The Treacle Well

by Moira Forsyth

  ‘Andrew and Laura are planning a baby next year.’

  ‘Oh help. Then you’ll be a granny and I’ll be that grim old thing a great-aunt.’ Louise laughed. ‘I suppose we’d better get used to it. I think of us always being young, don’t you? Elsie, Lacey and Tilly, the three little girls.’

  ‘Sometimes, yes.’

  ‘Time we three little girls were together again.’

  ‘Why? You’re the last person to be nostalgic.’

  ‘I actually re-read Alice from time to time. No more fantastic than the truth, some days.’ She tipped her chair back, balancing.

  ‘You know the bit I liked best?’ Esther asked.

  ‘The tea party with the Dormouse – ’

  ‘No. Not that at all. What I liked was when Alice eventually managed to be the right size to use the Golden Key and go through the wee door into the beautiful garden.’ She sighed. ‘I used to think, I wish I could find that key, and the little door. I wish I could get in there.’

  ‘Don’t we all!’ Louise smiled. ‘I guess it wasn’t all that great in the beautiful garden – the Queen ordering people’s heads off . . .’

  ‘Still,’ Esther said, ‘I like the idea. If only I could find my golden key.’

  Louise, bored by whimsy, changed the subject. ‘What about Mum – how’s she doing?’

  ‘Coping. Just. I don’t think for much longer. I get weird calls sometimes, she asks me where Dad is, when he’s coming home.’

  ‘Oh God, no?’

  ‘The carers are good, but they can’t be there all day and half the time she doesn’t remember who they are anyway.’

  ‘So we have to see about a place for her, sort out what’s best.’

  ‘That’s why you came?’

  ‘Well, yes, to look at places with you. What’s that one you mentioned like? Is it nice?’

  ‘What do you think? It’s a nursing home.’

  ‘They sit in a circle of chairs and the TV blares out but nobody’s watching it?’

  ‘It’s the nicest one I’ve seen. By far. I just feel too guilty to do anything about it. She could always come here, but I think it would be harder to get the support, out of the city.’ Esther banged her wooden spoon against the edge of the pan to knock off some rice sticking to it, but perhaps more violently than necessary.

  ‘Sorry, yes, I know,’ Louise said. ‘But a nursing home’s best, honestly. She’ll get worse, she’ll need full-time care. You can’t take that on. As long as they’re kind, as long as the food is decent and – sorry.’

  Esther sighed as she put warmed plates on the table and began to serve up. ‘Anyway, you’ll see for yourself.’

  Silence, as they began to eat.

  ‘This is lovely, what a good cook you always are,’ Louise said after a moment.

  ‘Don’t butter me up,’ Esther said. ‘I feel cross now.’

  ‘I know. I’m useless. Never mind.’ Louise reached across the table and covered Esther’s trembling hand with her own one, warm and strong. Esther blinked away tears.

  ‘Look,’ she said, bracing up, ‘since you’re here, maybe we should contact Caroline and ask her what she thinks. I did email her about Mum, but she was a bit abrupt. Said what you’ve said, I suppose. Get as good a place as you can.’

  ‘And you’ve spoken to Margaret.’

  ‘Yes, of course. We talk about it endlessly. She offered to have her, but I don’t think that would be a good idea. Anyway, I have more space.’

  Esther did not manage to eat much, but she watched Louise with at least the satisfaction of seeing her food appreciated by someone else. As she cleared away the plates she caught sight of the photograph on the dresser.

  ‘Look – there – see what I found today.’ She began stacking the dish washer.

  ‘That’s nice,’ Louise said after a moment, bored. Turning, Esther saw she was reading a postcard Margaret had sent from Florence where she had gone with a friend at New Year to cheer herself up. Margaret often needed cheering up. ‘Nice, but not interesting.’

  ‘Not that.’ Esther pointed. ‘That.’

  Louise took down the photograph. ‘Who – ’

  ‘You must know. It’s Daniel and Caroline.’

  Louise had become quite still, gazing at them. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Now when was that taken? Not in Aberdeen. So . . .’

  Relieved, Esther took another swig from her rapidly emptying glass and sat down on a chair with a thud. ‘You see it too. I thought I might be imagining things. I think it’s Glasgow, and I think it’s after he came back from his travelling about. Before – anyway, I think he was there for a while, don’t you?’

  Louise held the photograph up to get a better light on it. ‘It looks like a Glasgow tenement. So Caroline knew for some time that he was back. I wonder how long. You know, it’s a bloody good shot. It’s a bit faded but whoever took it knew about judging the light, framing it . . . Caroline – is she coming to join him, or to stop him from – what?’

  ‘Saying something?’

  ‘Yeah. Could be.’

  They looked at each other.

  ‘Right,’ Louise said, changing tack, propping the photograph back on the shelf, ‘now tell me how you are.’

  ‘Me?’ Was that it, was that all they were going to say about Daniel and Caroline? And yet, she was grateful to Louise for acknowledging it then letting it go, and for wanting to know how she was. Nobody asked now except in the safest, most perfunctory way. Death still hung around, spoiling the party. ‘I’m all right.’

  ‘Oh rubbish. Of course you’re not. You adored Jack. Here.’ She topped up the glass again. ‘Hm, better get another bottle, this one seems to be nearly empty.’ She got up to get another from the fridge. ‘Tell you what, make some coffee and we can get comfortable. Then you can talk about Jack all night if you like.’

  Esther’s throat closed, choking. ‘I can’t,’ she said.

  ‘Of course you can. What you mean is no one else wants to.’

  This was true. Esther swallowed hard, and obediently, made coffee.

  Allowed to talk about Jack, she found that perversely, she did not want to. He and Louise had been tolerant of each other (for Esther’s sake) but not close. He had disapproved of smoking, bad language and drinking too much – at least in women. Louise, guilty of all of those, increasingly thought him arrogant and narrow-minded. She seemed anyway to have forgotten her offer to listen. She talked on, as they took up residence on a sofa each in the sitting room and the second bottle of Chablis emptied, unwound long stories about herself and the people she knew. She referred to them as if Esther must know them too; it was all first names with Louise. ‘So Rory decided we’d had enough for the day and got this little man to take us out in his boat. It was mad, the wind had got up and Sam was desperately seasick and – ’

  Louise’s life was full of these adventures. Esther grew sleepy, no longer taking it in.

  ‘Anyway,’ Louise said sharply, ‘you’re to listen to this bit. Are you awake?’

  ‘Of course I am,’ Esther lied, sitting up with an effort.

  ‘I’ve been in touch with Eric.’

  ‘Eric who?’ A pause. ‘Oh – that Eric?’

  ‘Yes, that Eric. After all this time.’

  ‘Is he still in – where did he go – Exeter?’

  ‘Bristol. He’s retired, or semi, at any rate. He still has some PhD students, but he doesn’t go in every day.’

  ‘So . . . what made you – ’

  ‘I saw a review he did, in the Guardian, and I’d loved the book too, so I took a guess at his email address, that he’d still have a uni one, and he did. He replied right away.’

  ‘Well . . . that’s nice. But – ’

  ‘Pam left him. More than a year ago.’

  ‘She left him?’

  ‘She stayed while he had the position and the salary. Then she left. Moved in, it seems, with a former colleague of Eric’s. He didn’t say anything bad about her, but he never did. I couldn’t work o
ut if he was hurt or relieved, but he was very glad to hear from me. Said he would have been in touch, but he didn’t think it was fair. Poor old Eric, he always got it wrong.’

  ‘Have you seen him? It’s been years, Lou, he must be quite old now.’

  Louise laughed. ‘We’re all older!’ She refilled her cup with cooling coffee and sat down again, but since she didn’t drink the coffee, Esther thought this was to give her time to think what to say next. For once she seemed less sure of herself.

  ‘Yes, I’ve seen him. We’ve been emailing, I went to Bristol, he’s come to London. I think I’m going to spend a bit of time with him in Bristol, maybe several days a week. Then we’ll see.’

  ‘Wow. Mind, I always thought he was the only one you really – ’

  ‘Really loved? Well, he was a pal, he was my greatest pal, of all the men I’ve known, he was the only one I missed afterwards. He got me writing, he gave me ideas, he made me feel I could do anything. I owe him a lot, though I know nobody in my family would think so.’

  ‘Oh, Louise – don’t. I’m glad you’ve seen him, I’m glad if it’s going to work out after all – ’

  ‘I’ve not told you all of it.’

  Esther waited. So much for being able to talk about Jack, she thought wryly, but not minding.

  Louise took a gulp of wine, and began.

  ‘He’s ok, I don’t want you to think I’m going to be some sort of carer, I’m not, but he’s been diagnosed with the early symptoms of Parkinson’s. And since Pam’s not interested, in fact that’s when she left, when they found out, well, I thought I’d go there.’

  ‘But he has children, doesn’t he? What about them?’

  ‘Jeremy’s in New Zealand and Ruth’s in Canada. They left the country as soon as they could, basically. Unable to bear the fridge their parents’ marriage inhabited, I guess.’

  ‘For goodness sake – ’ Esther said. ‘Parkinson’s – that’s degenerative, isn’t?’

  ‘I know – don’t say it. There’s Mum and if I’m going to look after anybody it should be my mother. I don’t know if I’ll stay the course. Not sure I would cope if he really got ill. But they have amazing new drugs now and he could be fine for years.’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘I find I’ve missed him. A lot.’

  ‘You couldn’t look after Mum. I know that. If it’s anyone, it’s me, and maybe Margaret. Not you or Caroline.’

  ‘Sorry.’

  ‘Poor Eric. Getting older is horrible. It’s all horrible.’

  ‘I know.’

  Esther got up to put another log in the stove. Louise filled her own wine glass again, but set it down full on the low table beside her. After a few moments, she said,

  ‘Is Caroline still in that cottage in the Highlands – Ullapool or somewhere?’

  ‘I suppose so. An email address doesn’t give you that sort of information. But she didn’t say she had moved. I’ve not seen her since Jack’s funeral.’

  ‘She comes to funerals, not weddings. Nothing’s changed there.’

  ‘I did think she’d come to Andrew and Laura’s. But no. Sent a big cheque, apologies. No reason this time, as if there’s no point lying any more.’

  ‘I think I want another coffee,’ Louise said. ‘You?’

  ‘No . . . maybe a cup of tea. I’ll get it.’ Esther stirred herself.

  ‘Don’t you move. I can find everything – I bet it’s all in exactly the same place as last time.’

  Esther gave in, too tired to care. She never stayed up as late as this. Went to bed at ten, fell into a deep sleep, woke at three, didn’t sleep again till half past five or six. That was the pattern since Jack’s death and there was no use fighting it. At least she didn’t have to go to work, be out of the house by eight, functioning like an intelligent being. That was beyond her.

  She got up and went to the window that overlooked the garden. If she went behind the heavy curtains, she could, after a few moments, fancy she saw faintly the lawn Jack had sown, the shrubbery he had planted in front of the stone wall. Beyond was the lane leading to the main road. At this time on a winter night there was only an occasional vehicle, the headlights briefly glimmering in the distance as it passed. Esther leaned on the side of the window, the curtain wrapped round her, listening to her sister clatter about in the kitchen, the chink of crockery, the kettle hissing. For the first time since Jack had died, she had a sense of some new thing, a change coming, in what might now be acknowledged as the future.

  What it means to get old

  2012

  What Margaret wanted to do most was retire. It was monstrously unfair that whenever she considered this, however cautiously she approached it, the Government then changed the rules and women her age had even longer to wait. There were indignant features in serious newspapers and on the radio, but the poor middle-aged women affected did not march on Downing Street with placards and petitions or go on strike or even (speaking for herself) write to their MP. Perhaps she should – she could start with that. There was always something you could do to make a difference, start the ball rolling. But the ball remained obstinately in the same place. She never did a thing about it, except complain.

  They all complained, in the staffroom of the primary school where she had taught for ten years, generations of infants passing through her classroom and her life. All of them except Emma the probationer and Tony the Head Teacher, wanted to retire. They had had career breaks (though they called it ‘bringing up the kids’); they had worked part-time and been on the supply list. Their pensions, they often said, were pathetic.

  In earlier years, it had not occurred to Margaret that she need even think about pensions. She was a married woman and her husband a high-earner in the oil industry. It all looked different now. She was divorced, Mike had married again and he was anyway in a much less secure job with a construction company, having changed career at the request of his new wife, who didn’t like him going offshore. Margaret took a certain grim satisfaction in that, wickedly not hoping for an upturn in the industry, since it wasn’t going to help her any more.

  What she most looked forward to when she finally retired (aged about 90 at this rate), was throwing out every single lesson plan and reading scheme, every piece of paper which mentioned 5-14 or Curriculum for Excellence. It was all going on Mr Thompson’s annual bonfire. She would enjoy watching it burn and she would regain her third small bedroom. It would no longer be cluttered with school boxes and files, a room which gave her a throb of apprehension every time she went into it.

  She seemed to live in a state of constant anxiety, unfocused and so unable to be dispelled. Even now, she woke each day with a sense of dread. It had been like that since Mike left. She told herself that she could not have gone on after she found out about Sara; she could never have forgiven him. At the time she had been desolate, unable to believe he would not come back, full of remorse. It was hard to come to terms with the feeling that she wouldn’t want him back now, didn’t even like him much. Perhaps that had been the trouble all along.

  It was all right for Esther: widowhood was a protected state and anyway, she had Braeside. They must have made a lot of money out of turning it into a guest house nearly six months of the year. Louise had had a successful career, and now she had her novels. As far as Margaret could see, she just wrote more or less the same story, with different names and settings, over and over. You could go on doing that quite peacefully all your life. It couldn’t possibly exhaust you, as twenty-nine five- and six-year-olds did. She was tired all the time.

  The one thing Mike had done for her was pay off the remaining mortgage of their house in Aberdeen and leave Margaret in sole possession. Very soon she had sold it and moved to her neat bungalow on the edge of Westhill, close to the school where she taught, and more or less on the way to Braeside. She was of course not going to be destitute. She had inherited money from her father that Harry had helped her invest. A good deal had been put in trust for Anna. So she had her hou
se and savings though her pension would be meagre. And yet, she still worried about being poor and alone; she worried about old age. What she wanted most was to be married again, but that was never going to happen. Primary teachers don’t meet suitable men.

  ‘What about internet dating?’ Louise had said to her the last time she was here. She usually stayed at Braeside, but sometimes she spent a night or two with Margaret at the beginning or end of her visit. ‘I always end up with a headache after Louise has been here,’ she complained to Esther. ‘That’s the wine,’ Esther said. ‘I’m the same. We’re not used to it.’

  Alcohol betrayed, it made you say things you’d rather not reveal. That was how they had got onto meeting men.

  ‘Goodness no,’ Margaret said. ‘I couldn’t possibly do that. You don’t know who you’re contacting. And it seems so – blatant. Here I am, come and try before you buy.’

  Louise laughed. ‘You make it sound as if it’s one step up from going on the game!’

  ‘Maybe I think it is.’

  ‘Rubbish – everyone does it nowadays, it’s very respectable.’

  ‘I don’t. And I’ve no intention of it.’

  ‘Then don’t complain. If you don’t make an effort, how can you expect to meet anyone?’

  ‘Oh stop it,’ Margaret said wearily. Louise tired her out. She had an answer for everything.

  Then, just before February half-term, one of the women she taught with confided at morning break that she was seeing someone she had met on the internet.

  ‘We just had a coffee the first time,’ she told the others. ‘Somewhere safe, you know, in town. In public.’

  ‘Loads of my friends meet people that way,’ Emma said, Emma who was long-legged and pretty and looked as if she should still be in school herself.

  Now, on this sunny Friday morning at the start of the half-term break, Margaret had wakened with the thought that she might after all change her mind. If Sue could do it, Sue who was quite plain really, and older than she was, why shouldn’t she? She thought she would call Esther to see if she’d like to meet for lunch. She could talk it over with her. First she’d get the house straight and hang out the washing.