The Treacle Well

by Moira Forsyth

  Downstairs in the hall, the telephone was ringing but he did not hear it, it did not reach him. Then Caroline came running upstairs, calling him, and the door was thrown open.

  ‘It’s the police – Harry says you’ve to come. Come down Dan – they want to speak to you.’

  ‘Sorry, Dad,’ Daniel said. ‘You don’t get a say in it.’

  ‘You’re an adult, of course,’ his father began, his high colour intensifying on his cheekbones. His outdoor, weather-beaten face, too long exposed to Mediterranean or African sunlight, had become impassive, brick red, the eyes small and dark like Janet’s but dull, without her fierce alertness.

  Daniel’s face was equally unreadable: oblique, almost sly. Was that what humour turned to when there was no fun left and it was all serious, terrible? From the top of the stairs Esther watched them, keeping absolutely still. She was just behind the top of the Christmas tree, so perhaps invisible to them if they should look round, but she was taking no chances. It was the biggest tree they had ever had, obtained from someone Harry knew in the Forestry Commission. Esther, on the landing, was level with the fairy, which had slipped a little and leaned sideways. If they moved into the sitting room, whose doorway they blocked, she would no longer see Gordon and Daniel, but might still hear what they said. Hearing raised voices she had come out of her bedroom but had not really meant to eavesdrop; now she could not advertise her presence without being accused of it. At this moment, she could not anyway have torn herself away, so she waited, holding her breath.

  ‘You never had a say,’ Daniel said. ‘Not when it comes to something like this.’

  ‘You’ve been well funded through this degree, you’ve wanted for nothing, the pair of you. You wouldn’t have had to touch your mother’s money if you hadn’t been so determined to live in a squalid flat and buy that bloody car. It’s sheer madness to throw away your career like this.’

  ‘I’m mad then.’ Daniel shrugged. ‘Makes no difference. I’ve made up my mind.’

  ‘Don’t be stupid.’ Gordon had raised his voice and but Daniel was lowering his. Esther could barely hear him as he replied.

  ‘I owe you nothing. There’s nothing good come out of this thing – but I have learned that.’

  ‘What on earth are you talking about?’

  Gordon’s roar brought Janet hurrying from the kitchen. ‘What is it? What’s wrong?’

  Esther had instinctively moved back when her mother appeared. If she pretended to come out of her room now, she would seem to be there just because of the shouting. Something about her mother made her hesitate. Two tiny worry lines were drawn between her eyebrows and there was a tension as if she had been pulled tight. Esther saw her mother was upset and her heart jolted. She bit her lip in case she started to cry. It was awful when they shouted – awful because it was so rare. Something tugged at memory – Gordon shouting, her father’s voice hard and angry, her mother placating them. It was the same now.

  ‘He’s not thinking straight,’ Gordon said, sounding weary rather than angry. ‘Tell her Daniel, tell her what you think you’re going to do.’

  ‘Think!’ Daniel sounded amused for the first time, but not the old amusement. ‘I’m not just thinking – I’m going to do it.’

  ‘What?’

  Daniel turned to his aunt. ‘I’m leaving, Janet.’

  Janet frowned, the little lines deepening. ‘Leaving what? Here? Well, it’s up to you, if you’d really rather be in the flat.’

  ‘No, medicine. He’s giving up his degree.’

  ‘No!’

  ‘He should take a year out, if he must,’ Gordon went on. ‘I think it’s a mistake, myself. Work’s the best thing.’

  ‘But that’s what you mean, isn’t it, Daniel?’ Janet asked. ‘Caroline said you felt you couldn’t go back just yet.’

  ‘No. I’m leaving altogether. Medicine, our flat, Aberdeen.’ He paused, considering. ‘Probably Scotland too.’

  ‘No!’ Esther had never known her mother look or sound so bewildered. She always knew what to do, what to say. I wish they’d stop, she thought miserably, I wish they knew I was here.

  They moved into the sitting room and, just before her mother closed the door, she heard Gordon say, his voice rough, ‘All right, you don’t think you owe me anything – but what about your grandparents – and Janet? And Harry? I don’t know what you’d have done without him. ’

  Esther got up painfully: her legs had gone to sleep and the tingling was agony. She stamped her feet and shook her legs one after the other, willing them back to normal.

  ‘What’s going on?’

  It was Margaret, standing in her bedroom doorway. She must have heard the shouting, but had stayed where she was until there was silence.

  Esther rubbed her calves. ‘Pins and needles.’

  ‘No, Daddy – what was it about?’

  ‘Daniel says he’s going away – giving up being a doctor. Leaving Aberdeen – I don’t know if he will though, I’m sure he won’t do that.’

  You always had to reassure Margaret. Yet there might be some things you could not reassure her about. The accident had been bad enough, but they had shielded her from the worst; they had all done that. It’s not just me and Louise, Esther pondered as she went into Margaret’s room with her. We don’t tell her things because the grown-ups don’t. Think of Diana dying. But Diana had become an almost mythical figure, the beautiful dead mother and aunt. Margaret had been very young then, hardly able to understand, Janet had said.

  Margaret was crying so Esther sat on the bed hugging her, telling her it would be all right – though perhaps it would not.

  The thought occurred to Esther that Caroline might go too, and she shivered. Despite the central heating it was not very warm upstairs, and with the door ajar, a cold air seemed to come in from the landing. Still, Margaret was hot for once. She often seemed such a cold, puny little thing. Esther got a clean handkerchief from the chest of drawers. It was one of the pack Eileen gave them every year – the same square flat parcel, promising disappointment. This Christmas’s handkerchiefs had forget-me-nots embroidered in the corner. Even Margaret had graduated from hankies with nursery rhyme figures printed on them. She patted Margaret’s eyes. ‘Here, Tilly, you take the hanky.’

  ‘I don’t want Daniel to go away.’ Margaret brightened suddenly. ‘Caroline won’t let him.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Well then.’

  Esther could not think of anything that had ever divided Daniel from Caroline. If he were going, she would go too, or it would be with her blessing.

  ‘Let’s go down. Louise will be home soon from Denise’s house and Blue Peter must be coming on.’

  Esther suddenly longed for Louise to be there. She wouldn’t cry, she’d make light of it, not care, dash in and ask them all directly – Dan’s not going away, is he?

  Heart sinking, she knew he would, for she had heard the conviction in his voice. Dan, who never argued or got in a state about anything, Dan, who hadn’t been the same since that dreadful night when Louise had come running into the living room, her eyes wide with horror. There’s been an awful accident. Caroline’s just phoned – they’re in a police station.

  It had made no sense then and made little more now. I wish we could go back, Esther thought, I wish we could undo that whole night.

  It was one thing to tell his father; another to tell the rest. He was sorry Janet had heard the argument, sorry he had let it out to Gordon first.

  Second. Caroline was first, of course she was.

  She had not tried to stop him. The difficult thing was preventing her from throwing it all up and coming too. Saying to her ‘I need a while on my own,’ was reasonable, he knew it was. It was a reasonable thing to ask: to be alone, without his family, without his twin sister. Other people did it.

  He had dreaded telling her.

  ‘I know,’ she said. ‘I know you want to go. I’ve seen those books on your desk, the same books, open at the same pages. I
know you’re not working, I know you’ve given up in your head already.’

  ‘I’m glad you see it. I don’t think anyone else does. They think I’ll be fine after New Year, back in uni, back working again. But I won’t.’

  She sighed. ‘I’ll come with you.’

  ‘No!’ He put a hand on her arm, conciliatory. ‘Think about Janet and Harry. Granny. We can’t both go at once.’

  ‘Is it just a year out you want? It will be hard coming back, though.’

  ‘No. Well, maybe. How can I tell? I just know I can’t go back to pretending to be a doctor, after what happened.’

  ‘It was – ’

  ‘Don’t say it wasn’t my fault, that’s what they all say, and it isn’t the point. Not at all.’

  ‘I was going to say it was mine.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘I was in such a hurry and – ’

  ‘No. Don’t. It’s not your fault. It was my responsibility. All of it.’

  The accident had been reported in the Press & Journal with a photograph of the car in the ditch since there was no photograph of the victim. If he was a victim. It seemed to Caroline that they were the victims. It was news in that quiet spell before Christmas when nothing much happens because people are preoccupied and busy.

  They were sitting in a bar in Union Street, not Ma Cameron’s or one of the other student bars, but a place much frequented by working men and the unemployed at lunchtimes and five o’clock. It was quiet on weekday evenings. There was a long mahogany bar behind which a poker-faced barman, who had seen everything there was to see as far as drinking men were concerned, and a plump barmaid spoke quietly to each other and polished glasses or did nothing at all. The smoke from the woman’s cigarette curled upwards, its faint skein reflected in the mirror behind the optics.

  Caroline and Daniel sat on hard chairs at one of the scarred wooden tables, turning beer mats for Mackeson Stout and Tennants Lager in their hands, making them spin. The place smelled of beer and cigarette smoke and furniture polish.

  ‘Other people – ’ Caroline began.

  ‘Not to be relied on.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Hell too.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Hell is other people. Sartre. Huis Clos.’

  ‘How do you know that?’ She resented his knowing things she did not. Not about football or rugby, that sort of stuff, but about books, yes, she ought to know as much as he did.

  ‘Gillian. Back in third year.’

  ‘Oh yes, that girl doing the French degree.’ She had been going out with another medic that year. She had not gone out with anyone doing a different degree since first year. That hardly counted.

  ‘You’re right,’ she said suddenly. ‘Our world is very narrow. If you don’t go now, when can you? When can I?’

  ‘You can go later.’

  ‘You want to go on your own.’ She could hardly be surprised, but something gave way inside her. If she had not been a medical student, she might have called it her heart.

  ‘That’s the point. But you’ll have your turn to go off, do whatever you like. I promise.’

  ‘What do you promise?’

  ‘I’ll make it all right with Janet and Harry if you drop out later, go abroad, stop being a doctor, marry a criminal mastermind or a Conservative politician.’

  She laughed, despite herself. ‘Oh Daniel, that’s the first joke you’ve made since – ’ She stopped.

  ‘I don’t call getting hitched to a Tory a joke, my dear.’ He swallowed the last of his pint. ‘Do you want another drink?’

  ‘All right.’ Before he could rise to go to the bar, she said, ‘You want me to make it all right with them for you, persuade them they should respect your decision, let you drop out of medicine?’

  ‘Yeah. That’s it.’

  ‘I’d rather come with you.’

  This would not happen. He had made up his mind to go, and he had equally made up his mind she would not come with him. She thought of all the work she had done, of the fight it had been to get to the place she inhabited. Doctor Livingstone, I presume. . . .Their old joke to each other so that when other people made it, it was not too tiresome. No, if this was what she had to do to make it all right, she would carry on, she would not give up now. After all, it was getting off lightly.

  ‘Where will you go?’ she asked him when he sat down again with his pint and her shandy.

  He shrugged. ‘Don’t know yet. Away.’

  ‘You’ll tell me though?’

  ‘I’ll send postcards.’

  She shook her head, smiling at him. Not for one minute did she think this was all she would receive from him while he was away. He would phone, he would write, he would come back to see them, he would not be gone long.

  When she spoke to Janet and Harry, when she talked to her father (not caring really what any of them thought), she made a good job of reassuring them, knowing she was the only one who could. She made them believe he just needed a break, that he would be back and would eventually finish his degree. She led them to believe Daniel had discussed this with the university, the faculty, his tutor. It was weeks before they found out otherwise and by then it was too late. When they rounded on her it meant nothing, because by then she had lost Daniel.

  At first she thought it must be liberating, to go where no one knew you and you had no roots or base. She envied him with an ache so powerful her head hurt, thinking about it. Then she realised it was not like that at all.

  He had found the little pebbles dropped long ago on the forest floor and followed them out to the wide world beyond. Not home though, he would not come home.

  III

  The Crack in the World

  1967–1970

  So Inge put on her best clothes, and . . . set out, stepping very carefully, that she might be clean and neat about the feet, and there was nothing wrong in doing so. But when she came to the place where the footpath led across the moor, she found small pools of water, and a great deal of mud, so she threw the loaf into the mud, and trod upon it, that she might pass without wetting her feet. But as she stood with one foot on the loaf and the other lifted up to step forward, the loaf began to sink under her, lower and lower, till she disappeared altogether, and only a few bubbles on the surface of the muddy pool remained to show where she had sunk.

  The Girl Who Trod on the Loaf, Hans Christian Andersen.

  Hogmanay

  1967

  ‘Didn’t your cousin kill somebody in an accident?’ a red-haired student asked Esther at the Hogmanay party. ‘He was a medic, wasn’t he? My brother was in his year.’

  He was drunk, she realised later, but at the time all she could think was how dare you? All she felt was fury. Three years on, she was still defensive and this was a stranger who had no right to an opinion.

  ‘He didn’t kill anybody,’ she said. ‘A man – a drunk – ran in front of the car. Dan wasn’t even driving very fast. It was snowing. It wasn’t his fault.’ She glared at him.

  ‘God, sorry,’ said the student, shaking his head. ‘Sorry – no – yeah. Sure – I didn’t mean . . .’

  Esther walked off, leaving him leaning on the wall at the bottom of the stairs, gesturing apologetically at her with a bottle of stout.

  It was her first Hogmanay party – and my last, she was thinking bitterly, if this is anything to go by. She had been so keen, so insistent to her parents that she would be with friends, girls they had met. I’m sixteen, she kept saying to them. For goodness sake.

  She had not told them she was going with Colin, who was in sixth year at the Grammar, and who had met her at the pillared corner on Union Street they called the Monkey House, where everyone met, to take the bus over to Devanha Gardens, where the party was being held. She didn’t know this part of Aberdeen well and hoped some instinct would lead her home again if she had to walk on her own. She couldn’t rely on Colin. He was already slumped hiccupping on the living room floor next to his best friend Bill, who was no better. Sh
e did recognise one or two other people, but not as many as she had led her mother to believe.

  There seemed nowhere to go except the kitchen, where most of the party was taking place. On a small table opposite a sink full of dirty dishes and empty beer cans were plates of dried up chunks of French bread, a half melon spiked with cocktail sticks loaded with pickled onions and squares of pineapple and cheese, and bowls of crisps. That was the food. No wonder people were being sick she thought, recalling her one unpleasant visit to the bathroom upstairs. There was plenty of alcohol, but she knew better than to risk going home smelling of drink. Perhaps if she stayed out long enough they’d all have gone to bed and she could sneak upstairs. How much did you have to drink for other people to know about it? She had never had anything at home stronger than Babycham or Advocaat with lemonade; neither had had the least effect. She tilted her wrist to look at her watch. Five to twelve. In a few minutes it would be 1968 and in a few weeks she would be seventeen. That was almost grown up.

  ‘Here,’ said a boy in a long brown jersey, handing her a glass. ‘You’ve got to have something to toast the New Year.’ He was pouring everyone drinks from a bottle of golden liquid. Grouse, she read on the side. Whisky. ‘No,’ she began, ‘I don’t drink, actually.’

  He laughed. ‘You’re kidding?’ He put his arm round her, saying loudly to the assembled company, crammed into the narrow kitchen, ‘Hey, it’s Hogmanay and she says she doesn’t drink!’

  Someone cheered, someone else laughed. They were all drunk except her so with sudden resolution she took a gulp of the whisky. It burned in her throat, then apparently shot straight to her legs. ‘Oh,’ she said. ‘It’s strong.’ The boy tightened his grip on her shoulder. ‘I have to kiss you – we’ll soon be a year older.’