The White Lie (33 page)

Nobody would mention the lost boy. Mog had already gone too far, almost invoking the name of Sebastian, and knew it, the knowledge of it written on her face. All she could do was go to Edith, apologising into her hair, Edith replying by means of a forgiving hand rubbed briskly over her arm.

***

I remember vividly a day when I was 11 and about to move from Peattie out to the cottage. I was a sad boy, and my being reserved about my sadness, loyal to my mother’s needs for change (her need for a home further from Joan), had impressed the family enough to cause a loosening of reserve, in which things not talked about were unfettered briefly and aired. There was sympathy, and out of sympathy greater openness comes: open and shut in its camera lens way. That’s how it happened that Vita and I had a conversation about death by water.

“But why were we cursed?” I asked her.

“Your grandfather says he doesn’t know,” she told me. “But in the village they say that she wasn’t a witch at all.”

“She wasn’t a real witch?” I was disappointed.

“No.”

“But then what was she?”

“A mad person, an angry person. We don’t believe in witches and curses, surely.”

“Of course we do,” I said.

“Ah, Michael.” She ruffled my hair. “You are a silly billy and an intense little soul.”

I smiled at her, thinking this a compliment.

What do I know about the witch now? Only the truth: that she was Henry’s great-grandfather’s rejected lover. As to whether one person’s despair can curse another’s life, I had better reserve judgment.

At 11 years of age I was so thrilled and honoured that Vita was talking to me in this way, in this way that ordinarily only Tilly spoke to me, that I was driven over to the sceptical camp and even beyond its usual borders, determined to out-doubt Vita and impress her further. I told her that Henry’s father didn’t count. That, after all, was a heart attack.

“You know where he was when he had the heart attack?” she asked, her voice patient but preparing itself to triumph, the inflection rising. “He was salmon fishing, up to his thighs in icy water. He was 66 and had already had two attacks. He was warned not to go into the Spey.”

“Still a heart attack. Not death by water.”

“He was still alive when the river took him.”

“There’s no way of knowing that.”

“They can tell these things,” she said mysteriously.

Between the decision and the move to the coast I’d developed tonsillitis, a condition thought to be psychosomatic. Whatever the cause, I was confined to bed with a high fever. Henry, attentive and evidently also a little anxious, brought me a hot chocolate and a Jack Russell, the cup in one hand and the terrier under his arm. “A doggy hot-water bottle for you,” he said. “I’m told you have cold feet.” Vita having just left the bedroom after our chat, and wild themes coursing about in my head, I was bursting to ask him about his father and about the first Henry Salter and the curse, but too nervous of Henry, the way his brow would knit and his face darken when disappointed. Between the ages of 12 and 19 I was to hear frequently that I’d disappointed him. But never, in all that time, did I work up the nerve to ask him about Sebastian, the query that would have disappointed him the most. When you’re a child you love to hear about all the disasters in lurid detail. They have nothing to do with you and your own perfection, your own immutability, your life rolled up tight inside you like a new leaf. Vita seems to illustrate that this appetite for disaster returns in old age. It’s a kind of defiance, I suppose. A kind of courage, defiantly disrespectful, egging the grim reaper on.

***

Mog was thoughtful at the dinner table, sitting apart from Rebecca as they ate their soup and salad, the quiet threads of conversation picking their way around her. The rest of them were talking about the now inevitable land sale, Henry having told Alastair about it. Henry judged that Alastair had a right to know. Edith was doing her sad-but-necessary speech: “We’ve done our grieving and now we’re resigned.” Talk of the land sale takes us to the last night that Mog spent with Johnnie.

The evening before Mog broke up with Johnnie, they went to a Scottish dance in Edinburgh, a so-called ball in a hotel function room. Johnnie’s brother, his partner and another four of their circle made up the eight. The other girlfriends were part of that tribe of child-women, their twiggy brown legs finished with oil, long hair straightened and lip gloss like jam. Pip and Angelica were also there, that night, Angelica’s white-blonde bob newly angled to the chin. Tall Angelica and her tall friends were in tight sheaths of dresses, not intending to participate much other than in a minimalist way, walking through occasional dances. A pity. Reeling should have an abandoned pagan quality about it.

From Angelica Mog received a high, finger-waggling wave, dutiful and indifferent, delivered even as she was turning away and scanning the other tables. Pip kept his distance until the men in Mog’s party had gone off to the bar, a swagger of tuxedos, men with rugby club manners. Then he came and sat by Mog.

“About last night: Angelica didn’t mean it that way,” he said. “You upset her. Don’t punish her by being chilly with her, Mog.”

“That’s so perfect,” Mog told him. “That’s how it is exactly. Angelica’s rude but somehow it’s a worse rudeness to be offended by her. How does that work? It’s quite a trick, isn’t it?”

“You’re drunk.”

“I’ve had enough to say what I think. Get a grip, Pip. She’s the one who was insulting.”

“It was a joke. Half joking. She is offended, actually. She says she thought she was getting somewhere with you and that you were getting into a sisterly thing, one that allows for banter. But apparently not.”

“I am again found wanting.”

Pip sighed, smiling. “I love you and this is said in a loving way: lighten up. You need to lighten up.”

“Oh thanks. Bingo.”

“Sense of humour. A sense of humour’s important.”

“What’s funny about life?”

“She meant well. She was trying to warn you.”

“Because normally Johnnie goes for beauties so what could he want with me other than money. Or rather in this case, property. Imaginary money. Imaginary aristocracy.”

“That’s the gist of what his brother’s saying, yes. Angelica was just reporting.”

“Considerate of her.” Mog stood up. “I need some air.” Pip went after her, saying that he wanted a smoke. They went out onto the steps of the hotel. It was chilly and Mog wrapped her shawl closer around her dress, an old-fashioned looking affair with Grecian drapes and folds. Pip lit his cigarette and smoked it in silence, looking out over the grounds, the uplit statuary, a dark line of parked cars.

Mog said, “I think it’s all come to an end.”

“Johnnie?”

“All of it. This constant
striving
. Pretending everything’s fine. Doing the happy face that leads to happiness.”

“Mother’s full of shit.”

“I’m so—I’m just so tired.”

Pip put his arms around her, one hand at her nape, his cheek against hers: the highest compliment of understanding. He seemed taller than usual, and down at the trouser hem there were unmistakably stacked heels.

“We need whisky,” he said.

“No. No more, thanks.” She sat down heavily onto the step.

He sat beside her. “I need to talk to you about Christian. He has a new partner.”

“Anyone we know?” Mog’s face betrayed a stab of disappointment. Even though she knew she would never want to see Christian naked, he’d had a special place in her mind lately as an ideal candidate for a passionless marriage, passionless but chummy, with not-unpleasant procurement of heirs.

“Business partner. Don’t know him. But it means he has the money.”

“So, all the rest of it. The pasture.”

“Necessary.”

“Makes sense. Still seems mad.”

Each of them contemplated this possibility.

“You’re out of touch,” Pip said. “Peattie’s heavily in demand. Prices are going through the roof.”

“Henry won’t agree to a housing estate, not there, right opposite the house.”

“Ah, but that’s where Christian’s clever. You should see the plans.”

“You’ve seen the plans?”

“It’s to be traditionally built, faced in stone, replicating the village style, but bigger houses, and then extra bits, big glassed-out kitchens hidden round the back. It’s got a pretty good chance in planning.”

“Sounds a bit Prince Charlesish.”

He made a face. “And what’s wrong with Prince Charles?”

“But we wouldn’t.”

“Wouldn’t we? What would you rather have? Christian’s Brigadoon, or Peattie sold to a hotel group? Because it will come to that.”

“I suppose.”

Pip took out another cigarette, from a tooled silver case that belonged to Henry’s father, and produced Henry’s old cigarette lighter. He lit the cigarette, clicked the lighter shut, pocketing it, and drew deeply before letting out a slow drift of smoke. “Course, Henry’s got ten years, at least ten; another 20 wouldn’t surprise me. But he says he thinks he’ll be ready earlier. And I think it might be coming soon.”

“Ready?”

“To move out.”

“Move out? You’re joking. Henry? I don’t think so.”

“I would have said the same. But that was before I spoke to Edith.”

“She wants to leave?”

“She wants a few years at least of another life.”

“Another life?”

“She wouldn’t elaborate.”

“She wouldn’t elaborate.” Mog repeated the words dully. “Do you think . . .”

“To live apart from Henry? Maybe. Hard to say.”

“Oh . . . Oh god.”

“What is it?”

Mog’s head was in her hands. “It’s just the thought of it. No Henry and Edith at Peattie. I need them to be there.”

“Henry’s had enough.”

“Where do you get this from?”

“I think he might realise, once he’s out, what a relief it is.”

“I’m not convinced.”

“He’s stuck. Stuck in a moment, can’t get out of it. As the philosopher Bono has written.”

“But Peattie . . .”

“Decades, literally decades, half a lifetime of mourning. Half a lifetime.”

“Where does all this . . . I mean, how have you—”

“We’ve been talking. Henry and I. On the phone,” Pip said. “But I promised I wouldn’t say. So you don’t know that.”

“Christ.”

Mog took an offered cigarette.

“So what happens, what happens to Peattie?”

“They’ll move out.”

“And then what?”

“Angelica and I are happy to take it on. Do the hotel thing, in a small way. On an ‘eat with the aristocracy’ basis, all round one table together. Americans are very into it. More shoots probably. All that mallarkey. Angelica’s the marketing guru.”

Words of Izzy’s came to her lips. “And once you have her in captivity I imagine there’ll be breeding.”

“I’m counting on it.”

“Aren’t you forgetting one crucial thing?”

“What’s that?”

“Co-ownership, Pippin. Co-inheritance.”

“We’d have to clear it with the rest of you, obviously. Getting ahead of myself.”

“Very slightly.”

“It’s just that it seems like a fact now because it’s what I promised Henry, to reassure him.”

“You promised Henry.”

“Anybody who wants to can move into the main house. We can remodel bits into flats, that is if we can get the funding. Christian’s offer makes it possible.”

That’s my house he’s talking about. My should-have-been house. Eldest child of the eldest child.

Henry told me when I turned 18. There were two gifts: an old car, and disinheritance. He announced that he would name all five of us, the grandchildren, as joint heirs upon his death.

“Henry,” I said—and it was the only time I called him Henry, and I was very calm—“are you telling me that you are breaking with four generations of Peattie tradition, and instead of it going to me you are going to split it five ways, just to keep the bastard out of the direct line?”

“This step is bloody cold.” Mog got to her feet and Pip followed. “I must stop smoking,” she said. “Makes me nauseous.” She stamped out her cigarette. “So where will they go?”

“We haven’t got that far. Henry’s only at the very early stages of thinking. Let’s be clear about that. Thinking the unthinkable, it takes time.”

“Seems all such a shame.”

“Look. The land isn’t optional. Things are serious. The windows are already desperate. Pointing well overdue, stone crumbling off the side wall. Dry rot everywhere.”

“Is there?”

“And the damp. Have you been down to the old kitchen lately? Along the corridor? Powdery, the paint is, flaking off like diseased skin. Something has to be done about the heating. It’s all money.”

“Yes.”

“And if we’re to live there . . .”

“Of course.”

“Angelica will want a budget. There’ll be replastering. New floors. Wiring. We need Christian’s money.”

“How much is it?”

“Henry’s asked me not to say for the moment. They’re still haggling. But enough.”

“It’s almost like once he’s allowed Peattie to be spoiled, the new houses next door, it’s all over and that’s really why he’s going.” Mog looked at her brother searchingly.

“It’s not that,” Pip said in a quiet voice. “It’s Sebastian.”

“Well, of course that’s what it really is. I do know that.”

“He’s lived in the same place as this—this
stain
—for, what, 37 years. This watermark stain. This boy that would have been 41 now, and the heir. The golden boy.”

“This is how he talks about him.”

“I’m afraid it is. The golden boy who should be 41 but is forever four years old.”

There’s a picture of Sebastian on Henry’s desk. The boy in the photograph has a fishing net, a red zip sweater with snowflakes knitted into it, a sandy-blond pudding-bowl haircut and a sharply cut little pink mouth. I commented once to Vita how angelic he looked.

“Angelic? Don’t you believe it for a second,” Vita said. “Absolute rascal. Played on his beauty. Always got his own way, or expected to, and wasn’t checked nearly enough. But so adored. So very, very wanted; a boy at last. Poor Ursula was quite overshadowed.”

Mog told me about a conversation she’d had with Edith when she was a child. Edith was, at that time, quite certain about heaven, and talked about it as if it were just at the end of the garden: something actual and close at hand.