Adam's Peak (38 page)

“Carry on? What are you trying to say, Clare?” There was a flash of anger in Isobel's eyes, and for this Clare was grateful.

“Back in Stanwick. You had your whole life ahead of you. You could've done whatever you wanted.”

“I was nineteen. Everyone has their whole—”

“You were dating the apprentice blacksmith.
Fucking
him.” The word was explosive.

“Clare—”

“Then all of a sudden you were married to a guy who didn't particularly interest you and playing Susie Homemaker in a dreary suburb! That wasn't the life you'd imagined for yourself. How did you behave as if it was?”

Isobel marched toward the window, where the chesterfield used to be, then stopped. “Your assumptions aren't all correct, Clare.” She shook her head. “My life with Alastair was—It was just fine.”

“But it wasn't ...” Her voice faded. “It wasn't what you would have
chosen
.”

Isobel rubbed the back of her left hand. She looked out the window, and for a moment it seemed she had nothing more to say. Then she turned back to Clare.

“It all worked out for the best,” she said.

Outside the window, across the street, a car pulled into the Vantwests' driveway. Clare looked away.

“I want to find Patrick Locke,” she said.

The decision and the announcement came at the same time, and in the silence that followed, she kept her eyes nervously fixed on her mother.

“It occurred to me you might want to do that,” Isobel finally said. She sat down at one end of the sofa, and Clare knew, in the absence of any word or gesture, that she was being invited to sit as well. But she stayed where she was. “I have no idea where he is, pet,” her mother sighed. “I'd be surprised if he's still in Stanwick. Like I was saying, he wanted to travel.”

Clearly, Isobel didn't want her old lover to be tracked down. But her resistance was flimsy. Anything stronger, Clare suspected, would require a venturing into territory that had been deliberately and carefully avoided for so long.
I don't want you to go looking for him because he's part of a past I'll never have again
.
I'm afraid he'll tell you things about me I've never told you myself
.
I told him I wouldn't get pregnant; he'd feel betrayed
. The kinds of things Clare and her mother never discussed.

Clare shrugged. “I might not find him, but I want to try. I'll go to Stanwick and ask around.”

“Aunty Jean's not in Stanwick anymore, you remember. She moved to Aberdeen.”

“I know. I wouldn't have stayed with her anyway. I'll find a hotel or something.”

Isobel nodded slowly, a signal that despite the necessary limitations of their conversation, they could at least share an acknowledgment that Aunty Jean was insufferable. “There's a nice wee bed and breakfast you could try. Your father and I stayed there on our last visit.” Again she rubbed the back of her hand. Then she dropped it to her lap. “He might not be what you're expecting, Clare. He doesn't ...” Her voice trailed off.

“I'm not expecting anything. I just want to know who he is. I just ... want to know.”

“Well, pet, I'm not sure what to say. I guess it's up to you to decide what's best. You're an adult now.”

Clare headed for the clothing bench, where she'd left her bag when she came in. At the foot of the stairs she felt her mother's hand against her back, lightly, barely there.

“I wonder if you'd mind looking someone else up for me while you're there,” Isobel said. “An old friend I haven't seen in a long time.”

Clare hoisted her bag to her shoulder. She had no intention of contacting any long-lost friends, but she nodded and started up the stairs.

“That would be really wonderful,” Isobel called after her. “I'm sure you'll like her. I'll write and let her know you're coming.”

At the top of the staircase, she thought about protesting. But as she turned and was confronted by the steep, gaping distance between herself and her mother, a prospect more troubling than that of afternoon tea with one of Isobel's old school friends kept her silent. It was remarkable, really, that the idea hadn't come to her earlier, the very moment Isobel revealed the truth of her past. What did she say?
I realized I was expecting, and it was like the world had been pulled out from under my feet.
Clare stared down at her mother, crouching to pluck some foreign thing from the new carpet.

“You never wanted to be anyone's mother, did you?” she whispered, and in response Isobel straightened up and disappeared down the hall.

Clare went to her studio. There was so much to do, but she stood in the middle of the room, staring at the loveseat. It was nothing like
the new yellow sofa. It was tweedy and beige, a little scruffy. A reject from her father's store. She'd looked at it every day for as long as she could remember but had scarcely ever noticed it. The fat, upholstered buttons, the stiff skirting. This ugly, unobtrusive piece of furniture was a mystery.

From a tin can container on her bookshelf, she took a pair of scissors and crossed the room. She leaned over her loveseat, staring into its blank button-eyes, clenching the scissors like a dagger. Then she stabbed its dense, beige back, again and again. The glimpses of its insides spurred her on. She opened the scissors, gleamingly sharp, and slashed the length of it, just above the buttons. A ragged, thready wound opened up; dingy foam sprang out. But still she wanted to know more. She ripped and slashed, thrashing through the back of the loveseat until she reached wood and staples and stiff white fabric that looked like a cocoon. She yanked out handfuls of stuffing and flung them behind her, hurled the beige cushions against the studio door. She attacked the arms and the silky, quilted surface that covered the springs. She dug right through to the floor, where she discovered a Red Rose Tea rabbit figurine. It was covered in dust and one ear was chipped. She dropped the scissors and squeezed the tiny rabbit in her hand. Then she slumped on her piano stool and spun, around and around, her breathing shallow and fierce.

A
unty Jean's flat is ugly and cold. The rooms have fake fireplaces, but Aunty Jean doesn't like them to be on because they waste electricity, and because it's summer. Her tiny bathroom is all pink—the sink, the toilet, the tub, the shaggy bath mat and seat cover, the mildewy tiles, the crocheted cap over the extra toilet roll, and the cracked bars of soap that smell like dead flowers.

When Clare used the toilet the morning after they arrived, the pink paper turned red. At first she was confused. Then she realized what it was. Emma's warnings came back to her: “It probably won't happen till you're twelve, but you better make sure you've got your own supplies,” she'd said knowingly. “Your mom's had an operation, so she doesn't use that stuff anymore.” Frantically Clare searched Aunty Jean's cramped bathroom closet and found a box of pads with long, inexplicable tails. They didn't stay in place, however, and her mother noticed and asked her in an urgent whisper if she needed to take a trip to the chemist. Clare looked at the floor, confused again. On the walk to the
drugstore, in the same urgent whisper, Mum asked if she had any pain. Clare said no, for her mother's odd expression suggested she'd be disappointed, and even angry, if the answer were yes. The lie wasn't a serious one, and in any case the queer pains she was feeling were easier to bear than the awkwardness of the conversation, which was nothing at all like the cheerful mother-daughter chat in the book Clare had read about periods and babies.

It's four days later now. The bleeding has almost stopped, and the cramps. But her parents are having a disagreement. They've never fought, or even argued, and what they're doing right now in the kitchen can't really be called either of those things. Still, it's uncomfortable. Clare sits in the dark, ugly lounge, rereading her old copy of
The Jungle Books
and wishing, to her own surprise, that she'd gone with Aunty Jean to the Safeway.

“I just don't see what the purpose would be,” her mother says. There's a long silence, then she adds, “We've lost touch.”

Another silence, then her father speaks. “What if we see her in the town?”

“We're away to Paisley on Sunday. We won't see her.”

“What about
him
?”

Clare has no idea who they're talking about. It seems there are people her father wants to see, but her mother doesn't want to see them. Which is strange. Usually it's the other way around.

“No.” Mum's voice is quiet but firm. “That wasn't the purpose of this holiday. We're here to see family.”

“Aye.”

“Alastair. He doesn't even ... It wouldn't be right.”

“Is it right the other way?”

“I don't know,” Clare's mother says, then she mutters something that Clare can't make out. “And at any rate we're not likely to find him in Stanwick.”

Despite her mother's certainty that these strangers won't be seen, it seems to Clare that they are
already
in Aunty Jean's flat, invading the place and demanding that she pay attention to them. In an effort to shut them out, she focuses on her book—the part where Father Wolf discovers Mowgli, the man-cub, outside his cave.
Directly in front of him
, she reads,
holding on by a low branch, stood a naked brown baby who could just walk—as soft and as dimpled a little atom as ever came to a wolf's cave at night. He looked up into Father Wolf's face, and laughed.
Distractedly she reads the passage again. She still can't quite believe that the author used the word
naked
to describe Mowgli, or that her own father would have said the word when he first read her the story. But what strikes her most now is the image of the little boy—the one in her mind, for the book has only crude sketches. Because he's brown, and because he has no mother, he reminds her suddenly of the boy across the street, back home. As she ponders this, her picture of Mowgli transforms and sharpens. He is older now, and he's wearing navy blue school uniform shorts and a light blue shirt—much easier to picture than nakedness. Instead of a tree branch, he's holding a small suitcase. Clare puts herself in the picture, in the place of the wolves. She stares at the boy and stares, until it seems that she's actually
inside
him, and that they've become the same person, all alone in the jungle.

The disagreement between her parents seems to be over. They're talking about the trip to Paisley and the teenage cousins that Clare has to meet. Her mother is certain they'll all get along, because the cousins are girls and like to read, but Clare knows it will be awkward and embarrassing. She crosses the lounge to Aunty Jean's piano and perches on the stool. For four days, all she has done on the piano stool is spin. Now she faces the keys and studies their precise pattern of black and white. With her right hand she tries them out, first one at a time, then in pairs and threes. Some combinations sound like chandeliers or secret passageways; others are like a traffic jam. There's a sheet of music in front of her, but the only part of it that makes any sense, though not much, is the title: “Minuet in G.” She scans the notes on the page and plays randomly with her right hand, imagining that she's following the music.

Some time later, her father comes into the lounge and stands by the window. She doesn't mind him being there. Unlike Mum, he hasn't taken to looking at her suspiciously or asking her how she feels. Instead he stands with his hands in the pockets of his grey corduroys and looks out at the stone building across the street. Eventually he turns to the piano and quietly clears his throat.

“Would you fancy learning to play?” he says.

Clare presses her hands between her knees. “How?”

“There's a lady at the store who teaches. Mrs. Aroutian. You've met her.”

Mrs. Aroutian works in the back office. She's plump and friendly and has a collection of Red Rose Tea animals on her desk.

“I'd take piano lessons from her?”

“Aye. If you fancy it. If it doesn't suit you, you can stop.”

“We don't have a piano.”

“That could be arranged.”

Clare spins. She closes her eyes and imagines herself on a stage, in front of an enormous audience. But she can't see any faces; they're all in the dark, like at the school Christmas concert. She herself is hidden behind her piano, which is tall, like this one of Aunty Jean's. The only sign people have that she's there at all is her music. A kind of music they've never heard before. They sit in their rows, silent and invisible, and hope she'll go on playing forever.

When the piano stool comes to a stop, she's facing her father. He's looking out the window, his hands in his pockets.

“Okay,” she says.

Her father winks. “There's my girl.”