The Legacy (30 page)

After that lunch we children were sent to have an afternoon nap—because I was small and cross, Henry had been rude at lunch, and that left Beth with nobody to play with. Henry instigated the game. He hid first, and we found him at length in the attic room, behind the same crumbling, burgundy leather trunk I have so recently rediscovered. We stirred up motes of dust that flashed and swirled in the light from the eaves, circling slowly. I found a peacock butterfly, wrapped in spider webs and as mummified as I feared Caroline to be. I clamored for it to be my turn to hide, but Beth had found Henry first, so it was her turn. Henry and I knelt at the bottom of the stairs, shut our eyes, counted.

I don’t think I could count to a hundred at that age. I was relying on Henry, and he normally counted
one, two, miss a few, ninety-nine, a hundred
; so after what seemed a long time, listening to the housekeeper clattering dishes in the kitchen, I opened one eye to check on him. He wasn’t there. I looked up and saw him coming down the stairs. He smiled nastily at me, and I cast my eyes around. I did this instinctively, whenever I found myself alone with that look on Henry’s face. In case help was at hand. My heart pounded in my chest.

“Is it time to find Beth yet?” I whispered at last.

“No. Not yet. I’ll tell you when,” he said. “Come on, then, come with me.” He used his fake-nice voice, a high pitch that he also used to trick the Labradors. He offered me his hand and I took it unwillingly. We went into the study; he put the TV on.

“Is it time now?” I asked again. Something was wrong. I made for the door but he put out his leg, blocked me.

“Not yet! I told you—you can’t go and look until I say it’s time.”

I waited. I was miserable. I didn’t watch what was on the TV. I looked at Henry, at the door, back again. What’s time, when you’re five years old? I have no idea how long I was made to wait. It must have been over an hour, and it felt like an eternity. When the door creaked open, I ran to it. My father came in, asked where Beth was. He studied my anxious face and asked again. Henry shrugged. Dad and I went all over the house, calling. On the top floor corridor we heard her—banging, and faint sounds of distress. The final set of stairs, up to the attic, had a cupboard underneath, an iron key in the lock. Dad turned it, lifted the latch and Beth tumbled out, her face pale and streaked with dirt and tears.

“What on earth?” Dad said, gathering her up. She was breathing so hard that her own sobs half choked her, and her eyes stared out in a way that frightened me. It was as if she had closed herself off from me, from the world. Fear had made her hide inside her own head. The cupboard was cramped and cobwebby, and the light switch was on the outside. Henry had turned it off and turned the key in the lock while I kept my eyes closed and assumed he was counting. Left her alone in the dark with the spiders and no room to turn around. I knew all this, I told my dad, and he demanded the truth from Henry. Beth stood behind him, unnaturally quiet. There were pale patches of dust on her knees, grazes on the heels of her hands; something had caught a lock of her hair, pulled it out of her Alice band in a sagging loop.

“It was nothing to do with
me
. I’ve been down here all the time. We got bored of looking for her,” Henry shrugged, swinging his legs to and fro with excitement although he managed to keep his face straight. Beth had stopped crying. She was looking at Henry with a bright hatred that shocked me.

I
t’s mid-afternoon and I am upstairs, wedged onto the window sill in my bedroom. My breath has steamed up the glass, obscured the view, but I am reading so it doesn’t matter. More of Meredith’s letters to Caroline. I am surprised that Meredith kept them all—that she stowed them away with Caroline’s things, as a record of their troubled relationship. Letters belong to the recipient, I know, but it would have been easy, and understandable, for her to destroy them after her mother died. But perhaps she wanted them for exactly what they recorded. The fact that she tried to have another life, even if she failed.

Dear Mother,

Thank you for the card you sent. I can only say that I am as well as can be expected. I have my hands very full with Laura, who has recently started walking and has consequently taken to running rings around me—it is nigh on impossible to keep her out of mischief. Her particular passion this week is for mud and worms. I have an excellent nanny, a local girl called Doreen, who has a calming influence on the child—and on me, I must say. Nothing seems to fluster her, and in these troubled days, that is a virtue indeed. I have given your invitation to return to live with you at Storton Manor a great deal of thought, but for the time being I intend to remain in my own home. I have the support of my neighbors, who have proved themselves most sympathetic in my hour of need. Many of the local women have sons and husbands away fighting, and each time the much dreaded telegram arrives a contingent is dispatched to make sure that there is food in the house, and the children clothed, and the wife or mother still breathing. I dare say you would not approve of the social classes mingling in this way, but I was greatly moved to receive just such a visit myself when word of Charles’ death got about. I went to London last Friday, to collect what belongings of his remained at his club and offices. You would not believe the scenes of devastation I witnessed there. It was enough to chill the very heart of me.

So I will stay for as long as I can manage to do so, because, though it pains me greatly to commit such a thing to paper, I have not yet forgiven you, Mother. For not coming to Charles’ funeral. Your objections to him as a husband were never as great, and your dislike of travelling never so strong, that either should have prevented you from attending, and insulting him in this way. The snub did not go unnoticed amongst our acquaintances. And what of me? Do you not realize that I should have liked to have you there, that I needed your support on such a day? Surely there are limits to the stoicism a new widow should have to display? That is all I will say for the time being. I must grow accustomed to life without my husband, and I must take care of myself, little Laura and my unborn child. For now I do not think you or any one can ask anything more of me.

Meredith.

As I finish reading I am interrupted by the clang of the doorbell. I climb down from the sill, wincing, the blood rushing into my stiff legs. I make my way to the top of the stairs, pause when I hear Beth open the door, and Dinny’s voice. My first impulse is to carry on, rush down the stairs to see him, to ease things for them. But my feet don’t respond. I stay still, my hand on the banister, listening.

“How are you, Beth?” Dinny asks, and the question carries more weight than it normally would. More significance.

“I’m very well, thank you,” Beth answers, something odd in her tone that I can’t identify.

“Only . . . Erica said that you—”

“Erica said that I what?” she says sharply.

“That you weren’t happy to be back. That you wanted to leave.” I can’t hear Beth’s reply to this. If she makes one. “Can I come in?” he says, almost nervously.

“No. I . . . I think you’d better not. I’m . . . busy right now,” Beth lies, and I feel her tension, making my shoulders ache.

“Oh. Well, I really just came up to say thanks to Erica for the baby things she took down to Honey. Honey even smiled when I got back—it was amazing.” I smile as I hear this, but I don’t know if Beth will understand how rare Honey’s smiles seem to be.

“Oh, well . . . I’ll pass that on. Or shall I call her down?” Beth asks stiffly.

“No, no. No need,” Dinny says, and my smile fades. There’s a pause. I feel a draft from the open door, whispering up the stairs to me. “Listen, Beth, I’d like to talk to you about . . . what happened. There are some things I think you don’t understand—”

“No!” Beth interrupts him, her voice higher now, alarmed. “I don’t want to talk about it. There’s nothing to talk about. It’s in the past.”

“Is it, though?” he asks softly, and I hold my breath, waiting for Beth’s answer.

“Yes! What do you mean? Of course it is.”

“I mean, some things are hard to leave behind. Hard to forget about. Hard for me to forget about, anyway.”

“You just have to try hard,” she says bleakly. “Try harder.”

I can hear the movement of feet, on the flagstones. I can picture Beth twisting, trying to escape.

“It’s not that simple, though, is it, Beth?” he says, his voice stronger now. “We used to be . . . we used to be able to talk about anything, you and I.”

“That was a very long time ago,” she says.

“You know, you don’t get to call
all
the shots, Beth. You can’t just pretend nothing happened, you can’t wash your hands of it—of me.”

“I
don’t want to talk about it.
” She emphasizes each word, hardens them with feeling.

“You may not have a choice. There are things you need to hear,” Dinny says, every bit as firmly.

“Please,” Beth says. Her voice has shrunk, it is meek and afraid. “Please don’t.”

There’s a long, empty pause. I daren’t breathe.

“It’s good to see you again, Beth,” Dinny says at length, and again this is not the flippant remark it usually is. “I was starting to think I never would. See you again, that is.”

“We shouldn’t be here. I wouldn’t be, if it weren’t for . . .”

“And you’ll go again soon, will you?”

“Yes. Soon. After New Year.”

“Never a backward glance?” he asks, a bitter edge to the words.

“No,” Beth says, but the word does not sound as firm as it should. The cold air makes me shiver and I am shot through with desperation again, to know what it is that they know, to remember it.

“I’ll go, then.” Dinny sounds defeated. “Thank Erica for me. I hope . . . I hope I’ll see you again, Beth. Before you disappear.” I do not hear Beth’s reply, only the door shutting and a sudden loud sigh, as if a thousand pent-up words rush out of her at once and echo around the hallway.

I stay on the stairs for a short while, listen as Beth goes into the study. I hear the whoosh of a chair as she sits down abruptly, then nothing more. It would be easier, I think, to squeeze truths from the stones of these walls than to squeeze them from my sister. In frustration, I return to the attic, flip open the lid of the red trunk with none of my usual care, and run my fingers through Caroline’s possessions once more. There has to be something more, something I have missed. Something to tell me who the baby in the photo was and what happened to him. Something to tell me why she hated the Dinsdales so much that there was no room left inside her to love her own child. But once I have taken everything out, I am none the wiser. I stop, sit back on my heels, notice that my hands are shaking. And as I pick up a paper parcel, reach in to put it back, something catches my eye. A tear in the lining paper at the bottom of the trunk; a tear that has left a loose flap. And, half hidden beneath the paper, an envelope. I reach for it, see that the handwriting is not Meredith’s, and as I read the letter inside my pulse quickens.

Scrambling to my feet, I rush down to the study. The fire is devouring a huge pile of wood, pouring out heat.

“Beth—I’ve found something! Up in Caroline’s things,” I tell her. She looks up at me, her face drawn. She has not forgiven me yet, for the things I said at the dew pond.

“What is it?” she asks flatly.

“It’s a letter to Caroline—it had got lost. I found it in the lining of her trunk, and it’s very old—from before she came to England. Listen to this!” The envelope is another very small one; the paper inside it so old that the ink has faded to a weak brown color. The pages are spotted and torn, as if much handled: read and reread over a long spread of years. When I open it out, the sheets tear along the folds a little. I touch it as gently as I can. In places, I can hardly make out what it says, but there is enough here, enough to prove a theory.

“April 22nd, 1902,”
I read.
“My Darling Caroline—I received your letter and was much dismayed to hear that you had not received mine—nor the one before it, it would seem! Please rest assured that I have been writing—that I do write, almost every night. There is so much work to be done here, to ready it for your arrival, that I am ending each day fairly well beat, but nevertheless I think of you every night, I swear it to you. We have been greatly hampered by spring storms here—the day before yesterday hailstones the size of my fist came down in a shower that could have killed a man! This wild land needs a gentle female hand to tame it, love. And I know that I will not be troubled by any such tempests once you are here at my side.

“Please do not fret about your Aunt’s departure—here you will have all the home and family that you will ever need! I know it troubles you to part on bad terms with her, but surely . . .
I can’t make out what it says next. In fact, most of this paragraph . . .” I squint at it.
“I have seen to it that . . . It pains me to . . . Be patient for just a little while longer, my darling, and before you know it we will be together. I have found a place beside the house where I am going to make you a garden. I remember you told me once how much you would love to have a garden. Well, you shall have one of your very own, and you can grow in it whatever you wish to. The soil here is a little sandy, but many things will flourish in it. And we will flourish here, I know it. My heart reminds me of your absence every day, and I thank God that we will soon be reunited.