“Wouldn’t Dougie have taken up references?” “I shouldn’t have thought so for a minute. If he’d liked her it wouldn’t have crossed his mind.”
“When was that?”
“Seven years ago. The old lady died two years later. They were married soon after. Quickly. Register Office. No fuss. That was Bella’s decision. I think Dougie would have liked more of a show.”
“Why wait for Dougie’s mother to die?”
“How should I know?” It came out as an ill-tempered shout. She’d had enough of talking. “Look, I should get back.” She thought she might fit in an evening count before dusk, imagined the hill in the last of the light, the skylarks calling.
“Bo you have to?”
“Why?”
“You’re right. You’re not the person to answer. We should speak to Dougie.”
“Grace has a friend staying. I suppose I could leave it until morning.” She could hear the reluctance in her voice. She would rather be on the hill.
“If you don’t want me there I can fix up for you to go to Rosemount on your own.”
“Mother!” Rachael slapped the table with the flat of her hand. “Stop being so bloody understanding.” Then, after a pause, “Don’t be stupid.
Of course I want you there.”
Dougie had been prepared for bed. He wore pyjamas, striped like an old-fashioned prison uniform, with Rosemount Private Nursing Home stamped in red on the collar, a thin to welling dressing gown, brown tartan slippers. The slippers had been put on the wrong feet. He had his own room, pleasant enough, looking over the garden, though it was nothing compared with the view at Black Law. It was very hot. Dougie was perspiring. Rachael had pulled off her sweater as soon as she came into the building.
Outside in the corridor there was constant noise -the clatter of a wheelchair, staff voices shouting about baths and commodes and what had happened to Mrs. Price’s tablets, patients, confused and distressed.
When they arrived Dougie was staring at a portable television which stood on a mock pine formica chest of drawers. The sound was so low that Rachael could hardly hear it. Dougie seemed mesmerized by the fuzzy flashing pictures.
They think he’s daft, Rachael thought, and wondered angrily what Neville had told them. Yet when they went in it was clear that Dougie recognized her. The sister, who showed them into the room, was taken aback by the quick, lop-sided smile, the good hand patting the arm of the chair to indicate that Rachael should come closer.
“You’ve got some visitors, Mr. Furness,” she said shouting, as if he had deliberately misheard her, and
Rachael thought it was the first time she had spoken directly to him.
The visit had been worth it just for that.
Rachael squatted beside him, put her hand on his. “Oh, Dougie,” she said. “I’m so sorry.”
The sister looked at her watch, muttered something to Edie about being in her office if she was needed, and went out.
It was a strange conversation, as intensely focused as one of Edie’s therapy sessions. Dougie communicated by nods, grunts, squeezes of the hand, yet they understood each other. Occasionally they were distracted by the skittering sound in the corridor of soft shoes on polished lino, a high-pitched squeal, the noise, Rachael thought, of rats in a barn, but soon they returned to the business in hand. It came down to this: Bella had killed herself and they couldn’t understand why.
“I want to find out,” Rachael said. “Do you mind? Perhaps you would prefer she was left in peace.”
Dougie made it clear he would prefer nothing of the sort.
“I’d like to look in the house.”
He turned his head away from her and stared back at the television. At first Rachael thought she had offended him, but he clasped her fingers even tighter. It was Edie who followed his gaze, went to the chest of drawers and returned with a bunch of keys.
“Are these the Black Law keys, Dougie?”
But Rachael had already recognized them. They had hung on a cup hook in the kitchen between Dougie’s Newcastle United mug and the giant yellow and green teacup from which Bella drank her coffee.
“I should tell Neville, shouldn’t I, that I’ll be going into the house?”
She looked at him, waiting for an answer but his concentration had gone. In the corridor there was another minor disturbance. A woman screamed in a high, thin voice: “Go away, don’t touch me. Your hands are wet. Your hands are wet!” There were running footsteps, soothing voices but Dougie seemed not to hear.
Rachael, still crouched on the floor, turned so she was speaking almost into his ear, a child whispering secrets, forcing him to pay attention.
“Tell me, Dougie, do you remember the day Bella died?” He continued to stare at the flickering images on the television but she thought he was remembering. What did he see? Bella in the house at Black Law bending over his bed? Bella dressing up to die?
“Did anyone come to Black Law that day? I expect you heard me. I drove through the yard just as it was getting dark. All the dogs started barking. But did anyone come before that?” He seemed lost in thought.
“Was anyone there before me, Dougie?”
She was aware of an effort of memory. He nodded.
“Inside the house?”
He nodded again.
“Did you see them? Do you know who it was? Or hear a voice you could recognize?”
Painfully he shook his head.
Chapter Nine.
Overnight the wind had dropped. There was frost in the valley bottoms and beneath the dry stone walls. The smoke from Baikie’s chimney rose straight into the sky.
Grace was in the kitchen making toast. She held the tiny grill pan close to the gas flame. Otherwise you could wait for hours. She was alone.
“Did your friend come?” Rachael asked. The smell of the toasting bread made her feel hungry. She’d left home deliberately, before Edie was up.
“Yesterday afternoon.”
“Stay the night?”
Grace shook her head, not just an answer to the question but a way of making it clear that no other information would be forthcoming. “How was the funeral?” she asked. She put the toast on a plate, spread it thinly with margarine, cut it in half and offered a piece to Rachael.
Rachael took it and added marmalade.
“Oh, you know.”
“I can’t remember ever having been to a funeral,” Grace said. Rachael thought it was an odd way to put it. It wasn’t a thing you’d forget.
Then the door opened and Anne came in looking very pink and healthy like a child bursting into the house demanding tea after playing out in the street with friends.
“I didn’t hear the car,” Rachael said.
“No, I got Jem to drop me at the end of the track. I thought it looked a nice morning for a walk.”
“I’ve not long arrived. I must have just missed you.”
Anne grinned and Rachael thought it wasn’t Jeremy who’d dropped her at the end of the track but whichever lover she’d spent the night with.
“Have you had breakfast?” Grace asked. She cut another slice from the loaf and put it under the grill. Rachael had never before seen her prepare food without prompting.
“No,” Anne said. “I didn’t seem to have time.” Anyone that smug, Rachael thought, deserved to be gossiped about. She waited until Anne and Grace were on the hill before going into the farmhouse. She didn’t want to explain what she was up to. They might have thought her morbid.
There were two doors into the house. The one Rachael had always used led straight from the yard into the kitchen. It was modern, hardwood and double-glazed with a double lock as standard. Dougie had bought the door when he had the kitchen renovated for Bella. It had been a surprise, a sort of wedding present, a new start anyway. In the old lady’s day the kitchen had been small, dark and draughty, leading into a leaking scullery with a twin tub washing machine and a wringer. Bella had grumbled mildly about the twin tub. It had been before Rachael’s time but she’d heard the story: “By then there were sheets to wash most days. Ivy couldn’t help herself. I had muscles like a weightlifter lugging them, soaking, into the spinner. Poor lamb. It’s not the way I’d want to end up.”