by Mary Lawson
Tom’s own particular passion wasn’t outer space, it was supersonic flight, and it seemed to him that if there were a miracle involved it was that he happened to be born when he was, because in the whole history of flight there had never been a better time to be an aeronautical engineer. Over in Europe, Concorde was under development; out in Seattle, Boeing was working on the supersonic transport program; down at the Institute for Aerospace Studies in Toronto, having completed his final exams, Tom was called into his professor’s office and told that his name had been put forward to both Boeing and de Havilland and he would probably be receiving letters inviting him for interviews shortly. If that wasn’t a miracle for a boy from the bush, what was?
Three weeks later, back at home for the summer, he had rounded the corner of a sheer rock face and seen the crumpled heap of his friend’s body at the foot of it, and twenty years of passion had vanished in a heartbeat.
Now Tom walked around the little plane trying to work out what he was feeling. Nothing much. But he didn’t think he’d have been able to come and look at it a couple of months ago, so maybe that was progress.
He walked along the shore, keeping close to the edge, where the wind had left enough snow to provide some traction. The sun had gone and a few large soft flakes were drifting down—the plane would have to leave soon or not at all. Once he rounded the point that sheltered Low Down Bay from the wind, the snow was thigh deep and within yards he was breathless and sweating. As soon as Lower Beach Road came into view he stopped. No need to go farther.
The bay looked entirely different in winter, barren and hostile, the point where land and water met erased by ice and snow, the curve of the rocks obscured by drifts. The trees were so burdened with snow they looked like figures hunched against the wind.
The cottages were deserted—they had no insulation, so were only for summer use. The one the little girl and her parents had been staying in was at the far end of the road, with the beach on its doorstep and its back to the woods. It was the one they always stayed in. They came for a month every summer to enjoy the beach and the lake and the wide curving beauty of the bay. They loved the peace and quiet, the child’s mother had said that day in court, her mouth so distorted with grief and rage that the words had to be squeezed out one by one. The peace and the quiet and, in particular, the lack of traffic.
Robert was convicted of manslaughter, which surprised no one. What surprised them all was the sentence passed down by the Crown attorney: three months of service in the community. Robert had looked stunned by it. He’d expected a prison sentence.
Tom had been standing beside Robert when the child’s mother came up after the trial—Robert’s parents were on the other side—so he heard what she said. She was shaking so hard with anger that the words came out in fractured syllables, but they were still comprehensible. She said that justice had not been done and that Robert knew it. She said she hoped that the image of her child’s dead body would be at the forefront of Robert’s mind every minute of every day from now until the day he died. She said that Robert had destroyed her child’s past for her as well as her present and her future; she could no longer see her daughter in her mind’s eye as a baby or a toddler or a little girl learning to ride a bike—her memory no longer held those pictures. The only picture it held, the only thing left to her, was the image of her child’s dead body, head lolling back, mouth gaping open, as they had lifted her into the doctor’s car. And therefore her prayer now, her constant prayer, was that it would be all Robert would ever see either, now and forever.
Tom had known he should stop her; he’d known he should step between her and Robert and say, “Ma’am, excuse me, but you don’t want to say those things, you really mustn’t say those things, please come away now.” He should have put an arm around her and steered her away, forcibly if necessary, given her into the safekeeping of someone, anyone, so that she could not let loose into the world words that should never, ever, have been spoken. He knew he should do that but he was unable to move. He felt rather than saw Robert stagger back, though the woman hadn’t struck him with anything but words. Later he saw that Robert’s mother had collapsed and that people were gathered around her. He also saw Robert’s father, Reverend Thomas, standing as if carved from stone, one hand partially raised as though to stop the appalling words before they reached his son, his mouth half open as if he’d tried to say something but at this, the most critical moment of his life, had lost the power of speech.
By a stroke of luck Shelley the Slut wasn’t there when he got home. Adam was in the living room playing with his cars. Tom sat down in his chair, leaned his head back and closed his eyes. Apart from the sound of Adam’s cars there was silence, a rare and beautiful thing in this house. He thought he might even fall asleep, and then thought he was asleep, and then he woke up because the sound of cars had stopped and he smelled an odorous presence. He opened his eyes a slit. Adam was standing by his knee looking at him with serious eyes.
“Hello,” Tom said, not bothering to lift his head.
“Are you sad?” Adam asked.
“I guess a bit,” Tom said.
“Why?”
Tom sighed and straightened up. “A friend of mine died. It was a while ago, but it’s still sad.”
The by now familiar crease appeared between Adam’s eyebrows. “What is died?” he said.
Tom opened his mouth to say, “Like that mouse we found” but stopped himself. The concept was difficult enough without the kid thinking that everybody ended their days upside down in a jar of honey.
“It’s like … you just aren’t there anymore. It’s kind of hard to explain.”
“Where do you go?”
“Nobody knows. Nowhere bad, though.”
Adam thought about it long and hard. Finally he held out a car he’d been clutching. “This is my new car,” he said.
“That’s called a change of subject,” Tom said, taking the car. “This is new, is it? It’s very shiny. Do you know what kind it is?”
A shake of the head.
“It’s a Mercedes sports car. They can go really fast.”
A vigorous nod. “Is that colour called silver?”
“It is. Where did you get it?”
“It was on the table.”
“What do you mean, on the table? In a box or something?”
Adam shot off and returned with a little Matchbox box and handed it over.
“I see,” Tom said, examining the box. It had been considerably squashed. “That’s very neat. Where did it come from?”
“It came with the letters.”
“Someone sent it to you? That’s nice of them. Do you know who it was?”
A shake of the head.
“Do you have the paper it was wrapped in?”
Adam shot off again and returned with a jumble of brown paper.
“Right,” Tom said, smoothing out the paper on his knee and fitting pieces together. “Somewhere here there should be a return address … look at the stamps, they’re different—well hey! Whaddya know—it’s from Meg. Do you remember Meg? I guess you wouldn’t; she left a long time ago. She’s your big sister. She lives in England.”
Adam hauled up his T-shirt, releasing a fresh puff of stink, then hauled it down again. “Why doesn’t she live here with us?”
“That’s a good question,” Tom said. “I wish she did, then you wouldn’t smell like you do and we wouldn’t be in this mess. Have all your cars come like this?”
“Yes.”
“So Meg sent you all those cars. Wow! That’s really nice of her, isn’t it? I think she must like you. She’s never sent me anything.”
Adam looked thoughtful. For a moment he seemed to debate something with himself, then abruptly he disappeared behind the chair, rattled cars briefly and reappeared with a red and yellow dump truck that had seen better days.
“You can have this,” he said.
“You mean to keep?”
“Yes.”
�
��Thank you,” Tom said. “That’s very generous of you. I’m touched.”
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Megan
London, July 1968
His name was Andrew Bannerman and, apart from having an attractive smile, there was nothing remarkable about him. He had brown hair in need of a cut and a pleasant enough face and dirty jeans and a sweater that was unravelling at the collar. His bedsit room, across the landing from her own, was a shambles—at least the bit she caught a glimpse of through the open doorway was. Clothes and books and papers everywhere.
A standard male, in other words. He was on his way out when she met him on the landing and said he’d be away for a couple of weeks but would knock and introduce himself properly when he got back, so she only had that one brief look at him and he was nothing special. That was what she decided.
He seems nice enough, she told herself as she painted the window frame. It’ll be good to have someone nice across the landing. Did I just paint that bit or not?
——
Annabelle and Peter came over to view the room the evening after Megan signed the lease, bearing a bottle of wine and a set of wineglasses with delicate twisted stems.
“To your new home!” Peter said, raising a glass. “This is a real find, Meg. And that’s quite a view.” He went over to the big sash window. (Megan had washed it, inside and out, at no little risk to life and limb, as soon as she took possession of the room.)
“You’ve got your own private nature sanctuary,” Peter said. Birds were flitting about, squirrels were flowing up and down the trees. It was like a miniature forest, and from the road you’d never have guessed it was there. Just before Annabelle and Peter arrived there’d been a short but vigorous downpour and now the evening sun was glancing off the rooftops as if the whole thing had been stage-managed for the specific purpose of impressing Megan’s visitors.
Annabelle turned back from the window and contemplated the room with a decorator’s eye. They had offered to help Megan do up the flat before she moved in. “Have you decided on the colour?”
“Pale yellow-gold.” (Two years ago she would have painted everything white and never given it another thought.)
“Perfect,” Annabelle said. “I think you need another armchair for when someone comes around. Would you like the Windsor chair in the office? We never use it.”
Megan imagined Andrew Bannerman sitting in it, glass of wine in hand.
She took a week off to paint and decorate the room. Janet, her assistant housekeeper at the hotel, was quite capable of filling in for her now, and in any case Megan was still sleeping at the hotel, so she could keep an eye on things. Annabelle and Peter came around on a couple of evenings to help out and it was just like old times, though in fact it was the days on her own that Megan enjoyed most. She’d never had a holiday before, at least not since she was too young to remember. In between coats of emulsion she sat at the table by the window, looking down into people’s back gardens and thinking about the strangeness of the past two and a half years: the desperate homesickness of the early days, how close she had come to giving up and going home, how much she would have missed if she’d done so. Here she was in a place of her own, paid for with her own money, earned by doing a job she loved. And who knew what tomorrow would bring?
When the decorating was finished she went shopping. Around the corner there was a hardware store that sold all kinds of things for the kitchen. She bought a set of crockery (plain white, four of everything), cutlery, saucepans, a bread board, a chopping board, kitchen utensils and a fat brown tea pot. Then she went to John Lewis (“Never knowingly undersold”) and bought an electric kettle, a toaster, a coffee percolator and a casserole dish nice enough to put on the table should she happen to invite someone for dinner. She had to take a taxi to get everything home.
On Sunday, the final day of her week off, Megan moved in. It didn’t take long; apart from her recent purchases she still had very few possessions. She’d invited Annabelle and Peter for dinner that evening to celebrate, so after sorting out where everything went she started cooking. She made a chicken pie for the main course, just to check that she hadn’t lost the knack of making pastry, and fresh poached plums for dessert. Then, because she’d been wanting to make them for two and a half years and now she finally could, she made Chelsea buns to serve with the plums. They weren’t considered a dessert, but so what? She served them warm with custard and they were a triumph.
——
Megan was so happy that day she almost burst with it, so it was strange that she had a disturbing dream that night. In the dream she went back to see her family and they weren’t there anymore. Nothing was there: not the people, not the house, not even Struan itself. It and they no longer existed. The dream didn’t provide any explanation. Megan awoke to a feeling of loss and grief she hadn’t felt since her days at Lansdown Terrace. Why would you have a dream like that at a time like this?
On Monday morning she got a letter from her father—just her father, which was unusual; normally her parents wrote at the same time so as to economize on stamps. Megan opened it with a vague sense of apprehension (the dream was still lingering in the back of her mind) but by the time she finished reading the letter it was no longer apprehension she felt but outrage.
6th August 1968
Dear Megan,
Thank you for your letter dated 15th July. I am glad you have found an apartment close to your place of work. That will be a considerable advantage, saving time as well as travel fares. Provided the roof is sound, being on the top floor will be an advantage too, as there will be no noise from above.
Things here are much as usual. Your brother Tom is driving a lumber truck for the summer and appears to have no plans to return to his chosen career. We’ve had no word from the twins for a good while, so we don’t know where they are, but there is nothing new in that. Your mother is expecting another baby after Christmas.
That’s about all the news, apart from the fact that we have had a spell of dry weather so the mosquitoes are not as bad as they were earlier, which is a considerable relief.
Everyone is well. I hope you are too.
The way he slipped it in: “Your mother is expecting another baby after Christmas.” As if it was of no particular consequence. As if he hadn’t been told, straight out, by Dr. Christopherson—Megan had heard it with her own ears—that there were to be no more babies. Her mother wouldn’t be able to cope, the place would be utter chaos. But more important than that, much more important, was Adam: who would look after him while his mother fell in love with the new arrival? Megan was so furious she wanted to phone her father and shout, “You’re a disgrace!” down the phone line.
Fortunately, things were busy at the hotel. Mondays were Annabelle’s day off, so in addition to her other duties, Megan was front of house. An elderly lady guest had been taken by surprise by a spider in the bath and had to be soothed and brought tea and the spider disposed of. Someone had stolen a bottle of Harveys Bristol Cream, a bottle of Courvoisier and the contents of the honesty box from the bar. (A guest? A member of staff? Someone off the street? There was no way of knowing.) Megan grimly made a note of it and sent Janet out to buy more. Doing the rounds with Jonah (he of the single tooth), she happened to catch sight of his hand, which he had stabbed with a screwdriver the previous week. Megan didn’t like the look of it. “That’s infected,” she told him. “Go to the doctor. Go this minute.” Jonah said he didn’t have a doctor, he’d never had a doctor, he didn’t believe in doctors. Megan phoned the nearest surgery, made an appointment for him and threatened to escort him if he didn’t go at once. An American couple arrived with no luggage: they’d flown overnight from New York to Heathrow while their luggage had flown from New York to Singapore. Megan was very sympathetic—she didn’t have to pretend. She gave them complimentary toothpaste and toothbrushes and promised to make the airline’s life hell until the luggage was returned.
Whenever her father’s letter entered her mi
nd she reminded herself that her mother had coped without her for two and a half years now and Mrs. Jarvis came in twice a week and would doubtless come more often if necessary. And Adam was nearly four and, unless he had changed his personality since she’d left (and he wouldn’t have—in Megan’s experience they were who they were from the moment they drew breath), was a steady little soul. He’ll be fine, she told herself, just fine.
She did a reasonable job of convincing herself, but back at her bedsit that evening she reread her father’s letter and saw something she had failed to take in earlier—that Tom was still at home—and that made her mad all over again. Neither of her parents had mentioned him for a while and she’d assumed he’d managed to pull himself together and get on with his life. She should have known better. Tom had always been a brooder. As a child, when any little thing had gone wrong—someone stepping on his Lancaster bomber, his prize penknife vanishing—he’d withdrawn into himself and brooded for days.
She decided to write to him. Somebody had to do something or he’d sit there for the rest of his life. She got a pen and an airmail form from the kitchen drawer she’d dedicated to such things and sat down at the table by the window. “Dear Tom,” she wrote, and paused. What she wanted to say was, “Dear Tom, I know Robert’s death was terrible, but I hear from Dad that you are still at home sitting on your backside brooding about it and I was wondering exactly what you thought you were achieving by that and when you were going to get on with your life,” but she suspected that would be a mistake. She was still puzzling over it when there was a tap at the door. She answered it absent-mindedly, pen in hand.