The Legacy (15 page)

“Every time we come near it you go all Luna Lovegood. Staring into space like that.”

“Well,
excuse
me, I’m sure!”

“I’m only
joking
,” he exclaims, pushing me awkwardly with his shoulder. “But it does kind of look the same every time. Doesn’t it?” He turns away a few paces, crouches to pick up a stone, hurls it into the water. The surface shatters. I watch him and suddenly my knees ache, sickeningly, as if I’ve missed my step on a ladder.

“Come on, then,” I say, turning away quickly.

“Did something happen here?” Eddie asks in a rush. He sounds tense, worried.

“What makes you ask, Eddie?”

“It’s just . . . you keep coming back out here. You get that look in your eye, like Mum gets when she’s sad,” Eddie mumbles. I curse myself silently. “And Mum seems . . . she doesn’t seem to like it here.” It’s easy to forget how clearly a child can see things.

“Well, something did happen here, Eddie. When we were small our cousin Henry disappeared. He was eleven, the same age as you are now. Nobody ever found out what happened to him, so we’ve kind of never forgotten about it.”

“Oh.” He kicks up sprays of dead leaves. “That’s really sad,” he says, eventually.

“Yes. It was,” I reply.

“Maybe he just ran away and . . . I don’t know, joined a band or something?”

“Maybe he did, Eddie,” I say, hopelessly. Eddie nods, apparently satisfied with this explanation.

Dinny is standing with a man I don’t recognize as the dogs come charging over to us, circling proprietorially. I smile and wave as if I pop in every day, and Dinny waves back, more hesitantly. His companion smiles at me. He’s a thin man, wiry, not tall. He has fair hair, cropped very close, the tattoo of a tiny blue flower on his neck. Eddie walks closer to my side, bumping me. We move nervously into the circle of vehicles.

“Hi, sorry to interrupt,” I say. I try for bright, but to my own ears I sound brassy.

“Hello there, I’m Patrick. You must be our neighbors up at the big house?” the wiry man greets me. His smile is warm and real, his handshake rattles my shoulder. At such a welcome I feel a knot in my stomach begin to loosen.

“Yes, that’s right. I’m Erica and this is my nephew, Eddie.”

“Ed!” Eddie hisses at me sideways, through unruly teeth.

“Ed, good to meet you.” Patrick rattles Eddie’s shoulder too. I notice Harry sitting on the step of a van behind the two of them. I think about calling out a greeting, but change my mind. Something in his hands again, something the focus of immense concentration. Most of his face is hidden behind hanging hair and thick whiskers.

“Well, uh, this might sound a little odd but we noticed you’d forgotten to get Honey’s chips yesterday. In the shop. So, we brought some over for her. That’s if she’s not craving pickles this morning instead?” I wave the big sack of chips. Patrick gives Dinny a look—not unkind, slightly puzzled.

“I know how fed up
I
get when Mum forgets my food when she goes shopping,” Eddie rescues me. At the sound of his voice, Harry looks up. Dinny shrugs one shoulder. He turns.

“Honey!” he yells at the ambulance.

“Oh! There’s no need to disturb her . . .” I feel color in my cheeks. Honey appears at one of the small windows. It frames her face. Pretty, petulant.

“What?”
she shouts back, far louder than she needs to.

“Erica has something for you.” I squirm. Eddie edges closer to Harry, trying to see what he’s working on. Honey appears, picking her way carefully down the steps. All in black today, hair arrestingly pale against it. She stands at a distance from me and watches me suspiciously.

“Well. Silly really. We got you these. Dinny said you fancied some, so . . .” I trail off, I dangle the bag. Slowly, Honey steps forward and takes them from me.

“How much do I owe you?” she asks, scowling.

“Oh, no, don’t worry. I don’t remember. Forget it.” I wave my hand. She shoots Dinny a flat look and he puts his hand in his pocket.

“Two quid cover it?” he asks me.

“There’s really no need.”

“Take it. Please.” So I take it.

“Thanks,” Honey mutters, and goes back inside.

“Don’t mind Honey,” Patrick grins. “She was born in a bad mood, and then it got worse in puberty, and now that she’s expecting . . . well, forget it!”

“Fuck you, Pat!” Honey shouts, out of sight. He grins even wider.

Eddie has got closer and closer to Harry. He is peering at the man’s hands, and probably blocking his light.

“Don’t get in the way, will you, Ed?” I say, smiling cautiously.

“What is it?” Eddie asks Harry, who doesn’t reply, but looks at him and smiles.

“That’s Harry,” Dinny tells Ed. “He doesn’t really like to talk.”

“Oh. Well, it looks like a torch. Is it broken? Can I see?” Eddie presses. Harry opens his hands wide, displays the tiny mechanical parts.

“So, will you be down for our little solstice party this evening, Erica?” Patrick asks.

“Oh, well, I don’t know,” I say. I look at Dinny and he looks back, steadily, as if working out a problem.

“Of course you are! The more the merrier, right, Nathan? We’re lighting a bonfire, having a bit of a barbecue. Bring some booze and you’re most welcome, neighbor,” Patrick says.

“Well, maybe then.” I smile.

“Your dreadlocks are wicked,” Eddie tells Harry. “You look a bit like
Predator
. Have you seen that film?” He has his fingers in the mess of torch parts, picking bits out, putting them in order. Harry looks faintly astonished.

“I’ve got to run. I’ll catch you later.” Patrick nods at Dinny and me. He leaves the camp with a springing step, hands thrust into the pockets of a battered wax coat.

I look at the muddy toes of my boots, then at Eddie, who is piecing the torch back together before Harry’s incredulous eyes.

“Ed seems a good lad,” Dinny says then, and I nod.

“He’s the best. He’s a great help.” There’s a long silence.

“When I spoke to Beth . . . she seemed, I don’t know,” Dinny says, hesitant.

“She seemed what?”

“Not like she used to be. Almost like there was nobody home?”

“She suffers from depression,” I say, hurriedly. “She’s still the same Beth. Only she’s . . . she got more fragile.” I have to explain, even though I feel treacherous. He nods, frowns. “I think it started here. I think it started when Henry disappeared,” I blurt out. This is not what Beth has told me, but I do think it’s true. She told me it started one stormy day, driving home at dusk. The clouds were heavy, but on the western horizon as she drove toward it, they broke into slivers, and stripes of bright pale sky showed behind them. One of those wet mackerel skies. She said she suddenly couldn’t tell what was the horizon and what was the sky. Hills or clouds. Earth or air. It was so bewildering that she almost drifted into the oncoming traffic, and she felt seasick all evening, as if the ground were moving beneath her feet. After that, she told me, she wasn’t sure what was real any more, what was safe. That’s when she thinks it started. But I remember her the evening Henry vanished. Her silence, and the uneaten beans on her plate.

“I would hate to think that what happened then has made her ill all this time,” Dinny says quietly. He knows what happened. He
knows
.

“Oh?” I say. If only he would go on, say more.
Tell me
. But he doesn’t.

“It wasn’t . . . well. I’m sorry to hear that she’s not happy.”

“I thought coming back here would help, but . . . I’m worried it might be making her worse. You know, bringing it all back. It could go either way, I think. But it’s good that Eddie’s here. He takes her mind off things. Without him I think she’d even forget it was Christmas.”

“Do you think Beth will come to the party tonight?”

“Truthfully, no. I’ll ask her, if you like?” I say.

Dinny nods, his face falling. “Ask her. Bring Eddie too. He and Harry seem to be getting on well. He’s great with kids—they’re less complicated for him.”

“If you asked her, I’m sure she’d come. If you came up to the house, that is,” I venture. Dinny shoots me a brief, wry smile.

“Me and that house don’t really get along. You ask her, and perhaps I’ll see you both later.” I nod, bury my hands in the back pockets of my jeans.

“Are you coming, Ed? I’m going back to the house.” Eddie and Harry look up from their work. Two sets of clear blue eyes.

“Can’t I stay and finish this, Rick?” I glance at Dinny. He shrugs again, nods.

“I’ll keep an eye out,” he says.

W
e smuggled Dinny into the house once, when Meredith had gone into Devizes for a dental appointment. Henry was at the house of a boy in the village with whom he had taken up. A boy whose house had a
proper
swimming pool.

“Come
on
!” I hissed at Dinny. “Don’t be such a baby!” I was desperate to show him the big rooms, the huge stairs, the enormous cellars. Not to impress him, not to show off. Just to see his eyes widen. To be able to show
him
something for a change, to be the one in charge. Beth hunkered down at the back of the three of us, smiling tensely. There was nobody about except the housekeeper—who never paid us much attention—but still we crouched to scuttle in. Behind the last sheltering bush, I was close enough to feel Dinny’s knee pressing into my hip; smell the dry, woody smell of his skin.

Dinny was reluctant. He had been told enough times, heard enough stories from his grandpa, Flag, and his parents; had even had fleeting encounters with Meredith. He knew he wasn’t welcome there, and that he shouldn’t want to look. But he was curious, I could tell. As a child will be when a place is forbidden. I had never seen him that unsure; I’d never seen him hesitate, and then choose to carry on. We went from room to room, and I gave a running commentary: “This is the drawing room, only nobody ever does any drawing in it, not that I’ve seen. This is the way to the cellar. Come and see! It’s the size of another whole house! This is Beth’s room. She gets the bigger room because she’s older but from my room you can see right into the trees and I saw an owl, once.” On and on I went. The Labradors followed us, grinning and wagging excitedly.

But the more I went on, and the more we showed him, the more rooms we dragged him into, the quieter and quieter Dinny got. His words dried up, eyes that were wide fell flat again. Eventually even I noticed.

“Don’t you like it?”

A shrug, a tip of the eyebrows. And then the sound of the car on the driveway. Freezing, panicking, hearts lurching. Trying to hear: were they coming in the front, or the back? A calculated risk and I chose wrong. We ran out onto the terrace as they appeared at the side of the house. Meredith, my father, and worst of all Henry, back from his visit. He grinned. After a hung moment I grabbed Dinny’s arm, yanked it, and we tore across the lawn. The greatest act of insurrection I think I ever performed and it was to save Dinny. To save him from hearing what Meredith would say to him. She was shocked into silence, just for a second. Standing tall and thin in a crisp linen suit, duck-egg blue; hair set, immaculate. Her mouth was a hard red line of pigment, and then we were away and it cracked open.

“Erica Calcott, you come back here this
instant
! How dare you bring that
filth
into my house? How
dare
you! I
insist
that you come back here immediately! And you, you thieving gypsy! You’ll scuttle off like vermin, will you? Like the vermin that you are!” I like to think my father said something. I like to hope Dinny didn’t hear, but of course deep down I know that he did. Running away like a thief. Like a trespasser. I thought I was being brave, I thought I was being a hero for him. But he was angry with me for days. For making him go into the house, and then for making him run away.

I
’m up in Meredith’s room. This is the biggest bedroom, of course, with an ugly four-poster bed, heavy with carvings. The base is high and the mattress deep. How will the next owners move this bed? It’s huge. Only by taking an axe to it, I think. To be replaced with something contemporary and probably beige. I fling myself across it, over the stiff brocaded bedspread, and count how long it takes me to stop bouncing. Who made this bed? The housekeeper, I suppose. The morning that Meredith collapsed on her way into the village. Gradually I become still and realize that I am bouncing on my dead grandmother’s bed. The very sheets she slept in the night before she died.

In here more than anywhere the ghostly remains of her seem to linger. As is only natural, I suppose. Part of me wishes that I’d come to see her as an adult. That I’d pinned her down, made her tell me where all that bad feeling came from. Far too late now. Her dressing table is a huge thing—deep, wide; several drawers in columns on either side, a wide drawer in the middle that opens into my lap; a triptych mirror set on a box of yet more drawers. The top is satin smooth, a patina wrought by centuries of soft female fingers. I think Mum should have jewelry as well as photos. Meredith made no bones about telling us she’d sold off her best pieces, like the best of the estate’s land, to pay for repairs to the roof. She told my parents this accusingly, as if they ought to have put their hands in their pockets, looked under the sofa cushions and produced thirty thousand pounds. But there has to be something left for my thieving hands to find.