The Treacle Well

by Moira Forsyth

  For a while, the story comforted her, the other world taking over. It was no use though. She must somehow get unmarried. To do that, she had to speak to Pete.

  She was still thinking about this when they were having dinner and was so far from the table in her thoughts that it was only when Harry spoke to her directly, she realised what they were talking about.

  ‘I said,’ her father repeated, ‘have you had any contact with Caroline?’

  ‘What? No, of course not. I’d have told you.’

  ‘She hasn’t replied to the wedding invitation and Esther’s wondering if we should try to find a phone number for her, or write again.’

  Louise thought about this. ‘We could just go and see her. Any reason why not?’

  ‘She’s in London!’ Janet said.

  ‘We could go there – why not?’

  ‘I bet you’d find a wedding outfit there,’ Esther said to her mother.

  ‘You want me to come too?’

  Louise did not, but waited to see what Janet would say.

  ‘I’d have to think about it.’

  Later, when they were on their own, Louise said with a sly grin, ‘Mum only wants to come in case I find another unsuitable man in London,’

  ‘I can’t see the point really. It would make more sense to telephone.’

  ‘Ring up Directory Enquiries,’ Louise said. ‘We’ve got her address, haven’t we?’

  Janet had gone to Braeside after lunch to see their grandmother; Harry was at work. In the house on their own, before Margaret came home from school, Esther and Louise got out their mother’s address book and looked up Caroline’s addresses, each one eventually crossed out and replaced by another. Edinburgh, Glasgow, Edinburgh again, and now London. There was no telephone number but Janet had added St Bartholomew’s Hospital, Neurology Dept.

  A call to Directory Enquiries established that the telephone number for Caroline’s home address was ex -directory.

  ‘That’s that,’ Esther said.

  ‘Let’s try the hospital.’

  ‘What, ring it now?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Go on then.’

  Having called Directory Enquiries, Esther considered she had done her bit, but she also felt nervous of doing more. Caroline had made it clear she did not welcome anything other than the most perfunctory contact. She hadn’t even been sure the wedding invitation would elicit a response, though she had gone on hoping for one.

  Louise secured the main number of the hospital and dialled it. ‘I’ll just ask for Dr Caroline Livingstone, right?’

  ‘Yes, unless she’s got married.’

  Louise put the receiver down with a clang. ‘Really? Do you think so, without telling us?’

  ‘Well, you did that, and you were still in touch with us.’

  ‘That was different. I was young.’

  ‘You were an idiot.’

  ‘Yeah, well, I think we all know that.’ Louise sighed. ‘These violent delights have violent ends, as they say.’

  Esther laughed. ‘I can’t say I saw you and Pete Munro as Romeo and Juliet!’

  ‘I think she would keep her maiden name. Doctors often do. But I bet you anything she’s not married.’

  Esther did not see why not. She glanced across the den to the bookcase where there were framed photographs of them all as children, crowding in front of the faded one of Gordon and Bess. In one of them Daniel and Caroline, aged about sixteen, were in the garden at Braeside. Even then, she had been striking. After Daniel’s death, as if shock and grief had drained her of imperfection, she had seemed to Esther quite lovely. Daniel’s grave ascetic beauty was there, at last, in Caroline’s own face.

  Louise was speaking to someone in London. There was a pause. ‘Louise Duthie,’ she said in answer to a question. She covered the receiver. ‘They’re looking up her number in the department I think. Anyway, they didn’t say ‘who?’ I think she is there.’

  Someone spoke to her, and Esther waited, a knot of anxiety in her stomach. She must come, she must speak to them.

  ‘Yes, thank you. When will she be back? Oh. No, it’s ok. I’ll try again.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘That was her secretary. She must be quite important, do you think, having her own secretary?’

  ‘But she’s not there?’

  ‘On leave. Back in a week.’

  Just as well, Esther thought, they hadn’t gone rushing off to London.

  When they told their mother, Janet looked relieved. ‘Oh, that’s why she hasn’t replied. She’s on holiday. We’ll just wait.’

  ‘How was Granny?’

  ‘Och, she’s fine. It’s fortunate Eddie and May can pop in most days. Though they’re getting on too.’ Janet was coating fillets of haddock with breadcrumbs so she did not look up as she added, ‘She’s looking forward to the wedding.’

  ‘Maybe everybody will be there after all.’

  Janet paused, a shadow crossing her face, vanishing. ‘Oh aye, if Caroline comes.’

  ‘And we’ll meet Uncle Gordon’s lady friend from Richmond.’

  ‘She’s very nice,’ Janet said. Something in her tone suggested there were other things she might say, but would not. She and Harry had visited Gordon in his house in Richmond the previous year; he had not yet brought the woman Janet still thought of as Mrs Ashton to Aberdeen.

  ‘Do you think they’ll get married?’

  ‘Oh, I think they’re fine as they are,’ Janet said, surprising Esther. ‘He’s been married twice already, after all.’

  Perhaps the implication was that it was somehow immoral to keep getting married, or that Gordon himself wasn’t successful in his choices. Esther was much more concerned that Caroline should get in touch. She counted the days till she was supposed to be back in London, and they could try again.

  Esther and Louise had been teenagers who were out a lot: with friends or boyfriends, at other people’s houses, in cafés or folk clubs. In summer they had been down at the beach or at the other end of the city gathering in Hazlehead Park. Margaret was a teenager who stayed in her room a lot, playing music and reading, or in Janet and Harry’s bedroom, on the newly installed telephone extension, having long conversations with a best friend, or occasionally, a short-lived boyfriend. Now she was going steady with someone called Alan. Janet worried less about Margaret than the other two, partly because Margaret was the third, and she had less energy and fewer doubts these days. It was also because Margaret, apart from being timid and quiet, and ill a good deal as a child, had not given her a sleepless night or anxious day.

  Margaret was out with Alan now, and would not be home until later in the evening. He would walk her home, despite living himself on the other side of the city, but so far she had not brought him in to meet her aunt and uncle.

  ‘Don’t you think that’s strange?’ Louise said. She had unworthy hopes of finding Margaret out at last in some terrible indiscretion. For once, not me being the bad girl, she imagined.

  ‘Oh, I’m sure she’ll bring him in to meet us soon,’ was all Janet said. Louise and Esther made faces at each other behind their mother’s back, but Esther, in the bliss of being about to be married, gave other people’s love affairs very little thought.

  Esther and Jack were in the den; Louise was upstairs getting ready to go to a party. Harry and Janet were watching television in the sitting room. No wonder, Harry said, the central heating bills were so high: they were heating too many rooms. Once all these girls have left home, he told Janet, we’ll be able to turn off about half a dozen radiators.

  Because Esther had firmly closed the door of the den, and they were anyway listening to Simon and Garfunkel, they might not have heard the front door opening and Margaret coming in. But the LP had come to an end, and Esther had just got up to go and make them coffee. As she went to the door she heard Margaret calling ‘I’m home – Mum – Dad – it’s me – where are you? You’ll never guess – ’

  She did not even sound like Margaret
, usually so calm and soft-voiced. The television was on and Janet and Harry, also behind a closed door, had not yet heard. It was Esther on her way to the kitchen and Louise at the top of the stairs, who saw her first.

  Margaret was there in her coloured maxi skirt and army surplus jacket, face flushed with excitement – or shock. Later, Esther thought it was just shock.

  Behind her, framed in the doorway, with her loose coat open and a leather bag over her shoulder, another larger one at her feet, was Caroline.

  Dividing the Spoils

  1973

  Caroline had taken possession of her old room. Some of her clothes were hanging in the wardrobe and on the dressing-table sat jars of Clinique cream and her silver-backed hairbrush, a long ago present from Gordon and Diana. The air was fragrant with L’Air du Temps and a silky white kimono patterned with blue and green lilies sprawled across the bed. Esther, who had been in love with her trousseau, saw that nothing she had bought so far was anywhere near the elegance of any single thing Caroline owned.

  She stayed a week.

  ‘When I got the invitation,’ she told Janet, ‘I thought I should come and see you all. Esther getting married – I could hardly believe it.’

  ‘I can hardly believe it myself, sometimes,’ Janet said but she did not smile in answer. ‘At least we’re prepared – this time.’

  Behind her back, Louise made a face and amusement crooked the corner of Caroline’s mouth. With Harry and Janet, she was all courtesy and complaisance – or so it seemed to Esther, watching them, hearing the talk in the sitting room when she found them there. What her mother thought she could only guess, and wondered if she would dare ask, when Caroline had gone.

  Louise, aloof at first, came round in a day or so, as fascinated as the others by this changed, almost glamorous Caroline. Or not changed, Esther thought, remembering the seventeen-year-old reading Alice to them in the garden at Braeside, doing the different voices with such skill. Perhaps that was what gave her the ability to enter into her patients’ lives and sickness. Esther wanted to ask her, but there had been no opportunity.

  ‘I spoke to your secretary,’ Louise said. ‘Did she give you the message?’

  Caroline laughed. ‘God, I don’t have a secretary! There’s a department one – that must have been who you spoke to. Marion. I’m not grand enough to have my own. Not yet.’

  ‘You will be,’ Margaret said. Caroline smiled and tucked a stray curl behind Margaret’s ear for her, lightly, lightly, a gesture which might have been loving or mean nothing at all.

  Margaret had succumbed. She was wholly in love with Caroline as she had never been before. There was no Daniel now, no brother to idolise. They did not speak about him.

  ‘I like this,’ Caroline said, admiring her former bedroom. ‘Much nicer.’

  ‘I knew you would.’ Esther sat in the basket chair with its new tapestry cushion, stitched by Janet on winter evenings. Caroline swung her legs up on the bed and piled the pillows behind her head.

  ‘Where’s my wooden box?’ she asked. Margaret, examining the jars on the dressing table, knew at once what she meant.

  ‘The box with your jewellery? Is it still here?’

  ‘Yes, I didn’t take a thing away with me, apart from clothes and books.’

  ‘Mum put it in her wardrobe.’

  Margaret looked at Esther, surprised. ‘Did she?’

  ‘For safekeeping. This room is supposed to be the spare now, not that many other people have stayed.’

  ‘I’ll go and ask her,’ Margaret said.

  ‘No hurry.’ But Margaret had already gone, running downstairs.

  ‘I thought I’d go out to Braeside tomorrow,’ Caroline said.

  ‘Granny’s pleased you’re coming to the wedding.’

  ‘Oh. Yes, yes, I suppose I will.’

  Esther’s stomach gave way: might she not come, after all? She did not dare ask. Just assume, she thought, just go on assuming she will, so she can’t get out of it. She did not at that moment question why Caroline would want to.

  Margaret had fetched the box from Janet’s wardrobe. ‘Here,’ she said, breathless, putting it on the bed.

  ‘Thanks,’ Caroline said, but she did not open it. In a few moments they all went downstairs and the box was left in the middle of the bed, as if after all, she had lost interest in it.

  Caroline spent the next day at Braeside. She had never learned to drive, so Janet took her. Esther and Louise had other things to do, but anyway were not asked to go with them. Margaret was still at school until the following week.

  ‘I wonder what Mum and Caroline will talk about, all the way out to Braeside on their own,’ Esther said, thinking of what they would not be discussing: Daniel, Caroline’s cold withdrawal from the family; Gordon and Mrs Ashton. Though perhaps they would speak about that.

  ‘I bet it’s all about Granny and how she’s going to manage if she gets ill or loses her marbles,’ Louise said.

  Their bus for the town centre arrived. In the business of paying for tickets, Esther’s mind turned to the afternoon’s shopping, but when they were settled in their seats, Louise said,

  ‘I asked Mum about Granny’s house.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Braeside. When Granny dies, it will belong to Gordon and Mum. Well, Gordon and Mum and Dad. I said, would they sell it, or what?’

  ‘Sell it!’ Esther stared at Louise, her hand to her mouth. ‘It belongs to us – sell it?’

  ‘Mum doesn’t want it. That big draughty place, she called it. She said it would take thousands to bring it up to date and she and Dad had spent enough on our own house. Braeside doesn’t even have central heating and apparently some of the window sills are rotten. And no fitted carpets . . . that sort of stuff. Not that I’ve noticed, it seems fine to me.’

  ‘It’s lovely,’ Esther said. ‘It’s a wonderful house.’ After a moment she asked, ‘What about Uncle Gordon?’

  Louise grinned, imitating her mother. ‘She said he wouldn’t be interested, not now he’s in tow with that Mrs Ashton.’

  They both laughed. ‘Don’t think Mum liked her much that one time they met,’ Esther said. ‘But I wonder what Granny would want.’

  ‘She won’t care, will she? She’ll be dead by then.’

  ‘Louise!’

  ‘Well, she will.’

  ‘What about – ’ Esther felt sure her grandmother would know what they had done to her house. They never talked about it, but it seemed Louise no longer believed in God. I do, though, she kept reassuring some other voice in her head, it’s not just because Mum and Dad brought us up like that.

  In a month she would be taking vows in King’s College Chapel, in a month she would be marrying Jack in front of God. A God Jack also didn’t seem to have any interest or belief in, but that didn’t matter. In time, the minister had said, he may come to God, if you continue to be strong in your faith.

  She blushed at the memory of this conversation which had taken place in the stuffy little vestry one Thursday evening, after the Women’s Guild had finished and the Minister saw individually young people who were preparing for membership of the Church. Though she liked their minister, having known him all the way through Sunday School and teenage years, Esther had had no more intimate conversation with him than the pleasantries of chat after church or – long ago – the Brownies annual fair. To speak to him about Jack and marriage and the duties that apparently awaited her, had been excruciating. And yet, it had also been a conversation charged, for her, with emotion. Afterwards, walking home, clutching the booklet the Reverend John Simpson had given her (Preparing for Christian Marriage), she had been brimming with tears.

  She could not say any of this to Louise, bright and careless beside her. Perhaps to Margaret. Margaret still went to church with Harry and Janet, and Esther suspected her of a more devout faith than even she could manage.

  Religion, Jack declared, is something you grow out of, if you’ve grown up with it. And something you can ge
t fanatical about if you don’t. He said that sort of thing a lot, which had at first surprised Esther, since his father was a minister. Harry had said that was probably why. ‘Too much too young,’ her father had said, and laughed, as if it didn’t matter. Though still hanging on Jack’s every word, Esther could not quite agree with him about God – or his absence.

  Lightly, she said to Louise, ‘I wonder what Grandpa thinks of it, looking down on us all – bet he would have something to say if Braeside was being sold.’

  To this absurdity, Louise made no reply except to say, ‘Are we getting off at Union Terrace, or what?’

  On the evening before she went back to London, Caroline and Esther were alone for a moment in the kitchen.

  ‘Would you come upstairs with me?’ Caroline said. ‘I’ve got something for you.’

  Now that she was about to leave, it was impossible to ask any of the things that had been burning in Esther’s mind all week. She was curious, as she followed Caroline to her room. It must be a wedding present, but not, she was sure, a toaster or bed linen or any of the things people seemed to think were suitable. Most of it was boringly utilitarian (iron, chopping board, toaster, sheets and pillow cases) or hideous – how could you be grateful for such things, let alone love them? The tea set from Harry’s aunt Ethel had already arrived and was waiting for her in the dining room. Ethel had – unexpectedly, given her age – decided she would travel from Perth for the wedding, but had had the richly red and green rose-patterned tea set with fluted cups sent ahead directly from the china shop. Esther wondered if she could just quietly leave it here. Surely there would not be room for it in their tiny flat? All they needed – wanted – were coffee mugs and a few plates. Janet had laughed when she said so. ‘You should be grateful for her generosity – she’s an old lady so her taste is a bit old-fashioned.’ (‘A bit!’ Esther had exclaimed, not grateful at all.)

  Caroline had not bought them another tea set.

  They sat on the bed with its faded pink quilt and Caroline opened her wooden casket. ‘Here,’ she said. ‘I know you have your pretty engagement ring and you’ll have a wedding ring, but I thought you might like this too.’