by Caro Ramsay
‘No.’
They both turned to stare.
‘Would somebody please tell me what the big secret is? I’m finding it more than a little disconcerting, you seem to know why I am deaf and nobody has told me. I think I should know, I have that right.’
Donald Scobie looked at Dad, then said, ‘She’s going to find out sooner or later,’ he said with a shrug.
My dad looked very uncomfortable.
‘OK.’ He breathed out a long sigh. ‘Does it have to be now?’
‘Yes,’ I said, knowing I was taking advantage of his weakness.
‘It will clear the air,’ said the doctor and walked out, patting my dad on the shoulder, as he went past, like he was the one about to get the bad news.
Dad slowly stood up and moved to the unlit fire. This was his ‘listen because I am going to say something important pose’, and we had to pay attention when he did this, when I say ‘we’ I mean me. There was only me.
‘Your mother was never inoculated against rubella when she was small and when she was pregnant with you, Melissa wasn’t well but she was desperate to go to a pony club event. Nanny Brooke was going to take her and the pony. Melissa was running a fever – there had been an outbreak of German measles at the school – so naturally your mum kept out of her way.
‘But Melissa was young she wanted to take Morse and he was a bad-tempered little beast who really only liked your mum, so Melissa pestered and pestered. In the end, she had a full-blown tantrum and Beth ended up relenting, going to the pony club show with Melissa and Morse in the horse box. He behaved like an angel, she got first place.’
Dad closed his eyes slowly, a lowering of emotion, ready to come up with a well thought out argument. He placed both his hands over his face, pulling them down; the face that emerged was quite different; ashamed. ‘You know, Megan, we didn’t notice. We never noticed you were hard of hearing. Beth was well during the pregnancy. When you were born you were such a beautiful wee thing, you were so perfect. And you grew up to be obstinate and defiant and everything that a toddler should be, we shouted and you kept running in the opposite direction.
‘You would fool people very easily, you’d turn when people walked in the door but the rest of the time you’d switch off. Eventually, we took you to specialist. Do you remember going to Harley Street in London?’
‘I remember the doctor with the hairy hands, he had a light strapped onto his forehead. I thought he was a miner.’
‘They scanned you. You had every test under the sun. But Megan, you are my daughter, I think you are wonderful. I really don’t care what he thought or what you scored on this chart or that chart and that it was a different score to the previous Wednesday. We had you tested, there was nothing that we could do to help, and no operation was going to fix the problem. We bought you the most sophisticated hearing aids that money could buy and …’
‘I stood on them.’
‘Indeed, the next advice was to use the cheapest. You were young, of course you would break them, you would have tantrums and kick against it all but one day you would want to walk into a hearing world. I don’t think that day has ever come. Has it?’
‘Not really. I hate the hearing world.’
‘You were so quiet. After the whirlwind of Melissa I thought you were a God-send quite frankly.’ He bit his lip. ‘That specialist had told us to watch out for other signs of any mental instability.’ There was a long pause. ‘Then you set Dan Miller’s bed on fire. We all did our best. Donald Scobie did his best but I think we all realize now what a mistake that was.’
TWENTY-ONE
Sunday
Megan
Another day, another quiet breakfast in the kitchen with Molly. Now I was back up in the bedroom, trying not to think. It had been a difficult night.
It was, in a sad way, very funny.
So my sister and my mother were the reason I was deaf. Mum had tried her best, but Melissa, well, she should have taken a telling. Or was it all Mum’s fault, she had been the responsible one? Melissa had been five years old. Had I been a constant reminder to Mum of her shortcomings as a mother? A constant reminder to my sister what a selfish bitch she was?
Sorry.
It was dark today. It looked as though the weather was about to break, huge black clouds rolled on the horizon, advancing their way up the river; pushed on by an ever-rising wind. The air became very close, rain was not far away. It was as if this was the day that everything was going to change.
I felt nervous, scared of something but not sure where the danger was coming from.
And thinking about Carla, more familiar territory to fret over. The only person who had ever asked me what it was like to be deaf.
I doubt many people know what deafness is like, and I didn’t count myself among them. I know I have some hearing, I am not that delusional.
It was what it was.
The rain was starting to hit against the glass, I could see the rooks flying quickly for the Tentor Wood like they had been caught out in the rain. I watched them, looking down at the Benbrae and thinking of the hot summer days that seemed to inhabit our youth, watching the fish jump, tickling the trout as the sun flickered through the overhanging branches of the willows. We had been out on the Curlew, both of us had been leaning over the same side of the squat little rowing boat. The boat tipped us silently but gently into the bitter cold water, another way to cool down on that long hot summer day.
I told Carla that the easiest way to become deaf was to stick your head underwater and listen. So she dropped like a stone. The water swirled over her head, her hair, short blonde this time, floated out underneath the surface, an anemone of straw. I saw her eyes, mascaraed and fragmented, crystals of light dancing around them on the surface. She drew her knees up to her chin and she opened her eyes wide, then sank down further, I saw a trickle of bubbles escape from her lips. She was twisting, treading water, spinning, enjoying her deafness.
It’s a very arrogant thing to think the deaf want to hear.
I can walk into a coffee shop to read a book and the distractions are minimal. I am where the book takes me, I don’t need to suffer chattering people, mobile phones bleeping, young kids being spoken to loudly by their parents so the entire place knew that Findlay or George was a true genius and the constant, irritating clattering of fingers over a keyboard because the cafe had quick and free Wi-Fi for two hours if you bought a coffee. The noise of feet on the floor, the toilet door slamming open and closed, the screech of chairs being dragged across the tiled floor. People coming back and forth, do you want milk on the side or in the cup, so you want it hot or cold, cheese melted or not and more screaming of children as their buggies were clattered closed or wrenched open. For all that time I was in the novel.
I had no need for noise and nonsense. People talk far too much, and very few ever say anything of consequence. I decided to live a quieter life, but one that is fuller.
Hearing loss is a very different thing, a very different thing to never having had it. Or choosing not to have it. People listen to you talking so they know when they can start talking, they do not actually listen to what you have to say.
As humans we are despicable, we hear better with words of hate than we do with words of love so we are better not to hear at all.
Oh yes, people should talk less and listen more, especially Carla who always had too much to say for herself.
But now, for one of the few times in my life, I needed somebody to talk to.
I texted Drew and asked him if he was free.
Had I sensed it in the air? Did I know I needed help?
Again he appeared very quickly, this time his car drove up to the front door. I was upstairs at the paladin window, waiting for him and watching the weather as the skies darkened to indigo, the rain was staring to pour out in a constant stream. I hoped he was on my side, I wanted somebody to be. I can’t trust my own memory. I can’t trust my own family. I can’t trust my memory of the night Carla die
d. I knew that I hadn’t hurt her, I could never have done that, but those who knew me were not that sure.
I saw Drew come up the drive then Deborah brought him up the stairs chattering about the parched earth and how good this downpour would be. She asked us if we wanted anything to drink. Then trotted off downstairs leaving us under the eye of Agatha Emmaline.
Drew sat on the opposite chair.
I told him what my dad had said. ‘Yes, seemingly my sister’s need to run up and down a field on a fat little pony dropping potatoes into buckets was more important than the health of her unborn child.’
Drew nodded, slowly. ‘I have heard that rumour. From my uncle. Did Melissa have German Measles?’
‘She had been off school all week. But she really wanted to go to the pony club on Saturday. Mum knew she was pregnant with me. But it didn’t stop her.’
‘I’m sure she regretted it, people make these decisions all the time thinking that they will get away with it. We do it every time we drive a car or get in a plane.’
I stared at him. ‘No, she should not have gone near Melissa until it was safe. It’s not as if we didn’t have staff that could have taken Melissa to the club, but no, Mum wanted to go.’
‘I still say she regretted it for every day of her life. I can see Melissa being that insistent. And’ – he put his hand on my elbow gently – ‘do you think that had something to do with the way she viewed her own life? She was very hard on herself. Maybe it wasn’t easy for her.’ He sighed. ‘Was it ever spoken about?’
‘Not to me it wasn’t. But from what you’ve said, the whole bloody village knew. Everybody but me.’
‘I was talking to an audiologist after a case I worked on, a woman was struck deaf by shock, and there is sometimes such a thing as psychological deafness, brought on when there is a huge stress to the system, mentally or physically, to somebody in their formative years. You can be struck deaf just as much as you can be struck dumb, but the former is not as obvious, so who knows?’
‘Not in my case, nothing as exciting as that, there was just that wee infection, that nasty wee virus, and a sister and mother who really loved their ponies. I guess I was unlucky.’
‘I was thinking, about Carla. Reading the file after yesterday. When she had turned into the girl you needed her to be, she was the one who spoke out when you were too polite to. She said no. Did your family think you killed her because she was somebody you wanted rid of, you had found your voice as all teenagers do? Or did your sister kill her because she was getting too close to you and “the family”? Or because she had slept with Jago on the day before the wedding?’
I stared at him.
‘We do have a file on all this.’
‘Sleeping with the hired help?’ I muttered, wondering how much he knew.
‘Weird you should say that. I mean, for a Melvick, what is worse than sleeping with the hired help? Sleeping with the groom on his wedding day?’
So he knew. ‘Do you really think we are monsters?’
‘No, I think you are human beings, but I worried about Jago’s morality in that, you were only fifteen.’
‘Dad’s sleeping with Heather.’
‘Is he? Is he really?’ Drew sounded very surprised then changed the subject slightly. ‘Your family’s got where they are by killing people, never forget that, Megan. This land you have is from the backs of slaves and the tobacco trade. Have you ever read the real version of your family history, where the money really came from?’
‘Why do you hate me so much?’
‘I don’t bloody hate you, I am pointing out the obvious. I don’t think Carla died by accident.’
‘According to you they should have formed a queue.’
‘In the file are a few pictures of you two, when you were younger, you and Carla. You were starting to morph into the same person. I really thought how easily you two had drifted into the ying and the yang, night and day, the streetwise and the intellectual, the locked in and the locked out.’
I looked out the window, back to the Curlew now bobbing on waves in the Benbrae, the rain was stabbing at the window. The rooks low over the water. ‘She saved me in the end, she saved me.’
‘She saved you from trouble that you wouldn’t have got into if it hadn’t been for her in the first place. That’s what your dad thinks.’
‘Does he?’
‘My uncle got quite close to your dad, over the years after the wedding. He thought your parents were good parents, attentive, wanted the best for you.’
‘I suppose that’s true but they wanted what they thought was best for us not what we wanted.’
My heart started to pound in my chest, I was being led down a road that I didn’t want to go down.
Carla
I think Drew is onto something here. What is that phrase about the suitable lie, the convenient truth. I’m sure if the Melvicks wanted to believe the real truth, they would have asked themselves why Megan could speak so well, and read so well, if she had suffered from hearing difficulties from the moment she was born. It was a question the specialists asked often enough. And here’s a new boy on the scene talking about a form of deafness that is brought on by a big fright.
And the Melvicks removed her from treatment.
So what were they scared of?
And that got me thinking, of the Megan I knew, the girl who never went beyond the island on the Benbrae. Why was that? She was brave in many things. We did so much shit together but that was one thing she would never do.
What was down the other end of the Benbrae that scared her so much? Where the willows hung low and the branches of the oak fell down to kiss the surface of the dark water. No sun ever shone there. It stank of fermenting grass and death, the silence was stifling and the freshening breeze that fluttered over the open parts of the pond, never penetrated the Tentor Wood.
Silent. It was the quietest part of the whole estate, no path went there, there were no seats on the overgrown bank. It was a wild, lonely place.
Exactly the sort of place that Megan should have liked.
So why didn’t she?
Megan
Drew wanted some fresh air, which I took to mean he wanted out the house and I hoped meant that he didn’t want away from me. He suggested a walk, in the rain, he had his waterproofs in the car. And we should take the dogs. I think he liked dogs and didn’t have one in his life at the moment.
We had started by taking Anastasia and Molly out for a walk, but the rain had the wee dog scurrying back inside the minute I had my wellies on. Molly was made of sterner stuff.
We pulled our hoods high over our heads, the noise of the rain made any conversation impossible. The ground was covered in puddles, deep puddles. The deluge of rain was lying on top of the ground, the earth too dry and parched to absorb it. It might as well have been raining on concrete. But as we neared the Long Drive, I noticed that the world had changed. I did stop, look, then look again.
Then I pointed.
The Benbrae had gone. The water had emptied out. I ran down, feeling the panic rise and the tears fall. There was a huge void, a basin of stones and sludge, the side bank of the Benbrae nearest the loch had opened into a sucking, squelching bubbling hole. An underground channel had drained out, the lie of the lay had drained the water down to the loch. The ledge overhung, creating a lip, and the earth has been eaten away over the years, the grass at the top, clumped and sunburned, a verdant base where the water gave nutrition and sustenance to the soil.
Gone.
The Benbrae was empty, dead fish and mud banks of green algae and weeds. And the powan.
It would break Dad’s heart. The ground was wet after the onslaught and below, there was the breach in the bank wall, and I guessed, it went all the way to the Holy Loch, the high tide has pushed in, the ebb had drained us of everything. There were some fish, flipping and flapping, in small pools trying to stay alive. I couldn’t stop crying, this could not be happening. The island, dull and pathetic, wilted in
the middle of the mud making a wee brick wall protecting it from nothing. It looked old and arthritic.
And there, in the middle was the Curlew, reduced to a sculpture of skeletal charred ribs, a black fish dead, her side exposed, brown algae furring the solid parts of her underside. She looked fat and ugly, not the graceful little boat she was on the surface. Curlew 2 had beached near the pontoon, on her side, like she was drunk or a turtle that couldn’t right itself.
I realized Drew was moving, towards the boathouse and the hose which he unwound from its reel and turned the tap on, unravelling it as fast as the water was moving. He handed it to me and I stood on the narrow pier spraying out a weak jet of water, easing the situation, not very effectively, but better than nothing. It eased my pain. The sandbags at the top of the bank to protect the road were too heavy to move in their sodden state.
Sobbing, I played the hose into the little pools giving the fish some cover from the birds that were already gathering in the trees, waiting for the rain to cease. I felt I had to save the little fish, tears and snotters blinding me as I slid and fell trying not to let go of the hose as it writhed away in the opposite direction and twisted around, like a demented cobra. I tried to hold onto it with one hand, then secured it with the fold of my arm as I searched about for my mobile phone. We needed help. We needed Dad or Debs or even bloody Heather if she could be bothered dirtying her designer wellies.
Dirty.
Dad would be so upset if he saw this. Suicidally upset.
I fell again, sobbing my heart out this time. It had all gone so wrong, Carla had gone, then Mum, then Melissa and now the Benbrae. We were cursed, the hose jerked and I fell, lying on my front in the soft mud, looking at the angry sky.
‘Megan?’ I heard the shout. ‘Megan, stand up you stupid bitch or you will drown.’
He was an unlikely guardian angel, but I was in no position to argue.
I couldn’t get to my feet, every time I tried I fell down again my feet slipping in the stinking, sticking, treacherous mud. The mud swallowed my wellies, sucking them from me, then suddenly a sandbag was beside me and Drew was holding out his hand.