Spilt Milk (5 page)

As a child, Vivian thought she had been chosen by God to understand the connections He had made in the world. She had believed He wanted her to become a schoolteacher one day. She’d counted the number of fine fronds that made up an owl’s wing feather, noting in an exercise book that the dry hollow stem of the feather and the tiny elements of it all were part of a whole pattern of connecting things. Everything was God’s secret. A feather might be as soft as a girl’s cheek, but it was also as dry as a corn stalk, strong enough to carry a bird in flight and as light as a whisper. It was all those things. A river could be no more than a snake of silver in the grass, or it could be wide enough to hold
the whole sky in its reflections, but it was all water, tiny drops of cold that filled rain butts and church fonts alike. A man could be handsome and given to walking with a swagger, and yet hold the key to everything without even knowing it.

When she saw him, she pretended to be surprised.

‘Not working?’ she asked. ‘I hear Langham is worried about the harvest this year because of the drought.’

‘Well, I’ve worked my hours in any case,’ said Joe. ‘I’m not labouring for Langham now, so he can’t hire or fire me as he chooses.’

He wished her well, tipped his hat and began to walk away. Vivian called his name. She asked if he was a believer. He looked surprised.

‘In what? God, you mean? I suppose so. I think I doubt everything I believe in, and believe in everything I doubt. That suits me fine.’

Vivian said doubt was not a pleasant feeling. She preferred to be sure of things. She and her sister were fortunate. They never doubted each other. They were bound together by love, like a good woven cloth made of the warp and weft of shared blood and history, the way family ought to be.

He laughed, pushing his hat to the back of his head.

‘Is that right? And which way are you walking, Miss Marsh?’

A drift of swans flew overhead and landed on the river, beating snowy wings, tiny curled feathers dislodging themselves, floating in the air. Vivian watched the birds arching their long necks, settling their pure-white plumage, pretty as china ornaments. Nellie always said if you saw a swan flying against the wind, no matter how bright the day, a bad storm would follow.

‘I’m going this way,’ she said, walking in the direction the swans had taken upriver. ‘Which way are you going?’

‘The same way as you,’ he replied, and fell into step with her.

At the bend in the river where willows overhung the water, Joe suggested they sit down. Vivian agreed. She wanted to tell him
she would lay down her life for Nellie. That she would never let him steal her away.

‘How long do you intend to wear black?’ he asked her. ‘It’s so Victorian to be dressed in widow’s weeds for months on end. Heavens, we’re in the twentieth century now, Vivian, or hadn’t you noticed?’

‘I am well aware of that. I am grieving my sister Rose. And besides, we have always worn black to honour our parents’ memories.’

‘I would like to see you dressed in colours. Something to show off your pretty blonde hair.’ Joe began unpacking pencils and paper from his knapsack. ‘Can I draw you?’ He unrolled a piece of blue velvet which held reams of paper. ‘I’ve drawn your sister Nellie several times, but she fidgets. Just lift your head a little higher, could you? Beautiful. Thank you.’

Vivian was surprised at her own obedience. She kept very still, just as he said. Beautiful? Only Nellie had ever called her beautiful. She wanted to see the drawing but he had the paper angled away from her.

‘So, you are leaving soon?’ she said after they had sat in silence for a while.

‘Yes, I’ll be on my way in a day or two.’

The air was hot and sticky, and crickets buzzed in the long grass. The sound of his pencil strokes on paper was pleasant. Who would have thought such pleasure could be derived from being looked at by somebody?

There was a loud splash in the river, and Vivian jumped. A quick flicker of silver hovered in the air above the water. A fish breaking the surface. It flashed like a secret catching the light, a shard of mirror that dazzled the eye and was gone, leaving ripples behind it. Vivian remembered why she was there. She took off her hat and wiped her face with a handkerchief.

‘She won’t go with you.’

‘Who?’

‘Nellie. She won’t go away with you.’

‘Go where?’

Vivian felt the sun burning her face. She had never spoken so frankly. She could hear the shrillness in her voice. ‘Are you pretending you didn’t ask Nellie to go with you? Tell me, do you love all women like this? Do you promise them things and then leave? Is that it?’

Joe said he hadn’t promised anything. And as for love, he certainly never promised that to anybody.

‘So you don’t love her?’

Joe put down his pencil. ‘What do you know of love, Vivian? I’ve seen you watching me while I’m working in the fields. Standing under the trees near my tent. I’ve seen the way you look at me.’ His voice slowed. ‘I like to look at you too. I was sure you knew that when you met me this afternoon, pretending it was by chance.’

Vivian snatched up the drawing. He had paid more attention to the fine execution of her mended boots and patched skirts than to her face, which was softly shaded and indistinct, her eyes downcast under her tatty straw boater.

‘How can you be so heartless? You’ve made me look like a pauper.’

‘What you choose to see is what you want to find. Keep the drawing. Throw it in the river if it displeases you. To me it’s a portrait of simple beauty. You are beautiful as you are, but you don’t see it.

‘Wait,’ he said, catching hold of her arm as she got up to leave. ‘Stay. I’m a careless oaf. I didn’t mean to hurt your feelings. You are lovely. You’re so very lovely. Please, just stay. Really, you’re beautiful, Vivian.’

Did she hate him? And if she did, why did she let him kiss her? She was horrified by her inability to refuse him. By the desire that overtook her. Hidden under a curtain of leaves, Vivian gave herself to him like a confession, a truth that could no longer be denied. Her fingers, her lips, her eyes swarmed towards the
sweetness of his body. She could not stop herself. She took his face in her hands and pressed her lips to his mouth and it was hot, his tongue thick against hers.

She didn’t know if she was doing this to keep her sister or because she desired Joe so badly she would do anything to have him. Or perhaps she wanted to prove to Nellie that she was right: that Joe was rotten through and through, and hatred was what burned inside her.

He came to the cottage the next day, walking up the path minutes after Nellie had left to work on the Langhams’ farm. They lay down in the orchard all through the quiet hours of the day. Vivian breathed in the smell of him, tobacco and herbs in the dip of his collarbone and something else, peppery as watercress, a pungent earthiness like river mud in winter: the scent of her sister. Was she really saving Nellie or destroying her? Joe would belong to neither sister, but they would share him as they had always shared everything.

There was no cake baked that day and the housework went undone. Supper was cold potatoes, a tin of sardines from the store cupboard and a badly washed salad full of grit, hastily prepared while Nellie sat waiting at the table. Vivian couldn’t eat a thing. Nellie said she must be coming down with something. She looked feverish. Her pupils were dilated. Her skin flushed.

‘You have a rash on your face. Should we call the doctor?’ asked Nellie.

Vivian touched her cheeks. Joe’s stubble when he’d kissed her had reddened her tender skin.

‘Nettle rash,’ she said, and cleared the table.

‘It’s the heat, perhaps,’ said Nellie.

‘And you will be swimming I suppose?’ Vivian cleared the plates. ‘I think I’ll lie down. You go. Enjoy the water.’

She watched Nellie running towards the river and knew she was meeting Joe. She knew it, but she could not say a word. And
if Nellie did leave with him, Vivian felt she deserved to be left behind for what she had done. She deserved only punishment.

Joe came to the cottage again on Friday morning, and this time they were pulling at each other’s clothes before he had even removed his hat. Vivian took him up to her bedroom, where they made love greedily. Afterwards they lay naked in each other’s arms and slept. When she woke she listened to his breathing, watching his chest rise and fall, studying the slant of his hips, the curling dark hair between his legs, his pale genitals. This was how husbands and wives must be together. Able to stare at each other. She had a man in her bed. Nellie was the only other person she had ever slept beside.

They were sorry creatures, she and Nellie. Sorry, lonely women. And she was the sorriest. Treacherous and cruel. Taking the one thing she knew her little sister desired. The thought of Nellie made her leap from the bed, gathering up her discarded clothes, waking Joe, asking him to dress.

‘Let’s go to the river,’ he said casually, pulling on his boots. ‘We can lie together under the willows.’

At the end of the day, they sat by the water. A factory hooter sounded, miles away, at the guncotton works. Pigeons chorused in the trees. Joe said he was leaving. He could not stay. He was a traveller. Always moving on. He would not forget her, but it was time for him to leave.

‘Don’t cry,’ he said, kissing her forehead. ‘My pretty Vivian. Maybe I’ll come back for you one day.’

He walked away, whistling a tune she recognized. ‘The Song of the Lark’
.
She committed to memory the cut of his jacket, the easy way his arms hung at his sides as he walked. He never once looked back.

On the ground beside her was the velvet he had wrapped his paper and pencils in. She picked it up and in its folds was a small brown hagstone. She held it in her palm and rubbed its smooth surface. It was the one she had given Nellie.

The barley fields were thick with blood-red poppies as she walked home through the fields. The ears of barley crackled as Vivian’s skirts brushed against them. Stalks were crushed under her feet; petals stained her skin and clothes. She hoped she would not be seen by anybody with her hat askew, blonde hair loose around her shoulders, her cotton blouse dusted with pollen.

Nellie met her at the cottage door, holding a black hat in her hands. Joe’s hat.

‘I found this,’ she said, her eyes filled with tears. She looked defeated, as if all the storm of her character had blown out of her. ‘I found it in our bed.’

Vivian went past her into the shade of the kitchen and put the hagstone on the table. She turned and took Nellie’s hands.

‘Don’t cry. He’s gone now. It’s just us. The two of us. How it is meant to be. Look at me. We can forget him now.’

‘Gone?’

‘Yes. He’s gone and we are together, just as Rose said we should be.’

That night Vivian dreamed she saw Nellie standing by the window, in her black winter coat despite the heat of the summer night. She held her suitcase in her hand. She dreamed Nellie was asking her questions, over and over.

Why did you do it? Why, why?

Nellie’s face swam back and forth, so full of hurt she could have made a stone cry with the pity of it. A watery light moved in the room, like a candle seen through thick tears. The dream was as slow as weeds in a river; it pressed down on Vivian like water. She was drowning in regret. She gasped for air. Slowly she turned and dragged the bed sheet across her face.
Go away
, she pleaded.
Go away
. The white linen covered her. She closed her eyes tight.

When Vivian woke in the morning, a breeze drifted in through
the open window, carrying the noise of insects and birdsong. Nellie’s side of the bed was empty. The brown hagstone was on her pillow. Vivian got up, hurriedly straightened her clothes, splashed her face with cold water from the bowl on the dresser and went downstairs. The door stood open and light poured into the shadows of the room.

All day Vivian hoped Nellie might return. She imagined her coming in from the garden with a bowl of raspberries, complaining about the birds eating all the best ones. Or appearing barefoot at the gate, her hair and clothes damp, her boots in her arms. She knew in her heart that Nellie had gone. She had taken her suitcase and left the village.

Vivian had never thought much of the world beyond the village. She remembered a trip organized by Mrs Langham for the farm workers. A trip to the seaside in a charabanc. Vivian had stood on the beach and watched the tide go out. Nellie teased her because she had not wondered where it went. She’d accepted the bowing out of the water just as she accepted its coming back later in the day. Had her whole life been like that until now? An acceptance of everything?

She began to sing a hymn Rose liked, ‘Thy Will I All Thy Sins Forgive’, her voice weak and faltering. Nellie’s chickens came running to the door, thinking they were being called, expecting to be fed. Vivian shooed them away.

For months afterwards, waking or sleeping, she felt the weight of what she had done. She was sick with regret, and her headaches lasted for weeks at a time. She lost her appetite and lay in bed thinking of Joe. It shamed her to feel the ache in her body when she thought of him, but she relived the days she had with him again and again.

Sometimes she wondered if, with time and distance between them, Nellie might manage to think of her with less than hatred in her heart. Joe had said there was no wrongness in love, and she clung to that idea. After all, she loved Nellie and Joe both.
You are
shameful,
the voice of Rose whispered to her as she passed her dead sister’s bedroom.

When Vivian collected the laundry from the vicarage, the vicar’s wife asked after Nellie. Vivian said she was away visiting relatives. She made it sound so convincing, she almost believed her lies.

Slowly Vivian’s sickness left her. Her hair began to shine and her appetite increased. She filled out, her cheeks rounded, her eyes shone. She tied her corset tighter every day against her swelling body. When she passed Rose’s bedroom she put her fingers in her ears, but still there was the accusing voice of her sister’s ghost.