The Treacle Well

by Moira Forsyth

  ‘You’ll have to clear all that stuff away as soon as I tell you,’ she said, ladling soup. ‘Your Aunt Lou is coming, and she’ll want to get up the stairs without breaking her neck on your rubbish.’

  They gazed at each other across the table, raising their eyes theatrically. Esther, catching the look, repressed a smile.

  ‘Watch yourself when you go up,’ she told Gordon. ‘I don’t think you should have given them your crampons. They’re going to scratch the wood and pick holes in the carpet.’

  ‘It’s an old carpet,’ Gordon said, folding up his Press & Journal so that he could balance it on the corner of the table and carry on reading.

  It was the last day of the October holidays but Jack was in Glasgow for a Head Teacher conference. Kirsty had gone to the Ritchies in the village to play with their girls; Susan Ritchie would bring her back at four. At three, Harry and Janet brought Louise out from Aberdeen, having met her at the airport the day before.

  ‘It’s only a flying visit, sorry,’ she said when the boys had been greeted and the mountain on the staircase admired. (‘Now will you tidy it away?’ Esther said.)

  It was evening, when their parents had gone, the children were in bed and Gordon in front of a video tape of The World at War, whisky in hand, before the sisters had any time together. Esther, coming out of the boys’ room after a final goodnight, found Louise sitting at the top of the stairs reading one of the books Andrew had left in a pile on the landing. Esther sat down next to her with an ‘ouf’ of weariness. ‘Thank goodness, that’s them in bed and lights out.’ She glanced over Louise’s shoulder.

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘Alice. It must be our old copy – is it?’

  Esther looked. ‘Yes, we tried to keep the children’s books handy but their boxes must still be in the steading. That came out of a box of our old books, all mixed up. What Katy Did and Little Women, and that awful Hans Andersen book.’

  ‘You mean the one with the terrible story about the girl who trod on the loaf?’

  ‘Um. I was really frightened of that story. The drawing of the poor child in hell, wreathed in snakes.’

  ‘Her own fault,’ Louise said, ‘for being so vain.’

  ‘Amy is punished too in Little Women, for being vain.’

  ‘It must be the ultimate sin,’ Louise mused, leafing through Alice in Wonderland.

  Esther, by association of ideas, thinking of Caroline reading to them, said, ‘Did you meet Philip, did you go to Caroline’s party or whatever it was?’

  ‘Didn’t I tell you?’ Louise closed the book. ‘It was Sunday lunch. He has a house in Richmond, near where Gordon used to live. The garden goes down almost to a river – well, I suppose it must be the Thames. Not that it was warm enough to be in the garden or even see it properly, but there are French doors at the back. There were a lot of shrubs and trees dripping, and the river below. It poured with rain all day.’

  ‘He’s rich, then.’

  ‘I guess.’

  ‘What is he like?’

  Louise did not answer for a moment. ‘Essie, he looks like Daniel.’

  ‘No!’

  ‘How you’d imagine Daniel being now, at the age he would be. If you see what I mean. This Philip does look quite young – I suspect younger than Caroline. Maybe forty?’

  ‘He really looks like Daniel? Do you remember him that well? You were only sixteen when he died.’

  ‘I know. It was a shock, he was familiar right away.’

  Esther tried to conjure Daniel. Where would their grandmother’s photograph album be now? They should look for that.

  ‘I feel a bit sick, thinking about it,’ Louise said. ‘I keep remembering what Caroline said.’

  ‘Said – when? At this party?’

  ‘No, when we met that night. It was so strange. She said something about what Daniel did. No, let me think.’

  Esther waited.

  ‘What I made Daniel do,’ she said. ‘What he did. I don’t know, it didn’t make any sense. I assume it was about when he came back and he didn’t tell anyone and she didn’t either. Mum was so upset about that and the upset was all the worse because of the accident.’

  ‘Because he was dead and it was all Caroline’s fault we didn’t know he was even back?’ Esther’s voice rose, indignant. ‘I always thought they were so unfair to Caroline. It was awful for her. And maybe Daniel wouldn’t let her tell anyone? He seemed to have come back different, unlike himself.’

  ‘I can’t get over it,’ Louise said. ‘How like Daniel this guy seemed. Not all the time, not even after a while. It was the first look, when we met, when she introduced him.’

  The telephone rang downstairs in the hall.

  ‘Jack,’ Esther said, scrambling to her feet. ‘I’d better get it.’

  Louise went on sitting on the top stair, Alice open in her hands, thinking about Daniel.

  She was still there when Esther reappeared. ‘Lou, did you say anything to Caroline?’

  Louise, deep in Through the Looking Glass by this time, looked up bewildered. ‘What? What about?’

  Esther sat on a lower stair, and catching a loose thread in the carpet, torn out by an enthusiastic crampon earlier in the day, tried to tuck it back in. ‘I told Jack about Caroline marrying someone who looks like Dan, and he said, what did she say about that? Did you ask her?’

  Louise closed Alice. ‘To tell the truth, I drank a bit too much. I’m not good with wine early in the day and I don’t usually, but I’d had a row with Robin. I’d gone on my own after all and it was a bit of a relief really, since he’s always worrying we’ll meet somebody he knows – ’

  Esther gave up trying to re-stitch the carpet. She had heard all this stuff about Robin already. She had met him once and thought him a flirt, attractive but not someone to get involved with. He’s a lightweight, Jack had said and that throwaway comment had stuck.

  ‘So what does that mean?’ she interrupted. ‘You did or didn’t say anything?’

  Louise was apologetic. ‘Sorry. Don’t remember. I think I did. Just casually, you know.’

  ‘There’s nothing casual about – ’

  ‘No, no, I know, but my God, Essie, it’s more than twenty years since he died, surely we can speak about him without a major drama?’

  ‘We don’t though. Mum and Dad don’t. Gordon doesn’t. And Caroline doesn’t. Not at all, never mind dramatically.’

  Louise said, ‘I think Caroline went through the looking glass a long time ago, and stayed there. She’s like somebody on the other side. Another world.’

  It was Daniel, though, who was in the other world, if he was anywhere, Esther thought. More likely Caroline was trying to get through and the glass wouldn’t go all gauzy for her, let her into that mirror life. All she said was, ‘Do you think she really will marry him?’

  Louise considered. ‘Maybe not.’

  From the living room came the crashing chords at the end of Gordon’s video, abruptly cut off and followed by the theme tune of the nine o’clock news.

  ‘He’ll want a cup of tea,’ Esther said. ‘Do you? I’ll go and put the kettle on.’

  They’ve been here five minutes, Louise thought as she followed Esther downstairs, and already she knows all Gordon’s habits. Worse, she’s looking after him. No reason, Caroline had said, Esther and her family couldn’t stay on at Braeside. But Gordon might live another twenty years. Surely Esther – and especially Jack – would want their own place?

  This was why she had not married. The quirks and comforts of family life amused her, drew her in, but two days with other people in this claustrophobia and she wanted out again.

  Monday was full of the drama of family life Louise enjoyed when it belonged to other people: the children starting school, Jack heading to his job from this new base for the first time, worrying about staff problems, worrying that he had not made enough of an impact in his first two months up to the October break. Louise distracted Kirsty from her terror of going to a sc
hool where she knew nobody except the Ritchie children, found Jack’s briefcase which had disappeared behind the sofa, and finally made coffee for Esther and herself when at last the house was silent and empty. Gordon had gone out early, having reclaimed his rucksack for a hill walk.

  ‘I hope he’s all right,’ Esther said, as she cleared away the breakfast dishes. ‘He’s going on his own today, and I keep saying he should always go with other people now. He’s not as fit as he used to be and he’s awfully slow coming down.’

  ‘Don’t fuss. He’s been going up hills for donkey’s years,’ Louise said.

  ‘Mostly since he retired – there’s not a lot of hill walking in London or Egypt or all those other places he worked.’

  ‘He’s not your responsibility. If he’s anyone’s, it’s Margaret or Caroline who should be telling him off, not you.’

  Esther wiped over the table, not answering this. ‘I thought – as it’s such a beautiful morning – we might have a walk ourselves. You’re flying home tomorrow, aren’t you?’

  ‘Ok. Where will we go?’

  Esther had thought of this.

  It was years since Louise had been in the Drumoak churchyard. She could not remember being there since her grandmother’s funeral, and that was brief, hurried, in the driving snow, everyone glad to get back to the newly warm Braeside.

  They walked along the banks of the Dee for a couple of miles, and on their way back came through the village to the churchyard. The local names on many of the headstones were familiar, and their great-grandparents, as well as Andrew and Celia Livingstone, were buried here. Daniel’s grave was next to theirs.

  ‘We should have brought flowers, maybe,’ Louise said.

  ‘Oh no, I hate to see dead flowers on graves – and they do die, very quickly. Nobody comes so regularly they can keep renewing the flowers.’

  ‘I suppose not.’

  They stood in silence for a moment but Daniel eluded them. Ghostly, he had departed. They could not even picture his face. Esther was thinking she should bring Margaret with her next time, then as the thought appeared, it vanished, unsatisfactory. She ought instead to be keeping Margaret cheerful. She sighed; that was going to be hard.

  As they turned away, she asked Louise, ‘Have you spoken to Margaret this time, seen her?’

  ‘No, there’s been no time. How is she?’

  ‘Miserable. Never mind, now the kids are back at school and we’re sort of moved in, I’ll give her a call.’

  All those people Esther felt obliged to look after – it was exhausting, Louise thought, since she found it more than enough just to look after herself.

  As they got into the car to make the short drive back to Braeside, she finally told Esther what she had meant to say all weekend.

  ‘I know you don’t like me talking about it. I know you disapprove, you and Margaret. So you’ll be pleased to hear I’ve broken off with Robin.’

  Esther’s hand fell from the ignition, where she had just pushed in the key. ‘Lou, you should have said. I didn’t like the fact that he’s married, of course not, but I know you loved him and – ’

  ‘Love!’

  ‘Well – ’ Esther stopped. Could she be honest and say good, about time? Instead, she turned to her sister and, awkwardly, since they were not people who touched each other much, she hugged her.

  ‘Hey – it’s ok.’ But Louise hugged her back, grateful.

  ‘Right. Let’s go.’ Still she did not start the car. ‘You know,’ she added eventually, ‘I did like Eric. I’m sorry about him. I think you really suited each other.’

  Louise said nothing, but as Esther started the car and they drove off, she turned to look out of the window, so that she could blink away the stupid tears threatening to fall.

  Time she went back to London. Coming home was always awful, in the end.

  The House

  1991

  Esther wasn’t with him when Gordon had his heart attack. She was at Braeside, changing beds, while he was in a pull-in at the foot of Mount Keen, intending to climb the hill on his own. When some other hill walkers drew their vehicle in alongside his, they found him lying back in the driver’s seat, his flask on the ground next to the open door, a pool of spilled tea already seeped away.

  Esther was in the boys’ room, bundling sheets and duvet covers together in her arms, ready to take them downstairs, when the telephone rang. Gordon had put an extension in his bedroom so she did not have far to go to pick it up.

  The day before the funeral (another funeral at Braeside, she could not help thinking), Esther found herself wandering through the house, touching the doors, the chest on the landing, the curve of banister at the stairhead, and trying to persuade herself that somehow it would be possible to stay. It’s not, she thought, as if we’ve found another house we like. Not really like, and can afford. In the weeks they had been here, this house had become infiltrated by the Murrays, especially the children. They left toys in the hall or along the landing; their drawings were pinned up on the kitchen wall that needed a fresh coat of paint; their shoes in a heap by the kitchen door and she was always kicking them as she went in and out. Their coats and waterproofs were piled on the pegs in the hall. Their bedding, which she smoothed and stripped off and washed and replaced, was bright with primary colours, Disney characters or – in Andrew’s case – Transformers, currently his favourite toy. They treated the house as a familiar, loved and neglected home, Kirsty making ‘houses’ in odd corners, the boys coming downstairs by leaning over the banister and sliding, feet held up, all the way.

  At first, she had worried they were invading Gordon’s property, or perhaps, still, her grandmother’s house. Now the Murrays were in residence and it was almost wholly theirs.

  Only, it was not.

  ‘I guess,’ Jack had said the day after Gordon died, ‘this place belongs to Caroline and Margaret now. We’d better get a move on – find a house. They might want to sell.’

  This was what had shocked her into the new longing. Could they not buy it from them, could they not just stay, after all? When she tentatively put this to Jack, he laughed.

  ‘Not a hope,’ he said. ‘I know it needs loads of work but it’s a seven bedroom house, it’s huge, it has an acre of land. We could never afford it in a million years. And since Caroline’s in London, and Margaret is on her own now – they’re going to want to sell.’

  Esther sat down at the top of the stairs, Andrew’s favourite vantage point, and laid her head against the wall. The faded cream wallpaper had once had roses, she thought, pink roses. She put out a hand and traced the outline of a possible rose. The sun that reached here briefly in the afternoon, had whitened the patch she leaned on.

  Soon it would be time to fetch the children from school, one disadvantage, as Jack had reminded her, of living so far out in the country. They would never be able to walk home. It made no sense. They had to find their own place. Stubbornly, she thought, this is our own place.

  Inheriting

  1991

  Caroline stayed on at Braeside for a few days, partly to see John Chalmers, now their family solicitor at Cowie’s but also, she said, for a rest. She did look tired.

  ‘It’s wonderfully quiet here,’ she said to Esther at breakfast after the children had left for the school bus. She stood by the kitchen window looking across the yard to the steading, mug of coffee held in two hands, close to her chest. ‘You forget, in London, how quiet the country is, and how dark. So dark last night, and the stars dazzling.’

  ‘I bet London’s warmer,’ Esther grumbled, ‘and your flat must be much easier to heat.’

  ‘I know. Dad’s central heating isn’t terribly good, is it?’ She glanced round the kitchen. ‘He should never have got rid of the range.’

  ‘It did keep it nice and cosy – it was more homely,’ Esther admitted.

  ‘Have you found a house yet?’

  Esther turned to the sink to wash up breakfast dishes, so that Caroline would not see her
face. She was so inclined to cry when she thought about leaving Braeside, it was ridiculous. It was Caroline’s house now. Surely. Or did it belong to Margaret too? She thought fleetingly of wills, of Caroline’s wills, those scraps of betraying paper tucked away. For Esther, my ring.

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘We need to get on with it.’

  ‘Can we have some more coffee, Esther – will you join me? Leave the dishes alone. They’ll keep.’

  Surprised, Esther turned, heart thudding. What was this? How soon did they have to leave? She dried her hands on the damp towel on a hook by the sink, and moved aside to let Caroline fill the kettle and wash out the cafetière.

  They sat down at the table with mugs of fresh coffee, the scent of it soothing despite Esther’s fears.

  ‘I don’t usually drink coffee so early in the day,’ she said.

  ‘Always a first time.’ Caroline smiled and Esther – touched and alarmed – bit back betraying tears. Oh, if she was going to be nice –

  ‘You wouldn’t want to stay here, I take it?’ Caroline said. ‘Jack was saying you were trying to find something in the village, so the children could walk to school, somewhere less isolated.’

  ‘That’s the sensible thing, of course. It’s a pain, getting them to the school bus, and there’s all the toing and froing with their friends – and the boys’ football after school . . .’ She trailed off. ‘Well, that sort of stuff. You know.’ She blushed. Caroline could not know.

  ‘I can understand all that,’ Caroline said. ‘Though, obviously, I’ve never had kids.’ She smiled again, disarming. ‘Never will now.’

  ‘You’re getting married?’

  ‘Never mind that – what I want to talk to you about is Braeside. And you.’

  ‘Me?’

  ‘You must be thinking about what’s next. The children are all at school, you’re still young. What are you going to do? Write romances, like Louise? Start a market garden? Teach?’

  Why would you care, Esther wanted to say. You’re never here, you’re barely part of this family, you only come for funerals. But she could not say any of that with Caroline sitting opposite, being so friendly, and the coffee (much stronger than she ever made) zinging through her veins.