Under Don’s new regime, new behaviors developed. The smoothie maker ran just once a morning. To burn toast was no longer charmingly ditsy. Electric blankets were a distant dream. There was an art to a responsibly filled kettle. If Janet blow-dried her hair she concealed it beneath a low-key hat. Despite Arlo’s protests, the fridge and chest freezer thermostats were raised by three degrees. They took turns spending time with the windup radio.
The newlyweds, Erin and Varghese, acutely aware of not wanting to be a burden, had moved into Patrick’s old dome, where they made cups of tea on a gas stove. Lit by candlelight, frail and sniffly, they were more in love than ever. Varghese, the giant, was making a video of their honeymoon. Filming at night with a time-lapse, he’d set up his camera in the yard, looking at the house. He was very pleased with a shot he’d got that tracked the passage of individuals, turning on a light as they entered a space and off as they left. A flurry between 3:30 and 4 a.m. showed that some of the residents’ bladders had synchronized. One bedroom light stayed on all night and Varghese was thinking of reporting this to Don until he realized whose bedroom it was.
Kate and Geraint sat out on the shady grass and Mervyn sat on the deck on a beach chair in his Speedo with The Times on one side and The Sun on the other like main course and pudding. On weekends, he dozed on and off through the afternoons. Liz, with the patio doors open, could be heard whizzing and blending, having graduated to vegetarian recipes that were not imitations of meat. Kate and Geraint both wore their swimming costumes and, in breaks from studying, cooled off in the raised pool. Her white two-piece with bows at the shoulders and hips had been bought for her, on a day trip to McArthur Glen Retail Park, along with some tights that Liz said her legs “deserved.”
Uneven stacks of books made a skyline along the walls of the roundhouse. Most of the rest of Freya’s stuff was still in cardboard boxes, patterned with crossed-out labels in unfamiliar handwritings: Fragiles, Sport Gear, VHS. In acknowledgment that this was now her permanent situation, she had dragged a mattress down from the big house. Being ancient and much communally used, it was in bloom with yellow daffodil-shaped stains.
It was hard to argue with Don that her experiment had failed; Albert was more fanatical now than ever. It was agreed, then, that their son spend weekdays at the community, where he could at least do his schoolwork, and weekends with his mother. The other news was that Isaac was no longer allowed to spend any time at the roundhouse. Marina denied him access, flat out. According to Albert, the reason she gave was that she wanted Freya and Albert to have more time together. But Freya had plenty of time to speculate on what this actually meant.
So when Albert came to stay, it was just the two of them, which Freya liked, though they no longer joined their sleeping bags together. One Sunday they went for a low-tide walk on Whitford Burrows, out to the cast-iron lighthouse, rusted and peeling, which would make, as Albert observed, a good bunker. She tried to make the time he did spend in the roundhouse pleasant: they baked bread together, harvested horseradish, and made onion marmalade. She got him the windup radio, some books and worksheets, an electric lantern, a proper pillow, and a Japanese dressing screen which allowed him a quarter circle of personal space.
Of the weekdays Albert was at the community, every other night he slept on a camp bed in the workshop with Marina and Isaac. That made a three-way split in his sleeping arrangements.
Freya knew he needed a wholesale change of circumstances. But one of the reasons her options were so limited was that she had few contacts outside the community. There was really only one person she could think of who might help.
Don stood on a stool in the entrance hall, reaching up, his right forearm hidden in the wooden, crisscross-slatted lampshade. He was replacing the energy-saving bulbs with other, more severely energy-saving bulbs.
“I appreciated your support on this,” Don said.
Arlo was watching from the door to the kitchen and chewing imported biltong. Over the years, Don had come to rely on Arlo to get behind most projects (the yurt village and the Ad-Guard, for example) so long as they did not affect the kitchen.
“About that,” Arlo said, flicking the switch to test the new bulb. A barely perceptible glow showed at the edges of the lampshade. “It’s great to see you so full of energy, Don, but I slightly wonder if this is necessary?”
“I’m just finishing what Freya and I set out to do,” Don said as he unboxed another golf-ball–like bulb and went into the bathroom under the stairs, where his voice grew muffled. “If anyone’s not up to the challenge then they shouldn’t be here.”
“You sound like Albert.”
Don went into the kitchen, followed by Arlo, and they stood looking up at the lights above the counter.
“Don’t even think about it,” Arlo said.
“We all have to make sacrifices.”
“Yes but I actually need to see what I’m chopping. Unless you want me to sacrifice my fingers.”
“This reminds me,” Don said. “I wanted to talk to you about catering for the party.”
“Right.”
Don was still staring up at the lights. “I’ve been having thoughts about some unusual specialities.”
“Oh-kay,” Arlo said, frowning. “Whatever you like. As long as my workspace remains well lit.”
“Deal,” Don said, and he went through to the scullery. He pulled out a milk crate, stood on it, reached up, and twisted the bulb free. Arlo followed and shut the door behind them.
“I can see why you are doing this,” Arlo said, his voice lowered, “but I just wonder if you and Freya should talk first?”
“This is about what’s right for the community,” he said, and he screwed in the new bulb.
Arlo clicked the switch to test it. It was sunny outside and the light in the room didn’t change.
Kate was sitting in the lounge on the black leather sofa, a dress over her swimming costume, wearing Liz’s Dallas shades on top of her head, which she’d tried on as a joke but had grown to quite like, and was studying the Heaven’s Gate cult when she noticed the dark silhouette at the bay window. Her mother was in the front garden, waving, not knocking.
It had been nearly six weeks since she’d seen either of her parents. She often thought of what they would think of her new lifestyle, lounging around with luxurious hair. Kate did not acknowledge her mother at the glass but enjoyed the feeling of being silently judged.
Then, after a while, getting up off the sofa, Kate went into the hall, opened the plastic front door, ignored the shape standing there, shut the door quietly, and walked up the drive, along the street and out of sight. She stopped at a grass border between the pavement and the wide road. Watching her mother coming toward her, Kate was struck by how, in this postcode, her clothes looked sad—frowning, drooping, washed at low temperatures. She appeared to be carrying the woodland shade with her.
“How did you find me?”
“I rang your college.” Kate allowed herself to be hugged. “So glad to see you.”
Freya had her back to the sun; the light picked out the wilder edges of her dark hair, which ran down to her armpits, parting over her shoulders. She had a quality of being impervious to light; Kate struggled to see her expression.
“You look well,” Freya said.
“I’m fine.”
“What are Geraint’s parents like?”
“They’re normal.”
“You wear shades now,” her mother said, and seemed really pleased. “How are you? I’ve missed you.”
“I’m good. Fine. Studying.”
“In very glamorous surrounds.”
“Not ‘surrounds.’ This is what a normal street looks like. Why are you here?”
“Oh, this is a normal street. Of course. It’s been too long.”
Her mother was trying to be jokey and warm in the way of best friends, but Kate was not willing. Freya grinned with all her teeth, which, Kate could see, were clean but not white. Her mother, looking around,
seemed excited to be on the municipally maintained grass. Next to them, on a lamppost, there was a photocopied poster with a child’s scrawled handwriting: Your dog does the crime, you pay the fine. Freya had the curiosity of someone visiting the set of a long-running soap opera. Kate could tell she wanted to be invited inside.
“How did you get here?” Kate said.
“I hitched.”
“You’re too old to hitch.”
Her mother squinted at her. “Are you eating meat?”
“What?”
“You just seem carnivorous, somehow.”
Freya rubbed her daughter’s bare upper arms, then opened her mouth but didn’t speak.
“Mum, has something happened?”
“Sweetheart. I’m sorry. I wanted to talk to you.”
Kate took off her shades and squinted. “I don’t have time for this. I’ve got studying to do.”
“I wanted to speak. You’re my best friend.”
“I don’t think it’s healthy for us to be best friends.”
She watched her mother move from foot to foot.
“Is the grass hot?”
“No. It’s fine. I’m just pleased to see you.”
“Mum, what’s wrong? Do you need a wee?”
Kate looked around, her hand shading her eyes, checking to see if they were being watched.
“So,” Freya said. “Can I meet them?”
“No.”
“I’ll play it cool.”
“Do not play it cool.”
Kate looked her mother up and down. “Why are you wearing so many clothes? Are you sweaty?” She leaned in and smelt her mother’s neck, then sniffed her armpit.
Freya said: “If I didn’t love you so much this would be humiliating.”
The frosted-glass front door was unlocked. They went into the quiet, carpeted hallway and into the lounge.
“Okay, Mum. No specifics.”
Out the back of the garden they could see both Mervyn and Liz’s bodiless heads moving in the raised pool. It was more expensive to get a sunken pool, Kate now knew. Two severed, free-roaming heads. Liz was doing breaststroke and had her hair held up with a crab-colored clamp. Kate tried to read her mother’s expression.
Stepping out of the sliding doors and onto the deck, Freya was hit by direct sunlight and she did not melt.
Geraint was on the shady grass, bouncing the football on his knees. Each time the ball went up above his head it moved into sunlight and reflected brightly, then fell into shade again. He made small, unconscious grunting noises. The ball hit his shin and rolled into the flower bed. He looked up at the woodland troll on the deck next to his girlfriend.
He said: “Mum. Dad.”
Kate waited until the severed heads had noticed that she had brought a homeless person onto their property. The two heads smiled.
“Guys, I’d like you to meet Freya, my mum.”
The woodland troll waved.
On foldout garden chairs in a rough semicircle on the sunny deck, the mothers drank Pimm’s and lemonade, no trimmings; Geraint and Kate drank tiny Bière D’Alsace; and Mervyn, who was topless, smooth-skinned, drank cherry Coca-Cola from the can. Liz had put on a turquoise bathrobe with a big collar. Kate kept her shades on, tried not to look at her mother, and heard everything with live subtitles.
“You’ve a beautiful home, Liz.”
You’re a bourgeois sham, Liz.
“Thank you, Freya.”
“I hope my daughter’s been behaving herself,” Freya said.
“She’s been an absolute dream!” Liz said. “Wish we could keep her!”
Geraint leaned in. “She’s even got Dad eating polenta.”
“It’s true!” Mervyn said, lifting his glass. “I thought it was veal.”
Freya and Liz both laughed. Kate wondered how long she could endure this.
“Well, we’re really glad to finally meet you,” Liz said. “And how’s—Don, is it? He didn’t come with you?”
“He’s okay, thanks. I was trying to tell Kate, we’ve been going through …”
“Oh …,” Liz said, leaning forward.
“Well, I’m just glad that Katie is staying with you at the moment.”
“Oh, sweetheart,” Liz said, and she put her hand on Freya’s knee and kept it there. “Is everything okay?”
Kate, behind her shades, was trying to feel nothing.
“Well, no, Kate’s father and I are not living together anymore.”
“Oh God!” Liz said, and she crossed the circle and threw her arms around Freya, spilling Freya’s drink in the process, the Pimm’s and lemonade draining away between slats of deck board.
“My God, you need something stronger,” Liz said and looked to Mervyn, who disappeared off into the house.
“If there’s anything we can do to help.”
Then Geraint was kneeling next to Kate and taking her shades off. He hugged her and she couldn’t see much because of the sunlight.
Her mother said: “Kate’s probably furious with me for making a scene.”
“This is not a scene!” Liz said. “Merv, is this a scene?”
“God no,” came the voice from inside. “I know a scene when I see one and this isn’t it.”
Standing on the verge at the side of the North Gower road, Kate kept her thumb right out.
“I can’t fucking believe you. Why did you have to tell them?”
“I didn’t mean to. They seemed nice.”
“They’re not your sort of people. You shouldn’t make friends with them.”
On the moorland, they could see cows bathing in a murky pool, Serengeti-style. A station wagon with bikes on a rack went past, kicking up dust. Freya and Kate both squinted.
“I grew up in a house a bit like theirs, you know,” Freya said.
“Did you have a swimming pool?”
“Well.”
Her mother was a little drunk and it was infuriating. In her hand she was holding a piece of paper with the home phone number of Bishopston School’s headmaster, Howard Ley. Freya had told Liz and Mervyn that she had been thinking of sending Albert there in September, and Mervyn had immediately gone to fetch his little black book. He had all kinds of useful contacts, he said, and he would put in a good word.
A red minivan for M. Hare Period Restoration didn’t slow down.
“Mum, you don’t know them. They look like normal people but they’re not. Mervyn’s an insomniac and, I think, ex-alcoholic. And Liz is pathologically nice. She keeps buying me clothes she thinks make me look attractive.”
Two small cars went by, followed by a delivery motorbike. Kate extended her hand out straight, for more impact.
“Kate, you know that you, of all people, should be tolerant. You grew up with every kind of person,” Freya said, rubbing the small of her daughter’s back with her spare hand. “How many people have we seen touch each corner of the door frame and then touch the corresponding corners of their mouth with their tongue before they can walk through?”
“One person. Alan Medlicott.”
“Liz is being nice. Not everything is the tip of the iceberg,” Freya said. “Sometimes it is just … a bit of ice floating along.”
Kate shook her head. Her mother was drunk; it was dreadful.
“Why are you being like this?”
“Like what? Nonjudgmental?”
“Yes. It’s awful.”
A car driven by boys with surfboards on the roof slowed and pulled up, flashing its hazards.
“Okay, Mum. Go now.”
07/06/12.
Members present: Don (chair), Arlo, Marina, Janet, Albert, Isaac.
Visitors: Varghese, Erin.
Members absent: Kate, Patrick, Freya.
Albert was now banned from taking minutes. Don looked around the table. Janet had her Biro poised just above the lined pad in, he felt, mock anticipation. For any decision to be agreed, half the full-time members needed to be at the round table. Children counted for half, which meant that I
saac, although technically under the table, made a crucial difference. Freya was no longer expected at community meetings, though she had not been able to stop Albert from attending. The newlyweds were settling into communal life, ping-ponging a head cold back and forth between them. He coughed, she sniffed.
“A bit of naming and shaming,” Don said, turning to address his son. “It’s come to my attention that the young master has been speaking to a TV production company. He even sent them forged release forms. Anything to say in your defense?”
Albert was playing with his bottom lip, stretching it, turning it inside out to show off the forked blue veins. He let it flup back into position.
“Just trying to get the word out. People need to be warned.”
Don turned to Marina. She made a teepee out of her fingers. Janet frowned and wrote something down.
“Right, then,” Don said. “Moving on.”
He passed around copies of a document. It was a compilation of comments about the community dredged from the LiveWild.co.uk forum. One of the more notable contributions was from “Coastnut,” who used an extended metaphor, saying that Patrick had been “like one of these ‘replete ants’—a colony’s living larder, essentially—who they’d been fattening/milking for decades.” Firepoi88 said she had heard “the children are illiterate and some of the other accusations really ought to be taken to social services”—and then a shocked emoticon face. Callum09 said: “I’ve just come back from a week wwoofing there: NOT RECOMMEND.”
Don looked around, watching them go over the document. Some of the comments were a decade old but he didn’t feel the need to mention this. He threaded his fingers together.
“Applications for membership are a quarter of what they were three years ago and we only have three visitors booked in for the next open day,” he said. “But, on the upside, I hope you agree that since going off-grid we’ve really turned a corner. We need to let people know how much we’ve changed.”
Around the table, they were frowning and underlining.
At this point, Don turned to Varghese, the almost literal giant, the massive half of the honeymooners who Don had recently discovered had worked for many years in a Chicago-based ad agency. Varghese, who told Don he would be honored to “oversee a rebrand,” was shuffling a sheaf of papers, graphs, and inspiration material, shaping up to speak.