The Sisters Mortland

by Sally Beauman

  It was made of clear leaded glass, set in panes. In the pane nearest to me, I saw a marvelous boy. He had wild black hair, black eyes, a straight nose, a wide mouth, and white, white teeth. He was wearing a small gold earring. His expression was one of ferocity and accusation. He was disembodied, without neck, trunk, or limbs. Having appeared, etched on the glass, he disappeared. He manifested, at intervals, three times. “I’ll kill that boy when I get him home,” Bella muttered as we were leaving. We were in the churchyard, and the boy, still ferocious but now with a body, neck, arms, and legs, had just reappeared from behind a gravestone. “I’ll tan his hide,” she said when she spotted him in the lane, dangling from the branches of an elm. He made a final manifestation when we were back at the Abbey. Suddenly there his face was, pressed to the library window, staring fiercely through the glass. Stella was handing round tiny sandwiches, Gramps was pouring sherry, Julia and Finn were playing on the lionskin rug, Bella was making up the fire. Only I saw him. The library is on the first floor; there is a thirty-foot drop from the window to the flagstones. The boy and I stared at each other for several minutes. Something was troubling him. He lifted a grubby hand and rubbed his eyes. Then I blinked, and he was gone.

  That was Dan. I now know that he must have climbed a drain-pipe to reach that window, though Dan claims he flew. And I’ve recently discovered why he was troubled—though he insists I imagined the tears. But such details don’t matter. My view of Dan was fixed from that day onward. He’s the boy in the glass. And although he’s now greatly changed in most respects, to my eyes he is still the wild boy for whom I felt an instant affinity—the boy who’s forever on the outside, looking in. Whenever I meet him, I want to say: Admit him now! Open the window! Unlock the door!

  [ three ]

  Ocean’s Daughter Tells the Cards

  More blancmange, Miss Julia? I know you’re partial to it,” Bella says, heaping a great spoonful on her plate before Julia can say a word. Julia, whose loathing of blancmange is well known by all present, including Bella, can barely suppress a shudder. Bella, not without malice by any means, gives her a merry glance. Her small black eyes flash with amusement. “Swallow down that tea, girls,” she says. “And Maisie, you’ll have to have a sip. I’m starting with the leaves.”

  “Can’t we have the crystal ball, Mrs. Nunn?” I say—I’ve been eyeing the ball longingly all through tea. It’s on the dresser, veiled in a white silk handkerchief.

  “No, we can’t. Not first, anyways,” Bella replies. “There’s a right order and a wrong order. First it’s the leaves, then it’s the crystal, then the cards.”

  There’s no arguing with Bella, who is both bossy and stubborn. Also short-tempered: If we rub her the wrong way, there’ll be no fortune-telling at all—and we want Bella to tell our fortunes passionately, even Julia, who pretends it’s all hokum. Bella has the Gift; she’s told us this so often, and Dan has told us this so often, that we all believe it. The Gift comes down from Bella’s Romany ancestors. “Some people inherit a house, or a hunchback,” Bella will say to me. “Some people inherit a dukedom, or that himofilia, like them Russian princes. I inherited the Gift. How many children did Ocean have?”

  “Fourteen,” I’ll answer. I’m well rehearsed.

  “And how many got the Gift?”

  “Only you. You were the one.”

  “I was the one,” Bella will say beadily. “So watch out, Maisie. You can’t pull the wool over my eyes. I see through walls and doors.”

  Now, she pours an inch of black tea into a cup and passes it to me. It’s thick with leaves. I sip it carefully, under Finn’s watchful gaze. I’ve promised Stella and Gramps that I’ll describe the witch’s den in great detail, so while Julia chokes down her blancmange, and we all wait for her to finish, I survey the room.

  I already love it. I love its darkness and glitter. I admire the scarlet roses Bella has painted on the beams. I admire the mirrors framed in shiny tin that hang in the deep window recesses, hinting at and distorting the outside world. I like the many knickknacks, and the spangled ribbons strung from the dresser hooks, and the shiny brass pots, and the cushions on the bench by the black-leaded stove. They’re covered in flowers and stripes and spots, scarlet and yellow, sunflower orange, leaf green and raspberry pink; there’s one that I especially covet, sewn with tinselly stars. Best of all, and right next to me so I can inspect it closely, I like the ancestral wall.

  It’s set up like a small altar, with a shelf trimmed in scarlet flannel and a night-light candle glimmering away beneath the photographs, so the people come alive. There in the center, in pride of place, is Bella’s mother, Dan’s great-grandmother, the fabulous Ocean Jones. She’s sitting on the sepia steps of a wooden caravan—the kind of caravan I’ve never actually seen but aspire to live in. It has a curved roof, huge wheels, a stovepipe chimney, and painted shafts for the shaggy piebald pony that’s grazing nearby. In the doorway, in full Romany fig, is Ocean herself. No question about it: She’s superb. First, she’s fat; second, she’s craggy; third, she has dark, dark eyes that are fixed on the beyond. She’s wearing long embroidered skirts, several layers of them, a waistcoat, a billowing blouse, umpteen necklaces (that’s where Bella gets it from), and a head scarf trimmed with coins, fixed low upon her brow. Her white hair—which she never cut, just as Bella claims never to have cut hers; it is very bad luck—is worn in a plait as thick as a horse’s tail. It hangs over her shoulder all the way to her waist. She’s wearing a man’s boots and holding a man’s pipe—and there are men in the photograph, standing either side at the foot of the steps, but they’re dwarfed by Ocean’s presence. There’s no doubt who rules this clan, I think. It’s the first time I’ve understood the word Finn’s used of Ocean: matriarch.

  Ocean died in 1949, when Dan was four—I know that, Bella’s told me often enough. She foretold her own death and prepared for it with care. In those days, the Gypsies still came to this part of Suffolk every year, often at harvesttime, when there was casual work to be had. They made their encampment in bender tents down by Black Ditch and sometimes remained there through the winter. Then they moved on. North, south, east, west: England was theirs. They’d visit cities—they’d always done stints in cities, Bella says—but they preferred to sleep in fields, under stars. They went as far north as Yorkshire, where people were tight, and as far south as Dorset, where they had a more liberal hand. They attended fairs the length and breadth of the country. They made pegs and patchwork, tools and ornaments, which they sold. They picked hops in Kent, dug potatoes in Lincolnshire, collected scrap iron everywhere, and had an annual pitch in London’s East End. Bella nearly married a pearly king, she says, a king so charming, so gifted with the gab, that he could wind her around his little finger. She met him at Epsom, on Derby Day. He had thirty thousand pearl buttons on his king’s suit. The Eye of God was emblazoned on the back of his jacket; there was a sun and moon on his lapels. Bella took one look and fell. But Ocean didn’t like the cut of his jib, so in the end Bella saw sense and married Dan’s grandfather instead. Dan’s grandfather was a steady man, just as Dan’s father is—and, Bella says, a steady man is what a woman needs.

  It had been Ocean’s wish that she might die here, down in the fields by Black Ditch. She was particularly devoted to Wykenfield and had many friends here, not to mention a daughter, namely Bella, who’d married out but of whom Ocean remained fond. It wasn’t to be. She gathered the ninety-six members of her immediate family around her and died, on the stroke of midnight, near Scunthorpe (a location that could be improved on, I feel). According to Roma custom, the caravan was burned only when the male head of the family died, but in Ocean’s case—in view of the Gift, her willpower, and the force of her personality—an exception was made. This very caravan, torched within hours of Ocean’s death, was, in a sense, her funeral pyre.

  There is no photograph of that great event, alas. I have to make do with pictures of Ernest Jones, Ocean’s husband, one of the legendary Gypsy Joneses
and therefore distinct from more common or garden people who bore that name, Bella’s explained. I peer at clusters of Oceanic daughters, trying to pick out Bella among her swarming sisters. And I stare at Ocean’s wild boy-children, with their bare feet, ragged clothes, and swaggering princely good looks. I can’t really believe they belong in this century, but then all these pictures were taken before the war, and—Gramps says—prewar is another world. Where are these princes now? I wonder. Are they still alive? Are they still Romany? Are they still traveling? I hope so. I look at their unshorn curls, thin limbs, and black-eyed gaze: Any one of them could be the Daniel I thought I knew, the Daniel I mourn.

  I’m wondering where the photographs are of Bella’s Suffolk family—it’s tribal, too. There are still four Nunns, vaguely related, in the next village; there are fifteen (Finn and Dan counted once) in the churchyard here. But there’s no image of that steady man Bartholomew Nunn, Bella’s late husband, or of poor Dorrie, her only child. There’s no picture of Joe Nunn, Dan’s father, either. (Dorrie married a cousin; as Gramps says darkly, there’s a lot of interbreeding around here.) In fact, I realize, there’s virtually no evidence of Dan’s father in this room at all; it’s Bella’s domain. True, there is a framed certificate that states Joseph John Nunn won the East of England Annual Suffolk Horse Ploughing Match eight years running—I know this is a great achievement: Dan’s told me so. And there is a shotgun on a rack on the far wall, and that’s probably his or Dan’s—but it could be Bella’s. I know she both shot and snared rabbits as a girl, and unlike me, she has no respect for animals; they’re walking food, that’s all. If a chicken gets old or broody, she dispatches it with an ax: Chip-chop and into the pot, she cries. I once saw Bella decapitate one of Stella’s chickens, and I can’t forget it. Blood spouted from the severed neck; the headless chicken flapped round the yard for two long minutes. Her name was Miranda. She ate corn from my hand.

  Dan clears his throat. “Better get a move on, Gran,” he says in his awful new voice. And with an air of great ceremony, he produces a packet of cigarettes and hands it round. He’s blushed scarlet, and his hand is trembling slightly. I wonder who the Woodbines are supposed to impress—Finn, presumably?

  Julia gives them a look of immeasurable pity. “No, thank you, we don’t smoke,” she says in her prissiest voice.

  “Oh tosh,” says Finn, taking one.

  Leaning across the table, Dan strikes a match and holds it out to her. For a second I see it flare in Finn’s astonishing eyes. She and Dan exchange a look. It is like a knife, that look. It cuts them off from the rest of us; it hacks out a huge space in which they’re completely alone. I feel shocked, though I don’t exactly know why. I feel as if I’ve peeped through a keyhole, opened a locked door, and spied on the forbidden. It’s the way you feel when you look down the Squint—and I don’t like it. It makes me nervous, so I start to think about peeing, which I mustn’t do. I think Julia notices the power of that glance, too, but Bella is the only one to react. She gives one of her small, tight, malicious smiles.

  Bluish smoke curls in the air about the table, so it seems to shimmer. The stove is well stoked. The fug in the hot room intensifies. I’m beginning to feel a little faint and breathless—I expect it’s the excitement. After rising to her feet, every inch Ocean’s daughter now, Bella fetches the crystal and the cards.

  Bella likes ceremony, and now that I’m older I can see that there was some theater, some fairground razzamatazz, involved. There needed to be a degree of buildup, so she played with us to begin with, examining our palms, tracing the lines on them, shaking her head, muttering, and giving enigmatic frowns.

  “Now, here’s a husband and a half,” she says, turning Julia’s palm this way and that. “Well, who’d have thought it! You’re a dark one, and no mistake,” she cries, examining Finn’s. “Roses all the way for you, my darling,” she says quickly, clasping mine. “See that cross on the palm? Pure luck, that is. All your life through.” Neither Julia nor Finn has a palm cross. I feel proud. I crease up my hand so the cross mark deepens. No doubt about it, the lucky mark is there!

  Next it’s the tea leaves. We each have to swirl our cup around, then tip the liquid dregs into a special white china bowl. We pass the cups to Bella for her inspection. Again, she makes a great palaver of it, turning them this way and that—and it’s then, or so I decide afterward, that something starts to go wrong. Either Bella can’t read the leaves or she dislikes what she sees in them. She keeps picking up the cups and putting them down, and comparing them, and then comparing them again, until I think I’ll die of suspense. “Unclear,” she says finally. “They won’t speak. They’re resisting me. We’ll try the crystal. Where’s the birthday princess? You’re first, Miss Julia. Come up here.”

  She and Julia go into a huddle at the end of the table. I’m beginning to feel hot and sick from all the horrible food. I can still taste sulfurous eggs and beetroot and blancmange. I want some fresh air. If I were less in fear of Finn’s wrath, I might suggest a visit to the stone shed in the garden, but I don’t dare. I try to fix my eyes on the Ocean photographs and the altar to the dead, but the images are starting to swim about and merge. The back door is still wide open, but no air seems to be entering. Bella is muttering and sighing; Dan has lit another cigarette, and the acrid smoke drifts across the table. It’s aiming itself at me, and I can’t understand why it does that, because the atmosphere is still and clammy and there isn’t the least draft.

  “Well, miss, you’ll get everything your heart desires,” I hear, and Julia, looking flushed and triumphant, returns to her chair.

  Next it’s Finn’s turn. She bends over the crystal, and her hair falls forward like a veil. It’s very frustrating: All I can see is Finn’s thin brown arm and her mane of corn gold hair—unlike Julia’s, it could do with a comb. I fidget about, but no matter how I try, Finn’s been positioned so the crystal is invisible. I can’t even see Bella’s face, though I can hear her in an indistinct way. She’s been muttering and murmuring for an age, and she seems to be getting agitated. Something is happening, certainly. The room feels darker and hotter, and there’s a vibration, a perturbation, in the air. It’s like the plucking of a string, like the reverberations afterward. It’s the way the nuns announce their presence in the corridors—and I know I’m not imagining it because when I look at Dan, I can tell he’s sensed it, too: He’s paled.

  “I see a sacrifice,” Bella says, the words suddenly clear in the midst of the mumbo-jumbo. She sounds bewildered, or possibly afraid. She murmurs something indistinguishable—I think she’s lapsing into Romany; then she makes an odd humming sound. It’s like listening when Gramps tunes the wireless, half a sentence, two notes of music, snatches of song—all those voices concealed in the airwaves! But Bella is homing in on one particular station, I can sense it, and suddenly it comes through, loud and clear. “The second shall be first,” Bella pronounces in anguished tones. Then she loses the wavelength, or maybe there’s interference, for she pushes Finn away and covers her ears. Finn looks at her uncertainly—I don’t think she’s enjoying this—and Bella rallies. “And a great deal of travel,” she says in a hollow voice. “I see a journeying. Many seas to cross, but safe harbor in the end.”

  “Book your passage now,” Julia whispers as Finn sits down. Julia smiles—she’s always envious of Finn, and I know she’s delighted that Finn’s future sounds less promising than her own. Finn ignores her. Her face is set. Did she even hear Julia? Did she see anything in the magic crystal? I long to know, but I can’t ask: It’s my turn.

  “Now you, my little darling,” Bella says, and I stand up. The sickly feeling at once intensifies. I position myself by Bella’s chair. It all feels dreamlike. Bella makes me lean across the table so the crystal is hidden from Finn and Julia and only we can see it. She wipes it with the white silk handkerchief—very thoroughly, as if she’s polishing a doorknob—then flicks the silk away. I look at her face, which seems odd, not like Bella’s usual face a
t all. Her eyes are half-closed and rolled back so the whites are showing. She keeps cocking her head, as if someone’s whispering in her ear. I look at the crystal. “Deep, deep,” Bella murmurs. “Look deep into it, Maisie, right into its heart.”

  I look and I look. I’m expecting to see a scene from my future, very small, but like a film. The crystal is going to show me a story—or perhaps a face. Maybe I’ll see the man I’m going to marry, I think, because when I stop being a boy I suppose I will marry—what else is there to do? Maybe it will show me my future children. I’d like to see them. I’d like lots, like Ocean. If I’ve got to have them, I want a tribe.

  I start wondering if my children will inherit my eyes, as Dan inherited Ocean’s. I start hoping they will, because then Daddy will live on forever. But although I’m looking closely, and concentrating hard, all I can see is my own reflection, a wavering Maisie. Around me, inside me, there’s glass, clear glass, with a curious flaw deep in my crystal heart. This flaw is tear shaped. It’s large. I find it has a hypnotic effect, that flaw. I stare, and I discover it can alter shape and formation like a cloud. I watch, and I see that it’s swelling, gathering up other clouds and absorbing them. It’s getting larger and thicker. The whole crystal is beginning to mist over and cloud up, until all I can see is one whirling white spherical swirl.