The Treacle Well

by Moira Forsyth

  He was a tall fair man, at least ten years older than they were – perhaps even older than Caroline herself. So they judged, not having an idea really, just that he was older, another generation. It was only when he had gone, courteously turning down their offer of tea, retreating still puzzled, they felt, that Louise said,

  ‘He’s her lover.’

  ‘No!’

  ‘Well, what else? He had a key, so I don’t suppose he was a burglar.’

  ‘Oh help! Maybe he was and we let him go.’

  ‘What else were we going to do? Pin him to the ground? If he is a burglar he’s not the kind you see in the Beano, anyway. Bag marked Swag over his shoulder and a striped jersey.’

  Esther began to laugh. ‘A gentleman burglar?’

  ‘Was he a gentleman then?’

  ‘Oh yes.’ Esther was sure of that, at least.

  ‘God.’ Louise was laughing too. ‘You’re as bad as Mum. An instinct for class distinctions.’

  In the neat kitchen with its tub of parsley on the window sill and pottery jars for coffee and tea, Louise filled the kettle. ‘I guess that’s where I went wrong,’ she said. ‘Marrying out of my class.’

  ‘For goodness sake, all that stuff went out years ago. Not that we’re exactly upper class, eh?’

  ‘It’s not about that. It’s about . . . You think it all disappeared in the sixties?’

  ‘It seemed to.’

  ‘Don’t kid yourself. And wait and see what our new PM does. When she gets going.’ Louise dropped tea bags into mugs. ‘Even if she is a grocer’s daughter.’

  Esther thought Louise was the snob, not her, but she didn’t pursue it. There was too much to look at in Caroline’s flat, so much that might reveal her to them. Or not.

  In the living room they sat on beige sofas hoping they wouldn’t spill a drop or a crumb to mark them, and ate chocolate biscuits. It was a relief to find that Caroline had such ordinary things as tea bags and Penguin biscuits in this carefully chosen and anonymous place. It’s a different world from the one where she was brought up, Esther thought, her mind going to her mother, and then to Braeside.

  Louise had made up her mind about the man.

  ‘No, I’m right. A lover. Though clearly he doesn’t live here, or she could hardly have avoided telling us about him.’

  ‘Or him about us.’

  ‘So do we say, casually, this chap dropped in – ’

  ‘Something like that.’

  ‘Ok. What do you want to do now – I have to ring up about some flats to view.’

  ‘Go ahead. I’ll have a wash and unpack.’

  When Louise had made her appointments for the next day they went out to walk in the little park and explore the near neighbourhood. They began to feel reckless; there was something exotic about London. Instead of cooking, they ate out in an Italian restaurant not far from the flat, in a row of shops with a hairdresser and laundrette, like a village street tucked away in the city. When they came back late, full of food and a little hazy with the carafe of wine they had shared, Caroline was home.

  She was heating a tin of soup. There was a glass of white wine in a tall stemmed glass beside her. Esther was entranced – having had more than usual herself – by the extravagance of opening a whole bottle of wine on a week night, to drink some on your own. Even stranger, just to have it with soup from a tin and bread and cheese, which was all Caroline ate. Later, dropping something in the kitchen bin, Esther saw the tin and read on an unfamiliar label the words ‘Lobster Bisque’.

  Caroline put out two more glasses and offered the wine. Esther, sobering up, refused, explaining, ‘We had quite a lot in the restaurant, so – ’

  ‘Not that much,’ Louise interrupted. ‘I’d love some.’

  ‘What are your plans for tomorrow?’ Caroline asked.

  ‘Flat hunting. We’re going to see four.’

  ‘Where are they?’

  Louise got out the agent’s details and Caroline looked through them. ‘This one,’ she said.

  ‘Oh do you think so? It’s not as big as the – ’

  ‘Not such a good area.’

  ‘Oh. Right.’

  ‘You’ll see when you go.’

  Esther, curled up in the corner of a sofa, listening sleepily, thought that in the shadowy dusk, with one lamp lit, Caroline looked no older than they were. The years mattered less when you were all grown up. If we are, Esther thought, not feeling it. She was missing Jack, yet found herself wondering about being a single woman in London, as Louise planned, as Caroline was.

  ‘There was a man,’ she exclaimed, waking up, remembering him. ‘We forgot to say.’

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘He came in when we’d only just got here. He said he stayed sometimes. But he – ’

  ‘Well, he didn’t stay,’ Louise giggled. She really had had too much wine now.

  Esther broke in. ‘I think he had a bit of a shock, seeing us. Anyway, we did invite him in, but – ’

  Caroline looked down at her glass. Her colour did not change, or her voice. ‘I didn’t think he was back yet, or I’d have said.’

  ‘Is he – ?’

  Even Louise did not have courage to continue. There was a pause, lengthening in the dusk; outside a car went by. For London, this was a quiet street but if you listened, you heard the hum of traffic, a shout far off, then shrilly a police siren wailing into the distance.

  ‘His name is Martin,’ Caroline said. She looked directly at Esther. ‘How’s Jack?’

  Later, as they talked quietly in bed, Esther and Louise agreed that having had a bit to drink themselves made everything easier. ‘You don’t think she’s an alcoholic, do you?’ Esther wondered, ‘drinking on her own?’

  ‘She did offer us some.’

  ‘She had to, really.’

  Louise laughed softly. Esther was very unworldly, but it was no use telling her so, she would be hurt.

  Esther had been thinking about having a baby. She had tried to talk to Jack about it, but his mind was on his new job. ‘Whenever you want to,’ he said. ‘It’s up to you.’

  ‘I don’t want to have a baby just because I can’t think what else to do.’

  In London, she had begun to be aware of other possibilities, things she might have done had she not married Jack. Linlithgow was not London, and however near Edinburgh and Glasgow were, she no longer lived in a city and was not part of one as Caroline was, as Louise soon would be. She was jealous when she thought Louise and Caroline might meet and be friends, as you could be, she saw now, the eleven years between the two of them vanishing. For the first time since her wedding, she wondered if she had done the right thing, if she had not missed something important.

  Louise found a flat to share with another woman, a staff nurse at University College Hospital near the clinic where she was going to be based. In time, she planned to buy her own place, but for now she was too poor, she concluded, too junior.

  Full of excitement and courage, she had rushed headlong at London and was – at times – rebuffed, thrown back on her old provincial self, the person she was rather than the person she spent most of her time imagining she was. The imagining began, in the long evenings when the nurse was on shift and she was alone, to turn into stories, scribbled in blue notebooks bought from the corner shop. The shop was run by Mr Patel, who was avuncular and helpful and the person she was probably most comfortable with in the whole city.

  She would not go to Caroline for friendship or support. She would make it on her own.

  She was missing Eric.

  ‘All good things must come to an end,’ he said when they parted for the last time. Then, because language was what he worked with, he added, ‘all things, if you think about it, good and bad. Us too.’

  ‘Don’t,’ Louise said, closer to despair than she had been at the end of either of her marriages. ‘That’s not a comfort.’

  ‘Nor for me,’ he agreed. ‘I’m sorry.’

  He folded her in his large familiar
embrace, and she inhaled again his dear smell of tobacco and tweed, his dusty, academic, unfashionable smell, and she cried, ashamed and sorry and angry with herself and him. How had they let it get so out of hand, their little affair, what he called their tendresse, that was not meant to last or matter?

  ‘I can’t leave her,’ he said again. ‘Them. I can’t leave them. I’m a weak man, not good enough for you.’

  ‘Stop saying that!’ She was furious with him. ‘It’s a poor excuse.’

  ‘I’m sorry – ’’

  ‘We must also stop saying we’re sorry. It’s pathetic.’ Louise had braced up. She was stronger than he was and she was younger. She had the better chance of being happy again. So she told herself, even if on nights alone in London, it was not how she felt.

  The months passed. Caroline stayed in touch more often, but no more satisfactorily. She met Louise for coffee now and then; she recommended restaurants and the best places to buy clothes or food. She said she must invite Louise for dinner sometime, but it did not happen. Louise, not languishing long in self-pity, met new people and began going to parties and the theatre.

  Esther took a job in her local branch library, which she intended to be temporary, but it was not like the University, where she had felt inexperienced and inadequate. Here, the staff were gossipy and kindly, their idea of a good book Catherine Cookson or Georgette Heyer. They were delighted to have Esther there to keep them right about anything more academic. They thought she was young and trendy and clever, and spoiled her, believing she needed mothering. They gave her recipes for casseroles and puddings and a day to day life that was undemanding but never dull.

  Jack, growing more ambitious, began applying for promoted posts. In February of 1980, he was appointed to an Assistant Head’s job in Aberdeen.

  By April, Esther knew she was pregnant.

  Grown Up

  1985

  ‘Do you remember the time Caroline vanished – she didn’t come home all night?’

  ‘That was the night we went to the theatre – the whole family together,’ Esther replied.

  ‘I don’t remember,’ Margaret said.

  ‘We got to meet the actors. Oh, and there was champagne after the play. I was so impressed,’ Louise said. ‘I’d never so much as seen it before and everyone had these little thin glasses. They gave us some too.’

  ‘No they didn’t,’ Esther protested. ‘They never gave children alcohol in those days.’

  ‘I don’t now,’ said Margaret.

  ‘Poor Anna – you’re not preparing her properly for adult life.’ Louise watched her niece jumping off the low part of the wall into the paddling pool. There was not much water left in it because the children had been taking turns to do this all afternoon. You’re wrong, she thought, there was definitely champagne and we definitely got some. ‘If you think about it,’ she said, ‘Daniel and Caroline must have had a good bit – they were very lavish I remember, the people taking it round.’

  ‘I remember Mum said to Dad, better not have any more if you’re driving us all home.’ Esther was surprised by this sudden recollection. ‘You know, I think you’re right, I remember those little glasses. But I thought they just gave us lemonade.’

  ‘I’m sure that’s what gave me a taste for champagne,’ Louise said with a grin.

  ‘I can’t believe you remember all that – I don’t.’

  ‘You were tiny,’ Esther said. ‘No wonder.’

  ‘I have a good memory.’ Louise looked smug. ‘Writers need it.’

  ‘What for?’ Margaret asked. ‘Your stories are all fantasy, aren’t they? Rugged handsome men and flame-haired beauties riding off into the sunset on a black charger.’

  ‘Exactly,’ Louise said, laughing, ‘just like our own youth!’

  Margaret, feeling annoyed without knowing why, thought Louise had had more romance than she or Esther had managed. Two marriages already, and goodness knows how many boyfriends. She got up and went to tell the children to do something else. They were going to wreck that paddling pool, and it was quite new.

  They were at Braeside. None of them had a house big enough to accommodate all of them and Louise came up from London only two or three times a year. This was the best way to get together. It meant Esther and Margaret had to come out a day early to clean and make up beds, but Gordon was content to let them have the run of the place. He had retired last year, and sat in the sun wearing the white trousers he had had in Egypt years ago and a battered straw hat to provide enough shade for him to read. He read the sort of books nobody else was interested in: colonial and wartime memoirs; histories of both world wars; biographies of generals and dead politicians. Even he seemed to be bored by them this hot afternoon, for he’d fallen asleep under the apple tree and the book had slipped from his lap to the grass and lay open, the pages turning in a tiny breeze.

  ‘I don’t know how you can sleep,’ Esther said to him when she picked up the book. He opened his eyes with a grunt.

  ‘What? What time is it?’

  ‘Half past three. The children have been making such a racket.’

  ‘Have they?’

  He was getting deaf. Sometimes it was necessary to say things again, enunciating more clearly. Not that she would have commented on it; in every other way he was as fit as he had ever been. He still tramped the paths and hills of Scotland, alone or with his old friend, Bob Douglas.

  ‘Cup of tea?’ he asked.

  ‘Sure. I’ll see if Tilly and Lou want one.’

  Half past three, Esther thought, going up the garden to the house to put the kettle on, that dead part of the afternoon, too long after lunch to go out, too soon before dinner to start going indoors and getting ready for that. It was the children who would give half past three some meaning, when Andrew went to school in August, for that was when she would be at the school gates to meet him. She had a flicker of pleasure and excitement at the thought of it. Ross and Anna were toddlers, barely fledged, but Andrew gave her hope that their children would one day be grown up and independent.

  Gordon had followed her into the house. He had begun to modernise the kitchen when he first moved in, to make it easier for his mother to use, but since her death he had done nothing further. In this process, the place had somehow lost the warmth and familiarity Esther associated with it when she was a child, but it was still not convenient and no longer even comfortable.

  ‘Too hot to sit outside.’

  ‘You should be used to it!’ The water drummed into the kettle and she raised her voice above it.

  ‘Ach, it’s years since I worked overseas. It’s not the same here anyway – a different heat. Nobody sits out in it in hot countries. More sense.’

  ‘We’re very glad of it – keeps the children amused for one thing, being outside all the time.’

  She began to get out some of the old cups; Gordon’s improvements had not extended to buying crockery. Esther liked to use the familiar cups and plates with the green and gold rim.

  ‘If Granny was here she’d be making pancakes,’ she said.

  ‘There’s some shortbread in that tin,’ Gordon offered. ‘But mind, it’s been there a while and it’s only bought stuff.’

  ‘It’s all right – I brought fairy cakes and Margaret made a fruit loaf.’

  ‘So you still bake, do you, you young women?’

  ‘Scotswomen all bake, Uncle Gordon, you should know that!’

  He had married two Englishwomen, so maybe he didn’t know, though Janet had always baked, just as much and as well as Granny. When she stood with the baking bowl in front of her, sifting flour or beating butter and sugar together, Esther felt she was doing something traditional, taught to her at home, a skill she might one day pass on to her own children. The boys too, of course, but the thought was in her mind now that this third child, when she came along, might be a girl. She was at that early stage of not being quite sure, so only Jack knew. Should she say anything to Louise and Margaret? Not yet. She hugged it to herse
lf, liking for once to have a secret.

  Her own children had also followed her into the kitchen to complain about the loss of the paddling pool, but seeing her with a Tupperware box full of cakes, Andrew changed tack.

  ‘We’re hungry.’

  Ross came round to where she stood at the table, putting slices of fruit loaf onto her grandmother’s cake stand, and clung to her legs, wiping his nose on her skirt.

  ‘Cake,’ he said, hopefully.

  In the garden, Anna lay on Margaret’s lap where she and Louise sat on the old travelling rug, making daisy chains. Anna had shown interest at first, but now she was falling asleep, her head a hot weight on Margaret’s thighs through her thin cotton trousers.

  ‘She’s very blonde, isn’t she?’ Louise said, stroking Anna’s hair with light fingers. ‘You were fair like that when you were wee.’

  ‘You used to say,’ Margaret remembered, ‘that I was your ‘almost sister’ but, you know, I don’t look like either of you.’

  ‘Elsie, Lacie and Tilly.’

  ‘Oh. I’m so dim – I’ve just realised.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Your name, when you write those romances – I never even thought. That’s why.’

  ‘Lou Lacey.’ Louise grinned. ‘I can’t believe you didn’t get that! Yes, a lot better than Louise Duthie. Or either of my married names.’

  ‘Either!’

  ‘People do marry more than once,’ Louise said, still lightly, but with an edge of irritation. She was never allowed to forget she was the only person in their family who had been divorced.

  ‘You were really young when you and Pete – ’

  ‘Yes, I was. Nineteen. Nobody gets married at nineteen and expects it to last, surely.’

  ‘Didn’t you – when you ran off like that?’

  ‘Oh come on, we didn’t exactly elope. We just had this idea, the summer we were working in London. Why not do it now? It was a laugh. And it was doing something without asking permission. We were there just long enough to establish residency – but we got a special licence. For once I was beyond parental control. And so was he.’

  ‘We never met any of his family, did we?’