The Sisters Mortland

by Sally Beauman

  The nostalgia fuck: They’re the worst; they’re to be avoided. The fuck for old times’ sake—there’s nothing as bad or sad. Never again, I tell myself. All I can think about is the minimum number of lies that will ensure a fast exit.

  To my surprise, it’s easy. No reproaches this time, no pleas to call her: Veronica has achieved her objective, it seems. She’s as anxious to get me out of the house as I am to leave it.

  I never see her again or hear from her. I erase both her and the incident from my mind. My memory’s already learning how to be forgiving. I haven’t thought of her, or that last brief encounter, in years—twenty years, probably. But I’m not going to be spared shames down here in this netherworld. Next up, it’s Bella, dwindling away on a tide of Alzheimer ramblings; it’s Bella and all the excuses I make not to come here to visit her. It’s me on the phone to Joe, spilling poison into his ear, taking a high-handed line, and saying: Look, Dad, I’m sorry, but I can’t just drop everything. Gran doesn’t even know who I am—what difference can it possibly make?… I know. I know.… Look, Dad, I know, all right? It’s hard for you, and I’ll get down as soon as I can, but it won’t be this month.… What?… Well, I can’t help that: I’m in Milan tomorrow and New York next week, and when I get back I’ve got meetings wall-to-wall.… What?… What?… Oh, very well, I’ll try to get down in a couple of weeks, but I’ve got a big client meeting coming up, and umpteen presentations, so I can’t promise anything.…

  Next up: Family Christmas, the family Christmas I couldn’t avoid, because Gran’s dead, and Joe’s alone, and so I agree to come and arrive late, and shit, I’ve only been in the house ten seconds and I can see all the trouble he’s gone to. There are paper chains hanging from the kitchen beams and fake snow on the windows and a clean cloth on the table and a Christmas tree in the corner with a pile of ill-wrapped bulgy presents under it. And there’s a huge turkey—there’s only the two of us, and it would feed twenty without difficulty—crammed in the oven, and Joe’s telling me that he’s getting on quite well with the cooking now, and Flora McIver’s told him how to cope with the festive bird, and—look—he’s got it all written down. Four and a half hours on a medium setting.

  And it takes about ten hours for the blasted bird to cook, and Joe won’t sit still and keeps jumping up and down, tipping more coke in the stove, and consulting his notes, and saying, I don’t understand this, Danny, that bugger should be done by now.

  And I’m sitting there, staring at the presents I brought, now under the tree, in all their Bond Street elegance. Who applied this expensive paper, these bows, these ribbons? Not me. Some girl in a store did it—and I never went near that store. Me, troll around the shops in December? I don’t think so. I sent out the junior PA with a list, and she took care of it. What’s in those parcels? Things Joe doesn’t want or need: Jermyn Street shirts, cashmere socks, a calendar, a book of Giles cartoons, a silk tie, a soft leather wallet, and one of those male toys, an upmarket adult version of a boy’s Swiss Army knife—a neat, ingenious tool that will open bottles, undo screws, cut wire, and God knows what else. Why did I get these things? Why did I get the car, which is garaged in one of the McIver barns and which I suspect has never been driven, though Joe loyally sings her praises and says she’s a right little beauty. Why did I get any of these things? Because I’m guilty, so guilty that I’m already on my third Scotch, and these are my guilt offerings. Sorry, Joe, for letting you down, for never being here, for not knowing how to talk to you when I am here. Sorry for the boasting, and the lies, sorry I’m not the son you should have had. Sorry, Joe—here’s a handmade shirt. Does that make up for things?

  And then, finally, close on nine p.m. and only five hours late, we can sit down and eat that turkey. It’s tough. It’s dry. I force it down. I eat the turkey and the wet sprouts and the soggy spuds and the Bisto gravy, then we pull the crackers and put on the party hats, and Joe takes ten minutes to read the jokes, which are crap jokes anyway. And then we light the brandy and admire the Christmas pudding, and then Joe pours out a glass of something unbearably sweet and lifts a glass, and I know what’s coming. “Absent friends, Danny,” he says. Absent friends, I croak, and I can see the tears he’s blinking back, and I hate to see a grown man cry, I can’t stand it, I can’t deal with it.

  Then it’s the presents, and Joe will say something like, That’s a fine shirt, Danny, and no mistake. I’ll be keeping that for best, don’t you worry. And I know it’ll go straight in a drawer, with mothballs, and never be seen again, until I next visit, when Joe will loyally take it out and wear it. And I, meanwhile, I’ll be opening my lumpy parcels, wrapped with love, bought with love, after hours of fretting and list making and window-shopping. And I can act as well as Joe, so I’ll say, Hey, these gloves are great, Dad—where did you find them? How did you guess? They’re just what I need. When I never wear gloves and I’ve got five unused pairs already.

  Oh, the pain of it all, the love and the guilt inextricably entwined. And the worst moment of all, when, paper hatted, we sit having what Joe calls a quiet smoke and a wind-down before we tackle a mountain of plates and pans that will take three hours to wash, because there’s no hot water, so it all has to be boiled, kettle after kettle, and Joe won’t let me buy him a nice cottage, with hot water on tap and these things, Dad, that are called radiators. Yes, we’re having that quiet smoke and wind-down, and then Joe says, in a gentle, anxious way: It’ll be a fine day, tomorrow, Danny. Dry and sunny. I thought we might go for a walk, maybe? The McIvers would like to see you, I know. Then a nice bit of lunch… And I’m half-tanked, my eyes slide away, and I’m saying, Dad, didn’t I explain? I can’t stay. I have to get back, I really have to get back to London.…

  And Joe won’t reproach me. He’ll sit there opposite me, his huge, capable hands clasped in his lap and that expression on his face, slightly bewildered, as if something’s happening here, something wrong and unnatural that he can’t understand. I can see the wound in his steady gaze, and I know what he’s thinking. He’s thinking that he failed me—when this man has never failed anyone in his entire life, least of all that prize shit of a son of his, Danny.

  Dad, I love you, all right, I say. But I don’t think I said that then. I think I’m saying it now, too late as usual, too little and too late as usual, lying here in that bed we once shared and in which I now lie alone, loneliness eating up my heart, a black crow of misery eating up my heart, because you can’t go back, you can’t alter it. Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned.

  Only one life, and some things in that life, as Finn said, are irreversible.

  Yes: It all floats up out of this Xanadu dream, which has become—as I should have foreseen, why can’t I foresee anything; so much for my Gift—a Xanadu nightmare.

  It loops and reloops, Joe wearing a paper crown; a blank-faced Veronica; their ghosts are here to reproach me, along with Finn in her drab black clothes, in a café with red Formica tables; and Maisie in her hospital bed, her thin hand snaking across the bedspread. All those hands: Joe’s strong, square ones, hardened and callused from decades of physical work; Maisie’s bruised hand; Veronica’s soft palm, with its faint marriage line; Finn’s thin hand, emerging from a shabby glove, and her wedding finger with Lucas’s brassy curtain ring on it.

  I’ve had enough of Xanadu. Christ, let me get out of this place. Then a cool hand touches my temple, and a voice, it’s that woman doctor’s voice, says, I think we’ve turned the corner. Pulse rate back to normal. And the temperature’s dropping.

  part viii

  Nine of Wands

  I was once told by a relative of mine, that having in her childhood fallen into a river, and being on the very verge of death but for the critical assistance which reached her, she saw in a moment her whole life, in its minutest incidents, arrayed before her simultaneously as in a mirror; and she had a faculty developed… for understanding and comprehending the whole and every part. This, from some opium experiences of mine, I can believe; I have, in
deed, seen the same thing asserted twice in modern books, and accompanied by a remark which I am convinced is true; viz. that the dread book of account, which the Scriptures speak of, is, in fact, the mind itself of each individual.

  Of this, at least, I feel assured, that there is no such thing as forgetting possible to the mind; a thousand accidents may, and will, interpose a veil between our present consciousness and the secret inscriptions on the mind; accidents of the same sort will also rend away this veil; but alike, whether veiled or unveiled, the inscription remains forever.…

  —Thomas De Quincey, Confessions of an English Opium Eater, 1822

  The last of the Sisters were reluctant to leave the Abbey, I am told; it was so remote a place that they obstinately believed they might continue here, unobserved and unregarded.… But news reaching them, first, of the departure of the monks from Deepden, and then of the failure of the Pilgrimage of Grace, so many executed and that man of peace, Robert Aske, hung in chains from a church tower until he died of thirst and starvation… they made the decision to leave. And a sad departure it was, I am earnestly informed, many of the nuns having lived here sixty years or more, and all of them in as frail and fearful a state as may be imagined. These events are described to me with the utmost vividness as if they happened but yesterday; my witnesses wink at the fact that it was their great-great-grandsires that demolished much of the Abbey, using its stones to prop up their byres and repair their humble cotts: an admirable husbandry.… Venturing that way, this evening, I encountered an irreligious pig: he was disporting himself in the nuns’ former chapter house. But he was a fine pig for all that, and I look forward to sampling his rashers.

  —William Naismith, Recollections of a Suffolk Rectory, 1818

  [ twenty-six ]

  Honest Ghosts

  I’m sharing this cottage.

  I discover this when I start surfacing from Xanadu and find myself on that road the McIvers call the “road to recovery.” I already know that, I think: I’m sharing this cottage with my ghosts, with Joe and Bella, with that long line of my ancestors—but these aren’t the companions Flora McIver is referring to when, three times a day, she brings over the food that is going to “set me on my feet again.” No, it’s rodents who are sharing this house. What I have, it seems, is an infestation of wee mousies.

  Whenever she comes over with Scotch broth, or porridge, which you can’t beat for setting a man up, or a hot pot so good that I eat all of it (Now that’ll make a new man of you), Flora checks on these insolent, shameless creatures. At first, she thinks they’re confined to the kitchen, where they’ve eaten a pot of raspberry jam she made for Joe, chewing through its waxed-paper cover, consuming the raspberries, and spitting out the seeds on the larder shelves: the cheek of it. Then, no, they’ve invaded the bedrooms, too, and they’ve had a good gnaw at Joe’s slippers, the ones I gave him last Christmas, his last Christmas—and such a fine pair of slippers, too, Danny.

  Day six of Xanadu, and Flora takes action. She comes armed with traps, which she baits with cheese and chocolate. In her experience, which is considerable, mice prefer Cadbury’s Dairy Milk to Cheddar. They also have a weakness for Wunderbar.

  I don’t want these small companions put paid to. Call me sentimental, but I feel for these mice. Joe must have tolerated them. I don’t want their necks broken.

  I wait until Flora’s departed, then ease myself off the feather mattress and slip my feet into Joe’s nibbled slippers. A perfect fit, which surprises me. What’s more, a combination of those shots and Flora’s broth has done some good. Six days have passed, and I can now stand—even walk, I discover, walk well enough to totter round the cottage and spring all the traps. I hide the chocolate and cheese, evidence of my perfidy.

  Returning, unsteady but determined, in the dead of night to my bedroom, I meet one of the intrepid mice. It’s sitting on the end of my bed, grooming its whiskers. It’s a wood mouse—Apodemus sylvaticus, I hear Maisie whisper: smaller than the house mouse, browner in color. Wee, sleekit, cow’rin’, tim’rous beastie, / O, what a panic’s in thy breastie! It has a sensitive pointed snout, pink-palmed paws, large, darkly bright eyes, and quivering, silky whiskers. My heart goes out to this mouse. We inspect each other. It whisks off the bed and disappears beneath the gappy floorboards—indestructible elm boards, as also used for coffins once upon a time, worn and ancient.

  I kneel down and feel around for the loose board under which my childhood treasure trove was hidden. I find the board, lever it up—and the hoard’s still there, I discover. I adjust the dim bedside lamp and explore the dark cavity. The wee mousies have had a fine time. They’ve been nesting down here; they’ve been breeding down here. Fourteen-year-old Finn’s letters to me—they’ve made a good nest. The photographs, too, those small Box Brownie pictures Finn took one year, they’ve lined the nest softly. Even the picture, the only picture, I had of Dorrie—a blurry sepia smile in a prewar summer—that’s been munched, too. I find I can accept this. Torn, chewed, and pulped, they’ve served a useful purpose. I can let them go now, and do so without regret, even—how curious this is—without heartache.

  I feel around in the dark, pungent space. I can feel something hard, which proves to be a hazelnut. Finally, my searching fingers close over the one object of no use to nesting mice. I draw it out and inspect it. It’s a small, tinny charm, pressed into my four-year-old palm by my dying great-grandmother Ocean. It’s old and worn; its talismanic signs, guaranteed to protect against evil, are indecipherable. I put it in the pocket of Joe’s pajamas. I don’t possess pajamas, but in this cold house you need them. Joe and I were the same height, so these fit, though I’m still anorexic thin and they’re loose on me. Let’s get you decent, Flora said, handing them to me.

  I climb back into bed. I’ve left the curtains open. There’s a moon, a bright moon, shining. There are icicles hanging from the guttering; they glitter like a promise. I lie back and begin on an ancient task, one familiar from my earliest childhood: extracting the feathers from this mattress, the feathers that poke out through the worn cover and scratch at you. Here’s a duck’s feather, here’s a swan’s, here’s swansdown. I’m asleep in moments.

  When I wake to the new day, I don’t have to piss in the chamber pot, thank God. I’m strong enough, and steady enough, to make it outside to the privy in the garden. There’s a hoar frost; each plant, each bush, each branch, each tree, is etched white against a clear, cold blue sky. The world, new made overnight, is both beautiful and silent.

  I feel an absolute calm. Returning to the house, standing in the kitchen doorway, my breath visible, I watch a sparrow pecking at the frosted cabbages and sprout stalks, vegetables Joe planted his last summer, a few weeks before his disease truly took hold and set upon its slow and remorseless process of destruction.

  I close the door. The readiness is all. My way is now clear: I’ll go to the Abbey as soon as I’m strong enough.

  The woman doctor gives me the thumbs-up two days later. There’s no surgery in Wykenfield now, so she’s had to drive all the way from the group practice in Deepden. A kind action—but then, she is kind, this woman. She and her partners were good to Joe, last year; good to me, too. Today, she gives me one last shot—in the arm. She listens to my chest, checks my pulse and temperature.

  Right, she says. You’ll do. You won’t be needing me anymore.

  There’s then a pause. She replaces her stethoscope in her bag. She looks at me. She’s about thirty-five, I’d say: an attractive and unmarried professional. There are certain occasions when she’s looked at me in a speculative way that I find familiar. I’m her patient, however; there is the question of ethics—apart from other questions such as: What woman needs a walking, talking liability? Today, I sense she might feel I’m less of a liability than I was. She considers this, and I watch her doing so. Then she picks up her bag and briskly bids me good-bye. When she’s halfway down the path, I call after her.

  What was in those shots? I ask.

/>   “An antibiotic,” she replies, briskly again. “Latterly, some vitamins: high-dosage vitamin C and B12. I swear by it.”

  I set off for the Abbey on my interrupted task. I’m carrying a spade and a Sainsbury’s plastic bag inside which is the box with Joe in it. I know where he wants to lie now.

  It’s one of those winter days that Joe used to call “soft.” It’s not cold, there’s no wind, and in a high, pale sky a blurred sun is shining. The ground is damp underfoot, the night frost on the grass is melting; as I walk up Acre Lane, I see a rivulet of white in the ditches either side. The snowdrops are out; in another few weeks, unless the weather turns cold again, the primroses will be blooming.

  I go through the gate at the top of the lane and turn toward the bare trees of Nun Wood. Here, on the edge of the wood, where the bracken grows tall in summer, is a clearing where Joe wooed my mother. “Courted” was the word Joe used. I like that term, antique, long discontinued. I prefer it to its modern equivalents, to the language used now in this modern porno world. Courtship: nothing blatant or coarse. It’s gentle; it implies quest and dedication.

  The spade slices into the soft soil. It slices through the rhizomes of the bracken. My strength is returning. I bury Joe’s box one foot down and say the words I’ve planned. It’s quiet here: no ghosts. It’s peaceful. There’s a thin, whitish vapor rising from the frosted grass where the sun warms it. Through this mist, and at the edge of the trees, I can glimpse a still, watchful shape; when the shape moves, I realize it’s a deer. It steals silently away, there and then vanished. I know he will rest well here, my father.