The Sister

by Poppy Adams

  I’m sitting at my lookout on the landing, staring at my toes protruding from the ends of my slippers in their thick woolen socks. Did I tell you that three months ago I had to cut the tops off my slippers, at the very end, to let my toes stick out? My feet get so swollen that they felt as if they’d been crammed into slippers two sizes too small. Every step made me wince with pain. It’s such a relief to have them out.

  It’s while I’m sitting here on the window seat, trying to wiggle my toes up and down, exercising them, that I finally catch sight of Vivien, walking back up the drive. At the same time, I hear the faint whirr and chink of the bracket clock in the hall as it passes the half hour. Something inside the workings has become misaligned. It used to strike the half hour properly, with one full, rich note, but over the last few years it’s been muffled and the sound shortened, stripped of its echo; a chink, not a chime. Luckily, I can still hear it from the parts of the house I frequent, and when I do, I always check it against both of my wristwatches to make sure they’re all keeping time. Right now, they are in agreement: it’s four-thirty in the afternoon, and Vivien’s been out since five past one.

  Three and a half hours since she left the house—without a word—and the light is fading, but here she comes meandering slowly up the side of the drive, close to the beech hedge. She stops awhile to bend down and fiddle with her boot, then starts off again, dusting the beech hedge casually with her hand as she goes. Where has she been? I try to imagine all the places she might have been but, to tell you the truth, I can’t even think of one. There’s something strange about the way she’s walking, a manner that I can’t quite put my finger on or explain in words. She’s running her hand along the side of the hedge as she walks, childlike, knocking off some of last year’s crumpled brown leaves that seem to cling tightly to beech right through into spring.

  I hurry down the stairs, giving myself plenty of time before she reaches the house, and shut myself into the study behind the kitchen.

  The study has two doors off it, one to the kitchen and one to the hall. I’ve decided that if she goes into the kitchen I’ll time my entrance to happen upon her there, and if she goes straight upstairs I can pretend I’d just decided to leave the study as she starts up the stairs. Either way I’ll be able to ask her where she’s been. I plant myself by the bookcase, equidistant from the two doors, ready to go one way or the other. Vivien goes straight upstairs. Once she passes the study door, I count her footsteps up five stairs, then open the door.

  I freeze, hit by the unmistakable stench of sherry. The smell unleashes a little remnant of fear and unease that burrows its way out onto the skin of my arms, crawling between the hairs. It’s the smell of Maud. I back away from the door and close it again, quietly. I wait until I hear Vivien’s footsteps pass above me to her room before I go quietly to my own.

  Chapter 15

  In Remembrance of Pauline Abbey Clarke

  Once I’m in my room, I rearrange the pillows at the head of my bed, stacking them up so I can sit and admire the sleepy Bulburrow valley through the south windows. Outside the breeze leads the tips of the creeper’s new shoots in a quivering dance, each one searching for a partner to entwine. Maud said she’d planted the creeper because it was my namesake—Virginia. She said she liked the idea of me creeping all over the house forever, and I remember that then she laughed a lot because I asked her what she meant by that and she said I shouldn’t be so serious about everything.

  I can’t help thinking what a shock the smell of sherry has just given me, and the memories it’s inflamed. I’d forgotten how fearful I was of Maud when she was drunk. There’d be so little warning. One moment she’d be humming to herself, happily inebriated, and the next she’d have grabbed a weapon—a mug, a brolly, a book or whatever else was close to hand—and lashed out at me in unrestrained fury. But—I think I’ve mentioned this before—I always forgave her for what she did, I knew she couldn’t help it and, somehow, she more than made up for it when she was sober, with her sublime reassurances of love, when she’d lay her head on my lap, or squeeze me tight and kiss me. It was at those times that I thought we’d never been so close, and that we’d never needed each other so much.

  I could cope with the violence. That was easy—I could rationalize it. It was the incessant insults I found hardest to bear. I knew not to believe a word of it, I knew not to listen and, thanks to Maud herself, I knew how to lock myself in that place in my head where I can go and not hear. But there was one that came up over and over again, the one about how I’d ruined her life.

  “You’ll never know how much you’ve ruined my life,” she’d shout, grabbing my face in her hand as if she wanted to grind it to dust. I always thought how lucky it was that it was me, not Vivi; that I was able to detach myself from it in a way that Vivi’s mercurial personality would not have permitted. But it was this theme, that I’d ruined her life, that came up the most, that all the others would culminate with, the one she’d repeat over and over in different ways and, by the end, I couldn’t help but believe—in a little part of me—that she truly thought I had.

  Once or twice I let myself wonder what on earth I might have done to make her think it, but mostly I knew it was nonsense. Her life would have been ruined without me to cover up her every misplaced step, to shield her outbursts from her husband and her other daughter. She couldn’t have coped without me.

  I made sure Maud never knew that her gibes got to me. I remained impassive and unaffected, even though I saw the danger in that too. I saw the pattern but I couldn’t stop it. The more resilient I appeared, the more Maud wanted a reaction and the more vicious her behavior became. Only now, looking back, can I see that a clash was spiraling out of control.

  I stretch over to pull out the drawer at the top of my bedside table. It lost its handle many years ago so I have to pull on the screws that once fixed it and stick out two inches apart. The drawer is stiff, but once I wangle it out enough to slip my fingers into the top, I can wrench it all the way. There, lined up neatly, are two full rows of cannabis tea bags, each like a perfectly crafted marble with the muslin gathered in a spray at the top and a length of cotton thread for manipulating it in the mug. I don’t like to use them unless it’s absolutely necessary and I’ve exhausted all the other ways to alleviate the pain in my joints. It’s not that I’m moderating myself. It’s just that I so much prefer the two rows in the drawer being full. When there’s a gap the bags slide about as I open or close the drawer, upsetting their careful alignment.

  I lift up a bag and smell it. I like the idea of the smell more than the smell itself. My favorite thing is to take them all out and line them up on the bed. Then I pick up each one in turn—as I’m doing now—and roll it in my fingers, admiring the handiwork, the immaculate rows of small, even stitches along the seams. As I study it I picture Michael working at his late mother’s kitchen table, his fat, practiced fingers carefully folding the muslin, gently pulling the stitching to gather and tie it at the top.

  I like to believe he thinks of me while he’s stitching. I feel that he and I have a small connection and not only because our families go back for three generations in an employment partnership. We are both quiet and, I should imagine, similarly misjudged. Besides, I’ve known him all his life. Soon after his birth it became evident Michael was a near clone of his mother, missing out on all his father’s failings. He was born big and gentle and calm, and soon disclosed a big heart and a small intellect. But, like his mother, Michael was a grafter, and after she died he took over nursing his father patiently through his final ailing years. No other son would have put up with the childlike tantrums of that cantankerous man, until one glorious cold and cloudless day when Michael was collecting blood-blue sloes from the hedges along the willow walk and his father was choking slowly to death at home. For many years Michael was haunted by the ghosts of guilt, believing they were the actual ghosts of his father’s celestial fury.

  It took Michael several years to understand tha
t he had, in picking the sloes that day, secured his freedom. He rebelled gently, admitting his hatred of gardening—the only education his father had given him. I released him from his duties in the Bulburrow grounds and allowed him to continue living in the Stables in return for nothing. With the scrapings of a lifetime savings his father had forgotten to, or not got round to, spending in his own lifetime, Michael bought a big motorcycle and a small tent, about the size of our hanging pantry. He hired it that first year to the Jeffersons at Christmas for mince pies and carols, and for some yearly gathering at the Liberal Club, then to Ethel Phelps in the gatehouse lodge to extend her conservatory for Stan’s seventieth. And then he bought another slightly bigger tent—about the size of the kitchen study. Throughout the following summer, he hired them out for events and parties in the neighboring villages, Saxton, Broadhampton and Selby.

  I could swear Michael showed no sign of strategy, cunning or business, but now he has sixteen marquees, enormous ones, the size of the drawing room and library put together, with all the trimmings for weddings and funerals, and all of life’s ceremonies between. Michael never needed or cared for anything but that which he couldn’t have: a loving father. He still lives at the Stables, he still rides his bike and he still looks as if he works in the vegetable patch, but I know that he’s now the wealthiest man in the village. His late mother would have laughed and loved him just the same, but he would never have been able to make his father proud.

  He had acquired some cannabis seeds from his biker friends and, with the expertise in tending plants that his father had drummed into him from an early age, he used the remaining peach houses in the walled garden to grow a celebrated line in skunk, as he calls it. Like me, he lives alone, and although I wouldn’t be so bold as to claim a friendship, Michael and I have a long-term connection. He visits me irregularly—about twice a month—to deliver my groceries, take out my rubbish, block up new drafts, tell me the briefest of village news and, if necessary, to top up my supply of his personalized brand of herbal remedy.

  The second time Vivi sent Arthur to Bulburrow, he telephoned quite unexpectedly from Crewkerne, an hour and a half before his train was due in. I wasn’t ready for him. I’d had a long bath and scrubbed myself clean. I hadn’t yet peeled the potatoes for supper or finished rearranging the dried flowers in his room. I shoved aside the vase and the oasis I’d been piecing together in the back pantry, grabbed some King Edwards from the sack and threw them into the sink to remind me they needed to be sorted. Thankfully the place wasn’t in too bad a state. Recently, I’d been spending much more time on the housework than my moth work, much to Clive’s disapproval.

  One of my biggest regrets is not talking to Clive about Maud at this time. If only I had, he might have done something before it was too late. I didn’t know to what extent he thought she was drinking. He’d seen her drunk, of course, but he couldn’t have known how badly she’d deteriorated. At the time I was trying to avoid the subject so that I didn’t find myself having to pretend I knew less than I did. Maud was relying on me.

  Arthur was waiting for me by the station entrance as I pulled up in the Chester. The passenger seat was overloaded with Clive’s boxes and tools, so Arthur volunteered to squeeze in beside the apparatus in the back with his bag on his knees, facing the back windscreen.

  “I’m sorry you had to wait,” I said.

  “Not at all. I got an earlier train,” he shouted, competing with the full choke as I turned over the Chester’s engine. “So, how’s it all going?”

  “Everything’s ready,” I shouted back. “I’m sure the timing will be right this time.”

  “What?”

  “I’m sure I’ve got the timing right,” I yelled, trying to throw the words over my shoulder while I watched the road. “Maybe this time is going to be it.” In the mirror I saw Arthur craning his neck round stiffly, apparently still aware that he was in a chemical factory, to look towards me in the front.

  “I didn’t mean that, I just meant how are you?” He half-laughed. Our eyes met briefly in the mirror before I flicked mine back to the road.

  “Virginia…,” he said, seriously now, like I was about to be told off. I wanted to move the mirror: it had brought him too close. “You do know it could take years?”

  “Oh, no! I’m sure it won’t,” I said, a little appalled. I kept my eyes fixed on the road. I’d never imagined that these illicit meetings between Arthur and me would go on long. I’d never thought they might become less detached, less functional, that we might actually begin to get to know each other, that we might form a bond of our own, a friendship.

  “Really? What makes you think it won’t take long?” Arthur asked.

  The truth was I hadn’t thought about it. “Well, Vivi has worked out the chart really carefully and I’ve checked it as well. We think we’re right on timing so there’s nothing stopping—”

  “Ginny,” he interrupted, “there’s more to making a baby than preparations and timing control.”

  “Well, that’s if the sperm are—”

  “I didn’t mean my sperm.” He laughed loudly. We were coming down the hill into the village, passing the new bungalows on the left. “Ginny, let’s go for a drive. Let’s not go up to the house yet.”

  “Drive? Where to?”

  “Don’t you have a favorite place?” I didn’t answer. “Somewhere with a view?”

  “No.”

  “Come on, Ginny. Anywhere…,” I slowed and took the right-hand turn between the ivy-clad stone pillars, into the corridor of yellowing limes that escorted visitors up the winding drive. “A beauty spot?” he added, with gentle impatience.

  I had lots of favorite places: places I’d go caterpillar or moth hunting, places I’d walk and think and breathe and study. Or treacle the trees. But they’re rarely beautiful: behind the mobile homes on the cliff walk between Seatown and Beer, where at this time of year I’d hunt through the thorny scrub to find the Oak Eggar caterpillar hibernating in its hairy orange-and-black coat; the bog at Fossett’s Bar, where two streams meet and overflow, and marsh reeds grow in thick unsurpassable clumps, and I’d wade in to find the long silky cocoon of The Drinker tapered to the stems; the railway station, the one we’ve just left, to the disused square of land behind it, where the tall wire fence has fallen in so you can squeeze through and be in the company of some of the rarest wildflowers in the West Country; better still, the dump behind the Esso garage on the A303 at Winterbourne Stoke where, on a day of good fortune, I’d find the distinctively bulbous cocoon of the Elephant Hawk-moth tangled among the moss and litter on the ground, or Golden-rod Pug caterpillars, starting on a feast of ragwort. These were my favorite places, my beauty spots. Like the insects I studied, I’ve never been attracted to manicured beauty. To us, weeds are wildflowers and untended scrubland a rare and forgotten paradise. Dorset’s true wildernesses have quietly become the disused dumps, the unworthy wasteland, the boggy, the bleak and the barren. Certainly not a place to entertain guests.

  “No,” I said again, “not really.” The truth was, I didn’t relish the idea of walking and talking with Arthur. I could cope with our monthly sessions being purely clinical, impersonal, but I didn’t want to get to know him. I was happy to have this baby for Vivi if Arthur remained a catalyst, an inert part of the process. I’d have preferred him to be a total stranger.

  “So you don’t have a place you go to be alone sometimes,” he said, softly now, so that I had to strain to hear him. In the mirror I could see he was looking straight ahead, out the back window, but it felt as though he was peering right through me, inspecting my every secret.

  “Or a place that you like to walk?” he suggested. We’d reached the final bend, just before the house came into view. “Come on,” he pleaded finally. “Let’s not go home yet. Let’s just stop here and walk.”

  I pulled up at the side of the drive and turned off the engine. “We can walk to the brook if you like,” I said.

  “I’d love to walk
to the brook,” Arthur replied quickly, enthusiastically, and opened the rear door.

  I smiled for the first time since I’d picked him up, but so that he wouldn’t see it. Something that was tight within me relaxed a little, something I hadn’t known had been tight until that moment. Much later I came to realize that Arthur had a wonderfully natural way of putting me at ease. Looking back now, I might have known—by the end of that first walk—that he was never going to remain, for me, an inert part of the process.

  I led Arthur behind the line of fir trees that run along next to the fence marking our eastern boundary. The lowest branches reach a foot above my head and splay out over the top of the fence so that between it, the tree trunks and the dense layering of branches above us, a dark walkway has been created, which I’ve always called the Tunnel Walk. It was dim, but shafts of light collided through the trees in pretty spectacle and it was good to walk. I looked up, privately scanning the branches, increasingly taunted by the desire to stop and shake them and examine the fall. I’d not have hesitated had I been on my own, of course, but I knew it might seem an odd sort of habit so I refrained. Instead I guessed at the fall; mostly needles and cones, with a smattering of beetles and bugs. I’d look for any wasp apples, preferably without an exit hole so I could watch the wasp emerge in vitro back in the lab. But what I’d really be hoping to spot was the Puss Moth chrysalis, cocooned on the tree trunks and expertly disguised within the surrounding bark.

  I was proud that Clive had taught me to see the world around me without the blind ignorance with which most people must wander it. Where others see a small, dreary spider crawling up a fence, I might see a wingless female Vapourer; where I see an exquisite, harmless Bee Hawk attracted to sugary jam, others swat a pestilent wasp coveting their picnic; where I see a hibernating Eyed Hawk, others might step on an old dried-up leaf.