The Sister (12 page)

“How can you tell a cannibal?” he asked her as she glided into the room.

“Well, they’re the only ones left, silly,” Vivi replied cheekily.

“No,
before
they’ve eaten the others,” he said.

“Oh, that,” she said, affecting mystery. “They’ve just got a look about them,” and Arthur and I, we started laughing.

I
FOUND
M
AUD
keeping herself busy in her potting shed. I’d hidden her sherry today, as we’d agreed, and as soon as she saw me she said—very politely—“I need a little drink, Ginny.” I didn’t say anything. It was half-past four. She was trying to separate some bulbs as she said it, and I remember watching her shaky hands, which looked like mine do now, swollen round the joints and bent at the knuckles. All they were achieving was to strip off layers of the bulbs’ papery skin, as if her fingers couldn’t get a proper grip. Now that I know how hard my own hands are to manage I realize her arthritis might have impeded her, but back then I was shocked by what I thought were clearly withdrawal symptoms.

It was only after supper, when Maud seemed choked with desperation, that I finally helped her into the library. I was proud of her, like a nurse might be proud of a patient, and I told her so. She said nothing. She sat stiffly on a small upright chair by the window and looked at her feet, lifting them up and down to exercise her ankles.

Since I’d become her official collaborator, we’d normally have gone through a little role-play at this point: I’d ask her if she wanted a drink, she’d say, “Go on, then, just a small one,” and chide me for not joining her. We’d talk about whatever sprang to mind, and for a while it would seem a most congenial affair. Then, when her sense started to leave her, I’d go and let her slip inside herself to reflect on the darker side alone.

That night, however, she sat there on the chair, loosening her ankles and rubbing her clenched hands up and down her legs to encourage the circulation. When I asked if she’d like a drink, she didn’t answer. Her jaw was taut and I wondered if she was even capable of speaking. Then, when I poured her drink, she couldn’t muster the coordination to hold it steady, so I wrapped my hands round hers and together we lifted the glass to her mouth and tipped it. At that moment I felt us take another secret leap together. The role-play, the polite ceremony, the pretense, it was all gone now and her crude addiction was laid bare between us. By the third glass she’d refueled and discovered a moment of equanimity. She relaxed into the chair.

“Ginny,” she said, “what would I do without you? Thank you.” This was the first phase—I called it her lucid phase—when she was replenished but not too drunk, when the sherry had loosened her tongue, but not her mind, and she would pour out funny stories and scrutinize the world.

I’ll tell you something now, something I’m ashamed to admit, one of those honest little secrets that are hard enough to admit to yourself, and I can only hope that you’ll try to understand why I felt it. You see, I began to covet the intimacy that Maud’s reprehensible secret brought us and I really enjoyed—looked forward to, even—the entertaining moments her lucid phase would bring. One minute she’d have found a way to relate the pattern of Mrs. Axtell’s flower borders to her personality, the next she’d have taken on one of Clive’s pompous colleagues in a make-believe row. Maud had never talked to me in that way before. It was like some of the conversations she used to have with Vivi.

The second phase was when Maud
turned.
I was usually out of the room well before she turned, but that day she’d drunk too much too fast, and the lucid phase skipped by too quickly. Something trapped and dissatisfied was gathering buoyancy, pushing its way to the surface. She transferred herself to the sofa to sit next to me.

“Well, what do you think, darling?” she whispered hoarsely.

“Think of what?”

“The boyfriend. Bit stiff, darling, don’t you think?” Maud said, discarding the whisper. “Tight-arsed, don’t you think? Tight-arsed,” she said, even louder. Her head flopped against the back of the sofa and she laughed.

“Bloody London bloody little tight bloody arse,” she said, laughing at her moment of inspired rhapsody.

I didn’t say anything.

Then she turned on me, her mood switching suddenly. “What’s wrong with you? Can’t you talk?” she snapped.

I didn’t say anything.

“You can wipe that bloody look off your face, Ginny,” she said. “You’ve really got some cheek, you know. You’re not so damn perfect yourself.” She’d consumed an entirely different personality.

Just then we heard Arthur’s laugh burst out down the hall and luckily her attention was thrown back to him.

“Tight-arse,” she shouted to the ceiling. Then her eyes searched me out again. “Well, don’t you think, darling,” she said more softly, “bloody tight-arse?” I glanced nervously towards the door, as if to judge how far through it her voice might travel. Maud caught me. “Oh, Ginny, darling, please don’t be so bloody pathetic. I’m just telling the truth, darling,” she complained peevishly. “Can’t you see he’s a bloody tight-arse? God, I think I might have to go and live in Spain, yes, that’s not a bad idea, is it? What do you think? Get away from here for good and sit in the sun and look at the sea, darling, what do you think?”

I knew I had to leave.

“Tight. Arse.” She laughed again, as if it were just saying the words that she found so enjoyable—therapeutic, even.

“I’m going to do the washing up and then I’ll be back,” I said quickly, and left before she had a chance to protest. I knew the only possible way to extricate myself was on a promise to return, and I was relieved when I’d closed the door behind me. I stayed to listen. It was my responsibility to make sure no one saw her drunk.

There was silence for a second, then the clanking of glass on glass. Maud was going to make trouble tonight. I took a deep breath and rubbed two fingers along the key in the door’s lock. I balanced the risks: I could faintly hear Vivi and Arthur chatting in the drawing room farther down the hall; Clive was either in the cellar or the attic; Maud’s sherry supply was plentiful and I doubted, anyway, that she’d be able to get up from the sofa for the rest of the night. My mind was made up.

I held my breath, pulled the door tightly towards me so the lock wouldn’t click and, very slowly, very quietly, turned the key.

It felt good. A problem locked up for the night.

I went to clear up the kitchen. Tonight’s outburst had been less manageable and had felt more sinister than any of the previous ones. It was not only my job to hide her behavior from Clive, Vivi and the rest of the world, but also my solemn promise to the other Maud, my mother Maud. Vivi was in the house and I would have to be on guard all night. All at once the house, and everything in it, felt extremely precarious.

I
HAD NEARLY FINISHED
the dishes when I heard a dreadful thudding at the library door and Maud shouting, her voice distorted with rage. “Ginny, come and open this door at once!”

I could hear the pounding and crashing of books being flung at the inside of the door. What had I been thinking to lock her in?

“Ginny, do you hear me? How
dare
you lock me in.”

I was outside the door now, silent—and uncertain whether or not to open it. I wasn’t sure that anyone else could hear her. I didn’t want to enrage her further but I didn’t know what I would be faced with if I opened it. I was weighing the options when she whispered through the door. Surely she couldn’t have known I was standing there.

“Ginny…I promise that if you don’t open this door right now, I promise,
I’ll kill you,
” she threatened in a low growl.

I turned the key, the door flew open and three large hardback books hurtled towards me, glancing off me as I ducked. Then more books came, one or two at a time, as I cowered on the hall floor.

Vivi opened the door to the drawing room and stuck her head out. “What the hell’s going on?” she said. “What
are
you doing, Ginny?”

Thankfully she hadn’t witnessed any books in flight. She saw me kneeling in the hall with books scattered around me and I quickly busied myself with collecting them up and sorting them into piles. As soon as Maud heard Vivi, she had shut the library door on herself.

“I’m just chucking out old books. We’re finally sorting the library,” I lied impressively.

“Well, you don’t have to throw them around, do you?” Vivi said, slightly irritated, and went back to Arthur.

I pushed the books against the wall and went to bed. I was relieved that Vivi would be gone tomorrow and we could get back to our normal routine without any added constraints.

T
HE FLYING BOOKS
marked the start of violence that seemed as addictive as the drink. When she was drunk Maud looked for a fight—only with me—and the more I tried to appease her, to say the right thing, to tell her what I thought she wanted to hear, the more aggressive she became. It was a good day when I suffered merely a little shouting, and increasingly normal to suffer worse. I didn’t resent her for it. I felt sorry for her. I saw how she couldn’t help it, how she went away and something else filled her place that didn’t resemble her old self in any way at all. It took hold and possessed her, gaining in strength daily, feeding off her weakness. At those times she wasn’t my mother: she’d been ravished by a demon, overtaken by uncontrollable anger and aggression. Strangely, she was physically far stronger too, than my mother ever was. I found her lifting tables, smashing doors, throwing chests, things Maud would never have been able to move, as if her muscles, during those rabid moments, received a secret gift of strength. But it was her eyes that were most severely altered. They quickly became another’s. Clear, hard-edged and determined. Eyes that saw everything darkly. And I knew that Maud would never conquer this thing. Its force and ambition grew more palpable each day.

But one thing I could never understand. Even though I’m sure she was, for the most part, oblivious to her attacks, she would always stop the instant she heard Clive coming, and switch to a task close at hand. She was like a five-year-old who, even if she seemed completely out of control, still knew somewhere in her heart that she shouldn’t be behaving as she was.

When I closed my eyes at night, I’d remember my mother, the sober Maud, who’d hold me in her more lucid moments, stroke my hair and tell me she loved me so much it hurt. And then she’d thank me for being me, and I’d almost imagine her eyes were wet with tears, and I’d wonder if she was ever aware of the terror that daily turned in her.

CHAPTER
12

I Spy

V
IVIEN’S BEEN HOME
for a day now, almost exactly twenty-four hours. I’ve been lying on my bed all morning. The last time I saw her was earlier this morning, when I was holding my glass of milk as a prop and it had become quite obvious we had very different memories of our late father.

Since then I’ve been trying to shake off this awkward, irrepressible feeling that has crept over me ever since she came home: the need to know exactly where she is and what she’s doing. As time goes on the urge grows stronger. I’ve managed to get through the last forty-seven years without knowing her whereabouts, yet now, since twenty-four hours ago, I’m liable to panic if at any point I don’t know where she is. It’s completely illogical, I know. Perhaps it’s because I’m used to knowing exactly where and how things are in the house, because my surroundings are fixed, a constant if you like, and that, until Vivien came home, I was the only variable.

Luckily she doesn’t realize I’ve been spying on her. I know this house so intimately that I don’t need to be right on her heels. I’ve been developing a system whereby I can track her movements by listening to its sounds while staying within my own boundaries. I know all the views from the windows. I can recognize the doors that creak, the boards that squeak and the pipes that rattle. I can interpret the echoes that reverberate through the air spaces, the windows that shake when certain doors are opened and closed and the sounds that old ventilation pipes bring me from all directions. It is as if the entire internal workings of the house have been transformed into a vast communications network, carrying to me the sounds of Vivien, wherever she may be.

For instance, I might look through a window on the first floor to see her pass by another in a different wing or on a different floor, and I know if I move to a back room on the ground floor I will be able to hear her footsteps above me. Then, with the creak of a door, I can judge where she’s headed. I’ve been following her routine (at our age you always have a routine, it’s impossible not to—your body dictates it): last night she got up to go to the lavatory twice, and this morning to get her—and my—tea. All these noises are brought to me by this loyal house, as though it’s alive and throbbing and I am in tune with it, or even part of it, as Vera once said she was. It’s on my side.

However, it means I’m always trying to make sure she doesn’t see me, so our paths haven’t crossed as much as you might imagine they would, and there seems so much that is still unsaid between us.

L
ISTEN,
I can hear her again. She’s bashing about loudly—in the hall, I think. I pull myself off the bed and creep onto the landing. She’s rattling the door to the cellar, trying to open it. She’s got various keys in her hand that she must have found in the house and she’s trying each in turn. I’m baffled as to why she wants to open it. I tread as quietly as I can down the stairs and finally step out behind her.

“Oh my God, you gave me the fright of my life!” Vivien gasps, as her hand shoots up to her chest.

“Sorry.”

“I never know where you are or where you come from. It’s always so quiet and then you appear out of nowhere.”

“I saw you were trying to open the cellar door,” I say.

She looks at her hands as if to remind herself that that’s what they’ve been doing. “Yes I was, as a matter of fact. That’s exactly what I was trying to do.” She puts them back on the door latch and gives it a demonstrative yank.

“What do you want from there? What are you looking for, Vivien?” I want her to know that I’ve guessed she’s come back to look for something.

“I don’t want anything. I just want to take a look, but the damn thing’s got stuck,” she says, pulling at it again. She stops and stares at me. “I’m allowed to, you know,” she says testily, although I didn’t say she wasn’t. “Sometimes I think you forget it’s my house too.”

Her saying that surprises me a little. Of course I’ve always known it’s both of ours, but she’s right. I never really think of it as hers.

“I’ve had the door locked,” I say. She might as well know her labors are futile.

“But I’ve unlocked it.”

“You’ve unlocked it with the key but there’s a bolt on the inside.”

“On the inside?”

“I got Michael to put it on the inside, then climb out through the window.”

She looks at me strangely.

“Why on earth would you want to do that?”

“It was years ago, after Maud’s death. I never wanted to see the damn cellar after that. I didn’t want to be reminded of it or have it happen again. The problem is, it’s completely dark and the stairs are so steep and they’re right in front of you. It’s easy to see how you might step out into nothing as you reach for the switch. And that would be it.”

“So that’s why you locked it?”

“Yes.”

“Because Maud fell down the steps.” She eyes me carefully, uncertainly, as she has many times the past day. It feels intrusive, as if she’s looking right through my clothes to my nakedness.

“Yes,” I say impatiently, and even as I say it I can tell that Vivien has planned, in her mind, the entire future of this conversation, and I don’t like it.

“So you still think that’s what happened?” she says, to my astonishment.

It’s been years since I’ve felt someone’s goading me. I thought I’d long grown out of it, but here I am now, feeling tight as a coil, like an adolescent, remembering with irritation how Vivien had a way of obfuscating everything, and how Maud had to tell her to stop it because I never found a way to react that didn’t make it worse.

“Yes, that’s what happened,” I reply, with mild indignation.

She considers, and nods.

“Never mind,” she says, stepping back from the door and turning to leave.

Is she really going to end the conversation right there, like that? She can’t do that. You can’t start a revolution and then go home for tea.

“I was here, Vivien,” I say. “I saw her. I phoned for the ambulance.”

“Were you, Ginny?” she says, stopping to look up at Jake. “Were you standing right there? Did you see her fall?”

“Where were you?” I retort, more sharply than I’d imagined I could.

She shakes her head and turns to go, another of her most maddening teenage tendencies. She had a habit of introducing an infuriating idea or a niggling suspicion, and then she’d refuse to explain herself, presumably because she couldn’t. And even if the whole thing was complete and utter rubbish, she’d still have left the tiniest doubt to nag away at you for years.

“Vivien, you can’t walk away. I asked you a question. I said, ‘Where were
you
?’”

She seems a little surprised.

“Where were you when Maud died?”

“In London,” she says.

“Exactly.” But she doesn’t seem to understand the relevance.

“So who is better placed to say what happened?” I say, spelling it out for her.

She is clearly stunned that I’m fighting back. I feel myself redden. I don’t remember standing up to her like this before. By all logical reckoning I’ve won the argument, but for some strange reason it doesn’t feel like a victory. She stares at me for longer than I like—as if, for the first time ever, she’s lost for words.

“Well,” she begins slowly, “I think that depends on who is able to see things as they really are.” And then she adds glibly, “Was the cellar door always left open?” Again, a question to which she already knows the answer.

“No. It was left open accidentally and Maud mistook it for the kitchen door.”

Now she laughs. Not a real laugh, but an affected, condescending one, emanating superiority. Is it really us having this conversation, exactly the same adolescent girls battling it out with infuriating pauses and omissions, leaving everything unsaid? Why should she make me feel small in my own house?

“Mistook it for the kitchen door?” she says with ludicrous disbelief. “Ginny, how I would love to have your cozy view on life, everything slots into place. You never question anything, do you?” She pauses.

Of course I should be infuriated by her belittling strategy, but instead I’m bewildered. I can’t begin to work out what she’s getting at.

“She wasn’t an
idiot,
Ginny. Why on earth would she mistake it for the kitchen door?”

Now, suddenly, I understand. I’ve just remembered,
Vivien doesn’t know.
She’s never known. I’d made sure of it. Of course I’d
like
to tell her the truth. I’d like to scream at her, “No, your mother wasn’t an idiot, she was a
drunk,
” but I can’t bring myself to tell her, to shatter her untarnished memory of her mother. But now I realize that by ensuring that Vivien never knew the truth about Maud’s drinking I’d inadvertently led her to question the manner of her death. If only I could tell her that Maud was raving and rampaging at the end, that she could easily have walked into the greenhouse thinking it was the bedroom, or the pond for a bath. Mistaking the cellar door for the kitchen wasn’t the least bit difficult to imagine but only, of course,
if you knew.

“But, Vivien…” I sigh, and then I’m stuck for words. The knowledge that I have stood by my promise to Maud gives me the composure to rise above all this. She can patronize me as she likes, but after years of protecting her from the truth about Maud it wouldn’t be fair to destroy her perceptions of the past at life’s final hurdle, just to prove a point. I won’t do it, not only for Maud’s honor, but also for my little sister’s sake.

“Well, they’re right next to each other,” I say feebly.

Perhaps she’s still not got over Maud’s death. Perhaps it was Maud’s death that stopped her coming back for so many years.

“I’m sorry,” she says, and I let her bring me close until my head is buried in her shoulder and she holds it there firmly. It’s her way of finding support.

“No, I’m sorry,” I say.