The Bad Sister (14 page)

I stared at Gala, who was more animated than ever now. She seemed to be speaking to someone else as well as to me; her eyes were fixed on the wall opposite and in her persuasiveness I almost felt the street move and stand to attention beneath her. With her will she was pulling the world into her hands … But the bump of rock music from Paradise Island went on, and a car stopped with a screech at the pedestrian crossing outside the supermarket with the cardboard dolls.

‘But, Gala, do you know the answers?'

‘Where do you think my sculpture comes from, Jane? It can make no difference yet, but Meg has sent me on journeys where I can gather it up. She's shown me the way. I can't do what you can do, though –I can't bring Meg what she needs for the next stage. Come on, Jane, you've given her your blood. Now bring her that shadow to destroy!'

The hair of the head of a woman struck by thunder. I
could see it, coiled between the glass slides, terrifying symbol of Meg's power. I felt weak – my body was numb – only Gala's current kept me conscious. I found myself nodding though the rebellion was in me still like a small fish struggling to swim upstream.

‘Why should it be me, Gala? Surely …'

‘Perhaps it corresponds with your external situation,' Gala said briskly. I knew she was uninterested in my life with Tony, in my exasperations and jealousies. In fact, she seemed to have little belief in my external life at all. She and Meg together had translated me into this new zone and for them it was my sole existence. Was I to be their guinea pig, going from the known to the unknown and changed at their will?

‘You remember how you felt about the first trip Meg sent you on,' Gala said. ‘Don't you want to travel again?'

Ah, of course I did! The walls of the room where we sat were straining to be rid of me. Down the corridor, long and winding and grey in the eye of my exhaustion, there lay the kitchen and the washbox and the small, battered clothes and the door out onto the fire escape and the void. And all I had to do …

‘We'll be proud of you,' Gala said. ‘Jane, you look very pale. Are you all right?'

‘I'm a bit drained,' I said, and we both laughed. ‘No, I think I'd better get into bed. Don't worry, Gala, I've already made the first moves for what Meg wants.'

‘Have you? Have you really?' Gala leaned across the bed and gave me a sharp stare. ‘Ah!'

‘Tell me about K, though, or Gil-martin – I don't understand.'

‘You will!' Gala motioned to me to get under the covers. ‘I'll bring you some tea now. Jane, he can only be insubstantial at present, for you haven't rid yourself of your double female self yet. You could call him the male principle, which you lack… or…'

‘Yes,' I said. ‘All right, Gala. All right. I'll wait. I'll go to sleep now.'

I lay under the covers, and listened to Gala taking cups out of the cupboard in the kitchen. She came with the tea, and biscuits that had gone soft with age. I ate and drank, although I hardly had the strength to lift my hand. When we had finished, Gala brought the TV in from the sitting room and we watched the last hour – Richard Nixon, as he explained away his past.

Gala was smiling, my eyes were half-shut but I could feel her pleasure and excitement.

‘You see, Jane! No one could believe his language, the language of Watergate! It remains to us to lose our evil selves and speak again!'

Through my lowered eyelids I stared at Nixon's face. It may have been the effect of a reddish blur from the inner lids themselves, or it may have been my imagination, but his grey face seemed every moment to become more pink. A roseate blur surrounded the set, and slowly filled the room. I closed my eyes altogether, into a red nothingness.

‘Everything looked so grey earlier,' I mumbled to Gala. ‘And now it's turning red. As for green, I can't see it at all.'

‘We all have that,' Gala said. ‘We must suffer it until the day comes, as you say. And you must rest, Jane, as you're the one who will bring it about!'

I slept then. Gala stayed the night in the spare room, where Mrs Marten had tried to introduce her ball-gown. She said she would come to me early in the morning, with more tea and a boiled egg. I must rest. She advised me to rest as much as I could. I must be healthy, and there was a great deal of preparation ahead.

I WOKE THE
next morning feeling extraordinarily well and happy, as if I had been purged of all the miseries of the grey street outside, and the grey shadow that used to live inside me, knocking against my ribs in her effort to get out, and the weight of my own double face in public places. I was bled of it all. I was free. I knew I must revisit the old haunts again, that Meg would make me do this so that I could settle my scores with my sisters there before settling once and for all in this world with Miranda, but I no longer felt any doubt of my future … the journeys … Κ or Gil-martin: they were all mine and I would leave on my ship soon to enjoy them. I felt even frivolous: memories of Tony's mother – another Mrs Marten, but how different from Meg! – made me smile as I lay in bed waiting for Gala. Poor Mrs Marten! Had she had a good time at her Embassy dance? How could she know, setting off to meet her dear Miranda, that it was the last time they would go out together? But, when you added up what there was in it for Mrs Marten, would she really care? She would lose a daughter and gain a son – no, she would lose two daughters, for no doubt she saw me as a daughter too, an unwelcome one – and yet, when her grief for Miranda was over, she would after all have Tony for herself. She would imprison him in Surrey while he wept for Miranda and told her again and again that he couldn't understand how I could have brought myself to do it. She would marry him, fill his fat, disconsolate body with suet and lumps of meat and potatoes, sew his feet into his socks, sometimes take him out to look at the autumn trees that were so disconcertingly like curtains. He would play bridge, and
give up his film career. Or would he go on with the script of
Chance
, year in, year out, playing with the concept of two narrators, two male ‘voices over' discussing the pride and shame of poor Flora de Barral. I would be a long way away be then, of course. I, who had recounted my own life and taken my own decisions rather than have them recounted or taken from me, would he think of me sometimes, in his chintzy eunuch's bedroom, as I sailed the high seas? I doubted it. Mrs Marten would put an opiate in the tea from Jackson's. I would be blocked from his mind for good.

These enjoyable fantasies were broken by Gala's appearance in my room with a messily made up breakfast tray, a cracked egg and a slice of burnt toast. She had made coffee instead of the promised tea, and the smell was strengthening: I realized that however well I might feel I was still very weak. I thanked Gala and took the coffee with a shaky hand.

‘Did you sleep all right, Jane? How are the colour problems?'

‘Still a little rosy!' I smiled up at her – Gala seemed very grey still, while the rest of the room was bathed in the red spots Meg had bequeathed, like the dots in a comic. I raised myself to look out of the window – sure enough, the tops of the sparsely leaved plane trees in the street had lost their dull, London green. A slight wind shook them, and they danced like spirals of smoke against the grey houses. It came to me that in my memories of Mrs Marten in Surrey, the colours had all been normal. And despite my happiness I felt the shudder of the premonition of death. Where I walked, the colour of life was drained away. There was life only in my memories. I was already the walking dead, a shadow, drawn to my old life in search of the green.

‘Don't worry,' Gala said. ‘You're between regions, Jane. You're about to embark. Now eat your egg! I'm sorry it cracked, but it's a battery egg, it must be. Thank your lucky stars you weren't born a battery hen, my dear!'

I laughed, and felt some of the new frivolity return. If my new powers were beginning, what tricks I could play on the world before I finally bowed out! If my words became truth,
I could literally destroy the film I disliked or disapproved of: under my acid gaze the celluloid would turn to muddy water and run away. How I could tease poor Stephen, by substantiating his Christ on the cross for him, right in his sitting room as he handed out his sweet cakes to young men with burning cheeks! How it would torment him … what would he do? Go down on his knees by the bleeding feet … seize the dark emaciated legs? I laughed aloud. And Tony, I could set him dancing with Miranda and make sure they never could stop. I would hire them out on a cruise ship to South America, as dancing lovers, allowed only to pause for a few moments and refresh themselves with champagne. I would call the tune faster and faster, until Tony fell on his back and was pushed to the side in ignominy, and Miranda … ah, Miranda … I would call Taranta! … and what could she do but obey me, she the woman in a sexual, hysterical frenzy, the spider-bitten woman trembling and shaking in the poison of her wants. There! She tries to slow but she can't: in
her
marathon there'll be no dragging steps.

‘Jane!'

Through the open door of my bedroom I saw Gala's legs coming from the kitchen. I was disappointed, I felt moist with excitement at Miranda's humiliation, I saw for a moment the posters in the Underground where I had passed, every day as a woman child, the alluring figures of other women, whom I must become or emulate but was forbidden to love. I felt the bitter sting of my own defeat then, when I had first felt the other woman stir in my breast and point to the beautiful and impossible breasts of others. I saw the eyes of the crowd on Miranda, as her silk dress was ripped from her and she danced naked, screaming with pain. There was laughter on the ship, as the rich men savoured the sight. And I had tried to be the woman of the posters and yet not to love her … to be myself and her, and to please the world. My hands slid between my legs: I waited upright for Gala to reach my room.

‘It's bad news, I'm afraid.' Then Gala saw my expression.
‘Now, Jane, only two more days to go before you're whole again! Wait. He's waiting for
you
. But in the meantime, I have to tell you the unfortunate news that Tony is back. And his mother seems to be with him. They're coming in the main gate at the moment. D'you want me to go? I could use the fire escape in the kitchen, couldn't I?'

Dear Gala! I jumped out of bed, kicked the door of my room shut behind her, and threw my arms round her thin body. Where would I be without Gala? Still going off with a sinking heart and a sense of duty to my job, still bored and jealous with Tony, still trapped in a greyness far worse than the actuality of the state of the world provided by Meg. I would have no prospect of becoming whole at all. And there I was, in my miserable state of the past, when I should have been preparing for the great deed of tomorrow night. How did I imagine I was going to bring it off, after all? Did I think it would be easy, to kidnap Miranda, who would have no desire whatever to go with me? And in front of two hundred people. I trembled with agitation, standing there in my nightdress and listening to the horrible clang of the main door and the scrape of suitcase on lino.

‘Well … which do you want me to do?'

‘Stay, Gala, for heaven's sake!' I clutched her arm. ‘I feel … I feel afraid.'

Gala pushed me away and looked at me severely. ‘You don't seem very rested, Jane. What are the plans, then, before they come?'

‘At the … at the party.' I was stuttering: I could hear Tony at the flat door with his key, and the shrill, self-consuming laugh of his mother.

‘At Miles Alton's party …' Had I already told Gala or not? I felt confused, almost as if the party were already over and the deed done. As so often when there was about to be a confrontation with Tony, my colour went up, and my head throbbed; but this time it was worse, as if Mrs Marten's opiates had already been at work.

‘Don't panic!' Gala hissed at me. ‘It only helps them.
Now, can you make this party a fancy dress party, do you think?'

‘A fancy dress party?' I thought Gala must have gone out of her mind, when there were more important things to do than prance about in borrowed clothes.

‘Try!' Gala said. ‘Go on, think about it hard. Try!'

As Tony and Mrs Marten came up the haircord stairs and stood exchanging unnecessary remarks – they didn't know whether or not I was there and they wanted to test the atmosphere, to sense if I was lying in wait for them, hostile – Gala took hold of me roughly and pushed me into the corner of my room by the window. Struggling to be free of her, I pressed my head up against the pane: through the layer of dirt I saw the Persian students in the house opposite, with reflected sun from my windows striking their gold sunflower rooms … A succession of old women on the pavement below going past as if on a conveyor belt, motionless and lumpy, carrying parcels … Two women in jeans brushing up broken glass from the steps of Paradise Island and then standing back, hands on hips, to enjoy the sun. A lovely summer day! The first real day of summer! And it was sparkling crystal grey to me, while the light summer breeze tossed leaves and ruffled grass the colour of black and white film. I stared through the frame of the window, as if from a million miles away. Gala's grip was still tight on me. Tony and his mother went into the sitting room and sat down, still keeping up an artificially loud conversation.

‘Just do what I say,' Gala said. ‘You'll understand when the time comes!'

I closed my eyes, and reluctantly I thought of the party where the conflict would be resolved. First I saw Miles Alton, whom I hardly knew. He was taking ice from the icebox. His hair was long and golden. There were candles everywhere, and guests were coming up the stairs. I sighed at the banality of the vision. What on earth did Gala want? Perhaps to introduce Meg and Gil-martin, by way of disguise. My interest quickened. They would be there then,
would they? We would carry the drooping body of Miranda together to Meg's house. Κ would come towards me with a smile I could almost see. So, in fancy dress … I closed my eyes harder, shutting out the movements of the street and the unbalanced, reddish room where I stood with Gala. I saw a man dressed as a monk, with a cowl pulled over his face. I saw a twist of full taffeta skirt as the stair was turned. I saw a face that had become detached from a face …

‘Jane!' Tony was rattling the doorknob, as if the door was locked. ‘Are you there? I'm back, you know!'

‘Well?' said Gala softly. ‘What do you see, Jane?'

‘The face has slanting eyes,' I said. ‘It stands on a stick. But there's no soul behind the eyes, Gala. What does that mean?'

‘Jane, why did you lock the door? I hear you're not terribly well and I want to come in. Come on now, Jane!'

I turned to Gala, who still had me by the arm. I opened my eyes. Irritation … the red-dotted room was the colour of irritation … my vision was broken just as it began.

‘Why did you lock the door, Jane? For God's sake open it!'

Gala went to open the door. I sank on the bed. I felt at a disadvantage, still in my nightdress with Tony there coated with the dust of international airports, and his mother, who must have been up and covered in cosmetics for hours. I gazed down at my arms, which looked thin and white. How could it be me who would save the world, bring about conjunction when there had been so great a fissure? I was no more than a fragment myself. How many broken corners of humanity did Meg lure to her web in this way?

‘A most disappointing trip! Rome was far too hot! And the worst bit of miscasting for years. Woody Allen as Captain Anthony. Really!'

Tony was sitting on my bed. I had the unpleasant feeling he had been there for some time. He had a hand on my leg and his hand was warm: the nylon nightdress was beginning to sweat under his touch. I saw that Gala had gone. There was the sound of voices from the next room. What
could Mrs Marten and Gala, inhabitants of universes as remote from each other as the stars from the earth, ever find to say to each other?

‘But, Jane …' (For I still made no move: I knew I was ‘acting catatonic' and there was nothing I could do about it) ‘I heard worrying reports from Mummy! Were you … did you really have to be so rude?'

This shifted me of course. I pushed Tony's hand away and stood up. Then I turned to face him, as if the bedroom had become some kind of tribunal. Tony's face was at least as red as Nixon's had been last night, I noticed. It was splotchy, as if the colour needed adjusting, and went into a vivid orange by his receding hairline. ‘Do you honestly believe that it's my duty to put your mother up whenever she feels like coming to London?' I said. We had had this row so often that I saw Tony's features relax into spectator folds. It was my part to play the Japanese Noh theatre, and his to sit and growl from a distance.

‘But you might have been a little more polite,' Tony mumbled.

‘And so might she! She was just sitting here!'

‘And where had you been?'

Ah, that's a good one! In the metal forest, my dear Tony, in Meg's white house with the red heart. In the forest clearing too, betraying you!

‘I don't like the way she sees Miranda, and asks her to parties, and expects me not to mind!'

‘Miranda?' Tony looked surprised. He glanced with a worried expression at the bedside table, to see if the photograph had been resuscitated there. We never normally call her by her name – that's why, too, he seemed particularly uncomfortable. I saw him wondering if I'd been to see Miranda: what I'd been ‘up to' now.

‘She's welcome to see Miranda, as long as she doesn't sponge off me,' I went on unnecessarily. ‘Surely, Tony, you can see that?'

‘But Miranda means nothing more to me … to her I mean … than an old friend … really, Jane …'

‘Please ask your mother to leave the flat!'

I wasn't to be allowed that, though. The bedroom door opened – just as Tony was coming towards me in an attempt to remonstrate and give a kiss at the same time – and Mrs Marten put her head round it. Her body, which was in a white summer two-piece and very high white shoes, followed.

‘My dear Jane, how are you this morning? Tony, don't you think… Jane looks so terribly
pale
. I do think you ought to have a holiday, Jane dear! Tony – be gallant! Take Jane away somewhere for some air!'