Weird Sister (24 page)

They resurface an hour later. Robert feels restored, as though he’s got his head back on straight. He can deal with whatever comes his way. ‘Tell me what happened.’ His voice is steady.

‘I’m not sure. Some kind of trouble – Jenny swore at a teacher. Apparently the school phoned and Elizabeth answered. I don’t know what she was doing here – none of us were in the house at the time.’

‘The back door is always open.’

‘Yes but –’ Agnes gives Robert a hard look. ‘She took it upon herself to go to the school and get Jenny. She brought her home several hours later, at the end of the afternoon – we were completely unaware of what had happened. Graeme and I were out at the cottages – Elizabeth came and found us. Graeme didn’t react well to the news. I think Elizabeth’s involvement made it worse for him. He didn’t handle Jenny particularly well.’

‘He didn’t?’

‘No. He hit her.’

‘Oh shit.’ Robert sighs. He rises from the bed and begins to dress.

‘He didn’t ask to hear her side of the story.’

‘It’s not the first time.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Well, he has a short fuse. It’s what he does. You know what he’s like. He lashes out. He takes things very hard, and he lashes out. It’s unusual for it to happen with Jenny, but we’ve all been subject to it at some time or another. I expect you will be eventually.’

Agnes snorts. ‘He wouldn’t hit me.’

Robert considers. ‘No, I expect you’re right. He’s just – well, I don’t want to make excuses for him, but – how did Jenny react?’

‘How do you think? He hit her. She was devastated. I’m worried about her Robert. I think she –’ Agnes pauses. ‘It seems to me that she’s in the grip of all kinds of delusions – god knows what she’ll come out with next.’

‘She’s a teenager.’

‘And that makes it all right?’

‘No, of course not, but she’s not an adult. I think sometimes we expect too much of her. She’s just a child, really.’

‘She’s obsessed with sex.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘She sees everything and everyone in terms of sex. She thinks I’m having an affair with Graeme.’

‘What?’ Robert stops typing his shoelace. Agnes is standing in front of the mirror running her hands through her hair. She speaks to Robert’s reflection.

‘I’m guessing. But it was something she said to me yesterday. She seems to have got it into her head that Graeme and I are sleeping together.’

Robert stands. ‘How did she get that idea?’

Agnes turns. ‘I know, it’s ludicrous, but it’s the kind of thing she’s been coming out with lately.’

‘God,’ says Robert, ‘that’s – well – sick.’

‘I know,’ says Agnes, ‘revolting. And I’m unhappy about Elizabeth – about Elizabeth’s influence on Jenny.’ Agnes moves toward Robert and puts her arms around him. With a kiss she dispels the picture forming in his mind – Agnes and Graeme.

‘What should we do?’ he asks.

‘We should be patient with her. We should be nice to her. We should let her get out with her friends a bit more.’

Robert strokes Agnes’s glossy hair. ‘You’re right. You’re absolutely right. I guess I’ve been neglecting her lately – it’s easy to assume she’s fine. I’ll make more of an effort.’

‘And tell Graeme to keep his hands to himself.’

‘What?’

‘Tell Graeme that next time he wants to hit her, he should pick on someone his own size.’

‘Like me?’

Agnes laughs. ‘Yeah, like you.’

That night Robert stands outside Jenny’s door. It’s nine o’clock, Jenny had refused to come down for dinner earlier. He wants to check on her. He knocks. No answer. Knocks more loudly. Still no reply. He grabs the handle and opens the door. It is dark. He turns on the light.

Jenny is in front of the window, her back to Robert. The curtains are open, her head lists to one side at a peculiar angle, her arms dangle lifelessly. Robert realizes she is too high up, her feet can’t be touching the floor. My god, he thinks, she’s hung herself. He rushes forward into the room.

She turns and looks at him. Now he can see that she is standing on a stool, looking down into the garden. ‘Christ Jenny,’ he says ‘what are you doing?’

‘Have you come to tell me off as well?’ She steps down.

‘No, no, of course not. I meant what are you doing standing like that in front of the window?’

Jenny gives Robert a long look, he feels her appraising him. ‘Watching,’ she says.

‘Watching for what?’

She shakes her head. ‘Nothing.’ Jenny steps forward, gives her brother a hug. She has decided she can’t tell him she saw Graeme and Agnes. She doesn’t want to have to be the one to tell him, not yet. She thinks he probably wouldn’t believe her anyway.

Robert rumples Jenny’s hair. ‘If there’s anything I can do,’ he says, ‘just come and talk to me.’

‘Okay.’

‘Are you all right?’

‘Yes,’ she says, ‘I’m fine. Really.’

At school, Jenny does what is required of her. She gives a written apology to Mr McKay. He thanks her but he still feels hurt; he went out and got drunk last night and his head is pounding. Jenny’s words hit home; he hasn’t had a girlfriend for ages. Jenny apologizes to the Headteacher, she catches up with the work she missed, she is polite, she is meek. The other students watch her warily, half-hoping for another outburst. They look around the classroom, speculating. What will happen next, they wonder, if anything?

Robert is back home, working, Martin is in his chair, Karen is off doing the food shopping with Francis while Andrew is at nursery. Graeme tracks down Agnes in the house. She has watched him approach, trekking in from the field. She knows he is heading her way.

He opens the bedroom door. Agnes is seated in front of the mirror, waiting for her nail polish to dry.

Graeme sits down on the bed.

After a while, Agnes, her hands raised, her fingers spread limply, turns to face him. ‘Yes?’ she says.

Graeme stands without speaking. He walks toward her and stops right in front of her.

‘Yes?’

He grabs her by the wrist and pulls her up. He pushes her against the table, knocking over pots of cream, bottles of perfume. The nail polish, cap off, tips and begins to spread. He fumbles with one hand, his trousers, hers; she doesn’t help him, she keeps her hands in the air, her fingers relaxed and spread. He releases the buttons and zippers and cloth, pushing. He mumbles, ‘Oh Christ, I want you so much, I want you, I want you.’ While he is at it, Agnes looks at her nails. He knows she isn’t into it – that frustrates him and makes him even more excited.

Graeme takes his pleasure quickly. Agnes’s nails are shiny and dark. When he finishes he pulls away, breathing heavily, leaning hard on his cane. Agnes slides down off the table, adjusting her clothes. She can smell the spilt polish, she knows it has leaked onto her trousers, her skin. She doesn’t do anything about it for the time being. Graeme is looking at her, his eyes wide, slightly watery, he is overcome by a spasm of post-coital gratitude, guilt and grief. Agnes snarls, she snarls, and he sees her eyes flash black before returning, in a blink, to green. With one neat movement she kicks away Graeme’s cane. His face registers surprise as his leg buckles and he falls massively to the floor.

She stands over him. He looks up and thinks she’s like the Wicked Witch of the West.

‘That’s it,’ she says calmly. ‘You aren’t getting any more. Get up,’ she says, and she points at the door.

Graeme’s heart seizes up; he stops breathing. In that moment he feels lost, utterly lost, as though his life has ended, is no longer worth living. And he’s been waiting, he knows he’s been waiting for this to happen, for Agnes to say these words. He’s lying on the floor and his knee and hip are aching and his humiliation is complete, Agnes has completed it for him.

She moves away and leaves the room without saying anything more. He rolls over and draws himself up onto his hands and knees. Grabs his cane and uses the end of the bed to lever himself up to standing. As he walks his leg drags badly. Downstairs he can hear Agnes in the kitchen with Karen and Francis, they are laughing as they unpack the shopping. He slips out the front door of the house, closing it quietly.

‘You stink of nail polish,’ says Karen.

‘Do I?’ asks Agnes, blandly. ‘Must have spilt it on myself.’ She smiles. ‘Did you know that Graeme hit Jenny the other day? When he found out what had happened in school.’

‘He did? No one tells me anything.’

‘I’m telling you now. It was very brutal of him.’ With that, Agnes walks out the back door. Karen sits down abruptly. Francis demands a biscuit; she hands one over without thinking. He runs out of the room before she can change her mind.

Karen talks to Jenny

That evening Karen knocks on the door of Jenny’s room. Softly at first, then more loudly when, as usual, there is no reply.

Jenny could tell it was Karen coming along the corridor, she recognizes her soft step; she thinks, Karen’s got her sneakers on, she never wears high heels, not like Agnes. She no longer knows how to feel about this – is it good that Karen wears canvas sneakers that she buys in Woolworth’s in Peterborough, not kitten heels from Gucci? She glances at the small pile of
Vogue
she has stacked beside her bed, gifts from Agnes. Suddenly she feels nauseated.

‘Hello?’ she says, when Karen knocks again.

‘It’s me.’

I know that, thinks Jenny.

‘Can I come in?’

‘All right,’ Jenny sighs, world-weary.

Karen sticks her head round the door and smiles nervously. She comes in and closes the door behind her. She stands awkwardly, waiting.

Jenny is surprised to see Karen looking so unsteady. ‘Are you okay?’ she asks, suddenly concerned.

Karen laughs. ‘That what I was going to ask you.’ She comes over and sits next to Jenny on the bed.

‘Oh,’ says Jenny, sullen again, ‘of course I’m all right. I’m fine.

Why does everyone want to know if I’m all right?’

‘Well, you –’

‘I know what I did. I don’t want to talk about it.’

‘Okay.’

They sit in silence.

Karen speaks. ‘Graeme didn’t mean to hit you.’

‘What?’ Jenny gives Karen a look of contempt, then turns away. She gets up and looks out the window, into the night.

‘He didn’t mean –’

‘Why are you making excuses for him?’

‘I’m not – I –’

‘Of course he meant it.’ Jenny turns around, glaring. ‘And so what? I don’t care if he hits me. He hits everyone. That’s what he’s like. I don’t know why you stay married to him.’ It dawns on Jenny now that she could tell Karen what she knows, she could tell Karen what she saw.

‘I love him,’ Karen says.

‘Yes,’ says Jenny, and she feels as though she sees her sister-in-law for the first time. Karen loves Graeme; it’s pathetic. Jenny knows now that she won’t say it, she won’t tell Karen, like she didn’t tell Robert. She can’t. ‘You can go now,’ Jenny says, heavy with knowledge. Karen stands slowly, as though she has more to say but can’t find the words, and suddenly Jenny is full of regret, looking at Karen, wishing they were closer, that they could confide in one another. And Karen looks at Jenny and feels that same regret, tinged with guilt; Karen thinks, I haven’t been anything like a mother to her.

‘Good-night Jenny,’ says Karen.

‘Good-night,’ replies Jenny.

Martin talks to Agnes

Graeme doesn’t go to the pub, he spends the evening wandering the estate. He careers through the dark from cottage to wood to field, boiling. He tells himself he is glad it has ended with Agnes; part of him wanted to end the deceit. Although he is used to lying to Karen, to cutting away from her without explanation, there is a part of him that longs to stop. And he is always about to stop, he is always about to make good. Tomorrow. Or the next day. But with Agnes he has had no thought of finishing, no thought of reining himself in, no thought of Karen and what she might think. So now that Agnes has ended it, he tries to conjure up a feeling of blunt satisfaction. He tries to convince himself he engineered the break. It isn’t working. She has got him; he feels as though she has taken his soul away.

There are guests staying in one of the cottages, Graeme remembers just as he is about to try the door. He was opposed to these holiday cottages when Robert first came up with the idea but now he is glad they are there. Somewhere for him to escape to, at least in the low season, somewhere for him to be on his own. Somewhere for him to be with Agnes. Well, he says to himself, we won’t be coming out here anymore. Not Agnes. Not me. He thinks these words, he runs them by, but he can’t catch their meaning.

He walks up and down in front of the cottages until he becomes aware of someone watching him through the curtains. He gives a jaunty wave and hares off once again, over the field.

He tramps across the gravel on his way up the drive, on his way to the pub. Light flows out from the sitting room and he stops short. Agnes is sitting in the window. Next to her is Martin in his wheelchair. Agnes is talking with great animation, using her hands, gesticulating, smiling. Graeme stares at her. Her hair frames her pale face; she is lovely. She is talking, and she is laughing. Then Graeme notices Martin. His father is responding. His father, who hasn’t spoken for years, he is talking to Agnes, he is smiling, he raises his hand to make a point – a forgotten and familiar gesture – and he is laughing. He is laughing. They are both laughing and smiling.

Graeme spins across the drive to the house, lurching through the front door. He moves as quickly as his leg will take him, across the dark foyer to the door of the sitting room. He puts his hand on the doorknob and it feels hot and he twists it and flings the door open. Martin sits alone in the window, alone in his wheelchair, blanket over his knees. There is no sign of Agnes. Graeme rushes across the room. ‘Daddy,’ he says, ‘daddy,’ and he drops his cane and bends down awkwardly and takes Martin by the hands. ‘Talk to me. Talk to me.’ Martin stays as he is, his face blank, his gaze directed somewhere to the left of Graeme’s shoulder. He does not respond to his son’s entreaties. His hands are cool and he is perfectly still, as always. Graeme knows now that he hasn’t spoken, won’t speak, but he persists. ‘Tell me what she was saying. What was Agnes saying? What were you talking about? Daddy?’