The White Lie (11 page)

“What are we going to do about Ursula?” Edith asked Henry in the early morning of day three, noting from the bedside clock that it wasn’t yet 6am. She’d slept fitfully at best, disturbed by visions that took recent memory and elaborated it obscenely and violently. She had opened her eyes from sleep to see Henry sitting a few feet away, dressed and shaved, sitting on the dressing-table stool, neat in his usual khaki, though his feet were bare. He was folding and refolding an invitation to a neighbour’s grandchild’s christening, which had been slotted part-way into the mirror frame, where all such invitations were lodged before being declined, inevitably and with regret. Nobody expected the Salters to say yes to such things; they never did. The stiff card yielded only reluctantly to quartering and eighthing and refused point blank to be sixteenthed, at which point in the process it was opened and resmoothed on the dressing-table surface before the process began again.

Edith hauled herself up into a sitting position in bed, arranging the pillows vertically behind her. She was wearing a lemon-yellow bed jacket, which she’d worn crumpled in the night and sweltered in.

“What are we going to do about Ursula?” Such were Edith’s first thoughts. “When will there be an end to it?”

“There won’t,” Henry said to the invitation. “There won’t be an end to it.”

“I’m worried she’s not going to come back.”

“Come back where?” He went to the window. “She’s out there,” he said. “Ursula. She’s in the garden cutting flowers.”

Edith came to stand beside him just as Henry turned, brushing past her, his eyes averted, leaving the room without saying anything further.

She imagined he’d gone down to her, but when Edith went into the garden there was only Ursula. The heat was growing stronger, and though it was so early it occurred to Edith as she crossed the gravel into the flower garden that she ought to have been wearing a hat. She shrugged off and then picked up the slippers, pointed leather slippers that Ottilie had brought back from North Africa. The grass was cool, softly spiky, the day already yellow and ripe.

Ursula, too, was out in her nightdress—a Victorian linen shift that fell to her ankle and was decorated with ruffles around the bodice. Her hair was fanned out over her shoulders, falling to her waist in its usual dull and tangled way: it seems never to reflect the light but to absorb it like dark matter. She was singing one of her songs, one of those that sound like folk songs and that she makes up as she’s singing them. She didn’t notice Edith approaching until Edith was almost upon her. Ursula was barefoot, her childish feet vividly pink at their edges, vividly pink-toed. She was standing in a still-dewy patch of lawn, in the cool and damp of the shadow cast by a vast escallonia bush. She had a pair of kitchen scissors and was snipping at hollyhocks, at yellow rudbeckia, at the stems of blue-grey allium globes, and gathering an armful of a plant that produced many tiny white flowers, the effect like a cloud. All of these went into the rush-woven trug that lay at her feet.

To Edith’s surprise, Ursula turned to her smiling, an apparently uncompromised smile, eyes and mouth together.

“It’s the most beautiful morning there ever was,” she said. “So much beauty that it’s almost painful, do you know what I mean? There isn’t enough that can signify, that can be crammed in, that will feel like enough. Do you know what I mean?” Her smile continued beatific and untroubled.

Edith said nothing.

“I want to run and jump. Doesn’t it make you want to run and jump? But first I’ve got flowers for you, for your room. When I’m finished, anyway. You’ve interrupted the surprise.”

“Thank you,” Edith said uncertainly.

“The thing is not to waste a day worrying about things that can’t be changed. That’s right, isn’t it? That’s what you said to me once, remember? When I was so sad about Sebastian.”

She dropped the scissors into the trug, onto its neat pile of stalks and blooms, and came at her mother and hugged her hard. “I love you so much.”

“And I you.”

“And I know it seems wrong in a way, to be happy—because of Michael—but I can’t help it, I’m happy. It’s better to be happy than not happy. The day is so, so glorious and it’s good to be alive. I think it might be a sort of survivor’s euphoria. It could have been me. It wasn’t me. And the day is a day God gave me. I think we should try to make it a good day if we can. Have a picnic? Shall we have a picnic in the meadow?”

“Ursula.”

“We can’t do that. I can see that. Sensitivity. I know. I haven’t forgotten.”

Abruptly she grasped at her belly with both arms, her face momentarily stricken. “I don’t know why I said that, about the picnic.”

“It’s just that today is about Ottilie,” Edith said to her softly. “Ottilie is in the house, in bed, still on the pills to calm her down, and sleeping. We can’t go having any picnics.”

Ursula handed the basket to her mother. “Here. I’ll go home. I’ll stay at home today. You can telephone me when Ottilie has gone. Though I have to talk to her first. I need to talk to her; will you tell her?”

“She doesn’t want to see you, I’m afraid.”

“But I have something very important to say.”

“I’m sorry. But you’re not going to be able to do that. Not for a while. Not until Ottilie is ready.”

“She won’t see me.”

“No. Not yet. She may change her mind, though. I’ll tell you when it comes.”

“She thinks it’s my fault.”

“Ursula—”

“It wasn’t my fault. He would have killed me. He was trying to kill me, pulling me into the water.”

“I know.”

“And the fact that it was the oar. I’ve thought about this, the last two days, over it and over it. And this is the truth: the fact that it was the oar—that’s irrelevant. That was nothing to do with me. If it had been a book in my hand, I would have hit him with the book. It was what was there. You must see that. You must see.”

“Yes. But Michael is dead.”

“That was what killed him, getting hold of my leg. You do understand that. Does everybody understand? I need to talk to them. All of them. Ottilie needs to be there. Tell her. Tell her.”

“Ottilie won’t come.”

“All the rest of them, then. That was what killed him, getting hold of my leg and pulling. Wanting me to go into the water. Wanting me to die.”

“I’m sure he didn’t.”

“Wanting me to die.”

“I realise that it seemed that way.”

“It was suicide. They realise that, don’t they? You realise that, don’t you?”

“Ursula.”

“No. I mean it. I mean it. It isn’t a lie. It isn’t even a stretch from the true thing.”

“It wasn’t suicide, sweetheart. It wasn’t.”

“It was. I swear to you and promise on my life. He did it to get me to hit him. He wanted me to hit him. He said to me. He wanted to die.”

“He said—why would he say that?”

“When I told him. He said that he wanted to die. He said it was too much. He said his life was over. He said that he was going somewhere but now he’d have to go somewhere else. I thought at first that he meant that he wasn’t going to Yorkshire, that he was going to Somerset.”

“Somerset?”

“Yes. He was going to Yorkshire, to work in the forest there. But then he said that he needed a new family. He was trying to hurt my feelings. He was going to Alastair and Robert.”

“I can’t bear it.”

“But I was wrong. It wasn’t about Yorkshire and Somerset.”

“I can’t bear it.”

“He meant that he wanted to die, that he was going to kill himself.”

“But that doesn’t mean—”

“For ever he said. Never ever to return ever.”

“You’re interpreting. Don’t interpret.”

“I’m not interpreting. I’m remembering.”

“Sometimes it’s the same thing.”

“I’m not adding. I’m not elaborating.”

“It’s facts that we need. Interpretation isn’t going to get us anywhere.”

“He grabbed me, and he pulled. He wanted me to do it. He knew I wouldn’t have a choice. I was standing with the oar, and I was angry. Why would Michael come and pull my leg and try to pull me into the loch? When I had the big wooden oar in my hands?”

Edith said nothing, though she looked as if her mind was busy.

“You see. You do see. He came back to the boat. He could have swum away. Alan was on the shore. He could have swum to Alan and talked to him about me and they would have decided what to do. He didn’t. He swam to the boat and he pulled himself up and he took hold of my leg so tight—so tightly—look.”

She hitched up her nightdress slightly and offered her right leg, Edith gasping at the sight of it, the yellow and purple hand-print faintly visible just below the knee, wrapped there like marbled paper. Ursula has always bruised easily.

“Why didn’t you tell us this?”

“It’s fine, it’s just sore. It’s okay.” Ursula let her nightdress return to full length. “But you see. That’s what Michael decided. And I didn’t hit him hard enough to kill him. Nothing like. He raised his hand at the last second and his arm was bashed more than his head.”

“Why haven’t you said this before, about the arm? Why hasn’t Alan?”

“Alan saw. It was Alan who saw. Michael was thrown off the boat, let go of the boat and sank. There was pain on his face. I’m sorry about his wrist. It might be broken and I’m sorry. He made a decision. He was knocked underneath and it was him who decided not to come up again.”

Edith sank down onto the grass.

“I find it hard to believe,” she said, though not in an accusing way.

“I can see that,” Ursula said.

“That Michael would want that. That he would choose. Why a 19-year-old boy, so vigorous, so beautiful; I don’t see. Not even that. Not even the secret, the father. It’s not enough. It makes no sense to me.” She glanced at Ursula. “It was about the father, wasn’t it?”

Ursula joined her seated on the grass and said nothing. Edith looked up and saw Henry watching from the bedroom window. She raised her hand to him but he didn’t react, just stared down as before.

“Michael’s happy now, in heaven,” Ursula said, putting her hand over her mother’s.

“I wish I believed in heaven like you do,” Edith told her.

“Don’t say that. Don’t. God is listening to you,” Ursula said. “It’s too dangerous to lie. It’s the truth that matters. Being sorry is the main thing.”

“Tell me about the secret,” Edith said, and then, seeing Ursula’s face, “I know, I know you shouldn’t but this is an emergency and I need to know. An emergency’s different.”

Ursula looked blankly back.

“Not the secret itself. But I need some clue. You can give me a clue. I need that, Ursula. It’s about his father, isn’t it?”

Ursula closed her eyes. Something she still does when she wants the situation to go away.

“Can’t you just. Ursula, please. I’m so. So.” Edith began to cry, quite suddenly, and Ursula crawled to her on all fours and nestled, her head resting on her mother’s leg, a signal that she wanted her hair played with. Edith patted her head softly as she sobbed.

“I’m so sorry, I’m so so sorry,” Ursula told her, and then, “Don’t cry, Mummy. Don’t cry. It’s too lovely a day. Look at the day. It’s all over. It’s over. Michael chose and he’s gone and it’s over. Michael’s in heaven with God and he doesn’t want to see you crying over him.”

“I wish I was so sure.”

“If we know there is heaven, how can we be sad about death?” Ursula asked her. “After a little while of being sad—that’s normal. But then, think about it: heaven! Remember? That’s what you said to me, after Sebastian died.”

“Yes.”

“I remember it, every word.”

“I know you do.”

Something about Edith’s tone made Ursula stare at her. “You weren’t lying to me, were you?”

“Of course not,” Edith said. “I told you. I will never lie to you.”

“Yes.”

“I told you when Sebastian died. We will always tell the truth to one another, no matter what.”

Ursula raised herself and crawled away, and, remaining on all fours, splayed her fingers supportively on the grass, looking intently down at it. “So detailed a little world,” she said. “How far do you think the suffering goes?”

Edith put her hands over her eyes.

“Can’t we all just decide to be happy?” Ursula picked a daisy and lay down flat on her back and twirled it in her fingers, looking at the sun shining through and around it. “Those of us who can choose.”

“Michael’s dead,” Edith said. “You have to allow for people to be sad. And for people to be angry. They’re going to be angry.”

“They’re going to be angry with the wrong person, though. The time to cry about Michael was before he died.”

“Ursula, really.”

“I mean it. Ottilie had the power in the question. It wasn’t me that had the power. I told him something she should have told him a long time ago, when asking and asking was making him so unhappy and ill. Ottilie: she’s the one you need to talk to. It’s her secret and I have no right to share it.”

“You shared it with Michael.”

“I shouldn’t have. But otherwise, he would never have known. Nobody ever thought he should know and that was a worse wrong thing.”

“You told him about Alan. Alan, wasn’t it? The secret. Alan Dixon.” Edith spoke the name with care, watching for a reaction. None was evident. Ursula began making a daisy chain.

“It was wrong but I was angry,” she said to the chain, bringing her face close and squinting as she tried to get one small hairy stalk into a slit in another. “It was right but at the wrong time. I thought he’d be glad. I thought he’d rush off and find him and it would all be alright in the end. What I thought was that it was only the lie that was stopping it being alright.”

She looked at Edith, then returned to the chain. “I can see what’s going to happen now.”

“What’s going to happen?”

“Me, I’ll be the one blamed. Ottilie, she’ll be the one sanctified. Me, I’ll be the one demonised. Ottilie will be St Ottilie of the Cross.”

“Ursula, that’s cruel of you. Resist the urge to be cruel.”

“It’s what happens when people are beautiful.”

“Nonsense.”

“I can see what’s going to happen now,” she said again, and then, scarcely letting a beat fall, “Are you really going to leave him down there?”