The Treacle Well

by Moira Forsyth

  After that, looking for something new to read, she went up to the top floor in nightdress and slippers, to Caroline’s old room. She recalled a small bookcase by the bed, though they rarely used the top of the house and she had not been up there for years. When the children are older, she thought, they will love sleeping in the attic rooms. She was visualising years and years ahead when they would continue to congregate at Braeside and her children would have holidays here as she had. In their turn, they would wander through the wood with the dogs’ graves or run down to paddle in the burn and follow it all the way to the wall where it dipped underground and reappeared on the other side of the road.

  The remaining evening light seemed brighter in this room than on the first floor, perhaps because for some reason there were no longer any curtains in the window. In the shadowy dusk she looked round, remembering how Caroline had read to them at Braeside when they were little, a golden older sister, beautiful and accomplished.

  Another memory – of being here with Margaret long ago – jolted her back to being thirteen and she saw again the wooden casket with the inlaid pattern, Caroline’s scribbled list of bequests, and the gold ring. When her gaze rested on the chest of drawers, all that sat on it now was a dusty mirror. The box had gone. When had it disappeared – and who had it?

  Esther had forgotten about being tired. She looked in the drawers and opened the wardrobe. They were all empty. Next to this was Daniel’s room, but they did not go in there. Now she did, quietly opening the door and looking at it for the first time for so long she did not even try to remember when that might have been. This room was smaller, truly an attic, Spartan with its single bed stripped to the mattress on an iron frame. A chest of drawers, a small mirror attached to the wall above, a single wardrobe. Nothing of Daniel was here now.

  And yet, standing there, Esther had powerfully a sense of who Daniel had been: years after his death, he still had presence – or at least it seemed as if he did, in this little room.

  Taking a deep breath, Esther turned the key in the wardrobe. The door creaked and her heart began to thump. This isn’t good for me. I need to stay calm. She was excited, she was not afraid.

  It was empty. Dust in the corners, nothing else. She tried the chest of drawers. A stray shirt button. Why did old buttons cling so determinedly to abandoned furniture? It was always a button you found. She picked it up and rubbed it between her fingers. Then, as if someone had nudged her, she turned back to the wardrobe. She had assumed the top shelf was empty. It looked like it. She reached up and ran her hand over its dusty surface. At the back her fingers touched something hard, small, light.

  It was the box.

  Esther stood at the top of the stairs, listening. There was a murmur of voices and then a burst of laughter from the men. Louise made them laugh; she was easy company. They would be there for a while. Esther took the box back to her own room and dusted it carefully with a baby wipe. These days even Jack didn’t carry the kind of large white handkerchief her father always had in his top pocket.

  She could not have said why she treated it with such reverence as she sat down on the edge of the bed, making a ceremony of opening the box at last. Why not just take it in to Margaret, who was probably still awake?

  Afterwards, she was so relieved she had not, she broke out in a sweat, hot and cold at once.

  Inside were a piece of paper and a man’s gold watch with a black leather strap. The ring was not there. The paper was a sheet of A4 of the kind used in photocopiers, folded in four. Esther unfolded it and read, at first excited, then bewildered, hot, rigid with anxiety.

  It was dated at the top, Braeside, November 1968. Below, in a barely legible scrawl, in writing quite different from the original list, was another.

  For Esther, my mother’s ring

  For Louise, my mother’s crystal earrings

  For Esther’s first son, Daniel’s watch

  For Esther’s first daughter, my mother’s pearls

  In the unlikely event of Louise becoming a mother, my other jewellery can go to her

  Everything else to XXXXXXXXXX

  Everything else to XXXXXXXXX

  Everything else to Oxfam or Save the Children or XXXXXXXXX

  Including any money.

  It was a few minute before Esther worked out all that was wrong with this. 1969. Caroline had given her a ring – the emerald ring given to her before her wedding and which she rarely wore. She went nowhere you could wear jewellery that might snag on a child’s jersey or cause a scratch. She did not like to wear it in front of Louise or Margaret. That gift had not been repeated before their weddings. Was this the ring Caroline meant?

  She looked at the first scrap of paper, at the line drawn through that original list with a red pen. Why had it been kept if Caroline had superseded it in 1969?

  When did Daniel die? 1968, the year before I went to university. When did I get the ring? 1973, the year I married. Only months after he died, Caroline had written this, then later decided for some reason to give Esther the ring at once.

  She peered at the words crossed out thickly with black pen – XXXXXX – but could not make out what was written beneath. The ink was smudged in several places as if Caroline’s hand had rubbed over her words before the ink was dry, suggesting a fountain pen had been used. Which would be like her, Esther thought.

  It was all wrong. It read like something a teenager might write, not a woman of – what? – twenty-seven? Esther looked again.

  There was nothing for Margaret.

  Her eyes blurred, trying too hard to focus, unable to believe it. No, nothing.

  She sat for a long time on the edge of the bed, holding the little box in her hands, the papers and the watch inside it. The first time she had happened on this box she was thirteen, little more than a child and she had of course taken the secret to her mother, who had not thought it important at all. Now she was an adult and a mother herself. She stood up, shivering a little, realising the air had grown chilly and a stiff breeze was shaking the trees, heralding rain at last.

  It was not her property. She had no right to do anything with it. It had been hidden for a reason. Who else was going to look for it there? Not Margaret, certainly. Reluctantly, Esther went to Daniel’s room and put the box as far back as she could on the shelf where she had found it. Then she went to bed.

  She wished Jack would come upstairs. What on earth could they be talking about, so late? Come to bed, she willed him, and was rewarded by the sound of voices in the hall and then his step on the stairs.

  ‘I didn’t think you’d still be awake,’ he said.

  ‘I can’t sleep. I’m cold.’

  ‘You won’t be in a minute.’

  He was drunk, so there was no talking to him tonight. That would give her time to think. She was glad to have his warm body the length of hers, his hands under her nightdress – what are you wearing this thing for? – and his winy breath in her ear as he tucked himself round her turned back, fitting them close together, his hand on her breast, tightening, ever hopeful.

  ‘It’s too late,’ she murmured. ‘You’re drunk anyway.’

  ‘I can try,’ he said, but in a moment, his hands were still and she knew from his breathing he was falling asleep. She marvelled all over again at his wonderful ability to sleep like this, with abrupt speed.

  She was warm now. With a sigh, she leaned in as close to him as she could, and shut her eyes.

  Cheering Margaret up

  1990

  ‘Do you remember being the Elties?’ Louise said.

  ‘Esther turned us into an Enid Blyton adventure, didn’t you?’ Margaret said. ‘For the children.’

  ‘You should have written it down.’

  ‘You don’t think one writer in the family is enough?’ Esther put her hand on Margaret’s, smiling.

  Margaret smiled back, but did not answer.

  ‘So here you are,’ Louise said, raising her glass, ‘joining the ranks of the divorced and disposse
ssed. Though if you’re more sensible than I was, you’ll not be all that dispossessed. You’ll make sure you get your share. More than.’

  ‘Oh, Lou.’ Esther tried to steer away from this, since she could see Margaret was on the verge of tears.

  She raised her head, the little almost-sister, brown eyes brimming, attempting a smile.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she said, ‘I know you’ve been through it, you’ve had to deal with this stuff, but honestly, you’d hardly been married, either time, when it ended. I’ve been married for years, I’ve got a young child and there’s a huge mortgage on the house, I don’t see how I’m going to manage to go on living in it now – ’ She swallowed hard. ‘The worst thing is I thought I’d be married for ever. I believed in marriage.’

  Esther wanted to say ‘I still do’, but it didn’t seem quite the moment.

  Louise, becoming expansive since she had drunk her wine and not just played with the glass the way the others seemed to, disclosed her latest theory.

  ‘I actually believe,’ she said, ‘that with marriage you start out by setting each other free, then in the end, you find you’ve taken each other prisoner.’

  ‘Oh,’ Margaret quavered, ‘that’s so depressing.’

  ‘Is that in one of your romantic novels?’ Esther asked. ‘It’s a good line.’

  Louise grinned. ‘No, but I think I’ll use it. It’s true, too. I see it all the time.’ She nodded at the others. ‘Drink up for God’s sake, nobody’s driving.’

  ‘So what next?’ Esther asked. ‘Is it final, do you think, couldn’t you go to a counsellor or something? Or would Mike not do that?’

  ‘Not now he’s got That Woman,’ Margaret said.

  ‘I love the way you give her mental capital letters,’ Louise said. ‘That Woman – there’s something impossible about saying the name of a rival, have you noticed? You don’t want to grant them the ordinary courtesy of having a name. They don’t deserve it.’

  ‘You’re That Woman, aren’t you? Where Robin’s wife is concerned.’

  And Eric’s too, Esther thought but did not say.

  Louise shrugged. ‘That’s different.’

  ‘He doesn’t have small children,’ Margaret allowed, forgiving Louise, as people did.

  Esther said, ‘So you think it really is over?’

  Margaret did, and the tears spilled.

  ‘Oh well done,’ Louise cried, exasperated. ‘I’m trying to get her drunk so she can forget it for a while, bloody cheer up, and you’re trying to be some sort of therapist.’

  Esther gave in and drank her wine, which immediately went to her head so that some guilty thing swam around in there, vaguely reminding her of the prisoner Jack, who had to be telephoned to come and get them. Prisoners or not, she thought, I still love him.

  They were in a conservatory restaurant overlooking its own leafy garden. It was high summer and for once in Aberdeen, warm and sunny. They were having a rare long Saturday lunch, Louise’s idea. She had arrived on the Thursday to stay with Margaret and – she said – help her through it. Mike had left the previous week, after hiring a van so that he could take a great many of his own belongings with him. Margaret found herself in a house with no music centre; wardrobes and drawers with empty spaces; depleted bookshelves and a gap in the corner cupboard where once there had been a sizeable collection of vinyl records and CDs. The garage now lacked golf clubs, tools and worst of all, the bigger of the two cars, that she had driven most and had thought of as the family car. Clearly, Mike thought of it as his car.

  She had scarcely had time to get used to this, indeed even quite realise it, when Louise arrived in her sporty Mercedes with several suitcases and packages, and armfuls of wine, flowers and chocolates.

  ‘The thing is, broken hearts need looking after. Tender care. Alcohol. That sort of thing.’

  ‘You would know . . .’ Esther said.

  ‘Oh God yes, think what a disaster my love life has been. Still is. So learn from my experience. We have to spoil you.’

  Margaret, surrounded by Louise’s half unpacked bags and plunged into chaos of every kind, was dazed. The only person for whom Louise’s arrival was an immediate success was Anna, who at seven was easily bought with the array of presents Louise showered on her: blue plastic ponies, hitherto forbidden by her parents; a manicure set with several colours of nail polish, all unsuitable; and expensive and also unsuitable (in Margaret’s view) clothes.

  ‘So,’ Louise said, ‘here we are together, the Elties, and it’s up to us to give Margaret all the support she needs.’

  Esther knew what would happen: Louise would be here for a week and when she had gone, it would be Esther giving the support, month after month, in less glamorous ways. She would be the one at the end of the phone when Margaret was struggling through empty evenings; she would be the one calling in, making sure everything was all right, babysitting Anna when Margaret could eventually be persuaded to go out and start her life again. As she must: Esther was with Louise on this at least.

  They had reached dessert. Margaret didn’t want any, claiming she didn’t eat puddings anyway.

  ‘For God’s sake, it’s the best bit. You can have something small – crème caramel or the mousse thing – but you must have pudding.’

  Margaret gave in as it was easier, but left half her mousse. Esther, enjoying the novelty of going out to lunch, ate every morsel, rather guiltily, since it was rich and creamy. Louise talked non-stop and took twice as long as the others to finish.

  ‘We could take our coffee into the garden if you like – I think one of the wee tables out there is free,’ Esther suggested.

  They gathered up handbags and coffee cups and Louise pocketed the chocolate mints to take with them. Outside there was a breeze, but the wrought iron table they found empty was in a sheltered corner.

  Louise waved at a waiter. ‘Could you bring us a refill of coffee and the bill? Ta.’ She took out her Gauloises and lit up.

  ‘Oh,’ Margaret said, ‘you’re not still smoking?’

  ‘Don’t nag. Robin nags me too, though he’s hardly a great example of good behaviour.’

  ‘You’ll ruin your skin and have a wrinkly old age,’ Esther teased.

  ‘You don’t think I intend to be old, do you?’

  They could not imagine it; at thirty-six she was gamine and youthful with her cap of dark hair and scarlet finger- and toenails.

  Margaret was on the verge of tears again. ‘That’s what I’m most afraid of, I think. Being old and on my own.’

  ‘You won’t be,’ Esther said. ‘You’ll remarry, you’ll have another life after Mike.’

  ‘Or you could be like me, and have a string of affairs as an independent woman.’

  Now Esther was the only one with a husband. After three glasses of wine, she was very much in love with him and had no desire for Louise’s life.

  ‘Will you be able to give up your job?’ she asked. ‘Now you’re writing all these romances?’

  ‘Oh God, no. It’s a nice bit of extra money but you couldn’t do it all the time. Drive you mad. All these happy endings.’ Louise grinned. ‘I wonder if the other romantic novelists are old cynics like me!’

  ‘I’m sure they’re all blissfully married,’ Margaret said. ‘Nice women who like happy endings.’

  ‘I like them,’ Louise said. ‘I just don’t think they happen very often.’

  She put out her cigarette stub with the high heel of her sandal, then carefully picked it up and buried it in the flower bed behind her. Esther thought, watching her, she’s quite immoral in some ways, but just like Margaret and me in others. No litter, no pushing other people out of the way, please and thank you and polite to waiters and people in shops.

  ‘What about you?’ Louise asked Esther. ‘Are you going to get a job now your kids are all at school?’

  ‘I’ll be much too busy for that,’ Esther said. ‘Jack’s got a job at Drum Academy so we’ll be moving house.’

  Margaret looke
d astonished. ‘You never told me!’

  ‘Or me, but that’s different,’ Louise conceded. ‘I don’t keep in touch enough, I know. So is it a good job – what?’

  ‘Head.’

  ‘Wow – that’s brilliant. Why didn’t you say? I’d have got champagne.’

  ‘We just heard this morning.’ Why had she not told them right away? Mainly, Esther realised, because Margaret was so miserable. ‘He’s done brilliantly, everyone is saying so. They’re surprised at Robert Gordon’s – they didn’t think they’d lose him.’

  ‘Where will you live?’ Margaret asked. She was twisting her hands in her lap, her coffee and chocolate mint untouched.

  ‘Well . . .’ Esther reddened. ‘Well, actually, since the school is so near there, I spoke to Uncle Gordon about Braeside. If we could stay there for a while it would help us take our time to find the right house. Once we sell our own one, of course.’

  ‘You will – people like that bit of the city. It’s really popular now.’

  Louise could see Margaret was trying hard to be pleased for Esther. But failing. She was fed up, feeling that everyone was doing well except her. Silly woman. She put her hand on Margaret’s anxious fingers, still tightly bound together.

  ‘You wouldn’t mind that, would you? It would be good for him, to have other people in that great big house.’

  Esther was dismayed. ‘Oh God, Margaret, were you thinking you might move there, now Mike’s – ’

  ‘Don’t you dare leave your house – he’s got to give you enough money to stay in it, you know. With Anna.’ Louise was adamant.

  ‘Yes, but she might want to.’ Esther turned to Margaret. ‘Do you?’

  ‘I don’t know. I can’t think. I don’t seem to be living a real life, I feel as if I’ve got no future. As if somebody took my life and just threw it away. I have no idea what I’m going to do.’ Tears welled up again and this time spilled over. She tried to stifle the sob that rose. ‘Sorry, sorry. I think I’ll go to the Ladies.’