The Sisters Mortland

by Sally Beauman

  I take an apple from the bowl in front of me. I take a bite from it. A surfers’ wave of melancholy crashes over me. The apple smells sweet; it’s a Maxton, an old variety—I’m one of the few people left who’d recognize it instantly. Nothing much to look at, but it smells and tastes like the apples I used to pick in the Doggett brothers’ orchards. I liked those bachelor brothers, who’ve been dead twenty years. All the trees they planted, fed, pruned, nursed, cosseted, and fussed over have gone. The trees were too large, too slow to pick, uneconomic; besides, there’s no money in fruit now—or so I hear. Not much by way of subsidy, insufficient demand; everyone except Julia buys imported. It took a day—it took a man and a digger one day—to uproot the lot and burn them.

  I used to do piecework for the brothers, who were always kind to me. I’d help with the tar spraying in the winter, help pick in the summer, help store on the slatted shelves in the sheds, where the apple scent was intense, so powerful, I can still smell it now, at this table. Finn used to help me. In the spring, when the blossom was out, there was a certain tree she and I used to climb. Orchard Finn: Christ, memory’s unbearable.

  “There’s a right way to pick an apple and a wrong way,” I say now in a dead voice, in the dead brothers’ accents, the accents I once shared. “Remember, Nick?”

  “I remember.” He reaches across the table and rests his hand on my arm, a gesture of solidarity, of comfort. And I suddenly feel tired, extraordinarily tired, so fucking exhausted that I couldn’t put one foot in front of the other.

  “Sorry,” I say. “I’m okay. Really, I’ll be fine in a minute. I’m just—weary. I think it’s all this food. I’m not used to such good food, and it’s meeting you. Meeting you unexpectedly. Looking at the portrait…”

  I hesitate. I’d still like to tell him about Maisie’s voice. I still want to explain the discovery I made. But that discovery is losing its incandescence. It’s getting imprecise, blurry, and drab. So Lucas might have used elements of the library in his painting’s background? So what? So I’m being stupid and literal. So I thought I heard Maisie’s voice? Put it down to cocaine rush; call it tripping. Nick might call it hallucinating. Nick is a doctor, and—not that I’m in the least paranoid—doctors can have you sectioned. Do I want to end up in rehab, in a fashionable retreat, on some twelve-step program? Nick paying the bills—he’d certainly do that—and me taking my turn in the daily circus alongside the anorexic models, the alcoholic soap stars, the sad comedians?

  My name is Daniel, and I am a…

  I don’t think so. Change the subject. “Why were you at the gallery, Nick?” I ask. “Why were you there in front of that particular painting?”

  “No reason.” He glances away. “The exhibition will be coming off in a couple of days. I’d been meaning to go, but I’ve been too busy. I missed the opening night party—Julia went, but I couldn’t. An impulse, I suppose—I was just passing.”

  No, you weren’t, I think. “You sat in front of that one painting for hours, Nick. You didn’t look at any of the others. Is that usually what you do at exhibitions?”

  “Probably not. But your sense of time isn’t reliable, Dan. I sat there for ten minutes—fifteen at the most. And that painting’s worth fifteen minutes of anyone’s life.”

  “I left the room, went to the john, then came back—and you didn’t even notice.”

  “I was concentrating. I was thinking about the past. There was something you wrote in your last letter to me—‘the summer it all went wrong.’ I was thinking about that. The two of us, finding Maisie that day, on the flagstones. What happened afterwards—everything that happened afterwards. The tricks life plays.”

  There’s a silence. Should I correct him? It was I who found Maisie. Nick reached my side a minute or so later, a minute that in retrospect looks like a lifetime. I say nothing—what’s the point? Besides, I’ve just noticed something. Nick is hesitating. His eyes meet mine, and out of nowhere I sense need—not something I’d ever expect from Nick. I can scarcely believe it, but, yes, my radar’s certainly picking it up: I can sense revelation. Nick is about to tell me something, I realize—needs to tell me something. It’s a strange sensation: Suddenly the man opposite me is my double. He isn’t the controlled, calm friend I thought I knew; he’s like me—dancing on the end of a rope, looking down at a precipice.

  I feel a rush of concern, pride, and bewilderment. I may not be an obvious candidate to help anyone out of a fix—but I won’t let Nick down; I’ll repay his years of loyalty. Whatever he needs—advice, sympathy, consolation, assistance—I’ll be there for him. But what’s wrong? What could possibly be wrong? I look closely at his face; he doesn’t say a word, and suddenly I know what this unspoken, and to Nick unspeakable, problem is. Infidelity. That is the only possible explanation for his hesitancy, for the shame and pain that are shadowing his eyes: I think, Dear God, at last, he’s met someone else at last. He’s seen the light, and it’s call-the-lawyers time, thanks for the memories, and ciao, Julia.

  Good-bye and good riddance, as far as I’m concerned. I’m not Julia’s number one fan, and I’ve never understood how she got her claws into him. Nick deserved someone so much better—and there were umpteen candidates, as I vaguely recall: intelligent women, beautiful women (well, Julia’s both those things, I admit); women who were kindhearted, warm, loyal, faithful, and principled (not her most notable characteristics).

  Of course, once Fanny was born, Nick was trapped. He was doubly trapped when Tom arrived. No way would Nick abandon his children. So he’s soldiered on, lived with anomie for two decades, and those two decades have cost him—I can compute the cost in his eyes now. Being married to a woman you can’t respect is expensive.

  But Tom is still only nine—so what kind of woman could possibly have made Nick change his mind? She’d have to be a woman of worth, someone extraordinary. When and how did he meet her? Could it be someone at the National Health Service hospitals where he works? Nick does some private practice as well, so perhaps it’s someone who, like him, has rooms in Harley Street. A female consultant? A heart surgeon? Who is this paragon?

  I can’t wait for him to tell me. I’m feeling a burst of sympathy and affection—though it’s not as pure as I’d like, it’s not unalloyed; I admit that. There’s a certain mean triumphalism: Screw you, and about time, Julia. There’s also a gossipy curiosity, which I despise and regret, but there you go—sainthood eludes me. Perhaps those ignoble emotions are visible in my face, and perhaps Nick sees them, for the expected confession never comes. He’s about to speak—and at the last moment does not speak. That habitual mask of reticence covers his face again—and I know I’ve failed him.

  Instead, he begins to talk about me, to ask about me. What am I on? What exactly am I taking, and how long have I been taking it? Am I working? Have I finished clearing up my father’s belongings, or will I be returning to Suffolk to complete that difficult task? What’s happening to my London house? Is it still on the market? Am I short of money? Am I still harking back to Maisie’s accident? Has any type of antidepressant been prescribed? Have I tried to get professional help? Have I considered counseling?

  “Dan, I was shocked when I saw you,” he says with great gentleness and his customary courtesy. “I blame myself. I should have come to Wykenfield six weeks ago. I shouldn’t have waited. I waited because you asked me to—and that was wrong. You can’t continue like this. Can’t you talk to me? Won’t you talk to me?”

  And, given another minute, I would have done. Out it would all have spilled, because there comes a point when loneliness is killing and confession is irrepressible. And how I’d have regretted it, one hour, two hours later. I don’t like opening up. When pride is all you have left, intimacy’s inadvisable.

  I’m saved by an interruption. I’m saved by the nanny. She calls down to Nick from the head of the stairs at the crucial moment. Tom has had a nightmare, a really scary one; he’s woken up, and she can’t get him settled. If Nick could come and ta
lk to him… Nick rises. I can see anxiety and guilt in his face. “Tom isn’t sleeping well,” he says. “It’s just a phase; he’s worrying about school, I think. And Julia’s out a lot, my working hours are very long. That doesn’t always help.… Would you mind, Dan? It shouldn’t take long, then I’ll make us some coffee.”

  “That’s fine. Really. Coffee would be great. Give him my love.”

  Nick moves toward the stairs, hesitates, then mounts them and disappears from sight. I’m impressed. Across the room there’s a table weighted down with bottles: vodka, gin, whiskey, and wine. He didn’t warn me away from those bottles, he didn’t even glance in their direction, though during the course of the evening, I have: several times.

  I’m not used to such trust. I feel stronger immediately. I glance at my watch. It’s nine-thirty, and no danger of la Julia before midnight. We can talk for at least another hour.

  I wonder, a little sadly, who’ll crack first, who’ll confess first—me or Nicholas?

  [ fourteen ]

  Reflections

  So Nick has found love, I think. Well, I’m glad someone has. But I’m not going to think about love or its evil twin sex, because if I get started on that, I’ll empty the vodka bottle.

  No, more immediate matters require attention. Nick was “shocked” by my appearance. Now that I’m fortified by food, nourished by pure water, it’s time to find out why. A mirror—I need a mirror. I investigate and discover that there’s a sumptuous cloakroom off the sumptuous kitchen. I enter and, steeling myself, risk my reflection. When did I last face a mirror? Clearly some time ago, because there’s now a stranger in it. This specter hasn’t shaved today. He has dead eyes, wild tangled hair, and London pallor. He’s anorexic thin, clad in a crumpled black suit—why am I wearing a suit?

  The white shirt’s grimy, the fingernails are filthy. Worst of all, most distressing of all, this haunted apparition is wearing a gold earring. Where the hell did that come from? Wasn’t I good-looking once? Reasonably so, anyway. Not as handsome as Nick, but okay. I look at myself and I think, Christ, I’m reverting. I’ve turned back into a Gyp. I belong in a bender tent, my Roma genes are resurfacing.

  I take action fast. I comb the Gypsy hair, scrub the fingernails, lather the face with scalding water and soap; a vestige of color returns. I remove the offending earring. And I go through my pockets: no half measures, this time, I’m going to do it. Out go the last of the coke and the last of the speed; out go some squished white powdery things that may or may not be aspirin. Farewell two blues (unidentifiable, possibly Es), a couple of reds (maybe vitamins, maybe temazepam), and out goes—what is this?—an amyl-nitrate capsule. The girl who gave me that—which girl? some girl in a club, at a party a hundred years ago—this girl promised that, if broken and sniffed at the crucial moment, it would prolong and intensify orgasm to an unbelievable degree. So it seems a shame to miss out on that. Maybe I could… perhaps I should… after all, you never know when such things might come in useful.… No: This time I’m going to be thorough. The whole lot, every last one of them, goes down the lavatory.

  I flush it, and—can you believe this—the pharmacopoeia won’t dissolve. I flush again. It still won’t dissolve. The malignancy of inanimate objects is fucking unreal. I drape a few yards of white Andrex over the pan, flush once more for luck, and flee from the ignominy.

  Still no sign of Nick. Back in the kitchen, I start prowling about. I’m getting twitchy, and to divert me from all those bottles of alcohol, I start opening la Julia’s kitchen cupboards: anything to distract me. No additives here, you can be sure of that. Five kinds of balsamic vinegar; eight virgin varieties of olive oil. Jars of salted anchovies; tins of line-caught tuna; sixteen different pasta shapes; nine different kinds of dried beans and lentils, all with their glass jars, Jesus-wept, dated. Smoked paprika, laksa paste, Madagascan vanilla beans, dried fungi, mulberry jam, capers, cods’ eyes, sharks’ scrotums, pickled hedgehog brains—if it was very, very expensive or very, very arcane or very, very fashionable, la Julia had it. But then she probably made it fashionable in the first place.

  I did a campaign with la Julia once, back in the unimaginable past when she was still speaking to me. It was called “That Way/This Way.”

  It was a classic “before” and “after,” but with a knowing post-modern irony built in (or so we said; that argument could extricate you from anything). In the “before,” some young slattern tipped something generic, tinned, gloopy, and disgusting into an evil saucepan. Think Hell’s kitchen: dirty Formica, screaming kids, fat hubby smoking a fag and reading a red top. This woman, she’s a crap wife, a crap mother: Husband’s in line for a heart attack, kids are destined to start shooting up and nicking cars any second—and all because Mum won’t make an effort, won’t spend those few extra pennies.

  In the “after,” enter the Valkyrie: beautiful Julia, radiant and calm, Rhinegold hair snaking over her glorious shoulders. Stainless-steel über-kitchen; husband with a three-piece suit and a six-figure salary; two polite, school-uniformed, atypical clone-children; and on the stove a Le Pentole pan into which Julia is decanting the product. The product came in biodegradable eco-aware cartons. It was allegedly organic. In fact, Julia had pronounced it muck, and it had taken a hell of a lot of naughts on the end of her already massive fee to get her to sign—thus proving, as I’d always hoped, that la Julia was venal.

  You could do it that way, purred Julia’s famous voice over the shots of the soon-to-be-widowed slattern with generic tinned gloop. Or you can do it this way, she continued over shots of ticks-all-the-yuppie-boxes kitchen. Make the choice, she murmured as husband sniffed the product appreciatively, then curled an arm around her slender waist and kissed la Julia’s superb neck, while Julia—who had perfected the art of ironic flirt to camera lens—gave us all a deeply knowing, languorous oeillade, making it very clear that handsome husband would be getting more than an instant supper that evening.

  Julia played both parts—herself and the slattern. The prosthetics, wigs, and makeup teams did a brilliant job. Even people who knew Julia well didn’t recognize her in slut guise until the third or fourth viewing. And people loved that; it generated a thousand articles, acres of free publicity—how, how, had we contrived the disguise?

  Sales soared. We’d pressed all the holy buttons: sex, snobbery, satire, and domestic guilt, a four-cherries lineup that’s by no means easy to achieve, whatever people tell you. That ad made Julia a star. Prior to that, her TV appearances had brought her recognition, and given her beauty, there’d always been interest from Vogue-y mags and so on. But she’d always come across as too elitist and, to be honest, too damn upper-class really to register on the popularity Richter scale. Now everyone adored her; they couldn’t get enough of her. True, her detractors got a lot of mileage out of “That Way/This Way” and just what that might imply in a Julia context. None of that did her the least harm. Scandal and gossip ensure wall-to-wall coverage; without scandal, these days, it’s hard to become an icon. In public, Julia was smart enough to take such jokes in good part. Look, people said, isn’t she great? She’s stunning, and she can laugh at herself.

  In private, Julia was not laughing. She was incandescent with rage—and I know, because I was on the receiving end of it. Somehow she came to the conclusion that “That Way/This Way” was designed to ridicule her. Somehow she decided that it was I who started the round of blue jokes, I who fed those rumors about her past and her proclivities. Possibly guilty on the first charge, definitely not guilty on the second—I have too much affection for Nick to spread rumors about Julia. But guilty or innocent, it made no difference: Julia was gunning for me. And, oddly enough, those ads marked a watershed, I see in retrospect. From then on, I was banned from this house and my friend. I lost faith, and success tasted sour to me; Julia, meanwhile, flourished.

  Julia was never going to be content as a celeb cook, along with all the other Antonias, Nigels, and Olivias; she’d fallen into that world via journalism and
virtually by accident. Years of dinner parties for well-placed friends, a TV pilot, a trial-run first series, and she was launched. The moment advertising fame gave her a secure power base, she diversified. It was Julia who had first uttered the word lifestyle in my presence. She didn’t blush. And it was that slippery world that she then conquered. Now, if you have a couple of hundred thousand spare change, you can hire one of Julia’s several companies to do up your house. If you’re not quite in that league, no problem: You can buy Julia textiles or tableware. There’s a Julia Mortland batterie de cuisine, and if you’re really hard up, you can settle for JM paint: seventy-five shades of off white. It’s appalling.

  I stare at Julia’s walls. Julia is now an arbiter. Endorsement from her is worth thousands. She’s worth millions. All her paints have clever names. They’re called things like Thrush’s Throat and Heron’s Wing. Unless I’m much mistaken, this is Skylark.

  How many skylarks were there in the fields of my childhood? Thick as the autumnal leaves in Vallombrosa, as I recall. Now they seem to be extinct. They’ve gone the way of the dodo: I didn’t see one, not one, in all the months I spent nursing my father in Wykenfield. Loss of habitat? Too many toxins? I know the feeling. Last summer, Hector McIver sprayed his crops with pesticides five times during their growing cycle.… On the other hand, toxins have their uses. I pat my pockets. I stare at the fruit bowl. Do I dare to eat a peach? Do I dare to smoke a cigarette? Even on Julia’s premises, I feel I do. I’m circling the room now, I’m getting frayed, and I need to bypass those bottles. Out come the Marlboros. Thank God I didn’t get rid of them. Inhale deeply: Feel better at once. I prowl around a bit more, and I discover—a treasure trove.