The House at the Edge of the World (19 page)

‘Well,’ I said,
‘Corwin’s got this idea that Dad committed suicide. He thinks we missed
something.’ Saying this made me feel very tired. ‘He’s
combing the
past
,’ I said, and ran out of words.

‘Why now?’ asked Willow.

‘I don’t know. It never occurred
to us before, and then it occurred to Corwin, and here we are.’

‘Oh, Morwenna! Really? You must have
thought about it!’

‘No! People keep saying that. I never
did. Is there any reason I should have?’

‘What would I know about
fathers?’

‘Honestly, Willow,’ I said,
suddenly wanting to confide, ‘I don’t know what to do. Corwin’s become
completely obsessive about this. I’m worried about him.’

‘And I thought we’d spend lunch
talking about house prices and soft furnishings!’

‘Sorry,’ I said again.
‘But Corwin’s not going to get off my back until I’ve had this
conversation with you. And then … I never
thought I’d hear
myself say this, but hopefully he’ll piss off back to Sudan.’

‘You don’t mean that,’
said Willow, correctly. ‘So? Why does he think all of a sudden your dad committed
suicide?’

‘I don’t know. He won’t
say. He wants me to draw my own conclusions.’

‘The little shit! He always was a
didactic bugger!’

‘I’ve been missing and missing
him for a decade and a half, and now there he is, at Thornton, filling the house with
dour frowns and deep silences.’

Willow was framing her thoughts.
‘I’m not sure I’m qualified for this,’ she said, and beckoned
the waiter over to order coffee. Then she leaned forward and said, ‘OK! So! Are
you ready?’

I nodded.

‘Well,’ she said, ‘when
your dad died, we all talked about it, obviously. You know – Ooh! How weird! One minute
there he was playing his fiddle and the next minute he’s falling off a cliff and
we were so close and we didn’t even know.’

I must have flinched, or something, because
she stopped, and said, ‘Sorry – that came out wrong. But you know what I
mean.’

‘I know what you mean.’

‘And everyone said how your father was
the last person anyone would expect to have an accident like that. You know. He was so …
grounded.’

She paused again. ‘Are you all right
with this?’

‘Yes. I’m fine. Go
ahead.’

‘Well, there had been some gossip
…’

‘About?’

‘About … your mum and Bob. They seemed
… intimate. People thought that perhaps they’d been having an affair and your dad
had found out about it. Especially, later, when, you know …’

I did know. I was flooded with a sense of
self-disgust that I should have been so naïve. Willow’s expression was full of
concern for me.
She said, ‘Mickey and I saw them once, your mum
and Bob, having a cup of tea together at The Sands. They were just sitting opposite each
other drinking tea, chatting. They weren’t doing anything, not touching or
anything. It just looked – wrong, somehow. You know. Comfortable. Together. Like a
couple. We talked about it afterwards. We wondered.’

She put her hand on mine. ‘I’ve
upset you,’ she said.

‘No, it’s OK.’ Then I
said, ‘Sorry,’ for the third time, aware that since Corwin had come home my
life was full of apologies. I wanted my unapologetic life back.

The coffee arrived. I looked at my watch.
‘Oh, God, I have to go!’ I said. ‘My boss is really strict about lunch
breaks.’

It wasn’t an excuse. I did have to go.
I wanted to stay and show her that I was grateful – she had liberated me.

I said, ‘Thanks, Willow.
Really.’ I dropped a kiss on her cheek. ‘And it is good to see you.
Honestly. I’m just … you know.’

‘I know, sweetie!’ she said.
‘Off you go! Give Crow a kiss from me.’

All afternoon I stitched away, glowing with
self-righteousness. But when I got home and was about to call Corwin, something else
struck me: a detail of my conversation with Willow. And when he picked up the phone the
first thing I said was, ‘Corwin, what happened to Dad’s fiddle?’

Ed was silent as we approached Thornton. He
had seen photographs, of course, but I had underestimated the effect of that first view,
when the hedgerows shoot you out at the top of the combe and you look down on the
scattering of houses above the church and the solitary mill perching just where the sea
presses the land, which was all velvety with the lush green of June. Ed gasped, and
looked at me. He said, ‘You don’t do it justice.’

‘I’ve forgotten how to see
it,’ I said.

I stood in the hall and shouted but no one
answered.

‘What do you want to see first?’
I asked.

‘The beach, of course.’

We took our bags up to my room, and I had
the sensation that Ed was observing everything and attaching the new information to what
he already knew about me. I didn’t like the idea that I could be explained by
Thornton and began to regret bringing him.

I paused as we went downstairs. Something
had altered. It had flickered in the corner of my eye. I looked back to see what it was.
The key was in the door of my parents’ room.

We went for a long, long walk, which looped
up through the woods and came out onto the high cliffs and down into Thornton Mouth,
where we paused for tea in the cabin. I could see that Ed was love-struck.

‘It is beautiful,’ I said.
‘But there is a “but” – same as anywhere.’

Ed didn’t believe me. He had a glazed
look in his eye. He was staring at the photo hanging on a nail in its broken frame – the
one of Great-grandfather James standing before the wreck of the
Constantia
.

‘Who’s
that?’

‘James Venton. Matthew’s
father,’ I said. ‘He was the one who built the cabin.’ I pointed to
his boots. ‘He always wanted to go to America. He had these boots made
especially.’ I pointed to the beached ship. ‘And this is the last sailing
ship to wreck off The Sands – the
Constantia
. Look,’ I traced the twisted
sails. ‘Her masts are swinging against each other in opposing arcs. They’re
wrenching at her hull and any minute now she’ll split open and spill her cargo of
pit props onto the water and they’ll roll to the shore on the waves and James will
buy a lot or two at the salvage sale and build this cabin from them and pretend
he’s on Cape Cod, or somewhere like that. That’s why that stag’s head
is hanging over the stove. He never hunted in his life, but it adds to the
illusion.’

It had always bothered me, that photo.
Everyone else has their backs to the camera and is watching the death of the ship. But
James is caught looking inshore, past the camera – he has been caught by accident,
hunched up in his heavy pea-coat. I will always wonder what could possibly have turned
his gaze.

When we returned to the house we found
Corwin helping Sandra in the kitchen garden. They were tying peas and beans to their
supports of hazel tents. I had a sudden memory of being very small and chatting away to
my father while snapping pea pods from their tendrils and popping them open, the sweet
green taste of them. I remembered the hazel branches, cut too late in the season, taking
to leaf.

Corwin shook Ed’s hand. I hoped that
Ed would continue to resist his charm, but already he seemed to be softening. His idea
of Corwin was improved by the setting, and, what was more, here was an opportunity for
Ed to help out. I left him playing with balls of string and went to unpack.

The key was gone from my parents’
bedroom door. I carried on upstairs and hung up Ed’s suit and my dress, then went
to the
kitchen to see if the key was where it should be, but the hook
was empty.

As I closed the key-cupboard door, I heard
Matthew’s shuffle in the back porch. I found him sitting on the bench, removing
his walking boots. He didn’t hear me, and I watched him for a while. I could see
now that he was ill. Each movement required planning. He rocked himself forward
incrementally, each ratcheting motion taking him a little closer to his foot. Once he
arrived at his shoe, he pulled first one end of the lace and then the other. At last I
recollected myself and said, ‘Matthew, let me help.’

He looked up and smiled, but had no breath
for speech. He straightened up again, almost as slowly as he had bent forward. I knelt
down and loosened the laces and pulled off first one boot, then the second. I slid his
slippers onto his feet.

I said, ‘I worry about you, on your
walks.’

‘Ah, Morwenna,’ he said.
‘You mustn’t worry.’

That night, I didn’t hear Corwin come
to bed and, after Ed had fallen asleep, I left my own bed and went downstairs. There was
light under the door of our parents’ room. The key was in the keyhole.

I placed my hand on the doorknob. I knew I
would find Corwin in there, but at that moment I half expected to surprise him in
another form, one that I never saw – something fanged and clawed. I was just about to
turn the knob when the door opened and he stood there.

For a moment I did recoil. There was
something wrong with his face. He was pink – as though he had been peeled. I thought:
His skin has been flayed! Then I realized that he had shaved off his beard.

‘What are you doing?’ he said.
‘Are you coming in, or what?’

I hadn’t been inside that room for
over ten years. I remembered a junk room, everything covered with dust. But now it had
been ordered. The furniture was neatly stacked to one side, and
next
to the bed was a pile of boxes. The bed was covered with papers.

‘What’s going on?’

‘I’m looking for Dad’s
fiddle.’

‘No, you’re not.’

‘Well, I am, actually – among other
things.’

‘Why don’t you just ask Mum, or
Matthew?’

‘I have. They can’t remember
what happened to it. And I asked Bob too, but he can’t remember anything
much.’

‘Dad was probably holding
it.’

‘Not if he was taking a piss, he
wasn’t.’

‘Can’t we do this after the
wedding?’

‘Aren’t you curious? Some of
this is really interesting. These are all his old school reports,’ he said,
pointing to a pile of papers on the corner of the bed. ‘He was a crap pupil,
apparently.’

‘Well, he hated it there,’ I
said. Corwin handed me a pile of papers. The reports read: ‘Disappointing.
Distracted. Daydreamer.’

My father’s letters home were bland,
unilluminating – censored, probably. He had written: ‘It is very flat here. I miss
the sea.’

Homesick, I thought. Poor homesick boy.

There were letters from my father to my
mother – I placed them aside. I did not have Mum’s permission to read them. Corwin
had no such scruples. He read out snatches to me: ‘“Let’s have our
babies in winter, when Thornton is asleep and we have time to gaze at them. We’ll
lay them by the fire and tweak their toes and I will find you all the more beautiful by
firelight.”’

‘He was in love with her!’ I
said.

‘Of course he was. Why would you think
that he wasn’t?’

‘Why didn’t she keep the
letters?’

‘Why don’t you ask
her?’

‘They didn’t have their babies
in winter,’ I said.

They’d had their babies in summer, and
they had too many at
once, and the babies didn’t gaze back at
their parents. They only gazed at each other.

‘What else have you asked Bob?’
I asked.

‘I’ll tell you after the
wedding.’

‘What are you really looking
for?’

‘Proof. An explanation.’

‘Do you think,’ I asked idly,
‘that Bob pushed him off so that he could have Mum? Perhaps they planned it
together!’

‘No! Don’t even go there.
That’s not fair!’

‘You started it! And, anyway, it would
be a good story. I think I might work on it. It makes more sense than
suicide.’

‘You need to read that book. I keep
asking you to.’

‘Stop nagging. I left it here.
I’ll read it after the wedding.’

‘You will be good tomorrow,
won’t you? Don’t spoil things for Mum.’

‘I’ll be a perfect
angel.’

‘It’s nothing to do with Bob – I
swear.’

‘Mum and Bob were having an affair,
and you say it was nothing to do with Bob! OK. Whatever! Good night!’

‘Good night.’ He called after
me: ‘And remember. You promised.’

Mum and Bob’s wedding was in a manor
house turned boutique hotel, which was attempting to evoke Provence. There were lavender
and oleander in stone troughs. The ceremony itself was to be in ‘the
Orangerie’.

Matthew, Ed and I arrived early, so that
Matthew shouldn’t be anxious about being late. The chairs were dressed in white
cotton and tied about with silver ribbons. There were pale flowers arranged in silvery
foliage. We weren’t meant to be there yet – the room wasn’t ready for
us.

Eventually guests began to drift in. They
assumed that I was there to receive them, and it was too late to correct the impression.
They seemed to know me, but I couldn’t remember, or had never met, most of them.
The guests moved from me to Ed with an expression of curiosity and delight, as though he
was being introduced as my intended. He took to the role immediately. Matthew stayed
seated, and people went over to greet him, and to lay their hands on his shoulder in a
comforting gesture – subconsciously, probably, I thought. And comforting him for what?
That he was dying? Or that his son’s unfaithful widow was marrying her lover, his
son’s best friend and dispatcher to the depths of the sea?

Aunt Jane arrived, moved her cheek to within
three millimetres of mine, wafted some perfume in my direction, expressed her approval
of Ed, then took over as Receiver of Guests. I returned to my place beside Matthew. He
took my hand and whispered, ‘You stay here, where it’s safe.’

In the rows behind us there was a
heightening of excitement as Bob arrived. He came over to us, and I stood, kissed his
cheek,
introduced him to Ed. I wasn’t listening, but seeing him,
somehow. He was still vain: he wanted you to notice that he was keeping himself in good
shape. What, I thought, do you have to do with my father? I answered myself: Nothing –
you have nothing in common. But still you are connected – by his death, and because you
are marrying my mother. He was happy to be marrying my mother – I could see that. Pure
joy, untarnished by the many years they had already spent together. It was, after all,
love. And it outshone even his vanity.