The Bad Sister (17 page)

Eating and buying, shitting and dieting, the Martens stumbled towards their allotted places in the cemetery in the Surrey hills. That was expensive too: Tony's father was buried there and I had heard all about the cost. I shook my head, allowing myself a beatific smile. It was good, to feel the power of his fear. Mrs Marten was bending over backwards to sit Gala in the best seat at the table. She would do anything to postpone the hour of her death. Gala and I laughed again as we settled ourselves in the bright restaurant. Here, because of the bustle of people, and the moving light and shade from the low lamps which swing back and
forth as customers come and go, our absence of shadows would hardly be noticeable. Perhaps that is what relieved Tony and his mother: unpleasant and embarrassing scenes could be avoided, for the moment anyway.

I WRITE THIS
as the hour draws near, and in such confusion that I can't tell exactly what took place since yesterday … whether I dreamed … or if Mrs Marten put some drug in my wine at lunch … or how much I saw or imagined. Certainly the lunch went ‘ordinarily' enough, with Tony and his mother discussing the prices of property in Central London, and the possible dates for shooting
Chance
, and summer holiday plans until, looking up and across Gala, who was eating quietly with her eyes fixed on her plate, I saw Meg sitting at a table opposite. There was a man with her … it was he … but he had his back to me. Meg smiled at me and waved. I stared. Mrs Marten noticed, of course, and, ever eager for social contacts, whipped an eyeglass from her bag. Then she turned to me and nodded. She still held the eyeglass aloft, and it was between Meg and me now, so that I could see her, magnified in a third eye, still smiling and very close. I flinched. Meg winked at me. Under the table I found Gala's foot and kicked it hard.

‘Meg Gil-martin,' said Mrs Marten. ‘An old Scottish family! I can't see who the man is, though!'

‘Wasn't she at the Berrings' party?' said Tony.

Gala took my hand under cover of the tablecloth. I felt drained, half-alive. Between them, the Gil-martins and the Martens would crucify me, tear me from the material world into the outer regions, and back again. I saw land, I saw heaving seas, I saw a ship leaving a calm port, and a black cave in which I flapped without hope of escape. My face flamed. I looked down at my sitting body, polite by the white table, and the sun that fell in over the white tiled floor, and the hard white place where my shadow should
have been. I looked up again. Meg was talking and laughing with her companion, as she had when she appeared in the glass in my bedroom. Had she come to give me moral support, to ensure that Mrs Marten would be dealt with as she ordained? I glanced from one woman to the other. Mrs Marten was preening herself in a compact mirror now, and Meg – or a slice of Meg – was reflected alongside her. Why did they seem suddenly so alike – I could hardly tell the difference! Or did I see resemblances everywhere, now that my own double was so near her end? I stared fascinated at the twin reflections – Mrs Marten was dabbing her nose – but Gala pulled at my fingers under the table and muttered to me to stop.

Some waiters went by with a trolley, and when they had passed and the space between the tables was clear again, Meg's table was empty. I heard myself gasp, and Mrs Marten's voice, from a great distance, asking what the matter was.

‘Jane isn't herself,' Tony said succinctly. And so the rest of the meal went by, with Gala's and my high spirits somehow dampened by the reminder of Meg, and Tony and Mrs Marten at the zenith of their powers, their imposed vision of the world, their roundness and sureness in the face of our terrifying insubstantiality all the more crushing and oppressive as the pasta and veal-in Marsala and crisp salad and chocolate sweet came and went.

I didn't go home after that. But I don't know what I did. It seems to me that I went to see Stephen … Gala must have helped me to get there … I remember his sitting-room, with the curtains drawn. I must have asked him for darkness and closed them myself, for I can still see his large, comforting figure in the armchair and the outline of his face. He didn't seem surprised. But he couldn't help me either: my force was stronger than his, and slowly I disrupted the atmosphere of mild, complacent expectation of sanctity in which he lived. We sat in silence. From the corners of the dim room a cold wind got up, and there was the sound of rustling leaves. I closed my eyes. I knew the
forest had pursued me here. After a while Stephen put his head in his hands. He was beaten, and we both knew it. But his fear made me uneasy, for I felt nothing but patience and resignation, a waiting for the night.

It came at last. I left Stephen without a word and went out onto the pavement. I was strong now in the cover of night, and I had a raging hunger. I was going to the house where Miranda lived, to reconnoitre, to plan for the next day, and my other sister walked with me but she, too, would soon be taken away. I knew that and I held her close. We walked through the dark streets, which were full of people as soundless as ghosts, and soon we were in the garden of that terrible house – it was a winter evening again and bright with stars – and we went in at the back door and up the uncarpeted servants' stairs to our room. What had we done? What crime would we pay for now? There was a note pinned to my pillow. It was from the mistress of the house. It said
£
2 each was to be deducted from the wages of Jeanne and Marie to repair the iron broken that morning. That was all. We stood and faced each other in the narrow room with the sloping ceiling and the dead flies that accumulated every day on the window sill. In the past, my sister would have sobbed. But now we just stared into each other's eyes. Four eyes – dark – fringed with black.

It took me some time to arrive at Miranda's house. It was a house that had been converted into three flats, and I knew she lived at the top, also in rooms with attic ceilings; she would have made the flat ‘sweet', though, and there would be bunches of flowers in the wallpaper. I saw her at once, outlined against the window, staring straight down at me as if offering her throat. She was pale, her eyes were black, and there was a slight smile on her lips.

Marie took the note from the pillow and scrumpled it into a ball. She was the strong one now. I had never seen such hatred in anyone. She turned to me and her eyes told me to follow her. So I went back down the stairs, but on the landing where the baize door to the bedroom floor stood
closed, we stopped as if we knew that this was where we must stay. We stood there, by the door which was there to muffle our sound. We looked down the well of the poorly lit stairs, and we smelt the dinner for the rich Aldridge relations. Pheasant and breadcrumbs and green beans. We were meant to be there, handling it. Instead we had fled across the frosty fields and tried to escape but, as always, we were driven back by cold and hunger and we had failed. What would they do to us, now we hadn't turned up? My God … they were helping themselves … we could hear chairs scraping and heavy footsteps, and the popping of a cork.

Miranda opened the window and leaned out. She wore a black silky top, which showed her white breasts as she leaned towards me. I thought I could see behind her a kitchen exactly like my own. Yes, even the white enamel strainer was the same, hanging on a peg over the sink. She was still smiling, but without any gaiety, as if she was expecting me to come up and take over her kitchen there and then. But I wouldn't! I hugged Marie to me. I wasn't ready yet, and neither was Meg. Poor Miranda, she would simply have to wait.

Marie and I were still very close together when the baize door suddenly opened and Mrs Aldridge and her daughter appeared on their part of the landing. They must have left the dining room, come in search of us, keener on vengeance for the broken iron and our truancy than on their own rich food. Behind them the soft colours of the main passage glowed, red and gold in the Persian carpet that ran the length of the passage, orange in the walls hung with oils of horses and loved dogs. Mrs Aldridge's scent was strong that night. I tried to step back, pulling Marie with me. It was then I realized she wasn't going to come.

If you don't retreat, you must either stand still or go forward. I felt the pull in me as Miranda, perversely, as if she half-hoped to plunge to her death in my arms, leaned further out of the window, and Marie, unrecognizable in her strength and determination, stepped forward until she
was within a few inches of our employers. Now that Miranda was poised like a swimmer about to push off from the bar, more of the kitchen was visible behind her. I saw the black and white jars, labelled 1, 2, 3, 4, in which I keep coffee and sugar and old herbs I never use. I resented her having these too! Did Tony buy two sets then, furnish two kitchens at the same time? But as I stared at the numbers on the jars, I felt my hands going up – as if I wanted to get up there, to take hold of them as my property, to unstopper them and take the contents – and my hands were on Mrs Aldridge's daughter's throat, twisting, unscrewing, squeezing the porcelain neck. Marie had pulled out her mistress's eyes! They lay on the landing, one on the rich Persian carpet and the other nearer the edge where the bare boards began. Louise! I saw her distracted gaze as I knelt on the hill with the sharp stone in my hand. My mother … my Marie … generations of cruel mothers in rich corridors fell under our blows. When they had gone we would be whole. Well, we had the women so close they couldn't make a sound, except for a choking fighting for breath that sounded like wind going through the winter branches of the trees outside.

Still, Miranda was smiling down at me. I was horrified at her. Couldn't she see what she was doing: condemning Marie to death, and therefore herself too? For I saw now for the first time that Marie had put scissors in her pocket before running down from our room – and a length of piping which she must have always had concealed on her from the beginning of the afternoon when we tried to run away. The piping was thrust into my hand. How did I follow suit and hack them to pieces like that? The blood began to flow quite freely, sinking into the carpet without any difficulty, but running thin over the wooden boards, leaving erratic stains which leapt in front of my eyes as I struggled with my prey. Oh, we were grunting by now, Marie and I. And I had the daughter's eyes out too: I threw them down the passage with a shout that brought the men running. But Marie had never been so close to
me. It was my last day with her, and we were half-drowned in blood!

Miranda took herself back into her kitchen. She drew across a curtain that flowered in pink and white, quite unlike mine. I stood on the pavement beneath her window, with the streetlamp shining on me and my eyes in deep shadow, as she had once stood beneath me. But I don't know how I got home. The streets were empty then of the silent crowds – I must have walked again – and this time there was no Marie at my side.

The men found us in our room, where we had fled after my shout. There was such a smell of fresh blood in the corridors, so many hacked limbs lying there, there was almost an instinct in me to tidy it all away before I ran. But Marie grabbed me … we stripped off our clothes … we lay deep in the narrow bed. Then the men came and wrenched us apart. Their sobs were loud and hoarse. I knew, as they carried Marie's unmoving body from the room ahead of mine, that she would die in a prison cell far from me.

‘Jane, my dear!'

Mrs Marten's voice comes through the door. It must be late, there is sun behind the curtains and Tony has got up and left for work. Someone has hung a ballerina dress of pink net with a spangled bodice on a hanger on the outside of the cupboard, and beside it my dusty jeans and jacket. What can this mean … where did the dress come from? … and who has been interfering with the clothes I will wear when I finally go? It's Mr Marten, of course. This is intolerable! I spring out of bed, but the glare from the day gives me a headache and I sink back again. I can hear her stepping about in the passage, as if she's trying to make up her mind to come in.

‘I do think you should have some coffee! And what do you think of the outfit?'

This gets me to the door and I pull it open with a violence that obviously surprises her because she titters and waltzes away from me in the direction of the kitchen.

‘What is that dress doing in my room?' I can hear my voice still thick with exhaustion from the night. ‘And where did you find those jeans?'

‘My dear, do they belong to a younger brother? I didn't know you had one!' Mrs Marten stands in the doorway to the kitchen, arms akimbo and eyes blazing with malice. Over her arm is what appears to be a harlequin costume. One blue leg and one red dangle against her thigh. A cap with bells is suspended from the kitchen door-handle. I feel a chill … a terror … I will certainly never be able to despatch Mrs Marten into the other world! She will haunt me forever, bells ringing softly as she moves … divided, lozenge-patterned body thin and nimble as a cat.

‘The ballerina dress belonged to my poor dear sister,' says Mrs Marten. She must guess at my thoughts, for she is backing slowly into the kitchen as she speaks. In my panic I know Tony is miles away: she may have sent him away forever. I must be on my guard now, for it's a battle to the end between us. Yet I have never felt clumsier, less alert.

‘I just felt I would love you to wear it, you see! Do, Jane – it would make me so happy to see her again in you. She was quite promising as a ballet dancer, you know – but then grew a teeny bit too tall. And then … I thought I'd told you all this before but sometimes, you know, one is too upset to talk about these things … she died. Mummy and I were …'

I walked along the passage, monstrous in size compared to her. My nightdress sucked at my heels. ‘I'm sorry to hear that,' I said. ‘What did she die of?'

‘Too tragic. Leukaemia. It often takes the young and gifted, I fear! So, Jane, will you? But I'm being too awful when you haven't had your coffee yet. Look, I've got it ready for you!'

I'm at the kitchen door. I reach for the handle, but the little jester's cap repels me. I step in. My kitchen is less familiar to me than Miranda's. Is it just that I can no longer stand the light? Even the white enamel strainer on the peg
by the window looks somehow like a copy of the original. But there's something else …

‘It may seem banal to you that I should want to go as Pierrot! But do you know it's always been a dream of mine … ever since I was a child.'

Now Meg's voice begins to sound in my head. The rosy glow, which always intensifies when she comes to me, dots the strainer over with red and makes a sunset on the white lino floor. I take another step forward.