‘Somehow,’ Marion said, as they drove to the hospital later, ‘when you find out something like this, however much of a shock it is, you feel, in a way, you’ve always known it.’
‘I still can’t imagine what we’re going to say to Mamie,’ Eleanor sighed. ‘I mean, she’s only just had a major operation, and she’s quite frail.’
‘We could wait, speak to Dad instead,’ Marion suggested. ‘But we’ll see how Mamie is first.’
Mamie was sitting up in bed, pink with the heat in the ward, wearing a lacy nightdress. Her lipstick was slightly smeared, but the wearing of it was defiant and cheerful. Her hair stood up in a white fluff, and she apologised for it the minute they arrived.
‘You canna keep yourself nice in hospital,’ she complained. ‘Look at me, I’m nae presentable. I winna get my hair washed e’er the morn.’
‘You look great,’ Eleanor said, bending to kiss the soft cheek, smelling illness, sourness, under a waft of flowery perfume. Indeed, she looked better than Marion who had sat down at once on one of the plastic chairs, white faced.
‘We brought you some flowers and a magazine.’ Eleanor laid them on the bed.
‘Lovely, dear. Your dad was in this afternoon. He said you were coming.’
Eleanor and Marion glanced at each other. Then Eleanor went to fetch another chair. When she came back, Mamie said, ‘You’ve been at the house today?’
‘Yes, I hope it’s all right with you. Dad said you wanted us to sort out Alice’s things.’
‘I’ve been putting it off, and that’s the truth,’ Mamie admitted. ‘Eh dearie me, it’s a sad business, getting rid of a body’s belongings.’ She patted the bed. ‘And now look at me. What a silly auld woman, eh? Tumbled a the wey down the stairs.’
‘You could have been killed,’ Eleanor said.
‘Ach I’m nae so easy to kill.’ She chuckled and lifted the flowers to sniff at them. ‘Oh, I aye liked freesias.’ She laid them down again. ‘Now then, did you go into the bureau?’
‘Yes,’ Eleanor said, ‘we took everything out.’
‘And what did you find?’
She knows, Marion thought, she knows what we found. She and Eleanor looked at each other again, not sure what to say.
‘Ach, I telt your father. I said it was high time he said something. You were bound to find out by and by; indeed, if Alice had had her way, he’d have gone into it all when your mother died. But he wouldn’t go against your mother’s wishes. She couldn’t persuade him to that.’
‘Mamie, what happened?’ Marion asked. ‘We found David’s birth certificate – it was an awful shock.’
‘Of course it was. Daft, to keep it hidden all these years. Not that it was all your mother’s doing. Alice was just as determined. But oh, I often thought, one wrong word – it was like walking a tightrope sometimes, but the trouble is, the langer a secret’s kept, the mair difficult it is to let it out.’ She looked sharply at Marion. ‘Poor lass, it’s been too much for you, I can see that. You’re not up to hospital visiting. Away you go, the pair of you. Come in tomorrow afore you set off home. They’ll let you in, I’ll speak to the ward sister.’
‘I’m sorry,’ Eleanor began, ‘we do have to go home tomorrow.’ She would have liked to stay on, to question Mamie. She was sure it was Mamie who could best make it all clear, and she was afraid of upsetting her father, who would find it more difficult to talk. But Marion looked ill, and must be got back to Pitcairn, and bed.
As they prepared to leave, and Eleanor leaned down to kiss her aunt again, she could not help asking, ‘Auntie Mamie, does David know?’
‘Ah,’ she said, and for the first time in their visit, looked old and weary, ‘that I canna say. But you could maybe take a guess yourselves about that.’
‘I’m sorry,’ Marion said as Eleanor negotiated traffic, getting them out onto the Deeside road at last. ‘We should have stayed and talked. But –’
‘It’s all right, you’re worn out. No wonder. All these bloody secrets – it’s exhausting.’
‘I still can’t believe it.’
‘I know this is silly, but I’ve only just realised – David’s not our brother.’
‘Somehow,’ Marion said, ‘that’s the least surprising thing about it.’
‘Oh, Marion.’
‘Well, he’s always been different. Remember all that fuss about his Highers? He was perfectly well able to pass them. And the way he just ran off? I’ll never forget those awful days when no one knew where he was. Well, weeks, really, before he got in touch. It was only because poor Stanley changed his mind at Newcastle and came back that we knew anything at all. He didn’t just have to face his dad, and that dreadful Irene, it was our parents as well. I think a lot of Stanley for coming to tell Mum the way he did.’
‘It was the year you got married,’ Eleanor said.
‘That’s right – graduated in July, married in September. And not a word from David till just before the wedding. It was years before I could think about that without being angry. He absolutely ruined that summer. It should have been so lovely.’ The anger was rising again, as she thought of it. ‘And look at the mess he’s made of his life since then.’
‘It’s not a mess – well, no more than mine is.’ Eleanor still felt she and David were twinned, belonged together. Impossible to accept he could have known this unbelievable thing, without telling her he knew. Marion thinks I’m like her, she thought, but I’m not, I’m like David.
‘Oh nonsense,’ Marion said. ‘Your life’s not a mess. You’ve had awful things happen – losing a baby, then Ian. But you’ve been brave and strong: made a life for yourself and Claire, managed on your own. I’m only concerned this Gavin isn’t good enough for you. Another drifter like David. That’s what I’m afraid of.’
The road was quiet; the car coasted. On either side there were trees, then fields. It was easy driving, but for Eleanor it was almost too much. Her hands gripped the wheel, and she leaned forward, tense.
‘Do you think so?’ she said. ‘Do you really think I coped well?’
‘Whereas David,’ Marion went on, ‘has drifted about from one place to another, had dozens of jobs, and moved from one woman to another as well, I’m pretty sure. I’m not altogether convinced he hasn’t actually been in prison during one of his long absences.’
‘Oh no, Marion.’
‘Well.’ Her sister fell silent, looking out of the window.
‘He’s still our cousin,’ Eleanor said, after a moment.
‘I wonder what his father was like, this Eric,’ Marion mused.
‘He looked quite a strong character, in the photograph.’
‘He left her flat.’
‘Maybe she wouldn’t have him,’ Eleanor suggested.
Marion laughed. ‘Well, knowing Alice, that’s certainly a possibility.’
‘How did it all come about?’ Eleanor wondered. ‘I somehow can’t picture it – the discussions they must have had. Was it Alice’s idea, to give him up for adoption? Then Mum and Dad said they would have him?’
‘I suppose it must have been something like that,’ Marion nodded. ‘Och, there’s no point speculating. We’ve got to ask Dad.’
But they continued to speculate, all the way back to Pitcairn.
As they drew up in front of the house, Marion said, ‘Are you going to say something?’
‘Me?’
‘Well, I will then. But what? It might come better from you.’
‘Why?’
‘You were the one who found it.’ Marion shrugged. ‘I just feel so awkward. Not the kind of thing it’s easy to speak to your parents about.’
Eleanor switched off the engine, but neither made a move to get out of the car.
‘He must know, anyway,’ Eleanor pointed out. ‘He was so keen for me to go through everything.’
Their father was watching television. He rose and switched it off as they came in. ‘Sit yourselves down. How was she tonight?’
Eleanor hovered by the door as Marion went to an armchair near the fire. It was not cold, but their father chopped wood all year, and liked to keep the open fire going. And he, Marion realised, had always been the one to clear out and lay the fire in the morning, before he went to work. David used to watch, wanting to do it himself, wanting to be the one to strike the match, and light it. But by the time he was old enough to be allowed, he had lost interest, and would have nothing to do with it. He had given up, she saw now, playing with matches.
But this memory, like all the others, might have to be adjusted. He was not their brother.
‘Do you want tea or coffee or something, Marion?’ Eleanor asked.
‘A cup of tea, if you can be bothered.’
‘Dad?’
‘Aye, fine. There’s cake in the tin. Mamie made me take it from the house. She said it would go to waste.’
Left alone with her father, Marion was silent, gazing at the fire.
‘How did you get on?’ John Cairns leaned forward to take up the poker and stab at burning logs. They fell apart, a red-hot glow appearing between, and he placed another log on top.
‘Oh, we’ve parcelled up all the clothes. Eleanor’s taken the locket, and I have the pearls. Is that all right?’
‘I’m sure it is. Mamie wanted you to have the things.’
An awkward silence fell between them. Then Eleanor came in with the tray. ‘Kettle’s nearly boiling,’ she said. ‘I’ll bring the tea in a minute.’ She laid the tray on the table by the window and went out again. Their father made a remark about the weather, and Marion agreed. There was silence again, till Eleanor came in.
The cake was dark and moist, full of fruit, but none of them could eat it. They drank tea, all three conscious of the unspoken thing that was with them in the room.
‘So,’ their father said, setting down his mug, ‘did you look in the bureau? I took out the bank books and so on, but I left everything else she had in there. There were photograph albums I thought you girls might like to have. They go back before Alice was born – they belonged to your grandparents. You’ll hardly mind on them, I dare say. But there’s snaps of their life, when they had the smiddy. Did you recall your Granda Cairns was a blacksmith?’
‘Yes, I think so.’
‘And Mamie’s mother and father, Alex and Rose. You’ll maybe mind on them, Marion. They used to visit us when we first moved here.’ He seemed to muse for a moment on these long-finished lives. ‘Then Alex died, and Rose went into a home,’ he began again.
‘Dad,’ Eleanor broke in, unable to go on with this. ‘Dad, I’ve got to say it. You know anyway, don’t you? We found David’s birth certificate.’
John Cairns leaned back in his chair, one hand in front of his face, shielding his eyes. He rubbed them hard, then pushed his hand back over brow and scalp. ‘Aye,’ he said. ‘It’s bound to have been a shock to you. You didn’t know, then? You had no inkling?’
‘How could we?’ Marion burst out. ‘How could we possibly know?’
‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I’m very sorry about all of this.’ His face looked grey. A surge of pity swept over Eleanor.
‘Oh Dad,’ she cried, ‘why did no one tell us? We’re not blaming you, it’s not that.’
‘Was it Alice?’ Marion asked. ‘Did she not want anyone to know?’
‘Alice and your mother.’ He managed a rueful smile. ‘I couldn’t go against the pair of them, now could I?’ He took the poker to the fire again, spoiling it. ‘And in the end, it was the right way to do it. We brought him up, he was our boy.’
‘But you wanted us to know now, didn’t you?’ Marion prompted. ‘Was that because Alice and Mum are both … gone?’
‘Oh well, I’d no choice. With the will.’
‘The will?’
I knew there was something, Marion thought.
‘Alice has left the house to David.’
Eleanor frowned. ‘But how could she do that? It’s Mamie’s house too.’
‘No, it belonged to Alice. Mamie’s to be allowed to live in it the rest of her life, but then it passes to David.’
‘The house. The house in Duthie Crescent is David’s.’ Eleanor could not take this in. ‘And he got £6,000 as well – like Marion and me?’
Their father looked uneasy. ‘Quite a bit more than that. Legacies to Mamie and me, and you girls. The rest to David.’ He sighed. ‘Ach, wills cause nothing but ill-feeling. Mamie thinks you girls should have equal shares with David. She says she told Alice you were the ones came to visit, and did things for them, kept in touch, brought your bairns. Not David.’
‘Oh well,’ Marion said dryly, ‘he is her son.’
‘That’s the way Alice thought of it.’ Eleanor was nearest her father; he patted her knee. ‘And you two will get this place when I’m gone. Nae that I’ve much money to leave. But with house prices they way they are, even this far out of Aberdeen, you’ll have a tidy sum each.’
‘I don’t care about the money!’ Eleanor burst out. ‘It’s the secret – it’s not being told. I feel as if you and Mum were lying to us all our lives.’
‘Oh dear me, now see what a hornet’s nest this has stirred up. I saw how it would be.’ And her father rose, unable to sit still. ‘I tell you what, how about a dram? We could do with it.’
Marion would not have one, but he poured generous whiskies for Eleanor and himself. He downed half of his in the first swallow.
‘That’s more like it.’
‘Oh, Dad.’
‘I’m sorry, Eleanor. I’m sorry for the pair of you. But what could I do?’
‘Nothing, knowing Mum, knowing Alice,’ Marion admitted. ‘It’s all right, we’re just feeling a bit stunned. And we want to know now how it happened, all that.’
‘Oh, Mamie could tell you better than I could. At least how Alice came to have a bairn at that age, after being a single woman all her life. For she was never interested in men, that I could see. Though she was bonny enough as a young lass.’
‘Dad,’ Eleanor asked, ‘Does David know?’ A pause, while her father took another gulp of whisky.
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Not that we told him. We never intended to make him any different from the two of you. To this day, I couldn’t tell you exactly how he did come to know. But he does.’
‘Does he know he’s inherited her house, and Alice’s money?’ Marion asked.
‘No, he’s no idea of that. I’ve been phoning the number he gave me, but there’s never a soul there.’
‘Poor old David,’ Marion said, half laughing, ‘we should put out an SOS for him.’
‘An ad in the paper,’ Eleanor suggested. ‘If David Cairns contacts his family, he will hear something to his advantage.’
They both laughed, then stopped, looking guiltily at their father, but he seemed relieved, and smiled back. Some of the tension had gone.
‘Tell us, then,’ Eleanor prompted. Tell us what happened.’
So in the mild May evening, daylight fading behind the lilac trees, with the fire glowing, the room shadowy, their father talked, and the old story unfolded.
‘The first we knew of it,’ he began, ‘was when Mamie came to us.’
Mamie was still living in Northumberland then. Uncle Tom had died the previous year, but Mamie lived on in the police house, since it was not yet wanted for anyone else. She worked in a draper’s, and sold jumpers and cardigans she had knitted at home, through the shop. She had thought about coming back to Aberdeen, but she liked her village by the sea, and had good friends there.
‘She wouldn’t have come home at all, would she,’ Marion guessed, ‘if Alice hadn’t got pregnant?’
‘Who’s to say? Alice got in touch, and asked her to come up. “I need your help,” she said. Mamie was never one to turn away anyone that needed her. Pity, your mother and I used to say, she never had bairns herself.’
When Mamie arrived, she saw at once that Alice was pregnant.
‘She hadn’t been near us in over a month,’ John Cairns said. ‘Kept saying she was busy at work.’
So it was Mamie who had come to tell John and Faith. Their house in Aberdeen was on the other side of the city from Alice’s flat, two separate bus rides away. Mamie missed her second bus, and ended up walking the last two miles. She arrived to find Faith in the garden taking down her washing, with Marion on the swing, Eleanor toddling by her feet. It was a blustery October day, a good drying day, but a black cloud was rising from the horizon, so Faith wanted to get the clothes in and folded. She had not heard Mamie coming, and almost dropped the full basket she was holding when she turned. Mamie was not used to walking; even then, she was plump, and had arrived very out of breath. For a moment, neither of them spoke. Later, Mamie was to say, ‘I hardly needed to say a word. She was very quick, your mother. She saw there was trouble.’
In the kitchen, the women talked. Frequently, the children interrupted, and Faith had to get up to fetch Eleanor’s pot, or untie a knitted doll’s bonnet for Marion – childish, mundane things. Mamie began to think of Alice’s ‘problem’ as a baby, another life, someone who would call and cry and play like Marion and Eleanor.
‘Stay for your tea,’ Faith said. ‘We’ll get peace when the bairns are in bed.’
‘No, I don’t want to be out when Alice gets home from her work. She’s in a bad way.’
‘Upset?’ Faith could not imagine this. Nothing seemed to distress Alice; she was too cool, dry.
‘Well, yes. But not what you’d call – showing it.’ Mamie tried to find the words. ‘Buttoned-up. Angry.’
‘Angry?’
‘Aye, that’s it. She just canna get ower this happening. I says to her, it happens to the best of women, we all make mistakes. Nature has her way, whiles. But she would do anything to change the way things are. If you get my meaning.’
‘Oh no, Mamie. Surely not. But how … ?’ They knew only respectable women and doctors, though they had heard of other kinds. However, Mamie had put her foot down, a rare thing.
‘“I will help you all I can,” I says to her. “I’ll bring up the bairn myself. But I will not have anything to do with these backstreet craturs”.’
Perhaps in the end, Alice had not known how to set about getting rid of her baby. Or her nerve had failed. But she had gone on as if it were possible to keep the secret for ever. She would talk to no one about it.
‘But at work?’ Eleanor asked her father. ‘It was a scandal in those days. She was lucky they kept her on.’
‘Ach, they couldn’t in decency do anything else,’ John scoffed. ‘They had employed the fellow.’
‘Eric?’
‘Was that what he was called. I hadna minded. His surname was Foster, anyway.’ He snorted. ‘Fellow went off with more than Alice’s good name, at any rate. Took a deal of money he wasn’t entitled to as well. In the end, Peter Simpson decided to hush it up. For Alice’s sake, I whiles think. He was fond of Alice, in his way.’
‘Why didn’t he marry her, this Eric? Or was he really just some sort of criminal?’ Marion wanted to know.
It had fallen into place. The old man at the funeral, her father’s reference to the partner who had left. Eric was that partner; Eric was Alice’s lover.
‘That’s what your mother asked: could she not get married? But Mamie said the fellow had left the town already. She was convinced he had a wife some other place. I couldn’t say. Then, as I said, it was discovered he’d taken money out of the firm. Peter blamed himself for that. I think he felt he should have kept a closer eye, noticed something.’
‘Was he prosecuted? Did you ever find him?’ Eleanor asked.
‘Peter and I did try to trace him,’ her father said. ‘At least to get some money for Alice, for the bairn. She put a stop to that. She said she wouldn’t take a penny from him anyway. Proud! She was a proud woman, by God.’
All the way through her pregnancy, Alice insisted that the baby was to be given up for adoption. Mamie tried to persuade her otherwise, offering to stay with Alice and look after the child.
‘He’ll want for nothing,’ she had said.
‘He’ll want for a father,’ Alice had retorted. ‘Brought up by two old women – no, no. Better adopted. Plenty couples want babies.’
Then, when the child was born, she changed her mind. Eleanor and Marion, trying to imagine how this had come about, found themselves daunted, unable to fill in the gaps in their father’s story. It was the gaps that mattered, Eleanor decided, but no one could tell them what Alice had been thinking. At any rate, she was no longer willing to give the child up to strangers, though it seemed she would not feed him herself. As soon as she was home from the Maternity Hospital, she gave him over to Mamie.
Then Mamie changed too. She was forty-one; she realised suddenly how demanding a baby would be. David cried. He cried most of the day and all night, it seemed to those two desperate women, Mamie pacing the floor, Alice heating Ovaltine for them both, to comfort them in the long night.
‘What do you want to do?’ Mamie had asked, and Alice replied, trying to talk above the baby’s piercing screams, ‘I don’t know. But it seems wrong to give him away. How would we know they’d bring him up right?’
‘Should we keep him ourselves?’ Mamie, jiggling the infant in her arms, so that he redoubled his efforts, screamed even louder, was now afraid of what would happen if Alice said yes.
Then everyone would know he had no father!’ Alice shouted. Then, for the first time, she broke down and began to cry. ‘No father, no brothers and sisters – what kind of life could we give him?’
Mamie never forgot that night. Alice, with black thumb-print shadows under her dark eyes, huddled on her bed. Mamie walking up and down, up and down. Finally, exhausted, she laid the baby in the pram they had bought, and suddenly, with no subsiding cries, no warning, he fell asleep. They sat together in a silence that was even more terrifying than the noise which had preceded it, and wept together.
‘In the end,’ John Cairns told his daughters, ‘your mother said we could take him. She was having no more children herself, for Eleanor had been a Caesarian section, and they told her then she shouldn’t have another. But she knew I’d have liked a boy.’ He saw the way Marion and Eleanor looked at each other.
‘However,’ he said, ‘by that time, I had my two wee girls. I’d stopped minding.’ Marion shook her head, smiling. ‘Aye, lass, I had,’ he insisted. ‘I’m proud of my girls.’ He cleared his throat, embarrassed. ‘Well, your mother was only twenty-eight. Young. She said she would take him.’
‘And was that all right with Alice and Mamie?’ Marion asked.
‘At the time, they were mightily relieved, I suspect. You never heard an infant bawl the way David did, those first weeks.’ He shook his head, smiling. ‘And yet, you know, he was only a few weeks old when he came to us, and he hadn’t been here more than two or three days, when he settled. Your mother had him sleeping near through the night.’ He sighed. ‘So it was the best thing, eh?’
‘So, did you go on to adopt him?’ Eleanor wanted to know.
‘We never saw the need. Maybe we put it off, left it too late. We were afraid of others interfering. It was a family concern. Your mother said to me, “He’s better here, he’d be an only child otherwise.” She had been an only one herself, and her mother very possessive. Very ambitious. Her mother wasn’t best pleased when she married me, and gave up the dancing.’
Marion and Eleanor had heard this story before, and saw no need to go over it again.
‘So there was no formal adoption?’ Eleanor persisted.
‘No.’
‘But what about when he needed a birth certificate? I mean, why didn’t you just tell him the truth from the start?’
‘Neither Alice nor your mother would have it. They agreed on that. You can get a short certificate that just has the name and date and place. Nothing about parents on it. That one is fine for most things.’
‘So everyone agreed? Alice and Mum took the same view?’
‘Oh well. As long as David was a wee boy, it was fine. Or it seemed to be. Alice never interfered.’ Looking back, he thought this was both fair and true. But how little the words revealed. He would leave it to Mamie to tell the rest, he thought, finding it painful to go over the old ground. Women were better at this kind of thing.
After a year or so, he admitted, Faith had wanted to make the adoption legal, but Alice would not have it: she agreed that nothing would be said to David and she would not interfere, but she refused to give up her son altogether. Faith lay awake, worrying about it. In the end, this was what persuaded her when John wanted to buy Pitcairn rather than another house in town. They were too close, in Aberdeen; too many people knew them. Physically removed from the city, from Alice, David would be more their own. Even then, she went on worrying.
‘If she changes her mind and wants him back,’ she said, ‘could we do anything about it? Could we go to court, do you think?’
‘Go to court!’ He was horrified. This was his family; it would be impossible.
‘No,’ Faith agreed, ‘but I’d like to think we were safe.’
Yet David had caused her nothing but trouble, growing up, especially when he turned seventeen. That had been a bad time.
All through the childhood years, Alice had kept her word, and left it to Faith and John to bring up her son as they saw fit. Faith began to relax. As time went on, it became less and less likely that there would be any change. Alice wanted the best for him, she said. She would not tear him from their family now, and though she had not been happy about the move to Pitcairn, she eventually admitted to her brother that it was the best thing for David.
‘He can run wild,’ she said. ‘Boys have a lot of energy. He’s safer out here, in the country.’
She sent cheques regularly, insisting on this contribution, and just as regularly Faith paid them into a separate building society account for David. When he went to university, it would help to see him through, she said, and would not touch it for clothes or toys or food. Alice bought his bicycles, a new one every time he outgrew (or outwore) the last. Faith did not like this, but she did not resist.
‘Keep my name out of it,’ Alice said. ‘There’s no need to say where the money came from.’ Uneasily, with a sense almost of guilt, Faith gave in.
Keeping her distance, Alice had seemed content in her orderly single life. In the summer, she and Mamie went to Austria or Switzerland, once to the Italian lakes. They were active in the church; Mamie helped in an Oxfam shop; Alice chaired the Women’s Guild, and sang in a choir. Alice went on working for Simpson and Dalgarno, taking the bus to the city centre in the morning, walking home at five to get exercise. Mamie kept house and cooked. They both gardened at the weekends. They led useful, busy lives.
‘I still don’t understand how she could do it,’ Eleanor said. ‘Did she never want David to know she was his mother? I couldn’t bear that. It must have been awful.’
‘It’s a different world now, lass,’ her father said. ‘Alice hated the idea of anybody knowing she’d had a child out of wedlock. The funny thing was, even people who knew, people she’d worked with, or at the church, seemed almost to forget. It was as if she had wiped out the past. Wiped it out.’
Eleanor thought of the locket, with its hidden photographs. ‘I don’t believe that. She hadn’t wiped it out for herself.’
‘You’re right,’ her father agreed. ‘Because when David was seventeen, she suddenly took it into her head she wanted to tell him the truth.’
‘No!’ Marion exclaimed. ‘Why, after all that time?’
‘She had a cancer scare – a lump in her breast.’ Marion and Eleanor looked at each other, saying nothing. ‘Oh, she was luckier than you, it was nothing, not malignant. She had a wee op, she was fine. But she’d had a fright.’
Perhaps, Eleanor wondered, Alice had feared that if she died, if the secret went on being kept, David would never know who his mother was, and she could not bear that. Marion wasn’t having this.
‘Oh come on, Dad, he was bound to find out.’
‘Oh aye,’ her father admitted. ‘Bound to. And did. Anyway, it was what you might call a bit of a tussle between your mother and Alice for a while.’
Faith had thought David was at a dangerous age; they were worried about him.
‘It’ll do nothing but harm just now,’ she insisted. ‘Wait at least till his exams are over.’
Alice had finally agreed to this.
‘You know that story,’ their father went on. ‘David and his exams.’
‘So did Alice agree never to say anything?’
‘Well, that was the summer he went off to London and disappeared. When he finally got in touch, Alice and your mother were so relieved he was safe – that was the end of it. They agreed to say nothing. In a funny way, all that business brought them together.’
Privately, Alice might have blamed his upbringing, Faith his father, the unknowable genes, but both women wanted only the best for their difficult son.
Marion yawned, shivering a little. ‘Oh dear, it’s too much, all of this.’
‘Time you went to bed.’ Eleanor was watchful, her father thought, always watchful of Marion these days.
‘You can speak to Mamie tomorrow,’ he said. ‘She’ll tell you more.’
After Marion was in bed, Eleanor came into her room for half an hour. She sat on the bed and they went on talking, but there could be no end to such a conversation. It would go on and on, for years to come.
‘You should sleep now,’ Eleanor said, getting up. Tomorrow, we really must try to get hold of David again. Maybe I could find his partner. He had an unusual sort of name – what was it?’
‘So strange, the whole thing,’ Marion murmured, settling her pillows, lying down. She seemed young and childlike, her dark hair, her pale face, against the white pillows. Eleanor had a lurch of fear for her. I don’t have a brother now. All those years, I believed I had a brother. She could not grasp this, that David was no longer their brother. The idea made her want to cling to Marion even more.
Eleanor lay awake for a long time, unable to sleep. Once, falling into a floating half-consciousness, she thought she heard a baby cry, and started awake again. It was only an owl, hooting in the trees. As she lay listening to it, there came into her mind a memory of the uproar in the night when Marion had fled to their parents’ room shrieking about a ghost, a baby crying. Afterwards, she and Marion had cuddled up together in the same bed. Were they still sharing a room then – or had one crept along to be with the other? It must have been me, Eleanor thought drowsily, I was always the scaredy-cat, needing her. Marion’s hair, tickling her face like feathers, the softness of her Winceyette pyjamas, their legs tangled together in the narrow bed.
What did she look like, the lady?
A bit like Auntie Alice.
Maybe it was a dream.
The crying wasn ‘t. I heard the crying.
Where did the ghost come from, with her baby in her arms? I saw her too, Eleanor thought, in the garden at Pitcairn, years later. I thought it was the tinker woman, who died in the fire, clinging to her baby. A bit like Auntie Alice.
Eleanor turned over, and fell into sleep again, dreaming of Gavin, and that she was going to have his baby after all. When she woke, still believing this, her face was wet with tears. This dream had been so clear and present to her that she was scarcely aware now of having wakened in the night. Something had come to her then, some new idea, but she could not have said what it was.