Weird Sister (29 page)

‘What are you going to do about it?’ I asked.

‘Spread the word,’ she said. ‘Warn everybody.

I decided I needed to talk to Robert; we needed to talk things through. I wanted to find out what he was thinking, how he was coping in the aftermath of Karen’s death. I had been trying to get to see him – I was always trying to see him – but every time I dropped round to the house he was with Agnes. She was always there, at his side, in the office, in the kitchen. It was as though recent events had drawn them closer to each other, as though as time passed Robert was ever more deeply ensnared.

One day when I went round they were both in the office, Robert at his computer, Agnes sitting reading by the fire. They looked – she looked – so ordinary at that moment, happy, content, that I wavered. No one could take the charges seriously, whatever form they took: witchcraft, adultery.

‘I’ve come to see Jenny,’ I said, lying.

Robert glanced at his watch, annoyed. He was perpetually annoyed with me these days. ‘She’s still at school.’

‘Of course,’ I slapped my palm on my forehead as if to excuse my stupidity. I was getting used to looking stupid. ‘Anybody fancy a drink?’

Now they both looked at me as though I was the village idiot.

‘Thanks Lizzie,’ Robert spoke for them both, ‘but we’re busy. I’ve got to see to the cottages.’

I smiled and shrugged and said I was off to the pub. As I left I could feel Agnes staring at me. She’d understood why I was there. I left via the back door, uncertain of what to do next.

I walked down the garden and went into the tunnel under the vast yew hedge. I hadn’t been in the tunnel for ages. As a child I had found it too gloomy, I had tripped over bare roots and clutched at handfuls of needles too many times. The branches overhead were dense enough to keep out the rain, but that had not made it a good place to play. As my eyes adjusted to the black, I waited for Robert to leave the house and go out to the cottages. I didn’t hear Agnes enter the tunnel behind me. She was very light on her feet.

‘Elizabeth?’ she said.

I tried to turn and fell over, scraping my hand against bark. Agnes was smiling. She didn’t look cross, or even bemused at finding me there.

‘I was waiting for Robert.’

‘Have you arranged to meet?’

‘No.’ I got up off the cold ground. ‘I wanted to surprise him.’

She smiled again. I could tell she was laughing at me. ‘Here he comes now,’ she said and, indeed, there he was, heading out toward the field. She called to him, stepping through the gap in the hedge. ‘Robert,’ she said when he reached us, ‘Elizabeth wants to see you. I found her here in the tunnel. I think she was hiding from me.’

Robert looked at me as though I truly had gone crazy. I didn’t try to deny what Agnes had said. ‘I wanted to have a word with you.’

‘All right Lizzie.’ He turned to Agnes. ‘Let’s go out to the cottages.’

‘I’ll come out later,’ said Agnes, to my relief.

We trudged across the frost-burned field without speaking. Inside the cottage Robert lit the gas fire and we both stood in front of it, warming our hands. I couldn’t think where to begin.

‘Let’s have it,’ Robert said. There was no warmth in his voice.

‘The night she died – Karen – I . . . we . . . I saw her in the Black Hat. She came in on her own. We sat together for a while. She was very upset.’

Robert’s face changed; the annoyance he felt with me fell away. ‘She was upset?’

‘Yes.’ I paused before continuing. Robert looked miserable.

‘Oh Lizzie, I can’t believe she’s dead. The boys – it’s so hard, Andrew’s confused and Francis, well, he hardly seems to notice somehow and that’s almost as upsetting.’

‘They’re young.’

‘They are. Babies.’

I thought of Marlene. ‘Karen said something quite extraordinary to me that night. She said she knew that Graeme was having an affair.’

‘An affair?’ He sounded uncertain for a moment but then his tone became bitter, ‘Well, there’s nothing new about that. I never understood why she put up with it.’

‘This was different.’

‘How could it be different? My brother would follow his dick anywhere.’

‘It was Agnes.’ I didn’t want to say it, but I had to.

‘What?’

‘Karen said he was having an affair with Agnes.’

‘Oh,’ replied Robert, his voice soft. He did up the buttons on his jacket, shivered involuntarily. ‘That again.’

‘That’s what she said. She said she knew it was true.’

‘Well, it isn’t. Karen might have believed it, but it’s not true. How could it be? She must have got the idea off Jenny. Really Lizzie,’ he turned to me, ‘you are determined to pry.’

There was no point in defending myself. There was no point in continuing our conversation. He would not, could not, believe the allegation. I couldn’t keep on abasing myself. I know I should have persevered; if I had convinced him of the truth perhaps none of what followed would have taken place. And I can just imagine what his response would have been if I had told him about Marlene’s accusation. My pride got in the way – I was amazed to find I had any left, but I did. Robert didn’t believe me. He thought I was saying these things because I was after him for myself. I imagine part of him enjoyed it, the spectacle of two women struggling over his heart and soul. Except I was the only one struggling.

I let myself out of the cottage. I left him standing in front of the fire, happy in his ignorance.

Happy families

It is the summer before Agnes arrives: Graeme and Karen take Andrew and Francis on a picnic to celebrate Francis’s second birthday. Karen has made a chocolate cake in the shape of a bunny, Graeme packs crisps and smarties and cans of Coca-Cola into the hamper alongside Karen’s boiled eggs and carrot sticks. They don’t go far – to the end of the garden – but for the boys it is a tremendous treat to have both parents there, together, willing. They play football, Graeme running like a madman every time Francis gives the ball a good kick in the wrong direction. The boys force their father to give them horsy rides on his back and they scream with pleasure when he bucks and throws them. Karen tickles them, Karen sings to them; they are happy. After lunch Graeme lies on the grass with the sun in his face; he falls asleep.

He dreams.

He dreams it is thirty years ago – more than thirty. He is playing with Robert at the end of the garden; he looks up, here comes Mummy and Daddy. Daddy is tall and straight in a white shirt with rolled up sleeves; he wears his dark hair slicked back. Mummy has on the dress that Graeme likes best, yellow cotton with tiny flowers all over. She is carrying a hamper, Daddy kicks a ball. The boys tumble, they shout happily. Graeme doesn’t want the afternoon to end, he is afraid of it ending.

Robert

After Karen’s death my brother began receding, I can see now we were losing sight of him. It was as though he was standing on the deck of a great ship, we were on the dock, and we were having a prolonged leave-taking. My arm ached from waving, my face hurt from smiling. When would the boat pull away? I got so used to saying good-bye that when he disappeared for real I didn’t notice. I was otherwise engaged.

I thought that Agnes and I were managing. It was hard work, but I thought our household was fully functional, that we’d been wounded but we were recovering. Everyone was quiet, low to the ground, that was only natural. We had to find a new way of living and I naively imagined that we had found it. Agnes was contributing more of her own money toward running the house – she paid for the cleaner, the dishwasher – and I felt fine about that. I needed her help and she gave it freely. The Elizabethan wing of the house had sucked up all my money, though I hadn’t actually told Agnes; as always, she just knew. Jenny was back at school, calm, the boys were okay, as okay as could be expected, Andrew at nursery and we’d found a childminder for Francis, Agnes paid for that as well. Dad had his blanket on his knees. Managing the house without Karen was difficult but we were doing it, we were fine. Graeme was there, somewhere, fading away, and that was fine with me. I didn’t want to see him since we had had our fight at the funeral, I wanted to forget what had happened.

And Agnes, oh Christ, she made me so happy. When the February days after Karen died were long and dark and arduous she took me into our bed at night and showed me new ways to love her. And during the day – I don’t know, it was as though we had some kind of bug, we were both desperate for it. A way of making ourselves feel alive, a way of showing that Karen might be dead but we were
alive
. We had sex all over the house. Whenever we thought we wouldn’t be noticed, in the kitchen, in the sitting room, in the bathroom, outside, wherever we could find. We fucked on the floor in our old bedroom despite the danger, in the ballroom against the dirty steel scaffolding that Derek Hill’s crew had put in to shore up the house, in amongst the dust and debris. When I came I heard the voices, the singing moaning voices that I used to fear at night, but now I loved them, they were beautiful. She opened herself to me and urged me on. Maybe we stank of it, perhaps everyone knew, I didn’t care and I don’t care to this day.

And it was not only the sex. That was merely the physical manifestation – the excess energy, the sparks off the top – of a connection that ran very deep. It probably seems strange to say it, after what happened, masochistic perhaps, but it was as though Agnes and I were made for each other, created for each other. I lived so that Agnes could tell her story through me. I had her and she had me; I know there is some kind of truth in what we had together, there has to be. It wouldn’t have happened otherwise.

Agnes turns it on

Agnes is in her bedroom, except it’s not her bedroom in the way it should be, it’s Robert’s old bedroom. She doesn’t much like it and neither does Robert. It smells of teenage boys.

Agnes is getting dressed. She is slipping into her sharply pressed wool trousers, her leather belt, her cashmere polo neck, her leather boots with the cuban heels. She applies her make-up slowly, carefully, dabs perfume behind her ears, on her wrists. She brushes her hair and looks in the mirror. Fine. She looks good.

She is going to the Black Hat for a drink. Robert will join her once he has put his father to bed. Downstairs by the door she puts on her heavy coat, her velvet hat and scarf, her calf-skin gloves. She checks herself over in the mirror by the doorway, and leaves.

From her room Jenny watches Agnes go. She sighs and flops down onto her bed. There is nothing about her sister-in-law that is really all that witchy. She has gleaned what she can from Lolly’s books – as far as she knows Agnes has no supernumerary nipple, there are no pets who could pass as animal familiar. Jenny did see Agnes fly, Agnes raised herself to the level of Jenny’s bedroom window, but sometimes, late at night, Jenny wonders if that was a dream. She always has such strange, unhappy dreams. She knows she saw Agnes with Graeme – that was no dream or nightmare – but she can tell the affair is over now, it’s been over for a while, and that in itself is no proof of witchcraft. Jenny feels weary, too grown up too soon. She needs proof, proof enough to impress more than just Lolly. More than the compelling historical coincidence of Agnes Samuel’s name.

After a while she hears another set of feet crunching across the gravel drive. She pops up and looks out the window. Robert, off to join Agnes at the pub. I knew they were going out, she thinks, Robert asked if I would baby-sit. Now they are gone, they are both out of the house. The boys are asleep, Father is in his bed, Graeme isn’t around and if he is he won’t bother me. Jenny puts on her slippers and her favourite old sweater and passes along the corridor to Agnes and Robert’s bedroom, running her hand along the wall. She puts her hand on the doorknob, it feels hot, she turns it quickly and slips inside. There’s no one home, she tells herself. She turns on the light.

The room is crammed with too much furniture, furniture intended for a larger room, a traffic jam of furniture. Two wardrobes, a wide chest of drawers, and a vanity table with a long mirror. The bed is neatly made and there is no clutter, clothes and shoes have been put away. Robert’s old posters, from when he was Jenny’s age have been taken down but their shapes remain on the otherwise bare walls; in their hasty retreat from the other side of the house, Agnes and Robert did not have time to redecorate. There is a single candle in a cut-glass candlestick on the bedside table – domestic, romantic. Jenny hears them having sex all the time. She goes through the drawers. She looks under the bed and inside the wardrobes. She feels for hidden panels, secret partitions, false bottoms. She finds nothing. She finds an abundance of beautiful clothes and the textures – satin, silk, devore, mohair – fill her with longing. She wishes for a mother, she wishes she had a mother who dressed like this, this is not how her dead mother dressed. Agnes’s scent is everywhere.

Jenny stops looking, she knows she won’t find anything. Her sister-in-law has many sides; she is unfaithful, closed, cruel, beautiful, clever, seductive, charming. Jenny knows these things, she just doesn’t know – can’t prove – if Agnes is a witch.

In the Black Hat the patrons are warm and settled. It’s a bitter night; last week’s hints of spring have gone to ground again. Agnes comes in on her own. People look up from their drinks and smile. She’s here, they think, Agnes has arrived. She goes to the bar and speaks lightly to Jim Drury.

‘It’s quiet tonight.’

Jim is polishing glasses. There’s a couple of French tourists down the other end of the bar, Lolita is in the back making their supper. Jim nods their way. ‘Do you speak French?’ he asks Agnes.

Agnes looks at the tourists. She laughs. ‘Are you kidding?’

Jim smiles when she laughs, he can’t help himself. He has heard what Marlene is saying and he witnessed the fight at the funeral. He has heard that Agnes and Graeme were having an affair. Barbara says that Karen told Elizabeth who told Marlene. Jim knows this is gossip but in Warboys gossip usually tends to be true. He’s got a bad feeling about Agnes now and he wants it to go away. He wants to feel like he used to do about her. ‘They’re staying upstairs.’