The Legacy (13 page)

“What is it?” she asked, alarmed.

“You. Just look at you . . . You’re so brave. And so beautiful. I’ve never seen anything like it,” he said simply. Water had splayed his hair across his forehead, making him younger, boyish.

Caroline had only intended to paddle, but the touch of the water and the thrill of Corin’s words made her bold, and she waded in up to her waist, the water swirling the translucent folds of her chemise around her legs. With a nervous laugh she lay back and let the water buoy her up. It felt chilly as it fingered through her hair.

“Come here and kiss me,” Corin demanded.

“With regret, sir, I am far too busy swimming,” Caroline replied grandly, paddling away with an ungainly stroke. With a start, she realized she hadn’t swam since childhood, at her family’s summer house.

“I shall have a kiss, even if I must chase you down for it,” Corin told her. Laughing and kicking her legs Caroline tried to escape; but she did not try very hard.

T
he sun was setting as they came over the last rise and saw the lights of the ranch house glimmering below them. Caroline’s skin felt hot and raw where the sun had singed it, and her dress felt odd without the chemise underneath, which was laid out drying on the back of the buggy. She licked her lips, tasted the mineral tang of the creek water. They both carried the smell of it on their skin, in their hair. They had made love on the riverbank, and the languor of it lingered in her muscles, leaving her heavy and warm. Suddenly, she did not want to arrive back at the house. She wanted the day to last for ever; she and Corin in a shady place on a hot day, making love over and over again, without another thought or care in the world. As if reading her mind, Corin reined the horse to a halt, surveying his home for a moment before turning to her.

“Are you ready to go back?” he asked.

“No!” Caroline said fiercely. “I . . . I wish every day could be like today. It was so perfect.”

“It truly was, sweetheart,” Corin agreed, taking her hand and raising it to his lips.

“Promise me we’ll go back there. I won’t go one
inch
closer to the house until you promise me.”

“We have to go back to the house! Night’s coming . . . but I do promise you we’ll go there again. We can go back whenever we want to—we
will
go back, and we’ll have many more days like today. I swear it,” he said.

Caroline looked at the outline of him in the indigo twilight, caught the gleam of his eye, the faint shape of a smile. She put her hand out and touched his face. “I love you,” she told him simply.

With a shake of the reins the horse began a lazy descent toward the wooden house below, and with each step it took, Caroline felt a sense of vague foreboding growing inside her. She turned her eyes to the dark ground ahead and was suddenly afraid, in spite of Corin’s pledge, that no day to come would be as sweet as that which had just passed.

Chapter 3

mine eye

Fixed with mock study on my swimming book:

Save if the door half opened, and I snatched

A hasty glance, and still my heart leaped up,

For still I hoped to see the stranger’s face,

Samuel Taylor Coleridge,
Frost at Midnight

I
have been trying to remember good things about Henry. Perhaps we owe him that, because we got to grow up, live lives, fall in love, fall out again. He liked to tell stupid jokes, and I loved to hear them. Beth was always kind, and took me with her, and helped me, but she was rather serious, even as a child. Once I laughed so hard at Henry’s jokes that I nearly wet myself—the fear of it abruptly stopped the giggles, sent me scrambling for the toilet with one fist corked between my legs.
What do you call a dinosaur with only one eye? Do-you-think-he-saw-us. What do you call a deer with no eyes? No idea. Why do elephants paint the soles of their feet yellow? So they can hide upside down in custard. What’s orange and sounds like a parrot? A carrot. What’s small, brown and wrinkly and travels at two hundred miles an hour? An electric currant
. He could keep it up for hours, and I pushed my fingers into my cheeks where they ached.

He was telling me stupid jokes one day when I was about seven. It was a Saturday, because the remains of a cooked breakfast were still scattered on the dining room table; sunny outside but still cool. The French doors onto the terrace were open, letting a breath of air sneak in, just cold enough to tickle my ankles. I wasn’t really watching what Henry was doing as he reeled out his jokes. I wasn’t paying attention. I just followed him, stood close enough behind him to trip him, prompted him whenever there was a pause:
Say another one! How do you know when there’s an elephant in your bed? You can see the “E” on his pyjamas. What’s brown and sticky? A stick
. He had the biscuit barrel and he was cementing two plain shortbreads together with a thick daub of English mustard. The extra strong stuff, ugly colored, that Clifford liked on sausages. I was trying to remember a good thing about him, and now this.

I didn’t think to ask why. I didn’t ask where we were going. He wrapped the biscuits in a napkin, pocketed them. I followed him across the lawn like a tame monkey, demanding more jokes, more jokes. We went west, not south into the trees but to the lane instead; skirted along it, behind the hedge, until we got to Dinny’s camp. Henry hunkered down in the ditch, pulled me in with him. A foaming, pungent wall of cow parsley to sink behind. At this point only did I think to whisper, “Henry, what are you doing? Why are we hiding?” He told me to shut up so I did. A spying game, I thought; tried not to rustle loudly, checked beneath myself for nettles, ants’ nests, bumble bees. Dinny’s grandpa was sitting on a folding chair outside his battered white motor home, waxed hat pulled low over his eyes, arms folded, hands tucked into armpits. Asleep, I think. Deep, dark creases running from the sides of his nose to the corners of his mouth. His dogs lay either side of him, chins on paws. Two black and white collies called Dixie and Fiver, who you weren’t allowed to touch until Grandpa Flag had said it was OK.
They’ll ’ave those fingers, you give ’em cause
.

Henry threw the sandwiched biscuits over the hedge. The dogs were on their feet in an instant, but they smelt the biscuits and they didn’t bark. They crunched them down, mustard and all. I held my breath. I said
Henry!
in my head. Dixie made a hacking noise, sneezed, put her muzzle down on one paw and rubbed at it with the other. Her eyes squinted up; she sneezed again and shook her head, whimpered. Henry had his knuckles in his teeth, his eyes bright, intent. Lit up inside, he was. Grandpa Flag was murmuring to the dogs now, awake. He had his hands in Dixie’s ruff, was peering at her as she retched and snuffled. Fiver walked a small, slow circle to one side, heaved, threw up a disgusting yellow mess. A sob of laughter escaped around Henry’s fist. I was strangled with pity for the dogs, boiling with guilt. I wanted to stand up and shout,
It wasn’t me
. I wanted to disappear, run back to the house. I stayed, rocked on my crouched legs, hid my face in my knees.

But the worst of it was that when I was finally allowed to leave, a pinch on the arm to rouse me, we’d gone a scant twenty paces before Dinny and Beth appeared. The hems of their jeans soaked with dew, a small green leaf in Beth’s hair.

“What have you two been doing?” Beth asked. Henry scowled at her.

“Nothing,”
he said. Able to inject a world of scorn into a single word.

“Erica?” She looked at me sternly, incredulous that I should be with Henry, that I should look guilty. That I should betray them that way. But where had
they
been, without me? I wanted to shout.
They
had left
me
. Henry glowered at me, gave me a shove.

“Nothing,” I lied. I was quiet and sullen for the rest of the day. And when I saw Dinny the day after, knowing that he had been home, I couldn’t look at him. I knew he knew. Because of Henry’s jokes.

“R
ick? Can we go now?” Eddie’s head appears at the door to my room, where I, for once, have been skulking. Staring through the foggy glass at the white world beyond. Tiny crystals in the corners of the pane, feathery and perfect.

“The frost performs its secret ministry, Unhelped by any wind,”
I quote at him.

“What’s that?”

“Coleridge. Sure, Eddie, we can go. Give me five seconds.”

“One-two-three-four-five?”

“Ha, ha. Push off. I’ll be down in a moment—I can hardly go out in my dressing gown.” I was defiantly still in it when I opened the door to Maxwell earlier.

“Not today,” Eddie agrees, retreating. “It’s cold enough to freeze the arse off a penguin out there.”

“Charming, dear,” I call. The frost has cast the trees in white. It’s like another world out there—a brittle, albino world where white and opalescent blues have replaced dead grey and flat brown. It’s dazzling bright. Every tiny twig, every fallen leaf, every blade of grass. The house is made new; no longer the ghost, or the corpse, of a place I remember. I am soaring with optimism today. It would be hard not to be. After so many overcast days, the sky seems to go up for ever. It’s giddy, all that space up there. And Beth has said she’ll come with us—that’s how vibrant the day is.

When I told her Dinny was here she froze. I was scared for a minute. She didn’t seem to breathe. The blood could have halted in her veins, her ticking heart gone silent, such was the stillness in her. A long, hung moment in which I waited, and watched, and tried to guess what was next. Then she looked away from me and licked her lower lip with the tip of her tongue.

“We’d be strangers, now,” she said, and walked slowly into the kitchen. She didn’t ask me how I knew, what he looked like now, what he was doing here. And I found I didn’t mind not telling her. I didn’t mind keeping it to myself. Keeping the words he had spoken in my head alone. Owning them. She was relaxed again when I went to find her, as we made mugs of tea and I dunked Hobnobs in mine. But she didn’t eat that night. Not a Hobnob, not the plate of risotto I put in front of her, not the ice cream afterwards.

It’s the twentieth of December today. The car steams up as I drive east through the village and then turn north onto the A361.

“One more day, guys, and then it’s all downhill until spring!” I announce, flexing fingers stiff with chill inside my gloves.

“You can’t wish the winter away until Christmas has been,” Eddie tells me firmly.

“Really? Not even when my hands have frozen to the wheel? Look, I’m trying to let go and I can’t! Frozen on—look!” Eddie laughs at me.

“Keeping hold of the steering wheel while you drive could be considered a good thing,” Beth observes wryly from the passenger seat.

“Well then, it’s a good job I’m frozen on, I guess.” I smile. I take the turning to Avebury. Eddie’s been doing prehistory this term. Wiltshire’s riddled with it. We park, decline to join the National Trust, join instead the steady trickle of people going along the path toward the stones. The ground twinkles, the sun is overwhelming.

A fine Saturday and there are lots of other people at Avebury, all bundled up like we are, shapeless and dark, moving in and out of the ancient sarsen stones. Two concentric rings, not as high as Stonehenge, not as grand or orderly, but the circles far, far bigger. A road runs right through them; half the village is scattered amidst them, although the little church sits chastely without. I like this set-up. All those lives, all those years, piled up in one place. We walk all the way around the ring. Beth reads from the guidebook but I am not sure Eddie is listening. He has a stick again. He is sword-fighting somebody in his head and I wish I could see whom. Barbarians, perhaps? Or somebody from school.

“The Avebury Stone Circles are the largest in Britain, located in the third largest henge. In all, the surrounding bank and ditch and the area enclosed cover eleven point five hectares . . .”

“Beth!” I cry. She is wandering close to the edge of the bank. The grass is slick with frost-melt.

“Oops.” She corrects her course, gives a little laugh.

“Eddie, I’m going to test you on this later!” I shout. My voice blares in the still air. An elderly couple turn to look. I just want him to listen to Beth.

“The quarrying methods used include antler picks and rakes, ox-shoulder blades and probably wooden shovels and baskets . . .”

“Cool,” Eddie says, dutifully. We pass a tree grown into the rampart, its roots cascading above ground like a knotty waterfall. Eddie scrambles down it, commando-style; crouches down, clings to it, peers up from three meters below us.

“Are you an elf?” Beth asks.

“No, I’m a woodsman, waiting to rob you,” he replies.

“Bet you can’t get me before I pass this tree to safety,” Beth challenges him.

“I’ve lost the element of surprise,” Eddie complains.

“I’m getting away!” Beth goads, sauntering onward. With a rebel yell Eddie scales the roots, slipping and sliding, bashing his knees. He grabs Beth with two hands, makes her squeal. “I submit, I submit!” she laughs.

We walk out, away from the village along the wide avenue of stones that leads away to the south. The sun shines on Beth’s face—a long time since I saw it lit this way. She looks pale, older, but there are blooms in her cheeks. She looks serene too. Eddie leads us, sword aloft, and we walk until our toes get too cold.

On the way back I pull up at the Spar in Barrow Storton for some ginger beer for Eddie. Beth waits in the car, quieter again now. Eddie and I are pretending not to notice. There’s a horrible feeling of her teetering, being on the edge of something. Eddie and I hesitate, wanting to pull her one way, scared of accidentally nudging her, tipping her the wrong way.

“Can’t I have Coke instead?”

“Yes, if you’d rather.”

“I’m really not that bothered about alcohol, to be honest. I had some vodka last term, in dorm.”

“You’ve been drinking
vodka
?”

“Hardly drink
ing
. Drank, once. And I felt sick, and Boff and Danny
were
sick, and it stank the place out. Gross. I don’t know why grown-ups bother,” he says, airily. His cheeks have a glorious pink flare from the bite outside. Eyes bright as water.

“Well, you might change your mind later on. But for Christ’s sake don’t tell your mother! She’ll have a fit.”

“I’m not
stupid
, you know.” Eddie rolls his eyes at me.

“No. I know.” I smile, wincing at the weight as two huge bottles of Coke go into the basket. As we approach the till, Dinny comes in. The bell rings above his head, a jaunty little fanfare. At once I don’t know where to look, how to stand. He has walked right past Beth, in the car. I wonder if she saw him, if she knew him.

“Hullo, Dinny,” I greet him. I smile. Casual neighbors, nothing more, but my heart is high in my chest. He looks up at me, startled.

“Erica!”

“This is Eddie—I mean Ed—who I was telling you about. My nephew—Beth’s boy.” I pull Eddie to my side, he grins affably, says
hi
. Dinny studies him closely, then smiles.

“Beth’s son? It’s nice to meet you, Ed,” he says. They shake hands, and for some reason I am moved, I am choked. A simple gesture. My two worlds coming together with the press of their skins.