by Louisa Reid
Up until September The Mother taught us at home; her specialist subject was misery and lessons of painful silence and glares masqueraded as basic Maths and English. When the Home-School Inspector came to check up on us, they put on a show of course, but mainly she stuck with what she knew best. But when we turned sixteen Hephzi demanded that we study for our A levels. She’d been begging to go to school for years, her voice growing less meek, less mild, and when she found out about A levels from Mrs Sparks she wouldn’t shut up about them. The Father took a lot of persuading, and so did the people at the school, but for once the cards were dealt in our favour. The teachers would make arrangements and help us to catch up. It was an unusual situation but allowances could be made. I was glad. I thought we would breathe fresh air at last, away from the septic trail of The Mother’s spite. We’d been dying inside as we trod in her footsteps, marking time. I itched to be free but, well, I wasn’t sure about the idea of college. Getting out of the house more would be good but it made me nervous. It wasn’t me I was worried about, it was my sister.
The Mother hated to think she was doing us a favour by sending us to the school in the village, where we were to enrol at the sixth-form centre. But it was too late by then, they couldn’t back out without stirring up talk. Most of the local kids were staying on there and it would be an opportunity for us to try new things, meet some of the locals, have some fun, that’s what Mrs Sparks said to me when we bumped into her on the first day we left the vicarage to walk the mile up the main road to the school. Hephzi was thinking about meeting the ones who didn’t come to church, the ones we’d never had a chance to make friends with – and that was most of them. We’d seen them though, buying chips in their lunch breaks, smoking on the swings, hanging arm in arm around the village. Hephzi had stared greedy-eyed and I’d watched her wanting them and wished I could steal the view. Then the thought slid through me, a curl of hope, that I might find a friend there too, someone else besides Hephzi who I could talk to. But it didn’t work out like that.
Today Craig was waiting, as the note had said he would be, at the Rec. He was sitting on a swing, leaning back and looking up into cold acres of sky. The air was white, white with cold and white with ice, and I pulled my coat around me as I trod over ground that was as dead and as frozen as The Father’s heart. But for Craig, the place was empty. No one would see us. As I walked over to him, fighting the wind which drove slivers of cold into my bones, my body ached and I faltered. I could turn and go back the way I had come. I shouldn’t even be here. But Craig had spotted me and was sauntering over. I followed him into the kids’ playhouse and scrunched myself, small and tight, into a corner. He lit up a cigarette and I inched even further away. Someone had scrawled filthy words on the child-size table and I stared at them as I waited for him to speak first; I had nothing to say. When he’d smoked half his cigarette he spoke, his voice gruff.
‘You gonna tell us what happened, then?’
I didn’t answer. Why should I tell him anything? He wasn’t my friend.
‘Look, all I want to know is, how’d she die?’
Again, I didn’t respond. This was all he’d wanted, to interrogate me about my dead sister. What else had I been expecting? She was none of his business now. I shifted, still on my feet and ready to go. I should be at school in Physics. There’d be hell if they reported that I hadn’t been there.
‘Where’re you going?’
‘Physics.’
‘Just wait, would you?’
From outside the playhouse I stared at him then, as he sat in his beanie hat, smoking the cigarette down to the filter, his long legs somehow concertinaed into the tiny space, and wondered why Hephzi had liked him. I knew I was ill. My head ached and my throat was worse. Inside my old coat I was sweating and shivering too. As I turned away to trudge back to civilization I heard him call me a name but I didn’t respond. He was nothing to me.
By the time I reached school I knew I really wasn’t right. I slumped down in the corridor opposite the reception desk not caring who saw or stared. The bell had gone for second period and dawdling feet scuffed past me in trainers and dirty boots. I watched them go by and wondered if someone would stop. It was a pair of heels which faltered and then drew to a halt.
‘Are you all right down there?’
I looked up through my fringe, it was lank and greasy but I didn’t care that I hadn’t cleaned myself that morning. Without Hephzi to nag me I could be as smelly as I liked.
‘It’s Rebecca, isn’t it?’
I just about managed to nod.
‘Hang on, let me get someone.’
The heels clicked away and returned with another pair of feet, this time shod in sensible lace-ups.
‘Come on, love, let’s get you up.’ Strong hands hauled me upright and I lolled in the caretaker’s arms. He manoeuvred me to a plastic chair by the reception hatch and I sat, shivering and waiting to see what would happen next. I’d never caused a drama before. In fact I usually made a point of keeping well out of the limelight. Someone was being summoned, the school nurse it turned out, and she took one look at me before she said, ‘Call the parents.’
The Mother came for me. She wasn’t allowed to drive the car and so she’d walked and it had taken ages. I’d sat there in reception, not caring who stared, and the nurse had periodically come back to check on me. She’d given me a plastic cup of water and two paracetamol but it hadn’t made any difference. After twenty minutes or so Craig had sidled in and sloped past, avoiding looking in my direction like always.
When The Mother arrived the nurse appeared again.
‘Rebecca’s running a high fever and needs to go straight to bed, Mrs Kinsman. I’d ring for a doctor’s appointment if I were you.’
The Mother nodded. She looked annoyed.
‘Come on, Rebecca. Let’s get you home.’
‘She’s rather weak, I’m afraid. She’ll need some help getting to the car.’
‘Car? I didn’t bring the car. She can walk. The fresh air will do her the power of good.’ I heard my mother laugh, a brittle burst which I knew meant she was determined not to be bossed about by a wretched do-gooder. That was what they called people like the school nurse, or the local GP, or my form tutor. Once or twice when I was small, people had come to the vicarage, social workers or doctors or people interested in what I was, I don’t really know. They discussed me, and he explained how shy and slow I was and that they were doing their best with me. I would sit on his knee while they stared, not really there, playing invisible, and he would talk and then they’d smile and go away. The Father had explained that we were never to talk to people like that and that we’d only get in trouble if we did. He said that no one liked lying children and that there were special punishments for them. Never trust a do-gooder, he said. Not to their faces, though, to their faces he was as nice as pie.
‘You’re at the church at the other end of the village, aren’t you? Can you phone someone and ask for a lift?’
‘I don’t think so. Now, Rebecca. Come along.’
I wobbled to my feet and the walls began to spin. The nurse stepped forward, stopped me from toppling and pressed me back into the chair.
‘Mrs Kinsman, I understand this is a difficult time for you. But Rebecca really is unwell. She will not be able to walk the length of the High Street. I’ll get Linda to call a taxi for you.’
The receptionist made the call and I was too ill to even be frightened at the consequences which would await me back home when The Father saw us arrive in a cab. The Mother didn’t say a word to me on the journey; she didn’t need to, her silence iced the air between us. She helped me out of the cab though and paid the driver before hustling me inside, looking over her shoulder.
‘Where is he?’ I managed to croak.
‘Out visiting.’
I nodded and crept upstairs, falling into bed fully dressed.
She didn’
t bring me a drink or any painkillers, I doubt we had any in the house, and I knew she wouldn’t call the doctor. They don’t like people coming round unless it’s on church business, when they can keep them downstairs in the front room and pass round Granny’s posh teapot. Occasionally I staggered to the bathroom and drank from the tap. Three days I lay up there alternately sweating and shivering. At the height of my fever, somewhere in the middle of one of those nights, I saw Hephzi sitting on the end of my bed. She smiled, told me to be brave, then, waving and jolly, sank down into the floor, swallowed up by the carpet. I reached for her, to pull her back, but I was too slow and too weak. Again. I’d been begging Hephzi to come back to me and I screamed silently for her, but she’d gone and I fell back into my sweat-starched sheets, as the wall began to cry.
While I lay up there waiting for something to happen, he came. My eyes snapped open, startled out of a dream, to see The Father there in front of our wardrobe, his arms filled with Hephzi’s few things. Still as a statue I let my eyelids droop and willed myself invisible. He buried his head in her clothes, moaned, whimpered, crooned, then carried the bundle from the room, not once glancing my way. I was glad I’d hidden my favourite things, her blue jumper, her silver necklace. A tiny vial of perfume a woman in the chemist had given her as a tester when she’d admired the scent. If he was going to come creeping in here like that then I’d have to be even more careful. Nowhere was safe.
It’s hard to hide here. That’s why we play the invisible game. But The Parents have their secret amusements too, of course, and for a while I’d been a good specimen for him to practise on. But when my face stayed the same regardless of his ministrations he realized I wasn’t an adequate example of his power and that he couldn’t work miracles despite his hype. He started leaving me behind with Granny again but I can still remember how his special services frightened me. I didn’t like to see the other children cry as he exorcised their devils. I wanted to hide. Like a medieval mountebank he travelled the country, peddling false faith and the elixir of eternal life. In the car on the way home The Mother would count their spoils and he would thump the steering wheel with his fist and shout, Hallelujah! Praise the Lord!
His very own demon still comes in my dreams and I scream for release as it bundles me and burgles me and breaks me in two.
In the end someone put a stop to his little sideline but he still offered such services under cover of night. We played invisible then and tried not to hear the screams from downstairs.
Eventually I felt better and needed to eat. It was late morning and, pulling my cardigan tightly round me, I tottered downstairs. Sun filtered weakly through the hall window and made dancing patterns on the carpet and wallpaper. I would have some food and then go to college. Even before Hephzi had died I’d decided that if I had to go and study then I might as well try hard and let my exams be my passport out of the vicarage. I couldn’t live with them for the rest of my life and this might be a way to escape. The glares of accusation now made it even more obvious that I had to go.
With no one around I made toast and drank orange juice, pouring it shakily from the value pack I’d hauled home from the local shop. The margarine tasted rancid on the bread that had charred in the toaster but I swallowed it nevertheless, not caring. Food was barely a necessity in this house and never a luxury. I stared at the old Formica units and cracked linoleum. The ancient, grimy stove and greasy walls blankly returned my gaze. Even if I had a friend, bringing them here would be out of the question. Hephzi had tried to make our room nice, she’d smuggled in a pot of paint she’d got from Craig’s mum, who’d been doing up her living room, and got halfway through painting one wall pale green. That was in the autumn. She hadn’t finished it before she died. I wouldn’t be taking up the task; I wouldn’t go near that wall unless I had to. As I chewed the toast I wondered where The Parents were. The door had slammed about an hour ago. No one had been up to see me that morning and I knew better than to look for a note. If I hurried I would make period four. Maths. I couldn’t afford to fall behind in my least favourite subject and knew there’d already be tons to catch up on.
By lunchtime I was tired and took refuge in the library. It had become the place to which I’d retreat most days and the librarian looked up and smiled as I came in.
‘Rebecca! I wondered where you’d got to. Are you all right?’ Her warmth wrapped me like a blanket and I nodded and smiled back, the feeling funny on my face. I hoped I looked vaguely normal. Once I’d practised in the mirror in the school loo, trying to find the way to move my mouth to make it look less ghastly, but no matter how I tried, my jumble of teeth crowded the expression and I couldn’t disguise the ancient graveyard that hid ashamed behind my lips. I always smile with my mouth closed and speak as little as possible.
I made my way over to the back of the library to pick up where I’d left off, halfway through the Cs. I was determined to read every book on every shelf but it was taking me a long time. I couldn’t take the novels home and the only time I could read was in the library during lunch or in an odd free period. But I was determined not to give up. Once I was transported to Wuthering Heights or downtown LA I was happy, my world receded and for forty minutes reality hung suspended somewhere over the school like a black balloon waiting to pop as the bell for registration sounded. Today I was finishing off a Raymond Chandler and all through my illness I’d been wondering about the end, making up alternative versions of the story to keep my mind entertained in its more lucid moments. Hephzi hadn’t liked to read as much as I did, but sometimes at night if she couldn’t sleep she’d wake me up and ask me to tell her a story and I’d fill her in on Emma or Villette and we’d both nod off again, content. Hephzi wouldn’t have liked this one though. She liked the romances and the happy endings. Murder and mystery weren’t her style.
On my way out of the library Mrs Larkin stopped me in my tracks.
‘Look, Rebecca.’ She was holding out a leaflet. ‘I saw this and thought of you straight away! It’s a summer school.’ Seeing my face, she thrust the thing more firmly towards me. ‘Here take it – it’s something for you to think about at least.’
I took the glossy-looking pamphlet and stared at the photograph of girls and boys sitting together on a green lawn under a beech tree. Their faces were as bright as their futures and they held books open on their laps. Some were reading and some were laughing. I didn’t recognize them. ‘Cambridge Summer Schools,’ the leaflet read, ‘for Gifted and Talented Students.’ I thrust it back at her, shaking my head.
‘Take it, have a think,’ she encouraged and, seeing disappointment crease her face at my refusal, I put the thing in my pocket. I’d bin it later. There was no point dreaming; the leaflet was nothing more than a glass slipper handed to the ugly sister. I would never fit in there even if they’d let me go, which was a fairy tale in itself. Mrs Larkin meant well though so I tried my tight smile again and wandered off to registration. As the teacher called names and handed out notices I pulled the leaflet out of my pocket. I couldn’t resist the glossy paper, the smiling, intelligent faces. The courses were all for sixth formers and the one Mrs Larkin had underlined jumped out at me immediately. But I wasn’t studying English. I did the subjects he’d chosen, things I’d never understand. The idea of studying Literature for a whole two weeks sent a shudder of fear and excitement running to my heart like a little electric shock. I pushed the leaflet into my locker at the end of registration; I would look again tomorrow.
Life at home without Hephzi was hard. She had been the cement which held the bricks of our family together. If you can call us that. I don’t like the word, not for us, saying it is like trying to swallow a stone. The Father sort of loved Hephzi. She could make him laugh at her jokes and indulge her whims, he was proud of her sparkle and prettiness.
I remember going carolling when we were eleven. Someone from the church choir had suggested we raise money for charity by singing our way around the village.
Songs weren’t usually allowed, not for us, but the choirmaster had insisted.
‘Hephzibah has a beautiful voice, Vicar, she could do a little solo.’ He’d heard her singing as we polished the altar one Saturday. She’d clamped her hand over her mouth too late, only realizing her mistake when he’d stopped crashing out his chords on the organ and turned to listen. We’d hoped he wouldn’t tell, but he did.
Hephzi turned her face to The Father, glowing with the praise and excitement.
‘Please, Daddy, I’ll do my best, I promise, I won’t let you down.’
He had to say yes, he couldn’t resist, especially with the choir looking on and Mrs Sparks nodding so enthusiastically at his elbow, and so she was granted the chance. He marched round with us – I trailed behind holding the tin for the money and Hephzi sang like an angel at every door.
‘How wonderful! How delightful! What a beautiful voice! Isn’t she sweet?’ people said and put their spare change in my rattling pot. Despite himself, The Father swelled up and basked in her glory. But it never happened again, even though she begged for another chance. It would lead her to sin, that was his view, and all songs ceased but for the psalms we chanted in church.
Now with Hephzi gone he was more morose than he’d ever been. And bitter. That sharp, acid anger directed itself at me, the one who’d survived. The one who ought to have died.
They blamed me for bringing the spotlight on to the household and making it harder for them to do as they pleased. The Father hated me because the thing he’d liked to watch over, like a greedy vulture, was gone and now they had to be careful, extra vigilant, just in case any more questions were asked. But I blame myself too. I should have saved her. That was my job.