by Helen Grant
As we walked, Tom told me about the work he had been doing with his father, which had been some distance away in a place called Dunkeld. He told me a little about the town and about the job they had been doing, but the thing that interested me most was hearing him talk about his father – the things he had said and done. Tom’s way of talking about him was far less respectful than the way I would have spoken about Grandmother when she was alive. He seemed slightly exasperated sometimes by his father’s way of looking at things. And yet I thought there was real affection in his voice when he talked about the older man. It fascinated me to imagine all the relationships Tom had with other people – his father, his mother, his own grandmother, who sounded nothing at all like mine.
I asked him about his mother, but he seemed less willing to speak about her; when I asked, he looked away from me for a moment, into the forest. Then he made a little sound like a sigh.
“She’s still annoyed at me because I won’t tell her anything about you.” He grimaced. “I’m not using her car anymore but I think that pisses her off even more, the fact that I’ve got the bike so I can go off without her knowing first.”
“I’m sorry,” I said. I couldn’t think of anything else to say.
“I really haven’t told her, you know. I haven’t told any of it to anyone.”
Before I had time to think of anything to say to this, he began to walk again, pulling me along with him.
I glanced at his set face, perplexed. Suddenly, Tom seemed to be angry, and I didn’t understand why. It was weeks since he had first promised to keep my secret; now he seemed upset about it. I couldn’t tell whether he was angry with me, or with his mother, or with the situation.
Tom’s legs were longer than mine and he was moving more quickly than was comfortable for me; I stumbled, and then stopped, letting go of Tom’s hand, and Tom stopped too. We stared at each other. I tried to read the expression in Tom’s eyes.
“Tom,” I said at last, “I believe you. I know you haven’t told anyone. And I’m sorry about your mother, I really am. I don’t want to get you in trouble.”
For a moment Tom said nothing. Then, abruptly, he said, “I think we should go and see Dr. Robertson again.”
“But he said not to come back. He said if I knocked again he wouldn’t open the door.”
Tom turned away and began to walk uphill again, and I had to follow him.
“Tom–”
“I know what he said. I still think we should speak to him again.”
“But why? He said he wouldn’t talk to me again, and he said if I told anyone else and they came knocking, he’d deny everything.”
“Yes, but Ghost – how do you know that what he told you was true? Supposing it wasn’t true? Or only part of it was true? Or he left something out on purpose, something important?”
I was confused, and slightly out of breath from trying to talk to Tom while hurrying to keep up with him.
“I don’t know,” I said, “But if we went back, why would he tell us anything different?”
“He might.”
“But how would we make him?” A thought occurred to me. “You don’t mean threaten him, do you? We can’t do that.”
“We have to do something,” said Tom tersely.
“But why–?” I began to say, and then I stopped. I kept pace with Tom, but for a while the only words that came were the ones tumbling about silently inside my own head. Something was troubling Tom; I could feel it as plainly as walking with a stone in my shoe. There was something he wasn’t telling me.
“Tom?” I said, and waited for him to look at me. “Did you find out anything new? About my mother, I mean?”
Tom shook his head. “No. I tried all the different names but...” He shrugged. “She wasn’t there.”
I waited for him to say more, but he didn’t.
“Did you look for her with your– ” I struggled to remember the right expression. “–online machine?”
Tom let out a sigh. “Yeah, I searched online. There was nothing.”
“Not everything is – online – though, is it?” I persisted. I couldn’t understand why Tom was being so reticent about it.
“No,” said Tom. “But most people, you’d find something.” He looked away, and kicked a loose stone across the track. “Like I said, I think we should go and see Dr. Robertson again. We’ve got more out of talking to people in the town than doing online searches.”
“All right,” I said doubtfully. I was remembering the old man’s face as he had closed the door. Don’t come back here, ever, he had said.
Tom took my hand again and we walked on for a while in silence. I chewed my lip, thinking.
Eventually, the track emerged from the forest and wound its way through banks of springy heather towards the top of the hill. Where the hillside fell away from us, there was an open view across the countryside. I stood still, pulling Tom to a standstill too, and stared out at the rolling landscape and the distant hills, at the silver sheen of a small loch. The view from Langlands House was always hemmed in by trees; by comparison, this was as breathtaking as the ocean had been when we saw it from the clifftops.
At the last section, we left the path and scrambled up through the heather to the summit, marked by a stone – a ‘trig point’, Tom said, though I had no idea what that was. I stood with my back to the cool stone and stared at the town in the distance. Tom stood close beside me and pointed things out, telling me which other things lay in different directions from the town.
I listened, but mostly I thought about how small and contained the town looked in the landscape. It was strange to be able to see all of it at once like that. When Tom told me that the city of Perth was in this direction or Stirling in that direction, I began to see the land as a kind of giant map stretching away into the distance on all sides, with the town an insignificant mark on it. It gave me a kind of vertiginous feeling, an echo of the slowly building panic I had felt the day Tom had driven me to Elie to see the sea and I had started to think of what would happen to me if we were somehow separated. The outside was so vast, and I felt as though all I understood of the geography of it was that it was not Langlands, where I belonged.
After a while, I turned my face away from the view and leant against Tom’s shoulder, closing my eyes. Tom put his arms around me, and I put mine around him too. Sometimes when Tom held me, his touch was light, his hands moving restlessly over my face and hair. Now, we clung to each other as though we were afraid of being prised apart.
On Saturday Tom came again, just as fat raindrops were beginning to spatter the window panes. When I opened the front door to his knock, I felt the clammy coolness of the air.
“I thought we could go to Dr. Robertson’s,” was almost the first thing he said, after stooping to kiss me.
“Now?” I looked past him, at the rain slanting into the stone porch.
“Yeah.”
I looked down at the motorcycle helmet dangling from his fingers. “We’ll get soaked,” I pointed out.
Tom shrugged. “I know. But it’s important.”
I bit my lip. “Tom, tell me why we have to go and see Dr. Robertson again.”
Tom looked at me and I thought I saw a ripple of something – dismay or guilt – pass across his face. Then he said, “Because he might not have told us everything. He could have forgotten something, or left it out on purpose, or–” He stopped, shrugging his shoulders.
“What do you think he left out?” I said, boldly.
Tom hesitated. “I don’t know.”
I looked into his eyes, holding his gaze. “Tom, tell me.”
He held out his hands, placating me. “I told you, I don’t know anything for certain.”
“You’ve got an idea though, haven’t you?” I persisted. I went up very close to him. I was always very conscious of Tom’s physical proximity t
o me; my skin seemed to tingle with the sense of it. Now it was as though sparks were arcing through the air between us. I felt he must tell me the truth when we were so close that I could see every individual eyelash, when I could smell the cologne he wore. “Tell me.”
He thought about it for too long. “Ghost – it isn’t really an idea. It’s just something that...” He shook his head. “It might just be completely random.”
“Tell me anyway. Please.”
“I–” He thought about it. “I don’t think I should.” Tom saw me open my mouth to say something and he went on, “Look, okay, something did occur to me. But it might be completely wrong. What would be the point of getting upset about something that might be nothing at all?”
“So it’s something bad,” I said.
“I didn’t say that.”
“Well, why won’t you tell me, then?” I was struggling to keep my voice level.
“Let’s just go over there,” said Tom. “We can talk to him and... yeah, I know he said he wouldn’t talk to us again but we can try to persuade him. What’s the point in speculating about what he’s going to say beforehand?”
“Maybe there isn’t any point,” I said, “But I want to know. Tom.” I saw his gaze slide away from mine and forced him to look at me again. “Just say it, whatever it is.”
“Ghost, believe me, you don’t want to know.”
“I do.” I couldn’t help it now; my voice was rising. “Tom! I’m not a child!”
“I know you’re not–”
“And I’m not stupid! I know I don’t know all the things about the outside that I ought to, but that doesn’t mean I’m an idiot!” My hair had fallen over my eyes; I shook it back. “So just tell me, Tom.”
And he did. We didn’t even go through to the kitchen, where it was warmer and lighter. We stood there in the hallway on the dusty chequered tiles and Tom told me the idea that had come to him – an ugly, horrible idea that slowly took form as I listened to his words, as grotesque as a gargoyle. Tom thought Grandmother had made everything up: my father’s cruelty, my mother’s flight, the dangerous birth alone at Langlands, and not just those things but my parentage too. He thought that my mother and father weren’t my mother and father at all. He thought that Elspeth McAndrew did not even exist anymore. Worst of all, he thought Grandmother had stolen me from someone – just taken me from my real parents when I was a tiny baby because she was sick inside her head. If what he said was true, I wasn’t Augusta McAndrew. I didn’t know who I was; maybe I wasn’t anyone at all.
I listened to everything he said in horrified silence, corked like a bottle of poison by the stunned disbelief I felt. Then, when he was standing in front of me with his head down and regret in his eyes, I found my voice again.
“No.” My throat was dry and the word came out like a croak. “No,” I said again, more loudly. And then I was shrieking it, and I was flailing with my hands, trying to shove Tom away from me as though I could push away the thoughts he had put into my brain too. Tom took a step back, involuntarily, and then he grabbed my wrists, trying to stop me from shoving him. I wrenched myself out of his grip, and we parted, glaring at each other, both of us breathless.
“Ghost–”
“I don’t believe it!”
“You don’t have to believe it. It’s just an idea. It’s probably totally wrong. We’ll just talk to him and he’ll probably say it’s all crap.”
“I’m not talking to him!” I was really shouting now. “I’m not going. It’s just a pack of lies, all of it!”
“I’m sorry–” Tom began, but I cut him off.
“I don’t care. I’m not going.” There were hot tears in my eyes now. I blinked them back, angry at myself for crying. “You shouldn’t have said those things about Grandmother, Tom. Those lies. Grandmother wouldn’t ever do a thing like that.”
Tom turned away from me, putting his hands to his head, grasping his hair as though he meant to pluck it out in great handfuls. He took a few steps, almost stumbling, then turned back on himself as though pacing out the limits of a very small cage. I think he was as full of savage feelings as I was, but for a few moments he said nothing.
When he did speak, there was a strange tension in his voice. “I’m really sorry I upset you. But we have to know what happened. Look, it’s just an idea I had, and you’re right, it’s probably crap. But don’t you think we ought to talk to Dr. Robertson anyway? Even just to rule it out?”
“But it’s not true. I know it’s not.” The blood seemed to be thrumming through my body so violently that I was afraid I would faint. I put out a hand and touched the wall, steadying myself. “I can’t believe you would say that about Grandmother.”
“It’s not just about her,” Tom burst out. “Can’t you see that? Both of us are in trouble: you and me.” His blue-green eyes were wide. “I want to know what I’m involved in. I know you don’t want to believe your gran did anything wrong, and believe me, I really hope she didn’t. But if she did, if she did something criminally wrong, I’ve been helping to cover it up for the last two months. I could be in really deep shit for that and...I want some warning.”
“You go, then,” I retorted. “You talk to him about your horrible idea.”
“He won’t talk to me.”
“I don’t care. I don’t believe it and I’m not going.”
“Ghost–”
“Tom, just go.” I drew breath. “Go!”
I ran away from him, towards the stairs, and before I came to the turn in the staircase he had already reached the door. For a moment I paused in my flight and we stared at each other, me with my hand on the worn bannister, Tom with his on the door handle. Then I fled up to the first floor, and as I reached the spot where the stuffed bear stood snarling his eternal snarl, I heard the door bang closed.
I ran to my room. The anger and misery I felt were so terrible that I stumbled over to the bed and punched the mattress until I was too worn out and breathless to do it anymore. Then I collapsed onto it, curling myself into a ball, and cried until I felt sick. Outside the rain and wind had worked themselves up into a storm; I heard the distant rumble of thunder over the hiss of the rain.
At last I sat up, the tears drying on my face, and thought of Tom, riding back down the track and the rest of the way home in this weather. I was not angry enough to wish that he would come to grief. I looked at the rain-streaked window and the tree branches tossed in the wind beyond it, and my conscience pricked me.
When I went downstairs again, the house felt somehow emptier than before. I stood on the bottom step for a little while, looking around me as though I might find Tom still here, though I had heard the door close when he left. Then I went across to the door myself, and opened it to look out.
There was something sitting on the flagstones at the mouth of the stone porch. I went out to see what it was, shivering a little in the damp air. A little stack of groceries; Tom must have left them there before he rode away, not wanting to come back inside to give them to me after the way we had parted. There was a container of powdered milk, the seal intact, and a mesh bag full of oranges, their dimpled skins gleaming with wet from the rain, and a box of little cakes that looked as though it had probably been ruined; the cardboard was soaked and almost fell apart in my hands. In addition, there was a bag of sugar that was also spoiled; the paper had some kind of shiny coating but the rain had still got in. I carried everything indoors as best as I could.
I was right about the cakes. They were disintegrating into a kind of mush. After I had taken them out of the remains of the box I looked at them for a while, wondering whether to put them out for the birds, but in the end, I could not bear to waste food. I ate all of them, though the texture was soggy and unpleasant.
The sugar I took out of the bag and warmed in the oven in a roasting-pan. A whole two-pound bag of sugar was certainly too valuable to throw aw
ay, especially if I wasn’t sure how or when I would get any more...
It was dawning on me uncomfortably that Tom might not come back. I had been so angry that we had almost fought, physically, and he... I remembered how wild his eyes had looked when he blurted out the things about getting in trouble because he had helped me. He knew the world outside Langlands; if he was afraid of that, perhaps he was right to be. Perhaps now that we had argued, he would decide that he had to stay away for his own self-preservation.
When I drew the roasting-pan out of the oven with gloved hands, the sugar was dry and brittle, and I wetted it all over again with the tears that dripped from my face into it.
I suppose Ghost was right about one thing: it was nuts to think of going to Dr. Robertson’s house on Saturday during that rainstorm. By the time I’d got down to the cattle grid at the bottom of the drive, there was mud all over me and the bike. A soaking on the way home didn’t help much either. Not the best way to persuade someone to let you into their house, turning up looking like a drowned rat.
When I got home, Mum followed me up the stairs complaining about the dirt I’d tracked into the house.
“I wouldn’t be covered in mud if you’d let me have the car,” I pointed out, which was stupid. If I’d ever considered discussing the mess I’m in with her, the idea was buried in the row that erupted after that. It ended with me slamming my bedroom door and not talking to her until the next morning.
So now it’s Tuesday afternoon, and I’m standing outside Dr. Robertson’s house on my own. Ghost isn’t here. I haven’t been back to Langlands since Saturday, but it’s pretty clear how she feels about my idea. If I’m honest, though, that’s not the only reason I haven’t been back. I’m not saying I’m never going back. I just want to get my head straight first. And I want to know whether my idea is right.
The first thing I notice is that the old man’s house looks more neglected than before, if that’s possible. I mean, it’s not been that long since we were here before. There are a bunch of those free leaflets that people put through the door heaped up in the porch and the rain has got them, so they’re a soggy mess of wet paper right where you’d tread when you went in or out. I step over them, so that I’m standing right up close to the front door. Then I open the letterbox, being really careful not to make any noise, and look through, thinking maybe I can catch the old man unawares before he hears me knocking.