The Sisters Mortland

by Sally Beauman

  “I’m sorry?” She was looking at me blankly. I could sense hostility.

  “Just a quote. Dan was very young then—not that much older than you were. At that age, the heart’s resilient.”

  “Yes, well, I was never much good with quotes. That stupid school I went to. Unlike you, I’m not bookish. Of course, Dan never stopped telling me how clever you were, how the two of you liked the same books, the same poetry—”

  “That was Finn, not me. You’re confusing me with my sister.”

  “Really? I don’t think so. Never mind—I’m glad you see it like that, Julia. I was worried you might be upset.”

  “Upset that you had an affair with Dan? No. Why should I be?”

  “Well, I always felt there was something between you two. It was obvious. I could see it in that hospital ward. I could see the way he looked at you. Dan always denied it, of course—though I asked him and asked him. I can’t bear not knowing the truth, I’ve always hated it. It’s not that I’m jealous—I’m not remotely jealous, and never have been. I just like people to be straight with me—”

  “Then I’ll be straight,” I replied, rising. “There was no love affair between Dan and me. On the whole, Dan disliked me—as many people do.”

  I hesitated; I could still sense hostility. I said, “I’m pushed for time. Shall we go and look at those rooms now?”

  Veronica led the way upstairs, along great processional corridors, under the gaze of ancestors. Her pace was brisk. I followed more slowly. I was thinking about evidence: how you assemble it, how you compare it, how you weigh the statements of the various witnesses. The subject was on my mind anyway: I was still planning what I’d say when the trial took place and how I could ensure that my version of a crime came to be the accepted one.

  I was also thinking of the evidence Dan had given me and the new evidence gleaned from reading Maisie’s diary, or journal, or last communication—I wasn’t sure, really, how to classify it. Now I was confronted with another version of past events. I didn’t believe Veronica, but I was saddened that, with Dan so recently dead, she should tell me this now. If I could have believed her motive was purely self-protective, that she wanted to share with me a fabrication she found comforting, I could have accepted it. But that wasn’t entirely the case. Veronica, I sensed, harbored a grudge; she had hoped her revelation might hurt me. Not the first time that’s happened. Many women dislike me.

  “These rooms…,” Veronica said, coming to a halt at the far end of the west wing. “All these bedrooms and dressing rooms. Look at them, Julia. Aren’t they hideous?” She flung open a door. “This used to be Edmund’s. The ‘master bedroom, ’ as ghastly estate agents like to say. Except a house like Elde doesn’t have such a thing. They’re all master bedrooms. And there are at least thirty-five of them, maybe more. Perhaps one day I should count them.”

  I went into dead Edmund’s bedroom. Veronica’s manner was making me uneasy, and this room deepened that unease. I couldn’t see why she should describe it as hideous; it was certainly not that. Well proportioned and light; paneled walls, graceful windows. The room seemed pleasant enough to me. I could see no evidence of Edmund here; this space had the anonymity of a guest room. A four-poster bed with old silk hangings—rather dark, perhaps, a dark green silk brocade. Two chests, one of them almost certainly Chippendale. I couldn’t see anything wrong here.

  “Tweeds,” Veronica said in an angry way, throwing open a cupboard door and then slamming it. “He wore tweeds winter and summer. They’re all still here. I must be mad—why didn’t I sort this out? I’m going to pack them up and send them to Oxfam.”

  “I don’t see that this room needs touching,” I said. “It’s a conventional room—but you’d expect that at Elde. It’s quite beautiful in its way, Veronica. I can’t see why you’d want to alter it. Rooms like this are best left alone.”

  “You think so? What about this?” And, after opening a communicating door that led through an anteroom, she took me into another bedroom, with a more delicate four-poster. “This was mine. Not any more. But when I was married, when Edmund was alive, this was mine. What do you think of this, Julia?”

  “Veronica, I don’t understand,” I began. “This is a fine room. You can’t possibly want to alter this.…” I looked around me: eighteenth-century hand-painted Chinese wallpaper, now faded, still exquisite. A deep bay window overlooking the park and the lake, a bay with a window seat. Fine furniture, fine rugs… I made a slow circuit of the room. I could see nothing wrong. I looked at the hangings on the bed, which were perhaps too dark a red, a gloomy crimson. I looked at the window, the walls. Veronica was watching me. I was beginning to understand that decor was not what she wanted to show me, when, as I turned, I saw the back of the door through which we had entered. That door communicated with her husband’s room: It had five bolts on it.

  I crossed back into Edmund’s bedroom and came to a halt. I saw what I should have seen at once but had missed among the welter of architectural and decorative detail. On the table on the far side of the bed was a small photograph, black and white, in a silver frame. I went across and picked it up. It was a photograph of Maisie, aged about nine, taken here at Elde. She was standing in the long walk, between Violet’s celebrated herbaceous borders, those borders where Maisie had identified ten plants by their Latin names and been rewarded with a ten-shilling note by Edmund. “Right, Maisie, where now?” “We could go to the Wilderness again,” she had replied to him.

  “He was obsessed with her,” Veronica said. She had entered the room behind me. “Completely obsessed. He wanted me to be her.”

  There was a silence. The room felt hot and close. On the picture, my sister had written: “To Edmund from Maisie.” The handwriting, round and firm, was unmistakable. “Is this what you wanted to show me, Veronica?” I asked. I felt sick and uncertain. “Is this what I’m supposed to change? Beyond my powers—and it’s a little late, don’t you think?”

  “I suppose it is.” She gave a shrug. “I don’t really know why I brought you up here—not now. It was stupid. You’re right. These rooms should be left as they are. I shouldn’t change anything. Leave them to the moths—this damn house is infested with moths; they eat their way through everything. Moths and grubs and eggs, eat, breed, eat—look.” She slapped her hand down on the dark green silk bedcover. She shook the curtains at the head of the bed. Five or six tiny clothes moths flew out, fluttered in the stripes of sunlight from the windows, spiraled, alighted, and crawled into the dark canopy over the bed. Clothes moths: Tineola bisselliella, I heard Maisie whisper.

  “Violet knew what Edmund was like,” Veronica said. “She thought I was so stupid and innocent, I’d think nothing was wrong. A grown man worshipping a little girl—and not even a normal girl. I can’t forgive Violet for that, Julia. I always promised myself that I’d pay her back—but she’s dead now.” She gave the curtain one final, violent shake. One last silvery moth fluttered into the sunlight. Veronica attempted to catch it and failed. She clapped her hands on air.

  She drew in a deep breath and seemed to calm herself. “You’re right,” she went on in a flat voice, “I should leave everything exactly as it is. Let’s go downstairs. It’s such a lovely day. We could have tea outside.”

  “I don’t think so.” I replaced the photograph. “I told you, I’m going to see Maisie, and I don’t want to be late.”

  “I can’t imagine it would make much difference,” she replied, and I could hear the gibe in her voice—it was now obvious. “Does time make any difference to Maisie? Does she know if it’s afternoon or morning? She can’t even recognize you.”

  “The nuns will expect me, even if Maisie doesn’t. I’ll go now, Veronica.”

  I turned out of the room and walked back down the corridors. I was walking rapidly. Veronica caught up with me on the main stairs and took me by the arm. “You can’t go yet,” she said. “You haven’t told me about Dan. You promised to tell me what happened.”

 
; “Veronica, must I? My son and I were outside Dan’s house, and—”

  “Why were you there?”

  “We were on our way to visit Dan. He was my son’s godfather. He lived quite close to us in London.…” I walked on down the stairs. I walked fast, Veronica following.

  “Your son’s godfather? I didn’t know that. Did you visit Dan often?”

  “No, I didn’t. Veronica, I really must go—”

  “I used to write to him, you know.” She came to a halt at the foot of the stairs. “I never sent the letters, but I wrote to him for years. I had to tell someone what it was like, living here, being married to Edmund. I still have the letters. I could show them to you.”

  “Veronica, what would that achieve?” I hesitated. I was longing to leave, wishing I’d never come. But I could see she was close to tears. “You’d only regret it afterwards,” I went on more gently. “They’re private letters, and they should stay private, don’t you think?”

  “Be discreet, you mean?”

  “That’s one way of putting it, yes.” I turned away.

  “How certain you sound. You’re always certain about everything, aren’t you, Julia? So certain, so superior, and so cold. You don’t know what unhappiness is, do you?”

  “If I did, I wouldn’t advertise that fact. Look, Veronica, I’m sorry, but I’m going to be late. I really have to leave now.” I pushed her aside and crossed to the front door.

  “I want you to meet Eddie. I told him you’d be here. Julia, don’t go.…” She ran after me and caught up with me on the steps outside. I tried to turn away, but before I could do so, she saw my face and she saw my tears.

  “I knew it,” she said, catching hold of my arm. “You were lying to me earlier. Dan would never tell me, and now you won’t. I have to understand. You can’t hide it from me—it’s written all over your face. There was something between you and Dan, wasn’t there?”

  “Very well; yes, there was,” I replied. “We made love once. That’s it. That’s all. Once. One fuck, Veronica. End of story.”

  I shook her off and walked away fast. I scrambled into my car and drove fast, down that three-mile avenue. I kept expecting the gates, and then they weren’t there. When I finally reached them, I nearly collided with another car, also driving at speed, which had just entered them. I slammed on the brakes and slewed to a halt in spitting gravel.

  I wasn’t wearing my seat belt, and I was thrown forward hard. My face slammed against the arm I’d thrown up to protect myself. My arm smashed against the steering wheel. I straightened up slowly. Where were the gates? I was now facing in the opposite direction. I looked at this wrong direction in a dazed way. My car must have spun right round. My face hurt, but there didn’t seem to be any serious damage. Just bruising, I thought. Just bruising. Then an angry voice said, “What the fuck were you doing—you nearly killed us both,” and I looked up and saw Dan walking toward me.

  I managed to open the door and climb out. I couldn’t stand very well. The sky was dizzying. I was watching Dan walk toward me; he was wearing old blue jeans and a white shirt, and he was painfully young. I watched him walking toward me, that Dan of our last summer at the Abbey. His face came alive with concern as he recognized me. I took a step toward him and stumbled. He caught me. As his arms came around me, I heard him say my name; he said, “Julia.”

  He said, “Julia? It is you, isn’t it? Christ, I’m so sorry. That was a near thing. Can you walk? Lean on me—let me help you.”

  So I leaned on him, and he helped me across to his car and helped me to sit on its leather seat, with my feet still on the drive. “Lean forward,” he said. “You’re as white as a sheet. You’re not going to faint, are you?”

  I bent forward obediently. I could see Dan’s shoes, and they puzzled me. I’d never seen Dan wear loafers like these. I looked at his shoes and the narrow cuffs of his faded jeans. I straightened up; the sky was normalizing. The right height, the same build, the exact same hair and eyes. “I think I’d better take you back to the house,” he said. He crouched down so our faces were on a level. “Julia?… Mrs. Marlow? You look—did you hit your head? You’re not concussed? I think you’re in shock. Please, don’t cry. I’ve got a phone somewhere. Let me call the house. Christ—this was my fault, too. We were both driving too fast. But I was late, and I promised to get back in time to see you—”

  “We’ve seen each other now.” I took his hand. “Don’t call. Give me one minute.”

  Well, I have my religion, the same religion as yours, Dan—and in a minute or so I did recover. I looked at your son—and I knew that he was your son at once. He was like your twin, Dan. I could do the calculation now: This young man, in his last year at Oxford, reading Politics, Philosophy, and Economics, as Veronica had informed me over lunch, this young man would be twenty-three this coming June. Conceived in the dog days of August, at Violet’s Eaton Square outpost, by an insistent Veronica. No wonder she’d been so anxious for me to stay and meet her son—she had wanted me to see this proof of her lasting bond with Dan. She’d have known I could be in no possible doubt as to who fathered him.

  I remembered what you wrote, Dan. August in London: a blue scent and a chime of bracelets. I looked at this boy. I wished he could know who his father was. I wished he could know about you, about Wykenfield, Joe and Bella, and Ocean. I would have liked to give him those stories—but I knew I had no right to do so. Revelations like that can harm—and I wanted no harm here. Everything you, Dan, once wished my son, I wished yours. I wished him all the impossibilities: With all my heart, I wished him lasting happiness, absence of damage and pain, and true fulfillment.

  It felt powerful, that wish, intensely powerful. How strange. I stood up, thanked him, and told him this near collision was my fault; that I’d be able to drive in a moment or so, and I had to go shortly—I was visiting my sister.

  We stood by my car, looking across the park, on a still spring evening. In the distance, I could see the lake and the small temple to Artemis. The young man by my side, hands thrust into the pockets of his jeans, looked at this idyll in a frowning way. It did not appear to lift his heart; he showed no sign of pleasure in its ownership. Her firebrand son, Veronica had said, would inherit at twenty-five.

  “What are you going to do with it all?” I said as we stood there. I watched a swan move across the mirror of the lake. “All of this, what will you do with it?”

  “Christ knows.” He gave an impatient gesture. “Christ alone knows. Give it to the National Trust is my latest idea. I don’t want this around my neck.” He gave me a sidelong glance and smiled as his father once did. “Keep that under your hat. It’s just a thought—but for God’s sake, don’t tell my mother.”

  “Could you do that?” I asked. He was very young, I told myself.

  “I think so,” he replied. “Maybe. I’ve seen what it does to people.”

  “And I’ve seen what a lack of money can do to people.”

  “Oh, money.” He smiled. “I’m not worried about that. I’ve got brains. I can always earn money. As you’ve done, Julia.”

  I could hear Dan saying that—and he’d have given me the same sharp glance that his son did. I said: “I’d better go, Eddie. I’m going to be late.”

  I wished him good-bye. I turned away to my car. I drove out of the gates and concentrated on the road ahead of me. I didn’t look back; I knew what I’d see if I did. My life, in the rearview mirror: I had no wish to examine that route or to consider its missed turnings. I had to be calm when I saw Maisie. If you are not calm, she seems to sense it, and it can cause difficulties. I drove the fifteen miles to the care home without incident, arriving there later than planned, on the edge of a spring evening.

  The nuns had just finished celebrating Vespers when I arrived. I waited in the hall by the BVM statue. I rested my hand on her blue plaster dress. The nuns told me that Maisie was outside in the gardens. She was at work on her latest obsession, they said. I knew these obsessions of Maisie’s.
For several years, she had been obsessed with the color red and would spend hour upon hour, red crayon in hand, coloring sheets of paper. The color had to be even; it had to extend to every edge of the paper. If she was interrupted when there were still gaps in her coloring, there were tantrums.

  After the red period, there had been a blue period, then a black. Then it was parallel lines, then grids. The obsession with grids lasted a long time, almost five years. All the red, blue, and black works, all the parallels and grids, were kept in careful folders in Maisie’s bedroom. Now, the nuns told me, pointing me in the direction of the terrace, now it was circles. And what a splendid thing that was, they said; it kept her contented for hours at a time. Maisie’s muscular control had become better with the passing of years, and she could now draw very good circles freehand. They weren’t as perfect as those you would achieve with a compass, of course, but they were grand things. Did I know, one of them said, that the Japanese masters used to begin learning to draw in precisely this way? That was their apprenticeship. Only when they had mastered this technique were they considered sufficiently skilled to move on to more complex drawing. It might be years before they drew objects, let alone human beings.

  Maisie will never move on to more complex drawing. I walked across the terrace and onto the lawns. This building, now outgrown by the order, is a pleasant place. It could only be England. It is reminiscent of the Abbey. The lawns overlook green fields, a narrow valley, and the river that runs through it. So still was the evening that I could hear the sound of the river as I walked. I came to a halt beside Maisie, who was seated in her wheelchair at a small table. It had been placed so it caught the evening sun and was sheltered by budding rosebushes. She was bending over her work, a pencil in her hand. A stack of pages, each with one near perfect circle, lay next to her hand. Pages of circles, of naughts, of nothings. I wondered how many hours had passed while she did this.