The Sister

by Lynne Alexander

  Another note to William:

  ‘It is as simple as any fact of nature, the fall of a leaf or the blooming of a rose, and I have a delicious consciousness, ever present, of wide spaces close at hand, and whisperings of release in the air.

  Your always loving and grateful sister,

  Alice’

  Seventy-two

  ‘‘Do show Henry my story,’’ I instructed Katharine. I meant of course after my demise. Her reaction was unaccountable. She screwed up her eyes and swivelled her mouth to one side:

  ‘‘I believe that may be unwise.’’

  ‘‘Unwise? Is it after all such a poor thing?’’

  ‘‘No,’’ she insisted, ‘‘it is not to do with the writing so much as his reaction to it.’’ She looked about as if to make certain he hadn’t manifested out of thin air. ‘I mean,’’ she attempted to clarify, ‘‘it may frighten him … threaten him.’’ She was being unusually dramatic. ‘‘I feel that he may do something irretrievable.’’

  Her words shocked me, forcing me to consider the story from Henry’s point of view. Of course he would hate it for being cheap and easy, but more than that, he would assume, and would he not be right? that it was about him.

  But I have no strength left. ‘‘Do what you think best with it,’’ I tell her.

  A finger of light streams through the thin curtain. Henry is fresh and sad, drooping of eyelid and pallid of face, yet resonant with excitement. He presses my cheek with the back of his hand. His new play, he tells me, is called ‘Mrs Vibert’.

  Has he already forgotten my warning? Apparently so.

  ‘‘What amuses you, Alice?’’

  ‘‘Curtains,’’ I murmur. Curtains going up, curtains going down. ‘‘Is it not a droll coincidence?’’

  A rueful smile. As ever, he is able to read my thoughts – but only in part. My curtain may be about to fall for the last time; his, he apparently feels sure, will continue to rise for years to come, and to rapturous applause. How can he be so sure? But the future, I tell myself, is no longer my worry. (Though I believe – I am determined – Irish Home Rule, like Emancipation, is one of the immutable moralities sure of triumph in spite of all set-backs.)

  He asks after Katharine. ‘‘She has been watching over me all night,’’ I tell him, adding: ‘‘I am working away as hard as I can to get dead so as to release her to the outside world – as well as you of course.’’ He demurs, says it is not a release that he anticipates with much enthusiasm.

  ‘‘What more, Henry?’’

  He describes his new young acolyte: handsome, bearded … a sculptor.

  ‘‘I am thinking of commissioning a bust of you.’’

  ‘‘Will it include all my busts?’’ I ask impishly, touching my left breast. Oh dear, I have embarrassed him. But, come, he knows very well that there is no time for a bust, with or without the extra lump; unless it be a death mask – for which I have given my permission.

  There is still the ‘problem’ of Constance. I am determined not to let him forget. ‘‘Her story ‘Dorothy’,’’ I ask him: ‘‘have you read it?’’

  He gives one of his auctioneer’s nods.

  ‘‘In that case, you know there is a message in it for you.’’

  He turns his head away, as if to avoid an unpleasant smell or a tastelessly decorated room. He has moved on, I understand, taken up with new friends, reinvented himself: Henry James, the playwright. In the drama gesture is all.

  Another mistake.

  ‘‘Please, dear …,’’ I murmur, but I sense him already rising to go and Katharine preparing to take his place. Has so much time passed? Unsurprisingly, they do not keep watch together; though I hear him report to her that I have been ‘‘making sentences.’’ Making sentences, the phrase makes me smile. Have I been telling Henry about Hectoria in a quavering chirp? I have no recollection.

  I know now what will happen. Katharine, who has had the intention to ‘deal with’ Hectoria herself, and knowing better than anyone my intention, will attempt to complete it to the best of her prosaic ability. But before she has gotten very far she begins to ask herself: Am I really doing it the justice it deserves? Her doubts having crept in now grow great. She begins to suspect she was wrong and that I was right after all:

  It must go to Henry.

  She understands it calls for someone with a writerly flair to fill in the gaps, to realize its author’s intention of orchestrating it so it will live. As Alice well knows, she thinks, knowing herself to have no ear.

  She has begun sorting through my correspondence – another necessary chore – when she comes upon a letter from William that especially catches her attention. It is dated August, l890 and it says, ‘I am entirely certain that you’ve got a book inside of you … which will come out yet. Perhaps it’s the source of all your recent trouble.’ Carrying on with the sorting, she will find another badgering letter from William: ‘I do hope that you will leave some notes on life and English life which Harry can work in hereafter, so as to make the best book he ever wrote.’

  Which Harry can work in hereafter.

  In her thoughtful way she will reflect on the matter. But the final ‘act’ – it makes me chuckle to myself to think of it – will come upon her suddenly – an impulse of the moment. She is tired and let us say grief-stricken, and so one day she knocks peremptorily on Henry’s door; Smith opens; she thrusts a package into his hands. It contains my story along with the manila envelope full of scraps of unfinished bits. There is a covering letter explaining my wish that the story at least be made public in some form or other. ‘‘Please make sure Mr James gets this,’’ and she dashes off before she changes her mind.

  Katharine waits to get word from Henry but alas none comes. She puts off travelling home for a month – there are things left to do concerning my affairs – but still nothing. At some point she confronts Henry and asks him about my novel. He tells her he has no knowledge of such a thing.

  And the stories? fragments in the envelope?

  He sucks in his cheeks. As far as he is aware, there is only a diary containing a few precious telles-quelles.

  The only thing I regret is the pain which this will cause Katharine. She will blame herself for a bad decision. But that is foolish, the responsibility is all mine. She has merely obeyed my instructions. It is I who failed to consider the consequences.

  Henry is reading my story. He reads it rather hurriedly, I see, turning each page tremblingly. It makes him almost sick with horror at the thought of it coming to light, of the publicity, of his implied role in the story. Then there’s the prediction of ‘Hectoria’s suicide. How would poor Constance like to read that? Impossible. It is, he decides, the sad, violently misjudged product of a morphine-soaked brain. It is not a beautiful story. He considers reshaping it, turning it into something less incriminating, something approaching a story en temps et lieu, but there is no time. Besides, its publication in any form would be a disaster.

  Flames nip at me, eager to conclude. Early spring, I guess people are poking at their bonfires. The smell of burning hangs in the air. The feel of her open palm on my forehead, slipping down to cup my cheek then pulling itself lazily across my mouth so I can kiss it goodbye. Katharine, my beautiful counterpart.

  Seventy-three

  If the aim of life is the accretion of fat, the consumption of food unattended by digestive disorganization followed by a succession of pleasurable sensations – then I am one of life’s great failures. A sack of whippety bones; enormous eyes; a nose worthy of a Christmas reindeer.

  We have finished ‘Dorothy’ and gone on to the memoirs of the Electress Sophia of Hanover. I guess it’s Katharine’s last-ditch attempt to bring me into the fold of true history. It is a story about Sophia’s sister Elizabeth, Abbess of Herford. That excellent woman knew every language and science under the sun, corresponded with Descartes, was also very handsome, &etc. But – and here is the rub – her nose was apt to grow red and ‘all her philosophy could not
save her from vexation’. So when this misfortune overtook her ‘she used to hide herself from the world’.

  Poor Liz, think I, for which of us has not a red nose at the core of her being which defies all her philosophy and courage? So it is with me.

  ‘‘Dear Kath,’’ I entreat, ‘‘will you powder it?’’

  Vanity plays her hand to the end. The puffing powder makes me gag – and Kath herself – and Wardy – but it is worth it. Anything not to die with a red nose!

  *

  Pain falls away. Never mind that I am addicted, as the medical men say, as one of the ‘weaker sex enfeebled by illness but selfishly fond of pleasure’. Yet I am perfectly clear and humorous and would talk if doing so did not bring on revolting spasms of coughing. I can still manage a whisper, however, so into Henry’s ear I dictate a final message to be cabled to Willy: TENDEREST LOVE TO ALL FAREWELL AM GOING SOON ALICE.

  This year has been rich beyond compare, the heart all aglow with the affections of friend and brother, the mind deeply stirred by the human comedy with its flow of succulent juices, the spirit broadened and strengthened even as the carcass withers. But there is something I have left out, tidied away. The folding of history in the manner of a hope chest.

  Once upon a time there were two brilliant, successful brothers … oh, and I almost forgot, two other brothers called Wilkinson and Robertson; otherwise known as Wilky and Rob. What hope did these brothers have? Lamentably little. They were not brilliant; not what you would call ‘successful’: quite the reverse. But oh, I want to cry out – if only I could – failure is … necessary … essential. Was it not what the pater taught us all those years ago? For without it there was nothing to the eventual accomplishment? But what, dear pater – what if the afflictions, the trials, outdid one? Outdid your boys?

  There was a war. A Civil War. So it had been called. Wilky and Rob enlisted. Rob, our youngest brother: Rob or Bob, BobBobBob like a little cocksparrow. The odd thing – was it odd? – was that they had both led regiments of free black men. That in itself was a triumph, was it not? That in itself should be remembered. And then Wilky was wounded at Fort Wagner. Here are the facts: A canister ball entered his ankle and shattered the bone. Was not removed for eight days. And when he returned, a shell fragment hit him in the back, settling into a neat little pocket under the skin near his spine. When he came home afterwards I was afraid to go near him fearing – as if his body had been peppered with assorted exploding devices – he was in danger of ‘going off’. A girl’s fantasy. Whereas the truth, of his having to live with constant pain, was too awful, too ordinary, too familiar. Wilky ‘adipose and affectionate’ – so Father had once described him – was afflicted with hysterical blindness, heart trouble, Bright’s Disease.

  And little Bob? He was ‘awful homesick’. The pater scolded him for effiminacy, told him to force yourself like a man and do your whole duty. But no forcing could overcome the truth as he saw it. ‘‘Our side has won,’’ wrote little Bob at the end, ‘‘but I feel I have lost.’’

  After that? The two brothers bought a plantation down in Florida with money borrowed from our father. People called it a ‘mad venture’. Unsurprisingly it didn’t work out. But I say the following adjectives shall, must, be added: brave, brave and true, and decent. Yes, but hardly a success, alas.

  Wilky died of heart failure.

  Rob is still alive but drinks alcohol and has to be hospitalized from time to time.

  Enough. I dropped them into the story and now I propose to abandon them once again, repeating the whole disastrous thing.

  As for me, tucked up in my invalid’s bed? Oh I was protected by my sex. I did not have to earn a living or ‘act the man.’ And as I did not have to fight I received no wounds to the body. But according to Henry, our ‘upbringing’ – such as it was – had consequences for us all. Funesti, he called it. Fatal.

  Then there was that other notion put about by our father which we absorbed right from the beginning, which asserted that in any one family there is a limited (i.e., finite) fund of health and pleasure. Imagine a sort of bank account of well-being and accomplishment; so that, for example, if one of us took sick, it would be in order that the others could remain healthy. This theory he also applied to success, intelligence, genius. Unfortunately, by the time these attributes got to Rob and Wilky, their store was sorely depleted, having been ‘used up’ by William and Henry.

  And little Alice? Where will she ‘stand’ between the ‘successes’ and the ‘failures’? Will she distinguish herself or be blown away, another sooty flake like Rob and Wilky?

  Last night I had a dream in which Lizzie Boott appeared along with Clover and Ellen Hooper. They are standing up in a boat, just putting out to sea. The sea is tumbled like bedclothes. They pass from under a cloud into bright sunlight but still look back at me standing at the edge of the shore as if beckoning to me in their mute way to join them.

  That scene now fades and father appears, his beard curling jocosely among the clouds. I tell him the latest news. ‘‘In the last year Henry has published The Tragic Muse, and also brought The American to the stage, and is planning further theatricals. Then there’s William’s many volumes of Psychology and something about varieties of religious experience. Not a bad show for one family – especially if I get myself dead, the hardest job of all.’’ And there is something else besides: a serious, private thing not to do with accomplishments, or not as such.

  Dear Pater – guess what? Those creatures you called ‘chattering birds of night’ turn out to be plain old bats with delicate connecting draperies, tiny pointed ears and teeth, and bead-eyes; precious and perfect as persian miniatures or tapestries done with the finest needles.

  The howling wolves? Puppydogs.

  So much for your demons, dear.

  And your curse.

  Seventy-four

  I am at the theater, or so it appears. I have been given a seat in the front row, reserved for me by Henry. The curtain twitches but doesn’t open quite yet. It is the moment before, to be distinguished from other later moments. Let it soon be filled, I think, pray, with the applause Henry wishes for. Let it be marked like a book. Let it extend and stretch like the night sky or a story with no fin.

  The curtain opens on Act One. A well-appointed drawing-room. A fire in the hearth. Two chairs face one another and in them sit my brother Henry and his doctor and friend, William Wilberforce Baldwin, who has been staying with him.

  It is evening and they are relaxing after dinner, paunches-ho, beside Henry’s fire. His dainty lyre chairs barely contain them, especially after the partridge and pudding. Port and cigars will now be drunk and puffed respectively according to male ritual. Baldwin looks about the room, for the moment avoiding Henry’s troubled expression. The room, he notes approvingly, glows with the evidence of Henry’s success. He is naturally aware of its extreme orderliness, somewhat unusual, he considers, in someone of artistic sensibility admiring particularly the Persian rug (not to be compared with my own cheap Turkey rug) and an inlaid display cabinet with a serpentine front and swan-neck pediments.

  Now Baldwin, with Henry’s permission, rises, goes towards it, makes free to turn the key, the better to examine the romping stags, simpering geishas and laughing buddhas.

  Concerning this piece of furniture, by the way, I was told of it by Henry with not a little pride; alternatively by William with not a little ill-concealed glee. ‘Monstrous’, he called it, predicting it would give its owner nightmares’. In the same letter he wrote saying Henry had ‘covered himself, like some marine crustacean, with all sorts of material growth, rich seaweeds and rigid barnacles and things, and lives hidden in the midst of his strange heavy alien manners and customs.’ To his credit, however, he added this: ‘Beneath all the accretions, he is still the same dear innocent old Harry of our youth.’ In my reply to William I pointed out there was no accounting for Henry’s tastes. Katharine put it down to his ‘change of life’.

  But to return to
our little drama.

  ‘‘Katharine Loring …?’’ begins Baldwin. Henry frowns, he does not like thinking about her, especially in relation to me. Baldwin however admits to something of a fascination for ‘the friend’. The word ‘unwholesome’ crosses Henry’s mind. ‘‘No, no, nothing like that,’’ says Baldwin, reading him. ‘‘I mean only that I have long been puzzled – may I be frank? – about Miss Loring’s motive for tending to Alice so … faithfully.’’

  Silence. ‘‘You suspect …?’’ insinuates Henry.

  Again Baldwin is forced to clear the air with a doctorly wave. He is not expressing himself well. It is not an easy matter. If he is not careful he will insult poor Alice and, by extension, Henry. How to put it delicately? What he really longs to say is Why on earth, man, would a healthy, vibrant, dynamic, productive, free spinster (but with family responsibilities of her own) choose to give it all up to live with a wretched invalid, albeit the sister of Henry James?

  ‘‘I suspect nothing,’’ comes the reply: ‘‘merely the medical man’s prerogative; and the writer’s, I presume?’’ he adds interrogatively. Henry nods but there is tension, Baldwin observes, in the chords of his friend’s neck. Baldwin, who has assumed an infinite curiosity on his friend’s part, realizes his mistake. Henry has two ‘blind spots’, and this is one of them. Tread softly, he counsels himself. The question of an ‘intimacy’ is clearly beyond discussion; though how to account for it in general may, he assumes, be broached without danger.

  ‘‘An attraction of opposites …?’’ he chances.