I Am Pilgrim(83)

‘He drowned – he was at the beach house by himself and went for a swim one night.’

I knew the stretch of beach – it was dangerous even in daylight; nobody in their right mind would go swimming there in the dark. Fragments of things I had heard drifted back – he had flunked out of law school, ugly stories about hard drinking, time spent at a rehab clinic in Utah.

‘Of course there were spiteful rumours,’ his mother said. ‘You know what people are like – but the coroner and the police both agreed it was an accident.’

I remembered his grandfather had been a prominent judge – on the Supreme Court – and I figured somebody had put the fix in. If there was a note in the house I suppose it was handed privately to his parents and they destroyed it.

I’ve had too much experience of death for someone my age but even that couldn’t inoculate me. I always thought it would be me, but Corcoran – the dumb sonofabitch – was the first of my class to pass from this world, and it must have taken the colour from my face.

‘You’re pale,’ Mrs Corcoran said, touching my arm to comfort me. ‘I shouldn’t have said it so directly but, Scott, I don’t know any correct—’

She was swallowing hard and I thought she was going to cry but, thankfully, she didn’t. Instead she forced herself to brighten. ‘And what about you – still in the art business?’

Grief hadn’t unhinged her – that was the legend I had created for friends and family when I first went into the field for The Division. Legally, nobody was allowed to know of the agency’s existence, so I had spent months crafting my cover story before the Director finally signed off on it.

Arriving at Avalon unannounced one Sunday, I told Grace and Bill over lunch that I was sick of Rand, sick of research, sick of psychology itself. I said the greatest thing the two of them had given me was an interest in art and, as a result, I was leaving Rand to start a business dealing in early twentieth-century European paintings, basing myself in Berlin.

As legends went, if I do say so myself, it was good – it allowed me to travel anywhere in Europe for my real work and at the same time provided a reason to lose contact with my former acquaintances until I was virtually forgotten. And, obviously, it had been believable – here I was, so many years later, listening to a woman who had been a friend of Bill and Grace asking me about the art racket.

I smiled. ‘Yes, still chasing canvases, Mrs Corcoran – still squeezing out a living.’

She looked from my cashmere sweater down to my expensive loafers, and I realized my mistake – out of deference to Bill’s memory I had dressed up for the occasion.

‘I suspect more than squeezing,’ she said, eyes narrowing.

I didn’t want her to think my fictitious business was successful, or else people might start asking why they had never heard of it, so I took the almost revolutionary step of telling the truth. ‘I was lucky,’ I said. ‘Maybe you already know – Grace left me some money.’

She paused. ‘I would have bet everything I owned against that,’ she said softly.

‘Yeah, she could be pretty aloof,’ I replied, ‘but underneath I suppose she must have felt something.’

‘Obligation, if you ask me,’ she replied tartly. ‘They’re dead now, so I don’t suppose it matters – Grace never wanted you, Scott, not even from the beginning.’

Whatever difficulties I’d had with my stepmother, I had never expected to hear it put so bluntly. I wondered if Mrs Corcoran was exaggerating, and a look of doubt must have crossed my face.

‘Don’t stare at me. I heard her say it – about a week after you arrived from Detroit. We were having coffee out there.’ She pointed towards the lawn that overlooked the lake.

‘Bill, Grace and I were watching you – the nanny had you down at the water’s edge, looking at the swans, I think.’

As young as I was, I remembered that – I had never seen swans before and I thought they were the most beautiful things in the world.

‘Bill wouldn’t take his eyes off of you,’ Mrs Corcoran continued. ‘To be honest, I’ve never seen a man so taken with a child. Grace noticed it too. She kept looking at him and then, very quietly, she said: “I’ve changed my mind, Bill – a child doesn’t fit in with us.”

‘He turned to her. “You’re wrong,” he said. “It’s exactly what we need. More kids – give this place some damn life.”

‘There was a finality to it, but Grace wouldn’t let it drop, determined to have her way – apparently they only had a few days to tell the agency if they were going to keep you.’