Weird Sister (16 page)

‘I’m sure that’s not the case.’

‘Are you? Her parents weren’t so easily reassured.’ I could see Gillian’s mother clearly. I went to the funeral; I was so surprised to be invited I thought I had better go. The mother resembled her daughter, they were both petite blondes. I felt my eyes begin to tear as I remembered. ‘Why didn’t you call us?’ her mother asked when I introduced myself. I didn’t know how to reply. I stood there like an idiot, smiling.

‘Did you get into trouble?’

‘Trouble? No. Not professionally. She left a suicide note that specifically absolved me, among others, of blame. Not that I found that reassuring.’

‘This must happen to therapists all the time.’

‘It happens. It happened to me. Or rather, my client. Clients. Two of them. It happened twice. And with Christine – my therapist – gone as well . . .’ I sat and stared into my drink. I had run out of words, out of steam. I swallowed my tears, my dismay.

‘What did you do after Gillian Collins died?’ Agnes asked calmly.

‘I quit. I gave notice to my clients – I had left the clinic a while back. I had a substantial roster of private clients.’

‘You were popular.’

‘Popular? I guess. In a way. I was in demand.’

‘So you gave it all up.’

‘I did.’

‘And you came back to Warboys.’

‘Yes.’

‘You exiled yourself from everything you’d earned, everything you’d gained.’

‘I felt I no longer deserved it.’

‘No one was blaming you for her death,’ said Agnes.

‘A bit of blame might not have been such a bad thing. I could have fought against it then. Sometimes I feel that I’ve gone unpunished, that some kind of reckoning would have enabled me to put the whole episode behind me.’

‘Elizabeth,’ said Agnes, ‘that’s just too masochistic for words.’ She shook her head. ‘You’ve given up your career. Isn’t that punishment enough?’

I looked at Agnes. ‘The strange thing is – the thing that bothers me now . . . I can’t figure out why she did it. Gillian Collins. I don’t understand why she wanted to die.’

‘Oh,’ said Agnes, ‘that’s simple. Punishment. For some reason she needed to punish people.’

‘She did?’ I thought Agnes over-confident about what she was saying. She’d never met Gillian Collins.

‘That’s what suicide is, isn’t it? A punitive act?’

‘I don’t know. Punishing oneself?’ I asked. I used to be able to speak authoritatively about these things. No longer.

‘Punishing everyone who knows you. You’ll never know why she did it. It’s got nothing to do with you.’

I knew that I should have said it had everything to do with me, but I couldn’t. I no longer had the energy. Agnes’s explanation was sensible, if a little bald. It made me feel better.

We stopped talking and went back out onto the streets of Cambridge. I felt a kind of relief after telling my story, as if in the telling its impact had been lessened. I offered to give Agnes a tour of the colleges, I knew my way around. But she wasn’t interested.

‘King’s College Chapel?’ I suggested. ‘It’s amazing.’

‘I don’t like chapels,’ said Agnes. ‘I don’t much like old things.’

Agnes makes a move

It is the week before Christmas and Robert is away again for the night. Another meeting in London, and he is panicking about Christmas shopping, panicking about money. He leaves in the car on Wednesday lunchtime.

Agnes is working in Robert’s office when Jenny comes home from school. She is sitting in front of the computer. Jenny comes in, drops her books and sits down opposite her.

‘It’s cold in here.’

Agnes looks up. ‘It’s not too bad. I wear layers. I take them off and put them on as I move from room to room.’

‘Was it cold in your house in America?’

‘I didn’t have a house in America, you know that Jenny.’

‘Did it ever get cold in Las Vegas?’

‘Briefly. December, January, the temperature drops, especially at night. Sometimes there’s a little snow. But even then the sun is very strong.’

‘How hot can it get?’

‘Forty degrees Celsius or more is pretty common in the summer. It’s not that far from Death Valley where it gets incredibly hot.’ Agnes stretches as though the mere mention of heat warms her.

‘Why did you come to England?’

Agnes looks at Jenny sharply.

‘Why would anyone come here when you could stay in America?’

‘Had a bad day at school?’

‘That’s where I want to go. Do you think they’d let me emigrate more easily because I have an American sister-in-law?’

‘No.’ Agnes says, ‘no. It’s hard to get in to the US.’

‘I’ve heard that. God, that’s depressing.’

Agnes looks at Jenny again. ‘I might be able to help you though,’ she says.

Jenny sits up straight. ‘Yeah? How?’

‘I’ll look into it. I know some people.’

‘Great,’ says Jenny. She picks up her books and leaves the room.

The evening passes; dinner, the boys to bed, Martin wheeled into his room, Graeme off to the pub. Karen comes back downstairs after Andrew and Francis are asleep and finds Agnes on her own in the sitting room, reading a magazine. No one has bothered to light the fire. Karen suddenly feels uncomfortable, like an intruder in her own house.

‘Can I get you a drink?’ Agnes offers.

‘Thanks. I’ll have a glass of white wine.’

Agnes returns with the drinks and sits next to Karen on the settee. ‘How was Martin this evening?’ she asks.

‘Fine.’

‘He’s a charmer, isn’t he?’

‘Martin?’ says Karen, thinking, you must mean Andrew. Or Francis. Or even Graeme.

‘Yes. Charming.’ Agnes sips her drink.

Karen feels a little bewildered. What can Agnes mean? She changes the subject. ‘Christmas. I’m never ready on time,’ Karen says.

‘No?’ says Agnes, leafing through the magazine.

‘I don’t much like it. Too much work, too much drinking, too much too much.’

‘I don’t like it either,’ Agnes says, turning to face Karen. ‘It reminds me of my family.’ Agnes blinks and Karen thinks she sees her green eyes turn to black; she blinks again and her eyes are normal. For a moment Karen feels frightened. Agnes is angry, she thinks, Agnes hates me, then she pushes that thought away. She chastises herself and takes another drink. She has never heard Agnes talk about her family.

‘Were you very close?’

‘Yes. We stuck by each other. We had to, in the end.’ Agnes returns to her magazine.

Karen can’t think of any other questions to ask that won’t sound too prodding. ‘Like the Throckmortons,’ she says.

‘No,’ says Agnes, now her eyes are glinting, ‘not like them at all.’

Us, Karen thinks, but she doesn’t correct her out loud. Karen would like to pursue this line of conversation, it occurs to her now that she and Agnes could be natural allies, both outsiders in the family. Perhaps Agnes finds marriage and the Throckmortons different – less easy – than she had anticipated. Karen is trying to think of what to say next when Andrew appears in the doorway. He is crying, he has had a bad dream. She lifts him, gives him a hug and carries him upstairs to his bed. Once she has calmed him down and tucked him in she feels too tired to go back down, back to Agnes and her drink. She goes to bed.

Graeme comes in at eleven-thirty; he’s been at the Black Hat until closing. He and Agnes have been perfectly civil to each other in the month since their encounter on the settee. Robert is away again for the night and Graeme has stayed out late, hoping to avoid his sister-in-law. But she is there when he comes in.

‘Hello Graeme,’ she says, and she stands and walks toward him. ‘Let me take your coat.’ She moves behind him and he feels her hands on his shoulders. ‘It’s cold, isn’t it?’

‘Yes,’ he says, he has had quite a bit to drink and his tongue feels thick in his mouth.

‘It’s a beautiful coat,’ she says as she peels it away from his back. ‘Did you get it in London?’

He nods, turning to face her. His cane is leaning against the wall next to the door. Agnes steps close. She reaches up and pushes Graeme’s hair away from his eyes. She moves her hand down his cheek, her fingers lightly touching his lips. He swallows, and feels dazzled and tired and ready.

‘It’s an ideal situation,’ she says.

‘What?’

‘Us, you and I, here in this house. No one would know. I have my husband, you have your wife. He’s away, she’s asleep.’

Graeme pulls himself together. I have been waiting for this, he thinks. I have been biding my time. He takes a step toward Agnes, backing her up against the wall. There is no fire, the central heating has gone off, and the curtains on the big windows are thin. He feels a chill that makes him want to touch her more than ever, makes him want to feel her warmth. He looks into her face and her green green eyes and he thinks he sees openness, willing. He puts his hand on her breast and tries to kiss her. She turns her face away and, at the same time, puts her hand on the zipper of his trousers.

They have sex there, standing, in the sitting room, the cold December night around them. Graeme pushes inside her, against the wall, and she lets him, she urges him on. They keep on their clothes and bare only the necessary flesh. He tries to look into her face, tries to kiss her, but she won’t let him. Her face is turned away, buried in his shirt, looking away from him, over his shoulder. Her breathing is strong, his laboured, and they aren’t locked together for very long before Graeme feels himself start to slide into orgasm. He tries to find her lips once again, but she won’t allow him, so he lets what has begun happen. He pushes deep, hard, and shudders and gasps, and then withers.

When he steps away from her she looks at him. Her lips are dry and she licks them. And she smiles, she smiles her lovely smile, and Graeme thinks he has died and gone to heaven. Very slowly, quietly, she adjusts her tights. Moments later, she leaves the room as though nothing has happened. Graeme does up his trousers and goes to bed.

The sharp smell of his sweat lingers on in the sitting room until the next morning. Karen wrinkles her nose as she opens the window and lets fresh air fill the room.

Graeme goes shopping

Several days later Graeme drives down to London and parks his car near Holborn underground station. He hasn’t told Karen where he is going. He walks through the back streets to Covent Garden. He knows his way, he has been before, many times; he is heading for Armani. He has on his black suede jacket and he walks along like a big man, like an elegant man with a cane. Then, up ahead, he sees Agnes, her dark hair swinging as she walks. She stops and turns and – there – she sees him and smiles. Agnes! How brilliant to see her. They will spend the day together, they will look at beautiful things, he can ask her opinion, he can buy her something. He goes quickly toward her.

Agnes raises her hand, gives a little wave, and steps into a hair salon. Graeme catches up, pushes through the door. In the salon – very chic – everyone looks at him. Agnes isn’t there, of course she isn’t there, it was his imagination, she’s in Warboys. He runs his hand through his hair, disappointment pulling hard at him, and leaves. He makes his sorry way along the pavement.

At Armani the doors are open to him, the blond wood floors and glass display cases gleam, the air is hushed, and as he passes the shop assistants bow slightly, one by one, slim and solemn. Here no one knows he lives on a disability pension, no one knows his wife is a drudge and he is fucking his sister-in-law Agnes. He is wearing an expensive jacket and possesses a credit card and nothing else matters. The day is redeemed.

He fingers the fabric of a suit.

A young man stands to one side. ‘Would you like to try it on sir?’ He lifts it off the rail and holds it up. Nehru collar, no lapels.

Graeme takes a look. ‘The cut’s too fashionable,’ he says. ‘I like things to look more – classic.’

‘How about this?’ The shop assistant holds up another.

‘Black,’ says Graeme, ‘I want it in black.’

Graeme spends one hour and nine hundred pounds in the shop, the equivalent of weeks and weeks of the income he and his family receive from the state. He tries on stiff white cotton shirts and pale silk ties and cashmere sweaters. He tries on overcoats and raincoats and a sharp black tuxedo. The shop assistant fetches and carries.

The suit he buys is a thing of beauty, in its cut, in its fabric. In the changing room when he looks at himself in the mirror, his pleasure is intense. It’s a suit he could wear out in the evening with Agnes, it’s a suit he could be buried in. He buys it without hesitating.

Agnes tells a story

Jenny is having problems at school. She has never done particularly well although each year she excels at something, the next year something else. Last year she did well in art class, she began to paint. Still life: collections of things, a vase of cut flowers, an open book, a human skull, odd juxtapositions, strange angles. Skull and sausages, flowers and knives. This year she has been doing well in English Literature. She is reading
Macbeth
and enjoying the gore. In general, teachers despair of her, they sense a clever mind masked by insecurity. But, despite that, they like her, they find her intriguing. And they like her two brother/guardians, Robert and Graeme, who take it in turns to appear on parents’ night to charm the women teachers.

Jenny doesn’t have many friends. The boys she knows are tongue-tied and clumsy, confused about girls, a little afraid. Girls her own age find her aloof. However there is one girl Jenny gets on with, Lolly Senior. Lolly shares her name – Lolita – with the pub landlord’s wife and she is permanently annoyed by this coincidence. She has read Nabokov and she’s disgusted. She has a stutter which, after hours of speech therapy, she has almost mastered; it gets the better of her when she is angry or embarrassed and because she is sixteen this is much of the time. Lolly has ways of making herself feel better though, she has a little game she plays. Lolly pretends she is a witch. She tells people she is a witch. D-Don’t c-come near me, she’ll say, I’ll cast a sp-sp-spell on you. And everyone laughs, including Lolly. Oh that Lolly, they say, she thinks she’s a witch.