Sisterland

by Linda Newbery

  There was a lot of money tied up in the house, Hilly knew – money that could, possibly, be spent on a bigger one for themselves, with enough bedrooms for everyone. But it wasn’t simply a matter of house-room. With Zoë and Hilly back at school, their mother had to take almost all the responsibility of looking after Heidigran, fitting her own part-time work at the sports centre around everyone else’s hours. The strain was beginning to show.

  ‘Even though I seem to be dashing about all the time, trying to fit everything in,’ she had told Hilly, ‘I feel as if my whole life has slowed down to creeping pace. Creeping slowly towards the inevitable.’

  She was referring, Hilly knew, to Heidigran’s further decline and death. How long? How long are we talking about? Hilly wanted to ask, but it seemed callous – almost impatient, as if she were saying, Come on, let’s get on with it, if we must. Heidigran’s life was being measured out slowly, in cups of tea and rows of knitting, in trips to the shops or garden centre, in small treats and pleasures. She could not be left alone, and it was a blessing if she slept through the night without going downstairs to check the front door. Early on Wednesday morning, Rose, going to the bathroom, had checked Heidigran’s room and found the bed empty. The front door stood wide open. In a panic, Rose roused the whole family to search the streets; Heidigran was brought back in state in the milkman’s float, having been found in her nightgown and slippers three streets away. Now, the door was kept Chubb-locked from the inside, the key hidden where everyone but Heidigran knew where to find it. It felt uncomfortably like keeping her imprisoned.

  Hilly looked out of the car window at bleached, late-summer fields, at a landscape patched into wheat, grass, wheat, stubble; at copses of trees not yet beginning to show the approach of autumn. ‘Couldn’t Heidigran go to stay with Uncle Charlie and Aunt Anita for a week or two?’ she ventured, already knowing the answer; she had heard her parents discussing it.

  ‘They’ve offered,’ said Rose, ‘but we think it would only unsettle her – moving off again, another house, another bedroom. And it’s a burden for them.’

  ‘It’s a burden for you!’

  ‘I know, but she’s my mum. I can fit round her. Charlie and Anita both work full-time – they can’t keep taking days off. You know that time in the garden centre, when Mum kept saying she wanted to go back to Charlie’s? Do you know what he said, when I told him?’

  ‘No, what?’

  ‘They took her out to Bourton-on-the-Water one afternoon, and she made a scene in a teashop – kept saying she wanted to be with me. “Why won’t you let me go to Rose’s? You know you don’t really want me. I’ll be much happier at Rose’s.” That sort of thing. Then when they got home she said what a lovely time she’d had.’

  ‘It must be awful to be so confused.’

  Rose pulled out to overtake a removal van. ‘Yes, but you know – I think most of it washes over her. She says something one minute and then it’s forgotten. We’re the ones who remember everything. We’re the ones who get upset.’

  ‘But then she remembers things from years ago,’ Hilly said, ‘like Rachel playing the piano. Who do you think Rachel was?’

  Her mother shrugged. ‘Could be anyone. A friend from school?’

  ‘In England or in Germany? Rachel could be a Jewish name. Do you think Rachel was a Jewish friend, who died?’

  Rose shook her head. ‘Could be. I’ve no way of knowing. She’s never mentioned anything like that at all.’

  ‘And if she had a friend who was Jewish,’ said Hilly, ‘what’s made her decide she doesn’t like Jewish people?’

  Rose shook her head. They lapsed into silence for a few moments; then: ‘I’ve never really understood,’ Hilly said, ‘why Heidigran came to England after the war. Wasn’t that a bit odd? I know she was an orphan, but you’d have thought England was the last country a German orphan would be sent to. And it must have been difficult for her, mustn’t it? Having a German accent. Not speaking much English. Being from the enemy country. Did she talk much about it, when you were little?’

  ‘Hardly ever,’ said Rose. ‘She always called Gran and Grandad her parents. Actually it was my dad who told me they weren’t – till then I had no idea Mum was German. We were all together, I remember that – it was Mum’s birthday tea. Dad let slip something about Mum being born in Cologne. She was furious, I remember that! I must have been about ten at the time. We were having birthday cake, but she wouldn’t even speak to Dad, or answer our questions. Of course I tried to get it out of Dad later, but he’d clammed up too – only said Mum would tell us all she wanted us to know. He’d never talk about it again, it was always “Ask Mum”. Later she did tell me – about her parents being killed in a bombing raid in Cologne – but in a way that meant she didn’t want to talk about it. Losing both parents at such a young age – it was obviously a terrible shock, and I think she’d never really got over it. Gran and Grandad adopted her – well, you know that. I mean my gran and grandad Thornton. At least, I always called them Gran and Grandad, though of course they’re no relation, really. She was Heidi Thornton before she married my dad. I think they were friends of the family from before the war, or distant relations, or something. I’m a bit vague about it myself.’

  ‘It must be so odd for you, knowing next to nothing about your German grandparents, your real ones.’

  ‘Mm. As far as I was concerned, Gran and Grandad Thornton were my grandparents.’

  As children, Hilly and Zoë had been fascinated by Heidigran’s other identity in Germany. ‘Who were you, Gran?’ they would ask her. ‘Tell us your German name.’

  ‘Heidi Schmidt,’ she would say, and explain that Schmidt was the same as Smith in English.

  ‘So you were Heidi Schmidt, then Heidi Thornton, then Heidi Richardson when you married Grandad. What a lot of names!’

  ‘I know,’ Heidigran used to joke. ‘You know, I sometimes have to stop and remind myself who I am!’

  When Hilly was about seven, Gran had given her Heidi for her birthday – an illustrated version, with coloured pictures of mountain chalets, wild flowers and pretty goats. Heidi herself was round-cheeked and curly-haired, given to rushing around impulsively, consuming quantities of milk and goat’s cheese, and gathering alpine flowers in her pinafore. Hilly had been enchanted.

  ‘Did your mum and dad give you your name because of this Heidi, Gran?’ she had asked.

  ‘Yes, they did! Because I was always such a happy little girl, you know. Always cheerful and smiling.’

  ‘But how did they know that, when you were still only a baby?’ Hilly had objected.

  ‘Oh, they knew.’

  As a child, Hilly had confused Heidigran with Heidi in the book to the extent that she thought her grandmother had actually lived in a mountain hut in the Alps with the fierce but loving Grandpa, and that her early years had been spent clambering around hilly slopes with Peter the goatherd.

  ‘Haven’t you got any photos of when you were a little girl?’ seven-year-old Hilly demanded.

  ‘No, no photos,’ said Gran. ‘Everything was lost in the bombing. Lost and left behind.’

  Though she said nothing to her mother, Hilly knew that at some point in the day she was going to search through Heidigran’s dressing table. Perhaps her mum was right, and there was no way of finding out who Rachel was – other than from Gran herself – but Hilly intended to try.

  The air in the house felt undisturbed since her last visit, with Dad. A neighbour had piled a heap of post – mainly junk mail – on the hall table, that was all. Hilly thought of prospective buyers being shown round by an estate agent: ‘It needs some redecoration, of course, but the rooms are all good-sized. The bathroom could do with modernizing …’ She thought of a new family coming to view, young parents with a toddler, and an eye on the spare room for a nursery for an imminent baby. Heidigran had been taking up too much space here, space that could be exploited by a younger generation. ‘An old lady lived here alone, but she couldn’t cope a
ny more,’ said Hilly’s imaginary estate agent. And the young couple would mentally strip the wallpaper as they looked around, seeing it all redone in aqua, or sage-green, or whatever was fashionable. ‘Oh, but look at this!’ they would say in the garden, deciding on the far corner for a child’s swing and sandpit. Gran’s garden, Hilly thought, was the saddest thing of all. For years Heidigran had weeded and tended and pruned, knowing all the plants by name; it was probably the best thing she had made, her work, her signature. Soon the plants she had nurtured for so long would be dug up and replaced with decking or gravel or paving, according to the recommendations of TV gardening programmes. And then where would Heidigran be? For she was surely not the neatly dressed woman who had got meekly into the back seat of Annagran’s car this morning, to be taken by Dad and his mother to visit a local garden. The real Heidigran was lost somewhere in her own mind.

  ‘I’ll sort the post, first,’ Rose said, ‘then I’ve got to find all the paperwork to do with her bank accounts and phone bills – I should have sorted that out ages ago. Here, I’ve brought plenty of bin bags, and there’s cardboard boxes in the boot. Are you going to start on the books?’

  Hilly went upstairs, but not to the spare room where most of the books were shelved. Instead she went to her grandmother’s bedroom. She sat on the upholstered stool in front of the dressing table, and looked at herself reflected three times in the angled mirrors. She did not hesitate for long enough to feel guilty, nor to allow a build-up to potential disappointment. But she held her breath as she reached into the bottom drawer, lifted out the underwear stacked inside, and took out the lavender-scented paper.

  Nothing. The inside of the drawer was bare, grainy and unvarnished, unlike the lacquered veneer of the dressing table’s outer surfaces. There was a coin, an old tenpenny piece, that was all.

  Hilly replaced the drawer’s contents, then sat for a moment, numbed by the room’s silence.

  Where would you expect to find a photograph? In a photograph album. Where was Heidigran’s photograph album? On the shelf under the TV, downstairs. Hilly knew what was in there, or thought she knew. But how long since she had looked, properly looked? And she had not been alert to glimpses of Rachel, then.

  She ran downstairs; there it was, underneath Gardeners’ World magazine and an outdated copy of the Radio Times. Through the open door to the dining room she saw her mother sitting at the table with a pile of letters and catalogues. ‘Oh dear,’ Rose remarked, not looking up. ‘It looks like we missed an appointment at the clinic. And her TV licence should have been renewed. Still, I suppose that hardly matters now.’

  ‘No.’ Surreptitiously Hilly slid the photograph album under her arm, and went back upstairs. She had no idea why she was being so furtive; she could easily have sat with her mother at the table and said, ‘I’m looking through Gran’s photos.’ Instead she sat on the old-fashioned quilted bedspread that covered the bed – the big double bed that had once been Heidigran’s and Grandad’s – and opened the album.

  There they were, the pictures she knew would be there. With Heidigran’s typical neatness, each was fixed in place on thick black paper, and captioned in white pen. The album began with Hilly’s uncle, Charlie, as a baby; Heidigran was a pretty young woman, with permed wavy hair clipped back from her face. The infant Charlie kicked and beamed, became a bottom-heavy toddler, took his first steps, and was joined by a new white-swathed bundle, baby Rose. Hilly flicked through the familiar images to the blank pages at the end. There was nothing that predated Charlie’s birth, not one image. Not even a picture of Heidigran’s and Grandad’s wedding.

  ‘There must be more,’ Hilly muttered. Another album, an older one? She closed the book and stood, gazing around the room. More from frustration than for any other reason, she slid open the door of the cupboard space above Heidigran’s wardrobe.

  With a slithering rush, the contents poured out. She raised her arms to protect her face, and was almost knocked aside by a heavy torrent of paper and card. The separate pieces slid against her head and shoulders and arms, snagged in her hair; they cascaded to the floor, landing in an untidy heap.

  Slowly, Hilly lowered her arms and looked incredulously at the pile at her feet. Photographs. Images and images, hundreds of them, black and white, colour, matt, shiny, faces, places, various sizes. A jumbled archive of family life.

  She had been hoping for a single stray photograph! Overwhelmed by the unexpected choice, she got down on her knees to examine the lucky dip.

  ‘Hilly? What was that?’ Her mother’s voice came up the stairs.

  ‘Nothing!’ Hilly called back.

  But Rose was coming up; Hilly almost panicked. She considered sweeping all the photographs under the bed, but there was no time for that.

  ‘What’s going on?’ said her mother. ‘I thought you were in the spare room!’

  ‘I – was looking for something,’ Hilly faltered.

  And now Rose was in the doorway, staring at the heap of photographs, then at Hilly. ‘Where did you find all those?’

  ‘In Gran’s cupboard, up there.’ Hilly indicated the slid-back door; Rose shook her head, doing a double-take.

  ‘What, just like that? Loose, ready to tip out like an avalanche? Not in boxes or anything?’

  Hilly nodded. They both knew how completely unlike Heidigran it was to shove things into cupboards, in disarray. All her other cupboards and drawers were meticulously neat, everything ordered. Hilly fetched the bedside chair and stood on it to peer inside the storage space. ‘There are still more! More photos, and some boxes, at the back.’ She pulled them out. ‘Empty. See?’ There were three of them: lidded, each labelled in Heidigran’s writing: ‘Photographs, various’. They did not look capacious enough to hold the heap on the floor.

  They looked at each other. ‘She must have been going through them for some reason,’ said Rose. ‘Recently, since she’s – become ill. She must have got tired, or confused, or cross, to stuff them all back like that. I wonder what she was looking for?’

  ‘And whether she found it?’ With a sweep of her arm Hilly brushed out the remaining photographs, then climbed down and replaced the chair.

  Kneeling, Rose picked up one picture, then another. ‘What you still haven’t explained,’ she said, glancing at Hilly, ‘is what you were doing.’

  ‘No,’ said Hilly.

  ‘Go on, then!’ Rose looked up at her, exasperated.

  ‘I was looking for something. I was looking for Rachel.’

  ‘Rachel again! I’m beginning to think Mum’s not the only one with a bee in her bonnet about this mysterious Rachel!’

  ‘I want to know! And I feel it’s up to me to find out. I’m Rachel, according to Gran – you know how often she calls me Rachel! And Rachel played the piano. And I found a photograph, last time I was here – just one, with ‘Rachel’ on the back.’

  ‘You didn’t tell me!’

  ‘No, I …’ Hilly went to the window and looked out. The Rachel quest was not her only secret. There was Rashid, and tomorrow. She hadn’t yet said anything about that, either – not to her mother, nor to Reuben. What’s the matter with me? she wondered. I’m not used to being devious. ‘I don’t really know why not.’

  ‘Well,’ said her mother, settling cross-legged on the floor, ‘we may as well sort through this lot, now you’ve sidetracked us.’

  Hilly said nothing, reluctant to let her mother join her private quest. She began to pick up one photograph after another. There were holidays, Christmases, weddings, people she could not begin to recognize. ‘Oh, look!’ said Rose, from time to time. ‘This is me in my horse-riding craze,’ or, ‘This was on holiday in Devon.’ Once, ‘This is me at about fifteen, look, when my hair was long. Don’t you think I look like Zoë?’

  ‘Yes,’ Hilly agreed, seeing the almost uncanny resemblance; the haughty, I-want-my-own-way expression that made her wonder if her mother had been a right little pain, Zoë-style. ‘You don’t look like me. I don’t look like yo
u. But I don’t look much like Dad, either.’ She snatched up a photograph at random, beginning to indulge in a fantasy of being a changeling, an orphan, the child of unknown parents, the fruit of a mysterious liaison. But that was stupid. The evidence was there in Gran’s album that she was the first-born of Rose and Gavin; she had just seen it. ‘The person I look like is Rachel,’ she said.

  ‘Hilly! What’s got into you, with this Rachel business?’

  ‘Oh, nothing. What are we going to do with these? Shouldn’t we be putting them in some sort of order?’

  Rose threw up both hands. ‘But how to start? I think we should throw away most of them, the ones we can’t recognize. Just choose a few to keep.’

  ‘But you can’t throw photos away!’

  ‘Start saying that and we’ll never get rid of anything. We’ll be just as cluttered as when we started! Look, we’ll use Mum’s boxes – divide them into three. Keep, throw out, undecided. Shall I do it while you start on the books? I have a feeling you’re not going to be nearly ruthless enough.’

  ‘No,’ Hilly said sharply. ‘No. You do the books. I’ll do this.’

  ‘Well, OK,’ Rose said, getting to her feet. ‘I’ll fetch some bin bags.’

  ‘And go easy on the books,’ Hilly called after her.

  She resumed her sorting, more urgently, looking for black-and-white, for the older pictures, the ones that were browned at the edges, or cracked or dog-eared, or concealed in a studio’s paper slip-case. Heidigran and Grandad, young and smiling, hand-in-hand on a seaside promenade, in ridiculous clothes. Heidigran in her wedding dress, with a bridesmaid. An even younger Grandad – Hilly supposed it was him – in some sort of cadet’s uniform. Those must be kept. Unknown people at another wedding; passport-style pictures of Grandad, a strip of them; young Rose gazing at a birthday cake lit with candles.