Past by Tessa Hadley Page B

from the seventies, was isolated on its wooden stand as if it were ornamental like an aspidistra or a vase: when Molly used it they had to show her how to dial a number. There was no chair put out beside it: the grandpees hadn’t wanted to invite the cosy, long conversations which were so expensive. Fran was dialling Jeff’s number over and over and not getting through – resentful, she imagined him drinking beer and playing snooker and smoking with the rest of the band, his phone ringing pointlessly in his pocket. Roland and Pilar in the kitchen were roasting two chickens with grapes and apples: a Spanish recipe. They were collaborating efficiently: Pilar had everything exactly timed and Roland, tied into an apron, was following orders, peeling apples and liquidising grapes. This was a very different regime to the one with Valerie, who had run around looking after him as if he were helplessly unworldly. Now, he addressed the cooking processes with earnest technical interest.
    Kasim was bored, because Molly was teaching clock patience to the children. He went to walk by himself in the churchyard, and from his tall vantage point didn’t see Alice until he almost fell over her; sitting in the long grass, she was leaning back against the grey stone of a grave. Startled, he was cross for a moment, as if she’d lain in wait deliberately under his feet. When he was a boy he’d been humiliatingly aware of Alice’s female presence in his home – her underwear dropped in the washing basket, her perfume on his father’s bed sheets. Now her low exclamation and smiling upwards glance seemed too softly placatory, they clung to him.
    â€” Kas, spare a ciggy?
    She should buy her own, he thought, instead of pretending that she didn’t smoke. But he found them both cigarettes and dropped to sit cross-legged in the grass with her, his back to a grave opposite hers. Down among the grasses was a different universe, hotter and pleasantly sour with the smells of fermenting sap; out of sight of the encircling landscape, relationship to the huge sky was everything. He twisted to read the words over his shoulder, half indecipherable where the stone was flaking away:
Fell asleep in Jesus, 1882.
    â€” Fell asleep, and they buried him? Thank goodness I’m a Muslim.
    Alice longed to be strong enough not to ask if he was enjoying himself. She shouldn’t let him see her need for his approval. — Do you like Molly? she asked instead.
    He considered the lit end of his cigarette. Flatly, obediently, giving nothing away, he said he did like Molly. — But who is Molly? What is she?
    Alice sang his words, to the tune of
Who is Sylvia?
    â€” Are you sure she really is your brother’s actual daughter? She’s not much like him, is she? He’s straightforward, she’s an enigma.
    â€” You’re teasing. But just because Molly’s not the brightest, doesn’t mean she isn’t something special.
    â€” I’m deadly serious. I think she’s profound, perhaps presides over the secret to the universe. And while we’re on the subject of unknowns, who is Jill Fellowes?
    â€” Oh. Why?
    Kasim pulled out from his back pocket the book he’d been carrying round with him all day, not noticing how she flinched at the bent end boards. — Look. The name’s written inside it. It’s a book of poetry. Is she your grandmother?
    Taking the book from him, Alice pressed it tenderly back into shape. — Have you been reading these poems?
    â€” I only pretended to read them, just to intrigue Molly. I’m an economist, I don’t know what poetry’s function is.
    â€” It’s my mother’s name. Her maiden name. Lots of those books on the shelf where you found it are books from her childhood. It’s so uncanny that you spoke her name, because I’d come in here to think about her. She died, you know, when I was only thirteen.
    He was discomfited.