Weird Sister (5 page)

‘This is Agnes. Agnes Samuel.’ Robert makes a flourishy gesture and steps back, leaving Agnes on her own in the middle of the room.

No one speaks for what feels to Robert an age. The collective gaze rests on Agnes and Robert has to stop himself from rushing over to share the burden. This is Agnes’s moment: she can make it work, he knows she can.

Everything happens at once. Graeme turns back to the fridge and says loudly, ‘Karen, where did you put that bacon?’ Karen turns away from the sink, points at Robert’s shoes and says, ‘You’re tracking in mud.’ Andrew and Francis knock their heads together as they go back to their play, and both begin to cry. Jenny lowers her hand to the telephone, picks up the handset and puts it down again. She extends the same hand toward Agnes and says, ‘It’s so nice to meet you.’ Agnes is too far away to reciprocate and Jenny lets her hand drop to her side. Martin remains silent, as always, and as Karen glances at him en route to the babies she thinks, with a shock, that his eyes are clear and he is looking straight at Agnes. Karen scoops up Francis the two-year-old and Jenny takes Andrew by the hand. They are standing by the open fridge now, regrouped; they can feel the cool air on their skin.

Robert speaks again. ‘We are going to be married. On Saturday. This Saturday. You’re all invited. Everyone’s invited. I want a big party. I thought we could have it here.’

No one says a word. Their silence is punctuated by little sobs from Francis who can’t seem to get his breathing under control. They make a strange family portrait, frozen by the refrigerated air. In the corner, on his own in his wheelchair, Martin wheezes loudly. It is usual for him to gasp occasionally as though he is drawing his last breath. No one, except Agnes, turns to look at him.

Agnes keeps her eyes on Martin’s face. She smiles brilliantly and then looks directly into the eyes of each of the Throckmortons, one at a time. Her voice is low and mesmerizing as she speaks.

‘I am so pleased to meet you. I’ve so looked forward to meeting you all.’

She steps toward them, her hands outstretched. She goes from Martin to Karen to the babies (who slip behind Karen’s legs) to Jenny and, lastly, takes Graeme’s hands into her own. ‘I’m hoping we will be happy.’ She is speaking to everyone, slowly, deliberately, she has their complete attention. ‘Thank you for making me welcome. It means so much to me.’

And with that it is as though she has cast a spell, broken the ice, done whatever it takes, she is in, she is one of them, the Throckmortons take her into their hearts, their house. Even Graeme suddenly feels it is good to see her, to speak to her. Everyone begins to talk. Karen hands Agnes the baby Francis who smiles and reaches out and presses his hand to her lips. He stares at the red lipstick smudged on his fingers as though it is magic. Andrew draws himself together to make an announcement; he says ‘I am four.’ Agnes tells him she thinks that is wonderful. She draws up a chair next to Martin, Robert’s father, and begins to talk to him, her voice smooth, charming.

Karen pauses on her way back to the sink. ‘He doesn’t speak, you know.’

Agnes looks up expectantly, her face open.

‘We’re not sure if he hears us either,’ Karen continues. ‘He will turn the pages of a book, but we are not sure if he reads. We don’t actually know how much he can see.’ She comes nearer and puts her hand on Martin’s head. ‘Graeme says he’s blind, but I think he sees. I think he saw you Agnes,’ she says smiling. ‘I really do. I think he looked at you,’ she laughs, ‘and he likes what he sees.’

While Karen speaks, Agnes takes Martin by the hand. ‘He’s going to be my friend,’ she says, turning to her prospective father-in-law, ‘aren’t you Mr Throckmorton?’ She looks back at Karen, smiling. ‘He’s going to be my special way in to this family.’

Karen smiles at Agnes uncertainly. She is gazing into Agnes’s green, green eyes and for a moment she thinks she sees them go black, as though the pupil eclipses the iris and is restored by a blink. She is startled to see such anger, at least that’s what she thinks she sees. She glances at Martin and a look of terror passes over his face, like a spasm, a grotesque facial tic. Then it’s gone and what can she do, what can she say? Her skin is prickling. ‘Where are you from?’ she finds herself asking, thinking – who are you, why are you here?

‘Las Vegas,’ says Agnes, ‘Nevada. The gambling state, although they’re making it legal almost everywhere now. Have you been to the US?’

‘No. Foreign travel isn’t really my kind of thing. Graeme –’ she turns to see where her husband is, still standing beside the fridge, although he has closed the door, ‘–likes his creature comforts. He likes to be at home. He grew up here, in this house – I expect you know that. Robert, too, of course. And Jenny, but their mother died when she was born. Tragic. In childbirth. Things were not good in those days. Mind you, it was only sixteen years ago, hardly the dark ages. She was here, at home. I think labouring women belong in the maternity ward, don’t you?’ She shakes her head, suddenly worried about the way she is taking up space.

Agnes continues to smile pleasantly and Karen feels as though she might not be listening after all. She makes her way back to the sink.

Agnes pats Martin’s hand, leaning closer to whisper in his ear. Robert watches from the other side of the kitchen. He never knows how people will react to his father; sometimes they appear to be afraid of him, most of the time they speak to him slowly and loudly, as if he is a kind of deaf idiot, a large, slow child in a pushchair. Agnes behaves as though Martin is the most important person in the room. Robert wonders if this is an American thing, respect for older people, but he doesn’t know. It is probably simply Agnes being herself. He leans against the wall, his arms crossed. Karen at the sink, the little boys playing with their trucks and stealing glances at the new lady, Jenny setting the table; he feels that all is well in the world. Everything is in its place. He is going to marry that woman. He is –

Graeme interrupts his thoughts. ‘I want to talk to you about the cottages.’

The cottages are fine.’

‘I think we should be doing more marketing. They’re lying empty three quarters of the year.’

‘That’s an exaggeration. They do all right.’

‘All right isn’t good enough. They hardly pay for themselves.’

‘I –’ Robert stops. ‘Graeme, I don’t want to talk about this now.’

‘Oh no?’ Graeme’s fuse is very short, but Robert doesn’t attempt to mollify him. ‘When? When will you see fit to discuss it with me?’

‘I’m getting married on Saturday, can’t you see that this –’

Agnes appears beside Graeme. She moves close to him and slips her arm through his, smiling at Robert. Graeme feels her body pressed to his through layers of cloth. He can feel her breast, heavy and warm against his arm. Robert is stupid with happiness, he thinks.

Agnes speaks as though the incident on her first night at the Black Hat never happened, as though she didn’t call Graeme a cripple. ‘How can one family produce two such good-looking men?’ she asks. She eases herself away and steps lightly over to Robert’s side. She draws his face down and kisses him. Graeme sees a flash of open mouth, tongue.

‘Well ma’am,’ Graeme speaks in a bad imitation of a Southern US accent, charming and surly at the same time, ‘damned if I can tell you the answer to that.’ He makes as though to tip a hat and walks away.

Agnes sits next to the teenager, Jenny, at lunch and Jenny feels singled out, pleased. Karen apologizes for the food, mostly leftovers from evening meals of the past few days. ‘If I’d known –’

‘Don’t worry Karen,’ Robert speaks sharply. ‘It’s fine. Agnes is one of us. She’s not a guest. She’s not a stranger.’

After she has served Robert and Graeme, Karen takes a plate of food over to Martin. Like most household tasks, the care of Martin falls to her, and this is not something she questions. Karen doesn’t ask questions – not yet. She puts a large bib apron on over Martin’s head and sets the plate on his knees. She places a fork in one of his hands, a knife in the other. She returns to the table and he proceeds to eat rather messily, like a badly programmed automaton. No one watches over him.

During the meal Agnes speaks to Jenny in a confiding tone, as though no one else can hear. ‘I’m not sure what to wear for the wedding,’ she says. ‘I think I need your help. We can go to London together this week.’

Jenny smiles broadly and looks at Graeme and Robert for approval. ‘School?’ she asks.

Graeme clears his throat but Agnes speaks before he can. ‘It’s only one day. It can’t do any harm. We’ll have a good time. We’ll go to a museum as well, how about that, that’s educational.’ She turns to Jenny and says, ‘We’ll go to the Museum of Fashion.’ She winks.

Graeme eats quickly and stands to leave before any of the others are finished, grabbing his cane. ‘I’m going to the pub,’ he announces. ‘Jenny, you should be doing your homework.’

Jenny stands obediently. She goes upstairs. Agnes and Robert help clear the table. Karen thinks for a moment that they might offer to clean up while she sorts out the babies, but they don’t. They leave holding hands, Robert saying they are going to inspect the rest of the house.

Now Agnes is one of us, thinks Karen. Then she corrects herself. One of them. A Throckmorton.

Jenny longs for Agnes

Jenny can’t believe her new sister-in-law-to-be is real. She’s like a creature from another planet, too glamorous and cool for Warboys. Completely unexpected and exciting.

That night, after Agnes has gone back to the Black Hat, Jenny lies in bed chanting her resolutions. She is full of resolutions. Number one: Don’t eat. Jenny is tall and thin – a childish thin, she carries her breasts high on her ribcage and keeps her shoulders rounded, turned in, she is hipless, thighless, has no belly – but she is not too thin, and she would like to be too thin. She aspires to anorexia, but she hasn’t got the will and looks on this as a failure of sorts. Come mealtime she forgets, and eats what is put in front of her. Jenny is a good girl.

Number two: Blow-dry hair every day. Jenny’s hair is blonde and fine with a tendency to curl and frizz and she likes to keep it straight, shiny, and the only way to do this is to mousse it and blow-dry it with a brush every day. She envies Graeme and Robert their dark thick hair; if hers was like that she would wear it short and slicked back like them. But she is a blonde and Graeme tells her that blondes have more fun, all the best girls are blonde, and Karen scowls at him and says not to listen. Sometimes Jenny feels persecuted by her blondeness, as if she can’t really be a Throckmorton. Karen tries to help, she supplies Jenny with hair products, but they’re never the right kind. I could be a foundling, Jenny reasons, how would anyone know? My mother’s dead, and my father, well, he’s not saying. I might not belong in this family after all.

Number three: Talk more at school. Jenny never talks at school. When she was younger she was horribly shy; she doesn’t feel shy any longer but she hasn’t mastered the art of talking. Chatter. The other girls are good at chatter. They will talk about anything – they will say anything – they swear and shout and giggle. Jenny practises swearing as she lies in bed. ‘Motherfucker,’ she says, ‘mothafucka,’ raising her voice. She wonders if Agnes says ‘Fuck’. She bets she does. Maybe they’ll say ‘Fuck’ together, when Agnes moves in, when Agnes becomes Jenny’s fully fledged sister-in-law.

Sister-in-law. Sister. She longs for a sister. Karen’s never been like a sister, she’s too motherly for that, too tied to the ironing board and sink. Imagine having a sister. Girl-talk. Make-up. Sister things.

Jenny is a lonely girl. Even now, at sixteen, she knows she brings this loneliness upon herself. She’s not good at having friends. Robert has noticed this, and Karen, and they’ve done their best to encourage Jenny to invite people round to the house. She tries – Lolly Senior comes from time to time – but she never remembers. She forgets to be sociable. It’s as though there is too much going on in the Throckmorton family, this crowd of people, effectively parentless; Robert and Graeme can’t be Jenny’s parents, no matter how much they try. Jenny regrets not having parents and this makes her feel disloyal to her father who is, after all, alive.

Resolution number four: Be more outgoing.

She should join something. She’s never belonged to anything. Not Brownies or Girl Guides. Not the Drama Club. She’s never taken piano lessons or riding lessons or ballet. She doesn’t know how to swim. She hasn’t got any hobbies. She can’t sew – no one sews anymore, she thinks. She doesn’t read much – she can’t afford magazines. Robert gives her a pound a week, he’s given her one pound every week since she was six. She should save her pounds and take up smoking. But Agnes doesn’t smoke.

Resolution number five: Be like Agnes.

Elizabeth

They were like a weird family out of a novel, Stephen King perhaps. Not that I’ve ever read Stephen King, not that any of them would have read Stephen King either, not even Graeme. That was one of the oddest things about that household, as well as one of the things I liked best about it – the complete absence of popular culture. It wasn’t that they were particularly high-brow, but more along the lines of no-brow. They weren’t interested. They were interested in themselves, in each other. They were absorbed in getting by. They didn’t need television or radio or movies or gossip magazines. They didn’t watch the news, they didn’t buy newspapers. I’d never thought it odd before, it was just, well, a Throckmorton thing.

The person in whom this characteristic, this absence, was most noticeable was, of course, Jenny. The teenager. Teenagers are supposed to be pure popular culture these days, and little else. With Jenny I think that initially it was circumstance that kept her ignorant of boy-bands, girl-bands, block-buster movies, the right kind of shoes to wear. But by the time Agnes arrived it had become more self-conscious, it was what marked her out, what made her different. Not different as a statement, like her friend Lolly who was Different with a capital ‘D’, but something more profound. Other.