East Fortune (30 page)

‘I much prefer funerals to weddings,' a man was saying. ‘Weddings tend to go on for ever these days.'

Angus could hear his mother talking to friends and acquaintances about his father as they offered condolences, telling them again and again that Ian was a good man.

‘That he was.'

‘Few like him.'

Tessa handed round the canapés as Angus saw guests to and from their cars in a procession of greeting and farewell; all of them anxious to get home before the evening freeze.

Mr Maclean was asking Jack, ‘Where's that nice girlfriend of yours?' and Angus could hear his brother being defensive.

‘I think she's in the Highlands.'

‘All going well?'

‘Hard to tell.'

‘You don't want to lose her. She's a fine-looking girl.'

As the cars drove away Angus watched the rooks over the fields behind the beehives. He remembered the summer, his father gathering honey, adding smoke to push the bees back, drifting it across the top bars of the frames before inspecting the combs, holding them up against the sun, a glow of gold against the light. He did not know how to continue his legacy.

It was his turn now; his mother had made that clear. He had to hold the family together. She appeared to have forgotten about Italy and his plans for a new life.

‘We'll have to have a bit of a clear-out,' Elizabeth said, a few weeks later. ‘I'm all for memories but I don't want to be surrounded by them.'

They began to sort through books, clothes, furniture and possessions; all the accoutrements that had once been so essential to a life.

Angus was persuaded to keep his father's coat and dress shoes and Jack and Douglas were offered a choice of suits, even though they recognised that they would never wear them. Of course they would have to give away lan's professional clothing: the short bench wig for working in court, the long wig for ceremonial occasions, his gowns, tailcoats, white bow ties, and the long scarf-like falls.

There were old golfing trophies, out-of-date legal textbooks, and souvenirs of journeys made when Ian and his wife were young: a
miniature gondola made out of matchsticks, a set of wooden elephants, a real ivory tusk that their father had been sent after defending a corrupt Nigerian. What on earth were they going to do with that? Angus thought. It was probably a criminal offence just to own it.

No matter how much the house was decluttered it always reminded Angus of his childhood. He could still see his father standing under the goalposts, watching him take a series of place kicks, fifteen from the right, fifteen from the centre, and fifteen from the left, working his way along a muddy twenty-five-yard line. His father punted the ball back each time so that Angus could practise his catching in the same session. Scotland B. He had waved to his mother and father in the West Stand. Even though the game had been at Murrayfield Angus could tell that the achievement had never been quite enough for his parents. He had never won a full cap.

Elizabeth had not been keen on rugby from the start. She worried that her son would succumb to injury or damage his hands in one of the rucks. ‘Give blood – play rugby,' Douglas had joked but she had never thought it funny.

Angus thought of his mother before she was old, having tea on the table at ten past six, stirring the family into action as soon as her husband walked through the door. He could still smell the baking, shortbread and Victoria sponge, and hear his mother asking him to lay the table.

In those days they only had wine at Sunday lunch or when visitors came. Now they drank it all the time.

He remembered an American coming to stay, preparing one of his mother's stronger concoctions, and whispering,
'This would kill me.'

He tried to think how long it would be until he was an orphan and how much of his own life he had left. If he died at the same age as his father he would have thirty years.

He knew his mother would be upset, and that in many ways it was wrong to leave so soon after his father's death; but he was convinced that he and Tessa had to move away as soon as they could.

If they did not go now they would never go. Angus would never discover what his life could become.

Jack read aloud to his mother. Elizabeth tired in the evenings and she found his voice soothing. It reminded her of her husband.

She chose not fiction but guidebooks to places she had visited in the past: Germany after the war, Paris in the 1950s, the Italian lakes of her honeymoon.

Elizabeth interrupted her son with memories and contradictions, telling him that the guidebook had it wrong, that it wasn't like that at all. It failed to mention the atmosphere of each city, the taste of the food and the quality of the cocktails.

Jack's reading became an early-evening routine. His mother had done the same every night when he was a child; now the roles were reversed.

One evening she brought in an old shoebox and handed it to Jack. In the top corner, written in pencil, in Ian's handwriting, was one word:
Louvain.

‘I haven't ever opened this,' Elizabeth said. ‘Do you think I should?'

‘I don't know, Mother.'

‘You know what it is?'

‘I think so.'

‘It contains her letters.'

‘Perhaps you'd rather not know…'

He thought about his mother censoring the love letters of soldiers during the war: eighteen-year-old boys being trained for mobile units abroad, all of them fearing their letters might be their last.

‘Could you read them for me?' she asked.

‘I don't want to upset you.'

‘I never knew what he thought about her; if there was ever any regret. There was a sadness about him sometimes. He thought I never noticed. Perhaps he was thinking what might have been, had she lived.'

‘Are you sure you want me to do this?'

Jack did not know what he would do if what he found was bad. Would his mother be strong enough for the truth or would he have to make up a story?

‘I'll leave you now,' she said. ‘Then I'll come back and you must tell me what you think I need to know. After that I think you should burn them.'

Elizabeth left the room, stretching out her right arm to balance herself on the armchair. Jack had noticed how much more quickly she tired these days.

‘I'll be in the kitchen with my gin.'

He opened the box, put the lid to one side, and pulled out a small pile of letters and playbills tied together with an old piece of string. On the top was a small signed photograph of a girl in a dancing costume and a feather boa,
Always your Louvain.

She had probably given it to Ian before they were married. Jack untied the string. It was almost impossible to imagine Ian with a showgirl but there he was, in another photograph, in a restaurant with indoor palms, smoking a pipe, sitting with a proprietorial arm on her chair. There was a menu underneath: onion soup,
coq au vin, oeufs a la neige.
Jack supposed it was from his father's wedding day.

Underneath the two photographs lay a pale-lavender envelope with his father's name written in pencil. Inside was a sheet of paper filled with one word, in tiny writing, repeated again and again, filling both sides.
Come.

Then Jack found a postcard of Notre-Dame. The same writing covered the back.
Never leave me again, never leave me, never, never, never.

There was a birthday card,
Bon Anniversaire,
a lock of hair and a death certificate:
Franfoise Louvain Henderson née Lusignan, 13 July 1947. Cause of death: heart failure.

She had been twenty-three years old.

Jack sifted through the papers and the photographs, looking without reading, unable to concentrate. Did he want to know any of this?

He stacked the documents together, retied the piece of string, and put everything back in the box. He picked up the lid and pressed it down, giving it a tap with his knuckles that he hoped would keep it safe in some way. He left the box on the table by the fire and went to find his mother.

Elizabeth was sitting at the kitchen table. A soup was simmering on the hob.

‘Anything?' she asked.

‘She sounds a bit mad.'

‘Yes, I think she did go mad.'

‘Didn't Father say she had TB?'

‘I think he found that easier to deal with.'

Easier than a broken heart, thought Jack.
Heart failure.

‘And she was French?'

‘Her mother was French.' Jack realised that his mother knew far more than she was telling him. ‘So there's nothing of note?'

‘It's just a few letters that don't make very much sense.'

‘Ian said she was almost illiterate. She must have been very beautiful to make up for it.'

‘There's a photograph…'

‘I always wondered what she looked like…'

Jack wished he had not said the word ‘photograph'. He thought of Louvain smiling into the camera; feathers everywhere.

‘I don't think I need to see it…'

‘She wasn't as beautiful as you…'

‘I was quite glamorous, I suppose. In my day.'

Jack remembered how his mother had once defined her marriage.
From mink to sink.

‘Your father once told me that my eyes were so piercing that they could open an oyster a hundred yards away. “Only a hundred?” I said.'

Her son topped up her drink.

‘I never knew how much he looked at her letters; if he ever read them late at night or when I was out of the house.'

‘I doubt it, Mother. I don't think anyone's looked at them for years. Perhaps Father couldn't throw them away at the time and then forgot all about them.'

‘I don't like to think of him thinking of her. People are always more changed by love than they think they are.'

‘I'm sure he didn't. And even if he did it was such a long time ago. He was far better off with you.'

‘I hope so.' Elizabeth still sounded anxious. ‘We lasted long enough.'

‘And you were happy.' Jack tried to make his words sound like a statement rather than a question.

‘Blissfully happy,' said Elizabeth.

Jack admired the way his father never appeared to have any doubts about the decisions he had made in his life. He just did what he took to be the decent thing and never said a word.

‘By the way,' his mother asked. ‘Are we ever going to see Krystyna again? I rather liked her, even if she did disappear.'

‘She's a bit too young really…'

‘After the war older men found younger women all the time. Their wives had either died or run off or gone mad – just like Louvain – and I always felt sorry for them until up they'd pop with a nineteen-year-old beauty and start all over again. And it was often the ugly men that got them.'

‘Thanks.'

‘I don't mean you.'

It took Jack a long time to mention the baby. Even when he did so, telling his mother immediately that the boy was Sandy's, Elizabeth knew that she could not ask if Jack had ever thought of having a child with Krystyna himself.

‘She could have said something when she was with me,'Jack was saying.

‘She told you all about Sandy.'

‘You mean I should have guessed?'

Jack thought again how foolish he had been not to have known; to have gone through so much; to have harboured such hopes.

Elizabeth tried not to sound knowing.

‘One thing was probably hard enough. And she's so far from home.'

‘I offered her a home.'

‘I know; but perhaps it wasn't the kind of home she had in mind. Perhaps it still belonged to other people.'

Elizabeth tried to imagine what her husband would have said. Perhaps Jack would have been more open with his father.

‘I don't know what to do,' her son was saying. ‘I don't suppose I'll ever live with anyone ever again…'

‘I'm sure you'll find someone.'

‘No. It's best to be on my own…'

‘But you're not on your own. You have the girls, you have us…'

‘You know what I mean. The whole thing with Krystyna has completely thrown me. I can't concentrate on my work. I can't
concentrate on anything. I should never have asked her to stay…'

Elizabeth looked at her son.

‘Perhaps there are different ways of seeing each other.'

‘I don't know. It's hard to imagine the future.'

‘It might be dull if it was easy.'

‘I know that.'

‘Do you remember a girl visiting us when you were young, just once, at the house?' Elizabeth said.

‘What girl?'

‘You must have been about ten. It was in the summer holidays. She brought you all a game of boules. She was dark and pale, and she went for a long walk with your father. When they came back she showed you all how to play the game. She was French.'

‘You're not going to start telling me he had a daughter?'

‘No. He didn't.'

‘That's a relief. As soon as you said the word “French” I thought of Louvain.'

‘She was her daughter. Born before your father met her.'

‘Is she still alive?'

‘She lives outside Bordeaux.'

Jack sighed. He realised that it was the kind of exasperated noise his father always made.

‘Her name is Christiane. After her mother died she went to stay with her grandmother. But your father always kept in touch. He wanted to know how she was. I worried that she would ask for money or make things difficult but she never did.'

‘And she came here? To East Fortune?'

‘Only once. She was in Edinburgh for the Festival.'

‘Your generation. Honestly…'

‘Sometimes you have to save your secrets, Jack. Ian was very private about it. I suppose he just wanted to know that a part of his first wife was still in the world. I'm only telling you because it might help you.'

‘What about you? Did you mind?'