The Sisters Mortland

by Sally Beauman

  “Oh God,” Julia says as my fingers close around hers. Her voice sounds different; it sounds broken. “Oh Christ, what’s happened? Dan, what have we done?”

  [ nineteen ]

  Fall

  When Julia presses the hidden mechanism and the panel slides back, and we step out into the room, the light is blinding. My eyes take a moment to adjust to that light. One of the many clocks strikes, delicate chimes. It’s six-thirty. Was that clock accurate?

  We stand by the windows, facing each other. Julia’s eyes are averted; so are mine. I haven’t answered her last question: I can’t. I also know something has happened, but I don’t know what it is. It’s come at me out of the long accumulation of the day, or it’s come from some lair in the left field of nowhere; it’s sprung out at us from the air.

  In a very short time, another minute or so, an inevitable shame, a predictable guilt, will occlude my vision even further. I’ll realize that, very soon, Finn will return, and I’ll have to face her. But before that happens—sitting here at a London desk, sleepless in Highbury—I have to look closely at Julia and me, at the room in which we were standing, at the exact circumstances then—because I have to be sure, totally sure, that this act could not have been a factor in Maisie’s fall. Is it possible that this act could have influenced an event that’s ticking toward us, only ninety minutes away?

  Julia and I are standing by the windows. Two of them are open, but the middle one is closed. Am I certain of that? Yes, I am. We’re three feet apart. We’ve adjusted our clothing before we reentered the room, and even if someone had walked in then, we might have looked innocent—at a distance, anyway. And no one did walk in. I look out of the window. I’ve been condemned to look out of that window ever since, and whenever I do, I still see the same view, frame frozen, unchanged in over twenty years: I see Gramps, slumped in that deck chair in the cloister below. Maisie is not there. I can see the trowel she’d been using earlier; it lies abandoned on the grass, its metal glinting in the sun. The cloister is quiet; we’re on the edge of a summer’s evening. The birds are beginning to sing as the heat of the day diminishes; the shadows are lengthening; swifts and swallows hunt the upper sky.

  But there’s a hidden possibility. I can look at it now. Is it possible that someone unseen is watching the two of us, standing there?

  It is possible, I know that. It didn’t occur to me then: I had other things on my mind. If someone had been looking down at us from the Squint, we’d have been unaware of a hidden presence. But even if someone was there—and there are only two candidates for spy, Maisie or Lucas—why would it matter? Nothing incriminating was said or done; the exchange between Julia and me was in the eyes.

  “Stella and Finn will be home soon,” Julia says after an interval. She turns to me and meets my gaze, a long, measuring stare. I hear the chime of her bracelets. We look at each other in silence; the minutes tick by. Then Julia stretches and smiles. “God, it’s so hot—I think I might have a bath before the others get back,” she says, and her tone is so ordinary, so unexceptional, that reality splinters, and I think, Did I imagine that, did that panel ever open, did it close? She leaves the room. I hear the slap of her sandals on the stairs, and then—very distantly—the slam of a door. I walk back to my own room at the opposite side of the house, listening to the antique mechanisms of the Abbey as they stir and come to life. The water pipes begin to vibrate; there’s the familiar whispering, wheezing, and breathing that means a bath is being run. I think: Is it this ordinary sound that Maisie interprets as nuns at prayer?

  I also want a bath, and I take one. I kneel in two inches of rusty lukewarm water and wash the day off me. A mirror tells me I did not imagine that encounter in the dark. Julia has left her mark on me. I can conceal the scratches, but I can’t seem to alter my eyes. I try smiling at the liar in the mirror. I know what’s going to happen: Finn will smell my guilt, and when she looks me in the eyes, that guilt will be confirmed.

  I go back downstairs. As I reach the hall, I find Julia, changed, scented, and tense. She’s pacing that chessboard floor. “Have you seen Maisie?” she asks.

  I was expecting questions. Women always ask questions after sex—or the women in this village do. But not that question. I look at her, confused. Do I feel alarm? I don’t think so. “Maisie? No, why? She was in the cloisters earlier. Maybe she wandered down to the refectory. She’s probably talking to Lucas—maybe he’s drawing her again.”

  “No, she isn’t there. Gramps fell asleep, and when he woke, she’d disappeared. He’s been calling and calling—and she’s not answering him. He’s already been down to the refectory. Lucas is there, fiddling around with that damn portrait; he’s redoing part of it, some quarter inch he’s decided he has to change. He hasn’t seen Maisie.”

  “Then she’ll be in the orchard—feeding the chickens, perhaps. Or in her bedroom—maybe she’s gone up there and she’s reading. Writing those lists of hers.”

  “I’ve looked. She isn’t there. I’ve been running all round the house—every single damn room. Gramps is getting desperate—we can’t find her anywhere.”

  “She’ll be fine. She won’t have gone far. She takes off sometimes—why the alarm?”

  “Because she’s worse—she’s been talking about Daddy all day. Gramps made her promise not to leave his side—and Maisie always keeps her promises, you know that.”

  “It’s because Stella isn’t here,” I say. “Maisie doesn’t like change. I expect it’s unsettled her, that’s all. All right, all right—I’ll go and look. You check the back. I’ll check the front—she won’t have gone far.” There’s a pause; we’ve been careful not to look at each other, and now we do.

  “Julia—,” I begin, but before I can say anything else, before I can make a start on the thousand justifications and accusations I’ve already dreamed up, Julia forestalls me.

  She says: “Do you want Finn to know?”

  I give her a surly, mutinous look. “What do you think? Of course I bloody don’t,” I answer, moving away.

  “Not the most gallant of replies.”

  “Sorry, but it happens to be true. Listen, Julia—”

  “No need. I can script what you’re going to say. That’s fine.” She gives me a cool glance. “It didn’t happen. I’m sworn to silence. Can you be silent, too?”

  I hesitate. I don’t want to lie, especially to Finn—and silence will involve lying. But does a large lie matter when I lie in small ways every day? Why shouldn’t I lie about my actions, when I lie about who I am half the time? I touch the scrap of material that’s still in my pocket and feel anger. Why shouldn’t I lie to Finn? She’s lied to me.

  “I can hold my tongue. I’ve had plenty of practice,” I reply.

  “So I’ve heard.” Not a flicker of expression passes across her face. “That’s agreed, then. Now go and look for Maisie.” She turns away.

  “Julia, for fuck’s sake, it isn’t as simple as that. Don’t go. Look, you started this. This is your fault. I have to know why—” I’ve reached for her arm. She shakes me off.

  “No questions, Dan. And if you ask them, you certainly won’t get answers—not from me. I told you: I hate explanations. I hate justifications even more. Now go away and do something useful. Maisie’s very devoted to you. If you call for her, she’ll probably come out from wherever she’s hiding. Hurry up. We have to find her before Stella gets back.”

  She walks away toward the back of the house. I watch her traverse that chessboard floor. I listen to the slap of her sandals against her naked heels. She disappears from sight; a door slams. Trappist Julia: As far as I know, she was true to her word. She never told anyone what had happened, and neither did I. Events later that day distanced it anyway, until it became, for me, a ghost of an encounter, an experience that was shadowy and elusive, like a half-remembered dream. Even so, all these years afterward, the questions I never asked, the ones she refused to answer, remain.

  I’ll be on a plane or waiting for a p
hone call, and I’ll suddenly find I’m back at the Abbey that last day. I’ll watch my younger self, walking out to the cloister to search for Maisie. It’s a still summer’s evening; my world is about to change. I begin calling Maisie’s name. But I’m not yet alarmed, and it’s not Maisie’s predicament I’m concerned with, it’s my own. I’m replaying darkness and heat, a cool hand, amusement, and ambivalence. I’m feeling the heat of sex that burned my mind.

  I’m already trying to extricate myself morally. I’m already thinking up a score of excuses for what I’ve done. It helps to shift the blame on to Julia. Bitch, I’m thinking, slut, whore. I want to follow after her, seek her out, fuck her again—and show her who’s master. Julia used sex, but what she wanted was power—and two could play at that game. I envisioned a different Julia, a submissive double, a Julia who begged me not to leave her, a Julia begging me for more.

  I stood there, looking at the patterns the cloister arches made on the grass. I knew I’d betrayed Finn. I knew I’d betrayed myself. If my love for Finn didn’t define me, what did? There was nothing else left. But if I loved Finn, how could I have done what I’d done? Who am I? I thought. Where am I? I don’t know who I am.

  Then I walked on, shouting Maisie’s name, in search of an invisible girl. I walked along the drive. I went down to the old tennis court, through the shrubbery, round the lake that had once been the nunnery fishponds. I searched everywhere I could think of, all the old hiding places I’d used as a child. First irritably, then with growing anger, I called again and again.

  I tried to recall what Maisie had been wearing that day and then remembered it was her blue dress, the one with the smocking: her Liberty dress, given to her by her grandfather several years before. It was her “best” dress—and it’s the one Maisie wears in Lucas’s portrait of the sisters: a sky blue, old-fashioned little girl’s frock of a kind you scarcely see now. Maisie will wear that blue dress for an eternity now.

  I’d completed a circuit and reached the cloister again. They were silent. Where are you? I shouted. A bird sang; no reply.

  A few minutes later, over twenty years later, and I’m still walking around the cloister calling Maisie’s name. I’m on my second circuit, peering into the tangle of shrubs and roses by the walls, when Julia reappears. She and her grandfather come round the corner of the house together: I can feel their fear from ten feet away. Julia’s face is white; Gramps is having difficulty breathing. He stops and leans against a bench. He presses his hand against his heart. He sits down.

  “Any sign of her?” Julia calls, running toward me.

  “Nothing. I’ve been right round the front of the house—”

  “Did you go down to the lake?” She’s reached my side. She lowers her voice so her grandfather cannot hear.

  “Yes. I did. Julia, I promise you, she wasn’t there.”

  “She can’t swim. Oh Christ.”

  “Julia, she won’t be there—”

  “She could be. She could be anywhere. Anything could have happened. Gramps and I have been right round the vegetable garden, into the fruit cage, the orchard. We’ve looked and looked—we’ve tried the house again. There’s not a sign of her. She never does this. She must have had an accident. If she could hear us, she’d come when we called.”

  “Could she have gone back to the refectory?”

  “No. She’d have heard your voice. I could, and I was miles away. Lucas would throw her out anyway. Gramps says he’s repainting like a madman—that damned sky in the background, some stupid detail he wants to change. If he’s doing that, Maisie could bleed to death in the doorway and he wouldn’t care. Don’t expect any help from that quarter.”

  “Could she have gone down to the village?”

  “I doubt it. The shop’s closed. Why would she go there? They just stare at her and whisper behind their hands. Stupid ignorant peasants—I hate their guts.”

  Her eyes have brimmed with tears. I’m one of those peasants, I think. “Don’t cry, Julia,” I say. “Stay calm. Let’s think this through. She hasn’t been gone that long. When I last saw her—”

  “When? When did you last see her?”

  “When we went into the library. The clock was striking six. I looked out of the window, and she was here, on the grass.” I stop. We both look away.

  “And when we came out?” she says finally.

  “I didn’t see her then. Gramps was still there, but she wasn’t.”

  “That’s an hour ago. More.… I’m going back down to the lake.”

  “Julia, she isn’t there. I told you. I walked right round it—”

  “Can you see under the water?” Her face contracts. “You may have second sight, Dan—but is it that good? I don’t think so. And you know something’s wrong—I can see it in your eyes.”

  And by then—alarm and fear are catching—I do fear something is wrong: I can feel it, the way a swimmer feels an undertow pulling him out into deep water, away from the safety of the beach.

  “Fuck it—I’ll go and get Lucas,” I say. “He can help us look.” But Julia is already running off. I hear her say: “Gramps, darling, you stay here. I’m just going to check the gardens again. No, please don’t come with me—you look ill. Why don’t you stay here, in case Maisie comes back?”

  “This is all my fault,” I hear him say as I approach. “I should never have sat down. As soon as I did—it hadn’t been an easy day, she does talk so, I just dropped off. You go on, Julia. I’ll catch you up. What are we going to do? Where can she have got to, Dan? I promised Stella I wouldn’t let her out of my sight. I gave her my solemn word. If anything’s happened, I’ll never forgive myself.”

  That makes three of us, I think. I watch Julia set off at a run and an old man with a weak heart rise from a bench. Something he’s just said alerts me. I know Maisie, and I know she’s capable of cunning. “Gramps,” I say, “wait. Did Maisie say anything—when you sat down in the cloisters? Before you dozed off?”

  “No. I don’t think so. I was so tired, Dan. I could scarcely think straight. She wanted to finish that pergola of hers: ‘I must get it done today.’ I think she said that. She was very sweet. Thoughtful. ‘You look tired. Why don’t I fetch a deck chair for you, Gramps?’ she said. ‘Then you can sit down and watch me dig some more holes for those posts.’ “

  “Where did she put the deck chair? In the shade?”

  “No. I suggested that. But she wouldn’t have it. She said I’d get chilled. I do, you know—the circulation isn’t what it was. So she put it in the sun—I was basking in the evening sun. It was very warm and comfortable. Then she was as quiet as a lamb, bless her, and before I knew what was happening, I was drifting off.”

  I say nothing. At a slow, faltering pace, he sets off after Julia. He doesn’t seem to realize the import of what he’s just said—and I’m hoping it does not cross his trusting mind how deliberate this act of Maisie’s was. But I can see that Maisie wanted to escape her benevolent jailer and, with some guile, ensured she did so. But why would she want to be alone? Where has she been for the past hour? What can she be doing? I raise my eyes to the twenty-one eyes on the Abbey’s south face.

  Minutes later, I’m outside the refectory. Its windows are wide open; its door is padlocked. Pinned to the door is a note that reads, “Gone swimming.” So the touchings-up, the alterations to the portrait, must be finished. It’s unlike Lucas to explain his absences, and I wonder to whom that incommunicative message is addressed. Then I know. To Finn, of course.

  I feel jealousy and anger rise like bile at the back of my throat. I walk across to the archway in the ruined curtain wall that once marked the confines of the nunnery. I stand there, in the warm, slanting evening light, scanning the fields for a blue dress. In the stubble left by the combine, larks are feeding; it’s the evening for bell practice at the church, and as I stand there the first peal begins. Church and convent are contemporaneous, so Maisie’s nuns, her eternally watchful, indestructible sisters, might once have stood h
ere; and if they did so, this is what they would have heard. A six-bell peal to the glory of God; to a God I don’t believe in, and they did.

  In the far distance, I see a pale, naked figure by Black Ditch. I think: So it’s true, Lucas has gone swimming. The figure raises its arms, dives, and disappears. Could Maisie have gone back to Nun Wood, returned for some reason to the dogs’ burial ground? I scan the lane and the bracken at the edge of the trees, where I walked this afternoon. I see that someone, a man, is leaning against the gate.

  He moves, and I realize it’s Nick. He’ll be on his way to the Abbey. I shout his name; he swings round, sees me, and raises his hand in a salute. He’s too far away to hear any shouted explanation or request for help, but I make urgent beckoning gestures. He straightens, semaphores, and makes for the path. I don’t wait for him. I don’t wait because something is happening to the air: The air is altering in a way I recognize and fear. It’s infinitesimal, the disturbance of a wing, of a pinion. It’s no more than the brush of a feather, this brief bending of time, but I’ve known it from my earliest childhood, and for want of a better name, I’ve adopted Bella’s term for it. This, such as it is, is my Gift.

  It brings with it an adrenaline surge. In an instant, I’m tense as a wire: I’m a string that’s ready to be plucked. I’m back in the courtyard. I’m staring at a locked door, a brief note, and six windows: I’m willing them to speak. I run across to those windows and lean into the shadows beyond. There’s a stink of oils and turpentine—on a large canvas, leaning against the wall opposite, are The Sisters Mortland. Julia, Finn, and a small girl in a blue dress. Maisie stares me in the eyes: The fear I feel then is intense.

  I start running back to the house, and although I’m a fast runner, today I can’t run fast enough. I can’t see anything beyond those black yew walls either side of the path. I burst out into the silence of the cloisters. They are bleached of all color and etched with threat. I see the random pattern of shallow scrapings in the soil, the glint of a discarded trowel. I turn my eyes to the Abbey windows, the twenty-one eyes on the south face, and there, at the central window of the Lady Chapel, something moves, the faintest shape—and I know at once that it’s my mother; she’s come back.