Room Upstairs

by Monica Dickens

  Jess gave her back her stick, but Sybil did not get up. ‘What did you want to ask me?’ she asked intelligently. ‘You wanted to ask me something.’

  ‘I have. I wish I hadn’t,’ Jess added softly, as she moved away.

  Out of the tangle of illogic and wool-gathering, one truth remained. No one but Jess had ever seen a ghost in this house.

  Even poor Mary, with all her myths and legends, and the Charity tree weeping under the new moon. Shall I write to her again and ask her if that too was a lie? And she will answer Yes, and say it was only hysteria, from the servant’s mumbo jumbo. And I shall know for certain then. This house is haunted only for me.

  *

  ‘Would you like a drink, Gramma?’

  ‘Shan’t we wait for Laurie?’

  ‘He’s not coming tonight. Remember, I told you.’ (They always said that, but it wasn’t necessarily true.) ‘He’s going to hear the Vice-President speak and go on to the reception, and he’ll stay the night in town.’

  ‘Not taking his wife to the party?’

  ‘Look at her.’ Jess stuck her stomach out even farther and made a face like a pig. They both laughed.

  Jess made mint juleps, and Sybil said: ‘In my day, no mother would dream of taking liquor for the whole nine months.’

  ‘In my day, no mother would last the nine months without it.’

  They laughed again. The girl was friendly and more cheerful. She seemed to have got over her odd fit earlier in the day when she kept asking Sybil something and Sybil could not seem to give her the right answer, which was not surprising, since she was never quite clear what the question was.

  The day was waning in unremitting heat. It was cooler in the house, so they sat in the shaded back room, and Sybil brought the Dorothy bird to share the pleasant hour with her, and perch on the edge of the wooden bowl, drilling holes in the potato chips. It would not surprise Sybil to see it take a peck into her julep. Dorothy had liked her shot.

  ‘You make a very fair-julep, child. Just like we always had them.’ The medicinal bittersweetness, half taste, half fragrance, was like a sob for so many other summers. Juleps with Theo while the tired figures on the hillside moved slowly, raking the last of the hay before dark. Parties for John - or was it Laurie?

  ‘Uncle Ted taught me.’

  Parties for Ted. He had betrayed that girl with the funny nose like a faucet. ‘Everyone knew about it. There was quite a scandal. I expect she’s dead now.’ She chuckled. It was comic to think of everyone else falling apart but Sybil.

  She raised her glass, and the bird said without looking at her: ‘Drink up Sybil, drink up. Sybil Sybil Sybil.’

  Jess made a face at the bird, and Sybil said: ‘He always said that when Dot gave me medicine. Stuff she’d made herself.’

  ‘I always wondered why you drank it.’

  ‘I had to.’ Sybil glanced at the bird, but he was investigating under his wing. ‘There was no gainsaying her. You knew that. Drink up, she’d say, and I did.’ She put up a hand between her mouth and the bird and whispered to Jess behind it: ‘Though I’ll admit to you now that there was a time when I was afraid she was trying to poison me.’

  Weird - that came back all of a sudden. She had forgotten about that time of terror, since Dorothy came back to the world so benign. ‘I thought she drugged my hot milk.’ She could see herself now, sitting at the table, crying because she dared not drink and dared not refuse. It was all coming back. Must be the mint.

  ‘Poor Gramma,’ Jess said, not really believing. ‘But then in the end, she poisoned herself. You don’t suppose she meant that batch of pills for you?’

  ‘Oh no,’ Sybil said quickly. ‘Oh no, because she didn’t make those pills. She was much too sick.’

  ‘I’m coming down.’ She looked up in fear, and Dorothy loomed against the banister rail, wild-haired, lipstick on her teeth, her face as red as her awesome robe, the wide arc of raspberry buttons done up all wrong. The rack of coughing seized her and she gripped the rail until it shook, and the thin wooden posts trembled.

  Sybil thought she would choke to death. When Dorothy raised her head, her eyes were streaming, and saliva ran from her scarlet mouth on to the scarlet robe.

  ‘God damn it,’ she said - Dorothy never swore - ‘I’ll never make it.’

  ‘I’ll do it, Dot.’ Sybil heard herself gabbling and falling over her words, so eager to help. ‘I’ll make the pills. I know how. I’ve helped you dozens of times.’

  ‘Tell me how,’ Dorothy croaked, suspicious in extremis.

  ‘You take the powder, the parsnip root, and mix it with the bilberry pulp, and then you pound in cornmeal and put in a mess of honey till it tastes good, and then you roll the pills.’

  Clever Sybilla, Dorothy could have said, but she only grunted: ‘OKI guess you can do it. It’s the only thing will do me any good.’

  The jelly jars in which Dorothy kept the powders and liquids she used were on the top shelf of the cupboard, neatly labelled, for Dorothy was as precise in her herbalism as John Camden had ever been.

  Sybil could not find her reading glasses, had not been able to find them for days, but she knew which was the jar for the dried parsnip root. A place for everything and everything in its place was one of Dorothy’s sayings, informatively, as if no one else had ever said it.

  There it was, next to the horseradish. It was tall and narrow and had once held dill pickle chips. Sybil stood on a chair, panting and clutching at the cupboard shelves. The jar was empty.

  What now? She sat down on the chair holding the empty pickle jar, facing the counter under the cupboard as if she were going to play the organ. The eye of the mind saw a tiny figure of herself, like things seen far away in fever, limping up the stairs, knocking on Dorothy’s door and saying: ‘I’m sorry, Dot. I couldn’t do it.’

  Impossible. She had to do it. She had promised. And Dorothy would be pleased with her. She would say: I owe you my life, Sybil Camden Prince, because Sybil had not failed her in her time of greatest need. Sybil had made pills.

  But the wild parsnip. She had not been up to the old seed-house on the nursery hill for at least a year, but she knew that was where Dorothy dried the various roots on the sunny shelves, and beat them into powder and stored them in big jars she got from the lady at the soda fountain. This lady’s name was Ethel Wills, and she ate only Nature’s foods like dandelion salads and carrot tops, which made it hard for her to have to work among the synthetic juices and plastic hot dogs, but easy for her to understand about the herbal remeshes, and so she saved the big syrup jars for Dorothy.

  Thinking of Ethel Wills, and the hot fudge sundaes they had enjoyed from her, and would enjoy again when Dorothy was well, Sybil changed her shoes without realizing just what she was about, and found herself out on the wet spring lawn, headed for the gate of the fence.

  There had been a path once, a dirt track for the brown horse that hauled the cart, and later Theo’s tractor, and the Jeep. Trees and bushes were gradually obliterating it, seeded firs growing up between the ruts. Dorothy would not use the path, because the branches caught at her hair. Was it a wig? The thought arrested Sybil as she wandered in she trees on the other side of the fence, looking for the path. Or did Dorothy prefer to climb up through the meadow, because it was too steep for Sybil to follow?

  She headed back to the grass, chopping angrily with her cane at thistles, which did not flinch. I was running up that hill long before you were born, she told whoever it was who was telling her it was too far. I’ll get up, she panted aloud, stumbling and lurching through the lumps and tufts the winter had heaved, if I have to do it on my hands and knees. And later, after a blank interval when there was no mind to think or speak with, only the body toiling perpetually upward, she came to herself in sunlight and saw that she was indeed climbing the last slope on hands and knees.

  Her cane was gone, somewhere far below. Who cares. I lose one a week. Stones were under her hands, dry cow dung, thistles. She raised her h
ead like a tortoise and saw the top of the seedhouse, leaning against the sky, its old blue paint faded and flaked like a dinghy left too long in the water.

  Excelsior. In New Hampshire, Papa took her up a mountain, and they said Excelsior to each other when they reached-the top. But there was another top farther on, and so they said it again there.

  Rasping breaths knifed her throat. She paused, leaning against the slope, and decided not to go any farther. It had been a good climb. Below her, the house sat quietly among the bare trees, waiting for the leaves to clothe it. It was very peaceful resting here on the bosom of her own hill, with a small breeze softening her face that had been climbing with clenched jaw. Perhaps she should stay here. Here at the quiet limit of the world, Papa said, under the sky, with the dark miles of pines between him and the sea. Here at the quiet limit of the world, a white haired shadow roaming like a dream the ever silent spaces of the East.

  But he never did roam here. He went away and left her with Marma. Wait for me, Papa! With a grunt, she pushed herself upright and moved one foot above the other, to find him at the top of the hill.

  The door of the seedhouse was shut, but not locked. She pushed in and sat down on the broken chair, getting her breath back in the familiar dusty savour of dried earth and flowerpots and crumbled herbs.

  I did it. I did it, Dot. You will be proud of me.

  After a while, she was able to get up and poke about on the shelves, looking for what she had come for. But she knew what I she had come for, that was the thing. They thought she was done for, obsolete, a useless crone sopping her crusts in sweet tea.

  There were roots spread on the drying racks. Some of them had been there too long and were mildewing, some were crumbled and hollow. No telling what they were, but they were no use anyway. On a shelf at the back of the shed, near the thick board and the scarred rolling pin that Dorothy used to crush roots and dried stalks were the big jars that Ethel Wills gave her. Sybil took the one that contained the most powder, since Dorothy would need a good supply of pills to tide her through convalescence, and clutching it to her, shut the door of the shed and went home the longer way down the road and down the driveway, using a bamboo plant stake for a cane.

  As she mixed up the powder and the fruit pulp and the cornmeal in the old wooden bowl, she wished that Dorothy could see her, so efficient. But if Dorothy were there, she would be doing the mixing. Sybil was only allowed to roll the pills.

  She tipped in an amber waterfall of honey. She added a little more, for Dorothy’s sweet tooth, and hooked in a finger nail, to taste before she rolled. Disgusting. Did the pills always taste that bad? If so, Dorothy had been putting a good face on them to shame Sybil for grimacing over the willowleaf wine.

  But poor old Dot was sick now, and must be pampered. When Mary was a child, you couldn’t get a pill down her, hysterical as she was. Polly used to hide her tablets in a big spoonful of strawberry preserve. They still had some of Melia’s chunky marmalade, for when oranges were cheap, she had made enough for a year’s siege. When she had rolled the pills, Sybil took them upstairs with the marmalade and a spoon and a glass of water on a tray. She had to lay the marmalade jar on its side, and the water was all over the tray by the time she reached the top, but she filled up the glass in the bathroom and knocked on Emerson’s door.

  ‘Where have you been?’ Dorothy jerked open the door as if she had been waiting behind it. ‘I thought you’d shed.’

  ‘I might have,’ Sybil said proudly, ‘with my heart. Going all—’

  But Dorothy would not hear the epic tale. She grabbed a pill, chased it down with water and began to cough again, holding the sides of her great chest as if the bows of her ribs might fly apart.

  Sybil put the tray on a chair and put two pills into a big spoonful of marmalade, and when Dorothy opened her mouth to gasp, Sybil popped in the spoon, opening her own mouth like a mother feeding a baby.

  Dorothy leaned against the doorpost and glowered wanly. ‘That marmalade tastes funny.’

  ‘Best in the house!’ She did not remind her who made it, for Dorothy could never hear any good of Melia Mulligan, only bad. ‘Take a couple more, for luck. That’s a good girl. Come on now, to please Sybil.’ Cooing and coaxing, for there was no more ire in Dorothy, only a sickly weakness, she gave her two more marmaladed pills, and was emboldened to suggest: ‘Let me help you back into bed.’

  The slam of the door wiped the smile from her face like the back of a hand.

  *

  ‘Why didn’t you tell us this before?’

  ‘I never thought about it. All the fuss and excitement and the fool questions, it went clean out of my head. Can you imagine me making it to the seedhouse and down? I couldn’t do it now to save my life. But to save Dot’s, I could.’

  She was losing logic again, quite serenely, but Jess was beginning to tremble. She felt sick and cold, and her hands were shaking, so she twisted them together. They were sweating, but her mouth was thick and dry and it was hard to speak.

  ‘It must have been the shock of—the shock of—’ She could not speak to Sybil about Dorothy’s death.

  She did it. She killed her.

  She put her hands to her mouth and rushed out of the room. She ran outside, though the sink was nearer, and vomited up her soul into the long feathery grass beside the wire of the tennis court. There was nothing left inside her, and the baby plunged fretfully, as if he too would be vomited up and leave her.

  She lay there for a long time. When she got up at last and carried the baby indoors on legs that had no power, Sybil seemed to have forgotten everything again. She had poured herself another drink, and was in the kitchen chopping cabbage with the glass at her elbow, like any suburban housewife cooking dinner by the light of a martini.

  ‘What’s the matter, child?’ She turned as Jess came in. ‘You look terrible.’

  ‘How do you expect me to look?’ Jess swallowed, to see if she might be sick again.

  ‘It’s hard, I know. It’s hard for women. Dot says if men had to have the babies, it would solve the population problem.’ She laughed. ‘Shall I put dill into the slaw, or does it get in your teeth the way it does mine?’

  She had forgotten already. Whatever door had kept the truth concealed had clanged again. Jess was the only one who knew.

  Let me forget too, she prayed before she went to sleep. Let me forget. But in the leaden awakening of the morning, what might have been a dream was true.

  She could hardly look at Sybil. When she took in the break fast tray, and the old lady reached out scarecrow arms to embrace her, Jess stepped back quickly to the window, pretending to look out. She killed her. She stared down into the garden in a panic. She let her she an agonizing death. She’s a murderess. She’s mad.

  All day the thoughts twisted in her mind like maggots. She spent most of the morning in bed. Then she telephoned Anna and asked her to come early. She drove to where a finger of rocks lay out into the sea, and sat hunched up in her Pilgrim dress, staring at the green shifting water, not caring that the people who were fishing on the rocks farther out stared at her white Dutch cap and her big white collar fluttering.

  She craved the crowded obliteration of the Plantation, but when it was time to go there, she could not show them her face. She went back up the beach, carrying her shoes, and got into the car and drove barefoot towards Boston. When she was in the street where Laurie’s office was, She could not get out of the car because she was wearing her Pilgrim dress, so she drove back to Camden House and asked Anna if she would stay on for a while.

  She changed her clothes and sat outside behind a tree, and when she heard Laurie’s car at the top of the steep driveway, she rushed round the house to cry to him: She killed her! But when he stopped the car with a bounce and jumped out and ran to her, she could not tell him.

  She had asked Anna to stay later, because she had the idea that when she told Laurie, he would take her away from there. Away from Sybil and the bird and the yellow house
and the stench of death that swept down the stairs like poison gas.

  He put his arm around her and they went into the house together, and nothing was changed. She could not change it. If she told Laurie - but torturing everyone would not make her own torture less. Suppose he felt a perverted legal compulsion to reveal the truth, even about his own grandmother? Montgomery? His doctor’s code could also righteously destroy. Nothing to gain by haggling over Dorothy’s disintegrating corpse. Everything to lose.

  Sybil had forgotten already. The guilt had been passed to Jess. And to her child. She would tell him in the end, because she would tell him everything she knew. Laurie would bring him up in warm pride of his family. Then Jess would shiver it with her cold secret.

  Somehow she got through another day. She went to the Plantation in the long woollen dress, which was strained now as tightly as Dorothy’s cardigans. New images of Dorothy crowded her mind to replace the old false images of Dorothy as fool and fated bungler, hatching her own death. Dorothy was victim now, the bludgeoned corpse in Epping Forest, the mutilated woman in the river.

  A victim who would never be avenged, because of Jess. She sat on a three-legged stool inside the Myles Standish House and held on to her baby and thought: I am not fit to have a child.

  Myles Standish, with fiery ginger hair like scrubbing bristles glued too tightly to his head for wanton visitors to pluck, was doing business with one Hobomock in a Masonic apron, who brought beaver skins shaped like tennis rackets.

  In the background, Rose Standish, a thin, work-weary woman with a furious wax baby, offered the Indian a plate of what looked like dog food, although you could tell by her harrowed face that it was her own dinner.

  Visitors came in and out from the dusty sunlight, and asked questions and made the same joke about Mrs Standish and the dog’s dinner, and Jess answered them automatically and laughed her polite Pilgrim laugh. A middle aged woman in patchwork Bermuda shorts stood tiptoe girlishly to whisper something to her husband.

  He looked at Jess. ‘Quite right,’ he said, as they went out. ‘They had to populate America, after all.’