The Sister

by Lynne Alexander

  The reviewers did not like it either. I called their criticism superficial but it began to sound feeble even in my own ears. The most cutting remark of all (‘‘Why, the figure of Olive Chancellor lives upon his very doorstep!) overheard at one of Katherine’s Saturday Morning Club meetings – confirmed her suspicions.

  Twenty-eight

  Henry returned from the Continent bearing a screen decorated with brilliant prancing peacocks and intertwining lilies.

  ‘‘Much too fine,’’ I objected: ‘‘take it away.’’

  ‘‘It will act as a barrier against the draft,’’ he argued, asserting its practicality. Although its fineness was therefore beside the point, he added: ‘‘It might as well be fine.’’

  He positioned the screen at the foot of my day-bed. Whereupon there came a wind. Or something like a wind. Together we watched the candle on the mantelpiece with its strong oval flame flicker and gutter before finally going out, plunging us into darkness.

  Henry said nothing, but I guessed his thought: Not even the fine screen had the power to stop it. Everything existing in the visible world, my brother believed, was an imperfect mirror of some hidden reality or unseen world. Eventually he turned and there it was (he’d re-lit the candle) written on his face, not exactly a thing to ‘believe’ in, but a sensation, a force, an inspiration from which the imagination – call it the soul if you like – receives its most rarefied nourishment. Without ‘it’, I knew, he would not, could not write.

  But I was beginning to feel queer. Such things were beyond our knowledge; we were bound after all to earth.

  ‘‘How do you find London upon your return, Henry?’’

  ‘‘Ah, London,’’ he began, ‘‘the indispensable place.’’ He went on expansively, describing the great ‘soup-pot’ that was London from scruffy children and carpet beaters to riders and horses and walkers carrying portmanteaus holding tooth-brushes and sandwiches and … .

  ‘‘Henry!’’ I shouted. My brother was not easy to interrupt in full-flow. ‘‘I can read your next London review for myself; what I want to know is how are you taking it?’’

  The novel in question lay on the table between us. Had it been there before? I did not think so; but perhaps we had been too distracted by the fine screen to notice it. But it could not now be avoided. Henry turned it face-down.

  I said, ‘‘They have not been kind to you.’’

  ‘‘It is not the job of the critic to be kind, my dear Alice. They are paid raptors.’’

  ‘‘And you,’’ I said, ‘‘have been their latest prey.’’

  I watched as my brother, turning to gaze out the window, sucked in his cheeks. It was a response so familiar – his way of removing himself – and touching, that I had to look away myself. The pain of it. After that he rose and began polishing one of the lamps with his middle finger, as if to say: They have savaged me enough, go no further. I would not add to his hurt. I would not say I found The Bostonians in some way prosaic, or that I thought he was capable of a kind of writing that went beyond it. I would certainly not convey Katharine’s diatribe, or her fury.

  ‘‘The raptors be damned, Henry,’’ I said at last.

  His brow contracted. He reminded me that the novel (referred to as ‘an account of contemporary Boston’) had been called ‘inadequate’ by a certain influential critic. He’d tried to brush it off but the damage, I saw, had lodged within him. He had expected more. But he would not let them get the better of him. As if fearing paralysis, he had already moved on, the next book was already sketched out. Still, I understood, it would be there underneath: the fear of ‘the beast’ waiting to pounce.

  ‘‘So,’’ I said, moving us on: ‘‘How was it on the Continent?’’

  ‘‘Ah,’’ he breathed, his whole countenance relaxing. ‘‘The terraces at Saint Germain,’’ he began, ‘‘were luxuriantly residential, thickly inhabited, replete with prettiness.’’ On he went to describe a visit to the Theatre Francais in which he’d sat ‘in a sort of languid ecstasy of contemplation’. After that came a disquisition on the audience, beginning with ‘‘a number of old gents who looked as if they took snuff from boxes adorned with portraits of the fashionable beauty of 1820 …’’

  ‘‘Henry!‘‘ He was like a child at the back of a schoolroom lost in a dream. I rapped my knuckles on the book: ‘‘Enough lyrical gymnastics. How was it, I mean, with Constance?’’

  He feigned surprise, as if he’d forgotten he’d just spent three months in her company: ‘‘Ah, Fenimore.’’

  ‘‘Constance … Fenimore … call her Ishmael for all I care.’’ I was losing patience.

  ‘‘Fenimore,’’ he allowed, ‘‘is, as ever, a superb guide.’’

  I took aim with the book but restrained myself from actually throwing it. ‘‘I guess you have been gallivanting together?’’

  He recoiled from my barbarism. My brother, as I should have known, hated vulgar innuendo.

  ‘‘She is not typical of an American woman in search of a husband,’’ he allowed with sudden directness.

  ‘‘True; yet she is in search of a particular one,’’ I pointed out.

  His expression went vague again: ‘‘I believe she is made of many shades … several women at once. It is possible therefore that one of them desires a conventional ending.’’

  His implication was perfectly clear: he would not provide it. He was prepared to admit to ‘a mild excess’- whatever that might be – but that was his limit. I understood then what I had always known ever since witnessing an encounter between Henry and our mother in which she’d tried to persuade him ‘‘towards a favorable attitude of heart towards … towards …’’

  Henry: ‘‘What is it, Mother?’’

  Mother: (all in a whoosh): ‘‘… the divine institution of marriage.’’

  Henry, who had listened politely to the well-meaning speech (while examining his fingernails), then answered with an almost unbearable glibness:

  ‘‘If you will provide the wife, the fortune, and the inclination, Mother, I will take them all.’’

  At this point I, who had been attending as if to a tennis match, interpreted my brother’s remark to mean, ‘I am not inclined to it now’. But there was my mother’s expression – it had gone from hurt to puzzlement and finally to horror – so that I understood something momentous had occurred.

  Now here it was again, the pulling back, the dis-inclination. So where did that leave Constance? Do you feel anything for her, Henry? I longed to fling at him. But that would have been unfair; besides, like my mother, I was reluctant to intrude further. Henry, having lit a cigar, was gazing at the glowing tip. I saw we must move on.

  ‘‘Alice,’’ he began in his drawing-room voice, ‘‘are you aware that there is in London an unquenchable fashion for Americans?’’ I made an impatient gesture. Nor do I care to know. But on he went about the Princess of Lorne and other royalish personages. It was as if we’d agreed to fashion a clay bowl between us but were then unable to agree on the desired outcome: ‘Let us make a deep bowl,’ say I. ‘No,’ says he, ‘let us make it elegantly shallow’. Oh but Henry’s private bowl – if such an image could attach itself to my brother – was deeper than any I could fathom. A better metaphor would have been the Charles iced over. The deeps were there, would always be there. He must be allowed to skate on whatever surface allowed him to go smoothly, brilliantly, on.

  *

  ‘‘My brother says it’s a spirit put the candle out,’’ I later told Wardy in a scare-mongering voice. But instead of quailing in terror the normally superstitious creature haw-hawed, saying it only proved that the Jameses were all ‘off their rockers’. The surprising part of it was that in ‘intellectual’ matters she deferred to us while in trifles about arranging the room, or draughts, or what-not, she was as obstinate as an old mule. ‘‘Anyone with any sense in their head,’’ added she, ‘‘would know it was the ‘owling East wind.’’ And just to prove it, she got down on all fours sniffing li
ke a mongrel dog, lifting carpets and feeling between floorboards. She’d already stuffed an extra ‘snake’ under the hallway door. Eventually there came the ‘‘aha!’’ of enlightenment. The window on the landing had been left open an inch: ‘‘by you-know-who,’’ said she, wagging a thumb in the direction of ‘downstairs’.

  At which the landlady, Mrs Dickson, appeared, having come up to deliver a bowl of tripe and potato soup which had, she swore, ‘‘ealing properties’. ‘‘ ’ealing for what?’’ asked Wardy suspiciously. ‘‘Whatever troubles you.’’ ‘‘Humph,’’ said Wardy, ‘‘nothing troubles me.’’ ‘‘Well, bully for you.’’ ‘‘Now now, ladies,’’ I intervened. Wardy helped me to the table before huffing out. Mrs Dickson busied herself arranging the bowl and serviette. ‘‘There you are,’’ she said, looking on admiringly, as if I and my meal were the subject of one of those dark, dull paintings of domestic interiors, Invalid At Her Meagre Repast, which Henry detests for its mundane furniture and lack of imagination. Then she stood, hands crossed over capacious apron-front, the very image of a proud maker of tripe and potato soup.

  I raised my spoon, steeled to compliment her on her concoction, but she spoke first: ‘‘You seem quite comfortable, Miss James.’’ I looked up. Comfortable? I supposed so, allowing for the fact that I’d been laid up with rheumatism in my head, unable to move or breathe for twelve hours. Then, even more remarkably, she observed, sighing mournfully: ‘‘You are always ‘appy with yourself, Miss.’’

  ‘‘Happy with myself?’’ I repeated incredulously. ‘‘Kind of you to say so, Mrs. Dickson, but it is not how most people view me. As you are no doubt aware, Wardy thinks me ‘a miserable afflicted little thing’.’’ ‘‘Ah well,’’ pronounced Mrs. D, ‘‘each to his own. I shouldn’t worry too much about that one. Anywhile the soup is chilling under your nose.’’

  I raised my thumb causing the bowl-end to tip. Happy, came its judgment as it broke the starchy surface and began, very slowly, to sink. Each to his own. Was that how it would be: would I sit, or lie, here in this room while the world came in, so many perambulating spoons and ladles, declaring me well or ill, happy or miserable? Such a brave little soul you are, Alice! … Poor wretched Alice, such a poisonous jellyfish! And when the pronouncing spoons will have left? Will I see what they saw? But suddenly – the spoon had sunk to the very bottom of the bowl and the thick grey-white gluey mush had closed over it – suddenly it all seemed quite freeing, and funny, for it meant that I could be anything, anything at all. Oh what a brave little jellyfish am I! What a poisonous little soul! Or nothing at all.

  After supper, I was helped back to the couch. Katharine had moved it so that I could see out, at the same time be within three feet of the fire. I wore two layers of knitted underclothing, a flannel lined wrapper, two wool shawls over my shoulders and a heavy tartan rug over my legs. An extra fur cloak in case of a sudden blizzard. I could easily be mistaken for an esquimo.

  Thus I reclined in the smallish room, legs stretched out before me, midway between window and fire. To look out … or in, where the fire-demons would be having a knees-up? No … flames, I told myself, only flames. Wolf-howls? No, only the dry wind slicing round the chimney. I was safe; I was ‘comfortable’ and ‘appy in myself’. I turned again towards the window observing how the frost-pointed lights stood out against the darkness, and how the city roared like an outraged frozen lion. And yet, what was going on out there? The newspapers shouted out more cases every day: old and young dying of influenza, freezing to death; millions without work malnourished and starving. What did I – tucked up with my rugs and pictures and plants and books (more and more books) and reading chairs and reading lamps and fireplace and andirons and drapes and silver soup spoons &etc – what did I really know of that other outside world? Nothing. I would soon find out.

  Twenty-nine

  Wardy stood at the hall mirror adjusting her ‘dressing-up’ bonnet: green shirred stuff with pink frilly rose-blobs. ‘‘Going somewhere?’’ I asked, sweet as wormwood. It was Saturday, she reminded me, her day off. She and her hat were going to the the-ay-ter. She and her hat – nurse takes a day off – but why shouldn’t she? – and where did I get the right to pronounce upon her hat and her accent even if they did make me cringe?

  ‘‘What will you see?’’

  ‘‘The Pantomime, Miss, at Drury Lane, split your sides laughin’, so they say. Pity you can’t see it, tho’ I daresay you’d be snooty about it. Nevermind, I’m away. I’ve arranged with Mrs Dickson to bring you your tea. Keep an eye on the fire, we don’t want another conflagwhatsit.’’ Only the other day she’d discovered smoke rising up from under the fender owing to the carpet and rug having been laid too close up to the grate.

  ‘‘Con-flag-ration,’’ I offered.

  Three hours later she returned flapping like a hen on fire and never mind about the Pantomime. ‘‘Windows in the house on the corner are all busted up, Miss, and the shops are all shuttered and barricaded along Piccadilly.’’

  ‘‘Henry!’’ I gasped, stumbling towards the window. His house was next to the corner. His windows would be smashed and he lying cut and bleeding.

  ‘‘Calm yourself, Miss.’’ She was sure he was safe and as it turned out she was right. He had gone on dictating through one of the worst hullaballoos, it having provided ‘material’ for a certain passage to do with ‘radicals’.

  During the next week Wardy would continue feeding me her lurid version of events: ‘‘A shower of eggs and tomatoes and worse went flying in all directions …’’

  ‘‘Worse …?’’

  Titter-titter, holding her nose: ‘‘You know, Miss …’’

  ‘‘Ah, I see.’’

  On she went: ‘‘… and ladies dragged from their carriages and robbed of their jewels and frightened half to death … and the footmen running off with their cowardly tails between their legs!’’

  Well, hurrah, said I, it was the best news I’d heard in years and about time the fat and their flunkies were taken down a peg; so then she accused me of trying to provoke her; so then I snarled and ordered her out of my sight before I bit.

  Next morning Katharine returned from Cambridge. She’d brought with her Mrs Montague Cookson, wife of the defeated Radical candidate: a small, dark, purposeful figure with no thought for formalities. Just having her there in the room – and Katharine of course – was enough to restore me to myself and my own sense of justice. Arguing with Wardy, I realized, was like using a fly-swatter against a bird of prey. But here was a true fighter for the cause; someone I could believe and believe in. Her version of events could not have diverged more from Wardy’s:

  ‘‘Children lying about on shavings, rags, anything; famine looking out of babies’ faces, out of women’s eyes, out of the tremulous hands of men.’’ She spoke of destitution, the general frustration; things she knew of from her own experience. She’d performed good works under a clergyman in the East End, had seen more of the way the poor lived than any other woman of our class.

  ‘‘Thousands of families, half-a-dozen children and their parents living in one room, having tasted no food all winter but ‘sops’ …’’

  ‘‘Sops?’’

  ‘‘Bread soaked in water.’’

  I thought it might well be preferable to tripe soup but refrained from saying so.

  The demonstrations, in her view, were a legitimate and honorable means of petitioning the government, conducted peacefully but corrupted by louts and fanned into violence by the police.

  ‘‘And I am not talking about skivers but honest hard-working men crying out for work. But there is none: so how can you wonder!’’

  Wardy, who had been listening at the door, chose her moment to deliver the tea, cups jigging in their saucers. Katharine did the serving and pouring while Wardy stood by, arms crossed over chest. ‘‘That will be all, Wardy, thank you very much.’’ No, she would not budge, she was sure she sniffed sedition in the sitting room. Unsheathing a duster from som
e pocket or other in the way of a scabbard, she aimed it at Henry’s prancing peacocks.

  ‘‘I daresay,’’ she opined (swat-swat), ‘‘it has been dreadful for the poor tradesmen.’’

  ‘‘Oh, the tradesmen,’’ waved Mrs Cookson, more inclined at this point than I to treat the feather-head as human: ‘‘the tradesmen can look after themselves.’’

  Enough. Before she could reply I ordered her to bring more hot water and some extra sandwiches. The three of us sat about trying to make sense of a world where we, the privileged, could engage with the plight of the unemployed while someone of their own class denounced them as ‘rabble-rousers’. Mrs Cookson thought it might be our very privilege that allowed our sympathies to develop without the coarsening effect of having to work for a living and experience other hardships. Katharine disagreed. ‘‘Surely anyone with an imagination, a capacity for sympathy … connection … must feel the frustration … to be willing to work but be turned away time and again, to have to beg … to be so hungry you are ready to do anything, anything for a piece of bread … and your children starving and no room to breath … intolerable.’’ She shivered.

  We drank our tea, nibbled at our ridiculous crustless sandwiches.

  ‘‘William, my brother,’’ I offered, ‘‘believes we are not ‘wholes’ but divided like jigsaw puzzles, our brains like fields enclosed by walls. The phrenologists have proved it: the thing we call mind or consciousness is not a coherent entity but a myriad of possibilities.’’

  ‘‘But how do we act, what do we do, faced with all those possibilities?’’ entreated Katharine.

  ‘‘We do the right thing,’’ I said. There was a pause. ‘‘We throw in that segment of our being, that capacious net of conscience, of identification, with the underdog.’’

  Mrs Cookson rose. ‘‘Alice – may I call you Alice? – it’s a pity you are so unwell; otherwise, your voice would reverberate from a soapbox in Trafalgar Square.’’