You Must Be Sisters

by Deborah Moggach

  Then she rallied. Of course she’d tell her! Impossible to keep it buttoned up any longer. Who cared if it was inappropriate? Claire of all people wouldn’t mind.

  ‘I say, Claire,’ she began. And she told her. Speaking the words, she relived it; the whole strange, flustering then peaceful sequence. The stiff awakening, the train journey, the arrival at Euston. The telephoning of the number her doctor had given her, the number of a Doctor Stein. Things happening quickly then. By mid-morning she was sitting in the most elegant of rooms somewhere in St John’s Wood. A dark red room, its blinds down. As she talked to the doctor she kept her eyes away from his hands which were soft and white. Fingers. Fingers reaching out the night before. Why were this man’s hands so white? Fingers sliding between legs. Oh it was a cruel business, all of it. Until lately she hadn’t realized that.

  ‘What did he say?’ asked Claire.

  ‘Was I absolutely convinced I wanted the termination? A lot more questions like that. Probing ones. He wrote the answers down on a form.’ At one point he had lifted the telephone and spoken to her doctor in Bristol; they obviously knew each other well. While he talked he carried on writing on her form. She had the sensation of things being taken out of her hands, of the smooth machinery starting to work. He’d nodded several times and she’d started to relax. Then he’d sent her into another room to get the form counter-signed by an equally suave doctor sitting at an equally elegant desk.

  ‘Then he said that the red tape usually took a day or two, but that they had an unexpected vacancy in their clinic. By sheer chance they could fit me in the next afternoon. Sheer greed, more like. Obviously business hasn’t been too good lately.’

  Claire was sitting watching her. ‘How cynical you sound! It frightens me.’

  ‘I didn’t like them, either of them. I didn’t like their hands.’

  ‘And money?’

  ‘Remember Josie’s money? The Building Society? I’d forgotten she’d left us those little deposits.’ She smiled. ‘Funny Aunty Josie, with her shelves of romances. What would she say, I wonder, if she knew how her money had been used?’ She paused, thinking. ‘Actually, remember that sherry and those olives? In her way she always was a liberator.’ She paused again. ‘Anyway, I rushed off and cashed it, didn’t I.’

  ‘And then?’

  ‘Then I was hustled away. Most efficient, the whole business.’ Laura looked at the floor, looked at her hands, looked at her legs in their jeans. She did it all slowly, in a quiet way that was new to Claire. Claire didn’t move, so transfixed was she.

  ‘And later?’

  Consciousness glimmering brighter and brighter until Laura was awake. Sleepy still, but awake. For a while she couldn’t believe it had happened for she felt nothing but a comfortable drowsiness. The room was white and anonymous; timeless too, for blinds were down and she had no watch. All was silence. Minutes passed, perhaps hours, as she lay back in the soft pillows. Cleansed, she felt. The past lay behind, the future ahead and in the middle lay her own self, drowsy between the sheets. Lying there she was the blank space between two chapters; between two halves of a film she was the white notice saying INTERVAL. Not an unpleasant sensation.

  ‘Puritanically,’ she said, ‘I felt it should have hurt.’

  Time passed; a nurse entered with some tea. More time passed; the doctor came in and told her she could leave in the morning. More time passed; the blind grew grey and the nurse entered and switched on the light. It must be late. She lay in her vacuum, not thinking, just existing, in the room that was no longer white but lit yellow and with shadows in the corners. The confusions of the past seemed to be slipping away.

  ‘And this morning you came out?’

  This morning she had come out. Behind the clinic stood sooty privet bushes and dustbins; she’d seen them because she went out of the wrong door. They were large dustbins. Inside her body something cold knotted itself. She might be released but she would never forget.

  ‘And I peered through the bushes and looked at the forecourt. The side marked DOCTORS was sleek with Jaguars.’

  That was that, then. Claire sat back and gazed limply at Laura. Many questions swum around her head and one surfaced. ‘Why on earth didn’t you tell me, you idiot? I could have been there with you.’

  ‘It happened so quickly. This vacancy and all. Anyway, I wanted to see if I could do the whole thing myself for once. Be really adult.’

  ‘You chose a drastic time to start.’

  ‘It was rather drastic.’ Laura lapsed into silence, thinking it all over again. It took the greatest effort, a heaving apart of heavy curtains, rows and rows of them, to get back to the beginning and remember that the day before yesterday she’d woken up on a waiting-room bench.

  ‘And what now?’ Claire asked. She looked pale, drained, her hands clenched together. She was gazing at Laura, her eyes searching Laura’s face. There was a long pause.

  What now? ‘Money to be earned,’ Laura said. Josie – the memory of her – to be paid back. Things to be sorted out in her head and in her body. Things to be done in a different way. She looked up at Claire. ‘I feel rather changed but I don’t feel all goody-goody. I’m not some reformed paragon of purity. It’s just that I feel my attitude’s changed.’

  ‘Wearing the same dress but with a different expression on your face.’

  What shall I do? thought Laura. Tomorrow, next week, next month?

  ‘Enough about me,’ she said briskly. ‘What’s it like being married, then?’

  ‘Nice,’ said Claire, and stopped. Where could she start? There was a silence. The very size of events, the headline nature of them – Sister Has Abortion, Sister Marries – overwhelmed them. They gazed at each other.

  ‘Let’s look at the house,’ suggested Claire.

  They did look at it, its ordinary bay-fronted downstairs, its ordinary bay-fronted upstairs. Things already had their place; Laura felt safe. Downstairs on Geoff’s desk those long buff envelopes with windows that she, Laura, never bothered to investigate, were open and stacked on his IN tray. Not her sort of life, but she could see the use of it. And here upstairs the bed was made. Married people always made their beds. She and Mac never did. Looking round this bedroom she could tell that mornings here would be brisk bathroom noises and the murmur of the BBC News. Very different from mornings in Jacob’s Crescent; she and Mac never switched on the News, for who would wish strikes at Leyland to break a trance as sunlit as theirs? Instead, if they had the energy one of them would get up and put on a Bach Violin Concerto; or else they’d just lie there listening to the birdsong outside, and those unfortunate people who had to go to work trying to start their cars. Oh the freedom, and oh the sneaking guilt!

  Claire gestured towards the window. ‘No huge sky or epic landscape,’ she said apologetically. ‘Not quite the Jacob’s Crescent panorama.’

  Tiny gardens and the back views of semis. In fact, a row of equivalent back views. ‘I like it,’ said Laura. ‘Cared-for gardens. Ours never was, not really.’

  Laura gazed at the neat bed, at the order. Was this freedom? The view might be restricted but did that matter if one’s mind was not? And Geoff and Claire would listen to the BBC News, she knew it. They would care about what happened outside their own hallowed patch. Now she could look back on it – just a little, foreshortened as it was – she could see how shuttered her life with Mac had been. Despite that huge view, despite what she had considered that limitless freedom.

  Her life wouldn’t go the same way as Claire’s, she knew that. But she could understand now.

  Claire stood gazing at the back view of the opposite house. ‘I like it, I must say.’ For a moment she forgot Laura and smiled. Every night a light shone in the upstairs window equivalent to theirs; a bond lay between the two lit rectangles. A secret bond, for the occupants of the two houses would never recognize each other in the street. But they shared their nights, nights when Claire would lie, her husband’s body against hers, his arms around her, and
gaze into the dark. Her night-time view, dear beyond words.

  Downstairs they had the pie for lunch and then they started sorting through packing-cases in the sitting-room. The two of them sorted piles of junk – things with lids missing, things not quite broken enough to throw away, things that some day just might be useful – into piles. Suddenly Claire realized she wasn’t humming. With Geoff there, she would be. During the silence of any shared occupation she felt compelled to inform him, by a hum or a whistle, that she was cheerful. She was conscious of him beside her, that was why. With Laura, she realized, she never felt the need to hum, for Laura was completely accepted into her life and always would be. How long, she wondered, would it take her to get so utterly used to her husband? To his mind being in the same room as hers? Longer, for sure, than it took to get used to his marvellous body.

  Laura looked out at the street. The semis stared back at her, yet curiously enough she didn’t feel closed in by them as she should. She felt larger and calmer, actually, than she’d imagined possible. Whatever her surroundings she felt free – freer, she realized with surprise, than she’d felt in that independent room in Bristol which at the time had seemed the threshold to such fascinating liberty. Then she’d been blank and unused, and how very much younger, dabbling about with her little efforts at individuality.

  Outside a mother and two children were getting into a car. An unremarkable suburban family like her own had been. So why did she feel overwhelmed with fondness? A child pulled open the door; a large dog got into the back seat and sat in there, aunt-like, big and complacent, blotting out the rear window. The woman lifted the children in and closed the door. She won’t go down in history, thought Laura. Nor will I.

  Her image of people thickened – of Geoff, of her parents. Barriers were falling, vistas opening. The figures in her life were becoming more human by the minute. How could she have been so rigid about people, so intolerant?

  She sat back on her heels, looking at her suitcase. Soon – later today or tomorrow morning – she would go. Perhaps back to Bristol, but it would be a different Bristol now.

  For the first time in her life she would work, really work. That was the answer. She had a debt to pay. She looked out of the window; yes, perhaps she’d even work on the buses. Why not? There would be something right and proper about that. She’d sort out her stuff and find somewhere cheap and she’d make the money because she would work differently from the way Mac had done. She would tell nobody, not even Claire, until it was finished.

  It would be a strange few weeks, she knew that. A time cut adrift from Harrow, and textbooks, and Jacob’s Crescent with its little square of vegetables gone to seed. She looked up; adrift, too, from this Queen’s Park sitting-room with its returning husband and its little square of earth so carefully nurtured. What do I want? she thought.

  At the moment, just to pay back the money. It would satisfy her, that.

  twenty-nine

  SEPTEMBER, WITH AUTUMN scents on the air. In the herbaceous border many flowers had seeded and podded; spears of them, brown, now rose up behind the mauve blur of the michaelmas daisies. Dampness underfoot, under leaves.

  And hanging over the garden the blue smoke from a bonfire. From her bedroom upstairs Holly could see her father standing there throwing armfuls of leaves on to it. The flames leapt into the air; she could even hear them crackling. Her father bent down and gathered some more.

  She was supposed to be packing her trunk. Actually, she’d got very cross with Mummy about it because Mummy had kept on nagging and nagging about why didn’t she, Mummy, help, because she was so quick at it and then she, Holly, wouldn’t get into a fluster at the last minute.

  Yes, she’d really got quite cross with Mummy. She was getting to be such a nuisance, always telling her, Holly, to do things. The fact was, she wanted to do this particular thing in private; she wanted to do it in private because of the book.

  Whenever she went over to her chest of drawers to fetch something like her navy blue games knickers or her white shirts she had to pass her pillow. Under her pillow lay the book. If she just lifted the pillow she could see its orange cover. And if she opened it …

  She was sitting on her bed now, bundle of knickers in her hand. She opened it at the list of contents. She knew the list by heart, of course, but she wanted to see it again.

  Chapter 1: Sexual Development. Chapter 2: The Sex Act. Chapter 3: Some Difficulties Experienced by Couples. Chapter 4: Morals and Society. Chapter 5: Birth Control. Some bits were boring. She hadn’t bothered at all with Chapter 4. It was Chapters 2 and 3 that were the ones.

  She hadn’t believed any of it, of course. Not when she’d read it first. She thought there must have been some mistake, or she must have been reading it all wrong, or else it was some long and complicated joke. People couldn’t possibly do that, could they? Could they? Ordinary people like Ann’s mother and father, or the Hacketts next door, people who she’d regarded as quite sensible grown-ups in every other way. People – and whenever she thought about this she went icy inside – people like Mummy and Daddy.

  But they must. In the midst of all this awful muddle one thing was becoming clear. They must, or else she, Holly, wouldn’t be sitting here on her bed. Unless, of course, they’d found her in a phone box and adopted her when she was a tiny baby. She would like to think that was the answer but there was still the problem, she had to admit it, of how much she looked like Laura and Claire. ‘You must be sisters,’ people were always saying, and how much she looked like her mother, too. ‘Doesn’t she have Rosemary’s lovely eyes!’ people said, bending down and inspecting her. Anyway, for her parents to have the book downstairs was surely proof enough of their treachery: ‘Young Marrieds’, obvious as anything, right there in the shelf between ‘Roses for Everyone’ and ‘Rambles Through the Cotswolds’. Looking at her parents now made her blush.

  The burning question at the moment was: should she or should she not bring it to school? There were many, many things she wanted to get clear; many, many bits she must read again, and Chapter 5, which on first glance looked the most peculiar of all, she hadn’t even read yet. Anyway, she could show it to Ann and perhaps Ann could explain the funniest bits – if she knew anything about it, that was. And if she didn’t – well, what a marvellous feeling of power to be able to tell her! She could read it out loud, and probably with her it wouldn’t seem so odd when she thought about her parents; she might even be able to laugh about it or wave it aside in a grown-up, knowing sort of way.

  It would be simpler if Laura were here. She could ask her. She might tell her, Holly, a bit more about it. Funnily enough, though of course Laura had never done It, it was easier to imagine her doing It than her parents doing It. Claire, now she thought of it, must have done It else she wouldn’t be having a baby. Still, that didn’t seem too awful. It was just that her mind went blank and buzzing when she tried to picture her parents doing It. And now Laura was back in Bristol, and her room was painted white and looked so empty. Oh, but just now she needed a sister!

  A creak on the landing. Holly froze. There was someone outside the door. A grunt and the door moved a fraction.

  Seized with panic, she bundled the book under the pillow and wedged herself against it, knickers clenched in her hand. She stared at the door.

  Another creak and it pushed open to reveal – Badger. He padded in, tail waving, courteous and kindly. He had come to pay her a visit; he liked to keep in touch with what everyone was doing.

  Holly let out a deep breath and realized she was hot all over and damp under her arms. Her hands clutching the knickers were damp too. It was quite a new feeling, this. Never had she felt she’d had to hide something before. Of course, she’d had special secret treasures she’d kept in special secret places, like those holly trees beside the sand pit. But they’d been nice things. She hadn’t felt, well, guilty about them like she was feeling now. Come to think of it, she’d never felt guilty like this before at all. And now Badger was her
e, so trusting and such a friend, who’d done everything with her and who she’d shown all her secret places in the garden and in the Rec. Now Badge was here she felt worse because, with his wagging tail and bright eyes, he looked so straightforward, and for the first time she had something she would be ashamed of telling even him.

  Holly went to the window. She could see them in the garden, her father beside the bonfire, her mother squatting in the middle of a flowerbed, tying those mauvey flowers to sticks so they didn’t wave about in the wind. She heard laughter. She’d always thought adults led complicated lives, but just at the moment she had never seen grown-ups look so carefree, and it was herself, Holly, who was weighed down. She gazed at the apple tree she’d climbed a thousand times. It had ferns, she noticed, sprouting out under a branch. Ugh! Like hairs in an armpit.

  She avoided Badger’s eye and got up, took the book from its hiding-place and crept downstairs. The coast was clear and she slipped it back into the shelf. No doubt she’d go on reading it next holidays, but just at the moment it seemed too much of a burden to bring to school. Anyway, someone might notice it was gone.

  She started to walk towards the garden, but as she was passing the mirror she caught sight of herself in it. She was fascinated by mirrors, not because of vanity – she never actually looked at her face at all – but because of Inguedoc. Inguedoc was the place, almost like home but not quite, that she could see in the mirror, and it was full of people who were just out of sight. When she passed a mirror, then, she had to give these people a wave because they were her subjects and they expected it of her. She knew, as certainly as she knew anything, that they were craning round the very edges of the mirror frame, pushing and shoving to get a glimpse of her, and so she must please them by a wave. Apart from mirrors, the only other place she got near to them was when she was in her bath and she knew without looking that they were all around the sides of the bath on the floor. When she was sure they were ready she’d flick out little sparkling drops of water, which was money of course in Inguedoc, over the edge of the bath and keep her eyes averted so she didn’t see them scuttling away across the floor, undignifiedly, with their treasures.