The Sweetest Poison

by Jane Renshaw

  And Suzanne didn’t even like Wagon Wheels.

  She’d probably have ended up in a youth detention centre or something if her social worker hadn’t wangled her a place on a childcare course in Glasgow, and she’d surprised everyone by coming top of the class, and getting rave reports from the instructors; and if the Laird hadn’t offered her a job as Stinker’s nanny.

  It’s been the making of her, Auntie Ina said.

  And Helen supposed it had. But these last few days she’d really wished she could have the old Suzanne back: the Suzanne who used to laugh off Hector’s ‘reputation’ and say bad boys were more fun, who’d got a kick out of the lies and subterfuge and egged Helen on rather than channelling the voice of doom.

  A couple of days ago it’d all come to a head. They’d been bathing Stinker. Helen had been wrestling with him for the sponge, which he’d been sucking the water out of as usual, when Suzanne had said:

  ‘Don’t you think it’s a bit suss, that it has to be this big secret?’

  ‘What?’ Although Helen knew fine.

  ‘You and Hector writing to each other.’ Suzanne reached past her to yank the sponge away from Stinker. ‘Yes,’ she told him. ‘It’s your brother we’re talking about.’

  Stinker beamed at her, and held out his hands for the sponge.

  ‘It’s because of the Laird,’ said Helen.

  ‘Na!’ said Stinker.

  Suzanne picked up the wooden turtle from the side of the bath and started to wind it up. Stinker bounced in anticipation. But when Suzanne put the turtle in the water and let go, he didn’t shriek and splash, he just stared as it churned through the water towards him, flippers whirring. Only when it got within grabbing distance did he react, but he didn’t grab – he put his hand down into the water and let the turtle butt up against it. Then he took his hand away and the turtle moved forward again and nosed up against his fat little tummy. He laughed as the turtle butted and butted him.

  Until it ran down and stopped. Then he looked up at Suzanne.

  She lifted the turtle back out. ‘But why doesn’t he ever call you, or let you call him?’

  ‘They’re not allowed to give out their phone numbers for the same reason they can’t give out addresses, and have to use a PO box – it would give away where they are.’

  ‘Even James Bond gets to use a telephone.’ She started to wind the turtle.

  ‘He can’t phone me in case Mum answers.’

  ‘So what if she did?’

  ‘Because then Mum might tell people, and the Laird might hear about it.’

  ‘It. What’s it anyway? You’re penpals. He’s never even kissed you.’

  ‘I can’t explain it to you.’

  ‘Because a little slapper like me wouldn’t understand true love?’

  ‘Because you don’t understand about Hector. About the kind of person he is.’

  ‘Like you do?’

  ‘Na na na,’ said Stinker.

  ‘Yes, I do.’ She could feel her face going red. ‘I love him. I’ve always loved him. Even when I thought there was no way he’d ever be interested in me... I didn’t want anyone else. I never will want anyone else.’

  ‘Oh God, Helen.’

  ‘That sounds really soppy. I’m not explaining it properly.’

  ‘I do know what it’s like to be in love with someone. But – Hector – You think he’s some kind of saint, but he’s not.’

  ‘I know he’s not.’

  ‘You don’t know anything! You don’t know anything about him.’

  ‘It’s not like Rob’s a saint either, however much he tries to make out he is.’

  ‘Awow wow wow,’ said Stinker.

  ‘God!’ And Suzanne was suddenly fierce, telling Stinker to ‘Just shut up’ and rounding on her: ‘You’re such a bairnie, Helen. A lamb to the slaughter.’

  ‘No I’m not.’

  Stinker splashed both hands down on the water.

  Suzanne stood. ‘Right, that’s it, you’re coming out.’

  Stinker had started to girn as Suzanne grabbed him under the arms, and Helen had got the towel, a big soft white one, and wrapped it round Stinker’s slippery, writhing little body. Hector’s own little brother. She’d hugged him close, and looked over his head at Suzanne, and said, ‘Why can’t you be pleased for me?’

  Suzanne had given her a queer little twisted smile, like one of Mum’s when she was trying not to cry, but in Suzanne’s case Helen was pretty sure it wasn’t tears she was holding back. Then she’d reached into the bath and pulled out the plug, and as the water gurgled away she’d muttered, ‘I don’t want you getting hurt.’

  As if Hector would ever hurt her.

  She fastened the belt on the black dress.

  What was he thinking, right now? Had someone told him she’d arrived? Was he scanning the room, adjusting his tie, rehearsing what he’d say to her?

  In the kitchen, Suzanne had Stinker on her knee and was putting mush in his mouth. Lorna was chopping carrots. Irina was fussing with the vol au vents and going on about her parents. Helen wanted to run past them all and up the stairs and run through all the rooms of the house until she found him.

  She walked to the table and smiled at Stinker.

  ‘They’re Russian Orthodox,’ Irina was saying. ‘That means they’re practically Catholics. They think it’s outrageous to wait over six months between the birth and the christening.’

  Mrs MacIver said, without looking at Irina, ‘Forbes babies are aye baptised on the closest Sunday to Midsummer’s Day. But a year like this, with Midsummer’s Day falling on the Sunday itself – that’s special.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘It means the childie will be blessed. That no evil will come to him.’

  Irina hooted. ‘Wait till my mother hears that. She’s convinced there’s some dark Celtic ritual at the bottom of it all.’

  Mrs MacIver pursed her lips.

  ‘Bacchanalian orgies. Naked dancing round bonfires. I wish... Oh God, no I don’t. What am I saying? Joseph Begg and Billy Duncan naked? Just shoot me now!’

  Mrs MacIver’s lips tightened so much they disappeared.

  ‘Is this part of the country endemic for some sort of revolting medical condition that makes old men’s arses balloon sideways to fill those huge trousers they all wear? Like elephantiasis, but just their arses?’

  ‘Elephant-arse-is,’ spluttered Suzanne.

  Mrs MacIver grabbed the platter of vol au vents from under Irina’s nose and pushed it at Helen. ‘Take these up.’

  Irina grinned at Helen, took the platter from her, and put it back down on the worktop. ‘First things first. You have to give Stinker his present.’

  It was lying on the table. Helen picked it up and made a funny face at Stinker and held it out to him.

  He looked back at her with those blue eyes of his, like he couldn’t look at her enough, like it was a matter of life and death to him to drink in every detail of her. And then he smiled, and held out his hands, fingers opening and closing on air, and Helen put the present between them and felt her whole face smiling back.

  ‘He can’t take the paper off himself,’ said Suzanne. ‘Can he? Can’t do anything for himself.’

  Both his little fists were closed on the paper now, and he was focusing all his attention on it, his head bent over, breathing hard. When Suzanne tried to prise his hands off he just held on all the tighter.

  ‘Give it me.’

  He held on. ‘Ba ba ba ba.’

  ‘Oh for God’s sake.’ Suzanne snatched at the paper, ripping it, exposing the toy underneath. She pulled it free and dumped it down on the table. ‘Something else for you to dribble over.’

  ‘A rhino!’ Irina squealed, snatching it up and making it dance in the air towards Stinker, who opened his mouth in delight, and bounced on Suzanne’s knee, waving his hands towards the toy. As he grabbed it Irina grinned at Helen and said, ‘I told you he’d love it.’ Stinker beamed, and held the rhino out to Irina, but she was
off, clicking away up the stairs, and Stinker was looking after her with the rhino pressed against his mouth.

  ‘These have to go upstairs,’ said Mrs MacIver.

  ‘Oh. Yes. Sorry.’ Helen picked up the platter of vol au vents.

  The stairs were steep and narrow and dark. At the top there was a long passage with a row of cupboards and then a window, and then the back stairs twisting up to the floor above, and beyond the stairs the green baize door that led out into the hall.

  When Helen was half way along the passage, the door opened and the Laird came through.

  ‘Ah. Helen.’

  Oh God.

  She never knew what to say to him. Even when he’d been so nice after Dad died, all she could think of to say was ‘Thank you.’ It was no wonder Hector was terrified of him.

  He was the same age as Uncle Jim but he looked a lot younger. He wasn’t fat. He didn’t have a big beer belly. His face was weather-tanned, like Dad’s had been. He looked like she imagined Hector might in thirty years’ time, only his eyes weren’t brown – they were dark blue-grey, the colour of slate.

  ‘Good of you to help out. What’s this?’ He looked down at the platter.

  She didn’t even know.

  ‘Mrs MacIver’s work?’

  ‘Yes. I’m not sure...’

  ‘We’d need a forensic scientist, I suspect, for a precise identification.’ But he took one and put it in his mouth and raised his eyebrows, and went on past her and down the stairs.

  She breathed out.

  Dad would never hear a bad word about the Laird. He used to say Alec Forbes had been a thran-headed sort of a loon and he was a thran-headed sort of a man, but you wouldn’t find a better landlord in all of Aberdeenshire.

  And maybe that was true.

  After the funeral he’d come back to the house with everyone else, in his beautiful black suit, complete with waistcoat, which had made all the other men’s suits look like they didn’t fit properly. Mum had asked to speak to him and they’d gone out into the garden, and Helen had listened at the door. Mum had started crying. She’d said she and Helen were moving to Edinburgh to live with Auntie Anne (the first Helen knew), but she wanted to wait until the summer, when Helen would have finished school, but then the rent –

  The Laird had said of course he didn’t want any rent for the Parks this half-year or the next. That went without saying. And Mum had said no, she would pay, but it might be a bit late. And then he’d said, ‘Geordie did so much for the Estate, without any thought of recompense. A few months’ rent on the Parks is little enough in exchange.’

  Tears prickled at the back of her nose.

  Someone was coming up the stairs from the kitchen. Very slowly.

  Lorna. With a tray of drinks in tall glasses. The tip of her tongue was visible between her lips, and her legs were bent at the knees, as if the closer she was to the floor the shorter distance the glasses would have to fall.

  ‘Put them down here a minutie,’ Helen suggested.

  Lorna slid the tray onto the windowsill. ‘We should pour them out up here, shouldn’t we? We should bring up the bottles and the cartons and the glasses, and pour them out here.’

  ‘That would make more sense. What’s in them?’

  ‘That’s champagne... and that’s orange juice... and that’s a mixture of the two in the same glass. Want a taste?’

  They finished one between them, leaving the empty glass on the windowsill. Then Lorna bent her knees and picked up the tray, and Helen, balancing the platter on her arm, pulled open the baize door.

  Noise, suddenly. People talking and laughing. Jennifer Gordon, in too much eye make-up, looking at her and saying something to her mum out of the side of her mouth and laughing. Kids chasing each other. The double doors into the dining room on one side of the hall and the big drawing room on the other were opened up, so they had a running track three rooms long.

  A girl came rocketing out of the dining room and banged into Helen and the platter went flying. Vol au vents filled the air. The platter tumbled and bounced once, on its end, on the Persian carpet and then flopped over.

  An ironic cheer went up, and Jennifer shrieked on a laugh: ‘Oh my God!’

  Helen scanned the faces turned towards her.

  None of them was Hector’s.

  ‘Nice one, Iona!’ said Lorna.

  Iona Penney put her hand over her mouth and looked at Helen and said, ‘Sorry!’ through the hand, but Helen could tell from her eyes that she was grinning like mad.

  ‘Right, you can help me pick them up.’

  ‘Can’t. We’re going. My Grandpa’s dead and Mum’s crying.’

  She ran off. Helen gaped at Lorna.

  ‘Willie Duff. Not here; the food’s not that bad. Ten days ago. Lung cancer. Funeral’s tomorrow.’

  Lorna always knew who had died, and where, and how, because of her dad being the minister. She was looking down now at the vol au vent casualties. ‘I’ll come back and help you when I’ve got rid of these.’

  Helen got down on her knees and started putting the vol au vents back on the platter. Through the doors to the drawing room she could see Auntie Ina’s bright green back.

  Where was he?

  As she was reaching for a vol au vent, a graceful foot in a yellow pump came down on top of it and moved on, followed by a feminine leather loafer and a Sloaney voice saying, ‘I know, I know!’

  Steve squatted down next to her. ‘What’s the story?’

  She scraped at the mess on the carpet with a fingernail. ‘I – made a mistake.’ She turned away to deposit the remains on the platter. ‘They meant for me to come as a helper. Not a guest.’

  ‘And here’s me thinking slavery was abolished in the 19th Century.’

  ‘We’re getting paid.’

  He picked up the platter and, before Helen could stop him, stood and tipped its contents into the big urn on the table. ‘Which is more than can be said for the “guests” who’ve been summoned to kowtow. Look at those poor sods.’ He meant Charlie Duncan and his elderly father, standing together by the foot of the main staircase, holding their glasses of champagne as if they weren’t quite sure what to do with them.

  ‘Charlie Duncan was at school with the Laird. And Dad and Uncle Jim.’

  When he was nine years old, Charlie Duncan had set the Laird’s breeks on fire. They’d been striking matches and trying to fart on them.

  ‘Primary school, I mean.’

  ‘I didn’t think you meant Eton.’

  People from towns and cities – they didn’t get it, what living in a place like Pitfourie actually meant. In biology, when Mrs Keith had explained about how plants had to adapt especially well to their environment because they were rooted in the soil and couldn’t move about, Helen had thought of Pitfourie. We’re like plants. We’ve had to adapt ourselves to our environment, to each other, because we’re rooted here, whether we like it or not.

  There’d been Duncans at Boghead for two hundred years.

  She took the empty platter from Steve. And, through the door to the dining room, she saw him.

  8

  He was standing by the table with Fiona. He was wearing a grey suit, a white shirt, and a blue tie.

  He looked different. His shoulders were bigger. His face looked tougher, like the bones in it had got stronger. He looked the way a soldier should. And so handsome.

  But he could be the ugliest person in the world and it wouldn’t matter.

  ‘Hail the conquering hero,’ said Steve. ‘Although I doubt he’s conquered much more than the parade ground at Aldershot.’

  ‘He’s been in Bosnia.’

  Every time anything about Bosnia came on the News her heart started thumping. Once when the newsreader said, ‘A British soldier has been killed in peace-keeping operations in Bosnia,’ everything had gone splotchy and grey, and she’d had to put her head over her knees. ‘Helen? What’s wrong?’ Mum had rubbed her back. ‘What if it’s Hector?’ And Mum had smiled. �
��If it was Hector we’d know by now – there’s no way the BBC’s going to beat Ina to that sort of news.’ And that was true, but Helen had felt shaky and strange and sick all the rest of the day. At night she’d taken the radio to bed to listen to the World Service. And she’d prayed and prayed, Please God, let it not be Hector, until they’d announced the soldier’s name.

  And she’d cried and cried and cried.

  Why would anyone want to be a soldier?

  She wanted to run at him, to hug him so tight, to never let him go back there again. To keep him safe with her forever. Instead she walked away, through the people – Norrie smiled at her, but she didn’t stop – to the back of the hall. She pushed open the baize door and then she was in the cool of the long passage and she was alone.

  For about two seconds.

  ‘Helen.’ Irina’s voice, from the stairs to the first floor; Irina’s sleek blonde head catching the light as she came down into the passage, a white bundle balanced on her hip: Stinker in his christening robe, his face fat and blotchy and sulky, like a little grumpy old man’s.

  ‘I don’t suppose you know where Suzanne’s got to?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘In that case, can you be a darling and take him to meet his public? I have to get ready for church.’

  Her hair was perfect. Her face was perfect. The single row of pearls, the turquoise silk sheath, the long tanned legs, the strappy heels – everything about her was perfect. What was there to get ready? Maybe she meant she had to go to the loo.

  ‘And when you find Suzanne, can you tell her we’re leaving in ten minutes?’

  Helen nodded.

  ‘Where are those lovely smart shoes you had on?’

  ‘I thought these would be more practical. But I’ll change back again for church.’

  ‘Oh sweetie, I’m sorry, but you’ll need to stay and help with lunch and everything. The christening’s going to be utter tedium anyway... But yes please to the lovely shoes!’

  ‘I’ll go and get –’

  ‘But not right now. Can you take him?’