The Sisters Mortland

by Sally Beauman

  “ I asked Dan if he’d join us,” Stella begins hastily to explain. “I have one or two suggestions to make, and I just thought—every year we go round in circles, we make plans, and they’re never effective. Dan is almost part of the family, he’s known us so long. He’s our honorary son, in a way,” she continues, smiling at him,“and I’m sure it will help to have his viewpoint. He can look at all this from a fresh angle, and—”

  “Tell me about the grandson,” says the honorary son, flicking open his notebook. He doodles a few lines and then draws a small rabbit being produced from a hat. “I’m familiar with the rest of the cast. I know about Humphrey and the Viper, of course. I know about their son—he died young, didn’t he? But the grandson—I must have forgotten there was a grandson. Now, he does sound promising. Age?”

  “Twenty-seven.” It’s Julia who answers. “And before you ask, Dan—yes, he’s unmarried. His name is Edmund. Violet and Humphrey brought him up. But don’t imagine some Mr. Darcy. Imagine a fat oaf with three brain cells—you won’t be far wrong.”

  “Julia, please,” Gramps interjects. “He’s Eton, Christ Church, and the Royal Agricultural College. ‘Oaf ‘ is hardly the correct term.”

  “Okay, ‘creep, ’ then,” says Julia. “A creep who slunk into Oxford after every conceivable string had been pulled; a creep who just scraped a third. A creep who came into his trust fund two years ago. A creep with an unearned income of two hundred thousand a year. The apple of Violet’s eye and earmarked to inherit Elde, obviously. It breaks your heart, doesn’t it? But if you’re imagining… What are you imagining, Dan?”

  “Let’s ask Finn,” he replies dangerously. “Finn, what am I imagining? You usually know.”

  “Not on this occasion,” Finn answers in an equally dangerous way, looking up for the first time. She gives Dan a long, still, combative look, but he avoids her eyes.

  “I think I was imagining that an appeal to the grandson might succeed, where all other appeals have failed,” Dan continues. “Why not? He’s young; he’s male. And if the appeal were made in the right way, by the right person… what man could resist Julia? I guess that’s what I’m saying. Julia, looking the way she does today.”

  His eyes linger upon my elder sister. I see color rise in her cheeks, and I can’t believe she’s going to fall for such mockery, not from Dan, surely, when she must know how much he dislikes her and when she claims to detest him. But Julia is vain, and Dan is handsome, and his preference for Finn has always galled her. I can see she’s tempted, though still cautious, because she knows Dan and knows he might be setting her up—he’s devious that way.

  “I wouldn’t bet on my chances,” she replies with a frown. “I’d be delighted to rid him of some of his surplus cash—and we could certainly use it. But Edmund isn’t a soft touch.”

  I stand up. I mumble some excuse—no one takes any notice, no one cares whether I’m present or not, no one would dream of asking my views. Invisible to everyone, I push back my chair and cross to the door.

  I hear Stella say: “I think Dan may have a point. In fact, it’s a clever idea. It’s so hopeless trying to explain things to Humphrey—Violet will always intervene. But if Julia could talk to Edmund, just take him aside for a few minutes and explain. We wouldn’t be asking for very much, and this time it’s a business proposition.… Now, here’s my idea: I really believe it could succeed. Cooking schools are all the rage these days—have you noticed? I suddenly thought how much nicer it would be, learning to cook here at the Abbey rather than in some London basement. Just imagine it! Lovely gardens, fresh produce, eggs from my hens… We’d need to improve some of the bedrooms, perhaps, because it would have to be residential, but I’m sure that wouldn’t cost very much.… I’ve drawn up, well, I’ve drawn up a scheme. And I think we could get it started very quickly—but we would need some capital, just to get us going. Dan’s been over the figures with me, and we think that one thousand—Dan thinks two, because he says we’d have to advertise… but I’m sure we could do it for less. Let’s say fifteen hundred at the very most. And it would be a loan, obviously—you’d have to make that clear to Edmund, Julia. It’s a loan that would be repaid, with interest. Once the profits start coming in.”

  “Stella, that is the best idea you’ve ever had,” Gramps says quickly with a glance in my direction. “You’re a superlative cook. This could solve—well, it could be the answer to everything! Where are you off to, Maisie dear?”

  “The kitchen,” I reply. “I’m hungry.”

  “Oh good,” says Stella, who always likes to feed me up. “There’s lots of fruit, darling, and a fresh loaf I’ve made.… Don’t wander off, will you? We’ll be leaving soon.”

  Silence falls. Everyone around the table stares at me expectantly. “This is such a fine idea, Stella,” Gramps says after a pause. “Why didn’t you mention it before?”

  Stella hesitates, looks at him uncertainly. I know why she didn’t mention it, to Gramps or any of us: because she knows in her heart that this scheme, like its many predecessors, is going to fail. Even Stella can’t go on being optimistic forever. She is a good cook—but she could no more run a business than our cats could.

  I close the door.

  [ seven ]

  Starling

  I retreat to the hall. I move across the black and white flags like a chess piece: Sometimes I choose to move indirectly, like a knight; sometimes I swoop on the diagonal like a bishop; but today I inch one single square at a time, like a pawn. I listen to my nuns, who are now at work in the gardens, and to Bella, who’s Hoovering upstairs. I listen to the buzz of words in the dining room.

  I look at the prospect of Elde.

  I know how each second there will pass. On the way, Gramps and Stella will argue themselves into optimism. This time it will be different, they’ll say. But that optimism will start ebbing the second we pass through those tall iron gates and enter the drive. There the house will be, in all its cold gray magnificence. Stella will point out the lake, the familiar temples and obelisks, as we pass. She’ll exclaim at the foresight of Capability Brown, who laid out the park and planted that great avenue of oaks when the trees were only a few feet tall. No one will remind her that she says this every year, on the same bend of the drive. Our spirits will be sinking too rapidly for comment—and when we enter the house, they’ll plummet. Elde strikes a chill to the heart.

  Humphrey will be affable; the Viper will be wearing her famous pearls. We’ll be allotted twenty minutes for sherry and one hour for lunch, and then we’ll be shepherded back to the glacial drawing room, impatient Violet snapping at our heels. There, Finn will be silently scornful—which is how she hides pain. Julia will be as defiant as she dares, and I… well, what will I do?

  The rest of the family will settle down for the post-lunch strife, the period when twelve months of wary truce collapses and hostilities break out anew. The Viper will be timing them. She’ll allow an hour and a half of hand-to-hand fighting; then, when she judges our side is sufficiently demoralized, weaponless, wounded, and in retreat yet again, she’ll dictate the terms of the treaty. They’re straightforward. Abject surrender. That sums it up, I feel. I don’t want to watch this humiliating process—and I’m not allowed to do so anyway. I’m too young for family warfare. Not too young to be told all the details on the way home, or too young to have them repeated indignantly for months afterward, but too young actually to witness them—Gramps has decreed.

  So I’ll be sent outside. I’ll exit the marble halls of Elde. I’ll walk in the gardens (huge; full-time staff of nine). I’ll walk for ninety minutes. Sometimes I’m escorted.

  Usually I’m escorted.

  Once or twice, I’ve escaped and walked alone.

  I inch my way across the chessboard floor, but I can hear the agitated voices from the dining room, so there’s no solace there. I retreat to the kitchen. Once I’ve closed the door, the council-of-war arguments are inaudible. Gramps, with his usual gift for planning, pl
aced the kitchen several hundred yards away from the dining room, just as it is at Elde.

  The terrible disorder that affects the rest of the house doesn’t penetrate here. Everywhere else, there’s a fatal accretion of stuff, and no matter how much Stella tries to control it, it creeps back within a day. Letters, newspapers, magazines, discarded sweaters, Wellington boots, tennis shoes, Gramps’s pipes, Julia’s clothes, Finn’s books, coffee mugs, glasses, gardening gloves, secateurs—they’re all on the march, and the second Stella cleans and tidies a room, chaos returns and the random reinvades.

  But here, everything is in its right place. The kitchen is scrupulously clean, despite Bella’s best efforts to dirty it—Stella keeps it that way. The flagstones have been scrubbed, and they shine from centuries of feet. The copper saucepans have always been there, on the rack over the range, and they gleam. The pewter dishes on the great black dresser have always been ranked in that orderly way, and there isn’t a speck of dust on them. The old wireless sits in the right place—it was there when Daddy was a boy. On the kitchen table there’s a pile of bills in brown envelopes, but it’s always been there, and no matter how often Gramps gets out the checkbook, the pile remains the same size. I find that comforting. This room always calms me: I like order; I dislike change. On the table, there’s a bunch of marigolds in a blue mug, Stella’s “things to do” notebook, her copy of Mansfield Park, a garden trug, and a trowel. I flick open the Austen. Stella has reached chapter 10.

  I can’t hear my nuns in this room. I sit down at the table. I’m not hungry, I never feel hunger, but perhaps I should eat something—maybe that would make the pain in my stomach go away. If I tell Stella about the pain, will I be allowed to stay here and not go to Elde? No, she’ll refuse: I’ve tried before and never succeeded. Stella says I’m too young to remain on my own. I borrow a page from Stella’s notebook and start drawing the pergola I’m planning. I begin writing the list of roses I’ve selected to climb on it. I’ve never actually seen any of these roses, but I’ve read about them, and their scents, their colors, and the formation of their petals are clear to me. I write down: “The Bride, Wedding Day.” Then I scrunch up the piece of paper; I tear it into confetti. I’m not in the mood. Unlike Lucas, I can’t draw very well. My pergola looks peculiar. It looks childish. There’s something strangely wrong with the perspective. The perspective is skewed.

  I examine Stella’s notebook closely, but there’s nothing of interest. It’s filled with pages of arithmetic, with the computations for her cookery school. When the sums don’t balance, they’re in her writing; when they do, they’re in Dan’s. I look at her list of things to do—twenty tasks and only three of them crossed out—and decide I’ll relieve her of some of them. I can’t bear sitting here anymore. How much longer can this council of war continue? What are they talking about in there? Another hour before we leave for Elde. I pick up the trug and the trowel, find the egg basket, and go out to the kitchen garden. Dan’s father, Joe Nunn, who keeps any produce he needs in return for his work, is hoeing the long lines of peas and beans. I feel hot and cross, but Joe pretends not to see. He helps me dig up some new potatoes—sweet and fragrant, with the thinnest of skins. We pick some broad beans, too, and I slit open one fat pod with my fingernail: baby beans, so tender you can eat them uncooked, embryo beans, in a white velvet womb.

  I taste one, but it’s bitter. As soon as Joe Nunn has his back to me, I spit it out on the ground. “There’s another gleanie gone,” Joe says. “Mister Fox is back, and he finally found a way in. Mind you tell your mother, Maisie. I’ve dug out the old wire and replaced it. Goes down two feet now, so he won’t be digging under that in a hurry. Those gleanies are stupid birds, though. I warned your mother many a time—worse than chickens, they are.”

  I leave Joe and walk past the wigwams of runner beans and sweet peas. There’s a frantic fledgling, a starling (Sturnus vulgaris), trapped inside the fruit netting, beating its wings against the roof of the cage. I release it. It flies off and escapes to the trees. I walk on.

  In the orchard, I collect the eggs from the henhouse. Joe doesn’t say “warned,” he says “warnt.” “Fox” sounds more like “folks” when he says it. He has soft consonants and long, slow vowels. I can imitate him—but never very successfully. I wish I could speak as he does, as Dan used to do. Warnt, I say under my breath, warnt. It sounds more powerful than “warned.” Stella’s hens are Rhode Island reds: I’ve found eight eggs, eight dark brown, softly freckled eggs. They’re still warm in my hands. I give the hens and the guinea fowl some scoops of corn. I can see where Joe’s replaced the wire round the run, and I can see the evidence of a violent death—it’s Jessica that’s gone. The grass is bloodstained, her feathers are everywhere. I stoop to pick them up, beautiful dappled feathers, ebony and ivory and gray—but Joe is right, gleanies are unintelligent. They have the wit to roost in the trees at night, but they don’t check what’s hiding in the long grass when dawn comes and they fly down.

  I pick up the egg basket, and the trug, and turn back to the kitchen. Bees hum on the lavender (Lavandula angustifolia ‘Munstead’, a dwarf lavender, but the best sort). The council of war must be over now, I think, and I begin on some poetry as I walk. “Now sleeps the crimson petal, now the white,” I say aloud. I’ve reached the third stanza, “Now lies the Earth all Danaë to the stars, / And all thy heart lies open unto me,” when something catches my eye, a movement at the very edge of my vision. It’s Lucas, walking up the back drive. He’s pushing a bicycle. He has a small duffel bag, his equivalent of a suitcase, slung over his shoulder, and something furtive about his movements suggests he doesn’t want to be seen. He glances back toward the house. I step out from behind a large bush, startling him. He hesitates, then—there’s nothing much else he can do, I’m barring his way—he stops. I think he is not pleased to see me. He doesn’t greet me. He doesn’t smile.

  “That’s Julia’s bicycle,” I say.

  “Is it? I just borrowed the first one I found.”

  “Where are you going?” I look at the bag slung over his shoulder. “You can’t be leaving?”

  “Such a face, Maisie! Why not? It’s a fine day. I thought I’d go for a ride.”

  “I don’t believe you. You are leaving. You’re taking off again. That’s why you’re creeping up the back drive like a thief. Where are you going? Does…” I stop.

  “Does what?”

  “Does Finn know? Did you tell her?”

  Lucas gives me a measuring look. “Does Finn know?” he repeats in the most irritating way. “Possibly not—almost certainly not, since I only decided ten minutes ago. I don’t see why it should matter. But as you’ve spied me out, Maisie, you can tell her, can’t you? Is something wrong? Is there some problem I’m missing here?”

  I do not reply. “You can tell her,” he continues after a pause, “that I’m cycling to the station. From the station, I’m getting a train to Cambridge. In Cambridge, I’ll be staying with a friend. Not a friend Finn knows. Can you remember all that?”

  “A woman friend?”

  “How fierce you look, Maisie,” he says with great politeness. “I’m afraid I have to tell you that’s none of your bloody business. Or Finn’s.”

  “When are you coming back? Tomorrow? You can’t leave like this, not after…” I swallow down Finn’s name. I swallow down the memory of her face last night and that blind, bewildered look in her eyes. Lucas waits; he’s possibly amused. “After—after you made an appointment with me,” I continue with guile. “You said you were going to draw me again tomorrow.”

  “Did I? Well, I’m sorry, but we’ll have to rearrange that. We’ll do it another time.”

  “What about the portrait? You haven’t finished painting the portrait.”

  “It will wait.” Lucas’s manner has been growing increasingly cold. “I may abandon it altogether, who knows? The atmosphere here…” He glances back at the house and frowns. “It’s not right yet. You and your sisters aren’t right
yet, either. Something needs to happen, maybe I need to rethink… I’m sure the problems will be resolved, and I’ll find a way through. I usually do. Good-bye, Maisie. Enjoy your time at Elde.”

  He mounts the bicycle and pedals off. Why does no one ever tell me the truth? Lucas was lying about the bicycle, that’s for sure. All the other bikes are stowed away in an old shed, and indeed he could have taken any of them. But not Julia’s; her bike was put away when she went to California. It was chained up, it hasn’t been used since, and the key to the padlock was lying on Julia’s dressing table when I crept into her room last night at four. How could she have given it to Lucas in the hours since then? She’s been asleep, she’s been lying in a bath of scented water for half the morning, she’s been at the council of war.

  Maybe Lucas stole the key from her bedroom, I think. Maybe he won’t return—and if he doesn’t, he’ll never finish Summer Maisie. There’ll never be an autumn or a winter Maisie, either—and that possibility frightens me. I run back to the house, very fast.

  I get as far as the door of the dining room. I find it’s ajar. I’m about to push it back when I realize the family conference is over and everyone has dispersed—everyone except Dan and Finn, who are still there and alone.

  “That was unforgivable…,” Finn is saying in a low, angry voice. “How could you encourage Stella like that? Why build up her hopes? You know what will happen. This scheme will fail, the way the others all failed. Flirt with Julia if you must, I’m past caring—but don’t you dare play games with Stella and Gramps. You know how desperate they are. And to do it in front of Maisie—it’s cruel and underhand. Why do you deliberately set out to hurt me?”

  “Because you hurt me,” Dan replies, and his voice shocks me. “You hurt me. Week by week, day by day—you’re doing it hourly. Why shouldn’t I retaliate? Learn what it feels like, Finn. And don’t imagine I’m going to stop. This is just the beginning. I’m going to put you through hell. Every time you betray me, I’ll betray you. You want to break my heart? That’s easy enough. But I’ll smash yours—”