Every Secret Thing

by Rachel Crowther

  In the sitting room, she found Bill deep in an armchair.

  ‘Hello,’ he said, shutting his book hurriedly, as if he’d been discovered in some misdemeanour.

  Cressida felt a prick of impatience. Bill had done his best to hide, these last couple of days. He’d hovered in the background, betraying his presence with a sort of buzzing of nervous energy. She wondered what he’d said to Marmion; whether they’d talked at all.

  ‘We’re leaving soon,’ she said. ‘Are you ready?’

  ‘Leaving for where?’

  ‘Cambridge. Fay wants to get home.’

  ‘Fay was in here a moment ago,’ Bill said. ‘She didn’t say anything.’

  Cressida gave a little shrug. ‘Perhaps she didn’t see you.’

  *

  Marmion sat in the front: that seemed to be agreed without discussion. Cressida hung back while the others got in, and allowed Bill to move over to the middle of the back seat to give her a space by the window. No one made any comment about any of this, and Cressida felt a little ridiculous. It came from having brothers, she thought: it had always taken careful scheming to avoid the short straw in every aspect of family life. And the drive was going to be ghastly enough without being wedged between two men, especially when one of them was Stephen.

  On the way up, even more pressed for space with four of them in the back, they’d talked and played games and listened to a quiz show on the radio. But as they drove back down the valley today, passing the turning to Nag’s Pike, there was silence in the car. The silence continued until they were almost at Windermere, when Fay suddenly stopped the car and sat forward, one hand braced on her forehead. There was a rustle of expectation – all of them anticipating a speech of some kind, Cressida thought, perhaps even an ultimatum – but then after a few moments Fay simply put the car back into gear and drove on. They all stared straight ahead, not daring to exchange glances.

  When they reached the motorway, Fay opened the glove compartment and handed a box set of tapes to Marmion. A moment later, the overture to Tristan und Isolde filled the car. Perhaps it was intended, Cressida thought, to put their emotional dramas into perspective. Certainly it would be more than enough to last them all the way home.

  June 1995

  Bill

  Bill spent most of the first day back in Cambridge in bed with a hangover – the result of a pub crawl the night before with a group he’d played football with in his first year, whom he’d run into by chance on his way out for a walk. He was out of practice at the footballers’ drinking games, but the rapid descent into oblivion had been a welcome escape, and his shambolic state next morning an equally welcome excuse to hole up in his room.

  By six o’clock, though, he needed to get out. He hadn’t eaten all day, and he knew he couldn’t hide away forever. He pulled on his clothes and clattered loudly down the stairs, as though hoping that anyone lurking nearby, anyone he didn’t want to see, might be scared off like pigeons by the noise. And then, emerging from the shadows at the bottom of the staircase, he stopped, startled. A sheet of black cloud hung low over the college, and beneath it the slanting evening sun poured through the archway and spilled over the parapet, filling the court with a surreal intensity of light and colouring its mild sandstone a violent apricot. Bill stared. It was as though he’d stepped into a film set: as though, while he lurked in the fug of his room, a transformation had been wrought in the world. Beneath that lowering sky, life had been compressed, intensified, sharpened.

  ‘Amazing, isn’t it?’ said a voice behind him.

  Cressida, of all people. For another moment Bill stood, feeling the melodrama of the scene slipping, altering.

  ‘Hello,’ he said. ‘What have you been up to?’

  ‘I walked to Grantchester,’ Cressida said. ‘I went for lunch at the Rupert Brooke.’

  ‘How was that?’

  ‘Rather boring on my own. Everyone seems to have vanished.’

  Cressida kicked at something, a tiny pebble lodged among the cobbles. ‘What are you doing?’

  ‘Nothing.’ Bill stared at the ground for a second or two, watching the pebble skitter and settle. ‘D’you fancy a drink?’

  *

  Bill was sure Cressida was no keener to spend time with him than he was with her, but neither of them could escape now. He hoped the drink could be kept short, and that they could talk about something safe. The Tory leadership election, perhaps. Cressida was sure to have a view about John Major’s resignation. Were the Benhams Eurosceptics? he wondered. He could see them as Redwood supporters.

  ‘How about the Fort St George?’ he said, as they passed the porters’ lodge. Of all the pubs he could think of, that had the fewest associations.

  ‘Horrible food,’ said Cressida, ‘but never mind. I had a pie at lunchtime. I don’t need to eat again.’

  They crossed the market square and made for Midsummer Common, the sky still hanging heavy above them and the streets filled with the treacle thickness of the evening sunlight.

  ‘Is it going to rain, do you think?’ Cressida asked.

  ‘I can’t tell. It feels as though something’s going to happen. A storm, maybe.’

  ‘Not before we get back, I hope.’

  ‘We don’t have to be long,’ Bill said, but he regretted the words as soon as they were spoken. Like giving away his final chance, he thought. Like Orpheus, unable to resist looking back.

  *

  ‘I know I shouldn’t say this,’ Cressida said, when they’d found a table. ‘I know I shouldn’t say anything at all, but I’m going to. I can’t not.’

  Bill forced a smile. He almost felt he hated Cressida, just now. ‘Say whatever you like,’ he said.

  But for a moment she didn’t speak again, and when she did, it was with a question rather than a statement.

  ‘What are you planning to do?’ she asked.

  ‘In general,’ Bill said, ‘or . . .?’

  Cressida sipped crossly at her glass of cider.

  ‘About Judith,’ she said. ‘About Marmion.’

  No messing around then, Bill thought. And what sodding business was it of hers, anyway?

  ‘I haven’t given it much thought,’ he said.

  ‘Come off it, Bill.’ Cressida scowled at him. Her expression – petulant, impatient, disapproving – was unfamiliar, but somehow characteristic, even so. ‘Have you talked to Marmion?’

  ‘When?’

  ‘At all. Since Nag’s Pike.’

  ‘Yes.’

  He certainly wasn’t going to repeat that short, painful exchange for Cressida’s benefit. But her directness was better, he thought, than skirting around the subject with meaningful glances.

  ‘She’s gone home,’ Cressida said. ‘Did you know that?’

  ‘Yes,’ Bill lied. This information came as a relief, though.

  ‘Maybe you should go and see her.’

  ‘Judith?’

  ‘Marmion.’ Cressida frowned again; or perhaps the frown had never gone away. ‘Don’t you feel you owe her that? She trusted you, Bill. She loves you. Don’t you feel you ought to –’

  The sentence might have trailed away anyway, but Bill never found out, because at that moment there was a tremendous crash, as though that great weight of sky had simply fallen down upon them, and a dazzle of lightning so bright that it lit up the dingy windows of the pub and made the electricity flicker in awe.

  ‘Fucking hell.’ Bill’s heart thumped. He’d been frightened of thunder as a child, and even now it seemed to him momentous – Zeus, straddling those dark clouds and hurling a missile down at him. Raining fire and brimstone, storm and tempest upon the ungodly.

  ‘You were right,’ said Cressida.

  Another thunderclap broke over their heads almost before the last one had faded away, followed by a great rolling, rumbling roar. Bill leapt to his feet. It felt like a warning sign, he thought, a call to arms.

  ‘Come on,’ he said. ‘Let’s go.’

  ‘You’re no
t going out in this?’ Cressida said, half laughing. ‘You’ll get struck by lightning.’

  Bill hesitated, looking down at her.

  ‘I need to get back.’ His voice was half-drowned by another explosion of thunder. ‘I could call you a taxi.’

  Cressida stared at him as though she hardly knew him. ‘Don’t bother,’ she said. ‘I’ll stay here. I’m in no rush.’

  I’m being a cad, Bill thought. His father’s word, and he could hear his father speaking it. Frustration boiled inside him again, self-hate doing battle with an irresistible tide of self-determination. It wasn’t Cressida’s fault, but she represented everything he couldn’t bear, all the forces of moderation and mediocrity that wanted to drag him down. He had to let himself be caught up by the moment, by the storm: he had to seize the wonderful, fantastical possibility of being.

  He took a ten-pound note out of his wallet, the last cash he had on him.

  ‘Here,’ he said. ‘For the drinks. Or a taxi. I’m sorry.’

  He could feel Cressida watching him as he crossed the room, expecting him at any moment to turn round, but he didn’t. As he reached the door and flung it open the summer rain enveloped him, an immeasurable consolation.

  June 1995

  Stephen

  Stephen cycled across Coe Fen in a blaze of sunshine. It was a relief to be back in Cambridge, after the weekend from hell at High Scarp. He’d come out of it less scathed than the rest of them: poor Marmion broken-hearted, Judith broken-boned, Bill consumed by guilt and Cressida by – well, in the end by a righteous indignation that mostly seemed to be directed at other people, thank goodness. But even so, he’d been very glad to return to normality. Not that this no-man’s-land week before graduation felt very normal, with Cambridge blinking and dusting itself off in the unaccustomed sunshine that had followed that dramatic storm the other night, and tourists outnumbering students ten to one.

  And not that Stephen was looking back, either. He’d spent the last few days holed up in the Oriental Studies department, getting a head start on Arabic in the language labs and reading voraciously about history, politics, religion – anything that would help him get his bearings when he landed in the Gulf. He’d always been happiest when he had an objective, and Dubai was firmly in his sights now.

  But tonight he was going home to Surbiton. He’d promised his parents he’d be there for a night or two before driving back up with them for graduation day. It was a big deal for them, coming all this way, and bringing Robert – and Stephen going to the Middle East was a big deal too. He could see them watching him, the baby cuckoo preparing to leave the nest, and he hated himself for his impatience to be away. Although his father worked at Gatwick and watched people coming and going every day, streaming in and out of the country, round and round the globe, they had never been further than Bournemouth, fearful of taking Robert and his wheelchair on an aeroplane and scandalised by the idea of leaving him behind. Perhaps they blamed themselves, Stephen thought, for his wanderlust. Perhaps they thought a few well-chosen package holidays might have stopped him dreaming about the rest of the world.

  He’d do his best by them this summer, he told himself. They’d have him for ten weeks, including a fortnight in the familiar hotel in Bournemouth with its invaluable ramps and lifts and its sympathetic staff. There was time enough to placate and reassure, and to practise his Arabic calligraphy too. He loved his parents and his brother, but there was no point denying the itch he felt – that he’d felt ever since he could remember. His excitement about this adventure, just like his excitement about going to Cambridge three years ago, was partly about that yearning, that needling curiosity. Not about his birth parents – he certainly didn’t expect to find them in Dubai – but about himself. About what he could do, what he could be, how far he could go. It wasn’t just the beguiling terrain of the future he was so impatient to discover, it was himself as well. More of himself than he’d found in Cambridge.

  But he reminded himself as he crossed the swathe of meadow that, just as he was grateful to his parents, he was grateful to this place too, and to the people he’d known here. That thought had come to him very clearly on that afternoon when they’d lain on the grass above Ullswater, and he was pleased he’d been able to feel it, absorb it properly, before everything had gone so wrong – Judith’s accident, and Marmion’s misery, and before that his own ill-judged encounter with Cressida. He still couldn’t quite understand how that had happened; how he’d been beguiled by the moonlight and by Cressida’s breathless expectation. He knew it was shameful, but a little bit of him was relieved that the Nag’s Pike saga had made it easier to shrug Cressida off. In fact, although it was a pity things had ended on a bad note, he couldn’t help feeling that the trip to Cumbria had drawn a rather convenient line under the choir clan. To everything a season: it was good to move on with fewer regrets, fewer ties.

  Even so, as he cycled under Fen Causeway something nagged at him.

  It seemed to him suddenly that he had failed – they had all failed – to see the High Scarp episode from Fay’s point of view. She might have been overbearing at times, and perhaps less fun and easy-going than usual, but they had taken her hospitality and her protection for granted, and the payback had been . . . Looking back, he could see that she’d borne it with characteristic fortitude – the emotional upset and the practical consequences; all that driving up and down to Lancaster – but that she’d been irritated, or disappointed, or perhaps both. There’d been a kind of aloofness about her in those last few days. A sense of strain, too, which was hardly surprising.

  He ought to make his peace with her, Stephen thought. More than that: establish some sort of basis for keeping in touch, on different terms to the old ones. He liked that idea. There was more to know about Fay, he thought, than they’d ever bothered to find out. She was an interesting woman, and she’d always been interested in him, too: not so much more than the others that the distinction was obvious, but he’d noticed the way she addressed a question to him, sometimes, or that her gaze rested on him when he spoke. And who knew what insights she might have that could be helpful to him? What connections, even? Pedalling across Lammas Land now towards Barton Road, he was pleased by the thought that his altruism, his desire to make amends, might play to his own advantage.

  The roses in the front garden were in full bloom, a bravura display of red and pink. Stephen left his bike round the side and rang the bell, and after a minute or two Fay opened the door. His first impression was that she wasn’t very pleased to see him, but it was gone before his good spirits had a chance to waver.

  ‘Come in,’ she said, and he followed her through to the sitting room, where the French windows stood open. The room felt rather chilly, even though the garden was bathed in sunshine. ‘Would you like tea?’

  It was only two o’clock; Stephen felt another twinge of embarrassment.

  ‘I really came . . .’ he began – but then he couldn’t think what he’d come for; what he’d imagined. ‘A cup of tea would be nice,’ he said, ‘if you’re not busy. Shall I – can I give you a hand?’

  ‘I can manage a cup of tea,’ Fay said. Her tone of voice was hard to place, neither playful nor offended. She left the room again, and Stephen stood looking about him, feeling the self-assurance that had carried him here dissipating. He’d been in this room many times before, but never alone, and he had the sense now that its contents – the rather elaborate chairs, the glazed bookcase, the grand piano – were inspecting him, just as much as he was inspecting them. With a show of insouciance he moved over to the mantelpiece and picked up a photograph of a small girl – presumably Fay – wearing a dress with a tight bodice and full skirt, standing between her parents in a garden. Could that be High Scarp? Stephen wondered. Was that the blurred outline of Nag’s Pike in the background? He put the photograph down again and picked up another that had been tucked behind it. This must be Fay again, but . . .

  Stephen stared. The young woman in th
e photograph was holding a baby. Holding it in the way a mother would, with a rather anxious smile. She was wearing a pale summer dress and standing in front of a house Stephen didn’t recognise, with a lot of windows and a tarmac drive. The baby looked, to his inexpert eye, very young, still swaddled in a shawl. Could it be a sister’s? A friend’s? No; he felt sure it was Fay’s.

  He heard a clink of china just then, and he shoved the photograph back and moved quickly away to the French windows.

  ‘Doesn’t the garden look splendid?’ Fay said, carrying a tea tray into the room. ‘I’m glad you’ve come to see it in its prime.’

  He turned to see her smiling, any reserve in her manner gone. It was almost as though she was the one compensating for the embarrassment of his trespass. Stephen smiled back, wishing he could recover his geniality.

  ‘Let’s take it outside,’ Fay said. ‘I hope you like digestives. I haven’t got anything more exciting.’

  *

  On the train down to London, Stephen brooded. His conversation with Fay had been filled with misunderstandings and disjunctions, and that was because of the photograph, he knew; because he was flustered to have discovered a secret Fay clearly had no intention of sharing. Was it a secret, though? The photograph was there on the mantelpiece, even if it was hidden behind another one. But if Fay had a child – a grown-up child by now – why had she never mentioned it? A child she’d lost contact with, perhaps living abroad? Or a child who had died: that would account for her affection for them all, and would add a certain poignancy to the situation, but . . .

  No, there was more than that swilling around in his subconscious. One photograph of a mother and baby outside a house that had a faintly institutional look. No sign of the father in the photo; no hint, ever, in the time they had known her, of a marriage, let alone motherhood.

  Might she, then, have put the baby up for adoption? Might she . . . She knew when his birthday was, Stephen remembered: that was the first time she’d asked them to dinner. Could it have been that unexpected coincidence that had prompted her to invite them? And then, when she found out about his background, the startling suspicion that it was more than coincidence?