A LIFETIME BURNING
Linda Gillard
Copyright © 2006 Linda Gillard
All rights reserved.
www.lindagillard.co.uk
Originally published by Transita in 2006
Distributed by Smashwords
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of the author, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
All characters and events in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
The moral right of the author has been asserted.
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Table of Contents
Prologue
PART ONE
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
PART TWO
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
PART THREE
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
PART FOUR
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
PART FIVE
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Epilogue
Author’s Note
Acknowledgements
Also by Linda Gillard
Prologue
2000
The Dunbars are a good-looking family - even the old ones - and massed in black, as they are now, impressive. Clearly the gene pool has never been muddied with inferior stock. Was it in fact ancient in-breeding that produced such refinement of feature, such acute sensitivity, such intelligence? The Dunbars aren’t telling. We’re a canny and a clannish lot, loyal to a fault - even when we hate each other. A Dunbar will stand by another to the bitterest of ends - even the black sheep. Especially the black sheep. (And I should know - flighty Flo, dear Aunt Flora, poor Reverend Wentworth’s mad wife who, for everyone’s sake, really should have been kept in the attic.)
The Dunbars have an effective way of dealing with miscreants. You could call it assimilation, I suppose. We simply pretend the black sheep is white. As Hugh once said in one of his sermons, ‘There’s none so blind as those who don’t wish to see.’ There was a lot the Dunbars didn’t wish to see.
And so we didn’t.
Theodora Dunbar, matriarch, known always as Dora, is ninety-three. Only my mother could manage to look commanding in a wheelchair. The entourage helps of course: a bevy of attractive and attentive men hovering, pandering to her every wish. Dora has loved us all in her own peculiar way and the Dunbars have returned that love with loyalty and devotion. Only I stepped out of line. And of course Colin, but he was instantly forgiven on account of his extreme youth and my extreme wickedness.
Dora’s wheelchair is manoeuvred by one of her grandsons, Colin. My ex-lover. My nephew. My brother Rory’s son - like Rory, but much darker. The awkward boy has matured, as I (being something of a connoisseur in these matters) always knew he would, into a handsome man. But today Colin stands, as ever, in Theo’s shadow.
Theo. My son. At thirty-four, a few months older than Colin, taller, fairer, finer-featured and always said to favour me. Everyone agreed Theo’s Apollonian good looks owed little to Hugh. Theo is a Dunbar through and through. Nevertheless, Hugh and Theo are close - to spite me, perhaps. Theo adores Hugh, protects him, supports him - at the moment quite literally. At nearly eighty, Hugh’s tremendous height and bulk are bowed. Leaning heavily on Theo’s slender frame, he droops, like an ancient, gnarled tree, his thick black mane now white as a wizard’s.
There has been much love in this family - some would say too much - and not a little hate. The most unlikely love has been Hugh’s for Theo and Theo’s for Hugh. Against all the odds… I doubt Hugh ever contemplated revenge since he regards himself as even more of a black sinner than me, but if he’d wanted to settle old scores, loving Theo and making Theo love him would have been a masterstroke.
Rory weeps. My brother stands between his wife Grace, as plain and four-square solid as Grace has always been, and Colin. (My niece Charlotte is not present. She is on the other side of the globe, the distance she thought necessary to put between herself and my son.) Colin fidgets, clearly embarrassed by his father’s tears. My husband and son are dry-eyed; my mother, stunned by grief, is stoically composed; my sister-in-law Grace can barely disguise her relief.
Grace hated me. I can’t say I blamed her. She had good reason. Several, in fact. But if you asked my gracious sister-in-law why she hated me, she’d say it was because I seduced her precious firstborn, relieved him of the burden of his virginity, chewed him up and spat him out on to the admittedly sizeable scrap-heap marked ‘Flora’s ex-lovers’. That’s what Grace would say. But she’d be lying. That isn’t why Grace hated me. Ask my brother Rory.
Rory and I haven’t spoken for thirteen years, but my twin brother, my childhood companion, the other half of my life, the other half of my self weeps, weeps for me, his dead sister, who burns.
Burns…
Like a witch.
~~~
‘It is better to marry than to burn.’
The elderly man bearing a marked resemblance to an Old Testament prophet appears to be talking to himself.
‘What?’
‘Paul’s first Epistle to the Corinthians. Chapter seven, verse nine.’
‘Oh,’ Theo replies vaguely. The younger man, though tall, is still shorter than his companion. He is thin and his delicate, almost feminine features are drawn. He appears young at first but closer examination reveals many fine lines about his eyes and mouth suggesting a greater age, or at least a fondness for the outdoor life. His thick, fair hair, brushed vigorously in honour of the solemn occasion, is being coaxed by a gentle summer breeze into its natural state of unruly curls.
As the men wander round the parched crematorium flowerbeds, Theo finds himself wishing his mother had died in the spring. July has little to offer apart from blowsy hybrid tea roses and vulgar gladioli. Not Flora’s flowers at all. He tries to think what she would have preferred. Something blue perhaps, to match her eyes. Delphiniums. Larkspur. Cornflowers. Theo finds the botanic litany oddly comforting.
Hugh resumes his grumbling. ‘Trust St Paul to take a dim view of marriage. What did he know about it anyway? Lifelong celibate! Homosexual, probably. Poor bugger…’ The old man loses his footing and leans more heavily on Theo.
‘Take it easy, Dad. The paving’s uneven here. I wish you’d brought your stick.’
‘Don’t need it, my boy.’ The old man halts and breathes heavily, giving the lie to his claim. He speaks eventually and in quite a different tone. ‘I did love your mother.’
‘Dad, don’t upset yourself. It’s all over and done with. Long ago. Let’s go home.’
‘I tried to love Flora. But my kind of love wasn’t enough. She needed more than I could give her and, God knows, I needed more than she could give me. Mutual misery should have brought us together. It was one of the things we had in common.’
‘Dad…’
Hu
gh draws himself up to his full, imposing height so that Theo has to look up into his face. The remarkable brown eyes are barely dimmed; there is passion still. ‘But if they cannot contain, let them marry: for it is better to marry than to burn.’ He snorts and raises a finger to admonish the absent saint. ‘In this - as in so many things - St Paul was wrong!’ He shakes his white head. ‘Flora and I married and burned…’
Rory is now composed. As Grace drives them home she steals a glance now and again at his profile and wonders if her husband will ever age. At fifty-eight, there is something of the superannuated schoolboy about Rory. His sandy hair is now threaded with silver but it still flops across his forehead when he moves his head suddenly, which he is inclined to do. His thick fair brows have become untidy but his face is still lean, the skin almost unlined. Grace scowls at her own furrowed brow reflected in the rear-view mirror and envies the blessing of Dunbar genes.
Rory, staring straight ahead, announces suddenly, ‘You know, Flora always thought she’d burn in Hell.’
‘She didn’t really believe in all that mumbo-jumbo, did she?’
‘I think she did. She was a vicar’s wife. Goes with the territory.’
‘How horrible.’
Rory is silent for a while, then resumes. ‘I don’t think she saw it like that. Hell wasn’t a place she was afraid of going to, you see. My sister spent most of her life there.’
Grace lifts a hand from the wheel and lays it on her husband’s. Despite the summer heat, Rory’s long fingers are chilled.
In a Sydney wine bar a young woman sits alone with a briefcase and a bottle of wine. There is only one glass on the table but the bottle is nearly empty. A folder of documents lies open in front of her, unregarded as she fingers a dog-eared postcard, tapping the table with it nervously. One side of the postcard is covered in a black, uneven scrawl. The other shows a botanical print: Fritillaria meleagris, the snakeshead fritillary, checkered purple and white. Her favourite flower. She wonders how long it took to find a postcard of it and drinks again, turning the card over and over, as if rotation might eventually generate a different message.
Charlotte Dunbar - at thirty-one she hasn’t married and believes she never will - steels herself to read the postcard again. The message is unchanged.
Dear Lottie
I’ve asked Grace to forward this to you. She won’t give me your address. I don’t expect you to reply but I wanted you to know that my mother has been found, but she was dead. The cremation will take place on July 21st. I’m OK but my father took it very badly.
All love, as ever,
T.
PART ONE
Chapter 1
1942
Dora Dunbar had given up hoping for a child. At thirty-five, after fourteen years of marriage, she’d come to terms with her barrenness. Archie was equally sanguine. He apportioned no blame and kept his disappointment to himself. The painful subject of prospective parenthood was no longer discussed.
Dora’s faith in God was vague but unquestioning, as befitted an Anglican in wartime. She assumed quietly, with little fuss, that the confirmation of pregnancy, followed some months later by a diagnosis of twins, was nothing short of miraculous. Dora prayed in her modest way that at least one of the babies would survive. She didn’t pray for a son, partly because she feared to tempt Fate (a pagan deity who co-existed comfortably and just as inscrutably alongside her God); partly because she simply didn’t care about the babies’ gender. A baby, any baby, something to hold in her arms, to present to Archie, a piece of himself, a Dunbar scion, was all Dora asked. But Dora refused to pray mainly because she knew prayer didn’t work.
As a child she’d prayed nightly till she wept for her adored brothers to be spared in the last war. God had shown Himself to be deaf or indifferent and had taken Henry in 1915 and Roderick the following year. Dora had consoled herself with the infant Henrietta, had petted and spoiled the baby as if she were a treasured doll. Dora’s parents were grateful for the distraction of a new life in the family and, praising the resilience of children, marvelled at how young Dora cared for little Ettie, as she came to be known.
Dora would chatter incessantly to the infant long before she could understand anything she was told. Dora’s parents, bereft of both their sons and numbed by grief, paid little attention to Dora’s prattle. As she leaned over the cot, they assumed Dora told the baby stories.
She was indeed telling stories - stories of her adored brother Henry, dead at twenty. Dora, aged nine, told stories so that she wouldn’t forget Henry and so that little Ettie, who had never known him, wouldn’t forget him either.
When the twins were born - a pigeon pair: Roderick Henry and Flora Elizabeth - Dora wept copious tears. Archie assumed it was relief; the midwife said it was the milk coming in. Nobody asked Dora why she cried. She might not have known, but when two live babies were placed in her arms Dora found herself suddenly overwhelmed with grief for her two brothers, dead more than twenty-five years.
Ettie, hovering outside the bedroom door not wanting to intrude, might have understood but if she had, she would have said nothing. Ettie said little but perceived much. It was Ettie who, when Dora remarked anxiously that Roderick seemed such a mouthful for a tiny baby, suggested he be known as Rory. Dora looked up and smiled gratefully.
Rory settled to his feeds better after he’d been re-named. He fed well and slept soundly, unlike his older sister who, to Dora’s distress, seemed perpetually hungry, perpetually wakeful. The midwife on one of her visits cast a professional eye over Rory sleeping in his cot and Flora fussing at the breast and announced harshly - but prophetically - that Flora was ‘a naughty, greedy girl’.
1987
Tea sat untouched in bone china cups as brittle as the preceding silence. Dora sighed, then said firmly, ‘It’s wrong, Flora.’
‘Says who?’
Dora flinched at the sharp retort but continued evenly. ‘I do. So do Rory and Grace… And Hugh. Not that you care what Hugh thinks.’
‘Too bloody right, I don’t.’
‘Please don’t swear, Flora. It isn’t necessary and it doesn’t help.’
‘Well, mind your own damn business, Ma!’
‘I do usually. You know I do. I always have. But I think I have a right to speak here. You are making my grandson very unhappy.’
‘On the contrary - I appear to be making him deliriously happy. Ask him.’
‘Don’t be glib, Flora. There’s more to life than sex. Don’t pretend you think otherwise.’
‘There’s more to Colin and me than sex.’
Dora gave her daughter an appraising glance. ‘Yes, I dare say there is - for Colin.’
‘How dare you judge me!’
Dora fixed her daughter with faded blue eyes, still astute, still steely. ‘I may be very old but I am not yet a fool. Colin is twenty-one and you are forty-four. At best it’s mutual infatuation. Put an end to it now before Colin is hurt.’
‘Why should I? It’s not as if he’s a child. Or particularly immature. He wasn’t even a virgin, actually.’
Dora winced and held up her hands in protest. ‘Please! I don’t wish to hear details of Colin’s private life. Or yours for that matter.’
‘So why is it wrong? Tell me. He says he loves me. And I- I’m terribly fond of him…’ Her voice faltered. ‘We have a lot of interests in common,’ she added quickly. ‘And we enjoy sleeping together. Why is that wrong?’
Dora looked down at her hands, registering the throb of pain in her arthritic knuckles. The ugliness of her once beautiful hands never failed to repel her. She looked up into Flora’s still lovely face and, against her better judgement, relented. ‘I don’t know if it’s wrong, but I do know that one day you’ll regret it. I think you will feel…’ Dora cast around for a word and seemed almost surprised by her choice. ‘I think you’ll feel ashamed.’
Flora laughed, a high, barking sound that had nothing to do with mirth. ‘Oh no, Ma! That’s one thing I won’t feel. I
was inoculated against shame a long time ago.’
I don’t remember my mother as a young woman. She was thirty-five when we were born and in my earliest memories she already seems old. Our father was sixteen years older than our mother and so it was as if we’d been born to grandparents.
When I think of my mother, I see her in the garden wearing an old straw hat and a moth-eaten fur jacket that for all I know might have been fashionable in its day. I was crucified with embarrassment on the rare occasion when I brought a friend home to tea. They could barely stifle their giggles. Other people’s mothers wore pretty dresses, high-heeled shoes and took trouble with their hair. Mine wore galoshes.
The resemblance between Dora and my son Theo was astonishing - the same remarkable blue eyes, the high cheekbones and silky curls (except that Dora’s were, from her mid-forties, pure white.) She was pretty, tiny and doll-like. When she became crippled with arthritis, Hugh would lift her out of her battery-driven cart, kiss her pale, powdered cheek and carry her indoors. Dora was unperturbed by the lack of ceremony. I think she relished the attention, especially from Hugh. She’d cling on round her son-in-law’s neck, continuing her conversation over his shoulder. (Except that Dora didn’t really do conversation. She waved a twisted but regal hand and gave you an audience.)
When Theo was placed in my arms as a newborn I finally felt I was no longer a child. At twenty-three, I was free at last from my parents’ jurisdiction and disapproval. But as I cradled my beautiful son, I was struck by the sickening realisation that I hadn’t the faintest idea how to be a mother to this child.
1945
Rory didn’t speak. By the age of two he had uttered no recognisable words and very few sounds. He would cry out in pain and laugh out loud but he had no language other than a low humming, chaotically melodic, that accompanied his play and to which Flora appeared to respond, sometimes antiphonally, sometimes in unison. When Flora babbled to Rory’s droning hum, it was as if the two toddlers were making music together.
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