“So… how was Christmas?” I ask. I hear her draw in a breath, steeling herself.
“It was fine, thank you.” She pauses again. “I still buy Henry a present every year, you know. Clifford thinks I am quite mad, of course, but he has never really understood. What it’s like for a mother to lose a child. I can’t just put it aside and move on, as he has managed to do.”
“What did you get him?” Before I can stop myself.
“A book about the RAF. Some new football boots, and some DVDs,” she says, her voice growing, as if she is pleased about choosing these gifts. Gifts she will never give. I can’t think what to say. I would be strangely fascinated to know whether she buys child-sized football boots, or has hazarded a guess at his adult shoe size. “Do you ever think about your cousin, Erica? Do you still think about Henry?” she asks, rushing the words.
“Of course. Of course I do. Especially now we’re… back here again.”
“Good. Good. I’m glad,” she says, and I wonder what she means. I wonder if she senses guilt, hanging around Beth and me like a bad smell.
“So there’s been no news? Of him-of Henry?” Ridiculous thing for me to ask, twenty-three years after he vanished. But what conclusion can I draw, from the gifts she still buys him, but that she expects someday to have him back?
“No,” she says flatly. A single word; she makes no effort to elaborate.
“Eddie’s been here with us for Christmas,” I tell her.
“Who?”
“Edward-Beth’s son?”
“Oh yes, of course.”
“He’s eleven now, the same age as… Well, he had a fine old time, anyway, carousing around out in the woods, getting filthy.”
“Clifford wanted to have another, you know. After we lost Henry. There might still have been time.”
“Oh,” I say.
“But I told him I couldn’t. What did he think-that we could just replace him, like a lost watch?” She makes an odd, strangled sound that I think is meant to be a laugh.
“No. No, of course not,” I say. There is another long pause, another long breath from Mary.
“I know you never got on. You girls and Henry. I know that you didn’t like him,” she says, suddenly tense, offended.
“We did like him!” I lie. “It’s just… well, we liked Dinny too. And we kind of had to choose sides…”
“Did it ever occur to you that Henry used to… act up, sometimes, because you always left him out of your games and ran off to play with Dinny?” she says.
“No. I… never thought he wanted to play with us. He never seemed like he wanted to,” I mumble.
“Well, I think he did. I think it hurt his feelings that you couldn’t wait to get away,” she tells me, resolutely. I try to picture my cousin this way-try to shape the way he treated us, treated Dinny, in these terms. But I can’t-it won’t fit. That’s not the way it was, not the way he was. A flare of indignation warms me, but of course I can say nothing and the silence buzzes down the line. “Well, Erica, I really must go,” she says at last, in one long exhalation. “It was… nice to talk to you. Goodbye.”
She hangs up the phone before I can respond. She does not do this crossly, or abruptly. Absently, rather, as if something else has caught her attention. She’s had lots of fads and projects in the years since Henry died. Tapestry, watercolors, horoscopes, brass rubbing, Anglo-Saxon poetry. The family genealogy was the longest running, the one she really followed through. I wonder if she did it because she got to say his name, over and over again, when Clifford would not allow her to speak of their son. Henry Calcott, Henry Calcott, Henry Calcott. Learning everything she could about his ancestors, the source of each component part of him, as if she could rebuild him.
He’s dead. This I know. He was not carried off. It wasn’t him, lying in the back of a car in a Devizes car park. It wasn’t him, being carried by a mysterious hobo on the A361. I know it because I can feel it, I can feel the memory of his death. I can feel it at the dew pond, even if I can’t see it. The way I could hear the shape of Dinny in the darkness on Christmas Day. We were there, Henry was there; and Henry died. I have the shape of it. I just need to color it in. Because I’ve stalled. I’m blocked. I can’t go in any direction until I can fill this hole in my head, until I can work Beth’s splinter free. Every other thought must detour around these missing things, and that will not do. Not any longer. And if I must start in 1904 and work my way toward it, then that is what I will do.
Through the kitchen window I see Harry, lingering by the trees at the far end of the garden. It’s still raining, harder now. His hands are thrust into the pockets of his patchwork coat and he is hunched, damp, forlorn looking. Without thinking, I pull leftovers from the fridge and larder and start to carve fleshy slices from the cold turkey with its burnt leg stumps. I slather mayonnaise onto two bits of white bread, cram in turkey, and stuffing the consistency of chipboard. Then I take it down to him, wrapped in foil, my coat draped over my head. He doesn’t smile at me. He shifts from foot to foot, in an apparent agony of indecision. Rain drips from the ends of his dreadlocks. I catch the scent of his unwashed body. A soft, animal smell, strangely endearing.
“Here, Harry. I made this for your lunch. It’s a turkey sandwich,” I say, handing it to him. He takes it. I don’t know why I expect him to speak, when I know he won’t. It’s such a fundamentally human thing, I suppose. To communicate with noise. “Eddie’s gone back to his dad’s house now, Harry. Do you understand what I’m saying? He’s not here any more,” I tell him, as kindly as I can. If I knew when Eddie was coming back, I would add this information. I don’t. I don’t know if we’ll be here. I don’t know anything. “His father came today and took him home with him,” I explain. Harry glances at the sandwich. A tiny metallic tune, as rain hits the foil. “Well, at least eat this,” I say gently, patting his hand on the sandwich. “It’ll keep you going.”
Beth finds me in the study. I am curled up in a leather bucket chair. I stood on the desk to get this book of wild flowers down from the top shelf. It brought a shower of dead flies with it, a smell of past lives. Now it’s open, heavy across my knees, at a double-page spread of yellow marsh flags. Ragged, buttery irises. Nonchalantly drooped petals on tall stems, like pennants on a still day. I recognized them as soon as I saw them. Marsh flags.
“The rain’s stopped. Do you fancy a quick walk?” Beth asks. She has plaited her hair, put on clean jeans and a sweater the color of raspberries.
“Absolutely,” I say, all astonishment. “Yes, let’s.”
“What were you reading?”
“Oh, just about wild flowers. There were three old pillowcases up in the press. They had yellow flowers embroidered on them, and I wanted to know what they were.”
“What were they?”
“Marsh flags. Does that ring any bells with you?”
“No. Should it? What kind of bell?”
“Probably a misplaced bell. I’ll just get some wellies on.”
We don’t walk very far, since the sky is like charcoal on the horizon. Just down into the village and then up to the barrow. I am sure I see one of the girls from the solstice party through the window of the pub. Sitting by the fire, accepting a fresh pint from a man whose back is turned to me. There’s a welcoming drench of wood smoke and beer and voices from the doorway, but we carry on past. Lots of villagers out and about today. Walking off the cake and puddings. They all greet us, although I am sure we are not recognized. A few faces tug at me. They slot into my memories somewhere, but too seamlessly for me to pick them out. A stout woman rides past on her horse, silver tinsel woven into its tail.
We cross the tawny grassland up to the barrow, scare up two dozen glossy rooks that had been strutting purposefully. The wind whisks them away, and from a distance they look like ragged shot-holes in the sky. Beth links her arm through mine, walks with a swinging step.