He knocked, praying it wouldn’t open.
But it did. Estelle Beck leant against the door jamb in US combat fatigues which Dryden guessed had cost her half a week’s salary. Her T-shirt carried a single Stars & Stripes across her bust.
She held a large Alsatian, the size of a small horse, by the collar while eating a tomato.
‘He won’t hurt you,’ she said, with a smile that never touched the lichen-green eyes. She looked like she hadn’t slept for a week and her carefully cut bob of blonde hair was completely lifeless, like straw. Her knuckles were white as she gripped the dog’s collar. Dryden noticed that the leather was decorated with tiny studs in red and blue with white stars at their centre.
‘Then I won’t hurt him,’ said Dryden, failing to move any of his limbs. ‘What’s he called?’
‘Texas,’ she said, a laugh dying in her throat.
Pitch, thought Dryden. The difficult bit. He took a half step backwards: ‘Maggie asked me to be a witness for a reason. She wants me to find Lyndon’s father. I sent you a copy of the letter?’
She nodded. He looked beyond her to the dark interior of the house and saw a foot poised on the staircase. A trainer, Nike, new and still shop-white below a pair of jogging pants.
‘It’s what she would have wanted,’ he said. Experience told him that if he had to say anything more she wouldn’t let him in.
Estelle dropped the dog’s collar and it padded nonchalantly past, pausing only briefly to smell Dryden’s testicles. In the darkness beyond her Dryden saw a lighter flare, then snap out.
‘Come in. It’s a mess.’
He met Lyndon in the hall. He was putting a large bottle of mineral water into a rucksack. He didn’t have to explain why he was there. He was home, but he didn’t look like he was staying. Dryden looked from brother to sister and searched for the tell-tale signs of their mother.
Lyndon was in a less self-conscious outfit than his pilot’s uniform but it was equally American: grey sweatshirt with US Air Force crest, running trousers in white, and the new Nikes. He twisted a basketball in his slender hands. ‘Excuse me,’ he said to Dryden, and fled into the shadows of the house.
Estelle turned right into the front room. It was stuffy and about as homely as the Victoria and Albert Museum. An upright piano supported a clutch of family photos, a mockery of the truth they now knew. The newest showed Maggie in bed at The Tower with Lyndon on one side and Estelle on the other. It had ‘last picture’ written all over it.
Dryden picked it up. Best to ask first, get it over with. ‘Could I borrow this? We’ll need a picture. I can give you some copies too – bigger size.’
Estelle shrugged. Dryden thudded down into a moth-eaten armchair beneath a stuffed fox’s head. He took out a notebook and tapped it with a ballpoint. ‘I’ll keep it short.’ It was a phrase he loved, and like most of the phrases he loved, it meant nothing.
Estelle sat at the dining-room table sorting through some papers. A will? Dryden hadn’t even thought of that. A wilclass="underline" the sudden possibilities multiplied as he considered Maggie’s hastily re-drawn family tree.
‘So. Where to start?’ said Dryden. Clearly she didn’t know. There was a long silence while somewhere music played. Folk. An American voice just audible: Bob Dylan perhaps.
‘You were born after the crash?’
‘In 1978. Two years,’ she said. Dryden sensed she wanted to go on but was diverted by a greater truth.
‘And your father…?’ He knew much of the story himself, largely retold by his mother. But Fen gossip had clouded the detail.
‘Donald. Donald McGuire. Mum went back to the Beck family name after Dad died. They married in ’76. A few months after the crash. She never said why. He was older, much older. I think she loved him in a way, he certainly loved me. It’s odd, isn’t it? I don’t really believe I remember him at all, but I can remember that he loved me.’
She shuffled some of the papers on the table. ‘Why do you think she married?’ asked Dryden.
‘Yes. She talks about that on the tapes – we’ve been listening together. It’s such a help, hearing her voice. Thank you – it was your idea, wasn’t it? It must have done Mum so much good in those final months, to talk about her life. She felt very guilty about what she did but she had a very noble life in a way. Steadfast. That’s the word that Lyndon uses. We’re still listening. It’s painful – very painful for him.
‘We left the tape recorder in Laura’s room. We’ve cleared out the rest of her stuff – but we thought you should have it back.’
She returned to Dryden’s question. ‘I don’t think she ever regretted marrying Dad. But I got the feeling she did it to get away from here, from the memory. I think she fell in love with the idea of a new life. Away from Black Bank. He had a farm on Thetford Chase, Forest Farm, it’s sold up now and a private house. Mum moved there and that’s where I was born. He died in ’82. Heart. He’s buried out there,’ she said, nodding towards the fen. ‘The church on Fourth Drove.’
Dryden knew it. A wooden chapel built by the Victorians for the crop-pickers. Dilapidated now, it stood at an angle to the land, tipping its cheap tin belfry to the east. ‘St Matthew’s,’ he said, and made a squiggle in his notebook. ‘But you came back.’
‘When Dad died we sold the farm. There’d been a manager here and it had made money, it’s always made money. Black Gold, Mum called it, the peat… you can grow anything ten times a year. Mum wanted to come back.’ She looked out over the kitchen garden. ‘God knows why.’
‘You didn’t want to return?’
‘The place was haunted. It’s just the identity of the ghost that’s changed.’
Dryden tried to imagine it, a childhood overshadowed by the death of a baby she thought was her brother.
From somewhere to the rear of the farmhouse came the rhythmic thudding of a basketball hitting a wall. Dryden heaved a sigh and decided it was time to ask the only question that really mattered: ‘Any idea why she gave her son away?’
Estelle rose. ‘Drink?’ He followed her into the kitchen. By the door a noticeboard held snapshots covered by a clear plastic sheet. Most were of Lyndon, from the naked baby in the paddling pool with the sunburnt arms to the proud airman by his warplane on a windswept New Mexico airstrip. In several of the shots a grey-haired couple in expensive leisure clothes hovered in the background.
Estelle offered Dryden black coffee from a filter machine while she got herself a Pepsi from the fridge. She pulled the tab, slipped it back into the can, and studied the pictures.
‘Mum always made a point of keeping in touch. She’d not met Lyndon since the crash until this summer. There was a real spark – I guess now we know why,’ she said.
Dryden sipped the coffee and felt the promise of the caffeine lift his mood: ‘Jealous?’
She laughed then, forgetting whatever it was that was the backdrop to her life. ‘Of Lyndon! No way. It was dead exciting. An American cousin. And the family – the grandparents – sent presents. Toys and stuff. Clothes for me. It was great. He couldn’t be a threat – he was an ocean away. And it gave me an identity at school – the American kid. Least I wasn’t the Fen kid like the rest. That counts. No, I never resented Lyndon.’