The House at the Edge of the World (20 page)

I hadn’t been able to dissuade Mum
from walking down the aisle on Corwin’s arm. I said, ‘She’ll be making
a spectacle of herself.’

‘It’s important to her – let her
have it.’

‘Our stamp of approval?’

‘
My
stamp of approval – if
you insist on characterizing it like that,’ he said.

So walk down the aisle she did, to a Bach
orchestral piece suggested by the Classic FM website, looking very elegant, but leaning
in a little on Corwin, because she had underestimated the height of her heels. She
smiled and smiled and smiled, and when she reached Bob they held hands and interlocked
their fingers.

Bob’s brother stood up and read, with
appropriate irony, the lyrics to ‘When I’m Sixty-Four’, and then I
stood up and read, without any irony whatsoever, ‘A Red, Red Rose’
.
I read it very well, and as I sat down again I congratulated myself on my monumental
impassiveness.

Afterwards there was champagne on the lawn.
We drank within a circle of coral and cream roses. I drank a lot. Ed was too busy
ingratiating himself, and Corwin too busy being charming for either of them to notice. I
cornered Mark Luscombe. ‘Can we talk about Matthew?’ I asked.

‘I’m not sure that this is the
time or place, Morwenna,’ said Mark, moving away from me.

Matthew seemed to be enjoying himself
immensely, sitting at
a table and surrounded by the parish widows. I
went and hovered near them, but they didn’t want me there, so I wandered away
again. Corwin banged on his glass and gave a speech about how well Bob had looked after
Mum for the last however many years, and made some better-late-than-never jokes. The
women especially laughed; he looked so very handsome in a suit. Then everyone launched
themselves on the buffet.

I think I was sober by the time the guests
had all gone. I had realized by lunch that I needed to stop drinking, and touched only
water for the rest of the afternoon. Mum said goodbye to the last guest, then turned to
us and said, ‘That all went rather well, didn’t it?’

It did, actually. Even I had been warmed by
all that radiant goodwill. Corwin put his arms around her and gave her a hug. ‘It
was a great day, Mum. Well done.’

‘You will come back with us,
won’t you? You’ll need some supper.’

‘Of course,’ said Corwin.

Matthew had already been delivered home by
one of his old ladies. Jane went back with Mum and Bob, and Corwin drove me and Ed. It
was about six o’clock. The evening sea pushed back the cloud, the sky cleared. I
wasn’t having any dark thoughts. I felt fine. I was glad it was over.

At the house, Bob opened a bottle of
champagne that he had been saving. The cork soared up into the beautiful void within the
timber frames and we laughed and we drank to Mum and Bob’s happiness. Then Mum
took Ed by the elbow and steered him to sit next to her on one of the sofas that faced
each other in front of the fireplace.

‘You know, Ed,’ she said,
‘Morwenna still hasn’t been able to explain to me what it is that you
do.’

‘I teach maths,’ said Ed.

‘Oh, she made it sound a lot more
romantic than that!’

‘Did she?’ Ed looked surprised
and pleased.

‘Yes,’ said
Mum. ‘She said you’re a sort of mathematical Don Quixote.’

Ed looked less pleased. ‘I’m not
sure what that means,’ he said. ‘I teach maths. I work with other
mathematicians, but maths is a young man’s game – making breakthroughs, that is.
Perhaps that’s what she meant. I’m always hoping that the next mathematical
genius will turn up in one of my seminars and unlock my mind.’

‘You see?’ I said, to Ed as much
as to my mother. ‘He’s a poet!’

‘He’s an idealist!’
pronounced Mum. ‘Morwenna’s father was an idealist,’ she added.
‘So it follows.’

‘So how come you’re not
rich?’ asked Bob. ‘I thought you maths brains all went and made millions
from hedge funds.’

‘That doesn’t really interest
me,’ said Ed, as tactfully as he could.

‘I told you,’ I said stubbornly.
‘Ed’s a poet.’ And then, unnecessarily, ‘He has
integrity.’

Jane snorted. She didn’t trust people
with integrity. She couldn’t see how they pulled it off.

I remember thinking: I don’t care. Let
her snort. So I can’t even blame Jane for what I said next. I still have no idea
why it came out right there and then. I had intended to ask, but not in the way that I
did. I can only ascribe it to relief and exhaustion now that the wedding was over – I
was falling on the descent.

‘So, Mum,’ I said, ‘just
out of curiosity. Were you fucking Bob before Dad died?’

Too late, my skin gave me the alarm. Every
cell began to swell with blood – I felt it rise to fill my ears and lift me while
everyone else in the room disappeared and all I could see was Mum. She had taken off her
shoes and there was a hole in the toe of her tights. She had still been talking to Ed,
and her hand, with its new wedding ring, was on his sleeve (I found myself wondering
what she had done with the old one), and she turned and she was
smiling
.

She said slowly – I saw
her mouth form each syllable, ‘No, Morwenna, I was not, as you so charmingly put
it, “fucking Bob” before your father died. What makes you ask?’

I could see quite clearly now that this
smile of hers was toxic – that her toxic smile had been with my father at the edge of
the cliff, and that Bob, even if he hadn’t pushed him, had been too present that
night. His drunken laughter had been sufficient mockery to induce my father to jump.

‘We were just wondering,’ I
said, ‘what it was that might have encouraged Dad to throw himself off a
cliff.’

I sensed Corwin move. He was about to
intervene. But Mum held up her hand to stop him. ‘You think your father committed
suicide?’

‘Yes!’ I said. But already I
could see what I had done. I saw their faces: Bob’s, Jane’s, Corwin’s.
Most of all I saw the repulsion on Ed’s.

‘But why are you asking me this
now
?’

‘It has only just occurred to
us.’

Mum laughed. ‘Really? Surely, darling,
it must have occurred to you both at the time.’

‘No!’ I yelled. ‘It
didn’t. It never occurred to me that he had any reason to commit suicide! Now I
see that he did have!’

Strangely, Mum was putting her shoes on,
quite calmly. She didn’t want to continue the altercation in bare feet. She
wriggled her heels into her pumps, first one, then the other, and stood.

‘Darling,’ she said calmly.
‘You’re being hysterical. What can I say? It did occur to me that your
father had committed suicide, and it had nothing to do with Bob.
If
your father
did throw himself off, and
if
it was because anyone was fucking anyone,
it’s much more likely to be because he thought that
you
were fucking your
brother.’

Something dislodged from my belly and
flopped between us – a hideous translucent jellied thing. She and I had made it
together. Every gibe against Bob had been caught up and fed to it. Mum was smiling the
indulgent smile of the new mother.

‘He saw you both,
the week before he died,’ she said. ‘He was very upset. So upset, in fact,
that he deigned to discuss it with me.’

‘Saw us both? What do you mean, he saw
us both?’

But already a memory was forming.

‘He went up to wake you for work and
saw you in bed together.’

‘But we often shared a bed. You know
that. Dad knew that.’

‘What we knew was that your behaviour
was disturbing. You were eighteen and in bed together and naked!’

Corwin was standing. He was saying,
‘It’s time to go.’

‘Yes,’ said Mum. ‘I think
it is.’

Corwin was pulling me from the sofa and
saying, ‘Ed. Get up. We’re leaving.’

Mum was still smiling. She said, ‘Look
at you both – you’ve only ever needed each other. And you have the gall to
begrudge me Bob!’

Outside, at the car door, Corwin slapped me
hard. ‘You stupid bitch!’ he yelled, and pushed me into the back seat.

‘Ed,’ he said, ‘you can
sit in the front.’

At Thornton, Corwin got out of the car. Ed
sat in the passenger seat, waiting for me to offer something in mitigation of my
behaviour, but I couldn’t speak. Finally, he said, ‘Aren’t you even
going to try to explain that?’

‘I can’t,’ I said.
‘I can’t explain.’

‘Well, that’s not going to work
for me this time.’ He was gripping the door handle. As he opened the door, he
said, ‘You know, when I first met you what I liked about you was that you made
beautiful things. I don’t understand how that’s possible when your thoughts
are so ugly.’

I sat in the car a little longer, then
roused myself and went round to the boot room and changed out of my stupid uncomfortable
shoes, then walked down to the cabin in the floaty dress I had worn to please my mother
on her wedding day.

I felt calm – shock, I suppose. I knew that
Mum and I could never forgive each other. We would never argue again; we would never
again have that intimacy. I wasn’t angry with her, or even with myself, for that
matter. I wasn’t thinking about Mum’s accusation or about my father’s
suicide. I felt bad about Ed, but from a great distance. Mainly, I had the buoyant
sensation of having set down a great burden and walked on. It was still light. There was
a scattering of summer colour on the fields.

At the cabin I took a blanket and wrapped it
around myself and sat on the steps and watched the stars appear and waited for the moon
to rise and for Corwin to come. He would know what to do next. The moon was almost full
– a gibbous moon. Matthew had given me ‘gibbous’. It was one of his
uncountable gifts to me. I had always been able to receive them without
rancour. I wondered why I had been unable to do the same for my parents.

The tide was gentle and quiet. Eventually I
heard Corwin’s steps on the shingle. He sat down next to me. We watched the moon.
I had matters back in proportion: the Atlantic, the blind cliffs, my self set against
them.

‘I’m sorry,’ said Corwin.
‘That was my fault.’

I draped the blanket around us both.
‘Has Ed gone?’

‘Yes. Will you be able to explain it
to him?’

‘Probably not.’

After a while I said, ‘Do you think
she was right? Do you think Dad really thought that?’

The memory was clear. It had been so hot
that summer. We had fallen asleep, talking, and some time in the night I had freed
myself from the irritation of clothes, half asleep. I remembered the comfort of spooning
into Corwin’s skin. His chest and legs had been smooth then. It had not been the
first time although perhaps it had been the last.

‘She’s just punishing
you.’ Corwin picked up a pebble and threw it towards the approaching water.
‘Actually,’ he said, still staring after the pebble, ‘Dad asked me
about it.’

‘What? When?’

‘A couple of days before he
fell.’

‘So it
was
to do with us! How
did he ask? What did he say?’ I felt a spasm of remorse. My poor private father,
asking out loud if his son was having sex with his daughter.

‘He brought me down here and we sat
like this. And he said something about our “affinity” – yours and mine. How
you and I had always been close, but he was worried that we’d become too
close.’

‘Affinity,’ I echoed. At that
moment I felt it very important to be accurate – honest. I had just broken with my
mother and it seemed to me that in that there was something far more unnatural than any
distortion of love there might or might not be
between me and Corwin.
I thought of my father, standing in the doorway, watching us sleep, not understanding
us. I was ashamed. I acknowledged how lonely we had made him – him and Mum.

I said, ‘Look at me. Let me see your
face.’ He turned to me and I looked at him properly for the first time in years.
‘Did he see anything, do you think? In us? Anything that we didn’t see at
the time?’

‘I’ve thought about that a
lot,’ said Corwin; he sounded very, very sad. I thought: He’s weary.
He’s almost reached the end. But the end of what? ‘Dad said that we were
“in danger of violating the laws of nature”. I was so angry – I just wanted
to hit him, but I didn’t. I remember that quite clearly – the sensation of having
stopped myself from hitting him. He wanted my assurance that my feelings towards you
were “chaste”. I laughed at that. That word,
chaste
. He said it was
a good thing we were going to be separated for a while. I said I couldn’t believe
that he would think that of me – of us. That he offended us in asking.’

‘Did he believe you?’

‘I think so. Yes – I’m sure he
did.’

‘He should have talked to me about
it.’

‘He was going to – he told me he would
talk to you too.’

‘Why didn’t you tell
me?’

‘Well – events were superseded
somewhat, don’t you think?’

That was when I remembered my father
standing in the doorway with a cup of tea. So that was what he had wanted to talk about!
It had been too difficult. He had not had the courage. What would I have said, if
he’d asked me? I would have shouted. I would have thrown something. And I had not
been wearing pyjamas – he had misjudged the setting. It was all wrong for an accusation
of incest. Poor Dad! How unpleasant it must have been for him.

‘Dad wasn’t the only person who
asked me,’ Corwin said suddenly, as if he’d just decided not to hold
anything back.

‘Who
else?’

‘Mickey.’

I was beginning now to feel laid out to
view; pried open.

‘He said we were freaking everyone
out. He asked me if I’d ever thought about it.’

‘And had you?’ I asked.

‘What?’

‘Had you ever thought about
it?’

‘Christ! I don’t know. I
don’t think so – but you really don’t want to know what goes on in the minds
of adolescent boys. Dad did know. That’s why he talked to me first – me “in
particular, being male and therefore less in control of my appetites”.’