Some Old Lover's Ghost (58 page)

‘What will you do if you find your father?’

She imagined a grand house, with pillars and a wide front lawn. Herself and her father, riding through the hills.

‘I shall go and live with him, of course.’

Erich stood up and began to pull weeds from the stone urns at the top of the terrace. Caitlin remained sitting on the steps. She felt unusually peaceful, looking out over the garden in the warm early evening, with the scent of the flowers perfuming the air. Some of the perpetual restless unhappiness that was always with her began to slide away. She did not mind being with Erich because he asked nothing of her. She had thought that with men you always had to give something – smiles or kisses or sex – but Erich asked for nothing. Erich seemed to like her without expecting anything of her, anything at all. Her arms wrapped round her knees, Caitlin watched a bee nuzzle the golden trumpets of the honeysuckle.

Then Erich, behind her, said, ‘I have made the garden for Tilda. It will be a wonderful surprise for her, won’t it?’ and Caitlin stood up, kicking at the crumbling stone steps with the tip of her shoe.

When Hanna remembered to eat, she ate each meal with an open text book beside her. In the bath, she propped
Gray’s Anatomy
on the taps, but the wretched book tumbled into the water and she
had to spend ages drying it. She lost her temper with Rosi when she played her record-player too loud, and refused an invitation from Richard to go punting. She had decided to work each day until midnight, yet she found herself waking earlier and earlier, the short hours between going to bed and waking interrupted by nightmares.

One night, a few days after she had gone back to Cambridge, Hanna fell into a brief, uneasy sleep and then woke again, shivering and miserable. She thumped her pillow into shape and pulled on socks because her feet were cold, and tried again. This time, her dream was vivid. She was in Vienna, walking with her mother and sisters in a park. She did not recognize the park; the winding paths and overhanging trees were menacing and unfamiliar. They seemed to reach out to her, drawing her into the dark undergrowth. At length they came to a clearing, where she saw a statue made of white, polished stone. ‘Isn’t it lovely?’ said Hanna to her mother, but even as she spoke flakes of stone began to fall from the statue. The beautiful face was eroding away. Hanna turned to her mother, but she had gone. Her sisters too had gone, their footsteps barely audible as they ran through the park, which had metamorphosed into a forest of pendulous black branches and coiling creepers. Hanna thought that she was alone, and then a hand gripped her shoulder, shaking her, trying to drag her away—

‘Hanna,
liebling
, don’t cry.’

She opened her eyes and sat up, staring wildly around the room. Her face was wet with tears. Rosi, in her nightdress and with curlers in her hair, leaned over her bed.

Rosi said gently, ‘It was a dream, that’s all,’ and hugged her.

‘Put the light on.’

Rosi switched on the lamp. ‘That’s better, isn’t it? Was it your usual dream?’

Hanna shook her head. ‘It was different, this time.’ She sat up in bed, her knees hunched up to her forehead, almost overwhelmed by her sense of dread.

‘Tell me about it. Ah, it’s cold in here. Just a moment, I shall
get my cigarettes.’ Rosi scrabbled around in a drawer and then snuggled into bed beside Hanna.

‘There was a statue—’ Hanna struggled to remember where she had seen the statue before. ‘I remember. I saw it in the garden of The Red House.’

‘The Red House?’

‘It’s an empty house at home. Near the river. Erich is making a garden there. He showed me, ages ago, he said it was a secret. He had found a statue.’

A statue of a nymph. Small, perfect features and tumbling curls.

‘So?’ said Rosi. There was a hiss as she struck a match and lit her cigarette. ‘A statue?’

‘Erich thought it looked like Caitlin.’ Remembering, Hanna’s unease deepened. ‘Rosi, Erich is in love with Caitlin.’

‘No,’ said Rosi, very definitely. ‘How could he be? She hardly ever speaks to him.’

‘Someone like Erich,’ said Hanna, ‘might fall in love with someone who never spoke to him. Erich doesn’t expect people to be nice to him, does he?’

‘Even if he is in love with Caitlin, she would never pay any attention to him. Erich is not handsome enough for her.’

‘But I saw them, Rosi,’ said Hanna. Her voice shook. ‘I saw them going into the garden of The Red House.’

‘Then they are friends, perhaps.’ Rosi fell silent.

Hanna glanced at her. ‘What is it, Rosi? Rosi? You are dropping ash everywhere. You will set my bed on fire.’

‘Tilda told me that she was worried about Erich.’ Rosi scowled. ‘You don’t think … you don’t think that Caitlin would tease Erich a little, just to annoy Tilda?’

Hanna was bewildered. ‘Why should she want to annoy Tilda?’

‘Because she blames Tilda for having ended her love affair with that horrible Julian Pascoe. And because she hates Tilda.’

Hanna remembered the day her foster parents in Amsterdam had introduced her to Erich Wirmer. Erich had been nine years
old. His little suitcase had been full of hoarded bread and cheese, much of it green with mould. He had not spoken to any of his adoptive family for almost a month. He had slept beneath the bed rather than on top of it.

‘If Caitlin teases him,’ said Hanna slowly, ‘and leads him to think that she likes him, and then hurts his feelings, then I do not think that he will be able to bear it.’

They were both silent for a few minutes. ‘Perhaps,’ said Rosi as she stubbed her cigarette out in a discarded teacup, ‘perhaps we should write to Tilda.’

Tilda caught the nine o’clock bus. In Oxford, the psychiatrist, a tall, handsome man called Dr Marriott, showed her into his office.

‘You said on the telephone that you wanted to talk to me about your son, Mrs Franklin.’ Dr Marriott glanced at his notes. ‘Erich. I saw him once, a couple of months ago.’

‘I had hoped that Erich would consult you on a regular basis, Dr Marriott.’

He indicated a chair and Tilda sat down. ‘Erich denied that anything was wrong with him,’ he said. ‘I cannot persuade a patient to speak to me if he does not want to.’

‘Yes. Of course. I do see that.’ She fell silent, her mind whirring in anxious circles.

‘You are worried about him?’

She tried to put her fears into words. ‘He’s changed, recently. He is euphoric … elated. He won’t tell me why. He says that he has a secret.’

‘A secret?’

Tilda shook her head. ‘I have no idea.’

‘A girl, perhaps?’

‘You saw him, Dr Marriott. Is it likely?’ Yet the thought made her uneasy. ‘If he has met a girl, then I shouldn’t intrude. After all, he’s nineteen, almost an adult. It’s just that he still seems to me a little boy, sometimes. A frightened little boy.’

She looked up. ‘I thought that if he would not come to you, then perhaps you would come to him.’

‘A house call, you mean?’

She nodded, eyes fixed on his chiselled face. She wanted to cross her fingers, to mutter her good-luck charm.
Grant that no hobgoblins bite me, no hungry devils rise up and fright me
.

But Dr Marriott said, ‘I rarely make house calls, I’m afraid, Mrs Franklin. I find that it’s better to see patients on neutral ground.’

She swallowed her disappointment, and rose and held out her hand. ‘And there is the possibility,’ he added, as he saw her to the door, ‘that Erich would be an unsuitable candidate for psychoanalysis. That to confront his hidden memories would be too great an ordeal for him. That to do so would destroy him.’

The letter came by the second post. Caitlin’s heart began to pound when she saw the Irish postmark. She ran out through the garden to the copse where the pig and the hens pecked at acorns and beechmast. Sitting on the silvery bole that bulged from the trunk of the beech tree, she tore open the envelope. The letter was signed, ‘Caitlin Kinsella, née Canavan.’

She read the first sentence.
My dear Caitlin, I cannot tell you how pleased I was to receive your letter. To know that I have a niece the age of my eldest daughter is a joy indeed
.

Caitlin had read in cheap romances the phrase,
The blood coursed through her veins
, but it was not a phenomenon she had previously encountered. Now, as she realized that her search was nearing its end, her body seemed to become suddenly alive, to slough off in one glorious moment the dullness and detachment of the years since her father’s disappearance. It was as though she had touched a live wire, or pressed a switch that had returned her to what she once had been.

Aunt Caitlin went on,
It was wonderful to have news of Daragh and to know that he has done so well for himself A big house and horses and a farm – it is good to hear that my brother has fulfilled all his ambitions
.

Caitlin turned over the page.
I do not quite understand
, wrote her Aunt Caitlin, her father’s favourite sister,
why you believe your father may have returned to Ireland. With such a fine house and lands of his own, why should he wish to come here? Brendan inherited Granda’s farm, and Da sold the shop years ago, after Ma died. There is nothing for Daragh here
. The pig snuffled at Caitlin’s sandal; frowning, she kicked it away.

Daragh would never come back to Ireland, my dear. I am afraid that he
could not (underlined heavily)
come back. I still miss my brother very much, but I have to tell you that he would not be welcome here. He borrowed money from our neighbours and did not repay it. I have neither seen nor heard from Daragh for seventeen years
.

There was some more – family news, an invitation to Caitlin herself to visit – but Caitlin hardly glanced at it. She reread the second paragraph, examining each word minutely.

I have neither seen nor heard from Daragh for seventeen years
.

Her mind flailed desperately, looking for an explanation that would give her comfort. The letter dropped out of Caitlin’s hand. For a while, there was just the familiar emptiness as hope crumbled and the last of her illusions faltered. Sitting there, she acknowledged for the first time that either her father was dead, or he had chosen to leave her. Though neither of these options was bearable, there were no other possibilities. If he were dead, then she did not know how to live with such a loss. If he had chosen to leave her, then it had been because she was not worthy of him. He had seen through her and had known that she was bad. Why else would he go? She was, after all, a bad girl. Caitlin, who rarely looked at herself, did so, and acknowledged that she was deceitful and selfish and promiscuous. In order to have the bedroom to herself, she had made Melissa’s life so miserable that Melissa had gone to stay with her father in France. Though she was not yet sixteen, she had already slept with two men. She remembered herself in the back of Martin Devereux’s car, her knickers around her ankles, her skirt pulled up to her waist. Or lying in Julian Pascoe’s bed. The things he had done to her. Men
only did those things to bad girls. Good girls said no. Good girls waited for marriage.

A voice said her name, but she did not look up. A cautious hand touched her shoulder. ‘Caitlin – don’t c-c-cry.’

She sprang up, as though he had hit her. ‘Don’t touch me!’

‘I’m s-s-sorry.’ Erich stepped back.

The emptiness had returned, and she knew that it would never leave her. Caitlin stared at Erich, with his hunched shoulders and missing front tooth, and recalled that she had tried to make him – even him – love her. The thought sickened her.

He took a handkerchief from his pocket. ‘Here,’ he said, holding it out. ‘T-t-take it.’

‘Leave me
alone.’

Yet he did not go. He stood there, lolloping and clumsy, clad in dirty trousers and a handknitted jumper with holes in the elbows, staring at her with that mournful, devoted expression. She wanted to push him away, to beat at him with her clenched fists, but instead she said softly: ‘Why don’t you go away, Erich? I don’t want you. No-one wants you. Not even Tilda. She only feels sorry for you.’

When she saw him wince, she was aware of a fleeting exhilaration. ‘Go back to your stupid garden,’ she hissed. ‘It’s not yours anyway – someone else will buy the house and dig up the garden and you won’t be allowed there any more.’

‘No,’ Erich said. His face was white.

‘Of course they will. It’s not your house, Erich. It’s not your garden. Tilda will never see it because some awful people will buy it and make it how they like it. They’ll cut down your silly box trees and dig up your stupid flowers and build garages and tennis courts and things like that. That’s what people do. Didn’t you know?’

The expression on his face was so odd that she began to laugh. She gasped, ‘Don’t you know how stupid it all is, Erich? That’s what I thought when you showed it to me – stupid, stupid, stupid. That’s what Tilda will think, too. What a stupid surprise – to give someone something that isn’t even theirs! Oh, she’ll
say how nice it is, because she pretends to you like she pretends to everyone, but inside she’ll think, how
stupid
—’

Sliding down the tree trunk to sit on the beechmast, Caitlin laughed and could not stop laughing. She drew her knees up to her chin, rocking backwards and forwards as her laughter turned to tears. When both her laughter and her tears were exhausted, she looked up and Erich had gone.

Hanna had not been able to go back to sleep after her dream about the statue. The suspicion that something was terribly wrong had intensified rather than diminished. She cursed the colonel for not having a telephone, and knew that she could not say what she needed to say within the fractured phrases of a telegram. A letter would take a day or two to reach Woodcott St Martin, and she was seized by a sense of urgency she could not shake off. She rose early, but could not eat any breakfast. She tried to work, but found herself staring out of the window and thinking of Erich and the expression on his face when he had shown her that wretched statue. Her head ached dreadfully, and when she tried to read the letters danced in front of her eyes. Angrily she threw a textbook and her toothbrush into her bag, and cycled to the railway station.