Weird Sister (6 page)

They were all like that. And Agnes fit right in. When she arrived none of that changed. She didn’t open the house out, she didn’t alter the family in any way, insist on television, videos, CDs. At first I think we were all relieved. It wasn’t until later that it began to seem strange.

When Agnes arrived I myself had been back in the village for only six months. Since I returned I’d got used to dropping by the Throckmorton house to see Robert. We’d been friends for a long time, from the day we started school. We always got on well, Robert and I, I don’t know why. When we were kids it was unusual for a boy and girl to be friends, but our personalities suited. We were both a little shy, still are. I was an only child and so didn’t have a brother; Robert, at that time, didn’t have a sister, Jenny came along much later. We were like siblings.

As we grew older, into our later teens and onward, our relationship became a little more incestuous. When we were sixteen we decided we were both tired of being virgins, as though virginity was yet another unnecessary burden, something our parents insisted upon. We did it in the yew hedge at the end of the lawn at the back of the Throckmorton house. I brought a blanket I borrowed from my mother’s airing cupboard. Robert brought a bottle of wine he said he’d stolen from the house. Even though it was a bright summer evening it was dark inside that hedge and, as always, a little scary. We drank the wine and had a snog. The act itself took rather longer than I’d thought it might and it felt absolutely fantastic. Afterwards we shook hands and congratulated each other on joining the human race.

Over the years we continued to sleep together occasionally. We’d take advantage of each other when we were desperate or bored or drunk. ‘Freelance,’ was what Robert used to call our relationship. I think we found it consoling as well as convenient. But it never felt right for us to get together on a more permanent basis. I usually had a boyfriend when Robert was on his own; he usually had a girlfriend when I was single. But we endured. I used to tell myself when all is bleak at least there is Robert, and I imagine he had a similar mantra. It wasn’t until it was too late that I realized how much he meant to me.

When we were still in school we saw each other once a week, on Wednesday evenings. Regardless of what else was going on in our lives, Wednesday evenings remained inviolate. We would get together at either his house or mine – usually his, mine was too small to find anywhere private to sit and talk. We’d drink tea, we were both big tea drinkers – PG Tips, we mocked herbal teas. Funny, I’m pretty much a herbal tea person these days. And we’d talk about everything. Serious teenage conversation, about our lives and our dreams. When Robert’s mother died while giving birth, we talked about that a lot. Robert was seventeen, Graeme nineteen. Mrs Throckmorton – I knew her as Mrs T – was in the house, Robert and Graeme heard the whole thing. He told me that as it became clear something was going wrong, he and Graeme went upstairs to the old disused part of the house and hid. They stayed in a room full of boxes and crates for a whole night and a day. They huddled together like puppies in one corner of the room, as though they were little boys and not big, nearly-men. No one came looking for them. When they emerged their mother was dead.

We talked and talked after that, about death, about what a hideous thing childbirth must be. For a boy Robert was a very good talker, he would talk about anything. I was always the analyst, even then, the one who tried to figure out what it all might mean, what motivation might lie behind the action. Robert simply enjoyed sharing words and thoughts, ready to explore ideas and feelings, even after his mother died. Talking made him feel better. He’s always been that way.

He’s more unwilling now. Once Agnes arrived he confided less in me; later he became even more closed. Now there are some topics he will discuss only very reluctantly. There are others that are complete no-go areas. Agnes, of course, and most of what happened with her. Graeme as well. I don’t mind, I don’t object, I’m happy to pretend Agnes never happened, even though I know it is not healthy. It’s a few years since I last practised as a therapist but no matter how firmly I shut the door on that part of my life, it still comes back to me. I think therapy is in my bones, always was, always will be. Robert insists that talking doesn’t always make things clearer, that with certain things talking isn’t appropriate. He’s afraid he’ll hurt me with what he has to say.

He still loves her. But that doesn’t matter. That’s all right.

When I came back to Warboys after losing my job things were a little strained between us. My father had died, my mother passed away a few years before him; they both had heart conditions. I was at a very low ebb and I needed Robert to be my friend. Neither of us had ever needed the other before, at least not since his mother died, but I needed him then. Being needed didn’t really suit Robert.

It was my idea to reinstate our Wednesday evenings, but that didn’t last for long. Robert was often busy with something to do with the estate. And he was into a heavy pattern of serial monogamy. I couldn’t keep up with the string of girlfriends, I couldn’t keep track of their names, and none of them were very interesting. I was terribly, incredibly, single and probably rather alarming with it. I’ll admit that when I came back to the village one of the thoughts foremost in my mind was that Robert had still not met anyone, Robert was still the village bachelor. Robert was on my mind. And he could tell that. And it turned out to be a problem for him. I was breaking the unwritten rule of our friendship, the precious balance we had maintained all those years.

I guess a central feature of our friendship had been its blokeishness. We were mates and we’d do matey things together; I’d come home from university during holidays, we’d go to the pub and compete to see who could pull first. Occasionally, just occasionally, we would both fail, and we’d drink too much and find ourselves snogging in the tunnel under the yew hedge. Sometimes we’d sneak into his bedroom and spend a few hours pulling off each other’s clothes and having sex, but more often than not one of us would push the other away, laughing and saying ‘You look ridiculous.’ Regardless of what happened, come Wednesday evening we’d be together for the post-mortem, making each other hysterical with our stories of rejection. A funny kind of blokeishness, but you see what I mean.

By the time we were both in our mid-thirties, and I had come back to Warboys for good, that easy familiarity between us had dissipated. We hadn’t been to bed together for quite a while, years in fact. Not since Robert’s thirtieth, when he’d dared me to do it, even though I was, at the time, engaged to marry someone else. When I came back to the village sex had come to mean rather more to me and I don’t think I could have just jumped into bed with him and out again like it meant nothing. It was as though with age I’d become rather brittle, more breakable, easily hurt. I think Robert felt the same way. At least, he did when it came to me – obviously not when it came to all those other women. And, of course, not when it came to Agnes.

Barbara, who runs the shop, was the first to tell me that Jim Drury had a guest at the Black Hat. I’d gone in to buy a pound of potatoes – I was so broke that was about all I could afford – and I dreaded her asking me why on earth I was buying a couple of potatoes and nothing more, prepared for her litany about how important it was to support the village shop, had I taken to driving over to the supermarket in the next town? But she was full of her news about this new woman.

‘An American no less,’ she said.

‘Is that right?’

‘She’s called Agnes Samuel. You should see her Elizabeth, she’s gorgeous.’

‘Is she?’ It was unlike Barbara to be so gossipy.

‘She’s staying at the Black Hat. Robert seems to know her. Are you sure you haven’t met her?’

‘I’m sure.’

‘She’s been around for, well, it must be several weeks now.’ Barbara gave me a pitying look. I realized then that there must be something between Robert and Agnes Samuel, at least Barbara thought there was. ‘I’m sure you’ll be introduced,’ she continued. ‘Lovely, she’s just lovely,’ an enormous smile on her normally taciturn shopkeeper face. She sent me on my way, refusing to let me pay for the potatoes, which was, in itself, extraordinary.

That evening I put on my red cloche hat and my black dress and a shawl I bought in India and some lipstick that I know becomes me. Perfume on my wrists and in the dip of my neck. I went into the Black Hat and I sat at the table next to the fire. I had a gin and tonic, and another, and there were plenty of people for me to talk to as I hadn’t been to the pub for ages. There was no sign of Robert, nor the American stranger. After a while I excused myself to go to the loo.

The women’s toilet on the ground floor of the Black Hat is very poky and dimly lit. Over the years I had got into the habit of going up the stairs to the first floor where there is a spacious and bright loo that Jim and Lolita have tarted up for their paying guests. As I reached the top of the stairs I heard Robert’s voice coming from one of the bedrooms. It was him, unmistakable. He was moaning. Without thinking I moved across the landing to the door. I placed my hand on the door handle and I heard him again. ‘Oh please, Agnes,’ he said, his voice thick with passion, ‘please, yes, oh . . .’ and I stepped away.

I realized it then, I realized it with an awful, doomed sense of my own bad timing: I loved Robert. I’d always loved him and I had left it too late.

I went into the loo, closed the door, and burst into tears. I sat on the toilet and cried. After a while someone tried the door, but I didn’t get up or say anything. In the mirror I looked awful, smeared make-up, lipstick caked into the newly forming cracks around my mouth. I washed my face and patched things up, waited until my breathing returned to normal. I opened the door and went downstairs.

Robert and Agnes were at the table by the fire where I had been sitting. They were right, everyone in the village was right, she was beautiful. And – this is what no one ever says, what everyone fails to mention – so is he. I noticed for the first time that night how his dark hair was beginning to grey and how the flecks of white set off his blue eyes. He is tall and straight and wears clothes very well, with a long-limbed elegance that seems very English to me.

I went over to introduce myself, but as I approached they turned to each other with a look of particular intensity. That look struck me like a kind of body blow: Robert is in love, he’s in love with this woman, and not with me. I stepped back, I turned and walked unsteadily to the other side of the bar. I sat for a moment with Marlene and Geoff Henderson, Marlene has been a good friend to me. In a kind of daze, I agreed to have dinner with them Friday. After that I got up and left. Even the shock of the cold October air – it had chilled right down very early that year – did not bring me out of myself. I wandered back to my cottage.

The next few days were the worst I’ve ever experienced, even worse than when Gillian Collins committed suicide. I wanted to stay in bed and not get up, but I couldn’t allow myself that comfort. I found myself going over and over the mistakes I had made in my life. Everything I had ever done wrong. This included coming back to Warboys too late. Coming back to Warboys when it was too late to save Robert, when he was trapped in an endlessly repeating loop of girlfriends and break-ups, when he was ready and waiting for Agnes and her games.

But it was a few days, and that was all. That was all I was allowed. I pulled myself together, I’ve always pulled myself together, and I got to work on my life. I would get a job, there had to be someone in Warboys who would employ me. And I would get over Agnes, I would get over Robert. If he wasn’t going to love me, I could still keep him as a friend. I could have him beside me; we could talk. He didn’t see me that night in the pub, he didn’t have a chance to tell me his news and see the look on my face. I could embrace him, and his new girlfriend, and continue to be part of the Throckmorton family.

And after all, in the end, in my heart of hearts, I knew he would come back to me.

Agnes makes plans

The last week of October is windy and darkening, great gangs of fallen leaves skittering around the streets like marauding schoolchildren. The wedding is planned for the last Saturday in October – All Hallow’s Eve, Hallowe’en. Agnes laughs when Robert tells her the date. ‘We’ll have to stay home and answer the door to trick-or-treaters all evening,’ she says.

‘We don’t really do that here,’ Robert replies, ‘although it is catching on in some places, so I’m told. Bonfire Night – Guy Fawkes, November fifth – is the night we celebrate.’ He feels absurdly proud of this cultural difference. ‘It is quaint, isn’t it,’ he says, ‘American children dressed up as candy-grabbing witches and goblins, Britons torching their terrorist year after year.’

‘Cute,’ says Agnes, ‘sweet.’

Agnes remains in residence at the Black Hat until the day of the wedding. She says it is more seemly, and she laughs because there is nothing seemly about their affair, she and Robert met in a pub and less than a month later they are going to be married. They spend some time in the days before the wedding deciding what to do with the old wing of the house. On the top floor there are three crooked bedrooms with gables and sloping ceilings and a fourth room that was converted to a bathroom in the 1930s. This is the Elizabethan part of the house but that is evident only in the main bedroom – half-timbers showing through the plaster, a big open fireplace, thick outer walls and deeply set windows with lead latticing and bevelled glass – and, downstairs, the large empty room with the ornately carved plaster ceiling that might have once served as a ballroom. The other rooms have had piecemeal work done to them over the years, cheap flock vinyl wallpaper in pink and brown and double-glazing in the 1970s. Robert isn’t sure why this work was done, he can’t remember anyone occupying this part of the house during his lifetime.

Robert figures they should knock down the wall between the two smaller rooms to create a sitting room, and have the bathroom re-plumbed and decorated. The third room, which will be their bedroom, is filthy with dust and a huge accumulation of dead and disintegrating insects, flies on their backs with their legs in the air, spiders folded and dried, woodlice curled into tight Cs. The room contains decades of Throckmorton junk; Robert will clear it.