What use are higher faculties now, Rachel thinks, as she indicates and pulls out onto the road. Cognition and invention, the internal combustion engine, intermittent wipers, peace treaties and poetry, the Homo Sapiens’ thumb and tongue? Is optionality really evolutionary ascent when it leads to paralysis? She switches the wiper blades to full, and steers through the hard rain, back to the estate.
*
At first her brother will not even consider meeting without his wife present, like some kind of despotic moderator. Rachel holds the phone to her ear, listening to the silence. At any moment she expects him to hang up or for the despot herself to come on the line and ring-fence Lawrence. Her main offence of the last few months, it seems, has been to offend Emily.
Emily thinks you’re going to cause trouble, Lawrence finally says. She hasn’t forgiven you for the funeral. It was incredibly difficult, Rachel, doing it all without you.
Be calm, she thinks. Be calm, be reasonable, stay neutral. Don’t fail at the first move.
I wasn’t invited, she says, keeping her voice even. And it was made very clear to me during our last conversation that I shouldn’t come.
Lawrence becomes slightly petulant, his voice wavers.
It was a hard time for everyone. But you could have come anyway. She was our mother.
Yes, Lawrence, she was our mother.
Possession, inference, the terrible shared knowledge of Binny. There’s another long pause in what is already a deeply punctured conversation.
Emily knows all about the past, Lawrence says, I’ve told her. She always made an effort with Mum.
She does not know everything, Rachel thinks. Whatever power imbalance or folie à deux exists between her brother and his wife, she is certain Emily has little more than the basic facts about life with Binny at her disposal. Her brother’s naïvety is staggering. She wills herself not to point out the obvious: that it was an unpassable test to set, coming to the funeral against the wishes of her sister-in-law. That the death of their mother is, at the end of the day, none of Emily’s business. But the call is intended as placatory. The truth is, she does not like the idea of losing her brother, much as she has been telling herself that she could live with it. And for her brother’s sake, they should fix what needs fixing. He does not have the disposition for war; she can hear the upset in his voice. Better to subtly out-flank the wife.
Lawrence? Are you there?
She can hear murmuring in the background on the other end of the line, the occasional muffled outburst. Emily is monitoring Lawrence’s side of the conversation. Tell her to. . If she wants to. . Why doesn’t she. . over here. Rachel can picture the scenario: her brother’s hand covering the mouthpiece, him trying to find some private space to talk. The small blonde woman flapping her hands spastically beside him, furious at being left out. Nor can her brother see what is really going on — women fighting with each other through him. Though raised in a house of its mastery, he seems blind to female psychology: the competitive undercurrents, the desire for control. In his mind the problem is likely to be due to the stress of the tragedy, the old Binny-Rachel conflict, and Emily’s concern — dynamics he understands or would like to imagine.
Just a minute, Rachel.
Lawrence says something to his wife. His tone is gentle, but firm. Caught between hard places. Emily has had months, years, to dig her trenches. But, influential though she may be, Rachel knows her own position is strong, perhaps the strongest. She has historic authority, simply from being the older sibling in a family where dysfunction reigned. She was neither soft-hearted nor patient as a sister, but she still held his hand all those times, opened tins of mince for dinner, got him to school and back. And there is rare status in being prodigal; it creates a void, a longing even. Lawrence wants a stable family. He needs Rachel, and always has.
Lawrence, she says. Are you there?
Yes, I’m here. Just one minute. Sorry.
There’s another muted outburst: Don’t apologise to her. . She does not envy her brother’s position. He’s a decent man, and tries hard. He has always hated mutability and mess, ever since he was small. A boy does not flee from a bohemian household without the desperate ambition to be proper, and act properly. He does not go on to become a solicitor, to marry, to pay for IVF and care homes without some kind of moral drive. Rachel hears a door shut.
OK. Sorry. Two conversations at once. Go on.
Look, she says. Binny and I didn’t get along, granted, but that has nothing to do with you and I and we shouldn’t let it muddy the water. I just think we should meet and talk. Start from scratch.
Her tone is level, calm, exactly as if she were talking to volunteers, instructing them on sedation, how to inject or take a sample, inserting the syringe into the big muscles of the hindquarters. Be confident, you are in charge. First law of an argument: those who remain reasonable will make others seem unreasonable.
My feeling is no one else can fix things for us, she continues. You and I need to address the problem ourselves. You said as much last time we spoke. I’ve thought about that and I agree.
The tactics are manipulative. An agreeable-seeming sister repeating back to him his own idea. He sighs. He is thinking now, about what he thinks, what he wants. Emily is clever, Rachel knows, but she plays a negativist game, which is easy to undercut.
I’m glad you phoned, Rachel, he says. Because I do think we should try. I’d like to see you.
Great. How about the Saturday after next? We could go for a walk. We could meet halfway between here and there?
No, that’s OK. I’ll come up to you. I haven’t been back since the funeral. We can get a proper walk — maybe Blencathra?
Sure, if you can get up here in time.
I’ll leave early. I’ll get breakfast on the way.
Which will not make Emily happy at all, Rachel thinks. For a moment she feels vindicated, a petty triumph. But it was easy and perhaps unfair. Her brother loves the Fells; he is a nostalgic Cumbrian exile, rank and file. It does not take much to lure him home. His voice has altered; he sounds pleased, excited even. He would probably not admit it, not even to himself, but the idea of being untethered from Emily for a day must be heady.
OK, shall we say the White Horse car park, at eight-thirty, nine?
OK. See you there. Hey. Email me your new address.
I will. Bye for now.
Bye, Rachel. Look forward to seeing you.
They hang up. She feels better. She might have invited him to the estate, but she is not ready to bring him in that close, not yet. Small steps. She makes coffee, takes it out into the garden, and sits on the wooden bench under the quince tree. Yes, she does feel better. Deep down, the thought of estrangement from her brother has been worrying her. And the idea of failing him has always bothered her. Lawrence. Little man, the house visitors all used to call him. How he hated not being big enough to take them on. He never understood Binny, why she favoured the ones she did; he could not get past the visceral dislike of their presence in the small cottage: the sudden forced intimacies, strangers coming shirtless from the bathroom, kissing his mother’s neck, looking at her rump or chest, some kind of hunger in them like starved farm dogs. What’s up, little man? Shoving past them to get out, his face aflame. Don’t get your trousers in a twist. If I were your father, I’d soon teach you some manners. The agonies in his face. His whacking of sticks against the porch roof and the tyres of their cars. Always talking about his friends who did have fathers: fathers who liked them, fathers who lived in the same house, who stayed. Always looking at Rachel as if she could explain, as if she could get him out of a fatherless world.