David's Sisters

by Forsyth, Moira;

‘That’s just because it is hardly used,’ Marion told her. ‘Unused rooms are uncomfortable.’

  ‘Like my spare bedroom in the cottage,’ Eleanor said. ‘You’d think in such a tiny house there wouldn’t be any unused rooms. But it’s full of boxes.’

  ‘Still?’

  ‘Och, I’ve nowhere else to put the stuff.’

  ‘Maybe you should throw it out,’ her mother suggested.

  ‘Mum, it’s books mostly. You can’t throw out books.’

  Faith raised her eyes. ‘Oh, books.’

  ‘You probably still associate the dining room with your ballet classes,’ Marion said.

  ‘Very likely. If your father had ever got rid of those mirrors for me …’

  ‘Now then,’ John broke in, ‘we’re not going over that again. It’s a question of finding someone else who could make use of them.’

  Faith shook her head, smiling. ‘Well, well, tell them our news, John. Never mind the mirrors.’

  ‘What news?’ Eleanor looked from one to another, but could tell from their faces they were pleased. It was nothing bad. John got up and went to the dresser for his glasses, and picked up an envelope lying there.

  ‘It’s David,’ Faith announced, before he could sit down again. ‘We’ve heard from David.’

  ‘At last!’

  ‘What – not a letter?’ Eleanor exclaimed. ‘Good heavens, fancy him writing a letter.’

  ‘Well, a note. On a wee card.’ John took it out of the envelope. On one side, a reproduction of a Botticelli Madonna; on the other, a few scrawled words. Eleanor realised with a tiny shock that the very handwriting, large and black and looped, jolted memories. She kept still, listening as her father read.

  ‘Moving to Edinburgh before Christmas, back to being a Scot at last. Will be in touch. Love to all.’

  Silence, as they took this in.

  ‘Well,’ Marion said.

  Faith started piling up dishes. ‘I have no idea what he means by saying he’ll be back to being a Scot. Presumably he didn’t stop being Scottish just because he was living in England.’

  ‘Is there an address?’ Marion took the card from her father. ‘No – not even a phone number.’

  ‘But he’s going to be in touch,’ John said, taking his glasses off and beaming at them. ‘Back for Christmas.’

  ‘Oh, that’s what I was going to ask. Fergus wants to know – well, we all do. Are you coming up to us this year?’ Her parents looked at each other.

  ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘There’s Alice and Mamie …’

  ‘Oh them too.’ Marion waved away objections. ‘Fergus’s mother will put them up. We’ll manage. Or,’ she grinned at her sister, ‘Eleanor could clear out her boxroom.’

  ‘You’ll have David too,’ their father prompted. ‘David will be here.’

  ‘Maybe.’ Faith rose from the table. ‘Poke the fire up, John. We’ll take our coffee through.’

  Later, Eleanor tapped on Marion’s bedroom door. Marion was sitting up in bed with a cardigan round her shoulders, reading her way through a selection of her mother’s Woman and Home.

  ‘Do you want any of these?’ she asked.

  ‘No, I’ve got the Scots Magazine and the Reader’s Digest.’

  ‘I thought you always re-read What Katy Did when you came home?’

  ‘So I do. But one night isn’t quite long enough these days. I just fall asleep. Anyway, I love that page in Reader’s Digest – what’s it called – you know, “Life’s Like That”.’

  ‘Why, for goodness sake?’

  ‘Because mostly it isn’t like that. Life is like … oh, something else. Not like anything in Reader’s Digest.’ Eleanor sat on the edge of the bed. ‘It’s freezing in here.’

  ‘I know. Heating went off at nine o’clock as usual.’

  They grimaced at each other.

  ‘We grew up in this,’ Eleanor said. ‘How did we survive?’

  ‘Hardy.’

  ‘I suppose.’ Eleanor flicked over the pages of a discarded magazine. ‘Mum’s not too chuffed about David, is she?’

  ‘You can hardly blame her.’

  ‘Dad’s thrilled.’

  ‘He always is. David’s still the blue-eyed boy.’ Marion sighed, and leaned back on the pillows. ‘Mum’s sharper with him, with all of us.’

  ‘And you think that as far as David’s concerned, she’s quite right?’

  ‘Yes, I do. He’s so unfair to them. Why can’t he write, call them up, make sure they have his address? It’s not much to ask. What on earth is he doing that’s so secret?’

  Eleanor only shrugged, so Marion went on, ‘You ought to know, if anyone does. I mean, he was forever staying at your house at one time.’

  ‘Yes.’ Eleanor bit her lip, and went on leafing through pages of recipes.

  Marion looked at her in silence for a moment, then said, ‘Oh well, Mamie and Alice tomorrow. Lots of news and good advice.’

  ‘The aunts. You don’t really want them at Christmas as well, do you?’

  Marion smiled. ‘Och, where else are they going to go, if Mum and Dad come to us? They’d have a wee chicken on their own, and drive each other crazy.’

  Eleanor laughed. ‘So they’ll come and drive all of us crazy instead? Let me help, then. I’ll make a pudding.’

  ‘No thanks. I know your pudding. You can come and make table decorations and fold napkins. I know your strengths, Eleanor Cairns, and they don’t lie with pudding making.’

  They gazed at each other, startled.

  ‘Now,’ Eleanor said, ‘I can’t imagine anyone calling you Marion Cairns.’

  ‘Sorry, don’t know why—’

  ‘Oh, I never liked Ian’s name much anyway. But women didn’t keep their own names when we married. Eleanor Cooper. Hm. Doesn’t suit me. But maybe I’ve gone back to being single. Nice to think you could go back to being young.’

  ‘It’s because we’re here.’

  ‘Being the girls. Is David still “the boy”, do you think?’

  ‘To Dad he is.’

  Eleanor got up, stiffly. ‘I’m frozen. Must get a hot bottle, and go to bed.’

  ‘Up early,’ Marion warned. ‘I want to be in Marks by half nine.’

  Eleanor groaned, but nodded, ‘Aye, OK,’ then went back to her own room.

  At Pitcairn, they slept in the rooms they had had as teenagers, when Marion had demanded a bedroom of her own, and moved out of the one they had shared as children. It meant her room was always more grown-up than Eleanor’s, for Eleanor could not bear to leave the nursery bedroom, with the beech tree at the window and wallpaper with pink roses and blue forget-me-nots. And yet, the rooms were very alike now, with single beds and low bookcases their father had made, and empty wardrobes that held only their wedding gowns and the dresses they had worn as each other’s bridesmaids. Marion’s bookcase was full of stories about girls who became air hostesses, nurses, ballerinas; on the top shelf a row of pottery rabbits alternated with china figurines, dressed in pink tutus. Eleanor’s books were the old childhood classics: Enid Blyton adventures and Little Women, and the School Friend annuals. On top of hers, a row of sea shells, collected long ago, and so brittle now many were chipped and broken. The posters of pop stars, the clothes and make-up and long playing records, had years ago been cleared out. Childhood remained; adolescence had been swept away. No wonder, Eleanor thought, huddling round the burning hot water bottle, that coming back here is like being a child again.

  Not meaning to, or wanting to, she began to think of David, when he had stayed with her that last time. New Year. January. Black ice, and the funeral cars going so slowly in freezing air they seemed to move through silence. Not a sound all the way to the Crematorium. There must have been sound, after that. A hymn, words, farewells, some sort of conversation. Eleanor could recall only silence, and the coffin gliding away in hollow stillness. Think of other things. But she could not. In the end, she put the lamp on and read ‘Life’s Like That’ until her eyeli
ds fell and she could put the light off and try again to sleep, numb and heavy, not thinking at all.

  Marion woke early, as she always did. Her mother was downstairs already. The bedroom doors at Pitcairn still sprang open in the night, and though the fitted carpets they now had stopped them moving very far, Marion could hear Radio 4 very faintly from the kitchen. She lay listening to the sober murmur of the news, lulling herself with the illusion of being young again, a daughter, someone who did not have to get up and cope with waking a household, getting everyone organised for the day. The thought of the Christmas shopping kept her from sleep; she would have to get up.

  The kitchen light was on; outside, daylight crept up the garden. Faith was making pastry. Gently, she lifted a rolled-out disc and laid it in a pie dish.

  ‘You’re an early bird,’ she said, looking up.

  ‘Ach,’ Marion shrugged, ‘it’s years since I was able to lie in.’

  ‘Well, you would have a family,’ her mother smiled, as she began to roll out the second disc.

  ‘What are you making?’

  ‘Apple pie. I thought we’d have a pudding, since Mamie and Alice are coming.’

  Marion filled the kettle. ‘I’ve not much in the way of cereal,’ Faith went on, watching her. ‘Your dad likes his porridge.’

  ‘I’ll have toast.’ Marion moved about the familiar kitchen. ‘You must be relieved to hear from David,’ she said as she made herself tea and waited for the toaster.

  ‘Oh, I’ve given up worrying about him.’

  Marion knew this was not true. ‘I suppose he’s old enough to take care of himself now,’ she said.

  ‘He always thought so.’ Faith pinched the edges of the pie crust, and put the dish in the pantry. Then she began to wipe up the table, clearing it. Marion sat at the other end, spreading marmalade on her toast.

  ‘He’s thoughtless, though,’ she said.

  Her mother paused, looking up. ‘Och, Marion, people say boys are easier – you know? I hear other women say that about their children. It wasn’t true for us – David was the difficult one.’

  Marion thought of Ross, who was easy-going, quiet. ‘I suppose, even as a wee boy, he was always in trouble.’

  Faith sat down suddenly, the cloth still in her hand. ‘I used to blame Stanley,’ she said. ‘You mind on that lad, Stanley?’

  ‘Yes, of course I do. He was never away from the place when we were kids.’

  ‘I used to blame him – no mother, and his father forever in the Pitcairn Arms.’ She sighed. ‘But it was David – David was the leader. I saw that when Stanley came back that time, told us what had happened to David. And years before …’ She hesitated.

  ‘What?’

  ‘They had a spell of lighting fires, him and Stanley. Down in the woods, up the lane – they near set the henhouse alight one day. It was all David’s idea – he was fascinated by fire. I was terrified they’d do it sometime there was nobody to catch them.’ Her face tightened.

  ‘But they never did any real damage,’ Marion protested. ‘It was just a bonfire or two – wasn’t it?’

  Faith stood up, drawing the cloth across the table to catch the rest of the crumbs, sweeping them into her cupped hand, held at the edge. ‘I hope so,’ she said. ‘I hope that’s all it ever was.’ She looked up at the clock. ‘You’d better get Eleanor out of her bed, if you want to be in the town early. It’s terrible trying to get parked at this time of year.’

  Marion got up. ‘Right,’ she said. ‘I’ll go and see if she’s awake.’

  They were gone all morning, and came back in time for a late lunch, the back seat of the car full of bulging carrier bags.

  ‘Well?’ Faith asked as they came into the kitchen. ‘Success?’ ‘Yes,’ said Marion, and ‘No,’ said Eleanor.

  ‘Oh come on, Eleanor, you’ve bought heaps of things.’

  ‘Ach, I hate shopping.’

  ‘I just can’t do it any more,’ Faith said as she turned the soup down to a simmer and put the lid back on her stockpot. ‘My legs hurt. Shops don’t have chairs now, so you can have a wee rest.’ She went to get rolls from the bread bin. ‘I’m getting old, that’s my trouble.’

  ‘No, you’re not.’ Eleanor squeezed her mother round the waist, her tiny mother who seemed even smaller these days, and fragile. Faith shook her off, smiling, and put the rolls in a basket.

  ‘I’m not so spry as I was. And neither’s Dad.’ Marion halted with her arms full of carrier bags, hearing something like caution, almost a warning, in her mother’s voice.

  ‘He’s all right, though?’

  ‘Well, he’s got angina.’

  ‘When – when did he get that?’ Marion put her bags down, and Eleanor stopped in the middle of taking off her jacket.

  ‘He’s been breathless for months, but I couldn’t persuade him to see the doctor. Then, a couple of weeks back, chest pains in the night, so I got Martin Cleland to come in, next morning.’

  ‘You never said!’

  ‘Nothing to say. No sense in worrying you girls.’

  ‘But – what are they going to do about it?’

  ‘Oh, he’s down for some procedure where they put a balloon inside an artery or something. Don’t ask me. He’s got tablets for now, and Martin says there’s nothing to worry about. But the specialist has to decide, about the balloon thing. He’s seeing him in December.’

  Eleanor and Marion stood there for a moment, watching their mother shave curls of butter into a flowered china dish, getting on with things, not looking at them.

  ‘I wish you’d said,’ Eleanor muttered, as she hung up her jacket.

  ‘I’ll take this lot upstairs, out of the way,’ Marion said, gathering packages.

  ‘Right, then, Eleanor, take the bread and butter through.’

  The dining room fire had been lit, and the first chill just removed from the atmosphere, but the room was still bleak, and smelled of soot. Against the left-hand wall, opposite the window, stood the piano, long out of tune, where Marion had practised, and their mother, or Ruby, had played for the ballet classes. The long polished table was set with silver and glass, and the press door at the side of the fireplace stood ajar, showing on the shelves more glass, napkins and spare flower vases. It was an ordinary dining room, rarely used, a little musty, until you turned to the wall on the right of the door. All the way to the end, there were full-length mirrors fitted, and halfway up, a wooden barre. As Eleanor put the basket of rolls on the table, she caught sight of herself in the looking-glass world, the other dining table and chairs, the other fire burning silently in the grate, the other Eleanor fair and solemn, hair falling forward. Then all this dissolved and for a moment only she saw the row of little girls again in their leotards and pink practice shoes, heads poised, arms arched, one, two three, one two three, heads up, tummies in, and again, one two three …

  ‘Now then,’ Faith said behind her, ‘you could get the white napkins out.’

  ‘I wish Dad would get rid of these mirrors.’

  ‘Oh, he’s promised me that for years. And the room redecorated. This gloomy paper, it’s long overdue for a change.’

  ‘It could be a really lovely room – the fireplace, and the big window.’

  ‘Och, it’s hardly worth it now. This house is too big for us. I’m only setting the lunch in here because it keeps Mamie out of my kitchen.’

  ‘You’re not thinking of moving though?’

  ‘No, no, I’m too old for that palaver. Pitcairn will see us out. Then you girls and David can please yourselves.’

  ‘Don’t. You and Dad are going to live for ever.’

  Faith laughed. ‘Oh aye.’ She raised a hand. ‘Hark, is that them now?’ Faintly, along the drive, came the chugging of the aunts’ Morris Minor.

  Eleanor went through the hall to the front door, but her father was there before her. She thought how gaunt he seemed, but he still moved briskly, so he could not really be ill. Angina was common, wasn’t it? You didn’t die of angina. The
y could ask Fergus, when they got home.

  Mamie and Alice eased themselves stiffly out of the Morris Minor, Mamie in purple and blue, all floating scarves and sweet scent, a plump butterfly of a woman, her rings flashing as she waved to them in the sunshine of this mild November day. Alice came more soberly behind, thin and upright as her brother, and plain, in her grey coat and hat.

  Eleanor’s heart, chipped with anxiety about her father, squeezed by the past, by David’s careless note, relented and relaxed, and she ran down the steps to meet them, and take the flowers Mamie held out, the parcels Alice carried.

  Next morning, going home, Marion said, ‘They seem quite well, don’t they, Mum and Dad? I’ll ask Fergus about Dad’s angina. I don’t think there’s anything to worry about, though. Do you?’

  ‘They’re both fine,’ Eleanor assured her. ‘Mum’s never been ill, has she?’

  ‘All that exercise when she was young, the dancing.’

  ‘And those classes – remember? When we were at the Academy, and she wanted to make a bit of money herself.’

  ‘Is that why she did it, do you think?’ Marion sounded surprised. ‘I thought it was just that she missed teaching, and we were getting older, and anyway, both of us were utterly useless at ballet. So she took in all those other would-be Fonteyns.’

  ‘Those dreadful little girls on Saturday mornings, shrieking and laughing. How long did it go on?’

  ‘A few years – till around the time David left school? Can’t remember now. She could never have made much money at it. How many parents would bring their children all the way out there for a ballet class – the middle of nowhere.’

  ‘Those awful mirrors,’ Eleanor said.

  ‘I know.’ Marion laughed. ‘If you’re at the fireplace side of the table, you get a nice warm back, but you have to sit and look at yourself eating.’

  ‘Yes, and the back of Mamie’s head, nodding up and down. I try not to look.’ Eleanor had been conscious all through lunch-time of her reflection, and of Mamie’s plump rear view, the fluffy white hair less buoyant from the back, and showing pink scalp beneath. Even then, in the middle of the flow of reminiscence and gossip that made up family talk, she had been able to conjure them again, the row of little girls, hopping down the room, Ruby thumping on the piano, and her mother, tiny and dark, shouting instructions.