Too Near the Dead

by Helen Grant

  My father and mother are not late, and my father never speeds, disapproving (as he naturally must) of law breaking of any kind. However, he takes the black car up to the speed limit, because he has driven this road many times before and knows all the dips and corners. The sun goes behind a heavy bank of cloud and suddenly the black car is obscured; it slips through the deep shade like a minnow darting underneath the shadow of a riverbank.

  From my great height I see them racing towards each other: the dark grey car going west, the black one travelling east. Each of them follows bends and corners, heading towards the one straight piece of road that stretches between them like a garrote held between two fists. Seen from this distance, the road is small and narrow, and it seems impossible that two vehicles travelling that fast can miss each other. But in reality, there is plenty of space for them to pass each other safely. Except...

  Halfway down the straight stretch there is a third car, a small red hatchback crawling along like a ladybird idling its way up a twig. It catches the eye because of its bright colour, and perhaps that is the reason for what happens next. Perhaps Michael Haig’s attention is snagged by the splash of crimson, so that he fails to notice the black car sliding into the dip on the other side of the blind summit. Or perhaps he simply only has so much attention to give, and at least half of it is on the call he is trying to make on his mobile phone.

  He is approaching the red car far too fast, perhaps cursing the driver for moving so slowly that nobody can possibly be expected to sit patiently behind it. With a jerk of the wheel Mike swings into the other lane, accelerating to overtake just as he crests the summit. A second later the gleaming dark bulk of the judge’s car fills his vision as it races up to meet him. There is no time to react.

  Mike Haig and my mother die instantly. My father dies a little later, at the scene. The driver of the little red car, who calls the accident in, has hysterics at the side of the road. After this, there is no more; my imagination soars away on its invisible wings, up into an empty sky.

  Of all the terrible things I have dreamed, I have never dreamed any of this. It is reality, reconstructed in my mind’s eye from the details at the inquest, and from visiting the spot where it happened. I went, not to lay flowers, but to look for answers. There are none.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  RESURGAM, it said on Euphemia Alexander’s grave. I didn’t know what that meant when I read it, but I’ve looked it up since. I shall rise again. I suppose we all think that, at some level: we can’t quite believe our own death is going to be permanent.

  My father left very specific instructions for his funeral, as if the careful execution of them would give him some personal satisfaction. I stood between James and Belle, listening to Pachelbel’s Canon in D playing over the crematorium’s sound system and feeling horrible. The situation seemed unreal: there was a flat, remote feeling to it, as though we were watching ourselves in a poorly-made film. I recall thinking that I never knew my father liked that piece of music and that I would have to ask him why he chose it when I next saw him, even though I had not spoken to him at all for a long time. Then I remembered that he was gone, dead, and it would be impossible to ask him or my mother anything again. I made a noise, not a sob or a groan but a noise of not understanding, and James took my hand in his, pressing my cold fingers with his warm ones. After the service, a lot of people came up and expressed their condolences, shaking my hand, but they might as well have been making obeisances in front of an Easter Island statue. I could not seem to respond or even smile.

  After the funeral, there was a mountain of work to do, and it was impossible to put it off. The executors did most of the paperwork, but I had to make decisions about the house and all its contents. I could not live in it myself; I knew that the moment I slid the key into the front door lock and the widening gap as the door opened exhaled that familiar scent of furniture polish and disapproval. Nor could I simply leave it while I thought things over: a house that size does not run on nothing. I began the job of clearing it with the help of James and Belle but the task seemed too huge and heartless, which was why so much stuff ended up in remover’s cartons, unsorted and unexamined. My aunt took some things, and what was left – mainly bulky pieces of furniture – was removed by professional house clearers. The house was sold, and suddenly the theatre in which our family dramas had run for so many years was someone else’s exciting new renovation project. I suppose if I went down that street now, I would see the changes that have been made, but I have never been able to bring myself to do it. Supposing the new people have cut down the tree Stephen used to gaze up at, as he lay in the grass? No. It is better not to look, and to let the tree flourish in my memory.

  As for the money, that felt as unreal as everything else did. I couldn’t think why they left everything to me. They didn’t understand anything I did, beginning with the fire in my room. Why should they? I didn’t understand it myself, not in any way I could put into words. I just kept thinking about my brother, Stephen, lying on the floor of his room with the law books open on his desk and the blossoms on the tree outside his window, and there was nothing else I could do.

  I remember the university authorities were much kinder than I expected them to be. There was no question of continuing with law, but they supported my transfer to a different course at another university, much further away from home. My parents did not understand that, either. At least, they did not understand why I wanted to waste my time studying English. They did understand, however, that I was escaping. The conversations we had were full of anger and disapproval. When I graduated, they didn’t come to the ceremony; Belle came instead. When I landed a job in publishing they were not pleased. I suspect they were angry that I had not fallen into the failure and penury that my disobedience deserved. They never visited my flat in London. They never met James, not even once. By the time they drove along the stretch of country road where Michael Haig was to meet them so disastrously, we had not seen each other in person for over two years.

  No matter how much I think about them, I cannot fathom it. I don’t think they hated me, but I seemed to offend them. Whatever they wanted, I was not it. I didn’t expect anything from them, any more than I expected them to be gone so suddenly, without warning, from one moment to the next.

  There was no mistake about their intentions. The will that left me everything was a recent one. Sometimes I think they left it to me because that was what they had to give. Not patience when Stephen or I struggled with anything; not applause when we achieved something. Not even tears when Stephen died. Things. Money. A string of figures on a piece of paper.

  After they died I felt – strange. I had seen them so rarely over the previous years that their absence was hard to take in. I went from not seeing them but knowing that they were there, to not seeing them and knowing that they were gone. The numbness I had felt at the funeral went on and on, seeping through each hour and day like a spreading stain. I suppose people thought I was “coping amazingly well” because I didn’t break down at the office. Each passing day felt as though it was adding another layer of lacquer to my unnatural composure. I suppose it was bound to crack in the end.

  James and I went out one Sunday afternoon, to walk along the side of a lake. The weather had been cool considering it was now summertime, but that day it was actually hot. The parkland around the edge of the lake was very lush and green; it had not yet reached that point in the late summer where everything starts to look parched and weary. Even in the middle of the park you could hear the distant roar of traffic along the main road, but there was enough calm and greenery to create a remembrance of wilder places. Perhaps that was why Scotland came into my mind.

  We had been strolling for perhaps half an hour when we came to a spot at the water’s edge where there was a crescent of sandy earth, like a tiny beach sloping into the shallows. There were people picnicking on the grass and just as we came up, one of the child
ren, a girl of perhaps ten with blonde plaits, ran past us, heading for the lake’s edge. She was wearing jelly shoes but otherwise she was dressed for the land, not water, in cropped trousers and a t-shirt. The purposeful way in which she was moving snagged my attention. I watched her run onto the sand, where she paused and looked round, to see whether her parents were watching. Then she stepped very deliberately into the lake, and waded out a little way, until the water was halfway up her thighs and her trousers were sticking to her legs in a way that looked uncomfortable. That was as far as she went, but I stopped walking and gazed at her, wondering whether she would go any further – whether she would try to swim.

  I felt a tug on my hand. I had stopped walking, but James hadn’t until he felt my resistance.

  “Fen?”

  I shook my head, and started walking again, this time more briskly, not wanting the child or her family to see my face. I made for an old beech tree, and when we were safely on the other side of it I let go of James’s hand and leaned against the trunk.

  “Fuck,” I said. I put the heel of my hand to my eye and it came away wet. “Fuck. I’m sorry.”

  “For what?”

  “It’s just...” I shook my head again. “That girl in the water. I did that once, when I was a kid. Just walked into a loch in my clothes, and swam. I thought for a moment she was going to do that. It just made me think...”

  James waited for me to say what it made me think, but I was struggling to put it into words. I remembered doing exactly that, striding into the water and feeling the chill of it soak right through to my skin. The drag of the water on my clothes, the taste of it on my lips. I remembered looking back and seeing Stephen standing on the bank, a tiny figure glimpsed across an alarming distance; feeling the terror and exhilaration of having swum so far out to get away from our parents. All of that was gone, that family structure that felt like a cage. My older brother was gone; I was older than he was now. Our parents were gone. I would never have to run away from them again, but nor would there ever be any peace between us. The day I walked into the loch and discovered that the fairy castle was just a ruin existed only in my head. No matter how carefully I described it, I could never tell James exactly how it had been, and everyone else who had been there was dead.

  At last I said, “It was years ago, when we were on holiday in Scotland. Stephen watched me do it. My parents were furious. And now all of them are gone – Mum, Dad and Stephen. The house has been cleared. There isn’t even a place to go back to. I feel like I’m wandering around and all the landmarks have gone. I don’t belong anywhere.”

  James put his arms around me and pulled me close to him. For a few moments he just held me without saying anything at all. Then he said, “Let’s get married then.”

  It took a few seconds for this to sink in.

  “What?” I said.

  “Let’s get married. Then you’ll belong with me.”

  He said it in such an insouciant way that I could hardly believe my ears. I wondered if I’d misunderstood him somehow.

  When I didn’t reply, he added, “Unless you don’t want to.”

  “Of course I do,” I found myself saying. I felt slightly dazed; I hadn’t expected this. “Yes,” I remembered to say eventually.

  James laughed a little at that, and I smiled, and when I smiled I saw something kindle in his eyes: he was happy because he had arrested my downward swoop into misery. Behind the cover of the beech tree he kissed me, and then we walked on.

  I don’t remember anything we talked about after that. My head was too full of what had just happened, a hazy feeling of unreality still hanging over it.

  Sometimes I still feel it, that sense of faint disbelief. I feel as though with James I have been too lucky – that it cannot possibly last.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  I am sitting in the kitchen on a bar stool, with my laptop open in front of me. I still haven’t done anything about a proper office space for me. It doesn’t feel as though there’s any particular hurry – I quite like working in the kitchen, which is mostly light and cheerful, except in the nastiest weather. It also means I get five minutes’ chat whenever James comes through to get himself a coffee. I wonder if I’d see him otherwise? He’s right about being productive here at Barr Dubh. Me – not so much.

  I look down at the screen. The work is slow. The hero in this manuscript is infuriatingly smug and all the female characters have the sort of names you’d give to a small dog. I wouldn’t be surprised if I turned the page and found the next one was called Fluffy. The one positive thing about wading my way through the diabolical prose is that the process feels familiar and ordinary. I’ve done this many times before. All the stuff that’s been crowding in on me – things I can’t change from the past, the dreams – seem less real. I even find myself worrying less about James’s debt, because at least both of us are working. I feel as cheerful as any copyeditor can possibly feel when they have just read a sentence in which the protagonist is looking down someone’s blouse for no apparent reason. My finger hovers over the touchpad as I debate whether to suggest he looks into her eyes instead. Then I imagine him catching her rolling her eyes, and I laugh out loud.

  More tea, I think. A job like this can only be tackled when properly fuelled with a nice strong well-sugared mugful. So I slide off the bar stool and while I’m waiting for the kettle to boil I look wistfully out of the window. It’s cool in here and I rub my hands together absent-mindedly, trying to bring a little more life into my fingers. I miss something. I’m not wearing my engagement ring. I know where it is – I took it off earlier before doing some chores. It’s sitting in a little china dish on the windowsill. So I saunter over and I have my hand outstretched to pick it up when I stop and stare.

  There are two rings in the dish. One of them is my engagement ring, a sparkling solitaire diamond set in white gold. The other – well, the other doesn’t belong to me at all. I have nothing that heavy and gloomy-looking: a cluster of seed pearls on a black enamel ground, set round with gold.

  I don’t like the sight of the two rings nestling together in the dish: my bright silvery-looking diamond and that funereal-looking black and gold thing. I fish my ring out of the dish with my fingertips and hastily slide it onto my ring finger. Then I stand there looking at the other one.

  Am I going mad? Is that what is actually happening?

  I know that is not my ring. I don’t have anything even remotely like it. I know I didn’t put it there in the dish, either. But I recognise it. I remember looking down at myself in the dream and seeing the lavender silk of the dress I was wearing, and my hands clasped in my lap, that ring on one of my fingers.

  How can this be? I struggle to think of an explanation. Is it possible that I dreamed about it because I’d seen it before, and that I’ve just forgotten doing that? I look at the thing doubtfully. It seems unlikely; it’s such a distinctive design. And anyway, that wouldn’t explain how it’s suddenly appeared in the kitchen since I took off my own ring this morning. I hug myself, gazing down at it. Somehow I don’t like to pick it up, so eventually I carry the whole dish over to the spot where I’ve been working, where I can sit down again and study it under the kitchen spotlights.

  It’s old, I conclude: the pearls are a little grey with age and the setting is worn-looking in places. An antique, then. It occurs to me to look for a hallmark. I rotate the dish, peering at the inside of the gold band. There’s something stamped or inscribed in there. I squint at it, but I can’t make it out. In the end there’s nothing for it but to pick the ring up and hold it under the light, closer to my face. I tilt it, trying to reduce the reflective gleam of the polished gold. I read: E.A. C.R.

  First I think the R might stand for “king” or “queen” – like a Victorian letter box with VR on it for Victoria Regina. But I can’t think what the C would stand for in that case. Charles? I can’t remember when the last
King Charles was. And E.A.?

  Euphemia Alexander. The name just pops into my head. All of a sudden I can’t put the ring down fast enough. I drop it back into the dish, and without thinking about it I find myself wiping my hands on my skirt, as though the thing is contaminated.

  Coincidence, I tell myself queasily. And anyway, it doesn’t just say E.A. What’s C.R.?

  The idea’s in my head now though. Supposing it’s hers? And then I think: whose? Do I mean whoever is lying six feet under that lichenous slab in the overgrown remains of the kirkyard – or the person in the lavender dress, whom I inhabited in my dream?

  Or both.

  I was dreaming of Euphemia Alexander.

  I grasp the edge of the worktop, steadying myself. Get a grip, Fen, I say to myself as sternly as I can. There has to be some logical reason for this. I force myself to think it through. Supposing the ring did belong to the Euphemia Alexander buried by the chapel, she could have lost it somewhere in the land around the old house. James could have picked it up outside and brought it in – left it in the dish and forgotten about it. Maybe I saw it lying about but didn’t really take it in, and it just re-surfaced in my dream. I stare down at the ugly thing. It’s the only explanation I can think of, given that I know I didn’t bring it in, and nobody else has been inside the house since Belle left.

  I chew my lip. I’m very tempted to get rid of the ring without saying anything at all to James. What if I ask him about it and he denies all knowledge – what then? Maybe it would be better not to ask, given that I’ve already worked out what must have happened – right? Anyway, it’s just a ring.

  And those porcelain flowers, those were just a decoration.