I brightly suggested we have some music.
‘There is no music,’ Claud said.
‘Where are all your CDs?’
‘They belonged to a previous existence.’
‘If you didn’t want them, why did you take them?’
‘They weren’t yours.’
‘Are you seriously telling me’ – I was appalled – ‘that all the music you’ve collected over your whole life, you’ve just, just, binned.’
‘Yes.’
I looked around the room. I realised that, with surgical ruthlessness, Claud had sliced away any evidence of our life together, of our family. This wasn’t order. This was emptiness.
‘Claud,’ I blurted out, ‘how do you remember Natalie?’ Even as I asked, I knew my question was odd, oblique.
‘How do I remember her?’
‘I mean, I’ve been talking to people about her and it struck me as odd that we’ve never really talked to each other about our versions of her.’
Claud sat down in a chair and scrutinised me with the professional air that had always infuriated me.
‘Don’t you think that your preoccupation is going a bit far now, Jane. I mean, all of us – her real family, to put it frankly – we’re trying to pick up our lives. I’m not sure it’s entirely helpful to have you poking about in our past for your own private psychological reasons. Is this what your analyst has been encouraging you to do?’
His manner was mild and correct, and I felt like a schoolchild, unkempt and fidgety on his neat sofa.
‘Okay, Claud, lecture over – so how do you remember her?’
‘She was sweet and bright and loving.’
I stared at him.
‘Don’t look at me like that, Jane. Just because you’re in therapy, you suspect anything that’s straightforward. She was my little sister, and she was a dear child, on the brink of womanhood when she tragically died. That’s that. That’s how I remember her and that’s how I want to remember her. I don’t want you sullying her, even if she has been dead for twenty-five years. Okay?’
I poured another slug of sherry into my miniature glass, and took a sip.
‘All right, what are your last memories of her, then?’
This time Claud did seem to think a bit before answering – or perhaps he was just thinking about whether to answer at all. Then he nodded with an expression almost of pity.
‘I don’t know what you’re doing, but if you insist. We were all at the Stead arranging the anniversary party for when they arrived back from their cruise. I was to fly off to Bombay the following morning. Like most of us, Natalie was helping. On the day of the party and in the morning, you and Natalie and I were rushing about doing errands. Remember?’
‘It’s a long time ago,’ I said.
‘I remember taking her in the car to collect Alan and Martha’s present, and we talked about what she was going to wear, I think. All I remember after that is that I took charge of the barbecue, and I didn’t move from it until the early hours of the morning.’ He looked at me. ‘But you wouldn’t know about that, would you? You were too tied up with Theo. Then I left before dawn the next morning with Alec. The first I heard of Natalie’s disappearance was two months later when I came back home.’
I carefully picked up the crumbs on my plate with my forefinger.
‘Did you see Natalie in the morning?’
‘Of course not. I saw nobody, except mother, who drove Alec and me to the station at about three thirty in the morning. As you know. Come on, Jane, you’re just going over and over old ground. And I can’t help you much: I wasn’t there the day she disappeared.’
He passed his hand over his forehead, and I realised how tired he was. Then he smiled at me, a goofy little intimate half-smile; the hostility went from the atmosphere and was replaced by something else, just as disturbing.
‘Don’t you know,’ he said almost dreamily, ‘how much I regret not being there? For a long time, I thought that if I hadn’t gone off, then it wouldn’t have happened. That I could have prevented it or something ridiculous. And I feel still as if I were separated from the rest of the family because they were all together in it, and I was apart.’ He grinned mirthlessly at me. ‘You always called me the bureaucrat of the family, didn’t you, Jane? Perhaps it’s because that’s how I can feel properly a part of it.’
‘Claud, I’m sorry if I’ve been blundering around.’
Without thinking, I took his hand, and he didn’t take it away, but looked down at our fingers interlocking. We sat in thick silence for a few seconds, and then I drew back, embarrassed.
‘What are you doing for Christmas?’ My voice was too bright.
It was his turn to look embarrassed. ‘Didn’t you know? I was going to Martha’s and Alan’s, but Paul invited me to spend it with him and Peggy.’
‘But they’re coming to me.’ A nasty thought struck me.
‘Paul didn’t think you’d mind.’
‘It’s impossible, Claud. It’s impossible. Dad will be there, and Kim and her new lover, and the boys and Hana. Oh, shit, there’ll be a TV crew there as well, filming us all. What do you want us all to do? Play happy families for the cameras?’
‘It was you who said we could still be friends.’
I had said that. It was a stupid cliché, a fake consolation, and a lie, but I had said it.
‘And I want to be with my sons at Christmas.’
I knew it was a terrible mistake. What was Kim going to say to me?
‘All right.’
Twenty-One
I was sitting down, the dry moss of the stone scraping the curved ridge of my spine. I knew that Cree’s Top was behind me. The River Col was on my left, its surface slate grey, reflecting the cloud cover which had obscured the sun. It was suddenly cold in my sleeveless dress and I hugged myself with my prickly, goosepimpled arms. The screwed-up pieces of paper were almost lost in the murky surface and, flowing away from me, they disappeared into the shades and reflections long before they were carried round the bend. The branches in the elms on my right rustled and swayed with a sudden breath of wind that threatened rain.
I stood and turned round until I was facing Cree’s Top and looking along the path that wound up its slope. Sometimes bushes hid its progress until it disappeared into twilight. I walked determinedly up it. Each time I returned to this river and this hill which separated me from Natalie, the objects seemed more vividly present. The grass was a richer green, the river more detailed in all its ripples and flurries. On this occasion, the detail was not just more precise but somehow harder as well. The water looked heavier and more solid, the path was more rigid under my feet, even the leaves looked like blades that would cut the fingers that brushed against them.