The Treacle Well

by Moira Forsyth

  Harry knew the owner of J&S Pirie, the Ford dealership in the city. ‘I’ll ask him to look something out for you, when Daniel passes his test,’ he said.

  ‘Let’s hope I’m not one of those people who takes forty goes . . .’ Daniel said, grinning. ‘Thanks, Harry.’

  He had no interest in cars. It was Caroline who had come up with the idea of buying one, but he admitted it would be useful.

  ‘Car first,’ she said. ‘Then a flat.’

  ‘I thought it was the flat you were most bothered about – living on our own?’ Daniel said.

  They were in the den. It was late and everyone else was in bed. Except when they were studying in their rooms, this was the time they were most likely to be alone. Sometimes they had friends back in the evening and the den was theirs, the girls kept out. But it was not like having your own place.

  ‘We have to break them in to the idea,’ she said.

  ‘You’re so devious. Is it necessary? As Harry said, we’re adults, we can please ourselves.’

  Caroline shrugged. ‘Yes, but they‘ll resist it. Don’t you think?’

  ‘If you say so.’

  ‘We’ll just rent, eh? No sense in going to all the bother of buying somewhere for a couple of years. After that – who knows where we’ll be? I don’t want to do my clinical training in Aberdeen as well.’

  ‘So you keep saying,’ he teased.

  ‘Oh shut up. Neither do you.’

  For a moment they contemplated a life somewhere else, a different hospital, a different city, other experiences unimaginable beyond their bare outline. Perhaps, Daniel thought, we’ve lived too sheltered a life, protected by family, but limited by them too.

  ‘You’re right,’ he said. ‘The world lies before us, in all its glory.’

  ‘Is that a poem?’ she asked, suspicious.

  ‘Could be. You know, the trouble is you look so ungrateful, rebelling against a kind and loving family. What we really need is some cruelty or neglect. Unreasonable parental behaviour.’

  ‘Well, we do have our father.’

  He would not answer that. There was nothing more to be said about it. Caroline picked up the crumpled Evening Express from the floor and turned to the ‘To Let’ section of the Classified Ads.

  ‘This probably isn’t the best time to look,’ Daniel suggested. ‘In the middle of an epidemic.’

  ‘No one else will be looking, so there’ll be no competition if we find a nice place.’

  He laughed. ‘You’re a very determined woman.’

  Esther had her hair cut at last: the long plaits had gone. Caroline had encouraged her – think how easy it will be, no more tugs, and hair washing will be so quick! You look lovely, she said, when Esther came home feeling strange with her giddily weightless head. Glowing, she cared only for Caroline’s approval. When her mother said ‘That fringe is too heavy’, Esther tossed her new bob and said, ‘it’s with it, Mum.’ Janet, picking up a basket of washing to hang outside while the sun shone, said only ‘With what, exactly?’

  For a while, Esther kept the plaits tied with navy school ribbons in a dressing table drawer, wrapped in tissue paper. But they were like conkers fallen from the living tree; they lost their russet gloss. Finding them there a few months later, she threw them out. Only Margaret minded – she had planned to make them into a wig. Her own fair hair was fine; it would never grow long and thick like Esther’s.

  When Esther went to Braeside for a week of that surprisingly long and tedious summer of the typhoid epidemic, Granny admired the new grown-up Esther.

  ‘My, my, you’re a young lady now. You winna be chasing after kittens in the hay bales these holidays.’

  There were no kittens this year; the old cat had died. She had a growth, Granny said, and Esther did not want to know more. Her last remaining kittens were roaming tomcats now and rarely came indoors. Both Granny and the dog seemed older and stiffer but the hens still pecked busily about the wild ground behind the fence at the back. Early in the evenings she listened to their soft crooning as she sat on the doorstep shelling peas or hulling strawberries for their six o’clock high tea. The garden was as productive as ever, and the weather had blazed into heat the moment Esther stepped from Harry’s car and sniffed the different country air, heady with the perfume of summer.

  Granny kept to the old mealtimes and pattern, having the main dinner in the middle of the day. At home, when Daniel and Caroline had come to stay with them in term time, as students, Janet had moved theirs to early evening. After Granny’s mince and tatties or fish pie, Esther was too stuffed to do anything but lie on her full stomach and read. It was hot so she lay in the shade of the big apple tree on a tartan travelling rug with a bowl of strawberries by her side, and read her way through her library books. When they were done, she began on Granny’s papers. She read the Weekly News and the People’s Friend from cover to cover, and the old Reader’s Digests. She liked Increase your Wordpower, and would test Granny on the new words she had learned.

  When her mother telephoned to arrange to collect her, she said, ‘Can I stay another week?’ Surprised, but pleased (she worried about her mother), Janet agreed. ‘Do you want Louise out with you?’

  ‘She won’t want to come – she just likes to play with her friends.’

  ‘What about Margaret? It would be good for her.’

  Margaret was more biddable but at nine would not read as much as Esther wanted to. She also liked to have Granny to herself, but she could hear the hopeful note in her mother’s voice. ‘Oh well. All right.’

  ‘That’s a good girl – she likes your company and it will leave me a bit freer.’

  Esther spent her last day without Margaret reading and reading. ‘You’ll wear your eyes out,’ Granny said.

  ‘I’ll take Gyp for a walk soon,’ Esther promised.

  She went up the quiet road behind Granny’s house, the fields on the other side once grazed by their own cattle, but now leased to Easter Logie. The rent earned Celia an income to supplement her pension, and Gordon and Harry managed the business side of the property for her. Janet worried about how her mother would cope as the years went on. At present, Celia kept the place with only Eileen’s help and Eddie coming in to dig the garden. Eileen was getting on too, and overweight. Esther heard her panting as she trundled upstairs to put ironing away, or heaved herself onto a precarious chair to dust the tops of doors. Why? Esther decided this was not something she would ever bother doing when she had her own house.

  She and Gyp walked slowly, Esther to make the most of the day, Gyp because he was old and it was hot. She pretended Gyp was Black Bob, the dog in the Weekly News serial, who was so clever, frequently saving his master from danger, but Gyp, quiet and steady, did nothing to help this game along. It had all to be in her own head.

  The clover in the verges sent up a warm smell of honey, and the grasses were as high as Esther’s hand, trailing along their feathery tops, now and then pulling one up so that it came free from its sheath with a sweet white stalk you could suck till the juice was gone and it was stringy in your mouth. Now and again she slipped off her sandals and carried them in her hand by the straps, so that she could feel the hot tar beneath her feet. It was burning, melting in places, so she had to put the sandals on again. At the top of the hill, they looked across to Easter Logie Farmhouse, but didn’t turn up the lane towards it. Instead, Esther walked slowly along the edge of a barley field. It was too early for the ears to have folded over but the crop was high and turning gold. Gyp went through the barley and she could see his white-tipped tail weaving among the stalks. ‘Come out,’ she said, but half-heartedly. It was a little cooler in there for him. Soon they reached the gate and went through, Esther closing it carefully behind them. They came down the brae through a copse of birch and rowan and at last it was shady enough for Gyp.

  ‘Let’s have a rest,’ Esther said, and they both sank gratefully onto dry leaves, to sit listening to birdsong high above their heads and the scutter of
foraging birds and other tiny creatures in the undergrowth around them. Gyp stopped panting and closed his jaw with a gulp, sinking his head onto his forepaws. As she lay propped against a tree trunk, there suddenly came to Esther a memory of searching among dry leaves in the lane for Caroline’s ring. Did Caroline still wear that ring? She did not think so. Of course, as a student doctor, she couldn’t wear jewellery when she was with patients.

  Where had Caroline gone that night? How queer, Esther thought, nobody mentions it and I don’t even know if she was made to tell. I bet Daniel knows. She wondered if he and Caroline were home yet; they had gone to London to spend some time with their father. Will she wear the ring when she sees him? Esther did not think so. For a few minutes she was in a fret to be at home, so that she could slip into Caroline’s room and look in the wooden casket with its inlaid pattern of gold flowers, where she kept her jewellery: her mother’s rings and pearls, and a heap of cheap silver chains and earrings which were what she usually wore. Diana’s huge collection of clip-on earrings and coloured beads, gaudy and dated now, had been relegated to the dressing-up box, along with their mother’s dance dresses from when she was young and had no children to keep her at home. Diana’s diamond engagement ring had been put aside for Margaret in a blue velvet box in Janet’s dressing table drawer.

  Esther closed her eyes, to think better. When she opened them, dazed, she realised she had been sleeping. Alert to the change in her breathing, Gyp opened his eyes too and raised his head.

  ‘Right,’ she said. ‘Let’s go back. I want some raspberry wine and a scone.’

  When Margaret came, she brought several of her dolls. On the Monday the weather changed and it rained steadily so Esther, beginning to be at a loose end, set up a school for the dolls in one of the attic rooms. It had been Daniel’s, was still Daniel’s when he came to Braeside, but that was rarely now, and almost all his things had migrated to Harrowden Place. Margaret had chosen this room to play in: Daniel’s teddy was still on the bed, and became another pupil at the school, the only boy. Granny gave them a slate to be the blackboard, with a small broken piece for chalk. Esther cut up paper and stitched notebooks for the class; Margaret found a short garden cane to be the teacher’s pointer.

  Esther, sneaking off after a while to Caroline’s attic room next door, lay on the stripped mattress with her book, Jane Eyre, her mother’s old copy found in Granny’s bookcase. She was deep in the horrors of Lowood School when Margaret appeared in the doorway, bored with the game when Esther was no longer there.

  ‘It’s playtime,’ she said, ‘my children are all in the playground. Are you coming back to be the French teacher again?’

  Esther, with a year of learning French at the High School behind her, had been showing this new knowledge off to the dolls. Now she couldn’t be bothered. She just wanted to read.

  ‘In a minute,’ she said. ‘Let me finish this chapter.’

  Margaret perched on the edge of the bed, then got up and wandered round the room. ‘Caroline had this room,’ she said, ‘didn’t she?’

  ‘Mm.’

  Margaret opened the wardrobe door but all that remained were a pair of black lace-up shoes, very dusty, and a grey cardigan and skirt, also from Caroline’s school uniform. She closed the wardrobe door and tried the dressing table next. She studied her reflection for a few minutes, tucking her hair behind her ears to see if that suited her better. It didn’t. She thought her ears stuck out too much. With a sigh, checking that Esther was still reading, she opened the drawers. Nothing in the top one, nothing in the middle one, nothing but a white button in the bottom one and an old jersey. She shut the drawers quietly, not to disturb Esther. She was still hopeful about the French teacher, if she didn’t annoy her. Bonjour Madame, she whispered. Comeintally voo? Then she caught sight of a box behind the tilted mirror, a wooden box like the one Caroline had in Aberdeen for her beads and rings, but much smaller. She drew it towards her and opened it.

  ‘Look!’ she cried to Esther. ‘There’s a ring in here!’

  Silence.

  ‘What?’ Esther asked, surfacing. ‘What did you say?’

  ‘There’s a ring in this box. It’s Caroline’s. Do you think she knows it’s here?’

  It was the gold ring Esther had found in the woods. She took it from Margaret and without thinking, slipped it on her own middle finger. It was not as loose as it had been three and a half years ago when she was ten, when Caroline had disappeared for a whole night.

  ‘I don’t know. I think she must have put it there. I knew she wasn’t wearing it any more.’

  ‘Is it the ring you found?’

  Esther was surprised Margaret remembered. ‘Yes,’ she said.

  ‘There’s a bit of paper too – maybe it’s a secret letter,’ Margaret said, taking the paper from the box and unfolding it. She was the Enid Blyton reader now, and was entranced by secrets: drawers, passages, rooms and worlds. ‘Oh, no, it looks like a poem.’

  ‘It’s not a letter,’ Esther said, taking it from her, ‘or a poem, though it does look like one.’

  It was a list, in Caroline’s much younger handwriting, her school writing, neat and rounded.

  For Esther, my ring

  For Louise, my mother’s crystal earrings

  For Margaret, my mother’s pearls

  For Daniel, everything else

  ‘It’s a will, or a bit of a will,’ Esther discovered, and a thrill of shocked pleasure ran through her. For Esther, my ring.

  ‘What’s a will?’

  ‘It’s what you write down to tell everyone who is going to have your things when you die.’

  ‘Is Caroline going to die?’

  ‘No, silly. Well, not for years and years.’ She sat down on the edge of the bed and let Margaret take the piece of paper from her. Side by side, they read it again.

  ‘I’m going to make a will,’ Margaret decided. ‘I don’t want Louise to have my dolls.’

  ‘I doubt if she wants them.’

  ‘But she wouldn’t look after them. I’ll leave them to you, Essie.’

  Esther did not answer her. After a moment, growing restless, Margaret said,

  ‘Shall we give it to her, the ring? And the letter? The will.’

  Esther thought about this. ‘No,’ she said at last. ‘I don’t think so. This is still her room, really, and we shouldn’t be looking in her things. She might not want other people to know the ring’s here. Your Daddy gave it to her.’

  ‘He never gave me a ring,’ Margaret said, jealous.

  ‘You’re not old enough.’

  ‘I’m going to get Caroline’s pearls, though. What are they like?’

  Esther got up and put the ring back in the box. Then she folded the paper again and laid it on top, closing the lid.

  What should she do?

  In the end, going downstairs with Margaret because the rain had stopped and it was time to pull pea pods for their dinner, she made up her mind to speak to her mother, and see what she thought. Perhaps she didn’t need to do anything at all. Except Margaret had begun to covet the pearls, without being able to remember what they looked like, and she could see it wasn’t a secret any more.

  The Car

  1964

  Catching up with her friends at home, Esther forgot about the ring, but Margaret did not. At the dinner table, she announced to Louise, ‘You’re going to get Auntie Bess’s crystal earrings.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Caroline’s going to leave them to you in her will.’

  ‘Oh good,’ Louise said. ‘What about Auntie Bess’s emerald ring? I like that.’

  ‘What on earth are you talking about?’ Janet asked.

  Esther told her. Janet was amused but less interested than Esther had expected.

  ‘Not exactly a legal document, then,’ Harry said. ‘No witnesses?’

  Esther shrugged, not being sure what he meant. ‘It was only a bit of paper.’

  ‘No, it’s true,’ Margaret insisted. ‘Can
we go and look at the earrings and the pearls?’

  ‘Certainly not.’ Janet turned to Esther. ‘When was this bit of paper left at Granny’s?’

  ‘Oh, I think she wrote it ages ago – her writing’s different now, not so neat.’

  ‘Practising to be a doctor,’ Harry said, making a joke wasted on the children.

  ‘Well,’ Janet said, ‘you’d no business reading it in the first place – you wouldn’t read anybody else’s letters, would you? So I suggest you forget all about it.’

  ‘Am I not getting the pearls then?’ Margaret persisted.

  ‘For one thing, there is no guarantee Caroline will not outlive the lot of you!’

  Margaret fretted about this for days afterwards, imagining her life somehow shortened, indeed likely to come to an end any time.

  One night she crept into Esther’s bed late, and whispered, ‘Are we really going to die before Caroline?’

  Esther, who was reading Villette with some disappointment, finding it nowhere near as interesting as Jane Eyre, closed the book and put her arm round Margaret. ‘Silly Tilly,’ she said. ‘Honestly, none of us is going to die for years and years and years until we’re really old women.’

  This, for Margaret, was almost as unimaginable, but more reassuring.

  ‘I’m going to ask Caroline anyway,’ she said, ‘when they come back from London.’

  ‘Don’t say we looked in her box,’ Esther warned.

  ‘No, I won’t, I promise.’

  ‘You’d better go back to your own room. It’s boiling with two people in the bed.’

  Reluctantly, Margaret slipped away, and a few minutes later Esther heard her singing to herself, the bedroom door wide open to let what air there was drift through the open window and across the room to the landing. It was the hottest week of the summer so far.

  A little later her mother came upstairs and looked in, saying, ‘Time you had your light out, isn’t it? Dad and I are coming to bed now.’

  ‘I’m too hot to sleep.’