Caroline set her mug down on the low table, but she did not answer. What answer could she give, that was not just cliché, what words could she use but those so commonly flung across newspaper reports they had become cheap and devalued – horror, tragedy, I was devastated . . .
‘Did he go away because of the accident?’ Louise asked. ‘I was so young at the time, and nobody talked about it. Essie and I did, and Tilly, but secretly. We had the feeling we weren’t supposed to. We talked, but we had nothing to go on, no information.’
‘It’s strange,’ Caroline said, ‘I’ve been thinking of this a lot recently. I’m not sure why. Such a series of events now, today, might be so different they wouldn’t even happen. I mean, the accident, ok, but if he did go away after, it would be with a mobile phone. He wouldn’t send postcards, he would text, and we’d have texted back, and maybe used skype. He wouldn’t be cut off from us. He would have come home sooner, because he could never have made himself so isolated.’
‘And then,’ Louise said, grasping this, ‘when he did come home, you’d have known in advance and been keeping in constant touch with texts at least.’
‘All the time he was in Glasgow and I was working long shifts in the hospital we had to rely on phone calls and letters. He sent me these little notes. I didn’t leave them with Janet, I still have them.’
She passed the back of her hand under her eyes, as if – astonishingly – there were tears to brush away.
‘Oh Caroline,’ Esther sighed, ’what an awful thing. Why haven’t you told us before?’
‘I’m more interested in why you’re able to talk about it now,’ Louise said, smiling, pouring more coffee. ‘Here, you need this.’
Caroline could only say something trite about Janet’s stroke, the passing years, getting older. Since, after all, she had not told them the one thing that really mattered.
‘So,’ she said, ‘we’re going to the house tomorrow.’
‘Yes, we just have to brace ourselves,’ Esther said, ‘for a major throw-out.’
‘Have you had any offers?’
‘Three notes of interest, so they’re going to put a closing date on. I said we’d agree that with them on Monday,’ Esther said. She picked up the photograph of Daniel and looked at it again. Then she handed it to Caroline.
‘It’s yours,’ she said. ‘I was going to show it to Mum, but that doesn’t really matter now. You should keep it.’
Esther could not sleep. Usually she managed to fall asleep, and it was staying that way was the problem. She had developed a number of strategies for dealing with this, most of which resulted in her being awake for hours, but occupied in some way by reading, listening to the radio, or counting to five hundred without losing concentration once – the rule was you had to start again if you did. This was more difficult than it sounded.
It had been a clear day and the sky cloudless at night. Darkness seemed slow in coming, even though it was not yet June. Perhaps that was what was wrong. Her mind, clouded by anxiety about finally tackling her parents’ house, something she had simply put off worrying about, was now on fire with the day’s conversations, with the change in Caroline and the implications of what she had told them.
Why am I bothering, she scolded herself, since it makes no difference now? She swung between pity and annoyance, the irritation felt on behalf of her mother and father, who had been so distressed by Daniel’s abandonment and his silence. Janet did not speak about the postcards when they arrived, simply put them in an envelope and sent them on to Caroline. Harry had been watchful, kind, knowing how much she was affected by these unpredictable and random messages, too enigmatic to tell them anything they needed to know. Janet was always looking out for them, and always taken unawares when one came.
Who was there to blame now? Not Daniel, surely, coming home ill and strange; not Caroline, coping with her loss and fear. He was very fragile. I was terrified he would leave again. Besides, Caroline was on the verge of old age, so what was the point in blaming her for a young woman’s mistake, made more than forty years ago.
We will soon all be old, Esther thought. Getting older seemed a kind of disappearing act. Look at her mother, her real life vanishing as she lost her memories and her understanding. Esther was disappearing too; she was not the same girl, the same young woman. When she thought of the Elties, of her childhood, all that seemed to have gone, gradually, year by year, whittled away by all that happens, responsibility and work, and fitting in with others and childbearing and rearing and marriage and compromise and of course illness and death. Worst of all was old age itself, which takes away with ruthless cruelty, so that by the time Esther was her mother’s age, there would be nothing left of the little girl who slipped out by the back gate and found Caroline’s ring in the lane.
Daniel’s Gloves
2013
The first thing they did was open windows. The house was clean, since Esther had arranged for her mother’s cleaner to go in once more. It was dusted, the floors had been washed and the kitchen and bathroom gleamed as freshly as they could, given the age of everything in the house, nothing renewed since some time before Harry’s death in 1998.
On this mild May morning it smelled of disinfectant and cleaning creams and the kind of aerosol polish Janet would not have allowed near her furniture in the past. Opening windows helped.
Margaret was there first and had put the kettle on.
‘How are we going to do this?’ she asked as they sat round the kitchen table.
‘We could do the easy stuff first,’ Esther said. ‘If everyone marks what they want to take, and you let me know if you’re organising that yourself or if you want me to get a van or something. Andrew and Ross said they’d come and help with heavy stuff if we want them to. I just need to give them a bit of notice.’
‘It seems very final. Ruthless,’ Margaret protested.
‘What else can we do?’ Louise took out a pack of coloured sticky-backed notepads. ‘We can use these. Just put your name on.’
‘What about your children?’ Caroline asked. ‘Don’t they want to choose – ?’
‘Anna said she’d like some china, if nobody else wants it, and the good cutlery. For her new house. And the chair in Mum’s bedroom, the little velvet-covered one.’
‘I’ve got a list from my lot,’ Esther added. ‘But I think we four should choose first.’
With a sense of unreality, and then of daring (this was Janet and Harry’s house!) they began, faltered, gathered themselves and began again. Caroline was not much use. She didn’t want anything, she said, only the letters from Janet if the shoebox turned up. She was found by Margaret reading in the den, a little pile of books beside her that she thought she might just take, if no one else wanted them.
Esther sorted Janet’s clothes: a pile for charity, one to throw out, and some good things to keep at Braeside since Janet didn’t have much space in the home.
‘Oh my God,’ Louise exclaimed, coming up from the bottom of what had been Harry’s gentleman’s wardrobe, that they had thought long since emptied. ‘Look what I’ve found!’
It was Granny’s fox furs, tired and balding, but when Louise held them up, their little black eyes gleamed as sardonically as ever.
‘Well?’ she asked Esther.
‘Oh, charity. . . . Goodness. No one’s going to wear them.’
‘The tip, then?’
‘I don’t think I can bear to do that.’
‘I’ll do it,’ said Louise, not having the same sentimentality about a set of fur rags that had once been animals but so long dead you could hardly care, surely.
Esther went hurriedly next door, finding Margaret in the room she and Louise had once shared. ‘How did it go? Did you have a nice evening?’
Margaret looked round, pink with exertion or perhaps excitement. ‘Fine. He’s a terribly nice man. He’s just as embarrassed as I am, about the internet thing.’
‘What’s his name? Are you seeing him again?’
‘Alistair. He’s quite old-fashioned in some ways, but I like that. He’s been widowed for five years.’
‘Is he retired?’
‘Not yet. He’s a deputy head teacher, so maybe Jack would have known him. I haven’t asked yet.’
‘How lovely,’ Esther said, meaning it, but thinking, thank God I didn’t try this, I would absolutely hate to meet anyone Jack knew.
Downstairs, Louise had abandoned any kind of method and was randomly going through drawers and making unhelpful piles of stuff on the floor. She was taking a box of books out into the hall for herself when she thought of the hallstand. She could surely clear that, at least. She wondered what might be in the drawer. Old gloves and scarves, easy to put out to charity or the rubbish bin.
In the den, Caroline looked up with a start when Louise called, ‘What lovely gloves. I’ll give these to Eric, he feels the cold so much.’
Caroline went into the hall. Louise was wearing black fur-lined gloves, as good as new, like bear paws on her small hands as she held them up.
Caroline went white in a second, drained, swaying on her feet, grasping the newel post at the bottom of the stairs.
Louise was there, holding her. ‘Are you all right? What is it?’ She put her arm round Caroline. ‘Sit down on the stairs for a minute. I thought you were going to faint.’
‘So did I.’
They sat down side by side, Louise holding Caroline’s cold hands in her own, still with the gloves on. Caroline drew one hand out and stroked the gloves.
‘They were Daniel’s,’ she said.
‘What’s wrong?’
Esther and Margaret were at the top of the stairs.
‘Time to stop for coffee – where’s that stuff you brought?’ Louise said, getting up but shedding the gloves, leaving them in Caroline’s lap.
They took coffee and biscuits into the den, where the sun had not yet reached and it was cool. Esther struggled with the gas fire, since Caroline looked so white and ill, and her hands were icy.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I can’t believe how – very stupid of me. It must be being back in this house, with all of you. It’s as if the years just telescoped.’
Louise said, ‘They were Daniel’s gloves.’
‘You gave them to him,’ Esther said, remembering, ‘when he passed his driving test. Oh.’
‘It’s not what you think,’ Caroline said. She looked from one to the other.
‘It wasn’t his fault, though,’ Margaret said. ‘The police were quite clear about that. Didn’t the man just walk out in front of you? He was drunk, wasn’t he?’ She sighed. ‘I could never understand why Daniel took it so hard. I mean, at the time, I was young, I didn’t understand any of it. But thinking it over – and I often have – why did he have to go away?’
‘Because of me.’
‘How do you mean?’
This is it, Louise realised. There was always more than we knew. She waited, and for once neither of the others said a word.
Even now, more than forty years later, Caroline hardly knew how to tell them. If I do, she wondered, will it all go away, will I be absolved at last? No guarantee. Perhaps even if they couldn’t, she might forgive herself now. If she told them.
‘That night,’ she said. ‘The accident. He wasn’t driving. I was.’
They took this in, or tried to. Louise was there first.
‘I thought you couldn’t drive?’
‘I can’t. Couldn’t. I hadn’t even got my provisional licence. The idea was, Daniel would pass his test, I could practise with him, get some lessons . . . I hadn’t bothered, I’d done nothing about it. Lazy, I suppose, or just preoccupied with other things. Work, friends, our new flat, our social life. It was all so good. So good.’
‘But,’ Esther said, ‘how could you be driving?’
Caroline stroked the gloves in her lap. ‘We came here to collect my sandals, and he left his gloves behind. It was so cold in that car – the heater didn’t work. His hands – he got those frozen fingers, dead fingers, it was terribly painful. He wouldn’t even try my gloves. He could be really stubborn about pointless things.’
‘So you drove?’
‘We swopped over when we were away from the city centre. I could drive, I mean Harry and Daniel had taken me out at Braeside, on Grandpa’s land, several times. I wasn’t incapable. Just – illegal.’
‘So were you driving when – ?’ Esther was working out the implications.
‘He said, “we’ll tell them I was driving, we won’t tell them it was you.” We were in enough trouble you see, and though we knew it hadn’t actually been my fault, the police might have taken a different view if they knew a girl with no driving licence, no L plates, was driving. He took it on himself, and he never once, not once, reproached or blamed me. Never. But I blamed myself. When he wanted to go away, how could I stop him? I’m not reliable, I should never have let you drive, he said. I’m not fit to be a doctor. That sort of thing. I couldn’t stop him, and I couldn’t tell the truth without going against him. I had to let him go.’
She laughed shakily, gripping the gloves.
‘How mad it is. I’m seventy, I’m an old woman, and yet when I talk about it, it seems to come back and I’m young again and frightened, and don’t know what to do.’
She looked at Margaret, at her cousins, gauging their reaction, seeing only shocked and bewildered and pitying faces.
‘Oh poor you,’ Louise said. ‘Why didn’t you tell us?’
‘We wouldn’t have blamed you,’ Esther said. ‘You were young, we all do stupid things when we’re young, just mostly we get away with it.’
I didn’t, thought Margaret, sorry she had no foolish things in her past, though not this, this was awful.
‘So there you are,’ Caroline said. ‘Better late than never, perhaps, to tell you. Now you know.’
‘Did you really think we would blame you – and when Daniel died, blame you for that too?’
‘Yes.’
‘But we’d never – ’
‘I had promised Daniel I would never tell anyone. I suppose I felt it was my guilty secret we were keeping, so I had no choice. He was doing that for me, so I let him go away on his own. After that – it was so hard to keep anything from Janet, she had an instinct for the truth. The only way was to leave Aberdeen altogether. I tried not to be here more than I had to.’
‘So it cut you off from all of us as well,’ Esther said.
‘You didn’t give us the chance to understand,’ Margaret said.
‘Or forgive,’ Louise added.
‘It wasn’t easy,’ Caroline said, though at the time, it had not been as hard as all that. Better to be away, better to create a separate life. It was what she’d wanted all along. Though not without Daniel. She took a deep breath. ‘So,’ she finished, ‘I became a doctor, and work had to be everything. I was glad of it, in the end.’
Her bargain with Daniel, kept all her life, had been driven by guilt, and always guilty, she had stayed alone. That was the punishment. Should she say that to them too? It would sound melodramatic, and as if she had suffered. Well, she had. But guilt works its way into your bones, so you could no longer separate yourself from it if you tried.
They sat on in the den, surrounded by the furniture, books and photographs they had grown up with, in Janet and Harry’s familiar space: the worn Turkish rug in front of the fire, the china horses on the mantelpiece, the big blue vase that used always to have flowers in it. Here was the truth at last. Perhaps it had come too late, since it made the past an uncertain picture, blurred and changing by the minute.
‘You’re back though,’ Esther said. ‘You’re with us now.’
Caroline smiled. ‘I suppose so.’
She looked from one to the other. None of the faces judged or censured; there was no accusation. The three little girls sat waiting for the end of the story, and if the end was told already, they did not mind, they were content to wait with her for the next one. Somet
hing shifted in her like a stone moving. I’m sorry Dan, she thought, I’ve told them now, but you don’t mind anyway. Perhaps you’d never have minded.
‘Don’t cry,’ Esther said softly. She put her hands over both of Caroline’s holding Daniel’s gloves tight on her lap.
‘Here,’ Margaret said, taking a clean folded handkerchief with daisies embroidered in the corner from the pocket of her cardigan. She shook it out, and tenderly, patted the tears away.
‘Good grief,’ Louise said, ‘you’ve got a proper hanky!’
Margaret flushed. ‘I found them on that little shelf at the back of the linen cupboard. ‘We got so many from Eileen, a pack every year, and there they were, all the packs that you two never used. I always thought they were pretty, so I decided to take them, or they’d be thrown out.’ Offended, she protested, ‘I don’t know what you’re laughing at – you could all have a pack if you wanted them.’
‘You keep them,’ Louise said. ‘We were so ungrateful – poor Eileen, she meant well.’
‘At least Caroline’s not crying any more,’ Esther said. ‘Are you?’
‘No. No, I’m not. Ridiculous old woman, sorry.’
‘You’re all right? What a burden to carry.’
They did not really think so, she saw. For them, it was sad, it was a pity, it explained a lot, perhaps, but all they felt was sorrow that she’d cut herself off from them. With a surge of gratitude that was not wholly free from exasperation, she said,
‘I thought, if it helped, I might buy the house.’
‘This house?’ Esther said, astonished.
‘If you didn’t mind waiting till the London flat’s sold. I know it seems stupid, I don’t need a big place, but it would make things much easier for you. In time, if I sell it, we won’t have to throw everything out in such a rush. We can deal with it bit by bit. What do you think?’
‘You are back,’ Esther said again.
‘You’d really come here, to Aberdeen, to this house?’ Louise asked.
‘I might.’
‘So we’d be together again,’ Margaret said. ‘In a way.’
They were silent, and in that silence, for a moment or two, they were not four women on the verge of old age, but three little girls in the sunny garden at Braeside, listening to Caroline, seventeen and adored, reading to them all the long summer afternoon.
The Treacle Well Page 34