The Road to Hell (12 page)

Seeing that the bowl was empty, Helen took her hands off her older son, and the instant he was free he pedalled away to start his circuits of the kitchen table once more. The dogs, seeing that
the game had begun again, rushed back to join in. One of them tripped over the television flex, pulling the plug from the socket, and instantly a loud wail came from Angus, who found himself
sitting in front of a blank screen. Tutting irritably, Helen picked him up. The child turned his head away from her, wriggling in her arms, desperate to return to his seat on the floor and resume
his viewing.

‘It’s all right, Helen,’ Alice said, putting the tray down by the sink. ‘I liked it as it was.’ Helen looked at her doubtfully, so she added, ‘Honestly, just
as it was.’

Before Helen had a chance to respond, she had to leap out of the way to avoid being run over by her son.

‘Are you sure?’

‘Sure.’

Helen bent down and put the plug back into its socket and the TV flashed into life. There were gurgles of joy from her younger child, already enraptured by the picture on the screen. Alice
picked up a red-and-white dishcloth and began to dry one of the newly-scrubbed pans. Her sister returned to her place at the sink, yellow gloves on once more, as she attacked a blackened oven
dish.

‘Pete left it in the oven overnight to “roast” peppers,’ she said with a rueful sigh. Alice nodded but said nothing. After a while Helen spoke again. ‘Would it help
to talk?’

‘Not really,’ Alice answered, cutlery in hand, her eyes on the children. But in the minutes of prolonged and uncomfortable silence that followed she felt the need to say something.
Helen seemed to expect it.

‘I haven’t get my own mind around it yet, Helen,’ she began. ‘It’s hard to explain. It’s like something I’ve only half seen, something glimpsed. One bit
of my brain knows exactly what it saw, but another bit of it, the hopeful bit, goes on insisting that it was not that at all. It tells me that it was something else. And that’s the bit that I
want to believe. The hopeful bit, the bit that says that there’s been a mistake and he’s not really dead, that someone else was run over, not him. And then I can believe that
he’ll come walking through the door at any minute. Every time I think I’ve accepted his death, believe it, the hopeful bit of my brain upsets everything, saying I’m wrong. I know
he’s dead, of course I do . . .’

‘What happened?’ Helen asked, leaning her head against her bare forearm and rubbing her itchy forehead on it.

Alice breathed out. She did not want to talk to anyone about it, had a superstitious fear of putting into words the circumstances of his death. Describing it, talking about it, meant that it was
true, that she accepted that it had all happened and in that way. In the process of telling it, he would become a story, a tale to be told, someone to be spoken about by others, but who no longer
said anything himself.

‘He was in Stan’s Bar in Stockbridge,’ she started, hesitating before forcing herself to go on, listening to the sounds coming out of her mouth as if they were being made by
someone else. ‘I don’t know who he was with exactly, Cici told me their names but I didn’t know any of them. Some of his studio pals, apparently. I phoned her to find out what had
happened . . . because she’d been with him. She said that he was knocking back the drink a bit and became argumentative, so she decided to leave. He left at the same time, and as he was
crossing the road, dawdling a bit, he was hit by a car. Simple as that. They took him –’

She stopped, aware that tears had forced their way into her eyes again. ‘Well, not him any more... his body . . . to the Infirmary, but it was too late. DOA. Dead on arrival. I saw
him.’

‘What happened to the car driver? Was he hurt?’ Helen asked, slipping another plate into the rack.

‘I don’t know. It was a hit and run,’ Alice replied, tired with the effort of speaking. ‘Eric didn’t tell me and I forgot to ask. I’ll be told as soon as they
get him.’

‘Quiet you two! Ssshh!’ Angus demanded, putting his finger to his mouth to silence them and adding, ‘I can’t hear the telly!’

Seeing her sister’s appalled expression, Alice wordlessly put an arm around her shoulder. She did not mind what the boy had said, would have preferred to remain silent herself. But to
admit this sounded too unfriendly, and she did not have the energy to work out how to phrase it as tact required. It would be difficult to tell Helen that the children’s complete indifference
to her predicament seemed preferable, at present, to her own obvious concern. Their self-absorption meant that they required nothing of her, had little interest in anything she said. Her tears did
not have to be hidden from them because they would not notice them even if they were coursing down her face. Their own inner worlds were so interesting, so vivid and engaging, that little of anyone
else’s impinged upon them. So she did not have to make any effort with them, nothing needed to be hidden or explained. Thankfully, the part she played in the drama of their lives was so small
that they would not notice her absence from the stage. Yet they were company. In contrast, Helen’s sweet sympathy demanded a response.

‘Aunt Alice?’ Angus said, rising from his place on the floor and toddling towards her, the lip of an empty beaker trailing behind him along the tiled floor.

‘Yes?’

‘Why are you here?’ he asked, frowning, looking at her and attempting to drain the last drop of juice from his beaker.

For a moment she was not sure what to answer. Did he know? Should she allude to Ian’s death or simply gloss over it? Angus knew him after all, had referred to him as ‘Uncle
Ian’ on their last stay. But maybe she was supposed to palm the child off with some innocent lie? Such as, ‘I’m here because I like it here.’ Or perhaps his parents had a
policy of not shirking the ‘big issues’ as they arose? What did the boy know of death?

‘Well,’ she began, feeling the need to say something and catching her sister’s eye, in the hope that she would provide some kind of guidance on the appropriate answer. But
before she had begun to formulate anything, the boy yelled, ‘Prank Patrol!’ and rushed back to the TV set.

Later that morning, Alice went alone to feed the chickens. Her nephews, too busy wrestling with each other, had declined to come with her and she was relieved to be on her own.
The silence outside was like balm. The henhouse was set in a small paddock surrounded by laurel bushes, and the morning sun danced and sparked on their shiny, dark green leaves.

She threw the birds their mix of grain and layers pellets and then went into their house to see what they had laid since the previous day. A few of the straw-lined hen boxes contained clutches
of pale brown eggs but in one a hen was sitting, surveying Alice with an unblinking, malevolent gaze. A couple of eggs lay touching her feathered breast and Alice stretched a hand out to collect
them. A sharp peck to her wrist made her look up, meeting the bird’s outraged eyes. Its stare left her in no doubt that any further attempt to rob it would be met with the same treatment, so
she retreated, turning her back and leaving.

As she leant against the dilapidated little hut she gazed at the small flock as they pecked feverishly on the ground, the sun reflecting off their glossy, green-black feathers. Sparrows hopped
between the scaly feet of the fowl, ducking and dodging in search of missed morsels. A loud crowing behind her made her come to and she whirled round. A huge cockerel, his red crown flopping over
one eye, charged at her, flinging himself at her legs with his sharp spurs uppermost.

Instinctively, she moved aside to evade his attack and her manoeuvre worked, the cockerel missed his target and ended up somersaulting in the dirt. While she was still gazing at her floored
assailant, a memory bubbled to the surface, of the last occasion on which she had entered his domain. It was five months earlier, in the height of summer, with the cow parsley blooms fading and the
air heavy with the hum of bees. They had gone together to the hens. She was supposed to be feeding them and Ian planned to sketch them as they scratched about, beaks agape, in search of grain. As
soon as she had entered the hen-run, the cockerel had launched a surprise attack on her, charging without warning from a space below the hen-house, wings flapping and spurs to the fore. But he had
been stopped in his tracks by a tin pencil case flung at him, bouncing off his head and causing him to run off, squawking, to the shelter of his harem. When Ian had picked his case up, he had
brandished it at the cowering bird, muttering, ‘Next time, rooster – you’ll be coq au vin.’

The memory was so vivid, so strong, that she could see his smiling face in front of her, hear the laughter in his voice. And she did not want to. Trying to think about other things, she walked
back towards her sister’s house. It was an old, stone-built farmhouse set on the side of a hill. Normally the beauty of the place moved her. It seemed to be being gradually reclaimed by the
earth, with ivy, clematis and climbing hydrangea covering its walls, fringing its lower windows, their tendrils curling upwards into the metal gutters. Majestic lime trees surrounded it, sheltering
it from the prevailing wind, and, in the summer, the scent of its flowers was heady, drowsy bees working in its shade. She took its existence as proof that harmony could be achieved between the
works of man and nature, each enhancing the other. Even in the winter, on the coldest, darkest days, something of its essence usually touched her, but not today. It was as if she was no longer able
to truly see; everything was there just as it had been before, but the sight of it left her cold. A veil seemed to have been placed between herself and the world.

‘Aunt Alice . . . phone!’

Sam was standing beside her, and seeing that she did not move, he immediately shouted at her, ‘Come on, come on. Chop, chop!’

Obediently she followed him back to the house, and as she entered the kitchen her sister handed the phone to her, soundlessly miming the words, ‘Ian’s mother.’

The noise in the room had not abated but was, if anything, worse. A radio was now in competition with the television, the dogs were barking and the washing machine was whirring on spin-cycle. So
she walked into the nearby study and closed the door.

‘Hello,’ she said.

‘Alice?’ Mrs Melville asked, apparently not recognising her voice.

‘Yes.’

‘How are you, dear?’

‘I’m all right, thanks. And you?’

‘I’m fine too. But I need to speak to you about Hamish.’ The old lady’s voice sounded firm, as robust as ever.

Slowly, Alice closed her eyes, then, sighing to herself, she covered them with her left hand. In her grief she had forgotten all about the child, Ian’s son. He lived with his maternal aunt
and her partner in Roseburn Terrace, on the top floor of a tenement close to the Water of Leith. The boy’s mother, who had had a brief affair with Ian, had died a year earlier and Ian had
learnt of her death and the boy’s existence simultaneously. Since then they had both been trying to get to know him, seeing him once a fortnight, and if allowed, more frequently. He was now
aged four, curly-haired and sturdy, with a gap where one of his front milk teeth had been knocked out in a fall.

‘Right,’ she said, feeling ashamed, shocked by her own thoughtlessness. Maybe it was true that blood was thicker than water. Mrs Melville, despite her bereavement and over seven
decades spent upon the earth, had not forgotten the boy, overlooked his very existence.

‘Does he know yet?’ the old woman asked.

‘I don’t know, but I wouldn’t think so. I haven’t told him. If you haven’t either, I can’t think who would have done.’

‘That’s what I thought. But it does need to be done . . . and his aunt, Rachel, needs to know too.’

‘Shall I do it? Would you like me to do it? I could go and see her today if you like. Let Rachel know.’

‘Yes. The sooner the better, I think, but I’ll come too. I want to see Hamish and to speak to Rachel about him myself. Whatever has happened to his father, I’m still his
granny. I’ll leave the arrangements up to you, if you don’t mind, and perhaps we could meet there. In Rachel’s flat?’