by Caro Ramsay
Who could I talk to about that? Everybody had an agenda.
I fell back into a strange and thankfully dreamless sleep, that left me cold and nervous about the days ahead. The heat outside, even at that time in the morning, was starting to build. The weather forecast was warning people to avoid the heat of the midday, to drink plenty of water, wear a hat, don’t leave dogs in the car. All the big shops had run out of fans. The weather was becoming oppressive, there was a sense of danger in the air, the world was not the friendly damp place that Scotland usually was, it was parched and deadly.
Dad had been up and out on the estate already, overseeing the shooting, asking the tenant farmers to watch out for the wildlife, they would be suffering in the drought and for trespassers who might be after the eagles and their young.
I was going downstairs for a drink when I saw Debs walking, quickly, down the hall, her Ugg boots scuffing on the polished wooden floor. Something furtive about her movement made me stop, the way she cast a glance both up and down the hall. I sidestepped into the doorway of the dining room, immediately noticing the mess of the place, bottles and glasses strewn on the table. When I stepped out again, Debs had gone into my dad’s study, emerging with a set of keys wrapped in her fingers, and what looked like a rash on her face.
And the keys looked like those of the gun cabinet.
I waited until I saw her leave the kitchen, going across the yard to the lodge.
There could be a few explanations for that but not one that made sense to me.
I took a bottle of water from the fridge then took the dogs down to the Benbrae; they could swim in the cool water. Molly was her usual happy self, Anastasia seemed a little confused. There was usually a slight breeze down here, so it was not too hot for them. They could run around and then spend the rest of the day dozing in the coolness of the house.
It was very hot down at the bank. The grass was burning in the harsh unsettling heat, the water was starting to look low, the clouds appearing on the horizon. There was going to be a high tide on the Clyde and the parched earth would soak up the excess. I saw Dad drive past on his way back up to the house, he’d been out since six. Whatever was happening in his bed it wasn’t long lie-ins. I wondered when he had planned the shoot, he’d need access to the guns for that.
Another stress to worry about, I wanted to board Curlew 2, and think about nothing. I wanted the next few days to be over, I wanted to … well, where did I want to be? There had been no talk of me going back to work. I was now expected to be here in this non-life. I hoped Mum would turn up at the funeral. That was the unspoken question on everybody’s lips. Would she, wouldn’t she? Nobody had heard anything, even Heather was keeping quiet. She was around but keeping out of my way, I was sure her car hadn’t moved from the back parking area and there were two glasses on the coffee table in the front room, evidence of a wee late-night warmer. A bottle of Grey Goose and a bottle of Glenfiddich, though from memory, Heather was more fond of designer gin. I sat there for a long time, looking over at the dark part of the pond, where the trees overhung the surface. It buzzed with flies and always smelled as if something was rotting in there. Dad had explained that there was an underwater connection there out to the faerie pools beyond, the current eddied there, causing the water to be stagnant. Evil and magical creatures of the night lived down there, I was terrified of the place. Melissa had known that and it had given her no end of amusement. She could be cruel. Instead of being my ears, the way Oodie, Molly and Carla used to be, Melissa used my deafness to terrify me. Because it was funny. More than once she had blindfolded me and marched me down to the Tentor Wood, claiming we were playing Blind Man’s Bluff or she was walking me to a surprise and didn’t want it spoiled. If I hadn’t been so young, I wouldn’t have fallen for it. Once I did fall, into a faerie pool. And I couldn’t get out.
I nearly drowned.
She should have said sorry for that. It was a memory, uncovered in a session with Dr Scobie. I wish he had left it where it was, as it opened up something, the sense of another memory behind it. The vision I have in my mind is of the faerie pool at the Tentor Wood, then it goes out of focus and I am being carried up the Long Drive by Dad. Later Dad takes Melissa into the library for a ‘talk’.
My memory never hangs around at the faerie pool, and I don’t know why. And Dr Scobie never pushes on that the way he concentrates on other issues. I wonder if he knows.
I do have some memories of the place. No matter how much sun shone over the Benbrae, what time of year or how high the sun was in the sky, that part of the pond was always dark and dense. Jago and his mates, up one weekend, had got very drunk and dared each other, foolish young men, drunk, city boys, running through the thick undergrowth. One of them, Roddie, dived into a faerie pool, and couldn’t get out, a fatal mix of drink and overconfidence. A sober friend ran out of the Tentor Wood and picked up the lifebuoy that hung on the wall of the boathouse. That kept Roddie afloat until Dad was called and they got Roddie out with a rope, but it was touch and go. He caught giardiasis from swallowing the water and was in hospital for a long time, with terrible diarrhoea and vomiting. He’s never been the same since, he ended up losing his job, another victim of the Melvick curse.
Thinking of that night made me shiver, even in the heat of the sun. Dad was stunned, Mum was confused as to why, and how, somebody could be that stupid. We all knew how dangerous the faerie pools were, with their strange deep whirlpool current and the overhanging banks.
Roddie was lucky to be alive, Dad spoke to the police about fencing off the area. The police said that drunk folk do stupid stuff, and you couldn’t protect them from their own stupidity. It was the first time I had heard that people had died there before. Death just like that, right here at the end of the garden. Then the eagles came back, then birdwatchers and sightseers were walking through the woods uninvited. Dad, the police and the council decided to build a lay-by off the road, Dad was donating the land, and the council would provide signposts to divert people around the Tentor Wood to the bridge.
That’s how there came to be the lay-by where Mum was last seen, waiting to be picked up by a car driven by some man that we didn’t know about.
I decided to walk back up to the house, see what Dad was doing for breakfast and put off the evil moment of meeting Jago, maybe ask Deborah about the keys. Molly and Anastasia walked slowly after me, their tongues lolling out the side of their mouths, panting. It was already too hot for them.
Dad was nowhere to be seen so I showered, answered some more emails of condolence and spent a long time out on the balcony of my bedroom, part of the long terrace looking down the long drive out to the Benbrae, waiting for somebody to appear. There used to be a routine in this house, it used to bustle. Melissa was always the noisy one, screaming with some tantrum or another. I was the apologetic one, Melissa had a sense of entitlement and never apologized for anything. Until her dying breath.
This has never been a house for bringing people together, it’s too easy to stay apart. As a kid, I would sit alone in my room, in my soundless room, reading a book. They tried to send me to school but I didn’t like it so the school sent me back. They sent me away to another school, I didn’t like that so they sent me back. It was all too noisy and too difficult. Then I ended up at the local school, my parents had been talked into it by some of the villagers. That didn’t work and it ended up with me having a scar on my forehead and being schooled at home, in a classroom of one. But it did bring Carla to my rescue.
It did mean that I was lonely, but at least I was at peace. And it meant that I met Carla eventually. I was a kid who ran around this big house on my own, she was cramped into a corner somewhere in shared accommodation. We should have hated each other on sight but there was always a symbiosis there. The recognition of two outsiders who needed each other.
Eventually the sun drove me off the terrace so I went back into my bedroom and opened Lonesome Dove; I was slowly getting through it. I needed to do something o
n my own, I was still heavy-headed from the bad sleep. I wasn’t used to living with people, not used to having to wear my hearing aids and concentrating on listening to think. I actually wasn’t that interested in hearing, but I only knew that after I had been bothered listening to it. Funny how those that talk think I will be interested in hearing; it’s never that fascinating, believe me.
‘Megan?’ There was a knock at the door. I heard some muffled noise, saw the door open slightly. ‘Megan? Can I come in?’
Deep tones, I adjusted my hearing aid and put Lonesome Dove down on top of the duvet.
‘Come in.’
It was Dad, looking at the ground, smiling grimly. ‘Megan. Did you sleep well last night?’
‘No, why?’
‘Can you come downstairs for a minute?’ He stood up. He had his headmaster’s face on. ‘It’s important.’
‘What now?’ Christ, had Jago told him?
‘Yes, Megan, right now, please.’ He stood by the door and opened it wide, ushering me outside into the hall, then down to the front room.
I was surprised to see Deborah, not Jago, sitting there, legs crossed at the ankle, looking more prim than the queen, despite her normal dress of jeans and loose white T-shirt. She was holding her hand to the side of her face, she looked a little red-eyed. I thought she was having some delayed reaction to the events of yesterday.
Dad pointed to the sofa opposite Debs and asked me to have a seat. He sat on Debs’ side, close next to her. I wondered what Heather would say about that.
‘Megan, I think you should listen to what Deborah has to say.’
I looked at her but she was looking at Dad, eyes wide, almost frightened, not wanting to say what she was about to say. She looked incredibly young. Her hand dropped revealing a nasty injury, still bleeding at the bottom; crimson pansies of blood patterned the white handkerchief; from a distance I had mistaken the injury for a rash.
‘Deborah, can you tell us what happened to you last night?’
She looked from him to me then back to him. ‘She doesn’t know, does she?’
‘I don’t think she does.’ My dad looked at me, a curious mixture of guilt and shame on his face.
‘Know what?’ I asked.
‘Deborah was out last night, checking the house before she went back to the lodge. It was dark by the time she went down the path between the house and the orchard.’
‘It was very dark, so dark I really couldn’t see,’ Deborah explained, more tears rolling down her face.
‘Are you OK,’ I asked, ‘were you attacked?’ I felt the curse of the house come down amongst us. ‘Was there somebody out there?’
‘It was very late, it wasn’t dark until after midnight last night. You know that, Megan?’
‘Of course I do but I was upstairs in my bed …’ And then I looked at their faces, reading what they could not say.
‘Somebody was out there, waiting for Deborah when she went out to the bins, and hit her. It was only by chance that she managed to get away, a glancing blow rather than what might have been intended.’ He pointed at her face. ‘And the dogs did not bark, none of them, so it stands to reason it was somebody that the dogs knew.’ He looked at me directly; he had a way of staring that used to bore through me when I was young, it was a look of interrogation. Nobody would dare to lie under the intensity of that stare.
Now it was my time to look from one to the other.
‘Deborah thinks it was you, Megan.’
‘I didn’t say that. I just said—’
‘Deborah, I am dealing with this.’
And she was immediately silent, hands in her lap, the cut on her face surrounded by blue and black petals.
‘You must have followed her out from the house …’
‘I didn’t even know she was there …’ I argued, but it sounded weak, I knew exactly where this was going.
‘You did look very strange, I think you were asleep, Megan, I don’t think you meant it or anything. I’m not accusing you, I’m not doing that.’ And the tears started again.
‘Nobody is accusing anybody of anything. We know that Megan has had issues in the past and we are going to get it sorted. Megan? Do you recall anything last night, anything at all?’
‘No.’
‘And when you woke up this morning, Megan? Did you feel odd or cold or were you more dressed than you were when you went to bed?’
‘She had her nightdress on,’ said Deborah. ‘And her housecoat was over it but not tied closed.’ She looked at me. ‘I’m sorry but you did have it on, I think I startled you, you were sleepwalking, you didn’t look like yourself. Your eyes were open. I gave you a fright, I didn’t know you were there and you just lashed out at me, hitting me here. You had something in your hand, it was dark, I only saw it coming and I closed my eyes. There’s a scratch, must have come from your ring … there was a lot of blood. I went back into the lodge and watched from the door. You strolled back to the house, into the kitchen, like nothing had happened. You closed the door behind you and didn’t come back out.’
‘I don’t remember it at all.’
‘Can you go upstairs and get your nightdress and the housecoat you were wearing.’
‘I had them on this morning, they were clean.’ I knew they were, I would have noticed.
‘Ivan, she was sleepwalking, there is no need for all this.’
‘One look at what she was wearing will help us.’
‘In my washing basket, in the laundry,’ I said. ‘It was very hot, last night.’
‘I’ll go and fetch the basket,’ said Deborah, looking relived to be out of the firing range, caught between Dad and I.
‘Thank you, Deborah.’
And he waited until she was gone before he said, ‘Megan, do you feel that you have been under stress, too much stress, with Melissa and everything? Maybe we have been neglecting you, there has been so much and—’
I droned him out, floating into my silence. It was happening again. ‘I need to apologize to Deborah.’
‘She says there is no need, but yes, I think you must.’ He rubbed his face. ‘I was talking to Donald Scobie. He knows your history of blackouts. I called him yesterday about Melissa, of course, but I am going to call him again and tell him of this recent event. I do not want you going backwards, Megan, you have been so well, holding down a job and living independently. I’m sure this was a single incident, an accident because you came across Deborah in your sleep and you both got a fright. The stress of losing your sister …’
The door opened, Deborah entered holding a folded-up white cloth under her arm, my nightdress that she had put out on the bed for me the night I arrived. She handed it to my dad slowly, her hand shaking. Dad unrolled it and saw the little spatters of blood down the right side close to the bottom. He looked at the back, at the front, and then rolled it back up again.
‘I’m so sorry, Deborah.’
‘I know it was an accident, Megan,’ Deborah said, then turned to Dad. ‘Can we leave it like that? And Heather has arrived, I met her at the kitchen door. You might not want …’
‘Does she just let herself in?’ I asked.
‘The door was open. It’s very hot out there,’ she chided gently, back to her usual self.
‘OK.’ Dad voice was grave; he was getting this conversation back on track. ‘And I was telling Megan that we are getting Donald Scobie to call and see … if we need some more help.’
‘It’s been an awful time for you all. No need for you to apologize, Megan. I gave you a fright, that’s all.’ And she put her arm out to hug me, rubbing my back. Up close, the skin of her cheek had split, still open and weeping, not bleeding now. It was starting to crust round the outside, the edges of her skin were puffed and raw. The bruising was already starting to deform her cheekbone.
I said sorry again and walked towards the door, aware of a scarring noise on the far side, the smell of Pomegranate Noir hanging in the air. I hadn’t smelled it when I was hugging Debs. So I knew
that the lovely Heather had been listening at the door.
NINE
Carla
So Megan can’t trust her own memory. And she lamped Mum, good for her, maybe if she put a lot more effort in she could have stood them together and lamped Heather as well. If she fancies getting busy I can give her a whole list of folk that could benefit from a good slapping.
Megan, without me, is a bit unstable. I’m serious when I say that there is madness in that family. My family are all a bit bonks but we only suffer from the normal drunken madness of getting pissed, falling into fountains, stabbing our nearest and dearest and cockaleekie soup.
The memory of Frosty Pants dragging her down to the faerie pools, blindfolded, is coming back, slowly. There was a lot of screaming there, Megan’s complex neurones had convinced her that she was deaf by then so couldn’t hear herself scream for help. Ivan said it sounded like a wounded dog, inhuman, incredibly loud and piercing. When he first heard it, he had no idea it was his daughter making the noise. When he got to her, she was sitting in her own pish and shit, so mad with fear that she didn’t recognize him. He had looked round for the animal that had attacked her, the one that had made the noise, there was all kinds of stuff going through his mind.
Totally missing the fact that this was a rerun of the incident where she had been struck deaf by the noise, in the same way some folk are struck dumb. But they never talked about it, nobody listened. I think Frosty Pants knew that and was evil enough to repeat it.
As I’ve said, the Melvicks hide their delusions very well, they play rugger and are gentlemen, inbred to the extent that they possess a real Heathcliff and Cathy kind of madness, Ophelia going slowly nuts and then drowning herself. Megan met a boy that she really did like, and they starting seeing each other, he was really nice to her, he got on well with her family and had suitable breeding, was the right height, the right school etc. And what did she do? She woke up in the middle of the night and set fire to the bed while he was still in it.
