Aas I am an honest Puck,
If we have unearned luck
Now to 'scape the serpent's tongue,
We will make amends ere long;
Else the Puck a liar call;
So, good night unto you all.
Give me your hands, if we be friends,
And Robin shall restore amends.
Shakespeare, A Midsummer Night's Dream
Sheffield is lovely. It's not all red brick. Walk far enough and Una stumbles against a coastal path and miles of rolling green hills. Carl is triumphal. He declares it perfect for bug-watching. If there are no monkeys, the country makes up for it other ways, in primroses, gorse and the baaah of ambling sheep.
There are birds, and occasionally, there are horses, but mercifully, no one brings one home as a pet. There's no front garden, of course. Iris notices this immediately, Una supposes, because long hours of her childhood were spent on Trinity House's veranda, watching fireflies, spying on her adults or basking, catlike in the sun.
Robin, on the other hand, had years of Innisfree, which abutted the pavement without apology, so the loss doesn't register. Besides, Li makes a lovely garden out in the back. She names the flowers to Una as they walk through it, and on languid, summer evenings when the midges are bearable, she curls up in a patio chair and sketches them. That summer, for variety, she sketches Robin among the flowers, too. Robin with Kit the lurcher wrestling for control of a rope toy, or Robin up a tree, knees scabbed and startlingly bare. Startlingly browned too, under an English sun. Sometimes she lies on the lawn and the cat, a sleek black creature named Solace, stretches lethargically beside her, a paw extended to Robin's shoulder, arm, ear or wherever he can get. When Robin stands, she's all over midge bites and Una slathers her in calamine to soothe the itchiness. As Li sketches, Una curls, knees under hips in the chair opposite and reads Till We Have Faces. When she runs out of Lewis, she swaps it for A Glass of Blessings. Lovely, Una thinks, obliquely to be able to read Pym without the birdsong of anxiety serenading her soul.
'You read with your fish in your hand,' says Li one evening.
'Do I?' says Una.
Li laughs silver-fluted laughter. She says, 'Do you still pray Yeats like your Bible?'
'Not in a long time,' says Una, surprised by the veracity of it. Surprised by joy.
There's a piano – Rosemary's old one, finally rehomed – and on grey English days Una sits at it and plays all the old music, Rhapsody in Blue, Biblical Songs, I've Got Rhythm, Let's Call the Whole Thing Off. Sometimes she swaps it for newer staples: Don't Sit Under the Apple Tree, How High the Moon, Unforgettable…Li loves this, Una can tell. She sits in the room with her book or her lap desk and pencils and sketches as Una plays. Sometimes she forgoes the lap desk and co-opts one of Carl's languishing encyclopaedias for her purpose, while Solace curls doughnut-circular atop the piano.
Or perhaps the sun stumbles out from behind a cloud and Una makes tea in the cast iron teapot while Li carries jade tea bowls outside. Carl bought them to replace the butterfly stencil set, still alive and well-beloved in Trinity House, because, as Li says, they were once a wedding present, and it's past time they do duty as one again. These are carved with the rampant lion and coiled dragon of Singapore. They are painted with a sleek, silver inlay. Li loves them dearly. Una can see why.
Li arranges the jade tea bowls atop the ironwork table on the stone patio with precision. There are still no guavas, and rationing makes serving anything with tea a constant juggling act, but as Una says, they've all known so much worse. At least there is food.
Then Li makes room at the table for a tea-bearing Una and says, 'Show me the picture again?'
Una fishes the photo out of A Glass of Blessings where it does duty as a bookmark.
Iain and family up at Trinity House. Robin took it. Luna and little Bobby tease Kiki with a ring of pineapple. Emily, half a pace away is lying on a quilted blanket close to the catmint, a jewel-green lizard on her shoulder and a baby in her arms. Her hair spools half-wild over an arched shoulder and the baby grabs for it with plump infantine fists. If you squint, you can see Puck's grave behind the familial tableau. Una promised never to leave him, and there he is, still the heart of hte family.
'Remind me, they called the new one…' Li prompts.
'Elise Eleanor,' says Una. 'Ellie. Emmy wanted the name but thought none of us could stand a second Leesey. Or Nellie, come to that. She was probably right.'
Li raises her eyebrows. Una shrugs. 'Iain's habits are catching,' she says.
That evening they're out in the garden. The days are long, the light stretching even unto nine or ten o'clock. Iris is out on the arm of some shadowed personage Una has yet to meet, and Carl might be anywhere. The coastal path, probably, watching grasshoppers or listening to the rubbing of cricket wings one against the other. Hopefully avoiding trampling by horse.
Una and Li sit out on the patio, lion and dragon tea bowls in hand. They've got one each. The silver inlay flashes sterling-lucent in the empurpled and golden evening light. There's one out for Robin, too, but Una can't fathom how to get Robin to sit still long enough to use it. If Una turns her head she can just see Robin, comfortably ensconced in the bend of a yew tree. From Blyton's adventurous children, she has progressed naturally to squinting her way through The Talented Mr. Ripley. They left the window open earlier and now the sound of The Smoke Gets In Your Eyes crackles static-furred over the air.
'Memory does that,' says Una, 'don't you find?'
Li hums agreement. There follows a frenetic interlude of raps and knocks that Una takes for Iris returning home and letting herself out into the back garden. She slides cat-fluid into the vacant chair and holds up Robin's neglected teacup inquiringly. She wears Cecilia Meredith's locket at her throat and has the look of a young girl well-kissed. Mother and aunt smile but don't ask. Instead, they negotiate for custody of the teapot.
'My turn,' says Una, and pours out a golden, orange-scented oolong.
'Like the old days,' says Iris and tucks her knees up under her hips.
'Nice evening?' Li asks, and Iris shrugs Li's elegant shrug of old.
The Smoke Gets In Your Eyes ends, the continuity announcer babbles, and now it's Peggy Lee on the radio. She snaps and sizzles her way through Fever with electric fervour and static not of the radio's making. Una remembers Fever and it didn't used to sound like this. Peggy Lee transforms it. It flashes warm and lucent as the ruby back at Li's throat these days.
'Do people still dance to this, Firecracker?' asks Una.
There's a heartbeat's hesitation as Iris whets her lip and smiles that old, firecracker smile.
'Well…' she says, stretching the word bow-taut. 'I still like your music best, Auntie. Always will.'
'Good answer,' Una says.
Li smiles her waterlily smile, as bright now as it ever was. Gently turning inquisitor she says to Iris, 'What were you talking about this evening, or can't we know?'
'Singaporean self-government,' says Iris without the least hesitation. 'Think it will work now it's come through?'
'I think,' says Li, 'that when Carl and I courted, we talked quite a lot about the language of flowers and impossible monkeys. Una?'
'Poetry,' says Una, 'was always my gambit. And when in doubt, the consulate. So you aren't entirely alone, Firecracker.'
Li hums at a decibel that plainly registers despair over her family. Iris squeals, still whistle-register high and claps her hands to her ears. 'I don't want to know,' she says. 'Probably neither does Robin.'
'Oh, you don't mind, do you little bird?' says Una.
Robin laughs. She says, 'You're forgetting the adventure books, Mama. You used to talk lots about those, too.'
'And Kiki,' says Una. 'Can't think how I forgot.'
Laughter from the adults, and perhaps a wince or two from the children. Carl, Una thinks, really is taking an age tonight.
No sooner does she think this than there comes a terrific commotion from the front of the house. It sounds as if someone is navigating the slipway with tremendous difficulty, and possibly a large animal. But Carl would never… Well. He did once bring home a buffalo.
The air is full of the smell of orange-scented oolong and Li's lilacs. Also, something definitely animal. Something too heady for Solace the cat or even Kit the lurcher. The dog rolls in all sorts but this goes beyond that. And Solace is no hunter. It's not animal innards.
'Look!' says Robin, excitably, and points.
Una doesn't need the prompting. Nor does Li.
'Carl,' Li says, 'Will you introduce your friend?'
'Who, this?' asks Carl, gesturing at the gingery creature next to him.
It is…not a buffalo. Not by half. But close. Shaggy, animal-smelling, and if Una didn't know better…Surely not. Surely Carl has not brought home a highland cow. Carl and the cow – cow? – come into the yard. Kit the dog sniffs gingerly at the shaggy animal now in his home and wags his tail in time to Peggy Lee's finger snaps. Una waits, breath held. A second passes. Ten. Thirty. And there it is. A shadow leaps, gazelle-lithe from one of the gables and lands astride the cow. Solace commences washing the shaggy red ears of the animal beneath him. The cow appears unruffled. Hazily, Una registers it's not a full-grown cow. It's a calf. And Carl has befriended it. Well, naturally.
'I think, Mama,' says Iris, 'that's one of Daddy's pets.'
'Yes,' says Li. 'But besides that. Who is he? How did you meet him? Why is he here?'
'She,' says Carl, 'Is Gladstone Blue Ribbon. We'll call her Gladys for short.'
Una stares at him. She's unsure if she's more flummoxed by the mouthful of a name their dead mother's dead china tea set makes or by this presentation of highland cow as pet.
'I think we can get milk from her.'
'You mean,' says Una, incredulous, 'you don't know?'
'She's a highland cow,' says Carl as if this explains everything, which it doesn't. As if, thinks Una with a smile, they have somehow missed the fact of the considerable animal at his side.
'I see that,' Una says.
'I'm not feeding it,' says Li.
'Robin and I won't have to,' says Una and laughs. Then, curious, 'what does it eat?'
'Grass. It can live in the garden, can't it, Li? We have space.'
Li stares. Iris stares. Una tries to recall what Carl ever said, if anything, about highland cows but is unsuccessful. She supposes if the cow can survive outside north of Sheffield it can survive…Come to that, Una wouldn't know what an English winter was like. She has yet to experience one. Hasn't since that wet Christmas at Cressida's monolith of a house in '49 and that was ten years ago. Una doesn't think much of it.
'Gladstone Blue Ribbon,' she says.
'You,' says Li as she pokes Una's elbow, 'are enjoying this far too much.'
'Bet you're relieved to be well shot of that madness,' says Bernice, hearing this. They're driving back to Trinity House, Una firmly at the wheel. Robin sleeps behind them, exhausted after the journey.
'Glad I'm not feeding it this time,' says Una and makes the turn for Evelyn Road.
Bernice leans over and presses the horn. It blares to sudden and almighty life. Kiki copies it.
'Now look what you've started,' says Una. Kiki does her car horn noise again. She spots Robin and swoops down off her perch on the veranda overhang. She comes flying at Robin and Una, a blur of green, yellow and blue, and she shrieks as she flies, Murrrderrr!
'You were saying about madness?' asks Una.
Bernice doesn't answer. Even if she tried, Una thinks it would get lost in the chaos. Iain's goslings come tearing down the steps with all the subtlety and soft-footedness of a heard of stampeding buffalo, Emily on their heels, infant in her arms. She trails a nursery blanket behind her.
'Una!' says Emily and kisses her cheek.
'Auntie!' says Iain and promptly scoops up his errant children, one in each arm. Back straight, he turns the Blythe smile on Una at remarkable wattage.
'Come on,' Una says, waving them up the stairs, 'before you cause a traffic jam hanging about here.'
She stops in the doorway to kiss Martin's cheek in hello. Bernice mutters darkly about proper greetings and the ways in which this exchange doesn't qualify. Una ignores her.
'You saw your man about a dog, then?' says Una.
'Oh yes. Iain was extremely helpful. Everyone in England still where you and Robin left them?'
'Give or take a highland cow.'
Without anyone to bicker with or at, Bernice bustles off into the kitchen to stage a takeover of the tea things. She might not live at Trinity House any more, but she fancies she still has the run of it, and Una's summertime absence hasn't helped. Una shakes her head. She and Robin have been gone too long, clearly. Cressida comes ponderously down the stairs, leaning equal parts on the banister and on the cane the doctor insists on.
'Remarkably,' says Una, 'Joan is still in the middle of absolutely nowhere. Mind you, she's a mile or two as the crow flies from Carl and the others.'
'Are we talking marching miles?' asks Cressida, 'or Elise's Irish miles or what?'
'English miles,' says Una. 'Very definitely. Oh, and speaking of Leesey. We caught up with Elise's great defender. You remember, Fr. Sowerby of St Mark's, or whatever his church now is.'
'I think,' says Robin, with a flash of those heart-stopping green eyes, 'he rather liked you, you know, Mama.'
'Clergy always like your mother,' says Bernice, reappearing with a tea tray. 'She knows how to talk to them. Hazard of growing up vicarages, or whatever you Presbyterians have instead. I'm convinced that's half the reason you kept her around.'
Here Berncie attempts to prod at Martin and Una narrowly averts a disaster involving the tea tray. She did not save those red tea bowls all these years for Bernice to slaughter them now.
Una carries the tray and its treasures into the sun room. She says to Martin as she goes, 'Ignore her. Given the chance, Bernice will out-argue God at Judgement Day.'
'If I hadn't worked that out before,' he says without rancour, 'I'd have got around to puzzling it out by now.'
The tea is Assam, Frenny Razdan's particular blend. Una tests the strength of it and the scent of it, India-spiced and memory-rich conjures the echo another world. Not that the one they've got these days is a bad one. Cressida settles into the daffodil yellow chair, and Emily and Iain take the sunny orange sofa, she with the baby in her sling, he with a child on each knee. Robin worms in beside them. Bernice pulls out the piano bench and settles it so that she can put her back against something other than the ribbed lid of the piano. Kiki is beside herself. She flits indecisively from the lid of the piano, to Robin's shoulder, to Una's ear, where she pecks affectionately if painfully at Iris's birthstone.
Una swats at Kiki's crop ineffectually and mutters, 'Really, Kiki,' without ire or conviction.
Martin peers over Una's shoulder at the red and gold tea bowls with their butterflies, no two the same, and says 'Can I help at all?'
'Feed Kiki, you mean? Yes, do,' Una says.
Martin plucks a salted slice of guava off a platter, and it knocks musically against the coffee table in the process. The sound brings a silver-spotted cat skittering into the room, where she abruptly freezes, before laying siege to the footstool Cressida tries to appropriate, claws rasping magnificently against the upholstery. The cat is followed in no particular order by a surreptitious Harry the lizard, several ambitious rabbits, and one of the otters. So much for leaving the menagerie in England. As she always does, Una tips some of the tea into a chipped tea bowl for Puck's ghost. He's done a good job protecting her house all these years, and it's the least she can do. Another otter slides into the room and tucks its hand into that of its mate.
Cressida twists with improbable acrobatics towards the radio and sends strains of Sarah Vaughn's Misty spluttering into the room. The cat momentarily pauses to look offended. Helpless as a kitten up a tree indeed. The otters twitch their noses. Bernice's fingers mutely map the chords across the piano. Robin hums along in imperfect time.
Una passes Emily a tea bowl. As she takes it, Emily tilts her head inquiringly and asks, 'Glad to be back?
'Glad to be home,' says Una.