The Legacy (14 page)

“Are you the Dinny my mum used to play with when she was little?”

“Yes. I am.”

“Erica was telling me about you. She said you were best friends.” Dinny looks at me sharply, and I feel guilty, even though what I said was true.

“Well, we were, I suppose.” His voice calm and low, always measured.

“Stocking up for Christmas?” I butt in, inanely. The Spar is hardly bursting with seasonal fare; threadbare tinsel taped to the edges of the shelves. Dinny shakes his head, rolls his eyes slightly.

“Honey wants salt-and-vinegar chips,” he says, then looks away sheepishly.

“Did you see Mum, outside? She’s out there in the car—did you say hello?” Eddie asks. A flutter in the pit of my stomach.

“No. I didn’t. I’ll . . . I will now,” Dinny says, turning to the door, looking out at my grubby white car. His eyes are intent; he moves straight, shoulders tense, as if compelled to go to her.

I can see him, through the glass in the door. Between the spray-on drifts of fake snow in its corners. He bends down at the window, his breath clouding the air. Beth rolls the window down. I can’t see her face with Dinny in the way. I see her hands go up toward her mouth and then flutter away again, drifting as if weightless. I duck; I crane my neck to see. I strain my ears, but all I can hear is Slade on the radio behind the counter. Dinny leans his bare arm on the roof of the car and I feel the ache of that cold metal on my own skin.

“Rick—it’s our go,” Eddie says, nudging me with his elbow. I heave the basket onto the counter, am forced to break off my surveillance and smile at the gloomy-looking man at the till. I pay for the Coke, a Twix and some ham for lunch, and rush to get back out to the car.

“So what do you do now? You always wanted to be a concert flautist, if I remember rightly?” Dinny is saying. He straightens up from leaning on the car, folds his arms. He looks defensive suddenly, and I notice that Beth has not got out of the car to talk to him. She barely looks at him, keeps rearranging the ends of her scarf in her lap.

“Oh, that didn’t quite pan out,” she says with a thin little laugh. “I got to grade seven and then . . .” She pauses, looks away again. She got to grade seven the spring before Henry disappeared. “I stopped practicing as much,” she finishes, flatly. “I do some translating now. French and Italian, mostly.”

“Oh,” Dinny says. He studies her, and the moment hangs, so I blunder in.

“I struggle enough with English—trying to teach it to teenagers is like trying to push water uphill with a fork. But Beth always did have a gift for languages.”

“You have to listen, that’s all, Rick,” Beth says to me, and it is a reproof of some kind.

“Never was my strongest suit,” I agree with a smile. “We’ve just been to Avebury. Ed was keen to see it because they’ve been doing it at school. Mind you, once we got there you were more interested in having a hot fudge sundae in the pub, weren’t you, Ed?”

“It was
amazing
,” Eddie assures us. Dinny gives me a quizzical smile, but when Beth asks him nothing more, his face falls slightly and he steps back from the car.

“So, how long are you staying?” he asks, and he addresses this to me, since Beth is staring straight ahead.

“For Christmas, definitely. After that, we’re not really sure. There’s a lot of sorting out to be done,” I say. Which is honest and ambiguous enough. “How about you?”

“For the time being,” Dinny shrugs; even more ambiguous.

“Ah.” I smile.

“Well, I’d better be getting on. Good to see you again, Beth. Nice to meet you, Ed,” he says, nodding to us and walking away.

“He didn’t get the chips,” Eddie observes.

“No. He must have forgotten,” I agree, breathless. “I’ll get some and take them over later.”

“Cool.” Eddie nods. He pulls open the back door with one hand, the other hand fighting its way into the Twix. So flippant. No idea how huge the thing that just happened is, here at the car window. I go back into the shop, buy salt-and-vinegar chips, and when I get back into the car I start the engine and take us home, and I don’t look at Beth because I feel too awkward, and the things I would ask I won’t ask in front of her son.

E
ddie is lying on his bed, in pyjamas, tethered to his iPod. On his front with his heels swinging over his back. He’s reading a book called
Sasquatch!
and with his music on he can’t hear the owls outside, calling to each other between trees. I leave him. Downstairs, Beth is making mint tea, her fingers pinching the corner of the teabag and dipping it, over and over, into the water.

“I hope Dinny didn’t startle you, appearing at the car window like that?” I say. Lightly as I can. Beth glances at me, presses her lips together.

“I saw him go into the shop,” she says, still dipping.

“Really? And you recognized him? I don’t think I would have—not just from glimpsing him go by.”

“Don’t be ridiculous—he looks exactly the same,” she says. I feel inadequate—that she saw something I didn’t.

“Well,” I say. “Pretty amazing to see him again after all this time, isn’t it?”

“Yes, I suppose so,” she murmurs.

Now I can’t think what to ask. She should not be this careless about it. It should matter more. I search her face and frame for signs. “Perhaps we should ask them up to the house. For a drink or something?”

“They?”

“Dinny and Honey. She’s his . . . well, I’m not sure if they’re married. She’s about to have his baby. You could talk her out of having it in the woods. I think he’d be grateful for that.”

“Having it in the woods? How extraordinary,” Beth says. “What a pretty name though—Honey.” There is more to it than this. There has to be.

“Look, are you sure you’re OK?”

“Why wouldn’t I be?” she says, that same bemused tone that I don’t believe. She looks at me again, and I see that her fingers are in the hot water, mid-dip. Steaming hot water, and she does not flinch.

“But you hardly spoke to him. You two used to be so close . . . didn’t you want to talk to him? Catch up?”

“Twenty-three years is a long time, Erica. We’re totally different people now.”

“Not
totally
different—you’re still you. He’s still him. We’re still the same people who played together as kids . . .”

“People change. They move on,” she insists.

“Beth,” I say, eventually, “what happened? To Henry, I mean?”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, I mean, what happened to him?”

“He disappeared,” she says flatly, but her voice is like thin ice.

“No, but, do you remember, that day at the pond? The day he vanished? Do you remember what happened?” I press. I don’t think I should. I partly want to know, I partly want to move her. And I know I shouldn’t. Beth’s hand slips down to the worktop. It knocks her cup roughly aside, slops tea. She takes a deep breath.

“How can you ask me that?” she demands, constricted.

“How can I? Why shouldn’t I?” I ask, but when I look up I see she is shaking, eyes alight with anger. She doesn’t answer for a while.

“Just because Dinny’s around . . . just because he’s here it doesn’t mean you need to go raking up the past!” she says.

“What’s it got to do with Dinny? I just asked a simple question!”

“Well, don’t! Don’t keep asking bloody questions, Erica!” Beth snaps, walking away. I sit quietly for a long time, and I picture that day.

W
e got up early because it had been such a hot night. A night when the sheets seemed to wrap themselves around my legs, and I woke up again and again with my hair stuck in clammy rat-tails to my forehead and neck. We helped ourselves to breakfast and then listened to the radio in the conservatory, which faced north and was cool in the morning. Terracotta tiled floor, ranks of orchids and ferns on the window sill. We wallowed in Caroline’s swing chair, which had blue canvas cushions that smelt faintly sharp, almost feline. Caroline was dead by then. Dead when I was five or six years old. I ran past that swing chair once, a very little girl, and did not see her in it until her stick shot out and caught me.
Laura!
she snapped, calling me my mother’s name,
Go and find Corin. Tell him I need to see him. I must see him!
I had no idea who Corin was. I was terrified of the limp bundle of fabric in the swing chair, the incongruous strength behind that stick. I ducked beneath it, and ran.

We got dressed at the last possible minute, went reluctantly to church with Meredith and our parents, ate lunch in the shade of the oak tree on the lawn. A special little table laid there just for the three of us. Beth, Henry and me. Peanut butter-and-cucumber sandwiches, which Mum had made for us because she knew we were too hot and fractious to eat the soup. The itchy press of the wicker chair into the backs of my legs. Some small bird in the tree crapped on the table. Henry scraped it up with his knife, flicked it at me. I ducked so violently that I fell off my chair, kicked the table leg, spilt my lemonade and Beth’s. Henry laughed so hard a lump of bread went up his nose, and he choked until his eyes streamed. Beth and I watched, satisfied; we did not thump him on the back. He was vile for the rest of the day. We tried everything to lose him. The heat made him groggy and violent, like a sun-struck bull. Eventually he was called inside to lie down because he was caught tying a Labrador’s legs together with string while it panted, long-suffering and bewildered. Meredith would not stand for the torment of her Labradors.

But he came out again later, as the afternoon broadened. He found us at the dew pond. The three of us by then, of course. I had been swimming, pretending to be an otter, a mermaid, a dolphin. Henry laughed at my wet saggy knickers, at the bulge of water in the gusset.
Have you pissed your pants, Erica?
Then something,
something
. Running. Thoughts of the plughole at the bottom of the pond, of Henry being sucked down through it. That must have been why I said to them, again and again:
Look in the pond. I think he’s in the pond. We were all at the pond
. Even though they had looked, they told me. Mum told me, the policeman told me. They had looked and he wasn’t there. No need for divers—the water was clear enough to see. Meredith took me by the shoulders, shook me, shouted,
Where is he, Erica?
A tiny bubble of spit from her mouth landed warm and wet on my cheek.
Mother, stop it! Don’t!
Beth and I were given dinner in the kitchen, our mother spooning beans onto our toast, her face pale and preoccupied. As dusk bloomed the evening smelled of hot grass getting damp, and air so good you could eat it. But Beth did not eat. That was the first time, that evening. The first time I saw her mouth close so resolutely. Nothing in, and nothing out.

“W
hat’s with all the chips?” Beth asks, poking the multipack of salt-and-vinegar chips among the breakfast detritus on the table.

“Oh . . . they were supposed to be for Honey. I forgot to take them down to her yesterday,” I say. Eddie is sitting on the bench with his back to the kitchen table, throwing a tennis ball against the wall and catching it. The ball’s flat, threadbare; it probably belonged to a Labrador once. He throws it with a maddening lack of rhythm. “Eddie, can you give it a rest?” I ask. He sighs, aims, throws the ball into the bin in one smooth arc.

“Great shot, darling,” Beth smiles. Eddie rolls his eyes. “Are you bored?” she asks him.

“A bit. No, not really,” Eddie flounders. The equal pull of honesty and tact.

“Why don’t you deliver those chips to Honey?” I suggest, swigging the remains of my tea.

“I’ve never even
met
Honey. And I only met that bloke once, yesterday. I can hardly go marching into their front yard waving chips, can I?”

“I’ll go with you,” I say, swinging my legs around and getting up. “Do you want to come, Beth? The camp’s just where it always was,” I can’t resist adding. I don’t know how she can not want to go back, to see.

“No. No thanks. I’m going to . . . I’m going to walk into the village. Get the Sunday paper.”

“Can I have a Twix?”

“Eddie, you’re going to turn into a Twix.”

“Please?”

“Come on, Eddie. We’re going. Boots on, it’s pretty muddy on the way,” I say.

I take us to the camp the long way, via the dew pond. It’s becoming a daily pilgrimage. It’s just a cold brown day today, none of the ice and sparkle of yesterday. I pause to walk to the edge, look into the depths of it. It’s unchanged. It gives me no answers. I wonder if I just wasn’t paying attention, when whatever it was happened? My mind wanders sometimes—gets snagged on a background thought, gets coaxed away. When other teachers talk to me, sometimes it happens. I don’t like to think about repressed memories, about trauma, amnesia. Mental illness.

“I think you’re a bit obsessed with this pond, Rick,” Eddie tells me gravely. I smile.

“I’m not. What makes you say that, anyway?”