The White Lie

by Andrea Gillies

  “Why would I?”

  They looked at each other: Joan defiant and Euan unaffected by her defiance.

  His gaze returned to the woodburner. “Ottilie doesn’t know?”

  “No.”

  “Why doesn’t Ottilie know?”

  “He decided that it would be worse for her.”

  His fists drummed briefly into the sofa linen. “Bullshit! Bullshit! Just listen to yourself!”

  “Calm down.”

  “You just want to believe it because it twists the knife a little bit more into Ottilie.”

  “That’s a terrible thing to say.” Joan got up and went out of the room, and came back a few minutes later with a tall drink. Euan had moved to the window seat.

  “I don’t know what’s happened to you,” he said. “It’s like you’ve made it unreal, this death. You’ve made it a game.”

  “I’ve never thought Michael’s dead. And I think he chose. He chose to cut us off without another thought, to cut his mother off, and that’s too hard. That’s harder for her than his dying.”

  “Nice rationalising. He’ll retract it, even if I have to hold a gun to his head.”

  “That’s big talk, big man.” The sarcasm was penetrating. Euan looked her steadily in the eye. “Joan, I have something to tell you.” She waited. “But first you have to promise not to tell. You can do this. You’ve done it before.”

  Joan looked shocked. “You know about Sebastian?”

  “What? No. What about Sebastian?”

  “I misunderstood you.”

  Euan got to his feet. “But first I have stuff I need to do.” He left the room.

  “I’ll make coffee,” she shouted after him, hearing him going up the stairs.

  She went into the kitchen and boiled the kettle and cleaned the cafetiere, then reboiled the kettle, and heaped in the coffee and filled it. She put bread and cheese and some of the home-made apple pickle onto a platter, and carried it through on a tray. When she’d waited ten minutes, she went into the hall and called his name. Without answering her he came down the stairs with two suitcases.

  “Euan! What are you doing?”

  “I’m leaving, Joan. I’m moving out.” He put the cases by the door and went up again. “I’ll come back at the weekend and get some more stuff then.”

  “Euan. Euan.” Joan’s voice shook. “What do you mean?” It shook further as she followed him out to the car, repeating the words and variants on them. It was only once he’d got the engine running and had lowered the driver’s window that Euan looked at her.

  “I’m Michael’s father,” he said, and she didn’t hear him so he had to repeat it, had at last to shout it, and then he pulled out and went slowly down the drive to the gate, seeing Joan on the road behind him, her face utterly vacant, staring after him, her arms held out at an angle from her body and her fingers stiff and splayed.

  22

  The day after the party, the light dawned grey and soft over Peattie House. Henry was up by then; he had spoken to Rebecca before going to bed, and sleep had been fitful. Later he would try to explain that the coming of morning felt to him like a return to twilight, rather than the progression of hours; like time had become something rocking gently to a halt, back and forth: not marked by the pendulum but become the pendulum itself. Twilight had gone and was back. Later, in the afternoon, it would be four o’clock again and Michael would die: when the night returned it was only as a tormenting introduction to the next afternoon. The days would keep coming, and Michael would keep dying. Henry went out into the wood with the dogs, and onto the beach, throwing sticks from the shore. Dogs made things seem normal and as if life could be just about feeding and exercise and rest. That’s what he needed, he thought, a dog life, the peaceful eating up of time, blind to all of its meanings. A dog in the water made death feel normal, life properly temporary. It was what followed on from feeding and exercise and rest. It didn’t matter.

  He walked up and down the edge of the loch, his breath white in the damp morning, round-shouldered in his old wax coat, as various of the pack ran along the treeline, nosing rabbit trails around the tomb, or swam in the cold morning water, the spaniels sodden and dripping, the water extending their long belly hairs, the Labradors shaking themselves with impressive corkscrew winding and unwinding on the gravel, their close-knit fur tufting wet into carpets. Henry decided that it couldn’t wait another day: he had to go and talk to Ursula.

  All looked quiet at the gatehouse at 5.30am, but inside, wearing white pyjamas and a pale overcoat, Joan was sitting cross-legged on the sitting-room floor, smoking a cigarette and tapping its ash into the fireplace. Her mobile phone lay black and inert on the rug, a miniature plastic monolith that had failed, in an intolerable and stubborn way, minute after minute, either to ring or to beep its receipt of a message. She’d barely slept, dozing for scant half-hours before waking freshly to the shock of what had happened, her stomach heaving, her heart thumping and racing. At least the children wouldn’t be too badly affected. As she said to herself, over and over, a mantra newly adopted, it was a good thing the children weren’t here, that they were grown up; a good thing they were so independent. She could be proud at least of the independence she had nurtured in them. She was alone in the house and nobody had been disturbed, in either sense, by her making of peppermint tea at three and by her drinking of vodka at five. No detailed attempt at justification was made, other than for a single uttered word at the mouth of the cupboard. “Emergency.”

  Many impassioned, angry, conciliatory, flippant, pleading, contemptuous messages had been left on Euan’s phone, Joan working through her own night-aided process from rage to acceptance and back to rage, and the tone of the messages tracking this circle. She had been talking aloud to the empty house for hours, to the empty rooms as if each of them were him. “So if that’s how it seems to you, forget it. I shed you with an equal indifference.” But the truth was that she was shaken. Their relationship had been turbulent always, but that was an emotional engagement; turbulence was never less than alive and engaged. This quiet cutting-off, this silence: was this where they’d been headed all along, was this where they had stood teetering? Had this been the view ahead, this cliff, this imminent nothingness? This was how she’d speak to Mog about it later on, leaving Mog floundering, ill-equipped to answer.

  Eventually, cold and stiff from sitting on the carpet, Joan got up, placed the cigarettes on the coffee table in full view, patting the box as she did so, and went and dressed. She put her phone in her pocket—taking it out and turning it off before returning it there—and went up to Peattie. Henry was standing looking vague, at the top of the drive with the dogs.

  “Euan’s gone,” she told him bluntly as she approached. “For good, I think. We argued. It’s over. Don’t look like that.”

  “I imagine I look as if I’m sorry. There’s little I can do about being sorry, Joan.”

  “You’re not just sorry. You’re not surprised. You’re wondering how it took this long.”

  “That’s ungenerous of you.”

  “I know that will be the first thought of everybody who hears about it.”

  “We must go and wake your mother.”

  “I don’t want to. Not yet. Please. I’m going back to the gatehouse. I’m cold.”

  “Let me put the dogs in and come to you.”

  “Alright. But no sneaking up to whisper in Mother’s ear. I couldn’t take it, not the two of you looking wounded.”

  “As you wish.”

  “I’m glad he’s gone. I don’t want him back. I’m going to have a new life and I don’t want to talk about it. Not till later.”

  Her father nodded absently, the dogs milling around him, prompting him with noses pushed into his hands, wanting to be off.

  “What I need is to talk to you about Alan,” Joan said.

  “I know about it. I know what Alan said to Rebecca, if that’s what you mean. After you left the party, Rebecca went to Edith, and Edith brought
her to me.”

  It was from the gatehouse that Henry telephoned Pip on his mobile, just before 7am. When Henry called, Pip was in a deep sleep, having got to bed very late, and the ringtone prompted sincere groans from Angelica, who said he should tell the office to stuff it, whatever it was; it was too early and they were on holiday. When he got out of bed, saying that he needed to go and talk to his mother and she should go back to sleep, she put her head under the pillow.

  Pip got to the gatehouse to find Joan looking washed out and Henry’s expression unclassifiable. Henry had warned Pip on the phone that there had been a fight and that his father had gone to the flat and that it was better not to unleash his mother on the subject just yet, unless she brought it up herself. She didn’t. She didn’t mention Euan once. She explained the crisis to Pip even before he was properly through the door: that this was about Alan’s behaviour and that Henry needed advice. They went over the facts of the night before, Henry insisting that Ottilie mustn’t be upset.

  “You have to tell her some time,” Joan said.

  “Why?”

  “Because she has a right to know what Alan is telling people. She needs to hear it from us before she hears it from someone else.”

  “But it’s a lie,” Henry said, as if that were obvious.

  Joan looked flummoxed. “But when you told us, when you told Pip and me—you believed it then.”

  “I’ve always known that it’s a lie. For a start, I know he has the money. All of the money.”

  “How do you know?” Pip and Joan asked simultaneously.

  “Alan was over-careful about explaining to me how he could afford a van—that white one that’s been parked in the yard. Told me twice that he’d inherited the money. Some guff about a legacy from an uncle.”

  “Maybe there was a legacy,” Pip said.

  “Not according to George. There isn’t an uncle. But you see, Alan and I had an agreement. I was very clear. I told Alan that if he kept it to himself he could stay at the cottage, have lifetime use of it after George has gone. He said Michael had given him £200 and I told him he could keep the money. And I told him that if I heard a peep of it from anywhere, he and George would both be evicted and out.”

  “So now what?” Joan said. “You’re not proposing to throw George out of his house?”

  “Of course not.”

  “I’m going to see Alan,” Pip said, pushing his kitchen chair back scrapingly against the tiles. Henry followed him out. Joan said she wouldn’t come if they didn’t mind; she needed to shower. “And Pip—I just need to speak to Dad about something else, for a moment: can he catch you up?” Once Pip had left the house, Joan asked Henry if he had his mobile phone, and he told her that of course he did: he’d phoned Pip with it from her sitting room.

  “Look,” she said. “I can’t face Alan. Can’t face him. But I need you to phone me if anything is said about Euan.”

  “What kind of thing?”

  “Just anything. Anything surprising.”

  ***

  The van was parked outside the Dixons’ cottage with its back doors open. Alan was loading it with his few possessions, boxed up, and was still wearing the clothes from the night before. George was standing beside the rear doors in clean blue overalls and looked acutely uncomfortable as he saw Pip and Henry walking towards them.

  “Alan,” they heard him say, in what might have been a warning voice. “Mr Salter.”

  Alan climbed out of the van, sending it bobbing as he came down, a short and ungainly jump onto the tarmac. He walked quickly towards them.

  “I’m going; time to go,” he said, forestalling every rehearsed dismissal that had been in Henry’s mind and the speech that Pip had been formulating in walking here. “I’m not going to argue with you”—as he spoke he was walking past them—“but would you follow me please, I don’t want my dad overhearing this.”

  Henry and Pip did as he asked and George was content to watch the three of them, heads close together. He stood by the van doors and watched and crinkled up his eyes the better to focus.

  “You have disappointed me so deeply, Alan,” Henry said, his face and his voice composed.

  “Whatever. Well, I’m off. I’ll send for Dad when I’m settled.”

  Henry took the loss of George Dixon in his stride. Perhaps he’d anticipated this. He didn’t flinch. “Whatever George wants to do is of course fine with us,” he said.

  Alan lowered his head and spoke to the old road. “It’s up to you, but I haven’t said anything to Dad about Michael, and nothing about Euan either. Do me this one favour and keep Dad out of it.”

  Then Alan strode back towards his father, grinning at him, George’s face relaxing a little, reassured.

  “What do you mean, ‘about Euan’?” Pip called after him.

  ***

  At lunchtime, before Alan left for France, he went to Ursula’s cottage and knocked on the door. He’d left the van ready to go, packed with his few boxes of things. He’d left his father sitting on the leather couch with his head in his hands. There wasn’t any reply at Ursula’s house, so Alan went down to the loch thinking she might be there, and she was. Ursula was sitting on the beach, in a long white petticoat, ribbon-trimmed, and a big khaki sweater with patched elbows. It had been raining again and the shingle was wet, but Ursula didn’t seem to notice, sitting upright with her legs folded neatly in front. She didn’t acknowledge Alan or look at him when he sat beside her.

  “I’m leaving today,” he said to her.

  “Yes.” They sat together, Alan looking at the loch, following Ursula’s gaze, his attention returning from time to time to her face. Eventually he said, “Well, that’s that then, I just wanted to say goodbye” and got to his feet, brushing damp stones from the seat of his trousers.

  “Why did you lie?” Ursula asked him.

  “About what?”

  “My father telephoned me this morning. He told me what you’d said to him, in private, after Michael died. That Michael hadn’t died, that it was a mistake. I don’t understand. Can you explain it to me?”

  “I wanted him to be alive for your sake. And for your father’s sake.”

  “Did I hit him on the wrist, Alan? Was it his wrist that I hit?”

  “No.”

  “Why did you tell me afterwards, on that day afterwards, that it was his wrist and that he chose? Why do you lie to people in private, Alan?”

  “We needed to make it better. First we gave them the wrist. Then we said he’d survived it.”

  “I didn’t. You did.”

  “I did.”

  “Why did you lie? Lying causes suffering to God.”

  “I wanted you to be happy, to have a happy life. I wanted Henry to have a happier life, knowing Michael was alive. So it was a kindness, you see. And I wanted to protect you.”

  “You should have protected me at the beginning, then. Why did you lie to Rebecca?”

  “I was afraid you were about to be arrested.”

  “It’s a sin to lie.”

  “No. You’re wrong about that. People lie all the time.”

  “That doesn’t mean it’s not a sin.”

  “They lie all day, sometimes in unusual ways. Just by doing things they lie, sometimes. Life depends on lies. It runs on them. Your father lies.”

  “He doesn’t. He doesn’t.”

  “He does: he’s adjusting what he says, what he says he believes, all the time, depending on who he’s talking to.”

  “Why did you think I’d be arrested?”

  “The police have been here, talking to your mother.”

  “A policeman.”

  “Yes. Somebody told them Michael was dead in the loch. I don’t know what your mother told them but she wouldn’t lie to a policeman, would she?”

  “She’s lied for me all along.”

  “They all have. They’ve all pretended Michael left Peattie.”

  “I’m not talking about Michael. You wouldn’t understand. Mummy did, though.
The policeman would understand if she explained it to him properly.”

  “I wouldn’t count on it.”

  “They’ll see how it happened. They’ll tell me it’s alright.”

  “Talk to your mother about it first,” Alan told her.

  “I’m going to see my father; I’m going to talk it over with my father. He’s coming here now, to talk to me.” She looked towards the path. There was no sign of Henry yet.

  Alan began walking across the beach. “Goodbye then,” he said, turning his head and raising his hand. “I don’t think we’re going to meet again.”

  “Alan!”

  He stopped and turned properly to face her. “Yes?” He began walking back.

  “Joan was here. She told me that Euan has gone to live at the flat, that he won’t be doing the garden with me today. Usually we meet at two o’clock on Sundays.”

  “I know. I know you do.”

  “Was it because of you? Did you tell Joan? I shouldn’t have told you.”

  “Euan told her himself.”

  “I think you were wrong when you said that I should keep Euan and Ottilie’s baby a secret. I should have told Mummy.”

  “At the time it was the right thing. It was the kind thing. It wasn’t your secret; it was theirs.”

  “But does Joan know, now?”

  “Yes. Joan knows. It’s not a secret any more. I think it would be best if you told everyone about their baby now. That would be best.”

  ***

  Henry’s depression arrived the day after this. It was there when he woke, like a delivery, like new weather, having settled over him in the night. While he slept it had taken shape in him and taken root, and he woke to find its reflection in the mirror already embedded there, waiting. There wasn’t any point in carrying on: he said this to himself without self-pity. It was merely a fact. He got up and went to the bathroom and then, too exhausted to wash, he returned to bed. Edith found him there later in the morning. He wouldn’t leave the bedroom, or dress, and wouldn’t at first give reasons. This was a source of some exasperation to Edith. She wasn’t able to do as Joan urged and leave him alone. The days turned into a week and Edith began to feel desperate. She went and tapped on the bedroom door several times a day, asking if she could do anything for him, if she could fetch a doctor, if he wouldn’t perhaps feel better if he got some air and exercise. He ignored her questions. She’d sit on his bed, looking at him lying on his side, one side or the other, the quilt grasped tight in his hand and lifted to rest at his mouth, his eyes open and his expression unreadable. She’d open curtains that became closed again during her absences. She’d fuss over undrunk pots of tea and eggs left to go cold.