Mosaic

by Caro Ramsay

  ‘Really?’ I was almost laughing.

  ‘You might not want to hear the rest.’

  ‘You’ve started now.’

  ‘You know how most people think, wrongly, that schizophrenia is multiple personalities living in one’s head?’

  ‘I am not schizophrenic, Dr Scobie says so. It’s DID. That can come from childhood trauma. When you started talking there I thought that was what you were going to say, I got my DID in the Tentor Wood. Maybe my hysterical deafness as well. Who cares? It is what it is and it is in the past.’

  Drew was not to be put off. ‘Dr Donald Scobie? He’s a good friend of your dad’s. All he did was keep an eye on you and turn up at any time you got yourself into trouble. He played the mental illness diagnosis and you got a get out of jail free card. That was one of the perks of being a Melvick, but I’m not sure how much good that did you. Maybe your dad was worried that if Melissa had moved beyond all medical help then maybe keeping a close eye on you might work better. So no, you are not schizophrenic, schizoids suffer a breakdown of the solid state personality that one person should have, the default setting if you will.’

  I found a piece of green stalk and handed it to him. ‘I am following you so far.’

  He laid the piece down, it didn’t fit. ‘The solid state hard drive is the normal state of being. The computer model is a useful way of explaining it, the hard drive runs off the most obvious and observable programme but sometimes …’ He looked at me, then went back to the jigsaw on the ground. ‘Sometimes there is another programme running in the background while the main programme, our personality, deals with the important issues of the day. The other is in the background, co-existing, often in a role that differs from that of the main personality, controlling certain aspects. But usually the main personality continues to do what it has always done, totally unaware of the other personality hobby horsing on it. But if that person lets their guard down or when the main programme is set to hibernate, the other personality comes out to play.’ He placed a piece of stalk under the green, a tile of yellow and blue marked the start of the sky. He kept talking, his fingers working, feeling their way over the scattered remnants.

  ‘Rogue personality, the second personality – the mosaic personality, if you will – has scattered actions, spots there and here, seemingly at random in such a way that the whole picture cannot be seen. It’s only when the entire is seen from a distance that we see which personality is in control at any time, and that is why’ – he tilted his head, taking a different view of the sunflower – ‘that it is why it’s called the mosaic personality disorder.’

  ‘It kind of fits,’ is all I could say, my eyes fixed on the sunflower jigsaw, how small the pieces were, how big the picture. ‘We loved our sunflowers …’

  ‘It fits exactly, you had one personality hidden in behind yours, and I think you can guess what that was. Whose that was?’

  I thought of the night Jago had accused me of trying to sleep with him, of the night Debs was scratched on the face. ‘Carla?’

  ‘Yes of course, Carla.’ He waited a while for that to sink in. ‘I have been reading that file. You and Carla were together for some very difficult years. And she died. You witnessed that. She was burned alive in front of you and at some point along the way, some of that slipped into your psyche. You wanted to find out who did it to her. She wanted you to find out who did that to her. Yet you knew, you had been told often enough that she might not have been the intended victim, it might have been you. The guilt of that was not an easy burden to bear.’

  I nodded, seeing a big piece of sky and a cloud. I handed it to him, our fingers touched for a moment.

  ‘I think it’s fair to say that Carla was many things that you are not.’

  ‘That is true, so true.’

  ‘So there can be a degree of unity, if you will, you know when the two characters come together, each uses the strength of the other.’

  ‘It completes the picture.’

  ‘Indeed.’

  ‘Except I think I would have known if that was going on, I was—’

  ‘Oh you were totally aware of what you were doing in daylight hours, but what about at night, or when you were overtired, or drugged, or lying down during the day thinking about Melissa or lying out here in the Benbrae. Those times you said to me that you liked to relax and let time drift. Those times when you nipped along to Jago’s room, hitting Debs on the head, what was all that about? All those times you were lying to yourself.’ But he was smiling. ‘Well there’s nothing like another voice in your head for breeding a sense of paranoia.’

  I pulled my cardigan round me, watching the Curlew 2 on the water, floating, tugging on her mooring, a trout jumped, a flash of white and a splash, then nothing, gone before you saw it. More than a chill hung in the air, I felt death crawl over my soul. I felt Carla. ‘She loved it here.’

  ‘Why would anybody not love it here? She was born in a shithouse over in Dunoon somewhere. Of course she loved it here and she loved you, she made you strong and you made her stable, I bet you have never really felt that she left you at all.’

  ‘Not until recently, very recently, I feel she has gone now.’

  ‘Dr Scobie said that when you came here you spoke of her in the present tense. In your head, she is still very much alive.’

  ‘When I came back, it was as if I was coming home and that Carla would still be here. And I was looking forward to it.’

  Drew dropped his voice. ‘Yet you didn’t feel that way about Melissa?’

  ‘No. She was … well, Melissa was always somewhere else, so there was no point in missing her when she was gone, was there?’

  ‘Dr Scobie thinks that if you go into a clinic, for a period of time, away from us and this place, then you can have treatment. You can get rid of Carla. He thinks that will make you well. According to him, she has to go.’

  I smiled, holding the shard of tile in my hand. I felt the sharp edge on the skin of my thumb, a sharp cutting edge.

  Drew suddenly stood up, facing me. ‘Carla has to learn the world is not against her.’ He took the tile and placed it on the ground. ‘She is still very much part of the picture. Don’t let her forget that, Megan. Never let her forget that.’

  Carla

  My memories of this grand house and the people who live here are as strong as the colour in the Munnings in the study. Even though I was only ever a fleeting visitor, a voyeur on the Melvicks, I can sense every aspect of those memories. Overall, good times, the happiest and safest of my life and I am never going to leave. I can scent the pine in the air, the breath of the breeze on my cheek, the brackish water that I can still taste on my tongue. The sweet smell of the ponies’ coats, the hay, the constant pitter patter of a dog two feet behind me. And the feel of the Curlew under my back, her soft warm wood that smelled vaguely of varnish, mahogany and sea water. And her movement, the gentle nudge nudge of the waves on the Benbrae when the wind got up.

  I’m glad to be here.

  EPILOGUE

  By the following month the Benbrae had filled itself of water and Curlew 2 was back, bobbing around where and when she pleased, nobody had bothered tethering her to the side anymore as the boathouse and the pontoon had become totally useless. Getting wet to go out and get a boat was neither here nor there, so we left her as she was, free to float.

  Deborah was held in custody awaiting trial. She was mounting some kind of defence based on all the abuse she had suffered at the hands of men. And I suppose some of that may be true but as Carla had said, many a time, Deborah made her decisions and she chose her men. How could one person create so much havoc in one family, before easing her way into the house and the life of a man of substance and morality? Was that what Deborah really wanted all along? I had told Dad that the Melvicks were going to stand up for their duty properly as the law dictated.

  Dad looked at me as if I was a little mad. ‘Do you not think I know how to conduct myself in public?’

  Debo
rah said that Dad was abusing her. Heather came to Dad’s defence on that one. Then Deborah had changed her story and said that Dad had abused Melissa. She really was a first-class liar with a scattergun approach, dirt doesn’t stick though, not to my father. I think he had no idea how other people wanted, expected him, to behave and what we needed to do right now as a family. And I think he was surprised that I did know.

  There had been a change of responsibility. He was no longer the man in the charge, the man with all the answers. He had taken to asking me my opinion, and listening to my answers. He had crumpled, and it had been very public. It was about to get worse with the court case, Deborah had already said publicly that she was going to reveal all about the goings on in the big house, and that had caused a minor flurry of interest in the press, but we had already been picked clean and there was nothing more to discover. I was Dad’s rock now, and the Italian House was slowly closing its doors, building its wall around us. With this imprisonment, we had protection against the outside world and the circling wolves.

  And Heather surprised me. I thought she would hang around, show my dad some of the friendship that she had shown my mother, but I was wrong. I should have trusted my first impressions. Heather dropped us like the proverbial hot stone and trotted off to her yoga class to tell her stories of her narrow escape from the hands of a serial killer while staying at the Italian House. She did turn up at the funeral, as my dad buried my mother, her best friend. Dad kissed her on the cheek, and gave her her place as the close family friend. He did the right thing. She had dabbed at her eye and made the most of her hostess duties at the funeral, in a very good suit and lots of make-up, then she quickly seems to have decided that my dad was too old for her and she buggered off to another gym class.

  I could only think of how much Carla would have enjoyed smacking her right in the face.

  After Mum’s funeral, I sat on the front terrace with Drew, drinking a cup of tea and thinking about nothing. The house stood empty behind us, casting its shadow. But we had walked down to the Benbrae that morning, he had taken my hand and pointed out that the pond was filling up with water again. Some of the fish had survived, Curlew 2 was a bit warped, the mosaic was being repaired, a monument to two people now. And the sun had focussed its rays on the far end of the Benbrae, the end under the Tentor Wood. It looked magical and inviting now.

  I’d leave the faeries to their mischief.

  And Carla is here.