Mosaic

by Caro Ramsay

  It was a beautiful day, and as was tradition after the wedding the family had invited everybody in the village to a celebration on the parkland of the Italian House. It was the traditional thing and it happened for christenings and weddings, basically it was an invite for the villagers to drink themselves under the table.

  After the ceremony, the bride and groom drove off in an ancient Rolls-Royce up to the Italian House to their private reception in a marquee on the flat ground at the terrace. A route master bus then appeared to take everybody else up the road from the church, a three-mile journey. By late afternoon, the sun was still cracking the sky, softening the tarmac at the edge of the road and the bus itself was bedecked in flowers and branches as it ferried the guests in a strict order: bridesmaids, the parents, close family and friends, then the rest of them. We were categorized by class and bank account, folk the family liked and folk the family tolerated. The wankers were last. Debs and Tom, my mum and dad, separately, were high up in the food chain at that point as Dad worked for the Melvicks and Mum was the mother of the bridesmaid. I heard a few mutterings about her getting her foot in the door at last. Mum wasn’t really tolerated in the village as my dad was popular and Mum was seen to have dumped him and run off with the baby in search of a better life in the big city. If only they knew. The unlikely friendship between Megan and I was explained by the facts that my dad was a good guy and that Megan needed a companion to help her through life.

  But like I say, the invitation was open but restricted, numbers were given back for the catering and nobody in the village dared to abuse the family’s generosity. There was a huge marquee for us and long tables outside for the others. A buffet with all kinds of dead birds at the top and two bars on either side for the constant flow of chilled beer and wine. It was a beautiful sight, the Long Drive and the fence were covered in white and flowing ribbons with flowers that matched those in our hair and the bridal bouquet.

  On the lower part, near the fence that ran the length of the home meadow, was a large ‘thing’ covered in hoardings. It was very big, as if her dad had bought her a house for her wedding day and had popped it halfway down the drive so they could decide later where they wanted to put it. For now, it was under wraps.

  I had an inkling what it might be, Megan had once told me that they had both told their dad what they wanted on their wedding day and Megan said, looking at the juggernaut that towed the first of the three trailers, it looked as though Melissa had got her wish. Then she added, rather pointedly, that was what happened when daughters were divine and sweet. And perfect. It might have been different now Melissa was twenty-six and was about to marry a complete tosser, but Ivan Melvick was a man of his word, a man who always did ‘The Right Thing.’

  Megan wouldn’t tell me what she had asked for as her wedding present from her dad, probably something soppy like world peace or getting her hearing back. I’d like to see Ivan trying to sort those out with his Coutts bank account.

  The meal in the marquee was accompanied by some boring tinkling music from a sour-faced string quartet. We could still hear the folk outside, laughing and joking and having fun, while we had to act like grown-ups and use cutlery.

  I was allowed in the house to use the toilets but the rest of the guests had to make do with the portaloos in the hedgerows, and a long separate table for the children with chicken burgers and chips while an ice cream van dispensed cones and ninety-nines.

  Then a swing jazz band took over at eight o’clock or so. People, slightly drunk, dancing in a Glen Miller style. The kids had discarded any appearance of being dressed for the occasion; they were rolling down the slope close to the water. This was also a tradition, it could even get competitive at the summer fete, and at Christmas midnight mass if it snowed. Or sometimes, they would roll down in the mud. Like I say there was not a lot to do in Kilaird.

  The real guests then drifted back to the house for gin and a comfy seat, from where they could watch the fireworks from the paladin window. There they would enjoy unspoiled views right out over the Holy Loch in the distance and the Benbrae, easing their swollen ankles out from tight-fitting shoes and slipping on a cashmere shawl as the evening air chilled.

  Agatha, hanging behind them, would have the best view of all.

  I first saw the haze over the water at nine or so, people were still lying around drinking, eating sandwiches, picking at the remains of the hog roast. A few of the boats were out on the Benbrae, some brave souls had disrobed and swum out. My dad was on the bank watching, hanging around the water aware that drink and water do not mix. He later said he had actually been more worried about stuff getting nicked out of the boathouse.

  My favourite boat, the panama called the Curlew, was far out under the weeping willow, deep in the shade. An arm was hanging out, a finger dropping through the water, getting covered in wisps of green algae. The wedding guests were relaxing, things were winding down. Anybody who was going to be offended by anything was now up at the house behind a closed door, all the guests had to do to was keep out of sight and they could misbehave as they liked.

  Once the jazz band had played their set and everybody was buggered with the dancing, the big present was unveiled. I couldn’t make it out at first, or maybe I could but I didn’t believe it. One by one the plain brown hoarding boards dropped off the side like the leaves of a musical box, to reveal a series of red brightly painted scenes. And then the music started and I realized what it was. Ivan Melvick had only gone and got his daughter a bloody merry-go-round.

  A fucking full-sized carousel all to herself.

  Every guest gasped, then clapped or shrieked, even the posh ones were impressed. I saw the doors of the Italian House open, seats were repositioned around the twirling horses and the oldies, gins held tight in arthritic fingers, tottered down the length of the Long Drive to have a closer look.

  And we all know how that ended.

  FIVE

  Megan

  It seemed just like the old days when I pulled my feet out of my ancient boots, dusty and dry as there was no mud out there in the parched soil. The dogs were scampering around me, thinking why were their beds outside in the stables and not lying in a smelly heap in the back hall or in the corner of the kitchen. Anastasia ran off, her paws pitter-pattering on the wooden floor, Molly lay under the kitchen table, the long walk and heat tiring her out. Dad had drifted back to the darkness of the study like a bear in search of hibernation. It’s difficult to mourn in sunshine.

  I walked through the house barefoot. Everybody seemed to be somewhere else, a feeling that was very familiar when rattling around in this great old mansion. It was a very silent house, especially for me, a home of rolling emptiness. The portraits of older generations peered down from the walls and inhabited the place in death, as they did in life. I suppose they had first dabs. The paintings were worth a fortune because of the artists that painted them. And the last few generations had added to the collection. Ivan Hendry Reginald Melvick had had four sons, two were killed in the First World War, the other two, including my great great grandad, both committed suicide when they came home. The last portrait, towards the rear hall on the way to the walled garden was of my grandfather, John Ivan Reginald Melvick, 21st October 1924 – 12th June 1994, a small reminder that he’d died on my fourth birthday. Like I was going to forget.

  Money, just money, hanging on the walls.

  Just pictures.

  Daubs of coloured pigment stuck on a canvas.

  I did think about how much they were worth. That started me wondering if there was a cure out there for Melissa somewhere. But at what cost? Had Dad decided that he loved his art too much, the Hornell, the Dali, the Munnings? The family had started the collection as an investment for a rainy day. One wonders how much rain had to fall before he’d part with his paintings.

  It didn’t make him sound like a good father, or even a good person, but he just answered to a different calling. He wouldn’t sell any of it just to benefit one of us, it wa
s there for future generations.

  My ancestors were all the way down the stairs for twenty generations or more. One of them, can’t recall which one, had lost a title over a game of cards and a sly ace kept up a sleeve. All the portraits that hung along the corridor sat at eye level, watching as we walked past, giving us the once over. Not so with the Lady Agatha, we needed to be on the top landing to look her in the eye. Her portrait was the showstopper, full-length, painted in 1910 by some Dutchman who was quite famous at the time. Agatha ruled the roost, the portrait was the biggest and grandest in the entire house and I have no doubt that it nearly broke the bank when it was commissioned. In life, Lady Agatha looked a good laugh. She was young, tall, slim, dark-haired and mischievous-eyed, at least I hope she was. It was how the artist caught her. She had been painted against a dark, leafy backdrop, maybe an image from the Tentor Wood out beyond the Benbrae, out at the faerie pools, her long silk dress falling in delicate cream folds, her angel sleeves falling almost to the leaves underfoot. Her hair was piled up, loosely, strands drafting over her forehead as if the merest drift of air from our front door would brush it against her skin. She was incredibly beautiful. She’d died young. I was eighteen when I realized the painting was done posthumously. She too had committed suicide, hanged herself over the faerie pools. I felt a weird connection with her, she had wanted to escape as well.

  Did Melissa have that same madness, in a different form? Did I? Melissa was the dead spit of Agatha, those knife-edge cheekbones and huge eyes that spoke of some kind of Italian ancestry. They could have been twins; I was more like the little sister. And then all Dad’s ancestors round the walls all over the house, you could see the likeness of Dad in every one of them, gradually changing over the generations for sure, but it was all there.

  Then there was Carla, she had as much ancestry as the Melvicks, biologically speaking, but somehow she seemed more like an end point. The result of years of bad breeding, the sort of thing that Mum was eager to breed out of the ponies; bad blood. And genetically, Carla became a full stop.

  I knew her dad, Tom, of course, a quiet, rather steady man that my mum had liked. He was a turn-his-hand-to-anything kind of man, good with machines, good with the mares when they were in foal with his low voice and endless patience. Carla’s mother hated him.

  ‘Yes, he’s a good guy,’ said Carla once, lying on the bottom of the boat, her arms up and out, her fingers curling round the rowlocks, her eyes closed. Her hair that day was bright green with banana yellow streaks at the front, like a sunflower in summer time. The sun was shining on her forehead. Relaxed though she was, there was a wariness about her urchin looks, around her thin, feral features, the tip of her nose was upturned, her ears a little pinched at the top. She could never have been a Melvick, she would have been found out by the cheekbones. ‘My dad has one big problem,’ said Carla, her finger up in the air, drifting to point at the sky, indicating a number one, ‘one big problem’.

  ‘Gay?’ I hazarded.

  ‘Nope.’

  ‘Can’t be infertile, or impotent, because of you.’

  ‘That’s true is that. All his tadpoles are fit and well.’

  ‘I know.’ I had a flash of tabloid inspiration. ‘He sleeps with his mother.’

  Carla opened her hazel eyes and rolled them in mock shock. ‘Does he? I never knew that!’

  ‘I was only guessing, but you do get a sense of these things.’

  ‘No, he’s never shagged Gran, she’s not his type.’

  ‘So what put your mum off him?’

  ‘My dad was’ – she opened her mouth, yawning with the effort of staying awake – ‘just so bloody boring. Boring. Boring. Boring.’

  ‘Oh,’ I said, ‘is that a crime?’

  ‘Oh God, yes. You can be many things, Megan, you are rich, you are pretty, you are clever, you can’t hear the starting pistol in the hundred metres, but at least you are never ever boring.’

  ‘I think I’m boring. I never have anything to say. Nobody has ever told me a joke. What does that tell you?’

  ‘No, you are not boring. The Melvicks can’t be boring, your bank account alone will always be of huge interest to me.’

  ‘Not boring?’ This was a new version of me I wasn’t familiar with.

  ‘Well, even if you were boring, Megan, nobody would ever have the balls to tell you in case you stuck them in a dungeon or got them deported.’

  When we hear what others think of us, it’s often so different to how we perceive ourselves.

  There was movement in the front drive, looking out the window I saw a black van reversing up to the front door. Maybe this was what Dad wanted to get back to the house for. Two men got out, dressed in black, they didn’t pause so somebody had opened the front door for them. Molly pricked her ears but wasn’t really listening, her head moved, watching the sound as it moved up the stairs. Then Melissa would be brought down and out, taken away to be prepared for the funeral. I wasn’t sure what happens, would they wrap her up in something? Put the body in a box? Or just remove the body?

  My eyes passed over the photographs of Melissa doing Ophelia, then Mum and Dad on their wedding day, then Melissa dressed in white. Behind her, standing to the side, were Carla and I. I had forgotten that we would be there, in eternity in all these pictures. Melissa looked so tall and elegant, Carla and I looked like twins in our Royal Tea dresses and our hair piled up on top of our heads. At the time I thought the flowers in the hair were ridiculous, but now, looking at them, it was just perfect.

  So alike, Carla and I.

  So very, very alike.

  The photograph gave credence to the rumour that the wrong girl had been killed.

  I ignored the men coming and going through the hall, seeing my father pass the door, Deborah followed close behind. I lifted up the photograph, heavy in its antique silver frame. Questioning it.

  The whole farce of interminable discussions, debates, tears and tantrums of the previous three years. The bridesmaids’ hairstyles had been a huge point of tension. No matter what I said, Melissa, with that air that might at best be dismissive, and at worst might be cruel, shook her head and said, ‘No, scraped back, nothing untidy.’ At that point my mother looked at me with some sympathy, I stopped biting my lip so I could pretend that I didn’t care. But I hated her for that, and was so grateful when Carla came up with her sneaky plan. She smirked and whispered, ‘They can’t stick it back on, can they?’

  Clever Carla.

  Maybe too clever for her own good, trying to outwit a Melvick?

  I placed the picture back, noticing the top of the sideboard was free of dust, Debs was doing a good job. Molly’s ears pricked up again, she was on her feet, looking out the window, I glanced at the time.

  Was Jago coming back? I looked hard at the horizon, and yes, something caught my eye in the far distance, the slow imperceptible movement of the big gates opening. From here I couldn’t see what, or who, was about to come through. I’d see the car when it emerged from the dip in the land.

  I remember hearing that car one time I was down at the pond, Jago and his E-Type turning to climb the gentle hill of the long drive. What a tosser. Dad had had a word with him about it once, saying it’s OK to have such things but don’t flaunt them. Dad had bought me the Merc for use in the city but I wasn’t really allowed to drive it around the village. That would be drawing attention to yourself and was frowned upon. People like us, another one of Dad’s phrases, drove Land Rovers covered in dog hair, bits of pony with the dried blood of dead animals in the back.

  I watched Jago park, leaving his car on the gravel at the front, the car abandoned. He got out and looked at the private ambulance, shocked. He stood for a moment, looking much older, thinner than when I had last seen him, shock on his face, wary of what he was walking in to. It was suddenly going to be very real for him.

  I’d like to say I felt sorry for him but I didn’t.

  I’d like to say I went out to greet him but I didn’t.

/>   I had nothing to say to him at all.

  Different people, different lives.

  He walked behind the ambulance and into full view, his well-cut jeans, and his beautiful leather handmade shoes. He moved across the gravel, not looking at the black transit now. I had never really wondered what happened to them and their marriage. Was Melissa’s illness driven in part by her neurosis and constant need for attention and approval? Was it the fact he worked somewhere in the City, she toured with plays and he would stay over in London. Two people, with two separate lives that collided on a Monday night.

  Shame it didn’t work out for them but I didn’t think any marriage could hold up to having that many egos or Jago’s sexual predilections. But I was being unfair, we are different people now than who we were then. Carla and I were little more than kids and while Jago had no doubt met many girls like me before, he had never encountered anybody quite like Carla.

  Or was there something else they couldn’t live with?

  The guilt?

  I had very vague memories of them leaving the Italian House on the day they married. They left in a haze of smoke and the stink of burning flesh, as they drove off into the sunset leaving devastation behind them.

  I had harboured vague suspicions that Melissa had caused it for years, a little non-specific idea at the back of my head. Was that what Melissa had been apologizing for? That fleeting look on my dad’s face, as if the last thing she needed to say was something that could be taken as a death bed confession.

  But had she killed the wrong girl or the right girl?

  I thought, as the door opened and Jago came in, that I wasn’t sure which Melissa would find more difficult to live with.

  Carla

  I know who the car belongs to, bloody Jago. Some men you meet and they blow you away, others you meet and you want to blow them away – with a sawn-off shot gun. Jago was one of the latter.