Cold in the Earth

by Aline Templeton

  ‘Yes, of course,’ her mother said, her voice a little unsteady. ‘He – he didn’t give me much confidence either.’ They went back into the sitting-room and shut the door; Laura suspected it was never mentioned between them again.

  Yet, looking back, it was after this that their marriage – happy enough, in Laura’s childish estimation – began to drift slowly, almost imperceptibly, as her mother seemed no longer able to bring herself to make the gestures of intimacy which hold any marriage together. They had lived almost estranged under the same roof until her father died, uncomprehending and sad, eight years later.

  Laura hadn’t believed the accusation then, of course, and even now, looking back with the suspicious eye of a professional, she thought it was most unlikely. Dizzy had borrowed her mother’s car without permission and stayed out all night; the violent row which followed was a perfectly plausible explanation for her flinging out of the house in a fury, even if not for so cruelly disappearing out of their lives for ever. What her mother believed – well, again as a professional Laura could recognise a subconscious temptation to lay the blame for such a catastrophic estrangement on someone other than yourself, and she did remember her mother saying hopefully, when Geoffrey Harvey died, ‘Perhaps Dizzy will see the notice and get in touch.’ She hadn’t, of course. How sad to think that Laura’s father’s death might have meant to his wife only a barrier removed!

  Had there been later attempts at tracing her? Laura didn’t know: certainly during her brief visits home from the States Jane Harvey had never mentioned Dizzy’s name, and neither had Laura, shrinking from the thought of upsetting her. She was ashamed now of her moral cowardice, of never having defied the comfortable conventions of their relationship to talk about things that mattered. For instance, had Laura’s decision to live in New York been seen as another loss, another rejection? They hadn’t discussed it. Her mother had never complained, never been other than bright and brave, and Laura had never actually said, ‘I love you, I miss you, I wish I wasn’t so far away.’ If only she had perhaps she wouldn’t feel quite so guilty now.

  But then, of course, suffering from guilt was one of Laura’s personal vices. Had her sister been immune to such qualms of conscience? Had she simply put her family firmly out of her mind? Had she seen the notice of her mother’s death and ignored it, telling herself perhaps that it was too late now? There were so many questions unanswered, unanswerable.

  There was no record of her death, in Britain at least; lawyers were checking registers overseas while advertising for Diana Warwick now in all the major world newspapers. The executors had agreed with Laura that the house should be put on the market immediately. The estate, divided equally between the sisters, was a very substantial one and with her share Laura could take her time to work out what to do with this new, empty life. She had come to feel an exile in the States; it was a bitter irony that having returned she should find herself rootless, a displaced person in what she had thought of as home.

  If only Dizzy had been here! Faced with the grim task of sorting through their mother’s intimate possessions, they could have cried and laughed together over the memories they invoked – though of course that was an idealised picture. She couldn’t really remember much of her sister, beyond her glamour and her careless kindness.

  She’d been self-centred without a doubt. Thinking about it now, it was possible too that her parents’ divorce had made her to an extent self-destructive like her father. With that heredity, she could have been vulnerable to alcohol abuse and her daring, try-anything mentality might have led her into drugs – into prostitution, even. Yet somehow Laura couldn’t see Dizzy as human flotsam. It didn’t fit: she’d been tough-minded, a rebel, not a drop-out.

  So where was she? Happy, busy, absorbed in her own life and indifferent to the havoc she had wrought in the lives of her mother, her stepfather, of Laura herself? Even now, all those years later, she still dreamed of Dizzy – sometimes vibrant, exciting as she always had been, sometimes in a context of horror from which Laura would wake sweating and with her heart pounding. Always, afterwards, there were tears.

  There had been one of those dreams last night, not surprisingly: she was sleeping in her childhood bedroom where so often she had lain hopefully awake for Dizzy to push open the door and tell her of her latest escapade, putting her hand over Laura’s mouth to stifle the giggles. It had been what Laura privately called one of the black dreams, full of threat and ill-defined horror. Dizzy was in danger and it was cold, cold; Laura had struggled awake to find her covers on the floor and, shivering, pulled them up again.

  Oh yes, they had all suffered, as people in their situation always did. Grief and loss caused such waste, such distortion of people’s lives.

  Resentment grew in her, resentment and anger. It gathered as tension in her throat, half-choking her, so that she snatched at the grey and black silk twill scarf at her neck to loosen it. She jumped up from the chair and went over to her mother’s pretty walnut bureau where in Laura’s childhood writing materials had always been kept. They were there still: headed cards and notepaper, envelopes of all sizes, in their little pigeonholes. She tried not to read the pad headed, wittily, ‘Chopin Liszt’ with its poignant domestic entries – coffee, butter, cornflakes – and picked up some sheets of ruled foolscap and a ballpoint pen.

  ‘To Dizzy, Address Unknown,’ she began.

  ‘The Masons?’ Angus Laird said. ‘Oh aye, the Masons of Chapelton!’

  It sounded as if he was savouring the name. Perhaps his daughter was being over-sensitive in thinking that what he was truly savouring was her deference to his superior knowledge.

  He even switched off the television set. Janet, pouring tea from the big brown china pot which had either survived since Marjory’s childhood or been indistinguishably replaced, caught her daughter’s eye with a little smile and nod which suggested two women sharing a benevolent conspiracy to keep their man happy. Marjory smiled back non-committally as she took her cup.

  ‘Did they have some sort of charity do at Chapelton once?’ she asked. ‘I seem to remember playing in the garden – there was a sort of maze—’

  ‘Gracious me, fancy you remembering that!’ Janet exclaimed. ‘You can’t have been more than eleven or twelve. It was for the Lifeboat – Mrs Mason was on the committee, you see. And you were all very excited about this maze – a bit overgrown, I seem to recall, and someone got lost and then there were tears, well, there usually are, when bairns get excited, aren’t there! But it was a funny kind of a thing to have in a garden, I mind myself thinking, far too much work—’

  Angus cut ruthlessly across his wife. ‘I was under the impression, Marjory, that you were asking for background information. Of course, if all you want is to listen to your mother clattering on—’

  ‘No, no, of course she doesn’t.’ Janet turned pink with distress. ‘There I go again – my mother always used to call me a wee clatter-vengeance! But I’ll hold my wheesht now and not say a word.’

  Angus fixed Marjory with a hard stare, as if daring her to go to her mother’s defence, but having long ago accepted that her parents’ relationship – which had, after all, lasted for well over forty years – was their own business, not hers, she too ‘held her wheesht’.

  Appeased, her father went on, ‘More bawbees than brains, that family. It was old Edgar Mason bought the farm after the war – sold some big company down south somewhere so he could raise pedigree bulls and play at being a farmer. He’d a bee in his bonnet about bulls after being off in Spain with thon writer fellow. That maze you were on about – that was something to do with bulls too – there’s some stupid carving about them in the middle of it . . .’

  ‘I remember!’ Marjory interrupted. ‘The Minotaur – there was a picture of it, half-man, half-bull.’ Then, seeing her father’s expression, she said, ‘Greek mythology. Sorry,’ and subsided.

  ‘The old man was off his head by the end. There were rumours – mind you, folk in these par
ts’ll say anything, but it’s true enough they’d to call us out a couple of times to restrain him, bellowing like one of his own bulls. Blamed it on that foreign muck he’d been drinking when he was young, but if you’re asking me Jake’s not a lot better. He was in the papers thon time he went at one of the judges at the Royal Highland Show because his bull didn’t win. And the sister too – her with the daft-like name—’

  ‘Brett?’ That was Conrad’s mother; Marjory’s heart was sinking as she listened to this recital of hereditary dysfunction.

  ‘Daft, like I said. Ill-natured too, that one. Lost a husband with her screaming and carrying-on, just the way Jake lost his wife, and a proper lady she was too. Beats me what she saw in him.’

  ‘That’s right!’ Janet was never repressed for long. ‘Rosamond – she was a real nice woman. Then she just walked out on him and I never heard of her since. And after, of course, Jake’s boy fell out with him too and left home – Max, his name was, but I don’t know what happened to him.’

  Angus snorted. ‘Good riddance. Spoiled rotten. There was a business with drugs – got off with a slap on the wrist, but if I’d had my way he’d have been locked up.’

  That could mean Max Mason was mainlining heroin, or that he was a teenager who’d taken a puff on a spliff. Given Angus’s attitude to drugs of any kind, Marjory found it hard to tell. ‘What’s the situation at Chapelton at the moment, then? Conrad Mason – you remember he is in the Force? – gives Chapelton as his address.’

  She hadn’t declared her reason for wanting to know about the Masons; at the mention of Conrad’s name her father’s face brightened. ‘Now that’s a good lad!’ he said approvingly. ‘Though what he’s doing still tied to his mother’s apron strings I don’t know. The old man divided up the house when Jake got wed and of course when the daughter’s man threw her out she came running home and changed her name and the boy’s back to Mason—’

  ‘As if the father had never existed,’ Marjory murmured. That explained a lot about Conrad.

  ‘Aye, right enough. And that’s where she stays now. Jake’s still running the farm – he’s as daft as his father was about his blessed bulls. But Conrad, now – made of the right stuff, you could see that, even when he was wet behind the ears. He’ll be looking to make rank soon, no doubt.’ Then he added spitefully, ‘That’s if they’re still allowed to make up real men these days, instead of women and pansies.’

  Marjory had heard all she needed and she’d had enough. She got up to go, feeling proud of her own maturity in disengaging rather than becoming locked into a bitter and pointless argument. ‘Thanks, Dad, it’s always useful to get a bit of background on these things. I’d better be getting back to make Bill’s tea.’

  Angus hesitated, obviously longing to ask why she wanted to know but reluctant to risk the humiliation of being refused on grounds of professional discretion. Instead he grunted, ‘So well you might. About time too.’ Then he picked up the remote control to flick on the TV once more and Marjory noticed, with an involuntary pang, how the animation left his face and his eyes, fierce and challenging a moment ago, went blank.

  Janet escorted her daughter out of the room. ‘Wait a moment, dearie. I was baking today and I just made an extra sultana cake for Bill. I’ll pop it in the Tin.’

  The Tin was a well-travelled receptacle making regular journeys, empty, from Mains of Craigie to Kirkluce and back again, full.

  ‘His favourite. You spoil him, you know.’ Smiling, Marjory followed her mother through to the kitchen where the warm, sweet, homely smell of baking still lingered.

  ‘There’s some scones too, and a few wee chocolate crispies for the bairns.’

  ‘They make a beeline for the Tin whenever it appears. Thanks, Mum.’ She dropped a kiss on her plump, cushiony cheek as she took it from her.

  Janet beamed. ‘You know it’s my pleasure. I may not be awful clever like you and your father but if I say it myself I make not a bad scone.’

  Marjory laughed. ‘The best. I just never had the courage to compete, that’s what made me join the police instead.’

  Janet lowered her voice. ‘It was nice to see your dad so bright today, wasn’t it? He still misses the Force, you know, though it’s ten years come the summer. And he still minds all the local stories. Those Masons – there was one time when—’

  Recognising one of her mother’s lengthy reminiscences coming on, Marjory said hastily, ‘I really do have to go. Cammie has rugby practice tonight—’

  ‘Of course, of course.’ But as they reached the front door Janet went on, ‘Mind you, what your father didn’t mention is that good looks run in the family the same as temper. Jake Mason, when he was a young man . . .’ She giggled girlishly and Marjory caught a fleeting glimpse of a pretty, flirtatious young woman somewhere underneath the wrinkles and the tightly permed white curls. ‘Well, none of us ladies would ever have wondered why Rosamond Mason married him. To tell you the truth, I’d have had rather a notion for him myself, if I’d been a few years younger. Only don’t you go telling your father!’

  The fire had gone out by the time Laura had completed her therapeutic task and it had long been dark outside. She straightened up painfully, almost dazed from the effort of hours of concentration, and shuffling together the untidy pile of paper read it through. It was good: professional but personal too, hard-hitting. A pity Dizzy would never see it.

  She paused. She’d written articles occasionally for newspapers in the States; why shouldn’t she knock this into shape on her laptop and try it on one of the London broadsheets? It would strike a chord with other estranged families, might even shame someone into relenting, into picking up the phone . . . There would be a chance, however slim, that this someone might be Dizzy.

  Suddenly exhausted, she dragged herself to her feet. Tomorrow; she’d sort it out tomorrow. Meanwhile she’d get a sandwich and a glass of wine and take them up to her bedroom where she couldn’t hear the relentless tick, tock which was again sounding so loudly through the silent house.

  3

  When the phone rang for the fifth time within two hours, Laura very nearly didn’t answer it. Her ability to refuse invitations gracefully and with apparent regret was starting to show the cracks of excuse fatigue.

  Mercifully, they’d left her in respectful isolation the day after the funeral. She had time to write up her article, strong-mindedly suppressing the misgivings which the cold light of day had awakened, and send it off to the Sunday Tribune. What, after all, had she got to lose?

  After posting it, she’d taken herself for a long walk along the right-of-way through the parkland of the local manor house. It was a pretty walk, with drifts of snowdrops under the grey boles of the beeches and glimpses through the bare branches of the mellow golden stone of the Georgian house. It would be going too far to say the sun was shining but the clouds had a tinge of matching gold and somewhere in a bush a bird was chirping in tentative anticipation of spring.

  It felt, Laura thought fancifully, like a draught of pure, cold spring water after the stale, over-chlorinated stuff she had been used to, and she returned refreshed to tackle the task of sorting out the house. She was dreading it, even though she knew that like everything else in Jane Harvey’s life, her mother’s affairs were well organised. Documents the lawyers would need were filed and labelled and she had kept few personal papers.

  Apart from letters from her daughters. As she opened one of the long drawers in the bureau the sight of Dizzy’s flamboyant scrawl with its flying ‘t’ strokes and the circles above the ‘i’s, made Laura catch her breath, but they all had foreign stamps and pre-dated Dizzy’s leaving home. She pulled one out of its envelope, then thrust it back unread, reluctant to fall again under the spell of her sister’s charm. It was just too painful. She’d been given those breathless, ungrammatical effusions to read at the time and they could have nothing new to tell her. Anyway, they were worn with constant reading; her mother must have combed them again and again for clues which
weren’t there. Laura sighed. The lawyers could have these too.

  Her own letters, with their American stamps, she dumped unceremoniously in a black plastic bin-bag. She had no wish to come face to face with that younger Laura either, bubbling with enthusiasm about her new husband, her new country, her new life. All of them, now, consigned to the mental bin-bag which holds discarded dreams.

  Bleakly she climbed the stairs to her mother’s bedroom. This, with its intimate evidence of an interrupted life, would be the hardest part; the perfume she always wore, Estée Lauder’s White Linen, still hung on the air and a choking lump came to Laura’s throat. She wouldn’t give way to the disabling tears, though, busying herself with collecting, tidying, slowly obliterating the personal so that strangers should not paw over her mother’s life.

  She hesitated over the clothes – expensive, some of them almost new – and wondered whether her mother would have wished them to be given to friends. But then, of course, that would open up a whole ‘who-got-what’ can of worms; Laura seized them ruthlessly and put them into the bags. It would be a good haul for a charity shop.

  Jewellery: that could go to the lawyers too, meantime. Furniture: her eyes lingered on the bow-fronted Regency chest, the pretty Venetian mirror. The house was full of beautiful things her parents had collected over the years, but she had decided it must be sold and with that decision had effectively rendered herself homeless, so they had better go too. She would have nowhere to put them until she found herself somewhere to live and she had no idea as yet where that would be – the country, probably, though definitely not here where she would be haunted by memories round every corner. The problem was that without roots or constraints it was hard to know where to start looking.