Water Like a Stone

by Deborah Crombie

  Gemma nodded. “Maybe I misinterpreted—”

  “No.” Rosemary sighed. “Although I do try not to do that. It’s very unfair to Lally and Sam. He is their father, and the past year or so has been difficult enough for them without my adding to it.”

  “Um…” Gemma hesitated, not sure of the line between polite concern and nosiness. On the job, she’d have had no such scruples. Temporizing, she said, “I understand Juliet changed jobs this last year?”

  “That’s a very tame way of putting it,” agreed Rosemary, pushing the box out of the way and sitting across from Gemma at the big scrubbed table. “Juliet had served as general dogsbody for Caspar’s business since he and his partner set up on their own a few years ago. ‘Office manager’ was her official title, but she did everything from answering the phone to making appointments to keeping the books, and Caspar paid her a minimum wage. He said she benefited by the firm’s overall profitability, so it would be like robbing Peter to pay Paul to give her a decent salary. And while that may have been true, at least in part, it certainly did nothing for Juliet’s self-esteem.

  “She was content enough at first, because it allowed her some flexibility with the children, but then I could see it wearing away at her. Anyone could guess it was only a matter of time before she bolted.”

  “But setting herself up as a builder, and with no experience? Wasn’t that a bit—”

  “Risky? Impractical?” Rosemary’s smile, so like her son’s, lit up her face. “I’d even say foolhardy. But she’d managed quite complicated DIY projects on their own house for years, as well as acting as an unpaid contractor for her friends, and it was what she’d loved doing ever since she was a child.”

  Gemma wondered if Rosemary felt a little envy for the daughter who had turned away from the family business to make her own way. Had Rosemary dreamed of a life that held more than raising her children and helping with her husband’s shop?

  “Our banker, an old friend of Hugh’s and mine, loaned her the start-up money. Caspar was livid, and even though she’s kept her head above water so far, he hasn’t forgiven her. I think his pride is more damaged than his pocketbook. He sees it as a sort of defection.” Rosemary looked a little abashed. “I’m talking out of turn. It’s just that—well, I can’t say these things to Juliet, and I certainly can’t discuss it with friends in town. Everyone knows everyone’s business here. But I’m worried about Juliet, and the children. Lally especially—it’s such a difficult age. And her father spoils her, which only complicates the situation further.”

  “He doesn’t sound the type to spoil his children,” said Gemma, thinking that what he sounded was a right prat.

  “Oh, well, fathers and daughters.” Rosemary smiled. “To his credit, I think he does love the children. And he can display a certain earnest charm.”

  Gemma must have looked askance, because Rosemary let out a peal of laughter. But before she could speak, the phone trilled and she rose to answer it. After a murmured conversation, she rang off and turned back to Gemma.

  “You’ll get a chance to see for yourself, soon enough,” she said briskly. “That was Duncan, calling from his mobile. We’re to meet them at the house.”

  From the moment Kit stepped into his grandparents’ sitting room, he felt he’d known it his whole life. The shelves of books and the faded Oriental rug reminded him of Gemma’s friend Erika’s house, except that here the space was dominated by two large, scuffed brown leather chesterfields rather than a grand piano. The little wall space not filled with books held framed cartoons of odd-looking people and even funnier-looking dogs. A low fire burned in the grate, and a large fir tree had been jammed into the corner nearest the window.

  Sam crouched beneath the tree, sorting packages into a pile. “I’ve got more than anyone else,” he crowed as he delved under the branches for another gift. Toby knelt beside him, and Kit could tell from his brother’s expression that he was wondering if there were any packages under the tree for him.

  “You do not,” said Lally. Perched on an ottoman, she watched her brother with an expression of disdain. “And nobody cares, anyway. You’re a wanker.” She glanced at Kit from under her lashes, as if to see whether he was impressed with her vocabulary. He was. Hoping she couldn’t see him blushing, he gave an involuntary glance at the door. Gemma would box his ears for saying something like that, and he didn’t want her to think badly of Lally.

  “Am not.” Sam stopped in his pawing to glare at her, while Toby, losing interest in someone else’s loot, wandered over to the hearth.

  “You don’t even know what it means.”

  “Do so. It’s—”

  Before Sam could enlighten them, Toby interrupted. “Kit. Kit, look. They’ve got our names on them.” He was pointing to the stockings hanging from the mantel. There were four, each a different Christmas tapestry, and names were embroidered across their velvet tops. He reached up, tracing the lettering on the last one. “It says ‘Toby.’” At five, he was very proud of his rudimentary reading skills.

  Moving closer, Kit saw his name beside Toby’s, and Sam and Lally’s on the other two.

  “Nana didn’t want you to feel left out,” Lally informed them, which made Kit feel more awkward than ever, rather than included. The last thing he wanted was anything calling attention to the fact that he didn’t belong, or anyone feeling sorry for him.

  Having lost the focus of attention, Sam had risen from his pile of gifts and was jiggling impatiently. “Come see my Game Boy,” he demanded. “It’s upstairs. My dad gave it to me for my birthday.”

  “Kit doesn’t want to see your Game Boy,” said Lally, with undeniable finality. “You take Toby.”

  Sam hesitated, his inner struggle showing clearly on his face. He wanted to show off his toy to Toby, but he hated giving in to his sister’s bossiness. Pride of possession won. “Okay. But we’ll be right back. Come on, Toby.”

  Kit felt his breath stop with terror as the door closed behind the younger boys. What would he find to say to Lally alone? He needn’t have worried.

  “I know where Nana keeps the sherry,” Lally announced. “We can have a sip, but not enough so that she’ll notice the level’s gone down in the bottle.”

  “Sherry?” Kit made a face. He’d been given a taste once at Erika’s. “But that’s nasty. Tastes like cough medicine. Why would you want to drink that?”

  “It does the trick, doesn’t it?” She slipped off the ottoman and opened a cabinet near the fireplace. “Granddad keeps his whisky in here, too, but it’s really expensive, and he says he checks it to make sure it’s not evaporating.”

  Kit stared at her back as she reached up for a bottle. Could that possibly be a tattoo, just where her shirt rose to reveal the top of her jeans and an inch of bare skin? She turned back to him, bottle in hand, and he tore his eyes away from her midriff.

  She pulled the cork and took a drink, but he noticed it was a very small one, and she had to hide a grimace. Holding the bottle out to him, she said, “Sure you don’t want some?”

  Kit shook his head, blushing. Would she think him a total prat?

  “Don’t tell me you never get into your parents’ drinks cabinet at home?” Lally wiped the lip of the bottle with the hem of her shirt and recorked it.

  “They don’t keep much,” Kit answered evasively. Duncan usually had a bottle of whisky in his study, and there was often a bottle of wine or a few beers in the fridge, but he certainly wasn’t going to admit it had never occurred to him to sneak any. Besides, Duncan had let him have a taste of watered-down wine when they had friends over for dinner, and he hadn’t cared much for it.

  “You have to develop an appreciation for the finer things,” said Lally, coming back to the ottoman, and Kit had the feeling she was repeating something she’d heard often. She sat, drawing her knees up under her chin, and scrutinized him.

  Feeling like a specimen under the dissecting microscope, Kit squirmed and searched for something—anything—to say t
hat might impress her.

  Lally’s rescue left him feeling even more confused. “Do your parents fight?” she asked.

  “I—sometimes, I suppose.” Did Lally know that Gemma wasn’t his real mother, that his mum had died? If not, he wasn’t going to tell her.

  He thought of the tense silences that sometimes happened between Duncan and Gemma since she had lost the baby, and felt a coldness in his chest. He didn’t want to talk about that, either.

  “My mum and dad fight all the time,” Lally went on, as if she hadn’t expected an answer. “They think we don’t hear them, but we do. That’s why Sam’s so hyper, you know. He didn’t used to be like that. Or not as bad, at least. Mum’s never home after school anymore either, since she started her business. Do you think my mum really found a body?” she asked, sitting up a bit straighter.

  Not having really given it much thought, as his parents seemed to find bodies on a daily basis, Kit answered, “She said so, didn’t she? So I suppose she did.” It didn’t seem the sort of thing one would make up.

  “What do you think it was like?” Lally’s eyes sparkled.

  Kit flashed on the one thing he couldn’t bear to think about, the image as vivid as the day it had happened. He felt the nausea start, and the prickle of sweat on his forehead. Desperate to change the subject, he said, “Where’s your house, then?”

  “Nantwich, near the square.” Lally appeared to notice his blank look. “You don’t know the town at all, do you? It’s dead boring. But you can find things to do. Once we get dinner over with tonight, we’ll go out. I’ll show you round a bit.”

  The sitting-room door swung open with a bang, making Kit jump, and Sam looked in.

  “Uncle Duncan just rang. We’re going to our house, all of us, in Granddad’s estate car. Nana says we have to leave the dogs.”

  “My dad doesn’t like dogs in the house,” Lally explained, jumping up. “Let’s get our coats. If we hurry, we can get the best seats.”

  And Kit, who never willingly left his little terrier, trailed after her without a word.

  He discovered the pleasure of cruelty at eight. His mother had promised him a special treat, an afternoon on their own, the pictures, then an ice cream. But at the last minute a friend had rung and invited her out, and she had gone with nothing more than a murmured apology and a brush of her hand against his hair.

  He’d felt ill with fury at first. He’d screamed and kicked at the wall in his room, but the pain quickly stopped him. It was not himself he wanted to hurt.

  Nor was there anyone to hear him. His mother would have asked their neighbor Mrs. Buckham to look in on him and give him his tea, but for the moment he had the house to himself. He straightened up and wiped his runny nose on his sleeve.

  Slowly, he made his way to his mother’s room. Her scent lingered, a combination of perfume and hair spray and something indefinably female. The casual clothes she’d donned for her afternoon with him lay tossed across the bed, discarded in favor of something more elegant. Her face powder had spilled, and fanned across the glass of her vanity table like pale pink sand. He wrote “bitch” in the dust, then smeared the word away—even then, he had known that crudity brought less than satisfying results. And he had seen something else. Her pearl necklace, a favorite gift from his father, had slipped to the floor in a luminous tumble. He lifted it, running the smooth spheres through his fingers, then rubbing them against his cheek, feeling an unexpected and pleasurable physical stirring. With his pulse quickening, he glanced round the room. His gaze settled on just what he needed—the hammer left behind after his mother’s recent bout of tacking up pictures.

  First he took the pearls in both hands and jerked. The string snapped with a satisfying pop that flung the beads to the carpet in a random cascade. Then he lifted the hammer and carefully, thoroughly, smashed every pearl into a splash of luminescent dust.

  A gleam caught his eye—two had escaped and were nestled against the leg of the vanity, as if hiding. He raised the hammer, then stopped, struck by a sudden impulse, and scooped the pearls into his pocket. They felt cool and solid to his touch. He would keep them as souvenirs. Only later would he learn that such things were called mementos.

  The satisfaction that coursed through him after his act of destruction was unlike anything else he’d ever known, but that had been only the beginning. He awaited discovery, trembling with dread and excitement. His mother came home and went upstairs, but there had been no explosion of anger. Instead, she locked herself in her room, complaining of a headache. It wasn’t until the next morning, when he’d faced her across the breakfast table, that he’d seen the fear in her eyes.

  CHAPTER SIX

  “I’m too big for riding in laps.” Toby squirmed half off Gemma’s knee, but she hooked her arm round his middle and pulled him firmly back.

  “You’ll just have to make the best of it, won’t you?” she said, taking the opportunity to nuzzle his silky hair, something it seemed she seldom managed these days. “And what about my poor knee, having to put up with such a big boy on it? Do you hear it complaining?” She bounced him and he giggled, relaxing against her.

  “Knees don’t talk, Mummy,” Toby said with assurance.

  “Mine do,” Rosemary chimed in from the front passenger seat. “Especially when I’ve spent all day in the garden.”

  Hugh Kincaid’s old Vauxhall estate car could theoretically have held seven comfortably, but the third seat had been filled with cartons of books. Hugh had managed to shift them so that Kit could squeeze in the back, leaving Sam, Lally, Toby, and Gemma to jam into the center seat as best they could.

  It had begun to snow again, and the car was cold in spite of the number of bodies. “We’ll soon get the heater going,” Hugh said cheerfully as he turned up the blower. The blast of frigid air made Gemma even colder and she hugged Toby to her until he wriggled like a hooked fish.

  For Gemma, already disoriented by the unfamiliar terrain and her limited vision from the rear seat, the journey into town merged into a swarm of onrushing white flakes, punctuated by the yellow glare of the occasional sodium lamp and the wet gleam of black road. Ordinarily preferring to drive, she disliked the sensation of things being out of her control, and she felt a little queasy from the motion of the car.

  Then, as they passed beneath a dark arch, Sam said, “Look. There’s the aqueduct. The canal goes over the road.”

  “You mean the boats go overhead?” asked Kit, sounding intrigued.

  “Can we see?” added Toby.

  “Not tonight,” said Rosemary. “But maybe tomorrow, if the weather clears.”

  There were houses now, crowding in on either side, and Sam continued his narration. “This is Welsh Row, where the Welsh would march in to kill the English. And not far from here were the brine works, where the Romans made salt. The ‘wich’ in Nantwich means salt, you know.”

  “Who appointed you tour guide, Sam?” Lally said waspishly. “I’m sure they’re perfectly happy not knowing.” Lally and Kit had been talking as they left the house, and Gemma wondered if Lally was cross over having had to sit beside her brother rather than her new friend. At any rate, Gemma was glad to see Kit overcoming his shyness with his cousins.

  Toby tilted his head back until he could whisper in Gemma’s ear. “Who are the Welsh, Mummy? Do they still kill the English?”

  Gemma stifled a laugh. “The Welsh are perfectly nice people who live in Wales, lovey. And no, they don’t kill the English. You’re quite safe.” Wanting to encourage Sam, who had subsided into hurt silence, she peered out the window at the classical fronts of the buildings. “From what Duncan’s said, I thought Nantwich was Tudor, but these buildings look Georgian.”

  “Most of Welsh Row is Georgian,” Hugh answered, and although Sam jiggled with impatience, he didn’t interrupt as his grandfather went on. “But the town center has an exceptional number of intact Tudor buildings. It was built all of a piece, after the fire of 1583, a good bit of it with monies contribu
ted by Elizabeth the First, who wasn’t known for her generosity. It’s thought that she feared the Spanish would invade through Ireland, and Nantwich was the last important stop that provisioned the soldiers garrisoned at Chester.”

  Gemma could easily see where Sam had got his interest in local history.

  “There’s no access to the town square by car,” Hugh added as he stopped at a traffic light, “but I’d be glad to take you for a little tour after dinner, if you’d like. We can walk easily from Juliet’s, and of course we’ll be going to the church.”

  “There may not be time before mass,” put in Rosemary, sounding a little anxious. The box of punch ingredients clinked as she adjusted it on her knees.

  “Well, if it’s possible, I’d like that very much,” Gemma told Hugh. They were passing along a very ordinary shopping precinct now, and glimpsing a Boots and a Somerfield’s supermarket among the nondescript postwar shop fronts, she felt unexpectedly disappointed.

  Hugh made a quick right turn, causing Rosemary to clutch her box a bit tighter, then another, and then he was pulling up in a quiet cul-de-sac. To one side, Gemma saw ordinary redbrick terraced houses, their porches sprinkled with colored fairy lights, their postage-stamp lawns and common green muffled with snow. On the other side of the street stood a high garden wall with a wrought-iron gate at one end, and it was towards this that Hugh led them like heavily padded ducklings when they had piled out of the car.

  Although it was masked by evergreens, Gemma could see that the wall was built of a dark brick, as was the house that rose behind it. Near the gate, a narrow path overgrown with foliage led straight back from the cul-de-sac.

  “The town center is only a five minutes’ walk that way,” Hugh said cheerfully, nodding at the path as he opened the gate, but Gemma could only think that she wouldn’t care to walk there alone. The atmosphere of the entire place struck her as secretive: the dark tunnel of the path, the house brooding like a fortress behind its high wall. Nor did the sight of the garden improve her first impression. Small and enclosed, it was planted entirely with shrubs sculpted in different shapes and sizes. No patch of lawn welcomed dogs—or children, for that matter.