The Sisters Mortland

by Sally Beauman

  “Yes, she has. But it’s easier for her to see Lucas than it would be you, Dan.”

  “Oh? And why is that?”

  “She’d prefer you to remember her as she was, I think. You knew her in ways Lucas never did. And you’ll mourn her more. You know what Lucas is like. We all do.”

  “For Christ’s sake, I loved her,” I hear myself say. “I loved her. My whole life… And I loved you—my closest, oldest friend. The one person I trusted always to tell me the truth. You lied, Finn lied, Lucas lied—everyone’s lied to me. Why did you lie to me, Nick?”

  “Because Finn asked me to,” he replies, looking away. “That was the first reason. And then, because I was ashamed. Once you begin lying, it’s easier—and it can seem kinder—to go on doing so. That’s what I told myself, anyway. One can lie to oneself as well, Dan—don’t you know that?”

  “I don’t believe that. I don’t damn well believe it. We shared a flat for nearly three years. I saw you daily. I thought we had no secrets from each other. Did it never cross your mind to tell me the truth? You knew what I thought. Did you lie to Julia as well—or was she in on the secret? I’m sure she was. So she lied to me, too. A clean sweep—all my friends. That takes care of fucking everyone.”

  “No, you’re wrong. I lied to Julia, too. She knew nothing about this—and I don’t think she even suspected, not once in a twenty-year marriage—well, maybe once or twice, maybe latterly.” He pauses. “I finally told her this week. And it took me a week to work up the courage to do that. Finn’s been here for a week on her own—I’d promised to be here with her, and I still prevaricated. I couldn’t face Julia, I couldn’t face my children—that’s the kind of man I am. Now do you understand why I could never explain this to you?”

  “No, I don’t. I don’t understand. I don’t want to understand. What does it matter now? Nothing matters. Finn’s dying.”

  “Dan, I’d like you to know. I’d like to tell someone—I’ve had it on my conscience long enough.”

  “I don’t want to be your father confessor. Find someone else,” I reply angrily, rising and moving away from him. So much for all those resolutions of mine, I think an instant later. There’s a silence.

  “There isn’t anyone else I could tell,” Nick says eventually in a quiet voice. “I’ve made a complete mess of my life. I couldn’t begin to discuss that with anyone else. You’re the only confessor candidate, Dan.… I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have come here.”

  I look at my friend, at Nick, who has never found it easy to speak about himself, at Nick, who is reticent, as expert at concealment as I am. I return to the table and sit opposite him. “Forgive me,” I say. “Tell me. I’m listening.”

  He begins to explain, and I watch the past alter. I see all the events that were invisible to me before, hidden behind lies—and behind my own self-absorption. Nick opens a door: I step into the sunlight of the Abbey cloister, but everything’s changed. The shadows are deeper; they’re not in the same, the expected, places.

  “It was when Finn told me about the baby,” Nick is saying. “You remember what you wrote in your letter to me? ‘The summer it all went wrong’? For me, it went wrong when Finn came to me and told me she thought she might be pregnant.

  “Can you imagine how I felt? We’d been so happy, so… I loved her so much, Dan. It began the previous Easter—suddenly I saw her differently, and I couldn’t… I just wanted to be with her, every moment of every day, and—after that, I used to visit her at Girton whenever I could. We were secretive, because Finn was so afraid of hurting you. We were always careful, but there was one occasion towards the end of the summer term, when… well, I won’t talk about that. I knew we shouldn’t have taken that risk—I was worrying about the consequences for weeks. Every time I came home, every time I came to the Abbey—it was so difficult for us to be alone, I hated all the lies and the subterfuge. Finn seemed unconcerned, she kept saying it would be all right—and then… Do you remember the night before their visit to Elde—that evening, when we ate outside, in the cloisters? We all stayed up very late, and we danced—and then later, Finn and I went to Nun Wood. We used to go there sometimes—it was one of the few places where we felt safe, where we knew no one could find us or surprise us. That night—it was such a beautiful night—we made love and—something, I don’t know what it was, the wine we’d drunk, or that music Julia played, or just the place, the silence of it, and the moonlight—I felt healed somehow, confident again, free of all anxiety. I thought: It’s going to be all right, I needn’t have worried.… And then Finn told me. It was two months, and she was certain—as certain as she could be—that she was carrying our baby.

  “She seemed overjoyed, Dan. But I couldn’t—my whole world began to fall apart, from that moment. That made me feel guilty. I was shocked—and I was terrified. I was still training. Finn hadn’t completed her degree. We had no money and nowhere to live. My parents had never liked Finn, I don’t know why—and I knew how they’d react.…”

  He hesitates. Had his parents heard rumors about Finn’s father? Did that explain their antipathy? I stare at those whorls in the wood of the table. I see myself plucking a scrap of Indian cotton off a broken branch in Nun Wood. I say nothing.

  “I couldn’t believe I’d let this happen, Dan. I didn’t know what to do—so I tried to look at it rationally. You know what I’m like—I like to plan things. I don’t like to ricochet around and make stupid decisions in a moment of panic. It seemed to me that these weren’t the best possible circumstances to bring a child into the world. I was working eighteen-hour days in London. Even if we married, and they let Finn stay at Girton, there was no way she could look after a baby on her own and complete a degree. I didn’t say that then. Finn might have been wrong; it could have been a false alarm—so I persuaded her to get some pregnancy tests done. Finn agreed to meet so I could give her the results. It was the day she came up to London. She left Stella wandering round shops and came to the hospital. The tests had come back positive.”

  “You arranged the tests?” I say.

  “Well, of course. I wasn’t going to let someone else do them. Why should that matter?”

  “Nothing. No reason. That’s not what Finn told me, that’s all.”

  How well Finn lied to me, I think. How expertly she had lied in that red-tabled café. It had never occurred to me that Finn could be so duplicitous. I can see that she wanted to shield me. I can also see that she must have known her lies altered my whole perspective. I could believe in Lucas as some cardboard seducer, but if I’d known Nick was her child’s father, my reaction would have been very different. Finn would have known that. I look at the grain on the table and think: Who is the woman I’ve loved?

  “When I saw Finn at the hospital—it was terrible, Dan. I’d had time to consider by then, and I’d planned what to say—but I’d been working impossible hours for a three-week stretch, and I’d scarcely slept.… Everything I tried to say—somehow I put it badly and clumsily. I just wanted to make Finn see that we had a choice. Of course, if she wanted to keep the baby, then I’d marry her—we’d always planned to marry. We’d been going to wait a year, until she’d completed her degree and I was fully qualified. I told her, if that was what she wanted, I’d do it, of course, and we’d manage—somehow we’d manage. But there was an alternative. I knew people who would help. Doctors. Good doctors. At ten weeks, there would have been no risk involved. I could easily have made the arrangements.”

  He passes his hand across his face. “I don’t know, Dan, what I truly felt. I was twenty-five. I was afraid—and I was angry, too, perhaps there was a part of me that blamed her. Christ alone knows… all I know is that I couldn’t find the right words, and whatever I said seemed to make the situation worse. I went on and on talking, trying to be sensible—and Finn said nothing. Not one word. She—her face changed, Dan. She didn’t cry or argue. She heard me out, and then she just stood up and told me not to trouble myself, she’d make her own arrangements. And
then she walked out.”

  I look at the day of that London visit. I watch myself, cleaning windows, and Mrs. Marlow telling me Nick has changed his plans, that he’ll be back on the afternoon train. I watch myself, later that day, searching for Maisie in the cool evening air. I’m standing by the old nunnery gates, scanning the fields for a blue dress. Then, at the top of Acre Lane, by Nun Wood, someone moves, and I realize it’s a man, that it’s Nick. I gesture toward him.… “I see,” I say finally. “I see now. So that’s why you came back to Wykenfield?”

  “Of course. I was frantic—I had to see her. I had to talk to her.”

  “And then Maisie jumped.”

  “And then Maisie jumped.” He looks away, his voice breaking. “And after that—it was hopeless, it was so utterly hopeless, Dan. I was in a state of desperation—Maisie was in a coma, I had to go back to London and work, Finn would scarcely speak to me. When her grandfather had a stroke—I thought she must see then how impossible this was. I kept pleading with her, to make up her mind, to decide what we should do, because we were running out of time. But she wouldn’t listen. What I still couldn’t see was that she’d made her decision. She’d made it in the hospital in London. I’d failed her; and Finn is ruthless—she doesn’t forgive failure. I was phoning her every day, pleading, writing, trying to persuade her to talk to me—and then I found out: She’d married Lucas.”

  “She didn’t warn you what she was going to do?”

  “No. You know what she’s like. She just did it. She said it was a business arrangement. Lucas was perfectly amenable. It meant she could continue with her degree.… Maybe she wanted to punish me. I still don’t know. She looked so ill, Dan. She was under terrible strain. She blamed herself for what had happened to Maisie. She said Maisie knew just how faithless she’d been, how she lied to you.… She wasn’t capable of thinking rationally, Dan, any more than I was. So I’ll never know for sure why she married him.… I suppose it doesn’t matter now, anyway.”

  “She could have married me. I asked her, Nick.”

  “I know you did. But Finn wouldn’t hurt you. She knew there was no possibility of hurting Lucas. He didn’t love her. I’m not even sure he was ever very interested in her.”

  “He drew her often enough.”

  “That’s different.”

  I stand up. I start walking around in this cold, now emptied room. So Finn had told him about my sad and inept proposal. Nick knew everything, all my secrets—and I knew nothing. I’d spent over twenty years walking around a maze of ignorance. All this had been happening to Nick when I was sharing a flat with him, and I’d never once guessed. If he was on edge, miserable, incommunicative, or irritable, I’d blamed the hours he worked and the nature of that work. A crisis in my friend’s life, and I’d seen nothing. Not that my blindness matters now, I think; it’s too late to alter anything. Finn is dying. It’s over.

  “And later,” I say, returning to the table. “I still don’t understand, Nick. Tell me what happened later.”

  “What is there to say? Finn wrote me out of her life. Once she’d married Lucas, she wouldn’t meet me or answer my phone calls or my letters. Even when the baby died…” He covers his face with his hands. “Nothing, Dan. She wouldn’t let me anywhere near her. She behaved as if it weren’t my child, as if I had no right to feel anything.… I went to see her once, one last time—she’d forbidden me to go, but I went anyway. I drove to Cambridge, and I went to that horrible flat Lucas had taken in Green Street. He wasn’t there—I think he very rarely was, by that time. Finn was alone—and I scarcely recognized her, Dan. The flat was filthy, and she’d let herself go—and I could see she was ill, that she needed help. She had that same expression on her face that Maisie used to have, do you remember? Blank—as if she were listening to someone else, as if she couldn’t hear you. And I tried—I tried, Dan, to talk to her, to ask her about the baby, it was a little boy, that’s all I knew, and—I broke down. I started weeping… and she just stared at me, and then she said: ‘Why are you crying? He’s dead. That’s what you wanted, isn’t it?’

  “Something happened then, Dan. I couldn’t forgive her for saying that. She told me to go, and I left, and—I hardened my heart, perhaps. I learned to harden my heart. I felt she was treating me unjustly. I resolved to put all of this behind me, to move on, remake my life.… And three years later, I married her sister. I’d always liked Julia. I’d always admired Julia—she’s a considerable woman. Once I was married to Julia, Finn forgave me. Make what you like of that.”

  “Forgave you when you married Julia? I don’t understand.”

  “Neither do I. But that’s what happened. Finn wrote to me for the first time in three years within one month of my marriage. We met again, in secret. I didn’t tell Julia, and—I won’t say any more. Within hours—hours, Dan—I was right back where I started. I can’t—somehow I can’t—if Finn beckons, I go. That’s just the way it is. I’ve despised myself and hated myself, I’ve tried to change, but I can’t, somehow I can’t break with her.”

  “Finn knows that?”

  “Of course. She’s always known it. We’ve both always known it.” He hesitates. “So don’t ask me about my marriage, Dan. Don’t ask me about Julia. I’ve lied to her and deceived her, and I’ve done it for twenty years—on and off, throughout our marriage. Large lies and cheap ones, all the rubbish bin of adultery—alibis, hotel rooms, secret letters, and phone calls. I’ve lied to Finn, too. I’ve been faithless to everyone—to my wife, to Finn, to my children, and to myself. I can’t undo any of it. All I know, the one thing I know, is that I’m here now, and I’ll stay at the Abbey for as long as Finn needs me. I’ll stay for the end. I’ve loved Finn for most of my life. And it’s the last thing I can do for her.”

  There is a silence. I think of Julia, standing on my doorstep, demanding to know the truth, weeping in my arms. I think of Tom, troubled with nightmares, anxious and afraid, trying to believe the protective lies his father had told him. I look at my friend, the man I always thought of as disciplined, judicious, principled, as everything I was not. “Christ, Nick,” I say before I can stop myself. “What a mess. What a fucking awful mess.”

  “I know. My fault. I got myself there.”

  “I wouldn’t say that. I’d say you had some assistance.”

  “Don’t blame Finn. Don’t do that, Dan.”

  I’m not blaming Finn. I’m not blaming anyone. I’ve loved someone I didn’t begin to know, a creature of my own stubborn invention. I can see now how lost to me Finn is, how finally and irretrievably lost. I think: I never knew her. I’ve loved a woman who never existed.

  I look at Nick, who presumably does know her. I’m numb with pain and disbelief. I can’t bear to look at the past anymore. I’m trying to make my mind function, to see beyond the present, to imagine what will happen to Nick when Finn is gone. I want to ask him: What will you do—afterward? Will you go back to Julia? Will she take you back? What will happen to your children, to my godson? I can’t ask him questions like that, not now. My heart goes out to Nick—not that my heart, sympathy, or concern is of much use to anyone.

  There is a long silence then. I’m still listening to it. Nick, his head bent in his hands, has begun to weep. Tears are catching. I hate to see a grown man weep. I put my arms around his shoulders awkwardly. I say some of those inadequate things I’d learned at Joe’s bedside, those platitudes we all know to be meaningless but which give comfort anyway. When Nick is calmer, I reach my hand across the table to him. I can see my hand held out and his hand grasping it.

  “Listen, Nick,” I say finally. “You’re a fine doctor. You saved Maisie’s life—if it hadn’t been for you, she’d have died at the Abbey long before that ambulance got there. You’ve saved many people’s lives; that’s what you do, that’s what you’ve devoted your life to doing—and you shouldn’t forget that. You’ve always been a loyal friend to me, the one person I could turn to. You’re a good friend, a good doctor, a good man, and a go
od father.… Maybe you haven’t been such a good husband.…” Nick raises his head, meets my eyes, smiles wanly. “But you’re not the first unfaithful husband in human history, you’re not some stupid Lothario, some Casanova—and your marriage can’t have been that bad, or Julia wouldn’t have put up with it for a day, let alone twenty years. It is possible to love two women at a time—at least I think it is, I think it is; I can see it might be… and of all the women I know, Julia’s one of the few who might actually understand that. That’s for the two of you to resolve. Meanwhile, you shouldn’t be here, talking to me. So I’ll just say this: You’re not alone. Been there, done that, got every single one of the fucking T-shirts. However guilty you feel, or ashamed, you don’t need to say anything or explain anything to me. I know all about infidelity. And guilt. Betraying yourself, betraying others—you’re talking to a master, Nick, a fucking PhD. Now drink that whiskey. Then go back to Finn. You shouldn’t be here.”

  Nick did drink it. He grasped my offered hand. We talked quietly for a short while, and then, not long afterward, he left. We embraced in the doorway. Odd, how weakness brings people closer, how it knocks the barriers down. I’d known Nick all my life, and I’d never felt closer to him, more assured of our friendship, than I did at that moment. I was glad of that. Our final parting was a good one. Something’s salvaged from the wreckage.

  [ twenty-eight ]

  Shredder

  I missed that last train. I took the first train the next morning. After Nick left, I didn’t want to think, so I turned on the television I’d given Joe. I channel-hopped. My fingers danced on the remote buttons. I watched armies gathering in a desert, and night strikes, and laser-guided smart weapons that could travel three million miles and enter a building through the smallest of windows. I’d known a war was imminent, forgotten it for six weeks; now I watched its commencement. I watched bits of old movies; Casablanca was on. I watched them prepare to round up all the usual suspects. I watched game shows and quizzes and ads and interviews with addicts; I watched dancers and comedians and endangered species and polar bears giving birth and sitcoms and aliens star-trekking. Then I went and lay down on Joe’s stripped bed and watched the moon rise and decline. I listened to the mice inside and the owls outside, the owls waiting to hunt them.