Weird Sister (28 page)

Robert is enraged. He yells ‘Shut the fuck up,’ and he grinds his brother’s face into the dirt once again, using all his weight. Graeme jerks and kicks like an animal.

Suddenly, the brothers stop fighting. Robert allows Graeme to lift his head and take a breath. They stare upward, at the window on the first floor. Jenny is looking down at them, tapping her fingers on the glass, her lips moving. A moment passes. Then she puts her fist through the window; the glass fragments and scatters like confetti. Now they can hear her screaming, ‘She’s a witch, she’s a witch, I know she is, I’ve seen her.’

Both men look at Agnes. The funeral guests have crowded forward, they have gathered at the French doors, they are spilling out into the garden. Marlene clutches Geoff, the Trevelyans stand together, Jim wishes Lolita had stayed. Elizabeth is on her own, spell-bound. No one speaks.

Agnes pauses. She sighs. She steps confidently toward Robert and helps him to his feet, drawing him to her. She wipes the dirt off his knuckles and lifts his hand to her lips, smearing blood and muck across her cheek. She smiles and touches his face. His look is one of love and that love is palpable, everyone present feels it. ‘Agnes,’ he says, his voice full of grief, ‘Agnes.’ She kisses him, and leads him away.

People find their coats and their hats. They begin to leave, no one shows them out, no one thanks them for coming.

Andrew and Francis are under the table.

Martin sits on his own by the fire.

Graeme stays face down in the mud and the cold and the night, as though he too has been buried.

Robert

Of course I didn’t believe what Graeme said to me at Karen’s funeral. Karen was dead. Graeme was distraught. Agnes was not a whore. Graeme had never slept with her. He was blaming her – he needed someone to blame. I was sure of it then, and I’m sure of it now.

Graeme and I fought, more violently than ever before; we hadn’t had a knock-down fight like that since we were boys. We both sustained wounds which were, luckily, minor. He didn’t apologize – I knew he wouldn’t apologize. But, despite that, despite his terrible accusations, Agnes forgave him. She did not harbour a grudge, was not capable of harbouring a grudge. She forgave him. And so I followed her lead.

And thank God I did, because of what came next.

Talk happens

They can’t help themselves, the people of Warboys, they can’t stop themselves from gossiping. Everyone, everywhere. In their homes, in the pubs, in the village shop, even in the winter street. Have you heard, they say, Graeme killed Karen. Graeme and Agnes were having an affair, Karen told Elizabeth
the very night she died
. It’s not clear from where they get their information, but they get it. Have you heard, they say, I know it’s none of my business but have you heard what everyone is saying?

No one mentions anything about a witch. It is as though the very thought is too malevolent. But one morning as Jim Drury is opening the Black Hat he glances down the high street toward the clocktower. He looks up and sees the weathervane; a black witch in a black hat on a black broom. It catches the wind and swings round to point at him. Jim Drury scuttles inside.

Marlene Henderson is sunk deep into her own sadness. She stays at home, nursing herself back to well-being. But it isn’t working, she isn’t feeling any better, and she dwells on what happened. She is looking to lay blame for the miscarriage. It can’t be Geoff’s fault, he is too open and loving. It isn’t her fault, although she has been betrayed by her own body. Marlene knows that where she comes from – the deep woods of northern Europe – they would have an explanation. When an unborn baby dies something unnatural is afoot. In her dreams Marlene returns over and over to Karen’s funeral. She sees Agnes’s face as it hovers outside the window. She sees Agnes’s ill will cast over the village.

Marlene is the first to repeat the word witch. She says it in the shop to Barbara, the shop-keeper. ‘Agnes is a witch,’ she says, wild-eyed over the under-ripe tomatoes, her accent thickening. ‘Agnes killed my baby.’

Barbara is shocked, she comes out from behind her counter and puts her arm around Marlene. ‘There, there,’ she says, patting her shoulder, ‘never mind.’

But the words have been let loose, Marlene has freed them. Barbara repeats them, she whispers to her customers as she hands over their stripy carrier bags. The words are in the air that hangs over Warboys, flapping in the fenland wind, growing louder. The village resists; everyone loves Agnes, Agnes is their girl. But that resistance is shrivelling, it is being blown away, it is slowly vanishing.

Robert and Agnes are happy

Robert and Agnes take good care of the boys. Robert bathes them and wipes their bottoms and makes sure they have three meals a day. At night Agnes reads to them – she’s been banished from Jenny’s room, although she hasn’t mentioned this to Robert and he hasn’t noticed. The boys get Agnes’s stories now, but she doesn’t tell tall tales, she reads to them from their little library. She has a knack for finding just the right thing: Grimm tales about evil stepmothers, Struwwelpeter, shock-headed because he refused to comb his hair or cut his nails, James James Morrison Morrison Weatherby George Dupree whose mother goes down to the end of the town and is never seen again. Agnes is there for them, always, morning, noon and night, but she is not like Karen, she doesn’t try to be like Karen, she isn’t mummy. With her own money she hires a cleaner who comes in every other day, and she buys a dishwasher, a tumble dryer, a microwave; the new appliances perch in the big kitchen, awkward in-comers, gleaming.

Robert does the laundry and most of the cooking. When the boys cry, they go to him. He sees to Martin, shaves him, bathes him, changes him, all the things that Karen once did. None of these tasks are new to Robert but he’s never had to attempt to manage them single-handed, and it’s the weight of them, the extraordinary bulk of inescapable duty, that threatens to unbalance him now. It’s as if the teetering house itself has taken over their lives.

Graeme isn’t around. Robert doesn’t notice – he’s too busy – but his brother isn’t there.

Neither is Jenny.

They have skulked off, but not together. Jenny spends a lot of time in her room. She goes to school; Mr McKay and the Headteacher are pleased with her, she seems her quiet old self, despite the bereavement. In class people keep a respectful distance. Lolly is her bodyguard, her guide. After school, they go home together. Lolly encourages Jenny to go through her collection of books; Jenny is reading up on witchcraft lore. They tell each other they are arming themselves for battle. There is a witch among us, she must be cut out. She must be made to leave. Yet, even as they say it, they giggle with pleasure; and even as she giggles, Jenny is afraid.

And she misses Karen. She misses Karen dreadfully. Before she was gone Jenny hardly saw Karen, but now every time she enters the kitchen she thinks, where’s Karen? After school, first thing in the morning. Where’s Karen? Of course there’s a big change in the household, there’s so much work to do, so much to organize, Jenny knows that Robert is struggling to keep the house functioning. But quite apart from that, apart from the laundry and the cooking and the boys and Martin, Jenny misses having Karen in the house, having someone there who was, well, ordinary.

In Jenny’s bedroom, she and Lolly whisper about Agnes.

‘She said she would help me emigrate.’

‘Where to?’ asks Lolly.

‘The US, of course, where else? She said she knows people.’

‘America?’

Jenny nods.

‘What would you want to go there for?’ asks Lolly, amazed.

‘I don’t know,’ says Jenny. ‘I’d get a job. Get a life.’

Lolly cackles fiendishly, Jenny joins her. ‘You could work in one of those casinos. You could be a cigarette girl!’ They laugh and whoop and then stifle themselves when they realize how much noise they are making. ‘Did she do it?’ Lolly asks. ‘Have you got your green card yet?’

‘Of course not,’ says Jenny. ‘She was lying. She’s always lying.’

After Lolly is gone Jenny reads and reads, and studies. She gets up to the boys at night if she hears them cry – Robert and Agnes never seem to hear them crying. She gets up and goes down the hall and gets into bed with whomever is upset, sometimes both of them. All three crowd into Andrew’s little bed and Jenny holds them, a boy on either side. Andrew and Francis love their auntie, they love both their aunties, Aunt Jenny and Auntie Agnes.

Graeme is spinning around and around in circles. All day, everyday. In his head, around and around, over and over, his thoughts repeating themselves. He sees Karen’s face as he pushes her, as she falls again and again. How did it happen? he wonders. He can’t quite remember how it happened. What did she say? What was she saying?

When he looks at his sons, his boys, it’s as though he is seeing them from a very great height. He looks down and they are tiny and he is very far from them. They are safe; he is safe; they are safe from each other. They are not really his boys. This thought gouges at him like a blunt table knife. They are Karen’s boys. Oh, but he loves them, he loves them so much he can smell it, he can feel it in his guts, in his brain. They are all that there is for him, they are all that he has made of his life, they are all that is left of Karen. And they’re not mine – he pushes those words away. And they’re not mine. They are Robert’s.

He spends his time in the Marquis of Granby and if not there, the last cottage at the end of the field. He hasn’t gone back to their bedroom since the night Karen died. He has made a nest in the cottage, a pile of dirty laundry stolen from the house. A couple of shirts and a pair of jeans that belonged to Karen, an old shirt of Robert’s, Francis’s pyjamas, Andrew’s jumper, Jenny’s old dressing gown with the belt missing, a pile of his own things. A pair of knickers belonging to Agnes. Her trousers. A bra. He nestles in and the smelly clothes are reassuring.

Elizabeth

The scene between Robert and Graeme at the funeral was extraordinary, no one was about to forget it quickly. And the intervention from Jenny . . . well, everyone was alarmed and concerned. I felt like I knew what was going on because of the knowledge I possessed – about Agnes and Graeme – about what Karen had told me the night she died. But I also felt frightened.

I was frightened of Graeme. I realized for the first time that I had been frightened of Graeme since we were children. He’d always been a bully and he had never liked me. Nothing that Graeme said about Agnes at the funeral seemed to make any impact on Robert. It was as though her touch wiped everything away. In Robert’s eyes she was blameless, the affair had never taken place. I wanted to shake him. I wanted to slap him and bring him to his senses. But I suppose in a way that’s what Graeme tried to do. He failed, spectacularly.

And of course I was afraid of Agnes. It is appalling to watch someone walk into your life and commandeer a situation, a whole set of people, an entire family, that you thought was in some way your own. It chills the soul – it chilled my soul. And Agnes herself was frightening. She invoked in me a horrible mish-mash of emotions that I’ve since spent much time trying to sort out. I admired her, on some level I think we all admire good-looking people. I envied her confidence and poise, the way that men found her seductive and women found her charming. I was jealous of her marriage, of course, and I loathed the way she relied upon her – what else can I call it? – feminine wiles to get her way. I was a little in awe of her Americanness, we are all in awe of Americans these days, we despise them and we long to be Californian. I was disconcerted by the way she had no discernible interests outside her marriage, her new family, the village, and I longed to be able to know my own mind in the way that she seemed to know hers. I wanted to be like her while knowing I never could be. I hated her and I found that frightening.

A couple of days after the funeral I saw Marlene. I had finished work at the Trevelyans before lunch and, walking home, I was surprised to see her in her garden. I had assumed she would be back at work. She invited me in for a cup of tea.

‘I’m having some time off,’ she said, ‘a couple of weeks.’

‘A couple of weeks?’ I said, not meaning to sound surprised.

‘Yes. I told you Elizabeth, I lost the baby.’

‘I know, I –’

‘I don’t think you do.’ She made herself soften her tone. ‘Just some time to myself. To think about things.’

I hesitated before speaking. I didn’t want to say the wrong thing, to upset her further. ‘I’m sorry Marlene.’

‘It’s all right,’ she said. ‘It’s not your fault.’ She looked out the window. She repeated herself, ‘It’s not
your
fault.’

‘Whose fault is it then?’

‘You heard what she said at the funeral.’

‘Who?’

‘Jenny Throckmorton. She’s a mad girl –’

‘Jenny’s not mad –’

‘But still, she said it. As did Graeme. Graeme said it too.’

‘What?’

‘Agnes. She’s a witch.’ Marlene folded her hands across her empty belly. ‘Geoff and I have been trying to conceive a baby for years.’ She looked at me. ‘Years and years. I’ve been giving myself hormone shots. I take a big syringe –’ she held up her hand, miming ‘– and I inject myself in the bum.’ She stared at me so intensely it was all I could do to keep from turning away. ‘I’m 39 years old.’

‘I know, but you’ve conceived once now, you’ll do it again –’

She shook her head. ‘Not while she is in Warboys. It’s Agnes. Don’t look at me that way Lizzie, you know it’s true, everyone knows. She’s a witch. She killed my baby.’

Marlene Henderson is a lawyer. She is bright and articulate and well-informed about politics and history. She reads and considers and Geoff takes her to London to the Royal Opera on her birthday. She wears expensive clothes and their house is lovely. Geoff is the captain of the cricket team. Marlene thinks Agnes Samuel is a witch, she said it and she believed it, I could tell. I was horrified. Accusations like this were no good; it wasn’t going to help anybody. There was a problem with Agnes – she’d been having an affair with her brother-in-law who, in turn, accidentally, tragically, killed his wife. It had nothing to do with witchcraft, nothing to do with the supernatural. At least that’s what I believed at the time.