“I’d better take the dogs out,” Mog said.
“Can’t you put them in the walled?”
“Tried that. They dug and trampled. Not a huge success with Angelica.”
Ottilie seated herself on the second-to-bottom stair, crouching over a little as if she were cold.
“Don’t think about it,” Mog told her. “What we need is distraction.”
“Toast,” Ottilie said. “I’ve remembered I haven’t eaten anything today. Might feel better.”
“I’ll pop the dogs out first and then I’ll make some.”
“I’ll make it.”
“If you like, but I’m happy to. You look tired.”
“The truth is, I am. Exhausted. I’ll wait for you here. Close my eyes for a bit.”
“Go sit in the drawing room.”
Mog was gone for what seemed like a long time and Ottilie barely moved, sitting with her head resting on the wall. Then Mog appeared with a tray.
“Shall we?” Mog asked her, inclining her head and turning to go down the corridor.
“Can we do it here?”
“Here?”
“Do you mind?”
“Course not.”
“I’ve always disliked the drawing room. Even before.” Mog took the tray to the stairs and placed it on a tread above where Ottilie was sitting, and the two of them ate toast and drank tea in silence.
When they’d finished, Ottilie said, “I’m going back down there.”
“You don’t want to be there,” Mog said, without looking up.
“I do. And I want to go alone. Do you mind?”
“Of course I don’t. If you’re sure.”
“The stupid thing is, I’ve been losing sleep over it and it’s Ursula I’ve been worried about.”
“I know.”
“What if?”
“I know. But we’ll deal with it as we go. You know what Pip thinks. It won’t go any further.”
“Maybe so but it will be all over the papers.”
“Unavoidable.”
“There’s something I need to tell you. We’re going away on our trip, immediately it’s over with.”
“I’m glad for you. And for Gran. It’s absolutely what she needs.”
“She’s always wanted to travel and Henry wouldn’t.”
“Not because—I mean—you won’t stay away, will you?”
“The truth is, we can’t afford to be away for long. We need to be careful with money, at least until the sale goes through, and even then . . .”
“It won’t be a fortune once the debts are paid.”
“It won’t be a fortune.” Ottilie kissed Mog on the cheek, and went back through the gothic door and down the back stairs. A few minutes later the phone began to ring.
Angelica appeared out of nowhere, rushing past and into the office. She answered and was quiet, murmuring her responses. She laid the handset down on the desk and then she came out again, looking solemn.
“We need Pip. Where’s Pip? Do you know where Pip is?”
“I’m sorry, I don’t,” Mog told her.
Pip came in from the terrace. “What is it?”
“It’s them,” she said. “They’ve found him and it’s starting.”
Pip was standing on the end of the jetty, talking to a man in a wetsuit. Both of them had their backs to the boat, which was tied up alongside. Ottilie was in it, sitting in it, talking apparently to the deck. There was something on the floor of the boat, something large, something long, positioned under a big piece of dark green plastic or in a dark green plastic bag. Pip began to speak about arrangements, and used the word remains, and the police diver put a hand on his shoulder. I felt as if my neck were held from behind by a strong hand, preventing me from looking away.
What I’d like is to dream new memories and make them true. With proper attention to detail they could be as true as the old ones. The truth is that I have lived the escaped life, on and off, in snatches, for brief spectacular snatches. We’ve run together through southern woods, my children and I. My wife has beautiful eyes and there was love in them. And what I’ve discovered is that there’s all the time in the world. There’s time to read and also to write, and my writing is beginning to find its footing. There’s nothing but hopefulness. The days stretch long and warm and the meadows around our house are permanently in flower, aside from a Christmas that I visited, or made or whatever it was, one furnished with log fires and games and time spent in the kitchen together. Fantasy: that’s a word I’ve grown stubborn about, one I won’t admit to. I know what I know, and what I have done and where I have been. I think that I lived it. I lived it all.
You’re sceptical. But in the end it doesn’t matter how much of it was ever really mine. These were still experiences. This was still my life. Memories are all we ever have, after even a day in the world, and who’s to make a judgment on what’s real and what’s not? I know, I know. It’s pathetic and it won’t do. We all know what’s real and what isn’t. I concede. But the mind is a potent other world and conjures up realities if you’ll allow it to. That much you must now concede. That is how I escaped Ursula, Ursula’s oar, escaping with a broken wrist and swimming to the shore. I took the money and went south to a new world, and met the woman I was meant to meet and felt my girls kick under my hand. None of this you could dissuade me from. I’m sad for my mother, that none of this will ever also be hers. That’s my sustaining emotion now, that I’m sad for my mother.
***
Pip sent Angelica a text message. She read it and then she said to Mog, “He says that we should come down.”
“I don’t want to see,” Mog told her. “I’ll stay. You go, and I’ll stay here.”
Angelica came forward and put a hand onto Mog’s, folding it into her own. “We’ll walk down together.”
“I don’t want to go, really not, I can’t,” Mog said to her. “You go though. You go.”
“We’ll go to the wood. Just that far. We’ll go across the field and into the wood. We’ll go to the tomb and then, if we don’t want to go further, we won’t. We’ll come back across the field again. They’ll never know we were there.”
“Okay.”
“Okay?”
“Let’s go, then. I know later that I’ll be sorry if I don’t.”
They came down to the wood, walking across the field in the peculiar light. The lilac cloud cover was turning increasingly brown, and the humidity was building again, building into release, into rainfall. The women went into the back of the wood and made their way slowly to the tomb, Angelica leading. Angelica went first.
“There’s nothing to see,” she said, turning to Mog. “Nothing disturbing. Just the boat at the jetty. Ottilie’s in the boat. Pip’s talking to one of the divers.”
They seemed, incongruously, to be talking about wine. One of the divers had been on holiday to the vineyards in Chile, was recommending South America for travelling, and Pip was saying that before he and his girlfriend got married, before he and his wife had children, they might take six months off and go there and see for themselves. The estate was up for sale, Pip explained, and the diver said that he knew, he’d heard, and it was such a shame. It will be best for all of us, Pip told him, to make a new start. It was inevitable in any case, unavoidable, the only possible decision. The money they made from the sale of the land was only ever going to be a stop-gap, and as it turned out it had been just enough to get the house into a saleable shape. Bed and breakfast, it’s like treading water, he said; there’s no real money in it. Break even was never going to be enough. “This way,” he said, “everyone gets seed money to start something somewhere else.”
His wife had always wanted to go riding in Argentina, Pip said. The diver was encouraging him, beginning to suggest places to stay, and Pip took his phone out of his pocket and began making notes. He wasn’t really thinking of how this chatter might appear to onlookers. He was doing it protectively of Ottilie, masking her talking to me, what once was me, producin
g a sort of white noise that furnished her with privacy. She was sitting beside the green plastic, one hand placed upon it.
She was looking down at me. She was looking right at me, her hand on my forehead as if I were a child ill in bed. I was in the green package. I was there. I was looking back at her, her sad face looking down. Part of me. Part of there. “I’m so glad, I’m so relieved to see you again,” she said. “I knew that Alan was lying, that Joan was wrong. I knew it. I knew you wouldn’t leave me, say nothing to me ever again, edit me out of your life and carry on. I knew they were wrong. I’m so relieved. I love you so much.”
Everything else I can deal with. I can forgive.
And now I must sleep.
About the Author
ANDREA GILLIES has worked as a writer and editor. She was praised by the New York Times as a “gorgeous writer” for her first book, the memoir Keeper, which won the Orwell Prize and the Wellcome Trust Book Prize.
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