Weird Sister (3 page)

‘Good,’ she says, smiling. ‘Great.’

From behind the bar Jim Drury observes this meeting. He understands that he is witnessing an important event, an event that will change things in Warboys. He sees the look that passes between Robert and Agnes and he finds himself thinking about when he first fell in love with Lolita. He turns to look for his wife and she is standing right beside him, she is watching Robert and Agnes as well. Jim puts his arms around Lolita’s not inconsiderable waist and gives his wife a kiss full of longing and passion. They turn back to watch Robert and Agnes.

‘I’ve had a rotten evening,’ Robert speaks slowly and is surprised to hear how rough his voice sounds, as though he’s been crying. When he speaks he suddenly realizes how lonely he is, how lonely he has always been. He is tired, so tired, of being lonely.

‘Forget about it,’ Agnes replies.

‘In fact, it hasn’t been a great couple of years.’

‘Put it behind you.’

‘I want to settle down,’ Robert speaks without thinking.

‘You will get exactly what you’ve always wanted.’

‘I hate being single.’

‘You won’t have to be what you don’t want to be anymore.’

‘I don’t want to –’

Agnes raises her hand and places it on Robert’s cheek, as though in benediction. She strokes his skin with her thumb. ‘I’m here now,’ she says slowly. ‘You won’t be lonely with me.’

By now the whole pub is watching. Their noise has dropped away completely, Robert and Agnes speak surrounded by silence. Although their exact words cannot be overheard, everyone knows what is taking place and, as Robert and Agnes speak, everyone in the Black Hat begins to feel happy. Happy and happier, deliriously happy. It isn’t every day you actually see two people fall in love, it isn’t every day you see fate at work in that way. They’ll be talking about it in the streets tomorrow, to anyone who will listen, telling it and re-telling it, blow by blow. It isn’t every day you witness a
coup de foudre
, right where everyone can see it.

Robert sits back in his chair. He can’t take his eyes off Agnes, he can’t stop looking at her, he doesn’t want to stop looking at her. Agnes is smiling and laughing, her face young and unlined and full of anticipation.

‘I knew good things would happen for me in Warboys,’ she says. ‘I knew I would meet you, Robert Throckmorton. Nothing could stand in my way.’

Robert

It was fantastic when we first met, absolutely incredible. She floored me, she really did, it was like she had taken a broom and swept me right off my feet, I’m sorry to put it that way, but it’s true. I would have done anything to be with her. She combined the best qualities of all the women I’d ever met – and more. She was gorgeous and sexy and intelligent and single and American and funny and sporty and . . . well, you see what I mean. She had money, enough not to have to work or worry. And she was interested in me. Me. I’ll admit, I was used to women being interested in me, but not that interested, not interested in that way. Agnes was interested in my soul, in my heart, in my mind – in everything about me. That’s incredibly seductive. You try getting away from that. Not that I wanted to get away. She had me from the moment we met.

That first night we were both cautious. I didn’t want to make her feel like I was rushing things forward, I didn’t want to push my luck. And besides, we had Jim Drury to contend with, Jim was so excited, so proud of his pub, so keen to make sure Agnes was having a great time, that she was comfortable, that she would stay for more than one night. I don’t think he’d have been too keen on me running upstairs with his prize guest. It seemed important to be gentlemanly, a proper Englishman. And I wanted to get things exactly right. I was afraid that if I did things wrong she would disappear. Just disappear. And we’d all look at each other and wonder if she had ever really existed, if she had been there among us, or was a creature of our collective imaginations. Could we do that? Could a village, stuck in its ways after hundreds of years of being exactly the same, could a village conjure up the perfect incomer, the perfect injection of fresh blood, new life? Willing itself to open up to a stranger? Well, it was as though that is what Warboys did for Agnes. Warboys was ready. I was ready.

We met at lunchtime the next day. Before parting we had made an arrangement to go for a walk. She was waiting for me outside the Black Hat.

‘Hi,’ she said, smiling and shivering with the cold. She tucked her arm through mine.

‘Hello,’ I said, feeling awkward suddenly. ‘How did you sleep?’

‘All right. Still a little jet-lagged. I found myself wandering around at half past three.’

‘Oh no,’ I said, ‘I hope you brought your slippers.’ Where did I unearth that one? I felt even more embarrassed. A woman like Agnes wouldn’t wear slippers, would she?

‘Yes,’ she said laughing, ‘I always remember my slippers.’ That was what she was like; she put me at ease. We crossed the street.

I’m not that interested in local history and neither, it transpired, was Agnes. Elizabeth would disagree. Elizabeth says Agnes was obsessed with local history, with a particular moment in our local history, but I think she’s got that wrong. We didn’t look at the church or the graveyard or the houses, we wandered around the village and then took a public footpath leading; out to the fens. I know that Jim says Agnes told him she was here to seek out her roots – when things were going very badly he kept repeating that over and over – and I know that Elizabeth used Jim’s statement, if you could call it that, to help support her theory, but Agnes never demonstrated the slightest bit of interest in that stuff to me. She was like a lot of Americans that way, to her England itself was historical; to her eyes there was nothing remotely modern about the place. Everything was old and, all too often, decrepit. Agnes liked modern things, it was something she often got homesick for, especially when it was really cold and damp, indoors as well as out, especially when faced with the inadequacies of our house and its plumbing. So I would maintain that Agnes was not interested in history. And I think I knew Agnes, I knew her best. Lots of people now claim to have seen the real Agnes but surely I’m the one to whom they should defer. I was her husband, after all. I knew her best.

We walked for a good two hours. It was a cold day and Agnes’s cheeks were healthy and red. She was wearing a big grey sweater with sleek black trousers and a green wool scarf and a black woolly hat and gloves – I remember these details, I found that with Agnes I noticed the details in a way I’d never bothered with before. We enjoyed the cold air and walking fast and warming up, swinging our arms and banging our gloved hands together to keep the circulation going. The sun shone and as we walked it seemed to warm up along with us, the light growing stronger and stronger until it no longer resembled thin English autumn sunshine but felt more southern, Mediterranean, the air warm and soft.

We talked about all kinds of things, including the weather.

‘It’s cold here,’ she said, ‘colder than I expected.’

‘It’s the damp.’

She nodded vigorously, as though it would help her warm up. ‘It’s the damn damp. Gets into your bones. I feel it. What kind of country is this – hotels advertise they’ve got central heating as though it’s a kind of unexpected bonus.’

‘Isn’t it warm in the Black Hat?’

‘Too warm. The whole building fills up with smoke from the fire and the stink from the ale and the spirits and all the cigarettes – you Brits still smoke a lot – and it gets hotter and hotter until, after closing, Jim and Lolita open the doors and the windows and all the heat and smoke rushes out and the damp clambers in and I’m freezing. I need two hot water bottles just to get through the night.’

‘The damn damp,’ I said.

‘That’s right, the damn damp,’ she repeated.

It became a running joke between us, Britain and its deficiencies. It was something we had in common, our complaints. ‘Oh,’ Agnes would say to me, smiling, ‘you’re so unpatriotic.’

That afternoon Agnes told me two facts that had a great impact on me, on the way I thought about her, saw her. She told me that both her parents were dead – she didn’t say how or when. I’d been talking about my family, she was very interested in my family and so, naturally, I asked about hers.

‘My parents?’ she said. We had stopped walking and were looking out across the flat field. Although I grew up here I don’t particularly care for the landscape. In most seasons the fens resemble an enormous wet car park. Agnes kept her eyes on the horizon. ‘They’re dead.’ She turned to look at me. She had stopped smiling.

‘Both of them?’

‘Yes.’ Her look was calm, as though she was appraising my reaction. I felt like I was trespassing, but at the same time I felt closer to her.

‘Dead mothers,’ I said, regretting it immediately.

‘What?’

‘Something we share.’ Agnes didn’t speak. She stared at me, her gaze unreadable. I felt a bumbling fool. ‘I’m sorry,’ I said.

‘It was a long time ago,’ Agnes replied, and she began walking again. For a while neither of us spoke. The ground was soft and covered with fallen leaves. Our shoes were beginning to get muddy. After a while Agnes spoke again.

‘I’ve never really been in love,’ she said.

The first confidence had seemed almost ordinary. Not the fact that both her parents were dead, that was terrible, but the fact that she’d told me they were dead. It’s normal for two people who are getting to know each other to talk about their families. And her reticence, that seemed normal as well, given the circumstances. But to tell me that she’d never really been in love before – to me that was extraordinary. Call it male pride, but to me it was a kind of challenge. She wasn’t coy about it, she didn’t lower her eyes and look up at me blinking, as if to say, will you be the lucky boy? She said it in her blunt, disarming, matter-of-fact way, as if she said it all the time, as if Jim Drury, the landlord of the Black Hat, had said ‘Would you like a room?’ and she had replied, ‘I’ve never really been in love before, but yes, thank you. For at least one night. With central heating.’

I held my breath and struggled to think of something to say. And then it came to me: ‘Neither have I.’ When I said those words Agnes looked at me sharply. And it was true, it was absolutely true, I was 34-years-old and had never really been in love. Not until I met Agnes Samuel.

So then I was presented with this challenge, this quest: to make Agnes Samuel love me. To make Agnes Samuel stay in Warboys. She might not have seen it that way, but I did. I guess in this instance Jim Drury and I were in league together, he wanted her to stay in residence at his pub, I didn’t care where she stayed, I simply wanted her in my village. I needed her in my village.

My village is a funny old place. It’s in the middle of nowhere and it doesn’t have much to distinguish it. It’s too far from London to be in the commuter belt, too far from Cambridge to appeal to rural looking residents of that city. It consists of an intersection – where the clocktower stands – and several residential streets. There is one shop, Barbara’s, which is also the post office, a petrol station, and two pubs. Our house is one of the oldest, if not the oldest. Like I say, I’m not interested in history, but I’m fond of our village. Otherwise, why would I have stayed?

After our walk we went back to the pub, but it was past two o’clock and Jim and Lolita were no longer serving lunch. But an exception was made for Agnes, exceptions were always made for Agnes, it was one of the great things about being with her. So we ate sandwiches – Jim makes a good doorstep – and then I had to get back to the office. At this time of year the estate isn’t very busy but if I don’t attend to it every day things tend to grind to a halt. We arranged to meet that evening.

‘Seven o’clock?’ Agnes suggested. Without saying much she made it absolutely clear she wanted to see me again. It was in the way she held my gaze.

‘Seven o’clock,’ I replied. ‘I’ll be there.’

My heart pounded for the rest of the afternoon, I’m sure if my pulse had been taken it would have been racing. I actually felt quite peculiar, as though I’d inhaled too much air and it was trapped at the top of my head and between my shoulderblades. I sat in my office, in that cold, cavernous room, working on figures. I knew my father was on the other side of the house, in the sitting room, in his chair in front of the fireplace, a blanket over his knees. I imagined I could hear the steam rising off the cup of tea Karen had taken him, I thought I could hear him breathing. But that couldn’t have been possible, there were too many thick walls and corridors between us. I don’t know why I suddenly felt so aware of him, of his silent, blank presence. My thoughts flickered back and forth, from my father to Agnes, Agnes to my father, as I stared at the spreadsheet on my computer screen.

That evening I tried to eat what Karen had cooked for dinner but was unable, I was too keyed up. I announced I was going to the pub and when I looked at my watch, I suddenly realized I was going to be late. How could that be? I’d watched the clock so closely all afternoon. Jenny said she wanted to come too, and Graeme said he needed a drink, but I grabbed my coat and rushed out the door, saying I’d see them later. I ran down the drive and out onto the high street, forcing myself to slow to a more acceptable pace.

When I got to the Black Hat it was nearly empty, not many people had come out for the evening yet. Lolita was behind the bar polishing glasses, no sign of Jim. Nor Agnes. Lolita shrugged when I asked if she knew where her guest was, saying ‘Lovely girl,’ as she pulled my beer, ‘lovely. I expect she’ll be down later.’ She smiled widely, as though she knew this was torture for me.

I sat at the table by the fire, the table where Agnes had been seated the night before. I sipped at my beer and settled down to watch the clock and the door, checking both whenever anyone came in. Gradually the pub began to fill. An hour passed and it was nearly eight o’clock. Jim bustled around the room wiping tables, saying ‘lovely girl’ whenever anyone asked after Agnes. ‘Lovely girl.’ Everyone asked after her, and everyone agreed, as though there was nothing unusual about her being here and, equally, nothing unusual about her not being here now. Graeme and Jenny arrived, they stood together at the bar. I got increasingly worked up. Had I misheard the time we were to meet? Had I imagined the whole thing? Was it all a horrible joke cooked up by Graeme?