The Ugly Sister

by Winston Graham

  It was hours to darkness yet. Nothing had happened. Why should I feel in my bones that something might yet happen? Bram, if he had any sense, particularly a sense of self-preservation, would surely by now be packing his things and preparing to leave the county. Or had I misjudged him? Surely not. Could he brazen it out? He came of an influential family.

  Was he a man ever to run? I did not know. Was he wise enough to know when he was beaten?

  I had lentil soup for supper, with a cold capon and damson tart to follow. The food seemed to stick in my mouth and refuse to be swallowed; but I dallied over it, for there was nothing more to do with the day. I felt safer with Cannon’s presence in the house. He usually slept over the stables but I must tell him to stay in the house tonight.

  Fetch. ‘If you please, miss, Mrs Bluett says she has a bad headache and can she be excused?’

  ‘Of course. And tell Ethel she can clear these things.’

  ‘You ’ aven’t ate much,’ said Fetch, peering.

  ‘It’s enough.’

  Mrs Bluett was someone who ought to have been discharged. She had these headaches at regular intervals and it was rumoured they were caused by drinking. No doubt my porter or my brandy. She wasn’t even a very good cook. Under Uncle Francis’s promptings I had become very much better than that. But I had lacked the impulse or severity which was needed to make a change. She was the only one who had ‘come with the house’ and there had always seemed more important decisions to make.

  I had not slept for thirty-six hours, and as the tension relaxed my eyes ached and wanted to close. Yet I knew if I once shut them the wires would tauten again, and a rush of thought and nervous emotion would break in and make sleep impossible. I would have given a lot for some of that laudanum syrup which had been so helpful in Berlin.

  At eight I told Cannon that I would like him to spend the night in the house. There was a small bedroom overlooking the front door and I asked him to use that. By now the sun was setting. There had been cloud later in the day but this had broken again and shafts of sunlight lanced through the trees. In twenty minutes or so it would be gone and the long twilight would begin. There was no moon tonight, so after about nine-thirty it would be dark.

  I went into the back sitting room and began to read. In spite of all Uncle Francis’s efforts I have never felt deeply stirred by religion, but tonight I picked up the bible he gave me for my twentieth birthday and turned the pages. Now if ever I needed strength and comfort.

  ‘Oh, my dove, thou art in the clefts of the rock, in the secret places of the stairs, let me see thy countenance, let me hear thy voice, for sweet is thy voice and thy countenance is comely.

  ‘Take us the foxes, the little foxes, that spoil the vines, for our vines have tender grapes.

  ‘By night on my bed I sought him whom my soul loveth; I sought him but I found him not …

  ‘I am come into my garden, my sister, my spouse … I sleep but my heart waketh: it is the voice of my beloved that knocketh, saying, Open to me, my sister, my love … I opened to my beloved and my hands dropped with myrrh … My beloved had withdrawn himself and was gone: my soul failed when he spake; I sought him but I could not find him; I called him but he gave me no answer …’

  A loud banging. I woke with a start. So I had dozed after all. For how long? I got up and parted the curtains and saw it was nearly dusk. Was that banging in my head?

  Or was it Fetch at the door?

  ‘Beg pardon, miss, but it’s Mr Fox.’

  My heart lurched. ‘What? Where?’

  ‘At the front door. Cannon told him you was away, but though he shut the door in his face he came back like this, bangin’ and bangin’.’

  I had swallowed the remnants of a bad dream and wakened to a worse one. The house was silent now.

  I picked up the bible and put it on a side table. ‘He will go away.’

  As if directly to contradict this the banging on the door began again. And shouting.

  I went into the hall. Cannon was standing by the front door. He was about to speak but I put a finger to my lips. Ethel and one of the other maids were by the green baize door to the kitchen.

  I stole to the front door. Something splintered. It was not the door but something he was using on it outside.

  ‘Emma!’ he shouted. ‘Emma! I know you’re there, damn you! Let me in!’

  ‘There’s a weak shutter in the dining room,’ Cannon whispered. ‘I ’ope he don’t know of that!’

  ‘Emma!’ came his voice. ‘I know you’re in there! I’ll get you out sooner or later, so you might as well come now!’

  I looked at Cannon. He was of sturdy build, but his face had lost its usual colour. If the thought had ever entered my head that I might some day need a bodyguard I would have chosen someone taller and younger.

  Everybody waited, listening to a scraping outside.

  ‘Whatever’s to do?’ came a complaining voice from the kitchen. Mrs Bluett appeared, night-railed, wrapped in a shawl. ‘ Oh, beg pardon, ma’am, I didn’t see you was ’ ere. What’s to do?’

  ‘Be quiet!’ I said in a low voice.

  She turned to Ethel and muttered something about being waked from her first sleep and her head was something chronic. Her looks confirmed the suspicion that she was on a drinking bout.

  The voice outside suggested that someone else had been on a drinking bout. Bram drank above average always, but I had never seen him drunk. Was this the first time? Nor had I ever seen his temper at its worst. He had reason to be angry after receiving the letter. His life was in ruins.

  Now the banging began again. It sounded much heavier as if this time instead of wood he had found a rock or a piece of stone. Mrs Bluett put her hands to her ears and retreated unsteadily into the kitchen.

  Fetch said in my ear, ‘Farmer Eames will hear this! Surely he’ll come over to see what is amiss.’

  ‘Bring a lamp,’ I said. ‘It must be nearly dark outside.’

  The door was shaking and rattling with the assault on it. It was of good oak, but would not withstand this for ever.

  Then it all suddenly ceased. Fetch brought a light from the kitchen. I wondered if, as Cannon feared, the wild man outside would transfer his assault to one of the shuttered windows.

  Then a quiet voice said, ‘Emma.’

  He must have been speaking through the keyhole, for it sounded so terribly close, so intimate.

  ‘I know you’re there because your little kitten has come out to greet me. He’s not afraid of me, are you, Mousie? Kiddy, kiddy, kiddy, what a fine little kiddy.’

  I looked wildly around. Glances flew between us. No one spoke. Then Ethel whispered: ‘ She went out about ’alf an hour gone.’

  I choked and said nothing.

  Then Bram went on: ‘ I know you’re there now, Emma, because you can’t bear to part with your little baby, and if you had gone away you would have taken her with you.’

  I gripped the back of a chair for support.

  He said: ‘I don’t want to make any more disturbance for I might frighten little Mousie, and that would be too bad, wouldn’t it, kiddy?’

  Of the three other people in the hall, none would meet my eyes.

  Then he said: ‘Come out and walk in the garden. We can talk like ordinary human beings. You’ve made so many false assumptions in your letter that it would be only fair to hear what I have to say in my own defence.’

  I hesitated. ‘Don’t go, miss,’ whispered Fetch, her hands to her mouth. ‘ Don’t trust ’ im.’

  Sickness was coming and going in waves. I sat in the chair and did not speak. Minutes passed in silence.

  Then he said: ‘You’re so contrary, Emma, I could wring your neck. D’you know that? All I’m asking is for a walk in the garden. Your garden. Just let us talk it over. Just let us talk it out.’

  I held onto the arm of the chair, opened my mouth to reply, then said nothing. A clock was striking nine.

  ‘Or,’ he said, ‘if I have to do it I’
ll wring your little kitten’s blasted neck instead. Would you like that? If I have to go away I shall leave little Mousie hanging upside down on your door handle. I’ve got her in my hands now. She’s as friendly as you please. Just as friendly as I want you to be.’

  ‘He wouldn’t dare!’ said Fetch. ‘Not even ’e wouldn’t dare!’

  ‘You’ll hear the squawk,’ he said.

  I got up, went to the door. ‘ Open it,’ I said to Cannon and when he hesitated screamed at him:

  ‘Open it!’

  He began to pull the bolts back. They creaked and grunted.

  ‘Let me come with ’ ee,’ hissed Fetch.

  ‘No.’

  The door swung open. Outside it was nearly dark. The light from the hall showed him standing there holding the kitten. His coat was off and his cravat was loose. He laughed at the sight of me, all the old devil in his eyes, hair falling loosely across his forehead.

  ‘So there you are, my little Emma, eh? Coming for a little walk? Come along then.’ He released Mousie, who landed sure-footedly and fled into the house. ‘Think I would have hurt your damned cat? Never! I know you could never love me if I did.’ He laughed again as at a great joke.

  ‘Bram,’ I said, trembling all over, ‘I think you had better come in. I don’t want to walk anywhere with you.’

  ‘Anything you say, dear heart …’ He stopped and turned at the sound of footsteps on the gravel. He stopped laughing and his eyes changed.

  There was a tremendous explosion beside my ear, and a great black stain suddenly showed on Bram’s shirt. In seconds the black turned to red and he was lying half in and half out of the porch, his eyes open, blinking, gasping, wandering.

  I was on my knees beside him. He put up a hand but it fell back.

  ‘Slade,’ he said, and choked on blood. ‘It was Slade.’

  Cannon and Fetch had gone into the garden, staring after a retreating figure.

  ‘Bram,’ I said. ‘We must – must get a doctor.’

  ‘It was all a trap – wasn’t it,’ he said. ‘You invited him here – knew I would come—’

  ‘Oh, my God!’ I screamed. ‘That is not true! Do you think I could wish this? A trap! The only one I was trying to escape from was the one you set for me!’

  Cannon back. ‘’ E’s gone. Can’t see nothing of ’im. There’s a musket lying in the shrubbery. He must ’f thrown it as ’e ran!’

  ‘Help me!’ I cried. ‘ Help me, Fetch, I must get Mr Fox indoors out of the chill. Cannon, run for Dr Harris.’

  We dragged him into the hall. I clawed at a cushion to put under his head, flew into the kitchen for a towel to stem the blood.

  ‘Water!’ I said to Ethel. ‘ Get hot water and a basin.’

  Back with him, he looked up at me quizzically. ‘Can’t breathe.’ He coughed, and a blister of blood showed on his lips.

  With a knife I cut at his shirt, pulled it back. Red hole, oozing, torn at edges; press the linen towel against it. His eyes glazed over again. Fetch came with a blanket. ‘Cannon has taken the ’orse, miss. ’ Tis quicker.’

  Dr Harris three miles away. Ethel back with water. God knows I had little experience of wounds, scarcely knew what to do for the best. The other maid shut the front door. ‘More light!’ I snapped – she carried the single lamp nearer and lit two candles.

  Bram muttered something as I pressed gently at the wound.

  ‘What?’

  ‘It was not – a trap?’

  ‘God no, Bram, not a trap, I swear! How you could think it.’

  He raised his head an inch or two. ‘Oh well, … There it is.’ He coughed to clear the blood from his throat. ‘You know, Emma …’ He tailed off.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘You’re the only one I ever really …’ He did not finish the sentence. His head fell forward on his chest and life left him.

  Chapter Eleven

  I

  OLIVER SLADE was tried at Bodmin Assizes in October 1840 for the murder of Abraham Fox.

  I did not have to give evidence at the trial, but Mr Gascoigne went. He said it lasted a bare fifteen minutes. Slade confessed to the killing and offered no defence. He refused legal help or advice. With no case to argue the jury brought in a verdict of guilty and the judge put on the black silk cap.

  ‘I found it difficult to believe it was all over,’ Mr Gascoigne said. ‘The judge’s homily was of the briefest, and the condemned man was led away. He had no expression on his face – seemed almost to be unconscious of what was happening. Before I left the court they were preparing for the next case.’

  Slade was hanged on 30 November.

  In the previous August I had had a miscarriage. No one knew except Dr Harris, Sally Fetch and Ethel. I had done nothing to rid myself of his child. If it had been born I should have brought it up as my own at Killiganoon. Betsy Slocombe had borne and brought up one or more – probably two – illegitimate children here, so why should not I?

  A month after Bram’s death Tamsin left Place House with Celestine and went to live with her mother – our mother – in Richmond. She left a pile of debts which I discreetly discharged during the following months.

  She never wrote to me again, but I heard from my mother that she held me responsible for Bram’s death and the collapse of her life at Place House. Perhaps, if you looked at it from her point of view, I was.

  Desmond and Mary did not go back to Place, preferring to remain at Tregolls. As the years passed they became it seemed almost as much husband and wife as brother and sister. They were very much alike and grew more alike: decent, kindly, narrow, good-living people, withdrawn, a little ingrown, and completely different from their vigorous, thrusting elder brother and sister. I sometimes thought the shadow of their mother’s mental derangement weighed too heavily on them. They watched each other for tell-tale symptoms.

  Samuel came to inhabit Place at intervals and Anna Maria and Edward would drive over with their ever-increasing brood in the summer, but for quite long periods Place was empty except for a quartet of servants. Samuel became MP for Bodmin and was knighted shortly afterwards. He was High Sheriff for Cornwall in 1849. He remained unmarried throughout his active life but like his father kept a mistress – called Harriet Hill – but not at Killiganoon and much more discreetly. The year before he died he married her and so legitimized his eleven-year-old son, much to the scandal of the county.

  I remember going to his funeral at Place, with my husband and our two sons, who happened to be on leave at the time. I recalled Uncle Davey’s funeral almost exactly forty years before and the many members of the Cornish aristocracy and gentry who attended in their black coaches. This time, united in disapproval, most of the gentry sent their coaches empty, and these filled the wide drive before the house in a most melancholy way. It was a wake within a wake.

  The moral change in the country since the young Queen and her Consort had come to the throne had been steady and here was dramatically pointed. However the young John Samuel – now Spry – was bright-eyed if tearful, and seemed likely to survive the disapproval. So did Harriet, my new cousin.

  II

  BUT I am anticipating.

  Killiganoon passed out of the ownership of the Spry family shortly after I left. It was sold to a Mr Thomas Simmons.

  In 1841, almost thirty years ago now, I replied to a letter recently received from the Hon Jonathan Eliot. I have it before me.

  Dear Jonathan,

  Thank you for your long and very kind letter of the seventh. I do greatly appreciate it, and have given much thought and sentimental feeling to your proposal of marriage.

  I want to be completely honest with you, for as yet we know each other so little. I am twenty-eight, and for the first twenty-six years of my life I suffered a severe disfigurement. Now it has been partly put right but I sometimes wonder whether I still carry the scars of that injury in my character, in my nature. (Someone once told me that I do.) The feeling of being set apart from others, the feeling of being unw
anted, of being an outcast, is still strong at times.

  In my life I have been much in thrall to two men, one who softened me by his saintliness, the other who was the opposite of a saint. They are both dead.

  I believe I do want companionship and a settled life. I believe I do want the settled life that marriage brings – should bring. But I do not know if I truly love you. You have told me that you love me, and I do believe you, and that feeling is already a warmth in my heart. But marriage is for life. Shall we in a long life find the best in each other or discover the worst?

  You cannot answer me, except at another meeting. That perhaps will come soon. But even then there is the risk. Perhaps you will be able to convince me, Jonathan, that the risk is worth taking. Even as I sit here writing this I am greedy for a normal life. Can you help me to find it? If so I will marry you.

  Your affectionate friend

  Emma

  I remember after finishing it I spilled the young cat from my lap as I sanded the ink and reread what I had written. Then I sat for a long time head in hands, struggling with my thoughts and emotions – half tearful. There was so much more to say, and yet nothing more to say.

  Then I took out another sheet of paper and put the date on it. 15 March 1841. In some ways it was an even more difficult letter to write. I began it.

  ‘Dearest Charles …

  Copyright

  First published in 1998 by Macmillan

  This edition published 2013 by Bello

  an imprint of Pan Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited

  Pan Macmillan, 20 New Wharf Road, London N1 9RR

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  www.panmacmillan.co.uk/bello

  ISBN 978-1-4472-5653-3 EPUB

  ISBN 978-1-4472-5652-6 POD

  Copyright © Winston Graham, 1998

  The right of Winston Graham to be identified as the

  author of this work has been asserted in accordance

  with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.