The White Lie

by Andrea Gillies

  “My mother and Ottilie were born on Tilly’s birthday, on her 50th, and Tilly and Jo were both childless. It was a way of honouring them. Perpetuating them, I suppose. They couldn’t leave Ursa out, so Ursula turned up nine years later pre-named.”

  “Long gap. What if she’d been a boy?”

  “Miscarriages. She’d have been Henry. Or should have been. Henry the fifth. But there was a boy. A year after her. Sebastian. You must know about Sebastian.”

  “Why wasn’t he a Henry?”

  “I’m told it was time for a change. It got shunted to a middle name. He died, though, Sebastian, aged four, in the loch.”

  “Dad told me . . . How on earth? He fell in? He was on his own?”

  “His sisters were with him, and also a German au pair.”

  “Did anyone see what happened?”

  “Yes, Mum and Ottilie saw. And Ursula. Ursula’s never been the same. It was the au pair’s fault. The au pair had got distracted. She was flirting with Alan Dixon.”

  “So what happened to him—to Sebastian?”

  “He was throwing stones into the loch, off the end of the jetty, lobbing them in to see how far he could get them. He lost his balance. It was that simple and trivial. Lost his balance, toppled in. My mother went in after him and couldn’t find him. Alan and the au pair were too busy arguing to notice; flirting had turned into a row. By the time Alan got there it was too late.”

  “It can’t be deep there, surely.”

  “It’s surprisingly deep, and dark, and very weedy. We don’t swim anywhere near the jetty.”

  “How horrible. How truly dreadful.”

  “Ursula was completely traumatised. She didn’t speak for years after.”

  “She didn’t speak?”

  “She didn’t say a word.”

  They went together to Rebecca’s room, which was Ursa’s old bedroom, a forget-me-not blue room with dark furniture. When Edith lived here she maintained these family rooms, had them cleaned and the sheets refreshed as if perpetually we were expected for the weekend, and let us leave our things lying around undisturbed. When family members died, their rooms took on a sort of double identity, half shrine and half guest room; they were never decorated again or improved. Ursa’s room had retained her chosen décor, its framed sewn things from her youth and childish accumulations. Silk scarves that were hers hung from the vanity mirror and jewellery of hers was clustered on the top of the chest of drawers as if it had just been put there. Some of her clothes remained in the wardrobe, pushed tightly to one side to allow Rebecca space to hang her own things. There were also towels and blankets put out, and a water jug by the bed, and books and a tin of biscuits, ready for the visitations of the living.

  “I love this, being surrounded by my grandmother’s things,” Rebecca said. “It feels as if the past isn’t really over.”

  ***

  Ursa’s room was the scene of some drama one afternoon, during the winter before this. It was during the time that Edith was ill; it was her having been so very ill that prompted Joan to announce there’d be a party in the summer. The crisis had arrived unannounced one evening with back pain and breathlessness and had turned out to be an embolism, a clot that had travelled from a vein in her calf to her lung. Edith was in the hospital on a clot-busting drug. It was almost the end of January. After a mild, damp December, an un-christmassy Christmas, truly wintry weather had arrived with the new year; earth had stood hard as iron, water like a stone. But then in the third week, the thaw had come. Grey snow lay piled up and dirty at the sides of the roads. The trees dripped. Sleet fell soft and wet against the windows and sills, clogging the last glimmer of afternoon light, clogging the windscreen wipers as the family returned in the car from visiting. It had been a cheerful hour at Edith’s bedside, despite the seriousness of her condition, but there was a price for false confidence: Joan and Ottilie had argued in the car afterwards and bad feeling followed them into the house. It was almost as cold inside as out, and so when Ottilie came into Ursa’s room she was still wearing her military-looking overcoat and fake-fur hat, and the woolly green socks that had lined her wellingtons. She sat on the bed with a thump, her hands clasped firmly. One foot drummed against the carpet.

  Mog and Pip came in, wearing the Norwegian patterned sweaters that Edith had given them for Christmas, Mog in her matching hat and Pip in his matching scarf. Pip turned on the bedside lamp and the twilight of the room became blue. Mog shut the door behind her with exaggerated care so that its catch barely clicked at all, and went and sat beside Ottilie.

  “She’ll be alright. They caught it in time. She’ll be out in a few days. Gran’s tough as old boots, you know that. Don’t worry.”

  Joan came down the corridor outside, calling Ottilie’s name, opening and closing other doors. Ottilie pulled her fur hat down further over her ears. Joan was stalled for a few minutes by finding Henry in my old room. They heard the door opening and her exclamation.

  “Dad? What on earth are you doing in here?”

  The door was closed on the two of them and things went quiet again. One of Ursa’s scarves had fallen to the floor and for some reason Mog put it not on the chest but on the radiator, where Ursa’s scent wafted stalely out of it.

  “You won’t really go to the police?” she asked Ottilie.

  My mother got up and went to the window. She began to draw five-pointed stars in the condensation on the glass. “All I meant was that I’d tell them my theory that he committed suicide and that he’s in there.”

  “That’s not what you meant,” Pip said.

  “I want him found, Pip.”

  “Gran’s going to be fine. She’s on the drug and getting better.”

  “I want him,” Ottilie said. “I want him back. I want to bury him. I want to visit his grave, his proper grave, and talk to him. I can’t bear another year of him there in the loch, unloved and unretrieved.”

  “Not unloved, never that,” Pip said, his voice wavering.

  The door opened, making Mog jump. Joan came in and closed it behind her. “What are you doing in here?”

  No one answered her.

  Joan stayed by the door, leaning against it with her hands behind her back. Ottilie didn’t acknowledge her. She had her eyes fixed on Pip.

  “I’ve realised lately that I expected to lose him; I’d expected it for a long time.”

  “Ottilie,” Joan said. “There’s a reason why this is the thing we don’t talk about. A good reason. It doesn’t help. It just upsets people. It doesn’t go anywhere new.”

  “Ottilie’s talking,” Pip said quietly.

  “Well, I’m talking now,” Joan told him. “And what I want to say, Ottilie, is that I hope you go in to Dad and apologise for that outburst. There wasn’t any excuse.”

  “Shut up, Mother,” Pip said.

  “He’s worried sick,” Joan continued, “and the last thing he needs is you making threats about Ursula.”

  “I knew deep down there was a disaster coming,” Ottilie said, sitting on the window seat. The condensation ran in drips from the star points. “I knew about his unhappiness. I should have done something. Stubborn fucking pride.” I hadn’t ever heard my mother use this word before. It was drawn out and emphasised, quietly and almost menacingly, as if she’d just discovered its full weight and power. “I’d been visited by premonitions all that week. I woke in the middle of the night, three, four days before he died. Visited by premonitions. Waking with a start. Terrible engulfing dread. An awful doomy feeling, like the phone was going to ring and somebody was already dead.”

  “Oh, for pity’s sake,” Joan said.

  “I’d go and look at him asleep,” Ottilie continued. “I’d watch him sleeping, stroke the side of his face with my hand, tell him I loved him. Things I couldn’t any longer do when he was awake. He’d disagree, you see. He’d want to talk definitions.”

  Joan tried to share a look with Mog, a complicit look, but Mog averted her eyes.

  “I�
�m going home,” Joan said, opening the door. “Ring me if there’s news.”

  Shortly after this we heard the sound of Henry being ushered down the corridor to bed. Ottilie said she was tired and was turning in too.

  Mog and Pip saw her to my room, where she’d said she wanted to sleep that night, and then they went down to the kitchen. Pip brewed up some coffee using the Italian beast of a machine they’d bought for Christmas for Edith and Henry. Mog pressed her cold fingers against the useless lukewarm kitchen radiator. Thin gold strands of tinsel drooped from the curtain rail.

  “Ottilie thinks he killed himself,” she said to Pip’s back. “Suicide.”

  “Today she does.”

  “Today she does.”

  Pip looked round at her. “It varies, though, doesn’t it? The certainties come and go. It’s the same with all of us.”

  “What could be worse than your child killing itself? What a slap in the face. What a knife turned in the guts. There couldn’t be any greater punishment, could there?”

  “You take her too literally, Mog.”

  “It says ‘you failed me’, doesn’t it? It’s not a neutral act. There’s accusation in it.”

  Pip put a cup of coffee on the table in front of her. “She’s talking about going out to the wolf. Doesn’t mean Ursula didn’t do it.”

  “Ursula won’t tell secrets; won’t ever,” Mog said, sipping. “Perhaps Michael’s death is one. She’s covering for him.”

  “What total crap you do talk sometimes.” Pip sank into the chair opposite. “That’s the thing, though. Ursula. She’s the wolf.”

  Someone passed by the kitchen door, and went off down the corridor. Pip lowered his voice. “Suicide makes no sense. Why kill himself, when all he ever wanted was to confront him, and he could see Alan standing on the beach.”

  ***

  It was Rebecca who heard the taxi first, putting her book down and going to the window. Izzy had arrived, was emerging legs first from the rear door: heeled shoes, long legs, shoes and legs and hem, and then she was up and out, smoothing her dress, which was halter-necked and silky, a brown and cream polka dot belted tight into her small waist. She was pushing long hair off her face with one hand while she bent at the front window to pay: that same pink-gold cape of hair my mother has in the early photographs. Ottilie has said to me that it isn’t easy, seeing herself as a young woman around the house, recognising the loss of all that, the waste. She’s said that she has to prevent herself from making grandiose speeches. Izzy came up the steps, an overnight bag in one hand, a red leather bag with beaten gilt corners, the fingers of her other hand trailing in the lichen along the top of the wall. When she got to the terrace she took off her shoes and ran barefoot into the house. Henry’s oldest dog, a black and white spaniel waddling stiffly into old age, was in his bed by the study door. Badger had been sleeping, but raised his head and, seeing that it was Izzy, wagged his stumpy tail. Izzy crouched beside him for a few minutes, and then without further ado she went for a bath.

  “But where’s the entourage?” Mog asked her through the bathroom door.

  “Next train. Euan’s going. Just one. Terry. The rest are here Saturday.”

  It annoys Euan that his youngest child doesn’t call him Dad.

  When Euan got back from the station, Mog and Edith were helping Mrs Welsh with the supper. Izzy appeared, hair wet, smelling of orange blossom and wearing a kimono. She was unruffled when Mrs Welsh told her that smoking was banned in the kitchen. Cigarette planted between her lips, her eyes narrowed against the smoke, Izzy opened one of the sash windows a screeching six inches (the cord was broken, so a paperback book was inserted) and sat along the window sill holding her cigarette so that it was technically outside the building.

  “I didn’t say anything about ventilation,” Mrs Welsh told her. “I said no smoking. Get yourself outside.”

  Izzy was blithely unconcerned, picking stray tobacco off her bottom lip; Mrs Welsh’s withering glances didn’t wither her in the least. Terry came into the room and was introduced. He’d met Izzy on the modelling circuit and was a perfect specimen, unnervingly perfect, with light brown hair and amber eyes and cheekbones that could cut bread; when he smiled his white smile at Mog she blushed. He stood beside Izzy with one hand resting on her thigh, and leaned in close to her ear.

  “Do you know what I’d love right now?” His voice revealed him to be American. Everyone waited, agog. “One of those roll-ups of yours.”

  “Mrs Welsh, I’d appreciate it if you could go and make up a bed for Terry,” Edith said. “We’ll finish the tidying-up.” Mrs Welsh had been to the salon in readiness for the party and looked disconcertingly like Margaret Thatcher in her prime, other than for the housecoat and sheepskin zip slippers.

  ***

  When they gathered at seven o’clock, people had done as instructed by Joan and dressed up in evening clothes, despite the deepening chill and threat of rain. They arrived on the terrace in cocktail dresses and dinner jackets (all except for Euan, in his usual linen suit), and shivered as they downed their tepid white wine. When Mog arrived, Rebecca was helping Vita with the positioning of a purple tam o’shanter, angling the hat slightly over one eye at Vita’s instruction, her hand grasped in gratitude. Mog heard Michael’s name mentioned. She put her hand around Rebecca’s elbow. “No Michael talk,” she said into her ear. “Ottilie’s arrived.”

  Euan was to have catered: he’d planned a three-course meal and had been about to embark on a day of cooking when he was intercepted. Joan waited until he was readying himself in the old kitchen, cookery books wedged open on Victorian tables, ingredients amassed in thematic order, before announcing that, having courted the opinion of the group, nobody much fancied a complicated dinner. They ate their ham and salad in the formal dining room, and though the occasion hadn’t been quite distinguished enough to bother cleaning the silver, the table was polished and smelled freshly beeswaxy. It was discovered too late that the radiator wasn’t functioning, and so Joan sent Mog up to collect woollen garments and rugs from various rooms, scribbling her a list of where and what. Vita ate her supper wearing a fine lacy shawl wrapped closely around her throat, and, over the top of it, a dog-hairy tartan blanket that hadn’t been authorised.

  While Mog was off gathering woollens, Alastair stood beside Ursula, awaiting seating instructions and holding his drink.

  “I do like your green dress,” he said, gesturing with his glass.

  “It isn’t green,” Ursula told him.

  “It isn’t? I’m sorry, I thought it was.”

  “It’s blue.”

  “A greenish blue.”

  “It’s blue.”

  “Turquoise.”

  “Shall we sit down?” Edith asked them all.

  “On the floor; the floor, that would be fun,” Ursula suggested.

  “At the table, I meant.”

  “Then you should be clear about it. And less orthodox. Let’s take our socks off and compare our feet.”

  “I should be clear; you’re quite right,” Edith agreed. “Shall we sit at the table and eat food? Will that do?”

  “No need for that. That’s redundant.”

  “It’s an old dress by the look of it,” Alastair said to her as they sat down together. “Vintage. That’s the word, isn’t it? Or is it?”

  “Don’t patronise me,” Ursula warned him. “I really dislike it.”

  “I’m sorry, I wasn’t aware—”

  “You were aware. ‘I wasn’t aware’ is something liars say. Like ‘I can only apologise’, which isn’t an apology at all.”

  “Sorry,” Edith mouthed.

  “That’s quite alright, Edith,” Alastair said. “In business I’m accustomed to the cut and thrust. I think Ursula and I could be great friends. I like plain speaking.”

  “No you don’t—nobody does,” Ursula said.

  “No, it’s true; he really does,” Rebecca told her.

  Ursula shifted her weight, turning in her c
hair to poke her leg out and into Alastair’s view.

  “What do you think of my shoes?”

  “I think they’re quite outstandingly ugly.”

  She smiled a broad crooked smile. “It’s true. Even though you’re just indulging me.”

  “Not at all. They really are hideous.”

  “They were your mother’s. Before she got married.”

  “Gosh. My mother liked ugly shoes. That’s quite disillusioning.”

  “You’re nice. But I know why you’re doing it.”

  “Why am I doing it?”

  “Because you’ve been briefed.”

  “Briefed?”

  “Warned about me. About my being odd.”

  Alastair leaned towards her, his thick eyebrows knitted together. “And are you?”

  “Yes. But only by choice.”

  “I see.”

  “I could be ordinary if I wanted.”

  “Who’d want to be?”

  “It would be more interesting if people said what they were thinking, all the time.”

  “You don’t mean that; I bet you don’t. Chaos would ensue. Chaos and war.”

  “The only reason I don’t is because other people don’t, so the truth looks like rudeness.”

  “Yes.”

  “Mostly I just think the rude thing.”

  Meanwhile, Vita was quizzing Terry, who’d been seated opposite her.

  “I hear that you, young man, are living quite openly with my great-granddaughter as man and wife.”

  “Er—no, not really.”

  “That is all very well. Your immorality is your own affair. Personally I’ve always been rather a fan of immorality. But I can tell you now that you would be much happier if you were married. Have children early. Get them off to school and your life is ahead of you at last. In my day—”

  “Granny Top, don’t bully Terry,” Izzy chided. “You’ll frighten him off and then where will I be?”