The Sister

by Poppy Adams

  “…we’re based in Chard,” Cynthia continues. “Here’s some leaflets I thought might be interesting and this is my card and, well, that’s my name at the top and the address, and there’s the number…and somewhere I’ve got a…Here it is, a leaflet with some background information of what we—”

  Vivien interrupts her. “Do you know it’s Sunday afternoon?”

  “Sunday? Yes, it’s Sunday.”

  “Do you always go round pestering people on a Sunday?”

  Her pertness makes me smile with admiration. Between you and me, I can’t believe she said it outright like that.

  “Oh, I see…,” Cynthia says slowly, her voice deepening. “Well, the thing is, we’re all volunteers, you see, so we give up our weekends for our volunteer work.”

  I glance back to the library window. Although the heavy rain stopped some time ago, it has been drizzling on and off. The low seamless clouds still loom heavily over the valley and I wonder whether Vivien will feel she must invite the bobble-hat woman in if it starts off again.

  “What can I do for you?” Vivien asks her.

  “Well, now, is your sister in?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well,” she says, lowering her voice, “the truth is we’ve been finding it extremely difficult to talk to her.” Now she lowers her voice to a near-whisper, but I have particularly acute hearing. “We’ve been visiting, well, trying to visit, to check on your sister but, well, she’s never opened the door to us. Actually, it gave me quite a shock when you did open it,” Cynthia says with an inviting chuckle.

  “And why do you want her?” Vivien asks loudly, as if to make clear that she won’t enter into covert whispering with Social Services. I wonder if she knows I’m listening.

  “Well, we just wanted to check on her, really. We were particularly worried about her during the winter. Apparently there’s no central heating in the house,” Cynthia says disdainfully, and just then I hear the dripping of rainwater on the hall parquet as it starts to leak through its usual few spots where the ceiling slants low in the corner. The drips will get quicker and quicker until they merge into a steady stream that runs along the ceiling and pours off, like a curtain, onto the floor. “We were worried about her being cold,” she says, as if she needs to explain the function of heating.

  “She’s in very good health, thank you.”

  “Oh, good.” She pauses. “May I see her, please?”

  No, no, Vivien, I really can’t face meeting two strangers in one day. My spine curls in apprehension, shrinking me, as I wait these seconds for Vivien’s decision. Cynthia pushes: “Just so that next time, if you don’t happen to be around, she’ll feel she can answer the door herself.”

  “I understand your concern, but I’m afraid not. My sister doesn’t want to meet you.”

  Good for you, Vivien, I think. Relief softens the muscles across my shoulders.

  “Forgive me, but how do you know if you haven’t asked her?” replies Cynthia.

  I’m on tenterhooks. I know it’s absurd but it feels as if my little sister and the bobble-hat woman are playing a game of words at the front door, and whether or not I have to confront the woman rests on the outcome of their wit and resilience. It’s a miniature version of the card game of my life in which my hand is always played by others, some of whom are my opponents and all of whom play with the knowledge of their own hand as well as mine.

  “I don’t need to ask her,” Vivien says. “She doesn’t like meeting people, especially strangers. Don’t take it personally,” she adds. “If you like I’ll tell her you called and that you seem quite friendly, albeit a little persistent.”

  Well said, Vivien! I could throw flowers into the ring. Game over.

  It’s clearly not over for Bobble-hat Woman. I hear her clear her throat.

  “Mrs. Morris, we’re only concerned for the welfare of your sister. We don’t wish to interfere. We’ve had reports that she might not be capable of looking after herself anymore. I came to check her health. Now, if you’re not going to cooperate I’m afraid I’m going to have to write a report—”

  “Her health is good. Thank you,” Vivien chips in.

  “I mean her condition.”

  “I’ve told you her condition is good. She’s very healthy, despite the cold winter. Look, I’m not sure who’s been reporting to you but I’m her sister and I’m looking after her now. Please don’t call again.”

  “Mrs. Morris, it’s not an easy job caring for—”

  Goodness gracious me! Vivien slammed the door on her. I come out of hiding hesitantly, sticking my head round the library door, brimming with gratitude and quite forgetting to pretend that I haven’t been listening. Vivien looks at me without seeing me, her back pressed firmly against the front door, as if Cynthia’s next game plan might be to batter it down. As I move closer, it’s difficult to tell if she’s barricading the door or supporting herself on it. I’m surprised to see her so shaken, but she recovers quickly enough and moves away from the door, leaving our defenses down. I wish I hadn’t shown myself. If Cynthia were to ram the door now she might get through.

  “Social Services,” Vivien says with a haughty snort, as she passes me on her way to the kitchen. “Swines. Don’t ever answer the door to them, will you?” She doesn’t wait for an answer.

  I follow her. I’m after the leaflets. Vivien is busy pulling pots and pans out of the kitchen cupboard.

  “Did she drop off some leaflets?” I ask her.

  “Yes. Do you really want them, darling?” The small wad is still gripped tightly in Vivien’s hand.

  Actually, yes, I do, but something holds me back from telling her. I think she might laugh, or tease me or use it against me in a way that only she can. But I can tell she’s on the verge of screwing them up, that she thinks she deserves the gratification of ripping them to shreds. A strip of panic curls into my stomach and flutters there, slowly, like a leaf drying in autumn. For a moment I have the peculiar feeling that we are at a deadlock and a quick decision is needed—to stay calm or to take a surprise leap at her and make a grab for them. I want them that badly. They’re part of my routine.

  “I thought I might take a look,” I say as casually as I can.

  “Here you are,” she says, surprisingly, handing them to me, “but would you be a sweetie and help me catch some of that waterfall in the hall?”

  I help her take as many vessels as we can find and place them under the curtain of water to catch the bulk of it. As soon as we’ve finished arranging them, the first few need emptying, and it’s a good half hour before the torrent has subsided enough to allow me to squirrel myself away in the library with my leaflets.

  The first two I’ve seen many times:

  Senior Solutions, Ltd.

  Professional help with Medical Insurance, Life Insurance, long-term care insurance, Will advice, age discrimination, conservatorship and guardianship, or elderly abuse.

  Aged 50 and Over?

  Why not explore the chance of returning to work or training.

  Then there’s a whole lot of new ones: “Senior Safety: Safety Prevention and Tips for Common Problems Facing Older Adults” “Canine Partners” “Senior Travel” “Home Alone? Home Modifications” “The Needs of the Dying” “Singles Senior, It’s Never Too Late,” www.seniorsinlove.com; “Choosing Your Nursing Home” “Activities for the Elderly” “Alzheimer’s Disease—Unraveling the Mystery.”

  I stop at this. I always like to read the medical ones. Besides, I’ve often wondered how I’d know, living on my own, if I’d developed Alzheimer’s, or dementia like Clive. Without someone to tell you, how would you recognize a slow mental degeneration compared to a little bit of natural memory loss? That’s what everyone forgets these days: there’s a fine line between sanity and insanity. Lots of people are on the edge. We can’t be in perfect balance all the time. Most of us will have a little too much or too little of this or that chemical in our brains at some point. It’s part of being individual. Th
ere are no absolute norms; being too sane is most probably a type of madness in itself. Besides, who’s to be the judge of sanity? I know the villagers here have always thought the Moth Woman, and this house, slightly doo-lally, and they’ll latch on to any rumor that whirls their way. But, then, that’s how small villages have always reacted to anyone different or detached from them, and they don’t know me at all.

  I study the elderly people on the front of the leaflet, sitting in a row of plastic chairs as if they’re waiting for a bus to take them away. They look fine to me, a bit bored. If you ask me, these leaflets are too quick to label people. I once read one that told me that onychophagia was a common stress-relieving BFRB. The terms alone make you want to rush off to Accident and Emergency. Then I read that onychophagia means biting your nails and BFRB stands for body-focused repetitive behavior. Surely it’s a habit, not an ailment.

  I open up the leaflet and read the first paragraph: “Today the only definitive way to diagnose Alzheimer’s disease is to find plaques and tangles in brain tissue, but to look at brain tissue doctors must wait until they do an autopsy, which is an examination of the body after a person dies.”

  That’s not much use, is it? So, I might have Alzheimer’s and not know it. Would I feel any different if I did? Then I go on to read that doctors can diagnose only “probable Alzheimer’s” and that one set of symptoms may have many different causes, and that an easily curable thyroid complaint may manifest similar symptoms…. I stop reading. It’s obvious no one ever really knows and that they should leave people alone to become old, not tag them with all sorts of mental illnesses.

  Vivien comes into the library with a tea tray, Belinda’s pot, two cups and saucers, and some ginger biscuits she’s arranged in a circular motif round the edge of a plate. Simon trots in after her. “Anything interesting?” she asks, putting the tray down on an occasional table by the fireplace.

  I read her the leaflet. “I remember the days when people just got old, or eccentric,” I comment afterwards. “They weren’t mental. Like Mr. Bernado—remember? He was often caught fishing in his underpants. Someone would just take him home again and point to the wardrobe—”

  “Virginia!” Vivien reprimands me sternly. “You don’t say mental these days. It’s offensive.”

  “Well, all I’m saying is that most of them went barmy but we called them eccentric. Or old. They didn’t need a medical certificate.”

  “I think people have a right to know as much as they can about what’s”—Vivien pauses—“different about them.”

  “Ah, but does it help them?”

  “Yes. Yes, I think it does, actually,” Vivien says ardently. “I think it would. If you knew there was something wrong with you, medically, if you were actually diagnosed as intellectually challenged in some way—”

  “Intellectually challenged?” I butt in, and laugh—but Vivien isn’t laughing.

  “If you were told,” she perseveres, “you might find you understood yourself better. You could find ways of adjusting yourself—if you wanted to—or at least being aware of it. It’s far better to know,” she says, swirling her tea to dissolve the sugar. “It’s a great shame not to know, not to be told. It’s not right,” she says as she moves to the window, cup and saucer in hand, and stares private thoughts into the jungle beyond.

  “If you’re that barmy, it won’t make much difference,” I say jovially, a little to fill the silence and a little under my breath. I am not sure about her mood.

  “Maybe,” she says softly.

  I thought she’d find it funny, but I can tell she’s elsewhere in her thoughts. Could that be sadness in her stillness by the window? It was just an observation, and I wouldn’t want it to turn into a serious dispute, but I don’t mind being old-fashioned. I don’t take to all these modern ways of thinking that Vivien’s latched on to. What about all the poor old ladies who don’t have the wit to see through all the mental diseases they’ve been labeled with and can’t get on with being themselves? They’ll turn into nervous wrecks, worrying about their next affliction. Then, after all that, they might find they’ve only got an overactive thyroid. It occurs to me that Vivien might be thinking of Clive.

  “Do you think Clive knew?” I ask softly.

  “What happened to Clive was different,” she says sharply, turning back to face me. “That was all his own doing. He deserved every demon he got and he knew it.”

  I hadn’t meant to provoke another onslaught about Clive. “I think you’re taking your anger with him a bit far. Why don’t you just admit you had differences and accept them?” I say, very reasonably, I think.

  “Oh, Ginny, it’s always so simple with you, isn’t it? Don’t you ever see that?” Vivien’s cup rattles on its saucer as her temper starts to simmer.

  “I’m only trying to—”

  “Well,” she cuts me off, “I’ve been trying desperately,” she says, putting the cup and saucer on the window seat beside her, “to help you see it, to help you understand things, to help you see for yourself that things aren’t so simple and sometimes they need to be questioned. I didn’t come home to tell you this, but I can’t hide the truth anymore. I can protect you from other people but not from the truth.”

  There she goes again, talking in riddles. I never asked her to come home.

  “The problem is,” she continues, “that you wouldn’t know the truth if it came and looked you in the eye. That was always your problem.”

  I’m not listening to her rant because I don’t want to. I’m trying to work out what might have happened in Clive’s head, I mean at the molecular level, to lead to his dementia.

  I flinch as Vivien clutches my shoulders near my neck and shakes me. “Ginny!” she shouts.

  “What?” I say, startled out of my reverie.

  “You’re not there. It’s so convenient for you to go off somewhere else and not listen, isn’t it? Don’t you want to know the truth?”

  “What truth?”

  “All of it. Everything.”

  “Like what?” I raise my voice, exasperated with her.

  She pauses for a moment, enjoying my full attention. “Like your own mother was murdered,” she says finally.

  I watch her studying me. It’s as if she’s looking for the pain she may have inflicted. Then I laugh. I mean, what can you do? Actually, it’s a proper little giggle, as if she’s made a joke. And I can’t believe she’s not laughing too. I can’t believe she’s serious.

  “Don’t be ridiculous, Vivien!” I sputter.

  Then she does something most peculiar. She clenches her fists and stamps her right foot hard, three times in a row, as if she’s stamping on a scorpion and making sure she’s done the job properly. She looks like an eight-year-old having a tantrum.

  “How can I make you just try to understand?” she shouts. “Once. Just think about it once. Look at me! Look at me!” She grabs either side of my face and directs it up to hers. “Do I look like I’m making it up?”

  She doesn’t.

  I tell her again, softly, “Vivien, she fell down the cellar steps. I was there. I saw her lying at the bottom. I promise you, it was an accident.”

  “You’re wrong, Ginny. You saw it wrong,” she shouts.

  “What on earth makes you think so?” I say quietly, flabbergasted.

  “I just know.” For a moment she’s lost for words. “Most people just have that sort of intuition, Ginny.”

  I’m not going to say it out loud because there’s no knowing what she’ll do, but I can tell you: Vivien’s gone completely doo-lally. You can’t have intuition sitting in London about someone being murdered in Dorset. You either have the facts or you don’t—I’m sure you’ll agree with me. Besides, I’m a scientist and I’m afraid I don’t work with intuition.

  Vivien flops onto the cushions on the window seat, bringing her legs up to rest them on a stool in front of her.

  “For a while I thought it was you who had done it,” she says, more calmly now, like the ope
ning of a great story.

  I’m astounded. I’m shocked. I’m mortified. “Me? Oh, for goodness’ sake, Vivien, you’ve gone bonkers,” I blurt out. But she ignores me and continues, in a calm, even tone, as if the story must go on whatever the audience’s reaction.

  “I thought Clive and Dr. Moyse knew and were covering up for you.” She is looking at her legs stretched out on the stool in front of her as she speaks. I am standing a yard or so away, towering over her with my hands on my hips and, I’m sure, my jaw dropping. “Dr. Moyse had officially told the police not to interview you. He got a court injunction so they weren’t allowed to. He said you had some sort of disorder, that you were unstable.”

  “Oh, Vivien, the things you think of! It’s absolute nonsense. It was nothing like that at all.”

  “I know. I know,” she says, relenting. “I worked out later that you couldn’t have known anything about it or you would have told me.”

  “Exactly,” I say indignantly.

  “You would have told everyone.”

  “Of course.” But even as the words form in my mouth I already feel the tightening of a trap.

  “So then I realized it was Clive who’d pushed her and you’d been covering up for him.”

  “What? Vivien, I’m afraid you’ve gone quite mad.” I’m more than a little irritated now. Why she has to keep throwing in ridiculous theories and casting all sorts of doubts over our beloved parents’ memories is beyond me. “Clive didn’t do it and I didn’t cover up anything for him,” I tell her firmly, but as I say it, I know my efforts to change her mind are in vain. “This has all been festering for years in your head, but can’t you see it’s nonsense?”

  “You weren’t aware that you were covering up for him,” she trudges on. “You still aren’t aware of it. The police were banned from interviewing you, even though I kept telling them they had to.”

  “Oh, rubbish, Vivien. Even if the police had talked to me I wouldn’t have told them anything differently. Maud fell down the stairs.”

  I can’t take this any longer. She’s the one who doesn’t know what was going on. I look down at my watch and fiddle with its face with my thumb and forefinger, blocking out whatever Vivien is saying, trying to decide if this is it, if I have finally to tell her the secret I’d promised myself and Maud to keep from her for the rest of my life. Suddenly I can see how dangerous such secrets can be. You keep them to protect people, but in the end they are even more destructive. I took away the truth, so over the years Vivien has filled the void with ludicrous ideas. Surely the truth will stop her raving about Clive or me murdering Maud and put her mind at rest.