda said. ‘Show him your things. You can watch telly in the bedroom, if you like.’

      There was a moment when it was not clear whether Michael or Hettie would go along with this suggestion. They all held their breath. It was as if a military officer had issued a command to a band of unruly and potentially violent natives out of nothing but bluster. But this time the natives seemed to obey. Hettie turned, hardly looking at Michael, who followed her. ‘—know why they made—come downstairs,’ she muttered.

      ‘Thank God for that,’ Miranda said, almost before the door upstairs was closed with a perhaps excessive firmness. ‘I did think that we’d have one more year of peace before all that started. I do blame puberty.’

      ‘It starts so very much earlier than in our day,’ Kitty said.

      ‘I didn’t begin on all that until I was fifteen,’ Billa said. ‘I’m sure you were the same. One didn’t think it quite the thing to be much earlier. But now…’

      ‘You hear about girls of nine or ten beginning,’ Kitty said.

      ‘I can’t imagine,’ Billa said. ‘I want to ask what their parents must be thinking of, but I don’t suppose there’s anything you can do about it.’

      ‘Well, I do think it’s nice to see a girl maturing into a young woman like that,’ Sukie said, aghast, accepting a glass of lime and soda water. ‘Those little growing pains—goodness, I’m sure we all had them and were able to laugh about them afterwards. I know my mother—’

      ‘Well, it sounds awful, but I do wish we could send them away on their thirteenth birthday and get them back at twenty to hear all the funny stories,’ Miranda said. ‘I know that’s not awfully motherly of me.’

      ‘I know my mother—’ Sukie continued.

      ‘There are things called boarding schools,’ Sam said.

      ‘I could never do that,’ Miranda said. ‘We just couldn’t send Hettie away like that.’

      ‘Well,’ Sam said, getting up and pouring himself another drink, ‘we could all chip in, I suppose. Want a top-up, Billa?’

      That wasn’t what Miranda had meant. ‘Has Michael eaten, or should I take some sandwiches up?’ she said.

      ‘He has eaten, and some sandwiches will be very welcome all the same, I’m sure. When I was his age—of course, that was when I was drinking, I remember my mother—’ Sukie said.

      ‘Good, I’ll do that,’ Miranda said. She got up and went into the kitchen, leaving Sukie to tell the story of her juvenile nights with the vodka bottle.

      The house had been extended in most directions by the previous owner. Behind the frontage, three rooms had been knocked into one sitting room; a dining room went off to the right of the hallway, not often used. The kitchen at the back was a large addition, steel and glass in a steel-and-glass shell, and lit up like seaside illuminations at night. Miranda, Kenyon and certainly Hettie were not great ones for sitting in gardens, and the loss of half the garden to this marvellous kitchen didn’t seem to concern them. Twice or three times in the summer, Miranda would don a floppy hat kept specifically for the purpose. She would go and sit on one of their four deckchairs with a gin-and-tonic and a copy of a novel by Virginia Woolf. There she would stay until the doorbell rang, and she could be discovered in that position. As far as the outside went, she preferred to walk the streets of Hanmouth and look upon the estuary and its birds. You could not meet up by chance with friends and acquaintances if you sat on your own in your garden. Upstairs there were three bedrooms and a study with a futon; above that, the previous owners had converted the loft into an indeterminate space. If you were any more than Kenyon’s height, you could not stand upright in the converted uppermost room СКАЧАТЬ