“I don’t think he ever told her about his infidelity. I wouldn’t know for certain though.”
I thought back to Billy. Had he looked like Edwin or Gordon or Leith, who I’d only seen briefly in the old newspaper picture? I realized that Billy looked more like Clarissa than any of the men.
“He might have been yours?” I said, my voice cracking.
“Aye.”
“I’m so sorry, Edwin.” I was sorry about that part. Tears filled my eyes.
“Lass, I’m heartbroken about his death, but it’s been a long time since I considered that I might have fathered him. I tried tae give money tae Gordon and Fiona, tried tae help them, but Gordon wouldn’t hear of it. They raised the boy as their own.” He swallowed hard. “My heart hurts, but it’s their heartbreak we should be considering.”
His heartbreak was pretty evident to me. “Not Clarissa’s?”
“Weel, she’s tae get some sympathy too. She was a lovely young woman who handled a delicate situation in the wrong way. She wasn’t … Lass, it’s difficult tae tell you the story of the time as it was. Aye, there might have been three potential fathers, and that sounds disgraceful on the surface, but you’ll have tae trust me that it wasn’t disgraceful. It was just … it was just many poor decisions. It all worked out for the best though, it truly did. Until recent events at least.”
“I believe you, but maybe Billy was killed because of that past?”
“I have no idea how, lass. It was rough, but we were all happy with the final outcome. Leith is gone and I would never have hurt any of them. They were friends, dear friends at one time. You understand why we had tae part ways, but at one time I loved them like family.”
“What about the man on the boat that Clarissa accidentally killed?”
“Delaney, that wasn’t Clarissa. I don’t know where you got the information, but she didn’t kill him. He fell overboard, that’s all. There was no mystery.”
“No knife? No dirk that killed him first, accidentally even?”
Edwin’s eyebrows came together. “No, lass. We were all wearing dirks, but there was no foul play, even accidentally. The lad had had too much tae drink. We all had. It was terrible, but that’s not what tore apart our friendship.”
I believed him, but I was momentarily rocked by the fact that I’d been given the wrong information by Rosie.
“I thought Leith served some time in prison for the death,” I said.
“No, not for that. Leith spent some time in jail but not for anything that terrible. I believe his crimes were along the lines of drunk and disorderly. How did you come by this information?”
I smiled weakly. “Rosie.”
Edwin’s smile matched mine. “I see. Rosie is good at embellishing and mixing up stories, but there was no murder. She means no harm, but she’s not the most reliable source. I didn’t know you were dredging up these old events or I would have talked tae you sooner, before you’d spoken tae Rosie.”
He could have returned my calls, but I didn’t point that out.
“What’s S-P-E-C?” I said.
He thought a moment. “Our secret society?”
“Yes.”
“My goodness, lass, you have been busy. How do you know about SPEC? No matter. It disbanded after the drowning.”
“Why is the sticker on your diploma? It’s in your office, up against the wall.”
“I’d forgotten all about that. I put the sticker on the glass decades ago, tae remind me of the better days at university and, I suppose, the lessons that needed tae be learned by the bad days. I pulled the diploma out from behind my file cabinet shortly after you got back from the castle and told me about Billy. Anyway, by the time I graduated, we’d gone our separate ways and Clarissa was long gone tae us all, having run away tae have the baby and then never returning tae school. I ran into her some years later once but didn’t keep tabs on her.”
“What do the letters stand for?”
“S-P-E-C?”
“Yes.”
“Society, propriety, excellence, and calling. We meant it tae mean that we honor society, we behave with propriety, we strive for excellence, and we search for and follow our calling, whatever that might be.” Edwin smiled sadly. “We thought we were so special, more honorable than the next lads. We were wrong and we learned our lesson quickly, Delaney. It was a tough lesson for some of us tae learn.”
They weren’t big words like Rosie had remembered.
“Were the lessons tough for you too?” I asked.
“Well, despite my wealthy upbringing, my parents tried to instill some humility in me.” He smiled again, a little less sadly. “We weren’t a part of something that had any sort of history to it. We created it. It wasn’t meant tae be something done out of arrogance, but it felt that way after what we went through. We felt stupid and arrogant.”
“You know, lots of university-aged kids do crazy or stupid things that don’t necessarily dictate their futures. I’m sorry you all weren’t that fortunate.”
Edwin brought his eyebrows together and he studied me a moment.
“All of what we are talking about took place a very long time ago. Another lifetime, really. None of us forgot the pain from that time, particularly the death of the lad, but we were happy with what happened to Billy. Despite my feelings for Gordon now and his lies, Billy had a lovely family. I’m sure even Clarissa was happy with that outcome.”
“But it’s all so … suspicious, Edwin. Leith is dead. Gordon has been playing dead. Billy was killed. All coincidences?”
“I think so. Sad coincidences they may be.”
“Why did the dirk upset you so much?”
“It brought back those days, the drowning, Clarissa’s manipulations. The handle made me think it was her dirk at one time. As I mentioned, we were all wearing dirks on the boat. It was part of SPEC, tae wear the dirks. I hadn’t seen that one in years, but it brought back the memories; even more than Gordon coming into the shop, that dirk took me back tae those days.”
It was only because I’d sensed that he’d been mostly telling me the truth before that I knew this statement was a lie, or at least partly a lie, but I nodded. Why would Gordon have said the dirk indicated that Edwin could be Billy’s killer? Then again, Gordon’s life seemed to be one big lie.
“Why did you go to Glasgow yesterday?” I asked.
“Well, that’s business for another day. I looked at a portrait I’d like to buy and sell at auction. I needed the time alone or I would have taken you. We’ll talk about it another day. For now, I think I should go see Clarissa.”
“May I come with you?” I asked.
“Aye, Delaney. Come along.”
* * *
“I am fine. Please stop all of this…” Clarissa said to the nurse who seemed to be trying to take her blood pressure.
The woman I’d caused to faint to the floor looked no worse for the wear as she sat up in the hospital bed. I was momentarily jolted by the hospital gown and its noticeable lack of high style, but her hair and makeup were in place and she felt well enough to argue with the nurse. I took all of those behaviors as good signs.
On the way up to the hospital room Edwin prepared me for the fact that even though Clarissa’s cousin might think he should visit Clarissa, Clarissa herself might not be all that happy to see him. And even if she was happy, there would be at least an undercurrent of unhappy riding with it.
We had stopped by the nurse’s station to ask if it would be okay to visit the patient. Edwin admitted to the fact that she might experience a raised blood pressure at seeing him. The nurse had smiled, looked around to see if anyone was listening, and then told us Clarissa’s heart was fine and that she would probably be released within a few hours.
Nevertheless, I worried briefly as I saw the look on Clarissa’s face when she noticed Edwin.
“I guess I should have predicted I might see you soon,” she said as she sat up straighter in the bed. She smoothed the front of the hospital gown an
d pinched her earlobe as if she was checking on an earring. Her mouth fell into a straight line and color bloomed on her cheeks.
“Hello, Clarissa,” Edwin said with a smile.
He approached the bed and took her hand in both of his.
“You are still beautiful,” he said.
She didn’t buy into the compliment but at least she didn’t roll her eyes as she gently pulled her hand away.
“Hello,” she said to me.
“I’m so very sorry,” I said. “I didn’t know.”
“Of course not.”
“But I told her the story,” Edwin said.
“I work for him,” I said.
“You mentioned that,” she said.
“Aye, Delaney is a good friend. She cares for all of us at The Cracked Spine. Sometimes perhaps a bit too enthusiastically.” He smiled at me before turning back to Clarissa. “She didn’t know about the secrets from a long time ago before she came to visit you. She does now. I told her about me, Gordon, and Leith.”
Clarissa blinked, nodded, and then looked at me, her mouth still a straight line. I had listened hard to Edwin’s tone. I didn’t want to believe that he was trying to send Clarissa a signal as to the version of the story he’d told me, but that’s exactly what I’d heard. I wouldn’t call them on it, but continue to listen and hopefully figure out the truth at some point.
“Much happened that I’m not proud of, but it was a long time ago and we all did the best we could even if it doesn’t seem like it,” she said.
I shook my head. “I’m just sorry for the way I handled everything when I came to see you. I hope you’re feeling better.”
“I’m fine. My heart’s fine. Well…” She put her hand over her heart as if to see if it really was fine. She removed it a second later and sat up even straighter. “My heart hurts but not because it is sick. I’m sorry tae hear about Billy Armstrong. It’s sad news.”
“Devastating,” Edwin agreed. He cleared his throat.
“Did you know him well, Edwin? Billy?” Clarissa asked.
“I knew him a wee bit as a boy and young man mostly. I hadn’t seen him much over the last thirty years. But through Gordon and Fiona I knew he was fine. He was always happy, always kind.”
“Gordon and Leith died two years ago. Now Billy. I regret … It doesn’t matter.”
“There’s no need tae regret anything. You did right by him.”
Edwin and Clarissa looked at each other a long moment. There was no indication that Edwin was going to tell her that Gordon had not died with Leith. She looked at me.
“If you know the story, I must sound like quite the tart tae you, Delaney,” Clarissa said.
“Not at all. Things happen. I understand that nothing is as simple as it might sound. Ever.”
“True.”
Again she and Edwin gazed at each other. They both looked like slightly older versions of the newspaper picture I’d seen, sepia tones turning to full color right in front of me. They’d aged well. I felt like I needed to give them some time alone. Clarissa hadn’t been angry. I sensed that she was happy to see Edwin and he felt the same to see her.
As I was going to excuse myself, she spoke again.
“I have had a good life. My husband was a good man,” she said.
“I’m sorry he’s gone, Clari,” Edwin said.
“Thank you, Edwin.” Clarissa turned to me again. “My husband passed last year, didn’t wake up one morning. His lungs. He’d lived a good long life, but it was the cigarettes that did him in. A bad way tae go.”
“Did you two have any kids?”
“Aye. One son. He’s a lovely man. He lives in Glasgow.”
“I’m sorry for your loss,” I said. Glasgow was where Edwin had claimed to go yesterday. Was this another piece of the puzzle or another coincidence?
“Excuse me. I’ll wait outside for you,” I said to Edwin. I turned to Clarissa. “I hope you feel better, and again I’m so very sorry.”
She nodded and hinted at a smile.
Once in the hallway I stepped out of the way of a hurried group of medical personnel. The nurse who’d been trying to get Clarissa’s blood pressure smiled at me from behind the nurse’s station. I smiled back and approached the station.
“She’s fine, huh?” I said.
“Oh, aye, she’ll go home soon. Ye a family member?”
“No, a friend of a friend. Has her son come by to visit?”
“No, she wouldnae give us any family names. She didn’t want tae worry anyone. An older lady stopped by earlier this morning, but she didn’t stay long.”
I didn’t know if Scottish laws were similar to American medical privacy laws, but I couldn’t imagine that Clarissa’s health was any of my business or important to my growing list of questions.
The passing of almost fifty years hadn’t completely diffused the spark between Edwin and Clarissa. I felt it when they looked at each other. How in the world had those dynamics worked? Three men smitten with the same woman. That had to have gotten ugly.
Maybe she had loved all of them or maybe she’d not loved any of them. I would have liked to truly travel back in time just for a moment to better understand their complicated relationships.
Fifty years ago. The mid-1960s. Had Scotland seen any of the hippie counterculture movement? I didn’t think it had, though Hamlet had said something recently about that time period. I was curious enough to wonder. I’d have to ask someone.
I just had to figure out who.
TWENTY-ONE
Turned out my problem was easily solved. Artair knew almost everything about everything, and he was one of my dinner dates that evening.
Tom had prepared dinner for the two of us, which turned out to be the three of us. He made his famous seafood pasta and invited his father to join us. Artair had told him he had some information he wanted to pass along to me.
Tom lived by the sea. In a small blue house that was from another time. It was squeaky and drafty and held one of my favorite places in the entire world: a big old chair by a front window and a fireplace, from which could be seen a view of the North Sea while one lounged, under a quilt preferably, and read book after book.
The old two-story house was tucked between two larger, also older, buildings that had been turned into apartments. Artair had purchased the house when he and Tom’s now deceased mother had first gotten married. The garden in front of the house was as close to a magical garden as I’d ever seen. No one had ever requested that the house be torn down to make way for other, taller buildings that could hold more people or bring in more money.
Artair had eventually aged to the point that it was more work than enjoyment for him, so he gave the house to Tom and moved to a flat closer to the university library, where he spent most of his time anyway. Tom had proved to have just as green a thumb as his father, but the lines of the garden had apparently changed, become somehow more modern. I hadn’t seen it pre-Tom so I didn’t quite understand what that meant, but he and Artair had spoken about it a few times, neither of them giving way to how they thought a garden should look. Their garden stubbornness was only one of the many things they had in common.
“No, we didnae experience the 1960s the same way ye Americans did,” Artair said. “However…” He scratched his cheek as he sat across the small kitchen table from me. “No, the rebelliousness that came along with yer hippies didn’t happen here, but something else did. There was an undercurrent of change that would happen more in the 1970s and that could be seen and felt mostly with the literature of the time, the poetry too. Counterculture was quieter here, citizens finding their explorations in books or quiet clubs. I knew of a club in Glasgow. Can’t remember the name offhand, but I went a time or two.”
“Who were some of the writers of the time?” I asked.
“If I remember correctly, and I can look it up for you, I believe a group of them were given some sort of title like ‘justified sinners of the sixties,’ even if their words didn’t beco
me imbedded deeply enough to cause any sort of large movement. John Calder, Jim Haynes, Ian Finlay…”
“Someone recently brought a first-edition Ian Finlay into the bookshop,” I interrupted.
“Aye? Weel, meebe there’s still hope that the books will be read and thought about, but it’s been a long time.”
I looked at Tom before I continued. I didn’t sense that Artair was as conservative as my parents back home. I didn’t want to say anything too scandalous, but I couldn’t think of a more delicate way to phrase my question.
“So, if a woman back then was uncertain of which man of three was the father of her child, how would that have been received?” I said.
Artair laughed. “Not weel at all. No woman in her right mind would have admitted tae such a thing. And if she wasnae married, she’d be smart tae get married before the pregnancy showed. No, that wouldnae have gone over weel. It was a different time tae be sure. I remember the sense of wild freedom that we saw coming from America. I believe many of us found it interesting, but also somewhat frightening. No love and peace here. ’Twas a much more conservative time for us.” He held up two fingers in an arthritic peace sign.
The pose didn’t seem awkward on the older man with the slightly too-long hair and bushy eyebrows. Tom and I shared a smile.
Clarissa and the three men in her life had been faced with a difficult situation. She’d given her child to the man who might have been the biological father, but there must have been so much more involved. Big emotions, big feelings, ultimately more painful than joyous.
But the group of friends had been faced with at least one other difficult situation too. The death of their fellow society member.
“Artair, I found out what ‘SPEC’ means.” I shared Edwin’s definition and his explanation of the group’s intended motives. “It was a short-lived secret society that Edwin and his friends started. The letters stood for society, propriety, excellence, and calling. Does it sound more familiar?”
“Aye, now it does. I did a little research.”
“They had a member fall off a boat and drown.”
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