Scarlett chokes and splutters then and the water splatters all over the bedclothes, all over her papers. ‘You’re saying what?’
‘I know, I know.’ I pick up a little flannel that’s sticking out of her washbag and hand it to her. ‘It sounds outrageous. It sounds…desperate,’ I trail off. ‘But it worked for Mr Huang. He says you have very good chi. You’re young and you’re healthy and under the right conditions you should conceive naturally and easily, just like Mrs Huang…’
‘Oh, no, Hollie. No!’ My sister wipes up the spilt water, frowning furiously. ‘Don’t. Please. Just don’t, OK? Let’s not go there.’
‘I have to go there. There is no other place for me to go.’
‘Oh, yes, there is.’ Scarlett’s eyes suddenly take on a glint. ‘There’s adoption, for starters.’
‘Then it wouldn’t be Richard’s child. It wouldn’t be…it wouldn’t be mine.’
‘Yes, it would!’
She doesn’t know, she doesn’t remember all the things that I remember though…
For a moment, I can only stare at her dumbly.
‘I used to think of you as being mine, once upon a time,’ I tell her eventually. A child of my heart, if not of my body, but at the time I was too young to know the difference.
Does she remember the time me and Flo took her, aged four, for her pre-school booster injection at the clinic? She wanted to hold my hand on the way in. It was always me she looked to, for comfort and for succour, not Flo. It was me she wanted. But the nurse wouldn’t let me go in the room with her for the injection, she insisted Flo take her through. That didn’t go down too well. I don’t remember all the details but I remember Lettie kicking up an almightly fuss. Several nurses were drafted in to hold her down for the doctor in the end, and I wound up yelling at them all to stop, just stop, because they were hurting my Lettie and everyone turned to look at me in astonished embarrassment.
‘She’s not yours, Hollie Hudson,’ I remember Flo remonstrating with me afterwards, embarrassed by my noisy protestations. ‘You may think of her as yours but she isn’t. She never was and she never will be. I’ve given you too much of a free rein with her, that’s the trouble, but all that’s going to have to end.’
True to her word, Flo had taken Lettie’s little bed out of my room and put it in her own after that. She took to walking Scarlett to school herself, reading her bedtime stories and doing all the things that I liked to do for her. At the time I saw it as her stepping between us, driving a physical wedge between me and my sister, but the truth was she’d done more than that. She made me long for a time when I’d have a child of my own. Someone who nobody else could ever come and lay a claim to. Someone I could say ‘I love you’ to, in a way no one had ever been able to say it to us as kids.
‘There are other people in the world who could do this for you, for Christ’s sake, Hollie!’ Scarlett’s shocked voice brings me back to the present. She stands up and a whole pile of socks that she’d been balancing on her lap fall now to the floor. ‘Why the hell would you ask me to sleep with your husband you…you stupid fool!’ She looks directly at me for an instant. ‘If he were my man I’d never let you anywhere near him, know that?’ She’s only half-joking, I can tell.
‘I know Richard is an attractive man. I’d like to think you wouldn’t take my suggestion any less seriously if he were ugly as a dog.’
‘Look, I’m packing to go now, Hol. Just let me go. I’m planning to take out a tourist visa if I can’t get my work permit from the European wot-not group. I’m planning…I’m planning on making a go of it with Gui. I need to get back!’
‘Please.’ I do not know where the strength of my desire comes from; I know that it’s foolhardy to be so persistent in the face of all this opposition, not to mention the opposition in my heart. ‘Please, reconsider, Scarlett.’
‘The thing is…’she looks at me pityingly ‘…I have already reconsidered, Hol.’
We look at each other for a long minute and the wind flutters in through the little open window and ruffles her papers so that they waft down off the chest of drawers and onto the floor. We both just stare at them. I don’t make a move to shut the window as I normally would.
‘You need to find something else to fill that void, Hollie,’ she says slowly. ‘Whatever space you think that baby’s going to fill for you – find something else to fill it. Look – see what I found this morning.’ She leans forward suddenly and picks up an old familiar tapestry bag. I’d forgotten all about that!
‘I found it stuffed into the back of the wardrobe,’ she says in answer to my puzzled expression. ‘Look.’ She opens the bag and tips out the contents. A pile of unfinished toddler cardigans and jumpers fall onto the bed. She shakes the bag a bit and the clatter of a dozen knitting needles follows. ‘All these beautiful things that you used to make. Why did you ever stop?’
‘Only a few weeks ago you were telling me I needed more in my life than knitting,’ I accuse her.
‘Well, I was wrong. Because…they’re gorgeous. They’re so creative. Why did you ever give up doing what you’re so good at?’ My sister’s voice is coming in short puffs, as if she’s been running.
‘Because I wasn’t so good at making the babies to put in them, was I?’ I stare at the jumble of wool and tiny items for a moment. What’s this got to do with anything? She’s just trying to distract me. ‘I still need you to do that for me.’
‘Not that way. You’ve still got Richard, don’t forget. Would it really be worth it if you gained a baby and you lost your husband into the bargain?’
‘I won’t lose Rich.’
‘If this is how far you’re prepared to go to get the baby then maybe you deserve to,’ she throws at me. ‘Look, I just told you, I’ve reconsidered. All this was one big mistake, Hollie. I should never have agreed to do this for you. I’m so the wrong person. I’m…I’m not consistent and persevering like you are. I don’t stick at things when the going gets tough, I’m not made that way – I just get out. I know now that I’m not cut out for pregnancy. To tell you the truth…’she stares at the ground ‘…if I found I’d made a mistake last night and I’d read the pregnancy stick wrong, I’d still be telling you the same thing. I wouldn’t be prepared to go ahead with it.’
‘I don’t believe you. Of course you would! You’ve never run away from a single challenge in your life, Scarlett.’
‘I ran away from here, didn’t I? I ran halfway round the world…’
‘You never ran away. You went to Brazil to fulfil your dream. You love your work.’
Scarlett stares at me, dumbfounded, then throws up her arms in frustration. ‘I can’t explain this to you, if you can’t already see it. But you’re right, I did find some meaning in Brazil. Some peace too. There are people there I can actually be useful to.’
‘You could be useful here too if you stayed. Please do this for me.’ I don’t want to break down in front of her but my body does it all by itself.
‘Jeez – you make me so mad, really you do! Richard would never agree anyway. He’s as loyal to you as the day is long. He’d never agree to sleep with anyone else.’
‘Maybe not just anyone. But I’ve asked him if he’d agree to sleep with you.’
Scarlett suddenly becomes very still.
‘And?’ Her stark gaze meets mine. ‘He told you to get real, right?’
I shake my head. ‘He agreed to do it, Lettie. He said if I could persuade you, then he’d do it.’
‘Jesus wept!’ My sister rubs her eyes so hard now I think she’s going to poke them out. ‘You’ve asked him. You’ve already persuaded him?’
I nod. I get up and go to squeeze her hand but Scarlett shudders. ‘For God’s sake, Hol. Don’t ask me this. Just don’t ask me…’
But something, somehow, has got through to her at last. I can feel it.
Scarlett
We hadn’t had any music that day, Richard and I. But when he put his arms about my waist to dance with me in the cow-
barn, our surroundings felt as grand to me as any glitzy ballroom in the movies. The musty smell of the bales of straw in the corner vanished in an instant, the damp patches on the sandy floor where the rain leaked through were shining Italian marble beneath our flying feet. We’d hummed along as we went, trying to be serious, as military as the music in our minds, but I hadn’t been able to stop giggling.
Maybe it was the nerves. The fact that, at fourteen, I was way too short for him. He had to bend down as you would for a child, but he was so patient and attentive. Here, you place your feet here; you must look this way. Keep your expression serious. No, don’t look at me. In this dance the man has to woo the woman; she is proud and haughty, unattainable. Once you’ve mastered the steps you have to pay attention to the eyes. Think about what is going on between the couple in this dance. He wants her, but she will not let him know he is winning her over…
But how could I stop myself from looking at him? He was the most beautiful man I had ever seen. All I wanted to do was look at him. When I danced with Richard I didn’t have to worry about the fact that a new term at school was just around the corner, that my grades had plummeted the previous term after Auntie Flo had passed away and I couldn’t see for the life of me how I was ever going to get the energy to make them good again.
I didn’t have to think about anything else: about my sister who had become so short-tempered and worn down with all the sudden responsibility; about the limp poor Ruffles still had on his left hind leg after the accident, or even about the garden that felt like it was sinking with the weight of rain bearing down on it that summer…
Does Richard ever think about the summer we first met? Does he remember it as I do? How my sister had come in and stood so quietly by the door where we wouldn’t see her? How she had watched us right up until the end and how afterwards the sound of her pleased laughter and clapping had sent a shock right through me, because damn her, what was she doing there, where she shouldn’t have been? Richard had looked up and – seeing her – let go of me in an instant. His face lit up the first time he laid eyes on her.
And I was forgotten. I don’t believe either of them ever noticed how much I resented her in that moment. How I wished with all my heart she had never turned up that day and spotted us, never met him, never stolen my budding first love away from me.
No. My sister has not the first idea how I feel – how I have always felt – about her husband. I’ve pushed it away for so long I have almost forgotten myself. I would never have made a play for Richard. I would never have done anything to deliberately hurt her. Not in a thousand years.
But then yesterday she asked me.
And the moment she did that, everything changed.
Scarlett
My first reaction was: Christ, no! I was on my way out of here, wasn’t I? I was packing my things even as Hollie came in to me. I’d provisionally booked my tickets to go back to Brazil.
I booked them and then that stupid test kit stick came out positive. I was trapped. All I could think of yesterday morning was that I had to get away. How could Hollie have ever understood that? Something’s got into me over these past twenty-four hours – my wanderlust, Hollie would call it – though it is a great deal more than that. The truth is, from the moment I found out I was pregnant, all I have been able to feel is complete and utter panic.
Why? I have no idea. If this had been Hollie she would have felt joy. I feel panic. Oh, maybe it’s because I cannot bear to feel tied down. Because I cannot bear to be constrained. Or maybe it’s because I’m just like our mother.
I never knew this would happen if I found myself pregnant. How could I ever have predicted that? I’m good at handling most things; in the jungle I’ve dealt with stuff most people would run a mile from – snakes, poisonous plants, spiders, horrible insects, big cats. How could I have guessed a simple pregnancy would put me in this kind of spin? I would have given anything to have been able to open up and talk to Hollie about it this morning; to tell her how scared I felt; to make her understand that I wanted to fulfil my promise to her but I just couldn’t. I know Hollie. She wouldn’t have heard a single word of it beyond learning that I was expecting.
And she would have never let me get away.
I wasn’t going to tell her, I could have got away clean, and then – without having the first inkling of what she was doing -my sister brought out her ace card. Richard.
And with that ace card she has brought down the whole pack of my carefully laid plans, because she has offered me on a plate the one thing I have always wanted: a night with Richard.
I should have declined her request, I know that. I should have carried on packing and in a few days’ time I would have been in the safety of that plane to Brazil and out of the way of temptation. I could have got to Manaus and gone to Tunga, explained I was in a bit of a pickle, and he’d have given me some herbs that would have sorted out my problem.
I could have walked away from here scot-free. Away from Hollie and all her expectations. Away from this pregnancy and all the demands it will bring. Away from this town with its traffic jams and sprawling urban population and away back into the wilderness where I know I’ll be able to breathe.
I yearn to be back there, doing something useful and meaningful, collecting my seeds again; I long to see my second family again, to get in a boat and be back on that river, to wake in the morning to the constant calling of the birds and the monkeys through the trees, to be able to carry on with my exploring. It’s what I was put on this earth to do – not this. I should have caught that plane and flown far away across the world, far away from the temptation that my sister was about to put in front of me.
But she sat down on my old narrow bed and she caught me. I watched as all the T-shirts I’d painstakingly sorted into a neat pile to take with me fell higgledy-piggledy onto the floor.
‘You can’t go, Lettie,’ she begged me. ‘Not while there is the slightest chance left for me. You promised me that you’d have this baby for me and there’s still a chance you could do it.’
I froze mid-way in between putting some socks away into my backpack.
‘What do you want me to do?’ I must have sounded odd, my voice stifled. ‘What else is there?’ But her next words shocked me to the core.
‘Sleep with him,’ she said without missing a heartbeat. ‘Mr Huang says that’s the thing most likely to work for us now. He says you have good chi, remember? If we do it the natural way that’s the most likely route to getting the result that we want.’
I’d stood up straight then and the backpack I’d been loading up had fallen onto the floor. Neither of us bothered to pick it up.
‘Let me get this straight. You are actually asking me to sleep with your husband?’
‘For the purpose of conceiving a child. Oh, Lettie, I know it sounds crazy…’ She’d grabbed hold of my arm.
‘You’re bloody well right it sounds crazy.’ I’d shaken her off. ‘You can’t ask me to go to bed with him. That’s just crackpot!’
‘Why ever not? He’s an attractive guy, isn’t he?’ She’d looked hurt. Oh, you fool, Hollie. You bloody stupid fool.
‘He is an attractive guy,’ I agreed slowly. ‘Far too attractive for you to be offering him out on loan to other women.’
‘That’s hardly what I’m doing here. Look. You are the two people who I love and trust most in the world, don’t you see? If I can’t trust you two…Of course I trust you. It’s more a question of whether or not you can bear to stick around that little bit longer, that’s all. You’ve probably forgotten, but if it hadn’t been for you, darling, me and Richard would never even have got together in the first place.’
Oh, I remember all right. And the truth is I want him still. Just as I have always have done.
Now she’s asking me to take something that I have longed to take for a very long time. Does my innocent older sister have any notion of how risky an enterprise that might be?
I suspect not.
Sc
arlett
When Hollie gave me the key to Bluebell Hill this morning, she didn’t say a word. No more apologies ‘for putting me through this’ and no utterances of ‘good luck’. Her face as pale as wax, she offered to drive me up to the flat but I refused. I didn’t want her hanging around. I have already decided that somehow I am going to pull myself together and find a way through this pregnancy for her. I don’t know how I am going to manage it but I am going to try.
I’ve thought and thought about this. Other than admitting the awful truth – that I knew I was already expecting and lied about it – how else can I get out of this? If I say I lied she’ll know immediately that I thought of terminating – which she’ll never forgive. Yet if I turn out to be suddenly pregnant without going through this with Rich first, she’ll realise it anyway. I have to do this now, to spare her.
It is also something I want to do, for me. This once, because I will never get this opportunity again. Just because she has asked me and because he has agreed to it. And now I am going to put Hollie right out of my head. I am going to forget my sister’s dull eyes as I walked away from her this morning, her pursed lips. I’ve asked the taxi driver to leave me at the entrance to Bluebell Hill village so I can walk the rest of the way. I want to stretch my legs, shake out all my nerves about what Richard and I are going to do today.
By the time I’ve walked up to the Viewpoint, the morning has opened up; cold, but mostly bright, and part of me wants to just keep on walking. I know Richard will be arriving soon though, so I can’t. I just stand by the monument for a while instead, drawing in deep lungfuls of cold and sweetly-scented air.
I look about me in wonder. Am I really standing up here waiting for Richard to join me so we can go to his flat to make love?
I block out the fact that it will not be a secret assignation; that my sister knows about it, indeed, she has set this all up, because I want to think only about Richard, about how it might be between us. The breeze rustles through the grass, and it is so quiet and so beautifully still all about, I can hear a cricket chirupping. I can hear the high tinny call of a blackbird somewhere among the thickets. Wouldn’t it be gorgeous, I muse, if we could do it just here, lying in the long wild grass? And the thought puts a shiver up my spine and a smile on my face too, because I know that would never, could never, happen.
A Sister’s Gift Page 19