Adam's Peak (25 page)

THEY LEFT AT FOUR
, Isobel reporting as they crossed the street that she'd booked Ted's brother-in-law to repaint the entire house. Clare mumbled a reply, but her attention was on the Vantwests' front door.

This time, the aunt answered right away, smiling eagerly.

“Ah, it's good of you both to come back. Come in. Alec! Our guests are here.”

Entering the vestibule, Clare looked down the hall at the door behind which Mr. Vantwest had sequestered himself the time before. It was wide open. The light in the room was promptly turned out, and Mr. Vantwest emerged, nudging his glasses up the bridge of his nose with his index finger. His navy cardigan and white polo shirt looked like part
of a school uniform. His grey pants added to the effect, though they were a little too long and flopped over the sides of his corduroy slippers.

“Mrs. Fraser,” he said, extending his hand to Isobel. “Thank you for coming. I must apologize to you for Sunday. I—”

Clare anticipated her mother's interruption.

“Please, call me Isobel. And please don't worry about the other day at all. It was perfectly understandable that you'd be ... distracted. We really should have called first, but we were so shocked to hear about Adam's accident.”

“The boy loved his motorbike,” Mr. Vantwest said flatly. “I suspect he was reckless with it. That is his character.”

The words echoed in Clare's head.
That is his character.
An extraordinary thing to say. But, then, Mr. Vantwest seemed an extraordinary sort of man. He stepped aside as the aunt, offering Isobel a hanger, fired him a look.

“Tea will be ready soon,” she said. “Alec, show these people in.”

Mr. Vantwest extended his arm toward the living room. Then, as Clare and her mother seated themselves once again on the burgundy chesterfield, he stationed himself in front of them, hands clasped behind his back, and cleared his throat.

“I hope you won't be inconvenienced,” he said, turning to Clare for the first time. “I realize the main purpose of your visit was to offer your sympathy, but I'd be grateful if we didn't discuss my son this afternoon. His condition is stable for now, and the doctors are hopeful. That's really all I can say.” He offered no further explanation, and in the silence that followed he kept his eyes on Clare.

She clenched her hands between her knees. “It's okay. We can talk about something else.”

Mr. Vantwest nodded, nudged his glasses, then sat down in the armchair opposite the chesterfield. “Well,” he said, amicably, and the tension in the room gave way a little. “It's been some time since we last spoke.” His attention was now back on Isobel, who, nodding emphatically, seemed ready to begin making up for that time.

“Too long, I'm afraid. Was it summer that I last saw you? I remember you were out front trimming that beautiful lilac of yours. Did it bloom well?”

Mr. Vantwest craned his neck toward the window behind the chesterfield. “Not bad. It should fare better this year. You should take some cuttings when the time comes. They give a good fragrance in the house.” He crossed his legs and the corduroy slipper of his dangling foot dropped away from his heel. “Strong though,” he added. “Too overpowering for some.”

In the kitchen, cups and saucers clattered. Clare's eyes drifted to the photographs on the record player cabinet, to Adam in his jaunty mortarboard.
I'm in a coma and all you guys can talk about is lilac cuttings
, she imagined him saying.

The aunt came in, carrying her loaded silver tray, which she rested on the coffee table.

“There now,” she said. “I heard you all talking about the lilac tree and I was reminded of those flowers. I don't think we have them in Sri Lanka. They're very exquisite, no?”

Clare glanced at the crocodile lamp and wondered how anything from a Morgan Hill front yard could seem exquisite in the Vantwests' eyes. Then she marvelled at the entire conversation, at the capacity of these neighbour-strangers to connect themselves, obligate themselves to each other, with the flimsiest of threads. Awaiting a suitable pause, she stirred her tea and prepared something to say. When the lilac exchange had more or less petered out, she turned to the aunt.

“What kinds of plants do you have in Sri Lanka?” she said.

The aunt handed her brother his cup. “Ah, my garden at home is quite lush,” she began, spooning sugar into her own cup. “There is no flower bed like we have here, but I have several fruit trees. Mango, tamarind, banana, custard apple, jack fruit, of course.”

“What do you mean ‘of course'?” Mr. Vantwest said, his tone musing but subtly reproachful. “People in Canada wouldn't assume you have a jack tree.” He got up for a slice of cake. “Even Sri Lankans wouldn't assume this.”

“Alec, your sugar,” the aunt said.

Mr. Vantwest made a low hissing noise and rested the cake on the edge of his saucer.

“I only meant,” the aunt continued, “that the jack fruit is very useful. So many dishes we can make from that one fruit. Even the
seeds are made into a delicious curry.” She flapped her hand over her steaming tea. “If ever the troubles back home get so bad that I can't go to the shops, I know I can survive on my jack fruit. The rest is all surplus.”

“It must be lovely having all those fruits right there,” Isobel said, apparently taking no note of the troubles the aunt had mentioned.

Clare tried to imagine them herself. She scanned the photos on the record player cabinet, searching for hints, but with the exception of Rudy's graduation photo, in which he wore a dark, brooding expression, the faces in the pictures seemed to deny the existence, anywhere in their world, of troubles that could prevent an aging aunty from going to the shops.

She turned back to the conversation. Mr. Vantwest was asking her mother if she'd done any travelling.

“Europe?” he said. “The British Isles?”

Isobel laughed and rested her cup on her saucer. “I grew up in Scotland. A small town south of Glasgow.”

Mr. Vantwest looked flustered. He slapped his brow and shook his head rapidly. “Of course, of course. I should have known that.” Sighing, he added, “I see we're both a long way from home then.”

“Oh, I don't think of the U.K. as home anymore,” Isobel said. “I left at nineteen, and to tell you the truth, I was desperate to get out. I thought I'd suffocate if I stayed.” She paused, sprinkling tiny cake crumbs into her cup. “There was probably a bit of teenage rebellion in me. But I haven't regretted anything.”

“I've never had the opportunity to visit Britain,” Mr. Vantwest said. “I've always wanted to. I find the history fascinating. You'd know more about it than I would, but I studied it quite extensively at school—medieval times, the Elizabethan period, Cromwell, the Restoration—really fascinating stuff. And of course we Sri Lankans owe a great deal to that country.” He glanced at his sister. “Things weren't perfect under the English, but the place has virtually fallen apart since they left.”

Again Isobel ignored the reference to trouble.

“Isn't it funny? Here you are fascinated by a place that used to bore me to tears. I remember finding the history so dull when I was in
school, and the present day didn't seem any different. But I suppose I was only looking at my own small town.”

She sipped her tea. Mr. Vantwest nodded his head to one side and picked at the velvet armrest of his chair. When no one else spoke, Isobel continued, more slowly, as if gauging the particular impact of each word.

“You know, the funnier thing, now that I think about it, is that when I was still in Britain, I used to dream about going to Ceylon.” She paused. “That was the name back then, wasn't it?”

Mr. Vantwest said “Oh, yes” and smiled. Clare frowned. The idea was preposterous.

“It never came to pass, of course. But I do remember thinking what a lovely place it must be. I wouldn't have believed anyone from over there would want to go to Britain.”

“Ah well,” said Mr. Vantwest, “the grass is always greener somewhere else, as they say. I spent my boyhood on a tea estate, when I wasn't at school, and I never thought of it as anything special. It was just the place where we lived. But Canadians must find it a strange place to grow up.”

“A tea estate?” Isobel seemed to savour the words. “How interesting. Did your family own it?”

“Own the estate? No, no. The English owned them back then. And managed them. My father ran the factory. Later on he became a manager, after the English had left.”

The aunt interjected, addressing her remarks to Clare, as if to acknowledge that Isobel had been claimed by her brother. “It was a very interesting life, as your mother said. There was a whole society that revolved around the tea making. We had all sorts of fancy dress occasions—dinners, dances. Ah, you can't imagine what it was like back then!” Mr. Vantwest coughed and the aunt's expression became serious. “But naturally the tea was the most important thing. My brothers and I learned all about that process. There's much more to it than drying the leaves and putting them in a crate, isn't it. All the rolling and fermenting and heating and whatnot.”

“I didn't know you had other siblings,” Isobel said. “Are they still in Sri Lanka?”

“Only one other,” Mr. Vantwest replied, straightening in his chair. “Bit of an odd duck. You'll have some more tea?”

The aunt got up to refill their cups. “Not odd, Alec,” she said, and Mr. Vantwest grunted. The aunt carried on, still to Clare. “Our brother is very artistic. He used to paint such beautiful pictures. I have several of them at home. Some aren't suitable for hanging, but they're very skilfully done.” She poured the tea with a strong, steady hand. “Our father wanted Ernie to follow the planting business, but in the end it was Alec who carried on the tradition.”

Clare glanced at Mr. Vantwest, picking at the armrest of his chair, and was struck by an intuition that both surprised and impressed her. From Alec Vantwest she turned to the photograph of Adam.

This brother is the something your father wanted to get away from, isn't he?

The face in the photograph grinned. She was curious, but Mr. Vantwest seemed anxious for a change of topic, and Clare, for the moment, was his ally. Pinching the tiny china handle of her cup, she said, “Does the tea we're drinking come from Sri Lanka?”

Mr. Vantwest stopped picking and raised his own cup, as if in a toast. “Oh, yes. The very finest. Only the tenderest leaves and the bud are used. This particular batch is very fresh. I'd wager these leaves were plucked no more than two weeks ago. Mary brought them over with her. It was my one special request.”

Clare nodded. She could think of nothing else to say but noticed that her mother, eyebrows raised, lips parted, was ready to launch herself back into the conversation.

“I've a question for you, Alec,” she said, and Clare withdrew once again.

Isobel asked about the quality of the teas sold at the Provigo, and Mr. Vantwest offered in return an amiable condemnation of shoddy ingredients and lazy shortcuts. Isobel then recounted her memories of the Sunday afternoon tea ritual with her parents and sister, back in Scotland, while Mr. Vantwest nodded and sighed, adrift, it seemed, on the wave of Isobel's nostalgia. They spoke of Morgan Hill Road—all the terrible blizzards, the heat waves, the blackout that lasted for three days and had everyone in a panic over what to do with the contents of their freezers. They remembered, leaning forward in their
enthusiasm, the winter that several Morgan Hill families got together at Carnaval time to build an ice castle on the Boswells' front yard.

“Wasn't that a fantastic thing!” Mr. Vantwest exclaimed.

“Oh yes, and the skill that went into it! All those passageways, and the stairs going up top. But Ken Boswell is an architect of some kind, isn't he?”

“Yes, yes. I think so.”

Clare peeked out the window at the Boswells' front lawn. She too remembered the evening the ice castle was erected. She'd been twelve or thirteen, and she'd heard the neighbours' scattered, rowdy laughter through her bedroom window as she sat on her bed, reading. The Frasers had been invited, of course, but Alastair had dismissed the invitation, disapproved even. “They'll be up half the night drinking and carrying on, the lot o' them,” he'd said, and Clare, listening to the vaguely frightening merriment down the street, had understood her father's objections. She couldn't remember what her mother had thought of it all, or what she'd done that night. The details that Isobel and Mr. Vantwest recalled suggested that the two of them had actually participated in the event together—impossible, of course.

Still, as the reminiscences piled up, the conversation began to intimate that Isobel Fraser and Alec Vantwest were friends.
Real neighbours
, as Adam had put it. They laughed easily, and no pause lasted longer than a second or two before one or the other launched into a new thought. They managed somehow to talk about their lives with no mention of their late spouses. The names weren't awkwardly avoided; it was rather as if Alastair Fraser and Sirima Vantwest had never really been part of that Morgan Hill existence in the first place—as if, in defiance of what fate had dealt them, Isobel and Alec had made an implicit agreement to reorganize their past.

Settled into this remade history, Mr. Vantwest nudged his glasses up the bridge of his nose and sighed. “The neighbourhood is changing, though,” he said. “One of these days they'll start handing out tickets for speaking English in the street.”

Isobel coughed quietly. “Oh, I don't imagine they could do
that
.” She paused. “It's silly, though, isn't it, our French-English situation?”
She used the term inclusively—
our
situation, Mr. Vantwest's and hers—and Mr. Vantwest nodded thoughtfully.