‘Oh, I don’t know…’I shrug. I wish I could just tell her what’s eating at me but I can’t. What would I say? Right now your son is having sex with my sister so he can get her pregnant for me? I feel my stomach churn at the thought. But I don’t want to think about that. Don’t think about it because you’ve got to stay positive; see the good that’s going to come as a result. Think about the outcome.
Christine is still waiting for a reply. ‘I see the bridge as something positive and beautiful,’ I finally get out. ‘I’ve always thought of it as a way for people to reach…things on the other side that would otherwise have been beyond their reach. I see it as something…worthy and noble.’
‘And you don’t feel this picture represents all that?’
Why can’t she just drop it? Usually I’d enjoy this kind of conversation with Christine. I love her to bits and we always talk about all sorts of things but today I just can’t.
‘It does, I suppose,’ I say impatiently. ‘But there’s something in that drawing that seems to imply there’s a danger and an instability about the bridge, too.’
‘Entry number 12.’ Christine peers at the little scrap of paper still attached with a paperclip to the top right-hand corner of the piece.
…I wanted there to be nothing fully consistent about this piece, the artist has written, to reflect the turbulent and powerful history of the bridges which have been on this site…
Turbulent! That’s a good word. That word describes perfectly how I’m feeling at this moment. I’ve had the sense that Christine’s been pretty much on edge too, ever since she arrived from Lincolnshire last night. She can’t know, can she? I know Rich and his mum are close, but he wouldn’t have confided a thing like this, surely? I glance at her uneasily.
To make the work as dynamic as the crossing has been for nearly two thousand years, it had to contain several movements at once: the bridge thrusts forward past the viewer; the rippling light on the water snakes towards the foreground; the platform juts out from the left…
‘You see what I mean?’ I interrupt her. ‘Even the language the artist is using, it’s…it’s disconcerting. Topsy, get off the table.’ I pull at next door’s huge cat who’s all set to have the time of her life with Christine’s half-unravelled jumpers.
‘Actually I’d say that what the artist has just described is precisely why this picture works so well. Because it shows both sides of the equation. Because it’s real. Maybe…’ Christine angles her head a bit to get a better look at the piece ‘…maybe reaching “things on the other side,” as you just put it, can be a hazardous occupation as well as a rewarding one, wouldn’t you agree? This picture shows that admirably. Perhaps that’s what impressed the judges.’
‘Both sides of the equation?’ We both stand and look at it quietly for a while but I can barely take it in. I’m thinking how there might also be another side to what those two are doing up on Bluebell Hill right now. I mean, they’re both young, attractive people, aren’t they? What if they’re taking so long because they’re actually – God forbid! – enjoying it?
Shit!
I’ve got to stop thinking like this or I’ll go mad. She’s such a flirt, my sister, that’s the trouble. What man could resist the little coquette when she gets going? I never really dwelled on it before, but all that instinctive batting of eyelashes she does and that throaty laugh of hers…We’re so used to it here, but it might turn a man on, if that were her intention.
And Richard…I can hardly bear to think his name, to imagine him with her – if I ask him later, will he swear that she was rubbish in bed, that it was a torture to lie with her and that he thought only of me; that he closed his eyes and filled his head with images of me as he caressed her, kissed her – oh, God, is he kissing her now?
I feel a shot of pain at the thought. There is no need for kissing. Nor…tenderness, nor love. But they are both tender, loving people. I know this. All the things that I dread most, the things that I have not let myself even know that I feared – it is only what would come most naturally to them both, for they are neither of them robots.
Dear God, what have I asked them both to do? I feel a horrible pain in my chest as I realise that there are so many things I have not allowed myself to dwell on. So many things I have cast into the waves of chance, and trusted in without consideration, and any moment now they’re all going to come back in on the tide.
Could I possibly make some excuse and get in the car and go up to them now? If it’s not too late, can I still call it all off? It’s so awkward that Chrissie’s here. I’d have to make some excuse to go out and she’s so damn perceptive she’d know something was up…
‘Darling, everything is all right, isn’t it?’ Chrissie shocks me now by holding my gaze for that little bit longer than usual. I nod wordlessly but she continues slowly. ‘Hollie, it isn’t, is it?’ Oh, my lord, she knows, she must know…her voice is so dull, so guilty now. Have we both been skirting around each other avoiding saying the one thing that’s been on both our minds all day? ‘You look so unhappy. I wasn’t going to say anything but…’ She leans forward and touches me on the shoulder lightly. ‘Richard told me, darling.’
I catch my breath as she turns those sympathetic eyes on me now. ‘He did?’
‘I asked, forgive me. He’s been so miserable recently and you know he and I have always been close. It’s never been my intention to interfere in what goes on between you two, you know that.’
I watch her in silence as she struggles to get her reservations out. His mum knows! Oh, my word. What must she be thinking, what must she be feeling? I sense the colour creeping into my face, I feel so ashamed…
‘I wasn’t supposed to say anything. But how am I supposed to stand by and watch two of the people I love most in the world making themselves so unhappy?’
How long has she known? How much does she know, exactly? Does she know where they are, what they’re doing right now? Does she wonder, like me, why it’s taking so long?
I sit down at the table, feeling suddenly weak at the knees. If she knows, in one way it will be such a relief to share it with someone. Even if she doesn’t approve, even if she thinks we’ve made a terrible mistake.
I stare at her wordlessly as she scoops up a pile of jumpers and sweeps them into her knitting bag, unable to maintain eye contact with me any longer and for the first time I catch a glimpse of something else; of how this must look to someone seeing it from the outside, of how obsessed I must seem to anyone looking in, to be prepared to go to such lengths. Am I obsessed? Anyone who ever achieves anything against all odds has to be, surely? Who dares wins and all that. But I know it isn’t quite as simple as all that.
‘I wish, Chrissie, that there had been some easier way around it.’ I bury my head deep in my hands and my voice comes out muffled and squashed. I wish I could have felt satisfied – my thoughts are ringing in my ears so loud she must surely hear them – I wish I’d been satisfied, happy even, to try for an adoption. It would have been better. It would have helped some other little human being. It would have given me the chance I so long for, to mother, but it wouldn’t have given me…It wouldn’t have given me the child of my own blood that I long for. Oh, I don’t know what the difference is, in truth, or why I feel it so keenly. All I know is that I never felt that bond of kin with Flo, who was so good to me, who did everything a mother could and should have done for me. I never felt for her what I felt for my own, itinerant and unavailable mother; that unseen bond that connects two people joined by blood. I never wanted to become another Auntie Flo. I wanted to become the person my own mother should have been to me. I’ve wanted to fill that void with the goodness of all the things Auntie Flo taught me, but for a child who would be with its own parent, not like I was. Oh, does it sound too crazy for anyone else to understand who hasn’t been through it?
‘Over the last couple of weeks I’ve felt so conflicted about it all, not sure if this was the right action to take or not,’ I get out at
last, my eyes locked on Chrissie’s. ‘I’m so frightened that this thing is going to come between Richard and me,’ I add, my voice breaking. ‘And I love him so very much. That would be the last thing in the word that I want. Do you think,’ I watch the little tired lines around her eyes that are etched that much deeper than usual, ‘we’re doing the right thing?’
‘I think so.’
‘You do?’ I breathe out in an agony of relief that is mixed with regret, because now that this huge tangled web is done, created and irreversible, I am having serious doubts about it myself.
‘Oh, yes, I do. In fact, Hollie, I encouraged him,’ she says softly.
Scarlett
‘I am so sorry, Scarlett.’
He lies there naked alongside me, propped up on his elbows at first, his breath coming hard and short. Rich looks so remorseful that for one horrible moment I think he’s about to say he can’t go through with it. Poor, poor Richard. He’s riddled with guilt and also at this moment – I know because I saw him before he got in beside me – inflamed with desire.
‘Don’t be sorry.’ When I lean in to kiss him softly on the shoulder I can feel him ever so slightly pull back, so I stop. I’m going to have to let him take the lead in this. I lay my head down on the pillow beside him instead and just look at him.
God, he is beautiful. And I have wanted him so much for so long that it hurts to even be here in this position, unable to express my true feelings, having to pretend that it’s all an altruistic act on my part when I know full well it is not. I know that by letting him take me now, I betray not only my sister’s trust – and that is bad enough – but I betray his trust too. A sob catches in my throat at that thought. I do not want to betray him. I see his eyes widen in compassion at my distress, his tender and protective instincts drawing him to me and I know that he mistakes my tears for a sign of reluctance. He thinks I’m crying because of the sacrifice I’m about to make. He doesn’t know it’s because of the frustration I feel, because I cannot be honest with him.
‘Oh, Rich.’ I put up my hand to wipe away my tears and I can feel all his tension and his hesitation melt away in an instant.
‘I’m the one who should be apologising.’ If only you knew, I think. I haven’t been completely honest with you. It’s on the tip of my tongue to say it. I can’t sleep with you because I’m in love with you. And I don’t need to sleep with you to get pregnant because I’m already expecting your baby.
‘There’s something I need to say to you. I just don’t know…how to say it.’ Without making you hate me forever, that is. ‘I don’t want you to hate me,’ I whisper.
‘Lettie, that’s…’ He moves in a little closer to me, his face tender, compassionate. ‘Don’t you know that’s impossible? Don’t you know that will never happen, no matter what?’
‘Richard, the thing is…’I sniff, but he stops me.
‘I already know what you’re going to say.’
I catch my breath. ‘You do?’
‘It’s pretty obvious and I don’t blame you.’
‘Really?’
‘You’re about to say that you feel…strange and unnatural doing this. That you’re only doing it for Hollie and I know that. I respect that.’
‘Rich…’ I arch my back, about to sit up and face him, but he puts a finger to my lips so I cannot say a word.
‘We’ve both promised her to do this, Scarlett. Whether we were right or wrong, God knows. I haven’t been able to talk to her about it. Or talk her out of it. I couldn’t bring myself to explain to her how truly hard this is for me…because I can’t hurt her, I don’t want to let her down. But I’ve been feeling so conflicted these past two weeks, I can’t begin to tell you. I’ve even thought…I felt…that I might just have to leave her over it, you know that?’
‘You did?’
He tenderly wipes away the tear that rolls out of the corner of one eye and down my cheek. ‘I never thought I would ever feel this way about her, Lettie.’ He gives a short sad laugh now. ‘I guess what I’m asking you to do is change my mind for me. Tell me I’m wrong.’ He sighs heavily. ‘Tell me that I shouldn’t feel like this.’
‘We none of us can help how we feel,’ I say faintly.
‘I do want to give her what she wants, Lettie. I want her to be happy. I’ve always wanted that, all these years. I knew the moment I saw her that I’d met the woman I wanted for life. Don’t ask me how. But once you’d brought me to her I knew I would love her forever…’
Once I’d brought him to her. That was my one role, it seems.
‘And now?’
He swallows. ‘She’s pushing me away, Scarlett. With this obsession of hers, this desperate, all-consuming need to have a baby.’
We’ve been talking for too long, I worry. About her. It’s always all about her, isn’t it? When he got into the bed with me a while back he was hard, hot for it, I saw that, but all this talk of Hollie, always bloody Hollie…
‘Do you think, when we fall in love like that, so quickly – that it can ever truly be real?’ I whisper now.’ I ask because…’ Because I have never let myself fall in love with anyone other than you, have I? All these years, and all the men I have known and kept at a distance because of the flame that still burned in there somewhere, dampened and low but still burning, for you. ‘I used to think so, Lettie. Now I…’ he puts up his hand to brush the hair gently away from my face ‘…I really don’t know any more.’
‘Richard, I know this is something a brother and sister-in-law wouldn’t normally be doing. And I know these are really very extraordinary circumstances, but…’
He lifts up one finger, putting it to his lips, silencing me. For a few long moments his eyes seem to melt into mine and while he does not speak I can imagine a whole host of things he might be thinking; a whole conversation goes on between us. In the silence behind the sadness in his eyes he tells me how much he’s always loved me too…that it has always been nothing but a mistake that he ended up with her, but he respects her and he cares for her and he’s a person of integrity so…
‘I can’t do this, Lettie.’ He looks at me apologetically. ‘I’m sorry.’
‘You mean you don’t want to do this?’ My voice is thick with disappointment.
‘I mean I…I can’t. Because you aren’t her. Because this all feels wrong.’
‘Stop thinking about your wife, then. Think about me. No -don’t think about me. Look at me!
I push away the duvet to reveal my naked body and I see him gulp, taking me in. I lean forward then, letting the tips of my breasts lie lightly over his chest. I don’t think I’m imagining that my boobs are larger than usual at the moment – it’s the one single advantage of the pregnancy that I’ve discovered. I hope he likes that, I think, I feel him shudder at my touch but he doesn’t back off. And I kiss him. He responds, at first, too. He returns my kiss. He pushes back my hair from my face and I think for one glorious moment that he’s going to pull me to him but then something else kicks in. His protective, caring nature.
‘I can’t do this to you, Lettie. You’re her little sister, for God’s sake. Christ, how could I have ever imagined that I could?’
‘I’m a woman, Richard. That’s all you need to worry about.’ I cling on to his chest but he’s already pushing me away, gently but firmly.
‘It’s…it’s wrong,’ he says with a sudden air of finality. ‘That’s all.’
But he’s agreed to do it. He wants to do it. Why can’t he just…I pull the duvet back over me, swallowing down my disappointment, watching him swing his legs over the side of the bed, making his escape.
Why? When he kissed me just now I thought we were getting somewhere, despite his protests. Maybe we were, that’s the trouble? Maybe he found me too arousing? I can’t see if that’s the case or not but the sight of his naked backside certainly arouses me. For all the good it does.
‘Please don’t…Rich…Don’t leave me.’ I grasp hold of his arm, making him turn to face me. ‘You’v
e been the most important person in my life since as long as I can remember.’
‘Me?’ He looks bemused.
‘You. Everything I’ve done and everything I have in my life that means anything to me – it’s been because of you. You were always the one who accepted me just the way I was. You’ve no idea how much that meant to me. You’re even the reason I took up the study of botany in the first place. Because you suggested I should.’
‘No, Scarlett.’ He shakes his head. I can see that he is confused, perplexed, a whole host of conflicting emotions are battling inside him right now. ‘You were passionate about the garden – about plants – long before I ever knew you…’
‘But you’re the one who suggested I should study them.’ I sit up straight and the bedsheets drop off me. I see him gulp, turn his head away again. ‘Listen to me! You said I’d be good at it and I could be like my mum and really make a difference in the world.’ I lean in and put my hand on his shoulder. When he turns to me I kiss him softly just under his lips. ‘So I did it. Because you said I could.’
He frowns, puzzled. He looks at the floor, avoiding my gaze.
‘I did it for you, Richard. Because I wanted you to be proud of me. Because I wanted to show you that I could achieve so much more…’ I hiccup ‘…than all those people in school and at college ever thought I would. Nobody but you ever really thought I was going to amount to all that much, did they?’
‘Hollie always believed in you…’He says quietly. He half-turns to look at me but I can see he’s taken aback.
‘Everyone always said “Oh, Scarlett’s got green fingers, everything that Scarlett plants will grow,” but…but no one ever believed I was really all that bright, did they? Nobody except you.’
‘You were always bright, Scarlett. They’d never have given you that job of yours if you weren’t incredibly bright.’
‘Yes, but if only you knew what I had to do in order to…’
A Sister’s Gift Page 21