October 2000
This is Sebastian’s cottage; this is where I am. Alone for a fortnight – alone with a suitcase full of my grandmother’s books and papers. My mobile doesn’t work here on the ragged west coast of Scotland, and I’m eleven miles from the nearest pint of milk. So, no excuses; I’m going to begin.
‘Drive slowly once you’re past the lion gate,’ Sebastian had said. ‘It’s very easy to miss.’ I collected a hire car at Glasgow airport and let his directions draw me over grey stone bridges, past steep white rivulets smashing through bracken the colour of foxes, along the shores of flat pewter-sheened lochs, through wind and rain and mist. Any sense of where I’d come from fell away behind me; everything narrowed to a focal point, as it must have done for my father and Paulina all those years ago.
The lion gate I was to look out for was the wrought-iron entrance to a large estate. A long drive led up to the house; all I could see were grey Victorian turrets pointing up out of a battalion of beech trees. The turrets would have looked grand if the hills hadn’t looked so much grander. The beech trunks shone dull like armour in the gleam of an afternoon sun that pushed down shafts through swells of cloud. Two stone lions crouched on top of the gateposts, their ferocity smoothed by time. A red deer tiptoed out by the side of the gate, lifted its head, and pulled away.
‘Don’t turn down the drive,’ Sebastian had told me, ‘carry straight on.’ The cottage, once part of the estate, was right down by the sea. Once, it had housed farm labourers; you’d have needed hundreds of acres of this thin-skinned rocky ground to pull together any kind of living, and the sheep still wander right down to the shore, grazing on whatever’s there. Other low, white-walled cottages stand along the sea road with gaping roofs and rafters blackened by fire. What had made Simeon single out this one for salvation?
Dark was falling when I arrived – though ‘falling’ is the wrong word. Dusk was seeping across the hills; behind the tangled thorn trees the light thickened, grey and soft, but out to sea there was still a band of colour, a strip of orange bandaging the horizon beneath a mass of purple cloud. I parked in the shelter of a stone wall and began to unload. As I lugged my first two fistfuls of carrier bags – I’d bought food for the whole fortnight in Safeway in Dumbarton, an interesting exercise in itself – a heavy shape flopped across the stony path in front of me. A baby seal!Beyond the white fluffy stage, but too young, surely, to manage on its own. The rolling of the sea had lessened now, but earlier the day had been squally. The seal must have been hurled over the beach by a powerful wave, and not had the sense to find its way back again. I looked about – no one in sight, of course. The seal lay beating on the sharp stones, exposed, like an organ ripped from a living body. It had the slippery density of a pig; I didn’t think I’d be able to pick it up. I stood behind it and clapped my hands, startling myself with my own human noise, then flapped tentatively at its tail. It started to move away from me. I followed, stamping to make the ground vibrate, to encourage its forward movement. At last it had humped its way to the sea’s edge. ‘You’re on your own now,’ I said aloud. ‘I can’t do any more to help you.’ I zipped my fleece up to my chin and sat on a flat boulder, watching the seal turn dark and graceful in the water. It was gone in a moment, but I gazed out to sea until the strip of orange on the horizon had burned itself out.
Back at the cottage, it was all but dark. One of the carrier bags I’d left propped against the stone wall had toppled over, and even with a torch I wasn’t sure I’d retrieved everything that had spilled out. I unlocked the door – ‘Give it a kick, near the bottom,’ Sebastian had said – and stepped over the threshold, imagining my father. Their first time, had he carried Paulina in?
I propped the front door open, to let the sea wind disperse the long-locked-up smell of a holiday house. The caretaker had laid a fire. I held a match to the twists of newspaper and was glad to have a source of sound in the place that wasn’t either me or the wind. The double bed was made up, the top sheet folded down. I set up camp, as I always do – hung my clothes, lined up my shoes, stowed food in the appropriate places. In the middle of the sitting room was a low table with a few magazines fanned out on it with titles like Scotland Today. I moved these to a half-filled bookcase, and on the table I placed the package my mother had given me – the package she’d summoned me to collect, via a message on my answer-phone that I’d found waiting for me when I reeled in, drunk and exhilarated, after that first evening with Sebastian. ‘Darling’ – my mother’s voice had filled the flat, unusually high and resonant – ‘could you ring me back, as soon as you can? I’ve made a decision, and it’s rather important.’
I rang her the next morning, once I’d shaken off the tatters of the night. I’d slept, as one might have expected, badly. At dawn I woke for good, jolted out of sleep by a dream in which I was lying in a hospital bed being given an ultrasound scan and there, looming out of the dark swirling vapours inside me, was Sebastian’s face.
My mother and I hadn’t spoken of Sebastian since that day in June when she’d laid out the contents of my father’s desk like a minefield through which I had to pick my way. I’d retreated to London with a briefcase full of photographs and school reports and she’d never said another word about him. She must have wondered. She must have wanted to know, quite badly, whether I was taking steps to find my unknown brother. But I never thought about it, because I’ve never been in the habit of bearing my mother’s feelings in mind. That’s not a good thing, it’s just a fact. So when I rang her that Saturday morning, I should have been surprised to hear that the decision she’d made was something to do with Sebastian, but somehow I wasn’t.
For once, I didn’t hang fire. I said, ‘It sounds as if I ought to come to see you,’ and she said, ‘That would certainly make things easier.’
My mother was waiting for me in the garden of her new cottage. It was my first visit since she moved in, and I could see why it had attracted her. Everything was small and neat and orderly – no dark corners, nowhere to stow a secret. Very little character, really, and it struck me that she would find that restful. Standing at her garden gate in a floral blouse and brown corduroy skirt with useful pockets, her faded hair short and neatly set, she looked the epitome of middle-class respectability.
‘There are two things,’ she said, leading me into the breakfast room. ‘One to tell you, and one to give you.’ She’d laid out a tray for coffee with her usual precision-folded napkins, milk in a jug. I looked about me while the kettle boiled. She’d hung some quiet watercolours, scenes of lakes and not very mountainous mountains. I recognized them from a spare bedroom at Knighton. They were painted in the 1880s by my great-grandmother, Lionel Conway’s mother, she’d had a gentle talent for these things.
My mother brought in the coffee pot and sat down. ‘Hester,’ she said, ‘I’ll come straight to the point. I’ve been thinking about your father’s money and what you said about it, and I’ve come to agree with you. It doesn’t seem right that we should have it all. There must be reasons why Simeon left his… his other child out of his will, but he left no indication of what those reasons were, so I feel we’re free to act as we see fit.’
I nodded, impressed.
‘If he hoped to spare our feelings by leaving out any mention of his son,’ my mother continued, ‘– and I hardly need remind you that sparing people’s feelings wasn’t Simeon’s forte – but if he did, why leave the evidence untouched? He knew he was growing old, he knew his heart was bad. He mentioned death quite often. If he’d wanted to keep the boy’s existence from you, then he should have taken more radical steps.’
‘Did he know you knew?’
‘He must have done. It was never discussed, but he wasn’t a fool. So his will as it stands is the coward’s way out. And I want to be brave where Simeon failed.’ I dreaded a wobble in her voice, but there was none. ‘I want to transfer half the money to Sebastian Oakes, if you agree. Interesting that he was given our surname, not his mother’s. Do you know, I don’t even know what her surname was? Not that it matters, now. What matters is to trace the boy and set the legal process in motion. And, Hester, I want you to do that for me.’
I could have told her, then, that it was barely twelve hours since I’d been hugged goodnight by my father’s son, under a lamp post in Notting Hill, but I didn’t. My lifelong habit of reticence was strong. Instead I said, ‘Yes, I’ll do my best. I don’t think it will be too hard to find him.’
My mother seemed relieved, if anything, by the flatness of my response. ‘Good,’ she said, ‘that’s decided, then. Let me know how you get on.’
I said that I would.
We drank our coffee in silence. Then to speed things up a little I asked, ‘There was something else, too?’
There was a Jiffy bag lying on the table between us. I’d barely taken it in. My mother pushed it across to me. I read the inscription. ‘For Verity and Hester. To be opened after my death.’
I said, ‘I’d know that handwriting anywhere.’
My mother spoke quickly. ‘I don’t want it, Hester. It’s yours; do what you like with it. I can see it’s some kind of diary, but I haven’t read it and I don’t intend to. If you’re still interested in researching Grandma’s life, then perhaps it’ll be of use to you. But I’d rather you didn’t open it in front of me. I just feel as if I want to be rid of all that.’
I was startled, but I didn’t argue. I slipped it, unopened, into my bag. ‘Fine. Yes. I do still mean to do some research into Grandma. I just feel that someone’s going to some time, and I’d rather it was me. I’m going to take a couple of weeks off work soon, and hide myself away somewhere and just get on with it. Have you got those boxes of letters, by the way? I’d like to have a look at those.’
‘They’re all at Knighton still, in the attic. Dear Rosie said it was quite all right to leave them there, for you to collect whenever you want. I told you, didn’t I, that Rosie suggested we call in for lunch? What do you think?’
The thought of Rosie was like an open window. ‘I think that would be a very good idea.’
So we had a salady lunch at Knighton, and with Becky’s help I brought some shoeboxes full of old letters down from the attic and stowed them in the boot of my car. We talked about the coming baby; the children all knew about it now, because Rosie and Robin don’t keep secrets for long. Rosie said that if it was a girl she’d like to call it Evelyn. Angus pulled a face and said that sounded like a granny’s name, and I said, well, yes, that’s absolutely right. Rosie said it could be shortened to Eve, or Evie, and Angus said that would be better but it still wouldn’t be his first choice. ‘What would you choose, then, Ang?’ asked Robin, and Angus said firmly, ‘Jade.’
‘You could call it Evelyn whether it was a boy or a girl,’ pointed out Becky, who had Decline and Fall on her school reading list. I told her about Evelyn Waugh’s first wife also being an Evelyn, and how they had called each other ‘He-Evelyn’ and ‘She-Evelyn’. That led to a conversation about the Bright Young Things, and I thought, for by no means the first time, how lucky I was to have such an intelligent and interested goddaughter. I looked at Rosie, at her small, stubby, capable hands serving food and wiping up spillages and reaching out to pat whichever human or animal came within her orbit; and I thought, yes, hers is the baby that should be born. And suddenly I thought, Guy. Oh shit. Guy. When I got into the car to drive back to London, Rosie came up close and murmured, ‘Guy?’ and I said, ‘No. Absolutely not.’
They all stood at the door, waving me off, but as soon as I came to the first lay-by I pulled in and reached for my mobile. As I scrolled down for Guy’s number I had a sudden sharp vision of him sprawled naked across a hotel bed with a half-smile of anticipation, and I shuddered.
His answering voice was gruff, early-morning-ish, although it was late afternoon. ‘Guy? It’s Hester. I’m really sorry, but –’
‘Don’t tell me,’ he said, ‘you’ve got a headache. I’ve heard that so many times before.’
‘Yes,’ I said, ‘yes, I have got a headache. And it isn’t one that’s going to go away.’
There would be repercussions, I knew, but not for long. His campaign to woo me back had already lasted longer than most of his enterprises; he’d soon be diverted on to something else. The unfairness couldn’t be helped; at least I was saving him from a greater unfairness. I’d had a plan. I’d booked a room in an outrageously priced London hotel so that I could have sex with my ex-husband in an attempt to impregnate myself. I had planned to create a child with a man I didn’t love, didn’t even respect, simply because a child was the one thing I didn’t have, and you couldn’t just buy one in a shop. Yesterday this plan had made perfect sense to me; today it made me giddy with shame.
That was all about a month ago. I still haven’t told any of them about Sebastian, but I will. I want it all to be sorted, all the stuff about the money, and it very nearly is. This fortnight in Scotland is some kind of turning point. When I return, everything will be made clear.
I’ve told Sebastian about the money, but only recently. I wanted to get to know him first, and for him to get to know me. I wanted to be sure that there was some foundation for our – friendship? Kinship? I don’t know what to call it – that wasn’t overshadowed by money. Sitting here staring at the fire, I realize that it’s been years since I truly wanted anybody to get to know me. We’ve spent a fair bit of time together in the last few weeks, sometimes with Dylan, sometimes without. Dylan’s blond, crop-headed, tanned arms bulging out of a white T-shirt, with a wide Australian smile that’s almost as white. He and I went to see Sebastian in the play again, and Sebastian and I have had meals in and meals out and walks in the park. I don’t know whether it feels as if I’ve truly got a brother, because I don’t suppose I’ve any way of knowing what that feels like, but I do know that this feels – exhilarating. Set apart from anything else I’ve ever felt. Pure, almost. Free.
Sebastian gave me the use of this cottage before I told him about the money. He gave me a set of keys, and told me they were mine to keep. He said he was hoping not to have to let it again, just lend it to friends – ‘Friends – and family,’ he said smiling. He said he wanted to make more use of it himself; he’d like to spend time there with Dylan, make their mark on it, make it feel personal. This was the plan, but he wasn’t sure he could manage it without the rental income. And that’s when I stepped in and told him about the money. It took a while to sink in. We talked about it a lot, and we’ve got more talking to do. I still don’t think I’ve quite persuaded him that we’re both in earnest, my mother and I. He said, ‘I think I ought to meet your mother,’ and I agreed that would be the right thing to do, but not quite yet.
So here I am, alone in the cottage with the words that Grandma Evelyn left behind her. I’m sitting on the sofa with her diary on the table in front of me. My surroundings don’t give much away. The furnishings are simple and functional, displaying neither taste nor the lack of it. Carpets and curtains are the texture and colour of oatmeal, the walls a uniform cream. The framed black-and-white photographs of rock formations I attribute to Sebastian or Dylan, or both. As far as I can see, there’s nothing to conjure up Simeon-and-Paulina. At Knighton, even now that the Wilkinsons have overrun the place, and the front hall is filled with bicycles and wellington boots are strewn round the back door like the stumps of a fossilized forest – even now, one would only have to scratch the surface to uncover evidence of my parents’ marriage. In spite of my mother’s startling decision to throw so much away, her union with my father has, if you like, a solid historical framework. It happened. There are witnesses. But my father and Paulina – it all melts away. The ripples spread and vanish.
Grandma Evelyn – she’s still to be found at Knighton, too, even though she removed herself thirty years ago. And she left all these words for me to sift through, so she clearly didn’t seek her own erasure. I want to write her life – I don’t need to, but I do want to. I thought I needed a baby, but curiously enough I find I don’t. Somehow, I’ve managed to liberate myself from thinking about my life in terms of need.
I didn’t sleep much last night – my first in the cottage. I’d meant to start reading Grandma’s diary, but in the end I let it wait. I gazed into the fire until it had died right down, and then I lay in bed, thinking, examining the quality of this new aloneness, listening to the rattle of the wind and the distant thud of the sea. And after a while I could no longer deny to myself that there was another sound, a sound that was neither wind nor sea. An irregular, sniffling, scratching sound, much closer to the house; a living, breathing sound.
My heart did a thump, I have to admit, and my limbs felt heavy and weak – why is this paralysis a useful response to fear? I’ve never understood that. But I’ve always thought I’d rather face an assailant on my own two feet than be stabbed or strangled in my bed. So I persuaded my shaking body that it had to get up. I pulled a sweater on over my pyjamas, crept into the kitchen for a bread knife, and drew back the blind, just a little.
I didn’t need a torch; a white three-quarters moon had bounced clear of the clouds. I heard a scalp-prickling squeal, and then my eyes made out the two lithe, dark shapes squabbling over something in the courtyard. Weasels or stoats, or even pine-martens – I’m no expert on those narrow snaky mammals, but I could see what they were fighting over. I recognized the paper wrapping of the kipper I’d bought for myself when I stopped for lunch at Loch Fyne on the way down. It must have been one of the things that fell out of my carrier bag when I was busy with the seal. It had looked like a particularly magnificent kipper, tarnished gold, like an Etruscan artefact. I’d been looking forward to grilling it for my breakfast, with tomatoes.
I laughed out loud. I watched the tussle for a while, but when I twitched the blind to get a better view, the creatures looked up, listened, and undulated away into the darkness.
When I woke, the wind had dropped, the day was still and grey, almost warm. A good day for getting on with reading, for reacquainting myself with my grandmother. After breakfast – toast and grapefruit, and I regretted the loss of the kipper – I went outside to clear away the scraps of fishy paper the weasels had left behind.
There was hardly a garden at all – no need of one, with the shore and the hills stretching away for ever, and no one to tend to it, in any case. There was the stone wall, and a paved area for an outside table and chairs, and a curved stone seat set into an inlet in the wall that I hadn’t noticed the night before. The seat was positioned to face west; one could sit and watch the sunset. I went in to fetch some coffee and my grandmother’s diary, and took them out with me to that seat. What better way to spend a morning?
Then I noticed that the seat had a back. It was a single, large, smooth stone, grey with white speckles like a seal, and it was heart-shaped. It looked as if it had already been that shape, and a stonemason had worked on it to make it more so. There were initials chiselled into it, expertly, in a faintly Gaelic script. S.O. and P.O. And a date.
Had Paulina taken my father’s name, then, or had her own surname, coincidentally, also begun with an O? I would remember to ask Sebastian, but there was no hurry. I leaned my back against the heart-shaped stone and drew my grandmother’s diary out of its bag. The past stretched behind me, the future before me, and both were as wide as the horizon.