I always thought that because I supported him and enabled him to stay in his crappy waiter’s job in an effort to gain restaurant experience, life with me was too much to give up. Failing to leave even after I refused him a child felt like proof of that. That life was easier with me. But what I realise now is that life would be easier without me. It is not easy to love a person who is cold, or who always shuts you out. It is not easy to stick around when you want so much more than they are prepared to give. Yet he did. ‘I need to get home as soon as possible,’ I tell him. Perhaps there is something there that can be saved.
I hear him shuffling along in his sloppy slippers, the sound of the computer waking up. ‘Just a minute,’ he says, the ruffle of his chin against the receiver. The keys click as his fingers strike them, entering the search. ‘There is only one more flight today. Hang on, let me open it up. It’s at 9.45 p.m. You will arrive at 11.15. Is that OK?’
‘It’s fine. Book it.’ The relief is instant, knowing I will be away from here soon. I glance out of the window while he makes the booking, towards the well-maintained lawn. Today there is a table out there, a few sad-looking refreshments on top for those who choose to return to the house.
‘That’s it. Booked. Shall I email you the reference?’
‘No, read it out to me. I don’t have my phone, so I’ll check in at the desk.’ He reads out the number and I write it down on a notepad embossed with my father’s initials.
‘What will you do between now and then?’ he asks.
‘I will get my things together and call a taxi. The sooner I leave, the—’ I don’t finish my sentence, because I spot something half-slipping out from a cupboard next to the desk. A face. A face I recognise.
‘Rini?’
‘The better,’ I finish. ‘The sooner the better.’ I reach down and pick up the photograph. The face of my mother stares back. It could be me, looking back in time. We are so alike, no wonder Miss Endicott felt compelled to ask if I had family in Horton. Must have been like seeing a ghost when I turned up.
‘Rini, are you all right?’
‘Yes,’ I say, not even sure if I know the real answer to that question.
I open the door to the cupboard and find a row of old blue photograph albums, lined up in date order. One of them has fallen over; I stand it up to see the spine, which reads 1978. I finger my way along the rest and find that three from the sequence are missing: 1984, 1985 and 1986. I flop to the floor with the phone balanced on my shoulder and leaf through the fragile pages of 1978, old glue falling away like dust. The faces of history gaze back at me.
‘What is it?’ I hear Antonio say.
‘Nothing,’ I reply as I close the album. ‘I think they are coming back. Let me go and get ready. We’ll talk later, before the flight.’
I hang up and reopen the album at the desk. It shows my parents in their younger days. Outside the Louvre before the pyramid was built. Boating on a gondola in what I assume is Venice. Happy, unlined faces, free from anguish and pain. Our happiest times were in youth, when our family was young, when our memories were fresh. There are empty white spaces in the album where images once sat but have since been lost. Then a picture of them with a baby. Their firstborn. Must be Elle.
I grab another album, 1983, the year after I was born. I run my fingers along the faded gold lettering, then open the cover. The first image is of Elle standing at a table with a birthday cake on top of it. The fondant glistens and the candles flare bright, blurring the image. I count five flickering flames. There are other children at her side, but there is distance between her and them. Not one of them is smiling, and in fact, one is crying, his arms raised in the air, asking to be taken away. I push aside the thought that it means something.
I turn the pages, image after image of a growing family. Then it is me and Elle together. Elle running along chasing a dog, the one that she would later kill, me in the background on a push-along tricycle. Bright yellow seat, curls cascading over my chubby face. I flick to the next photo. It is the same wintry scene, a white sky, frost on the ground. Only this time I am on the floor, pushed from my tricycle by the looks of things. Elle is snatching it away from me, and the dog is jumping in the background. I smile at the idea of us together, just being a family. Domesticity, something I never experienced. Not first hand, anyway. I only saw it as an observer, a watcher from the sidelines. But here in this image, with my face red from the cold, my eyes wet with tears because my sister has stolen my tricycle, I see the normality of family. We were that, once. I turn the page, hoping the story continues overleaf, but the sleeve is blank. The next picture has been lost.
I hear the front door open. I push the album back in the cupboard and make it into the corridor before anybody sees me slip the fallen picture of my mother up my sleeve. It is Frank who arrives first, and I breathe a sigh of relief.
‘Irini. We were wondering where you went.’
‘I left early. Can you please take me to the airport?’
‘You are leaving already?’ He looks back towards the front door, expecting company.
‘It’s for the best. Really it is.’ He nods as if he understands. ‘In the next ten minutes?’
His shoulders drop with disappointment, and I know he is about to let me down. ‘I’m sorry, Irini, but that won’t be possible. In a couple of hours, once the wake is finished, is fine, but if I leave now, Mr Harringford will string me up. Today of all days.’ He takes a step closer. ‘Anyway, you should stay. It wouldn’t be right to leave now.’
Embarrassed, I reluctantly agree, and soon enough the house fills with guests. What’s a couple more hours? Elle has stopped crying, and is now playing hostess. She has Joyce running back and forth in uncomfortable court shoes. I look down at my pumps and wish guiltily that she was wearing them instead of me. There is tea and coffee, champagne, sherry, whisky. Anything you want, as if we have arrived at Willy Wonka’s. I knock back a couple of whiskies, linger on an old Queen Anne chair in the corner of the drawing room. The hit from the alcohol is fast because I haven’t eaten anything for almost twenty-four hours. Feels good, too. But still, in the hope of staying clear-headed, I stand up, pick up a cocktail stick of cheese and pineapple, quickly followed by a square of quiche Lorraine.
It seems nobody is interested in talking to me. And I am grateful, because their sly over-the-shoulder glances are enough to unsettle me. I remember that Elle told me everybody would know who I am, and I realise she was right. How could they not when I look so much like the woman they are here to mourn? So I slip into the study and grab the flight-booking details, which I left there in my haste, before retreating to my bedroom, whisky in hand, to wait out the last couple of hours.
I set the tumbler on the bedside table and shove anything of mine into my bag, including the image of my mother that I took from the study, and the sherry, which I have decided doesn’t need to be returned. They owe me something, and since it is difficult to give back a whole life, I settle on the remainder of a bottle and mark off part of the debt as paid. I slide the framed butterflies into the top of my bag. But now that everything is packed, the room seems a little more dead than it was before. Like I am being removed twice over.
I hear the creak of the stairs, followed by the rattling of the door handle. I do up the zip and turn around just as the door opens.
‘Frank tells me that you want to leave,’ Elle stutters as she inches through.
‘Yes.’ I’m less unnerved by her now, and I can’t feel her like before. ‘I’m ready to go home. Back to my life.’
‘When?’
‘Tonight. Plus you should know I’ll be changing my number tomorrow. This time, don’t search for me.’ I need a clean start, another chance at life away from her. ‘I can’t play these games with you any more, Elle.’ I sit down on the edge of the bed, close to tears, spurred on by Dutch courage. I look at her for the first time since she arrived. ‘We have nothing left to say to each other.’
I have spent my life believ
ing that it was here that I belonged. Now that I know that isn’t true, I have to get away. I have to stop dreaming of what this house and these people could once have been. I have what I needed from the past. My mother wanted me all along, just like I used to wish for. Anything else is superfluous, Elle included. I’ll trade knowing the rest for a future, one where I can look back and say that perhaps I don’t understand everything that happened, but I can accept it was done for love. Learning any more than that is a risk. I can settle for what I know now.
‘You really mean that, don’t you?’ She looks visibly deflated. ‘You said that once before, remember?’ She sits down next to me, my bag between us.
‘I’m sure I said it many times, Elle.’ I am calm, the tears stemmed. I feel like something is over.
‘But you used to say it without meaning it.’ She huddles inside a big black cardigan that she has thrown over the slick dress she wore to the funeral. I can hear Joyce downstairs in the kitchen, my father’s voice bidding farewell to the final mourners. ‘There was only one other time when you actually meant it.’
‘When?’
‘When I killed my dog. After that, you said you didn’t want to see me again.’
I think back to the satisfaction I felt when I overheard Aunt Jemima on the telephone only months after our failed reunion, telling my father how he had to expect this kind of thing from Elle. That he should never have allowed her to be around animals. How pleased I was that my parents’ lives were falling apart, all because of Elle and one dead dog.
‘Did you really kick it to death?’
‘No. I stamped on it and cut it open.’
To hear it from her own lips, so matter-of-fact, is as scary as it is exhilarating. It really happened, I think. ‘I was pleased you killed that dog because I thought you had managed to upset our parents.’
‘Good, because I did it for you. Aunt Jemima had moved house and they wouldn’t let me see you again. I did it to upset them. Afterwards she wanted to send me away again so the doctors could try to fix me, but he wouldn’t allow it. Not after what happened the time before.’ She stops for a moment and glances at the window, stares off into the distance. ‘Shame for you, really. You might have got your wish if they had. Her too.’
‘What time before? What wish? What are you talking about?’
‘In the mental home. The nut house,’ she says, rapping her knuckles against her temple. ‘They have drugs that make you say stuff that you would normally keep secret.’ She fiddles a piece of dirt out from underneath her bitten fingernail. ‘They got it all down on record the first time I was in there, before our parents could get me back. Lucky what happened to me really. For me, at least. Not so good for you, I suppose, but otherwise I’m not sure they would have ever let me out.’
‘You’re not making any sense to me, Elle.’ I think I am past caring. ‘Except for the fact that you really did kill the dog. I always wondered.’
‘Yes, of course I did. But you knew that already. That’s why you told Aunt Jemima that you didn’t want to see me again. That’s what they told me, anyway.’
‘I don’t remember.’
‘Could be another one of their lies. That’s what I always hoped. When I found you a few years later, you did seem pleased to see me. Maybe they were lying after all.’ What I realise is that she always needed me to want her just as much as I needed her to want me. She turns to me and grips my arms. Tightly to the extent that it hurts. But it is not anger on her face, it’s desperation. ‘Stay.’
I shake my head. ‘I have to leave.’
‘But not yet you don’t. If you really mean it, about never wanting to see me again, just do one more thing for me. I need you, Rini. We just buried my mother. I feel so alone. Let’s go out together now. A quick drink somewhere nearby. It’s still early.’
‘I have a flight to catch.’
‘The place I’m thinking of is ever so close. We can get back here, grab your things, and still be at the airport on time. I promise. We’ll say goodbye there.’ She tries a smile, unable to hide how she really feels, which makes me pity her for the first time in my life. She leans into me, strokes my face. ‘It will be exciting; like Hollywood or something.’ She is nearly crying when she says it.
‘This morning you told me that I was free of you. That you would never look for me again. That you knew how our father felt, and that he would still choose you, like everything was better without me.’ I can feel the tears coming on too. ‘What’s changed?’
‘Just one drink. A last goodbye. One good final memory.’ She looks pathetically broken as she clings to me. ‘Together.’ The limited past we share tells me that nothing good can come from this. But how can I say no? Today of all days, how can I run from her again?
‘Just one drink. And from an unopened bottle,’ I warn her. ‘Don’t think I can’t remember what you did to that poor girl at my school.’ She looks hurt when I bring up Margot Wolfe, and shakes her head.
‘I wasn’t even there. I was somewhere else.’
‘It was your plan. You knew what would happen. I was too young to understand.’
‘You were old enough to know the consequences of what you were doing, and more than pleased with the result.’ She enjoys watching as I squirm, remembering what we did. ‘It was one of the best things that happened to you at school. But as if I would do the same to you. You’re my sister.’
18
We leave the house at 5 p.m. and head into town, me back in my FEEL jumper, Elle in a snazzy pair of leggings and a T-shirt that might or might not be designed for exercise. I am ready and braced for any possible erratic responses as we set off, gripping the door handle before we even leave the driveway. Yet she is calm and mild-mannered. In fact, she is nothing like Elle.
By the time we park up at the pub in the nearby border town of Hawick, it is approaching 5.20, the wind blowing, a summer storm brewing. She has parked and changed her mind three times, but eventually she settles on the Bourtree. She is quiet and reserved, almost to the point of unresponsive, like she knows something is over too. I encourage her along, pointing out a table just inside, and she follows. I suggest bottled beer and she agrees. I tell her that I thought it was a nice service at the church, and she smiles and says the reverend is a kind person. Throughout she burns matches from a box bearing the name of the pub. She strikes one, watches the flame, waits until it is burnt all the way to the end before dropping it in an empty glass. She tests her tolerance of the fire, drawing patterns with the flame across her hand, occasionally catching the down on her arm, filling the air with the scent of burnt hair. I have no idea who the impostor in the chair opposite me is, but it makes me nervous.
The silence between us is difficult, and I can’t think of anything mundane to fill it. So I plump for something real. ‘Will you be all right with our father once I leave?’ It’s a dangerous question, because if she tells me no, I’m not sure what I will say. It’s not like I would ask her to come to London with me. It’s not like I’m planning to come back and check in on her.
‘I think so,’ she says, and I breathe a sigh of relief. She spots it, pretends not to. ‘It will be better now, anyway. I think once he gets over it, he too will find it easier.’
‘What will he find easier?’
‘Her not being around. It was always strained between them. Mainly because it was strained between me and her.’ She looks up at me and sees that I am waiting for clarification. She drops a lit match on to a beer mat and watches as it starts to smoke. I bash it out with the edge of my fist, but it’s like she doesn’t even notice. ‘She blamed me, you see. She always knew there was something wrong with me. It’s not like it’s a secret.’ She lights another match and we both watch it burn down as she holds it steady between us.
I maintain a silence. I pity her beaten resolve, quashed by her own insight into the nature of who she is. ‘You said something earlier that I didn’t know about,’ I say. She shrugs, inviting me to elaborate. ‘That you went into
a clinic. Why did they send you away?’
She looks surprised, like I am the one with the problem. ‘Why did they send me to the nut house? Because they didn’t know what to do. They thought the doctors would help. So they put me in there as a show of action, to make them feel better about things. Anyway, whatever. It’s a long time ago, not that long after you were born. But let’s not sit here all night talking about that like somebody died.’
She jumps from her seat and heads to the bar. I see her making a phone call before she comes back with two more drinks. Just like she always did, trying to lure me in. Hardly a surprise.
‘I said only one, and from a bottle. I’m not drinking that. Plus, you’re driving.’
She rolls her eyes at me in the classic Elle way, as if I am just a miserly fun-spoiler. A party-pooper. I’ve seen this look many times before. She takes a sip from both drinks as if to prove they haven’t been spiked. I take the one closest to her, give it a sniff. I don’t know what I am looking for, but it just smells like whisky.
‘Come on. We’re drinking to your Elle-free future,’ she says without a hint of irony, her unblinking eyes fixed upon mine. If her comment was designed to make me feel bad, or her stare to make me uncomfortable, it’s worked. She is holding up her glass so that we might raise a toast. I strike her glass with mine. I sip cautiously and see that it tastes fine. As if I would do the same to you. You’re my sister. ‘It’s a good one,’ I say, hoping the compliment on her whisky choice can sweeten her mood.
‘I know it is. This is Scotland, and I know a good whisky when I see one, just like I know a person who likes a good drink. You and he are not so different. Go on, knock it back.’ I humour her and swallow the drink. ‘That’s better,’ she says.
We pass the next half an hour talking about our shared experiences, of which there are few. Of course we discuss the dead dog, the fact that it happened, and that indeed the white cross at the end of the lawn represents not only where it was buried, but also where it died. She raises some of the more questionable things she got me to do. She tries to bring up the last time we saw each other before I left for university, but I dodge the subject by mentioning the time she jumped from the aqueduct. For some reason I find it amusing, and instead of reprimanding her for it, I finally see the funny side. I laugh as I remember the horror on the face of the man who pulled her out, jabbing at her naked body with a fallen tree branch. The leaf that clung to her eyelid like a pirate’s patch. Haha! I’m actually giggling out loud, and amidst my humour I realise the trick. I look down; her whisky remains untouched.
If You Knew My Sister Page 13