The Ugly Sister

by Winston Graham

  ‘It hasn’t been a complete success, has it?’

  ‘No … I make the best of it.’

  ‘I’m sure.’

  There was a brief silence.

  ‘Bram,’ I said, ‘as you will know, is in Plymouth.’

  ‘Good of you to tell me. I hear you have been meeting him from time to time.’

  So she knew.

  ‘He comes to see me, I do not invite him.’

  ‘I suppose you no longer regard him as an enemy, as you used to.’

  ‘Did I? I don’t know. He has always been a challenge.’

  ‘Are we going to talk about him or about us?’

  ‘All three.’

  ‘I do not think I am willing to do that.’

  ‘There’s not much choice, Tamsin. I’m sorry but …’

  She turned from the window. ‘This is my house – mine and Bram’s. You are my sister, so I give you leave to come here. But you come on my terms. If what you have to say is against Bram or against my association with him, then you can take it elsewhere.’

  I had never heard her voice so hard, and the battle not yet even joined.

  ‘I came today because I knew Bram was not here and could not interrupt us. As you say, I’m your sister – and though we have not perhaps liked each other so well since we grew up, the blood tie is there and we owe each other a little frankness, a little honesty …’

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘I don’t know quite where to begin. I … have no option but to … Did you know that Slade is still alive?’

  She looked up, eyes startled. ‘ What d’you mean? Bram told you. He’s dead!’

  ‘Bram was – mistaken. I have spoken to him.’

  ‘To Slade? When? Where? I don’t believe you!’

  ‘He is with his sister at Feock. It is quite close to Killiganoon. I walked there.’

  ‘You – saw him? I don’t believe you!’

  ‘He did not die of a stroke. He was attacked by four men, taken from Place with a tarpaulin flung over his head, kept in a shed without food or water; then both his legs were broken and he was dropped in the tidal mud of the Fal and left to die.’

  Tamsin took out a handkerchief and wiped her lips. ‘Bram must have been told wrongly …’

  ‘Yes … yes. I would like you to reassure me of that.’

  ‘Slade was mixed up in all sorts of shady things. You know that yourself. You took great pleasure in coming over to Tregrehan and telling me what you had found out about him.’ She sat down.

  I sat on the opposite side of the table. ‘Slade had a lot to say when I went to see him. He said that Bram was not only head of the Excise but deeply involved in the trade – in contraband. With his tacit permission certain routes to the continent are – are left open; others, which do not pay him a percentage of the goods run, are closed and the smugglers caught. Slade says – I did not know – that while running contraband is illegal, the sale of contraband, once it has been landed undetected, is not forbidden in law. Bram, he says, draws a profit in this way, also.’

  ‘What complete nonsense,’ Tamsin said with conviction. ‘Utter rubbish! You know how this county is rife with slander and scare stories. You remember how it was said that your deformed face cast a spell on this house and helped to derange Aunt Anna? Well, if you can believe this you can believe that!’

  I put my hand up to my face.

  ‘If what Slade said is true, if, just supposing it were true, Bram would have little reason to fear exposure from him. Slade is terrified of what would happen if he spoke out. He says it was Bram’s doing, on Bram’s orders that he was attacked and beaten. He says he quarrelled with Bram because he took all the risks and should have had a greater share of the profits. They had worked in Place, he says, together ever since the Admiral died. He says there’s no one in the trade who would dare stand up in court and testify against Abraham Fox. He even has some of the gentry behind him.’

  Tamsin laughed harshly. ‘Don’t be so utterly silly. You ought to know that nothing Slade says is worth a moment’s belief. You remember the story he told us about burying his children in the cellar? Well, we were children then! We’re not now. You’re not. You’re old enough to know better!’

  ‘Yet,’ thoughtfully, still rubbing my face. ‘You’ve just said, Bram told me Slade was dead. You heard him.’

  ‘Maybe he heard wrong! There’s no excuse at all to suppose that whatever happened to Slade happened on Bram’s orders!’

  ‘Did you know anything about this, Tamsin?’

  ‘About what, for God’s sake?’

  ‘About all I’ve just said. You say Slade disappeared from this house one day? How did it happen?’

  ‘Oh …’ She made an angry gesture. ‘It just happened. When – when the house wakened one morning he was gone! It was Lucy who came to tell me. When he did not come down at his usual time they sent her up to his bedroom. The room was empty, the bed had not been slept in, some of his clothes were gone. I simply shrugged my shoulders and continued with my life as normal. Slade had become very eccentric, very strange. I think he had a softening of the brain. It is quite possible that he got drunk and fell down some steps and has invented the rest of the story. He is quite capable of making up any wild tale. No doubt he found you a willing listener. You of all people! That you believed anything that Slade said! You ought to be ashamed of yourself!’

  I said: ‘If I have made a mistake I must ask your pardon. I shall be very, very, very glad if it is all a mistake – for a reason I’ll explain in a moment. But first tell me … Tell me – if Bram is keeping strictly within the law, how does he live as well as he does? He never had money when we knew him first. He went to prison for debt. Well, his salary as Commissioner for Customs and Excise can hardly be that generous. Yet he tells me he pays the rental on your behalf for Place House. And although he works hard he lives a gentleman’s existence in the meantime. You too are prosperous-looking and as far as I know you have no money of your own.’

  She turned suddenly in her chair and shouted: ‘What business is it of yours! How dare you come here questioning me as if you were a judge! What right have you!’

  ‘Only the partial right of being your sister … And for another reason …’

  ‘What other reason?’

  ‘Bram has asked me to marry him.’

  III

  THERE ARE times when I forget that Tamsin and I are daughters of an actress. I find I can simulate moods that are not quite my own, and usually I can detect them in her. As young girls we would challenge each other, instinctively rather than deliberately, what my mother coldly condemned as ‘striking attitudes’. Tamsin, by reason of her beauty and the favouritism bestowed on her, was more prone than I.

  But when she laughed at my last utterance I could not tell how deeply she was moved by it, precisely because it was histrionic, hysterical, contemptuous all at the same time.

  ‘You can’t be serious!’ she said.

  ‘I think he is. I think I may be.’

  ‘You’ve lost your senses!’

  ‘It’s why I came to ask you these questions about Bram. It is a relief to hear you say that these stories are not true.’

  ‘You couldn’t keep him a month,’ she snapped contemptuously. ‘And I don’t mean in a money sense!’

  ‘Nor do I. But he has offered to keep me.’

  Her eyes glinted. ‘Do you love him?’

  ‘I think I always have.’

  ‘And what about me? Have you forgotten about me?’

  ‘No. I certainly haven’t! I’ve thought of little else. But I suppose I did not feel that you were bound together in a – in a—’ I tailed off.

  ‘Why have you come to say this to me? Are you really, really – in your right mind? Do you suppose that my – my relationship with Bram can be parcelled up and put away in a convenient cupboard? My God, your – your impertinence is beyond belief!’

  I took a deep rather shaky breath. ‘ The truth may be that we are both
a trifle besotted with him. We always have been, haven’t we? Perhaps I’m wrong, but I felt I could do no more behind your back, so I came to see you, to have it out – as they say. The truth is you cannot marry him, and I can. It will be a stormy marriage, but I am prepared for that. I am willing to risk it. I thought – Tamsin knows him far, far better than I do. In crude words, he keeps her. He uses her house. Her daughter calls him uncle. She must know a great deal about what goes on in his life outside Place House. So she will know whether these – these lies, these stories spread about him, are true or have some element of truth in them. Now you say there is no truth in them I feel happier, no longer quite so anxious, quite so concerned …’

  Silence fell while the clock in the next room struck three. I could hear her breathing. Then a dog barked down by the river.

  ‘D’you remember Parish?’ I said. ‘I never knew why Uncle Davey so disliked Parish.’

  She shouted: ‘And I suppose if I had said your lies about Bram were true you would have pulled your skirts away in disdain and had nothing more to do with him!’

  ‘I’m not sure, Tammy—’

  ‘Don’t call me that!’

  ‘I’m not sure, Tamsin. When you commit yourself to the idea of marrying someone you come to accept what he does, what he is doing, what his view of life is, even if you personally dislike it.’

  ‘I don’t believe Bram will ever marry you! Why should he? You’ve been a spinster so long that you have these hot fancies! You don’t know anything about it! Coming here – coming here – it makes me choke to see you. Cool and collected, just as if you were here to engage a footman and wanted my references! “ If he’s respectable I’ll have him.” Well, he’s respectable enough for me, and he’s not for sale!’

  I got up. ‘I came to spend the night, Tamsin. I knew this would be a difficult meeting. Perhaps it would be better if I left after supper. I cannot think we should be sweet companions this evening.’

  ‘Go when you like,’ she said. ‘You’ll never get a welcome again in this house.’

  I shook my head. ‘I didn’t want it to be at all like this.’

  ‘The remedy was in your own hands.’

  ‘Was it? Somehow Bram has always been between us, hasn’t he? There’s been a sort of fatal progression. You’ve always wanted him, and you got him, even though it broke your marriage in the process. Now I want him, and can offer him what you cannot.’

  She too stood up. Her face was paper white. ‘And in this cosy domestic arrangement that you have come to – are you supposing that he will give me up?’

  ‘I have supposed that.’

  ‘He won’t, you know. He won’t. He can’t!’

  ‘We haven’t discussed you because I felt it was up to him. I want no part in it.’

  ‘Part in it! You’re trying to ruin my life and you say you want no part in it! Well, you shan’t!’

  I stared at her, still trying so hard not to break into a matching anger.

  ‘Shan’t what?’

  ‘Take him away from me.’ She laughed again. ‘You don’t know what you’re talking about. He couldn’t go on without me, without the use of this house, without the help I give him.’

  ‘Help?’

  She raised her head. ‘Yes, help. That was why we got rid of Slade.’

  ‘You mean why he was kidnapped?’

  ‘Nothing of the sort! We made it uncomfortable for him here, so he left.’

  ‘So why particularly was it helpful to get rid of him?’

  ‘You ought to know that! You surprised him on one of his little enterprises years ago!’

  ‘And he threatened me then, you know. If I spoke too openly I might have been beaten. So in the end he was paid in his own medicine.’

  ‘Yes, but not by Bram! By one of his own seedy kind.’

  ‘Bram’s seedy kind?’

  ‘Emma, please take your bag and go to the Pardoes for the night. I shall of course tell Bram of your visit when he comes back.’

  ‘So shall I.’

  She was waiting for me to go. I wondered if she felt as badly shaken as I did.

  ‘I’m very sorry, Tamsin.’

  She said in whisper. ‘ You’ve always hated me, always envied me. Now you’re trying deliberately to destroy me. Well, you shan’t! Nor shall you destroy my life with Bram. He couldn’t leave me. He can’t leave me. He wouldn’t dare!’

  Chapter Eight

  I

  SPRING IS so often spoiled by great winds, heavy rains, sudden cold spells under unrelenting cloud, and summer comes late and reluctant with half the blossom lost. But this year we had gentle airs, days of fitful but warming sunshine, showers that seemed to occur by accident to make the birds sing; even the trees, so late in Cornwall, began to unfurl their leaves.

  Fetch, now nearing forty and expanding – in all ways – under the undemanding regime of being a lady’s maid, revealed important depths of knowledge about birds, and hedgerows and wild flowers, from her early youth on a farm in Madron. She knew, to my shame, far more than I did when as a child I’d had infinite freedom to explore the woods and lanes of Roseland. Often she only had the country names, so I bought a book which helped us on what became a daily tour of inspection of garden and field and hedgerow.

  Early wild daffodils, sedum (which she called orpine) scarcely yet above ground, golden saxifrage just showing yellow on the edge of a wet valley in Kea, beside it the Cornish moneywort struggling for space; on the scrubland of Carnon, with its abounding rabbits and whitethroat badgers, redwings, curlews and jackdaws, were many other small flowers and mosses to be stooped over, a little sample of each put into Sally’s basket to examine and identify when we got home.

  Spring flowers were of course plentiful in the garden, and I compared it to the rectory garden of a few years ago. This was more lush but scarcely more varied. The difference lay in me.

  Bram turned up when Fetch and I were pulling up some rank grass in a corner to make way for the bluebells. His shadow fell across us before I knew he had come over the mossy grass.

  ‘Bram! You startled me.’

  ‘Is there something then that can still startle you? Good afternoon, Carry.’

  ‘Af’noon, sur.’

  ‘I trust you are well? Your mistress also?’

  ‘Oh yes, thank ’ ee, sur. I – er – and the mistress, I believe.’

  ‘Thank you, Sally,’ I said. ‘We shall have to put off our gardening for a while.’

  We watched her go towards the house, carrying her basket and trowel.

  ‘Carry is putting on weight. Her buttocks are spreading.’

  ‘I think she is happy.’

  ‘Her mistress puts on no weight. It is strange to think what a fat little girl you were when I first met you.’

  ‘Shall we go in?’

  ‘I’m well enough here, if you are. Can the difference between you and your maid be that you are not entirely happy and not yet fulfilled?’

  ‘I hope if I ever am I shall not broaden as a result.’

  He looked me up and down. I peeled off my gardening gloves and faced him. His face was dark, determined, the derisive laughter not lurking at the back of his eyes.

  ‘I came last week,’ he said. ‘You were away.’

  ‘I was visiting the Treffrys.’

  ‘What did you want with them, if I may ask?’

  ‘I’ve known them for years.’

  ‘You did not go on to see Jonathan Eliot?’

  ‘No, I did not.’

  He tapped his boot. ‘So, having broken the news of your intention to your sister you decided to go away until the air had cleared?’

  ‘I did not suppose the air would clear at all.’

  ‘Nor has it. Tamsin, as I am sure you know, was greatly upset by your accusations against me.’

  ‘I do not think that was so much the cause of her distress.’

  He laughed softly. ‘Is it true what you say, that Slade is still alive?’

  ‘He surv
ived his ordeal. He is only a mile or so away if you need proof.’

  ‘So he is spreading these vindictive rumours about me, is he?’

  ‘He told me them when I pressed him to speak. He’s too afraid of what will happen to him if he talks openly.’

  ‘And to whom have you passed on his lies?’

  ‘To Tamsin – that is all.’

  He swished idly at a rhododendron branch, breaking off the bud. ‘Is Slade crippled?’

  ‘He is hobbling with a stick. A doctor would perhaps have amputated his legs, but they have not seen a doctor and he seems to be slowly mending … And vowing vengeance …’

  ‘So if pressed he will talk …’

  ‘I don’t think you need worry. Everyone is afraid of you.’

  ‘Do you believe those stories of me, Emma?’

  ‘You’re spoiling that bush. Use your crop on something else.’

  ‘Such as you?’

  ‘Does it matter what I believe?’

  ‘You are willing to marry me.’

  ‘I said I was. If something can be done to appease Tamsin.’

  ‘Even if you believed Slade’s stories to be true?’

  ‘I think I said to Tamsin that when you commit yourself to marry someone you have to accept what he does, what he is doing with his life even though you may not altogether like it.’

  He came up and took my shoulders. I half withdrew and glanced around, but he tightened his grip. ‘ There’s no one to see us. That tree screens us from the house.’ He kissed me. I half turned away my face so that the still-scarred side showed.

  ‘How can you appease Tamsin?’

  ‘I’ll think of a way.’

  ‘That’s not good enough. She accuses you of using Place House in some way.’

  ‘So I do. I use it as my headquarters.’

  ‘For what purpose?’

  ‘All sorts of things. In my legitimate pursuits it’s good to have a central base from which to operate.’

  ‘And your illegitimate ones?’

  He laughed against my face. ‘I’ve broken a few laws in my life, but they are not the laws given us by God.’

  ‘Slade said something like that to me once to justify his smuggling.’