She left the gate propped open with a stone, because the latch was hard to undo from the outside. Then she began walking with her head down, looking from side to side, sweeping the breadth of the path with the torch beam. She was sure there must be something. This was how Caroline would have come home, getting off the bus and walking up the lane to their back gate. She knew it so well the darkness wouldn’t have bothered her, and she would have been able to slip into the house and upstairs without anyone knowing. The fact that she had not come home meant something had stopped her, but she would have left a sign, Esther was sure. She had had a dream about it. In the dream she was in the woods across from Granny’s house and was searching there among leaves and pine needles. When she first woke she had a confused feeling that she must get out to Braeside, but after a few moments decided the dream was telling her simply to search and this was the obvious place to start. Here she would find a sign to show Caroline had been on her way home; it would be something everyone else had missed or had not realised was linked to her.
Then something gleamed in the wavering light of her torch. She had found it.
It was Caroline’s gold ring, that is how tiny it was, and easily overlooked. It was an odd design: two parallel rings so slender they were little more than wires, linked by six bars a little broader, two each white, yellow and rose gold. Esther had seen her turn that ring, loose on the third finger of her right hand, round and round. She must have taken it off and dropped it for me to find, Esther thought, so that I would know she was nearly at our gate when she changed her mind, or something happened. She wiped it clean on her jersey and put it on her own finger to keep it safe. Caroline had long elegant hands, the knuckles flat; Esther’s were much smaller and not so beautiful. One day, she hoped, she would have hands like Caroline’s. She put the ring on the third finger of her left hand where it was much too big. She was only nine, but one day she would be married. How would it feel to have a ring there all the time? Her mother had never taken hers off, not once, since her wedding.
Esther closed her hand round the ring, holding it tight. She glanced about her before she left, but she knew there was no point in searching for anything else. Luck, or persistence, or something more mysterious, had helped her find the ring. She went in the back gate and ran up the garden to tell the others.
Esther knew she came from a good family. She had heard her mother say of someone else: what can you expect, she’s not from what I’d call a good family. It was unusual, however, for them to go out as a family, grandparents, aunt and uncle and children. It could happen only when Gordon and Diana were back on leave, and in the holidays, when Caroline and Daniel were home from their boarding schools. It was unusual for their grandparents to go on outings of any kind, except annual events like the Dunecht Agricultural Show. Certainly they came into town, Grandpa for business and Granny for shopping, but rarely to go to the theatre, unless it was to hear Andy Stewart or Kenneth McKellar. The children would be taken to the pantomime in a week or so; to make two visits to the theatre in a month seemed glamorous and extravagant.
Esther and Louise associated the changing of the seasons and celebrations of all kinds, with clothes. In May they took off their long fawn or grey socks for the last time and threw away the elastic garters that had been so tight a few months ago, cutting into their legs just below the knee. The elastic had become grubby and chewed-looking, so that Janet said ‘I don’t know what you do with it’, but legs grew every year and they had to have new garters anyway. They put on short white socks and brown sandals, and their legs felt bare and skippy. In September when those same legs, brown with running about outside in the garden or at Braeside, became goose-pimply, the long socks came out to be darned or replaced, and they went to buy new Clarks shoes for winter.
Christmas parties were like a change of season in an afternoon, and so were visits to the theatre. Party dresses were even thinner than summer frocks, party shoes silver and flimsy.
The day of the theatre outing was dreary with a north-east wind cutting round corners sharply enough to make you gasp, so they had stayed indoors all day, drawing at the table in the den, making paper dolls and designing clothes to fix on them with tabs over their shoulders and round their waists. They had had paper doll booklets bought for them some weeks ago when Margaret was ill, but these had been discarded, the tabs torn and the dolls themselves no longer crisp in pink underwear, upright on their cardboard stands. ‘We can make our own,’ Esther said. Margaret was allowed to colour in, her expertise with scissors and draughtsmanship too slight for anything else.
In the afternoon their grandparents arrived. Gordon and Diana had been Christmas shopping and they came in just before tea. There was a quick meal of scrambled eggs and toast, so that they could all get ready for the theatre in time.
Their grandmother wore her church and town coat, dove-grey, a grey hat with a curled purple feather tucked in the brim, and grey gloves and shoes. She also wore a pair of fox furs draped over her shoulders. Esther was mesmerised by the heads with their shiny black noses and gleaming eyes, even more by the little paws hanging down. As an adult she retained a clear memory of the two foxes, kindly keeping her grandmother warm, the russet blaze of their fur against her grandmother’s grey wool coat. Then, she did not quite appreciate they had been killed for this purpose. When she was allowed to play with them they seemed alive, with distinct personalities.
Their grandfather was uncomfortable in suit and white shirt, his tie tightly knotted, his red farmer’s face above it the face of a man who has been drafted into something he did not quite mean to join.
‘Everyone’s in their best clothes,’ Esther said to her mother when they were shivering in vest and pants, ready to put on their party dresses.
‘Is it a party?’ Louise asked, hopeful.
Janet said they had better get dressed in the den, since the bedrooms were too cold. But first the chilly bathroom, to wash faces and hands. Louise ran downstairs, clutching her silver party shoes. They all had new dresses this year, with fluffy boleros to cover up bare arms in case the theatre was not warm enough. Louise eyed Esther’s blue dress, wondering whether she would like it when she inherited it next year. It was unusual for her to have a new dress that had not come from Esther. They were early Christmas presents from Diana, and much more elaborate than usual. Janet, doing up buttons at the back, thought how poorly finished they were and wondered if they’d last more than a season. She inspected finger nails and brushed hair; Esther’s was tied in a single plait down her back with a blue satin ribbon to match the dress. Then they were made to sit quietly while Janet got ready herself and Harry marshalled everyone in the hall, to make sure they left on time.
At the last moment there was a debate about who was going in which car.
‘Why are we going to this play anyhow?’ Louise whispered to Esther while this was going on.
‘Auntie Diana knows the man who wrote it – he’s famous.’
‘Will we see him?’
‘He wrote the play, he’s not in it, so I don’t know.’ Esther thought about this. ‘I think he’ll come on and bow at the end.’
Louise giggled, making an exaggerated bow, thus drawing attention to herself, which up till now she had succeeded in not doing.
‘Louise! What have you done to your face?’ Her mother had noticed. ‘Go up and wash that stuff off right now.’
Everyone turned to look at Louise’s face blushing scarlet as the stolen lipstick – Diana’s, to judge by the colour. Her eyelids were smoky green with something else taken from her aunt’s make-up pouch, since her mother used nothing but a powder compact and lipstick. Before Louise could argue her father said,
‘Och, leave her, Janet. It’s too late now – we need to get a move on. If she wants to make an exhibition of herself, let her.’
Harry hated to be late for anything. Impatiently, he herded them into the two cars and they set off.
Eleven of them went to the theatre; ten came hom
e.
The playwright did take a bow; Esther and Louise stifled giggles and everyone clapped. There was a lot of standing about after the play ended, the adults drinking champagne. They had sherry and whisky at home, and brandy at Christmas for the pudding and pies and butter. No-one had wine and none of the children, including Caroline and Daniel, had ever seen anyone open a bottle of champagne. Tiny amounts in slender glasses were given to the children. ‘Nearly as nice as fizzy lemonade,’ Louise conceded, gulping it down.
At first it was exciting, seeing the actors come into the bar dressed in ordinary, rather scruffy clothes, but still imbued with glamour. Then it became dull, just grownups talking. Esther felt cross and bored, stuck with Louise and Margaret and unable even to see her older cousins who had disappeared into the crowd.
There was just as much fuss getting back into the cars as there had been leaving the house. When they were home Janet made Horlicks while their grandmother filled hot water bottles. Diana was out in the porch behind the scullery with the back door open, smoking. Because so many people were staying in the house that night, Esther was to sleep in Louise and Margaret’s room, leaving her own for Granny and Grandpa. Daniel was in the box room on a camp bed, leaving his room for Gordon and Diana. All this moving about and the extra people in the house made it seem quite festive, as if it were Christmas already.
It was Esther who noticed Caroline was not there.
‘Has Caroline gone to bed?’ she asked, taking her hot bottle from her grandmother and hugging it tight. Because they had been out all evening, the living room fire had died and the house felt cold.
‘I dare say, after drinking champagne. You run up and put that bottle in her bed,’ her grandmother said. ‘She’ll be cold if she’s nae a bottle in wi’ her.’
‘Make mine next then.’
‘Dinna you worry, it’ll be ready. Time you were a’ in bed.’
Esther ran upstairs. It was a good excuse to rap on Caroline’s door and go in and sit on the bed and talk and smell her special scent, sweet and spicy, and feel the touch of Caroline’s light fingers on her arm, and watch her flick her dark fringe from her eyes.
There was no reply to Esther’s knock. She could tell the room was empty so she went in and put the bottle under the bed covers, before trying the bathroom instead, tapping on the door and calling, ‘Caro?’
‘It’s me,’ came Daniel’s voice, thick with tooth-brushing. ‘I won’t be long.’
‘Where’s Caroline?’
He opened the door and looked out, a smear of toothpaste at the corner of his mouth. He wiped it off with a towel and said, ‘She’s not in bed.’
This was not a question, but she did not notice.
‘No, she’s not. I can’t find her.’
Daniel shoved the towel roughly onto the rail by the washbasin. ‘She must be downstairs then, mustn’t she,’ he said, going into the box room and shutting the door.
The house was quiet. Esther’s father and Uncle Gordon were standing in the cold living room with whiskies; Diana had gone to bed and so had Grandpa who was so used to getting up at dawn to feed beasts he never sat up late. By the time they left the theatre he had had more than enough standing about talking. Only her mother and Granny were left in the kitchen.
‘Here you are, Esther,’ Granny said. ‘You go on up and put out your light. Time we were a’ in the Land of Nod.’
‘I’ll do the rest, Mum,’ Janet said. ‘You go up – the electric blanket’s on in your bed.’
Esther said, ‘I put the bottle in Caroline’s bed, but she’s not there.’
‘Go on,’ said her mother, ‘and don’t bother Caroline. It’s late.’
No one listens, Esther thought, trailing crossly upstairs, her bottle making a hot patch on her stomach as she hugged it.
Esther lay awake listening to Louise’s noisy breathing, a snuffling little girl’s snore. In the spaces between she listened to the silence in the room next door, the silence that was not Caroline.
In the morning they paid attention; in the morning everyone knew that Caroline had not come home.
There was a general feeling at this point that it was the family’s collective fault she was missing. She had gone to the ladies’ cloakroom just before they left the theatre; they had all got into the cars and everyone in one car assumed she was in the other. At least, at the time, it was thought to be everyone. No-one questioned Daniel and he volunteered no information.
As the anxious day dragged by, it seemed more and more their fault. They had not even noticed she was not in the house last night. How could they have been so careless? By afternoon, Harry and Gordon were talking about calling the police.
The house had never been so full of people. Everyone stayed on, even the grandparents who had to make arrangements for milking, for the hens, for all the work of the farm that would have to go on without them for a few hours at least. There was no longer any question of Gordon and Diana leaving for London to fly back to Egypt next day. He was due to start managing a new contract the following week.
From the landing at the top of the stairs, the children heard Gordon talking to someone on the telephone in the hall below. There was only one telephone in the house, so there could be no private calls, but this meant it was often a source of interesting information.
The three of them sat on Caroline’s not-slept-in bed, keeping close to each other, as if one of them might vanish if left on her own.
‘Where’s Daniel?’ Margaret asked.
‘Out with Daddy. I think they’ve gone to the theatre to ask about Caroline.’
‘Where is Caroline?’
‘We don’t know, Tilly, but don’t worry. They’ll find her.’
‘Is she lost?’
‘Yes,’ Louise said. ‘She got lost in the middle of the night.’
‘Let’s think where she might be,’ Esther said.
‘At Granny’s,’ said Margaret, unable to picture Caroline anywhere apart from their own house or their grandparents’.
‘No,’ Esther said. ‘She can’t be. Granny’s here. Where do you think, Louise?’
‘I don’t know,’ Louise sighed heavily and lay down across the bottom of the bed, dangling her head near the floor where she could see Caroline’s blue slippers under the bed.
Downstairs, the adults had become unsettlingly quiet.
Louise sat up suddenly, her face red from being upside down. ‘Do you think a bad man has got her?’
Margaret started to cry. Esther put her arms round her.
‘That’s silly,’ she scolded Louise but Margaret cried harder than ever. ‘Maybe she went away with a nice pixie,’ she said in a desperate attempt to stop this wailing. She looked at Louise and made a face, to show this was just for Margaret who was too little to understand, and still believed in fairies and pixies. This face was also meant to convey to Louise how stupid she had been to say anything about bad men. Louise made a face back, and resumed dangling over the side of the bed. She thought she had seen one of the teddies under there and wanted to have another look. Margaret sighed and laid her head on Esther’s lap, and although this habit was supposed to have been thoroughly trained out of her, she tucked her thumb in her mouth. Louise came up triumphantly with the missing teddy but as neither Esther nor Margaret paid her any attention, she shivered, complaining of cold. ‘I’m going downstairs,’ she said, but did not move, did not go down to the warmer kitchen where the adults who were there sat at the table, not talking. Eventually, she leaned on Esther and cuddled the dusty teddy, sucking his ear.
When Esther read in her teenage years about what happened at Ayers Rock, she thought of herself and Louise and Margaret, the Elties, huddling together, bewildered and beginning to be frightened. Perhaps they were more afraid of being the one left behind than the one who vanished, led away by goodness knows what pied piper.
‘Caroline was in the lane,’ Esther announced, making her dramatic gesture, taking the ring from her finger and laying it on the
kitchen table. ‘This is her ring.’
They looked at the ring, then they looked at Esther.
‘What?’
‘Where did you get this?’
Her grandmother reached across the table and picked up the ring.
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘There’s not two like it. I said to Gordon when he bought it, it’s an extravagant thing for a girl of fifteen. She’ll have plenty rings in time, I told him, but – ’
‘What’s extravagant?’ Gordon asked, coming into the room. He looked more gaunt than usual, his hair on end because he had run his hands through it so many times, his long elegant hands like Caroline’s. His face was greyish. Even in her triumph at bringing home the ring, Esther saw that.
‘This ring,’ Janet said, taking it from her mother’s hand and giving it to her brother.
‘It’s Caroline’s,’ he said. ‘It’s hers. Where – ’
‘Esther found it in the back lane.’
The glory of being the one to find it palled in the face of all their questions. She was instructed to take them to the exact spot where she had picked it up, but once there, she was no longer sure. Her father spoke sharply to her and Esther burst into tears. She had thought it would prove Caroline had been here, that somehow it would help them to find her. Instead, all the grown-ups began talking at once, frighteningly unlike themselves, intense and angry. Someone pointed out Caroline might have lost the ring there any time. When was she last seen wearing it?
She always wore it. Esther was certain of that but no one was listening to her now. For years afterwards, she hated to think of that afternoon, memorable not for fear or anxiety but embarrassment, that unwelcome emotion, so close to shame. The only moment of quiet and pleasure in all of it was the instant of finding the ring. She left it for me, Esther had believed then, she left it as a sign for me. Questioned by her parents, she could not explain why she had gone into the lane, why she thought some sign of Caroline would be found there.
The Treacle Well Page 6
