Sisterland

by Linda Newbery

  ‘We had a band practice – not that it’s any of your business. We’re doing our first gig in two weeks.’

  ‘Right, the famous Doppelgänger. Where’s this happening, then? National Front rally? Meeting of the British National Party?’

  ‘Why d’you have to be so snidey? It’s a perfectly ordinary gig, that’s all. At a club.’

  ‘Oh, good. Mum and Dad and I can come and support you.’

  Zoë huffed a laugh. ‘Yeah, right.’

  ‘Why not be straight with them, instead of lying about Nadine, then turning up so late you’re bound to be sussed? Or have you got something to hide?’

  Zoë didn’t answer. She pulled off her shoes, sitting on the bed with her back pointedly turned.

  ‘Anyone would think you were ashamed of Grant and Co.,’ Hilly said.

  ‘You’re just jealous ’cos I’ve got a boyfriend and you haven’t.’

  ‘Don’t flatter yourself! And, Zoë – I know about you going into Settlers the other night and giving the boy who works there a hard time. That’s awful.’

  ‘What boy?’ Zoë was on the alert.

  ‘Saeed, the Palestinian boy who works there.’

  ‘Didn’t know you knew him! Didn’t know he was Palestinian, either.’

  ‘Well, I do. And he is.’

  ‘It was only messing about.’ Zoë sat on her bed, back to Hilly, undressing.

  ‘Not for him it wasn’t. Can’t you imagine what it’s like being on the receiving end? On your own, outnumbered, at the mercy of any racist morons who happen to walk in? Christ, Zoë – and there you were, joining in and making it worse!’

  ‘You don’t have to make a big thing about it. Like I said, it was only a joke – he ought to be able to have a laugh with customers, not act like he can’t lower himself to even talk to us. And how was I supposed to know you know him?’

  ‘That’s not the point, whether I know him or not! You know it isn’t.’ Hilly was too hot now, hot and exasperated; she pushed the duvet away. ‘And stop talking about jokes and messing about. It’s frightening, the way you can’t see what you’re doing – if you go along with them, you’re as bad. Do you really want to be part of that?’

  ‘Give it a rest, will you? You’re like a worn-out record. God, if I’d known it’d be like this, sharing a room with you—’

  ‘It wasn’t my choice!’

  ‘Well, I can tell you it wasn’t mine,’ said Zoë, pulling her T-shirt over her head. She got into bed and turned her back on Hilly. Within five minutes Hilly heard soft regular breathing; Zoë was asleep. Hilly lay awake for a long time more, wakeful and fidgety, thinking of all the things she could have said.

  Chapter Nine

  Gone Away

  Alterations to domestic arrangements are likely to involve the whole family, and should therefore be given careful consideration. The decision to remove an Alzheimer’s sufferer from his or her own home, though often inevitable, is likely to cause further distress and confusion.

  Denise Lombard, Living with Alzheimer’s

  Hilly was in the passenger seat of the car, staring moodily at the dual carriageway ahead. This hadn’t been her idea. Her mother was teaching fitness classes, Zoë had been left in charge of Heidigran, and Hilly and her father were on their way to Heidigran’s house in Banbury to collect the mail, mow the lawn and tidy the garden, and to bring back extra clothes and belongings. No, Mum had said, it wouldn’t be a good idea to take Heidigran too; she’d think she was home to stay, and would get confused when it was time to come back. Which left Hilly with the prospect of spending almost the whole of Sunday alone with her father.

  She could barely bring herself to speak to him. After his attempts at conversation had received curt answers, he drummed his fingers on the steering wheel and lapsed into silence for several miles. They were well clear of town before he said, ‘Hilly, love, please don’t freeze me out. I know what this is all about.’

  ‘Do you?’

  ‘I think so. Will you let me explain?’

  ‘If you think it’ll make the slightest difference.’

  He glanced at her. ‘Rose told me about the conversation you had. After your gran dropped the bombshell about me and – and Stella.’

  Hilly gave an aloof little nod.

  ‘I don’t blame you for being upset,’ he said. ‘I’m just sorry you had to hear about it. It’s not something I’m proud of.’

  ‘But you did it. You had an affair.’

  ‘Yes, I did. And I’m not making excuses – I don’t expect you to make allowances for me.’

  ‘Why, then? Dad, how could you?’

  ‘I don’t know. Don’t know how to explain it. Only the obvious things – Stella was there, she was gorgeous, she was sexy, she wanted me—’

  ‘And Mum didn’t? Mum wasn’t enough for you? And what about us, Zoë and me? You were going to leave us – betray us all for some tarty woman, just for sex!’ Hilly’s voice rose, quavered. ‘You didn’t even love her!’

  After a moment, her father said, ‘I did love her. I thought I did.’

  ‘That’s even worse,’ Hilly said, though she wasn’t sure whether it was or not. If love could switch its focus so suddenly, what was the point of it? How could you possibly trust it, and how it made you behave?

  ‘I honestly don’t know what came over me, Hill – it was a kind of madness while it lasted. I’d have done anything.’

  ‘What stopped you?’ Hilly said coldly.

  ‘When it came to it, to leaving, I just couldn’t.’

  ‘You bottled out?’

  ‘No – no, it wasn’t a matter of bottle. It was like something had carried me along so far – this kind of reckless feeling – like nothing mattered so much as me and my wants. Just in time I realized what I was about to throw away. And Rose took me back, Hilly – I’d treated her appallingly, but she took me back.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I’ll never forget that. And you know what? She didn’t hold it over me for ever after. Never made it a bargaining point. Didn’t drag it up whenever we had a disagreement. She forgave me.’

  Hilly was silent, recognizing the implicit question. Her father pulled out to overtake a Volvo estate full of a family apparently sharing a joke – parents, a couple of boys, a tailwaggy golden retriever clambering over the back seat to join in the fun. By comparison the Craig car was a capsule of hurt restraint.

  ‘All I can say,’ her dad offered, ‘is – however much I hurt your mother, I hurt myself just as much.’

  ‘Good,’ said Hilly.

  ‘And now you.’

  They had reached the turn-off for the country road towards Banbury. At the roundabout, he took an abrupt turn into the Little Chef, pulled into one of the marked bays in the car park, and turned off the ignition.

  ‘Do you need the loo or something?’ Hilly asked.

  ‘No. I just need to take a moment.’

  He wasn’t looking at her but she registered the catch in his voice, the rapid blinking. She realized that he was struggling to hold back tears. Never, never had she seen that before. Not her father.

  ‘Dad …’ she said, in dismay.

  ‘Sorry, Hilly, sorry,’ he whispered. ‘The worst thing of all is that you think less of me than you did. I can’t bear that. And it’s all my own fault—’ His voice wavered out of control; he put a hand over his eyes.

  ‘It’s OK. It’s OK.’ Shaken as Hilly was, the urge to comfort and soothe was stronger.

  ‘Have you got a tissue?’ He touched the corner of one eye, then the other.

  She rummaged in her patchwork bag, found a crumpled one and passed it over. Her father blew his nose loudly, sniffed a couple of times; looked at himself in the driver’s mirror, and took a deep breath.

  ‘Shall we get ourselves a coffee now we’re here?’ he said.

  No one had exactly said so, but it was understood that Heidigran would never live in her house again; not alone. The house would stay empty until a decision was
made. Meanwhile, Heidigran’s possessions and furniture looked forlorn and unused: the mantelpiece clock ticking to an empty room, Oscar’s favourite chair with the cushion indented to the shape of his curled body, a calendar that already showed the wrong month. There was a pile of mail in the porch, most of it junk, and free papers. ‘We’ll have to do something about this,’ Hilly’s father said; ‘get the post redirected, ask one of the neighbours to come in every couple of days and get rid of the papers. It’s too obvious she’s gone away.’

  Gone away, gone away. The words sang in Hilly’s head while she found a roll of bin liners. It was too appropriate; Heidigran had gone away in more ways than one. Part of Hilly’s childhood was being shut up and tidied with this house and garden. If it were sold, all those memories would go with it. For as long as she could remember, Grandad had grown onions, runner beans and lettuces in the vegetable plot beyond a low privet hedge; as children she and Zoë had made an obstacle course round the garden, using canes and buckets and sacks. In her memory it always seemed to be either summer or Christmas. Most of her Christmases had happened here, too; she thought of Dad mulling wine in the kitchen, herself and Zoë arranging presents round the tree, and waking up early and excited in the tiny box room where there was only just room for their two camp beds.

  But Zoë wasn’t an excitable little girl any more. Grandad was in the cemetery. Heidigran was becoming an unpredictable stranger. And Dad—

  Hilly and her father moved round each other carefully, going about their jobs, being too considerate, a little too polite. They opened up the shed; Hilly took secateurs and a wheelbarrow and dead-headed the roses, her father got out the electric lawnmower. Afterwards they raked and composted, and Hilly trimmed the edges with long-handled shears. It was a large garden, both longer and wider than their own; it would take a lot of effort to keep it tidy. Too much effort, perhaps. The house would have to be sold or let; it was a waste to keep it standing empty. The money it brought in could go towards a carer for Heidigran, taking the pressure off the family. But to put the house on the market would be to make an irreversible change, to acknowledge that nothing would ever be the same again. Easier to mow and trim and rake, and pretend that a bit of tidying up was all that was needed.

  At lunch time, while her dad went out to fetch fish and chips, Hilly went indoors with the list of items she’d been asked to bring back. Heidigran’s bag of knitting patterns, her address book; lily-of-the-valley talcum powder from the bathroom cabinet, and some interlock vests. Hilly’s mother had told her where to find it all.

  Heidigran’s bedroom looked sadly uncluttered, abnormally tidy, with no personal possessions on view. Hilly found the knitting bag in the bottom of the wardrobe, then turned to the underwear. Heidigran had an old-fashioned dressing table with an upholstered stool, and a three-piece mirror angled so that someone brushing her hair could view herself from the sides as well as from the front. It made Hilly think of a glamorous woman in an ancient film, Betty Grable or Ingrid Bergman or one of that generation, dressing for dinner in slinky black, putting on pearls and leaning to the mirror making strange mouths while she applied lipstick. On the polished but now dusty surface there was a set of three lace mats, a crystal perfume bottle (empty – Hilly pulled out the glass stopper and got a waft of something musky and lavendery) and a photograph of Hilly’s mother at about twenty, in an ornate silver frame.

  Feeling like an intruder, Hilly slid back the lefthand drawer. A sweet powdery smell rose from it; it contained only make-up, a gold compact and a range of lipsticks and eyeshadows, all rather old and caked. The next drawer down contained scarves and handkerchiefs. Underwear was in the deeper bottom drawer. Hilly looked at the items inside, neatly folded and stacked. Big knickers in pink or white, otherwise identical; she took them out carefully, placing them in a carrier bag. Her nose was attuning itself to a range of scents, this time from lily-of-the-valley lining paper that slid under her fingers as she reached the bottom layer. As she took out four lace-trimmed vests, she realized that she had felt something under the thin paper; the edges of a piece of card. She lifted the lining, revealing a small square photograph, black and white, yellowed at the edges.

  A girl. A girl of about her own age: thin-faced, dark hair parted in the centre and arranged in plaited whorls around her ears. A girl in round glasses, gazing up and to one side in slightly angelic fashion; but she looked selfconscious, as if someone had asked her to pose like that. The background was of draped curtain, perhaps in a photographer’s studio. She wore a dark-coloured lacy cardigan with a bow at the neck. She wasn’t Heidigran, Hilly was sure of that.

  She turned over the photograph. ‘Rachel’ was written in pencil on the back, in a looping hand.

  The front door opened and slammed shut. ‘Hilly?’ her father called. ‘I’m back!’

  ‘Coming!’ she answered. She slid the photograph back into its hiding place; then changed her mind. Retrieving it, she slipped it into the breast pocket of her shirt.

  Today, with her mind working as if it had been oiled and serviced, Heidi felt good. Perfectly clear-headed. Such a fuss they all made, treating her like an old lady, when all she needed was a bit of rest! She’d be right as rain now; she knew what was going on. Rose was at the gym, Hilly and Gavin had gone home to check things, and Zoë was indoors. There had been a row last night; she had heard the raised voices and the shushing and knew that Zoë was in trouble about coming home on the back of a motorbike. Zoë. Heidi smiled fondly. Troublesome, that one was, rushing headlong into arguments, never stopping to think. Wanted it all at once, that was her problem.

  Heidi sat in a garden chair in the shade of the apple tree, with Oscar washing himself by her feet. Her fingers worked at her knitting; the steady quiet clicking of needles accompanied her thoughts. She could hear starlings on the roof, chattering in that way they did that always made her think they must be happy, though how could you tell with a bird? What was happiness to a starling? Warm sun and enough to eat, that would be enough. So she was the same, needing no more than a starling. She’d been parked here by Zoë, out of the way, she knew that, though Zoë had made beans on toast at lunch time and had just brought out a mug of tea, not as strong as she liked it but still tea, and she’d put plenty of sugar in. She saw Zoë walking from room to room, talking all the while into her mobile telephone the way they did these days.

  If she felt like stirring herself later she might do a bit more in the garden. The globe thistles were sagging; they’d collapse over the grass at this rate. They should have been staked long before this. And there was bindweed twining itself round the stems of a rose. She would spike her hands on the rose’s thorns, pulling it off, but still she’d have to make the effort. She couldn’t stand bindweed, the way it strangled and choked; once it got a hold there was no stopping it, its roots went so deep. You’d pull it out in handfuls and it would come straight back from its hold deep underground. She’d told Gavin to get a systemic herbicide, but he wouldn’t have it. No sprays, no pesticides. No good complaining then if his hostas were eaten into tatters by slugs, and his roses smothered in greenfly and bindweed.

  She finished a row of her knitting and left it on her lap for a moment. It made her hands ache after a while, that was the trouble. Her finger-joints seemed to get knotted up. She smoothed out the rows of maroon plain and purl, wondering. She had left her pattern indoors and couldn’t now remember what stage she was at, whether this was the front or the back or whether it had long or short sleeves. It was for Rachel, she knew that. Maroon was Rachel’s favourite colour: the colour of plums, of dark cherries, of the dahlias that grew in their garden in the autumn. It would suit her.

  Zoë came out, still jabbering away into the phone she held clamped to her ear. She didn’t look Heidi’s way but walked slowly across the grass, kicking at a small apple that had fallen off the tree too soon. Such a tall girl she was now, Heidi thought, looking at her long legs in jeans, her slim waist, the fall of hair. Like a young racehorse,
glossy and lithe. She could be one of those fashion models if she wanted. What must it be like to be so young and so careless, so untouched?

  Zoë laughed. ‘Right, then,’ she said into her phone. ‘My mum and dad’ll go ballistic, but that’s too bad. See you later!’ She almost sang it: See you la-ter.

  ‘Where’s Rachel?’ Heidi asked her. She pushed on the seat-arms and rose stiffly to her feet, tipping the knitting and wool to the grass; the cat, with a syllable of protest, walked away, tail high. ‘When’s she coming? When will she get here?’

  ‘There’s no one here called Rachel,’ said Zoë. ‘Shall I make you another cup of tea?’

  Chapter Ten

  Games

  Sarah was glad that Helga’s foster family lived nearby. Helga was bigger and cleverer and knew how to do things. Although she was two years older, she went to the same school, and the two would always meet at playtimes and dinner-times and speak German together. Other than this, Sarah spoke English. She was learning fast. Sometimes she stopped and wondered which language she was thinking in.

  One summer dinner-time Sarah and Helga were playing together, a counting-and-sorting game with painted wooden cubes and a small ball. They were in a corner of the sports field; the grass had been mown for running races and the tracks marked out in white paint. The sky was blue and full of summer. Sarah had been picking daisies; they lay limp and wilting in her lap.

  Absorbed in the complicated scoring of their game, they did not notice the boys coming across the field until four of them grouped close, blocking the sun. They were big boys from the top year, grinning and confident. Sarah recognized the stocky freckle-faced one who was good at football. Some of the girls in her class were silly about him.

  One of them spat. A gobbet of saliva made an arc in the air and dropped into the grass near Sarah’s hands. Another boy laughed. Helga looked up at them, shielding her eyes. ‘What do you want?’