The Legacy (27 page)

“I . . .” she began, but could not think what to say. “I want to be happy too,” she whispered.

“Then tell me, please. Tell me what I can do to make you happy!” he implored. Caroline said nothing. What could she say? He had done everything a man could do to give her a child, but she could not manage it. He had loved her, and married her, and given her a new life, and she could not ask again for him to give that life up. “We’ll go swimming again. We’ll have our honeymoon again. This Sunday—we’ll go. Hang the ranch, hang the work—just you and me, my love. And we’ll make a baby this time, I just know it. What do you say?” he urged. Caroline shook her head and felt a tremor shake the core of her. It was too late, she realized. Too late for their second honeymoon swim. She could never go back to that pool, not now. It was too far, the way too open; it was too much for her now, too frightening. But what remained? What else could she suggest?

“Only . . . only promise me you’ll never leave me,” she said, at last. Corin put his arms around her and held her tightly with quiet, helpless desperation.

“I will
never
leave you,” he whispered.

T
he first hot night of June, Caroline woke in the darkness with sweat cooling between her breasts, pooling in the hollow of her stomach and slicking her hair to her forehead. She had been dreaming of waking up alone, out on the grasslands, as if she had fallen asleep that day she set out for the Moore’s place and not woken since. No house, no ranch, no people, no Corin. She lay still and listened to the blood rushing in her ears, listened to her own breathing as it slowed, grew quieter. Goosebumps rose along her arms. She looked beside her at the comforting outline of Corin, edged in gray light from around the shutters. The coyote song that always haunted the night echoed outside, reaching out unhindered for mile after boundless, borderless mile. Caroline closed her eyes and tried to shut out the sound. It shook her very soul to hear it, waking from such a dream, from such a nightmare. It told her, over and over, of the wilderness outside the walls; of the empty, pitiless land.

Suddenly then, Caroline faced what she had long known but refused to acknowledge. This was where she lived. Here was her husband, here was her life, and this was it. No change, no move; Corin had told her so. And no children. It was two years since she and Corin had been wed and the failure to conceive a child certainly did not stem from a want of trying. She would watch Magpie and Joe raise a brood, she thought; and never have a child of her own. It would be unbearable. If Magpie were to conceive again, she would not be able to have her in the house all day. So, this empty house then, when Corin was away buying or selling beeves, delivering a thoroughbred saddle horse to its new owner, or arguing the price of wheat in Woodward. This empty house in this empty land, for the rest of her life.
I will lose my mind
, Caroline realized, seeing this fact clearly, like plainly printed words scrolling in front of her eyes.
I will lose my mind
. She sat up with a cry and beat her hands against her ears to block out the howling and the resounding silence behind it.

“What is it? What’s happening! Are you ill?” Corin slurred, stirred from his sleep. “What is it, my darling? Did you have a nightmare? Please, tell me!” he begged, grasping her hands to stop the blows she was raining onto them both.

“I just . . . I just . . .” she gasped, choking and shaking her head.

“What? Tell me!”

“I just . . . can’t sleep with those god
damned
coyotes shrieking all night long! Don’t they
ever
let up? All night! Every night! They’re driving me out of my goddamned
mind
, I tell you!” she shouted, eyes wild with rage and fear. Corin took this in and then he smiled.

“Do you know, that’s the first time I’ve ever heard you swear?” he said, releasing her, brushing her dishevelled hair from her face. “And I have to say, you did a mighty fine job of it!” he grinned. Caroline stopped crying. She looked at the shadow of his smile in the darkness and an odd calm befell her—the numbness of exhausted sleep as it stole in and overcame her in seconds.

The next morning, Corin went out briefly before breakfast and then returned, smiling at his wife with a twinkle in his eye. Caroline’s eyes were puffy and they itched. In silence, she went about making breakfast, but she burnt the coffee beans in the roasting pan and the resulting drink was bitter and gritty. She warmed some bean pottage from the night before and made a batch of flat biscuits to go with it, all of which Corin wolfed down with great relish. Before long there was a shout from outside. Caroline opened the door to find Hutch and Joe outside, mounted on their dun-colored horses with rifles jutting up from the saddles and pistols at their hips. Joe held Strumpet’s reins and the black mare was also saddled and ready to ride.

“I didn’t think you were riding out today? I thought you were mending fences?” Caroline asked her husband, her voice a small thing after the furies in the night.

“Well,” Corin said, swallowing the last of his coffee with only the faintest grimace and walking out of the house. “This is a little extra trip I’ve decided to take, on the spur of the moment.”

“Where are you going?”

“We’re going . . .” Corin swung into the saddle, “to hunt some coyotes,” he grinned. “You’re quite right, Caroline—there are too many of them living close to the ranch. We’ve been losing some hens; you’ve been losing some sleep. And it’s a fine day for a bit of sport!” he exclaimed, wheeling Strumpet in a tight circle. The mare got onto her toes and snorted in anticipation.

“Oh, Corin!” Caroline said, touched by his efforts for her. The men tipped their hats to her, and with a whoop and a drumming of hooves they were away, leaving nothing but tracks in the sand.

By lunchtime the sky had closed over, filling with thick clouds that rolled steadily out of the northwest. In the kitchen, Caroline sat at the table with Magpie, shelling peas while William slept quietly by his mother’s feet. Every now and then he stirred and whimpered as if dreaming, and while this made Magpie smile, it made Caroline’s heart ache as if with cold. How much longer, she wondered, before this chill became irrevocable and her heart would be lost to her just like three of Hutch’s toes had been lost to him? Magpie seemed to sense her sadness. At length the Ponca girl spoke.

“White Cloud is a very wise woman,” she said. In the stillness of the house the crisp pop of the green pods and the rattle of peas falling into the pail were loud. Caroline waited for Magpie to say more, unsure of how to reply to this statement. “She can make many medicines,” Magpie went on at last. Caroline glanced up and Magpie met her gaze with steady, black eyes.

“Oh?” Caroline said, with as much polite interest as she could muster.

“In the days before, when she lived among our own people, in the lands far to the north of here, many Ponca would go to her for advice. Many
women
would go to her,” Magpie said, with heavy emphasis. Caroline felt warmth prickle her cheeks, and she got up to light a lamp against the dull afternoon. The yellow glow shone on glossy braids and brown skin. Caroline felt like a wraith of some kind, as if Magpie were real and she herself were not quite so. Not quite whole, not quite flesh. The lamp did not light her in the same way.

“Do you think . . . White Cloud would help me?” she asked, in barely more than a whisper. Magpie looked at her with great sympathy then, and Caroline looked down, studying the peas as they blurred in front of her.

“I can ask her. If you would like me to ask her?” Magpie said softly. Caroline could not speak, but she nodded.

Later, Caroline stood and watched from the window as the first drops of rain began to fall. It was not a violent rainstorm, just a steady soaking that fell straight down from the sky. Not a breath of wind was blowing. Caroline listened to the percussion of it on the roof, the gurgle of it in the guttering as it sluiced down into the cistern. It took a while for her to work out what was making her uneasy. The rain had come on slowly, out of the northwest, the same direction in which the men had ridden away. They would have seen this rain closing in, drawing a gray veil over the horizon. It would have found them long before it found the ranch, and yet they had not returned. There would be no hunting in rain like this, and it was late. Magpie had put a rabbit stew in the stove and had left, over an hour ago. The table was set, the stew was ready. Caroline had scrubbed her nails to get the stain of the pea pods out from underneath them. She stood at the window and her unease grew with each drop of rain that fell.

When at last she thought she saw riders coming, the end-of-day light was weak and made them hard to discern. Two hats only, she could see. Two riders only, and not a third. Her heart beat in her chest—not fast, but hard. A steady, slow, tight clenching that was almost painful. Two hats only; and, as they drew nearer, definitely only two horses. And as they drew nearer still, she saw two horses with dun coats and no black one.

Chapter 5

For I was reared

In the great city, pent ’mid cloisters dim,

And saw nought lovely but the sky and stars.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge,
Frost at Midnight

O
n Boxing Day I wake up to hear voices in the kitchen, the clatter of the kettle on the Rayburn, the tap running, water clunking through the pipes in the wall by my bed. It sounds so like the mornings of my childhood here that I lie still for a moment, with the dizzying feeling that I have gone back in time. I expect I am the last one up, as I always used to be. Still full and heavy with yesterday’s rich food, I go up to the attic in my dressing gown, unwrap the bone ring from Caroline’s trunk and take it downstairs with me. On the stairs hangs the smell of coffee and grilled bacon; and against all logic my stomach rumbles.

The four of them are at the table, which is properly laid with plates and cutlery, coffee mugs and a huge French press, a platter of bacon and eggs, toast tucked neatly into a rack. Such quirks of the generation gap make me so fond. I would never think of setting the breakfast table, putting toast in a rack instead of on my plate. The four people I care most about in the world, sitting together at a laden table. I lean on the door jamb for a second and wish that it could always be this way. Warm steam in the air; the dishwasher grinding through its noisy cycle.

“Ah! You’ve decided to grace us with your presence,” Dad beams, pouring me a coffee.

“Cut me some slack, Dad, it’s only nine o’clock,” I yawn, sauntering to the table, sliding onto a bench.

“I’ve been out already, to fetch in loads more wood,” Eddie boasts, smothering some toast with chocolate spread.

“Show off,” I accuse him.

“Ed, would you like some toast with your Nutella?” Beth asks him pointedly. Eddie grins at her, takes a huge bite that leaves a chocolate smile on his cheeks.

“Sleep OK?” I ask my parents. They took the same guest room they always did before. So many rooms to choose from, and we all of us have filed into our habitual ones like well-behaved children.

“Very well, thank you, Erica.”

“Here, Mum—this is that bell I was telling you about, that I found up in Caroline’s things.” I hand it to her. “The handle looks like it’s bone, or something.”

Mum turns it over in her hands, glances up at me incredulously. “It’s not a bell, you dope, it’s a baby’s teething ring. A very lovely one, too. This is ivory, not bone . . . and the silver bell acts as a rattle. Added interest.”

“A teething ring? Really?”

“A very old-fashioned one, yes; but that’s certainly what it is.”

“I saw something like that on
The Antiques Roadshow
not that long ago,” Dad adds.

“Ivory and silver—it must have been for a pretty rich kid,” Eddie observes, around a mouthful of toast.

“Was it Clifford’s? Do you remember it?” I ask. Mum frowns slightly.

“No, I have to say I don’t. But I may have forgotten. Or . . .” she reaches behind her, takes the family tree from the sideboard. “Look at the gap between Caroline getting married, and Meredith being born—seven years! That’s rather unusual. There’s my great aunt, Evangeline—she died before her first birthday, poor thing.” She points to the name preceding Meredith’s, the pitifully short dates in brackets beneath. “Two babies in seven years is not very many. Perhaps she had a son that died, before she had Meredith, and this ring belonged to that poor little chap.”

“Maybe. But wouldn’t he be on the family tree, even if he’d died?”

“Well, not necessarily. Not if he was born prematurely, or was stillborn,” Mum muses. “I know that Meredith lost a child before I was born. These things can run in families.”

“Perhaps we could talk about something else at the breakfast table?” Beth says quietly. Mum and I button our lips guiltily. Beth miscarried a child, very early on, before Eddie was born. It was little more than a slip of life, but its sudden absence was like a tiny, bright light going out.

“What are we going to do today, then?” Dad asks, helping himself to more scrambled eggs. “I, for one, feel the need to stretch my legs a bit—walk off some of yesterday’s excess.”

“To make room for today’s excess, David?” Mum remarks, peering at his plate.

“Quite so!” he agrees cheerfully.

It is brighter today, but gray clouds nose purposefully across the sky and the wind is brisk, penetrating. We take a route through the village, westward past the little stone church that nestles into a green slope studded with the gravestones of generations of Barrow Storton’s dead. In the far corner is the Calcott plot, and in unspoken unity we drift over to it. It is about two meters wide, and as long. A cold bed of marble chippings for our family to sleep in. Henry, Lord Calcott, is in there, and Caroline, with the little daughter she lost before Meredith. Evangeline. And now Meredith has joined them. So recently that the remnants of the funeral flowers are still here in a small, brass pot, and the cuts of her name on the stone are sharp and fresh. I can’t help thinking she would rather have had her own place, or lie next to her husband Charles, than spend eternity cooped up with Caroline, but it is too late now. I shudder, make a silent pledge that I will never lie in this claustrophobic family grave.

“I suppose if Caroline had had a son, he’d be buried here, wouldn’t he?” I ask, breaking the silence. Beth sighs sharply and walks away, over to where Eddie is climbing the gabled lychgate.

“I suppose so. Probably. But, who knows? If he was very tiny, perhaps they’d have given him an infant’s grave instead,” Mum replies.

“What would that look like?”

“Just like a grave with a smaller stone, usually with an angel on it somewhere—or a cherub,” she says. Dad looks at me sidelong.

“I have to say, you’re taking a pretty keen interest in this all of a sudden,” he says.

“No, I just . . . you know. I never could stand an unsolved mystery,” I shrug.

“Then I fear you were born into the wrong family.”

“Hey, Eddie!” I call to him. “Look for small gravestones with angels on them, and the name Calcott!” Eddie rips me a smart salute, begins to trot up and down the rows of stones. Beth folds her arms and glares at me.

“Can we please stop looking for dead babies!” she shouts, the wind pulling at her voice.

“Give me five minutes!” I call back.

“Perhaps we should get on, Erica?” Mum says diffidently.

“Five minutes,” I say again.

I run my eyes along the ranks of stones, in the opposite direction to which Eddie has gone, but they all seem to be of regular size.

“Sometimes there’s a special area for the infant graves . . .” Mum sets her gaze to the far corner of the churchyard. “Try over there—do you see? Under that beech tree.” I walk quickly to where the wind is seething through the naked beech, sounding like the sea. There are perhaps fifteen or twenty graves here. On the older graves are little cherubs, their features blurred with lichen, chubby arms wrapped forlornly around the stones. There are a couple of newer stones too, carved with teddy bears instead; less celestial guardians which seem somehow out of place. But then that’s the point, I suppose. An infant has no place in a churchyard. Lives that had no chance to start, losses that must have torn their parents’ souls. All those broken hearts are buried here too, alongside the tiny bodies that broke them. It’s a melancholy sight and I scan the names and dates hurriedly, walk away from the sad little party with a shiver.

I have never before found graveyards eerie, or particularly depressing. I like the expressions of love on the stones, the quiet declarations of people having existed, of having mattered. Who knows what secret feelings lie behind the carved lists of offspring, siblings and surviving spouses—or if the memories they had were truly loving. But there is the hope, always, that each transient life meant something to those left behind; cast a vapor trail of influence and emotion to fade gradually across the years.

“Anything?” I ask Eddie.

“Nope. There’s an angel over there, but the lady was seventy-three and called Iris Bateman.”

“Can we go, now?” Beth says impatiently. “If you’re that desperate to know if she had a son, go and look it up in the births, marriages and deaths register. It’s all online now.”

“Perhaps she
was
married before, in America,” Mum says, taking my arm in a conciliatory manner. “Perhaps the baby in the photograph died there, before she came over.”

To the north of the village is a web of farm tracks and bridleways, dodging through the drab winter fields. We take a circular route, at a brisk pace, falling into pairs to pass along the narrow pathways. Eddie drops back to walk beside me. He is leaving later on today. I look at his sharp face, his scruffy hair, and feel a pull of affection. It gives me such an odd, desperate feeling for a second that I pause to consider how Beth must be feeling. As if reading my mind, Eddie speaks.

“Is Mum going to be OK?” A carefully neutral tone he is too young to have developed.

“Yes, of course,” I tell him, with as much certainty as I can find.

“It’s just . . . when Dad came to pick me up last time, before Christmas, she seemed . . . really unhappy about it. She’s getting thin again. And, like, today, just now, she was really snappy with you . . .”

“Sisters always snap at each other, Eddie. That’s nothing out of the ordinary!” I find a fake laugh and Eddie gives me an accusing look. I drop the bravado. “Sorry,” I say. “Look, it’s just . . . it’s hard for your mum, being back at the manor house. Has she told you about your great-grandma’s will? That we can only keep the house if we both come and live in it?” He nods. “Well, that’s why we’ve come to stay. To see if we would like to come and live here.”

“Why does she hate it so much? Because your cousin was kidnapped—and she misses him?”

“Possibly . . . possibly it’s to do with Henry. And the fact that, well, this place is in our past now, and sometimes it can feel wrong to try and live in the past. To be honest, I don’t think we’ll come to live here, but I’m going to try to make your mum stay for a bit longer at least; even if she doesn’t really want to.”

“But why?”

“Well . . .” I struggle for a way to explain. “Do you remember that time your finger swelled up to the size of a sausage and it was so sore you wouldn’t let us look at it properly, but it wouldn’t heal up so finally we did look and you had a splinter of metal in it?”

“Yeah, I remember. It looked like it was going to explode,” he grimaces.

“Once we got the splinter out it healed, right?” Eddie nods. “Well, I think your mum won’t . . . heal because she has a splinter. Not of metal, and not in her finger, but she’s got a kind of splinter inside her and that’s why she can’t get better. I’m going to get the splinter out. I’m going to . . . find out what it is and get rid of it.” I hope I sound calm, confident in this purpose; when what I feel is desperate. If I believed in God, I would be striking all kinds of fervent bargains right now.
Make Beth well. Make her happy
.

“How? Why do you have to be here to do it?”

“Because . . . I think this is where she got the splinter in the first place,” I say.

Eddie considers this in silence for a while, his face marked by worried lines I hate to see. “I hope you do. I hope you can find out what it is,” he says, eventually. “You will find out, won’t you? And she will get better?”

“I promise you, Ed,” I say. And now I must not fail. I
cannot
let us come away from here without a resolution of some kind. The weight of my promise settles onto me like chains.

O
ur parents leave soon after lunch, and by teatime Maxwell has come for Eddie as well. Maxwell is grouchy, blotches of overindulgence on his cheeks. He looks mealy-mouthed. I load carrier bags of presents into the trunk, Beth watching me blackly as if I am colluding in the theft of her son.

“See you, Edderino,” I say.

“Bye then,
Auntie
Rick,” he says, and climbs into the back. He is calm, resigned. He goes from one place of welcome to the next; he is practical, does not fret. He lets himself be ferried, and pretends not to notice Beth’s anguish. There’s the smallest hint of cruelty in this, as if he means to say, you made this situation, you set it up this way.

“Did you tell Harry you were going today?” I ask, leaning into the car.

“Yes, but you might have to tell him again, if you see him around. I’m not sure how much attention he was paying.”

“OK. Call your mum later on, won’t you?” I keep my voice low.