Finally Edith rang Pip at the office.
“I wish you’d told me before,” he said to her. “I’m sorry I haven’t telephoned. It’s been mad here and the hours run away with me.”
“I didn’t want to worry you,” Edith told him. “I’m confused by what’s happening. I thought that it would lift on its own, but things aren’t improving. I thought he’d be happy that Michael’s alive. That he might be alive.”
Pip decided against taking on this statement. Surely even Edith would have to let go of this absurdity now.
“Have you heard any more from Alan?” he asked her instead.
“No. George says he rings every evening. He’s setting up a gardening business. For British people, George says, and not for the French; he despises the French. British people with holiday houses out there.”
“How are you bearing up?”
“I’m worried about everybody. About Henry. About whether your parents are alright.”
“My parents are fine. Don’t go wasting a minute fretting about them. They’re fine at the flat, getting along fine.”
“Joan said she’s moving out of the gatehouse.”
“Best thing that could have happened to them. They’re united in outrage.”
“I don’t understand you.”
“Ottilie’s the common enemy now. Mum takes Dad’s side; thinks him noble for keeping quiet.”
“It’s Ottilie I worry about most.”
“You haven’t told her? Nobody’s told her?”
“No. Henry’s adamant. I don’t know what to do.”
“I had better talk to him.”
***
When Henry answered the phone it was clear from his voice that he’d been woken by its ringing.
“I’m sorry, you were sleeping; I’ll call again later,” Pip said.
“It’s fine,” Henry told him. “It’s fine. I’d rather not have to worry about being here later.”
“You’re going somewhere?”
“No.”
“Are you feeling alright? You’re speaking a bit oddly.”
“Am I? Odd how?”
“Slowly. Very slowly. The words spaced out.”
“I’m not aware of slowness.”
“I told Gran that I’d call. She’s worried about you.”
“I wish she’d stop. Her worrying about me is tiring. I’m so tired.”
“She can’t help it. Maybe if you made an appearance . . .”
“I can’t do anything about it, and that’s that.”
“What is it? What’s going on?”
“It’s nothing I can really talk about.”
“Tell me what it is. What’s it about, specifically?”
“Something Ursula told me.”
“Something Ursula told you. About Michael?”
“Not about Michael.”
“What then? Please tell me. What did she tell you?”
“Your grandmother has lied to me for a very long time.”
“I wish you’d tell me what’s going on.”
“It wasn’t something she said. It was something she didn’t.”
“Something she didn’t.”
“This Rebecca business,” Henry said, changing the subject. “About Michael, Alan saying Michael is alive. I need to make sure you know it isn’t true. Michael’s dead. He’s dead, Pip. And Ursula killed him. That’s the truth. The whole thing opened up suddenly.”
“I think you need to see a doctor. You don’t sound yourself.”
“No doctors.”
Pip heard Henry putting the receiver onto the table and blowing his nose.
“I’ll come up,” he said, when Henry returned. “I can take tomorrow off and make it a long weekend.”
“Please don’t. I’d rather you didn’t. I’d really rather you didn’t. I just want to be left alone. For now. I can’t do it. I can’t do it, Pip.”
“What can’t you do?”
No answer.
“Gran,” Pip said. “Gran, she believes it, that Michael’s alive.”
“No. No she doesn’t. Edith’s only saying that she does for my sake. I wish she wouldn’t. I’m so sick of deceit.” Henry could be heard breathing. Pip waited. “I’ll try and explain it to you,” Henry said. “It isn’t easy. And then please. Please don’t talk to anyone else about it. Please.”
“I won’t until you give me leave to.”
“Before Alan talked to Rebecca, Michael being alive was something unlikely but true. It was true in all of our hopes. We could keep it as our own unlikely truth, and say nothing, and it got us through the years and years. Secret belief. A secret belief that Alan lied and that Ursula was mistaken, mixing up the day with another day.”
“I see. I sort of see.”
“And even though the edifice, the whole edifice of it depended on my being civil to the man who had lied, I was prepared to do that. Alan became somebody I could talk to about Michael as if he were alive.”
“You talked to Alan about Michael?”
“Frequently. We’d imagine what he’d done, what life he was living.”
“Really?”
“Yes. It was essential to me, Pip. Essential. Like a drug. It kept me going.”
“With Alan, though. I can’t imagine it.”
“We invented this whole other life for him. A woodcutter. It sounds faintly ludicrous, like a fairy tale, doesn’t it? A woodcutter. I doubt that woodcutters even exist any longer. Probably not. It’s an archaic description, but maybe that was part of the point. It’s just men in overalls and protective goggles now, working heavy machinery. But anyway, that was the story. A woodcutter, and a greeneyed auburn-haired wife.”
“A green-eyed auburn-haired wife?”
“That was Alan. His idea. I gave Michael the children. Two lively daughters. In a cottage in the woods. We’d go into such detail. So much detail. We’d pretend we’d had letters from him. That’s how we’d recommence. I had a letter from Michael. We gave him his writing, the way he wanted. He was writing for the newspapers. It started as an article about being a woodcutter and not being able to write. Alan didn’t care. He just waved it through. He was kind to me, Pip. That’s the thing I don’t get. Why be kind to me? And then Michael went on to write a book about living in the woods. I wrote some of it for him, at night when I couldn’t sleep. I imagined parts in which he talked about his life at Peattie, missing Peattie; it helped. It was about to be published, in the game I mean, when Alastair and Rebecca arrived. But it’s all come to an end now. It’s come to a halt in any case. Alan’s gone. It’s all over.”
There was a pause and then Pip said, “Jesus.”
“And then I talked to Ursula.”
“I wish you’d tell me what Ursula said.”
“I can’t. I’ll write it down. I’ll write it all down.”
“Do it then, do that. Please.”
“Michael being alive: it didn’t ever bear much examination, is the truth of it. Not talking among ourselves about it was what kept it true. Like a deep-down faith in God.”
“Which you have also.”
“Only if I don’t allow myself to go into the detail. The way He behaved in the Bible. So morally inferior to humanity.”
“This is all very odd.”
“We tolerated Alan because he was Michael’s father. We knew that for sure. And now he isn’t. He isn’t, suddenly, and we’ve had 30 years of being sure that he was. Over 30 years. It’s shocking. It’s been a real shock.”
“Yes.”
“His revenge on us doesn’t make sense now. It doesn’t follow. When he was Michael’s father I could make allowances, do you see? I was guilty. About the way we’d treated Alan. I made allowances. But now that Michael’s your half-brother . . .”
“It’s not an idea I’m ever going to get used to.”
“I heard about your meeting with your dad in Edinburgh.”
“He came down, made speeches. It wasn’t a good day. But I don’t want to talk about tha
t now. Carry on. You were saying.”
“What was I saying?”
“You made allowances.”
“I made allowances for Alan when he was Michael’s father. But now he isn’t . . . The only explanation is that he’s a bad person. An evil man.” Pip could hear that Henry was becoming upset. Henry paused, blowing his nose again, and when his voice returned it was more composed. “It’s going to be easy for people to blame Ottilie.”
“It is easy. It’s what’s happening. Everyone’s furious with her for letting us think it was Alan. Letting us argue between Alan and the boys.”
“Ottilie’s the one, all along, the only one who never held the secret hope. She said from the beginning that she could sense him, Michael, his spirit, when she went into the wood. She says that sometimes she can almost see him.”
“I thought Ottilie didn’t believe in life after death.”
“Ah but she saw him you know. David. The day the children saw him. She was shaken up by it.”
“You’re kidding.”
“Pip, I need to go back to sleep. I’ll talk to you again soon.”
***
Pip rang Henry again in the early evening.
“It’s me again. Sorry to pester you. Did you sleep? Are you feeling better rested?”
“I slept. What do you want to know?”
“This thing about Ursula,” Pip said. “What Ursula told you. I haven’t been able to stop thinking about it.”
“I can’t. I’m sorry.”
“We need a plan. We need to get you up and about.”
“I can’t do it any more. Carry on. Out there. Outside the room.”
“It’ll get better. I think you should get some help. Get Dr Nixon in. She’s lovely. Warm. Lovely voice.”
“I can’t talk to her. I can’t see her any more.”
“Dr Nixon?”
“Ursula.” His voice wavered, speaking the name. “And I mean it. I’m afraid that I mean it. I can’t speak to her again. I can’t see her. Not even far off, over in the garden. It’s not safe to leave the room.”
“You can’t hide from her for ever.”
“Yes. I can do that.”
“Look. You’re the ones, you and Gran, all these years, who’ve reassured her, over and over and over, that it was self-defence. That her lashing out wasn’t something wicked, but understandable. A reflex. And that’s still true.”
“I can’t speak to her ever again. I can’t see her even in the garden.”
“I’m going to call Dr Nixon.”
“You’re wasting your time. I don’t want to be medicated out of this—this clarity—and to have it taken away. This is the true world and I need to live in it now. But away from here. We should have left here after Sebastian.”
“I know that you—”
Henry interrupted him. “You don’t know. You don’t know anything. We told the truth to each other before Sebastian. But after Sebastian everything was a lie.”
“I don’t understand, I’m sorry.”
“It wasn’t possible to carry on. But we carried on. That was the lie.”
“I’m coming up to see you.”
“I won’t see you. I won’t see anyone. Only Edith with the tray. I need to be left alone for now.”
“I’ll come up on Sunday. It’s Thursday today. By Sunday you’ll be ready to dress and go out on the hill.”
“I can’t see her.”
“Tell Gran that I’m coming and to keep Ursula away. And I’ll see you on Sunday afternoon.”
***
It wasn’t unusual for Pip to have to go into the office on a Saturday, not the way things were going at the bank, the papers full of alarmist rumours. That’s why he hadn’t promised Saturday. But having to give up the whole weekend to 14-hour days: that was unprecedented. Pip had to ring and speak to Edith on Sunday morning and tell her that he couldn’t come.
“There’s a crisis—a real one,” he told her. “I wouldn’t cancel if it were something I could get out of. But this is serious. This is survival.”
“I heard about it on the radio,” Edith said. “I understand. Henry will understand. Don’t worry about it. He’s better, I think, getting better. He’s eating now, and sleep seems to be helping. He’s been outside for a little while today. His colour’s much better.”
Pip was all set to come up the following Friday evening, but on Thursday he got the call from Joan to say that Henry had been found on the hill, looking as if he were sleeping, pale and certain in the moss.
23
Why did Euan marry Joan, when it was Ottilie that he wanted? It’s a good question, to which there are multiple possible answers. In other words, I don’t know. I’m not likely ever to know. Joan’s own enthusiasm for marriage may have been a key point. Joan, the second sister, the less pretty one, the one said to be the clever one but overlooked, all eyes on the beauty—Joan was determined, after Sebastian died and Ottilie became the heir of Peattie, that she would marry first. She would marry before Ottilie and on her 18th birthday as their mother had done. Gaining the attention and approval of their mother had become tacitly a competition by then. Everybody talks about Ursula’s closing down after Sebastian died, but nobody much discusses Edith doing the same. In the four years that passed between Seb’s death and Joan’s marriage, Edith suffered seriously from depression, although if necessary—on birthdays, at Christmas, presented by a child with good news—she would up her game, snapping out of her withdrawn, monosyllabic normality, returning to the present with unconvincing words that all was well.
What you have to understand, my mother has said to me since I died, sitting with me in the wood, is that everybody was always trying to make Edith smile. Ottilie and Joan, specifically, were always trying to make their mother smile. The bringing of temporary sorts of lightness into her life: that was a project on the footing of a constant unofficial campaign. So, at 17 Joan came up with what seemed like the ultimate good news: she announced there would be a wedding, a small, white, perfect family wedding. Joan feigned her passion for Euan, her belief in their future together so skilfully that her mother was entranced by it. The house was full of love, of plans, of possibility again; Edith was caught up in the spirit of the thing and seemed almost like her old self, Henry said, his gratitude obvious. For a time Joan was the heroine of the dynasty.
But why did Euan consent? There might have been an element of wanting to be close to the beloved, though that seems particularly wet, even for him. I suppose that it was his only chance to stay in the Peattie circle, but I struggle to make sense even of that. My mother’s theory is that Euan cooled off and Joan threatened to tell. What she had to tell was that she’d been under age when they began having sex, only just 15, a situation that was illegal and actionable. Joyce and Richard Catto, unaware of this development in their courtship, brought Euan to Peattie three times a year, not only for the summer holiday but during the Easter and October school breaks. Even so, why would Euan care enough about the threat of scandal to marry someone he didn’t much like? Certainly he fooled them all. Everyone regarded the boy Alan, the winking, wandering-eyed, innuendo-making, cheeky and lascivious boy Alan, as the likely source of trouble with daughters, and went to lengths to protect them from him. Meanwhile, the attention of parents and friends successfully diverted, it was studious, lanky, rather saturnine, ambitious and well-mannered Euan who harvested the virginity first of Joan and then of her sister. Not that either was unwilling.
Ottilie was puzzled by the engagement. It had been obvious from the beginning, to Ottilie anyway: Joan’s being second choice. Even at 14 she’d been aware of it, during the Easter that Euan first visited. She’d been aware of Euan looking at her, his calm observant absorption of her, his trying repeatedly to meet her eyes with his. It became seriously awkward. He wasn’t deterred when Ottilie let it be known that Alan had kissed her. She’d let Alan kiss her, for heaven’s sake, better to get the message across, to suggest that there was another pairing, that sh
e was unavailable. It didn’t seem to help. Even when he became engaged officially to Joan, Euan had engineered their being alone together. In the outhouses, getting the tennis racquets, backing Ottilie against the wall and placing his hands either side of her, closing in, a look of pathetic sincerity on his face as he bent to kiss, Ottilie ducking under his arms and away. He sought her out repeatedly, in outhouses, over the net, at the loch, in the wood, in the linen room: Euan Catto made his declarations and Euan Catto was rebuffed.
“It wasn’t as if he knew me, even. He never got the chance to know me.” Ottilie said this to me, recently. “I never gave him anything of myself, no encouragement. It was all in his head. In his eyes. That was all it was. It wasn’t about me. I don’t think we ever had a proper conversation. Joan kept him on a tight leash, but he’d devise excuses to slip the leash and come looking. When he made his declarations they were always abstract: how he loved and worshipped me, how he was yearning. He didn’t know what I liked, what I felt, what I wanted, what I didn’t want, what I thought about anything. He wasn’t interested. He wanted to screw me—sorry Michael, but there you are. He wanted to screw me: that’s all it was, and I don’t know even now whether he dressed it up purposely—my eyes like the sea in winter—all that stuff, purely to try and get me to have sex with him . . . the cynicism of that! It takes my breath away. Or whether he thought that he meant it, whether he had bought into it himself and meant every word. I felt it later, like a cold wind, Michael, the cost, the implications of looking as I did. You didn’t see me then but at 16 I was ridiculously lovely, I say that without vanity; well, without much vanity. I couldn’t help it, and I hated it. My body was the enemy. It seemed like it was intent on betraying me, whoring without permission, advertising itself to men, my arse so pert in the bloody shorts, my little waist curving in. I let my hair grow long thinking it was unvain and unworldly to have this long little-girl hair, but looking back, looking at the photographs, it was down to my waist and wavy and did yet more advertising. The irony was that I didn’t want it, this power I had over men, over Euan, over Alan, over Christian. I’d go into the village and be stared at and wolf-whistled at and it was just horrible. But it seemed to me that it was all about a woman as a receptacle, a cup and a vice, a woman as a commodity. That’s an appalling way to look at a person, isn’t it? I was so afraid you’d become one of them. I admit it, I was afraid. Because what’s the outcome of that world view? It has a hundred devastating outcomes, I promise you. And what happens later, when the bloom of youth has gone? The man who sees a woman that way, as something of use, as a service, he’s going to move on. So that’s what happened, and that’s why I never hooked up with anyone, I suppose. It was the terms of Euan’s desire; they were educational. I realised I didn’t want to be part of it. I didn’t want to be any part of it.”
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