After You'd Gone (8 page)

She saw an uneasy look pass between the two of them. Ben

cleared his throat. 'Ann hasn't told her parents yet. '

Elspeth was aware of her face registering surprise and tried, unsuccessfully, to alter her expression to one of mild interest. 'Oh, I see.'

'We don't really want a long engagement, do we?' Ben turned to Ann, who had brought her hand up to her face and was pressing it to her mouth in an odd gesture. That this woman did not love her son became suddenly apparent to Elspeth. She felt a sharp stab of pity for Ben, who so obviously adored Ann. 'So we thought we'd get married in the autumn,' Ben was saying, 'October maybe.' He laughed with evident excitement. 'I start at the university in September and there's no point in waiting, is there?'

'Have you thought about where you'll live?'

Ben's face clouded. 'No, not really. Somewhere small. A university wage isn't much.'

'I've been giving it a bit of thought,' Elspeth began, 'and , you see, this house is far too big for just me. I don't know how you'd feel about living out in North Berwick but the train only takes about an hour. I'd love you both to come and live here, I really would, but only if it's what you want.'

Ben hesitated, looking at Ann. 'I'm not sure . . .'

'This is a beautiful house, Mrs . . . I mean, Elspeth. How long have you lived here?' Ann said.

'Most of Ben's life. It belonged to my parents-in-law. When my husband died, the boys were still very small, Ben was only a year old, and they asked me to come and live with them. '

'How did your husband die?'

Elspeth smiled to show that she didn't mind such a direct question. 'It was malaria. He was a missionary, like my father, and we were living in Africa. Everybody got malaria out there and there weren't the drugs then as there are now. I think he must have had a particularly bad strain. He died two weeks

49

later. It was not a good position for me to be in. We'd only been married two years and I had two wee boys to bring up and nowhere to go. I was very lucky that Gordon's parents offered to take me in.'

'What about your parents?'

'My father was a missionary, as I said. They didn't earn a great deal, as you probably know, and my mother and father couldn't have afforded to keep the three of us. Not that they would have turned us away, mind, but life would have been very difficult. Gordon's parents were so good to us, even though to begin with they didn't approve of our marriage.' Elspeth laughed.

'And you never married again?'

Ben shifted in his seat, wondering whether his mother minded Ann's frank questioning.

Elspeth was just pleased that Ann was talking at last. 'No, dear. Gordon was the only one for me.'

'So Gordon's parents left you the house?'

'That's right. They left it to me in the hope that I would pass it on to the boys, which I will do, one day.'

'Well, I would love to live here.' Ann smiled, and Elspeth felt relieved.

'Well, that's settled, then. Do you think you'll like North

Berwick?'

Elspeth's overriding recollection of boarding-school was of being hungry or cold, or often both. St Cuthbert's comprised mainly the daughters of well-to-do Edinburgh families, who would all go back to their homes in Morningside or the Grange at the end of the day. The boarding-house was just behind the school where there were twenty boarders from the ages of eight to eighteen. Elspeth remembered always having a cold, her cardigan sleeves stuffed with damp hankies embroidered

with 'E. A. Laurie' . Her parents loved her, she was sure of that, and wrote to her once a week, sending her scraps of brightly coloured silk, carved ebony elephants or sepia picture postcards of dusty streets. She never asked when she would see them again or why they had never told her they were going.

The most difficult part was the holidays. Even the other

boarders, miserable, thin girls, had places to go during the breaks, but Elspeth's parents could never have afforded to bring their daughter out to India. She spent her first few holidays hoping and expecting a kind letter from her grandmother or aunt in Glasgow, but it never came. They disapproved of Elspeth's mother's marriage and by default the daughter that came of it.

She missed her parents and North Berwick desperately. The climate of Edinburgh was so different from that of North Berwick, although they couldn't have been more than twenty five miles apart. Edinburgh was steeped in a coagulating damp and mist; whenever Elspeth tried to conjure her childhood there she envisaged wet, slicked streets at dusk, veiled with sheets of feathery rain and grey buildings. Every winter she was plagued by asthma and lay awake, struggling for breath, imagining herself back in the crisp, dry sea air of her birthplace.

Elspeth became a peculiarly independent and resourceful child, immune to the slights to which the other, richer girls subjected her. When, in her third year at St Cuthbert' s, a school outing to Kirkcaldy was organised, Elspeth wore her school uniform while the other girls were dressed in bright sweaters and matching hats. On the train, a girl called Catriona Macfarlane started a whisper that Elspeth Laurie had no other clothes apart from her school uniform. Catriona was queen bee in their year, so even girls who liked Elspeth were obliged to join in the giggling and nudging. Elspeth stared resolutely out Ma g g i e D ' F a r r ell

of the window at the rain-smudged outskirts of Edinburgh. Catriona became incensed by Elspeth's lack of response,, began whispering more and more ostentatiously and eventually stood up in the aisle and roughly pulled the sleeve of Elspeth's regulation red cardigan. 'Elspeth, why are you wearing your school uniform? Don't you have any other clothes, Elspeth?'

Elspeth turned to face her. 'No, I don't.'

Catriona was thrown. She had expected denial or silence.

The other girls watched, tense and silent.

'Why don't you have any other clothes, Elspeth?'

Elspeth turned her gaze out of the window again. 'My father is a missionary and he doesn't have much money.'

'How come you can afford to go to this school, then?' 'The Church pays for me. ' Elspeth's voice was quiet, and they had to strain to hear her.

Then a teacher, Miss Scott, came bustling down the aisle. 'Catriona Macf arlane, what are you doing out of your seat? Sit back down again please. We are nearly there.'

Elspeth invites Ann to see the garden.

'Ben tells me you are a biologist,' Elspeth says, as they step outside the back door. 'What part of biology is it that you specialise in?' Elspeth is hoping that now they are alone, Ann might open out a little more. Elspeth likes women. She finds their minds and lives interesting, and enjoys their company, especially that of educated, bright young women. She is always saddened that she could not have had a daughter after her two boys.

'Plant life, I suppose. My thesis was more to do with botany than biology.'

'How marvellous. You must get stuck into this garden

when you live here. It's far too big for me to manage, as you can see.'

5 2

The garden is indeed huge, with lush green grass sloping down to Westgate and a croquet lawn to the left of the house. The broad horizon of the sea glints through the gaps in the trees. Ann wanders away towards the bottom of the garden. The bright white of her dress hurts Elspeth's eyes. She notices Ben hovering in the kitchen window and pretends not to see.

'Where is it that you are from, Ann?' she calls.

Ann speaks without turning round. 'My parents live in London now, but I grew up mostly in a boarding-school in the middle of Dartmoor.'

'I spent a large chunk of my childhood in a boarding-school for young ladies in Edinburgh. It's surprising the number of people who did. Did your parents live abroad?'

'My father was a musician and my mother used to travel the world with him. '

'Ah. Are you musical yourself?'

Ann shakes her head. 'The school I went to didn't teach you anything apart from social skills. '

'I see. Boarding-schools are funny things. I refused to send the boys away, even though Gordon's parents wanted me to. I wanted them to grow up here in North Berwick.'

'People who send their children away to boarding-school should never have had them in the first place,' Ann says bitterly, stripping the branch she is fingering of its leaves. Elspeth begins to understand a little more of her prospective daughter-in-law.

Ben and Ann were married in what had once been Elspeth's father's church in the High Street in North Berwick. The whole town lined the pavement opposite to see Ben Raikes's pale bride emerge from the red sandstone church in her scandalously short and tight wedding dress. It had been chosen by Ann's mother in an attempt to inject some style into her daughter's

53

wedding. Ann had refused to get married in a register office in London and had insisted on having the ceremony in this godforsaken windswept village in the middle of nowhere. During the photographs, Ann's mother clung to her collapsing beehive hairdo, eyeing Elspeth's severe undyed hair and lace-up shoes. Ann's father attempted to light a cigarette in the brisk October breeze and tried to ignore all the curious onlookers across the street.

They had a week's honeymoon in the French Alps, where Ann's hair was bleached a dazzling white. Ben couldn't quite believe his luck and while she slept he would sit above her and trace with his fingertips the network of violet rivers frozen just beneath her skin.

Ann wanted children straight away and Ben didn't argue with her, as he would never argue with her about anything. During the first couple of months of marriage when Ann failed to conceive, she didn't worry particularly. But when six months of trying to get pregnant had gone by, she began to fret. 'Don't worry, darling,' Ben said, when he saw her reach despondently into the cupboard for the sanitary towels that she clipped to a looped belt around her waist. 'It takes time, you know.'

Ben left the house at around eight and Elspeth would usually be out and about in North Berwick for most of the day doing her charity work or seeing her innumerable friends. Ann would wander from room to room of the house that was supposed to be her home but in which she never failed to feel like a guest who'd long outstayed her welcome, pressing her lower stomach with clenched fists, as if willing it to miraculously gestate. If she had a child, she told herself, she'd feel like she had a right to live in this echoey house with upright chairs, leather-backed books and watercolours of seabirds.

Nine months into their marriage, Ann became passionate and cool by turns. Sometimes when Ben came home from the university she would be waiting for him upstairs on the bed, glowing with desire, wearing nothing but her slip. Downstairs, Elspeth would turn up the wireless while Ann would seize him with hot palms, pressing herself against him, and pull him towards the bed. When they had fin ished, Ann would hold on to Ben, wanting him to stay in her as long as possible, and lie completely motionless, imagining the sperm writhing up inside her. But every month without fail she would feel the aching cramps in her back and the slow, dropping heat between her legs. Then she would turn away from Ben in bed. Confused, he would tentatively caress her stiff back and kiss her impassive, taut face, murmuring to her, 'Ann, my love. Please, Ann. Don't be upset, my love.'

This went on for a year. It was Elspeth who finally cracked. One morning at breakfast when Ben had left, she took one look at the pinched whiteness of Ann's face and said, 'Things can't go on like this, can they?'

Ann said nothing but Elspeth saw something she had never seen before: a single, silver tear, coursing down Ann's porcelain cheek.

'I think we should make an appointment to see the doctor.'

A hoarse sob broke from Ann's thin frame.
'I
can't.
I

can't bear it.'

'Can't bear what?'

'I can't bear to be told that I can't have children.'

Elspeth took Ann in her arms for the first and last time of their lives together. Ann stiffened momentarily then pressed her face into Elspeth's shoulder and sobbed.

'There, there. You cry. Let it all out. Crying never did

anyone any harm,' Elspeth kept saying. 'We'll sort it out. Don't worry.'

The family doctor took Ann's pulse and blood pressure, palpated her stomach through her skirt, asked discreet ques tions about her menstrual cycle and 'marital relations', making notes all the time in deft, neat handwriting. 'There is nothing wrong with you or your husband, Mrs Raikes. I am quite certain that you will conceive in no time. Take exercise, get some fresh air.' He also gave her a prescription.

In the chemist's on the High Street, Elspeth scrutinized the prescription, holding it close to her face. 'What are these?' she asked the pharmacist.