I nodded.
I had expected him to take me home, but when he turned the car towards his own house, I stopped him.
I can’t, I said. I have to go back.
He did not understand, and I did not know how to explain that she had been there, alone, all weekend. It had been, in fact, the first weekend I had ever left her.
Perhaps, he said when we pulled up at Dorothy’s gate, we should talk about you coming to live with me.
He had been kissing me, his mouth hot and suffocating on mine, his eyes closed. I had felt the seat belt cutting into my shoulder as he pulled me towards him and I had tried to undo it but had not been able to find the catch.
He opened his eyes when he spoke and I did not want to meet his gaze. I was embarrassed by his desire. I tried to open the door to let some air in. With the airconditioning off it was hot and I felt I was going to faint.
What do you think? he asked, leaning forward to kiss me again.
I have to go, I told him, pulling away, knowing I could not find the words to explain how difficult it was for me to answer him.
He let me go but he did not give up. Once the question had been asked, there was, for him, no going back. Every time we saw each other, he mentioned it.
It is not that he wore me down. It would be unfair to say that. He would take me home, and sitting in Dorothy’s kitchen, watching her read and paste, I would dream of my escape, but I could not find the moment and I could not find the words.
Have you told her? he would ask.
I would shake my head and promise that soon, very soon, I would speak.
But it took me six months. Six months from when I first promised Martin to when I actually told Dorothy that I wanted to move.
I do not know how I found the courage. I suppose these things build up. I had imagined my words a thousand times, so many times that eventually they moved from the imagined to the spoken, coming out before I knew that they were no longer just words in my head.
I do not like to remember what I said. I know I did not stop. I felt that if I kept on speaking, I could make it better.
Dorothy put her scissors and paste down and walked out of the room.
Please. I followed her, standing right behind her, not knowing how I was going to keep saying what still needed to be said. And each of my words fell like stones, heavy and stupid at my feet.
I was met by silence. She did not speak, she did not move, she did not even blink.
Please, I finally said. I know you disapprove, but please.
She looked at me. I have not said a thing, she said, hands in the air, walking backwards out of the room. I have not said a thing.
And she did not say a thing, not another word from that moment, until I put the last of all I owned in Martin’s car. It was only then, when we both stood awkwardly in the kitchen, that Dorothy finally spoke.
Goodbye, she said.
I told her I would visit. I promised I would be back. She did not look at me and I did not know what else to say.
Martin beeped his horn and I knew I had to go.
I’ll take good care of her, he shouted from his open window. You just call us if you need anything, anything at all, and he waved. Bye, Dorothy, toot toot of the horn for good measure as he pulled out on to the road.
She did not wave back, did not lift a finger, and was gone, back inside the house, before I had even turned around to face the road ahead.
20
I do not speak to Martin until Sunday morning.
Each time I have called him, there has been no answer. On Sunday I call early and after ten rings he picks up the telephone.
We are polite. We have very little to say to each other.
I tell him I need some things, some clothes I forgot to bring, and he tells me he will bring them to work tomorrow.
I tell him I need them this evening.
We both know I am lying, but eventually he promises to drop them in.
I hang up and I hear Dorothy shift in her bed. I know she has heard every word of our conversation and I am strangely ashamed. I am about to knock on the door, but I change my mind; I want to put off the moment of facing her.
Standing on the back steps, her papers under my arm, I look out across her yard to the next-door neighbours’. Where we have pebbles, they have a small lawn, with neatly weeded flowerbeds. Scarlet pansies against the grey sky, and I stare at them, eventually seeing that they have been planted to spell ‘Bless This House’ in crimson.
They are new neighbours. I remember when they moved in six months ago. I saw their little boy. A packing box squashed almost flat, rocking furiously back and forth, back and forth, on their lawn. I was watching it, unable to comprehend how it was moving so frantically on its own, when he emerged, head first, corduroy legs second. Seeing me, he ran back into the house, embarrassed at being caught in a world of his own making.
In the kitchen I try to make Dorothy’s breakfast. My head is elsewhere. I find I am staring out the window at the fence and the toast has burnt.
What are you thinking? Martin used to ask me and I could never answer him.
He no longer asks me that question. Most nights we eat our dinner in silence. Not a word, until I cannot bear it any longer.
What are you thinking? I will ask him, hearing my voice rise.
Nothing, he will usually say, nothing at all, and he will open the newspaper and try to read.
I will wait, tense, for him to turn the page. I will listen to him chewing. Sometimes he will hum softly, tunelessly. My fingers will grip tightly around my knife and fork. I will push my chair back and take my plate to the sink, scraping the scraps into the bin, metal on china, scratching, dropping the cutlery into the sink so that it will clatter, slamming a cupboard door shut, turning the taps on, water spraying fast and furious; but he will not move. He will not even flinch.
But I am not there with him. I am here with her.
I remember that I have been boiling an egg. I remember that I have been making coffee. I turn the percolator off seconds before it boils over. I fish the egg out of the water. It has cracked, letting out a trail of white that has solidified into a grey mass on the outside of the shell.
I knock nervously on Dorothy’s door. It swings open at my touch, and I tiptoe in, unsure whether she has gone back to sleep.
She is awake. In the dark I can just see her, flat on her back, eyes open, staring at the ceiling. She does not move and she does not speak. I put the tray on the table next to her bed and move to open her curtains, to let in some daylight.
Don’t, she says, the abruptness of her voice startling me. I want to see them. She reaches out and turns on her bedside light. It burns, harsh, in one small pool, leaving the rest of the room in darkness.
I am in pain, she mutters, and I can see that she is. As I try to ease her into a sitting position, I am mentally counting the number of pain-killers she has had. I cannot remember. Even if I could, it would not be much help. I have forgotten how many she is allowed.
Dorothy pushes me away. I’ll do it, she says, drawing herself up so that she can eat.
Her coffee is lukewarm now. She drinks two sips and hands it back to me. I break off a piece of toast and dip it into the egg before passing it to her. She is irritated.
I can feed myself, she tells me.
With the plate balanced on her lap, she eats slowly. I do not know whether I should stay with her or leave.
Don’t, she says, when I finally turn to the door. She motions for me to take her plate and sit next to her, patting the edge of her bed with her hand.
I wish that I could brush my hair, she tells me wistfully, running her fingers through the strands that have escaped from where it is twisted at the back of her neck. It takes me a few moments before I realise she is, in fact, asking me to do it for her.
Gently, she tells me as I pick up the brush from her dressing-table. It is clogged with fine dry hair, twisting through each of the bristles.
I unti
e the knot at the base of her scalp, my fingers touching her. I can see the liver spots on her once clear skin, and in the white brightness of her bedside light, there is no possibility of hiding each pore, each soft sag, each red vein.
Her hair is long and heavy in my hands, dry beneath my fingers, a dead weight.
And I am, for a moment, overwhelmed by an awareness of her mortality.
Your father used to love my hair, she tells me. He used to brush it for me. He told me it was the colour of the sunset over the lakes in northern Italy.
She is not expecting a response and I do not give her one.
I was the envy of all the girls. I would catch them looking at it, admiring its colour, their own hair dull in comparison.
She motions for me to brush higher, near her crown.
Her roots are grey. I have known that she is grey for some time. I buy her hair colour every month. She writes the brand and the colour on her list that she leaves for me on the kitchen table. One of the items that she does not want anyone to know about. I had, however, never realised how grey she has become.
Once I was even asked to be in a commercial. For shampoo, and she sighs Just the ends, she instructs me.
I lift her hair up, holding the length near the bottom, and brush the ends until there is not a knot left.
Shall I tie it back for you? I ask her.
She shakes her head and thanks me.
As I turn to the door, she stops me one more time. One hand on the knob, I turn to face her, thinking she wants to tell me something.
But she just points at her plate on the floor.
I pick it up as I am told.
21
There was no moment when it happened. That is what is difficult.
Sometimes when I find myself going over that day, I realise I could never stop. I could keep going, the next day and the one following and the days that stretched before that day.
I am searching for a defined event, and that is not how it was.
I imagine other losses. A lover dies in your arms and you brush his hair back from his face, feeling the last breath, all the life, there and then gone. Your child is killed in an accident and you see the body, tiny body, laid out in front of you and you know that it has come to this. A friend leaves the country, there with you and then gone, last grasp of the hand, last kiss on the cheek, last moments before you are physically pulled apart by the reality of the departure.
I imagine these losses, and it seems that in each of them there is a dividing line between what was and what is. But that is not how it was for us.
I see Frances walking down the path to the beach. Tall and thin under a harsh blue sky. I see the bleached wooden slats of the path she walks. I see me watching her, hoping she will look back, but she doesn’t. She walks towards the white sand and beyond that the glittering sea.
This is the last time I saw my sister.
It is a moment. But it is not the moment. It is not the dividing line I am looking for. Because there was more. If she died, I want to know how she died. If she left us, I want to know when and why.
Twenty years later, I stand at the top of the path and, still, I see her.
I take my shoes off and the sand is cold beneath my feet.
Following the path she took, I walk towards the beach. The jetty and the kiosk, closed for winter, are to my left. That is the way she went, but I do not walk towards them. I turn, as always, to the right.
It is still early and there is a Sunday-morning calm. The houses on the beachfront look deserted. The curtains are drawn and the doors are closed. Most people would still be asleep. The sky is blank and empty, pearly grey over a dark grey sea. Grey on grey, broken only by a single ship that moves from left to right. The seaweed has washed up onto the beach. It stretches, forward and behind, as far as I can see in both directions. Black and knotted on the white sand, a great uneven stripe.
I am relieved to be out of the house. I have not left it since I arrived on Friday and being there, alone with Dorothy, weighs heavy on me.
I will be back soon, I promised, wondering why I worried about leaving her alone. She is used to it, after all.
I walk to where the sand and the grass are no longer divided by road. The Esplanade has stopped, returned to nature by the council. The grass grows thick and coarse, unruly and unmowed up to the neat clipped lawns of homes that are wealthier here, new and obvious in their attempt to blend into the surrounds. Designed by architects, painted pale-blue or grey, with great windows and decks that are usually empty, they are the kind of houses that Martin likes.
A young woman in pale-pink tights and a sky-blue T-shirt stretches and limbers up. Headphones on, she jogs up and down a few times before setting off along the beach. She is chased by a dog that barks furiously, running in and out of her path. A little boy wheels his red tricycle around and around the cement at his front door. From far off, a man calls out, Jesus, that bloody dog, and his voice rings out, loud and clear, in the stillness.
I walk close to where the sea curls up on to the shore and then slips back out again. Slick and silent, slippery with weeds. It slides over my toes, white foam washing over my white feet. In my hand I have a stick and I am tracing a pattern, a curling line to mark where I have been. It follows me, broken in patches by the tide washing the sand smooth again.
Because I am not looking where I am going (Martin tells me that I always have my head in the clouds), I do not see him. I do not even hear him when he calls out to me, and I am startled when he stops me, hand on my shoulder.
Elise, he repeats, and I look up at him, John Mills with his camera, framed against the washed-out sky.
He apologises for surprising me and tells me he has been meaning to come over.
We are awkward with each other, out here away from the house and Dorothy.
I have been taking pictures, he says. My Sunday-morning ritual. Far more satisfying than church, and he smiles.
We stand silent together and look out across the ocean.
He tells me he has been working on his mosaic. He has been meaning to visit but he lost track of time.
I am surprised it is still unfinished.
Sometimes I think it is because I don’t want to finish it, and at other times I think it is because I want it to be perfect. I want each colour to match my vision, and my vision grows more and more impossible. He looks down for a moment. Shall we walk back together? he asks, and I nod my head.
He sees the pattern I have traced in the sand.
So you can find your way home? he asks. Although it would be impossible to get lost on this beach, and then, realising what he has said, he looks away, embarrassed.
I want to tell him it is all right, I am not upset, but before I can speak, he apologises.
I am sorry, he says. It was thoughtless.
I tell him it is okay, and I mean it.
We are silent again.
My feet sink into the wet sand, each print swallowed up seconds after I leave it. I drop my stick and it floats out with the next swell, tossed back in again moments later.
John Mills looks across to the line of seaweed on our left. I have been photographing it, he says. There are some extraordinary plants. Both fascinating and repulsive.
We walk closer to where it stretches oily and dark for what appears to be miles.
I have never liked seaweed. I remember the smell from when I was young. After the winter storms. You could smell it as soon as you got off the bus, thick and sulphurous. Once Frances collected a bucketload and left it under Dorothy’s window as revenge for a punishment. When Dorothy found it, she brought it straight into the house and dumped it on Frances’s bed.
But what about me? I complained. Now I have to smell it too.
Absorbed in their own war, they had both ignored me.
What do you do with yourself? John Mills asks me. After work, in your spare time?
I tell him I see plays, the ones at the theatre. It is all that I can think of. I do not know
what I do with the rest of my time. Alone in that house with Martin, time just seems to pass.
He asks me what I have seen lately, and I tell him, finding that I am running through the list of names on our winter season program. I have seen them all.
Any favourites? he asks.
I am never confident discussing what I have liked and why. Sitting at dinner parties with Martin and his friends, I am usually silent while they talk loudly about actors, directors and writers they love and hate. Martin joins in, despite the fact he has not seen anything. His opinions are dressed-up versions of the little I have told him.
Walking along the sand, I describe the last play I saw. My words are halting and uncertain, but he listens, stopping me with the occasional question, so that I talk until we come to the path where we will part ways.
We are standing opposite The Mansions. They are a row of bluestone terraces, three storeys high. Tall and grand, they break the flat miles of beach and bungalows.
They look as though they have been transplanted from another place, I say.
Do you know the story? he asks, and I shake my head.
He tells me they were built for sea captains. I have visions of their wives sitting on those balconies, watching for their husbands’ ships to come in.
A place to wait.
He turns to the path and then stops. Will is coming for dinner, he says. If you are not doing anything, I’m sure he would love to see you again.
I thank him but tell him I am busy. Besides, I say, without thinking, Frances was always the one he liked.
Above us, the sun is breaking through the clouds. We are squinting in its pale, clear light as we stand, awkward with each other once again.
Do you think about her often? he asks.
I look straight past him and lie. Not any more, I say.
I do. He stares at the ground. I wish I could have done more. He speaks softly, so softly that I almost do not hear him.
I wait for him to say something else, but he is silent.
Later, lying in the bedroom that was once my bedroom, and before that, the bedroom I shared with Frances, I think about his words and I do not know what he meant.
Closed for Winter Page 9
