Weird Sister (10 page)

Once Karen has gone upstairs Graeme starts to drink more seriously. When one of the waiters walks by he relieves him of the bottle of champagne he is carrying. The boy objects and Graeme says, ‘It’s mine. I’m paying for it.’ He tucks the bottle under his arm and goes into the sitting room. His father, Martin, has been parked beside the fire and he stares out at the crowded room blankly. ‘Well, dad,’ Graeme says, sitting down next to him, ‘you’ve gained a new daughter-in-law today. Somebody else to help around the house.’ His mild words are not matched by his expression as he looks around the room at the guests, all these people he has never really liked. Geoff and Marlene Henderson, Elizabeth Hopkins, Jim and Lolita Drury. He looks for his glass but he has misplaced it, so he drinks straight from the bottle instead.

Robert stands in front of him. ‘Graeme,’ he says, ‘can you come and help me in the kitchen? They are having a little trouble getting the food organized.’

Graeme looks up at his brother. ‘No,’ he says. ‘It’s your wedding.’ He goes back to his bottle, angling his chair so that he can look into the flames.

Graeme doesn’t know how much time has passed when he feels warm lips on his ear. He lifts his head expecting Karen but it is Agnes leaning down to him, her hand on his shoulder. ‘Don’t you think we should move into the ballroom?’ she asks, her voice low. ‘We should make use of the ballroom; it’s so crowded in here.’ She straightens and walks away; Graeme picks up his cane and follows.

The ballroom is empty, apart from Agnes who now stands in front of the fireplace. Despite the warmth from the fire, the room is too unused to be welcoming and there is a chill in the air centuries old. The windows, though large, are deep-set and make the room dark on the brightest day, and what remains of the oak panelling on two of the walls darkens it further. In her wedding dress Agnes glows with a white light. Graeme stands near enough to see that there are tiny beads of perspiration strung across her collarbone, like a very fine pearl necklace.

This room,’ she says pausing, ‘don’t you think this room is strange? I feel very odd when I come in here. This room has seen too much.’ She walks away from Graeme, running her hand along the wall. ‘If these walls could speak you wouldn’t want to hear what they have to say. It wouldn’t make for a very nice story.’

Graeme’s head feels thick. He’s had too much to drink. Ordinarily he would claim to be fond of the feeling.

Agnes walks toward him, stopping only inches away. Her face looms at his, pale. ‘Your brother is very sweet to me,’ she says. ‘I’d like to keep you sweet too.’ She moves away, graceful and sinewy in the close-fitting dress. She pauses by the door of the room before leaving. ‘We should be friends, you and I, Graeme. Brother-in-law.’ She says the last word slowly.

After she is gone Graeme stands on his own in the ballroom. He doesn’t notice, but behind him on the floor little mounds of plaster dust are growing steadily. The heavy plaster ceiling has been shifting over the centuries, it has not been restored or stabilized in any way, and the recent building work upstairs has loosened it further. Slabs of plaster work against each other like tectonic plates and dust pours from the ceiling in a quiet steady stream, sand in an egg-timer.

What Agnes said has made Graeme uncommonly angry. His thoughts are inarticulate, contradictory. He shakes off the reverie into which he has fallen and thinks, I don’t want to be friends with my sister-in-law, I don’t want anyone new to come into this family. I have things the way I want them already, I don’t want the family altered. Why couldn’t Robert have married that Elizabeth Hopkins woman, she wouldn’t make things difficult for me. She knows me. She wouldn’t expect to be friends.

He spins round and walks to the back of the room. Agnes’s perfume lingers in the air, there is an undertow to it that makes him feel queasy. He wipes his hand across his face in an attempt to rid himself of the smell. He is disturbed by her, and he does not like the feeling. He thinks that friendship is not what she is after. He prods the rotting panelling with his cane.

A group of people have gathered in the entrance foyer. There is confusion over the whereabouts of coats and hats. Robert arrives to sort things out and the group pauses by the front door. Several people look into the ballroom and notice Graeme standing at the far end. There is a sound that they later describe like hearing a rock move, stone scraping against stone, the sarcophagus lid pushing back. A large chunk of carved plaster drops from the ceiling. There is a moment of slow-motion quiet as it falls. Then the plaster crashes down across the back of Graeme’s head and shoulders. He pitches forward and, mid-air, turns his body like a dancer, rolling free of the weight of the debris. The air fills with dust and grit. Two men run over. One helps Graeme up and brushes him down while the other searches for his cane. Graeme takes it without a word. He pushes his hair, thick with dirt, from his face and walks out of the room, through the crowd in the foyer, his limp slightly more pronounced than usual. He heads upstairs and does not reappear for the duration of the party. ‘He could have been killed,’ people murmur to each other, and this moment becomes part of the story, part of the wedding tale.

Elizabeth

I survived the wedding thanks to Marlene. I survived what came afterward thanks to myself. I should have seen what was coming, I should have seen it right away. Everyone fell under her spell. No one escaped from that, except me, and that was because I was already too poisoned against her for even Agnes to be able to bend me to her ways.

At the party after the wedding I got talking to Julia Trevelyan. She wasn’t someone I knew well. She and her husband David had moved to the village six or seven years previously. They were IT workers, Warboys’ first, and they had their office in their big house along the high street. David worked as an editor for various information technology publications and Julia designed web-sites and commercial on-line information. We were standing next to each other under the canopy, chatting, when Agnes reached us on her tour of duty. Robert hadn’t managed to introduce me to Agnes before the wedding; we had a scrambled introduction, one among many, outside the church. And now she remembered my name.

‘Elizabeth,’ she said, her lips parting over white teeth, ‘I’m glad to find you again.’ She turned to Julia, ‘Can I introduce you?’

Julia laughed. ‘Oh no, I know Elizabeth. We all know each other here in Warboys, Agnes. But it’s sweet of you to offer.’

‘I hear,’ Agnes turned back to me, ‘that you are looking for work?’

I was surprised that Robert had told her this. I wondered what else he had said. ‘Yes, I –’

‘And I hear you are looking for an employee,’ she said turning to look at Julia.

‘Well that’s right, it just so happens that we . . .’

Agnes moved on, leaving Julia and me looking at each other speculatively. ‘It’s not remotely in your field,’ Julia said.

‘I’m looking to move on,’ I replied. We talked for a while until it became clear that Julia and David Trevelyan had found their new employee. We shook hands, and I said I’d be at their house Monday morning.

I left the party on my own sometime after ten p.m. I walked past the Black Hat but didn’t notice anything strange. I had expected to make my way much earlier, but I was so cheered by the idea that I was now gainfully employed that I actually began to enjoy myself. I helped Robert organize the food for supper. I sat outside under the canopy, near one of the blow-heaters. Jenny came and sat beside me. We could see the autumn stars above the hedge at the end of the garden. Jenny dipped her head briefly, laying it on my shoulder for a moment, and I found her presence reassuring. She was not a happy girl and her teenage years were proving especially turbulent. I worried about her. But tonight she radiated charm and confidence.

‘You look fabulous,’ I said.

‘Elizabeth,’ she was a little breathless from all the excitement and drink, ‘I’ve got a sister now. Can you believe it? Look at her.’ We could see Agnes standing in the garden with a group of people, her figure illuminated by a torch burning near her feet. Her dress shone white against the dark night. ‘She’s like a beacon,’ Jenny whispered, ‘blazing away.’

The Black Hat flies off

At three a.m. Robert pushes his father’s wheelchair to his bedroom. He lifts him into bed fully clothed, foregoing the nightly ablutions that Karen performs without fail. Robert strokes his father’s forehead and says, ‘Well dad, Agnes and I are married.’ His father makes no response, but Robert doesn’t expect him to. Most of the guests are gone, Jenny is asleep on a couch in the sitting room, still wearing her matching dress and coat. Jim and Lolita are labouring in the kitchen, but they have urged Agnes and Robert to go to bed.

Agnes’s hair is in a lovely state of disarray. Robert insists on carrying her up the stairs to their new bedroom, cleaned and repainted for the occasion. He helps her get out of the wedding dress and with every button his anticipation mounts. She licks her teeth and looks at him with an open sexual knowing that he finds absolutely compelling. They slide into bed together and begin the gorgeous process of celebrating their marriage.

Elizabeth walked past the pub earlier and she didn’t notice. Other people walk past on their way home from the wedding and they don’t notice either. There is a low light burning in The Black Hat, but they think nothing of it – perhaps Jim left it on for security. Inside three young men are at work. They wear black puffy jackets and small woollen caps and faded blue jeans and though they are young, their faces are marked and hardened and stern. They look like what they are – thieves. They are inside the Black Hat robbing it clean. They have broken down the back door using crowbars and a large gleaming axe. ‘Why did no one hear them?’ Jim will wail very early the next morning when he and Lolita make their weary way home. ‘How could no one hear them? We weren’t
all
at the wedding.’

‘This village,’ sputters Lolita, ‘this village is run through with envy and malice. I swear, they could have knocked us down in the street and no one would have done a thing.’

‘Lolita,’ says Jim, ‘that’s not true.’ But he hasn’t been inside yet.

They have torn down the curtains and smashed the glasses – every glass, not one survives. They have stolen the Toby jugs and taken or drunk or poured out all the booze, holding open the draught taps until the floor is awash with lager and bitter and Guinness and coke. They took an axe to the new computer till and when that yielded nothing, they used the axe on the polished oak bar, the shining counter that has long reflected back the faces of the punters who sit there with their beer. There was no money anywhere in the pub for them to steal, not – as Agnes would say – a single red cent, except the charity box with its pennies. So they have taken their tithe in destruction instead and the Black Hat looks like a wild army of drunken soldiers has vented its war rage on it. Little of its pub beauty survives, the windows, the front door, that’s it.

Jim is so heartbroken he is unable to cry.

Lolita becomes a dervish. She fetches the black bin liners from out back and begins to clear the debris.

‘Stop,’ says Jim, his voice dry and sticky in his throat, ‘stop it. We’ve got to call the police.’

‘And let them see the place in this state? No,’ she shakes her head.

‘I’ve got to call someone,’ says Jim, ‘I’ll call Robert and Agnes.’

‘You will not,’ says Lolita, ‘and spoil their wedding night?’ And with that they hear a noise. They both stiffen and look around. But it is only the cat coming out from where she has been hiding.

‘This village,’ mutters Lolita, as she bends to her task. And now Jim knows exactly what she means. It is a quiet village, Warboys, they know each other by name, they have flowers in their gardens and there are birds in the trees. It is an oasis of warm people in the cold grey fenland. And if it wasn’t for the burglars, it would be perfect. And if it hadn’t been for the joy-riders a few years back, it would have been perfect then as well – Jim and Lolita didn’t lose their car, but plenty of other people did. You could hardly step out the front door and into the high street without fear of being mowed down. And if it hadn’t been for the tricksters and graffitos and those boys who did over the church, and the shop, and the houses along the back.

‘This country,’ mutters Lolita, as she rights a table, as Jim picks up the dustpan and brush.

In the morning light, Robert wakes. He is very cold, and gripped by an inexplicable fear. He thinks he sees Agnes standing at the end of the bed, dressed in black with a severe black hat, staring at him, her face white with rage. With a sharp movement he turns away from what he sees and finds his wife, Agnes, naked and warm, breathing deeply beside him.

Karen belongs in Warboys

Karen knows she belongs in Warboys. She lies in bed next to Graeme and thinks about the conversation she had with her mother at the wedding. Warboys is Karen’s village. She grew up here. This is where she married Graeme, at nineteen. She worked in Peterborough for a while but she knew that was temporary. She didn’t much like Peterborough. An in-between kind of place, a too-small city, a too-big village. She was glad when she gave up the commute and took up housekeeping.

Karen couldn’t believe it when her parents decided to move back to Leicester. They were in-comers in Warboys, they’d both grown up in the Midlands, and for them the village was temporary. They sold the house where Karen grew up. It was their business, not Karen’s – she no longer lived there – but still, it shocked her. Even now when she walks by her old house she has to stop herself from going up the footpath to the front door and walking straight in. And if she did, it wouldn’t really matter. Marlene and Geoff Henderson own the house now. Marlene would make Karen a cup of tea and show her around the renovations.

Karen loves the Throckmorton house, with its scabby cracked walls and its broken guttering. She loves it because it is Throckmorton, always has been; they have lived here forever, they are not about to sell up and move away. When things are bad between Karen and Graeme, and things do get bad, the house consoles her. She cleans and scrubs and the house welcomes her ministrations, much like Graeme’s father Martin silently accepts her care. The house absorbs her, like it absorbs the noise and thunder of the two little boys. Sometimes she thinks, oh yes, I really am a housewife, the house is my husband, not Graeme, and this thought makes her feel giddy.