‘We read Agatha Christie, don’t we?’
Caroline was wondering if after all she should be studying English Literature instead of medicine. She hoped it would be better next year, once this awful stage was past. It was only determination not to let anyone see she cared that was getting her through Anatomy. She had nightmares about it. Daniel did too, though he made a point of being blasé in class and with other students, even with her.
If she hadn’t been so adamant about doing medicine, she might change direction now. It couldn’t help but be easier, English, just reading and analysing all those books, and writing about them. She read all the time, and so did Daniel. They had the biggest collection of books of anyone she knew. Janet had books of course: the house was full of them and they were all hers, not Harry’s. Harry probably only read Accountant’s Monthly or something. That and the Press & Journal and the Sunday Times. They had been in Harry’s office yesterday, and waiting for him had been struck by the utter lack of anything to read in the reception area. It seemed a waste of the comfortable leather chairs. ‘Far be it from me to recommend the dentist,’ Daniel had said, ‘but at least Mr Simpson has Reader’s Digest and Punch.’
‘I still don’t understand why we can’t get our own money now. We are grown up: we can drive and get married and join the army.’
‘We’ve not done any of that yet,’ Daniel pointed out.
‘We could drive if we had our money. We could buy a car and live in a flat and be independent. But not, of course,’ she added, ‘join the army. Or get married.’
‘I don’t think they can hang onto it after we’re twenty-one,’ Daniel said. ‘So let’s not bother for now, eh?’
He did not want the responsibility of their mother’s money, left to them in trust until they reached adulthood. They had – naively it appeared – assumed this meant eighteen. Harry had told them that in law and in the trustees’ view it meant twenty-one. He and Grandpa and their father were the trustees, and Caroline, who had not let go, did not mean to let go as easily as Daniel, was wondering which of the other two she should approach.
‘Leave it,’ said Daniel, reading her mind. He picked up To Kill a Mockingbird. He was reading it the way Caroline, equally annoyingly, had read Gone with the Wind: in bed, at the dinner table, in the bath, on the bus. Books did not survive this treatment well. Gone with the Wind had food smears, pages rippled by steam, corners knocked. Caroline saw To Kill a Mockingbird going the same way.
‘I’ll read it when you’ve finished,’ she said. ‘It’s obviously gripping.’
‘Shut up,’ he said. ‘I’ll never finish if you keep interrupting.’
The front door opened and they heard Janet come in with the dog. There was a skitter of claws on the polished floor, then the door closed and they heard them go past and into the kitchen.
Caroline got up. ‘That’s Janet back. I’m going to talk to her about the money.’
‘Good luck,’ Daniel said, not looking up from the book.
In the kitchen, Caroline felt less certain of what to say. Janet acknowledged her with a smile, but she was rubbing the Labrador dry with an old towel. She opened the door into the back porch and the dog went into his bed, settling down with a grunt.
‘Would you hand me my book from the sideboard?’ Janet asked. She often read while she worked at the sink, the book propped up behind the taps.
‘Nobody in this house treats books very well,’ Caroline said, handing her a battered copy of Frenchman’s Creek. ‘It’s going to get all spattered if you read it in the kitchen.’
‘It’s old,’ Janet said. ‘I’ve had it for years.’
‘Do you have to read it now?’
With a sigh, Janet put the book on the windowsill next to her pot of parsley. ‘I liked Jamaica Inn better,’ she said. ‘What is it, did you want something?’
‘You know Harry spoke to us about the money yesterday?’
‘Yes.’
‘It seems so unfair. Not being able to have it. It’s our money.’
Janet had gone into the larder to rummage in the vegetable basket. She came out with carrots and potatoes.
‘You’ll need it later, when you’ve graduated. Best to wait till then.’
‘That’s what Harry said. But we think we should have it now, so we can get a flat and be independent. That would be easier for you, wouldn’t it, if we didn’t have to live here? Medical degrees take years.’
Surely this was what Janet really wanted: her house to herself again. She was standing with the carrots in her hands, as if deliberating the merits of the proposal. In the end, all she said was ‘You’ve just begun. We’ll see how you get on after the first year or so.’
‘I might change my mind,’ Caroline said.
‘About what?’ Janet put the carrots in the sink and ran cold water over them.
‘Medicine.’
‘Don’t be silly, Caroline. You’ve been accepted into medicine – that’s a great achievement. You can’t just throw it away.’
‘I wouldn’t be throwing it away – I’d change to English or History or something instead.’
Janet abandoned the carrots. ‘Oh, for goodness sake.’
‘What?’
‘After all the fuss you made! You were adamant, you said it wasn’t just because Daniel had applied for medicine. You don’t seem to realise how privileged you are. A degree isn’t something you keep changing – you have to stick to it, once you’ve begun.’
‘I don’t want to keep changing. I just think it’s maybe not the right career for me after all.’
‘You thought it was last year, and the year before.’
‘But how could I know?’
‘How can you suddenly know you’d like something else better? What if you didn’t?’ Janet was out of her depth. ‘I don’t think you can do that anyway. Just change to another subject.’ She softened, trying to understand. ‘Look, is it because of . . . of the bodies in the Anatomy class? That won’t last for ever – it will be quite different next year.’
‘I’m getting through that all right.’ Caroline opened a cupboard and got the biscuit tin out. ‘I’m hungry – when’s dinner?’
‘Not for a while, but don’t start eating biscuits. You could lay the table for me.’
Caroline banged the lid on the tin again and went out, eating a digestive. ‘All right,’ she said. ‘In a minute.’
Janet cleaned the carrots and sliced them into a saucepan. She found Caroline difficult. How indignant she had been when they suggested the only reason she was going into medicine was to stay with Daniel, do the same as he did. But that was the reason; she just wouldn’t admit it. Better for both of them if they’d gone into different disciplines, indeed, gone to different universities. Janet leaned against the sink, dropping potatoes into clean water, dismayed for a moment by how obvious this was, yet how little they had considered it.
‘It’s up to them,’ Gordon had said. ‘Aberdeen’s an excellent medical school. Diana thinks it’s fine for them to do the same degree.’
Diana! What on earth had it got to do with her? Janet and her mother had had the bringing up of Caroline and Daniel. As a stepmother, Diana wasn’t even of the wicked variety, she was simply absent. Useless.
‘Damn it,’ she said aloud. She wiped her hands on her apron and propped Frenchman’s Creek up behind the taps to read while she cleaned the potatoes.
Daniel was still reading, but looked up when Caroline came into the room.
‘She’s not even our mother and anyway it was Granny who brought us up.’
‘So it wasn’t a complete success, consulting Janet?’
‘Move.’ Caroline shoved his legs off the sofa and sat down next to him. Daniel laid his book down with a sigh. ‘She thinks I should stick to being a doctor. Which is ironic, considering none of them thought I was up to it in the first place.’
‘I thought you were asking her about the money?’
‘I was. I got distracted.’ They lay back on the sofa i
n companionable silence. ‘It’s quiet without the girls, isn’t it?’
‘You realise that’s why they they’re at Braeside and we’re here – so Harry could talk to us about the money? He’s just doing Dad’s dirty work for him though.’
‘I suppose so. He said they’d talked about it, him and Dad and Grandpa.’
Once, she had felt secure knowing the adults in the family would always look after them. Now she resented the idea of these three men deciding about their money, their future.
‘I hate the way they think they’re in charge of our lives. They’re not.’
‘Nope.’
Caroline kicked at the rug, flipping the corner of it over. ‘We’re adults. We should make our own decisions.’
Daniel said nothing for a moment, but eyed his book which had slipped to the floor. Caroline kicked the rug again, folding it over To Kill a Mockingbird.
‘Caro, you don’t have to be a doctor.’
‘I know.’
‘We can do different things from each other, it wouldn’t matter.’
‘I know that.’
Abruptly, she got up and went out. He heard her a moment later in the kitchen, clashing cutlery and plates.
Daniel stretched out on the sofa and let his hand trail along the floor, unfolding the rug and feeling for his book, but he did not start reading again. He laid it on his chest, opened flat at the page he had reached, and closed his eyes, thinking about Caroline, not about the money. He did not care about the money; it meant nothing. He didn’t even care about living in a flat, though he could see the attraction of it, especially for Caroline, who seemed less free than he was, even at eighteen.
He could not remember wanting to do anything else. He had always planned to be a doctor. ‘I see myself in one of those white coats with a stethoscope,’ he had said to his grandmother, teasing, but she had taken him seriously. Yes, it would be a fine thing to be a doctor. A fine thing for them, he realised. He had heard his grandmother say so to Eileen one day when she called for her to go to the Women’s Rural Institute, their weekly outing. ‘Daniel’s going in for a doctor,’ she said. ‘He’s always been a clever boy.’ He liked the idea of doing what he pleased and pleasing everyone else at the same time. He did not have Caroline’s ability – or wish – to argue everything out, to be stubborn when it would be easier to give way.
He should be in his bedroom, studying, but he could not make himself move. They had lived in Harrowden Place since becoming students, and of course it was better to be in the city. Sometimes he missed Braeside and he knew his grandmother liked to have him there. He and Caroline would probably go there at Christmas. They could take the little girls with them for part of their holiday. He was fond of them, but had been known to forget Margaret was his half-sister, not his cousin and one of the Duthies. If he had not had Caroline, he might have missed his mother. But there was Caroline, his mirror self, and there had been Granny always, Eileen sometimes, Aunt Janet often. How many women do you need, he wondered? Is having your own mother important? Are mothers necessary? He closed his eyes, growing drowsy. The fire had been left to die down and cinders collapsed softly in the grate with a final lick of flame, but the big chintz sofa was warm and deep, and he was dreaming.
Celia Livingstone remembered Bess, but for her too, she had become a shadow, someone in photographs taken long ago, first in a snap sent by Gordon to let his parents see the girl he wanted to marry, then in their wedding photographs and only a year later, with her babies in her arms. Already she looked tired and ill and nine months later she was dead.
Bess, lacking family of her own, was living with her parents-in-law, since it was 1943 and Gordon was in the army, posted to France soon after the twins’ birth. After she died, Celia brought in someone to help. Eileen was a retired district nurse, glad enough to live at the farm for a few months instead of with her cantankerous mother. She went on coming in until Caroline and Daniel went away to school. Now she was at Braeside once or twice a week, supposedly to help, but Janet told Harry it was just for a blether and her fly cup.
When Bess died, Gordon was first stunned, then helpless, and profoundly relieved his mother was taking charge. When the war ended, the habit of living at Braeside was established, so he looked first for work locally. Having completed his engineering qualifications, he thought he would eventually build a house on his parents’ land and settle there. They hoped he would marry again. A few years later, bored and restless, wanting a change, he applied for a job in London. That was where he met Diana.
He will want his children back now, Celia thought. She and Andrew discussed it when the children were in bed, never in front of them. Gordon had married another English girl. ‘Fit wey could he nae find a guid Scots quinie?’ Andrew said. ‘Well, it could have been a foreigner,’ Celia retorted.
Just before he and Diana married, Gordon told his parents he would be working overseas for the next few years. The return of his children was postponed.
‘You’re doing such a wonderful job with them, Mum,’ he said to Celia, when Diana was not in the room. ‘Di’s not used to children, and it’s a bit daunting for her.’
‘Oh aye,’ said his mother. Gordon glanced away, embarrassed.
‘We thought – I realise it’s a lot for you and Dad, and if you retire soon – ’
‘Retirement?’
Gordon knew his father was thinking about it. They could lease the land to the Soutars at Easter Logie, keeping the house and an acre or two for themselves. Andrew was thinking of selling the whole farm, but Gordon and Harry thought the house worth hanging onto. ‘Property will go up in value,’ Gordon said.
Andrew had no interest in property for its own sake; he thought more of the impossibility of removing himself and his wife from their home of nearly fifty years and starting all over again in a new bungalow. ‘I dare say we’ll need the space anyway,’ he conceded. ‘With your bairns here.’
‘They won’t be here all the time. We thought we’d find schools for them, boarding school. Most people working abroad send their children to boarding school and in England it’s the usual thing, Diana says.’
Later, in the kitchen with his mother, who had so far said nothing to this, he raised the matter again.
‘We’re planning to look at a few schools while I’m home on leave.’
‘Will they be going to the same school?’
‘Oh no. They’re boarding schools, as I said.’
For a moment she was silent, but her scepticism, it seemed to him, thickened around them.
‘Your father says they’re like two halves of a mussel shell. If you try to get in atween them, they’ll shut up tight.’
Taken aback, he said with a laugh, ‘We’ll just have to prise them apart.’
‘Aye,’ she said. ‘We’ll see.’
He would have to speak to his father again; he would make it all right with her.
She got up and went to fill the kettle, setting it on the range. When she opened the oven door the warm wheaten smell of scones wafted out. Diana appeared in her summer frock and red shoes, which she had discovered were unsuitable for teetering around the cobbled yard or down the garden paths, the packed earth softened by rain.
‘What a wonderful smell!’ she cried.
Celia watched her son as she slid the scones onto a grid to cool. He was gazing at his wife in what, had she thought of so fanciful a term, she would have called adoration. With a sigh, she went to find her husband.
He was at the edge of the corner field next to the vegetable garden, with Bonnie the old pony.
‘Are you coming in for your fly, Father?’
‘Aye, fairly.’ He scratched the pony’s back with a stick, letting it nuzzle him, then turned to follow her indoors. They’d have to call it afternoon tea now, their fly cup, since that was the usual thing in England, she said, but her husband, hearing the sardonic note in her voice, only laughed.
‘They’re putting the bairns to boarding school,’ she to
ld him as they crossed the yard together.
‘Aye, so I hear.’
‘English ideas,’ she said.
‘Well, we’ll hae them home in the holidays,’ he comforted her. He knew she would miss the children, but nothing would have made her admit that, even to him.
‘Well,’ she said, closing the subject, ‘he can be the one to tell them they’re being parted. I wouldna relish that myself.’
‘Wake up!’ Caroline hit Daniel with a cushion, hard enough to rouse him with a start.
‘What?’ He blinked and snatched at the book sliding off his chest. ‘Hey – I was asleep.’
‘I know. Dinner time.’
‘Ok. Just a minute.’
‘I’m going to work all evening. There’s so much to get through before Christmas.’
‘So you’re sticking with it, are you?’
‘I can’t give up in the middle of Anatomy. It would look so feeble.’ She took a poker to the fire. ‘Look, it’s gone out. We’ll be in trouble.’ She heaved a shovelful of coal onto the embers, smothering them. A smell of soot rose up.
‘You’ve killed it now.’
‘Oh well, I tried. Come on.’
Left alone again, Daniel sat on the edge of the sofa, watching the last specks of red glimmer in the hearth then vanish, defeated. He had been dreaming. What was it? He tried to catch at the mood of the dream, something rich and exciting, warm with promise, but it eluded him.
Something about his mother, he thought. Or maybe not. He got up and followed his sister.
The Ring
1960
Once Esther had the idea, she could not stop thinking about it. In the end she decided to walk down the lane behind the house and search on her own.
It was almost four when she went, so although there was a clear sky, last night’s cold wind having swept the clouds away, it was already dusk. She had been trying to get out there all day, but the house was full of family and after what had happened it was difficult to move without being noticed. Because it was so late, she took a torch from a shelf in the porch.
She slipped out of the back door and down the garden path to the gate that opened onto the lane between the gardens of the houses in their street and those of the road behind. The walls were high most of the way along but many of the gardens had mature trees whose branches dipped over the tops. Their fallen leaves were packed on the rough stony path making it slippery on wet days. People used the lane as a short cut to reach the bus stops on Fountainhall Road. Today, late on a December afternoon, it was empty. Esther had not told Louise and Margaret she was going. They were too young to keep secrets.
The Treacle Well Page 5