by Caro Ramsay
I was rubbing her ears when I saw Deborah, still in her pyjamas, wrapped in a jacket that looked like the one my mum used to wear to bring the ponies in. Debs was outside the door of the Nether Lodge, smoking, leaning, one hip hitched up on the garden wall. Did she live there now? Had I been told that? It would explain why she was still here so late last night.
It was easy to think of her as my father’s generation but she was only thirty-seven now, maybe thirty-eight. A single woman, she’d had Carla when she was sixteen. I had noticed when she spoke to my dad, her blue eyes opened wide. When she had walked past him when filing out Melissa’s bedroom, her hand had reached up to touch him, no doubt it was a gesture of comfort but I wouldn’t be surprised if she had fallen for his charm a little. Heather Kincaid had. The only woman who was totally immune to his charm was my mother.
I couldn’t see any of Carla in her mother, nothing at all. Carla had rather pinched and elfin type features. Her mum, Deborah, was round-faced and pleasant looking, there was a calmness about her that belied the life she had led before she came to the Italian House.
I was glad she had a home here. I felt partly responsible for the death of her daughter. I raised my hand to wave at her. She waved back, and stubbed out her cigarette and walked across the back court to the lodge.
Molly and I retreated to the kitchen and I gave her some cheese before sticking bread in the toaster, a slice for her, a slice for me. I liked sitting down here, in the bright sunny kitchen, the weight of the dog on my feet. She had already scoffed her toast and now had her eyes on mine except I had covered it in Marmite so she was on a holding pattern at the moment, still hopeful of negotiating a crust.
I jumped at the sight of Heather standing at the open door, I had no idea how long she had been there for, listening to me talking to the dog.
And I did feel, as I scrabbled about in my pocket for my hearing aids, that I was slightly unwelcome in my own home. That I was the guest, the stranger, the one who should have asked before making the toast or bringing the dog in.
Heather walked into the kitchen, shaking her head ruefully at the pile of cups, but I noticed she was not doing anything to put them away. ‘Deborah will need to see to this.’
‘She was up all night, she went for a nap. I thought you had too.’
She shook her head. ‘Your dad was too upset.’
‘I’ve just boiled the kettle,’ I said, watching her lift it up and assess the weight.
‘Your dad went back to the study, I think he wants some time to himself.’
‘Who was that he was talking to?’ I asked.
‘Drew.’ She didn’t expand.
I saw my mobile flash, that would be a colleague wanting to know what was going on and how I was. I had a very short list of people to inform of Melissa’s passing but they can wait, today is for me.
‘Do you want anything else, Megan?’ Heather slid into the seat opposite me at the kitchen table. I was holding a cup of tea, feeling drained and tired, gritty-eyed and that worn out non-hunger of being deprived of sleep. I had to pay attention while Heather was blethering, and she didn’t make it easy for me. She turned away, I didn’t catch what she said but she got up and walked towards the back door, opening it, I thought she was letting in some fresh air. ‘… better to be outside, don’t you think.’ She pointed at Molly and then out the door. The dog didn’t move, she just looked up at me.
‘She’s OK,’ I said, ‘here.’
‘Oh, but so much better outside, in the fresh air, not in the kitchen.’
‘No, she’s fine.’ I went back to my toast. The dog stayed where she was. Bloody useless conversation.
Heather sat back down, moving things around the table top, straightening up some cutlery, the salt and pepper, putting the cover over the butter. She smiled at me. ‘Do you want anything else?’
‘No, I am fine. I was just talking to Drew in the front room.’
She didn’t blink an eye.
‘Who is he exactly?’
‘Drew? Andrew Murray. His uncle died recently, he knew Ivan quite well.’
‘He did seem very well informed of what goes on in this family.’ Not adding, ‘More than I do’ as I knew she would just say, ‘Well whose bloody fault is that’. She wasn’t a Melvick so she would point a finger, whereas we were far too well brought up. We just let these things simmer and then we run away, like Mum. Or commit suicide.
‘Yes, he’s very nice, came over as soon as he heard. Your dad likes to talk to him, they were in the study for more than an hour. Did he mention what they were talking about?’
She’s fishing now. ‘I think he was very careful not to say anything,’ I replied
Her lips pursed at that so she changed tack. ‘How do you think your dad is doing?’
‘He’s just seen his eldest daughter die.’ I have no wish to make it easy for Heather. If she wants to join this family then she had better learn how bloody hard it can be.
‘I’m sorry, it must be so hard for you too. But I meant, how do you think he is coping with all this? And where is Beth? Why is she not here?’
Silence. ‘No idea.’ I let my eyes drift to the clock on the wall; it had only been hours.
‘I was so glad you came home, somebody he can share it with. I don’t understand why Beth didn’t make it.’
Silence.
Carla
Megan will clock Heather straight away. I knew the minute Heather Kincaid set her L K Bennetts on the Turkish rugs in the Italian House that she’d have her eyes on Ivan. I could smell the hormones off her.
The fact he was still married to her best friend was incidental.
It takes some balls to sniff after your best friend’s husband while standing in her kitchen, drinking her gin and ignoring her children. Then of course Beth left with a secret lover, died in a faerie pool or was eaten by a kelpie, depending on what the rumour mill was saying at the time.
Heather claims she had no idea why Beth left. I didn’t buy that for a moment, women talk all the time and bored rich women like Beth and Heather rabbit constantly over bridge hands while sipping gin and tonic.
She did take a photograph of her kids with her. But not one of her beloved Ivan, so that spoke volumes.
I can see why a woman would do that. Men really don’t stick around and any that do are the ones you wish would go away and bother somebody else. My mum went through loads of men and still didn’t get a decent one, although I believe she’s working on that now.
There was one good one, a real gentleman, a dead old guy that Mum befriended. We were in temporary housing on the sixteenth floor in the east end of Glasgow. Bernie was very fat and had an oxygen mask on his face and red scales on his legs like a diseased fish. He puffed his way through sentences, watched the racing on the tele and gave me a few quid to run to the bookies. He had two grandsons about the same age as me, both of them in Australia. There was always a nurse coming or going.
They were good times. We’d go in in the mornings and open the windows in Bernie’s flat, he’d howl and protest at all that fresh air. Mum would make him breakfast, I’d boil water and stick it in a bowl for his feet to steep in. I’d stick a clothes peg on my nose, he thought it was a joke but it wasn’t, he was rank rotten. Bernie encouraged me to read and so I sat in his house, reading books on the sofa, reading out the Daily Record when we were at the table.
Mum made a point of answering the phone when Bernie’s daughter called from Adelaide. Mum was chatty, everybody liked her. Life was going good, I had somewhere to go when I came home from school.
Then Bernie died. Mum had been in to check on him the previous night, making sure that he was OK. I went in the next morning and he wasn’t sitting in front of the TV. The flat was very quiet and you can’t help have a sense about these things. I didn’t shout and open the windows or boil the kettle, I went back into the hall and pushed open the door to his bedroom. I could smell something not quite right. The oxygen tank was still there, but it was qu
iet, the little sizzle sizzle sound had stopped. I put my hand out and touched him on his big toe. He was propped up against the headboard, eyes open, his glasses squint on his nose.
He was cold.
Megan
I could sense Heather was here to say something but she was taking her time working up to it. Her fingers reached out towards mine, crawling across the table. ‘I do worry about your dad, you know. I care for him very much. I just wonder what is going through his mind.’ Then she realized what she had said and looked away.
‘Why? Why do you worry about him? Because of me?’
She backtracked. ‘No, no. Just the family history. What happened to his father, your Papa? It makes you wonder if, well, if it’s all starting again. He’s under so much stress.’ Her brown eyes are creased a little in thought. She’s looking at the floor, I see a shiver going down her back. She’s starting to second guess herself. The Melvick curse. And she knew my mum very well, they were friends for many years when Mum first came here, but Dad always thought that people like Heather should be kept at a little distance. Dad might have her in his bed, but he will not allow her into the family. I bet Melissa said the same before adding ‘over my dead body’, which is, sadly, now the case.
‘Deborah mentioned that your dad has started misplacing things. She found his mobile in the fridge last week, then she came in and he’d left the gas on. I’m sure it’s just stress but, well, I hope it’s not the family trouble rearing its head.’ She frowns, looking at the floor. ‘And you, well …’
‘I have Dissociative Identity Disorder. I am not mad, Heather.’
‘Well, I hope all this doesn’t upset you. Melissa’s mental health was so fragile.’ She looks at me, her expression alternating between sympathy and curiosity.
‘It’s a different generation. Different times and different people. If you think Dad’s heading that way, ask him to go to the doctor. He trusts you enough that if you expressed your concern, he would go. If he asks me what I think, I will back you up.’
Heather smiled as if I have given her some comfort, some place of influence in our family. It wasn’t really my intention, I was just stating a fact while wondering who Drew Murray was and what was he doing talking to my father in the study, a father who is forgetting things.
I took another sip of tea, content not to talk. Heather pulled herself up, sitting straight.
‘If you resent me being here, Megan, then I will go.’ She looked me straight in the eye. I’m surprised to find that I believe she means what she says.
‘Heather, this is not my house, my dad can invite who he wants to stay here.’
‘I am not staying here …’ She had the decency to get a little embarrassed. ‘Your father and I …’ She splutters to a halt.
It’s the first time I have seen her in discomfort. It’s quite amusing.
‘I don’t expect my dad to live like a monk.’
She smiled, raising her shoulders like a teenager in love. ‘I guess the gossip is all over the village.’ She put her hand out to cover mine again, I don’t pull mine away. I knew where my dad’s responsibilities and loyalties lay.
‘I wouldn’t know. I’m never in the village,’ I replied coolly just to see her response.
She sailed on undaunted now, her hand up at her hair. ‘But yes, I am very fond of your father.’
I fully expected her next line to be, ‘Does he ever talk about me?’
‘I mean as a friend, I am fond of him as a friend.’ She’s backtracking now. ‘And I am trying to help him through this. I was pleased to be able to do that last night. He was Beth’s husband and she was a good friend to me when Peter died, that was pancreatic cancer, so quick I didn’t know what had hit me. In fact she introduced me to Colin, but that didn’t work out.’
‘Are you divorced now?’
‘Yes, we split up.’ She looked around her, up at the old pulleys hanging from the ceiling. ‘I think of your dad as very alone, trapped in this huge house.’
Not quite as insensitive as her silly shoes may suggest then. ‘It can be a very lonely place this house.’
‘Only while there were no other members of his family here, but now that you are back, just say if I am getting in the way.’
‘You are not getting in the way, Heather,’ I reassured her. ‘Not at all.’
She smiled again.
‘Like you say, it’s a big house.’
‘You are very precious to him, Megan, he thinks such a lot of you.’
‘When did you get so close to Dad? It seems only yesterday that Mum was still here.’
Heather sat back as if I had slapped her, then shrugged. ‘Beth was a very close friend of mine, I miss her very much. I don’t know why she’d leave your dad.’
‘She had another man. She told you that, not any of us. I’ve often wondered why she texted you to say goodbye, not any of us. Not a word, not a phone call. Nothing. Yet she kept in touch with you for a while.’
‘Just a few days. I did ask her to come back, but she said she couldn’t. That I was to look after you and your sister.’
I couldn’t imagine my mum putting that in a text while walking out of our lives. I looked at my phone, a few text messages and emails from people, some little more than strangers, asking after Melissa, wanting to know how I was doing yet my own mother hadn’t bothered to say goodbye to me. ‘I guess she had her reasons.’
‘Maybe she thought you would talk her out of it.’ For the first time, Heather looked upset, or maybe guilty.
‘Maybe it was all too much for her.’
‘There were a few messages, all wanting to know about her girls. I think it broke her heart leaving you behind.’
‘Good. Maybe she shouldn’t have gone.’
Heather smoothed the tablecloth with the palms of her hands, slowly, carefully. ‘And I really do like your dad, you know, but I don’t want to cause him any distress or embarrassment.’
‘Good.’
She smiled, still not looking up. ‘You are a tough young lady, Megan Melvick.’
‘My dad taught me well.’
‘Maybe he is not as tough as you think. This last year has taken its toll and I’d like to think that I, in some way, have helped him with that. And you have not. You were very content to leave him to cope. Well, if you don’t mind me saying, you have been very self-absorbed, looking after number one, so yes, I do think I have a right to stay here and help him through this in any way I can.’ Her mouth slammed shut, little lips pursing again like she had more to say but was stopping himself from saying it. Her speech sounded rehearsed, memorized from a self-help magazine. Then she sighed, her head tilted, her hand rubbed her upper arm, caressing herself as a smile played on her lips, bending them to a smile. ‘Does he ever talk about me?’
‘No,’ I said.
Carla
So Melissa is gone. Out of reach. The Italian House is now actually quiet, rather than quiet because Megan’s entire world is quiet. But the sun is splitting the sky, so all is not bad. Megan is no longer alone in the house, she has Molly with her now, and they will soon be walking down the Long Drive to the Benbrae, to the water’s edge where she will sit on the bank and throw sticks and stones in the water. Molly will run after the first one. Maybe Anastasia, Melissa’s stupid wee Boston Terrier will trot after them. The Russells will please themselves.
I’m glad Megan is not on her own but I don’t really think of Heather as a friend, she’s a wee parasite. Megan needs a friend and that Drew bloke was a bit tasty. I hope she noticed. No wedding ring. I clocked that, no wedding ring and no baby seat in the car. The car was a year old, so he’s earning. Yeah, defo a bit tasty with his nice hair, a gentle golden red colour, shame it’s cut short like he’s a cop.
And then it clicked. Andrew Murray. And PC Harry Murray, the Hairy Monkey. So he’s passed away. There was a likeness. I hope he’s good to her. Megan didn’t realize she needed friends until she met me.
Maybe I sensed that, which is why I
had to push it after I wasn’t invited back to the Italian House. I bet the Hairy Monkey had told them what I was like so I had to take my chance when it came one miserable rainy day, later that summer holiday. Gran had taken to her bed with a really bad cold and Dad was out working at the Italian House. He had popped in to see me and brought a pint of milk, a loaf and a box of Lemsips and I was laughing as he had his suit on instead of his gardening clothes so I guessed he was going up, actually into the house for some kind of meeting. I asked if I could go with him as Gran was in her bed. He looked shocked and, bless him, tried to explain why I would not be welcome.
Gran must have been feeling pretty ill as she had left her handbag down the side of the sofa. I had cabin fever so I pulled on my anorak and, taking what I could out Gran’s purse, I started to walk. Six miles to Kilaird, a long way for my short legs, but I was on my own and therefore safe. Weird that nobody stopped to ask a child what they were doing walking the long road that skirted the top of the loch.
They probably knew it was me. More likely to run me over than stop and offer me a ride. Mr Melvick would have stopped, of course, that would be one of his ‘do the right thing’ activities. Maybe Mrs Melvick would have stopped as well, now that I had saved her daughter, and been rewarded with a sandwich. But nobody did so I was bloody soaked by the time I got to the big black gates, ten feet tall. They were closed as usual. To the side was a wee box on a metal post with a light and buttons, I guess that opened the gates. I didn’t know where my dad would be, like I said, today he had his suit on.
I got over the fence easy peasy, my feet were narrow enough to use the ornate cross struts as footholds and once over, I scuttled round the small path that followed the inside of the wall, between the dark wood and the outer limits of the estate. Much later I found out that this was a track made by Melissa’s feet as she ran to burn off every calorie she had eaten, silly bitch. It became my secret route when I was sneaking out to meet Megan at the Benbrae unseen. It was totally hidden with the high wall on one side, the dense trees of the Tentor Wood on the other. Nobody ever went in there, not when the rest of the estate was so beautiful. At the gate the path was little more than a gap in the trees. At the other side, where the water of the Benbrae thinned the trees out, the path was a meandering strip of flattened grass, the water on one side, the field on the far side with the Holy Loch beyond.