by Rachel Hore
‘You were late. We were starting to worry,’ said Desmond as he unlocked the drinks cabinet. In the sparsely furnished living room, where Desmond waged perpetual battle against dog hair, the grown-ups perched on the stiff-backed suite and sipped at little glasses of sherry. Major Carter watched his wife anxiously as, having drunk her sherry in two mouthfuls, she wandered over for a replenishment.
Sam and Daisy had retreated to one corner, by the upright piano that Kate and Nicola used to play, but which was never opened now, the dogs to another. The children were nervous of the snapping tendencies of Ringo and Benjy, who in turn, disliked the sudden, unpredictable movements of young children. There was nothing to play with at the Carters’ house, so Kate had brought a couple of boxes of toys and games to keep the children amused.
‘I’d better see to the chicken,’ said Barbara, gulping down her second sherry. Her husband eased the glass out of her hand as she got up. Kate followed her into the kitchen.
‘I just got one of those ready-stuffed ones from Sainsbury’s,’ said Barbara, a touch too brightly. ‘They seem to be all right. There are some roast potatoes in the top drawer of the freezer. Oh, and some peas somewhere. I can’t . . .’ She stopped, looking confused.
‘I’m sure it will all be fine, Mum,’ Kate said, tying a plastic apron over her skirt and blouse and setting about the task of Sunday lunch. Her mother leaned against the cabinets, playing with her necklace and looking lost and faraway. Kate noticed a cut-glass tumbler over by the sink and wondered whether, if she picked it up, it would smell of gin.
I’ll wait till lunch is over before I say anything about our plans, she decided. Instead, in between shoving a tray of frozen potatoes in the oven, whisking up a packet of bread sauce and unwrapping the supermarket apple crumble waiting on the side, she asked her mother whether she was sleeping any better, about Desmond’s back trouble and how his sister Maggie seemed when she came last week.
Barbara, small, thin, but still elegant, her chin-length hair expertly tinted and coiffed in the 1960s ends-turned-out style that she’d always worn, politely answered each question in a toneless voice, only showing some animation when telling Kate about the problem of Travellers camping on the Downs. It was a relief when they could all move into the dining room and watch Desmond carefully carve the chicken.
‘How’s the house then?’ Desmond asked Simon as he lowered himself into his chair, unfurled his cloth napkin, and gave the signal to eat. ‘All shipshape?’ Desmond always asked his son-in-law this question but today, instead of the usual, ‘Fine, actually, Desmond. We had the gutters cleaned last week but the porch needs retiling,’ Simon looked over at Kate, who was cutting up Sam’s meat, and nodded, raising his eyebrows.
Kate put down her knife and fork and took a deep breath. ‘We’re planning to move, actually, Dad.’ She looked anxiously at her mother, who had been picking at a potato with her fork and glancing at Daisy, as if trying to think of something to ask the little girl. Barbara looked up at Kate, her face suddenly full of alarm.
Kate went on to explain that they were moving to Suffolk. Her father looked puzzled for a moment, then nodded. ‘Nice part of the world, if I remember. But what d’you want to go there for?’
Kate stabbed at a piece of chicken and summoned the courage to continue. ‘Simon’s mother lives there. She’s got a cottage large enough for us to stay in while we look for somewhere of our own. Simon will still work in the City but look for something nearby. It would be a new start for us, and it would help Joyce now she’s on her own. You remember we thought she might have had a small stroke last year? She’s recovered completely, but Simon would like to be nearby in case anything happens.’
In fact, Simon had never said anything about being anxious for Joyce’s health, but Kate instinctively felt that her parents would be reassured by being given a practical reason rather than any heavy emotional language about needing somewhere to call home or having more precious time with the children. Kate’s parents didn’t do emotion. They didn’t really do children either, and Kate had always been determined to bring up her children completely differently from the way she and Nicola had been raised.
‘I don’t know why you protect them so much,’ said Simon once when her mother had forgotten Daisy’s birthday for the second year running, despite Kate having reminded her twice. ‘They were terrible parents. They should never have had children. And now they’re hopeless grandparents.’
‘But they’re so vulnerable, Simon. They’ve been hurt by everything – losing Nicola, Mum’s problems. It would be like kicking them in the teeth to criticize them.’
‘Yeah, I know, but I hate seeing you tie yourself up in nervous knots trying to defend them. Oh, I’m sorry, I shouldn’t complain. After all, Dad could be pretty annoying sometimes with his lecturing.’
The time her parents’ remoteness had come home to Kate hardest of all had been when Daisy was born. Joyce had immediately got the next train from Diss, her bags full of newly knitted cardigans, bootees and little hats, and had bedded down in the Hutchinsons’ house for a fortnight, directing operations with Simon fetching and carrying while Kate struggled to tend to the needs of a tiny baby who wouldn’t suck. Desmond and Barbara visited twice during this period, staying precisely one hour each time. The second time, towards the end of the visit, Barbara had inexplicably burst into tears. Desmond, his own eyes rheumy, whispered stiffly to Kate that ‘the old girl’ found the baby brought back difficult memories and gently steered Barbara out of the front door. That time, Kate had cried herself into such a state that Simon, alarmed, called the doctor.
After the metallic-tasting apple crumble, the adults cleared the table and Desmond banged about in the kitchen, inexpertly loading the dishwasher and making a pot of tea. Her mother had vanished somewhere and Kate went into the living room where Simon was on the floor preventing violence breaking out over Snakes and Ladders. She sat down next to the mahogany bookcase, with its ranks of photographs. There was a single picture of Daisy and Sam taken by her friend Claire the summer before, and a small wedding portrait of Kate and Simon. But the other dozen photographs, not to mention the three framed enlargements on the wall above the piano, were all of the same girl, a pretty, laughing, blue-eyed brunette – a little like Kate but not Kate. There she was, full of life, her sister Nicola – as a jolly sun-hatted baby sitting in her pram, playing in a sandpit at three, in school uniform with a thick navy Alice band at twelve, in a white confirmation dress at fourteen, gorgeous in midnight-blue taffeta at nineteen . . . when the photographs stopped.
As familiar as the pain from an old war wound came that double stab of jealousy and guilt. Jealousy that her parents’ attention was still, after all these years, focused on Nicola. Guilt that it was Nicola who had died, not Kate. Nicola, whom Kate still firmly believed, everyone had loved best.
When she and her sister were very young, they had had a series of nannies, mostly local women with little English, in whichever country the Carters were living in at the time. The girls only saw their parents for a small part of every day. Barbara, nervous when handling small children, usually found some secretarial or voluntary work deliberately, to take her out of the house, and then there was a range of mess events and bridge parties in the evenings.
Nicola didn’t seem affected by this mild form of neglect that constituted the traditional English officer-class way of bringing up children. She was naturally bubbly, charming, self-possessed, and the obvious favourite of the nannies. Kate, on the other hand, everyone dismissed as quiet and stubborn. She badly needed cuddles and reassurance, which she didn’t get – except from her big sister. Nicky always guarded Kate. There was one famous incident in Hong Kong, when the amah had slapped Kate hard after accusing the five-year-old girl of stealing from her. Nicola had jumped up and slapped the woman back, then lectured her like a grown-up, threatening her with the sack. The money was later found to have been taken by a visiting child, but Missy Nicola was held in awe after this a
nd Kate loved her for it. And hated herself for still being jealous of her sister.
One thing she found increasingly difficult to cope with was that, whatever she tried to do, Nicola unwittingly took the limelight. Their mother was no more affectionate to Nicola than to Kate, but Kate could see that at least Nicola made some impact on Barbara. Barbara would encourage her to try new things – to ride her bike, play the piano, take ballet lessons, go out with friends. She never showed the same interest in Kate, rarely praised her when she practised hard at the piano and passed her exams ahead of Nicola.
When the girls both went away to boarding school, again, it was Nicola whom everyone liked best. ‘Nicky, would you like to take the lead part in the play?’ ‘Nicola, we need you on the lacrosse team.’ ‘Nicky, will you come and stay with us at half-term?’ At first Kate trailed around after her sister, trying desperately hard to get into a school team, writing to her parents that it wasn’t fair that Nicola should go to stay with friends and not her. But after a while, she learned to avoid pain by avoiding Nicola. She made her own friends, but their interests were less high profile – writing for the school magazine, listening to music, outings with the Natural History Club. But still envy twisted inside, though she knew Nicola was hurt by her behaviour. For Kate, though, keeping away from her sister was a survival technique. She loved her sister – indeed, along with the rest of the school, how could she not? But Nicola’s continued to be the name on everyone’s lips. Nicola became deputy head girl, while Kate didn’t even get to be prefect. Nicola won a place at Cambridge . . . Kate was advised not to apply.
But it was Nicola who drove too fast one rainy July night down a narrow country lane after an evening out, the headlights cutting a swathe through the black woods on either side. She misjudged the bend, plunging the car through the undergrowth and into the trees. She must have died instantly, the coroner said.
Hundreds of people attended the funeral. Golden girl mourned by all, the local paper said. Kate had never felt so lonely in her life. Her parents, felled by grief, turned in on themselves. They should have reassured Kate that they were glad they still had her, that she was precious to them, but it was as though they had lost their only child. Her mother hardly spoke for weeks after the tragedy, not least because the doctor had dosed her up with sedatives. And her father, alien to the language of emotion as his own father had been before him, could only manage to hug Kate awkwardly, then turn away so she wouldn’t see him cry.
Resentful, self-pitying, it was a while before Kate realized she too was mourning her sister. The year of her A-levels was one of the worst of her life. She tried to lose herself in her work, but away at school, cut off from her parents who were, anyway, too self-absorbed to help her, she felt isolated. Many of the staff and pupils were devastated by the loss of Nicola, but the fact that in death Nicola was raised to a pedestal of beauty and perfection made it harder for Kate to grieve. Only in the visits to her grandmother in Hastings was she able to unbottle her grief to someone who really understood and cared, and to cry herself to sleep in the old lady’s arms.
Since having Daisy and Sam, Kate had often wondered what her relationship with her sister would have been like if the accident hadn’t happened. She concluded that she would probably have grown out of her jealousy. Nicola would have become a happy and successful woman, married, had children. Sam and Daisy would have loved playing with their cousins and their mums would have laughed and cried over their own childhood, healing each other in the process, sharing the burden of trying to get on with their now-ageing parents.
But if Nicola hadn’t died, their parents would surely now be entirely different . . . Barbara might not have started to drink, Desmond might have been warmer, bluff and relaxed in retirement. They might have got on well with their adult children, have been close to their grandchildren. If Nicola hadn’t died . . .
‘Are the children allowed sweets, dear?’
Kate pulled her attention back to her mother, who had appeared with a suspiciously dusty box of mint imperials. Then Desmond bustled in with the tea tray and laid it on the glass coffee-table. He brushed at the sofa, plumped the cushions and sat down.
‘Well, we’ll miss you, there’s no doubt about that,’ he mumbled. ‘But your mother and I, we’ll . . . harrumph, I’m sure . . . When are you off?’
‘July probably,’ broke in Simon, coming to join them. ‘Fits in with Daisy’s schooling. And I’ll be able to take a bit of holiday to help.’
‘I had some lovely holidays in Suffolk when I was a girl,’ Barbara said, with unusual vivacity. ‘Frances and Marion – you know, my cousins – lived that way. There was someone else we visited, an older cousin. Ooh, Desmond, do you remember me talking about her?’
He shook his head. ‘Must have been before we met, darling.’
‘A beautiful house, yes – and she had a maid, a real maid with a uniform. I might have some photographs upstairs somewhere. Or did we throw them out when we came here? We got rid of so much.’
‘Sounds intriguing, Mum. I suppose she might be dead now, though.’
Kate studied her mother, who was furiously stroking the little dogs in her lap and staring at the carpet. She looked up and smiled at Kate, a smile that carried a flash of charm. Kate suddenly felt an inkling of another Barbara, a Barbara long gone. She wished she had the courage to reach out to her mother and hug her, but she knew that Barbara would shy away from physical contact. That was how it had been ever since Kate could remember. Barbara had rarely been able to demonstrate that she was sad or happy, that she loved or hated. Kate had seen pictures of her mother at twenty and could never believe this was the same woman; she’d seemed so vibrant then, full of the love of life, probably quite a catch for a kind but dull man like her father, handsome in his new officer’s uniform at the Sandhurst ball.
What had happened to Barbara after her marriage? Kate’s father had always deflected his daughter’s timid questions. Old-fashioned loyalty was the name of the game in his book and his love for his wife was tender and unswerving. Of course, Nicola’s death was the unmentionable barrier between them all now, a terrible loss that had frozen their family life entirely.
Kate’s eyes moved again to the silent ranks of photos, and was struck anew by how greatly Nicola resembled the pictures of Barbara when she was young. Kate was so different, with her pixie face, her jaw-length dark hair, her green eyes and shy smile. She certainly didn’t look like Nicola – the pretty, lively, laughing sister. Suddenly, Kate felt a bolt of childish anger charge through her. It wasn’t fair! No one ever took any notice of her! There must have been dozens of photographs of Kate by herself or of Kate and Nicola together in the family albums, but her parents had only chosen to put out ones of Nicola. Why did their only surviving child seem to matter so little to them?
But with the maturity she had only fully gained after rearing her own children, she breathed deeply until the anger ebbed away and sadness and compassion flooded in to take its place. Of course they must love her. It’s just they were so wounded by the loss of their other child. As she was by the loss of the sister she too, despite her envy, had loved.
But why would they never talk about it? Therein lay the hell of this situation. She remembered discussing it with a therapist once, and he’d encouraged her to try again to talk to them or to write them a letter. But she’d never found the courage to do that.
Even now she felt her father’s anxious eyes upon her. Don’t mention your sister! Better not let the side down, had I? Kate told herself with scorn, bringing her attention back to the land of the living. Her father’s expression softened and she smiled at him. He relaxed.
‘So how’s that car of yours, Simon? Still running smoothly?’ Normal service had been resumed.
‘Thank Christ that’s over.’ Simon slumped with relief in his seat as he pulled the car out onto the Downs roundabout.
‘Simon!’ Kate half-glanced round to see if the children had heard, but Daisy was recounting to Sam
a long fantasy about her toy dog. ‘That’s my parents you’re talking about.’
‘I’m sorry. It’s just they’re such an ordeal. They’re impossible! Anyone would have thought we’d just said we were getting a new washing machine for all the interest they showed, not removing their only daughter and grandchildren to the further reaches of the country.’
‘Simon, I know, but that’s not what they’re feeling underneath. I thought Mum looked quite upset actually.’
‘I expect she’s heading for the gin bottle even now – look, I’m sorry, Kate. It’s just I get so upset for you and the kids. They ought to cherish you more.’
‘They do their best.’ Kate’s voice was wobbly. ‘Well, OK, they probably don’t,’ she conceded. ‘Anyway, Mum’s drinking is much better than it used to be. Dad says she’ll go whole days now without anything.’
‘Then she has a blow-out on the Gordon’s and spends two days with her head down the toilet.’ Once or twice, when Barbara’s drinking had got particularly bad, she had had an enforced stay in a local clinic. But since she would never even admit to herself that there was a problem, all attempts to persuade her to overcome it had failed.
‘Oh, stop it!’ Kate looked round again anxiously but, lulled by the motion of the warm car, both children were falling into sleep.
‘Don’t shout, Mummy,’ yawned Daisy. ‘Shouting’s . . . rude.’ Kate leaned forward and fiddled with the air-conditioning to turn up the temperature in the back.
‘Well,’ she sighed, ‘you won’t have to see them so often now, will you? Though I suppose we’ll have to ask them to stay – when we have a proper house, I mean. It’s a good thing I get on so well with your mum, isn’t it?’
‘Better than I do.’ Simon glanced in the rearview mirror then took his hand off the wheel to squeeze Kate’s thigh through her corduroy skirt. She accepted this as a silent apology.