Sisters Three

by Jessica Stirling

  Tony seemed unusually rattled.

  He flung open the door of the Dolomite, snapped, ‘Okay, Dougie, hop to it.’

  The printer emerged cautiously with the cat cradled in his arms. His head appeared over the roof of the motorcar and he stared at Penny as if he had never seen her before. The cat squirmed a little, dug her claws into the shoulder of the new overcoat and hung on for dear life, her green eyes narrow and unblinking.

  ‘Present for you,’ Tony said. ‘He’s all yours, Penny.’

  ‘Mine?’ she said. ‘I understood that you were to be his keeper.’

  ‘Nope. I’m your keeper. You’re his keeper.’

  ‘Nobody’s mah bloody keeper.’ Dougie lowered the tabby to the cobbles and watched her strut away towards the farmhouse. ‘Is this the place ah’m stayin’?’

  ‘Yeah,’ Tony said. ‘This is it, Doug. Shangri-La.’

  ‘Remote enough, ain’t it?’

  ‘Not a pub for miles, Dougie, if that’s what you mean.’

  He was different, the printer; younger. Not only had Tony supplied him with a new wardrobe but he had also had a haircut and a shave and, Penny suspected, a bath. His hair was plastered down with Brylcreem, shaped to an elegant skull with a domed forehead and close set ears. He reminded her of a whippet her father had once owned and from which he had bred a line of aristocratic pups that had been sold for substantial sums – not, she told herself, that Giffard was worth much for, a shapely skull notwithstanding, he was still just a scruffy little mongrel.

  ‘New and much improved, don’t you reckon?’ Tony said. ‘It’s amazing what twenty minutes in a public bath-house can do for a guy.’

  ‘Did you accompany him into the bath-house?’

  ‘Unfortunately, yeah,’ Tony said. ‘I even had to scrub his back.’

  Indifferent to their sarcasm, Dougie leaned on the car and observed the tabby sniff at the doorpost and then, still sniffing, slip into the kitchen.

  ‘Got any spare grub in there, lass?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes, I will make us lunch in due course,’ Penny told him.

  ‘Not if Frobe gets there afore you, you won’t,’ Dougie Giffard said and grinned as the girl rushed shrieking into the house.

  Chapter Seven

  Looking back, it seemed to Polly that Dominic had known that this would be the family’s last Christmas together and for that reason had pulled out all the stops. He had always been lavish with gifts and hospitality, a benefactor not just to kith and kin but to all the charities and institutions to which he lent support.

  In the week preceding Christmas he had been invited to lunch at the Exchange, had dined at the Union as well as the Cassia, and had presided from the wings at the Jewish pipe-band’s annual bun-fight, for which he picked up the bill. There was no evidence of enjoyment in him, though, no beaming smiles or expansive gestures of goodwill. He did not sings carols, tell risqué jokes or perform conjuring tricks; he just signed the cheques and left the celebrating to others.

  Polly could not be sure if his dourness had to do with the imminent threat of war or with the state of the business. She had never been able to read her husband’s moods accurately and, lately, he had become as opaque as a blown mirror. In this respect he was not alone. Many men and women were reluctant to decide whether they were pessimists or optimists and were content to bob like corks on the tide of press opinion as news from Europe ebbed and flowed.

  She didn’t even know what Tony thought of the current crisis, how he interpreted the Munich Agreement or the shop-worn non-aggression pact with Poland – or if he even cared. She had seen nothing of him, heard nothing from him. Her anger, like fear of war, swung first one way then the other.

  In compensation she threw herself into Christmas shopping, purchasing ridiculously expensive gifts for everyone she could think of, including Cook, Leah and Patricia, spending Dominic’s money hand-over-fist. She took the children into town by taxi-cab – riding out with Charley Fraser was just too demeaning – and trailed them round the department stores, buying clothes that would not fit them for two or three years, buying for herself the most expensive garments she could find, useless jackets and little dresses, silk suits that she would have few, if any, opportunities to wear. Stuart and Ishbel soon got over their initial excitement of being in town with Mummy. They began to droop and whine and had to be fed cream cakes and lemonade in a tea-room to keep them going. All in all even Polly found it rather too hectic and depressing and, laden with packages, was glad to sink into a taxi-cab, light a cigarette and ride home again.

  Cook had been consulted over the menu and grocery lists were compiled in advance. Dominic did most of the ordering straight from the warehouse and throughout Christmas week crates and hampers and boxes turned up at Manor Park Avenue almost hourly. Mrs O’Shea and Patricia had agreed to forego time off until New Year, which was, in any case, the traditional holiday for servants, and Leah had been persuaded to come in on Christmas Day to help lay table and serve.

  Polly pretended that she was taking the occasion in her stride. But this year she felt curiously cut off from the rich and vivid pleasures of the festive season. She was trapped in swirling little eddies of anxiety, anger and fear that stemmed, of course, from Tony’s absence.

  By Christmas Eve she was near to breaking point, to screaming aloud in frustration. Only a stealthy stream of cocktails saw her through the afternoon while down in the kitchen and up in the playroom other women competently took care of ‘her party’, and her children.

  A fir tree had been put up in the living-room. Dominic had taken the children out in the huge ungainly motorcar he had acquired from Jackie and had returned an hour later with the tree stowed in the cavernous boot and Stuart and Ishbel chattering about their adventure in ‘the forest’.

  Later that evening, the twenty-third of the month, Dom and the children opened boxes of ornaments and after securing the tree in a tub of earth decorated it prettily while Polly, sans cocktail glass, drifted in and out of the room, feigning enthusiasm for the children’s sake, approving this touch and vetoing that, as if she were an arbiter of taste and the only person whose opinion mattered.

  In spite of her tension she was pleased to see her children happy and went upstairs and sat with them for a half-hour after supper while Dom put through three or four telephone calls.

  The tree, Polly had to agree, was pretty, almost a work of art. It occupied the space behind Dom’s long brown sofa, tall and upright like a green guardsman and on the afternoon of Christmas Eve, when she found herself alone in the living-room – Patricia had taken the children to a matinee – she brushed it with the rim of her glass just for the pleasure of watching the boughs tremble and the baubles nod. She was just about to touch it again when she saw the Dolomite appear out of the gloaming and draw to a halt in the driveway.

  She met him at the door before he could ring the bell.

  Laden with parcels, he stood on the step big and awkward as a bear.

  ‘For me, Mr El?’ Polly said.

  ‘Only one of them, Mrs Em,’ said Tony.

  ‘Which one?’

  He juggled the parcels, fished in his overcoat pocket, brought out a small oblong packet wrapped not in brown paper but in tissue tied with silk thread.

  ‘This one,’ he said. ‘It’s not to be opened ’til tomorrow, though.’

  ‘In mixed company?’

  ‘Maybe not,’ said Tony. ‘No, definitely not.’

  Polly glanced round, saw no one in the hall or on the stairs. She moved suddenly against him, kissed him on the mouth and whispered: ‘Oh, God! I was beginning to think I’d never see you again.’ She held the cocktail glass out to one side and, pressing her breasts against the parcels, kissed him again. ‘Dominic’s not here. I don’t know where he is.’

  ‘I do,’ Tony said.

  ‘Where?’

  ‘He won’t be back for hours,’ Tony said.

  ‘For sure?’

  ‘Yeah, for sure.’
/>   ‘Come in then, oh please, do come in.’

  ‘Better yet, if you can slip out for an hour why don’t we go to my place?’

  ‘Yes,’ Polly said, ‘Oh God, darling! Yes!’

  * * *

  He had less respect for the plates than seemed quite proper and Penny had to remind herself of Tony’s warning that Douglas Giffard might seem like an unwholesome drunkard but that she would do well not to underestimate his intelligence. When the printer annoyed her, therefore, she bit not on the bullet but on a sugared almond from the jar that Tony had given her just before he announced that he was going away for a while.

  ‘How long?’ she asked.

  ‘I’ll be back first thing tomorrow.’

  ‘Does Dominic know that you intend to abandon me?’

  ‘It’s Christmas Eve. I’m taking my folks to Mass,’ Tony said.

  ‘What if I want to go to Mass?’

  ‘You’re not a Catholic, though, are you?’

  She remembered how Giffard glanced up from the armchair by the hearth and gave her such a sly, quizzical look that she had been quite shaken by it and had realised at that moment that Tony’s warning was not without substance.

  She said, ‘I think you are going to meet your girlfriend.’

  ‘No girlfriend,’ Tony said.

  ‘Your lover then.’

  ‘I’m taking my parents to Mass, Penny, that’s all. I’ll eat with them beforehand, them and my sisters, because I won’t be around tomorrow, Christmas, like I usually am.’

  ‘Where will you be tomorrow?’

  ‘Here,’ he told her, flatly. ‘Tomorrow I’m moving in.’

  ‘On Dominic’s orders.’

  ‘Yeah, on Dominic’s orders.’

  There were four bedrooms in the farmhouse, two on the floor above the kitchen, two others tucked under the sloping roof. The attics each had a skylight and a quaint little iron fireplace and were furnished with an iron cot, a corner what not with a basin and jug and a rush-bottomed chair that reminded Penny of a painting. There were no azure skies or giddy patchwork quilts for Mr Giffard, though. He had to settle for rain on the roof and a brown army blanket, not that the printer seemed to mind. He was concerned only about his cat and his whisky, and Penny had already negotiated a truce with the tabby and held the key to the cupboard where the whisky was kept.

  She had that element of power over Giffard, control of his whisky ration.

  One half bottle per day, delivered at noon.

  She had expected him to plead, to keen and nag and humiliate himself but in that respect she was disappointed. He might be twitching inside but outwardly he was calm, though he would eye the clock with baleful eagerness as noon approached or smoke one cigarette after another and go for a toddle about the yard with the tabby clinging to his shoulder. Most of the rest of the time he occupied himself with newspaper crossword puzzles or by poring over the engraved plates under the light that hung above the long deal table in the kitchen. He had requested drawing materials and Tony had brought him big sheets of glazed card, black Indian ink, a selection of fine-nibbed pens, and a penknife with a sharp heart-shaped blade that were stored with the plates in a drawer lined with clean newspapers.

  A watchmaker’s glass screwed into one eye, Dougie would sit for hours studying the surface of the face plate, peering at it until his eyes began to water and his hand shake. Only then would he reach for the glass and bottle, measure himself an inch of Haig’s and knock it back to restore and revive his concentration.

  Tony left soon after lunch. Penny was sorry to see him go. She was excited at the prospect of having him sleep at the farm from now on, though, and spent the best part of the afternoon airing the bedroom adjacent to hers. She laid clean sheets for the bed, fine woollen blankets and a quilt with a sun-burst pattern that cheered the room up enormously. She put an ashtray on the bedside table and filled the water carafe, did all the things that a nice, new conscientious wife might do for a husband, while downstairs Dougie and the cat dozed in the armchair by the fire.

  He looked peaceful in that pose, almost grandfatherly, Penny thought when she returned to the kitchen, almost as if he had been born and bred on the farm. He was no shabbier than the average shepherd or pig-breeder and the manner in which he had disciplined his craving for drink roused a sneaking respect.

  She moved so quietly about the kitchen that the cat, curled on Giffard’s lap, did not even raise its head.

  Outside it was almost dark, the weather grey and still, not ominous. She leaned on the edge of the sink and looked from the window, thinking of nothing much, nothing too serious – of Dominic, of Dominic and Tony, Tony and Dominic, a loose little pas de deux in which she danced first with one and then the other in an empty ballroom with the lights turned low.

  ‘Homesick?’ Giffard said.

  She started, turned swiftly, almost guiltily.

  He was exactly as he had been a moment ago, the cat still asleep on his lap, his stockinged feet stretched out to the fire. But now his eyes were open and he was studying her as intently if she were Britannia engraved on a metal plate.

  ‘Pardon?’

  ‘I asked if you was homesick?’ Dougie said.

  She shook her head and came away from the window, walked across the kitchen with the table between her and the man in the chair by the fire. The half bottle of Haig whisky was on the table together with a clean shot glass. He had taken a nip after lunch but that was all. She smiled at him cheesily and lifted the bottle.

  ‘Shall I pour one for you?’

  ‘Nah, not yet, lass,’ Giffard said. ‘What would you be doin’ now if you was at home? Gettin’ dolled up for a cocktail party?’

  She was surprised that he had even heard of cocktails, this inveterate consumer of neat whisky: again Tony’s little warning bell sounded in her head. She plucked a floral apron from a hook on the larder door and tied it about her waist. Preparations for Christmas dinner were well in hand. And she had made a cheese and potato pie for supper that evening that required only an hour of slow cooking. An orange trifle was setting nicely on a high shelf in the back of the larder where Frobe couldn’t get at it. There was nothing to do, nothing with which to occupy her hands. She felt more confident with the apron on, though.

  ‘Are you sure that you do not wish to drink?’ she said, brightly. ‘I think that since it is the Christmas season you might be permitted a little extra.’

  He shifted the cat gingerly and sat forward. He reached for his cigarette packet, tapped one out, lit it with a match, blew smoke away from the drowsy tabby.

  He said, ‘It’ll be snowin’ where you come from, I expect?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘In the mountains?’

  ‘Yes, in the mountains.’

  ‘The Alps?’

  ‘It always snows at this time of the year,’ Penny said, ‘in the Alps.’

  ‘Ah’ve never been t’ the Alps.’ For some reason Penny felt relieved at his confession. ‘Ah’ve never been anywhere, hardly.’ He looked a her, blew smoke, grinned. ‘Always had a fancy for t’ climb the Hummelstreek an’ look down on the Vienna woods. I’m too old for those capers now, though.’

  ‘How old are you?’

  ‘Forty-eight.’

  ‘Did you not fight in the war?’

  ‘Bad eyes kept me out o’ that nasty business.’

  ‘You are not blind?’

  ‘Nah, but it’s amazin’ what damage a few wee drops o’ menthol can do before a medical inspection – provided y’ know what you’re doin’.’ He stirred again and this time the tabby awoke, lolloped lazily down from his lap, curled up on the floor under the armchair and promptly went back to sleep. ‘That’s the secret in this life, lass, always to know what you’re doin’.’

  He glanced at her from under greying brows, let his gaze linger, studying her with what seemed like calculation – but not cockily like Edgar Harker, not the way young men in uniform had studied her, their eyes swimming with longing. She
could not define the manner in which Giffard looked at her or what image of her he saw, the fantasy or the reality.

  She tugged nervously at the hem of her apron then, clearing her throat, said, ‘If you are not going to drink your whisky, will I make you tea instead?’

  ‘Aye, lass,’ Giffard said. ‘Tea will do fine for me, thanks’, and to her relief picked up his newspaper and busied himself with the crossword again.

  * * *

  She lay back across the bed as he pulled away from her. She was wetter than she had ever been, all that part of her between her stockings and underskirt, wet and cold after lovemaking. She wasn’t satisfied, though, and still felt twitchy and needed him back upon her, pressing down, warming her in the limp, exhausted lulls between orgasms, to be joined to him, rocking rhythmically to his will.

  But Tony had gone. Turning her head, she saw him bulked against the uncurtained window and the faint light of the street lamps below. She lifted herself from the quilt, her head spinning. She spread her arms and hoisted herself into a sitting position. The full, dull ache in her loins closed about the only part of her that still seemed congnisant. She could not bring herself to move and remained braced on her elbows. Her knees and feet stretched out, vague and disembodied in the gloom.

  ‘Polly,’ Tony said thickly. ‘We’d better get going.’

  ‘Going?’

  ‘Home,’ he said, ‘get you home.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because it’s late.’

  ‘Late? How late?’

  ‘After six,’ he said.

  He had put on his trousers and buttoned his shirt. He sat on the bed and stooped over to find his shoes. When he reached out to switch on the light, Polly said. ‘Please don’t.’