• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

By Root 764 0

retrieved my bicycle, and headed to the village. I had no plan other than to find Todd. I would be in his presence, and whatever happened would happen. Perhaps we would simply sit side by side, talking about university and his studies, perhaps . . . I knew only that the sight of Coco laughing and squirming on the stone bed had made me reluctant to climb quietly into mine. Would Mr. Sinclair be happy with someone who didn’t know a pied wagtail from a mallard? The Iron Age from the Stone Age? And what would happen if she became the mistress of Blackbird Hall? I pictured Nell at a school like Claypoole. My lovely room, my job, gone in a flick of her scarlet nails.

“Au pair,” Coco would say incredulously, shimmying her blond hair.

When I got to the village, Nora’s house was dark. Perhaps, I thought, they were visiting a neighbour. I walked my bike down the road, studying the lit-up windows of the houses on either side, hoping to spot Nora, or Todd. I would tap on the window and Todd would look up with a smile. In one house I glimpsed the minister and his wife, in another the postmistress and her sister. If Nora and her family were visiting, it was farther afield. On impulse I stopped at the one place in the village I could legitimately enter at any hour. Leaning my bike against the wall, unclipping my light, I pushed through the gate into the churchyard. In all my weekly visits I had never before stopped to look at the graves. Now I began to walk up and down the rows, shining my torch on the stones, some new and upright, some old and perilously aslant. I came upon several Sinclairs, including Vicky’s parents. At last I found Mr. Sinclair’s brother.

“Roy Albert Sinclair, beloved son of Hamish and Elspeth. His Redeemer calleth. 1923–1953.”

Next to him were their parents. Hamish had died in 1960, Elspeth less than two years ago, in August 1964. My torch caught a flash of scarlet. A vase of dahlias—the same colour as those blooming in the border at Blackbird Hall—stood beside the stone. I kept searching up and down the rows. No grave bore Alison’s name.

Back at the hall the lights were still on downstairs. I put my bike in the shed and began to walk around the house, thinking to slip in through the back door. I had just turned the corner when the sound of voices stopped me.

“Can we go sailing tomorrow?” Coco said.

“If the wind drops, if the tide is right, and if Mr. Pirie will lend me his boat.”

They were sitting on the bench beneath the beech trees; I could make out the glimmer of Coco’s blouse and of Mr. Sinclair’s white shirt. Grateful for my dark clothes, I edged closer to the fountain.

“Why don’t you get your own boat? You could call it HMS Coco.”

“Because it would pain my thrifty Scottish soul to spend money on something I used only two or three times a year. As a boy I had to gather driftwood and dig potatoes to earn my pocket money. My parents saved string and pieces of soap and the sticky edges of sheets of stamps. Buying a boat would be like burning money on their graves.”

Rather than giving them red dahlias, I thought.

“So tell me, Madame Coco,” he went on, “why did Giles decline my invitation to come here so vehemently? One week the two of you seemed to be heading to the altar. The next you’d prefer to be at opposite ends of the country.”

“I don’t want to talk about Giles. He’s a philanderer.” She said the word so lazily that at first I thought she was referring to some kind of shrub, a cousin of the rhododendron. She slipped off the bench and, stepping away from the trees, sat and then lay back on the grass.

“You have good stars here,” she said. “My first boyfriend had a telescope. He taught me how to find the rings of Saturn, but we never had stars like this near Brighton.”

“Giles might use an even harder word about you. Just when he lost his job you couldn’t give him the time of day.”

“Don’t let’s talk about Giles,” Coco repeated. “Here we are in your Scottish stronghold. Colin told me today that there’s a legend about your family: that only second sons will inherit. The oldest son is always doomed.