‘I’m right, though, eh? I’m not yours, I’m somebody else’s. Where’s my mother then, my father – are they dead or what?’
His mother looked shocked, her face whitening. ‘No, no of course not. I thought – I thought you had guessed, that you knew that.’
‘Guessed what? You and Alice were arguing. She wants me to know I’m adopted or whatever, right – and you don’t. Is that it? What’s it got to do with her?’
And then, as his mother covered her face for a moment with both hands, as she sighed, and then looked up at him, her face full of truth at last, he did guess. He did know.
Stanley came with him as far as Newcastle. The lifts were easy at first, and one lorry driver treated them to ham and eggs in a service station. He could see they were running away, not really headed anywhere in particular. But it was not his business, so he fed them, gave them a fag each with their mugs of tea, and eventually left them on the A9, just south of Newcastle. He was going into Sunderland, with his delivery.
There, Stanley lost his nerve.
‘What, you really want to go back home? Back to working for your dad, getting married to Irene – all that?’
‘Naw, but I’ve got tae tell them I’m OK. The old man’ll be haein kittens. We’ve a big job startin Thursday, and he’ll need to get somebody else in to gie him a hand.’
‘Go on then,’ David said. Tuck off back to Inverurie – just don’t expect me to come with you.’
Stanley’s sympathy for David had taken him halfway down the country, all the way out of Scotland, further than he had ever been in his life. He was beginning to panic, so far from home. It was not just his dad and the job, anyway. There was Irene, and the baby. What did he look like, running out on her? But he did not want to say this to David.
For years he had been bound to David: the den in the garden, the private games, the long summer holiday weeks when he had been at Pitcairn much more than at home. And for all the years at secondary school when they had moved apart and taken up different friends, they were still joined: by childhood, secrecy, the flames of friendship still burning.
He too had watched the fire at the Mackies’, from the tiny front garden of his house where he had stood with his father. Jimmy had just come back from the pub, and swayed a little, appalled but not sober enough to walk the mile and a half to the Mains, and give his help, as all the other men in the place had done. Bar one.
‘I was drinking with yon tinker,’ his father had said. ‘He telt me his family’s bidin at the Mains the nicht.’ Then he had turned indoors, unsteady, heading for the whisky bottle he kept in the sideboard, leaving Stanley alone by the gate, sick at heart.
He was bound to David. That was why he had travelled so far. But perhaps there was only so far you could go. He had other ties now.
They stood by the side of the road, traffic roaring past, and in its wake, over and over, gusts of gritty wind. Even more now, David wanted to go on, to put as great a distance as he could between himself and the long cheating lie that all his life had turned out to be. But he also saw that no one else could share this. He turned to Stanley, looking skinny and frail in his combat jacket and jeans, the rucksack too heavy for him.
‘Cheers,’ David said. ‘It’s OK. You go home. I’ll manage fine – send you a postcard.’
Stanley hesitated. Then he put out his hand, and David gripped it in his larger, stronger one.
‘Aye. All right then. Keep in touch, eh? See you, Davy.’ He crossed the dual carriageway by a pedestrian bridge arching overhead. Then, for a while, they stood on either side of the road, waiting for lifts in different directions. David got one first – a Jaguar with a couple in the front, going on holiday. He turned round as they drove on with him in the back, and waved at Stanley, who was too far off to see, and anyway, holding out his arm, thumb extended, watching the traffic.
David leaned back, and shut his eyes.
‘Back-packing, are you?’ the woman asked, turning round and offering him a toffee. ‘You students – such wonderful long holidays.’
‘Yes,’ David said. ‘It’s great.’
22
Eleanor spent Sunday evening with Gavin.
‘We’ll be back on Wednesday night,’ she said. ‘I’ll see you then.’
‘I’ll survive. In fact, I’m going out Wednesday.’
‘Oh.’
‘Guy I know works in Aberdeen now – he’s up seeing his sister. We’re having a drink. Don’t worry,’ he added. ‘It’s not another woman.’
‘I didn’t think it was.’ She punched him with a cushion, joking, but thinking, Can I trust him, really?
‘I’m cementing relationships,’ he told her. ‘For when I move to Aberdeen.’
‘Move?’
‘In six months, maybe. Not more.’ He saw the look on her face. ‘I told you, Eleanor, about the job.’
‘Yes, but I thought you meant here.’
‘That’s not possible. What is there to do here? The office is in Aberdeen. That’s where I’ll be based.’
‘But I thought – I thought you wanted …’ She could not say it. Had she got this all wrong?
He put his arm round her. ‘I was hoping you’d come with me. We could get a house, see how things went. But I thought, since it’s months away, we’d have plenty of time to discuss it later. You’re caught up in family stuff just now, I realise that.’
‘Yes, but—’
‘You don’t want to.’
‘No. Yes. I thought—’
She had thought, foolishly, she realised now, that he would work in Inverness, and they would somehow continue as they were, but planning perhaps to buy a bigger house together, years from now, when Claire had left home. Since Ian’s death she had had only hazy notions of the future. This had been, for her, quite a clear vision.
‘I can’t leave here,’ she said. ‘Claire would hate to move. And she’s doing Standard Grades next year. I couldn’t disrupt her then.’
‘You wouldn’t have to move right away,’ he suggested. ‘I’d come up weekends, maybe till she’d finished her exams.’
More parting and reunion, she thought, only worse. He would not be safely on an oil rig, but in the city, working and living a separate life.
‘There’s Marion too.’
‘But her treatment’s finished, you said. In six months, she’ll be a lot better. Believe me.’
She saw that he did not understand. She could not be so far away every time Marion had a scan, a test, if she needed more treatment; if the cancer came back. She had to live here; that would not change.
‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘I don’t know what to say.’
‘Leave it,’ he advised. ‘There’s no need to make any decisions just now.’
Eleanor did not sleep well that night, and got up tired to see Claire off to school. At half past eight, clearing away breakfast, she thought of calling David. Perhaps he would want to meet them in Aberdeen. There was nothing of Alice’s he would want, surely, and he would soon have his £6,000, but he should at least be told what they were doing. But there was no reply from the flat.
‘Yes, I tried him last night,’ Marion said when Eleanor told her this. ‘He must have been out all evening.’
When they reached Pitcairn, their father had also been trying to contact David. ‘He must be away on business,’ he decided. ‘Now then, I’ll get you the house keys.’
‘How’s Mamie?’
‘Not so bad. They’ve had her up already, trying to walk.’
‘It’s a wonder she wasn’t killed, falling downstairs,’ Marion said.
‘Plenty of padding,’ their father joked, handing over the keys.
‘We’ll see you back here at tea-time, then, or are you coming to the house too?’
‘No, no. I’ll visit her, then just come home. But why don’t you two have your tea at the house, then go up to the hospital a wee while afterwards? Save you driving all the way out here and back again.’
‘A
ll right – that’s not a bad idea.’ Eleanor was worried more driving around would tire Marion too much.
Their father set off for the hospital after they had had a sandwich lunch.
‘How long do you think it will take us?’ Marion asked as they washed up the plates and mugs.
‘I don’t know. Two hours?’
‘Let’s leave it then, go in about three.’
‘Right – you have a lie-down till then.’
The sun was shining, so Marion sat at the back door on one of the old garden chairs, and read for an hour.
Alice’s house smelt musty when they opened the front door. Sunlight lay across the hall, but upstairs the landing seemed dark. At the top, there was a bundle of clothes, roughly piled together.
‘Look. She must have been carrying that lot when she tripped. I suppose Dad gathered them up.’ Eleanor ran lightly upstairs, then at the top turned and looked back. Marion was leaning on the newel post. ‘You go and sit in the living room. I’ll scout around, see what there is, and either bring it down or you can come up.’
‘All right.’ Here, Marion saw that the surfaces were dusty, but the room was neat, with nothing lying about except a copy of the People’s Friend on the coffee-table, and Mamie’s knitting bag, leaning against an armchair. Marion sat down and waited for Eleanor.
Eleanor hardly knew where or how to begin. She went into Alice’s bedroom. It was at the back of the house, cool and shadowy. Eleanor had not often been in the room before, though of course she had seen it, passing the open door on her way to the bathroom. Here were the familiar oak dressing-table and wardrobe, the green satin counterpane, the wallpaper with tiny violets and roses, the bedside table with its green-shaded lamp and alarm clock. Throughout the rest of the house every surface had its photographs, china shepherdesses, Hummel figures, glass animals, silver rose bowls. Perhaps they all belonged to Mamie, since here, there were no ornaments, and on the dressing-table, apart from Alice’s tortoiseshell brush and comb, and a jar of Pond’s Cold Cream, only one small photograph in a gilt frame. Eleanor picked it up. David, aged about twelve, in the garden at Pitcairn. He grinned out at Eleanor, hair tousled, in open-necked shirt and shorts. She looked round again, but there were no other photographs, nothing that was not functional and necessary. In the corner by the window stood an elegant little bureau, polished walnut, with two drawers. There were three books lying on top: a biography of Mary Wollstonecraft, a gardening manual, and a historical novel set during the Napoleonic Wars. The biography and the novel were from the library, and weeks overdue. Eleanor put them aside, so that her father could return them later.
The wardrobe door was open. There were still a few skirts and dresses hanging there, and on the floor, a roll of black plastic bags. Eleanor checked the dressing-table drawers: white slips, underwear, cotton pyjamas, stockings. She closed them, feeling awkward about touching these, but they would have to go, and there were plenty of charities to take them. So, the clothes were easy. She could fold them neatly and tie up the bags. Before she did, she would just check through and see if there was anything she and Marion might want to have. Alice’s clothes were good, if plain, and Eleanor could see herself wearing one of the grey or navy suit jackets with her jeans or a long patterned skirt.
She crossed to the bureau and opened the flap, that squeaked as it moved. In the pigeon-holes there were letters and other documents neatly tied with pink legal tape. In the centre was a tiny cupboard, locked, but without a key. Eleanor tried the desk key, but that was too big. She looked in all the pigeon-holes, taking out the contents and laying them on the leather-covered writing surface, faded red, edged with a gold border that had rubbed off in places. Gently, she raised the flap and opened the drawers. In the top one, writing paper, envelopes, engagement diaries for the last two or three years, a few pens and pencils. In the bottom drawer were photograph albums, some very old, and two jewellers’ boxes, long and narrow. One held the locket, the other a single string of pearls. Eleanor took the boxes out and laid them on the desk with the papers. Then she slid the drawer shut. She would look at the albums later, with Marion. Then, as if something – someone – nudged her, she opened the box with the locket again and took it out. The locket was large and old-fashioned. Eleanor thought it had belonged to her grandmother, whom she barely remembered. She could not make out the initials entwined on the front. It was difficult to prise apart, but she finally managed to edge a fingernail under the catch and it flew open. Inside, two tiny photographs. Eleanor moved nearer to the window.
In one, a man from another age, with a moustache and a stiff collar, perhaps her grandfather. In the other, a young woman with piled-up hair and a high-necked dress. As Eleanor touched this tiny representation of someone she recalled only as an old woman with an apron and a querulous voice, who smelled of peppermints, it slipped out and fluttered to the floor. Eleanor was about to bend to pick it up, when she saw that there was another photograph behind – no wonder the top one was loose. A baby. Very young and new, in a shawl, with eyes shut. Alice? Gently, Eleanor touched the photograph of her grandfather, and it too slipped out of the oval frame. Behind this also, another photograph. A boy of six or seven, faint, but this time unmistakable. Eleanor’s heart began to beat faster. This was an invasion, it did not feel right. Alice’s room, her clothes, her jewellery, her dead parents. Her secrets.
Eleanor fitted the photographs back into the locket and laid it in its box. Then she pulled up the dressing-table stool and sat by the bureau, opening the pink-taped bundles one by one. She was doing no more than glance through, aware that she was looking for something, without knowing quite what it was. Even when she found it, opened up the sheet of paper, dry with age and disuse, tried to read it, make sense of the information it so coolly imparted: even then, she did not at first understand what she had discovered.
Downstairs, Marion had looked idly through the People’s Friend, comforted by the way it remained unchanged since she had read it as a child, coming to visit her aunts. However, in a few minutes, the pages blurred, and she grew drowsy. Warmed by the sunlight spreading over carpet and chairs, she fell into a doze, her head resting on the cushions of Alice’s high-backed armchair. She swam in and out of dreams, heard cattle lowing in the field behind Pitcairn, seemed to hear Kirsty and Eilidh talking together. Then her mother was there, in the kitchen not at Pitcairn but in Marion’s own house. Sleeves pushed back, her apron on, rolling out pastry at Marion’s pine table. Marion was annoyed that she could not make the pie herself, because she was too tired, but relieved that at last her mother had come to look after them all. ‘It’s David I worry about,’ her mother was saying.
‘Marion!’
She opened her eyes, tried to focus. Eleanor was in the room, Alice and Mamie’s living room, holding up a sheet of paper, a form of some kind.
‘I’m sorry, you were asleep. But Marion—’ Eleanor’s face was flushed, her eyes wide. Marion made an effort, and sat up.
‘What’s wrong?’
‘This – look at this.’
‘What is it?’ Eleanor thrust the paper at her. Marion turned it the right way up, held it straight, worked out what it was. It’s a birth certificate,’ she said, feeling stupid and slow.
‘It’s David’s.’ Eleanor slumped on the other chair by the fireside, Mamie’s smaller, softer chair.
Marion studied the certificate again, then looked up at Eleanor. ‘It can’t be. It’s – good grief, Alice had a baby, years ago – that’s what it tells us. She had a baby. What on earth …’
‘It’s David.’
‘Well, the name is the same, but that could be a coincidence.’
‘No, look at the date. There couldn’t have been another baby.’
Marion looked. ‘Oh God.’
This can’t be true, can it? Marion, tell me there’s some other explanation.’
Marion shook her head. ‘No,’ she said. ‘You’re right. David John Cairns, born twenty-seventh April, Aberdeen Royal
Maternity Hospital.’
‘But the mother’s name – it’s not Mum. It’s Alice.’
‘And no father’s name – there’s no entry for that.’
Then who—’ Eleanor began.
‘Well, who is there to ask, now?’
‘Dad. Mamie.’
‘We’re going to have to ask. Aren’t we?’
Eleanor did not know. They sat quite still, Marion holding the certificate.
‘Look,’ Marion said, after a moment. ‘It was Dad who asked us to go through Alice’s things.’
‘And Mamie.’
They knew fine we were going to find this.’
‘You think …’ Eleanor hesitated. ‘They wanted us to find out?’
‘Yes. Doesn’t it look like that to you?’
‘I don’t know. I don’t feel I know anything any more. The whole world seems to have got a big crack in it.’
‘Are there a lot of other papers?’ Marion asked.
‘Well, yes, but I hadn’t got far when I found this.’
‘I’ll come up,’ Marion said, easing herself out of the chair.
‘No, it’s cold up there. I’ll bring everything down, all the papers. There’s only one wee cupboard thing in the bureau I can’t get into. The key’s missing. But I’ll bring everything that was in the pigeon-holes.’
‘Try the dressing table,’ Marion suggested. ‘Taped behind the mirror.’
‘What?’
‘For the other key.’
‘Really?’
Marion was right: a tiny key was taped to the back of the dressing-table mirror. Eleanor prised it off, and used it to open the bureau cupboard. Inside were a couple of black and white photographs, and a letter. One of the photographs was of Alice, standing by a window, a shawled infant in her arms. She did not look at the child she held so firmly; she stared at the camera, unsmiling. She was stiff and strange, like someone who had never held a child before. And yet, there was something uneasily familiar too, in her outline, her appearance. Eleanor put this behind the other photograph and studied it instead. A man, hot young or handsome, but with a hard, vigorous face, a shock of dark hair, a high-bridged nose. It was a snapshjot taken in the open air. He leaned on the parapet of a bridge; there were trees behind, and he wore slacks and a pullover over an open-necked shirt. He smiled, but fixedly, as if he had held the pose too long, and the casual grin for the camera had become rigid, humourless.
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