The Sisters Mortland

by Sally Beauman

  All of this spills from her very fast, and I’m trying to follow it and make sense of it, and trying to put her words and the expression in her eyes together, and I’m still sick with apprehension. There’s one part of my mind that blocks all the others. It’s thinking, No, it can’t be, she’s not going to say that. And then, awkwardly, struggling with the table, Finn stands up. She parts the folds of her coat. She lifts those layers of jumpers, and I see the thickened waistline, the curve of the stomach they’ve been hiding.

  Do I say anything? I don’t know. I think I bowed my head, because I can see red-speckled Formica, and I think I’m counting the speckles in it, seeing their patterns. A hand places two see-through plastic coffee cups in front of us, the coffee black, with an inch of brownish froth on it. Then Finn says, “Four months.”

  I can hear myself echoing that number, saying something like, Four? No, it can’t be four. And then I’m trying to count back stupidly, and the number won’t compute. All the months muddle, then settle, and I hear myself say: “Four—but that would mean… Finn? That’s not possible. Early June? We were still in Cambridge then. It was before we came to the Abbey. How can that be? We were—I thought we were, I thought you were—”

  “I know what you thought,” she says quietly. “Dear Dan, my dearest Dan—I know what you thought, and I know how I’ve lied. I’m so sorry. Believe me, I’m so terribly sorry.”

  I look at her face, which I can’t see properly, because the café is now blurred, indistinct, and muddly. I can feel that I’m trapped, and Finn’s trapped. This encounter, this conversation has been scripted a million times. I know all the lines she could say, and I could say. I don’t want to say any of them, though I can feel them rising to my lips. I don’t want to storm out of that place, or interrogate her, or insult her, or plead, or weep, but I can see all those well-scripted routes, a great fistful of them. Which to go down? They’re all pointless, humiliating, obvious, and inadequate.

  “Does Lucas know?” I say finally. I can scarcely speak.

  “Yes. He does.”

  “How long has he known? When did you tell him?”

  “Two months ago. About two months ago. I had some tests—you know, they do these tests. And the results came back the day before Stella and I went to London. I told him after that—I can’t remember when, not exactly, because of Maisie… you know.”

  “Who did the tests?You can’t have had them done in Wykenfield. You didn’t go to Dr. Marlow—not Nick’s father, surely?”

  “No. Obviously not. Lucas borrowed Gramps’ car. He drove me over to Deepden. I had them done there. I made up some stupid story, gave them a false name, said I was just staying in the neighborhood, something like that. They didn’t believe me, of course. But then they see it all the time. It’s so predictable—that’s one of the things I hate the most, how sordid and predictable it seems to other people. Dan, it was awful, they made me feel so dirty. I’ve never been so humiliated.… Well, I hadn’t then. I have now. I’m getting used to humiliation now. Which is just as well, I suppose, because there’ll be plenty more of it.”

  She gives a wry smile, her eyes still brimming with tears. She picks up the sugar dispenser and looks as if she can’t imagine what it is, then shakes it, tips it, adds three doses of sugar to her cup. Finn doesn’t take sugar in coffee, or didn’t. Where was I that day? I’m thinking. The day Lucas drove her to a doctor at a discreet distance, where was I? Cleaning windows? Mending tractors? Counting out money to pensioners at the post office? How many hours Finn had in which to deceive me.

  And then I ask the question. I have to ask it, no matter how stale and predictable it is, no matter how many other men in this situation have asked it before me. I’m trying to control my voice. I say: “Finn, just answer me this. I won’t ask you again. Did you love me? Did you ever love me?”

  “You know that I did.” Fat tears spill down her cheeks, and her voice breaks. “Oh, Dan, you know that I did. In some ways, you’re closer to me than anyone else, and you always will be. And I used to think—you know what I used to think. I couldn’t imagine a time without you. You were my all-in-all, my everything.” She hesitates. “Sun, moon, and stars, Dan. But, we were very young. And then—this happened.”

  “It’s the women, isn’t it,” I say before I can stop myself. “Christ, Finn—you know very well that if you’d let me—just once, Finn. Just once, and I’d never have looked at a single one of them. I wouldn’t have touched them. There weren’t that many anyway, and none of them matters. I can hardly remember their names, or what they look like. I wanted them for half an hour, because I couldn’t have you—and you know that.” I stop. I’ve thought of Julia. Was that true of Julia?

  “Maybe I do.” She lowers her gaze. She doesn’t know, I think—and I hate myself. “That’s what I used to tell myself, anyway. Though that’s what men always say—or so I hear. It was nothing to do with them, those girls, anyway. I woke up one day, and five and five made ten—and then the next day, they didn’t. Sometimes they made nine, or a hundred. And I realized that’s what people meant by falling in love. Not being able to add up, or think, or see.… What a predictable conversation we’re having. I hate it.”

  “Marry me, Finn,” I say. And I lean across the table and take her gloved hands in mine, and force her to look at me, and I launch myself on that one and only proposal of my life. A hideous, incoherent mess I make of it. All I could hear was Finn confirming she had loved me, and that was enough: I could rewrite this script, alter it the way I wanted. And it made such sense. If four months had gone by, Lucas must have left her in the lurch—and I couldn’t imagine his doing otherwise. Lucas, and the pram in the hall? Lucas, trying to paint with a squalling infant? No, I couldn’t imagine that, and I knew Finn wouldn’t imagine it, either. She’d have no illusions about Lucas, even if she loved him: Finn, my Finn, was too clear-sighted.

  I knew what Finn was facing as an unmarried mother. They didn’t want them at Cambridge. A woman was sent down merely for having a man in her room overnight, whereas a man caught with a woman was gated for a few weeks. A double standard operated and always had. So Finn was facing certain expulsion and an uncertain, unsupported, unthinkable future.“Marry me, Finn,” I say. I see myself moving to Cambridge, finding some kind of work there—who cares what, I’ll clean windows if need be. Once married, Finn will be allowed to continue her degree course. Somehow, between the two of us, we’ll manage to look after the baby. And I will love it, this child, this child of another man; I’ll love him and rear him; I’ll love and protect him and Finn. I know I can do it. Simple. Inevitable. Then I hesitate.

  “Is it too late, Finn?” I say. I’m ashamed, but I do say it. “Four months is too late, isn’t it.”

  “I think so,” she replies, looking away. “It’s illegal at any point. Though that doesn’t matter. There are always kindly doctors who will help you out. I don’t mean back street: I mean the works, a private clinic, everything. It costs one hundred and fifty pounds, I hear. You can be in and out in a day. So they’d probably do it at four months. I expect they’d do it at eight months, if you paid enough. But that’s irrelevant. I don’t want this baby killed or harmed. I love this baby, Dan. I want my baby.”

  She rests her hands across her stomach in a protective way, and I watch her face change: a dreamy determination in the eyes, a calm, female inwardness, a strange, fierce joy and concentration. It kills me, that look. I’d give anything to see that expression and to know it was my child she was carrying. Then I wonder who gave her this detailed information—and I know at once: Lucas, who found himself staring down a cul-de-sac and went for the cheapest, most obvious route—backing out of it.

  I see my way clear then. “Marry me, Finn,” I say. The love I feel for her is so deep, I feel it must speak to her. I talk on and on, convincing her, convincing myself, and it takes a long time for me to see that Finn has become quiet and still, that her pale face, blotched with tears, is set in an expression I know
well, one of sadness and unshakable obstinacy.

  “Finn, trust me, believe me. I know we could do this. It’s all I want in the world.”

  “That’s not true,” Finn says quietly. “It isn’t all you want in the world, Dan. Of course it isn’t. And why should it be?”

  “Finn, darling Finn, listen to me. I love you. I know I could do this.”

  “But I couldn’t. Not to you, Dan. And anyway, it’s impossible.” “Don’t say that. It isn’t. Finn, it isn’t.”

  “It is. I’m already married.”

  I stare at her. “I married Lucas yesterday,” she continues in a flat voice. “In the register office at Cambridge.” She frowns. “It wasn’t much of a ceremony. There were plastic flowers—I minded about them. They were hideous. There were hundreds of stupid forms to fill in—who your father was, what he did. When I said mine was dead, the registrar, he was this small fat man, with glasses, in a suit that was too tight for him—he said, I’m sincerely sorry to hear that. And I thought, What a stupid thing to say. Why would he care? Why even pretend to care? But there you are, we had to go through all the formalities, and I suppose that was just part of them. It took twenty minutes. I timed it. Anyway, it’s done now. Look.”

  She removes her gloves. And there on the third finger of her left hand is a wedding ring of sorts. It looks dull and brassy. It’s too large for her. It looks like a curtain ring. Knowing Lucas, it probably is a curtain ring.

  I’d have sold my soul to buy Finn gold, diamonds, rubies, whatever she wanted. If she’d wanted St. Paul’s Cathedral for her wedding, I’d have moved heaven and earth to get it for her. But Lucas, of course, would have viewed the matter very differently. Lucas had always been contemptuous of ceremonies and traditions and bourgeois tokens—wedding rings, marriage, till death do us part, for instance.

  It was called Georgio’s, that café. It’s still there. I pass it from time to time. I never enter it. I never look in the window to see if there’s another couple in there, this afternoon, this morning, having a similar, or happier, conversation. I cross the street and avert my eyes. I’m good at that. I’ve perfected the art of ignoring the painful.

  But lying here, in this place where two decades are two seconds, and ten years ago is yesterday, the painful won’t drift away as it usually does; it comes looping around with an insistence I can’t control. And it makes me watch what I did next, after I’d taken Finn back to King’s Cross and watched the lights of her Cambridge train disappear into darkness. Lucas would meet her at the other end, she’d said. When he left the Abbey, Lucas had taken rooms in Green Street, not far from our old college. I imagined them going to those rooms. I envisaged them there, together.

  Then I walk; that’s what I do. I don’t know where I walk, or for how long, but miles and for a long time; it’s late when, on some street corner, I finally stop outside a telephone box. I can palm coins; I can read palms; I have a facility for such tricks—and for remembering numbers also. So I step into the box and dial the number of a little cottage off King’s Road in Chelsea. I’m hurting: I want to punish Finn and the world and Lucas and myself. Meanwhile, I’ll punish anything and anyone else that comes within range, especially when Julia has put the idea into my head, and especially when Julia, of all women, has warned me against precisely this course of action.

  I hear the lift in sweet Veronica’s voice when she realizes who’s telephoning; then I hear the hesitation. All alone on a Saturday night; that trinity of Vs has split up. The two schoolfriends have gone home to their country-living parents for the weekend; all alone, and it is late. Why, she was about to go to bed; it’s eleven-thirty.

  “Now or not at all,” I hear myself say. “You’ve got one minute to make your mind up.”

  It takes her thirty seconds. Half an hour later, I’m in Chelsea, outside a former laborer’s cottage; it’s been prettified. Inside—not that I really see the inside, I’m blind to it—inside, I’m vaguely aware of girlish chintzes, and silver photograph frames, and tapestry cushions; too many tapestry cushions, cushions with trite little sayings embroidered on them. A bottle of Blue Nun wine has been opened in my honor; candles have been lit; Veronica’s used that half hour to put on a pretty pink dress, to apply pink lipstick, to brush her shining hair, and to spray scent on her pulse points.

  It’s October, and the room reeks of spring flowers; it’s choking, that scent. One hour later we’re in bed. Half an hour later and Veronica’s lost her virginity.

  A simple seduction, like taking candy from a baby. There’s a certain savage pleasure in that, I discover—and I discover, too, that there’s a new Dan inside me, one whose heart is easily hardened. He can ignore female tears, jealousy, and reproaches, though they anger him; he learns that the more women like Veronica are ignored or slighted, the more eager they are for similar punishment. Where have you been, Dan? Why didn’t you call? Who were you with? There’s someone else, isn’t there? Tell me you love me—why won’t you ever say it? I detest this weakness and masochism, but I’m prepared to exploit it.

  The affair continues, messily and intermittently, for another six weeks. I break with her, finally, two days before her wedding that November. It’s easy to forget her; there are plenty of women eager enough to take her place. Besides, I’m busy. I’m busy forgetting Finn; busy climbing the success ladder; I’m busy at work; I’m busy running all over London, engaged in that quintessential late sixties task: finding out where it’s at and making sure I’m there at the heart of it.

  Where it’s at: That’s the phrase we all use. A restaurant, a street, a person, a shop, a party—they can all be where it’s at, and the weird thing is, you’re no sooner there, right at the epicenter, than, hey presto, where it’s at has moved on. It’s someplace else, and you have to run hard to keep up with it or—secret ambition of everyone—be ahead of it. Christ, you’d think—what’s happened? Where it’s at was here yesterday, it was here this morning—but it can’t be here now, not at this party, surely, not when these same where-it’s-at people are driving me crazy, so I can’t wait to escape and just walk home and be silent and breathe air again. Where it’s at has moved on—that’s what it always does. Where’s it gone now, I’d think, and how do I get there quickly? On the q.v. twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. It’s exhausting. And numbing.

  And then, one summer’s day, I’m walking down King’s Road after a celebratory lunch at a where-it’s-at Italian restaurant. I think it’s the following summer. Yes, it must be then, because by then, and somewhere in the haze that’s now my daily existence, Gramps has died, and Finn’s baby has been stillborn at seven months, and the rumor is that she and Lucas are unhappy, though still living together. I don’t know if the rumors are true: Finn won’t see me or answer my letters. Yes, it must be then, because Maisie has finally been moved to that care home where she remains to this day, that care home where nuns look after her with quiet fortitude and patience. Maisie’s condition has improved—to an extent. She can now feed herself, with assistance. She can walk a little, with assistance, but spends most of her days in a wheelchair. She cannot speak or communicate in any way—and it’s now clear that, barring a true miracle, she will never do so.

  Yes, it’s the following August, the dog days of summer, about ten months later, and I’ve just clinched my first major campaign, I’ve been celebrating at a client lunch: I’ve drunk two cocktails and half a bottle of Soave. There’s a spring in my step: I’m in that kindest of all states, neither drunk nor sober, and I’m on my way back to work when, in Sloane Square, outside Peter Jones department store—where else; I imagine her haunting it—I bump into a young matron who says: Dan, don’t you recognize me, it’s Veronica.

  “That’s wonderful news, Dan,” she says warmly when I tell her about the major campaign—which I do at once. “I’m so pleased for you. I’m up from Elde for a day or two to do some shopping.” She pauses. “I’m staying at Violet’s place. It’s just around the corner. Why don’t we go there a
nd have a drink and celebrate?”

  I find myself in Violet’s Eaton Square outpost. Its drinks cupboard contains excellent brandy. There’s chintz in the drawing room and chintz in Veronica’s bedroom.

  What happened to that sweet-faced girl? I wonder as I go through the preliminaries. This young matron is too brisk, too knowing, and too insistent. I can’t bear the dress she’s wearing or her scent. I can’t bear the tension in her body. “Look, sorry,” I say, rolling off her. “I must have drunk too much at lunch. Let’s forget it, shall we?”

  Then she does an appalling thing. She stands up and smooths down her skirt. “Shall I tell you what I’m wearing?” she says, smiling at me in a knowing way. “White knickers. Clean ones. Clean white panties. I put them on this morning. You’re not allowed to touch, but I’ll let you look, if you like. If you’re good. If you’re very, very good. Watch, Dan. Look closely.”

  Before I can stop her, she lifts the hem of her dress in a coy peekaboo way that makes my skin crawl with embarrassment. And there are the white panties, with a revealing panel of lace; they do nothing for me. I can see she’s shaved off her pubic hair; that does nothing for me, either.

  “Veronica,” I say, “this really isn’t my thing. I’m not into games or role-play or whatever the hell this is.… Can you stop this?”

  “Oh, all right,” she replies. She looks at me in a curious blank-faced way. “What do you like, Dan? Ah, I remember now.…”

  And then she begins to touch me and to do things to me that indeed I do like, and I find that if I lie back and close my eyes, I can wipe her, wipe her completely. I can smell the cool blue scent and hear the chime of bracelets that always makes me hard. It’s easy then. I fuck her, and it’s okay—average, but okay—and when I come, I think at last. Then I wait. The postcoital wash of distaste never takes long to arrive, and this time it’s immediate. I look at a blank-faced Veronica lying back on the bed, and I can’t see that sweet-faced girl at all. I think, Did marriage do this to her? Or am I responsible?