The White Lie

by Andrea Gillies

  “Poor Seb indeed,” Mog agreed, faintly ridiculously.

  He was never called Seb while alive. He’s usually called Seb now he’s dead. In a way it keeps the two separate. Perhaps abbreviation has helped denature the horror of it. It must be exhausting having to feel so much and so often. Shorthand must help. The word Sebastian is invested so completely with grief.

  “You should have seen Ursula,” Ottilie continued. “She was brilliant with the flowers. We’d turn round from fussing at the altar and see her, her nimble white fingers busy and totally absorbed, lacing cream roses into the pew ends, trailing ivy down with cream ribbons. It looked gorgeous. Joan was amazed. Hugged Ursula, even made her smile.”

  “Lovely.” Poor Mog was now deep in confusion about the way this conversation was going.

  “You know that your mother insisted on a preview of what everybody was to wear?” Ottilie said. “Joyce’s floral two-piece was declared impossible. Joan took her shopping and got her into a bronze-coloured coat dress and matching feather-trimmed hat.”

  “You seem well,” Mog said. “You look really well.”

  “I’m going to Madrid with the new work at the end of the summer,” Ottilie told her. “There’s excitement about the exhibition and I’m feeling quite . . . purposeful. Still can’t sleep, though.” She made a self-deprecating face. “And the party should be fun. Strangely enough, I find myself looking forward to it.” She let down and put up her hair. “I hear you’re joining me on the lighting sub-committee. Shall we meet tomorrow after breakfast, at nine thirty? Here for coffee and the list, then do the tour?”

  ***

  The next morning was cold and damp, as it had rained all night. Mog and Ottilie met and allocated the buying and the putting-up of lights, as Joan demanded. Joan had gone to Edinburgh shopping and would be away all day, and so, daringly, in her absence, they made adjustments and additions to the list. When they’d finished, Mog retreated to the warmth of the linen room. Finally, belatedly, she was working her way through the piles of books I’d left in my room at Peattie, starting with the stuff I’d said was mandatory. I’d ranged them for her in a row along the length of the window sill, and they sat there still. When Alastair and Rebecca arrived, their airport hire car crunching slowly across the gravel, Mog was lying on the usual broad shelf, one padded out with old blankets, reading David Copperfield, an ancient edition bound in a tea-stained blue cloth. It’s warm in the linen room when the heating is on, pumping ineffectually away; it has one of the few radiators that work properly and houses the boiler in a corner cupboard.

  Mog wasn’t really reading properly, and recognising this, kept turning back to the beginning of the chapter, trying and failing to make the sentences adhere. She’d confided in Ottilie that she was nervous about Rebecca’s arrival, having to entertain Rebecca. She was hoping and praying that her second cousin wouldn’t turn out to be one of those guests that’s like a hungry baby bird on a branch, constantly wanting attention and unable to fend for itself. But here they were: the moment had come. Rebecca and Alastair had arrived and there wasn’t any escaping this. She closed the book and went along the corridor, dawdling. Down the stairs one at a time, hearing Edith calling Henry’s name. Into the hall, and out onto the terrace, where wide stone steps flare elegantly onto the drive.

  Edith was standing by the car talking to the visitors, when Mog went down to be introduced. Henry arrived from the yard and he and Alastair greeted each other with a handshake, one that Alastair prolonged, placing his free hand on Henry’s upper arm. Alastair was paunchy, had a veiny nose, was kind-faced, his white hair swept back. He had a close cropped pepper-and-salt beard that might have been unshaven stubble. The ice that had formed over more than 40 years of not talking had broken now between Henry and his nephew Alastair, in exclaiming how very alike Rebecca and Mog looked, except for their colouring. Rebecca’s nut-brown hair and creamy skin were gifted by Alastair’s mother.

  ***

  They’d only been in the new kitchen a few minutes when Ursula came in. Edith had tried to steer the group towards the drawing room, but Alastair expressed a liking for sitting around a kitchen table, so here they were staying. Vita and Mrs Hammill had come in to join them, Vita warmly welcoming and Mrs H stand-offish. Ottilie was out at the cottage, in her studio, no doubt, with Mozart and Bach, and wouldn’t return until tonight. Ursula, knowing this, was in the house to meet the visitors.

  She came into the kitchen quietly, tiptoeing, wanting to surprise: creeping up on them as they were standing at the window having the view explained. It had a long history, this idea of fun, and it was usual in the family to indulge her, to pretend not to have noticed, to pretend to be caught out. Ursula’s smile is slightly crooked and one side of her face is mildly less mobile than the other. She had a minor stroke a few years ago and the doctors wanted to probe further, but Ursula wouldn’t allow it and Edith wouldn’t intervene. Edith has always been adamant about not wanting anything purely diagnostic said or done. The shock of Sebastian’s death, when he was four and she was five, a death she and her 14-year-old sisters were helpless witnesses to: that’s considered sufficient to explain Ursula’s oddness. The idea that it might be a condition, a matter merely of health, and might always have been, is one that Edith repelled, and people respected her wishes.

  Alastair and Rebecca didn’t know much about Ursula, when they arrived. They didn’t know much about any of us, which is what made conversation so stilted. After so long a time there were big themes in the offing, but they seemed too big to embark on over marmite toast. The questions suggesting themselves were too heavy with significance. They seemed all to lead back to the rift, one that had prevented any but the stiffest and briefest of annual exchanges, hurried summings-up of the year added at the bottom of Christmas cards, summaries that in Alastair’s case were scrawled in barely legible handwriting (illegibility, Edith had sometimes thought, that was making a point).

  It was Edith who sent the cards at Christmas, the same card every year, showing the house sparkling in frost, thick snow over the gardens, trees starkly and two-dimensionally white. The cards didn’t give much away, not until 1970, at least. There was news in the December of 1970 that Sebastian had died. I’ve seen Alastair at the moment of opening that card: the announcement falling out and onto the floor, its heavy linen weave denoting importance, its ominous black embossed edge. He was eating a mince pie at the time of its arrival, opening the mail while listening to carols, chiding the cat for patting at the tree decorations. He was distracted from all those things, came to a halt, mince pie in hand, reading and rereading the news that a four-year-old boy, his cousin Sebastian, had drowned in the loch in the summer. There was news but no scene setting, no real explanation. His first reaction was shouted—“No! No! For pity’s sake, no!”—and his second reaction another sort of sorrow, one that took on the truth that his uncle had waited four months and left it to Edith to tell him about the disaster. Alastair had heard of my “running away” in just the same manner, and felt, I’m sure, that it’d be tactless to bring it up, that it shouldn’t be mentioned unless the family mentioned it first. Over the years my status had morphed from runaway to lost; in every subsequent Christmas card, Edith had written “Michael’s still missing” at the bottom of her message. Missing presumed dead, Alastair thought, after so long a period of silence; missing presumed heartless, Rebecca’s side of the argument went. They’d talked about little else on the way up here, causing airline rows of a two-back and two-front radius to fall silent and listen, engrossed.

  Alastair and Rebecca didn’t know that Ursula is “eccentric”, nor any of the other possible synonyms attaching to that, though they might have been guessing as much, right now, as Ursula stepped forward. She had her child’s white hand outstretched, and was moving it smoothly up and down, saying, “Shake, please; be polite.” She was wearing a pink cocktail dress that was layers of frills from the waist down, with a tiara, a yellow cardigan that had once been Henry’
s, and green wellingtons.

  “That’s quite an outfit. Amateur dramatics?” Alastair asked her.

  “And you look very boring,” Ursula told him, in her clipped, flat-toned way. She speaks very fast in general, but with longish pauses between pronouncements. Alastair, robustly conversational in his practised, businesslike manner, proceeded over tea and packet cake to quiz Ursula about her life, whether she married, where she lived now, what she did for a living, and was bemused by the style and content of her replies. It was Ursula who brought up the rift.

  “Why haven’t I met you before? We’re cousins. We should know each other.”

  Alastair glanced at Henry. “Your father and I had a falling out. A long time ago, before you were born.”

  “But you didn’t fall out with me.”

  “No, you’re quite right. But we live hundreds of miles apart and I’m terrible at letter writing. And I’m a lot older than you. And you’re a girl. That’s also a factor obviously. I don’t often talk to girls. Ask my daughter here.”

  All of this completely deadpan.

  Ursula smiled crookedly. “Why did you drive off in the middle of the night?”

  “Ursula, no,” Henry said sharply.

  “It’s fine, Henry,” Alastair said. “Ursula’s right, we need to talk about it. We can’t go on acting like it didn’t happen. I owe you an apology.”

  “Not at all,” Henry said. “Or rather, I owe you one equally.”

  Alastair turned to Ursula. “My brother Robert, he’s a sensitive soul. A bit like you, I imagine.”

  “Oh dear: sensitive is nearly always a euphemism.”

  “Euphemism’s a good word.”

  Ursula’s mouth turned scornful. “I read a lot. I have a good vocabulary. I’m not backward.”

  “Of course not. And nor is Robert. He’s the brightest man I’ve ever met. But he’s sensitive too. He got very upset, Robert, about our mother being buried here with her sister, and not at home with us. He decided he couldn’t come up for the funeral. I didn’t explain him to your father very well. It turned into an argument and it got out of hand. We were all upset. The truth is that though I was defending him so hotly, I was angry with my brother too.”

  “I’m named after her, after your mother.”

  “Yes. That was a lovely gesture.”

  “Not really: I was always going to be Ursula. There was already a Joan and an Ottilie.”

  Alastair smiled. “Quite right. Did you know that we called my mother Ursa rather than Ursula, and that Joan was always called Jo, and Ottilie always Tilly?”

  “Tilly lived here, after her sisters died. I knew her. Didn’t you know that about her?”

  “Of course, of course she did.”

  “She was everybody’s favourite. I loved her. I’m sure I would have loved Ursa and Jo too, if I’d known them.”

  “That’s kind of you to say.”

  “I can be kind sometimes. Do you believe in the curse?”

  “Ursula, no,” Henry said again.

  “I don’t know what I think about the curse,” Alastair said. “Life’s full of mystery, isn’t it? It might be a mistake to be dismissive of mystery.” He turned to Henry. “I’ve been sitting all day and I’d love a walk in the gardens, if you’ve time to show me around.”

  Henry said he’d be delighted. They went off to do the tour, and Mog brought Rebecca to the loch.

  They sat on the bench together at the edge of the wood. The bench has feet that are sunk deeply in shingle, and sits with its back to the great uncle. One of the willows planted around the great uncle’s grave had colonised it a little, had extended one of its many sad long branches, supple and slender, with its many feathery leaves, over this bench, so Mog had to take it in hand and bend it behind the seat before they could use it. It had more determination and exerted more force than she was expecting.

  “It isn’t particularly warm for mid-June, I grant you,” she said to Rebecca, seeing her wrap her thin jacket tighter around herself.

  “I was warned. I have a sweater with me. Should have thought.”

  “We must be acclimatised. We used to go swimming in there on colder days than this and play on the beach soaked through afterwards. Me and Michael. But that was a long time ago.”

  “I’d like to know more about Michael, the mysterious Michael,” Rebecca said.

  Mog took her to the great uncle’s tomb and answered the usual questions. Even the great uncle’s effigy looked bored.

  “And what’s this, more commemorations for David?” Rebecca was standing beside the angel.

  “For Michael,” Mog told her. “For his being missing. Ottilie thought it would help.”

  “Did he look like Ottilie? I haven’t seen a photograph.”

  “He was a real mixture. Very tall like Grandpa Andrew. That was Vita’s husband’s name. Olive-skinned like Vita.”

  “And like you.”

  “Ottilie’s hands and mouth, and her way of walking. Tall, dark, clever, the works. Big nose. Lovely eyes, very brown. Long lashes. Deep voice. Funny when not being neurotic.” I may have blushed, though neurotic smarted a bit.

  “You’ll have to show me a photograph.”

  “I don’t have any. I didn’t have a camera until after he’d gone. You’d have to ask Ottilie. She took hundreds. You won’t see any at Peattie, though. You won’t see pictures of Michael here.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “Because Henry had them taken down and put away.”

  “Angry with him.”

  “Grieving.”

  “So what was the trouble, what was it that made him go off?”

  “You know how they say everybody has a story,” Mog said to her. “Sometimes a trivial thing. Mine is not finding what Dad calls my vocation, so far, anyway, or even a job I can bear to do. Well, anyway. That’s very dull news. Michael’s story was his being fatherless. He was obsessed. Even from ten years old.”

  “How do you mean, obsessed?”

  “With not knowing who he was.”

  “Who he was?”

  “Michael. Didn’t know who his father was. Ottilie wouldn’t tell him.”

  “Oh god. That’s horrible.”

  “You don’t know about Ottilie getting pregnant, the whole scandal, then.”

  “No. I think I might have been protected from something so shocking.”

  “Well. Ottilie, my mother’s twin, goes to a house party the weekend after my parents are married, while they’re off in Italy on honeymoon, and sleeps with some boy. Some random boy she met there. She’s 18 and one week old at the time. Exactly 18 and a week. I know that because my parents got married on my mother’s 18th birthday.”

  “Also Ottilie’s birthday, surely.”

  “Also Ottilie’s birthday. But because my mother declared she wanted to marry on her 18th, that only her 18th would do, the party that Gran was planning had to be cancelled, and the family across the valley, the Grants, offered to host it there instead, feeling sorry for poor Ottilie, done out of her 18th birthday.”

  “I’m getting the feeling that Joan and Ottilie didn’t get on.”

  “Rivalry. Bitter rivalry. Always.”

  “That was kind of mean of your mother, hogging the limelight.”

  “You’re right. Mean is the right word. Well, anyway. Ottilie goes off to this party, sleeps with some boy, won’t tell anybody who it was.”

  “But surely. Process of elimination.”

  “Fourteen boys. But don’t think Henry didn’t try. He went all over the county eliminating.”

  “Ouch.”

  “They didn’t know she was pregnant until ages later. Four months gone, when she started to show. Was never sick or anything. Too scared to speak up.”

  “Blimey. And she never married?”

  “No. No partners, boyfriends that we know of. Though Pip has a theory that she has lovers abroad, that that’s what all the trips overseas are really about.”

  “Poor Ottilie.”


  “Michael was always fighting with his mother. Like they say, it’s never about what it’s about. It was always really about his father, not knowing. He was angry a lot of the time. Everybody was irritated. But now I think, well, why didn’t you just tell him, Ottilie? If you’d just told him the name of the boy, the man. He could have tracked him down, confronted him, upset his wife, freaked out his halfsiblings. Lots of upset, maybe, but then over. Over. The boil lanced. She wouldn’t talk, though. He couldn’t get her to talk about it.”

  Even in my very earliest memories it’s clear that my mother didn’t want to talk much about anything. Not unless it was about the work. She didn’t mean just her own work, by that, but any kind of creativity. She was absolutely clear that a life without it—the work—was a waste. That was a cultural divide with other people; a cliff, a wall, quite often a hole. She had very few friends, few I knew about, anyway. But this was the point, I suppose, and it’s something I’ve had time to think about, that the real romance of my mother’s life is with herself, her experience of being alive, her journey: this ongoing dialogue she has with her own consciousness. It made the rest of us pretty much redundant. She approved of me, as a teenager, in so far as I was a voracious reader, always reading, would walk down the street with a book open, walking into things. And writing. I was always writing something. So I passed muster, as far as it went. We had something to talk about, but it wasn’t a frequent conversation and of course it wasn’t what I wanted to talk about.