The Snakes Page 8
‘Is someone else here?’ she whispered.
‘Talking to himself,’ said Dan. ‘He should sleep.’
‘He can’t,’ she answered.
Then silence. Then morning.
7
Griff and Liv Adamson’s huge bright red four-wheel-drive Porsche Cayenne drove through the gates at six o’clock the next evening. Bea and Dan watched from a window as it pulled up between the battered Peugeot and Alex’s black Renault. The driver’s door opened, trees sliding from the glass.
‘Bonsoir! Bienvenue! Willkommen!’ Alex cried, bounding out to meet them, long legs flailing like a sunset shadow of himself.
‘You all right?’ said Dan to Bea.
She crossed her arms over her stomach. ‘Fine,’ she said.
The three of them had cleaned up all the mess, Alex was contrite and hung-over, and Bea was quiet, dread settling like frost.
Striding across the gravel, Griff stuck out his hand to grasp Alex’s, and with the other arm pulled him into an embrace. Liv bent to collect her handbag, tugging at her pashmina which fell forward as she reached into the footwell. Griff and Alex went for the suitcases, and Liv came towards the front door with a girlish step; flat shoes and strawberry-blonde hair landing lightly on her collarbones. She was sixty-three years old and five foot five; she often announced these facts as though they were a virtue.
‘Yay,’ said Bea tightly. ‘Let’s do this.’ And they went out to meet them.
‘Dan!’ Liv’s huge handbag dangled from her bone-thin forearm. ‘Bea! What a surprise. I’ve almost forgotten what you look like.’
Griff kissed his daughter’s cheek and grabbed Dan’s hand, slapping his back.
‘Good to see you,’ he said.
Liv stood on tiptoe to air-kiss Dan, first one side, then the other, so just her perfume and fingertips touched him.
‘Dan, so thrilled.’
He looked from his mother-in-law to his wife, searching for something to connect them. It was as if they were made of different material. They were both fair but there was no red in Bea’s hair, it was just pale, unbrightened blonde; both were small but Bea the taller of the two, and in outline had a mother’s shape; her mother had a child’s. But, he realised they had the same heart-shaped face. If the flesh were stripped from Bea’s face, you’d have Liv’s, everything about her was polished to a point.
‘We couldn’t believe it when Alex said you would be here,’ she said. ‘Wow! What do you think of our project?’
‘It’s good,’ said Bea, going to Alex’s side, but her mother reached him first.
‘Darling, I missed you,’ she said, putting her arms around him.
He ducked away and smiled.
‘We stopped for lunch near Versailles yesterday,’ said Griff. ‘It was horrific.’
‘You know, that five-star awful,’ said Liv sorrowfully.
‘Total bullshit. I don’t know why she booked it. It was disgusting.’
‘You drove?’ said Bea.
‘They always drive,’ said Alex proudly, infantilised.
‘I sold the jet last year,’ said Griff. Bea saw Dan start, and look at Griff with sudden focus. ‘It cost an arm and a leg to get it off the ground, and it was always a palaver trying to find a runway long enough anywhere. We’d have had to leave it at Dijon, so what’s the point?’
‘The crossing is fine,’ said Liv. ‘And the drive down is so beautiful. We always love it.’
‘I can’t stand rented cars,’ said Griff. ‘They’re always completely disgusting, and collecting them is a nightmare.’
‘Come in, come in. Let’s go in,’ said Alex, breaking a sweat.
‘Dan?’ said Bea.
Startled from his thoughts, he smiled at her, but his smile was false. ‘Coming,’ he said.
She wanted to say something but there was no time.
In the hall Alex was all eagerness. ‘What can I get you?’
‘Hang on,’ said Griff. ‘Blimey. We only just walked in.’
‘D’you want to go in the garden? Shall we – we could – you’ll want to sit down, yeah?’
‘You’re the boss,’ said Griff. ‘Fawlty Towers, eh? Where’s Manuel?’ He laughed. He wore off-white trousers and a peach-coloured linen shirt, untucked, and handmade shoes.
‘Your rooms are ready,’ said Alex.
‘Christ,’ said Griff, ‘that makes a change.’
They sat in the smaller of the two sitting rooms. Alex smashed a stemmed glass getting the drinks, and kicked the pieces under the sideboard.
‘We stayed in a really lovely chateau not far from Dijon last night,’ said Liv. ‘And the first night, Alex, in that place we stayed last time. In Picardy, do you remember?’
‘Unbelievably pretentious,’ said Griff.
‘But fun,’ beamed Liv, ‘with a really lovely terrasse.’
‘You two enjoying yourselves?’ Griff asked, tapping the arm of his chair, eyes darting at Dan and Bea.
‘We only just got here,’ said Bea.
‘What is this, a holiday?’
‘Sort of.’
‘Alex said six months.’
‘No, three.’
Griff stared from her to Dan and back, and moved on. ‘Alex, how’s the cellar?’
‘It sort of flooded, a couple of months ago,’ said Alex. ‘The temperature’s OK, I think.’
‘We picked up a case of Chablis on the way,’ said Griff. ‘And some Corton.’ He blinked, ending the exchange.
‘I won’t be a minute,’ said Bea. She got up. Dan started from his chair.
‘I’m fine,’ she said. ‘Don’t get up.’
She went to the kitchen and safe behind the fire door finished making supper, not thinking about the conversation in the sitting room, just focusing on that. She even sang to herself. There were open bottles of wine and jugs of water. They had put two tables together to hide the mess from the paint. They had scraped it off the grass and hosed it, but it still showed. She took cloths from the sideboard in the dining room. They smelled of damp wood as she shook them out over the tables. She carried the dishes out into the garden; thin ham rippling on a long white plate, and roasted vegetables from the supermarket.
‘Dinner’s ready,’ she said, putting her head round the sitting-room door.
Liv inclined her head wearily. She took Alex’s arm and they went out together, followed by Griff and Dan, Griff talking non-stop, firing questions, and Dan politely at his side.
They all sat down; Bea next to Dan, contained and still, and Liv next to Alex, twisting towards him and smiling constantly. Griff ate and talked and talked and ate. All through the first course he held forth. Football. Nuclear power. Useless wind turbines. The absurdities of recycling. The misguided regulation of the financial sector. Lobbyists. Petrol. Socialist Europe. His voice was a sandpaper baritone with a diesel boom, consistently aggressive, the difference between a joke and an attack not easily felt out. Liv pushed her food about and said how delicious everything was, as if saying it were eating it. Every now and then she would start talking, as if Griff weren’t already speaking, knowing it wouldn’t interrupt him. She talked about recent holidays or exhibitions she’d seen, decorating, but it was the names connected to them that were the topic, not the things themselves, and Alex, Bea and Dan were a disappointing, irritating audience.
‘You must know Jasper,’ she’d say. ‘You remember.’
Griff’s voice dominated and the others’ wove through it, with Alex laughing at his jokes, out of time, like a drunk musician in a string quintet.
‘It’s so boring, this sanctity of every human life bullshit,’ Griff was saying. ‘Thousands stranded on the borders of wherever, hundreds drowned – I’m sorry, nobody likes to say it, but none of these people are essential. They’re not useful – so what? The planet is horrifically overpopulated. Horrible for them, personally, obviously, but wouldn’t any eco-warrior see it the same way?’ He looked around, and landed on Bea. ‘Bea? We’re parasites, aren’t we?’
‘The human race are vermin,’ said Griff. ‘Some need to go, surely the weakest, and most parasitical? We need to approach these things rationally.’
‘Like Nazis,’ said Bea, falling into his trap.
‘Still in love with your student politics?’ Griff barked at her. ‘Still a lefty?’
‘There’s no useful to answer to that.’
‘I can imagine the whining that goes on amongst NHS social workers, nothing but moaning, I should think.’
‘I’m not a social worker,’ said Bea.
‘It’s the pen-pushers I blame, more than anyone.’ And he was away again, on bureaucracy, and the oppression of free enterprise.
As he talked, Liv reached into her bag beside her chair. She took out her reading glasses and shyly put them on.
Bea stopped listening, transfixed by her mother, who beneath the cover of Griff’s voice, took Alex’s hand and placed it on the table. She rolled up his sleeve and bent over his bare arm, inspecting it, tracing her fingers, inch by inch along his veins. Griff lost his audience and lost his focus. As the table fell silent Liv looked up and around them all. She was not surprised to be noticed, performing her intimate ritual. Alex sat compliant, like a person sedated.
‘Old habits die hard,’ said Liv.
She let go of his hand. He tucked it back into his body as she took his other arm gently by the wrist and rolled up that sleeve too, examining his skin from palm to bicep.
‘Mum,’ he whispered, ‘that was years ago.’
Her nails were short and glossy.
‘You’ve no idea what I go through, worrying,’ she said. She let his shirtsleeve fall, and patted it.
‘Bea!’ Griff’s voice was like a gunshot.
Bea jumped, blood pumped through her chest and up her neck.
‘Don’t look at your mother like that.’
Liv looked up. ‘What have I done? Are we supposed to pretend? I thought you would be all for openness, Bea.’
Bea picked up her empty plate, then Dan’s and Alex’s, and left the table.
‘All right?’ she heard Dan say.
She went into the kitchen and put the plates down anywhere, on the counter somewhere. They wouldn’t notice. She could take two minutes. She stood in beautiful solitude. She listened attentively to the whirr of the fridge motor, and the electric clock ticking, in minuscule, measured steps. She wanted to bolt, like a flight animal from a predator. Her heart raced. She had to grip the countertop. She breathed in, forcing herself to do it slowly. She paid attention to the smell of the chicken, resting in its tin, the grease and salt-smell in the air. She relaxed her fingers, and took air into her lungs and let it out, feet planted, back straight, and she fixed her eyes on the wall ahead of her.
Attention, taken to its highest degree, is the same thing as prayer.
She concentrated on her breathing, measuring it, then the feeling of the counter under her fingers. She heard her mother laughing through the open window. Reaching over the countertop, she closed it. It was quiet now. She imagined shoving things into a bag and going. She pictured getting into the car with Dan. The engine, the tearing gravel.
‘Shit,’ she whispered. ‘Come on.’
She relaxed her eyes. She paid attention. The white wall ahead of her turned insubstantial and disappeared.
It was hard enough for Dan to sit there pretending to be relaxed but when Bea had gone inside Griff turned on him. It felt as if without her he was prey more easily brought down.
‘So, Dan, how’s married life?’
‘Good, yeah, thanks,’ said Dan.
‘Still an estate agent?’
‘I’m taking some time.’
‘Alex tells us you decided to quit the rat race.’
‘Just until August.’
‘Not working out for you?’
Alex got up to collect the rest of the dishes.
‘Not now,’ said Griff.
He froze.
‘Relax,’ said Liv.
He sat.
‘You should have given me a call, Dan,’ Griff said. ‘Do you know who I am?’
Dan had never heard anybody actually say that. There was no answer to it.
‘Not being funny. Don’t take this the wrong way, but what were you both thinking?’
‘Pardon?’ said Dan. He hadn’t said pardon since he was about six years old.
‘It’s not the 1960s,’ said Griff. ‘Dropping out and tuning in, or whatever the man said. Not that most people were doing that in the sixties, anyway. I certainly wasn’t. I was working two jobs. Bought my first property in 1967, famously. I mean, whose idea was it, to go farting off round Europe?’
Across the table, Alex laughed at the word farting.
‘No,’ said Griff, and Alex stopped laughing. Griff turned back to Dan. ‘How can you afford it? Have you come into some money? Last I heard, Bea was earning practically nothing, and you were at a high-street estate agent somewhere. Foundations.’
They’d met once, over two years ago, the man was in his seventies and he remembered the name of Dan’s office.
‘Foundations of Holloway,’ said Dan.
‘Holloway?’ Griff stared at him for a moment and then gave a short laugh, like a depth charge. ‘Foundations of Holloway? Priceless.’
‘Griff, don’t,’ said Liv, in a baby voice. She turned from her son, reached across the table and touched Dan’s arm. ‘Just ignore him,’ she said, ‘he’s a bully. Ignore him.’
‘Yes, ignore me,’ said Griff.
Inside, when she had recovered herself and could do it, Bea gave her attention to the next thing. She had a task. She could get food onto serving dishes, and take them from one place to another. That was easy. She levered the loose-jointed chicken from the tin and picked up the carving knife. Its blade was slender and very sharp. She put the knife next to the chicken, with some halves of lemon, and carried it out to the garden, her thumb anchoring it, for safety. Someone had turned on the lights. The group at the table were lit on one side only, in darkness on the other. As she approached, she heard her mother say, ‘You’re an artist, aren’t you, Dan?’
Alex jumped up and took the chicken from her and put it in front of his father, like an offering. Bea studied Dan, trying to hear her mother’s voice as he heard it, and see what he was thinking.
‘You said you’d show me your work. Do you remember?’ Liv was saying. Everything she said was banal yet weighted. ‘It’s such a shame we don’t see more of you.’
‘Yeah,’ said Dan. ‘Sorry.’
‘Hey, Dan,’ said Alex, ‘you could work out here if you like. The barn is empty. You could turn it into a studio –’
‘Thanks,’ said Dan.
Bea thought he looked nothing more than embarrassed. She sat down again. He didn’t catch her eye.
Griff picked up the carving knife. ‘Greasy,’ he said.
‘Sorry,’ said Alex automatically.
Griff wiped it with his napkin and threw the napkin down.
‘First thing tomorrow morning I’m going to get some candles,’ said Liv, shuddering. ‘This light is awful. When we were here in March it didn’t matter, we ate inside.’
‘Bea,’ said Alex, ‘where did we leave the lamp? We’ve got a lamp.’
‘No, no, darling,’ said Liv. ‘You relax.’
Griff patted Bea’s arm. ‘Sorry I snapped at you before. Low blood sugar.’
‘It doesn’t matter,’ said Bea.
‘A few beautiful things will make so much difference,’ said Liv to the table, then turned to Alex. ‘We just need to really go for it, Alex. This place could be fantastic.’
‘I know,’ said Alex. ‘It could.’
Griff carved the chicken. ‘Needn’t bother with a knife,’ he said, ‘could do it with a spoon.’
Chicken and potatoes were doled out. Conversation overlaid the tension, like call-centre hold music. Dan watched Bea’s famil
y in action. He had googled his father-in-law. He knew he was rich and seen he had an ego on him when they had met, but nothing prepared him for this. From the moment they got out of the car and started talking about private jets he had begun to lose his bearings. Before, Bea’s family money had been notional, he could forget it, but seeing them now, rich was all they were. Everything they did and everything they said radiated it. She had let the facts out gradually, like a trickle of change. Now it was a steady stream. The jet. New York, the apartment. That gallery I bought you. I said we might see them in Cortina. The cars. Quicker. Easier. Gorgeous. Get.
‘Griff,’ said Liv. She had a way of emphasising names and places, that was intimate and drawling. ‘Didn’t Joe Kaminski start out camping in Marina Foster’s barn, in Gloucestershire?’
The conversation swept over him in an opiate tide. He felt Bea take his hand under the table. He closed his fingers over hers.
‘You remember, Griff,’ said Liv. ‘When he dropped out of Bristol. Now look at him. Such a sweet boy. We had some of his early pieces at my little gallery – you know, to help him out. See, Dan, you could be the next Joe Kaminski.’
Completely wrapped in the duvet with just her head showing, Bea watched Dan undress.
‘You cold?’ he said.
‘No.’
‘What’s all that, with your dad?’ said Dan. ‘All that Do you know who I am?’
‘It’s just the way he is.’
‘I looked him up –’
‘When?’
‘Long time ago. When we met.’
‘Background checks?’
‘Like you do.’
‘Sure.’
‘He’s a big-shot developer,’ he said. ‘Did I miss something?’
‘No,’ said Bea. ‘That’s what a big-shot developer looks like.’
He had his T-shirt off, kneeling to undo his trainers, poised like a runner on a track. He did not look tired. She wriggled a little way out of the duvet and sat up.
‘What is it?’ she said.
‘What?’
‘Just say it.’
‘What’s with the private jet?’
‘He had a jet.’
‘Yeah, I got that,’ said Dan. ‘You never told me.’