‘Yes. At a party at the castle.’
‘That’s right. I’ve never forgotten it, either. Fiona must still be kicking herself. She organised that party, if I remember rightly.’ Margaret chuckled.
‘They don’t get on, do they?’ I said. ‘Mom and Fiona.’
‘Don’t get on?’ repeated Margaret, amused. ‘They’re chalk and cheese. Your mom with her jangly bracelets and those breasts! Sorry, I probably shouldn’t say that. No, they don’t get on. Because your mom has always been a bit of a glamour. Like Nell. She always liked a bit of glamour too. And Fiona’s boring. I shouldn’t say that, since she’s my niece, but she is.’
Margaret paused to drag back on her cigarette.
‘Remind me of something,’ she said. ‘How old were you when Jack died? I’m thinking you were twelve.’
‘Thirteen.’
‘Thirteen. So young. Your mom was young too. Distraught. I don’t doubt for a minute that she was madly in love with your dad. And then what was she supposed to do? Stay on the estate? Alone in that pavilion? She didn’t want that. She asked Fiona to sell but Fiona said no.’
She coughed, rested the cigarette, reached out and grasped the neck of the bottle.
‘But now Fiona is on board. Except your mom told me on the phone you’re not happy.’
‘I’m not unhappy,’ I said, shrugging. ‘They said they can get a good price and we’re in a lot of debt. It’s just I’m worried, you know, about Penelope and Rex. And Earl. They live there too.’
‘Well that’s very noble, Eden, but it’s been a very good deal for them for a very long time already. But that’s another story.’
‘I’m a bit worried about Pop too.’
Margaret coughed and banged her chest again.
‘Well, that’s one thing you definitely don’t need to worry about. Owen gets to die there, which is all he wants,’ said Margaret, shrugging. ‘And the price is in the millions. They did tell you that, I hope?’
I nodded.
‘Well, that should have cheered you up. Even after they’ve paid the debt there’s going to be plenty left. Now, open that pantry and get me some more wine, will you?’
I looked over the shelves, finding only one bottle of red, already three-quarters gone.
‘This one?’ I said, holding it up by the waist.
‘Yes, please. Come and top up my glass.’
‘You’re drinking white. You don’t want a new glass?’
‘I really don’t care. Believe me when I tell you most people don’t care. I used to be the sober host at the Stoughton tastings, remember? People would arrive so drunk you could give them lighter fluid and they wouldn’t know. Anyway. How old did you say you were now?’
‘Seventeen.’
‘Then you’re old enough to know some facts of life,’ Margaret said, draining the bottle into her glass.
‘I know the facts of life,’ I said, hurriedly.
‘Not those facts. Although I can tell you a bit about sex. You kids think you know it all. You don’t.’
I blinked. I felt embarrassed and found myself thinking: where’s Earl? My phone was in my back pocket so I couldn’t even text to see how far away he was.
‘People get funny when old people talk about sex,’ said Margaret, lighting another cigarette, ‘you forget I used to be young once too.’
I felt panicked and awkward, and my face must have given me away.
‘Oh look at you, thinking: Please, old lady, don’t talk to me about your sex life,’ said Margaret, chuckling. ‘Have you had sex yet? You don’t have to tell me. But when you do have sex, make sure it’s good. I’m telling you that because I never had a good sex life. That was because your uncle Stan didn’t know how to give pleasure. I know how to give myself pleasure. That’s something you should learn, if you haven’t already.’
I closed my eyes and let them rest for a second. I breathed in and gently breathed out. My feeling of awkwardness had become excruciating unease. Margaret reached for the bottle and found it empty.
‘You know Stan never once gave me an orgasm,’ Margaret continued. ‘Come to that, he didn’t ever want to have sex with me. Men are supposed to think about sex every five minutes. You’re supposed to have to fight them off. Never happened to me! I don’t know why. I wasn’t ugly. You’ve seen pictures of me when I was young, haven’t you?’
‘I have.’
‘Go and have another look,’ said Margaret, signalling towards the clutch of frames on the table by the front door. ‘You can see for yourself. But Stan was not interested. I had to look elsewhere, without much luck. One night, back on our estate, we had a wine-tasting. Lanterns in the trees. Wine barrels for tables. Hay bales for chairs. I had a dress on. Can you believe that? You’ve probably never even seen me in a dress. You give them up as you get older. Every single lady in this retirement village wears slacks. Every day. Slacks with rubber shoes.’
She had veered off course and for a moment seemed confused.
‘Where was I? Oh, yes. I was still in good shape, not so many wrinkles,’ she said, pulling at her face. ‘And I made this pass at somebody I knew,’ she continued. ‘He was divorced. We’d been dancing and I felt him get an erection, and I pressed myself into it. And do you know what happened, Eden? He jumped back, like I was a scorpion.’
‘He probably thought you’d had too much to drink,’ I said. ‘Like, he didn’t want to take advantage.’
Margaret laughed.
‘Oh no,’ she said, shaking her head. ‘Or maybe. The point is, I couldn’t believe it. I thought, Come on, you old, divorced man. I know for a fact there’s no other woman. Why won’t you take me? But he wasn’t interested.’
She wiped at a red wine stain on the table.
‘He did this with his hand,’ she said, making a go-away gesture, ‘as if he was saying, “You crazy old sex maniac, leave me alone, you’ll get us both shot.” And I stomped off and went to the bathroom to pee, which is about the worst thing you can do, isn’t it? Because there was a mirror in the bathroom and the face that looked back at me … Tragic! So old. Pathetic. Mascara everywhere. And I thought, Christ, no wonder he doesn’t want you. Look at you. You old hag.’
‘Everybody thinks that when they look into the mirror after a party,’ I said.
‘Maybe,’ Margaret said, dolefully. ‘But anyway, that wasn’t the point of my story. I’m getting to the point. The point is, I should have left Stan. And do you know why I didn’t?’
I thought for a minute, then said: ‘Because you had children?’
Margaret looked into her wine glass. It was empty. She rose and took a few unsteady steps towards a framed photograph. I wondered what she was doing and got up to help but she returned in an instant with a wine box in her hands.
‘My secret stash,’ she said, swaying a bit as she put it down on the table. ‘For God’s sake, don’t tell anyone I drink box wine! But where was I? Yes. How I didn’t leave. Except for once. My granddaughter called me and said: “We’re going to Europe.” She and her fiancé. “We’re going to Europe and we need somebody to come to New York and take care of the cat. Can you do it?” And I don’t know what came over me but I said: “Of course.” Because that was something I’d never done.
‘And so I packed a little bag and off I went. And it was my first time on a plane by myself. And my first time living alone. And it was bliss. Bliss. The apartment was tiny. One bedroom. One bathroom. I went down the elevator in the morning and I went to the French patisserie and got myself a croissant. I didn’t have to think: And what would Stan want, and what would the children want? I walked along looking at buildings. I tried on a pair of shoes. Because I had no responsibilities.’
‘It sounds like you had fun.’
‘Yes, but here is the thing I wanted to tell you,’ Margaret said, wagging a finger. ‘I was a good house guest. A good cat sitter. But one night, I was in my granddaughter’s bed, and I opened the bedside drawer. I don’t even know why. I wasn’t snooping.
I was in bed, and the drawer was there, and I opened it. And do you know what was inside?’
I thought about my own bedside drawer at Briar Ridge. Chargers, magazines?
‘A vibrator! There was a vibrator in my granddaughter’s bedside drawer!’ said Margaret, wiping one leaking eye. ‘And I couldn’t have been more stunned. Do you know what that told me, Eden?’
I shook my head, mortified.
‘It said: “We have a sex life.” It said: “We are two people – young man and young woman – who talk to each other about sex.” So here was this young woman living the life that I wanted to lead. Because I’d never had any of that. Not the apartment, not the freedom, not the sex.’
Distressed, I rose up and reached for some scented tissues protruding from a cardboard box.
‘No, don’t. I don’t want tissues,’ Margaret said, waving them away. ‘I’m trying to get you to understand something, Eden. I should have left a thousand times and the reason I didn’t was because I had no money. Money is everything, Eden. If you have it, you can make choices. But if you don’t? You’re stuck. And that is why I’m telling you: take the money. Don’t get all romantic about your childhood here or feelings of friendship or whatever else is bugging you. Don’t be insane! You’ll end up trapped. Trust me. I’m telling you. Take the money and go.’
* * *
Tap-tap.
Tap-tap.
I woke after midnight to the sound of somebody tapping one of the sliding glass windows in my bedroom. I didn’t know it was Earl – not at first – but then who else would it be?
I felt around the wall for the button to lift the electric blind. It rose, but it was impossible to see anything beyond the glass. Then Earl turned on his torch and lit up his grinning face.
I mouthed the words: ‘What the hell are you doing?’
He shrugged and smiled. I threw back my linen covers, tiptoed across the room and turned the lock that held the window shut. Earl popped his head in and made like he might be going to crawl inside. I shook my head, no, no, and twirled my finger in the air, as if to say: ‘Don’t even try to sneak in here. Go around the back.’
He made a sad face, then a resigned face, and ducked away into the darkness. I pulled a zip-up jacket on over my puppy pyjamas and pushed my shoulder against the door. I padded down the hallway and out to the deck. There was a pair of shoes – Uncle Tim’s big work boots – by the iron boot remover and I slipped my feet into them, took Earl’s hand and ran with him, boots flopping, down the gravel drive.
‘Where are we going?’ I whispered.
‘You’ll see.’
We ran on, through the darkness, until we reached Alden Castle. I stopped dead. There was a full moon, plate-sized, hanging low by the stone turret. Every brick in the castle’s facade was glowing.
‘It’s gorgeous,’ I said.
‘I knew you’d want to see it,’ he said, pleased.
I stood marvelling at the beauty of the dilapidated building I’d grown up in.
‘Come on,’ said Earl, taking my hand. We stepped onto the drawbridge and I reached out and grasped the doorhandle – a giant knob on a steel post – and rattled it hard but the door didn’t open.
‘We’re going to have to use the window.’
We headed around the castle’s southern wall, into a tangle of weeds. I pushed the palm of my hand against the first window, then the second one. The third one slid up.
Earl offered to go first, rolling forward on his stomach and landing with the palms of his hands on the floorboards. He helped me. We dusted ourselves off and looked around.
‘Wow,’ I said. The castle wasn’t precisely as I remembered it. We’d entered via the main room, as opposed to the entrance hall, and the long table and the bison-covered chairs and the giant fireplace were still there, but the antler chandelier was gone, as was the suit of armour we’d loved when we were kids. Earl pointed his torch towards the door, and we stepped into the hall and walked slowly down to the old kitchen with the pink timber cabinets and the yellow plastic handles, and the steel-and-laminate table and the matching stools.
‘I remember all of this,’ I said, running my hand along the benchtop. ‘I remember Nan in here, smoking. She kept her cigarettes in that drawer. And we had a cat. Your mom would push Nan into the kitchen in her chair. She’d have on her feathered heels and that silky négligée she loved, and she’d get her cigarettes and light one and blow smoke rings out the door. And the cat would get a saucer of milk. And your mom would be smoothing the tablecloth down, and putting out that little vase of flowers and boiling the water for Pop’s eggs, and the one thing I was allowed to do was set the egg timer.’
‘I remember all of that,’ said Earl. ‘It’s like no time has passed. When do you think the last time you were in here was?’
‘In the castle or the kitchen?’
‘In the castle.’
‘I don’t know. I remember breaking in here a lot after the pavilion got built, when Fletcher and Austin were visiting at Thanksgiving or Christmas. It was always Fletcher that made us do it. Tim used to say he had a nose for trouble, and I remember looking at his nose once, wondering what that meant.’
‘You’re a gimp.’ Earl laughed, but Tim hadn’t been wrong. Fletcher as a teenager was a lot of trouble. One incident I can’t forget: it was the summer after he’d started at high school. He’d arrived on the estate wearing aviator sunglasses and he’d refused for days to take them off. He’d come out of the pavilion one morning carrying some kind of heavy sack and when we – Austin and me – asked him what it was, he’d only say: ‘You’ll see.’
He’d led us down the drive to the castle. We weren’t nervous about breaking in. We’d done it so many times. We went over the drawbridge and through the front door. It mustn’t have been locked in those days. We mucked around on the ground floor for a while, with Fletcher saying how bored he was, even while he was messing with the suit of armour and taking its sword for sword-fighting. Austin went up the big staircase and slid down the banister. Fletcher went upstairs and tried to get into some of the locked rooms, including Pop’s Egg Room, and when he found it was locked he lifted one foot and kicked the door in.
‘Mom’s going to kill you!’ said Austin.
‘Like she’s going to know,’ said Fletcher.
Beyond the door was a room lined with timber cabinets with dozens of tiny drawers, all made from some kind of special polished timber. One egg per drawer, and bigger cabinets within the cabinet, for ostrich and emu eggs. Fletcher headed straight over, and started going through it.
‘God, I remember these,’ he said, tugging at the half-moon handles and exposing the delicate egg clutches to the light. ‘Isn’t there an emu egg somewhere? I remember an emu egg. Blown out and carved. It was massive.’
‘The emu egg was in a box,’ said Austin. ‘A big glass box. It’s not going to fit in one of those drawers. They must have sold it.’
‘You’re not supposed to touch those eggs!’
That was me saying that, because I was the good girl. Also the nervous one.
‘“You’re not supposed to touch those eggs,”’ mocked Fletcher. ‘You’re such a nerd, Ewok. Hey, Austin, remember how after the pavilion went up Mom was freaking out about the eggs being left here? She used to go on about this collection being worth, like, a million dollars?’ He slammed one drawer shut and opened another. ‘Remember how Dad organised that sale and all those people came and looked at the eggs and gave him nothing? The day before, Dad was like: “I’m gonna buy a Ferrari.” They didn’t want any of it.’
‘Your mom wanted to throw it all out,’ Austin said to me. ‘She should have. Look at it. Stinky eggs. Old nests. They all smell.’
‘What’s in them?’ I asked.
‘They’re empty,’ said Fletcher, shaking one. ‘Not fair. I want to see the chicken foetus.’
‘You’re gross.’ That was also me, the queasy one.
‘You’re gross, Ewok.’
�
�I found a chicken in a boiled egg once,’ said Austin. ‘I cracked it open and there was a beak in the yolk. Blood and a beak.’
‘You’re a liar.’ Fletcher.
‘You’re gross.’ Austin.
‘You’re going to be more gross when I smash an egg on you.’ Fletcher again, and then it was on. Fletcher led the charge, crushing a nest of three eggs beneath his boots, and then another, and then balancing the nest on his head, before even that got boring.
‘Let’s go up to the turret,’ said Austin.
‘No. Let’s go onto the roof,’ said Fletcher, hefting his mysterious sack. The two places are separate: to get to the top of the turret you have to go through a timber door and up a spiral staircase with an iron balustrade and out through a trapdoor into the light. To get onto the roof you had to go through a window in what was my old bedroom and scramble across the tiles. Not as high, but much more dangerous. Only Fletcher was brave enough to walk across the old broken tiles.
‘What if you fall? You’ll smash your dumb head.’ That was Austin.
‘I’ll smash your head,’ Fletcher said.
He ordered us to follow him to the chimney, where he stopped, and examined the brickwork. Because the chimney came out of the sloped roof, if you stood on the high side you could look down into it.
‘This must be how Santa used to get in,’ he said. ‘So I bet I could get down, too.’
‘You’re not Santa Claus,’ said Austin.
‘No, but if that fat bastard can get down there a person must be able to. And I’ve got just the things to test my theory.’
Fletcher opened the sack. He’d been funny all day about what was inside, saying: ‘You’ll find out.’ He took out a potato. Austin was laughing, saying: ‘That’s your big secret?’ but Fletcher ignored him and made a big show about dropping it down the chimney. We heard a sound. Austin and I took turns to peer down. It was hard to see but we guessed the potato had smashed to pieces in the fireplace. Fletcher turned his attention back to the sack. Out came a small watermelon, and it went down next, splitting into pieces. From where we stood, peering down, it looked like flesh and blood.
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