Mosaic

by Caro Ramsay

  ‘Hi, how are you? Do they have enough tea through there?’

  ‘The ladies from the church guild have taken over the kitchen. Heather is in charge.’

  ‘That will stop them gossiping. Or give them more to talk about once her back is turned. I am having a bit of a breather, a quick fag.’

  ‘Can I steal one?’

  ‘It’s a disgusting habit.’

  ‘Yes, I know, it’s your habit, not mine, so it doesn’t count.’

  I sat beside her, pulling up the other swing, keeping the back and forth momentum. Her feet were up on the seat beside her, her red shoes kicked off to let her feet cool down. They were tanned and she had her toenails painted. She had a small tattoo on the side of her ankle, a little dolphin, and the word Carla underneath and a date. The date of Melissa’s wedding. Which of course, was the day Carla died.

  ‘When did you get that done?’

  ‘Last year. You could afford a mosaic. I got a tattoo. I like it, God knows what it will look like when I am old and wrinkly, it’s going to stop looking like a dolphin and start looking like a bloodhound.’

  ‘Heather thinks women with tattoos are little more than harlots.’

  ‘Well, she should get out more.’ At that moment two of Mum’s friends from the flower club walked through the courtyard, looking at the flowers, talking about how some people can have everything, but not happiness. Debs nudged me. ‘Let’s walk.’ She pulled long and hard on her cigarette, as she slid off the seat. ‘Don’t fuel their gossip, they have tea to make.’ She stopped after two paces, standing at Oodie’s grave. ‘You Melvicks really do love your dogs, don’t you? This was your collie.’

  ‘My childhood dog, my friend. Her mother was called Fern. She was the dog lost in the faerie pool.’

  Deb pointed at the small cairn. ‘No grave, just a memorial, like the mosaic and the tattoo.’

  The next one was a grave covered by a well-trimmed bamboo plant, a stone statue of a Labrador peeking out from between the leaves. ‘Martha,’ I explained. ‘She was murdered.’

  ‘Really?’ Debs looked alarmed, ‘Come on,’ she said, and we walked in silence for a while, habitually taking the path out to the stable then turning towards the water.

  ‘Why is Heather here so often, she’s swanning around in there like she owns the place? How long has that been going on for?’ I asked, well out of earshot.

  ‘About eighteen months or so. She’s a dead man’s slippers kind of woman, as soon as somebody dies she’s right in there.’ She placed her hand on my arm. ‘Sorry, kid, but you know Heather wants to be the next Mrs Melvick, Christ knows why.’

  I smile at her mockney accent. Debs was always cheery. Always had a glass half full way of looking at life. ‘I know it’s hard and she’s a right royal pain in the arse but you have your own life to lead now, you have your flat and a job. Maybe Heather and your dad will do just fine.’

  ‘I’m not sure I will be going back to work, with Dad the way he is. Maybe it should be me looking after him.’

  She didn’t look at me. ‘That might be for the best. But you shouldn’t if they do get together. Like I say, you will be away one day and he’ll be left here with me, a couple of ponies and an incontinent dog. I know how fucking useless he is. Your dad can start a combine harvester but can’t programme the microwave. So no, Megan, don’t you mind what your dad does, he needs his happiness and you need yours. I always thought Melissa was tied to this place too much by being Melissa Melvick from the big house after she left, or tried to leave. She was whiplashed right back. I hope things are different for you.’

  She was right. Mum had not come back. It was all very different now. I was thinking about what Drew had said, and I knew deep inside that she would have come back to see Melissa if she could. ‘Debs? Why do you think Mum left?’

  ‘There were lots of rumours at the time but honestly, I think she had her reasons, kiddo, and she will come back when she wants to. And if she knew about Melissa, I’m sure she’d be back right now.’

  ‘Of course she must know.’

  Deb’s head flicked round. ‘Why? The only person who has heard from her is Heather. Would you tell Beth what was going on if you were her? Heather’s sitting here, all doe-eyed helping your dad to get through the trauma, using Melissa’s passing to get him to change his will. I wouldn’t put it past her to offer to be your responsible adult, you know, with your history. Of trouble. That Scobie guy saying you were incompetent … mentally …’ she added lamely.

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Yes, one of those suits at the house yesterday was a lawyer, a new will to protect you if he gets married again. You still inherit everything, at the end, any new wife will have an entitlement but nothing that will affect the house or the estate.’

  ‘Or the Munnings, get your priorities right. Bloody hell, so he must be serious about her.’

  She laughed, ‘Or lonely, maybe just lonely. But still technically married. Drew was being all sensible, stressing that he thought your dad wasn’t thinking clearly, you know, this is not a good time for him to be making decisions.’

  We walked on in the baking sun, hard to grieve on such a beautiful day. ‘And what about you, staying at the lodge?’

  ‘I’m here all the time, I had a flat in Dunoon, but when Melissa’s illness took hold your dad offered me the lodge. What with Carla and my alcoholic boyfriends, shit and vomit don’t bother me and I could be on hand to look after Melissa. I don’t have a lease for the lodge or anything, so don’t you go rushing back to Glasgow, or I could be out on my ear. And your dad needs you.’

  ‘You think?’

  ‘He needs somebody. When you are not here that somebody becomes bloody Heather. I always get suspicious when that lawyer, Lawton, appears at the house and they disappear into the study with strong coffee and instructions not to be disturbed.’

  ‘So how do you know about the will?’

  ‘He asked me to witness it.’

  ‘And he told you what it was?’

  ‘I asked him. I wasn’t going to sign anything that didn’t look after you properly. Since Beth left, I’ve always thought it was my duty to look out for you.’

  ‘And I’ve always thought it was the duty of our family to look after you. After Carla …’

  ‘So we are quits then.’ She continued, ‘And they were looking at Melissa’s will.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Yeah, your dad said I wasn’t to say anything but Melissa did leave me a few quid.’

  ‘You are kidding?’

  ‘I hardly knew her. I thought it was weird. I was around her, you know, when she came back here, she was so weak by then.’

  We strolled in silence.

  ‘How weird do you think that is? You did look after her for a while, but not enough to warrant an inheritance.’

  ‘I know what you mean, it crossed my mind too. Melissa hated Carla, and she leaves me some dosh. Blood money? Almost as if she was sorry.’

  ‘Melissa was always strange,’ I said, not wanting to think about that. Princess Frosty Pants.

  For a while, we walked on the other side of the fence almost at the bank of the Benbrae, the aroma of cigarette smoke mingling in the air with the warm sun, a bee buzzed nearby. There was a strong resonance of what had gone on before. She was looking at something, her eyes slightly narrowed, she shivered in her black blouse, and stuck another fag in her mouth so she could rub her upper arms to get some warmth back. Or to comfort herself. Funerals tend to invite thoughts of those absent. ‘Carla?’ I asked.

  ‘No, not Carla. Carla was Carla and that was that. I was thinking of those trees over there, they always give me the creeps.’

  ‘The Tentor Wood? They give everybody the creeps.’

  ‘Yeah, but you more so surely.’

  ‘Why? Why me more?’

  She looked at me with surprise, her blonde fringe falling into her eyes. She looked at her feet. ‘Oh shite, you don’t know?’

  ‘Know what
? There are a lot of things I don’t know. I’m getting a bit pissed off with it. I think I grew up blind as well as deaf, I sleepwalked through my entire existence seemingly.’

  ‘The Tentor Wood has a dark past, in your family.’

  ‘But not recently?’ I raised an eyebrow.

  ‘You had better ask your dad that one. It’s none of my business.’

  I looked across, aware of Deborah getting onto her feet and drying them on the grass before she slipped them back in her bright red ballerina pumps. ‘No, Debs, you tell me. Please. Just because I’m deaf doesn’t mean I should be kept in the dark. Ignorance is not the default position of the deaf.’

  She smiled. ‘Have you been practising that?’

  ‘I heard it somewhere.’

  ‘I like it. But still, ask your dad.’ With that she got up and left. Not like her not to finish a conversation that she had started, she was the straightest person I knew.

  I looked over at the Tentor Wood, vague memories dancing around me. Dad lifting me up out the water, but I was dressed up. I felt the lace at the bottom of the skirt wet against my legs. I never had that on, not down at the wood. That was my birthday frock. That memory rises and then the dark water, slick like ebony oil, covers it and it sinks from my consciousness.

  That hadn’t struck me before. I would go anywhere in this house that I wasn’t allowed to go. I crept into Dad’s study, went into his wine cellar and climbed up onto trees but those other trees, those that crouched in the dense darkness, I never went there.

  Carla

  There is always a turning point, that moment in time when enough becomes enough. The moment when the shit hits the fan. And that was how I ended back up in Dunoon. Mum got a taste of how bad the big wide world can be. She was in court and I was in high dependency.

  Dad was good, of course. In his own faltering cack-handed way, he came to the rescue. He stood up for Mum in court, as the ex-partner, saying that he thought she was a good woman who had lost her way. The social workers had created this wonderful fiction of my new life in Dunoon, in a place where the big city couldn’t reach me and I would learn to be responsible and turn into a useful human being. Dad was going to look after me. Well, he was going to get Gran to look after me as Fishface Norma couldn’t stand the sight of me.

  Mum was deemed to be irresponsible after taking up with a new partner who was involved in a paedophile ring. He was in jail of course. Now. A real hateful bastard called Keith. He was one I couldn’t fight off but anything can become normal if you are exposed to it often enough. Not so different from M and M, all their demons came from the inside, mine were right out my bedroom door.

  I never like to play the victim, these things happen, I wasn’t the first kid and I wouldn’t be the last. I survived all that, I had Megan somewhere, to hold on to, to run to.

  Things didn’t change though, I was passed on. Somebody else’s problem.

  It was a fuckin joke, back in Dunoon. Next thing Mum is back also, saying that she had changed and it was all different now, telling the social worker that she was a better mother after the rude awakening of her dangerous lifestyle. She asked Dad if she could have me back, as she was staying above a pub in Dunoon (like that was a good idea). Dad wasn’t keen. He said he’d ask his boss if I could go to work with him for a few weeks so that I could get into a routine and I might even be some help with the dogs and the horses. It had been proven that kids with a tough past do well with animals.

  Ivan Melvick said no.

  So he must have been well chuffed when I rolled up anyway, the heroine who saved his daughter. Not.

  Megan

  I spent a fair while down at the Benbrae, on my own, sitting on the bench at the mosaic and watching the cars leave the house. The mourners were all going home. I strolled back up, released Molly from the stables and let her run around the home field. I sat on the fence as more people came out the front door of the house, shaking hands with Dad, leaving him alone on the step as they drove off. I was surprised to see Jago’s parents go off in a local taxi back to the airport and then Jago himself, leaving, shaking hands with his father-in-law, climbing into his Jag and away.

  My dad looked very small and alone, standing in the big double doors of the house. Then Heather appeared behind him.

  I waited for a while, until I was sure they were all gone, no cars left on the gravelled forecourt. Then I saw Dad leave, walking down the Long Drive and felt it was time for me to see what was left of the buffet.

  I ran straight into Heather, standing at the bottom of the stairs in the great hall, looking up at Agatha, straightening her black skirt, and patting her hair. She was tilting her head, trying to pose like Agatha. I think she might have been looking for hints for being a Melvick, pulling faces and practising the insincerity.

  ‘I think she would have approved of it today. Quiet, tasteful. All very tasteful. The women’s guild did us very proud.’

  Us?

  ‘Is there any food left?’

  ‘Deborah is seeing to that in the kitchen. Megan?’ she said, linking arms with me. ‘Your dad and I were just saying that it’s all going to come down to you. I noticed at the service how beautiful that necklace looks sitting around your neck, like it belongs.’

  ‘Does it?’

  ‘It does. You’re the only child, you will be the one to inherit.’

  ‘I’d rather they were all here to share it with me. And Mum is not dead. She’s still married to Dad. It will take seven years, legally.’

  ‘Three years have already passed. Drew mentioned that.’

  ‘Did he really?’ That needled me. Why had this man become some kind of magi?

  ‘But you won’t leave here, will you? Your dad wants you to stay.’ Heather tilted her head to the side the way Molly does when she wants the crusts of the toast, as she was a greedy little madam, and I was thinking that she wasn’t the only one around. Heather was standing there, her lovely legs crossed at the ankle, looking every bit like the lady of the manor. In a minute she’d be asking if my dad was in good health and if he was well-insured.

  I knew the answer to the last question would be yes. I wasn’t so sure about the former. I wasn’t even sure if he’d changed his power of attorney after Mum disappeared.

  ‘He’s so broke up about your mother not coming back for the funeral. I wonder if it’s now time to break free from that.’

  ‘Do you want him to start divorce proceedings now?’ I shook my head. ‘The week his daughter died?’

  ‘Sorry.’ She took my hand in both of hers, despite the heat of the day her skin was dry and cool, like snakeskin. ‘I didn’t mean that. What I meant was, do you think he’ll be able to break free of Beth now?’

  ‘Mum got out of bed that morning, took off her engagement ring and her wedding ring, and this.’ I held up the necklace. ‘This is what the current Mrs Melvick is supposed to wear and off she trotted. That’s a pretty clear sign to the family. She rejected us. I think she had somewhere to go. And she has gone there. And stayed.’

  ‘Do you really think she would do that? To you, to Ivan?’

  ‘It’s not what I think. It’s what she did. Melissa was married and away, I was turning seventeen, she felt she’d done her bit. She was miserable here.’

  ‘Why do you …?’ Then she stopped, and there it was again that little lie. The evasion that everybody thought I wouldn’t notice. ‘Are you going to stay around this afternoon? I don’t think he should be on his own. He has some people to see later, he didn’t say who.’

  ‘Yes, of course, I’ll be here.’ Was she hinting that these ‘people’ might upset him? Had she already noticed something not right about him, or did she put it down to the strain of the day.

  ‘Well, I will go then.’ She went up on her tiptoes and kissed me on the cheek.

  ‘Bye,’ I muttered, ‘don’t hurry back.’

  They arrived about six o’clock. Two men. Walking around, men on the outside of the estate, I saw them take Dad to o
ne side, have a few quiet words, a nod then they would part, Dad walking back to the house and the men back down to the gate and to continue their circuit.

  I asked him what was going on but he said it was nothing to worry about but there was such a crease of concern over his forehead it was obvious that there was plenty to worry about.

  They did underestimate me, I had already gone into the study and looked in Dad’s desk diary. It was written there in fountain pen with his precise italic hand. He really did believe that people lived to his standards, not reading other folks’ diaries was one of them.

  He was having the estate valued.

  Valued.

  I know, he was distracted after the funeral. He had been in mourning before, but now he was worried. Something had happened and he wasn’t telling me.

  I watched as he turned away from the men. He stood for a long, long moment, looking up at the house then down to the Benbrae, staring at the sky as if the rooks were offering the answers to all the questions he had never asked.

  Or totting it up in his head.

  Then he seemed to come to some conclusion and began the walk back up the Long Drive, his shoulders down, walking reluctantly, as if he was walking back to a situation he would rather avoid.

  I was going to hide back up in the bedroom but then, too restless, I strolled round the house, looking at the familiar, resenting the changes. Everybody had gone home. Deb to her lodge house, the dogs to their beds, even Heather had buggered off.

  Dad had disappeared too. Off hiding in the study with a bottle of malt and a glass. He said goodnight to me, clasping my upper arms, kissing me on the forehead and said, ‘Do you know where my car keys are? I know I left them in my study.’

  ‘They will turn up, it’s been an awful day. Use the spare set.’

  ‘They were the spare set. I have already mislaid the other ones.’

  ‘What did you want them for? You’ve had a drink?’

  ‘Just in case.’

  ‘I’m sure they will turn up.’

  He rubbed his chin. ‘I was sure I had them in my hand this morning.’

  ‘I’ll keep my eye out for them. It’s been a very long day.’