The Sister

by Lynne Alexander

  She agreed such comparisons were likely to be based more on ignorance and prejudice than any kind of science.

  ‘‘However,’’ she pursued the matter: ‘‘portraiting or describing has always been done, even in some of the accounts of historical personages.’’ She paused. ‘‘If you deny it, what is left?’’

  I raised a half-balled fist, ‘‘To refuse easy assumptions!’’

  Oh she could support that. ‘‘But will your heroine have no face or figure then? will she go about stark naked?’’

  I aimed the Lavater at her but it did a belly-flop onto the floor. Bending to retrieve it she held her back with her other hand. I saw that she had aged: the coarsening and whitening of her hair, the dried-pruning of her weathered, New England skin – it had never been English, after all.

  ‘‘Well, it would be amusing, don’t you agree, to have her go about starkers?’’

  ‘‘Hush, now, Alice,’’ she entreated.

  ‘‘Katharine,’’ I growled: ‘‘I am not a dog to be pat to sleep.’’

  She removed her spectacles and pinched the bridge of her nose; but I was not impressed.

  ‘‘I cannot create like this,’’ I declared: ‘‘in tandem. It’s not like riding a bicycle. Oh, it is all too … lumpen.’’ I flung the word out carelessly, without a thought as to where it landed or what damage it might do.

  ‘‘Then write it yourself!’’ she cried, stomping off to her garden.

  Two minutes later she returned. ‘‘By the way, what will you call her?’’

  ‘‘Her?’’

  ‘‘Your … protagonist.’’

  ‘‘Ah.’’

  I am silent, fearful of saying ‘her’ name out loud. If I do, I think, ‘she’ will dissolve before she has been wholly concocted. Also, I am afraid not only of exposing her, and making her risible, but of ‘fixing’ her with a name that is just as false – as incriminating – as a dark stubble on a jutting chin.

  ‘‘Her name, Alice?’’ asks a persistent Katharine.

  ‘‘Hectoria,’’ I whisper.

  Silence. She looks to the ceiling. Bites her lip. Slowly – very slowly – begins shaking her head.

  ‘‘It will not do, Alice.’’

  That put me in a porcupine rage. ‘‘It is the name I have given her; how dare you laugh!’’ But she was equally ‘hot’ and warned me against ‘acting up’ – it was not good for my health.

  ‘‘Health?’’ I cried, ‘‘what health? I am dying.’’

  ‘‘Oh fine, then, die,’’ she declared sans frill or fluff. But if it went on, she threatened, she would have me shipped back to Boston. Boston? 3,000 miles of sea-sickness and my righteous indignation turns to pulp, and I flop back into my tangle of shawls swindled into savorless amiability.

  Katharine. She vowed to stay with me to the end. She would not return to her sister Louisa or her aged father or her students or her beloved American landscape. And would I allow her to do this, to give up everything for me? Yes – selfish Alice – I would. I would allow myself to absorb her as a sponge sucks up life-giving moisture, make use of her as my right to an excellent death.

  You will not die but you will suffer to the end.

  I will not.

  My bones were being ground into knobbly pebbles before being dumped into a tumbler, like agates, for smoothing and shining.

  Pain but not suffering. I would not call it suffering.

  Refuse all curses, Alice.

  Katharine, below me, works the earth. I watch from the window – a glimpse of sky, the sound of rooks in Lord Holland’s Park, and many a feathery bit of green – as she digs and hoes. We have been sent seeds by Fanny Morse. Our poppies are blooming. Before long I imagine myself being carried by my slaves through the tangled bloom at midsummer among sweet peas, mignonette, cornflowers, pyrethrum, pansies, carnations, daisies, musk and nasturtiums …

  Slaves?

  What in the world has Baldwin given me?

  Sixty-four

  1891

  He came towards me, solid as a house. But houses, as I reminded myself, are not solid. ‘‘Do sit, Henry.’’ He sagged rather than sat, as if hoping to disappear down the side of the chair like a sticky mintball wrapper.

  ‘‘You are lopsided, dearest, like one of Aunt Kate’s cakes.’’

  He shifted about in an attempt to right himself. I could not help comparing his demeanor with that of the previous January. The American had just opened at Southport to great acclaim, and Henry had returned to rehearse his triumph first with Constance in Cheltenham, and then me, re-performing the simpering bows he had taken and re-living his triumph.

  ‘‘And how did you take it?’’ I had prompted.

  ‘‘Ah, my zeal was only matched by my indifference.’’

  ‘‘Henry,’’ I’d snorted: ‘‘I do not buy it for a moment.’’

  ‘‘Well you may not,’’ he’d rejoined archly, ‘‘but I find the form opens out before me as if it were a kingdom to conquer.’’

  ‘‘Henry! – only beware’’ – it had slid out of me – ‘‘you are no Bismarck!’’

  Still, I had been pleased for him. But a debut opening at the Opera Comique, I sensed, was a different kettle of fish-faced critics and grinning gainsayers from the cosy provincials who had filled the Winter Gardens in Southport back in January.

  ‘‘How is it progressing, Henry?’’

  He confessed he’d already had to do a great deal of what he called ‘play-carpentry’. A scene did not sound as it should; actors balked at their lines; speeches needed to be made less ‘speechifying’. ‘‘Naturally,’’ he finished, ‘‘I have had to compromise … make further revisions …’’

  ‘‘Towards its improvement, I take it?’’

  ‘‘Oh, the cast could not be bettered: Elizabeth Robin as Claire Cintre, Compton as Newman …’’

  ‘‘There is certainly dramatic tension in the story’’ – I took up the banner – ‘‘even melodrama in the machinations of the Countess’s family.’’

  He had no doubt that that aspect of it would claim an audience’s attention; on the other hand …

  ‘‘You are uncertain’’ – I guessed – did I not share his writing concerns as fully and sympathetically as he shared my physical ills? – ‘‘as to how the more internal, psychological interactions described in the novel will come across.’’

  He did not deny it.

  ‘‘Henry,’’ I waved towards the table, ‘‘kindly fetch my copy.’’ He did so. I then asked him to read out the scene in which Mme de Cintre receives Newman for the first time. He crossed his legs and began: ‘‘‘Mrs Tristram has spoken to me a great deal of you,’’ said Mme de Cintre gently …’.’’

  Here Newman – the American of the title – after seating himself, gradually becomes aware of his own discomfort. There is a sense of being wrong-footed, of not quite knowing how to behave with the Countess, in that foreign world of hers: ‘He felt as one does in missing a step, in an ascent, where one expected to find it. This strange, pretty woman …’

  There is not a line of dialog. Only after an unconscionable length of time does Newman ‘do’ something. Having survived a moment of panic (he feels himself ‘drowning’), he ‘saves the day’ (and himself) by performing an act – so characteristic of him – which represents in the novel the restoration of his self-possession.

  ‘‘ ‘He extended his legs,’ ’’ read Henry, closing the book.

  ‘‘It is a magnificent passage.’’

  But was it – indeed was the novel as a whole – enough like a play? No, I thought, it was too literary. Even Newman’s interest in Mme Cintre is expressed in bookish terms:

  ‘… he had opened a book and the first lines held his attention.’

  How to dramatize that? No, the more I thought about it, the less I believed it to be advisable. But was I to voice my doubts and thereby risk hurting Henry? Yes, I decided, I must; because he will be further tempted after this to make an ‘assault�
� on the stage. It will be too exciting, too enticing to resist. The siren-song of money and fame … And it will be – I see this as clearly as I see Constance giving up – a disaster. Better to hurt his pride now than allow him to fling himself into the fray, only to become publicly damaged – exposed – humiliated …

  If I do not tell him the truth, who will?

  ‘‘But Henry,’’ I spoke gently, ‘‘will there ever be actors good enough to convey all that goes on under the surface; will they be able to be still enough? After all,’’ I pursued, ‘‘what actually happens? The settling of a dress, the turning of a face, the meeting of eyes and the looking away … finally, the extending of a leg … These ‘actions’, as you have written them, attain enormous significance. But on the stage, Henry? People will hardly notice such delicacies, such smallnesses. They will become bored; they will shuffle about; the reviewers will be scathing, the money will not warrant … You are in danger, Henry,’’ I concluded, shocking even myself.

  He held up his hand, as he had done once before. ‘‘Do not be hard on me, Alice. Stevenson has already put in a cruel ‘dig’ … do not add to it.’’ Steadying his voice he went on: ‘‘Necessity has laid its brutal hand on me. My books don’t sell, and it looks as if my plays might.’’

  ‘‘Will you slum it then?’’

  A ‘blow’ had clearly been registered but he rallied. ‘‘It will amuse me,’’ he managed, ‘‘while offering financial rewards.’’

  ‘‘And if it does not?’’ I persisted.

  ‘‘An exciting gamble it yet remains. Therefore I am going with a brazen front to write half a dozen more.’’

  ‘‘And will they be filled with dates and currants? Please, Henry,’’ I entreated, ‘‘do not become a baker of edible little dramas.’’

  ‘‘Pray for me,’’ he whispered in a squeezed-out voice. He then rose and set off but abruptly stopped, turned:

  ‘‘Alice, I almost forgot …’’ He stood there looking pale and loose-fleshed. .

  ‘‘What is it Henry?’’

  ‘‘Our chef de la famille is in England, indeed, here in London.’’

  ‘‘William …?’’

  ‘‘He has come for the opening and …’’

  ‘‘… to say goodbye to me. It’s alright, Henry, we needn’t pretend. So where is he and when may I see him?’’

  ‘‘He has been lunching at The Reform Club and is presently waiting – he sidled over to the window – for the news to be broken to you; and if you survive it, I’m to tie my handkerchief to the balcony as a sign … .’’

  ‘‘A sign of what, Henry?’’ His anxious ‘handling’ of me was getting on my nerves; his assumption that some kind of attack would ‘come on’ and that I would ‘go off’ upon seeing William for the first time in, what was it? seven years. I assured him that, with the help of 200 grains of bromides, that I was not a cannonball, and that I looked forward hugely to seeing Willy.

  ‘‘But how has he managed it?’’ I asked.

  ‘‘Only thanks to Aunt Kate’s legacy: he, as her male heir, received $10,000.’’

  ‘‘And you, Henry?’’ ‘‘I was given hardly a mention,’’ he said meditatively, ‘‘but surely she has done well by you?’’

  ‘‘Oh,’’ I drawled, ‘‘she left me a life interest in a shawl.’’

  He pursed his lips: his solution, I suppose, to ‘the problem’ of expressing amusement. As to the shawl, we agreed it was her ‘revenge’ for my failing her.

  ‘‘But the letters, Henry, do not forget the letters – Mt Vernon Street – or had you gone by then?’’

  He waited for more.

  ‘‘It was after our parents’ deaths. I was ill in bed. Aunt Kate had found a drawerful of letters which she proceeded to burn. Katharine, alerted by the smell, caught her in the act but was too late to save them. She remonstrated but Kate told her they were family papers and she thought it better that ‘the children’ should not see them.’’

  ‘‘I suppose she was trying to protect us …?’’

  ‘‘Or deprive us of vital information.’’

  He said nothing. The burning of letters … it was a long time ago … he hadn’t been there to feel the full force of it. But as for the money – Kate’s legacy – we agreed that William, with his large family, needed it more than we did.

  It was time to summon the watcher at the gate. ‘‘He will be freezing out there,’’ I said. But Katharine ‘put down her foot’. I had had enough for one day, could he not see it? The two brothers, she instructed, were to come tomorrow, assuming I was ‘up to it’. Henry, consenting, took his leave.

  Sixty-five

  My big brothers, my book-ends. William and Henry: the one hairy and grizzled as a bear, the other bald and fleshy as an infant. What did it say about them? That one was more hidden while the other proclaimed himself more open – unsheathed, unwrapped – to the world? William … Henry? But surely it was the other way around. ‘‘Really Henry,’’ I heard myself say, ‘‘Willy should lend you his beard and what remains of his head-piece.’’

  Wardy brought chairs from the parlor placing them close by. ‘‘Do sit,’’ she invited in her politest company voice. They did so, flanking my sickbed, one each side, marking its perimeter with their substantial bodies. ‘‘Have an invalid mint,’’ I offered, holding out the bowl of ‘medicinal’ sweets. Henry, simpering, took one. William, with his lantern eyes and a tendency to self-denial, declined. I’d already taken one. Unless I sucked on peppermints, I explained, my mouth tended to dry out. ‘‘It’s the drugs, you see, according to Miss Ward who learned about such things at her orphan school – isn’t that right, Wardy? (the poor booby actually curtsied) – ‘‘as well as’’ – I moued – ‘‘the laying out of the dead.’’ William pretended not to hear while Henry pulled on his invalid mint as if it were a cigar that had gone out. I kept on sucking.

  Henry. At first glance, this brother appears rather a dull, opaque fellow, easily passed over. He is a banker, you think, or a politician perhaps. Look closer. See how his thumb is hooked in his waistcoat pocket – where it likes to live and swing – not quite knowing how to declare itself. On the other hand, there is the fantastical bow-tie. Then the eyes, see how they move about; they are never still and miss not a thing, real or imagined.

  William: my older, highly inquisitive brother: this one wears his personality in his face. He will never be passed over. Sweet, charismatic, twinkly of eye, hirsute and handsome; yet those eyes, for all their crinkly curiosity and courage – they gaze unflinchingly at me – do not see as far into the unknown or the impossible, or indeed the unsalubrious, as his younger brother’s.

  Do I appear to reveal a preference here? Then let me take their hands – one each – in mine. By the evidence of those – both fleshly, firm, warm and male – they are entirely equal and barely distinguishable. My brothers. I see them as young men in tall hats and black gloves – we are in the Louvre stepping as quietly as we can among the busts (which, it seems to me, are observing us with not a little alarm). Once we have ‘gorged’ on the ‘significant’ paintings, Henry leads us to a cafe where he orders a baba au rhum. William, saving his dollars and his waistline, watches him with his leanest, hungriest look as he devours the melting baba. ‘‘You will spoil your appetite – and get fat,’’ he bursts out. Henry orders another.

  ‘‘Willy, it is a draught of champagne to see you again,’’ I tell him.

  ‘‘And you, my little grey-eyed doe.’’

  But where to begin? I feared he would jump straight in to the subject of me but was soon reassured he would not (painful subjects were never, I recalled, his forte).

  ‘‘How is London?’’ he began.

  ‘‘Ah London,’’ I replied, ‘‘we are over our heads in scandals.’’

  ‘‘So I see, so I see.’’ William, keen for such tittle-tattle, was all a-twitter about Cleveland Street, a house containing a whole platoon of male prostitutes … Lord Somerset … others … the
shock … could I imagine such a thing?

  Could I? I laughed: well of course I could:

  ‘‘Everyone knows the social elite are regular clients and as for Prince Eddy …’’ I said the only thing that shocked me was the audicity of the cover-up. William rubbed his hands together like an insect, vibrating with the thrill of it, while Henry stared at us both. But here his voice changed, his whole body drooped. Oh dear, I thought: here it comes.

  ‘‘Alice … how are you?’’

  I opened my eyes, which had shut with the mint-sucking. The danger of opiates is that after an initial period of stimulation and euphoria one is in danger of falling asleep.

  ‘‘I am my brothers’ sister,’’ I replied. ‘‘At any rate,’’ I explained: ‘‘that is how my visitors address me. Quite humiliating,’’ I added, ‘‘to a free-born American woman, don’t you think?’’

  Henry looked bemused, as well he might.

  ‘‘Ah,’’ said William, drumming upon his chair-arms: ‘‘still my little lionness.’’

  But his question, he delicately reminded me, was how was I, not who.

  The invalid mint which I’d sucked to a sliver went forth inadvertently from my mouth, dropping onto the front of my bed-jacket, where it stuck. Henry froze; William jumped up and began fussing with his handkerchief. I waved him away: Wardy would take care of it later. It was merely one of many unavoidable accidents. ‘‘One is no longer in absolute control of one’s bodily functions,’’ I explained, ‘‘given a dissolute diet consisting of opium, morphia and strychnine, interspersed with Baldwin’s red wine, and the occasional sip of thin gruel or soup.’’

  ‘‘Mn,’’ said William.

  Henry avoided my gaze.

  ‘‘It seems only a moment ago,’’ I said turning to Willliam, ‘‘that you were getting married and, come to think of it, I was horizontal then as I am now.’’ The crows around his eyes lifted their wings.