‘Well, they lived in Dundee and it wasn’t somewhere they seemed keen on leaving – God knows why. They were even less pleased than Mum and Dad. He didn’t have any sisters and his mother was hoping for a big white wedding – like Esther’s.’
‘So what happened?’
Louise shrugged. ‘We lived in a tiny flat with two other students, till Mum and Dad got over it and helped us out so we could rent our own place.’
‘I remember that. I meant, what happened that you didn’t stay together?’
Louise looked down at Anna, flushed with heat and sleep, her thistledown hair, smooth unmarked skin and pale pink finger- and toenails, the soft perfection of having had only two years of life.
‘When we actually knew each other better, we just got on each other’s nerves. It turned out we didn’t want the same things. The same sort of life.’
Abruptly, she got up. Daisies scattered, the half-finished chain drifting down to land on Anna’s hair like a crown.
‘I’m going to see if Esther wants a hand,’ she said.
Margaret sat on quietly with Anna. Her legs were aching, but if she moved, Anna would wake. Where was Pete now? Had he married again, had a family? Louise probably didn’t know. Then there was that second husband, the time she’d had what Margaret thought of as the proper wedding. That hadn’t lasted either. He hadn’t looked like a wife beater but it turned out this was something that happened to all sorts of women. Still, you couldn’t overlook the fact that Louise had had two very short failed marriages. She thought of her own wedding, how kind Janet had been, how pretty she had felt, all day. She looked down at Anna. It was worth it.
She arranged the daisy crown more carefully on Anna’s hair. My love, she thought, my dear, dearest little love.
Louise had brought some work with her, so she went upstairs after tea to spend an hour on her own with the romance she was writing. Her heroine was a primary school teacher, which meant she had been able to get some useful background material from Margaret. She thought of it as colouring in, this inclusion of realistic detail, intended to give her readers the illusion their dull primary school or shop assistant lives could be miraculously enhanced – or more often, transformed – by the kind of unlikely adventure her heroine was thrown into.
Writing romances had started almost as a joke, a way of proving she could do something unexpected. Eric’s idea. When she flung another rejection note in the waste paper basket after yet another angst ridden novel had been turned down, he said, ‘Try something different’.
‘What sort of different? Are you just telling me I can’t write?’
‘You can write,’ he said, for once with no hint of humour in look or voice. ‘Just not the literary stuff, I suspect.’
‘What then?’
‘Romance, crime, I don’t know. Humour is difficult, but – ’
‘Give me a start,’ she said, liking the challenge, if only to prove him wrong. ‘Give me – I don’t know – an outline or something.’
Instead, he told her which publishers to approach, and from the first, and least likely, she received a template, and instructions. This was what they wanted; these were the rules. Rules! She hated rules and regulations.
‘I knew you’d give up at the first hurdle,’ Eric mocked. ‘Go back to your tales of misunderstood women.’
‘All right, you win,’ she said. ‘I’ll give it a go.’
The affair with Eric had been full of that kind of thing. Nonsense, she called it, never taking anything seriously, a truth or dare kind of relationship. Appropriate, perhaps, for someone recovering from the end of a marriage that had been her major attempt to be serious and grown-up.
Well, she thought, feeding a new sheet of paper into the Olivetti, that didn’t work. She wasn’t meant to be grown-up. Look at Esther and Margaret with their husbands and toddlers and the cakes they baked and the nice houses they had: they had grown up.
Two failed marriages, Janet had said, when she told her about leaving Mark. It had taken courage to tell her mother. She was still in awe of her, still wanted Janet to admire and believe in her as she apparently believed in Esther and Margaret. But she could not reach her. Different generation, different education, outlook, personality, everything.
‘We weren’t happy,’ she said, knowing this was feeble and would sound like an excuse to Janet.
‘Happy! You have to work at marriage, Louise, it isn’t all hearts and flowers.’
Was it pride or shame made her unable to tell her mother about Mark? Already it was too late to confide and it had taken years for her to tell even Esther and Margaret. She felt stupid, that was it. How to admit to your mother you’re stupid, when her opinion is already low? She had a sneaking fear Janet would not even believe her, or if she did, say it was her own fault. Better not to talk about it at all.
Her books supplied all the hearts and flowers she needed. She could be cynical talking about them, but write with happy commitment to the ideals of romantic love. All her heroines obeyed the rules set by the publisher: they married their one true love after setbacks and confusion. Sometimes the confusion was occasioned by not realising who the one true love was, but it always worked out fine in the end.
As for marrying again herself – that would never happen. She was only thirty-two, but she had rushed through too much too quickly. That was that, then. Love.
She was between lovers, she told herself, now that Eric had taken a new job at the University in Bristol and was going there with the wife who – he claimed – bored him, and the teenage children who merely bewildered. The wife who had known about Louise all along. A martyr, was how Louise had thought of her, a fool. But perhaps not – she was the one with Eric, after all.
Louise stared at the last page she had written, trying to think her way back into the scene. Concentrate, she scolded herself. The window was open and she could hear faintly the voices of Esther and Margaret as they sat talking on the wooden bench at the back door, without being able to make out the words. Then she heard a car in the lane: Jack and Mike were back from golf. She got up and shut the window.
She only needed one line, then she’d be off again.
Harriet unlatched the wooden gate in the wall. It was stiff and creaky. Suddenly it opened wide and she was gazing for the first time on the gardens of the house that she had been dreaming about for so long.
‘Louise?’ Gordon had tapped at the door without a response, but hearing the typewriter, he came in and stood on the threshold.
Louise pulled herself out of the other world. ‘Oh – hello. Sorry, deep in my new masterpiece.’
‘Sorry to interrupt – do you have any indigestion stuff? Milk of Magnesia?’
‘Me? No. Is there nothing in the bathroom cabinet?’
‘Esther and Margaret cleared it out yesterday. They said everything was too old to be safe.’ He smiled. ‘I doubt that. But your grandmother did hang on to medicines for years.’
‘I bet Margaret has something – did you ask her?’
Gordon shook his head. ‘No, no, I’ve been having a lie down.’
Louise got up. ‘Are you all right? D’you feel ill?’
‘Not at all. Just tummy trouble.’
‘Ok. I’ll go and ask Margaret.’
‘You get on with your story – I’ll ask her myself.’
‘Are you sure?’
His colour was high, but he had always had a ruddy skin, weathered by years of sun. Louise sat down, but it was a few minutes before she could begin writing again.
When Gordon had come to live at Braeside he spent money on what he saw as essential maintenance and repair. Thinking as an engineer, he took care of the fabric of the house: roof, windows, heating, believing they were what mattered. Since he had been on his own, the house had gradually and subtly altered in less visible ways. Her grandmother’s absence was powerful as her presence had been. Eileen had died last year, but had anyway been too stout and arthritic to help for some time. A girl from Echt wi
th children at the primary school had come in to clean for a while but she had had another baby and now nobody did it. When they visited, Esther and Margaret took turns to go through the house, doing what they could. Still, the neglect was visible in a house no longer cared for, in the corners and the cupboards, the grimy kitchen floor, the smeared cooker, the mould at the back of the fridge, the green rusty stain along the bottom of the bath beneath a dripping tap. The bloom of the house had rubbed off. It no longer felt lived in, as if Gordon only half inhabited it. Until January he had continued to work away from home on contracts on a consulting basis, so the house had often been empty.
Tomorrow, Esther said they should tackle some weeding and tidy the garden. This was not Louise’s idea of a holiday, but it would be good exercise and as Margaret said, they could make a difference in a morning if they all worked at it. Gordon was not a gardener.
Watching her uncle walk slowly along the landing and downstairs, a hand on the banister rail as if to steady himself, Louise was overcome by a sensation that was close to fear. What would happen to Braeside if Gordon was no longer here? Don’t be squeamish, she told herself. When he dies.
She had not realised she loved the house. Not like Esther, not in that way, Esther who had spent so much time here with their grandmother. But it belonged to their family and the idea that it could belong to anyone who was not one of them was appalling.
Louise sat down at the typewriter again, but had lost all interest in Harriet and the handsome gardener she was about to encounter in the orangery. What was an orangery, anyway? She must look it up.
A few moments later she heard Margaret running lightly upstairs and along the landing.
‘Lou – are you there?’
‘Yes, what?’
‘You don’t have any Rennies or anything? Dad has indigestion.’
Louise got up and went to the door. ‘No. He asked me, and I said to try you.’
‘The shops will all be shut now. I’ll get him something tomorrow.’
‘You shouldn’t have emptied the bathroom cabinet – I bet there was stuff in that.’
‘Oh yes, with its own penicillin growing on it probably.’
‘Is it just indigestion?’
‘What?’ Margaret looked surprised. ‘Sure. Of course.’ A pause. ‘What else could it be?’
‘Where’s our cousin Caroline when we need her?’
Margaret hurried past that thought. ‘Oh, he’s not ill. He says he often gets it.’
Louise went back into her room. Third time lucky, she thought. This time, staring at the next empty page, she started to think not about her grandmother or the house, but about Caroline.
Useless, this, of course – another train of thought that would never lead her towards romantic fiction.
It was definitely not Esther’s turn to tell the bedtime stories. Though she was not the author in the family, it seemed she was best at it, so here she was anyway, with all three children.
‘Tell about the Elties,’ Andrew said.
The children were in a row in the same bed, crammed together. Eventually, Anna would have to move across to Mike and Margaret’s room and the travel cot. Meantime, for the stories, she was an honorary Murray and sat up between Andrew and Ross, clutching a wilting teddy and sucking his ear.
‘Once upon a time,’ Esther began, ‘there were three little girls and their names were Elsie, Lacey and Tilly.’
The stories were based on childhood memories, embellished to make that distant time more exciting than it was. Margaret, leaning on the door frame listening, was amused.
‘I don’t know where you get it all from,’ she said as Esther came to an end and Anna was lifted from the bed, protesting. ‘You and Louise, with your stories. I couldn’t be bothered. I just read Anna the same books over and over. That’s what she wants. I could scream sometimes, I didn’t know it was possible to dislike a fictional character as much as I hate the Hungry Caterpillar.’
‘And I don’t know how you came to be a primary teacher,’ Esther retorted. ‘Aren’t you supposed to like reading stories?’
To this ignorance, Margaret made no reply. She had, in any case, left being a primary teacher behind, and had no intention of returning. Perhaps one day, she said to Mike, when Anna is at school. That seemed a long way off.
She carried Anna through to the cot in the room across the landing, murmuring to her, settling her for sleep. Esther’s boys, tucked up with a tractor and a cloth rabbit, were still wide awake, but she left them with a kiss, hoping they might sleep soon.
In the living room, Jack and Mike had opened two bottles of wine, and Louise had joined them, having given up on her romance for the night. Gordon nursed a whisky, his glass perched on the swell of his uncomfortable stomach, and read his book beneath the light of the standard lamp.
‘All well?’ he asked, looking up over his glasses.
‘All well.’
‘Peace reigns at last,’ Mike said, getting out glasses for Esther and Margaret.
‘Can I have white, please.’ Esther sank onto the sofa next to her husband.
Jack put his arm round her. ‘Are they sleeping?’
‘Not yet, but fingers crossed. Andrew insisted on the tractor, so I just left it in the bed.’
On the other sofa, Mike and Margaret sat a little way apart. Margaret looked broody, Esther thought.
‘I don’t think you like me making up stories about us, about our childhood,’ she said. ‘They’re not about us really. Mostly I’m inventing adventures for the Elties.’
‘The what?’
Esther looked from Mike to Margaret. ‘Hasn’t she told you about the Elties? That’s what we called ourselves, the three of us.’
Mike shrugged. ‘She doesn’t talk about that stuff, do you, Maggie?’
‘Don’t call me that,’ Margaret said, but as if she had said it too often before and hardly paid attention herself. ‘I can’t see the point. It wasn’t as marvellous as you make out, Esther.’
‘Oh, I make it more exciting than it was.’
Margaret shrugged but did not answer. Perhaps she was thinking about Diana. Esther realised she did not know, never knew what Margaret thought about her own mother. She had always been more sister than cousin, so she had had just as much love and security, surely?
Jack looked from Esther to Margaret.
‘Right,’ he said, heaving himself out of the sofa. ‘I’m going to get that box of chocolates Esther hid from the kids. Where did you put it?’
Gordon went to bed at nine. The rest sat up late, hoping none of the children would wake.
Esther took half a glass of wine but did not even finish that. As the evening went on she was aware the others were jollier than usual, even Margaret, but did not mind feeling a little apart from them. She curled up against Jack on the old hide sofa and let them all talk over her. Jack put his hand on her thigh and squeezed it now and then, smiling at her. I’m happy, she thought, dangerously.
About eleven, too tired to stay awake, she decided to go to bed.
‘I won’t be long,’ Jack said.
‘I’d better go up too,’ Margaret sighed. ‘Anna still wakes sometimes in the night.’
On the landing, Esther said, ‘What about checking Uncle Gordon’s all right?’
Margaret frowned. ‘Why? Are you worried?’
‘No. Just, he didn’t seem quite himself and he went to bed early.’
They stood in silence, listening. Faintly, from Gordon’s room, once their grandparents’, came an unsteady intake of breath followed by the wheezing growl of a snorer asleep. They looked at each other.
‘Sounds ok,’ Esther admitted.
Margaret laughed softly, as if louder noise would wake him. ‘I think he’s out for the count – I’m sure he’s fine.’
‘Goodnight.’
‘Esther – ’
‘Yes?’
‘Is Louise – is she happy?’
‘Oh, you know Louise. She just moves on
to the next thing without much thought.’
‘Next man.’
‘Well.’
‘Essie – ’ Margaret lowered her voice still further. She was gripping the banister, Esther realised. ‘Does Caroline write to Janet? Or phone sometimes?’
‘You don’t hear from her?’
‘Nothing. Well, if you call a scrawl on a card at Christmas hearing . . .’
‘No, nor do I. You know I’d tell you if I did. Mum’s the same – we’d always tell you. I think Lou sees her now and again.’
Margaret gave herself a little shake. ‘Ah well.’
‘She has her career,’ Esther said doubtfully. ‘She has such a responsible job now she’s a consultant, Mum says. And the hospital is a big one, a teaching hospital.’
On an impulse, Margaret, least demonstrative of the three of them, put a hand on Esther’s arm. ‘You two are much more my sisters than she’s ever been.’
‘Oh, Tilly.’ Esther put her arms round Margaret. It wasn’t easy to hug her – she went stiff and didn’t respond. Esther was on the verge of tears. Yes, she was thinking now, I definitely am. Or why am I so soppy?
‘I’m fine,’ Margaret said, disengaging herself. ‘Sorry. Don’t know what came over me.’
‘Bordeaux?’
Margaret laughed. ‘Yes, probably. Goodnight.’
‘You don’t still think about it, do you?’
‘What?’
‘You know, that she didn’t come to your wedding? She didn’t come to any of them. A big cheque and that was it.’
‘I suppose the strange thing was the way she turned up just before you and Jack got married.’
‘Strange?’
‘It wasn’t the start of Caroline being part of the family again, whatever it meant.’
‘She came to Granny’s funeral.’
They fell silent. Then Margaret, rousing herself, said, ‘I’m going to bed. Goodnight.’
When she went into the bathroom, Esther was distracted by the green stain along the bottom of the bath which had bothered her when the children had been bathed earlier in the evening. Wide awake now, she shook some Vim onto the stain and scrubbed at it vigorously with the dried up cloth found hanging over the end. She ran water in, sluiced it away and surveyed the results. A bit better, surely?
The Treacle Well Page 23