It feels like a touch from the mother, her gaze cloying and silky as spiderwebs against my skin. I turn to look at both, mother and daughter. The elder’s face stretches into another smile.
‘All this party talk,’ she says, ‘you must be bored senseless.’ Before I can answer, she points me to the solution: a garden stroll.
‘Fresh air is so invigorating,’ she says.
So I cross the kitchen and pass through, out into the garden, careful not to disturb the staff arranging tables and decorations. The lawn extends in all directions into geometric eruptions of flowers and leafy plants. Further back, stone steps lead down to a mossy fountain, framed by hedges and still more flowers. It’s all beautifully cultivated, with just a touch of overgrown wildness. Presumably achieved via attentive gardening. I look back at the house, up at the sweeping, creeping ivy grandeur. It’s a mansion, really. Toad of Toad Hall – my embarrassingly childish frame of reference surprises me. But it’s true, this place looks like the delicate, sprawling watercolour illustrations I remember from childhood. And somehow I’ve stepped into it. Here I am, on the inside.
Ey-hey. Pretty lay-day.
One of the labourers, carrying a large folded table under his arm, calls out from a few metres away. When I look over, he stops walking, sets the table down and leans against it.
Pretty lady, you think it’s fair? You stroll in the sunshine while I work, eh? What a world!
His sing-song voice rings sour. He’s older – maybe late forties. Damp hair sticks flat to his brow even as he shakes his head.
I wonder, who else in this household would he say that to? In his preferred social hierarchy, his understanding of fair, who is allowed to walk, to breathe, to enjoy a Saturday? He has bluish bags beneath his eyes and pronounced jowls. His entire body slumps as he stands there, waiting for his answer. He disgusts me, I realize. His impotent anger, his need to assert himself – to tell me who he thinks this world belongs to. I turn away, and start towards the steps at the back of the garden.
Pretty lady? he calls after me. Joking, pretty lady come back!
I keep going until I no longer hear his laughter.
It’s cooler by the fountain. A few fat, silvery-orange fish loop around the pond beneath. I watch them dart between rocks, disappearing and reappearing, glinting in the rainbow refracted light. Convince the lowest white man… LBJ had accurately diagnosed the importance of a coloured other to placate his people. I’ve watched with dispassionate curiosity as this continent hacks away at itself: confused, lost, sick with nostalgia for those imperialist glory days – when the them had been so clearly defined! It’s evident now, obvious in retrospect as the proof of root-two’s irrationality, that these world superpowers are neither infallible, nor superior. They’re nothing, not without a brutally enforced relativity. An organized, systematic brutality that their soft and sagging children can scarcely stomach – won’t even acknowledge. Yet cling to as truth. There was never any absolute, no decree from God. Just viscous, random chance. And then, compounding.1
I let myself out, lifting and replacing the rusted lever to lock the fence behind me. Even from the periphery, just here, the house seems already quite far. I am not much of a rambler, but right now I want to walk. Further than even their ample garden will allow. I want distance. I think. Up through the hills.
I walk to it.
It spreads, the doctor said when I asked her how it’s killing me. She explained the stages. Said if I leave it too long, let it spread too far, the damage will be unsurvivable. Metastasis: it spreads through the blood to other organs, growing uncontrollably, overwhelming the body.
There is a basic physicality to the family’s wealth. The house, these grounds, the staff, art – all things they can touch, inhabit, live on. And the family genealogy; all the documents, photographs. Books! A curated history. I press my palm against the rough bark of a tree trunk and look up at its branches. Cool and leafy, the air here tastes like possibility. Imagine growing up amongst this. The son, of course, insists the best things in life are free. All this was, is, free to him. The schoolchildren here don’t need artificial inspiration from people like me. They take chances, pursue dreams, risk climbing out to the highest, furthest limb. They reach out – knowing the ground beneath is soil, soft grass and dandelions.
I can even understand Lou, considering all this. The underdog he sees in himself, believing in his own fairytale of overcoming; from Bedford to midway up the corporate ladder with a two-bed two-bath in a W9 postcode. Lou will make it, I expect. He’ll have all this. He’ll upsize, then upsize again, soon enough. Get the kids on waiting lists for the right schools. Schmooze up to the right people, get that next promotion, the ski invite, start buying better suits. He’ll evolve. Until he slips in, indistinguishable. His children will grow up knowing only this. Believing it’s free.