Ian Henderson was eighty-four, ‘not a bad knock’, Angus could almost hear him saying. He wondered how many people would start to tell him that his father ‘had had a good innings’.
Elizabeth sat by her husband but could not settle, anxious about his breathing and if he was comfortable, depressed by his diminishing consciousness and by her own powerlessness.
Jack wanted to find something to read aloud, some Shakespeare sonnets or Scots metrical psalms. Douglas arrived, sat with his barely conscious father for an hour and a half, and then went downstairs to find a consoling whisky. It was only when he was back in the family home that he realised how much he had to suspend his life and wait for the end.
Part of Ian had already left them.
‘I feel I am about to discover the great secret,’ he said with his eyes closed.
‘More water?’ Elizabeth asked. Her husband was easing into sleep.
The family fell into an informal and disorganised shift system, climbing the stairs with water and tea and food, their lives reduced to the simplest of rituals.
Sometimes it felt that the moment would never come but any activity other than waiting was an irresponsibility, a form of neglect, a betrayal.
Ian was almost impatient with his family, irritated by their continual coming and going and their questions about his comfort. He became confused as to who they were, increasingly unwilling or unable to answer their questions, annoyed about his condition, impatient with death for taking so long. It was the kind of intolerance that was usually displayed when they all took too long to prepare for an outing.
Well, come on, if you’re coming.
Death was like a recalcitrant child, refusing to leave the beach at the end of a long summer day.
Oh for God’s sake.
He died in the middle of the afternoon when everyone was out of the room. Jack was in Edinburgh, Douglas and Angus were watching the first of the Six Nations rugby games: Scotland against France.
Elizabeth had returned to the bedroom to check on her husband.
Angus heard her cry out just as Chris Paterson was taking a penalty to put Scotland ahead. It was unlike any sound he had ever known. At first he thought it might have been a bird.
Then he heard his own name.
‘Angus … Douglas. Come up…’
Chris Paterson struck the ball and the commentator’s voice sang out: ‘That’s a beauty.’
Douglas reached for the remote and turned off the television.
‘I’ll come with you.’
Angus climbed the stairs two at a time. Douglas followed. Their father’s head had fallen away to the side. There was less colour to the flesh. He made no sound.
‘I don’t think he’s breathing,’ said Elizabeth.
Angus felt for a pulse. He listened against his father’s chest and touched his upper neck by the right ear. He cupped his hand against the cheek. Then he looked at his mother. He did not need to speak.
Elizabeth felt the steadiness leave her. She sat down on the edge of the bed and held her husband’s hand. Then she leant forward and kissed him, first on the forehead, then on the lips.
Angus reached out his hand to touch his mother but changed his mind and withdrew.
Elizabeth looked up at her sons and then at her husband.
‘I’ve always dreaded this moment,’ she said. ‘And now here it is.’
Douglas sat down on the chair of the dressing table and began to cry. His father’s death had been as calm as anyone could have hoped but he had not expected it to be so simple.
Angus put his hand on his brother’s shoulder.
The afternoon divided into a series of disconnected fragments as each member of the family tried to find an activity that was helpful. Angus offered to make his mother a cup of tea but realised that he had spoken too soon. She did not even appear to hear him.
‘Will you telephone for the undertakers?’ she said at last. ‘Make sure they take care. I’d like to think of him as he was; when he was younger, not as he is now. I’d like to be able to bring him back, to pretend he’s still with me.’
‘Take your time, Mother. There’s no rush…’
‘Then perhaps I’d like to pick some flowers,’ his mother said. ‘If I can find any…’
‘Do you need any help?’
It was half-past three in the afternoon. The light had gone.
‘I’ll go,’ said Douglas.
‘I think I’d like to be alone,’ Elizabeth said. ‘Do you mind?’
‘Of course not.’
‘I could never imagine this day. Will one of you tell Jack and the girls? I think he’s coming this evening. Where’s Tessa?’
‘She’s on her way.’
‘When everyone is here I think we should have champagne,’ Elizabeth said. ‘I don’t like to think of everyone in a state.’
‘That’s something I can do,’ said Douglas.
‘And will you tell Emma? Ian was always fond of her…’
Douglas could not think how he was going to achieve this. He would have to ask Tessa. At least he knew how to open a bottle.
He went down to the wine cellar. The last time he had drunk champagne had been with Julia. She hadn’t phoned. He didn’t know what they would say to each other.
He could hear the doorbell and footsteps in the hall and Angus telling his wife what had happened and what he thought she should say.
‘I’ll deal with it in my own way,’ Tessa said, and then, ‘Oh Elizabeth.’
Douglas could feel the cold from outside. He remembered his father’s irritation whenever anyone left the front door open. It took so long for the house to warm up again. He remembered him shouting, For God’s sake, will somebody please close the door?
‘I’ll phone the undertakers,’ he heard Angus say. ‘You two have a moment. I’m not sure what Douglas is doing.’
He was sitting on the steps down to the cellar.
‘It’s so cold outside,’ Elizabeth was saying.
Tessa fetched her coat and offered to help gather the flowers.
‘I know there are snowdrops under the chestnut tree. There might even be a crocus or two.’
Douglas could still recall the preparations for the last play. He imagined his father’s voice again. My masters, are you mad? Or what are you? Have you no wit, manners, or honesty, but to gabble like tinkers at this time of night?
By the time Jack arrived Elizabeth was ironing her husband’s pyjamas. He wanted to stop her. He even thought to offer to take her place, or ask what use they would have for his father’s pyjamas now.
‘What can I do?’ he asked.
He did not know if he wanted to see his father’s body.
‘Ask Angus,’ Elizabeth replied. ‘He’s in charge.’
Jack wondered which of the brothers would become most like their father in old age, and how much of his life or spirit would be preserved through the generations. There were still a few mannerisms, reminders of a life: the movement of hands, a laugh here and there, the pronunciation of certain words.
The boys divided the tasks between them. Angus would deal with the undertakers and arrange the funeral. Jack would make the phone calls to inform their friends and colleagues. Douglas agreed to register the death and put a notice in the papers.
They were children once more. Their father was back in control of their lives, commanding them from a parental afterlife, insisting that proprieties were observed, standards upheld.
Each family member concentrated on their allotted duties, doing what they had to do, making lists and ticking off achievements. Elizabeth and Tessa went to the kirk, decided on the flowers, and briefed the Minister about the funeral.
Jack was working through his father’s address book. He had reached the letter M and realised that it was the longest entry in the book: all those Macdonalds and Macleans.
Then Douglas returned from the Registrar of Births, Marriages and Deaths.
‘Did you know Father had been married before?’
‘I thought we all knew that,’ said Angus. ‘It only lasted a few years. He didn’t like to make a fuss about it.’
‘Who was she?’
‘Some kind of showgirl, I think,’ said Angus. ‘Louvain.’
‘What?’
‘That was her name.’
‘And what happened? Did they divorce?’ Douglas remembered his father’s disapproval when his marriage had failed.
‘She died,’ said Angus. ‘Father said she was always frail. I think it was TB.’
‘Does Mother know?’
‘It’s “your father’s sorrow”, she used to say.’
‘Not to me.’
Douglas walked over to the decanter and poured himself a whisky.
‘So am I the only one who didn’t know?’
‘We thought you did,’ said Angus.
‘When did you find out?’
‘Years ago. It’s one of the reasons Father always liked Emma.’
‘I wonder if she knew.’
‘I think he told her,’ said Jack. ‘After you’d split up. She came to see him.’
‘That’s a bit bloody rich,’ said Douglas.
He thought back over all the Shakespearean roles Emma had played in the garden: Rosalind, Viola, Helena and Mistress Quickly. She’d even been Lady Macbeth, for God’s sake. Perhaps she looked like Louvain.
‘It’s best not to dwell on these things,’ said Angus.
‘Easy for you to say.’
‘I don’t think he felt they had to tell us anything,’ said Jack, sitting back down on the sofa. ‘Father was a great believer in discretion.’
‘What do you mean? He told you. He was only being discreet with me.’
‘Perhaps he assumed we’d tell you. Or it didn’t really matter.’
‘But it does matter,’ Douglas said. ‘Every member of the family knew something that I did not. That makes a difference.’
Angus reminded his brother of the family mantra. You should always speak the truth but the truth need not always be spoken.
‘Yes, but life doesn’t always work out like that,’ said Douglas. ‘Sometimes the truth comes out at the wrong time and you can’t do anything about it and then you’re completely fucked.’
‘Of course.’
‘Believe me, I know,’ said Douglas.
‘We know you know,’ said Jack.
The funeral was held a week later. It was the beginning of Lent. Confetti remained from weddings conducted long ago, spattered across the paths, blown amidst the graves, frozen in puddles round the kirk.
The whole family came, even those who had left. Emma stood to one side in a tight black dress, thin and veiled, the most elegant member of the congregation. She had only come on condition that no one expected her to speak to her husband.
Maggie arrived with Guy, and Jack even shook his hand, feeling nothing, unable to quite believe that he had ever been married. It made him think about Krystyna. He wished she was with him but he had done nothing about her letter. Perhaps he would just drive up and surprise her.
Tessa wore the dress in which she had played Olivia. At first, Angus had questioned her choice, but his wife said that she could not think of anything more appropriate. It was an acknowledgement of the world Ian had created; a house preserved, principles followed, values known.
‘He would have smiled,’ she said. ‘He would have understood my appreciation of him.’
She could still hear his voice, the fair Olivia, greeting her as she stepped out into the garden in the black widow’s dress. It had been what Tessa had appreciated most about him, the fact that he was always pleased to see her.
It was the gift of affirmation. So few people had it, she thought.
The Henderson family wanted music and readings and tributes with jokes; enough, each son hoped, to acknowledge their father’s vitality.
Say not the struggle naught availeth.
The singing of the first hymn, ‘Amazing Grace’, began timidly but Tessa, and then Maggie, encouraged the others to lose their reserve and sing out in tribute to a man who had always liked a performance.
As the service progressed Jack realised that he could be at almost any time or place in history. So many had stood in his place, uttered the same words, said the same psalms.
Elizabeth had hired a professional tenor to sing ‘Ae Fond Kiss’ and a piper to play ‘The Flowers of the Forest’ as the coffin was carried out of the kirk.
She did not cry.
It was only when the piper walked away and out down the lane, when the ceremony was over and the grave still lay open, that the tears of the rest of the family flowed: Douglas with his mother; Tessa with Angus, Imogen, Sarah and Gavin; Jack with his daughters.
Three black saloon cars took the family back to the house. Douglas could not stop crying.
‘Oh for goodness’ sake,’ Elizabeth snapped. ‘That’s enough.’
Tessa handed him a paper handkerchief. Emma had already left.
Back at the house the Edinburgh friends assembled, suited and kilted survivors, respectful and appreciative, grateful for any moment of humour to leaven the gathering: anecdotes, memories, and light conversation about golf handicaps, holiday caravans, and the renewed potential of the Scottish rugby team.
‘Beating France, who’d have thought it?’
Angus had persuaded as many of his father’s surviving friends as he could to come, laying on lifts, providing whisky and smoked salmon. They stood around, talking about funerals they had been to in the past, playing down both their ailments and their impending mortality, seeking out chairs when they were tired.
‘I much prefer funerals to weddings,’ a man was saying. ‘Weddings tend to go on for ever these days.’
Angus could hear his mother talking to friends and acquaintances about his father as they offered condolences, telling them again and again that Ian was a good man.
‘That he was.’
‘Few like him.’
Tessa handed round the canapés as Angus saw guests to and from their cars in a procession of greeting and farewell; all of them anxious to get home before the evening freeze.
Mr Maclean was asking Jack, ‘Where’s that nice girlfriend of yours?’ and Angus could hear his brother being defensive.
‘I think she’s in the Highlands.’
‘All going well?’
‘Hard to tell.’
‘You don’t want to lose her. She’s a fine-looking girl.’
As the cars drove away Angus watched the rooks over the fields behind the beehives. He remembered the summer, his father gathering honey, adding smoke to push the bees back, drifting it across the top bars of the frames before inspecting the combs, holding them up against the sun, a glow of gold against the light. He did not know how to continue his legacy.
It was his turn now; his mother had made that clear. He had to hold the family together. She appeared to have forgotten about Italy and his plans for a new life.
‘We’ll have to have a bit of a clear-out,’ Elizabeth said, a few weeks later. ‘I’m all for memories but I don’t want to be surrounded by them.’
They began to sort through books, clothes, furniture and possessions; all the accoutrements that had once been so essential to a life.
Angus was persuaded to keep his father’s coat and dress shoes and Jack and Douglas were offered a choice of suits, even though they recognised that they would never wear them. Of course they would have to give away lan’s professional clothing: the short bench wig for working in court, the long wig for ceremonial occasions, his gowns, tailcoats, white bow ties, and the long scarf-like falls.
There were old golfing trophies, out-of-date legal textbooks, and souvenirs of journeys made when Ian and his wife were young: a miniature gondola made out of matchsticks, a set of wooden elephants, a real ivory tusk that their father had been sent after defending a corrupt Nigerian. What on earth were they going to do with that? Angus thought. It was probably a criminal offence just to own it.
No matter how much the house was decluttered it always reminded Angus of his childhood. He could still see his father standing under the goalposts, watching him take a series of place kicks, fifteen from the right, fifteen from the centre, and fifteen from the left, working his way along a muddy twenty-five-yard line. His father punted the ball back each time so that Angus could practise his catching in the same session. Scotland B. He had waved to his mother and father in the West Stand. Even though the game had been at Murrayfield Angus could tell that the achievement had never been quite enough for his parents. He had never won a full cap.
Elizabeth had not been keen on rugby from the start. She worried that her son would succumb to injury or damage his hands in one of the rucks. ‘Give blood – play rugby,’ Douglas had joked but she had never thought it funny.
Angus thought of his mother before she was old, having tea on the table at ten past six, stirring the family into action as soon as her husband walked through the door. He could still smell the baking, shortbread and Victoria sponge, and hear his mother asking him to lay the table.
In those days they only had wine at Sunday lunch or when visitors came. Now they drank it all the time.
He remembered an American coming to stay, preparing one of his mother’s stronger concoctions, and whispering, ’This would kill me.’
He tried to think how long it would be until he was an orphan and how much of his own life he had left. If he died at the same age as his father he would have thirty years.
He knew his mother would be upset, and that in many ways it was wrong to leave so soon after his father’s death; but he was convinced that he and Tessa had to move away as soon as they could.
If they did not go now they would never go. Angus would never discover what his life could become.
Jack read aloud to his mother. Elizabeth tired in the evenings and she found his voice soothing. It reminded her of her husband.
She chose not fiction but guidebooks to places she had visited in the past: Germany after the war, Paris in the 1950s, the Italian lakes of her honeymoon.
Elizabeth interrupted her son with memories and contradictions, telling him that the guidebook had it wrong, that it wasn’t like that at all. It failed to mention the atmosphere of each city, the taste of the food and the quality of the cocktails.
Jack’s reading became an early-evening routine. His mother had done the same every night when he was a child; now the roles were reversed.
One evening she brought in an old shoebox and handed it to Jack. In the top corner, written in pencil, in Ian’s handwriting, was one word: Louvain.
‘I haven’t ever opened this,’ Elizabeth said. ‘Do you think I should?’
‘I don’t know, Mother.’
‘You know what it is?’
‘I think so.’
‘It contains her letters.’
‘Perhaps you’d rather not know…’
He thought about his mother censoring the love letters of soldiers during the war: eighteen-year-old boys being trained for mobile units abroad, all of them fearing their letters might be their last.
‘Could you read them for me?’ she asked.
‘I don’t want to upset you.’
‘I never knew what he thought about her; if there was ever any regret. There was a sadness about him sometimes. He thought I never noticed. Perhaps he was thinking what might have been, had she lived.’
‘Are you sure you want me to do this?’
Jack did not know what he would do if what he found was bad. Would his mother be strong enough for the truth or would he have to make up a story?
‘I’ll leave you now,’ she said. ‘Then I’ll come back and you must tell me what you think I need to know. After that I think you should burn them.’
Elizabeth left the room, stretching out her right arm to balance herself on the armchair. Jack had noticed how much more quickly she tired these days.
‘I’ll be in the kitchen with my gin.’
He opened the box, put the lid to one side, and pulled out a small pile of letters and playbills tied together with an old piece of string. On the top was a small signed photograph of a girl in a dancing costume and a feather boa, Always your Louvain.
She had probably given it to Ian before they were married. Jack untied the string. It was almost impossible to imagine Ian with a showgirl but there he was, in another photograph, in a restaurant with indoor palms, smoking a pipe, sitting with a proprietorial arm on her chair. There was a menu underneath: onion soup, coq au vin, oeufs a la neige. Jack supposed it was from his father’s wedding day.
Underneath the two photographs lay a pale-lavender envelope with his father’s name written in pencil. Inside was a sheet of paper filled with one word, in tiny writing, repeated again and again, filling both sides. Come.
Then Jack found a postcard of Notre-Dame. The same writing covered the back. Never leave me again, never leave me, never, never, never.
There was a birthday card, Bon Anniversaire, a lock of hair and a death certificate: Franfoise Louvain Henderson née Lusignan, 13 July 1947. Cause of death: heart failure.
She had been twenty-three years old.
Jack sifted through the papers and the photographs, looking without reading, unable to concentrate. Did he want to know any of this?
He stacked the documents together, retied the piece of string, and put everything back in the box. He picked up the lid and pressed it down, giving it a tap with his knuckles that he hoped would keep it safe in some way. He left the box on the table by the fire and went to find his mother.
Elizabeth was sitting at the kitchen table. A soup was simmering on the hob.
‘Anything?’ she asked.
‘She sounds a bit mad.’
‘Yes, I think she did go mad.’
‘Didn’t Father say she had TB?’
‘I think he found that easier to deal with.’
Easier than a broken heart, thought Jack. Heart failure.
‘And she was French?’
‘Her mother was French.’ Jack realised that his mother knew far more than she was telling him. ‘So there’s nothing of note?’
‘It’s just a few letters that don’t make very much sense.’
‘Ian said she was almost illiterate. She must have been very beautiful to make up for it.’
‘There’s a photograph…’
‘I always wondered what she looked like…’
Jack wished he had not said the word ‘photograph’. He thought of Louvain smiling into the camera; feathers everywhere.
‘I don’t think I need to see it…’
‘She wasn’t as beautiful as you…’
‘I was quite glamorous, I suppose. In my day.’
Jack remembered how his mother had once defined her marriage. From mink to sink.
‘Your father once told me that my eyes were so piercing that they could open an oyster a hundred yards away. “Only a hundred?” I said.’
Her son topped up her drink.
‘I never knew how much he looked at her letters; if he ever read them late at night or when I was out of the house.’
‘I doubt it, Mother. I don’t think anyone’s looked at them for years. Perhaps Father couldn’t throw them away at the time and then forgot all about them.’
‘I don’t like to think of him thinking of her. People are always more changed by love than they think they are.’
‘I’m sure he didn’t. And even if he did it was such a long time ago. He was far better off with you.’
‘I hope so.’ Elizabeth still sounded anxious. ‘We lasted long enough.’
‘And you were happy.’ Jack tried to make his words sound like a statement rather than a question.
‘Blissfully happy,’ said Elizabeth.
Jack admired the way his father never appeared to have any doubts about the decisions he had made in his life. He just did what he took to be the decent thing and never said a word.
‘By the way,’ his mother asked. ‘Are we ever going to see Krystyna again? I rather liked her, even if she did disappear.’
‘She’s a bit too young really…’
‘After the war older men found younger women all the time. Their wives had either died or run off or gone mad – just like Louvain – and I always felt sorry for them until up they’d pop with a nineteen-year-old beauty and start all over again. And it was often the ugly men that got them.’
‘Thanks.’
‘I don’t mean you.’
It took Jack a long time to mention the baby. Even when he did so, telling his mother immediately that the boy was Sandy’s, Elizabeth knew that she could not ask if Jack had ever thought of having a child with Krystyna himself.
‘She could have said something when she was with me,’Jack was saying.
‘She told you all about Sandy.’
‘You mean I should have guessed?’
Jack thought again how foolish he had been not to have known; to have gone through so much; to have harboured such hopes.
Elizabeth tried not to sound knowing.
‘One thing was probably hard enough. And she’s so far from home.’
‘I offered her a home.’
‘I know; but perhaps it wasn’t the kind of home she had in mind. Perhaps it still belonged to other people.’
Elizabeth tried to imagine what her husband would have said. Perhaps Jack would have been more open with his father.
‘I don’t know what to do,’ her son was saying. ‘I don’t suppose I’ll ever live with anyone ever again…’
‘I’m sure you’ll find someone.’
‘No. It’s best to be on my own…’
‘But you’re not on your own. You have the girls, you have us…’
‘You know what I mean. The whole thing with Krystyna has completely thrown me. I can’t concentrate on my work. I can’t concentrate on anything. I should never have asked her to stay…’
Elizabeth looked at her son.
‘Perhaps there are different ways of seeing each other.’
‘I don’t know. It’s hard to imagine the future.’
‘It might be dull if it was easy.’
‘I know that.’
‘Do you remember a girl visiting us when you were young, just once, at the house?’ Elizabeth said.
‘What girl?’
‘You must have been about ten. It was in the summer holidays. She brought you all a game of boules. She was dark and pale, and she went for a long walk with your father. When they came back she showed you all how to play the game. She was French.’
‘You’re not going to start telling me he had a daughter?’
‘No. He didn’t.’
‘That’s a relief. As soon as you said the word “French” I thought of Louvain.’
‘She was her daughter. Born before your father met her.’
‘Is she still alive?’
‘She lives outside Bordeaux.’
Jack sighed. He realised that it was the kind of exasperated noise his father always made.
‘Her name is Christiane. After her mother died she went to stay with her grandmother. But your father always kept in touch. He wanted to know how she was. I worried that she would ask for money or make things difficult but she never did.’
‘And she came here? To East Fortune?’
‘Only once. She was in Edinburgh for the Festival.’
‘Your generation. Honestly…’
‘Sometimes you have to save your secrets, Jack. Ian was very private about it. I suppose he just wanted to know that a part of his first wife was still in the world. I’m only telling you because it might help you.’
‘What about you? Did you mind?’
‘I did at the beginning. I thought of her, of course, just as I thought of Louvain, I couldn’t help it, but Ian never appeared to be troubled or distracted. It was not in his nature.’
‘I sometimes think he never worried about anything.’
‘He did, but he concealed it. He thought it was bad manners to appear over-anxious.’
‘Does Christiane know?’
‘I wrote to her to say that your father had died and she sent me such a kind letter back. She’s around sixty now. She runs some kind of children’s home.’
Jack stood up to close the shutters.
He looked out to see the snow melting under the trees and the first signs of spring on the branches. He could not remember a young French girl coming to the house at all. Perhaps it had never happened. Perhaps his mother was making the whole thing up in order to provide some kind of consolation. But he did think of his father, dressed as ‘the madly used Malvolio’, striding on to the stage with his yellow stockings and his cross-garters, smiling beneficently, Please one, and please all.
‘Sometimes people want everything to be clear and final,’ Elizabeth was saying, ‘but I’ve always believed that one of the greatest blessings in life is the opportunity to see things through. Most things come back to you eventually. I suppose that’s what makes everything so interesting.’
Jack wondered if ‘interesting’ was the right word.
He needed to think about all that had happened. He wanted to be on his own again. He told his mother that he had to get back.
‘Will you be all right?’ he asked.
‘Oh, I’ll be perfectly happy,’ she said. ‘You don’t need to worry about me.’
Jack tried to imagine what it must have been like when Elizabeth had first met her future husband; a man living in the aftermath of another marriage. He wondered how much she had asked his father about his past, or if his mother had secrets of her own: lost possibilities. Perhaps they had decided to maintain the grace of silence, finding it safer not to ask too many questions, only telling each other what needed to be known.
His mother and father seemed always to have known that the truth did not always reveal the most about a life. Perhaps they had recognised that it was not so much their lives as the stories they made of them that mattered.
Douglas knew that he should return to London and get on with his work but he was enjoying the reassurance of family company. He told his mother that, in return for her hospitality, he would tend to his father’s bees and check that the hives were ready for the spring.
He walked into the scullery, took off his jacket, and began to collect everything his father had taught him that he needed for the manipulation of the bees: the hive tool, the queen excluders, supers and the smoker. Then he changed into his overalls, making sure that his trousers were tucked into his boots. He remembered helping his father for the first time when he was a child. It was the only activity they had in common. Angus had his rugby, Jack was the scholar, and Douglas was left with the bees.
He was surprised how easily he returned to the routine. It was as familiar as a childhood country lane. He filled the smoker with a ball of newspaper, corrugated paper, sacking and dried grass. He lit it, put on his father’s veil and gloves, and began to smoke the entrance to the hive.
He thought of Julia. She had sent him one of her minimalist texts. Let me know. Douglas replied, Father dead. Miss you. He thought that covered everything. His brother Jack would have been proud of such concision.
He let the heat drift in, allowing the bees to fill themselves up from the honey store. He recalled his father’s wisdom: A full bee never starts a fight. Then he removed the roof and laid it gently on the ground. He took out the crown board and added more smoke to push the bees back, drifting it across the top bars of the frames until they had gone down into the bee ways between the combs. Some of them came out to try and defend the colony, following Douglas’s movements with their front legs in the air.
Julia’s texting became terse. Call me.
Douglas checked the colony had sufficient room. He tried to find the queen and made sure that the hive was free of disease and abnormality.
Even if he wanted to continue with Julia he was not sure that he could afford to do so. She was probably out of his league, he thought, and then asked himself whether he was in any league at all. If he were a football team what would he be? St Mirren? Queen of the South? He could almost hear rival fans taunting him: You’re shit and you know you are.
He could see the queen’s cell, suspended from the bottom strut. He made sure that there was a sufficient reserve of pollen and sugar syrup. The colony was prepared, as his father would have wanted, for the spring.
That, at least, was one good thing he could tell his mother.
He put the lid back on the hive and returned to find Elizabeth and Angus in the living room.
‘Job done. I think I’ll have a shower.’
‘Then you can join us for drinks,’ said Elizabeth. ‘When are you going back to London?’
‘I’m not sure.’
Another text arrived from Julia. Call.
‘Are you still staying with those friends of yours?’ Angus asked.
‘I am.’
‘And you’ve not got work up here?’
‘It’s mostly London…’
Julia again. Now. He really should reply.
‘So we’ll see less of you,’ said Elizabeth.
‘Not necessarily, Mother.’
‘I was thinking you might even be able to live here. Then you wouldn’t have to pay any rent.’
Douglas was irritated that she had suggested this in front of his brother.
‘I know, Mother. That’s very kind. But it’s not very practical.’
‘You could even have your father’s car.’
Douglas thought what it might be like. It would be a true sign of failure: the international television producer, accustomed to travelling all over Europe and eating in expensive restaurants, now living at home with his mother and driving his dad’s old car.
He was supposed to be the one with the bright future, who would live in a comfortable home on the outskirts of Los Angeles with two or three beautiful children. What was he doing, childless and alone, trying to convince his mother that he still had prospects?
Soon it would be dark.
The last of the light showed the dust on the piano and side tables. Douglas looked at the windows and noticed that the shutters needed repainting. He thought he should say something, offer to help, and guessed that his mother was already worried but hadn’t liked to ask. He would have to talk to Angus. It was yet another piece of maintenance; preserving the building as their father would have wanted.
‘I’ll go and have my shower.’
‘Well, don’t dilly-dally.’
Douglas knew that his mother was trying her best. She was far better at concealing disappointment than his father. That, at least, was one good thing about his death, Douglas decided. He would not have to face up to all those expectations any more.
He tried to imagine what his father would think of him now. He was almost relieved that he was dead.
Elizabeth knew she could not keep her boys together in the house but she wished they could stay longer or visit more often. The rooms contained so many memories of them that they felt complete when her sons were with her and empty when they were not. It never ceased to surprise her; how presence could alter the mood of a room.
Sometimes it helped to imagine that her husband was still with them, that he had only gone off to make a cup of tea and would soon return and settle down with his feet on a footstool and holes in his socks. He would read Wisden, or the latest political biography, and the two dogs would lie asleep at his feet after their afternoon walk, muddied and satisfied.
She could even hear Ian’s voice, apologising for dying first.
Selfish of me, I know…
You can’t help it.
At least the stronger of us survives.
I don’t think so.
You know I’d be hopeless without you. Everything is hopeless without you.
Elizabeth began to fall asleep. The rest of the family smiled as her head nodded down on to her chest but when she woke she looked afraid that she had been caught out.
‘Liebe kennt der allein, der ohne Hoffnung liebt.’
‘What?’ Jack asked.
‘It’s nothing.’
‘I didn’t know you could speak German, Mother.’
‘You’d be surprised what you don’t know.’
‘Perhaps you should go to bed,’ said Angus.
‘I think I will.’
Angus held out his arm and pulled his mother up from the chair.
‘Take your time.’
Elizabeth took a moment to steady herself.
‘There,’ she said, ‘I’ll be all right in a minute. Everything takes so much longer these days.’
She stopped to look at her family. They had all stood up to say goodnight: Angus and Tessa, Douglas and Jack.
The grandfather clock in the hall struck half past eleven. She had not realised that it was so late. She bade her nightly farewells, kissing Tessa and her sons.
‘I’ve been so very blessed.’
She made her way up the stairs, holding on to the banister. She knew that she was getting frailer and her balance was less certain. If she stumbled she would no longer be able to say, ‘It’s all right, I just tripped.’ She would have ‘had a fall’.
In her room she listened to the sounds of the house at night: the wind in the joists and her family slowly preparing for bed; the locking of the front door, the bathroom pull-lights going on and off, footsteps in corridors, little laughs and temporary farewells. She could hear a brandy glass fall – Shit – Douglas, no doubt – and Tessa fetching a dustpan and brush.
She sat in front of her dressing table and unwound her hair, brushing it free. For a moment she could almost see her mother sitting in the same chair, and then herself as a child with black, velvet ribbons, preparing for a birthday party. The sofa she had hidden behind was still in the living room.
She thought back to the formality of the parties she had known in her youth: the black-tie dinners, the reels and strathspeys. She could still envisage all the giggling and the retouching of hair and make-up in the bathrooms upstairs as the men drank whisky and port in the smoking room below.
Sometimes guests would come over from other parties and there could be as many as fourteen couples dancing in the house: the Dashing White Sergeant and the Military Two Step, the Canadian Barn Dance and the Palais Glide.
They would stay on for an early breakfast, of kedgeree or scrambled eggs and bacon, before leaving for home at three in the morning, exhilarated and appreciative, and Elizabeth would walk back upstairs, look out of her bedroom window, and wait for the light of dawn.
It never ceased to surprise her how she had lived so long, become so old, or how much her sons had changed. She had not thought it possible. It seemed almost unjust.
Outside it began to rain. Looking at the darkened window, Elizabeth could only see her reflection. She noticed that her natural expression had gained a sense of mild amusement recently, quizzicality, a renewed interest in what might happen next.
She thought of Ian dead-heading the roses. He had always been fastidious about his tasks in the garden but sometimes he cut them too soon. They might have been blowsy and far-gone but they still had life in them. It was one of the few things about her husband that had always irritated her, getting things done, staying ahead of the game, cutting things off when there was still a way to go yet.
She remembered teasing him, telling him that he had a bark that was fiercer than any animal, and that he really should try to speak to his sons without giving them orders. They found it difficult enough as it was to live up to his expectations.
She could hear his voice, answering her thoughts: What absolute rot.
And she felt guilty for suggesting how it must have been hard for the boys to be the sons of such loving parents.
So, Elizabeth, if we’d been miserable they would have been happier? Is that what you are saying?
She remembered the last time she had been out for a walk with her husband. They had driven to one of their favourite views, looking over the Borders from Soutra Summit. They had hardly said anything at all. Ian had reached for her hand and it had been enough.
Elizabeth could never have imagined that her life would turn out as it had: that she would have the boys and that they would marry, have children, face disappointments, and that two out of the three would separate.
The rest of the family had so much on their minds; so many anxieties. Elizabeth did not know what they still wanted out of life or what she could do to help them. Happiness was always so transitory, she thought, so elusive, and yet sometimes it did come, even out of darkness.
She remembered the words of the Minister at her husband’s funeral and hoped that she was strong enough to believe them: Suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope.
She knew that she had made her mistakes. She had expected too much of Angus, she had taken Jack for granted, she had spoiled Douglas; and it had taken each one of them a lifetime to leave home.
But they had survived, and Elizabeth had loved them throughout their lives. She had even learned not to show that love too strongly; just in case it alarmed them.