The Sweetest Poison

by Jane Renshaw

  The long robe trailed as Irina lifted Stinker towards her. Helen took him against her left side and he immediately clutched on to her collar, legs clamping round her waist, the robe bumfling up a bit between him and Helen’s hip.

  ‘He’s in a foul mood still.’ Irina bent over him, but then quickly straightened as he belched and some sick came out onto his chin. ‘Eee. Do you have a tissue?’ And she swept back up the stairs.

  Helen didn’t have a tissue. She used a trailing bit of christening robe.

  Stinker looked like he was about to start crying.

  ‘In a foul mood, are you? Hmm?’ And she whispered: ‘My little cushie-doo,’ and kissed him.

  Back in the hall, people crowded round her, bobbing their faces at Stinker and saying, ‘Oh, the craiter.’ One of the Sloane girls said, ‘He’s going to be a proper little heartbreaker. Aren’t you, Mr Gorgeous?’

  Stinker turned his blotchy face against Helen’s neck. She edged down the hall.

  ‘Helen! I was wondering where you’d got to.’ Rob stepped in front of her. ‘Where’ve you been hiding?’

  ‘Nowhere. In the kitchen.’

  ‘No rest for the wicked, eh? Hey hey, little man.’ He bent over Stinker. ‘Ready for your big day? Ready to scream the church down when the nasty man pours water on your head? Yup, I reckon so.’

  Get away from him!

  She forced a smile. ‘He’s only crabby because he’s teething.’

  ‘Tell me about it. I don’t think Suzanne’s had more than four hours’ sleep a night for about three weeks.’ He fingered the big square buckle on his belt, and leant in close. ‘Although that’s not just down to Stinker.’

  She went to move past him, but someone else was blocking her way.

  Someone in a grey suit.

  She looked up.

  Hector smiled at her, and put a brown hand on Stinker’s head. ‘Hello.’

  ‘Hello.’

  His smile got wider. Her heart was hammering at a hundred miles an hour. She felt a bit odd. What if she fainted? What if she dropped Stinker, right in front of him?

  Rob was grinning. ‘Well, I think this –’

  ‘Piss off, Rob.’ Hector didn’t even look at him.

  ‘Well, and it’s nice to see you too Hector.’

  When Rob had moved away, Hector said, ‘I’ve been looking for you. You’ve been helping out downstairs?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Stinker was slipping off her hip. She hitched him back up. He started to girn, and suddenly reached out his hands to Hector.

  ‘Come here then, you little brat.’ Hector lifted him off Helen and swung him up above his head. The christening robe streamed out behind him like he was some sort of superhero baby, and he choked and spluttered and girned all the more.

  A man with a fruity voice said, ‘That’s the way, Hector – if in doubt, apply a bit of centrifugal force.’

  ‘Hasn’t he just been fed?’ said a woman.

  ‘We’ll send you the dry cleaning bills.’

  Irina’s mother was laughing. ‘What’s he doing to you, Shoo-Shoo?’

  Hector was laughing too. ‘Oh God, take him.’

  ‘Come to your old granny.’

  Zenaida wasn’t like any granny Helen had ever seen. She looked like one of those women in black and white films, slender and elegant and beautiful, grey hair swept up into a plain gold clasp with a diamond at the end of it.

  ‘It worked before,’ Hector muttered at Helen. ‘The flying baby thing. Looks like I’ve lost my touch.’

  She loved the way he spoke. When she was little she had thought of his accent as ‘English’ and ‘posh’, but as she’d got older she’d picked up the nuances in it, like how he pronounced ‘r’ in words where English people wouldn’t, and realised that someone like Prince Charles would probably think Hector and the Laird had broad Scottish accents.

  All she could do was smile. Stinker was still whimpering, and Zenaida was jiggling him and walking him about, and people were crowding round her.

  Hector said, ‘I’m so sorry about your father.’

  Helen nodded.

  ‘I’m sorry not to have been here, for the funeral and so on –’

  ‘I didn’t expect you to –’

  ‘Did you get my letter?’

  ‘Yes.’ Silly, to feel shy of him, when he knew more of her innermost thoughts than anyone else here. She smiled. ‘I’ve brought warm clothes.’

  He lifted his eyebrows just like the Laird had.

  But then Rob was back, flicking a look at Hector and saying, ‘You know Helen and Vivienne are leaving the Parks?’

  ‘Yes. I had heard.’ He still didn’t look at Rob.

  ‘In August.’

  ‘We’re going to Edinburgh,’ said Helen. Like he didn’t know the address and phone number and the name of Auntie Anne’s dog. ‘I’ve got a place at University there. To do archaeology.’

  ‘Aha. Archaeology? Pictish kings the length and breadth of Scotland will be trembling in their barrows. Skeletal hands closing convulsively on crumbling treasure chests.’

  She laughed, too loudly.

  Hector cupped his hand under her elbow. ‘If you’ve a couple of minutes to spare – I wonder if you could help me with something?’

  From the place he was touching her, little shivers were going up her arm and down her body. Her throat had closed up. She couldn’t breathe properly. She managed to nod and smile.

  He guided her down a corridor and opened a door and took his hand away, standing back for her to go into the room first.

  It was the Laird’s study. Ancient leather chairs with patched arms; the smell of wood ash and tobacco; dark red walls covered in Victorian and Edwardian photos of estate workers, mainly, posed in rows in front of the house. Somewhere in one of them was her Great-Great-Uncle Willie.

  Hector closed the door and all the noises from the hall were muffled and she heard the tick... tick of the clock on the wall.

  This room probably hadn’t changed since those photos were taken, since Willie was walking past outside with a hoe on his shoulder, and the sound of his whistling was coming in through the open window.

  Hector went past her to the table under the other window, sunlight streaming hot across its shiny dark wood.

  ‘Take a look at this.’

  This was a book, its paper thick and yellowy and rough at the edges. On the right-hand page there was an engraving of a bonfire, with a man standing beside it holding a flaming branch, and, in the dark behind, shadowy figures and faces.

  He lifted the front cover so she could see the title:

  Customs of the North-East

  ‘Midsummer’s Eve rituals. Mr Cranston says that even in the 1940s there were still some farmers who kept a midsummer vigil – staying up all night by the fire, making sure it kept burning through the shortest night. Have you heard of that?’

  Why was he talking about this stuff? Was he worried about his father – that maybe he’d come in and find them together – or was he as nervous as she was?

  He smiled at her. The clock ticked. He was standing very close. She breathed in the scent of him, clean warm skin and the very faint trace of something sharp – not aftershave, but maybe shaving cream? Or soap?

  And at last she could speak. ‘I can’t believe you’re actually here.’

  ‘The ghost at the feast?’ His mouth quirked. ‘No, well, it’s –’

  And then the door opened and Suzanne was puffing, ‘Where’s Stinker?’

  ‘Stinker?’ said Hector.

  ‘Okay: Damian.’

  ‘You call him Stinker?’ Hector frowned at the same moment as Helen said, ‘Zenaida’s got him.’

  ‘Irina calls him Stinker,’ said Suzanne. ‘Surprised he’s not being christened it. God, can you imagine Mr Beattie? “I baptise this child Stinker”!’ She came over to the table. ‘What’s that?’

  Well, Helen had wished for the old Suzanne back, and here she was: eyes bright, face shining, voice h
igher and louder than usual. Helen risked a glance at Hector, but he was looking down at the book, speaking about midsummer rituals again.

  Helen tilted her head towards the door, hoping Suzanne would get the message.

  ‘I’m planning a midsummer vigil of our own,’ Hector was saying, ‘up on the Knock. A bonfire in the stone circle... Bit of a party, basically.’

  ‘Brill!’ said Suzanne.

  ‘And I’m going to need a script.’ He picked up a sheet of paper from the table with a couple of paragraphs on it in his neat, sloping writing. Neater and smaller than in his letters – less uneven. When she wrote to him, she often had to go back with Tippex where her hand had gone wobbly with emotion. It had never even occurred to her that he might have the same problem. She could feel her face burning.

  He was going on: ‘I’ve got the basic superstition side covered – the vigil, the souls of the dead, etc. – but it’s not exactly shivers-up-the-spine stuff. What I need are some “real-life” stories about people who’ve seen ghosts while keeping a vigil, or gone suddenly psycho, or who’ve been found mysteriously dead in the morning...’

  Helen smiled. ‘Or disappeared, never to be seen again.’

  ‘Yep, I knew you were the girl for the job.’

  ‘But – I don’t know of anything like that that’s actually happened.’

  ‘Of course you don’t. It’s all nonsense. But you can come up with something convincing, can’t you? Something suitably gruesome?’

  ‘Well. There was Sandie Milne, at Greenmires. He shot himself.’

  ‘Or did he?’ leered Suzanne.

  ‘Aha.’ Hector was writing on the paper. ‘When was this?’

  ‘In the sixties, I think,’ said Helen. ‘You could say it happened on Midsummer’s Eve. No one’s going to know if it did or not. You could say there was always some doubt about it being suicide because the shotgun was found a bit away from the body... and the fire was out.’

  ‘He always kept the vigil, but on this night he let the fire go out...’

  Helen grinned. ‘And the evil spirits got him.’

  The door opened. The Laird came only half into the room before immediately turning back out again. ‘Hector, we need to get off to the church.’

  ‘Okay, with you in a sec. Just, um, giving Helen the numbers of some people I know in Edinburgh.’

  ‘People?’

  ‘You don’t know them.’

  ‘Mmm. And I don’t imagine Helen will want to either.’ He shut the door.

  Suzanne looked at Hector with owl eyes. ‘So your dad doesn’t know about this party?’

  ‘Best not, I think, for the sake of his blood pressure – and mine, for that matter.’

  ‘Are we invited? And Rob?’

  ‘You and Helen, of course.’ He folded the piece of paper and tucked it inside his suit jacket. ‘On the one condition that you don’t bring Rob.’

  Before Suzanne could say anything to that, the door came open again. Irina this time. ‘Suzanne. Helen. Where is he?’

  ‘Stinker?’ said Suzanne.

  Quickly, before Suzanne could add something like God knows, Helen said, ‘Your mother took him.’

  ‘Okay.’ Irina was studying Suzanne too closely. ‘And what about his things? Come on girls, let’s move. Hector, can you take my parents in your car?’

  ‘Yes, of course.’ As he moved towards the door he looked back at Helen with a smile that seemed casual, careless – until she met his eyes, and felt her face flush all over again.

  The hall was emptying. Car engines were turning over outside, and through the open door Helen could see a convoy heading off up the drive.

  ‘Hey, you know what we should do?’ said Suzanne. ‘Get an eye pencil and write “666” on Stinker. What do you reckon Mr Beattie would do, if he went to pour on the holy water and there was “666” on the kid’s head?’

  Helen pushed open the baize door, her own hysteria rising. ‘The sooner we get some water into you the better.’

  9

  It was a queer feeling, to be with all these people, all the noise they were making, and sit with her back to the fire and look down the steepness of the hill over the tops of the pines and the birks to where the last of the light was streaked across the sky. The dark outlines of the hills stood out against it: Ben Aven and Tom na Creiche, and behind them Monadh Caoin and Morven and Lochnagar.

  This must have been what it was like in the Bronze Age, sitting by the fire with your tribe and looking out at the Simmer Dim. There must have been a clearing here then, too, to put the stone circle in. It was a good place for it – a wide expanse of flat ground above a drop, so the trees down the hill didn’t block your view and you could see straight over their tops to the hills and the sky.

  The air was still and soft and smelt of pine, and the midgies were out, so everyone was clustered round the fire in the middle of the stones. It wouldn’t get properly dark, not tonight, not even at midnight – except under the trees, where the shadows were blackening. There was something eerie about the quality of the light. Eerier than moonlight. The sky wasn’t black but a faded china blue, and the hills, the trees, the grass of the clearing weren’t shades of grey but shadowed versions of their daytime colours. And there was something weird about the way things in the distance had blurred and darkened, but she could see, starkly, the individual blades of grass at her feet; the words on the piece of paper in her hand.

  She turned back to the fire, to the brightness that made everything beyond it recede into black, into how the night should be.

  She’d changed into her jeans and jumper, but she wished she’d known Hector was going to bring some of his own clothes for people to put on. One of the Sloanes was wearing his Aran jersey, Jennifer Gordon had a blue and white Norwegian one, and Fiona had grabbed a waxed jacket.

  They’d left the cars and the Land Rovers on the track and carted all the stuff up the stalkers’ path – the rugs and the bottles and the boxes of food left over from the official party, and the bag of potatoes to roast in the fire. And a can of paraffin, which Norrie had been going on about.

  ‘The ground’s gey dry. If we use that we’ll set the whole place up.’

  ‘Go for it,’ said Suzanne.

  Norrie had given her a quick, wary look, as if he really did think Suzanne was capable of deliberately setting the hillside ablaze.

  She was kneeling now at the fire, arguing with Lorna about the best way to cook the potatoes. Foil, or no foil. Lorna was saying they burnt away to nothing unless you wrapped them in foil, and Suzanne was insisting they tasted better without, naked as God intended.

  Helen closed her fingers on the paper. She’d left her glass in a dip in the ground while she went round the circle looking at the stones, and when she got back she’d found this piece of paper tucked under it, and two lines of Hector’s sloping writing:

  Meet me at the Land Rover – the one I was driving – at the stroke of midnight!

  It would be midnight in an hour.

  When they were alone together, what would happen? Would they just talk, and maybe kiss, or would he want to do it? In the Land Rover?

  She knew she wanted him to touch her. When he’d touched her elbow it’d been like her skin had little wires in it sending the feeling of his hand tingling through her whole body, and she’d wanted him to keep touching her, to move his hand on her skin – But actually having sex... Would he expect her to know what to do?

  Well, she did know what to do. You couldn’t grow up on a farm and not know which bits went where.

  She looked out at the dark hills, out in the direction of the Parks, and thought of her little bed under the eaves. The next time she got under those covers, would she be different? How would it feel, to have done it?

  Everything was changing. Soon some intruder family would be living at the Parks, running water into the kitchen sink, shutting the back door and walking across the yard. And they would probably take out the old doors in the byre that Dad had patc
hed and put new ones in, and paper over all the gouges and cracks in the plaster above her bed – the mark that looked like a dog on his hind legs, and the witch’s face.

  When she came back to visit at the Mains she’d have to see them living there, the intruders, when she should be able to run up the track and into the yard and see Dad leaning on a graip and smiling at her and saying, ‘Well, Hel’nie.’

  She turned back to the fire, and Norrie said, ‘Do you want some of this?’

  He was holding a bottle over her empty glass. She must have drunk all the cider that was in it. She nodded.

  ‘No Rob,’ said Norrie.

  Someone said, ‘Shame.’

  Fiona laughed. ‘What do you reckon the Church of Scotland line is on midnight shenanigans in stone circles? On a Sunday? I’m guessing burn in hell?’

  ‘Not exactly a ticket to heaven, certainly,’ said Steve.

  It was just as well Suzanne had gone round to the other side of the fire and couldn’t hear this. But Helen kept her voice low. ‘Hector told him not to come.’

  Steve poked at the fire. ‘Why, what’s wrong with the guy?’

  ‘Oh, nothing really,’ said Fiona. ‘He can just be a bit... If you’re in a group and Rob’s there, you subtly try not to get landed next to him.’

  Steve chucked a stick into the blaze. ‘Or not so subtly? How do you go about telling someone they’re not welcome at a party because their social skills aren’t up to scratch? What exactly did Hector say to him?’

  ‘ “Piss off you little shit”?’ said Norrie.

  Fiona yelped, and Helen and Norrie grinned at each other.

  Everyone looked like they were in an Old Master painting, the firelight flaring on Helen’s glass, Tom Strachan’s hands taking something from one of the boxes, a beautiful girl’s face, Fiona’s face as she leant forward over the fire.

  ‘Midsummer’s Eve,’ said a menacing voice, and someone screamed.

  Hector was standing between the two tallest stones in the circle.

  ‘I hope you all realise what we’re doing. What it means to light a vigil fire in a stone circle on the summer solstice...’

  He stopped, and the wind came shivering through the trees. Someone snorted out a laugh, but Hector’s voice, pitched low, cut through it: