She called Harry from a public telephone in the hospital.
‘I’ll come right away.’
‘It’s all right,’ she said, ‘you don’t have to. There’s no point really and I can get the bus home. It’s still snowing, isn’t it?’
All she wanted was to leave the hospital as soon as she decently could. She saw the Sister in charge, collected her mother’s things and arranged that Harry would pick up the death certificate the following day.
Then she set off for the bus stop and home, where she would try to reach Gordon, who was in Texas, and begin the other telephone calls she had to make. The bus crept down the hill in a blizzard but by the time she got off to walk the rest of the way home, rather than change buses nearer town, there were only a few stray flakes still floating in the air.
Just me, she kept thinking, just me now, and Gordon. We have no parents, Harry has no parents, there is no one behind us. With a dusting of snow, a new mantle seemed to have landed lightly on her shoulders.
The funeral took place a week later, giving everyone time to get back to Aberdeen: Esther and Jack from Glasgow, Louise from Newcastle, and at the last moment, Caroline from London. Margaret and Mike were only on the outskirts of the city in their newbuilt house at Westhill.
Caroline had not come for Margaret’s wedding a few months ago. She was a registrar now, still working long hours. They did not often hear from her so Janet, managing to reach her by telephone to tell her about her grandmother, was half surprised by the swift response.
‘When is the funeral? Tell me as soon as you know – I’ll make sure I can take a few days off.’
Weather intervened. Snow went on falling all week across the whole country. Planes were delayed or could not land; trains were late or cancelled; nobody drove further than they had to. Louise came by car but no one knew that she had been driven from Newcastle to Aberdeen in Eric’s Volvo that he said was built like a tank, and drove like one too, slowly but safely, and with a wonderful heater which made the winter landscape seem like a film going steadily past them all the way north. To the indolent soundtrack of Miles Davis in the cassette player, she began to imagine a story based around a dramatic mountain rescue. When they reached Aberdeen, she took a taxi to Harrowden Place, where she pretended she had come from the station. Harry drove out to Braeside with Jack next to him and Louise crammed between her mother and Esther in the back. Eric, still foolish with love, began driving back to Newcastle but was stuck for three hours near Perth because a lorry had skidded and jack-knifed across the road. He had plenty of time in which to work out which explanation to give his wife.
Esther and Jack came by train, where the heating broke down in a full carriage crowded with families going home after New Year. They all seemed to have loud undisciplined children and Esther, wrapped up in as many jumpers as she could drag out of her suitcase, but still shivering, went off the whole idea of having a family. The decision had been postponed anyway until they could afford a better house and, though Jack wasn’t fully aware of this, move back north. Esther was miserable in Glasgow though she had wanted so much to leave Aberdeen. Jack came home exhausted and angry from a school apparently peopled by the offspring of Glasgow gangs. Esther, thankful she had resisted teaching for herself, despite Janet’s urging, worked in the University library and was bored. She was learning how slowly afternoons can pass. They had been in Aberdeen for a long break over Christmas and would not be able to stay on after the funeral. Term started the following Monday.
Mike and Margaret drove, since they lived so near, but because of the snow it took them longer than Mike had anticipated and they arrived at Braeside not speaking to each other. Janet and Gordon agreed it would have been easier if the funeral had taken place in Aberdeen, but Celia was to be buried in the Drumoak churchyard with her husband, so there was no question of starting from anywhere but her home.
Since he had begun working in the Aberdeen office of an oil company Gordon had been living at Braeside, letting out his Richmond house. He had been called to its head office just before his mother’s first stroke. Coming back, he realised he would always in future return to an empty house.
‘What are you going to do with this place now?’ Harry asked him as they stood about waiting for the hearse to arrive and the cars to take them to the church.
‘Do?’ Gordon had not thought of doing anything. He seemed to have run out of the ability to see ahead. ‘Ach, no idea. Carry on, I suppose.’ He tilted his wrist to look at his watch. ‘Caroline’s cutting it fine.’
‘She is coming?’
‘Said so. She called me last night. A surprise, can’t remember the last time. Oh well.’
‘Is that a car?’ Janet asked.
Esther was nearest the window. ‘I think it must be the undertaker – it’s black. No – it’s a taxi.’
For the last hour, it had not been snowing. The sky was a brilliant deceptive blue, as if innocently promising the rest of the day would be fine. Caroline got out of the taxi and paid the driver. She was in black, a long coat and boots, and carried a dark grey suitcase.
‘It’s Caroline,’ Louise said, at the window with Esther. They turned to look at Margaret, perched on a sofa arm on the other side of the room from Mike.
The funeral service was short but the minister kind and sorrowful; he had known Celia for many years, and Andrew too. He was newly retired himself and had moved from the draughty manse to a cosy bungalow in Peterculter, but wanted to take this funeral himself. He shook hands warmly with the family and came back to Braeside afterwards, where Janet and Margaret heated the soup they had brought and Esther and Louise cut sandwiches and slices of fruit cake, and made pots of tea.
It was just as well, Janet thought, that there was so much crockery in the china cabinet, unused for years. The house was full and for once, very warm. They had lit fires to make the big rooms welcoming but the central heating Gordon had installed, despite his mother’s horror at the cost, was also on, turned high.
‘Did you know there would be such a crowd?’ Esther asked her mother as they piled sandwiches on plates and gathered cutlery.
‘I wasn’t sure. The house was full like this for your Grandpa’s funeral, but some of the folk who came then are . . . well, they’re dead too. It’s a smaller group now, the old friends.’
‘Have you spoken to Caroline?’ Esther asked, pausing in the kitchen doorway with her tray.
‘Not really. It’s been all go since we got here.’ Janet looked up from the cake she was cutting. ‘Have you?’
‘I thought I’d look for her now – see how long she’s staying.’
‘Staying?’ Janet had not thought of that. ‘I don’t know – ask her, Esther. Gordon won’t have thought about making up a bed.’
Esther went round with sandwiches. ‘Have you seen Caroline?’ she asked Louise.
‘No – not for a wee while. I was just going out for a fag.’
‘Mum wants to know about making up beds, I think.’
When Louise went outside it was getting dark already at half past three, clouds like a pewter blanket closing down the light, full of snow. On the far side of the yard, someone else was already there, a tall thin figure in a long coat: Caroline, pacing up and down against the cold.
‘Hi,’ she said as Louise joined her and flicked her lighter twice, three times, without success.
‘Bloody thing, never works outside.’
It flared at last and the cigarette caught in her cupped hands. They walked up and down the yard for a moment in silence, their boots making neat footprints in the snow, side by side.
‘Time I stopped really,’ Louise said after a moment, indicating the cigarette.
‘Out of doors,’ Caroline said, ‘I occasionally fancy it myself.’ She smiled.
‘And you a doctor!’
‘Well, at funerals only, perhaps.’
‘Ah,’ said Louise. ‘I suppose they are stressful, eh? I’m supposed to ask you – are you staying here
or Harrowden Place? Mum’s wondering – she has a pretty full house with all of us but there’s space if you want it.’
‘I’m staying here with Dad,’ Caroline said. ‘I thought I might get a flight back tonight, but it wasn’t possible. I’ll get a taxi straight to Dyce in the morning.’
‘Ok.’
More silence, more walking. After a moment, Louise put out her cigarette on the snow then picked up the stub to put in the kitchen bin later. How well brought up I was, she thought with a spurt of amusement, and still stick to it. Mum would be proud.
‘Better go in,’ she said. ‘Collect empty plates or something – earn my keep.’
‘How do you?’
‘What?’
‘Earn your keep. What are you doing now?’
Louise stared. ‘Don’t you know?’
Caroline shrugged. ‘I must have, once. Tell me again. I’ll listen this time.’
Louise laughed. ‘Oh don’t worry, I’m not offended. Why should you remember? I’m a psychologist. I work with adolescents, mainly in youth custody, children’s homes . . . that sort of stuff.’
‘Oh.’ Caroline stopped walking. ‘God, sorry I didn’t know.’
‘What about you?’
Caroline reached out and put a hand on Louise’s arm, gripping it. ‘Don’t. Don’t ask me questions. I’m fine, I’m all right, work is all right, I’m lucky to have such a good job. That’s all there is to know.’
‘I see,’ said Louise, who did not. At least Caroline was talking to her, at least she had stopped mouthing platitudes, which were all she seemed able to offer her family these days. The light was almost gone and their faces were in shadow. Louise took courage from this anonymity.
She would say what she knew her mother would want her to say. And perhaps Gordon as well, who knew? After all, Louise decided, as they turned by tacit agreement towards the door of the farmhouse, what have I got to lose? She’s not close to any of us now.
‘Pity you couldn’t come to Margaret’s wedding.’
They were at the back door and could hear the rise and fall of voices inside, the sound of the first farewells. In a moment, the door would open and someone would come out to be seen off into their car parked in the lane, urged to get safely home before the snow began again.
‘Work,’ Caroline said.
‘Oh sure – but you could have booked leave, couldn’t you? She was upset.’
Caroline bit her lip. ‘Was she? I sent a present.’
‘That’s hardly – ’
‘No, you’re right. I should have come. I’m not keen on weddings.’ She managed a grim smile. ‘I seem to cope better with funerals. You’re right, of course, I should have come – whatever the circumstances. Not Margaret’s fault, what happened.’
Louise, astonished, saw that for all the indifference of Caroline’s tone, there were tears glittering on her lower lids. In the dusk, she felt as much as saw a sudden distress.
‘Oh there you are,’ Harry said, opening the door to usher the minister and his wife out. ‘Are you not frozen stiff out here?’
They were, and went indoors grateful for the rush of heat that greeted them in the kitchen, the fresh pot of tea Janet had just brewed for the remaining guests.
Louise, coming into the sitting room with her cup, raised her eyebrows at Esther – tell you later – and Esther frowned slightly – what?
In an hour they had all gone but the family. They sat around in the sitting room with its extra chairs – brought in from bedrooms and elsewhere – empty now, so that the room looked both crowded and vacant, a room where something has happened, but it is impossible to say what from the furniture or the expressions of the remaining inhabitants, all too tired to get up and put another shovelful of coal on the dying fire. Eventually Janet said, ‘That fire’s going out’ and Gordon rose with a grunt and went to fill the coal scuttle.
‘This is the warmest the house has ever been,’ Margaret said. ‘Thank goodness.’
‘Oh, you’d like to live in an oven,’ Mike teased, but she would not look at him. Esther realised there had been something wrong with Margaret all day. They had exchanged only a few words, the day being too full of other people for anything else. Soon they would leave Braeside all except Caroline and Gordon, but only Louise and Esther would be staying at Harrowden Place. They could not conduct their three-way sisters’ analysis of the day, as they’d done all through childhood and adolescence. If she was to find out what was wrong, she would have to speak to Margaret before they left.
‘Does anybody want anything to eat?’ Janet asked as Gordon reappeared with coal.
‘I’m stuffed with sandwiches,’ Esther said.
‘What about a curry?’ Jack asked. ‘We could get a curry in Aberdeen, save cooking.’
‘Curry!’ Janet looked disbelieving.
Mike thought that was a good idea. ‘Will we just take it back to your house?’ he asked Janet. ‘Eat together?’
‘Well, if that’s what you want to do – ’
Janet liked her sons-in-law, more than Harry did, though he had wanted a son. She supposed daughters’ husbands are not always so welcome to men. They were nice boys, mannerly, as her mother would have said. She sighed, seeing for a disorientating moment, her mother’s dead face, her mother no longer herself. A sob rose in her throat but she quelled it, rising briskly. ‘Now then, curry or not, we’d better get going. That road will be terrible if we wait till the snow starts again.’
It had already. Louise went to the door to check and came back saying, ‘Do you really think we should set out in this?’
They went to the windows or stood in the doorway, unable to see the other side of the yard or beyond the hedge that bordered the lane. Snow obliterated, whirling past, blown by a northerly wind driving Louise indoors, shivering. ‘Shut the door somebody – it’s perishing.’
‘What do you think?’ Janet asked Harry.
‘We’ll wait for a bit,’ he said. ‘It might clear.’
‘It’s only going to get worse,’ Gordon said. ‘They won’t send a snow plough out till tomorrow morning at the soonest.’
It was already deep on the wall, on the roof of the steading, weighing down the branches of the rowan near the back door. In the near dark, the snow glimmered, lit by the light from the house, the open doorway, the uncurtained windows. Harry shut the back door and they all returned to the sitting room. Gordon got out a bottle of whisky and offered it round. Harry, catching Janet’s eye, began to say no, then changed his mind.
‘We could all stay, I suppose,’ Janet said. ‘That might be best. Though goodness knows where everyone will sleep.’
‘Don’t fuss, woman.’ Gordon poured generous tumblers, while Harry went to get a jug of water. ‘If there’s one thing we’re not short of here, it’s space.’
‘What about the rest of us?’ Esther said. ‘I don’t like whisky.’
‘There might be some sherry – even a couple of bottles of stout – in the sideboard. Help yourselves.’
‘Advocaat!’ Esther peered further into the cupboard. ‘How long has that been here?’
‘Guess we’re not going to have a curry,’ Jack sighed as he and Mike gulped whisky, not their usual drink, and going far too quickly to their heads.
‘There are eggs,’ Gordon said, cheerful now that he was going to have a full house for at least tonight. ‘Plenty of eggs.’
‘You’re glad we’re staying,’ Janet smiled as she sat down next to him on the sofa.
‘Ah well.’
‘Eggs – ’ Esther turned to her mother. ‘What about the hens? Who’s going to look after them now?’
Gordon laughed, not caring after his large whisky, and poured another.
‘Mum’s hens. She would insist on keeping them,’ Janet said. ‘I’m sure May will go on doing it for a bit longer till we sort it out. We might just take them up to Easter Logie. I should have asked Kathleen today.’ She closed her eyes, leaning back in her chair, wearied by the long
difficult day.
Upstairs, making up beds, Esther and Margaret talked about the funeral.
‘It seems strange, everybody laughing and being quite jolly,’ Margaret said. ‘And Granny – ’
‘I know. I think it often happens – it did at Grandpa’s too, but not so . . . more subdued, I think. Because of Granny.’
‘Give me that pillow case. Thanks.’
‘Are you ok?’
‘What?’ Margaret did not look up from the pillow she was stuffing into a pillow case so long unused the creases were sharp. It smelled of lavender from the linen cupboard on the landing, a scent overlaid with something musty, old.
‘You’re very quiet.’
‘It’s a funeral!’
‘Yes, but – ’
Margaret paused, the pillow in her arms, hugging it. She looked up. ‘Och, I’m just annoyed with Caroline. Turning up like that, last minute as usual, but she didn’t manage to come to our weddings, did she?’
Louise, appearing in the doorway, heard this.
‘I came to help. Told Mum to leave it to us. She looks done in, I think she’s had enough. Pity we can’t go home.’
‘I hate the idea of getting up in the morning and putting on all the same clothes,’ Esther said.
‘Knickers, you mean.’ Louise grinned at Margaret.
‘Well – ’ Esther, defensive, dissolved, laughed too. ‘Ok, I especially must have clean knickers to put on.’
‘I’m sure there’s some of Granny’s you could have.’
‘Lou!’ Margaret was shocked.
‘Nighties though,’ Esther suggested. ‘There’s a thought – if Mum doesn’t mind.’
‘I’ll need a winceyette nightie,’ Louise said. ‘It’s all right for you two with your nice warm husbands.’
Esther laughed. ‘You should hang onto yours a bit longer then.’
‘Touché.’ Louise shuddered. ‘But not Mark. My worst enemy wouldn’t want me to hang onto him.’
Esther sat on the newly made bed with a bump. ‘What?’
The Treacle Well Page 20