The Treacle Well

by Moira Forsyth

  ‘No – I need to tell you. Tell you something.’

  Janet’s heart sank. ‘You don’t have to tell me anything,’ she said.

  ‘Oh, I think I do. You don’t like me much, but I bet I can trust you. You and Gordy. But you’re not to say anything to him, promise me?’

  ‘Anything about what?’ Don’t give me a secret, she thought, don’t give me something I can’t say to my brother or my husband. She did not know how to stop her though, this fading woman, insisting on her lipstick, her rings flashing in the harsh hospital light, putting on her brave face.

  So Diana told her.

  Outside, it had begun to rain and Janet had not brought an umbrella. She stood in the shelter of the hospital entrance way and shivered, for all the air was so mild. I didn’t misunderstand, she thought, I know what she said. But is it true? She might be delusory, it can happen.

  She knew it was true, knew as if she had always known it. Not heeding the rain, she began to walk away from the hospital, but not towards the underground station or the taxi rank according to Gordon’s instructions. She hardly knew what she was doing, she just wanted to walk. After a few minutes the rain stopped and the clouds cleared a little.

  She had been in London for a few months towards the end of the war, but it had seemed friendlier then, and anyway, that was years ago. Now she found herself taken back to that time. She had wandered into an area still not rebuilt and was confronted by the ragged sides of bombed houses, abandoned homes exposed: fireplaces intact or leaning out, plasterwork crumbling; scraps of wallpaper still with some colour on sheltered areas; and through it all, the persistence of vegetation growing tall as the first floors and even some rooftops. Suddenly this dereliction seemed unbearable. She turned quickly to make her way back to the busier place she had left, hoping to find a taxi, unable to face the underground, the difficulty of getting on the right train, going in the right direction. All that was too much, with the burden she was carrying.

  In the end, Daniel and Caroline did not go to the funeral. Diana had become much worse soon after Janet got home, the treatment was stopped, and in a week she was dead. Janet and Harry were still discussing whether she should go back to London, when Gordon called to tell them. They began talking instead about who should go to the funeral. It would be another long and expensive train journey on the sleeper. Was Mother fit to have all the girls, could she come into Aberdeen to stay with them? What about the work on the farm – surely they could manage without her for a few days? Time it was sold, Janet said, admitting this for the first time. And what about Daniel and Caroline?

  ‘They’re adults, they can decide for themselves,’ Harry said.

  Janet thought about Gordon, managing alone. ‘I need to speak to him,’ she said.

  She tried to discuss this with Daniel and Caroline. What did they want to do? Daniel said he would go to London if his father wanted him to. Caroline said she would go if Daniel was going.

  Gordon’s voice on the end of the phone line was harsh and strained. He wanted other people to decide, and in the end Janet, talking it over with Harry again, began to think there was no point in Caroline and Daniel leaving their studies at this important time. They could go to London and stay with their father later – that would be more sensible.

  ‘What do you think?’ she asked them.

  ‘We’ll be in the middle of exams,’ Caroline said. ‘How long would we have to be away?’

  ‘Does Dad want us to go?’ Daniel asked.

  ‘I don’t think he knows what he wants.’

  ‘Oh well,’ Caroline said, ‘we can always go to London in the summer. I quite fancy that – do you, Dan?’

  ‘I think you’re right,’ Janet said. ‘These exams are important.’

  Caroline made a face at Daniel behind Janet’s back. It was a standing joke with her, how important Janet thought education was. Daniel said it was because she hadn’t had the chance of enough of it herself.

  When Caroline had disappeared upstairs – to work, she claimed – Janet said,

  ‘Daniel, do you know about blood, blood groups? Have you learned about that?’

  ‘We did that in biology at school,’ he said. ‘Why?’

  ‘Can you tell . . .?’ She was so hesitant, his attention was caught. ‘You always have a blood group that’s the same as one of your parents, don’t you?’

  ‘It’s a bit more complicated than that,’ he said, and tried to explain. ‘Why do you want to know?’

  To his surprise, she reddened, uncomfortable. ‘Oh, it’s just something I read in the paper,’ she said. ‘Right, I’d better go and collect Margaret.’

  Daniel sat on in the den when she had left, and wondered. He was so unused to Janet lying, he could scarcely believe she had. You always knew exactly where you were with Janet, and though you might not like where you were, it was at least clear. Now he was not so sure.

  When Janet came in again with Margaret, she was worrying about something else altogether. Margaret was hot and miserable, running a temperature. ‘I can’t leave her if she’s not better,’ she said to Harry.

  ‘Couldn’t Caroline keep an eye on her?’ he asked.

  ‘She’s got too much work to do,’ Janet said, her tone sharper than they had ever heard her use to their father. ‘Anyway, Margaret’s my responsibility.’

  Harry himself, hearing something in her voice that was not just anxiety, looked surprised, but since the children were in the room with them, and Daniel too, he did not answer.

  Margaret did not have any illness the doctor could diagnose, but her temperature went on falling a little during the day then rising sharply at night, so Janet kept her home from school. Margaret slept a lot. In the end, Harry went to London alone, but it was not satisfactory. Janet felt she had let her brother down. She should have made his children go to London with Harry. Yet she could scarcely expect them to care very much about a father who had left them with his parents, sent them to boarding school, remarried and gone away again, and who even now rarely saw them. He had been obsessed with his wife, not his children. As for Margaret, Janet went on caring for her, doing her best.

  ‘Tell Gordon to come up and stay with us a while,’ she told her husband, packing his case for him, sponging a mark from the black tie so rarely worn. ‘Tell him to come home. Oh dear.’

  When he had gone, she was left to worry on her own about Gordon, about letting him down, about whether Daniel and Caroline should have gone to the funeral – but most of all, cripplingly, about what Diana had told her. Soon, she must decide whether to tell Harry – when to tell him. They had no secrets and she did not want any now.

  On the day of the funeral, Margaret was well enough to go back to school, and went eagerly. She was going to be a teacher, she told Janet. ‘I love my school,’ she said.

  Margaret had not yet been told her mother was dead, only that she was ill. Janet had no idea how to tackle this with a six-year-old. Today she must tell her; today she must deal with this. For one thing, Louise could not be relied on and was already being self-consciously mysterious in front of Margaret. Still, she was apprehensive as she set off for the school at quarter to three.

  Margaret ran across the playground, holding out a picture she had drawn in class. This is me, look, Auntie Janet, this is me and this is you and this is my Mummy Diana and my Daddy and this is our cat. It was a very crowded picture but the cat at any rate was large and recognisable.

  ‘Clever girl, that’s very good.’

  They did not have a cat, but Margaret had heard enough about the kittens at Braeside to long for one.

  ‘We’ll get one of Granny’s kittens, will we?’ Janet said, thinking perhaps it would help to distract her, while also wondering how much she would understand about her rarely seen and barely known mother. Margaret held Janet’s hand, the picture clutched in her other one, and skipped beside her all the way up the road, her little satchel bouncing on her back.

  They would have half an hour before Lo
uise and Esther were home; school finished earlier for the Infants’ classes. Margaret would have her glass of milk and biscuit at the kitchen table and draw more cats, and Janet would explain that she would not see her mother again.

  A month after the funeral Gordon came north for a fortnight’s leave. It was June. Summer had come in a rush of warmth, and the trees were lavish in their green finery. The car moved in and out of sunshine on the North Deeside Road as he and Harry drove to Braeside to help his mother arrange what should be done about the farm.

  He and Harry agreed: she should keep the house and an acre or so and lease the rest of the land to Bert Soutar at Easter Logie, who would also buy the remaining stock. It was, after all, their inheritance, and though he had no wife now and could not imagine having one again, Gordon thought of his children, and how the property might, in ways he could not yet see, be part of their future. He had not lived in it since he was a young man in his first engineering job and he had no feeling for it beyond a faint nostalgia, but it was a good house and arable land was valuable. Harry was right: the world was changing, and they should hold on to what would last, and increase in worth as the years went on. On the road out of the city they talked it over, in complete agreement.

  For Gordon it was a relief to discuss it in this calm, reasonable way with Harry, and come to good business decisions. Everything else was temporary and unreliable. Everything else, for him, was inarticulate with pain.

  II

  Into the Forest

  1964

  Not long afterwards, there was once more great dearth throughout the land, and the children heard their mother saying at night to their father: ‘Everything is eaten again, we have one half loaf left, and that is the end. The children must go, we will take them farther into the wood, so that they will not find their way out again; there is no other means of saving ourselves!’ The man’s heart was heavy, and he thought: ‘It would be better for you to share the last mouthful with your children.’ The woman, however, would listen to nothing that he had to say, but scolded and reproached him.

  Hansel and Gretel, The Brothers Grimm

  The Typhoid Summer

  1964

  They were always being told to wash their hands. That was the boring part. The best thing was having a much longer summer holiday.

  One morning early in June when Janet came into the girls’ bedrooms to open the curtains, instead of saying ‘Time to get up’ she said, ‘Last day of school today.’

  ‘What day is it?’ Margaret sat up. ‘Thursday – today is Thursday. Why is it the last day?’

  ‘It’s because of the typhoid epidemic. On the wireless they’re saying they’ve decided to close the schools early.’ Janet sighed, as if it might not be wholly good news. ‘You’re all to get letters home today.’

  Louise started bouncing on the bed. ‘No more school!’ Then an idea struck her and she stopped, anxious.

  ‘We’ll go back in August, they won’t keep them closed?’

  ‘It will all be over by then,’ Janet said. ‘I hope.’

  Louise was going up to the High School in August, to be with Esther. Margaret’s feelings about this were divided between resentment at being left behind in Primary and relief at not having to leave Miss Gardiner, the best teacher in the Universe. Margaret was much taken up with the idea of the Universe. Daniel had told her theirs was not the only world – there were others out there on planets they didn’t even know about.

  ‘Have they got typhoid in other places too?’ she asked Janet as she started to get dressed in the school skirt and blouse left on the chair where they’d been neatly folded the previous night.

  ‘Just Aberdeen,’ Janet said, picking up socks from the floor. There was another one under the bed. So that was where they all got to.

  ‘Uncle Harry said it’s an epidemic. What’s that?’ Margaret asked.

  ‘It means a lot of people have the same disease, and it’s spreading.’

  ‘Could it spread over the whole world?’

  ‘That won’t happen,’ Janet said firmly. ‘Not if you wash your hands properly.’

  ‘So – everyone in the world has to wash their hands or they’ll get it?’ Louise asked.

  Janet, growing exasperated – mainly at the thought of the three of them home from school until August – snapped a brusque reply and went downstairs with a pile of washing.

  How often should they wash their hands? After touching animals, Louise said, but how was this possible – Margaret was always hauling the cat about.

  ‘Animals don’t get typhoid,’ Esther decided.

  ‘How do you know?’

  ‘Oh don’t be silly, Louise, it’s a human disease and they think people got it because they ate corned beef.’

  ‘I ate corned beef!’ Margaret exclaimed.

  ‘When?’

  Margaret could not remember. Surely she would have typhoid by now if it had been the poisoned corned beef?

  In the kitchen Harry was reading the Press & Journal. ‘Three more down with it,’ he said. ‘They’ve opened up an isolation ward at Woodend.’

  ‘Daniel, you’re not working anywhere near this, are you?’ Janet asked. He had appeared in trousers and shirt, barefoot.

  ‘Near what? I don’t have any socks.’

  ‘The typhoid patients, Janet means,’ Harry said.

  ‘No, they’re all in isolation and none of them at Foresterhill, where we are. It’s ok.’

  ‘How serious is this?’ Janet asked, calling through from the scullery where she had filled the washing machine and was attaching its hoses to the scullery taps.

  ‘Well, quite serious, I don’t think our consultant on the ward will like it if I turn up with no socks.’

  ‘You know fine what I meant – the typhoid epidemic.’

  ‘Who knows?’ Daniel put two slices of bread into the toaster then filled a bowl with corn flakes, scattering the overspill across the table. ‘There’s been a bit of a panic, but I think they’ll contain it now.’

  ‘It was the corned beef, then?’

  ‘Yeah, seems like it.’

  ‘I never liked corned beef,’ Caroline declared, coming in to make herself instant coffee and cut a grapefruit in half.

  ‘I ate corned beef!’ Margaret insisted.

  ‘No, you didn’t,’ Janet said. ‘There’s nothing wrong with it usually. Though I must say, I think it will be a while before anyone in Aberdeen buys it again.’

  As Harry folded the paper and rose from the table, Daniel said,

  ‘I’ve booked driving lessons.’

  ‘What?’ Janet closed the scullery door behind her and the rumble of the washing machine faded.

  ‘Thought it was about time.’

  ‘We’re going to get a car. Dan will learn first, then me, but that means he can teach me so we won’t have to spend so much on my lessons.’ Caroline dug carefully round her half grapefruit with a sharp knife. The toaster popped and the kettle started to whistle. Unperturbed, Daniel and Caroline carried on with breakfast. Harry and Janet looked at each other.

  ‘Well,’ Harry said, ‘it’s your money. But cars depreciate in value very quickly.’

  ‘That’s right,’ Caroline said. ‘It’s our money.’

  When Harry opened the front door, sunshine streamed across the parquet and glinted on the stained glass of the inner door.

  ‘Another lovely day,’ he said.

  ‘Harry – ’

  ‘I know you’re worried about this business of Bess’s money,’ he said, ‘but we can’t stop them having it. They’re over twenty-one, and adults. They have the right to spend it if they want to.’

  ‘Not on cars, surely. I thought they’d keep it for when they’ve graduated and have to live on their own or move away and work in other hospitals. That would be good for them. Sometimes I wish we’d encouraged them to go away to university.’

  ‘They went away to school.’

  ‘I know, and I felt bad about that.’

 
‘It wasn’t your decision, Janet, and it wasn’t mine. It was up to their father. It was Gordon who sent them, and he paid for it. Nothing to do with us. And neither is the money, really.’

  ‘You and Dad were trustees too.’

  ‘Our duties have been discharged – I’ve no further responsibility.’

  ‘It’s a worry, though.’

  He kissed her. ‘I know. But they’re sensible – Daniel certainly is. Don’t fret. Think how miserable it must be to be one of those families with typhoid.’

  ‘Och, you’re as bad as Mother, making me count my blessings!’ But she smiled and kissed him back and let him go to work, closing the door on the morning sunshine that was already lighting up the rooms at the front of the house.

  Louise and Margaret spent some time speculating on what kind of car Daniel might buy.

  ‘He should get a sports car,’ Louise said.

  ‘As long as we get a ride in it.’

  ‘One at a time, in a sports car – they only have two seats in front and no back seats.’

  ‘That’s no use,’ Margaret said. ‘I hope he gets a big car, then we can all go in it.’

  They put this to Daniel when he was home from the hospital that night.

  ‘I’m going to get a Mustang,’ he said, teasing them.

  ‘That sounds like an animal,’ Louise objected. ‘It’s not a real car.’

  ‘It’s an animal, but it’s also a car.’

  They looked doubtful. Daniel, relenting, said, ‘It’s American. Actually, I’ll just have to buy whatever I can afford. Maybe a Triumph Herald.’

  They liked the sound of that. ‘Why do cars have two names?’ Margaret asked. ‘Like people.’

  Esther, appearing in the doorway, said, ‘I thought our Morris Oxford sounded like a person. Austin Cambridge was the other one – his friend. Austin and Morris, two nice old gentlemen.’

  ‘Triumph Herald sounds younger,’ Margaret said. ‘He could be their nephew.’

  ‘And Mustang is their dog,’ Louise added.

  ‘I give up,’ Daniel said, laughing. ‘I can see the car’s name is more important than anything else about it.’