Crow Lake (22 page)

Luke said, “No, we’ve got to know. Marie? Who killed Laurie? Was it your dad?”

Matt said, “I said leave her! Jesus Christ! Can’t you see the state she’s in?”

Luke didn’t look at him. He couldn’t look at him. He kept his eyes on Marie. He said quietly, “I see the state she’s in all right. Are you saying we should calm her down and send her home to her father?”

Matt stared at him, but Luke wouldn’t meet his eyes. He said, “Marie, you’ve got to tell us. Did your father kill Laurie?”

She looked at him. You could see her focus on him and figure out who he was. She whispered, “Yes.”

“Are you sure? Did you see it happen?”

“Yes.”

“But Laurie ran away, Marie. Matt saw him go.”

Her eyes were huge in the whiteness of her face. She said, “He came back. It was cold. He came back for his coat, and my dad caught him, and he took him into the barn. We tried to stop him but we couldn’t, and he hit him, and Laurie hit him back, so then he hit him and hit him, and Laurie fell, and he hit his head, and there was blood, and there was blood …”

Luke said, “Okay, okay, Marie.”

“… and there was blood, and …”

Luke said to Matt, without looking at him, “Take her into the other room.”

“What are you going to do?”

“I’m going to call Dr. Christopherson, and then I’m going to call the police.”

Marie gave another cry. She said, “He didn’t mean to kill him! He was hitting him, and we were trying to stop him, and he was hitting him, and Laurie fell! He hit his head on the blade of the plough! Oh God, oh God, don’t call the police! He’ll kill me!”

Luke said, “Take her into the other room.”

Marie said, “No! No! Oh please! Oh please don’t, he’ll kill us all! He’ll kill my mother! He’ll kill us all!”

Matt couldn’t move, so Luke brushed him aside and picked her up and though she was screaming and fighting him, he carried her into the other room, with Matt trailing helplessly behind. He said to Matt, “Keep her here.” And then he came back and called Dr. Christopherson and the police.

Calvin Pye killed himself three hours later.

The police had driven out from Struan and had come first to our house to talk to Marie, in the presence of Dr. Christopherson. From there they went to the farm. Calvin himself opened the door to them. When they said that they had come to ask him a few questions about Laurie’s disappearance, he said, fine, but could he just go and tell his wife because she’d be wondering who was at the door. They said yes, and waited uneasily on the doorstep. Almost at once there was a shot. Calvin kept a loaded shotgun above the fireplace in the living room and he shot himself right there, in front of Mrs. Pye, before she had time to get out of her chair. Rosie, fortunately, was asleep upstairs.

Calvin died without saying where Laurie’s body was, and neither Marie nor her mother knew. It took the police two weeks to find it, and they discovered it then only because of a combination of a dry summer and a peculiar chance. Calvin had put Laurie’s body in an old feed sack, weighted with rocks, and dropped the sack into one of the ponds. The pond he chose—not the one closest to the farm, and not “our” pond, but one of the deeper ones in between—was steep-sided, and the sack would have sunk a good twenty feet except that it snagged on a jutting piece of rock. By October, when the water level was at its lowest, the top of the sack was just visible below the surface.

Dr. Christopherson took Mrs. Pye to the mental hospital in St. Thomas two days after Laurie’s body was found. She died within a year of no disease anyone could put a name to. Rosie was sent to her mother’s relatives in New Liskeard. I know Marie tried to keep in touch with her, but Rosie never really mastered the art of writing, so it was difficult. She married very young and moved out of the area. Whether Marie knows where she is now, I’ve never liked to ask.

Matt and Marie married in October, and Matt took over the farm. I’m sure it was the last thing in the world either of them wanted to do.

The week before the wedding, when the police had finished all their investigations and no longer needed access to the barn where Laurie had died, Matt burned it down. That act was his wedding present to Marie. Luke helped him build a new one. That was his wedding present to the two of them.

Simon was born the following April. It was a difficult birth, and as a consequence Marie has been unable to have more children.

chapter
TWENTY-FOUR

I was awakened about five in the morning by the tractor starting up. Daniel snorted and opened his eyes and said, “What the
hell
was that?” and I said, “The tractor,” but he was already asleep again.

I lay for a while, missing the sound of the lake. Normally, as I said, I stay with Luke and Bo when I come home, and the quiet slow hush, hush of the waves is the last and first thing I hear every day. Here it was farmyard noises instead. And the sound of Daniel breathing beside me.

There had been, as I had known there would be, a moment’s embarrassment the night before about the sleeping arrangements. After the clearing up was done, when Luke and Bo had gone and Simon had said goodnight and gone off upstairs, I’d overheard Marie, who was still in the kitchen with Matt, say, “Well
you
ask her.
I
can’t ask her.” And a moment later Matt came into the living room looking uncomfortable.

But I’d anticipated it and worked out what to say. I could have suggested separate rooms just to save embarrassment. Daniel would have gone along with it, though he wouldn’t have understood why. But although I had not wanted him to come, granted that he was here I found that I wanted him beside me. I wanted him to be a buffer between me and the rest of them. He was my present. If he was there, then perhaps the past would not spread out in the night and overwhelm me. Besides, I thought, a shade defiantly, what right had Matt, of all people, to pass judgment? Silly, I know. It would never occur to him to judge me.

So when he came into the living room examining a small scratch on his hand with unusual interest I said casually, “I think it’s about time we went up too, Matt. Where do you want us? The front bedroom?” I knew the layout of the upstairs and knew that apart from Matt and Marie’s room, the front room was the only one with a double bed. And Matt looked relieved and said, “Yes, sure. That would be fine.”

We took our bags up, undressed, and climbed into the big loose-sprung double bed. I was expecting Daniel to keep me awake half the night dissecting my family, but he must have been worn out by the Untamed Splendour of the Wilderness because after telling me that I hadn’t described them properly
at all,
he almost instantly fell asleep. I lay awake for half an hour or so, listening to the movements of the house and thinking about things long gone, and finally fell into sleep like falling into a pit, and didn’t wake until the tractor roared.

For a while after that I lay awake, trying not to think too much about the room we were in. It was the largest bedroom in the house and in the best position, overlooking the farmyard. It must have been Mr. and Mrs. Pye’s room—otherwise Matt and Marie would have used it. It was what Miss Vernon would have called handsome: well proportioned, with screened windows on two sides. Matt and Marie used a room at the side of the house and Simon had a smaller one beside the bathroom. There were three other bedrooms, one of them furnished with bunks, one with a desk for the farm accounts, and the other used as a storeroom. Apart from the bunks, which were built in, I was pretty sure that most of the furniture in the house postdated the Pyes. I imagine Matt and Marie got rid of everything they could, and replaced things slowly, when they could afford to. They’d want as little to remind them of the past as possible.

I lay halfway between sleep and wakefulness, thinking dimly that even so, you would expect there to be a lingering atmosphere of despair in the house, and yet, somehow, there didn’t seem to be. And then I must have fallen asleep again, because the next thing I heard was the tractor coming back and Matt and Simon talking in low voices out in the yard. It was seven o’clock, so I prodded Daniel and got up.

Marie was in the middle of making French toast and bacon and sausages and cornbread and muffins and scrambled eggs. I asked if I could help and she looked slightly panicky at the thought and said, “Oh, thanks, but—I don’t think so. Maybe you could find the men and tell them breakfast is in ten minutes? I think they’re in the yard.”

So I went out. The sun was strong already, and the sky a pale clear blue. Daniel had joined Matt and Simon, and the three of them were admiring the tractor.

“How much did it set you back?” Daniel was saying. “If it’s not a rude question.”

Simon and Matt looked blankly at each other.

“How much was it, in the end?” Matt said. “We beat him down quite a bit.”

“Like hell we did,” Simon said. “You chickened out. It was tragic. Here’s Auntie Kate. How do you like our baby?” He patted the tractor’s muddy flank. Where you could see through the mud it was gleaming red; it looked powerful and businesslike, with its vast wheels and deep-cut treads, and oddly graceful, in the way anything well designed is graceful.

I said, “Happy birthday, Simon. Your baby’s lovely. Is she new?”

“Two weeks old today.”

“She’s got a terrible cough first thing in the morning,” I said. “Are you sure she’s all right?”

“Spoken like a true city slicker,” Matt said. “We’re just going to take Dan out for a run. If you’re lucky you can have a turn later.”

I said, “Actually, I came to tell you breakfast is almost ready. Marie says ten minutes.”

“Oh,” said Matt. He looked at Daniel. “Later? After the celebrations? I’d say after breakfast, but I suspect Marie has other plans for us.”

“Later’s fine,” Daniel said.

We started toward the house, Simon and Daniel still talking tractors, Matt and I a few steps behind.

“So how’s it going?” I asked. “The farm, I mean. It’s looking prosperous.”

He smiled. “We’re surviving. We’re never going to be rich, but it’s not bad.”

I nodded. At least he had never cared about being rich.

There was a pause. It is the pauses that I dread, in my conversations with Matt. The conversations themselves, polite and careful, as if between strangers, are bad enough, but it is the pauses I take home with me afterwards.

“How about you?” he said. “How’s your research?”

“It’s going well.”

“What—what are you actually researching, Kate? I don’t think you’ve ever said.”

I watched our feet, our shoes stirring the fine dust of the farmyard. No, I had never said. Why rub his nose in the fact that I was doing the sort of thing he would have so loved to do? But now it seemed I had no option.

I said, “Well, roughly speaking, I’m looking into the effects of surfactants on the inhabitants of the surface film.”

“Things like detergents?”

“Yes. And wetting agents from pesticides and herbicides. That sort of thing.”

He nodded. “Interesting stuff.”

“Yes. Yes, it is.”

Interesting stuff.

What anyone would say. As if he were just anyone. As if he had not taught me most of what I know. That is literally true, I believe. It is the approach that is important— the openness, the ability to really
see,
without being blinded by preconceptions—and Matt taught me that. The things I have learned since have been mere details.

He was waiting for me to go on, to describe my work to him, but I could not bring myself to do that. It wasn’t that I didn’t think he would understand—if I could explain my work to an undergraduate I could certainly explain it to Matt. It was the fact that I would
have to explain it.
I cannot describe how wrong that seemed, and how cruel.

He had slowed down and I had to do likewise. The others went on ahead. I glanced at him and he gave me a swift smile. When he is under stress his smile is stretched in a way it isn’t normally. I imagine most people wouldn’t notice, but I watched him so much when I was young, you see. I know his face so well.

“Daniel seems a great guy,” he said at last.

“Yes,” I said, relieved beyond measure that he was dropping it. “Yes, he is.”

“Is it … serious? Between the two of you?”

“It might be. I think it probably is.”

“Good. Good. That’s great.”

He bent down and picked up a flat stone. If we’d been on the beach he would have skipped it, but we weren’t, so after turning it over a few times he dropped it again. Then he looked at me, that clear, grey-eyed, steady look of his.

“You should take him back to the ponds afterwards, Kate. They’re in great shape.”

I looked away quickly. In my mind’s eye, I saw him, stealing a few moments from the incessant demands of the farm, walking back to the ponds, standing, alone, looking into their depths.

I waited a moment, to be sure that my throat would be clear. Simon and Daniel had reached the house. Marie was standing in the doorway.

“Yes,” I said finally. “Yes, I should do that.”

Marie seemed to be watching us. I couldn’t make out her expression.

I said, “I think breakfast is ready.”

Matt nodded, and prodded at the stone with his shoe. “Right,” he said. “Let’s go in.”

Matt and Simon and Daniel started moving furniture around right after breakfast. They’d decided that the day was going to be warm enough to hold the party outside, so they were taking out tables and chairs and setting them up around the side of the house, where there was grass and a struggling fringe of garden.

Marie and I stayed in the kitchen, doing women’s work. Or at least, Marie did women’s work, and I stood and watched. She seemed distracted. Normally Marie is fairly confident in her own kitchen, but she was moving ineffectually about, taking things out of the refrigerator and putting them back in, opening drawers and closing them again. She had about two dozen desserts spread about on the counter in varying stages of unreadiness and couldn’t seem to decide which to start on first. I wondered if it was the party that was unnerving her or if it was me. I know she does not find me easy to have around. I would have gone out and left her to it, except that it seemed so impolite.

I said for the third time, “There must be something I can do, Marie. Let me whip the cream.”

“Oh,” she said. “Well—all right. If you like. Thank you.” She opened the refrigerator and took out a jug of cream. “I’ll get you the beater,” she said.

“It’s here.”

“Oh. Yes. All right, I’ll get a bowl.”

She put down the cream, opened the cupboard, and got out a large bowl. Instead of giving it to me though, she stood holding it in both hands, her back to me. Suddenly, without turning around, she said, “What did you think of the tractor?”

“The tractor?” I said, startled.

“Yes.”

“I thought it was great. I don’t know a lot about tractors, but it looked really good.”

She nodded, her back still to me. She said, “Matt and Simon chose it together. They spent weeks working out just what they wanted. The two of them. They had brochures and magazines all over the kitchen table for weeks. They’re very proud of it.”

I laughed. I said, “I know.”

She turned around, holding the bowl in front of her. She was smiling rather oddly. She said, “What do you think of Simon?”

I stared at her. I said, “I like him very much. Very much. He’s a lovely boy. An extremely nice boy.”

I felt myself flushing—her question was so strange and my reply sounded so old-fashioned and patronizing. Then it struck me that Simon was now eighteen, the same age as Matt had been that disastrous summer. I wondered if she was worrying about him. I was sure he was far too streetwise to make his father’s mistakes, but still, she might be worrying.

I said, “I also think he has a lot of common sense, Marie. He’s a lot more mature than most of the students I see. I think he’ll do very well next year.”

She nodded. She put down the bowl and wrapped her arms around herself—the same old defensive gesture, but different somehow. Her face was flushed, but she seemed grim rather than embarrassed. Fierce, almost. It was so unlike her that I was quite unnerved.

She said, “How does Matt strike you? Does he seem well to you?”

“I think he’s looking very well. Very well.”

“Do you think he looks happy?”

I was alarmed now. We do not ask such questions in our family.

“He looks happy to me, Marie. Why? What’s wrong?”

“Nothing.” She gave a little shrug. “I just wondered if you could see it, that’s all. Could see that he is well and happy and has a wonderful son who he loves and has a good time with. I just wanted you to see it, for once, after all this time.”

In the silence we could hear furniture being heaved about. Something had become stuck in a doorway. Matt was cursing, Simon was hooting with laughter. I heard Daniel say, “Maybe if we tried going back …”

Marie said, “If you only knew how much your opinion matters to him, Kate. If you could see him when he knows you’re coming home … at first he’s so happy … but then as it gets closer, he doesn’t sleep. Luke forgave him years ago, and Bo never knew that there was anything to forgive. But your disappointment—you thinking his whole life is a failure, feeling so sorry for him for the way he let himself down—that’s been so hard for him to bear. That’s been the hardest thing. Everything else that’s happened to him has been easy compared to that.”

I was so astonished that I found it hard to take in what she was saying. She was so upset, so emotional, and it seemed to me that her accusations made no sense. What was my disappointment compared to the loss of Matt’s dreams?

I said, “I don’t think his whole life is a failure, Marie. I think you’ve both done very well, I think Simon is a credit—”

“You do think his life is a failure.” Her arms were wrapped tight, hands gripping her elbows. I was shocked, not only by what she was saying but by the timing of it, a birthday party, guests about to arrive. “You think what happened is the great tragedy of his life. You can hardly look at him, you feel so sorry for him and so angry with him still. After all these years you can still hardly look at him, Kate.”

I don’t know what I would have said then, but I was spared because Simon came in. He surveyed the desserts and then stuck his finger in one and said, “What’s this one then?”

Marie said sharply, “Leave it!” and he jumped and said “Okay! Okay!” and backed out, looking at her strangely. We heard him say, “Don’t go in there. Mum’s getting ratty.”