‘We move on, do we not? I told my husband about my life at Black Bank and he was horrified – he said it sounded Dickensian. He didn’t want anything to do with them, and Maggie moved anyway – from Black Bank. A few Christmas cards… then it was easier to send nothing.’
‘Lyndon needs to know why… Perhaps, could you?’
She took his hand for the last time. ‘You tell stories for a living, Mr Dryden. Tell this one for me.’
Back in Humph’s cab Dryden sat and tried not to think. He flipped down the vanity mirror and looked again at the picture he had downloaded to his PC that morning: a happy wedding-day shot, confetti on the groom’s smart pilot’s uniform, brother kissing sister. The visceral age-old revulsion swept over him again, and he tried to imagine what it felt like for them.
He found Maggie’s last tape in the glove compartment. ‘Black Bank,’ he said, and hoped it was for the last time.
41
‘Dry lightning,’ said Dryden, as Humph’s cab bumped through the gates to Black Bank Farm.
The bolt struck some trees at Mons Wood with a crack like an artillery shell, the light and sound in almost perfect harmony. The tallest pine torched itself, a crackling suicide of sudden purple flame. The sight of fire seemed, incredibly, to deepen the heat. The featureless horizon appeared to pulse, the hot air on the fen boiling over the shadowless fields.
Humph’s Capri skidded to a halt in the red dust before the old farmhouse. Estelle was at the door, one hand clutched defensively to her throat. She looked a generation older, but nothing like her mother. Maggie’s almost Victorian stoicism was beyond her reach. She looked very modern in the timeless surroundings of Black Bank. And very frightened.
Dryden produced the tape from his pocket and held it up like a trophy: ‘I think we should listen to this. It’s the last one. She said everything would be explained.’
‘Everything is,’ said Estelle, her voice crackling like the air. She turned on her heels and disappeared inside the cool blackness of the farmhouse. He found her in the kitchen, up on the wooden worktop with her legs folded beneath her. Beside her was a portable tape recorder.
‘Your husband?’ said Dryden, leaning against the whitewashed wall.
She flinched at the word, then began to twist the drawstrings of her sweatshirt in a tight knot. ‘I told him you’d find out. He had some crazy idea we could just live in the States–Austin, perhaps. Say we were married in the UK. Keep the other secret. Pretend we didn’t know about that.’ Her hands shook as she lifted a can of Pepsi. ‘But you can’t keep a secret from yourself. And the passport was wrong. They’d have to change that. So we couldn’t just go. Could we?’
Dryden sensed time opening up to let them talk. ‘And the tapes… she did say why she gave Lyndon away?’
She nodded, not trusting herself to speak. Another lightning bolt struck the peatfields to the east and she jumped, every nerve alive to the fact that her world was being ripped apart: shredded by the lie Maggie had told twenty-seven years before.
‘I know too,’ said Dryden. ‘Constance Tompkins just told me. I went to see her this morning.’
Estelle looked at him. ‘We listened to the tapes after the funeral. Lyndon was there. Mum wasn’t very explicit, I guess. But it’s pretty clear. About Johnnie, Johnnie and the pictures… pictures of them, pictures of others. I think Mum was sick. Sick with anxiety. Sick that Lyndon – that Matty – would be abused–sucked into that life. How could she have married him? And in shock. She’d just seen her parents die, die horribly. And then she made that decision, almost instantly. I told Lyndon… he has to see it through the eyes of the girl, the girl Mum was.’ Water welled freely out of her eyes and down her chin. ‘She loved her baby,’ she said, as if insisting on a great truth which had been disputed.
‘But Lyndon doesn’t believe that?’
‘I think he feels it’s not the reason he wanted. He wanted something else… I don’t know what, Dryden. Just something that made it OK. This doesn’t make it OK. I don’t think anything could…’
‘You knew who the father was, didn’t you?’
She looked scared then. ‘Mum never said. I think she wanted it forgotten. That’s one of the reasons she went away. And Johnnie went away too for a bit. When he did come back he must’ve kept his distance. She never mentioned him. People forget, even in a place like this. But I knew. Kids, they talk. When we got back to Black Bank I was twelve. I went to the secondary school and I was famous – infamous. I came from the place where the plane had crashed. At the time, everyone knew Johnnie was the father. Why else would he have run into the flames? But you can imagine the scandal. So I found out pretty quickly. Sometimes, for a dare, we’d go to the Ritz and I’d buy a Coke. It was weird. He never knew I hated him.’
‘Did Lyndon know?’
‘Not before Mum died. But I told him that night–and it was on the tapes.’ She bit her lip.
Dryden walked towards the tapedeck. ‘Maggie said that the tapes would answer all the questions. We should give her that chance,’ he said. He took the last cassette and slipped it into the recorder, and as he did so he felt some of the burden of his promise to Maggie lift. They listened to the silence together and Dryden wondered if it might be blank. Somewhere he could hear seagulls trailing a tractor. Then they heard Maggie’s breath, laboured and intimate, unnaturally close. It filled the kitchen with a tangible sense of her, like an answerphone message played back for the first time.
Estelle watched the spools turn with appalled concentration. This was her mother’s last testament, save for those few words on her deathbed; the two words nobody ever heard: ‘The tapes’.
‘Estelle?’ The voice was an echo of the woman, speaking directly from what she knew would be her grave. It sounded extraordinarily strong and vital.
‘My love,’ said Maggie. ‘I lied to you as well.’
Estelle covered her mouth and waited to see which way her life would turn.
‘We promised each other we’d tell you. But then each year came and went and we wondered why. It made no difference to us. No difference… Every Christmas. Every birthday. All those chances missed…’
The breathing interrupted her, the failing heart bruising her ribs.
‘Then Don died. Don died and it was all down to me. I just couldn’t. He loved you too, Estelle, loved you more than anything–more than his life. He said that before he died – believe me – I haven’t the breath to lie. He didn’t count for anything without you. He told me that for you. His daughter…’
She took a breath and held it.
‘But you weren’t, love. Or mine. We tried to have a family, but it didn’t happen. I think it was a punishment for me, although the doctors said it was Don. But it was my punishment for giving Matty away. For walking away from a child. And a punishment for both of us for wanting a son. Only a son.’
The tape clicked off, then almost immediately back on. ‘The adoption service promised us a son. It was easier then, even with Don’s age. But it went wrong, the family took the boy back at the last minute and it broke my heart, Estelle, broke my heart again. So we said we’d be happy to take the next child. We didn’t mind then if it was a boy or a girl. We just wanted it… wanted you. And when Don brought you home I loved you from the minute I first saw you. I loved you like my own… more than my own.’
Estelle was frozen. ‘Mum,’ she said, and began to cry again.
‘More than my own,’ said Maggie again. ‘A few people knew. But Connie had gone, and I didn’t really have anyone I could tell at Black Bank. So we thought it was best left. Schooclass="underline" it worried us. That you might be teased. So we brought you back to Black Bank as our child. You are our child, love.’