The Legacy (39 page)

“H
ere you go,” she says, as I come down to the kitchen.

“This should get us a bit more in the party spirit.” I smile and take a glass from her. We clink, and drink. Beth’s smile looks a little forced, but she is trying. “How was Maxwell? Is Eddie coming back to stay?”

“What, here? No,” she says. “I want him to come and stay with me at home for the last weekend of the holiday. Max says they’re going to his parents . . . I don’t know,” she sighs. “I always feel like the one who has to fight to get the better slots in the timetable.”

“Well, we did have him for Christmas . . .” Disappointment bites me. Nothing will keep her here now. Something scrambles inside me, twists, tries to find a way to hold on to her, to hold on to our time here. I am not finished. I am jittery with need.

“A few days out of a four week holiday! It’s hardly fair.”

“A few pretty important days, though,” I argue, my voice high. I have lost track of the conversation. I should be urging her to fight harder, to get Eddie back—back here to his friend Harry. Beth sips her whisky. I watch the cartilage in her neck move as she swallows.

“I know. I just . . . I miss him so much, Rick. I don’t really see what the point of me is, when I don’t have him to look after,” she says forlornly.

“The point of you is to be his mother, whether he’s in the room or not. And to be my big sister. And, more importantly right now, your purpose is to drink whisky with me, because I don’t intend to be the only one starting the new year with a headache,” I say.

“Bottoms up, then,” Beth says gravely, tipping the entire contents of her glass down her throat, spluttering and laughing as it burns her nose.

“Now, that’s more like it!” I laugh.

It’s bitter outside. The air bites right through our clothes, and the glow of the alcohol; makes our eyes stream, our lips crack. We walk quickly with gritted teeth, hunched and inelegant. It’s clear; the sky is inky, torn across by the unrelenting wind. There are lights on all through the village, warding off the lonely night, and the heat and humanity of the White Horse crashes out like a wave when I pull the door open. It’s cheek by jowl. We breathe in the breath of others, swim through it; the heavy, happy stink of alcohol and bodies. Voices so loud, so close. I am sure the silence at the heart of Beth will be battered into submission. I thread us a path to the bar, searching the crowd for Patrick or Dinny, or anybody else I recognize. It’s Harry’s dreadlocks that I spot, in the snug room at the back of the pub. I buy two whisky and waters, tip my head and smile at Beth to follow me.

“Hi!” I shout, arriving next to the table. I recognize faces from the solstice party, faces I have seen coming and going around the camp. Denise, Sarah and Kip. Dinny and Patrick, of course. Patrick grins at me, and Dinny smiles, his eyes widening with surprise as they alight on Beth. A second later I wonder if it was Beth he was smiling at, not me, but I can’t be sure.

“It’s the ladies of the manor! Come join us, ladies!” Patrick calls, waving a magnanimous arm over the group. His cheeks are pink, eyes bright. Harry pats my arm and on impulse I bend to him, kiss his cheek, feel the brush of his whiskers. Dinny stares. There’s a shuffling, a bunching together along the horseshoe-shaped bench, and room is made for Beth and me at either end.

“I’ve never actually been in here before,” I shout. “We weren’t old enough the last time we came to stay!”

“That’s a crime! Well, this is your local now, so let’s get you acquainted with it. Cheers!” Patrick clatters our glasses together. Cold liquid see-saws out, catches the back of Dinny’s hand.

“Sorry,” I say, and he shrugs.

“No problem.” He sucks the whisky from his skin, grimacing. “I don’t know how you can drink that poison.”

“After the fourth or fifth nip you get used to it,” I reply jovially. “So, how are you getting used to being an uncle?”

“I’m not! I still can’t believe she’s had a baby—five seconds ago she was a baby herself, you know?” Dinny tips his head wryly.

“Make the most of her when she’s tiny,” Beth tells him, her words struggling to rise above of the mash of voices. “They grow so quickly! You won’t believe how quickly,” she tries again, louder now.

“Well, I do have the best of both worlds, I suppose. I get to have fun with the kid and then give her back when she stinks or starts howling,” Dinny smiles.

“That’s always been my favorite part of being an aunt,” I say, smiling at Beth. And so just like that we chat. We sit and talk like neighbors, like nearly friends. I try not to think about it, how miraculous it is; I don’t want to break the spell.

“How’s your family research going?” Dinny asks me a while later when my body is warm, my face slightly numb. I peer at him.

“You mean
our
family history?” I ask.

“Do I? What do you mean?”

“Well, what I’ve found out, basically, is that we’re cousins,” I say, smiling widely. Beth frowns at me, Dinny gives that quizzical look of his.

“Rick, what are you talking about?” Beth asks.

“Quite distant—half cousins, twice removed, or thereabouts. Seriously!” I add, when I am met with skepticism all around.

“Let’s hear it, then,” says Patrick, folding his arms.

“Right. We know that Caroline had a baby boy before she married Lord Calcott in 1904. There’s a photograph, and she kept hold of the kid’s teething ring for the rest of her life—”

“A baby boy who more than likely never came over the water with her, or she would have had trouble remarrying as a spinster, which she apparently did not,” Beth interjects.

“Just hear me out. Then there’s a pillowcase missing from one of the antique sets in the house—a pillowcase with yellow marsh flags stitched onto it. Now, Dinny, your grandpa himself told me the story of how he got his name, and your mum reminded me the other day, when I was over there. But I think some of the finer details have got scrambled over the years—Mo said Flag was found in a patch of marsh flags and got the name that way, here, in the Barrow Storton woods which slope and are pretty well drained and aren’t really good ground for marsh flags to grow in. I’m
sure
I remember Grandpa Flag telling me himself that he was found in a blanket with yellow flowers on it. It has to be the pillowcase—it has to be!” I insist, as Patrick scoffs and Dinny looks even more sceptical. “And today, I met George Hathaway—”

“The bloke who used to run the garage on the main road?” Patrick asks.

“That’s him. His mother worked at the manor house when Caroline first arrived there. She was sacked—ostensibly for stealing, but she insisted, George says, that she was sent away because she knew there had been a baby in the house—right at the time the Dinsdales found Flag. There was a baby in the house and then it vanished. Your grandpa was my great-grandmother’s son. I’m sure of it,” I finish, jabbing a tipsy finger at Dinny. He studies me, rubs his chin, considers this.

“That’s . . .” Beth gropes for the word. “Ridiculous!” she finishes.

“Why is it?” I demand. “It would explain Caroline’s hostility to the Dinsdales—she dumps the kid, wants rid of him, and they pick him up and raise him right on her doorstep. Every time they came back here, they brought that baby with them. It must have driven her mad. That was why she hated them so much.”

“Answer this, then,” Dinny says. “She brings the baby over with her. She has him with her while she remarries—for some reason her previous marriage is not recorded, but there’s no way she’d have wound up marrying a lord if the baby was illegitimate. So, she keeps the baby until she gets here, to Barrow Storton, and then she dumps it in the woods. My question would be why? Why did she do that?”

“Because . . .” I trail off, study my drink. “I don’t know,” I admit. I think hard. “Was your grandpa disabled in any way?”

“Fit as a fiddle, sharp as a tack,” Dinny shakes his head.

“Maybe Lord Calcott wouldn’t let her keep another man’s son?”

“Then he would have just not married her, surely, if he minded that much?”

“Isn’t it possible,” Patrick begins, “and indeed rather more plausible, that Caroline’s baby died in the States, one of the
servants
at the manor got herself in trouble—perhaps Hathaway’s mum—took a pillowcase from the house in a moment of desperation, and got rid of her illegitimate baby? It would hardly be surprising if she lied about it, or got fired for it,” he suggests cheerfully.

“He has a point,” Beth tells me. I shake my head.

“No. I
know
it was the baby in the picture. It has to be,” I insist.

“And as for her attitude toward me and mine,” Patrick goes on with a shrug, “she was just a product of her time. God knows we come up against enough prejudice these days, let alone a hundred years ago! Vagrancy used to be an actual crime, you know.”

“All right, all right!” I cry. “I still think I’m right. What do you say, Dinny?”

“I’m not sure. And I’m not sure I want to be a Calcott. They haven’t been very kind to the people I love, over the years,” he says, and his gaze is so direct that I have to look away.

“Well, drink up, cousin,” Patrick says. Conciliatory, but not convinced. The subject is changed, my parade rained upon.

“It was a good theory, though,” Beth says, chucking me with her elbow.

B
y midnight my ears are buzzing and when I turn my head the world blurs past, takes a while to settle back into the right order. I lean against Harry, who sits up straight and has drunk so much cola that he climbs over me to go to the toilet every twenty minutes or so. There is talk all around me and I am part of it, I am included. I am happy, drunk, blinkered. At midnight the barman turns the radio up loud and we listen to Big Ben, waiting with our breath paused in the gap before the first toll of the new year. The pub erupts and I think of London, of hearing those bells all the way from there, of my old life carrying on without me. I find I don’t want it back. Patrick and Beth and several others kiss me and then I turn to Dinny, proffer my cheek, and he plants a kiss there that I can still feel long after it’s gone, wonder if it will leave an indelible mark.

Not long afterwards Beth pulls my arm, says that she’s going. The crowd is thinning out, leaving the drunker people behind, of which I am one. I want to stay. I want to keep this party going, maintain the false impression that I belong with these people. Beth shakes her head and speaks into my ear.

“I’m tired. I think you should come too, so we can see each other safely back. You’ve had quite a bit to drink.”

“I’m fine!” I protest, too loudly, proving her point.

Beth gets up, smiles her goodbyes, starts to pull on her coat and hands me mine.

“We’re off,” she says, smiling in general but not meeting Dinny’s eye.

“Yep. Party’s pretty much over,” Patrick yawns. His bright eyes have turned pink.

“You can all come back to ours, if you want. Plenty of booze there,” I offer expansively. Beth shoots me a worried glance, but nobody takes me up—pleading lateness, drunkenness, impending headaches. I pull on my coat. I am clumsy, can’t find the arms. I knock the table as I climb out from behind it, rattling the glasses. As we turn to go Dinny catches Beth’s arm, pulls her down to him and speaks into her ear.

“Good night, cousin Erica!” he calls as I weave away.

“I’m right!” I insist, tumbling out of the pub.

“Erica! Wait for me!” Beth shouts into the wind as she emerges from the pub behind me. But I can’t seem to slow down. There’s a fire in my blood and it’s working my body, and I have no control. “Wait for me, will you!” She jogs to my side. “That was actually quite fun,” she says.

“Told you,” I say, loud above the buffeting air. I can’t quite name what I’m feeling. A huge impatience, the boundless frustration of knowing nothing for sure.

“What were you and Dinny whispering about back there?” I ask.

“He, uh . . .” She looks taken aback. “He just said to . . . see you safely to bed, that’s all.”

“That’s all?”

“Yes, that’s all! Erica, don’t start—you’re drunk.”

“I’m not that drunk! You two always did have your secrets and not much has changed. Why won’t either of you tell me what happened back then?”

“I . . . I’ve told you—I don’t want to talk about it and neither should you. Have you asked Dinny, then?” She sounds alarmed, almost frightened. I think back, muzzily, realize that I haven’t. Not outright.

“What did he really say just now?”

“I just
told
you what he said! My God, Erica . . . are you
jealous
? Still—after all this time?” I stop walking, turn to look at her in the last scatterings of light from the village. It never occurred to me that she knew. That they knew, that they noticed me clamoring for attention. Somehow, it’s worse that they did.

“I’m not jealous,” I mutter, wishing it were true. We walk on, stumble up the driveway in silence. As we get to the house I realize that I am uneasy. Some warning bell is trying to ring, beneath my drunken haze. It’s Beth’s silence, I think. The quality of it, its breadth and depth.