The Sisters Mortland

by Sally Beauman

  I’m hungry and I’m thirsty. I’d like a cake and a sandwich. I’d give my soul for a cold beer; I’d settle for the barley water or Ribena that will be on offer. But I’m still in that state of churning rage and confusion. I don’t want to be anyone’s protégé, and I’m sick to death of being a surrogate son. I have my own mother, I want to shout. Remember her? She’s lying in a white slipper-satin shroud in the churchyard over the wall. There’s a nest of worms in her white rib cage. Stop trying to turn me into something I’m not. I don’t fucking fit here, and I don’t fucking want to. I’m—someone else.

  And who is that, Dan? Some hick, some obscure son of the soil, some Gyp, some bit of rough, some graduate, some revolutionary cineast, some coming man? I haven’t a clue, but whoever I am, I don’t want fairy cakes and fucking Ribena. Watch out, offering me things like that, because I bite the hand that feeds me. “No thanks,” I reply. “No time. I’m late. Colonel Edwardes is expecting me.”

  I’m not usually so offhand. I’ve never verged on rude before. Mrs. Marlow colors and manages a few awkward pleasantries. I can see she’s hurt, possibly offended. Now she’s worrying whether she’s paid me enough. Good: I’ve punished her, too. Serves you right for the book token, I think. She probably doesn’t even remember that incident—and I find that unpardonable.

  Cut, and we’re at the last house of the day. Colonel Edwardes, breeder of Heavy Hogs. Scene: a large Victorian morgue two miles outside the village. I clean fifteen filthy windows and one glass house full of dying tomato plants. It’s three p.m. when, sweating and filthy myself, I finally finish them. Now it’s back to the Abbey.

  Colonel Edwardes comes scurrying out. He’s wearing a cravat and a linen jacket; he smells of cologne. I don’t trust him and I don’t like him. This feeling may or may not be mutual. I’m none too sure he was ever in India, let alone the Indian army. Is he really a colonel? Where it touches his scraggy neck, the edge of the cravat is greasy. When I first started doing these windows, I was twelve and small for my age. Now he has to look up to me.

  “I think we said seven and six,” he begins.

  “Sorry. Ten bob. That’s what we agreed. I did the greenhouse.”

  “Can’t we make up the difference next time?”

  “No, we can’t. And there won’t be a next time. I’m starting work in London in a couple of weeks. I’m saving up. So I need the money now.”

  “Of course you do. Not thinking.… Well, you’d better come in and I’ll find the rest. Time for a snifter, maybe?”

  It’s always time for a snifter at the colonel’s. His is neat whiskey; mine is beer. We go in through the servants’ entrance. I stand by the kitchen sink, drinking the beer down, while he searches through umpteen canisters and boxes until he’s made up the ten shillings in change. He counts it out on the table in pennies. The rumors are he’s losing a packet on his pig farm, that he’s in hock to the bank, and that the house will be on the market sometime soon. The kitchen is dank and cheerless; no one is certain whether the colonel’s a bachelor or a widower, his histories vary according to the number of snifters, but a bachelor, I’d say: the eternal kind. On the kitchen table, under a muslin protector, is the colonel’s supper in waiting: two pork chops and some leftover mashed potato. There’s a small tin of peas next to them. A fly buzzes.

  “Still breaking hearts in the village?” he asks. “How’s the love life, Daniel?”

  He always asks this, and I always give the same answer: “Ticking over,” I say.

  He puts the coins in an envelope and licks the seal. He downs the whiskey in a single swallow. “I hear you spend a lot of time at the Abbey these days,” he continues. He cocks his head to one side and gives me a roguish look, man to man. He has gleaming false teeth; a liverish complexion. I do what Joe would do in such a situation: Stare stolidly; say naught.

  “You want to be careful with that family,” he continues—he’s quite a gossip, Colonel Edwardes. Not too well informed, since he’s widely disliked, but assiduous. “They’re well connected, of course. And the senior branch, they’re wealthy, very wealthy indeed. Live in some state, I believe. Yes, Elde Hall—quite a palace, I’ve been told, not that I’ve ever been invited there myself, you understand.… I hear they’re investing in this cookery school of Stella’s, is that right?”

  “I wouldn’t know.”

  “Well, someone must be, because they haven’t got two brass farthings to rub together. I wish the project well, naturally—as I’m sure you do, Daniel—another beer?… No? But I can’t help thinking it’s misguided. Wykenfield is the back of beyond—and Stella, fond though I am of her… well, she doesn’t have any qualifications as such, does she?”

  I find this kind of hypocrisy tiring. Why disguise malice as friendly concern? It’s such a waste of time. Why not come right out with it and admit schadenfreude? Why not just say, “I can’t wait for it to fail”? If Stella’s cookery school flops, he’ll be the first to cheer.

  “She’s a very good cook. Maybe that’s qualification enough.”

  “I don’t think so, Daniel, not these days. People want Cordon Bleu, that kind of thing.” He pronounces “bleu” as “blue.” I can’t tell whether this is affectation, a joke, or ignorance. “And the Abbey is so run-down. Frankly, I can’t see them pulling it off. Though I wish them every success, naturally.”

  “I’d better go.”

  “A word to the wise,” he says, and winks. “Just a little hint, Daniel, my boy. Be a bit careful: Julia and Finn—delightful, delightful. But poor Maisie… well, there’s no hiding it, is there? I saw her in the village the other day, walking along, talking to those nuns of hers. The invisible holy sisters—tragic. So sad. And her father was the same, you know—completely off his rocker, or so I hear. It’s in the genes, you see. Dear old Henry’s been dotty as long as I’ve known him, but his son… Terrible. They covered it up, naturally. No one talks about it. Guy Mortland cut his throat, you know, took a razor and sliced his throat from ear to ear. Bled like a stuck pig. Poor Stella found him. Mind you, she must have known it was on the cards. Depression. Mania. He’d had every treatment in the book, drugs, electric shock therapy, private clinics. Cost a packet, and none of it worked. In and out of loony bins for years—”

  “Sanatoriums,” I say, coming to a halt in the doorway. “Sanatoriums. He had TB.”

  “Oh, I know that. But that was later—he got infected at one of the funny farms. The TB responded to treatment, I hear—and it made a good cover story. But it wasn’t why he was invalided out of the RAF, believe you me. No, no—it was psychological problems. It was the war that pushed him over the edge. Battle shock. Happened to a lot of the fighter boys. Your generation—you don’t know how lucky you are.…” He pauses.

  “But my point is—be wary. I hear you and Finn are very thick. People talk. You’ve been seen, you know. Out in the woods at night, naughty, naughty. And of course she seems normal enough at the moment, can be charming when she wants—a little curt, perhaps, or she is to me, anyway. But you have to look at these things long term, and with a father like that, a sister like that—who knows what the future holds? Want children one day, do you, Daniel? Bound to—handsome young man like you. On your way up, fine strapping fellow, bit of a clever clogs, Cambridge and so on. But you want to pick and choose, that’s my advice. Plenty of fish in the sea; play the field and all that. Besides, you and the Mortlands—very different backgrounds, aren’t you? Expect you feel like a fish out of water sometimes, eh? I’d be careful if I was you.… Daniel?… Daniel? What’s your hurry? You’re forgetting your money.…”

  I’m outside, in the gloomy backyard. In the warm air, there’s a rich smell from the Heavy Hogs, a stink of pig swill and ordure. Colonel Edwardes is in the doorway, waving the envelope. I tell him to keep his ten shillings.

  And cut, I’m on the road. I’m trudging back to the village. I’m dripping sweat. The sun’s merciless and there are no trees, there’s no shade. My boots kick up white dust as
I walk. The white dusty road runs alongside Black Ditch; both run as straight as a die between the fields, Angus McIver’s fields. They were pasture; now he’s experimenting with sugar beet. Sugar beet is a thirsty plant; it consumes gallon upon gallon of water. Every twenty yards there are irrigation pipes. The anger’s gone. I feel sick. I feel heartsick. Was that true? Does Finn know? If she knows, why has she never told me? One foot in front of the other: Truth or malice, truth or lies?

  The white road is a Roman road. Black Ditch is even older. It predates the Romans; it predates the Iceni, and this is Iceni battleground territory. As a small boy, I used to imagine Boadicea here, bowling along in her chariot, murderous knives bound to its wheels. I can hear the rumbling of those wheels now and the tramp of centurion feet: the march of history, the sound of the inevitable; it’s marching behind, and it’s gaining on me.

  Black Ditch, which is Iron Age or older, mirrors the sky in its unmoving, unwinking surface. Yes, this road runs dead straight, and I can feel something die in me as I walk along it. Miles of Roman road behind me, miles ahead of me: This is the road I still walk along in dreams.

  I know what lies at the end of that walk. When I reach the village, the church clock will be striking four—so I can be exact about the time. Hens will be pecking on the verge. I can just hear the distant combine; I hear the distant report of a shotgun. At our cottage, all the windows will be closed—Gran distrusts fresh air. No doubt she will still be sitting by the stove, nursing her sore gums. Maybe, to keep her hand in, she’ll be consulting the tarot. I won’t call in to see her. I won’t discover what the Rider-Waite deck predicts today. I won’t encounter Joe, either; he will be working in the last of the McIvers’ hay fields, over a mile away.

  By the village green, I’ll pause. I’ll count the ducks on the duck pond. I’ll examine, for the millionth time, the famous pargeting on the pub: a wily fox, a foolish goose. When I was little, I used to stare at them and think, Which am I?

  Next to the pub is the village shop and post office. This is where, one afternoon a week, I’m temporarily employed in a clerkish capacity. I issue wireless, dog, and TV licenses; I put stamps on parcels and count out money to the numerous village pensioners. In the window there are big plastic-lidded glass jars of sweets: bull’s-eyes and gob stoppers, licorice sticks, flying saucer sherbets, bubble gum. I can remember when sweets were rationed. Nick was always forbidden bubble gum. There’s a Fox’s Glacier Mints display ad in the window, made of tin. It shows a polar bear, standing on an ice floe—and when you look at the ice closely, you see it’s mint shaped. Why aren’t they called Fox’s Iceberg Mints?

  I’ll take the letter out of my jeans pocket—I’ve been carrying this letter around all day. It’s the thirty-sixth job application. It’s the second I’ve sent to this particular agency, the first having received no acknowledgment or reply. This ad agency is the one I most want to work for—but this letter isn’t like the others I’ve sent. “You’re too formal,” ultraformal Maisie said yesterday, scrutinizing the sad carbon copies of my previous efforts. “I wouldn’t give you a job if you wrote like that to me.”

  “Thanks, Maisie—but that’s the way it’s done. There are conventions here.”

  “It doesn’t sound like you. It sounds stiff. And it’s too long.”

  Pretty rich, Maisie, I thought, coming from you. “Okay,” I said. “Why not? I’m getting bloody nowhere. You tell me what to write.”

  “If I do, you swear you’ll send it?”

  I swore. Maisie dictated. There were two sentences. Lynx eyed, she watched me while I typed them out on Stella’s ancient machine. And it’s this letter—this ridiculous letter—that is in my hand as I stare at that Fox’s Glacier Mints advertisement. And in the end, I’ll post it—because by then I’ll be beyond caring.

  I’ll post the letter, I’ll turn into the lane, and I’ll trudge up the hill, past the Doggetts’ orchards, where the apples are ripening, and past Acre Field. By then it’s four-fifteen.

  As I walk, I’ll be trying to concentrate on my next task. I’ve promised Stella I’ll paint one of the cookery school bedrooms. I’m afraid these rooms will never be used, because Stella isn’t going to have any takers, though I’ve done my best with the ads that have been inserted in various small magazines. On the other hand, Lady Violet, alias the Viper, seems to be being helpful for once. She and some Veronica woman, her grandson’s fiancée, have promised to spread the word. They’re sending out the prospectuses we had printed; they’re talking us up in London, in W1, SW7, and SW3.… I can’t understand why the Viper is doing this, given her past record, given her charity bypass, but doing it she is. So perhaps there will be enrollments. Meanwhile, at the Abbey, brushes, rollers, and gallons of white emulsion are waiting for me.

  I’ll come to a halt at the top of the hill. I’ll pause in the shade of the elms. The McIvers’ combine still drones away in the distance. It’s reached the last corner, in the field below Nun Wood, the field we called Holyspring. I’ll have no desire to slap white paint on bedroom walls. I’ll want to see Finn, ache to talk to Finn. But Finn will still be in London, not due back till seven p.m. at the earliest. I’ll look at my watch. I can remember looking at my watch. It will tell me it’s now four twenty-five. I’ll look blindly at the valley below. In the distance, a shotgun fires. I scan the fields. No one’s out in the fields after rabbits, nor would they be—it’s too early. It fires again once more; the report is closer this time, though it’s always hard to estimate the distance and direction of a gun shot, especially in the echoey bowl of this valley. It sounded as if it came from Nun Wood.

  I turn to look at the woods. Their green shade is inviting. I move across to the gate at the head of the lane and peer toward the trees. I see something move—some small, pale, crouching thing. It’s there, and then it’s vanished. The gun fires again, and this time I’m certain the report comes from the depths of the wood. I hesitate, peering into the shadows. Was it a child I glimpsed or a deer? Was it a trick of the light, or could it have been a woman?

  I can hear something moving in the undergrowth ahead of me; the fronds of bracken tremble. I listen intently. Maisie, is that you? I call softly. Maisie, someone’s shooting in there, come out. There’s no reply. The bracken shivers. Quietly, I move forward under the trees. At that point, when I decide I’d better investigate this, Maisie has less than four hours of normal life ahead of her. So have we all.

  [ seventeen ]

  Nun Wood

  Whatever it is that’s moving ahead of me, it isn’t a man. No man could move through this undergrowth with such delicacy. Could it be a hind? There are deer in the wood, though they’re shy and I’ve rarely encountered them. Could it be Maisie, playing some game with me? The bracken makes an impenetrable screen. Its green fronds, the curled undersides laden with dusty brown spore, twenty million on one tiny leaf, Maisie has told me, are at heart height—and I’m six feet three; they’d easily conceal someone smaller, a child or a woman. I can see the fronds trembling. I know these woods well: Joe first brought me here to shoot pigeon when I was seven years old. I’ve shot pheasant here, for Stella. But pigeon and pheasant don’t take refuge in bracken, and my voice would have driven a deer away. I move forward silently, placing my feet with care, parting the fronds, watching, and listening.

  The wood is more overgrown than it used to be. As I move away from the edges, there’s less light and the bracken thins. It’s choked out by a tangle of dark undergrowth, stunted holly, hazel, and brambles. Peering through the greenish shadows, I glimpse movement again: something white, something fleet—and then it’s gone. It’s too swift and too silent to be a child, surely? I hesitate, listening. I circle round to my left and find the path I remember. It winds through the trees and ends at the clearing where the ruins of the building the nuns made are still just discernible. It’s years since I’ve been to that part of the wood. I stand on the path, irresolute.

  I think of nuns. The nuns here belonged to the Cis
tercian order; they wore white, not black. I think of three newborn skeletal babies, with rosaries. I still feel connected to them, my ancient unwanted kin. This wood has always been able to make a child of me.

  Nick and I used to make dens here. We’d dare each other to build them near the clearing where the babies were found. But we never went too close, for all our bravado. Once, and only once, we camped the night in the wood—and, older then, determined to brave it out, we set up camp in the center of the clearing. We laughed at our former timidity—or we did until dusk fell. With darkness, our nerves failed us. We lay side by side in Nick’s Boy Scout tent, two adolescent boys, rigid with terror. Owls hooted, the wind stirred the leaves—but we weren’t fearful of such noises, which had a known, natural explanation. Nothing happened—nothing we could name, at least. Yet neither of us slept, and by common consent, that experiment was never repeated.

  The wood is silent. The air eddies with a faint breeze. I have the unpleasant sensation that the trees are breathing, that someone unseen is watching me. I begin to move silently along the path: I can see something now, in the distance, something small and pale. It doesn’t disappear as I move, but it seems to stir, as if it’s caught, as if it’s shivering.

  I walk toward it stealthily. As I move, I see that this path seems to be in use—and that puzzles me. Nun Wood is private property; it has a reputation for being haunted—no one in the village would trespass. Joe and I are the only people who come here. Has someone been poaching? Does Lucas walk this way? Lucas comes and goes as he pleases, so it’s possible. Someone’s certainly been using this path.

  I come to a halt. The trees are still; not a leaf moves. A jet from Deepden screams overhead. I peer at the dark undergrowth on all sides: I can see nothing, hear no sound except my own breathing. I can’t see the clearing, either; it’s farther on, beyond the next winding of the path. But I can see it with my mind’s eye: a rough circle of random stones, low broken walls overgrown with ivy, a greenish watery light filtering through. The air there smells of leaf mold, of rich soil; it’s spongy underfoot. There’s a grassy bank and a circular area of thick moss—moss that’s an insistent emerald green. Before those archeologists arrived, I used to think of it as a fairy ring, as a place of enchantment: I don’t now.