Excerpts

H Hugh was in bed with Freddie when his father began to die. The mobile telephone shrieked and Hugh leaned over, busying through the pile of clothes on the floor. Freddie slipped out of his arm, sighed loudly and turned over on her side. "Hugh Palmer. Oh, hi. Yes, what? When? How is he?" Hugh was already hopping around on one leg trying to put on his boxer shorts as he spoke on the phone. "Yup, I'm on my way now. What? No, I'm in ...er, in Gospel Oak. Just come out of a meeting." Freddie turned over and raised an eyebrow at him and Hugh shook his head at her. "Okay, I'll be with you as soon as I can. Tell her I'm coming." He threw the little black phone onto the bed and scrabbled around in search of a sock. "My father's collapsed. Come on, I've got to go." Freddie pushed back the duvet and stretched her long legs to the floor. "Is he bad?" Hugh made a face. "I wouldn't know. My brother Ralph is a man of few words and they are invariably an order. He's on his way to the Mill." "Gospel Oak? Why on earth Gospel Oak?" Hugh, now fully dressed, looked at Freddie-her large, succulent body, half dressed, her long red hair tousled-and he longed to drag her back into bed. She was nearly twenty years younger than he. It's not true that a young mistress makes a middle-aged man feel younger-Hugh felt every one of his fifty-two years when he was with Freddie, but he had more fun and he was more relaxed with her than with anyone else. He shrugged. "Don't know. I've never been there, but I've always liked the name. Gospel Oak." He savored the words. "John Wesley tub-thumping under an oak tree. It just came out while I was talking and it's a safe distance from Fulham." "A word of advice, Hugh. On these sort of occasions-selective honesty or, rather, selective lying is the key." Freddie leaned over to straighten the bed and smiled up at Hugh. "There is always a chance that there was a major traffic accident or a bomb at Gospel Oak this afternoon and you would have been caught up in it. You should have told the truth." Hugh looked mystified. "What, that I am in a friend's flat, in central London, screwing my young, beautiful mistress?" "No. That your meeting is in Kensington. You and I are meeting in Kensington. That's a truth." "Well, it's been a most productive meeting." Hugh winked at her. "We must meet again soon." "I hope we will." Freddie smiled at him mischievously. "Give me a ring, why don't you." Hugh bent down and kissed her. He made an attempt to help her with the bed, but Freddie waved him away. "Leave it, I'll tidy up here and lock up. You go. Shouldn't you phone your wife, by the way?" "Oh shit, yes, I suppose so. I'll do it in the car. Are you sure you're all right with all this?" He gestured at the empty champagne bottle and glasses on the bedside table. Freddie moved round the bed and put her arms around Hugh. "Of course. Trust me. I'll leave it spotless, promise. Call me when you can." "I will." He paused for a moment at the bedroom door and said with confidence, "The Gaffer's done this before. Emphysema, you know. They'll get him onto some oxygen and I'm sure he'll be fine. Nice fuck," he added laconically. Titus was in his workshop listening to the afternoon play on the radio when his father began to die. By the time he was dead, Titus had completed the reupholstery of a Queen Anne chair and had begun repairs on a headboard commissioned by the local museum. He had turned off the radio to answer the phone and now, as he put down the receiver, he absentmindedly pushed the CD button on the stereo. The gravelly voice of Leonard Cohen throbbed round the workshop and he was still sitting motionless on his workbench when Jane came in with two mugs of tea. "Tea." She joggled his arm. "Hey, you. Hello. Tea." Titus became aware of his wife's brisk Australian voice beside him and looked up at her. "My father has died," he said with a sad formality as he took the tea. "Oh, no. Oh, sweetheart, I'm sorry." Jane put down her mug and taking Titus's out of his hand hugged him tightly. Cohen's sixties anthem flooded over them. "When did it happen?" "This afternoon." They stood together in silence. "So now what?" Jane released Titus and settled herself on the bench beside him. He looked down at her bare feet and found himself counting the red poppy designs on her long skirt. He was waiting to feel something sad, to feel different in some way, but all his feelings seemed to have been suspended. He shrugged. "She didn't have time to talk, the others were on their way down. She'll phone me about the funeral and"-he looked at her-"and she's going to tell them about us." Jane drew in her breath. "Ow. Bad time. Very heavy for them." "I suppose this is it. It's all over, isn't it?" "Why should it be?" Titus slid off the bench. He clenched his lips together and raised his eyebrows. "He's dead, so it will be like we never existed. After all, she doesn't have to do anything about me, us, if she doesn't want to-not now." Jane joined him on the floor and, out of habit, Titus frowned, wishing vaguely that she wouldn't walk barefoot in his workshop. "That's rubbish. I really don't think she's going to abandon us-she's not that type of person. You know how she feels about you. And the kids." Jane took Titus's hand. "And now we've got to tell Summer and Alby everything. We really must." "Why must we? Can't we just leave it as it is?" Jane shook Titus's arm. "Of course we can't. If they're going to know, so should our kids. I've always thought they should've been told before. Now there's no argument. The secret is out and we've got to tell them the truth." Titus shrugged in a hopeless gesture. "Come on." Jane took his hand. "Summer will be home from college in a minute." "They'll miss him," Titus said sadly. Hugh was mistaken. His father was not fine. Not at all. Jack Palmer was already dead by the time Hugh arrived at the family house in a small village just outside Tunbridge Wells. "He's gone, I'm afraid." Ralph greeted Hugh brusquely, his voice choked, holding back unmanly tears. "Heart attack, very quick, no pain." Without thinking first, Hugh reached out and squeezed his older brother's arm-an unusually tactile gesture from which Ralph, characteristically, edged away slightly. They rarely exchanged physical expressions of emotion, and Hugh's touch was made in an unthinking moment, born of just having spent time with Freddie. Hugh spoke hurriedly to cover the awkwardness between them. "How's Clattie? Where is she?" "In the drawing room. Grania's with her. She's bearing up very well in the circumstances." Used to his brother's formality, Hugh nodded. "Is there something I should be doing?" he asked diffidently. "Arrangements and things." "All in hand." Ralph sounded more robust, safer now that he was back to dealing with practical matters. "He's upstairs, if you want to see him. The undertaker will be here shortly." He looked at his watch. "I hope Pippa gets here before he does. She's very late." Hugh climbed the stairs and went into his father's room. The Gaffer was lying on his bed, fully clothed, eyes closed as though he were still sleeping: his skin had already taken on a waxy patina and his face was empty. Hugh looked out of the window and watched the white pigeons on the roof of the outhouses at the rear of the yard. The bedroom window was closed so he couldn't hear the wind in their wings as the flock took off together in sudden flight, wheeling round the garden in a white cloud. Hugh forced himself to look down at the body of his father. He could feel nothing. Ralph was coming up the stairs as Hugh left the bedroom. "Right," Ralph said. "I'd just like another moment on my own..." There was genuine pain and grief in his face. "You better go and see Clattie." In the drawing room, their mother was standing, staring at the garden through the floor-length sash windows. The large herbaceous flower beds were full of early spring flowers and wisteria just coming into bud hung heavily over the old stone walls. She was talking as Hugh appeared in the doorway. "Damn, I really needed Jack to strike some camellia cuttings this spring. He was so much better at it than me." Ralph's wife rose from the sofa when she saw Hugh and kissing him, murmured, "She's in shock. She keeps saying very strange things." Clattie heard her and turned around. "There is nothing strange about needing some camellia cuttings," she said patiently. She tripped across the room to hug Hugh. "Darling boy, I am so sorry." She held his face in her hands and looked at him earnestly. "It was a heart attack, just out of the blue. He was fine at lunch, then he went to lie down. I heard him call out. He died at about three o'clock, just as the ambulance arrived. There was nothing they could have done. It was quite quick and I don't think he felt much pain. He would like this. So much better than slowly drowning to death with his emphysema." Hugh hugged Clattie and felt some of her strength and resilience flow into his stiff, tense body. The first tears began to build up behind his eyes-and they were only for his mother. Relieved to relinquish the responsibility for her mother-in-law, Grania stood up and offered to make a pot of tea. "Would you, darling," Clattie said thankfully. "Doris is in the kitchen. She insisted on staying on this afternoon-to look after us, she said. She's terribly upset." Clattie sat down on the sofa when Grania had left: she patted the seat beside her. "Come and sit down, darling. Dear Grania. Ralph put her in charge of me when she arrived and she's been so kind and gentle. But"-she drew herself up straight-"I'm all right. I am not about to fall apart. I have too much to do," she finished enigmatically. Hugh looked at his mother with affection. She had always been known as Clattie to everyone, including her children. Considerably younger than her husband and now in her mid-seventies, she was like a cheerful exotic bird, pecking and preening about the place. Always energetic and practical, she was surprisingly strong for such a small, delicate-looking woman. Now, as she unsuccessfully tried to tuck a lock of long white hair into the knot tied on the top of her head, her bright blue eyes examined her younger son anxiously. "The important thing is, are you all right, darling? Is Bella coming?" Hugh had rung his wife on the car phone as he beat his way down the motorway. "I have to go into a meeting in a minute," Bella had said impatiently, "but I'll meet you at the Mill this evening." Hugh could imagine her pulling her Filofax toward her and penciling the appointment into the time slot marked seven P.M. Bella ran her own PR company with ferocious commitment. "I'm sure the Gaffer will be fine," she had added briskly. "We've had scares like this before." "Yes," Hugh said to Clattie now. "She's coming down after work. She couldn't get away before. Ralph says Pippa's on her way." Clattie sighed. "Poor Pippa, she will be sure to blame herself for not being here. You don't suppose she'll bring anyone from the community with her, do you? It only occurred to me afterwards, but it was too late to phone her back. I don't think I could bear to be prayed over just now." Hugh and Ralph's sister, Philippa, had been born nine years after Hugh. With both boys away at school much of the year, she had had a solitary childhood until she too was sent off to boarding school. As an adult, she had lived an unambitious and single life, moving seamlessly from secretarial college to an office job in a boys' prep school in Bath, where she had remained until recently. As Pippa was prone to sudden enthusiasms, her life was littered with abandoned fads and hobbies and now, suddenly, aged forty-three, she had become caught up in Christianity and was currently staying at a religious community with, it seemed to her family, a view to reinventing herself as a modern-day nun. No one was quite sure how she had become so involved with this specific group of born-again Christians but her family was disconcerted by this newfound, fierce evangelical fervor, and Ralph, especially, found his sister's particular brand of Christianity quite unacceptable. "All this lecturing and 'bless you' bit," he would grumble. "So bloody presumptuous." "This is going to be such a terrible shock for her," Clattie now went on quietly, fidgeting her fingers over her elegant navy blue skirt. Clattie, with consummate taste, always wore her clothes well. Hugh put out his hand to still hers. "She knows that the Gaffer was old and had been ill for a long time, so it can't be too much of a shock for her. She'll be sad, particularly that she wasn't here, but it's not really a shock, is it?" Hugh was trying to comfort, but he had a growing sense that Clattie's dominant emotion at this moment was, strangely, not so much grief as some sort of apprehension or trepidation. "And Ralph. I'm worried about Ralph, too," Clattie said urgently. "They were so close. This is going to be hard for you all." Hugh responded briskly. "We'll be all right. We all knew the Gaffer was a sick man; we'll grieve and then we'll get over it. But you-your life will be very different without him. You must think about yourself as well at this time." "I can't," Clattie said with an odd note of desperation in her voice. "Not now, I can't." The front door banged and Clattie rose to her feet. "That'll be Pippa. I must go and see her." Alone in the drawing room, Hugh left a brief message on his wife's mobile phone and then sat back on the sofa, looking up at the ornate cornicing on the ceiling. The white paint contrasted pleasingly with the robin's-egg blue of the walls. The elegant long drawing room at the Mill had been painted in these same colors for as long as he could remember. Nothing ever changed in this particular room. His eyes dropped down to the picture of his father on the mantelpiece, taken when he was a young man. In his army uniform, Jack stood stiff and proud; it could have been Ralph, they were so alike. And so close. Ralph had been their father's favorite-it was a generally acknowledged fact that Hugh could never accept. He was the middle child-the also-ran-who wasn't the favored eldest son, nor the longed-for daughter who came so much later. The haughty expression on the Gaffer's handsome face seemed to glare down at Hugh as if he had known then, when the photograph was taken, long before he had had children, that he would, in the future, have one who could never quite manage to please him. "A chef," he had bellowed when Hugh had told him his ambition. "A chef? What sort of job is that? You won't make money out of cooking." But, supported by Clattie, Hugh had pursued his own path and now he owned Basil, a successful catering company. "Glorified servant-a modern-day butler, that's all you are" was the Gaffer's view. "You should be using your brain." Ralph had taken the expected path, joining the family stationery business that Jack had started on leaving the army, and marrying the kind, sensible Grania, who had managed to produce the only grandchildren. Hugh had married the exquisitely beautiful Bella, whose energy and desire to achieve matched his own. Hugh knew it was he who had inherited his father's brains, his ability to think quickly and to manipulate, and he had never grown out of his childish habit of trying to prove that-of seeking his father's approbation. But the Gaffer had not acknowledged Hugh's success and now he never would. Hugh turned away from the picture as if unable to meet his father's eye, even in a photograph, and tried to imagine the Mill without him. Grania brought in a tray of tea. "The undertaker is here and Pippa has just arrived. Apparently she had an altercation with a truck on the Malden bypass." Hugh recognized the effort Grania was making not to sound critical of her sister-in-law. Pippa rarely arrived anywhere without some confusion. Grania unpacked the pile of cups and saucers, looked down at the tray and clicked her tongue. "Cake. I'll see if there is any." She left the room again and Hugh reflected idly why it was that some people found it so necessary in a crisis to feed those around them. Pippa, followed by Ralph, came into the drawing room. Her large, strongly defined face showed signs of recent tears. "Bless you, Hugh," she said in a broken voice as she embraced him, and Hugh looked at Ralph over her shoulder. Ralph raised his eyebrows and grimaced. Hugh gazed at his sister and tried to work out what was different about her. As Pippa plumped herself into an armchair he realized it was her clothes. For as long as Hugh could remember she had worn jeans and a sweatshirt and she'd always used makeup. Now her face was plain and unmade-up and she was wearing a large blouse over an ankle-length skirt that billowed around her as she sat forward in the chair. She looked, he thought, like a pregnant bag lady. "I think the Gaffer should stay here," she announced imperiously. "He shouldn't be taken away to some cold mortuary. He should be at home with us, at least for tonight." "Clattie and I thought it better not," Ralph said stiffly, never liking his decisions questioned. "The brothers and sisters are praying for his soul," Pippa announced in the singsong voice that she had recently adopted when talking about the community. "That is kind of them," Ralph said with polite irony. "Everyone sends their blessings. Do you think he had the Lord in his heart when he died?" Pippa looked at her brothers. Since Jack had not been near a church since he had fallen out with the local vicar in the early fifties, Hugh thought it highly unlikely. It was Ralph who answered curtly. "I don't think that's any of our business actually, Pippa." She looked stricken. "No, I'm sorry ... I just hoped ..." Embarrassed, she swirled to her feet and went out of the room. "I can't believe that Jesus really demands his disciples to dress as though they've hijacked a ragbag," observed Ralph. Grania came in with the cake. "Tea's all ready. Where's Pippa gone?" "To administer Jesus to poor Clattie, I imagine." Ralph threw himself into a chair. The two men watched Grania dispense tea in silence. Death creeps into a house, curls itself round a room and makes a hole that has to be filled-even if it's with mindless conversation. Hugh asked after his niece and nephew. "Kit's at last beginning to get into his senior work," Grania said, sitting down with her tea, "and Caitlin is having a fine time at Leeds." "Too much so, I would say." Ralph smiled, and a lightness came back into his eyes as he talked about his precious family. "I don't know that it's dawned on her yet that she is meant to work at school. What I do know is that it's costing me a fortune." Hugh turned to Grania. "And how's the open university course going?" Grania shook her head. "So-so. It's a long time since I did anything academic. I'm struggling with Chaucer at the moment." Ralph smiled across at his wife. "She's working harder than all of us." The front door banged and Bella arrived in the drawing room, with Pippa and Clattie close behind her. "I'm a bit late." Bella sketched a kiss somewhere near Hugh's cheek and he could smell her heavy scent. "I just couldn't get out of the meeting. I saw your message when I came out." She adjusted her beautiful face into an expression of sadness. "I'm so sorry about the Gaffer. Such a shock. I never-" "Sit down," interrupted Clattie peremptorily. They all looked up, startled by the ferocity in her normally mild voice. Standing in the middle of the room as though about to address a meeting, she looked pale and strained. She held what looked like a piece of cardboard in her hand and Hugh noticed that she was rubbing her forefinger and thumb nervously against the dimpled surface. "I have something I must tell you ..." she began quietly, and the five of them stared at her expectantly. "Your father should be standing here doing this." Her voice gathered strength, becoming, it seemed to Hugh, almost belligerent. "He should have told you a long time ago. I have always urged him to ... now it is too late and I must do it. And I'm sorry. I am very, very sorry." --from Breaking The Trust by Lucy Clare, copyright © 2003 Lucy Clare, published by Dutton, a member of Penguin Group (USA) Inc., all rights reserved, reprinted with permission from the publisher. Excerpted from Breaking the Trust by Lucy Clare All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.