David's Sisters

by Forsyth, Moira;

  Marion was not going to keep this awful news to herself, however privileged. When her mother was out of the way, and David not likely to burst in, she would explain the horror of menstruation to Eleanor. After all, Eleanor was as tall as Marion had been before glandular fever, so she was catching up anyway.

  ‘Mummy said not to tell you,’ she warned, ‘so if you breathe a single word to her, I’ll never tell you anything again.’

  ‘Don’t tell me then,’ Eleanor said, not wanting this responsibility. Marion stopped, thwarted.

  ‘Oh well then, if you want to be a baby.’

  ‘No, I’m not – all right, tell me then.’

  The trouble was, neither of them believed it.

  ‘Not every month,’ Eleanor said. ‘Not everybody.’

  ‘Everybody, she said. But you can’t imagine Auntie Alice …’

  ‘I can imagine Auntie Mamie,’ Eleanor said candidly. ‘What a fuss she must make.’

  ‘You can’t tell when it’s happening to somebody, it’s secret. Nobody else could tell, Mum says.’ But to herself Marion said, I’m not going to school on those days.

  ‘Well,’ Eleanor sighed, for once relieved to be the younger sister, ‘at least it won’t happen to me for ages and ages. Maybe,’ she added, ‘it won’t happen at all.’

  ‘It has to,’ Marion confirmed, ‘or you can’t have babies.’

  ‘I don’t care, I don’t want any babies anyway.’

  ‘I do,’ Marion said. Even if it meant going through all this, she meant to have children. Five of them: three boys and two girls. She had names for them, which changed depending on the books she was reading. The girls were called Shirley and Caroline at the moment.

  ‘I’m going to be an artist,’ Eleanor said. ‘So it would be better if I didn’t have children.’ She was designing an evening dress for Stephanie, her cut-out doll. It had sequins round the hem and a low neck.

  Faith had looked out Marion’s school clothes for going back on Monday. Now Marion stood looking in the wardrobe mirror, holding her skirt in front of her.

  ‘It’s miles too short. I’ve grown about a foot.’

  Eleanor went on drawing. She was jealous of the Academy uniform, and could hardly wait to wear it herself, next year.

  ‘The aunts are coming tomorrow,’ she said.

  Alice and Mamie had put off their visit because of the bad weather, but still arrived with all the flurry and drama of people who have struggled over trackless wastes to reach the house.

  ‘Well, Faith,’ Alice said, as they took off layers of outdoor clothes, littering the hall with coats, scarves and galoshes. ‘Are you not thinking of moving back into the town? You’ve been fair stranded out here.’

  ‘The Duthie Park was like the North Pole,’ Mamie told them, coming to get warm at the living room fire.

  ‘Have you been to the North Pole?’ David asked. Mamie stood with her back to the fire, raising her skirt so that the heat would flow up under it. Marion was embarrassed and looked away. Alice took her shoulders and held her still.

  ‘You’ve grown a wheen,’ she announced. ‘And you’ve fair got thin.’

  ‘I know,’ Marion said, freeing herself, backing out of the door.

  Upstairs, her new bedroom was cold and the grate empty. She was better now, there was no need for a fire. But she did not really feel better. She felt different, and a lot of the time she wanted to cry. Faith, coming in to see where she had got to, found her sitting on the edge of her bed, gazing down at her newly long legs.

  ‘Come away downstairs – it’s far too cold in here.’

  ‘Can I stay in this bedroom?’

  ‘It’s too cold, I said. What, you mean not move back with Eleanor?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Faith weighed this up. ‘We’ll see,’ she said.

  ‘Please. I like the wardrobe and dressing table in here – I like the curly patterns on the wood, so you wouldn’t have to get new furniture or anything.’

  ‘Oh good,’ said Faith, sarcastic, but smiling.

  Marion got off the bed and crossed to the dressing table. She had spent hours in this room, and had explored every corner of the unfamiliar furniture. ‘It was all in the house before we came, wasn’t it?’

  ‘Some of it, yes. Not the bed.’

  ‘Well, look, Mum, there’s this wee drawer in the dressing table – it’s locked. Have you got the key?’

  ‘Oh no, Marion – this room’s scarcely been used except when your aunties are staying. Alice had it last, once when Daddy and I were away.’

  ‘I remember that.’ Marion open the tiny cupboard in the centre of the dressing table, beneath the mirror. Inside were two drawers, one which opened and was empty, the other, below it, locked.

  ‘Well, fancy that,’ Faith said. ‘I never even noticed.’

  ‘Maybe there’s jewels hidden in there. A treasure map, or an old will – do you think there could be?’

  ‘You read too many stories.’ But Faith paused, thinking. ‘I tell you what – there’s a thing your granny did – Granny Cairns. Once she told me …’ Faith reached round behind the mirror and felt down the back. ‘Well, well.’ There was a ripping sound, and she pulled away a piece of sticky tape with a tiny key attached.

  ‘Oh, Mum!’

  ‘We’ll try it.’ The key fitted. Faith turned to Marion. There you are – you open it, see if there’s a diamond necklace inside.’

  Marion’s fingers trembled, but it was all for nothing: there was only a hairpin inside, and a silver sixpence. Her face fell.

  ‘Never mind,’ her mother said. ‘You’ve got a secret drawer for your own jewels now. And maybe it’s a lucky sixpence.’

  ‘Don’t tell anyone,’ Marion said.

  ‘Our secret,’ Faith promised. ‘Now then, come downstairs to the warm. I don’t want you moping up here.’

  ‘I can have this bedroom, can’t I?’ Marion wanted her mother to stay, so that they could go on talking, sharing secrets, but Faith seemed all at once to lose interest. She turned away. ‘Don’t pester me. I said, we’ll see.’

  Marion followed her mother downstairs. In her head, she was decorating her new room.

  Alice was helping David with homework. Mamie was knitting and Eleanor, sitting beside her, had two thick wooden needles and a ball of pink wool. Their father had said more than once that Eleanor and Mamie were alike, and Marion thought she saw what he meant: both were fair-haired (the only fair people in the family), with that white, powdery skin that fires up red with heat or excitement, and both had very blue eyes. Marion’s eyes were hazel like her mother’s, David’s grey like Aunt Alice. We are all like somebody, Marion thought. Perhaps Eleanor wasn’t very like Mamie after all, since Mamie’s hair was fluffy and dry with being permed over and over, while Eleanor’s was waving and shiny. And Mamie was plump and middle-aged, while Eleanor was a slim child. Eleanor hated to be compared to anyone, especially Mamie. ‘How can I be like her? She’s quite old and I’m young. And she’s fat, and all her clothes are frilly and fussy.’

  Marion liked Mamie’s frills, her lacy jumpers, her jingling bracelets and coloured scarves. She glanced up at the sideboard, where all the family photographs were crowded together at the back. One had been taken at Mamie’s wedding: there was Uncle Tom, whom they did not remember, looking serious in his Air Force uniform; there were Mamie and Alice (who was bridesmaid) in 1940s suits, with hats at an angle. Mamie’s blouse had a ruffle at the neck, Alice’s was plain. ‘A pink silk blouse,’ Mamie had told the girls, ‘I chose the pattern and material myself. But she wouldn’t have so much as a fancy button on it. Not her.’

  Marion looked down at Eleanor, who frowned hard over her knitting, concentrating. She tugged the tight loop with difficulty over the point of the needle. ‘In, over, through, off,’ Mamie was saying. ‘Can ye mind that?’

  ‘In, over, through, off,’ Eleanor was muttering through gritted teeth, and the loop did fly off, but too fast, the stitch was lost. Eleanor, se
eing her inch of pink knitting unravel in the middle, burst into tears.

  ‘Here, gie it ower,’ Mamie said, putting down her own cloud of white jumper sleeve. ‘Dinna pull at it, Eleanor, you’ll mak it worse.’

  ‘It’s in a mess,’ Eleanor moaned. ‘I can’t do it.’

  ‘Well,’ Faith said, coming in, ‘I hope you’re not coming down with something.’

  Eleanor stopped crying and looked up at her mother. ‘Maybe I am,’ she said hopefully.

  ‘I’ll do that,’ Marion said, coming down beside Eleanor on the floor. ‘See, Auntie Mamie, I know how to pick up dropped stitches.’

  ‘Ye’ve good hands on ye,’ Mamie agreed, guiding Marion as she picked up the loop, row by row.

  Eleanor lost interest and followed her mother to the kitchen. David, giving up the page of sums, flung down his book and went after her. Marion was left with Alice and Mamie, comfortable by the fire.

  ‘We’d better think about getting home,’ Alice said. She took the poker to the fire, which did not need it, and a shower of sparks flew up. ‘Afore it’s dark.’

  ‘Are you not staying for tea?’ Marion looked up.

  The roads is still bad, here and there,’ Mamie said, folding up her knitting and tucking it into her tapestry bag.

  ‘Remember when we were little,’ Marion said, ‘we used to tidy your work bag?’

  ‘Untidy it, mair like!’ Mamie laughed. Marion fastened the bag for her, tracing with her fingers all the little pockets along the side, that held packets of needles and pins, reels of thread, scissors and scraps of wool.

  The children watched from the living-room window as the aunts drove slowly through the trees towards the gates.

  ‘They’ll take hours and hours to get home,’ David said, ‘driving at two miles an hour.’

  ‘I wish they’d stayed,’ Marion said.

  ‘I don’t. Auntie Alice keeps wanting to talk about schoolwork.’ David flung himself into a handstand, held it for a moment, moved a step, collapsed. ‘See!’ he shouted, red-faced. ‘I nearly walked!’

  Marion had slept too much in the day-time. Now she could not manage to fall asleep at night, and though she did not want to admit it, she missed talking to Eleanor, who was still in the old bedroom, the light switched off at half-past eight. Marion had put on her new bedside lamp and read for a while, but she tired of this too, and lay down in the dark again. The thaw had turned to rain; it spattered on the window, an irritable bluster of wind and water, fretfully knocking round the house and garden.

  At last, between dozing and waking, she heard her parents come upstairs, and the line of light under the door grew wider, as Faith looked in.

  ‘I’m not asleep,’ Marion said firmly, but her mother only tucked the covers round and said, ‘You soon will be,’ before going out again. Eventually, after some to-ing and fro-ing, the sound of water running, the lavatory flushing, doors closing, the hall light went out, and all was still and dark. Outside, the wind vented its temper among the trees and against the windows, but indoors, the house had settled for the night.

  Perhaps she did sleep. At any rate, she thought something had wakened her, was conscious of a dream vanishing, colours fading. Marion opened her eyes in the dark. The wind had dropped; she could not tell if it was still raining. She could just make out the shapes of the furniture, so the sky must have cleared, since the gap in the curtains let in a shaft of moonlight, enough for her to see by, see all the familiar things, and know what they were.

  She listened to silence, and then a sound, very faint. It might have been the wind again, sighing among the trees. Then it came again, thinner and higher, and a little less faint. Marion sat up in bed, eyes wide open. Somewhere in the house, a baby was crying. She swung her legs over the side of the bed, and felt around for her slippers. Maybe I’m in a dream, she thought, going to the door and opening it cautiously. The sound had stopped. Then it came again, that thin, despairing sound of a newborn baby, that scarcely knows yet what to cry for.

  Marion was on the long landing, among shadows. Her room was at one end, her parents’ at the other, the black depths of the stairwell halfway between. Slowly, she moved towards the crying. She would get her mother, her mother would know what to do. Maybe it was not a baby but a kitten, shut in somewhere. Marion hoped it was a kitten. As she neared her mother’s room, the cry was suddenly behind her, so she turned, turned only for a second, and saw the dark figure at the head of the stairs, with a bundle in her arms, and the crying rose, urgent and unearthly, in the dark.

  Marion screamed and flung herself through the open doorway of her mother’s room, diving headlong onto the bed. Faith was out of bed, heart pounding, by the time Marion reached her.

  ‘What’s wrong – what is it?’ Faith held her tightly, smoothed her hair. ‘Hush, hush. Was it a bad dream?’ Felt her fore­head. ‘Are you feverish again, is that it? Hush, hush, it’s all right.’

  By this time, David and Eleanor were calling, so John went to settle them again. Somehow, in a moment, they were all in their parents’ bed, David bouncing with excitement, Eleanor crying with fright, Marion still leaning on her mother, feeling Faith’s heart thud in tune with her own, as their pulses began to slow again.

  ‘Is it a burglar, did Marion see a burglar?’

  ‘Don’t be silly, David.’

  ‘I saw a ghost,’ Marion told him.

  ‘Nonsense!’ But it was too late. Eleanor and David believed in the ghost; their house was haunted. David pulled the sheet over his head.

  ‘Did it go like this – whoo … whoo?’ His father hauled the sheet away.

  ‘Stop that all of you,’ Faith scolded. ‘There are no such things as ghosts.’

  There was no going straight back to sleep. They had to have warm milk and the hot water bottles reheated, as if they were being put to bed all over again. David stayed with their parents, falling asleep quickly, but kicking and wriggling so much they got no rest. Marion went back to her old room with Eleanor, and to her old bed. As soon as the girls were alone, Eleanor climbed in beside her. They weren’t afraid any more: the landing light was on, and they could hear the murmur of their mother’s voice, the low rumble of their father’s reply.

  ‘Tell me about it again,’ Eleanor whispered. ‘What did the lady look like?’ Marion had said, over and over, I saw a lady, I saw a lady holding something, I thought it was her baby. Now she said thoughtfully, ‘A bit like Auntie Alice.’

  Eleanor was reassured by this. ‘Oh, not scary then.’

  ‘No, Eleanor,’ Marion insisted, ‘it was scary. I never saw her face, it was just she had dark hair, and she was tall.’

  ‘She’s gone now, though.’ Eleanor turned round, nestling her bottom against Marion, sighing as she closed her eyes. ‘Mummy says you were dreaming. Maybe you dreamed her.’

  ‘The crying wasn’t a dream. I heard the crying.’

  ‘Yes, but you said it could be a kitten.’

  Marion did not reply. I saw her, she thought. I heard the crying. Then she realised that Eleanor had fallen asleep, because she could hear sucking noises, and Eleanor never put her thumb in her mouth now except in sleep. Marion cuddled up to Eleanor’s turned back, and rested her cheek on the softness of Winceyette, and listened. But the baby had stopped crying, the woman (if there had been a woman) was gone.

  In their parents’ bedroom, John fell asleep too, turned away like Eleanor, tugging the covers round him. Faith lay with her arms round David’s hot, restless body, trying to keep him still, and waited for morning. I know who you are, she told Marion’s ghostly lady. Will you never let go?

  16

  Gavin came back onshore at the end of February, just at the time Marion was having her third chemotherapy session. Eleanor heard the Saab coming up the lane, and knew it was his car. When the engine had stopped, she went to the window to make sure. She was thankful he had already disappeared into his house; she could look at his car, heart thumping, but not yet at him. So she waited, feverish with
uncertainty. Then she made herself turn away from the window and go into the kitchen, feeling she must do something to keep her mind occupied. Something. What? Anything.

  Claire, coming past his house on her way home from school a few minutes later, saw him first. He was carrying a box of groceries in from the car.

  ‘Hi,’ he greeted her. ‘How are you?’

  Tine,’ Claire answered, not stopping. Gavin, wanting to say more, had to call after her.

  She dumped her school rucksack in the hallway at home, ‘That man Gavin’s back,’ she said as she came into the kitchen and opened the fridge door. ‘What can I have to eat that’s not fattening, but stops you feeling hungry?’

  ‘An apple?’

  Claire made a face. ‘Mm. He said he’d look in and see you later.’ She spread two slices of bread with butter and sandwiched them with cheese slices. ‘Is this your evening class night?’

  ‘No, tomorrow.’

  ‘Cheese and bread are good for you, aren’t they?’

  ‘Well, real cheese is.’

  ‘This is real cheese. Anyway, I don’t like that stuff you eat. It smells disgusting.’

  I want someone to sit down with me, Eleanor thought, and eat real food, and like the things I like. I want another adult to be here. Now.

  When Gavin opened his door to her and she said, ‘Hi, I put your post in the kitchen, did you find it?’ her voice emerged high and strained, and she was trembling.

  He was the same. He looked tired and bit rough, unshaven, but he smiled with real pleasure to see her, ignored the post, took her (as soon as she had stepped inside) in his arms.

  ‘A long time, eh?’ he murmured, his mouth on her neck, sending shivers through her, stubble grazing tender skin, firing her up.

  ‘Oh,’ she gasped, ‘it was real.’

  ‘Real? This is real enough – I missed you.’

  ‘Yes.’ She could say it now. ‘Yes, I missed you.’ Then his hands were under her jersey, icy on hot skin, fingers hooked under her bra, pushing it up, then travelling down, down, a moment later, unzipping jeans, finding the secret places so soon she gasped again, tried to stop him, but felt, despite her protests, the betraying wetness seeping onto his fingers.