by Caro Ramsay
Running my eye along the north bank, I couldn’t quite see the brightly coloured tiles of the sunflower mosaic, a memorial to friendship that lasted a lifetime; a short life, though. I can close my eyes and see Carla’s elfin face, laughing, mischievous. She was always up to something.
This was a house of many beautiful views. Weird that none of them are happy.
Despite the heat, I felt the breath of a chill on my neck. The beauty of the Benbrae pond was always darkened by the danger of the faerie pools beyond. Were they called that when I was young? I don’t think so. They were forbidden territory for Melissa and me after I nearly drowned in one when I was wee, but I can’t recall it. The thick trees there were borne from Tolkien fantasy, as dark and dense as Mirkwood, isolated from the house and the road. It’s very grown over now but I knew the faerie pools were still there. There used to be three of them, who knows how many there might be now. They appeared overnight as if by magic, hence the name but like much that was magical, the reality was mundane. They were merely the signs of tidal water eroding the subterranean soil. I preferred the faeries explanation, dark faeries who lurked in the flowers and the deep dank grass where no sunshine penetrated to warm their cold hearts, they waited there to drag children and adulterous wives into the murky depths. The police searched the pools after my mother disappeared, in case she had come to harm. Maybe while looking for a runaway dog, she had come across a pool sooner than she thought and tumbled in. They are impossible to climb out of, the banks roll in over the water, underwater branches and roots of surrounding trees catch on struggling feet, or strike the skull on the way down.
It wasn’t true. Everybody knew that my mum, Beth, had left us for a man.
Just like that.
This place hasn’t changed, not really. The grass was a little longer, the trees were bigger, the wood denser, allowed to grow as it wanted after Tom McEwan went to jail. How long would that be now? Four years? His actual incarceration would be short; I have no doubt that he would be a model prisoner. The prison garden would have impeccable lawns and well-trimmed trees.
My memory caught and stopped.
It’s remarkable how easily the eye picks up the familiar figure of a loved one. I could see Dad leaning against the bonnet of his Land Rover, his hand raised, cupping his eyes from the glare of the sun. He was looking for me, scanning the land at the bottom of the drive. Then he waved, and jogged towards me, maybe not something a man of his age should do. It’s a long way. And then the dogs were running down the drive to greet me. Molly, the retriever, was a golden, galloping streak. Mo and Midge, the two Russells yapping and tumbling behind her, stopping every few yards to take a snap at each other.
I waved back at him, slipping my hearing aids in before dropping to my knees to hug the dogs, readying myself to go through the routine of being the perfect daughter. Then Dad’s arms were outstretched, lifting me and swinging me round, the dogs jumping and barking. I laughed and warned Dad to watch his back. He held my face in his hands and kissed me on the forehead in a rare show of emotion.
‘Megan, it’s so good to see you.’
I smiled at him. Every time I come home he’s older, slightly leaner, his once sable hair is greyer and longer but his eyes were still the blue of the Caspian Sea and his smile as wide as the moon. He’s a very handsome man. Melissa inherited her looks from him and is, was, a very beautiful woman. I took after my mother, kind-faced and pretty, so I have been told, but never beautiful, not in the heart-stopping way Melissa was.
The way Melissa used to be.
‘Have you heard from Mum?’
I truly expected him to say yes but he shook his head. ‘Not a word, Megan. Not a single word.’
Trying not to meet his eyes my line of vision drifted past my father, up to the house, to the far window upstairs on the left, where the curtains were closed. My sister was in there, dying.
Then I saw the other woman striding purposefully down the long drive.
Well, well, well.
So it wasn’t only the rooks that were circling.
Carla
I can hardly wait for Megan to come back. After a year of speculation, there are rumours that it might be this week. That it might even be today.
It has been three years since Beth walked out, and then Megan, for her seventeenth, got her Mercedes. She doesn’t think she’s coming back for me, she thinks it’s for Melissa.
All this homecoming is for Melissa.
That’s what they think.
I think – I know – different.
I knew it when I saw the rooks swooping high above the Tentor Wood, squawking and cawing. They have been flying around the bay for the past few weeks, then the Benbrae, in the last few days and this morning they are right up at the house, black-winged demons. Soon they will be flying into the house, smashing their brains, smearing leaded glass with blood. I wonder if they know, if they can sense death and are preparing for what may come their way. There’s talk Ivan will be out with the shotgun before the end of the week.
Their presence reminds me of Melissa’s wedding day. The sun was very bright that morning too. Ivan Melvick said the rooks flew into the windows at this time of year, when the sun’s rays hit the old window panes at a certain angle, and the rooks, stupid buggers, were attracted by the glint and the flare. On the morning of the wedding they battered into the paladin window, covering it with bloodied smears and black feathers. We’d be plunged into darkness for an instant with a sickening dull thud, and Megan thought they had died, bursting their brains, but rooks, like the upper classes, have very hard skulls. They bounced off, leaving us looking at a raspberry ripple sky.
That day my dad was in the middle of the Long Drive with a clipboard, overseeing the parking of two transporters, directing catering vans and the odd guest that was parking up at the house. He was an important man on the day Melissa, or Princess Frosty Pants, got married.
Today it’s Megan’s dad who has top billing. He has been pacing about downstairs, scared to go out and welcome his daughter back to the family home. When Megan sees Heather I think she’ll realize how often Ivan has been mentioning her mum’s best friend on the phone. Heather Kincaid is a bloodsucking, gold-digging little tick. With Beth gone, Ivan is now up for grabs and the bold Heather is right in there. I almost feel sorry for him.
Megan will pick up on that, she’s sharp where her beloved daddy is concerned. My mum is keeping out the way, knowing her place as the hired help and all that. She’ll be in the kitchen making tea and providing sandwiches, preparing to pick up the pieces once the prodigal one has passed away.
I’ve never liked Melissa.
And she’s always hated me.
Strange how things pan out. I am scared that they will pull Megan apart now she’s back, just as they destroyed Melissa, just as they drove Beth away.
Megan is delicate and she’ll not come to harm, not while I am here.
Over my dead body.
I have the same memories of the wedding day as Megan.
I remember the carousel starting up, slowly at first, with Jago and Melissa, the newlyweds, both on the same horse. The barrel organ music rolled out down the Long Drive, discordant in the night sky. It rolled over the water as the spinning rhythm wound up and the starey-eyed horses flashed past, their coloured lights dappling and dancing on the Benbrae. Then the carousel slowed, becoming more definite in form, horses and the bride and groom, those sweeping, magical lights changed to single bulbs covered in cheap plastic.
We all climbed on for the photographs, a battery of mobile phones. Melissa and Jago stayed on board, Beth and Ivan, Beth holding the reins properly. Megan and I hitched up our skirts and we posed on top of our mounted steeds, their painted bright eyes wide and red mouths open like they were out their faces on cocaine. Round and round we went, holding onto the poles with one hand and letting the wind whip through our hair; the flowers went flying through the air, the music ground on and on. The lights sprinkled over the land,
brightly coloured, reds and blues and green, all flashing through the darkening air. Once it slowed, the guests lined up, ready for their turn. I had necked a few vodkas by then and I fell off, I lay on the ground and waited for my guts to stop churning and my head to stop hurting. I don’t think anybody noticed.
Then I should have gone off looking for Megan as she hates fireworks but I didn’t find her. She’d come to the Curlew as soon as she had escaped from whichever boring relative had pinholed her. I had been stockpiling a few bottles for our own private party later. The Italian House would probably be open all night so nobody would care if Megan was there or not.
I had planned a beautiful end to a beautiful day, out on the Curlew. She was at the bank, bobbing, there was nobody else on the water, everybody was drinking around the carousel, waiting for their ride. The oldies were climbing aboard, getting legs up onto the horses, some of them sitting side saddle. Those old posh biddies were probably on a horse before they could walk. But the carousel was a social leveller, the duchess and barmaid, side by side, laughing. Minutes passed, the music went on and on, I was out on the Curlew, close to the bank, drinking my vodka, waiting. I remember feeling warm and cosy when the first firework rocketed into the sky, bursting again and again, flowering sparks of colour all over the heavens.
Then the explosion happened.
TWO
Megan
All I ever wanted was a life filled with a million happy days. I would live out on the Benbrae, floating in the Curlew, my fingers turning blue in the cold water. It didn’t even need to be summer, Carla and I could giggle at anything and our laughter would have kept us warm. As long as we were together, we were happy.
That was my vision of the life I wanted.
Instead, my life so far was best described as adequate, although it looked like it was going to take a turn for the worse.
The small figure dressed in black trousers topped by the bob of auburn hair bouncing on her head was engaging in a pincer manoeuvre. I noticed how puffy her eyes were, tears already spent. Her triangular face was grim with concentration as she strode down the Long Drive, struggling in high heels, her elbows pumping to give her short legs more momentum. Heather the Blether. My mum’s best friend.
I took my father’s hand, squeezed it. This was supposed to be a family moment. Heather Kincaid was not, and never would be, a Melvick.
‘Are you OK?’ he asked, which was Father Speak for ‘you don’t mind, do you?’.
Bar the odd quick visit, it was me who had not been home for the last three years, who was I to criticize him for the company he kept? But this woman, waving at me, smiling as she stuck her nose in, well, she was betraying my mother.
Nature abhors a vacuum, and now that Mum was off the scene, here was Heather, an heir apparent, no longer content to wait. My mind cast back to the phone calls of the last few months, Dad peppering Heather’s name into the conversation. Here she was looking thinner, younger, dressed in linen casual chic and her hair cut into a soft, modern bob.
For my dad’s benefit?
I shouldn’t comment. I left Dad just as much as Mum had, as Melissa will in her turn. Again it struck me, looking up at the Italian House with the welcoming paladin window and the carvings on the balustrade, that it will be all mine one day, soon.
Dad had commissioned the rebuilding of the boathouse after the explosion, no doubt for future generations, although grandchildren were now looking a rather remote possibility. He needed to believe that we were not the end of the Melvick family and I felt the doors of the Italian House closing on me on my twenty-first birthday. The day of my inheritance.
Then I will be trapped like the rest of them.
Heather got busy, she adored helping and being needed. She offered to drive my car up to the house, leaving Dad and I to walk up the Long Drive with the dogs. It was thoughtful offer, I wanted to enjoy the house and drink in the view as I walked, hand in hand with Dad. The Italian House never changes. The land has been in the family for over five hundred years, and this house, or variations of it, have stood on that site for 150 of them. It was carefully designed to take advantage of the view over the Holy Loch, with huge French windows from every room on the upper floor that opened onto a long veranda. My bedroom was up there, on the east side of the house above the front portico. It was three years since I had last slept here but I knew nothing would have changed. My sister is dying. We all ride the carousel of life and death but this house is a constant. All the good things in life have to be balanced with the bad. We Melvicks knew that, as a family we had a worse curse than the Kennedys.
I stood in the reception hall, a guest in my own home, looking up to the huge portrait of Agatha Emmaline Melvick staring down at me as if she had uttered the words, ‘Where have you been, my dear?’. I was making the usual chit-chat with Dad about being well and the weather. At the bottom of the stairs, before the first turn, was the copy of the Munnings oil, The White Horse. The original, probably my dad’s most treasured possession, was safe in his study in its protected case. If this all panned out the way it seemed to be going, I would be moving one rung up the ladder of inheritance. Melissa and I joked that we would never be as close to Dad’s heart as the Munnings was. That and the Hornell we had in the dining room, the Three Shell Seekers. It was a picture of three girls, very typical of the artist’s work, rosy-cheeked and round-faced, smiling girls, dancing. Dad thought two of them looked like Melissa and I and as a kid, I used to wonder who the third one was. If there was some dark secret that Dad hadn’t told me, a third half-sibling somewhere. If there was, I hoped she had the good sense to keep away. Then, on the day I was lying on the pavement, bleeding and helpless, Carla came to save me. I felt the question of the third girl had been answered.
We were complete.
For a while.
As I looked upstairs, checking the house was all as it should be, I saw Deborah waiting behind the door like the hired help waiting to be summoned. We exchanged glances. If I was surprised that she was here, I hope I didn’t show it. I sensed that she was asking me not to say anything, like she had crept into the house without anybody noticing.
‘Megan?’ She addressed me directly, rather formally. ‘I’ve got your old bedroom ready. Is that OK?’
‘Of course it will be,’ said Dad. ‘Megan’s just happy to be home, aren’t you?’
‘Thanks,’ I said, aware of the uneasiness of manners between the three of us standing at the bottom of the stairs, in this house of twenty rooms. A shadow fell over the floor, a clatter of heels broke the silence, heralding Heather’s arrival from the kitchen.
‘Deborah, can you take Megan’s bags up for her?’ suggested Heather, ‘and put the keys on the rack so they don’t get lost.’ She had my car keys dangling from her forefinger on an outstretched arm, commanding the space in the way that only very short people can do. She then proceeded to usher the dogs out the front door, wafting the scent of Pomegranate Noir around the hall.
‘She doesn’t like the dogs in the house,’ explained Dad, managing to look sheepish.
Then I noticed Debs had her hand out, ready to take my bag from me.
‘No, I can manage,’ I said. ‘Honestly.’ Few things are more embarrassing that your dad’s girlfriend ordering your friend’s mum around like a servant.
‘Oh well, you’re much younger than me, Megan, so fill your boots.’ Debs was her usual unflappable cheery self as she turned towards me. ‘I’ve opened the windows in your room but if it’s too drafty be careful closing the top window. The hinges are very stiff.’ With a nod she walked off back to the kitchen, her Ugg boots scuffling on the timber floor, muttering something I didn’t catch but it probably involved putting the kettle on. For Debs, tea was a remedy for everything. A faint scent of nicotine drifted along behind her, sparking happy memories of Carla.
‘Megan, would you like to see your sister now,’ Dad said, his voice trailing off, not willing to say, ‘before she slips away’.
My roo
m was exactly as it had been. I sensed that the bed was freshly made, the glass on the photographs newly polished. Me at five years of age with Oodie. Dad and Papa at the pontoon, both in sailor’s hats. Me, Melissa, Mum and Dad on the sofa downstairs with Anastasia, the Boston Terrier, as a pup, so that would have been taken just before Mum left. And one of the carousel pictures of Melissa’s wedding, Carla and I flying round, our arms outstretched, not holding on, screaming with laughter. We were so secure in the certainty of our youth. We thought we had it all ahead of us. Now we were all back where we started. I unpacked my laptop, my books and candles, put a few clothes in a drawer and then had a very quick shower to remove the grime of the Glasgow streets, and any infection I might be carrying. I dressed in jeans and a T-shirt, and left my room to tread the squeaky floorboards of the corridor that ran the length of the upstairs of our home.
At the top of the stairway, the paladin window rose in a great arch from the floor on one side to the apex of the roof and then back again. Beneath it was a wingback chair and the old mariner desk covered with more family photographs. Pride of place was one of Mum, sitting on the sofa in her favourite spot with me and Melissa, Dad is perched on the end. Martha the yellow lab has pride of place. We are all laughing, especially the dog. I love that picture. It’s the one I have on my own desk at work. It’s bittersweet, there are five beating hearts in that one picture, and by the end of today we could be down to three.
Maybe two.
Mum had taken one, of Melissa and I, with her when she left. The frame was still empty, as a reminder.
No curtains fettered the view. It was everybody’s favourite part of the house; from here I could look right down the Long Drive to the Benbrae and to the woods beyond. Here you could look Agatha Emmaline straight in the eye. She was telling me to get on with what I was here for.
I felt the soft carpet runner beneath my feet as I paused at Dad’s bedroom door, curious to see if it had changed in three years. I opened it, quietly. The bed didn’t look slept in, the room didn’t seem lived in. No scent of the shower being used or clothes in the basket, just rows of neat cushions where the pillows should be. My dad would have piled them up at the bottom of the bed. So he was sleeping elsewhere. With Heather? There were not many people Dad would let order the dogs around.
