David appeared about ten, and made coffee and toast with more mess than Eleanor would have thought possible: breadboard and table littered with crumbs, coffee grounds spilt by the kettle, a pool of water dripping onto the floor. She wiped up after him, feeling irritated.
‘What about work?’ she asked. ‘Have you rung your partner – what’s his name? – to let him know what’s happened?’
David looked up from the newspaper. ‘Not a lot of point,’ he said.
‘Why not?’
‘He was the guy that hammered me.’
‘What? He attacked you?’
‘Not personally. But then he never did anything himself he could get some other sucker to do. He has mates who’re not averse to a bit of violence.’
‘But what on earth for? This is awful. I’d no idea you were mixed up with people like that.’
David snorted, unable to manage a laugh yet. ‘Well, he did have a grievance.’
‘A grievance?’ Eleanor sat down opposite him at the table.
‘Found me in bed with his bird. Well, not in bed, on the floor actually. But you get the picture.’
Eleanor went red. Only a few months ago, she would not have understood this. Why take risks for sex? Now she knew that you would, knew just how you could.
‘This was Sophie, is that right? Sophie who was so sympathetic?’
‘Yeah. That’s it.’
‘But to beat you up like that – get someone else to do it – that’s completely over the top. It’s criminal, David. You could have him prosecuted.’
David shook his head. ‘Let’s just call it a lesson learned, eh?’
‘What about Sophie, is she all right? He didn’t—’
‘I don’t know. Left in a bit of a rush, shall we say. Didn’t stop to enquire.’
‘But aren’t you worried about her? You could phone. Or I’ll do it for you, if you like.’
‘Eleanor.’ He put his hand over hers, restlessly poking about among the crumbs on the table. They’re not the kind of people you could ever understand, or connect with. Sophie’s all right, believe me. I’m well out of it.’
Still his large warm hand covered hers. The skinned knuckles (he had fought back, anyway), the crooked middle finger he had broken playing rugby at fifteen. His hand was as familiar as her own. My brother’s hand. Not my brother’s hand.
‘David,’ she said, ‘there’s something I’ve got to tell you.’
‘This about Gavin?’
‘No.’
‘It’s OK – high time you had a fella.’
‘David, we went to Alice’s house; we went through all her things, Marion and me. We tried to reach you, we all tried, Dad as well. But in the end, we had to go ahead on our own.’
Slowly he withdrew his hand. ‘And?’
‘We found your birth certificate.’
‘Oh yes?’
‘Dad said … Dad said you knew.’
‘Yeah. Sure.’ His eyes opaque, his mouth in a tight line.
‘Why didn’t you tell us, Marion and me? Why on earth didn’t you say? How long have you known about it?’
‘Since I was seventeen.’
Outraged, stunned, Eleanor pushed back her chair and stood up. ‘Seventeen? Twenty years?’
His eyes darkened and he flushed. ‘Why d’you think I buggered off that summer before the Higher results came out?’
‘Ran away,’ she said. ‘You ran away.’ Breathless, she sat down again. Tell me, David, please.’
So he did. Even now, it hurt to call it up again.
I’d been restless all year, fed up with school, wanting out,’ he said. ‘But after that I just couldn’t stay at all. Couldn’t face anybody. I had no place any more, no family. I certainly never wanted to see Alice, sort of confront her. God. The embarrassment. When you’re seventeen, that’s the worst feeling you can have. Well, no. But you can’t face that, when you are feeling the worst thing.’
‘Betrayed?’ Eleanor asked.
‘Shut out. I didn’t belong.’
‘But you did, you do.’ How could she ever have thought that he did not?
‘No. Faith was not my mother.’ The secret self, glimpsed in the dancer on the grass, silent and graceful. He had been both mystified and proud: his mother someone special, magical. To find she was not his mother, no blood relation at all – that had been the worst thing.
‘What about Dad? Not knowing who your real father was, that must have been worse.’
‘Actually, it wasn’t. Awful, yes, but Dad was a pal, you know. Just the same to me, really. There wasn’t any other person on the edge somewhere, hovering, waiting to be my father. Like Alice. And, I don’t know if you can understand this, how could you? He was still my uncle, still my family. Faith wasn’t. That was what – that was the core of it. Anyway, I don’t think Mum – Faith – told Dad I knew. Not for a while, anyway. She was scared it was her fault I’d gone off. It was. It was her fault! Hers and Alice’s.’
‘My God,’ Eleanor said. ‘All those secrets.’
‘You had them too, of course,’ he reminded her.
‘Not from you.’
‘It would have been much better for you if I’d stayed away,’ he said, raising his shoulders, his bruised mouth attempting a smile. ‘Never hooked myself on to you and Ian. Not been there when Ian died. Much better.’
‘Oh no, I needed you, I’d have been so alone—’
‘If I hadn’t been there, you’d have gone to him, called the doctor sooner. I was the one persuaded you not to.’
Eleanor pressed her hands to her head. ‘I don’t remember that.’
‘All you remember is guilt. But it was never your fault. Ian didn’t like me – we both played on that. Him and me. You were in the middle, to and fro between us. He was to blame for that, and so was I. But not you.’
‘But—’
‘Eleanor, you tried to go upstairs, but you’d had far too much to drink, more than you could handle. I knew that, and I kept giving you more. So when I persuaded you to leave Ian alone, you did. You were relieved – he’d been cold to you ever since I arrived.’
‘Had he?’
David spoke slowly, each word given weight. ‘He never liked me. He was jealous.’
Eleanor did not answer. For a few moments, they sat in silence, Eleanor staring at the floor. There was something she had to ask, but the words stuck in her throat. ‘Ian,’ she tried. ‘Ian didn’t know though, did he? That you were not my brother?’
‘What do you think?’
‘Well, how could he, if I didn’t know?’
David shrugged. ‘That wasn’t the point. He was jealous. You were easier with me, happier.’
He did care, then, Eleanor thought. He did mind. And the pain of this, the desolation of it, squeezed so hard in her chest she was breathless again.
David got up and went to put his dishes in the sink. ‘Anyway,’ he said, ‘you should be glad I’m not your brother after all. I’m nothing but trouble. Marion is right – wherever I am, disaster strikes. I used to think it was my bad judgement, but of course it’s not that at all. It’s bred in me, something destructive there from the start.’
She looked up at him, but could not say a word.
‘Other people come to harm because of me,’ he said, sitting down opposite her again. ‘Look at Stanley, poor kid.’
‘Oh come on, David, it can hardly be anything to do with you that he’s in prison.’
‘It was something to do with me, when we were kids.’
‘What was?’
‘You remember the fire at the Mackies’?’
‘Of course I do.’
‘Mum – Faith – she thought I started it.’
‘Oh no. That’s ridiculous.’ She remembered her father speaking of it, after Faith’s death. He was home long before it started. ‘You couldn’t have done – she never thought that. She was just frightened – you were late home, weren’t you. They couldn’t find you and Stanley. It wasn’t your fault.
’
‘No, I didn’t start the bloody fire. I wasn’t in the barn, we didn’t go to the Mackies’. Or I don’t think we did. But now, years later, I’m not sure of anything. How can you be? Your childhood goes into a kind of blur; the years and the adventures that were so clear, sort of merge. Don’t they? What do you remember?’
‘That glow in the sky – being at the window with Marion. You were there, mad with excitement, running from one window to another. You’d have been frightened, if you’d had anything to do with it.’
‘Would I? We did have matches, you know. We did light fires. We did give some to those kids. The tinker’s kids.’
Eleanor was holding her breath. She let it out in a slow sigh. ‘Oh, then they …’
‘God knows. They didn’t have a forensic science team going over the place next day, did they? Not in those days. The father got the blame – he smoked.’ He leaned back folding his arms, looking at Eleanor, watching her reaction. ‘So did we. We all smoked. That was really why we wanted matches. Stan nicked his father’s cigarettes. That was long before Jimmy got the scare with his lung, went on to a pipe. Much good it did him, when he was pickled in alcohol anyway. We nicked his ciggies, the tinker’s kids nicked their dad’s, when he was drunk and wouldn’t notice, wouldn’t leather them.’
‘You remember all that,’ Eleanor said, ‘so you must remember what happened that night.’
David shook his head. ‘Not really. The point is, I’m still responsible. Whatever happened. Responsible! That’s not really the word for me, is it?’
‘All that – it’s got nothing to do with whose son you are.’
‘No?’ He cast around for his cigarettes, lit one. ‘Sorry, can I smoke it in here? I need it.’
‘Yes, sure.’ She breathed in his smoke.
David turned the lit cigarette in his fingers, watching it burn. ‘Marion’s right,’ he said. ‘I’m a curse – I wreak havoc for other people. I was right to leave; it’s better if I keep away.’
He was dramatising, she thought, annoyed with him, and yet uneasy. ‘Didn’t you think how awful it was for us, not knowing where you were?’
David shrugged, and drew on his cigarette. ‘I used to think, you know, that I would look for my father one day. My real father.’
‘And did you?’
‘No.’
‘But you knew who he was?’ Do I have to tell him this? Eleanor wondered. Please God, don’t let me have to tell anybody anything any more.
‘Oh yeah, Mum said. Faith.’ He shrugged, half-laughing at himself. ‘So I decided if he was such a jerk I didn’t want to meet him anyway. Except maybe to spit in his eye.’
‘Oh, David.’
‘After all, if I’m such a liability, it must be because of him, eh? His legacy.’
‘But Mum and Dad are your real parents, they brought you up.’ She bit her lip. ‘I’ll never get used to this, never.’
‘That I’m not your true blood brother?’
‘Any of it. The lying. Years and years of it. Mum and Dad, and Alice and Mamie. Then you.’ She took a deep breath. ‘Then you come and tell me that when Ian had his heart attack, it wasn’t the way I remember it. You have a different version. But why should I believe yours? You’ve been lying to me since you were seventeen. Not just about jobs, girlfriends, what you’re up to all the time. About who you are.’
David looked down, not answering.
‘So tell me,’ she pleaded, in tears now, ‘why should what you say about anything be the truth? How could anyone tell, anyway? You don’t even remember what you’ve done. What you’re guilty of.’ He was blurred by tears; she could not see him any more. ‘There just isn’t any truth,’ she said, and got up, tearing off a square of kitchen paper, blowing her nose.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I know I should have talked to you and Marion. You especially.’
‘Why didn’t you?’
‘Och, I don’t know, Eleanor. There was Dad, keeping quiet because Mum wanted him to. Even after Mum’s funeral – Alice came to him then and said he’d got to tell me. So of course, Dad said, “David knows, Alice. He’s known since he left school”.’
‘Oh God. What did she say to that?’
‘Something like, obviously if I’d wanted to, I would have gone to her before now. Something about being punished for it. God knows. Anyhow, the money kept on coming.’
‘What money?’
David told her about those stilted conversations with his father, as the arrangements Alice had made to pay for what she called his ‘upkeep’ were explained.
‘Your mother wants me to go over this with you,’ he had said, bringing out the building society book, the records they had kept.
‘Which one? Which mother?’ he had asked. (‘I was nineteen,’ he told Eleanor now, ‘and still sore as hell.’) His father, confused, embarrassed, said, ‘I meant Faith.’
‘So that was it,’ David shrugged. ‘There was always money when I needed it. In my many … crises.’
‘Did you never …’ Eleanor hesitated. ‘Did you never speak to Alice about it directly, nor she to you?’
‘No.’
‘You never even … acknowledged it?’
He did not answer this directly. ‘I was angry and sore, and guilty too, for going off and upsetting them all. The silence just sort of got stronger. In the end, it was impossible to break it. And the truth – I never wanted it to be the truth. I wanted to pretend Faith – well, I wanted to go on believing what I’d believed when I was a kid.’ He smiled, mocking himself. ‘I went on taking the money, of course.’
‘And now she’s dead, and you’ve got all her money,’ Eleanor said, but wonderingly, not thinking for the moment how this would sound to David.
He scraped his chair back violently. ‘Say that again?’
‘Oh God. Dad was trying to reach you as well, you know. When you’re a bit better he’s going to come and talk to you. About this.’
‘About what?’
‘Alice left you her house, her money.’
‘She can’t have done.’ He was white.
‘Well, she has. I mean, Mamie’s all right, she’s to live in the house till she dies, or whatever. But you own it, and there’s money. I don’t know how much, but Dad says – David, are you all right?’
‘Christ.’
‘What’s wrong?’
‘Come on, I can’t take it. I can’t take the house, the money – a fucking penny of it.’
‘Why not? It’s yours, she was your mother. She wanted you to have it.’
‘I never had the guts, the guts even to speak to her. I can’t take it.’
She had never seen him like this. ‘David …’
‘Christ, Eleanor, sorry, I’ve got to get out of here.’
‘You can’t, you’re not well.’
He looked round wildly, snatched at his jersey hanging on the back of a chair, and pulled it over his head, wincing as it caught on his face. ‘Got to get out. Don’t worry. Just fresh air, that’s all. A walk.’
‘Don’t go far – let me come too.’
‘No! Just leave me, leave me, Eleanor. Please.’
She let him go. This is no good, she thought, tears falling again. This is no good at all. Everything’s just coming to pieces, our whole family. Eventually, she stopped crying in this hopeless fashion, blew her nose again, and went to the telephone to call her father. She would ask him to come now. He was the one who had to deal with this, and speak to David.
He was a long time coming to the telephone. He’s in the garden, Eleanor thought, I’ll have to try later. But then, just as she was about to replace the receiver, he answered.
‘Dad, are you OK? Were you outside?’
‘No, no. Just takes me a while to get through.’
‘Look, I’m sorry, but I told David about Alice’s house – there wasn’t any way I couldn’t. We’ve been talking and talking. Could you come now, do you think? Could you come up as soon as you can? He’s saying he
won’t take the money or the house. He’s really upset about it.’
‘Well, I would lass, but there’s a problem.’
‘What’s wrong?’
‘You’ll mind I sprained my ankle at Christmas?’ Christmas? Eleanor could hardly remember it. ‘It seems I’ve done it again. Must have left a weakness, I don’t know. I slipped coming down the stepladder.’
‘What on earth were you doing on a stepladder? Are you all right?’
‘Aye, aye, but I’d to get the doctor in, and I’m all strapped up. I’ve to have an X-ray. There’s an ambulance comes round for the old folk, and it’ll pick me up, take me in to the hospital. I canna drive, you see.’
‘Oh Dad. Oh dear. Could we bring David down to you then? I just feel it’s all got to be sorted out.’
‘Aye, lass. You do that.’
‘Are you managing? Are you all right?’
‘Oh, Ruby’s coming in. She’s very good, Ruby.’
‘We’ll come down then, in a day or so.’
‘You could visit Mamie. I’m nae able, with this foot of mine.’
‘Right then. I’ll speak to David.’
First she would tell Marion.
‘What do you think?’ she asked her sister. ‘I’m right, amn’t I? It should be Dad that speaks to him.’ Silence. What have I said? Eleanor wondered. Am I all wrong here, all wrong again?
‘I’m coming too.’ Marion’s voice was firmer than Eleanor had heard it for months. ‘You and me and David, the three of us. We have to speak to Dad together, and Mamie too, probably.’
Eleanor let out a breath of relief. ‘Are you sure? Oh Marion, what a relief. Are you sure you can manage?’
‘Yes. I’m not dead yet. And I don’t intend to die.’
‘No, I didn’t mean—’
‘It’s all right. I’m all right. Well, no, I’m not, I feel foul, but I can’t let my life just slip past like this. I’ve got to fight for it. So I’m coming with you.’
David had gone up the hill and was sitting on a boulder near the farm gate where Eleanor herself had often paused to catch her breath, and hold the view like a great painting in her arms. Below them, the shining firth, the gentle rise of the Black Isle beyond, little huddles of houses set in fertile land, green and golden with spring growth. On the water, the white specks that were oyster-catchers or shelduck, too far to see which, gently bobbing. Water mirrored sky, glinting blue and grey.
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