The Sisters Mortland

by Sally Beauman

  “I don’t think so.” She looks away. “It might have been once. But not recently. I’d failed Maisie. She never forgave that kind of failure.”

  “Why do you say that?” Julia asks. I also want to know, but I know what kind of answer she’ll receive—and I’m right.

  “It doesn’t matter. I had, that’s all. There was a moment a few weeks ago when Maisie needed my help, and I failed to see it. Leave it at that.”

  “If it’s not you, then there aren’t many candidates,” Julia says. “Not Stella. Maisie could be cruel to Stella, and she never confided in her—not that she confided in anyone. Certainly not Gramps. Maisie wouldn’t waste time on him—she’d know he’d never look for any last message, and if he found one, he wouldn’t understand it. He’d cling to the obvious and the false. Gramps always wants the soft answer.”

  “That’s unkind, Julia,” I say.

  “The truth often is.”

  “He loves her. You know that. This is crucifying him.”

  “I do know that. But love doesn’t preclude stupidity. Alas.”

  Her tone is cold. Is that remark, accurate and unpleasant, directed at me? I feel that it is. I meet the flick of Julia’s glance at me with a banked hostility. Why did I ever touch this woman, how could I bear to touch her? I think.

  “Who, then?” Julia continues, turning away to Finn. “Lucas? She spent enough time talking to him when he was drawing her.… No. Not Lucas. Not once she’d seen the portrait. She’d never forgive him that. It must be Dan. She adored Dan—she always did, from the moment we first came to the Abbey.”

  “No,” Finn says in a bitter way before I can speak. She gives a gesture of impatience. “Not Dan. Think a little. Who did Maisie talk to most of the time—because none of us had the stamina or kindness of heart to listen to her long enough? Because we’d all interrupt, or slink off, or refuse to understand, or pretend we were busy doing something else? The dead. She spent most of her time talking to the dead. And if she’s left a message behind, she’ll have left it where they can find it. So think about it, because it narrows the field.…” She pauses and looks at us sadly. “If Maisie decided to explain herself, if she decided to leave one last message, there are only two possible recipients. Either she wrote to her nuns, to her Sisters—or to Daddy. Can’t you see that?”

  I look down at my task list. I’ve written six tasks:

  Nick

  Lucas

  Abbey

  Finn

  Ashes

  Afterwards

  I’ve no recollection of writing this list; it’s been written on autopilot. I’ve been watching that scene, listening to that conversation in Maisie’s bedroom. It ends abruptly. Finn speaks that last sentence, then suddenly scrapes back her chair and stands up. I see her sway and think she’s about to faint. “I’m going to be sick,” she says. “I’m sorry. Excuse me.” Then she leaves the room. I hear her footsteps in the corridor and the sound of retching. Julia and I look at each other in silence. She’s wearing a tawny, deep orange dress; no bracelets. I can’t bring myself to speak to her—the detestation I feel is too great. When Finn returns and says that she’ll understand if we wish to pursue this but that she does not, I think I know why she’s come to that decision. I can see the strain she’s under. I can see this is making her ill. I curse my own stupidity in making it worse.

  I say nothing of that to her or to Julia. From that point onward, both sisters close ranks. They refuse to make further searches of any kind. I continue, intermittently, without great hope, and whenever I have the opportunity. I find nothing—and I fail to see that there is another mystery, a mystery that involves Finn, not Maisie. It takes me months to discover what Julia knew long before: Finn is also facing a sea of troubles—and she’d known that these troubles would have to be resolved before she left with Stella for the day in London.

  So much for my own Final Finn: for that expression of frank, unclouded happiness I saw on her face when I waved her off in the car that bright morning. I’d misread that expression, just as I’d misread so much else. Just as, in all probability, I’m still misreading, I expect.

  Why am I recording this? I ask myself. Why try to make sense of the past or impose a shape on it? I look at the stack of A4 pages on the table. Why bother with these misreadings, guesses, and approximations that I’m going to burn or feed through a shredder? I’d thought I was writing to myself. Now I doubt that.

  I think I’m writing to the dead, too. To all those I’ve loved: to Joe; to Bella, who was kind as well as unkind toward me. To Dorrie, whom I never knew. To Maisie, who is as good as dead; Maisie, who cannot (or will not) speak or communicate. And to Finn, above all to Finn, who is alive but lost to me. Finn, who is never going to journey down here to this place I’m in; Finn, who is never going to play Orpheus to my Eurydice; Finn, who is going to leave me to extricate, to rescue, myself. Notes from the underworld, love letters to the dead, that’s what this is, I tell myself, resisting the urge to tear it all up, resisting the urge to check whether, earlier this morning, I really did make Corporal Body tip all the vodka supplies down the sink.

  At which point, just when I’m on the most dangerous edge of all, that cliff face famous throughout the mountaineering world as the Self-Pity Drop (watch it: One false step there and you’re falling six thousand feet straight down onto rocks), I notice something that should have been obvious some moments before: The front-door bell is ringing. Loud and long and shrill. Someone’s got an index finger on the bell push, and he or she is not removing it.

  Interesting, at a quarter to six in the morning. Now, who could that be? I wonder, making for the stairs fast before he or she wakes the amyl-nitrate girl on my Milanese sofa. Maybe it’s a deus ex machina—Finn, for instance. Chance’d be a fine thing. Maybe it’s Nick. Or the milkman. Or the bailiffs. Maybe it’s Malc.

  I open the front door. Parked by my gate, in the ill light of a London January dawn, is a large black limousine pumping exhaust fumes.

  Standing on the doorstep is Julia. She is holding my long-lost briefcase.

  [ twenty-one ]

  Double Trouble

  Julia gives me a smile like frostbite. “This is yours, I think?” She hands me the briefcase. “Now, may I have the photograph of my sister, please? The one you removed from my notice board last night?”

  “It’s upstairs,” I say—and I say it bravely.

  “Then go upstairs and get it.”

  I go upstairs. I retrieve the photograph from yesterday’s suit pocket. I return. This doesn’t take very long, a minute at most, but in that minute I’ve convinced myself, convinced myself, that all will yet be well. True, this isn’t a good beginning, but I can deal with it. Now is my chance to show Julia how much I’ve changed, how far I’ve moved on. It’s my chance to make amends, set things straight. It’s a God-given, early morning opportunity—exactly the kind I need on this first day of my new life.

  This optimistic mistake, and it is a mistake, is one I’ve made before—in fact, I’ve been making it since birth, so you’d think I might have learned. But no: As I run up and down stairs, I’m thinking of Julia as she appeared to me last night. That Julia is before my eyes with a visionary clarity. There she stands, a young, beautiful, and ambivalent woman. We’re in that attic at the Abbey. I can smell her blue scent and hear the chime of her bracelets. As I extract Finn’s photograph, that Julia is beckoning to me.

  Blessed by hindsight, I can see, now, where I went wrong then. It’s so obvious—why was I blind to it? I should never have blamed Julia for what happened that day in the dark. We were equally to blame—and why use the word blame, anyway? Let’s reexamine our act: Let’s scrape away the poisonous Pauline guilt that’s attached itself to such acts over the centuries; off it comes, all that phony crypto-Christian sexual revulsion and fear that too many generations have accepted as the diktats of God. Let’s remove the other accretions, too, several millennia of misogyny, sexual stereotyping, and gender bias, for instan
ce; we certainly don’t need them—all they’re doing is impeding our view, so they can come off. Let’s get rid of scummy linguistic concretions, too, words like “fornication,” for example: Out with it. Let’s scrape off all that sorry obscurantist accumulation of pseudo-morality and consign it to the eternal garbage can where it so rightly belongs. Let’s toss the complete works of Sigmund Freud in after it, and what are you left with? An unmarried young man and an unmarried young woman experiencing intercourse. In short, a fuck.

  A fuck we both wanted; a fuck that gave both of us deep physical pleasure. Is that so evil? What’s so wrong with that? Nothing. Nothing. Nothing. Twenty-plus years on, in a more enlightened era, I can look at that incident with new eyes. Apart from anything else, I can see how rare it was.

  I’m back in the hall, photograph of Finn clutched in my hand. I know why the man I was reacted to Julia as he did, I know why he felt that anger and revulsion. But I am no longer that sad man. I am a new man. I am a liberal and a leftist; I’m a paid-up, card-carrying, evangelical, moral, sexual, and political radical. I’m not that dark, archaic thing I used to be, that creature who teemed with demons. And this new man, this new Adam, owes Julia and her sex an apology. Urgently.

  Does it occur to me as I stand in the hall that while my mind has been following this pleasing trajectory, Julia’s could have followed a different one? No, it does not. But then I never do see, until too late, that half the time I’m on the wrong wavelength, out of radio contact with the rest of the world and waving wildly at it from a different galaxy. “Julia,” I say, coming to a halt in the doorway. “Julia, I’m sorry.”

  I hand her the photograph. I’m sure it will be clear to Julia that I’m not apologizing just for myself here: I’m apologizing on behalf of the male sex for the last two millennia. “Listen, Julia,” I continue, “I’m sorry I came to your house last night when I know you don’t want me there. I’m sorry I fucked up that espresso machine—I’ll get you a new one. I’m sorry about those ‘That Way/This Way’ ads. I’m sorry we ever fell out. I’m sorry for all the times when I’ve said the wrong thing and thought the wrong thing and done the wrong thing. There was a moment—I think there was a moment, when you and I might have taken a different route. And then we didn’t. I don’t suppose you regret that—I mean, look at me. But I’m trying to reform, I’m trying to change. Do you remember that time at the Abbey, in the attics, when I was painting the walls? Apology accepted? Friends? I’d like us to be friends again, Julia.”

  I’m waiting for her to take the hand I’m holding out to her. She doesn’t. This message clearly didn’t compute. She looks at me as if I’m certifiable. She takes the photograph, puts it in her bag, and takes something out of that bag—but I can’t see what it is.

  I look at her uncertainly. She isn’t looking her best—in fact, she looks as if she hasn’t slept. She looks pale and tired, and her hair is a mess, but even so, with no makeup and shadows under her eyes, she still looks beautiful. I say: “Julia, you look beautiful.”

  “Please,” she says, snapping back to life. “Spare me the charm. I’m not a complete fool. Why did you take that photograph?”

  “I don’t know. Truly, I don’t. Finn doesn’t answer my letters. I miss her badly. It was an impulse.”

  This reply, honest as it is, doesn’t seem to compute, either. Her mouth tightens. She says: “I see. Was this an impulse, too? Or did this require more thought?”

  And she holds out the small object she took from her bag. I see that it’s a Post-it note that has been scrunched up and smoothed out. On this Post-it, in my hand, is a message. It says: “Julia, beware! Your husband’s thinking of leaving you.”

  It gets worse. “You see,” Julia continues in a calm voice, “after you left, Dan, there was quite a lot of clearing up to do. As you obviously know, you’d sabotaged my espresso machine, and once you’d made good your escape, it blew up—I’m sure you’ll find that gratifying. Coffee grounds everywhere—on the ceiling, on the walls, on the floor. And when I’d finished sweeping all that up, and washing the entire kitchen, I put all the mess—all the mess you’d caused—in the rubbish bin. And there, mixed up with some eggshells—because my stupid husband actually made you scrambled eggs and God knows what else—I found this. So I thought I’d come round and ask how you got that information. It’s going to make me late for location, and I’m inconveniencing an entire production team—but I’d like to get this settled. I’m intrigued, Dan. You seem to have some insider knowledge here. Why would you believe my husband is about to leave me? What did Nick say to you?”

  “Nothing. He didn’t say anything. Really, Julia—we didn’t talk about you at all.”

  “Then you have some other source, perhaps?”

  “No, I don’t. Look, I don’t know why I wrote it—it doesn’t mean anything. I was a bit high, and—it was just a stupid joke, it was a reaction to those notes you’d left for Juanita or whatever her name is. I wrote it, then I saw how dumb it was, so I chucked the damn thing. I didn’t mean you to find it.” I pause. I can hear myself floundering. “Listen, Julia,” I say, “trust me. This is the truth. I’ve been thinking about you half the night.”

  “How odd. I was thinking about you half the night as well. I was thinking what a troublemaker you are, and how, no matter what happens, I am never, never, going to let you back into my life. I was thinking how I can’t stand you, because you’re a liar and a fool and a woman chaser, and you always think you can turn on the famous charm, and whatever you’ve done you’ll wriggle out of it. Well, you’re not wriggling out of this. So just don’t lie to me. Nick said something to you, didn’t he? I know he must have said something—so you can stop protecting him. Who is he seeing? How long has this been going on? Who is she? Christ, we’ve been married twenty years. We have two children. Tom’s only nine. Now tell me.”

  Something terrible is happening. Julia’s voice is unsteady. Under her words there’s a current of emotion, and it’s powerful. “Julia, don’t,” I begin. “Shit. Julia, don’t cry, please. Look, please don’t cry. I promise you, I give you my word, Nick didn’t say anything.”

  “I don’t care anyway,” Julia says, making a choking sound in her throat. “Living with that man is like living with a public monument. Sod him.”

  I’m shocked into silence. When I get over the shock, I say firmly: “You don’t mean that, Julia. Believe me, you do not mean that.”

  And in an awkward, tentative way, not knowing what else to do, I put my arms around her. Julia stiffens, and for a moment I think she’s going to slap my face. Then tears spill from her eyes; she gives a sigh, she swears, makes another choked sound, and steps blindly into my embrace. She buries her face against my shoulder and weeps bitterly. Those tears affect me: Latterly, I’ve found it hard to believe that alpha Julia, empress of trend, could weep—other than crocodile tears. I’d convinced myself she was a coldhearted alpha bitch. That was wrong of me. After all, I’ve seen Julia weep before. I saw her weep bitterly for Maisie, and for her grandfather, when the stroke finally took him, which—a few months after Maisie’s fall—it did.

  I’m not good with women’s tears. In the past they used to anger me; now they remind me that, as a consoler, I’m inadequate. But I do my best. I make soothing noises. I utter the gentle platitudes we all need at such moments—and I’ve discovered what they are, because I’ve longed for them a few times recently, and I had to learn them in the long months when I sat by Joe’s sickbed. I stroke Julia’s cashmere-coated back and her hair—her beautiful hair, which she, like Finn, has cut boyishly short. Its gold is shot through with the finest silver. I stare over her head at the black limousine, with its invisible driver. He’s running the engine; the sickly smell of diesel washes across the weeds in my front garden. It’s barely light. It’s cold. In the distance, I can hear the rumble of traffic, the sound of the city, of the great beast of the city; of the kraken, as it wakes.

  It feels strange, almost tranquil, standing there on
my doorstep, consoling Julia. I tell myself I’m being useful, at least. Women like a shoulder to cry on, Joe used to say. It was one of his core beliefs—not that Joe, a chaste widower for five decades, knew much about women, I suspect. Still, my consolations seem to be effective: I’m looking at this event distantly, through a pane of thick glass, a sensation probably due to an absence of stimulants; but Julia does seem to be growing calmer—and I feel calm, too, almost contented, which is progress, I tell myself. This isn’t how I’d planned this first day of my new life, but I’m dealing with it. In a minute Julia will pull herself together, and I’ll walk her to the car, and that will be that. And if Nick has been deceiving her, he can make that confession: I’m staying out of it. If I get involved—Julia is right about that—I’ll make the situation worse. Another lesson I’ve learned. Though I don’t understand why this curious malfunction happens; why is it that my interventions always provoke some catastrophic short circuit? It’s been happening since birth.

  Julia’s sobs have stopped. “You’re thin, Dan,” she says in a muffled voice against my shoulder. “You’re painfully thin, and you used to be so strong. What’s happened to you?”

  “Oh, you know, life. Age. A few things like that. Drugs don’t help.”

  “Are you off them?” She draws back, lifts her face, and looks at me steadily.

  “I wasn’t yesterday. I am today. But it is only six o’clock.”

  “That’s something. I’m glad about that.” She hesitates and then steps away from me. She pushes back her hair; she is wearing one narrow silver bracelet on her slender wrist. She glances along the street. “Rather a public place,” she says. “The last time you put your arms around me, we were less conspicuous. A long time ago, of course. Your apology is accepted. And I apologize, too. I shouldn’t have inflicted this on you first thing in the morning. I’ve been working very hard, long hours—you know what it’s like. I wish…” She hesitates. “I’d better go, Dan.”