The Full Legacy (20 page)

‘... And Granny and Gramps...’ I could see where Turner got her looks from. ‘Granny’ was a stunner. She was gazing down adoringly at the baby wrapped in a crocheted white blanket in her arms.

‘... Me... I reckon...’

I could just make out a sprig of silky black hair, sticking out from the folds of the blanket.’

‘Grandmother....’

The bony old lady was dressed in a tan skirt suit that looked almost as ancient as she was. She had a very slight arthritic curve to her spine and she was eyeing both Turner and her American In-Laws with deep suspicion.

‘And...’ Her face clouded. ‘That’s my Aunt Sylvia... My God... this must be the morning of the day she was killed...’

I leaned forward to get a closer look.

I could see nothing of the exuberant young woman whose letters I had read earlier. She looked pale with thick dark smudges under her slightly vacant looking eyes. Her hair was lank. She was dressed in a fairly unkempt version of the art student style of the times – baggy black jumper – tight black slacks that came just to her ankles – black shoes that looked like plimsols. She looked disconnected from the rest of the party, standing there on the edge of the circle. Then her mother beckoned her in and handed the baby to her and I saw how she reached for the child, hungrily, drawing her into her arms and gazing down into the tiny face with a look of such utter devotion it left me in no doubt.

I was looking at Turner’s ‘dark lady’.

I glanced at Turner to see if she had realised too, but I couldn’t tell.

She was clicking the video off and ejecting it.

A muscle flickered in her cheek.

‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘It’s just so sad, what happened to her... Anyway, I can remember how to do this now. Let’s get this film up and running.’

Later, I was down in the basement kitchen preparing cocoa to go with the fudge cake.

The video had just finished – Manderley destroyed in flames and the tragic Mrs Danvers silhouetted at her beloved Rebecca’s window before falling back into the inferno.

It was one o’clock and I was very tired. The milk was gathering up its energy to billow over the edges of the pan when, distantly, I thought I heard voices.

‘Probably just the TV?’ I thought aloud, though Turner wasn’t particularly a TV kind of a person, and I didn’t really believe my own reassurance.

I turned off the gas, looking around me for a weapon, a knife maybe. Then I decided that I was getting overwrought again, gathered up my courage, and went upstairs, unarmed.

Joyce Waters

Turner was nowhere to be seen by the time I got up to the drawing room, but our visitor was standing by the fireplace and she seemed absorbed in her own thoughts. She was an attractive woman maybe in her early sixties, tall, slim, and very stylish. The standard lamp beside her lit the fine line of her jaw as she drew deeply on a long, slim cigarette. Her nails were perfectly manicured. She wore a skirt suit in black, and her dark, only slightly greying hair was swept back from her face in a perfect wave. I recognised her immediately from the video as Turner’s mother.

She exhaled slowly as she turned and spotted me, wrapping herself in a haze of smoke.

Face to face with my girlfriend’s mother for the first time, I was glad I hadn’t leapt into the room like some crazed knife-wielding assassin. I tried to picture the signature on the paintings... Waters... Joyce Waters...

 ‘Hi,’ I said stepping through the doorway, with my hand outstretched. ‘I’m Gill.’

‘I gathered.’ Her eyes glinted at me as she ignored my proffered hand. ‘Unless my daughter has more than two women on the go at the moment, that is.’

The comment stung, as, I’m sure, it was meant to. My hand slumped down and crept into my pocket, embarrassed.

The family resemblance was quite stunning now that she was facing me. Even her voice reminded me of Turner’s. It was slightly huskier, due to the cigarettes probably, and there was the faintest trace of an American accent, but there was no doubt of the family heritage – mother and daughter inhabited the same tonal range.

I suspected that she didn’t like the idea of me very much. And maybe that was understandable if she blamed me for the breakdown of Turner’s marriage. She unnerved me though, looking at me like that. I found myself tongue-tied, staring at my feet like a naughty schoolgirl who had just been hauled into the headmistress’s office.

‘Where’s Turner?’ I asked eventually, in desperation.

‘She’s speaking to her husband on the phone.’

‘Oh?’ At ten past one in the morning? ‘Nothing’s wrong, I hope?’

Joyce Waters raised an eyebrow as she considered me standing there. Then she picked up a cut glass ashtray from the mantelpiece and flicked her cigarette into it.

‘I imagine it’s all sorted now.’ she said coldly.

She didn’t elaborate and I felt that I couldn’t ask anymore. I wondered if I should just excuse myself and slink off to bed.

Then a hand was on my shoulder and Turner was beside me, taking charge.... up to a point.

‘Gill,’ she said. ‘This is my mother. She’s just come from London.’

Turner looked across at her mother. There was something strange in the look that passed between them. Like each of them was trying to fathom something out in the other.

‘Well,’ said Joyce Waters, exhaling smoke again and sitting down in one of the fireside chairs. ‘Isn’t this cosy?’

She balanced the ashtray on the chair arm and crossed one leg over the other.

A long silence followed.

‘I wonder if I could speak to my daughter alone?’ she asked me eventually. It felt more like an order than a question. And Turner didn’t step in to ask me to stay.

‘Yes... yes, of course.’

I left the room immediately, pulling the door shut behind me. A couple of steps later I heard it click and creak ajar and an uneasy curiosity led me to hover in the hallway and listen.

‘So?’ asked Turner’s mother. ‘Is that sorted now?’

‘Strangely – yes. How did you manage to swing that one?’

‘I just appealed to his better nature – as a friend.’

‘Adam doesn’t
have
a better nature Mum. And he doesn’t really have friends either.’

‘Adam has always tried very hard with you.’  

‘Okay Mum, have it your own way. I don’t really expect any different anymore. And, thank you anyway. I think he could have made things pretty unpleasant for me.’

 ‘Indeed... And who could have blamed him in the light of your current activities. I must say, this latest diversion has come as quite a surprise to me.... Is it because of that teacher?’

‘No... of course not....’ I heard Turner’s words hang, mid-sentence as she realised the implication of what her mother had just said. ‘And how on earth did you know about
that
?’ she demanded.

Self consciously, I stepped closer to the door, straining to hear.

‘One of your friends realised what was going on and phoned me. Samantha something or other...  She told me that Miss.... what was her name...?’

‘Christie,’ said Turner, infusing the name with all of the contempt I’d heard when she spoke about the woman earlier.

‘Ah... yes, that’s right. That Miss Christie had caught you up to some kind of mischief, and was blackmailing you into providing ‘favours’ for her. I must say, it never occurred to me that you might have actually
encouraged
the woman.’

‘
Jesus!.....
Mum... I never.... truly!....’

I was aware how appalled Turner would be at the thought of that. I wondered if that was why her mother had said it; subtly punishing her for the mess she’d caused.

 ‘So why didn’t you tell me?’ demanded her mother.

‘Because I knew you’d be like this about it!’

And then it was as if someone had turned the volume down. Turner had obviously walked across the room to stand or sit by the fireplace, closer to her mother, and their voices became so low and intermingled, I had no idea who was saying what to who anymore.

‘So what did you do?’ asked one.

‘I did what I had to do to make it stop...’ said the other.

I gave up trying to make sense of the conversation and headed wearily up the stairs to the bedroom.

It was around 2am when Turner slid under the covers and snuggled up to my back. I turned my head to kiss her.

‘Are you okay?’ I asked.

‘Not really.’ I could feel her breath against my neck. It felt ragged. I wondered if she’d been crying.

‘Do you want to talk about it?’

‘No... I’m just worried about my mum. There’s something not right there. I mentioned what happened to Mary and she just suddenly became really upset. I mean... she’s normally so cool. I didn’t expect it. And then when she’d composed herself, she told me she loved me.’

‘Well, that’s good... isn’t it?.... surely?’  Though how should
I
know? My mum told me she loved me all the time. Me.... random friends.... total strangers....

 ‘No. It’s not normal for her... There’s something seriously wrong. I can feel it.’

‘D’you want to try to talk to her again?’

‘No – She’s gone to bed. I’ll have a word in the morning. I just feel like she’s hiding something from me... that’s all.’

I knew she wasn’t going to say any more than that. And for now, at least, it was enough to feel the warmth of her body and her arms around me, slowly slackening their hold as we drifted together into sleep.     

Shattered

By 3am, I was wide awake again, reeling from a whole battery of nightmares, my flesh crawling with a sense that something somewhere in that house, that night, was profoundly, unutterably wrong.

I slid the door shut behind me as I crept out into the corridor carrying the sweatshirt and my jeans and trainers. I was jumpy as hell as I pulled them on just outside the door where I wouldn’t disturb Turner. Then I almost knocked over the dried flower arrangement at the end of the corridor as I slipped past the silent doorways – one bedroom, the broom cupboard.... aware that I had no idea at all where Turner’s mother was supposed to be sleeping.

The shadow joined me at the base of the attic stairs. It stayed with me then as I climbed, sometimes just slightly behind me, sometimes close by my side.

The door to the studio was ajar. I pushed my way in.

The light from outside was clearer than it had been last night. Through the huge, slanting windows I could see the sky, indigo and heavy with cloud above the moving shadows of the tree tops.

At the far end of the loft space, Turner’s mother sat at a work bench writing by the light of an anglepoise lamp. She was wearing a thick black dressing gown. Her long neck looked ghostly white against it. She looked up as I came into the room, and for an instant I thought she looked disappointed. ‘Oh,’ she said. ‘It’s you.’

‘Yes,’ I felt sick with apprehension, but I knew I had to stand my ground now.

‘Could you just excuse me a moment?’ she asked. ‘I need to finish this before I talk to you.’

I stood quietly and waited.

Eventually, she put the pen down and looked up.

‘It’s ironic,’ she said. ‘But many years ago, I corresponded with your father. I wanted him to contact my sister... after she died, of course.’

I felt as if she had punched me – knocked all the air out of me.

‘How the hell did you...?’

‘Know the connection?... I make it my business to know who’s trying to get their claws into my daughter.’

‘Well, you didn’t do a very good job with Adam!’ I said.

She laughed bitterly. ‘Adam is a good man,’ she said. ‘But that tart of a secretary, now
she
slipped under my radar for a while, not being blessed with the right equipment, so to speak.... Do you know what your father wrote back to me?’

I figured she was about to tell me.

‘He said “Our thoughts are things...”’

The line flooded back to me. ‘... “and as their currents run, they can become crimes or miracles”.....’

 It was a quote from Edgar Cayce. I remembered how my Uncle Bob had read it at the funeral. I went there without telling my mother and I shouldn’t have done. But I was glad I did for Bob’s sake. I remembered his voice wavering out over the almost empty crematorium - The tears in his eyes for his once-glittering younger brother. He hugged me after the service, pathetically grateful that I’d turned up. ‘Please keep in touch,’ he’d begged. So I promised that I would. I meant to. But it was difficult, and I never did.

‘You sound bitter!’

‘I just think that people should practice what they preach.’

She shook her head. ‘Oh Gillian, haven’t the last couple of weeks taught you anything? You of all people should know that these things are never so clear cut... Take Turner for instance. The things she does. But it’s not her fault. I was so cold with her. I never really could look at her without knowing how much she’d cost me.... Your father was a great man, Gillian. Don’t ever forget that when you’re learning how to manage the gift he passed on to you.’

I didn’t comment. I was sick of how transparent I appeared to be to this family.

‘I think I know what happened,’ I said. ‘With your sister... and Turner.’

‘Ah, yes, well I thought you might when I realised that you’d been reading my private letters.’

I felt guilty immediately, which was a bit rich, considering that she’d obviously had a private detective on me.

‘They were just there, on the bookshelf,’ I said.

She softened. ‘I’m sorry. I can be very prickly, I know that. I don’t mean to be. And if you’ve read the letters, you already have some idea of what Sylvia was like. She was my baby sister. Ten years younger than me.... a bit of an afterthought with my parents, though they always adored her. She was pretty and sweet natured and incredibly talented.... Much more so than me. I’ve always been a good draftswoman... I know the techniques. I could recreate a 19th Century Masterpiece perfectly and probably get away with selling it at most auctions as an original. But Sylvia was the real deal. She was so creative and clever.... And she suffered from the downside of that too. Her shifts of mood were just awful. She would become more and more exuberant and euphoric and extreme and then she’d crash into the deepest, darkest places. I guess she’d be on Lithium now, but back then there wasn’t much of anything anyone could do except try to keep her stress levels down, wait it out and let the rollercoaster run its course.’