The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox (16 page)

'How did you know I played the piano?' She heard him laugh, the noise bouncing along the wet pavement towards her. 'I did a little research on you. It
wasn't difficult. You seem to be rather notorious. I found out all kinds of things. Can't say what, though. So, you'll come to tea?'

She turned towards home again. 'I doubt it.'

Iris is turning the car off the coast road and on to the bypass for Edinburgh, Esme in the seat next to her, when she decides that maybe she should call Luke. Just to check. Just to make sure he hasn't done anything stupid.

As they accelerate down the sliproad towards the bypass, she takes her phone out of her pocket with one hand, keeping her eyes on the road and her foot on the pedal. She had told Luke in the past that she would never call at the weekend. She knows the rules. But what if he has told her? He can't have. He won't have. Surely.

Iris sighs and flings the phone on to the dashboard. It may be time, she reflects, to excise Luke from her life.

Esme shifted in the armchair. It was covered with a heavy brown fabric, balding on the arms. The sharp ends of feathers poked through it, needling her thighs. She shifted again, making her mother glance at her. She had to stop herself sticking out her tongue. Why had she made her come?

They were having a conversation about the imminent party, the difficulty about invitations in Edinburgh, the best dairy from which to obtain fresh cream. Esme attempted
to listen. Maybe she should say something. She hadn't spoken yet and she felt it might be time for her to open her mouth. Kitty, on the sofa with their mother, was managing to put in a few comments, though heaven only knew what she had to say about the purchase of cream. Mrs Dalziel made some remark about the cut on Jamie's face and how he'd walked into a low-growing branch in the fog. Esme froze, all possible conversational gambits dying in her throat.

'It looks terribly painful, James,' Esme's mother said.

'It isn't,' he said, 'I assure you. I've had worse.'

'I hope it's healed in time for your party. Would you be able to identify the tree? Someone should maybe tell the authorities. It sounds dangerous.'

Jamie cleared his throat. 'It is dangerous. I think I will alert the authorities. Good idea.'

Esme, her face hot, looked about for somewhere to put down her teacup. There was no convenient table or surface nearby. The floor? She peered over the arm of the chair at the parquet. It seemed an awful long way down and she wasn't sure if she could balance it on the saucer at the angle the drop required. Imagine shattering one of Mrs Dalziel's teacups. Kitty and their mother had placed theirs on a small table in front of them. Esme was getting desperate. She twisted round once more to see if there wasn't a table the other side of the enormous chair and suddenly Jamie was there, his hand outstretched. 'Will I take that for you?' he was saying.

Esme put the teacup into his hand. 'Oh,' she said, 'thank you.'

He winked at her as he took it and Esme saw that Mrs Dalziel was looking at them with a gaze sharp as a knife.

'Tell me, Mrs Lennox,' Mrs Dalziel said in a slightly raised voice, 'what plans do you have for Esme when she leaves school?'

'Well,' her mother began, and Esme felt a flush of indignation. Why not ask her directly? Did she not have a voice of her own?

She opened her mouth without the faintest idea of what was going to come out of it, until she heard: 'I am going to travel the world.' And she was rather pleased with this notion.

Jamie, from the chair opposite, snorted with laughter and had to smother it, coughing into a handkerchief. Kitty was regarding her, stunned, and Mrs Dalziel brought up a pair of spectacles, through which she took a long look at Esme, from her feet all the way up to a point above her head.

'Is that so?' Mrs Dalziel said. 'Well, that should keep you busy.'

Esme's mother replaced her teaspoon on a saucer with a clash. 'Esme is...' she began '...she is still so young ... She has some rather ... extreme views on...'

'So I see.' Mrs Dalziel shot a look at her son, who turned his head towards Esme and Esme saw, at the same moment, her sister. Kitty's eyes were cast down towards the floor but she lifted them to Jamie for a split second and then dropped
them again. Esme saw her change in that instant, red staining her neck, her lips pressing together. Esme sat motionless, in shock, then she sat forward and got to her feet.

All faces in the room turned towards her. Mrs Dalziel was frowning, reaching for her spectacles again. Esme stood in the middle of the carpet. Might I play your piano?' she said.

Mrs Dalziel put her head on one side, pressed two fingers to her mouth. She glanced again at her son. 'By all means,' she said, inclining her head.

Jamie leapt up. 'I'll show you where it is,' he said, and hustled Esme out into the corridor. 'She likes you,' he whispered, as he shut the door behind him.

'She does not. She thinks I'm the Devil incarnate.'

'Don't be ridiculous. She's my mother. I can tell. She likes you.' He put a hand round her arm. 'This way,' he said, and led her towards a room at the back of the house, with leaves pressed up against the windows, giving a peculiar greenish glow to the walls.

Esme seated herself on the stool and ran her hands over the black-wood lid, the gold letters that spelt out 'Steinway'.

'I don't see that it matters anyway,' she said, as she lifted the lid.

'It doesn't,' he said, leaning on the piano, 'you're right. I can have whomever I like.'

She shot him a look. He was gazing at her, lips curled in a smile, hair falling into his eyes, and she wondered for a moment what it would be like to be married to him. She
tried to imagine herself in this big house with its dark walls, its windows crushed in by plants, its winding staircase and a room upstairs that would be hers and one that would be his, close by. She could have this, she saw with surprise. It could be hers. She could be Esme Dalziel.

She stretched her fingers into a soft chord. 'It doesn't matter,' she said, not looking at him, 'because I'm not going to get married. To anyone.'

He laughed. 'Are you not?' He moved round and seated himself next to her on the stool, right next to her. 'Let me tell you something,' he murmured, close to her ear, and Esme fixed her eyes on the rivet on the music stand, on the curling
y
of 'Steinway', on the knife-crease of his trouser leg. She had never been as close to a man as this before. His hand was pressing at her waist. He smelt of something sharp, some kind of cologne, and of fresh leather. It was not unpleasant. 'Of all the girls I've met, you seem the one most suited for marriage.'

Esme was taken aback by this. It was not at all what she had expected him to say. She turned to him. 'I do?' But his face was close to hers, blurringly close, and she was struck by the thought that he might try to kiss her so she turned her head back.

'Yes,' he whispered into her ear, 'you have the spirit for it. You could match a man, stroke for stroke. You wouldn't be cowed by it.'

'By marriage?'

'Most women are. You see it all the time. Pretty young
girls who become matronly bores the minute they get a ring on their finger. You wouldn't be like that. You wouldn't be changed at all. I can't imagine you being changed by anything. And that's what I want. That's why I want you.'

The hand on her waist tightened and she was drawn towards him and she felt him press his lips to her skin, at the place where her blouse ended and her neck began. The shock was electrifying. It was the most intimate thing anyone had ever done to her. She turned to look at him in amazement and he was laughing at her, his chest pressed to her shoulder, and she wanted to say: is it that, is that what it is, is that what it would be like, like that? But she heard the door to the parlour open and the voice of Jamie's mother could be heard: 'Why don't you go and join them, Kitty, dear?'

She pulled her gaze from Jamie just in time to see her sister step into the room. Kitty came through the door and raised her head. Esme saw her blink, very slowly, then look away. Esme put the flat of her hands to the wood of the piano stool and pushed herself into a standing position. She went to her sister's side and linked her arm through hers but Kitty kept her face averted and her arm felt heavy, lifeless.

In real time, Esme is in the car, being driven back from the sea to Edinburgh. She has decided to pretend to fall asleep. Not because she's tired. Because she needs to think. She lets her head fall back and she closes her eyes. After a few moments, the girl, Iris, leans over and turns off the radio. The orchestral music, which in truth Esme had been enjoying, is silenced.

This is the single nicest act Esme has witnessed in a long time. It almost makes her cry, which is something that never happens any more. She is overcome by an urge to open her eyes and take the girl's hand. But she doesn't. The girl is unsure of her, she wishes she weren't there—Esme knows this. But imagine. She was still worried about the radio music disturbing her sleep. Imagine that.

In order not to cry, she thinks. She concentrates.

On New Year's Eve afternoon, her mother and Kitty go out to the dressmaker, a small woman with a bun, to pick up the dresses. While they are out, Esme wanders into her mother's room. She peers into her jewellery box, she opens the pots on her dressing-table, she tries on a felt hat. She is sixteen.

She checks the street. Empty. She cocks her head and listens to the house. Empty. She twists her hair into a rope and pins it high on her head. She opens her mother's wardrobe. Tweed, fur, wool, tartan, cashmere. She knows what she is looking for. She has known since she came in here, since she heard the front door click shut. She has glimpsed it only a handful of times, at night, her mother gliding along the corridor between her father's room and hers. A négligé in aquamarine silk. She wants to know if the hem will swish round her ankles. She wants to know if the narrow straps will lie against her shoulders, just so. She wants to see the self she will be under all that sea-coloured lace. She is sixteen.

She feels it before she sees it – the cold caress of silk. It
is right at the back, behind her mother's second-best suit. Esme slips it off its hanger, and it tries to escape her, slithering through her fingers to the floor. But she catches it round its waist and flings it to the bed. She pulls off her sweater, keeping her eyes on the pool of silk. She is about to dive in. Does she dare?

But she turns her head towards the car window. She opens her eyes. She does not want to think of this. She does not. Why should she? When the sun shines? When she is with the girl who cares if she sleeps well or not? When she is being driven along a road she doesn't recognise? The city she knows, the buildings, the line of roofs, but nothing else. Not the road, not the strings of orange lights, not the shopfronts. Why should she think of this?

—no small amount of shame in it, I can tell you. It has never happened in our family, ever. And for it to befall my own son. Times have changed, he said to me, and I said, you have to work at a marriage, God knows, your father and I did, thinking, if he only knew. But. Is it absolutely necessary to divorce, couldn't you—and he interrupted me. We're not married, he said, so technically it's not a divorce. Well. Of course I've kept that quiet in our circle. For the sake of the child. I never liked the wife or whatever she is. Shapeless clothes and unkempt hair. He says it is amicable. And I must say he is very good about keeping in touch with the child. A pretty little thing, she is, she has a look of my
mother but in terms of character I think she reminds me most of—

—I do not know if I like yoghurt. A woman is asking me and I don't know the answer. What shall I say? I'll say no. She'll take it away and I won't need to think about it. But she hasn't waited for my answer, she has left it beside my plate. I'll pick it up and that long shiny thing she has left with it, silver it is, with a round head, the name of it is—

—he would always count them after a dinner party. Wrapping wet bundles of them in teacloths, polishing their ends and counting them back into the velvet-lined cutlery box. It used to drive me mad. I had to leave the room. I couldn't stand the sound of him murmuring the numbers under his breath, the way he stacked them into battalions of ten along the emptied table. Is there anything more likely to drive you completely out of your—

—pebbles. I taught her to count with pebbles I collected from the garden in India. I found ten beautiful, even, smooth pebbles that I lined up on the path for her. Look, I said, one, two, three, do you see? She had bare feet, her hair tied in a ribbon. Onetwofree, she said back to me, and smiled. No, I said, look, one, two, three. She caught them up, the pebbles, four in one hand and six in the other. Before I could stop her, she hurled them up into the air. As they rained back down I ducked. Miraculous, really, that she wasn't hit, if you think about—

—the mother brings the child to visit me. She and I don't have much to say to each other but I confess I have surprised
myself by conceiving a fondness for the little girl. Grandma, she said to me the other day, and she was making these circles in the air with her arm, watching herself as she did it, when I do something my skeleton does it too. And I said, you are quite right, my dear. My son may have other children, who knows, he is still young. If he meets someone else, someone nice, someone more suitable. I would like that. It would be better for Iris not to be an only one and I should know because—

—and when I found them, when I came upon them sitting together like that, the pair of them on the piano stool, and him gazing at her as if he was seeing something rare and precious and desirable, I wanted to stamp my foot, to shout, do you know what they call her, they call her the Oddbod, people laugh about her behind her back, don't you know that? I knew that it could not be, that it must not happen, that I had to—

—I do not like yoghurt. It is cold, oversweet and there are hidden lumps of sloppy, slippery fruit. I do not like it. I let the spoon drop to the floor and the yoghurt makes an interesting fan-shape over the carpet and—