David's Sisters

by Forsyth, Moira;

  In a week, the anaesthetic out of her system, healthy flesh healing, Marion was doing everything just as usual. ‘She’s marvellous,’ her friends said to Eleanor, to Fergus, and ‘yes,’ they answered ‘she’s coping so well,’ Marion did really feel fit; she had put off thinking about the treatment, would face that in the New Year.

  ‘I could manage Christmas fine,’ she said to Fergus, ‘but Eleanor has set her heart on all of us going to Pitcairn. What do you think?’

  ‘I’m easy either way, but there’s no sense in your overdoing things. It’ll make a change, eh? And Mother’s all set for Dundee now.’

  ‘Right. Let’s just do it then.’

  She threw herself into preparations for Christmas. David, now at Pitcairn, phoned regularly. He had discovered the ‘conference call’, and he and Marion and Eleanor were all on the line together, whenever he wanted to discuss anything with them.

  ‘Now then,’ he said, a week before Christmas, ‘the tree’s up, but I thought the kids might want to decorate it. So I’ve bought masses of those bauble things, and stuff.’

  ‘Do you want my decorations?’ Eleanor asked.

  ‘Not unless they’re silver or white. I’m having a white and silver theme.’

  Eleanor laughed; Marion snorted. Neither knew whether to believe this. Was he kidding?

  ‘Wait till you see it.’

  ‘I’m not bothered,’ Eilidh said, when Marion asked her about the tree. ‘I’ll help decorate it if you like.’

  ‘Decorate the tree?’ Ross echoed, as Marion ticked off her list of things to do. ‘What tree?’

  ‘David’s. At Pitcairn.’

  ‘It’s a bit far to go to decorate a Christmas tree, isn’t it? What about our own one?’

  ‘Ross, for goodness sake, you know we’re all going to Pitcairn for Christmas.’

  ‘Are we? No one told me.’ He shuffled off to the kitchen in search of more food. ‘Can I have a bit of Christmas cake?’ he asked, as his mother came in after him.

  ‘Certainly not. We’re taking it with us.’ Marion looked round the kitchen and spotted the Wellington boots in the porch. ‘No wonder it’s freezing in here – someone’s left the porch door open. Now, Ross, get a carrier bag from the cupboard and put everybody’s wellies in.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘We’d better take them with us.’

  ‘What for?’

  ‘Walks. It can be very muddy round the lanes.’

  ‘I don’t go for walks.’

  Kirsty came in on her mother’s heels. ‘We’ve still got to have our own tree. Mum! I said, we’ve still got to have our own tree, haven’t we?’

  The whole thing, Marion and Eleanor realised, as they counted down the days, was turning into an expedition.

  ‘It will be like the Christmases we used to have at Pitcairn when we were children,’ Marion told her family. ‘But better.’

  ‘What was good about them?’ Eilidh asked.

  ‘Am I still getting to decorate Uncle David’s tree?’ Kirsty wanted to know.

  At home, Eleanor watered her plants and turned down the Rayburn. Then she went next door to give Jim and Edie a bottle of port and tell them where she would be for the next few days.

  ‘Oh lovely, a family Christmas.’ Edie hugged the port. ‘You shouldn’t have bothered, no need. Very kind, isn’t she kind, Jim? But we’ll keep an eye, Jim will keep an eye, quiet here, but you never know, and next door—’ here Edie jerked her head in the general direction of the other cottage – ‘seems to be on his own. One car, just the one car now. Not that he’s at home a great deal. Works on the rigs, Betty at the Post Office tells me, works away.’ She dived for their Christmas tree, with its winking lights. The curtains were kept half-open, so that you could see it from outside. ‘Now then, a wee thing for Claire, she likes a parcel, eh? They all like a parcel to open.’

  ‘Oh, you didn’t need to—’

  ‘Now dear, you drive safely, have a lovely time. We’ll keep an eye, Jim will check for you.’

  Eleanor backed out, thanking them, and Jim nodded, to show all was well, before they disappeared indoors. The other cottage was dark, and there was no car outside.

  On the morning before Christmas Eve, Eleanor and Claire set off; Marion, with all her family, would follow next day. When she knew that Eleanor had gone, Marion had a sudden lapse in all her new enthusiasm and energy. She thought she would make brandy butter, but found herself with the ingredients marshalled before her, unable to decide how much to make. In the end, she put everything away again. There might be time tomorrow, and if not, well, she did not care any more.

  ‘All set?’ Fergus asked when he came in after his last surgery.

  ‘I think so.’

  ‘Who’s feeding the troops?’

  Marion had arranged for a neighbour to feed the cats and take care of the dog while they were away. ‘Sue’s doing it. I must remember to leave a bottle of wine for her.’

  ‘I must say, I’m beginning to think this has turned out to be even more work for you than staying here would have been.’

  Marion smiled. ‘You noticed.’

  ‘Oh dearie me. I hope it’s all worth it.’ He put his arms round her, and she leaned on his chest. ‘You would have thought this week you and Eleanor were setting off for the North Pole. I’ve never seen so much food.’

  ‘We’ll need it, we’re feeding … oh God, nearly a dozen folk. And Dad never has a thing in the house.’

  ‘I thought David was seeing to all that?’

  ‘All what? You can’t rely on David.’

  This was what Fergus was afraid of. ‘Don’t worry,’ Eleanor had reassured him, ‘it’s all right. I’m going to make sure the house is warm, and everything’s organised.’ But Marion was the one who was organised. Eleanor, certainly, was a better bet than David, but she was airy-fairy, Fergus thought, lived inside her imagination. It came, he had decided, of being widowed so young. She needed steadying; it was as if she had never really settled down. No use saying any of this now. All he could do was get them there in one piece, and bring them home again afterwards.

  He sighed, coming up to bed that night, and wished they were staying at home.

  ‘You’re not happy, are you?’ Marion asked, as he got into bed.

  ‘Ach, ignore me. I’m a boring old so-and-so. I like my ain fireside.’

  ‘I wish you’d said. I thought you wanted me to go.’

  ‘I wanted you not to wear yourself out, woman!’

  ‘Och, it’s not for long. We’ll have Hogmanay at home.’

  ‘Good thing too.’

  He took her in his arms and they lay in the lamplight together, her face on his breast, her breath warm on his skin, hair tickling his neck. She thought how strange it was that the thing other people (his mother, Eleanor) considered a flaw in her husband – his predictability, his steady sameness, was what she loved most.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ she said. ‘I don’t mind how boring you are. That’s what I like.’

  ‘Just as well, eh?’ He switched off the lamp, and they settled. After a moment or two, Marion turned round with a little sigh, and nestled herself into the curve of his body.

  This was how they went to sleep, like spoons in a drawer, he had said to her, years ago, and still said it, never seeing any need to change the simile, since it had served him well. Only – it was different now, changed for ever. That first night she had come home from hospital, she’d turned like this in his arms, and tucked her bottom into the crook of his body, against his pelvis, his chin resting on her head, his right arm coming round to cup her left breast. But the breast had not been there, round and full in his palm. Only the cotton pad of the dressing, and beneath it a flat place, a healing wound. Neither of them, for all their talk beforehand, had truly anticipated this moment. Marion’s eyes had filled with tears, and she had turned to face him again, to find, in pity and distress, that he too was crying.

  She had never seen her husband cry before. In the d
ark, they comforted each other, and though she wanted to say something, to ask for reassurance that he did not mind, the finer part of her knew there was no question of his minding for himself, only for her. And he knew the same of Marion. There was no help for it. After so many years of marriage, you cannot change sides, make yourself sleep facing the other way, in the other half of the bed.

  Later, Marion thought that was the moment the change became real to her, permanent. Not all the discomfort to come, the nausea, the thinning of her beautiful hair, the weariness, the terrible uncertainty, gave her a pain as sharp and final as that one moment in bed with Fergus, the night she came home.

  10

  The dolls’ house had come the Christmas Marion was nine. No one even pretended that Santa Glaus had brought it down the chimney; the whole family knew it had been given to the girls jointly by their parents, and that it had been made by a friend of Aunt Alice’s, who was good with his hands. No one had attempted to wrap it either. It stood by the Christmas tree in the hall, with a piece of gold tinsel tied in a bow round one of its chimneys.

  At first, waking in the dark and fumbling among the parcels at the bottom of their beds, hearing paper crackle, feeling the lumpy woollen sock full of tiny things, and at the end the round solidity of a tangerine – they thought there was no dolls’ house at all.

  ‘Where is it?’ Eleanor whispered.

  On Christmas Eve, David was allowed to sleep in their room, on Daddy’s army camp bed. Usually, he fell off some time in the night, and lay like a green chrysalis in the sleeping bag. He woke now, hearing their voices, saying as he wriggled out, ‘Where’s the dolls’ house?’ They all knew about it. There had been too many hints and whispers for them to doubt. Until now.

  Then Eleanor said, ‘You know you said a girl in your class told you about having all their presents under the tree?’

  ‘Yes, they don’t get to open them until after breakfast.’

  None of them could imagine such cruelty.

  ‘Come on then,’ David urged them. ‘Look under the tree.’

  They crept downstairs in single file, Marion first, and hung over the banister, and looked. There was no light in the hall. Then David, not caring (it was Christmas, you didn’t get into trouble at Christmas, and he wasn’t five yet, couldn’t be blamed) ran down ahead and jumped up to reach the switch, flooding the hall with light. They blinked and staggered, and then, getting used to the brightness, they saw it.

  It was perfect. Most presents, Eleanor discovered as she grew older, were a disappointment. They could not live up to the promise of anticipation, hope, the mysterious shape under the wrapping, the electric rustle of tearing paper. The dolls’ house was perfect – better than Marion or Eleanor had imagined it could be. Marion unhooked the front and it swung gently open. Furniture, curtains, tiny rugs, a whole life waiting to be lived in miniature. There was even a family to live it: father, mother and daughter. These little figures were made of wire, covered with cotton padding, and they had painted faces which faded in time, and had to be re-done with biro. It was hard to keep their expressions the same: mother quietly resigned; father brisk, with a moustache; child rosy and cheerful. Eleanor, whose job this became, did her best. The family was a little stiff, and would not sit properly in the chairs, so they went to bed a lot, or stood around. David took the father for his person, Marion the mother, and Eleanor the daughter.

  As he got older, David rarely played with them when the dolls’ house was used. He had better things to do, and he was, anyway, too rough. Something always got broken, and the girls did not really want their father doll to lead a life so full of risk and terror as David made him have. But still, when they were feeling dull and short of ideas, David did brighten things up.

  When Marion was ill, that long winter she was twelve, she played with the dolls’ house while she was convalescing. After that, she seemed to outgrow the house and it fell more to Eleanor. For Eleanor it was always there, waiting, and it was always worth opening up the front to see what the family was doing. Sometimes she made them a newspaper, or a cardboard swing for their imaginary garden, or took them out in one of David’s cars, when he wasn’t around to argue. When she was well, Marion wanted company, and Eleanor, who did not care for Violet or the other friends very much, often played on her own.

  Eleanor could not remember much else about that perfect Christmas, or separate it out completely from all the others at Pitcairn. They merged in memory. Perhaps that was why Marion was unable to explain to Eilidh and Kirsty what was special about Christmas at Pitcairn.

  As Eleanor came slowly up the drive she saw that David had been watching for them. He opened the front door as they got out of the car, and stood there in the glow from the light behind, a whiter glow than usual. He stopped them on the steps.

  ‘Wait. Shut your eyes, both of you.’

  ‘Why?’ Claire asked, but they did it, allowing David to lead them in.

  ‘Now!’

  All they could say was ‘Oh!’ and gasp, and gaze. The tree must have been nine feet high. It shimmered, silver and white with a thousand lights, a cascade of silky threads, pouring from the top where a silver fairy glimmered, a long way off.

  ‘Wow,’ said Claire. ‘Cool.’

  ‘Oh David, it’s lovely, it really is – shut the door, Claire, keep the heat in – oh David, how on earth did you get it here?’

  Her brother touched the side of his nose. ‘Trust me,’ he said. ‘Man with a trailer, slipped him a fiver.’

  ‘Cool,’ Claire said again, looking more closely, slowly circling as much of the tree as she could. It stood in the stairwell, behind it the dark varnished panelling. ‘Oh hey, Mum – see the wee animals and that.’

  Eleanor went to look. Amongst the branches where the silver trails of ribbon wound in and out, hung tiny crystal animals, winking in the lights, and glass baubles, and twists of green and silvery mesh in the shape of candles, parcels and bells.

  ‘David,’ she gasped, ‘this tree must have cost a fortune! Where did you get all this?’

  ‘London. Flew down last week for the day.’

  ‘What? You’re joking.’

  ‘No, I’m not.’ He stood there looking pleased.

  ‘But I thought …’ She had thought he had no money. She remembered Marion saying ‘he’s a sponger,’ and she began to worry.

  ‘Sold my car.’

  ‘What car?’

  ‘Phil – sold my car in Edinburgh for me. Got a nice fat cheque. So I thought we’d do something special with it – for the whole family.’

  ‘I didn’t know you had a car.’

  ‘An MG. I usually have an MG when I’m in funds.’

  ‘Years ago – that little red car …’ A twoseater. Just Eleanor and David, off for a spin. Ian standing by the front door with a tiny Claire in his arms, watching them go. And before that, Ian studying for his professional exams, Eleanor and David off for the Sunday afternoon, leaving him to get on with it, having sandwiches and beer in a pub way out of town. David driving very fast through country lanes.

  ‘An MG,’ Eleanor said again, shaking herself free of the past.

  ‘No more, alas. And don’t worry – I got a cheap fare to London, and I do actually have some cash left over. The tree stuff didn’t cost that much. Anyway, I needed to see a guy in London. A bit of leftover business.’

  ‘Where’s Grandpa?’ Claire asked. She had finished inspecting the tree.

  ‘In the garden somewhere. Getting veg for tomorrow.’

  ‘I’ll go and tell him we’re here. OK, Mum?’

  ‘Yes, you do that. David, give me a hand, we’ve masses of stuff to get in from the car.’

  Much later, when they were all home again, Claire said to her mother, ‘That was when Christmas began, wasn’t it? When we saw the tree.’ But Kirsty, arriving on Christmas Eve, burst into tears when she saw it.

  ‘You promised I could decorate it!’

  Stricken with remorse, David took her into the gar
den to cut a large branch from a tree there.

  This is yours,’ he said. ‘We’ll find the old decorations, and you can have this one in your room.’ Kirsty looked at him with contempt.

  ‘I want lights,’ she said. ‘I want a proper tree. This one is a branch.’

  David came into the kitchen, where Marion was setting out everything she needed for the turkey.

  ‘What can I do?’ he asked. ‘I’m finished with Kirsty. She hates and reviles me.’

  ‘Don’t be silly,’ Marion scoffed. ‘Pass me those onions.’

  ‘You could buy her one of those wee artificial trees,’ his father suggested. ‘They’ve got them in Asda.’

  ‘Brilliant. Right, Kirsty, where are you?’

  Fergus and Ross had gone out to split logs. As Marion began work on the turkey and Eleanor checked dishes and cutlery, Fergus came in with a full basket.

  ‘Where do you want these?’

  ‘Dining room,’ Eleanor said, taking the basket from him.

  Fergus took off his boots by the back door. ‘I thought you were supposed to be sitting about, letting everyone else do all the work?’ he said to Marion.

  ‘Ach, I’m fine. It turns Eleanor’s stomach to do the turkey.’

  ‘This is the same Eleanor who was going to do everything?’

  ‘I don’t mind. I’m no good at sitting about.’

  ‘Well, be sure and have a rest after you’ve finished with that bird.’

  ‘Don’t fuss me, I’m fine.’

  So he left her, pushing stuffing into a bald unwieldy fowl that looked to him obscene. He could see Eleanor’s point. Would they actually eat it?

  Eleanor had borrowed a portable gas heater from the Mackies’ daughter, and it stood in the hall, blazing.

  ‘I’ve never known the front of the house so warm before,’ John said, standing over it, his hands held out to the heat. This is a great thing. Expensive to run, I doubt. What is it, calor gas? I hope you’ve a spare canister.’