The White Lie (42 page)

She could see it now: the news kept aside, kept in the quiver with all the other arrows, until the perfect moment announced itself. "
Mog didn’t mention it? I’ve known for over a week.”

“No, well, thinking’s not something you’re known for, is it?” her father said, his face betraying its secret hurt but his mouth continuing sarcastically.

“Sorry.”

“Thinking. Not something you’ve ever really gone in for much.”

“It’s all very new—the decision, I mean. I wasn’t even really sure.”

Her announcement of the plan to her mother had also taken place in the shop. The timing had been less than ideal. Pip says she’s like one of those pheasants that sit in the verge and wait for a car to come by before they rush across the road just in front of it. The confession wasn’t planned but the village store, crowded with a coach party and noisy and ordinary, had seemed quite suddenly like the ideal venue. The explosion came, but within those four walls and between chattering Japanese people buying bottles of water and postcards it was controlled, smothered,
whoomph
.

Her mother had gone quiet. That was her way. Quietness first, a quiet metabolising, before coming up with her response. When it was delivered, finally, it came in whole and prepared paragraphs, its rebuttals built in, already anticipating others’ responses.

Euan’s reaction, however, was immediate. “You’re a fool.”

“Oh—thanks, Dad. Thanks for all the support.”

“You are. Work in the hotel, are you mad? Really, Mary. What on earth is going on with you? I barely recognise you in these decisions.”

“I’m not intending it to be permanent. I need a change of pace for a bit. I have other things I want to do.”

“Writing, you mean. Bloody stupid idea.” He opened the chill cabinet with unnecessary force. “No money in it. And precious little point.”

The chill cabinet was slammed shut again,
whap
. Mog followed him down the aisle and he talked to her over his shoulder. “It’s all rejection and heartache, Mary. Thousands, hundreds of thousands of you chasing the same little slots. Rejection, self-doubt and unpaid bills.”

“Some people have to succeed. There’s no reason that it shouldn’t be me.”

“No reason? I could give you a hundred reasons.”

“Go on then. A hundred reasons.”

“Don’t be cheeky.”

“Don’t be cheeky? I’m almost 30.”

“I can give you the reason that matters most. You don’t have the talent for it. Harsh words, but there you are. Better to know the truth now than to struggle.”

“How would you know? Really, how? Have you read anything I’ve written in the last ten years?”

“And the other thing is, it’s all nepotism. This is what you don’t understand. People who get published—they’re people with contacts, with family in there, friends giving them a leg-up.”

“They can’t all be.”

Euan selected a newspaper and folded it under his arm. “You need a profession. You need structure. I’m all for having a break, but the hotel! That’s a waste of your time. A waste of a good brain. I can’t bear it. I can’t.” He rifled through the bags of bread, looking for the palest rolls. Joan would send them back if they were too brown. “Promise me you’ll consider the college. I’ll get a prospectus sent on to you. And don’t talk about writing, for pity’s sake. Please. Just drop it.”

“I need to try or I’m always going to wonder. I have enough money saved.”

“You need to have a good long think about what it is that interests you, really interests you, and start working towards that.” He put his packet of butter, the carton of milk, the newspaper and bag of morning rolls decisively onto the counter. It was the newspaper she worked for. Used to work for. Both of them stared at it.

“I knew that job was a mistake. I told you. I told you, didn’t I? But you wouldn’t have it. You’re so bloody stubborn. Never wrong, you’re never bloody wrong.” And then, without a pause, “Yes, morning Mrs Pym; fine, thanks; yes, really peculiar weather.”

That was when Mog walked away, turning and giving him her most wounded look. She left the shop and kept walking, forgetting all about the bicycle.

“Oh yes, there she goes, typical,” he called after her, coming to the door.

***

Edith and Pip were on the terrace. Edith was working her way along the urns, dead-heading flowers and evicting sprouting weeds. Pip was using his phone to reply to email.

“I’ve been thinking about Michael a good deal this week,” Edith said, unearthing a dandelion by the root and discarding it.

“Me too,” Pip replied absent-mindedly.

“It’s because we have visitors, I suppose.”

“And his name has been mentioned a lot,” Pip added. Edith stopped what she was doing and turned to him, her hands in floral garden gloves. “Has it?”

“Don’t worry,” Pip said blandly, frowning at his screen. “All fine. Nothing to worry about.”

Edith dropped her secateurs and went into the house at a rush, fumbling with the door handle. Pip stared after her, then followed. He heard the ballroom door opening and closing, its particular whoosh and metallic definitive click. He found Edith in there, already on her way out, opening the French windows that lead back onto the terrace.

“It occurred to me to air the room for the party,” she said. “I don’t know if your Joan had it on there—your mother, I mean—on the list for today.”

“You’re upset.”

“It was the way you said that. I felt suddenly like . . . like a conspirator.”

“Well, that can’t be helped,” Pip said reasonably. “And look. The conspiracy, such as it is, is protective of someone and not damaging to another. So it was the right decision. On one side, protective, and on the other, unable to make anything worse. It didn’t make Michael any more dead.”

“Oh, Pip.
Pip.
”

“I’m sorry—that was rather crudely put. But please, please, let’s try not to romanticise it. Let’s hold onto the facts. Those facts.”

“Yes.”

They returned outside. Edith leaned against the balustrade and Pip stood beside her.

“I’ve been having the most vivid dreams,” Edith told him. “Exhausting dreams. Things from the past, the deep past, some of them. Things I feel as if I’m witnessing, that feel true.”

“Like?”

“Even though I wasn’t there. Ursa and Jo for instance, the accident.” She shivered. “As if I was in the car with them. The lorry on the wrong side of the road. Ursa swerving away and then—”

“Don’t.”

“It’s so real, it feels so real. I’ve been through a long period of things not seeming as real as that. It feels new; the sharpness of it.”

“It’s because Alastair’s here.”

“I know. I know; you’re right.”

“It will all settle down again on Monday when everyone’s gone.”

“I’m dreading Monday.”

“Please don’t cry. Please don’t. It’s your birthday.”

“I was fine earlier. I was happy. I walked home from church feeling anxious, but then I saw you all in the kitchen and decided everything was going to be fine.”

“It will be.”

“I feel as if something has started that can’t be stopped.”

“What on earth, why would you feel that?”

“I should be happy. But I feel this . . . this terrible dread.”

“I can stay on for a couple of days if you like. And Mog will be here. Mog will be here with you for probably a whole year—think of that. You’re going to love it.”

She dried her eyes. “I know. You’re right.”

Pip squeezed her hand. “What on earth is it? I wish you’d tell me.”

“I’m stirred up, that’s all.”

“I think we all are.”

She turned to look at him. “Really? Are we? Are we together in this?”

“Of course. And it will settle. Things will go back to their lovely quiet ploddy state very soon.”

“But I keep seeing this image, Pip. You will think me very foolish. I think I’m very foolish. I’d be the first to say so. It’s a glider, gliding behind the plane, and when the string or whatever is cut, when the line is released, the glider swoops down and crashes and breaks and bounces along and it’s all silent, no sound at all.”

“You’re feeling the strain.”

“I keep seeing this. It comes into my head. It’s not even a dream. I can’t wake up from it, Pip.”

“It will pass. These things always pass.”

“It’s how I feel about Monday. I won’t be able to . . . I don’t think I can carry on.”

“Mog will be here though.”

Fresh tears fell.

“What on earth is it? Is there anything I can do?”

“There’s something I need to tell you.”

“Okay.”

“I told someone.”

“You told someone what?”

“I told Susan Marriott. About Michael.”

“About Michael what?”

“About Michael. About the loch.”

“About the loch.”

“Yes. The loch, Ursula, the day. The accident.”

“Oh god.”

“I know, I’m sorry.”

“Oh no. You didn’t. Tell me you didn’t. About Ursula?”

“Yes. Everything.”

“I can’t believe it. After all this time. What on earth made you do that?” His voice was heroically unexcited. “I can’t believe it. Why would you?”

“I don’t know. I had to. I’m sorry. I tried to take it back. I rang her and said I’d been idiotic. I’m not sure what she thinks of me now, and what she believes. Our friendship has come to an end. But I trust her. I do trust her.”

“Right.”

“You’re angry with me.”

“I think it was a mistake.”

“Also, I’m becoming a Catholic.”

“What? Where did that come from?”

“I have no one to talk to, Pip.”

“And that has anything to do with anything because?”

“I’m so sorry about Susan. You’re angry. We’ll talk about it another time.”

“Another time?” He laughed mirthlessly, and leaned down, hands on the balustrade. “Oh shit.”

“Susan’s a Catholic,” Edith explained. “No—that’s not the reason. But I needed to know from her what would happen if I told the priest.”

“About Ursula killing Michael.”

“Please lower your voice.”

“You needed to know that it would stay in the confessional.”

“Yes.”

“And?”

“She didn’t know. About—about something like this.”

“What if Susan decides it’s her duty to tell someone? Or can’t help herself confiding in a friend, and then they feel they have to report it? What about Ursula? I thought Ursula came first.”

“I think I wanted to be punished. I think I wanted Susan to ring the police. At the moment I told her, I mean. But she surprised me completely. I told her what happened and she said that she would have done exactly the same.”

“Well, that’s something.”

“It started in hospital,” Edith said. “Wanting someone to tell. Lying there on my own a lot. Don’t look like that. I don’t blame Henry for not coming. Henry’s Henry and that’s that. It wasn’t that. Lying in hospital, knowing I might die, all I could think about was Michael and how we handled things.”

“We all think about it, all the time, believe me. I don’t think I’ve ever had a conversation with Mog that hasn’t come back to it in some way. Seriously.”

“It was wrong, Pip.”

“There wasn’t any choice,” Pip said. “You didn’t feel like you had any choice. We all get that. We understand it.”

“Will you tell? Tell the others, what I’ve done?”

“I won’t tell the others anything. Sometimes keeping quiet is the best policy. If we keep quiet it may all blow over and be nothing.”

***

By six o’clock that evening, Joan’s plans had all reached fruition. Out in the flower garden, a trestle table spread with a red gingham cloth was laden with the kind of food that a television cook thinks children like, and plastic jugs heavy with ice had been filled with fresh juices, a pastel-fruit array of them, jugs topped by fly-nets weighted by polished pebbles. The weedy profusion of the flower garden was at its most successful point of the growing year, its most convincingly apparently designed, the weeds forming a soft green backdrop to flowers in drifts. The white lilac was out, late flowering after a cold spring, and the backs of the borders glowed shell pink with plate-sized blackhearted poppies. Waterproof-backed rugs had been spread around, and books, toys and musical instruments had been left sitting in strategic piles. A nanny hired for the occasion had prepared the cut-potato printing, a pass-the-parcel package, the paddling pool for hook-a-duck. She was wearing jeans and cowboy boots and a man’s pale blue shirt knotted at the front, sunglasses ready on the top of her head, and seemed the most relaxed of anyone: relaxed and voluble and patently used to being in charge.

Over the stile, beside the most photogenic of Peattie’s threatened meadows, cushions had been positioned encircling the fire pit. I dug out this fire pit, lined it with stones and created the stone slab seating around the edge, for my 19th-birthday party. Henry wasn’t impressed, or so I heard via Vita, who reported that the word
vandalism
had been mentioned. We disagreed, Henry and I, about heritage and fun—the two seemed often to be at odds with one another. Henry had argued that he was merely the custodian. “You’re not just a custodian,” I’d told him. “This is your life. This is your house. You can do what you like with it. What would you like to do with it? Do some of it.” (Henry looking appropriately blank.)

Inside the great hall, Gail the coat attendant was reading a magazine, seated at a table upon which stood rows of glasses of steadily warming and flattening champagne. Joan had already been in, irritably, to complain that she had pre-poured, instead of keeping the bottles in the ice beneath the table until needed, as instructed. White fairy lights led the way along the passage towards the picture gallery, and the ropes of heavier coloured globes Mog and Rebecca had fixed up marked the children’s route, through the gothic studded door (wedged open tonight with a warming iron) and down the stairs into the flower garden. Gail was supposed to telephone the nanny in the garden on her mobile—Joan had provided the phones—to come and fetch those who were known to be or appeared to be under the age of 13. Some of these children, refusing to comply, had decamped en masse to the ballroom. Joan’s decision not to use it for the evening proved the right one; there’s something persistently cheerless about its great size and grandeur, its murals and gilt. A gang of small girls, clad every one as fairies or princesses in slightly too-large-dressing-up clothes, was running and sliding in white ankle socks and making the most of the echo.