The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox (7 page)

Peter Lasdun is crossing Cauldstone car park, struggling to put on his mackintosh. A keen wind is coming in gusts off the Firth of Forth. He gets one arm in but the other sleeve flaps free, turning the coat inside out, the scarlet tartan lining waving in the salty air like a flag.

He is just wrestling it into submission when he hears someone calling his name. He turns into the wind and sees a woman hurrying towards him. He has to stare at her for a moment before he can place her. It's that Lennox woman, or Lockhart woman or whatever her name is, and she is accompanied by a monstrously large dog. Peter takes a step back. He doesn't like dogs.

'Can you tell me,' she says, as she bears down on him, 'what happens to her now? To people like her?'

Peter sighs. It is ten past the hour. His wife will be opening the oven door to check on his dinner. The aroma of meat
juices and roasting vegetables will be filling the kitchen. His children, he hopes, are doing their homework in their rooms. He should be in the car, on the bypass, not trapped in a breezy car park by this woman. 'May I suggest you make another appointment—'

'I just want to ask one question, a quick question,' she flashes him a smile, revealing a row of nicely kept teeth, 'I won't delay you. I'll walk to your car with you.'

'Very well.' Peter gives up trying to put on his coat and lets it flap around his ankles.

'So, what happens to Esme now?'

'Esme?'

'Euphemia. Actually, you know...' She trails off and flashes him that smile again. 'Never mind. I mean Euphemia.'

Peter opens his car boot and lifts in his briefcase. 'Patients for whom no provisions have been made by relatives,' he can see the policy document before him and he reads the words aloud, 'become the responsibility of the state and will be rehoused accordingly.'

She frowns and it makes her lower lip pout slightly. 'What does that mean?'

'She'll be rehoused.' He slams the boot down and walks towards the car door. But the girl tags behind him.

'Where?'

'In a state establishment.'

'Another hospital?'

'No.' Peter sighs again. He knew this wouldn't be quick.
'Euphemia has been deemed eligible for discharge. She's successfully been through a Discharge Adjustment Programme and a Rehabilitation Schedule. She is on a waiting list at a home for the elderly. So she will be transferred there, I would imagine, as soon as a place becomes available.' Peter slides into the driver's seat and inserts his keys into the ignition. Surely that will be sufficient to get rid of her.

But no. She leans on the open car door and the hound sticks its muzzle in Peter's direction, sniffing. 'When will that be?' she asks.

He looks up at her and there is something about her – her persistence, her doggedness – that makes him feel particularly weary. 'You really want to know? It could be weeks. It could be months. You cannot imagine the pressure that such establishments are under. Insufficient finance, insufficient staff, not enough places to supply demand. Cauldstone is due to close in five weeks, Miss Lockhart, and were I to reveal to you that—'

'Isn't there anywhere else she can go in the meantime? She can't stay here. There must be somewhere else. I would ... I just want to get her out of here.'

He fiddles with the rear-view mirror, tilting it forward then back, unable to get a satisfactory view. 'There have been instances of patients such as Euphemia going to temporary accommodation until such time as a more permanent placing can be found. But my professional opinion is that I wouldn't recommend it.'

'What do you mean, temporary accommodation?'

'A short-term housing scheme, a residential hostel. Somewhere like that.'

'How soon could that happen?'

He gives his car door a tug. He really has had enough now. Will this woman never leave him alone? 'As soon as we can find transportation,' he snaps.

'I'll take her,' she says, without hesitation. 'I'll drive her myself.'

Iris lies on her side, a book in her hand. Luke's arm is round her waist and she can feel his breath on the back of her neck. His wife is visiting her sister so Luke is staying the night for the first time. Iris doesn't usually permit men to remain in her bed overnight but Luke had happened to call while she had lots of customers so she didn't have the time or privacy to argue her case.

She turns a page. Luke strokes her arm, then presses an experimental kiss to her shoulder. Iris doesn't respond. He sighs, shifts closer.

'Luke,' Iris says, shrugging him off.

He starts to nuzzle her neck.

'Luke, I'm reading.'

'I can see that,' he mumbles.

She turns another page with a flick of her fingers. He is gripping her tighter.

'You know what it says here?' she says. 'That a man used
to be able to admit his daughter or wife to an asylum with just a signature from a GP.'

'Iris—'

'Imagine. You could get rid of your wife if you got fed up with her. You could get shot of your daughter if she wouldn't do as she was told.'

Luke makes a grab for the book. 'Will you stop reading that depressing tome and talk to me instead?'

She turns her head to look at him. 'Talk to you?'

He smiles. 'Talk. Or anything else that might take your fancy.'

She shuts the book, turns on to her back and looks up at the ceiling. Luke is smoothing her hair, pushing his face into her shoulder, his hands moving down her body. 'When was your first?' she asks suddenly. How old were you?'

'First what?'

'You know. Your first.'

He kisses her cheekbone, her temple, her brow. 'Do we have to talk about this now?'

'Yes.'

Luke sighs. 'OK. Her name was Jenny. I was seventeen. It was at a new-year party and it was at her parents' house. There. Will that do you?'

'Where?' Iris demands. 'Where in her parents' house?'

Luke starts to smile. 'Their bed.'

'Their bed?' she says, wrinkling her nose. 'I hope you had the decency to change the sheets.' She sits up and
folds her arms. 'You know, I can't stop thinking about that place.'

'What place?'

'Cauldstone. Can you imagine being in a place like that for most of your life? I can't even begin to see what it would do to you, to be taken away when you're still a—'

Without warning, Luke seizes her and tips her sideways, crashing her into the mattress.

'There's only one thing,' he says, 'that's going to shut you up.' He is disappearing under the duvet, working his way down her body when his voice reaches her: 'Who was your first?'

She releases a strand of trapped hair from under her head, readjusts the pillow. 'Sorry,' she says. 'Confidential information.'

He lurches out from under the duvet. 'Come on.' He is outraged. 'Fair's fair. I told you.'

She shrugs, impassive.

He seizes her round the ribs. 'You have to tell me. Was it someone I know?'

'No.'

'Were you obscenely young?'

She shakes her head.

'Ridiculously old?'

'No.' Iris reaches out, touches the shade on the bedside light, then withdraws her hand again. She places it on the swell of Luke's biceps. She examines the skin there, the way the white of his shoulder meets the browner skin of his
arm. She thinks, my brother. She thinks, Alex. The desire to tell flickers, resurges, then wanes. She cannot imagine what Luke would say, how he would respond.

His hands are tight on her shoulders and he is still insisting, 'Tell me, you have to tell me.'

Iris pulls away, letting her head fall back to the pillow. 'No, I don't,' she says.

They were casting off from Bombay. The boat was vibrating and groaning beneath them and people were crowded along the quay, waving flags and banners in the air. Esme held her handkerchief between two fingers and watched it flap and flutter in the breeze.

'Who are you waving at?' Kitty asked.

'No one.'

Esme turned towards her mother, standing next to her at the rail. She had one hand raised, holding her hat firm. Her skin had acquired a taut, stretched look, her eyes seeming to press back into their sockets. Her wrist, protruding from her lace cuff, was thin, the gold watch-strap round it loose. Something in Esme moved her to put her hand on her mother's wrist, to touch that bone, to slide a fingertip between the skin and the links in the watch-strap.

Her mother shifted from one foot to the other, turned her head as if to see who was next to her, then turned it back. She reached forward with a jerked movement, as if
on strings, gave Esme's fingers two quick pats, then removed them.

Kitty watched her go. Esme didn't. Esme fixed her eyes on the quay, on the flags, on the great bales of cloth that were being loaded on to the ship. Kitty put her arm through Esme's and Esme was glad of it, the warmth of it, and she laid her head against her sister's shoulder.

Two days later, the ship began to pitch, very slightly at first, and then to roll. Glasses slid along the tablecloths, soup slopped over the sides of bowls. Then the line of the horizon began to see-saw in the portholes and spray hurled itself at the glass. People hurried to their cabins, staggering and falling as the ship bucked beneath them.

Esme studied the map that had been pinned to the wall in the games room, their course plotted in a line of red. They were, she saw, in the middle of the Arabian Sea. She said these words to herself as she made her way back along the corridor, clutching the handrail for balance: 'Arabian', and 'sea', and 'squall'. 'Squall' was a good word. It was halfway between 'squawk' and 'all'. Half-way between 'shawl' and 'squeamish'. Or 'squat' and 'call'.

The crew were scurrying about the wet decks, shouting to each other. Everyone else had vanished. Esme was standing at the edge of the deserted ballroom when a steward, darting past, said, 'Don't you feel it?'

Esme turned. 'Feel what?'

'Ill. Seasick.'

She thought about it; she took an inventory of her whole
being, searching for signs of unease. But there was nothing. She felt shamefully, exuberantly healthy. 'No,' she said.

'You're lucky,' he said, hurrying on his way. 'It's a gift.'

Her parents' cabin door was locked and, pressing her ear to the wood, she heard sounds like coughing, someone weeping. In her own cabin, Kitty was crumpled on the bed and her face was deathly white.

'Kit,' Esme said, bending over her, and she was suddenly seized with the fear that her sister was ill, that her sister might die. She gripped her arm. 'Kit, it's me. Can you hear me?'

Kitty opened her eyes, gazed at Esme for a moment, then turned her face to the wall. 'I can't stand the sight of the sea,' she muttered.

Esme brought her water, read to her, rinsed out the bowl beside the bed. She hung a petticoat over the porthole so that Kitty wouldn't have to see the wild, swinging angles of the sea. And when Kitty slept, Esme ventured out. The planked decks were deserted, the lounges and dining rooms empty. She learnt to lean into the angle of the pitch when the ship shifted beneath her like a horse taking a fence. She played quoits, hurling the rope circles one by one on to a pole. She liked to watch the foaming path left behind the ship, her elbows hooked over the railings, to watch the grey, crested waves that they had passed over. A steward might appear and drape a blanket round her shoulders.

In the second week, more people appeared. Esme met a
missionary couple returning to a place called Wells-next-the-Sea.

'It's next to the sea,' the lady said, and Esme smiled and thought she must remember that, to tell Kitty later. She saw them both glance at the black band round her arm, then look away. They told her about the huge beach that stretched out below the town and how Norfolk was full of houses made of pebbles. They had never been to Scotland, they said, but they had heard it was very beautiful. They bought her some lemonade and sat with her on deck-chairs while she drank it.

'My baby brother,' Esme found herself saying, as she swirled the ice in the bottom of the glass, died of typhoid.'

The lady put her hand to her throat, then rested it on Esme's arm. She said she was very sorry. Esme didn't mention that her
ayah
had also died, or that they had buried Hugo in the churchyard in the village and that this bothered her, that he was being left behind in India while they all went to Scotland, or that her mother hadn't spoken to her or looked at her since.

'I didn't die,' Esme said, because this still puzzled her, still kept her awake in her narrow bunk. 'Even though I was there.'

The man cleared his throat. He gazed out to the lumped, greenish line of what he'd told Esme was the coast of Africa. 'You will have been spared,' he said, 'for a purpose. A special purpose.'

Esme looked up from her empty glass and studied his
face in wonder. A purpose. She had a special purpose ahead of her. His dog-collar was startling white against the brown of his neck, his mouth set in a serious downturn. He said he would pray for her.

Esme's first sight of the place her parents called Home was the flatlands of Tilbury, emerging from a shadowy, dank October dawn. She and Kitty had been waiting up on deck, straining their eyes into the mist. They had been expecting the mountains, lochs and glens they had seen in the encyclopedia when they had looked up Scotland, and found this low, fogged marshland a disappointment.

The cold was astonishing. It seemed to flay the skin from their faces, to chill the flesh right down to the bone. When their father told them that it would get colder still, they simply did not believe him. On the train to Scotland – because it turned out that this was not Scotland, after all, just the edge of England – she and Kitty bumped against each other in the lavatory as they struggled to put on all the clothes they had, one on top of the other. Their mother held a handkerchief to her face all the way. Esme was wearing five dresses and two cardigans when they pulled into Edinburgh.

There must have been a car or a tram, Esme thinks, from Waverley, but this she doesn't remember. She recalls flashes of high, dark buildings, of veils of rain, of gas-lamps reflected on wet cobbles, but this may have been later. They were met at the door of a large stone house by a woman in an apron.