The White Lie

by Andrea Gillies

  Where did it start, the train of events that brings us here? Further back than I’d imagined. We follow it upstream as far as we can and find ourselves in the summer school holidays the year the twins were 14. In fact it goes back further, to the Easter of that year. When the summer holidays arrived, Ottilie and Joan were still talking about Easter and Easter’s momentous events.

  Let me take you, as I have been taken, to that cool grey summer day of long ago. It seems sometimes that the past is still there, lurking under the painted surfaces of the present, and that it would take only the scratch of a thumbnail to reveal it all still going on. Perhaps we’re back at the frontiers only of science here, and there’s nothing supernatural about it—just the emergence, through a thinning divide, of physical space shared with all that’s thought dead and lost.

  We are walking along the track towards the loch, you and I, in veiled summer sunlight, the sky luminously pearly and the wind gusting cold. Neither of us makes a sound on the grit surface of the path. We have taken our places in a procession, following my mother and her siblings as children, and have been overtaken by a fifth person as we walk: Petra, the children’s German au pair, who came for two months and lasted less than a week.

  They were dressed the same, the teenage Joan and Ottilie, in yellow shorts (because it was summer) and Aran sweaters that Tilly knitted (because it didn’t feel like it), though at 14 twinning must have been growing tedious. They looked almost identical from the back, their similar-length hair reaching to the shoulder blade—Ottilie’s was of a pinker sort of blonde and wavier—but when they turned to see if Ursula and Petra were following it was clear immediately that one was pretty and one not. The pretty one had a green batik scarf across the top of her fringe, disappearing under her hairline at the ears, and beautiful skin. The other was wearing hoop earrings and pale lipstick, and had applied a thick coat of beige-coloured make-up in an effort to conceal an angry-looking acne. Sometimes the genetic fairy is merciless in the distribution of gifts.

  What must it have been like to be Joan, I wonder, growing up like this, having people compare you day to day and moment to moment, consciously and unconsciously, with the pretty twin, seeing the differential register on people’s faces when introduced? A twin, after all, a better-looking twin, presents a might-have-been to the world, a cruelly perfect template from which you are the deviation. It’s a bold claim but you could make a case for everything that followed as explicable in just one of those differential-registering looks.

  They’d been sent to the loch, as they were sent every day in all weathers. If it was raining they took shelter in the wood: fresh air and exercise were paramount. Today was dry at least. They spread the picnic rug just inside the treeline for shelter from the wind.

  Joan lay down on her back, crossing her legs at the ankle. Small flies hovered in clusters, doing their airborne square dance. She clasped her hands behind her head.

  “This time next week Euan will be here” she said.

  Ottilie, sitting next to her and smoothing a page in her sketchbook, looked up towards the heavens, crossing and uncrossing her eyes. She said “God give me strength.”

  There was a pause and then Joan said, “You’re quite superficial about men, aren’t you?”

  Ottilie snorted. “No. Just discriminating.”

  The Catto family had stayed in the holiday cottage over the Easter weekend and were set to return for a fortnight. They were science teachers, Joyce and Richard Catto, and their son Euan, then 19 and studying English, hoped to be a university academic. He was given to explaining, as a corollary to this, that really he was a poet who had to make a living somehow. He’d been published twice in the small presses and all were agreed that this was a very sound start. His parents talked of inevitable fame, of bestsellers and a house in France: all the riches that were bound to follow from being good with words. Joan was very taken with Euan’s tallness. He wasn’t handsome but his face was serious and clever; he said serious, clever things. Aside from his height, he took after his mother; only his tall lanky boniness, his long-fingered hands, are his father’s, only his skeletal self. It’s a pity he didn’t inherit his father’s kindliness, a quality that shines out of Richard Catto’s eyes, an eagerness to please and to be pleased in return; I’ve never seen anything shine out of Euan’s other than victory. He has his mother’s straight brown hair, and even now wears it as he did then, in the same schoolboy way. He’s one of those men who age well, a Peter Pan type who—until you get close up—might be taken for 35.

  The first time that Euan held Joan’s hand was after a tennis game at Easter, their first doubles match, the two of them versus Ottilie and Alan. Joan was vile to Alan throughout and petitioned Ottilie to find a more suitable partner, not always caring if Alan heard. At 20 he wasn’t bad-looking, though this impression was more about musculature than beauty. He had a sporty, strong body, good legs, discreet blocks of muscle showing above the knees. He had a soldier’s square-faced kind of handsomeness; genetically there was something of his mother’s family who had come from Poland during the war. His was a recent arrival at Peattie, though technically a re-arrival, having lived here as a baby. He’d come from his mother’s house in Glasgow; she left George when their son was barely two years old, citing lack of ambition, and had taken Alan with her and had remarried. Alan had come to help, to live at the cottage with his father for an indefinite period, to gain some informal gardening experience. George had developed a dodgy back and needed help with the heavier work.

  The sisters, who were enemies on most days of the year, had brief and absolute intimacies, periods of ceasefire that were as intense as their usual loathing. The air wasn’t just cleared, in these occasional reversals, but thick with confidentiality. All was told and shared, in bouts of friendship that began quite suddenly and ended just as bluntly, without apology or post-mortem. They began with one of the twins telling the other a secret. The other must respond in kind: those were the rules, though rules had never been discussed. The intimacy came to an end with one twin failing to speak to the other when spoken to: that was the signal that the period of friendship was over. Nothing was ever said about why it should end; it just ended. Easter, the events of Easter, the arrival of temporary Euan and (theoretically at least) permanent Alan, the surprising transformation of routine school holidays by an unforeseen double romance: these had been the triggers to the sisters’ most intense closeness.

  Ottilie told Joan, at Easter, that when she and Alan were fetching the racquets from the summerhouse, Alan had kissed her. She said that he was rough and bristly and that he put his tongue in her mouth; a fat tongue, probing and wet with saliva. Joan protested that it sounded disgusting, looking over Ottilie’s shoulder in wonder at the blameless-looking Alan, who was warming up with Euan, his serving growing more and more competitive. Euan and Joan were easily defeated, 6-2, 6-1. Alan’s backhand shots were usually winners and he patted Ottilie on the behind when he won a point, something which had become ritualised, Alan insisting on his “good luck pat” and Ottilie protesting good-humouredly. After Ottilie told her about the kiss, Joan confided to a school friend that she needed a boyfriend of her own and that this Euan Catto would do, despite having knock knees and patting at the ball like a girl.

  Euan was living at home while he was a college student in order to save money. He’d given Joan his parents’ address and had said he would write to her first, but he hadn’t yet. Perhaps she should write to him, Joan said. By now, in early August, all of her and Ottilie’s Easter intimacy had long since ceased. Joan was using the echo of that intimacy as an irritant, and Ottilie’s body language signalled that she was succeeding. Aware of this and relishing it, rolling over and stretching on the rug like a cat, Joan wondered aloud if she should write to tell Euan that she was excited about seeing him again. “Although. Not excited. That’s too keen. Looking forward. Still too keen. To say that he should remember to bring his better racquet. Maybe I should phone.”

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nbsp; “Phone then, but stop going on about it,” Ottilie told her, getting up and going to the beach, to Petra and Sebastian down on the shore. After a few moments Joan went after her, and, catching up, began to talk about Euan again. She couldn’t help rubbing Ottilie’s nose in it, in the fact that she had a boyfriend and Ottilie didn’t. Of the two romances, only Joan’s had survived into the summer. Ottilie had been banned from seeing Alan, a ban dating from an afternoon in April when she didn’t come straight home from school and was tracked down at the Dixons’ cottage, found in the bedroom with him, though Edith told Henry that it was all perfectly innocent: all they were doing was listening to records. Privately, Edith didn’t think it was innocent at all. She’d been aware that she’d interrupted something, and if Joan hadn’t tipped her off . . . When they got back to the house Edith had a frank discussion with Ottilie about men and their intentions. Girls of 14 shouldn’t get involved with boys of 20, young men of 20, she’d said. That was the point, that 20-year-old boys were young men, and had different ideas about love. Ottilie had been banned from seeing Alan or even talking to him, and had been warned that if she flouted this ban Edith was sure to hear of it. The consequences would be serious, not for Ottilie perhaps, but certainly for Alan, who would be sent away for good and what would poor George do then?

  Alan had come to the wood, was standing behind the great uncle’s tomb, smoking a cigarette and watching the girls on the beach. Petra, noticing him there, went up to say hello. He’d been kind to her, introducing her to his friends at the hotel, taking her to the bar on her first evening here. Alan offered her a cigarette and Petra said she mustn’t leave Sebastian alone. Alan pointed out that Sebastian wasn’t remotely alone and hoisted Petra up to sit on the tomb, facing the loch so that she could keep an eye on things. He came round to be on the same side, and leaned back, his elbows resting on its lid, close to a shining marble shin. Petra wasn’t a beauty by any means—her hairline was very high, her forehead curving like a planet, and she had a noticeable overbite—but she had a lovely body, shown to best advantage in today’s tight white trousers and low-cut white sweater. She shone white in the gloom of the wood. She made it obvious, in contrasting, how grey the marble of the tomb really was.

  The two of them began talking about education. Petra had done badly in her university exams that summer. Her view was that the process was entirely memory-oriented, was really only regurgitation, and that as she had a poor memory it was harder for her than for others. Alan made the point that education was class-based, resting its value on those who’d been initiated into the language of examinations.

  Joan interrupted them in full flow, striding forward into view. “Petra” she said, “Sebastian is asking for you.”

  Petra handed her cigarette to Alan, and jumped down and went to the shore.

  Now that Petra was gone Alan began beckoning to Ottilie. Joan told her very firmly that she absolutely mustn’t on any account have anything to do with him ever again, mustn’t even speak to him. This advice was instrumental. Ottilie went to the tomb and Alan lifted her up by the waist, into Petra’s place, setting her down where the bowl of the submerged chest and stomach of the great uncle makes a comfortable enough seat. He came and stood in front of her, stepping up onto the plinth. He placed his big hands on her small knees, opening them and smiling into her face. He placed her lower legs at either side of his waist and moved in closer. He took her arms and hooked them one after the other around his neck. He put his hands gently, lightly down the back of her shorts. All this she tolerated, while protesting in a jokey fashion. But his attempts to kiss her on the mouth were foiled as she ducked him, laughing an uncertain laugh.

  Petra saw what was happening and began to come back up the beach, going as fast as the shingle allowed, the stones shifting and resettling. She was calling Alan’s name in a way designed to get his immediate attention, sharp calls that put the emphasis on the first syllable. Joan had come forward and was pointing at him, jabbing at the air. “Alan Dixon, leave her alone. I’ll tell.”

  Alan clasped Ottilie closer. Ottilie strained her neck to one side, laughing and awkward, and was kissed on it twice.

  “I’ll tell,” Joan said again. And Joan did tell. But not straight away, because of what was to happen next.

  ***

  It’s been easy to blame the au pair all these years, for what happened. Petra and Alan were off in the wood arguing, out of sight and out of auditory range of the loch. Petra was absent a vital few minutes; she was responsible and she had failed. Alan they couldn’t blame—he’d gone off out of the back of the wood, angrily, just as the crisis unfolded: they couldn’t blame him for that. He didn’t know what was about to happen, and hadn’t in any case any supervisory role; his being there at all was accidental. Even bad people can be heroic: when Alan was alerted, it was Alan who found Sebastian, who brought Sebastian up from under the jetty, and knew what to do to try to revive him. But if only, if only. If only, my mother has said to me, a hundred times. If only Alan had been watching from the tomb at the crucial moment, and had seen. Edith especially has been haunted by this alternative outcome.

  Edith was at the hairdresser’s in the town. Vita called the number, found on the board in the kitchen, and spoke to the receptionist, saying it was urgent that she speak to her daughter, that it was an emergency, but the receptionist mustn’t say so, please, or give any indication that something was wrong when she called Edith to the phone. Vita said to Edith only that she must come straight home: Edith standing with her hair half cut, a towel around her shoulders, in the cramped office of the salon, pleading with Vita to tell her what it was. It couldn’t be just that she had missed tea, surely: they were supposed to be going out to dinner, and Henry knew this was the only appointment she’d been able to get.

  Aware that Edith would be driving herself home, aware that Edith’s driving was often erratic, Vita found herself reassuring her that it wasn’t anything terrible.

  “It isn’t anything terrible, but you must come straight home. We need you.”

  “What do you mean, what on earth’s going on? Tell me. Tell me now.”

  “Just come home, Edith. Come now.”

  Poor Edith. Driving home with her hair half cut, imagining the worst and getting to Peattie to find that indeed the worst had happened. She didn’t cry when they told her: it wasn’t like upset, Ottilie has said to me. It was more like she’d been killed, like her killing had been set in progress and was inevitable, like she had begun on the road of a slow death. All that had made her herself began at once efficiently to dim. Not even when she’d viewed him laid out on the bed, his hair already dried, did the tears come. His hair had mis-dried rumpled into another shape, as if already he wasn’t her child but had become something other, something shared and public and other.

  The crying was left to others.

  “We’d been in the wood,” Ottilie told her, weeping. She didn’t add that they’d been watching Petra and Alan.

  “Sebastian and Ursula went onto the jetty,” Joan said, her voice breaking. “We were away two minutes and they went straight on there. Even though we’d made them promise they wouldn’t.”

  “We got back to the beach and they were throwing stones,” Ottilie said, her voice unrecognisable.

  “And you went straight up there,” Edith prompted. “Straight up there” would have been the correct response.

  “We didn’t, we didn’t, we didn’t, we didn’t.” Ottilie’s words grew progressively more distorted. “We stood on the beach by the steps and demanded they come down.”

  “Ursula was taunting him. I’m sorry but it’s true.” Joan’s voice grew authoritative, anticipating Edith’s dissent. “She told him she was the queen of the loch and he would never be able to beat her. He threw his pebble so hard, threw his arm back so hard, threw his body forward so hard that he went in as well.”

  “He went in as well,” Ottilie repeated.

  “He wouldn’t come until he’d thrown on
e last pebble,” Joan said. “One more, one more pebble, one last pebble, and he ran at it and he lobbed and he was too close to the edge and in he went.”

  “In and gone, in and lost,” Ottilie wailed. “He couldn’t find him, Alan couldn’t find him.”

  “I was in there first,” Joan said. “Before Alan arrived. I was straight in. But it was like Seb wasn’t there, I couldn’t find him. Ottilie went off to find you, to find someone, and came back with Grandpa Andrew. By that time Alan was there. Alan dived and dived, under and under, but Sebastian wasn’t where he’d fallen. He was under the jetty; he was under the jetty.”

  Edith’s fingernails were driven productively into her own palms.

  ***

  Four years after this, Joan married Euan. At the time of the wedding Alan had been back at Peattie five months. His return had been by special dispensation, because George had been ill in the spring with bronchitis, too ill to look after himself. Henry gave his permission, and Alan needed that special consent. Theoretically he was in exile. I’m not sure if Edith knows, even now, the real reason why Alan left after Sebastian died; I suspect that she thought it entirely to do with the shock of Sebastian’s loss. When Joan gave her account of Alan and Ottilie “canoodling” at the loch, an account that portrayed her sister as enthusiastic in kissing him back, it wasn’t Edith that she told. Instead, the day after Sebastian’s funeral, Joan went to her father and Henry saw to things. I don’t know how it was managed or whether George was informed about reasons. I suspect not. I suspect that he too thought Alan’s departure to do with the shock of events.

  Alan wasn’t invited to Joan and Euan’s wedding. Alan, the problem of Alan, was much discussed at the reception, conversations initiated by Joan: Alan seemed to have taken root, and how were they to dislodge him? The plain fact was that George could have whomsoever he liked living with him at the cottage. George was invited and wrote a formal RSVP to Joan, putting himself in the third person and saying that Mr George Dixon was delighted to accept. He was splendid in his father’s dinner suit, broadcasting its gentle scent of cedar-lined box. Everyone looked splendid, out in their finery, without need of warm layers to protect them from the cold; the weather conditions were close to ideal. It was one of those violet evenings; things could barely be seen when looked at squarely, and only a sideways approach brought them into focus. Guests drifted from house to marquee and back again, camouflaged by dusk.