The Full Legacy (19 page)

I wasn’t about to say no.

The setting sun was casting an unexpectedly rosy glow over the sky as we headed back in the general direction of Lowestoft.

I settled back in my seat, relieved that nothing strange had happened for a while, still feeling the echo of Turner inside me, slightly damp, and surprisingly mellow. She smiled over at me, her hair, ruffled by the breeze from the open window, shining bronze against jet in the golden light. Her hands were as confident on the wheel as they had been over my body only minutes before.

Despite her smile, I thought she looked a little distant. I wondered if she was regretting the words of love she’d whispered as she’d held me in her arms.

Suddenly there was something I needed to ask her.

‘When did you first know?’ I ventured. ‘About loving women, I mean?’

I’d wondered ever since I first met her. It seemed strange though, that it suddenly felt so important now.

She didn’t answer immediately. She was concentrating hard on the road as it wound away in front of us, constantly elusive, vanishing at every curve. On our left, we passed a tiny weathered church. It had one new grave, bright with flowers, among the mossy tombstones. Distracted, I twisted in my seat to look back, thinking guiltily about Mary and how I’d forgotten all about her for a while.

When I looked forward again we were passing trees in lush summer green by the roadside, their lower branches scratching at the roof of the car.

The wind whipped Turner’s hair over her eyes. She shoved it back.

‘There was a girl at school,’ she said. ‘Her name was Sam – short for Samantha, of course.’ There was a rueful tone in her voice as she remembered. ‘She was in the sixth form when I was in the fourth. She seemed very grown up and very glamorous. She had a key to the boathouse and a highly active sex drive. She was the first person ever to even kiss me properly, let alone make love to me, and I would have done
anything
for her. When she got engaged to a Coldstream Guard during the Christmas holidays she insisted that it didn’t make the slightest difference to what she felt for me, and I guess I took that as a model for how things were when women loved each other... You know, it was just a side-show to the main event... marriage and kids and all that stuff.’

I was surprised to hear the hurt teenager in her voice, and knew we were on tender ground, even after all those years.

‘I can see how that might have put you off getting close to other women,’ I said tentatively.

‘That?’ she laughed. ‘Oh no, I handled
that
. It’s amazing what people can push out of their minds if they really try.... No, it was when we were found out that everything began to fall apart... My housemistress, Miss Christie...
Creepy
Christie we used to call her.... caught us one night. There didn’t seem to be much point in trying to deny what we were doing. Sam was terrified. She thought we’d be hauled straight in front of the headmistress and expelled.’

She hesitated and I gave her space.

Eventually she continued. ‘Anyway... that wasn’t quite what she had in mind. She gave us overnight to squirm and spoke to each of us individually the next day... She told Sam that she’d had a lucky escape and if she ever came near me again, she’d report us both..... And then she told me she’d been watching me for a while and if I was
really
nice to her we could keep everything a secret, just between the two of us.’

My flesh began to crawl. I shook my head to dispel the idea forming there.

‘Please tell me this isn’t what I think.....’

I saw the flush rising up Turner’s throat.

‘The filthy b...!’

‘Yes, seems she’d got quite a taste for young girls. And there was no way I could risk it coming out with Sam so scared. It wouldn’t really have bothered
me
a lot. I doubt whether I’d have been expelled. The school was struggling anyway and they needed every fee-paying customer they could get. It couldn’t have made things worse at home. Mum was permanently mad at me anyway. But it would have been awful for Sam... Her parents would have gone ballistic and it probably would have wrecked her engagement.

Anyway... the story has a happy ending. Apart from a disgusting grope at my knicker elastic that day, nothing ever actually happened. The nasty old perve said she wanted us to meet in her room during private study time that Friday so we could have an hour without being disturbed, but when I got up there, she’d gone.’

‘Gone?....
You mean she’d chickened out or something?’

‘Nope... She’d gone... permanently. The whole room was completely stripped. At first I thought it was some sick game she was playing... like she was lulling me into a false sense of security and she was about to leap out of the wardrobe in suspenders and a ski mask or something really gross and scary like that. But she just wasn’t there.

In assembly the next Monday, the headmistress said she’d had to go home to look after a relative who’d been suddenly taken ill. She never came back. And a couple of days later we had a new housemistress who I
wouldn’t
have minded a bit of ‘private study’ time with, to be honest.... It was a miracle.’

Despite myself, I couldn’t help but smile at Turner’s incorrigibility.

I didn’t believe in miracles though. I’d stopped believing in those a long time ago.  

I was about to ask, cautiously, if Turner thought that somebody might have warned the teacher off, when the road twisted sharply to the left and she slowed down. ‘I hate this bit of road,’ she said. ‘It always gives me the creeps.’ She followed the curve intently with her eyes. Then, just as we passed into the straight, a shadow flashed out in front of us. I screamed, too late. Turner slammed her foot down on the brake pedal, sending the car into a skid. Rubber shrieked on grit as the car tyres bit into the tarmac. Then we were skidding in slippery, rutted mud as we veered into a short lay-by, the Rover bouncing like an off-road rally car until, finally, our seatbelts hurled us back into our seats and we came to rest. Turner slumped against the headrest with her eyes closed. I stared out of the side window. We had missed hitting the banking at the edge of the lay-by with, maybe twelve inches to spare. Hawthorn and brambles reached out and scratched at the front wing of the car. I opened my door gingerly and eased myself out, circling hesitantly round to the front of the car, just by the driver’s door, to look at the road, where a body should have been.

Nothing!

I walked wonderingly down the road, searching the gullies on either side until my eyes ached.

I came back and knelt in the mud and peered underneath the car, so sure that we had just killed, or at the very least, seriously injured someone.

Still nothing!

I thought I was going to be sick with relief.

Through the windscreen, I saw Turner, still sitting motionless, staring ahead of her now, gripping the steering wheel. She looked pale and her jaw was trembling.

‘I don’t understand it,’ I said, as I slid back into my seat. ‘I could have sworn... Look... I’m so sorry. It must have been a trick of the light.’

Now there was no pedestrian to pray for, I was praying frantically that the car wasn’t damaged.

Turner restarted the engine. So far so good!

‘No.’ She put the car into reverse and I felt it starting to move.

‘This is where my aunt died,’ she said. ‘My mother was always superstitious about the place. She thought it was haunted. When I was a baby she was driving home past here and she saw a figure in the road, just like you did now. She swerved and I was thrown across the car. No high tech baby seats in those days, like there are now. I smashed my head against the windscreen – fractured my skull. Everybody thought I was going to die. I was in a coma for a week, apparently. Anyway, I survived. Or so I’m told. No ill effects apart from this scar.’ She pointed to it and I looked, though I didn’t need to. It was etched on my memory, just like every other inch of her. ‘I guess Mum was right then,’ she said. ‘This place really is haunted after all.’

Rebecca

We were subdued when we got back to the house. I made coffee for Turner and found food in the freezer to heat up.

Zucchini Lasagne and crinkle cut oven chips. Under normal circumstances it would have been food to warm my heart. There was even a chocolate fudge cake to defrost for ‘afters’.

I left the lasagne preparing itself in the oven and went to check back with Turner. She was in the lounge and she’d put on a CD of the Brahms she’d played for me that morning. She was gripping her coffee mug tight. I imagined it chilling as she held it. I could tell from the glazed look in her eyes that she was still in shock.

I lowered myself onto the sofa beside her and put an arm around her shoulders.

‘Dinner’ll be ready in about half an hour,’ I said.

‘Thank you.’ She tried to smile. Then she gave up trying.

‘There’s been too much death,’ she said. ‘I can feel it clinging to me. I can smell it.’

‘Oh, that’s probably just me,’ I quipped, trying to lift things a bit. ‘Maybe I should take a shower?’

She shook her head, and I knew what she meant. It could sense something unspeakable in the shadows. I told myself very firmly that it was my imagination. But Turner was on her own journey.

‘Mary was like raw meat,’ she whispered. ‘The lorry had dragged her about a hundred yards before he could get onto the hard shoulder. You could see where all the layers of her had been torn away. Half her face was missing. There were bits of gravel embedded in her from the road... I threw up. I was no comfort to Suzanne... None at all.’

Suddenly, I could imagine it all so vividly. The mortuary slab, the smell of disinfectant – and Mary’s pain transfigured in one last cold act, moving her unforgiveness beyond death.

‘It’s all my fault,’ Turner said, shivering.

‘Sweetheart,’ I held her close to me, hoping she’d get some comfort from my warmth. ‘You couldn’t have known it would end like that.’

‘No. I was careless... I
am
careless. If there had been someone in the road just now, what chance would they have stood against all that metal and glass?’

I didn’t know what to say. It seemed to me suddenly that we’re all too powerful for our own good – too powerful and too fragile. I shuddered as I thought about it, trying to hide my fear from Turner, who was in a dark enough place already.

It’s funny how we keep on eating, even in the shadow of death...

‘I should have brought a lettuce or something,’ said Turner, from over the table. ‘Try to get something green down you.’ We’d lit candles, though I think both of us would have preferred more light if we’d been honest.

‘Well, zucchini’s quite enough green for me for one day!’ I said.

And then we fell into silence again.

Neither of us said much more over the meal, though I was surprised to find that I was very hungry indeed.

Turner barely ate anything at all.

When I’d finished, I looked up and saw that, even in the softening flicker of the candles, Turner’s face was strained.

I think we both knew that we were waiting for something awful to happen.

‘The fudge cake needs another hour or so to defrost,’ I said.

‘That’s okay. You can have it for your supper.’ She stood up. ‘Fancy a video or something?’

‘Mm. That would be good, what kind of thing do you fancy?’

‘You choose. You’re the guest.’

‘Have you got anything old there? Black and white?’ I felt like I needed something familiar and comforting.

Turner smiled. ‘Well, as it happens, I’ve pretty much got the lot... Greta Garbo, Bette Davis...
Loads
of film noir.’

‘Fantastic! Any of that’s going to be fine with me.’ I stretched. I felt tired and wondered whether I’d actually manage to make it to the end of a film. Whatever, I was willing to give it a try.

‘How about Rebecca?’

‘Brilliant!’

She pulled the video out from a row, then she knelt to fiddle with the recorder. ‘Wish I could remember how to work this thing,’ she said. ‘It’s different to the one I’ve got in London... Oh
shit!
’
She stopped to listen, her head slightly on one side. The phone was ringing in the study. ‘Better get that. Don’t go away.’

I felt very drowsy suddenly and curled up in the corner of the sofa to wait for her. My eyes were getting heavier and heavier. I couldn’t see any harm in just ‘resting’ them for a moment. I remembered how my father would deny falling asleep in his armchair in front of the fire. ‘Just resting my eyes,’ he’d say when my mum used to tease him about it. And maybe I’d drifted off for a moment or two, because when I opened my eyes again, the video was playing.

It was black and white. But it wasn’t Rebecca.

It looked like a Standard 8 home movie, converted to video. I guessed it must have already been in the machine – jerking back into life from the place where its last viewer had paused it. It was old, slightly out of focus and barely decipherable. I glanced around sleepily for the remote control.

The image rolled, broke up, cascaded into points of light, then reformed again, rolling down the TV screen.

Turner’s hand was on my shoulder. She looked disturbed. I pulled her round to sit beside me on the sofa.

‘Who was it?’ I asked.

‘I don’t know. They’d hung up by the time I got there.’

‘Probably just a wrong number, eh?’ I squeezed her hand and she smiled, keen to be reassured.

‘Hey,’ I said, to keep the lighter mood going. ‘Your video started playing me a home movie while you were gone.’

She looked across at the screen, surprised, scowling a little as she tried to make out the figures there.

‘It’s a really old one. I haven’t seen it before. Mum must have just had it converted... That’s Mum and Dad....’ She pointed at the screen.

They looked like film stars; her mother in a pretty, flared summer dress, her dark hair flicked up at the shoulders, and her father, handsome in a cardigan that looked as if it had stepped straight off the front of an early sixties knitting pattern.