They sat gazing at each other in silence.
‘There’s nothing to be done,’ Daniel said. ‘We just carry on as if nothing’s changed. Maybe it hasn’t.’
‘What about Dad?’
Daniel shrugged. ‘We don’t even know if he knows’
‘So, Diana, on her deathbed, says to Mum – ’ She could not imagine it.
‘It’s all speculation. You can always stack up what you think is evidence, but it’s not, not really. The thing is – we mustn’t say anything to Margaret. She needs to be protected. She always will, probably.’
‘All right,’ she said, not agreeing, but for the moment not much caring. After a moment, she took her hands away and looked at her watch. ‘You’ll miss the five-fifteen if we don’t go now.’
They got up and paid for the coffee. Outside, the sky had darkened and the day was cold as November. Caroline tucked her arm in his. In his other hand he gripped the string she had tied round the shoebox of letters.
‘Don’t you dare lose that,’ she said. ‘My precious letters. I love to get them, you know.’
‘I’ll look after them.’
At Waverley, as they waited to see which platform his train was to leave from, he said, ‘You remember George’s cottage – that place near Ullapool?’
‘Of course I do!’
‘Is it still there – I mean, does George still have it?’
Caroline bit her lip. ‘George died,’ she said. ‘About two years ago. He had a heart attack while he was climbing and he was dead before the Mountain Rescue people could get to him.’ She put her hand on Daniel’s arm, afraid of his reaction. ‘I don’t know who owns the cottage now.’
‘Ah. Oh well, things don’t stand still just because I’ve gone off travelling,’ he said lightly.
‘What made you ask?’
‘I thought – I thought we might go there, that’s all.’
‘We can find another cottage. I’ll look, we can organise that.’
‘You can,’ he said with a smile.
‘OK, I’ll do it.’
‘But we have to tell them – don’t we?’
‘Yes.’
‘All right,’ he said. ‘I will do that. I promise.’
When she left him at Waverley she was weak with relief. She took the bus back to her flat instead of walking.
He would read the letters, then he would get in touch with their family so that she need not lie to them any longer. After that, they would find a cottage and have a holiday together. It would not be the same – they were older and too much had happened. But it would be fine, it would be wonderful. As for Margaret – by now, only an hour later, she had convinced herself it wasn’t true anyway, and if it were – what difference was it going to make? Still, you could not forget that, not altogether.
She had an hour in the flat before she had to go to work, and was tidying the living room when she realised she had not looked at her post, that Daniel had laid on the table for her. Tucked under the electricity bill, unnoticed by either of them, was a letter from Janet.
Dear Caroline
I never know when to telephone because you are working such odd hours, so I thought I would just write an extra letter.
I’ve decided to come down to Edinburgh at the end of the month to see Sunset Song while it’s on in the theatre. Uncle Harry and I will be away on holiday when it comes to His Majesty’s. I just can’t let this go by, though it seems extravagant. I’ve always loved the book so much. I’m taking Esther with me because she’s reading it. It’s one of her course books. We can stay with Doreen at Linlithgow if you’re working. I know how busy you are.’
Caroline was cold with apprehension. She turned over the sheet of blue Basildon Bond and read on the back,
I’ve booked for the Saturday night, so we’ll travel down during the day and go home on the Sunday or Monday depending on the hours you’re working, if that suits you all right.
Two weeks away.
Janet missed nothing. The slightest shift in a tone of voice, the merest hesitation told her more than you wanted to reveal. How could Caroline lie to her when she was here? It was not possible.
Daniel would still be on the train and she had to leave for the hospital in a few minutes. She must find a time next morning to call the restaurant and leave him a message. Perhaps it would be quicker to write. Anxious and flustered, she left for work. In a fortnight she would have to meet Janet and Esther, would indeed have to offer them a bed for the nights they were going to be in Edinburgh.
Janet had read and re-read Sunset Song, had tried to interest Caroline and Margaret and her own girls in the novel, but it appealed less to them. It was certainly not of interest to Harry. And yet, Caroline had never known Janet do such a thing on her own – travel to another city just to see a play. Perhaps it was to help Esther. What she was afraid of was that Janet had guessed something had happened. She had an instinct sometimes that was uncanny.
I bet she knows there’s something going on, Caroline thought. You could never keep secrets from Janet. That was one reason Dan left, why I had to go too.
She raced for the bus, breathless with anxiety. There was no longer any question of giving Daniel all the time he wanted. Their family had to be told.
Caroline and Daniel had been writing to each other, usually a few words on a postcard, if they weren’t likely to meet for a couple of weeks. Daniel’s were more frequent. She kept all his notes in her bedside cabinet, along with the postcards he had sent during his long absence. Her shifts made it more difficult for her to write and send notes, except on her days off, but she felt she couldn’t wait to let him know about Janet. In the first break she managed to take that night, she went along to the day clinic and found some stationery in a drawer behind the reception counter. The envelopes were brown hospital ones, used for sending out appointments. She scribbled a note and sealed it up. The hospital mail was franked, but she had a stamp left in her purse and she could post her letter in the patients’ mailbox at the hospital entrance. Once there, she hesitated – no, I have to tell him – then dropped it in and strode to the revolving door. She stood outside for a moment, breathing cold air. The sky was clear and there was a faint light low on the horizon, as if somewhere dawn was lurking. With a sigh, she turned and went back to work.
Four shifts passed, but she did not hear from Daniel. He must have got her note by now. He might have phoned the flat but she had hardly been there. Two more shifts and she would have a day off; she could call the restaurant then and try to reach him.
When the policewoman had gone, Kenny and Joe went back into Daniel’s bare room and stood looking at each other in disbelief.
‘You think we should try and get hold of his sister?’ Kenny asked.
‘They’re going to do it, she said. That’s why they wanted her address – why she took away all that stuff.’
‘It wasn’t much, just that notebook he wrote in and his driving licence and passport. He didn’t have any ID on him she said, only that letter from his sister that came in the post the other day. I remember Dan saying, that’s her using the hospital envelopes again, joking. He put it in his jacket pocket when he was going out.’
‘Oh, right.’ Joe thought about this and about what the policewoman had said. ‘The envelope had our address on it, then.’
‘What’s that?’
‘What?’
‘Under the bed.’ Kenny pulled out a shoebox. ‘God, I knew he was a poof – he keeps his shoes in boxes.’
‘No he isn’t,’ Joe said, knowing this because he was queer himself, but hadn’t told Kenny, who was not. ‘Wasn’t. Jesus.’ He looked at the shoebox more closely. ‘It’s tied up with string – even poofs don’t tie their shoes boxes up with fucking string. And it’s for high heels, you moron, girls’ shoes – look at the picture.’
‘Should we have given this to the bobby as well?’
‘What’s in it?’
‘Is it ok to look, do you think?’ Kenny as
ked.
They were silent, realising there was no one to mind, whatever they did in Daniel’s room.
‘We should give it to Caroline,’ Kenny decided. ‘I guess she’ll come over and collect his stuff.’
Joe sat on the bed. ‘I feel like I need a drink.’
Kenny dropped to the floor and sat with his back to the wall opposite the bed. ‘Me too. Poor guy.’
‘They’re twins – she’s going to be shattered.’
Each of them was wondering how they could manage not to be here when Caroline came for Daniel’s things, as she must.
‘We should both see her,’ Kenny said at last, before Joe could find some reason to be absent. ‘Right?’
‘Right. Yeah, ok.’
After a moment, Kenny said, ‘I never knew anybody who died before. Well, my grandparents, but I was three when my gran died and ten when my grandpa had a heart attack. They were old, though.’
‘I knew somebody who died of cancer,’ Joe offered. ‘Well, my mum knew her.’
It was not the same. Daniel was only a few years older than they were. They knew of course that people their age died in war, in accidents, in all sorts of ways. They knew it happened, but it still did not seem possible that Daniel, who had made them spaghetti Bolognese, who liked Pink Floyd and who had anyway walked out of the house that very morning, was no longer living and breathing.
‘In front of a van,’ Joe said, thinking about it. ‘She said it was a van. You’d think you’d see a van coming, wouldn’t you?’
‘Some of these drivers in Glasgow – they’re lunatics.’
‘Yeah. I suppose.’
They went on sitting in Daniel’s quiet tidy room for what seemed a long time, feeling frightened and shocked, and unable to get up and do anything at all.
Caroline was in the ward with an elderly patient when Dr Grainger and Staff Nurse MacLeod came to find her.
‘I was just going to – ’ Caroline began, but Dr Grainger said,
‘Staff Nurse will deal with it. Will you come with me, Caroline?’
She wondered at the use of her first name in front of the patients. There was something odd about the way Dr Grainger, usually so aloof, spoke to her. Suddenly afraid, she wondered if she had made some terrible mistake – given the wrong dosage of a drug, missed something vital in a diagnosis. She was frightened, when she followed the consultant down the ward, but it was the wrong thing she feared.
Caroline
1968
Frost lies on the fields along the top of the ruts the plough has made, a faint whitening. Shreds of mist cling to the edge of the woods, a wispy scarf for the trees near the edge, wrapping their throats from the icy air.
Caroline has risen early and dressed in the dark, her clothes carefully laid out the night before. After the brightness of the bathroom, the shadowy bedroom soothes. She puts her mother’s pearl earrings in, finding the tiny holes for the spikes with the swiftness of practice. Daniel’s chain is already round her neck, as it always is. She can brush her hair in the dark, easy when it’s straight and falls in wings on either side of your face, the central parting made with a fingernail.
For a little while longer, she will have the silence of the house, its large cold spaces, instead of the stuffy heat and smells of the hospital. The kitchen will be warm and she can make herself tea before she goes out. These days, Granny does not get up as early as she used to, so it is as if she has the whole place to herself.
There’s daylight when she goes outside and stands looking over the fields, that pure early morning light that comes in early November in the North of Scotland, the faint flush of the sun coming up on the horizon, the pearly blue of the night sky making its slow farewell, the stars gone, the moon a high transparent disc.
Across the yard she opens the garden gate and begins to cross the lawn. The frost is softening already and her city boots are quickly soaked. She should have remembered not to wear them, but they matched the other things she has chosen this morning, and they stand for something she hasn’t quite named yet. She could go back for wellingtons, but the forgotten sensation of icy feet and hands (she has not thought of wearing gloves) is still more pleasure than pain. She breathes in clean air like a drink of cold water, and pauses at the far side of the lawn at the next gate, the one that leads to her grandmother’s vegetable plot. Beneath the hedge there are tiny rustlings made by birds or perhaps mice, but nothing seems to move among the fallen leaves.
Today she will decide what to do. Since she realised that she is able to do this alone, that she holds her future in her mind, can direct it by her own actions and is answerable – now – to no one else, she has felt peaceful. The frantic dashing between one bed and another in hospital; the dread that haunted her for hours after she came off shift, worrying about mistakes she might have made; the aimless toing and froing of the rest of her life and then the breaking down, the helpless giving way that finally brought her home to Braeside – all that has stopped. It is as if she has moved into an empty space she did not realise was there. Despair has made its own place; she has found a way to live inside it.
Wherever Daniel is, he cannot help her. He is no longer her advisor and friend, her other self. There is no other self, she knows that now.
Everyone told her she was going back to work too soon, but what else was she to do? There was nothing that would fill up her mind as work does and make her so tired she could not think. She had no memory of the funeral, or the days leading up to it, and now she could not remember those frantic weeks back at work, brushing off sympathy, getting on with it, being absolutely focused on each and every patient, each and every task.
They had been right, she supposed. She was not sure how it had crashed, only that it had. Janet’s regular phone call and one day being unable to speak to her, that silence. Then there was a whispering at the other end of the line as she waited, her feet cold because she had taken off her shoes and was standing in her little kitchen on vinyl tiles. She remembered her cold feet, and Harry speaking to her instead of Janet, saying they were coming for her, just to wait, they were on their way.
For weeks now she had been at Braeside. She knew all about that, there was no fog around her any more. It was like being a child again, with Granny’s broth on the stove and her oatcakes on the griddle, her scones coming out of the oven, the comfort of someone else doing everything. When she got up at last she was sent to bring in the eggs or told to sweep the kitchen floor, given the kind of jobs a child might get, that Esther had loved when she was little, but Caroline never had, resenting it all. She did not resent it now. Whatever she thought, Granny said nothing about Daniel, nothing about getting better, or going back to work, any of that. You could see Janet wanted to when she and Harry came out, but Harry wouldn’t let her; they too kept their silence and left her alone.
She slept not in the attic but in the big back bedroom across the landing from Granny’s. One day not long after she had got out of bed for the first time, she went upstairs to the attic rooms while Granny was outside talking to the egg man, who had come to collect her week’s trays. On the top floor the house was still warm from risen heat. This was an afternoon full of sunshine, and she was dazzled when she opened the door of her old room and moved from the shady staircase to bright south-facing space. The room had been emptied out, nothing of her left but the familiar furniture, the bed stripped, its knitted patchwork cover folded neatly at the foot.
She opened the wardrobe door and found some of her school uniform, forgotten. On the chest of drawers was the little wooden box she had left here because she’d been given a larger, more elaborate one by her father which was – she supposed – still at Harrowden Place. It held the rest of her mother’s jewellery; all she ever wore were the tiny pearl studs in her ears.
This box must be empty. She lifted the lid.
How small her ring looked, how little it mattered now. She picked it up and slipped it on the third finger of her right hand. It was loose. She had lo
st too much weight. Perhaps she would wear it now, but not on her finger. She pulled Daniel’s chain free of the neck of her jumper and unclasped it. The ring slid along the chain, as it had before, when she had been too angry with Gordon to wear it, but not able to abandon it altogether. It was a pretty ring, unusual. She fastened the chain again and tucked it into her jumper.
There was something else in the box – a piece of paper, folded small. Oh – her will! As children, she and Daniel had each made a will, and this was hers. What had happened to his, she had no idea. Thrown out, years ago, in one of Granny’s spring cleans, she supposed.
She folded the piece of paper again, crushing it tight in her hand, not wanting to look at Daniel’s name. She would have to write another one now.
She had a bad night after that, almost as bad as those she’d lived through after the funeral. She must keep it from Granny, not worry her. At some point during the long wakeful hours she crept upstairs again with another piece of paper, an angry scribble of words, some scrawled out. She meant later to destroy that. It was childish. She put something else in too, because Daniel had not worn it or wanted it, and she was glad to hide it away.
The next day passed, and the next, another week, and another. It was the middle of October, and as the weather cooled and darkened, she felt lighter. She slept for hours, and walked, and did whatever jobs Granny asked of her, and read her way through Grandpa’s collection of Reader’s Digest Condensed Books that she and Daniel had mocked when they were students but were now the perfect way to read anything. The tight, hard pain in her chest seemed to move off a little, as if it was standing in the corner, not gone, but no longer inhabiting her so fiercely.
The first frosts came, and the vast autumn skies were clear as water.
Before her lies the familiar garden. The pea shaws that are left are brownish yellow and shrinking, but the kale is bushy and upright, and will go on far into the winter. The fruit bushes have long been stripped of blackcurrant, redcurrant and gooseberry, and only the apple trees have some fallen fruit still left on the grass for the birds. It is all familiar as her own skin, but she seems to see it as if for the first time. Beyond the wall is the South field with cattle still out of doors because the autumn has been mild. They are up early too and grazing, heads down, still as a painting in the first sunlight.
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