The Legacy (28 page)

“ ’Course,” he mutters, looking at his hands.

The brake lights of the car gleam red as they pull out of the drive. It’s raining again. Beth and I stand and wave like idiots until the car is out of sight. Our hands drop, in near-perfect unison. Neither one of us wants to turn back to the house now this event is past. Christmas. The preparation of the house, the feeding and entertaining of Eddie, of our parents. Now what? No deadline, no timetable. Nothing to guide us but ourselves. I glance at Beth, see tiny drops of water beading the stray hairs around her face. I can’t even ask what she wants for lunch, can’t even impose this small future on us. The house is bursting with leftovers, ready to be grazed.

“Eddie’s so great, Beth. You’ve done so well there,” I say, needing to break the silence. But there’s a chilly, sad edge to Beth’s eyes.

“I’m not sure how much of it comes from me,” she says.

“All the best bits,” I say, taking her hand, squeezing it. She shakes her head. We turn and go inside again, alone.

When she is this quiet, when she is this pale and still, like a carving, I think of her in the hospital. At least I didn’t find her. I’ve only got Eddie’s descriptions, making pictures in my head. She was in her bedroom, lying on her side, bent at the waist as if she had been sitting up and then tipped over. He couldn’t see her face, he told me. Her hair had fallen right over it. He says he doesn’t know how long he stood there before going over to her, because he was too afraid of moving her hair, of seeing what was underneath. His mother, or his dead mother. He needn’t have touched her at all, of course. He could have just called an ambulance. But he was a child, a little boy. He wanted to make it right himself. He wanted to touch her and find her sleeping, nothing more. What courage he must have found. To do it—to push back her hair. I am so proud of him it hurts.

She had taken a lot of sleeping pills and then tried to cut her wrists—with the short-bladed paring knife that I had seen her use more than once, slicing banana onto Eddie’s cereal—but the conclusion drawn was that she had hesitated. She had hesitated—perhaps because the first cut, deep enough to look bad but not deep enough to do any real damage, had hurt more than she expected. And while she hesitated the pills sank into her bloodstream and she passed out. She had cut her wrist the wrong way. Horizontally, across the vessels and tendons, instead of parallel to them as any serious suicide, these days, knows is best. The doctors called it a cry for help rather than a genuine attempt, but I knew different. I clattered into the hospital, waited while they pumped her stomach. Opposite me in the corridor was a window, blinds drawn. My reflection stared back at me. In the greenish light I looked dead. Lank hair, face drooping. I fed money into a machine; it expelled watery hot chocolate for Eddie. Then Maxwell came and took him away.

When she woke up I went in to see her, and I had no idea until I got to her that I was angry.
So
angry with her. Angrier than I have ever been.

“What were you doing? What about Eddie?” These were my first words. Snapping like a trap.

A nurse with hair the color of sand scowled at me, said, “Elizabeth needs her rest,” in an admonishing tone, as if she knew her better than I. There was a bruise on Beth’s chin, purple hollows around her eyes, in her cheeks.
What about me?
I wanted to add. Hurt, that she would want to leave me. The same feeling as when she ran off with Dinny, snowballing down the years. She didn’t answer me. She started to cry and my heart cracked, let the anger run out. I picked up a matted length of her hair and began chasing out the knots with my fingertips.

I
t’s been a long time since I spoke to my Aunt Mary, let alone telephoned her. I am still reluctant to, but I have got a ball rolling now. I have started to learn things, started to uncover secrets. If I keep going, sooner or later I will get to the ones I am looking for. I shift uncomfortably in the chair as I wait to hear Mary’s voice. She was always mousy, quiet; so mild and meek that half the time we didn’t even notice her. A pink-skinned woman with pale hair and eyes. Neat blouses, tucked into neat skirts. It was a shock to hear her scream; to hear her shout and cry and curse in the aftermath of Henry’s disappearance. Then when that stopped she was even quieter than before, as if she’d used up all the noise she possessed in that one burst. Her voice is fluting and quiet, as precarious as wet tissue paper.

“Mary Calcott speaking?” So timorous, as if she’s really not sure.

“Hello, Aunt Mary, it’s Erica.”

“Erica? Oh hello, dear. Happy Christmas. Well, I suppose it’s a bit late for that now. Happy New Year.” There is little conviction behind these words. I wonder if she hates us, for surviving when Henry did not. For being around to remind her of it.

“And to you. I hope you’re well? You didn’t come down with Clifford, to collect those bits and bobs you wanted from the house?”

“No, no. Well, I’m sure you understand that Storton Manor is . . . not an easy place for me. It’s not a place I like to think of often, or return to,” she tells me, delicately. I can’t warm to her. To put losing her son in such limp terms, as if it was an embarrassing incident, best forgotten. I know how unfair I am being. I know she’s not a whole person any more.

“Of course.” I struggle to find more small talk, fail. “Well, the reason I was calling, and I hope you won’t mind me asking, is that I wanted to pick your brains a little about the family research you did, the year before last.”

“Oh, yes?”

“I’ve found a photo of Caroline, you see, dated 1904, and it was taken in New York . . .”

“Well, that certainly sounds right. She came to London in late 1904. It’s hard to be absolutely sure of the date.”

“Yes. The thing is she has a child with her, in the picture. A baby that looks about six months old or so. I just wondered if you had any idea who the baby might have been?”

“A child? Well. I can’t think. That can’t be right.”

“Was she married before, in the States? Only, the way she’s holding the baby . . . it just looks like a family portrait to me. She looks so proud . . . It looks to me like it’s her baby, you see.”

“Oh, no, Erica. That can’t be right at all. Let me just get the file down. One moment.” I hear rustling, a cupboard door creaking. “No, I’ve got a copy of her marriage certificate to Sir Henry Calcott here, and it clearly says, in the ‘condition’ column, that she was a spinster. A spinster at twenty-one! Hardly seems an appropriate label, does it?”

“Could she have . . . got a divorce, or something?” I ask, dubiously.

“Goodness me, no. It was very rare in that day and age, and certainly not without it being well talked about. Or mentioned on the occasion of her subsequent marriage. The child must belong to somebody else.”

“Oh. Well, thank you . . .”

“Of course, Caroline was always rather reticent about her early years in America. All anybody could discover was that she had grown up without any close family and had come to England to make a fresh start when she came into her money. She married Henry Calcott very soon after meeting him, which, I have always thought, perhaps shows how lonely she was, poor girl.” Twice now, she has said his name.

“Yes, it does sound that way. Well, thanks for looking it up for me, anyway.”

“You’re welcome, Erica. I wonder whether I might ask you to send me the photograph? To add to my presentation files? Early pictures of Caroline and her generation are so very scarce.”

“Oh, well actually, my mother has already asked me to give her any pictures I find. But I’m sure she’d be happy to send you copies of them . . .”

“Of course. Well, I shall ask Laura when I next see her.”

There’s a pause and I can’t quite bring myself to say goodbye, to admit that this piece of information was all I was after, and that I do not want to talk to her. There is so much to say, so much not to say.

“So . . . how was Christmas?” I ask. I hear her draw in a breath, steeling herself.

“It was fine, thank you.” She pauses again. “I still buy Henry a present every year, you know. Clifford thinks I am quite mad, of course, but he has never really understood. What it’s like for a mother to lose a child. I can’t just put it aside and move on, as he has managed to do.”

“What did you get him?” Before I can stop myself.

“A book about the RAF. Some new football boots, and some DVDs,” she says, her voice growing, as if she is pleased about choosing these gifts. Gifts she will never give. I can’t think what to say. I would be strangely fascinated to know whether she buys child-sized football boots, or has hazarded a guess at his adult shoe size. “Do you ever think about your cousin, Erica? Do you still think about Henry?” she asks, rushing the words.

“Of course. Of course I do. Especially now we’re . . . back here again.”

“Good. Good. I’m glad,” she says, and I wonder what she means. I wonder if she senses guilt, hanging around Beth and me like a bad smell.

“So there’s been no news? Of him—of Henry?” Ridiculous thing for me to ask, twenty-three years after he vanished. But what conclusion can I draw, from the gifts she still buys him, but that she expects someday to have him back?

“No,” she says flatly. A single word; she makes no effort to elaborate.

“Eddie’s been here with us for Christmas,” I tell her.

“Who?”

“Edward—Beth’s son?”

“Oh yes, of course.”

“He’s eleven now, the same age as . . . Well, he had a fine old time, anyway, carousing around out in the woods, getting filthy.”

“Clifford wanted to have another, you know. After we lost Henry. There might still have been time.”

“Oh,” I say.

“But I told him I couldn’t. What did he think—that we could just replace him, like a lost watch?” She makes an odd, strangled sound that I think is meant to be a laugh.

“No. No, of course not,” I say. There is another long pause, another long breath from Mary.

“I know you never got on. You girls and Henry. I know that you didn’t like him,” she says, suddenly tense, offended.

“We did like him!” I lie. “It’s just . . . well, we liked Dinny too. And we kind of had to choose sides . . .”

“Did it ever occur to you that Henry used to . . . act up, sometimes, because you always left him out of your games and ran off to play with Dinny?” she says.

“No. I . . . never thought he wanted to play with us. He never seemed like he wanted to,” I mumble.

“Well, I think he did. I think it hurt his feelings that you couldn’t wait to get away,” she tells me, resolutely. I try to picture my cousin this way—try to shape the way he treated us, treated Dinny, in these terms. But I can’t—it won’t fit. That’s not the way it was, not the way
he
was. A flare of indignation warms me, but of course I can say nothing and the silence buzzes down the line. “Well, Erica, I really must go,” she says at last, in one long exhalation. “It was . . . nice to talk to you. Goodbye.”

She hangs up the phone before I can respond. She does not do this crossly, or abruptly. Absently, rather, as if something else has caught her attention. She’s had lots of fads and projects in the years since Henry died. Tapestry, watercolors, horoscopes, brass rubbing, Anglo-Saxon poetry. The family genealogy was the longest running, the one she really followed through. I wonder if she did it because she got to say his name, over and over again, when Clifford would not allow her to speak of their son.
Henry Calcott, Henry Calcott, Henry Calcott
. Learning everything she could about his ancestors, the source of each component part of him, as if she could rebuild him.

He’s dead. This I know. He was not carried off. It wasn’t him, lying in the back of a car in a Devizes car park. It wasn’t him, being carried by a mysterious hobo on the A361. I know it because I can feel it, I can feel the memory of his death. I can feel it at the dew pond, even if I can’t see it. The way I could hear the shape of Dinny in the darkness on Christmas Day. We were there, Henry was there; and Henry died. I have the shape of it. I just need to color it in. Because I’ve stalled. I’m blocked. I can’t go in any direction until I can fill this hole in my head, until I can work Beth’s splinter free. Every other thought must detour around these missing things, and that will not do. Not any longer. And if I must start in 1904 and work my way toward it, then that is what I will do.

Through the kitchen window I see Harry, lingering by the trees at the far end of the garden. It’s still raining, harder now. His hands are thrust into the pockets of his patchwork coat and he is hunched, damp, forlorn looking. Without thinking, I pull leftovers from the fridge and larder and start to carve fleshy slices from the cold turkey with its burnt leg stumps. I slather mayonnaise onto two bits of white bread, cram in turkey, and stuffing the consistency of chipboard. Then I take it down to him, wrapped in foil, my coat draped over my head. He doesn’t smile at me. He shifts from foot to foot, in an apparent agony of indecision. Rain drips from the ends of his dreadlocks. I catch the scent of his unwashed body. A soft, animal smell, strangely endearing.

“Here, Harry. I made this for your lunch. It’s a turkey sandwich,” I say, handing it to him. He takes it. I don’t know why I expect him to speak, when I know he won’t. It’s such a fundamentally human thing, I suppose. To communicate with noise. “Eddie’s gone back to his dad’s house now, Harry. Do you understand what I’m saying? He’s not here any more,” I tell him, as kindly as I can. If I knew when Eddie was coming back, I would add this information. I don’t. I don’t know if we’ll be here. I don’t know anything. “His father came today and took him home with him,” I explain. Harry glances at the sandwich. A tiny metallic tune, as rain hits the foil. “Well, at least eat this,” I say gently, patting his hand on the sandwich. “It’ll keep you going.”