CHAPTER TWELVE
I WENT UP into my room and sat on the bed, holding the satchel. The leather was stiff and dark, mummified almost, although in the creases I could see the pale fawn colour it had once been. The letters CC had been neatly incised into the front flap, perhaps with the point of a compass. They stood out darker than the rest of the leather, black where the dust had engrained itself. I followed the twin curls of the letters with the tip of my finger, imagining the young Caroline sitting in the room beside mine, making her mark. I wondered how it was the satchel had found its way into the loft. Daniel said it had been hidden. What had he meant by that?
‘Did you put it there, Caroline?’ I whispered. ‘Did you put it there out of sight in the hope that one day it would be found?’
I didn’t expect to hear a reply, of course, but still the silence that hung in the room was deafening. I had the sensation of being watched, of something waiting.
I forced stiff leather straps through the buckles that secured the flap and opened the satchel. A spider scuttled from the darkness inside, long legs fingering. I cried out, jumped away and watched as the spider, followed by its shadow, disappeared down the side of the bed. I pushed the satchel a couple of times to see if anything else was inside and when nothing emerged, I lifted it by its corners and tipped the rest of its contents on to the bed.
There were ancient pencils, an eraser so old and dry it was crumbling, a sketchpad and a school exercise book. On the front, in elaborate, old-fashioned handwriting was the name Caroline Anne Cummings and above it a stamp saying Blackwater Village School. I flicked through. The book was full of exercises marked and commented upon in red ink. Not good enough. Where is the rest of your work? A poor and lazy attempt. See me. Stay behind. Detention. Slipper.
Slipper?
Oh, that was how it was in many schools, not just then but now, I knew that. There were, and probably always would be, teachers who believed that children could be bullied into learning, punished into submission. I found it barbaric that anyone of the slightest intelligence could believe that fragile young minds could be improved by such treatment; it was as mad as thinking seedlings would do better thrown out on rough ground at the mercy of the elements than they would being nurtured in a warm greenhouse.
‘Poor old you,’ I murmured to the child Caroline, whose worst crime appeared to have been failing to understand long division.
Next, I looked through the sketchpad and it was obvious that art was where Caroline’s talent lay. There were drawings of the lake, individual water birds and animals, sheep grazing, a duck surrounded by ripples of water, pheasants, a sleeping dog. Caroline had returned several times to the same place, a view over the lake that was framed by the leaves of trees, as if she were looking at it through a picture window. The view was vaguely familiar to me. I too had seen the lake from that spot – it was the hollow with the fallen tree. Caroline had captured some of the moods of the water in the texture of its surface; a moorhen amongst the reeds on a peaceful day; spray caught in the wind above waves shaped like bared teeth on a different occasion. She had drawn for her own pleasure. These pictures might never have been seen by anyone else. This thought unsettled me. I alone was connected to her through time, through the pencil-marks on the paper, through that outlook over the water.
Something else lay on the bed: a Swan Vesta matchbox. I laid down the sketchpad and picked up the box, pressed open the cardboard drawer. Inside was a piece of lint, browned by age, and wrapped inside the lint was treasure: a gold chain, very fine, with a golden pendant – a heart-shaped ruby surrounded by little diamonds set into the gold. The gems were framed by a pair of clasped hands joined at the top of the heart.
I held the necklace up to the light. I closed one eye and, with the other, stared into the ruby. I had never seen anything so beautiful. I lost myself in its colour.
‘Oh Caroline,’ I said in awe. ‘This is lovely. Where did you get this?’
I listened but still there was no answer, no sound at all.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
THAT NIGHT, I could not sleep – and it wasn’t only because I was worried about the spider crawling up to seek me out. My dreams were disturbed and when I woke, I heard whispers from the empty bedroom. I imagined the window open, a draught blowing through, moon shadows dancing on the walls. I closed my eyes and I saw the colour red, the inside of the ruby; I saw a dark stain spreading slowly across the floorboards in the empty bedroom. I saw the shape of a young girl standing by the window … and then the girl turned slowly to confront me and her face was white and glassy like ice and her eyes were dark as death. She held out one hand towards me and as I watched, the flesh fell from her like ash and her hair floated away like dandelion seed. All that was left was the darkness where she had been; she was described by her absence and I woke with a scream in my throat. Cold and shaky, I at last dropped into a patchy, shallow unconsciousness and was woken almost at once by Viviane, who had come creeping into my room. I was so pleased to see her. I lifted the covers and she slipped into the bed beside me. Her feet, on my legs, were icy and her teeth were chattering. I held her close.
‘What is it, darling?’ I whispered. ‘What’s the matter?’
‘It’s Caroline,’ Vivi said. ‘She doesn’t want me to sleep.’
‘What do you mean by that? Why doesn’t she want you to sleep?’
‘Because when I’m sleeping, she is all alone. She’s been so lonely for so long. She keeps saying: “Don’t leave me, Vivi.”’
I kissed her head. ‘How about if I tell you a story, like I used to when you were a little girl?’
Viviane said: ‘Mmm.’ I felt her relax in my arms. ‘Tell us about the Pigeon Princess,’ she breathed. ‘Caroline would like that very much.’
This sounded to me more like the imaginary friend of the past – dear, non-existent Emily – who articulated Vivi’s hopes and dreams, who said, through Viviane, the things that Viviane herself did not want to say. I told myself to relax. The child’s breath was hot and damp, a shaky vibrato against my clavicle. I smoothed her hair. We had curled up together, like this, a thousand times.
‘Once upon a time,’ I began, ‘there was a little pigeon who lived in a hole in the factory wall …’
The next day, the anxiety about Vivi’s imaginary friend returned. I told myself it was the simple fact that I was overtired that distorted my thinking and my reasoning. If I weren’t so exhausted, then I’d be able to rationalize the situation. But I was tired, and I couldn’t seem to think straight. I went outside for some fresh air and glanced at the lake, amenable that morning – pastel-blue and white, a flock of white birds feeding at its edges. I walked around the garden three times with Bess, trying to think of a good reason not to telephone Daniel Aldridge – it was too soon, he would think me neurotic, I didn’t know him well enough to confide in him – but I knew in my heart that none of these reasons was valid. I went inside and I called him. He sounded pleased to hear from me but we were both tongue-tied. We tried, and failed, to make small talk. He offered to take me out for a drink, to the pictures, even to the dancehall in Weston-super-Mare, but I was not in the mood for dancing. I asked if, instead, we could go for a drive.
‘I need someone to listen to me,’ I told him, ‘to tell me if I’m going crazy.’
‘I’m told I am a very good listener.’
‘Then you are the man I need.’
He came as soon as he could, picked me up in the jeep and we drove though the Mendip lanes, across the top of the hills, bare and yellow now for winter, patches of grey striated rock breaking the dying grass and acres of dead bracken and the tough little wild goats grazing the cliffs above the gorge. We parked at the top of a long, winding lane, and gazed out at the sky and the clouds and the colours of the sunlight on the fields, the drystone walls. From this vantage we could only see a small section of the lake, a tiny, distant line of blue amongst the browns and greys. Up here, woolly cattle turned their backs to the wind an
d the jeep rocked, buffeted by gusts. A goshawk perched on a fence-post and stared at the undergrowth. I imagined the little creatures running through the limp grass below, the voles and mice careering through their tiny tunnels, their feet pitter-pattering above the frozen ground, their minute little hearts pumping away. I pulled my coat tight about me and I looked through the window while I told Daniel about Vivi and about her imaginary friends, first Emily and now Caroline – the aunt who had died as a teenager brought back to life. Daniel was very quiet as he listened. He was looking out of the window and hardly seemed to be breathing.
‘I know a little about psychology,’ I said, ‘and I’m aware that imaginary friends, like toys, are a device children use to play out scenarios that frighten or confuse them. So it might be that Vivi is using Caroline as a kind of basket into which she can transfer her anxiety about losing her father.’
‘That seems logical,’ Daniel said.
‘It doesn’t feel right, though. I’m worried I should be doing something – that if I don’t, something awful will happen.’
‘Something awful has already happened. Her father has died. That’s what’s at the root of all this.’
‘I know. But … you’ll think I’m being stupid, Daniel, but Julia has told me things about the real Caroline.’
He stiffened. ‘What things?’
‘Well, she’s intimated more than actually said. But I know Caroline was a difficult person, that she had few friends. Julia changes when she speaks of her. She has no affection for her. I suspect things were very bad between the two of them.’
‘Oh.’
‘Yes. And even though I know it’s not really dead Caroline talking to Vivi, if Vivi finds out or even senses some of her mother’s feelings, I fear she may start to incorporate them into her imaginary conversations. She may start to give imaginary Caroline the attributes of the real Caroline. She’s only ten, Daniel. I can’t bear the thought of her being tainted by all this.’
Daniel pressed the palms of his hands against the steering wheel and stretched his arms. ‘Would you like a drink?’
I smiled. ‘You brought something to drink?’
He took a hip flask from the pocket in the side of the car door and passed it to me.
‘You’ll have to drink straight from the flask, I’m afraid.’
‘What is it?’
‘Apple brandy. It cures everything from blocked drains to broken hearts, or so my father tells me.’
I took a sip, and the heat went to my cheeks at once. I drank some more, then wiped my lips and returned the flask to Daniel. ‘Lovely!’ I said.
He took a drink and considered his words. Eventually he said: ‘I think the less fuss you make of this, the quicker it will pass.’ He turned his face from me, looked out of the window again. ‘I’ll tell you something about me,’ he said. ‘It’s something that’s difficult for me to talk about. My mother died when I was a baby.’
‘Oh Daniel, how terrible! I’m sorry, I didn’t know.’
‘You don’t need to be sorry; how could you have known? Obviously it didn’t affect me at the time. I was less than a week old. I didn’t know any different. But when I was old enough to understand something of what death meant, it used to haunt me.’ He looked down at his hand, scratched at a scab at the base of his finger. ‘I was there when she died, physically there. And I used to think that somehow it was my fault.’
‘You were a few days old. How could you be to blame?’
‘I know, I know, it’s irrational. But a child’s mind isn’t rational.’
‘No, I don’t suppose it is.’
He picked at the scab. Any moment now, it would begin to bleed. I couldn’t bear it. I covered his hand with mine. Still he wouldn’t look at me.
‘I thought about my mother so much, that she started to become real to me. I knew other people couldn’t see her, I knew they thought she was dead, but I really believed she was with me.’
‘How do you mean?’
‘If I was lonely, she would take my hand; if I was afraid, she’d wrap herself around me and make me feel safe. At night, as I was falling asleep, I’d hear her whisper in my ear.’
‘What did she say?’
‘That she loved me, that she was sorry she’d let me go but that she’d always be there with me; that even when I was sleeping she was watching over me. I can still hear her voice in my mind.’
He took another drink from the flask. I watched his throat move as he swallowed.
‘My father couldn’t bear it. It used to drive him mad. But the more he tried to stop me being with her, the more I wanted to be with her. We fought all the time.’
‘What happened?’
‘Father hired a psychiatrist who recommended I be sent to boarding school. He believed cold showers, discipline and a rigorous exercise regime would sort me out.’
‘Oh. And did they?’
‘They taught me to keep my secrets to myself.’
I put one hand on Daniel’s arm. He was still staring through the window. ‘My father thought he was acting in my best interests,’ he said. ‘Suffice to say, that was the last time I confided anything to him.’
‘Perhaps you bringing your mother back to life, so to speak, was your way of compensating for the guilt you felt over her death,’ I suggested.
‘Yes, I thought of that too. I blamed myself for her dying, and the only way to put it right was to make her live again.’
I followed his eyes. The hawk was hunting now, flying low and concentrated over the dead heather and gorse, tipping and dodging the gusts of wind. In the distance, I glimpsed the white bob-tail of a running deer.
‘All I’m trying to say is that children’s minds don’t work the same as ours,’ he said. ‘You don’t know what Viviane is feeling and she probably can’t tell you, or is afraid to.’
‘What should I do then?’ I asked. ‘How can I help her?’
‘Keep talking to her. Talk about her father. Don’t force her to hide her feelings. Try to make her understand that death is a natural process, even when it is brought about through violence. Being less afraid of it helped me. It brought me a kind of peace.’
I looked at Daniel’s face, still in profile. It was a beautiful face and, despite being so new, it was becoming very dear to me.
He turned and smiled at me. ‘There,’ he said. ‘You know everything there is to know about me now.’
‘Not everything.’
‘The most important thing. Does it change your opinion of me?’
‘Not at all,’ I said.
I wished that he would kiss me and when he made no move to do so, I, emboldened by the apple brandy, kissed him instead. And it was lovely.
He asked for my number before we parted and he found an old pencil in his bag and I wrote the number on a scrap of paper. He told me he would call me soon.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
I DIDN’T MENTION any of that conversation to Julia. I didn’t even tell her that I’d spoken to Daniel Aldridge but I did tell her that I was thinking of taking Vivi up to the churchyard to put some flowers on her grandparents’ grave. I said I thought it might help to demystify death and be a starting point for conversations about Alain.
‘Vivi needs to be encouraged to talk about her feelings,’ I said, with some confidence.
Julia was unconvinced. She did not want to accompany us because the cold weather was exacerbating the pain in her hip and she said she could not even contemplate the walk uphill. However, she did not oppose the idea. I suggested the outing casually to Viviane who thought it over for a while, and then agreed.
We cut some holly and ivy for the grave, took the dog with us and walked in silence through the woods past a line of silver birch where little spade-shaped leaves of pale green and yellow were fallen like confetti and heaped wetly around the feet of the trunks. Viviane peeled a strip of bark the colour of mother-of-pearl and then broke it into smaller pieces which she dropped behind her, as if she were a child in a stor
y who might need to find her way home. I tried a couple of times to persuade her to talk about her father, but she would not humour me.
When we reached the churchyard, I hooked Bess’s lead over the gatepost and Viviane and I wandered in, through nettles browned and dead, all caught with threads of spider silk that shimmered in the grey light. The ground was hard beneath our feet. Beyond, the lake shone green and glassy, perfectly still save for where the waterbirds rippled at its edges, frilling the surface.
Caroline must have known this path; she must have seen the lake in all its myriad moods, and Daniel’s mother must have done so too. All the people who came and went to the church, who were born and lived and died in Blackwater – they must have felt what I was feeling now; they must have known their time would be measured but the lake would remain, changing all the time but always there.
I looked back. Viviane was trailing behind me with her hands in the pocket of her duffel coat.
I went back to her. ‘It’s all right, sweetheart,’ I said. ‘Really it is. There’s nothing to fear in graveyards. See how peaceful it is here? Listen – how quiet it is. How calm. It will be the same where your papa lies.’
‘It’s not the same,’ Vivi said. ‘Where he is, there are buildings all around, and traffic and people cutting through the pathways to get to the station. People go into the cemetery to eat their lunch. They walk their dogs and meet their girlfriends and do business and have arguments. It’s not quiet at all. And don’t,’ she said angrily, ‘tell me next that that’s good because Papa didn’t like being on his own. Don’t keep trying to say things to make it better because nothing can make it better!’
The Secret by the Lake Page 6