The Beloved Girls

by Harriet Evans

  They passed out of the room leaving me alone in there. I stood for a moment looking around, wondering what a young Rosalind Hunter would have got up to in here. I was pretty sure I knew. On the shelves were rows of old Angela Brazil books. The built-in cupboard under the eaves was filled with boxes of letters and photographs. One summer I’d gone through them all, hoping for some scurrilous boarding school anecdotes, but it was all pashes on head girls and endless stories about the beneficence of Matron or the headmistress. I remembered the tale of a girl who had broken her leg falling from her pony – you were allowed to keep ponies at Letham’s then, but the stables had been demolished after the Second World War. Young Ros had written a five-page letter home about how the headmistress, Miss Shaw, had given the girl her own handkerchief as she lay on the ground waiting for a doctor to arrive and set her leg. ‘She told Arabella she could keep the handkerchief. I long for a broken leg!’

  Joss and I used to quote this to each other, when Aunty Ros was particularly manic about Letham’s or anything else. I long for a broken leg.

  There were a few mentions of Charles (‘he’s a fine fellow; Father says he thinks a great deal too much of himself though’) and Pammy (‘everyone says she is a dear little thing, thoroughly excited about becoming a Letham’s girl!), but nothing about her death, though Ros would have gone back to school two weeks after it happened. She’d been wiped out of history. I realised, looking at the box, I’d never even seen a photo of Pammy. She was my aunt, and I had no idea what she looked like. What had she wanted to do, to be? No one knew. When her siblings were dead, no one alive would remember her. She wasn’t even a ghost. Apart from the leaflet about the bees she was gone, forgotten.

  I started going through Janey’s things. The striped T-shirt dress that suited her cool androgyny, the strange baggy T-shirts with messages on them, the second-hand skirts and dresses, the hideous brown sandals. There were her knickers, on the floor, and bra. I picked up the bra – her breasts were smaller than mine. I held my fist inside the cup. I flicked through the books on the bedside table, and the letters.

  I still miss you,

  her friend Claire had written.

  I’m sorry it sounds so weird there. Are you sure you can’t come back and go to secretarial college here? Do you want me to ring your mother? If she knew you were willing to agree I’m sure she’d help you. What can I do? I want to see you before I go to Birmingham, Janey!

  The Radio 1 roadshow was in Somerset this week, somewhere like Western something, with a pier? I wondered if that was near you, did you see it? It was Mark Goodier, I do not understand why you think he’s fit. I got all the questions right on Bits n Pieces, but it’s not the same without you there, Janey. I miss you.

  I saw Do the Right Thing last week and Paul Rolles was there with another girl, thought you’d want to know. They were all over each other (it was grim).

  Loads of girls from school have been going to raves, there’s a place out past Ruislip, apparently it’s great, maybe we can go when you’re back . . .

  I hope you are OK. I think about you a lot. I hope you don’t miss your dad too much, Janey. Let me know if you want me to talk to your mum.

  Love from Claire

  (Your Best Friend in case you’d forgotten)

  PS Got some Tooty Frooties waiting 4 when U R back. And my dad bought me the double album of Sign “O” The Times.

  I hated this letter, I hated it so much my first instinct was to screw it up and throw it away, then I realised Janey would find out and I’d look mad. I was mad, but she couldn’t know that. I bit my finger, wondering what to do. I hated Claire, with her view of the world, her trying to drag Janey back into normality with her. Janey didn’t want to be normal, she wanted to stay here, here with me.

  Then I read the letter from her mother. Her mother was pretty awful. My mother, for all the horror I felt quivering around her at times, loved me, I knew that, I knew it fundamentally. I wasn’t sure Janey’s mother did.

  You cannot go to university to study ideas, and theories, and not learn how to make a living. Even if they wanted you in this day and age it is a waste of your time, of money, of everything. You’re not one of them.

  You’re not one of them.

  I could hear Janey downstairs, talking to Aunty Ros. I could see it all then, as clear as day. I ran downstairs, avoiding the creaking stairs. The house was silent in the early-morning stillness. I crept into Mummy’s study, and pulled out the electric typewriter. I had watched Mummy write a letter with it five days ago, the letter that was now hopefully resting on the desk of the Dean of Admissions at King’s College. It was that which had given me the idea.

  I’ll go, I told her. If you do this for me. I started to type, ignoring the voice in my head which said: You’re betraying her. I wasn’t. I was doing what was best for her.

  Dear Mum

  I am staying on at Vanes and then going travelling with Kitty. I’ve had a great summer. I love it here. I don’t want to go to secretarial college.

  You’ve made it clear you’ve no interest in me or my future. Now I’m eighteen, I don’t have to do what you say. Hope you understand that. I don’t expect you to provide a home for me any more. You can handle the sale of the house, Mum. I will be in touch about my share of the money. Despite what Martin says, I’ve got a friend here whose father is a solicitor and he will advise me on how we divide up the proceeds when it’s sold. Or you can just give me half, which is the minimum I’m due given you were divorced from Daddy.

  You can write to me, I’ll send a postcard with details of what my address will be.

  Take care, Mum, it’s for the best, isn’t it? Hope this brings you some relief. Tell Claire if you see her that I fancied a change and to keep the Tooty Frooties for next time.

  Janey x

  I printed it out on our headed paper, and signed it with Janey’s small, tight signature, which I’d taken to practising, over and over again.

  It was very quiet in the house. Mummy was outside, deadheading, my father was dozing in the study as he always did after breakfast.

  ‘What are you doing?’ I spun round, to see Joss in the doorway.

  ‘Oh,’ I said. ‘Just something for my Cambridge place. I have to send it off today.’ I smiled at him. ‘I hear Giles is one of the rivals.’

  ‘Yes, and Guy and Nico. Good chaps.’ Joss swallowed, and pulled at the black leather thong around his neck, from which hung the shark’s tooth he told everyone he’d bought in Camden Market but which in fact was bought in Minehead at an establishment confusingly named Mavis Crystals and Joss Sticks. ‘Listen, Kitty – he’s . . . Um – it’s all right, between you two, isn’t it?’

  ‘Course it is, Joss.’

  ‘Oh, good.’ Joss looked enormously relieved. He fingered the shark’s tooth. ‘Because, you know – uh, if he wasn’t treating my little sister right, I’d have something to say about it.’

  ‘Of course,’ I said, marvelling at this. ‘No. It’s . . . fine.’

  ‘OK.’

  ‘And Joss?’

  ‘Yeah?’ he said, fingering some of Mummy’s old textiles.

  ‘I’m your big sister, by the way.’ I blew him a kiss. ‘See you later.’

  I ran to the post box, at the end of the drive, and posted the letter. On the way back, I passed Aunty Ros, humming as she hung out her washing in the tiny little gatehouse garden.

  ‘Dare to strive, strive to dare!’ she called loudly. ‘Are you ready for tonight, Kitty?’

  ‘Sure,’ I said. I pulled my sleeves, easing them over my thumbs, and went back along the drive. Inside my head, it felt alternately light, fizzing, bright and heavy, as though my brain was pulsing, aching with trying to work, to process, to complete.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  The rehearsal went well. Janey and I were demurely obedient, hands clasped in front of us. The twelve hunters were a little too overexcited and had to be told by my father to calm down. It was their job to walk at the front
of the procession, two apiece, starting the singing. They had to be local because they had to know the words of the song. It’s an old, strange variation and the rhythm needs to be right. One year I remember a gang of them including Tom Red’s father Jim drank too much beforehand, and got hopelessly out of sync, then crashed into each other at the door of the chapel. Joss and I were about nine and thought it was very funny. But Aunty Ros and my father were not amused.

  The twelve hunters were: Matty Culney, Jed Culney, a gaggle of Reds, including my old friend Tom, Pete from the Good Leper, the Yarner boys, and two sons of the Thomas family who came on holiday at the same time every year and liked to pretend they were locals whilst they were here. They took the whole thing immensely seriously, though not, of course, as seriously as my father. ‘You’re Hunters for one evening only,’ he kept saying to the locals, trying to nudge those close to him. ‘Don’t get any ideas into your head, will you? My wife would kill me!’ And everyone would laugh, the Thomases sycophantically. Mummy just stood there, dangling the key in one finger, watching him, with her vague, vague smile.

  ‘So charming,’ I heard Mr Thomas saying to his wife as their sons walked out, ringing the handbells.

  The five walkers were Joss, my father, Merry, Ros and Mrs Red, all carrying the smoke and bellows. Mummy was the Outsider. The honey makers were four women from the village, Mrs Culney, Pete Crawter’s wife, and so on.

  One of the rivals was missing – Giles had said he’d make it later. Anyone else, and they’d have been thrown off the team, but my father said nothing. The two remaining rivals, Guy and Nico, walked behind us, holding their spoons.

  ‘Why are we here, man? This is fucking stupid,’ Nico hissed, and was nudged by Guy.

  The Outsider always picks a helper – Mummy, at my father’s prompting, selected Ros and she, greatly pleased, very much enjoyed the ceremony of opening the door to the chapel, as my family gathered around her to pretend to push the smoke into the tombs and into the roof. We used the smoke to calm the bees down, before we opened up the ancient hives.

  Even though this was a practice run and the tombs and the ceiling would not be opened until the ceremony, I hung back. I was not terrified of bees – I had grown up with them. I knew their moods, what kind they were. I knew too that they didn’t sting you unless they absolutely had to. But I didn’t like being in the midst of them. That was why I loved being by or in the pool. There were rarely bees there.

  We didn’t ever talk about the time I’d been stung. I don’t think my father could quite believe it, that he had a child who was allergic to bee stings. It was like his cousin’s daughter Clarissa who, we’d been informed in their much-mocked Christmas round robin, had an allergy to dairy. ‘Dairy allergy indeed,’ my father had said, laughing hysterically. ‘These girls, honestly. Like Kitty and the bees. Load of nonsense!’

  ‘It’s serious,’ Mummy had said, in exasperation. ‘If she’s stung again, her heart could pack up. The venom sends her into some kind of shock.’

  ‘What, and it doesn’t with us?’ said my father. ‘Come on, Sylvia. No one likes being stung. It’s one of those things. Your daughter just likes to make a fuss.’

  Mummy had pushed open the door with her bottom, carrying two platters out to the dining room. I’d seen her face, as I hovered in the hallway. ‘Jesus Christ, Charles. Do try to understand.’

  I think he took it as evidence of my betrayal. That I was a Bad Daughter, in some way. Merry, jumping eagerly behind us all, wouldn’t develop something as ludicrous as that.

  Some people at the back – the lads, the twelve hunters – were humming the Collecting Carol, as the setting sun flooded into the open door of the chapel and the old leper window. A sharp wind came in, and Janey, wearing the silly bridesmaid’s dress into which Ros had forced her, shivered. In my mind, I was thinking how useful this rehearsal was. How I could see it all now, the food laid out in the drawing room and kitchen and on the terrace, the champagne with which they were all liberally plied beforehand, the tasting of the honey.

  I knew too that this year the honey was madder than ever, though no one ever admitted it. Something to do with the rhododendron bushes that ran along the north wall of the garden, and the reason why my father never sold the honey. We mostly ate the spring honey. But you never ate rhododendron honey in large quantities. Once a year, in summer, was enough, and it was the reason they were all there, giggling, nudging each other. Everyone knew.

  In Minehead Library a few summers ago, whiling away the hours of a wet August at home I had read in a dry, long-forgotten book turned the wrong way on the Natural World shelf about a similar honey in Anatolia, in a part of Turkey. I remember the sound of rain on the large glass windows, shutting the book quickly, afraid someone might spot me. It made perfect sense. ‘In large quantities can have an hallucinogenic effect.’ I wondered if a member of my family was the person who had read the relevant passages and neatly underlined them in pencil. I came to consider if it hadn’t, over the years, got into their blood somehow, permanently changing them, driving them mad. Whether that is why no one had been able to save Pammy.

  As the rehearsal finished and the participants dispersed, I was thinking about what we’d need to pack, how we’d get the bags in the car without anyone noticing, whether the letter requesting the name change had arrived at Cambridge.

  My daughter is delighted to accept the deferred place as discussed on the telephone, Mummy had written. Please note that the name on the exam certificates (which I am delighted to enclose here) is not correct. She now chooses to use my name. Therefore Catherine Lestrange will be taking up the place in the Michaelmas Term of the following year i.e. 1990. Please could you confirm by return of post or via the telephone that this change has been made and is acceptable.

  Yours sincerely,

  Sylvia Lestrange

  ‘Two days to go, my dear!’ my father said, slapping me on the back when the rehearsal ended. ‘Just two more days.’

  ‘Where’s Joss gone?’ I said to Janey.

  ‘He’s gone down to pick up the car. Your father wanted him to.’

  The car was still where we’d abandoned it last week, on the edge of the field after the night at the pub.

  My parents walked back to the house together, and I watched them go: she so small, slight, the tension in the distance between them to me a palpable thing, and we were alone by the pool. It was early evening, electric-blue light, the Seven in the western sky, low as ever they went, and there was an edge to the warmth. Summer was almost over.

  I swam, and Janey joined me. We did not speak – lately, we found we didn’t need to. In places, I noticed, her hair was now longer than mine. I wondered if she might want to have longer hair. I’d chosen to have short hair. She hadn’t.

  ‘Do you – like Joss?’ I said, when we were sitting at the edge of the pool with our feet dangling in the cool water.

  ‘I like him, yes.’

  ‘You know what I mean.’

  ‘Of course. I’ll say it again. I like him. Possibly more than you do.’

  I laughed. ‘I don’t dislike him. He’s my brother. It’s just –’ I took a can of beer out of the ancient cool box by the table. ‘I don’t know.’ I wanted more from her.

  ‘Try me.’

  ‘It’s incredibly strange to me, the idea that he and I were in the womb together. That we were face to face, touching each other, together. And we have nothing in common. Apart from you.’

  Janey shook her head. ‘I think you have more in common than you think.’

  I drank another can of beer and we sat in silence, for a long time. Like I say, there were no words. Gradually, the energy of the house dipped. A light went out here, and then there.

  ‘Kitty,’ Janey said. ‘What will you do? After we’ve travelled? Will you come back? Will you go to Cambridge?’

  I stuck my finger into the beer can. The sharp opening cut into my skin. ‘I don’t want to let them down.’ But I didn’t want to. I didn�
��t want to have to make decisions about the future. I didn’t see the future. That was the difference between us. ‘What about you?’

  Janey eased herself into the pool. ‘I’ll get a job. I might try and retake the exams. Get into university. I don’t know.’ She blinked. ‘Not sure how I’ll afford it.’

  I thought of the letter I’d written and hadn’t told her, to her mother. I thought of all the plans I’d put in place. You’re lying to her. It’s not lying. It’s . . . organising things. I was keeping secrets from her, and it was best that way. For the moment. I told myself that was the truth. My fingers were wrinkled, freezing cold, but I didn’t want to go inside. If only. In the distance was the faintest of roars, like water rushing, or an engine.

  ‘This time next week,’ Janey was saying, ‘we’ll be – What?’

  I’d stood up. The sound I had heard was a car engine. Footsteps on the gravel. ‘Stay still,’ I said. ‘Don’t move.’

  Janey froze. There were voices. Low, very quiet. Outside the boundary, somewhere in the trees, our friend the owl called. I could hear the footsteps, on the terrace, then silence.

  ‘They’ve gone,’ said Janey, very quietly. ‘It’s nothing.’

  ‘No,’ I said, terror making it hard for me to speak. I knew the pattern of the sounds. There was no sound when you walked on grass. I knew they were coming.

  ‘There you are!’

  A voice in the doorway, holding the wooden door open. I looked over, to see my brother, half slumping against the stone frame, his floral waistcoat unbuttoned, hair dishevelled. He had a red wine smile around his mouth.

  ‘I brought some friends back,’ he said, very quickly. I could tell Janey didn’t understand him. He couldn’t look at me.

  ‘You didn’t drive like that.’

  ‘Someone left the car in the lane. Silly.’ He waggled his finger. ‘Hey, Janey. Hey.’ Then he turned. ‘Giles! Guy! Nico! I found the girls!’

  He really was in a state; I’d seen my brother drunk, but never that drunk. I couldn’t imagine how he’d driven the car up the road. What had they given him, in such a short space of time? He staggered across the flagstones to the side of the pool, and was sick into it.