The Ugly Sister

by Winston Graham

  ‘Is Mr Charles Lane at home?’

  She was taking me in, as I was taking her in. ‘ Er – no. He’s probably at the Docks …’

  ‘Oh … D’you mean in the centre of the town?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘He – lives here?’

  ‘Oh, yes. I’m his wife.’

  ‘Oh, thank you.’

  A hesitation, then, as I was about to turn away. ‘Shall I tell him who called?’

  ‘Emma Spry,’ I said. ‘Your husband and I have met once or twice in Cornwall.’

  ‘Oh … Oh, yes.’ Her startled eyes travelled over my dress. ‘He’s mentioned you. I – er – don’t know quite what the time is, but I am expecting him back for dinner. Will you come in and wait?’

  ‘Oh, no thank you. I was in Bristol and thought to look him up. I have no – special business with him. It was just a call.’

  She had a West Country accent and a slightly protruding bottom lip that made a slurring of some of her words. She looked very clean, but her hair was untidy and she wore a black apron over a cream dress. Most men, I’d think, would not have called her pretty but she was wholesome-looking.

  She said sharply: ‘Do come in, Miss Spry.’

  ‘Thank you … I …’ Hard to escape the challenge in her voice. ‘Thank you.’ I went in.

  A cosy cottage-type of house: as he was moving around so much this was probably rented. I did not know what his tastes were; he said he had begun life as a bricklayer, but since Brunel took him on he must have moved in all sorts of society.

  I sat down in the front sitting room, and she went to stand by the window with a finger pulling back the lace curtain to see if he was coming.

  I had told the cab to wait at the end of the street.

  I glanced at the clock on the mantel shelf. ‘It’s only just noon,’ I said. ‘Do you dine so early?’

  ‘It depends on how his work goes. He was away all last week, but today he expects to be home. He said so when he left that I could cook for the both of us.’

  ‘Then I’m interfering with your preparations.’

  ‘No, no, I have Susie who will look to the joint for me. Can I get you some refreshment, Miss Spry?’

  ‘Oh … a cordial would be very nice.’ I had noticed some on a side table. Wondering how best to make my excuses. Stupid ever to have come.

  Charles, she said, was at present working with the chief engineer on the Great Western. He had been with the ship on its maiden voyage across the Atlantic to New York. At present it was anchored off Avonmouth, but Charles was at the Town Docks today on some other business. Mr Brunel was now designing a still larger liner built all of metal and driven by screws instead of paddle wheels. It would cost some huge sum, and there were many critics who said Mr Brunel was overreaching himself and that such a huge vessel could only be run at a loss.

  ‘Where did you meet your husband?’ I asked.

  ‘At a church fête at Ashburton. I was looking after a biscuit stall; he came to buy a tin of short-breads for his mother.’

  ‘I was born near there.’

  ‘Near Ashburton? I thought you were Cornish.’

  ‘My father was. My family is. So you have known Charles a long time?’

  ‘About seven years. He is from London.’

  ‘He came to dinner at my grandfather’s house near St Mawes. Mr Brunel was with him. That was – oh, about eight or nine years ago.’

  There was a pause, each waiting for the other.

  ‘You are dressed very smart, Miss Spry. That’s something else I didn’t expect.’

  ‘Pray forgive me. I was just travelling. I should have given you notice.’

  She let the curtain fall. ‘ You know that I shall never give him up.’

  I stared at her. She had gone a brick red. ‘Charles? Your husband? Why should you?’

  ‘Not to you,’ she said, ‘nor to no one else!’

  ‘I – I don’t quite understand. You’re married to him.’

  ‘I know. And marriage is binding, isn’t it? There’s no way out.’

  ‘I still don’t understand.’

  She put her hands up to her cheeks, as if aware of their colour. ‘I suppose I shouldn’t ever have spoken. It just came out – seeing you here.’

  ‘But I am a friend of Mr Lane’s! You cannot surely begrudge him having friends! We mean nothing to each other on any other – other level.’

  ‘Charles isn’t that good-looking,’ she said. ‘But women take to him. He mixes with many sorts and kinds in his work, and I’ve seen them make a great fuss of him.’

  I took a breath. ‘ Oh, perhaps. Oh yes. But you surely do him a terrible injustice if you feel – suspect … I don’t know him well, but I should have thought him one of the most steadfast of men. I do not think, having taken his marriage vows to you, he would ever allow himself to be attracted elsewhere – at least not in the way you are meaning.’

  She said passionately: ‘Not to a pretty face, perhaps, but mebbe to a lady with a damaged face!’

  ‘D’you mean me?’

  ‘Yes, I mean you, Miss Spry, for I see he has been lying to me too about how bad your face was—’

  ‘I had it operated on last year! But what I cannot understand is how you should think he has some attachment to me over and above a normal friendly relationship—’

  ‘Because he told me.’

  I took another deep breath, or tried to.

  ‘Oh, come. I’m sure you are—’

  ‘Before we married, before he asked me to marry him, he told me how he felt about you. He thought you was out of his reach. He thought you was too good for him. He told me this, but I loved him and said I didn’t mind. No more do I; no more do I, but I cannot let you suddenly turn up in our lives to put a sort of – a sort of dark stain on our marriage, like. It isn’t fair!’

  My hand was trembling as I put the cordial glass down. ‘The last thing I want to do, Mrs Lane, is to upset your marriage. The very last. I’m astonished at what you’ve just told me! … But that was before your marriage; it’s unlikely he feels the same now – if he ever did. You mistook him! You know how—’

  ‘I didn’t mistake him at all! I couldn’t have. Besides, you have written – and he has written. I know when a letter from you has come: he’s different after—’

  ‘Have you read any of my letters?’

  She flared up. ‘How dare you! I don’t look in my husband’s pockets—’

  ‘I wish you had! Then you would know they contain no endearments whatsoever. There’s nothing in them to suggest there was anything between us in the way you imply! Nor was there ever! Nor is there. Nor will there ever be. I am fond of Charles, and if he thinks he is fond of me in another way he is quite mistaken to suppose I return it. So your fears are quite unfounded. Now I’ll go.’

  She barred my way, anger ebbing. ‘I’m sorry. I’ve said too much. It has been so much in my mind and in my heart that when you turned up unexpected I—’

  ‘Thank you for inviting me in. Perhaps this will have helped to reassure you.’

  ‘Stay till he—’

  ‘Of course not! And do not tell him I have been. It will be much better that way.’

  Chapter Four

  I

  SALLY FETCH could not know – and could not be told – why I was so upset. Nor did I actually know the extent myself. It meant a complete break with an old friend, that was upsetting enough. But all that went with it left me depressed and tearful. And I am not a tearful woman.

  We were leaving by the noon coach on the following day and would spend a night in Exeter. But Thursday dawned so bleak that I would probably have changed our booking for a later date, had it not been for my encounter with Effie Lane. I couldn’t be out of the city soon enough.

  A high wind blew in from the Bristol Channel, and sheet-curtains of rain fell almost horizontally across the town. Looking from my bedroom window I saw people in the street below being almost blown over by the wind. One tall st
rongly built young man was holding onto his hat, and his coat tails were flying as he turned in at the door of the hotel. A panic feeling.

  I went across to the mirror staring at my still-marked face, hastily brushed hair over from the temple to hide it. Fetch in the doorway.

  ‘If you please, ma’am, a gentleman to see you. Mr Charles Lane.’

  I stared back at her. ‘Is there anyone in the upstairs sitting room?’

  ‘Dunno, miss. Not likely at this time of the morning, I s’pose.’

  ‘Ask him to wait in there.’

  Take a little time. Powder over the imperfections. Whatever the outcome of this meeting, one could not but try to look one’s best.

  He was standing by the window, hands behind back. In the low room he looked very big. There was a wizened old woman in a seat by the fire. Knitting.

  He looked at me, face flushing. Some of his hair was wet. He glanced at the old woman.

  ‘Emma,’ he said carefully. ‘I felt I had to see you, as you called yesterday.’

  ‘I met your wife.’

  ‘She told me.’

  ‘Did she tell you of our conversation?’

  ‘Yes.’

  The old lady looked up from her knitting, then the needles began again.

  ‘How is Mr Brunel?’

  ‘Greatly stressed. Working sometimes twenty hours a day. But very successful now, in spite of so many setbacks.’

  ‘Your wife tells me you crossed the Atlantic.’

  ‘In the Great Western, yes.’

  The wind gusted against the windows, beating the rain before it.

  ‘Her last voyage,’ said Charles. ‘It was a race. The London and Liverpool merchants did not want the Great Western to be the first steamer to cross to New York. They felt it would re-establish Bristol as the major port, as in the old days. So they chartered the Sirius which was being built for this crossing and she left the Thames four days ahead of us.’

  ‘So what – how did it turn out?’

  ‘They beat us by a short head. But their voyage had taken nineteen days, ours only just fifteen: and while they were almost out of coal when they reached New York, we arrived with 200 tons to spare. In the end it was a great triumph.’

  ‘Mr Brunel would be pleased.’

  ‘Unfortunately he was injured in an accident aboard the Great Western just before we sailed so he was not able to come with us. Emma, is there somewhere where we could talk privately?’

  ‘Is there any need?’

  ‘I feel there is.’

  The knitting needles stopped clicking and then began again.

  He said: ‘ Your face. Your eye, Emma. What has happened?’

  ‘I had an operation.’

  ‘It makes you look different.’

  ‘My mother says it makes me look harder.’

  ‘Oh, I don’t think so. Not at all—’

  ‘I am harder, Charles. I am sure you chose wisely in your wife.’

  ‘I did not know there was another choice open to me.’

  ‘Nor did I.’

  ‘I thought you were out of my reach.’

  ‘So I am – now.’

  The knitting needles stopped. The old lady said: ‘I will leave. You wish to talk in private?’

  ‘Not at all,’ I said.

  ‘Yes please,’ said Charles.

  It seemed to take an age for her to gather up her knitting, her jacket, her stick, stand up, balance herself, narrow her old eyes to look at us, then totter towards the door. Charles gratefully opened it for her, and presently we were alone.

  After a second: ‘My coach goes at noon,’ I said.

  He stared at me, frowning his concentration. ‘Really you’re the same, aren’t you. The same Emma I – came to – know.’

  ‘We’re going to spend the night in Exeter,’ I said.

  ‘Did she – did Effie tell you what she told me she had?’

  ‘I asked her to say nothing about my visit. That would have been easiest.’

  ‘She blurted it out as soon as I came in. I’m sorry she …’

  Now we were alone it seemed even harder to talk.

  He said: ‘ I told her before I ever asked her to marry me—’

  ‘Yes, what did you tell her? What could you tell her?’

  ‘That I was, well, it’s hard to say to your face, but I was hopelessly in love with you – but that hopeless was the word.’

  ‘Was I such a wonderful catch, disfigured and penniless?’

  ‘You would have been to me. That’s how I felt. I’m sorry …’

  ‘Your wife told me not to disrupt your marriage. I told her there was no possibility of my doing so—’

  ‘But she told you that I loved you.’

  ‘Whatever it was, it’s a thing of the past, Charles.’

  He put his face in his hands. ‘Could it have meant something?’

  ‘I don’t know. I never considered it. I thought that sort of love was out of my reach. But whatever – I have changed, Charles my dear. Two years ago I was ugly and with less than fifty pounds to call my own. Now I am – not so ugly, and have some money. As I have grown older I really have grown harder – everyone agrees about that. But I am still quite young. So I am going to live as I please and where I please, in Cornwall, in London, in Bristol.’

  ‘Without a care in the world.’

  ‘No … No one can do that. But I don’t want to leave unhappiness behind me here. It would be better if we did not write again.’

  ‘Why ever not? Am I to be deprived even of that pleasure?’

  I hedged the answer. ‘ You have a wonderful future ahead of you. Mr Brunel will go on to even greater things. You have a worthy and loving wife. Take care of her and forget me.’

  ‘Will you forget me?’ he asked.

  ‘No!’

  ‘You who care so little won’t forget. Am I likely to who – who care so much?’

  I took out my watch. ‘I do not know if the coach will go today. How much better it would be on one of your trains!’

  ‘Then stay another day. You can be in no hurry.’

  ‘I want to leave. You know I must. Even if we only get to Taunton.’

  He took a step forward. ‘Look, Emma …’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘I can’t bear that we should separate.’

  ‘We have to.’

  He put his big hands on my shoulders. ‘All right. If that is the way you want it.’

  He bent and kissed me. His lips were not big but gentle. It was hasty and ingenuous, but not so ingenuous as I had expected.

  When we parted I pulled a face. ‘’Twas disagreeable. That proves a point does it not. It proves that Effie has nothing to fear from me!’

  He took a deep breath, slowly let it out. ‘I – don’t believe that, Emma. I don’t and won’t believe what you’ve just said. I know I have made a terrible mistake in my life, and now I must live with it. I suppose it’s better that we end now. It’s better that we shouldn’t write.’

  II

  A WEEK with Mrs Caroline Collins, seeing old friends, riding, meeting the new (now well established) rector of Blisland; a week with Mrs Susanna Austen. Caroline Collins was some twenty years older than I was but we got along famously together. Mrs Austen was older still, but was someone who greatly appealed to me, as I apparently appealed to her. Her son Joseph, who was rapidly restoring the Treffry fortunes, had recently been appointed High Sheriff of Cornwall, so he was seldom at home during my visit, but I enjoyed my time there and took especial pleasure from the surprise they all showed at my change of appearance.

  Most people must know how it is: you plan a trip – a holiday or a pleasurable visit – and it takes place and is everything you could want. But something happens – or something has happened before you start off – and your pleasure all the time is soured by this happening that you did not expect or did not seek; it is a sort of nagging tooth, a sadness and a soreness of the spirit, so that you are aware all the time of this incubus of d
epression.

  I eventually arrived at Tregolls in Truro, to be greeted by Mary and her two cousins. Desmond, they said, was in Bath taking a cure. Here I had expected unpleasantness, so I was not disappointed. The three women were greatly disapproving of Tamsin’s behaviour, and did not hesitate to tell it all to Tamsin’s sister. It took me a little while to discover that Samuel had been as good as his word, and I had been granted a twelve-month lease of Killiganoon. I stayed two days at Tregolls and then thankfully hired a trap to drive to the house previously occupied by Admiral Davey’s mistress.

  I had never been there before. It was just off to the left of the main coaching road, about halfway between Truro and Falmouth, and was protected in its privacy by a copse of fir trees. It was a big house, not at all the bijou cosy love nest I had pictured.

  Yet it was quite a pretty house: half-timbered (most unusual in Cornwall, where wood was always at a premium), with big sash windows, mostly green-shuttered, a long portico over the front door with climbing roses. The garden was wanton with neglect, but some palms flourished.

  ‘Will this do for you, Sally?’ I asked.

  ‘’Tis handsome. But what’ll we do with it all?’

  ‘We’ll spread ourselves. You’ll see.’

  A Mrs Bluett was acting as cook and caretaker, and she let us in. She had crimped white hair, spectacles and a cross face. She did not look as if the sun had ever shone for her.

  The house was furnished in an old-fashioned style with a number of noticeable gaps, as if Miss Betsy Slocombe had taken some things with her when she left. It all smelt of dust and mildew and mice, but a few weeks of spring-cleaning would put that right.

  Mrs Bluett was in touch with three of the maids who had worked for Miss Slocombe, and they were all willing and waiting to return.