‘Holly!’
‘What?’
‘That really is enough.’
‘Sounds like quite a normal marriage to me,’ says Charlie.
Ash has been helping James in the kitchen. Now they both come in, James carrying a glass of local cider, and Ash with his apple juice.
‘Who bets that I can’t do a hundred sit-ups?’
‘Holly, for goodness sake. Can’t you sit down for five minutes?’
‘All right. I bet you can’t do a hundred sit-ups,’ says James.
Bryony glares at him. Holly gets down on to the floor and tucks her toes in under the sofa that Charlie is sitting on. She starts doing sit-ups.
‘I bet I can do a hundred sit-ups too,’ says Ash, his timing off as usual.
Holly sighs. ‘All right. We’ll start again. Uncle Charlie, you can count and see who can do the most.’
‘This girl does not need more exercise,’ Bryony says to James.
‘Ten, eleven, twelve – come on, Ash, don’t give up!’
‘Everyone needs more exercise, Mummy.’
‘Apple pie? OK . . . I mean, I suppose it’s quite retro and . . .’
‘According to the Chicago Smell and Taste foundation, just the smell of apple pie increases women’s genital sensitivity by twenty-four per cent.’
‘Where on earth would you find out something as ridiculous as that?’
‘Men’s Health magazine.’
‘And are you planning some kind of orgy?’
‘Well, now you mention it . . .’
‘Right. So we’ll just get everyone to throw their car keys in the middle of the table?’
Silence.
‘I mean, why do we need our guests to have increased genital sensitivity?’
‘Not our guests.’
‘What?’
Sighing. ‘I just want you to want me.’
James keeps going on about Holly’s birthday present, but will not confirm that he has bought her the Wilson Steam tennis racquet she so desperately wants. Even Bryony is no longer sure that he has done what was required and gone to Canterbury and bought the racquet. But he must have done. It was basically the only thing he had to do for Holly’s birthday, since Fleur offered to make food for the surprise party and bring it over in secret while Holly plays tennis with Charlie – with her new racquet – in the morning. Bryony is glad: at least she knows Holly will eat some of Fleur’s delicate and beautiful cakes, biscuits and chocolates. At one point James rather ridiculously suggested a hog roast, which is perhaps the least likely thing that Holly would ever eat. How can he not see that? But he now seems to be planning to make up for it with this secret present that must be on top of the tennis racquet, could not possibly be instead of the tennis racquet. It’s all very worrying. Bryony had been considering buying a back-up racquet herself and hiding it in the boot of her car, but that’s silly and she trusts James, but now Holly’s birthday is tomorrow and it’s too late even to order something on Amazon.
‘You’ll never, ever guess,’ he says now to Holly.
Dinner is over and everyone is in the sitting room. Bryony is supposed to be reading Tristram Shandy on her iPad but is actually reading Grazia. MasterChef has just finished and she is eking out the last of a rather nice Syrah. She can’t really get away with opening another bottle now, just for one small glass. Maybe she’ll have some white instead. Just a drop to help her sleep. Although it’s not bedtime for a little while, and . . .
‘OK,’ says Holly, rolling her eyes. ‘Is it a tennis racquet?
‘Come on,’ says James. ‘Show some imagination.’
‘Is it a tree?’ says Ash, in that random way that he does sometimes.
James makes a face at him.
‘What?’ he says. And everyone realises it is a tree.
‘Did he know?’ Bryony asks James later, in bed.
‘No. I mean, he can’t possibly have done . . .’
‘Oh well. It’ll still be a surprise. What kind of tree did you get?’
‘Guess.’
‘Hmm. A holly tree?’
‘God. I am transparent.’
‘I think it’s a lovely present. Where will we plant it?’
‘At the bottom of the garden. It’ll be her special tree.’
‘It’ll look beautiful.’
‘And . . . No. Actually, I’ll leave the next bit as a surprise.’
‘What next bit?’
‘Oh. I found a lovely Emily Brontë poem to read before we plant it.’
‘“Love is like a wild rose briar . . .”’
‘You already know it.’
‘Yes. Of course I do.’ Breathe. ‘Look, James. This is all lovely and everything, but I do have to ask you . . .’
‘What?’
‘You did buy the tennis racquet, didn’t you?’
‘This is so much more . . .’
‘You DID buy the racquet, didn’t you?’
‘Well, actually . . .’
Bryony sighs. ‘Fuck.’
‘What?’
Bryony gets out her iPad. ‘It’s Sunday tomorrow as well. The shop in Canterbury is closed. Bluewater won’t open until ten in the morning. Oh Christ, what am I going to do?’ She looks at her watch. It’s gone eleven. How on earth . . . ? She can ring Charlie and get him to stop at Bluewater on his way tomorrow, although that will mean pushing everything a bit later and . . .
‘What? She has a tennis racquet already.’
‘Do you know anything about tennis?’
‘Do you? What happened to being given what you need, rather than what you want? What happened to birthdays being more than just a shopping list you give your parents?’
‘She only wanted ONE THING. I couldn’t even get her to make a list. All she wants is that sodding racquet.’
‘Which is a good reason for her not to have it.’
Bryony shakes her head. ‘I just don’t get you.’
James raises his eyebrows. ‘I could say the same.’
‘Yes, but anyone in their right mind in the entire world would agree with me.’
James sighs. ‘Well, you would think that.’
‘Even her tennis teacher said she was ready for a new racquet.’
‘OK. Well, I didn’t know that. No one told me that . . .’
‘And I even rang up and got them to hold the racquet in Canterbury! It was simply your job to go and pick it up. I mean, I could have done it, but you said you would. Your job was not to CHOOSE Holly’s birthday present, just to collect it.’
‘Which is always the way, isn’t it?’
‘What is that supposed to mean?’
‘Why can’t I choose something for Holly for a change?’
‘I just don’t understand why you are deliberately wrecking her birthday.’
‘I have no idea why everyone thinks nature is so benign and glorious and wonderful. All nature is trying to do is kill us as efficiently as possible.’
Distant giggling. The clinking of glasses. A plane flying over the Channel.
‘Isn’t that a bit of an out-of-date view, though? Nature being “red in tooth and claw” and all that. And didn’t people use that as an argument in the nineteenth century to basically control nature and exploit it for its value?’
‘OK. Number one: nature in this sense is not red at all but sort of golden. And no one has ever controlled nature. The people who think they are most in control of nature are the ones being most controlled by it. We only really do what plants make us do. We are like huge bees in a way, moving around not just pollen but seeds, fruits, whole plants. And we think we are doing it because we want to, but we are actually doing it because the plants want us to.’
‘But hang on. Plants are not conscious.’
‘Aren’t they?’
Laughter. ‘No. Don’t be so . . .’
‘But consciousness takes different forms. Why is ours the best? Why is ours the only possible form? What we call consciousness is, after all, just a lot of
cells that are not conscious doing things in harmony with one another. When people try to find the thing we call consciousness in there, they can’t do it.’
‘OK, but you’re not saying that a poppy sits there thinking and plotting?’
‘No. But if you put together every poppy in the world, then you have a plot.’
‘Well, that was embarrassing,’ Charlie says to Bryony.
It’s warm in the garden so everyone has stayed outside after watching James plant the holly tree. The occasional blue tit visits the bird table regardless of the guests. There’s one there now, nibbling something, and then a robin comes and shoves it out of the way and . . .
‘Yep.’ She sips her champagne.
‘I mean, if you can choose one poem that will freak out the maximum amount of people . . . I mean, it’s not just that it’s our poem, but now all the stuff about the wild rose briar sounds wrong. Fleur’s face.’
‘He didn’t know. And Fleur’s mother was Briar Rose. But still, it’s close enough.’
‘Yeah. Well, at least Holly got her racquet.’
‘Yes. Thank you. I totally owe you one.’
‘She’s bloody good, you know. You should come and watch her.’
‘I know. I must do. I’ll try next week.’
‘I mean, she thrashes me.’
‘But you let her, right?’
‘Nope. I’m very competitive. I wouldn’t be able to . . .’
Ollie drifts over with an unlit cigarette hanging out of his mouth.
‘Who’s competitive?’ he asks.
‘Me,’ says Charlie.
‘Want to do a triathlon, then?’
Charlie laughs. ‘What?’
‘Seriously. Well, maybe not. Well, anyway, there was a sign on the way here. The Walmer Triathlon. You swim Walmer to Deal, then run to Fowlmead, and then it’s a few laps on the bike.’
James comes over. ‘I heard the word “bike”,’ he says.
Which is lucky, thinks Bryony, because if he’d come over a few minutes earlier he would have heard the word ‘twat’. Although she hopes she said it so quietly that no one could possibly have heard. Maybe she just thought it.
‘Fancy a triathlon?’ says Ollie, lighting his cigarette.
‘Sorry?’ says James.
‘Twenty-fifth September. You fancy it?’
‘You’re not serious?’ says James.
‘Actually,’ says Charlie, ‘I run, Ollie swims and you ride a bike . . .’
‘Nice,’ says Ollie. ‘We are a triathlon.’
‘So . . .’
‘The Walmer Triathlon. It’s like a fun thing. The swim’s only a mile. The run’s 5k and the bike ride is only 20k.’
‘20k!’
‘What?’
‘I normally use my bike for going to the shops in Sandwich. Or to ride with Ash to school.’
‘You’ve ridden to Canterbury,’ Bryony reminds him.
‘Once. And I had to get the bus back.’
‘I think it would be fun to have something to train for,’ says Bryony.
‘I’m in,’ says Charlie. ‘Although I’d prefer it if the run was 10k.’
‘I’m in,’ says Ollie.
‘James is in,’ says Bryony.
‘Game on,’ says Ollie.
Skye’s dance routines have fucked up her knees big time so she sometimes spends over an hour on one of the pink foam rollers in Studio B, the only place in Namaste House with frosted and very high windows, lying on her front, going up and down and up and down her thighs, often with tears of pain rolling down her face. When the fronts of her quads are done she does her iliotibial bands, down the outer edges of her thighs. She moans and groans her way through this while Fleur sits with her back against the mirrored wall, writing. She’s not writing into the actual book, not yet. Because that might not be what it’s all about at all. That might be totally fucking wrong. Anyway, she can ask Ina quite soon. The plane tickets are booked. She and Skye are going on a trip! To the Outer Hebrides! Apart from anything else, poor Skye needs to get away and hide somewhere more remote than Studio B. The tabloids won’t leave. And with Piyali suddenly stalking the cottage because Kam has ‘gone away’, and Ketki growling her way around the main house it seems to make sense for both of them to hide out in the studio; but obviously it can’t go on forever. One of the celebrities is doing the Silent Retreat while the other two have opted for the Get up and Glow package. People are having trouble remembering which is which. Ish keeps talking to the silent one – the cricketer – about betting scandals and leg-spin bowling. This is the sort of stuff Oleander used to control.
But for now Fleur is only interested in what Oleander used to say.
‘How did you first hear about Oleander?’ Fleur asks Skye.
Of course Skye was Oleander’s client originally. Then, when she needed someone to meet her in London, Fleur would go. And then there was the swapping of dresses and lipsticks and the hair brushing and recently Fleur telling Skye things too, which would be wrong if she had ever had any training but of course she has never had any training and . . .
‘One of my aunts. Mail on Sunday.’
‘Oh, that thing.’
‘Like the Madonna thing.’
‘Madonna never even came here.’
‘Yeah. Nice publicity, though.’
‘OK, anyway, so what was the most helpful thing Oleander ever said to you?’
A long pause. Up and down on the left ITB band. A low groan.
‘She said that giving love was the only way to receive love. No.’ Skye shakes her head, and her hair tumbles over and then – ouch – under the foam roller. Fleur wonders if this could lead to a really gruesome accident, but now Skye retrieves her hair, scrunches it into a brown band, sits up and rearranges the foam roller so she can lie on it lengthways. She breathes in and then starts rolling her spine up into a lowish bridge. ‘Actually, that’s wrong, because she always said that you would receive love anyway, no matter what you did, even if you’d, like, murdered someone or run them over or whatever. But this was more like a short cut or something.’
‘Yeah. But you can’t see it like that.’
‘No. Exactly. It has to be genuine.’
‘You have to really love the person in that instant.’
‘Which is when you realise how hard it is to love someone else, really.’
‘And how fucking hard it is to love yourself.’
‘Which is the same thing.’
They go to Deal, even though Granny doesn’t like it because it is full of homosexuals. There’s a westerly blowing gently, so it’s even quite hot walking down the pier. It’s Bank Holiday Monday, which means that everyone has come out to complain about the weather, but the weather is actually rather nice so no one has anything to talk about. Except . . .
‘The turnstones!’ says James. ‘They’re still here.’
All this toing and froing that birds do. It must be quite tiring. Why not just find somewhere the right temperature all year round – like Benidorm or Auckland – and stay there? But everyone loves the turnstones, even though they are known for eating anything, including used condoms. They look like a proper water bird, with black, brown and white feathers that work with shingle and stormy weather. They also have nice orange beaks with which they supposedly turn stones, but around here are more likely to use to turn chip packets and drink from dirty puddles. They scurry along the pier in quite a cute way, though, trying to steal the fishermen’s bait, or their catch. They are supposed to only be in Deal for the winter, but it’s no surprise that they have not left somewhere that has such rich pickings and – usually – can’t be that much less freezing than wherever they’d normally go.
‘Didn’t they say on Springwatch that some of them have started . . .’
‘Look,’ says Ash. ‘That one’s only got one leg.’
‘Started what, Granny?’ Bryony needs a drink.
‘Staying for the summer. Gosh, he has only got one leg, poor thing.?
??
‘We’ll call him Hopalong,’ says James.
‘It’s got a leg, stupid,’ Holly says to Ash. ‘It just doesn’t have a foot.’
They walk around the end of the pier, where Bryony gets a text message welcoming her to Belgium. This happens all around the coast here. More often it’s France, which at least you can see from the end of the pier. This is usually funny enough to tell people, but she’s too hungover, and Granny won’t understand anyway. Then back. And there’s Hopalong again.
‘He’s following us,’ says Ash. ‘Maybe he likes us.’
And then he’s down by the fishermen again. And then on the bench. Hopalong is everywhere, it seems, hopping along with a stump where his foot should be. He certainly has no difficulty in getting around, poor thing.
Then Bryony realises. There are four or five turnstones on the pier and each one is missing a foot. Now there are six, now seven . . . Dark piano chords thump painfully in Bryony’s mind. They are all footless. Which means . . . ? They have some disease that will spread and wipe them all out? Or maybe they are being snagged on fishing lines. Maybe there is some psychopath who . . . In any case, what if they are not migrating because they can’t, because like so many other organisms in this sad, crumbling universe they have ended up broken and stuck where they are? But when she looks up she sees that no one else has noticed, and Granny is now offering to buy the kids ice creams and Holly is asking if she can have a new can of tennis balls instead.
Posters have gone up around the public areas in Namaste House: the entrance lobby, the spa and the gift shop. GROUP READING: THE BHAGAVAD GITA. BEGINNING WEDNESDAY 8 P.M. Who is doing this? Pi is doing this. Pi is still here. Kam, having ‘gone away’, has not come back. Kam’s sister, it turns out, got on the same train that Pi and James were on, because she lives in Folkestone, but they didn’t see her. Bluebell has been muttering over her condensed milk about a possible divorce. Ketki is still not talking to Fleur. Anyway, it’s not that it isn’t lovely having someone else around the place helping with the activities. It’s a bit like the old days. Pi has started an advanced men’s yoga group, which Fleur thought was ambitious until men actually began turning up for it: a tennis coach from Deal, a hipster with a bright orange beard from Canterbury, two triathletes from Sandwich, a gym instructor and two very flexible sixty-somethings who had been going to Fleur’s yoga for years but came and told her that in fact they prefer Pi’s approach because it is more ‘intellectual’.