You Must Be Sisters (26 page)

‘Hmm.’ Honestly, she couldn’t think what to say. So she said: ‘Congratulations!’ as if Claire were a total stranger.

The grass-pulling started again. Claire was watching her. ‘Go
on
, Laura. Tell me what you think.’

‘Honestly, I think it’s all jolly exciting. Jolly exciting, I must say. What a thing to happen, eh? You and Geoff. Goodness.’ She burbled away at random. ‘He’s very handsome.’ She nearly added: ‘And he’s got such a lovely car,’ which showed how hard up she was.

Avoiding Claire’s eyes, she stared at the backbone of iron that stuck up through the grass. The sun went behind a cloud and she shivered.

‘I can see his faults,’ said Claire brightly. ‘I’m very level-headed. Anyway, I’ve got faults too.’ Oh no! Laura shouted silently, not like his! ‘It’s just that, although he may not bowl one over with excitement at first glance, one discovers more and more as time goes on. He’s very very nice. Decent. He’s so sensible. I like that.’ She was still searching Laura’s face; Laura, avoiding her gaze, could yet feel it burning her cheeks. Claire went on: ‘It’s all right for me, you see. I don’t mind about intriguing lifestyles and all. He doesn’t have to set the world alight.’

‘Do you love him?’

‘Of course I do,’ she replied simply. ‘And I do hope you will. Give him a bit of a chance. He’s very English, you know. Sometimes you have to break through a sort of code.’ She was still pulling at the grass. ‘I know you’ll love him too.’

‘Goodness,’ protested Laura, ‘I’m sure I like him already. I think he’s very nice, honestly.’ How terrible to have to be polite to one’s sister!

After a while Claire got up to wander about the garden. Laura felt suddenly lonely. All at once she and Claire were miles apart; it was the same desolate feeling as when Mac had shown her his awful paintings. From now onwards Geoff stood between them; from now onwards she would have to pretend about him. She could never say what she thought.

For Geoff surely was
boring
. Now Claire was down the garden she could sort him out better in her mind. Wasn’t his the dullness she so despised, the well-nurtured dullness of Harrow? The most comfortable emptiness? She tried to picture their married evenings, Claire looking out of the window and Geoff totting up his Barclay-card counterfoils. Dead! Dead!

She threw herself back on the grass. Perhaps she was unjust; perhaps he was the type to blossom as a husband. After all, he was perfectly pleasant, not unintelligent, he’d care for Claire.

He’d had no brothers or sisters to loosen him up. Perhaps he’d improve; she must give him a chance.

She sat up and watched Claire walking towards her, brown hair billowing round her face. Oh, but nobody was good enough for Claire, with her unshowy, independent life! Claire, who never lost touch with her fellow humans whatever they were like, and who was so special just because she believed herself to be so ordinary.

Just then Claire started waving to someone behind Laura’s back. Laura turned round. Mac had appeared at the back door with Holly. She got up. Claire approached, brushing the bits of grass off her skirt. Grass lay everywhere, green scatterings of her huge news.

Mac and Holly looked companionable standing there together; this warmed Laura. She also needed him at this moment. Bereft of Claire, he suddenly seemed more important to her. She ran towards him.

But as she approached, her warmth drained away.

‘Hello folks.’ Mac looked sheepish; he scratched his head. She could see at a glance that he had been drinking. There was something about his smile lingering forgotten on his face; anyway, she could smell the booze now she was this near. And she’d wanted him so much. He gave Claire a kiss; it would be, unmistakably, a beery one.

‘Where did you go?’ she demanded, feeling shrewish as she said it, the nagging wife.

He replied, unabashed: ‘To the Downs.’

‘Then where?’ Her patient voice. ‘Which pub?’

‘Oh, just the Oak. On the way home, that is.’

‘Where did Holly go? She’s not allowed in pubs.’

‘I sat outside in the garden,’ said Holly. ‘It was lovely.’

‘What, all alone?’

‘But I could see him inside. And anyway I played with a dog. It really was fun.’

But sinkingly Laura could see that Holly protested too much. She wouldn’t have told her it was such fun if she hadn’t thought it was odd. And from this she gathered that he must have spent ages in the pub; longer, for sure, than a quick one.

Oh Mac! Even the fact that his jumper was inside-out failed to melt her. As he stood there, scratching and blinking, she thought:
Is
this what my father feels? This disappointment and feeling of sheer waste? ‘Come on,’ she said. ‘Let’s go in.’

They started towards the door. Just then they heard some thuds amongst the thistles, followed by a pattering noise. They looked up at the house; in an upstairs window they saw a figure sinking back into the darkness of the top room. Closer inspection of the thistles revealed eggshells and two tins saying Batchelor Peas.

‘It’s too much,’ said Laura. ‘They can’t go on just chucking out their rubbish.’ She turned to Mac. ‘Will you go upstairs and tell them to shut up?’

Mac paused and considered this.

‘Go on!’ she urged.

He scratched his head again. He looked uncomfortable. ‘Can’t you go?’ he said at last. ‘I’m scared of that big bloke. He always gives me dirty looks when I meet him on the stairs.’ He put on a persuasive face. ‘Honestly, my sonner, he likes you. You do it.’

Laura blushed, ashamed of his feebleness – or of his gentleness – he became coloured differently according to her mood. She knew Claire must be thinking of Geoff and how he would have leapt up the stairs wordlessly, no hesitation. ‘You’re hopeless,’ she said with a laugh. But it was important, for her. Claire was always calling Laura’s life bohemian, but in truth it was bohemian only in its trivial things, like odd hours and harmonium playing. Its essentials, such as her feelings about Mac, were of the most ordinary kind. Nothing exotic about her disappointment, or her impatience, or her love. At the bottom she was exactly the same as everybody else. Whether that was a comfort or not she couldn’t, for the hundredth time, decide.

Lunch had gone on so long that at three sharp, when Geoff arrived, they were just thinking about coffee. On the doorstep Laura didn’t know how to greet him. Should she give him a kiss? He was now definitely in the kissing category. But she didn’t dare, he was so tall and straight. Not unpleasant, though, at close view. She would next time. After all, he didn’t know that she knew yet.

She led him past the junk, apologizing for it this time with a touch more smugness than she had with Claire. His leading such a very conventional life made her prouder of hers. Upstairs he shook hands all round, even with Holly. Holly looked pleased;
hardly
anyone ever shook
her
hand. Laura poured out the coffee.

And as they took their cups, Geoff was informed that they knew. Congratulations were given, even Mac wished them good luck for the great unknown, and suddenly, sitting round the table, they were united. It was quite unexpected. They gazed into the brown liquid; as they stirred the sugar they were hushed, each gazing into his cup and into the mysterious years ahead. They sipped and drank as if drinking a sacrament. Claire and Geoff sat side by side, impressive; even Holly for an instant looked older. The weight of marriage had taken them all by surprise.

But the moment passed. Conversation broke out, Claire got up to clear the plates and the general feeling changed to: What now?

And the consensus was: The Zoo. An agreeable enough way for this little assortment, this motley fivesome, to spend the afternoon.

‘My favourite place,’ said Mac. ‘Some truly amazing creatures.’

‘I haven’t been to a zoo for years,’ said Geoff.

‘There’s an otter,’ said Mac, ‘who I have deep conversations with.’

‘Really?’ asked Geoff.

‘And a very motherly giraffe.’ Mac started foraging under the sink for some carrots, another farewell haul from the gardens. Getting them past the foreman, he’d told Laura, had been very cinematic. ‘Let’s bring these. They must get pissed off with all those buns.’

‘But I don’t think one’s allowed to feed animals in zoos,’ said Geoff. ‘People give them the wrong things, you see. Their diet’s carefully worked out, I’ve been told.’

A pause. Laura looked at him sourly. He was right, of course.

Holly asked Mac: ‘Can we see the white tigers?’

‘Uh-huh. They’re amazing, but snooty.’

‘And can we stay a long time, not be hurried?’

Mac nodded.

‘Good.’ She did like Mac. He made things special, somehow.

Geoff was shuffling through his briefcase. ‘Lucky I brought my camera along, wasn’t it. Is there a shop on the way where I can get some more film? I only have six exposures left and I’d like to get the Zoo down on record.’

Laura looked at him severely. He was the sort of person, she decided, who only enjoyed something if he could take a photo of
it
. Document it. In fact he seemed to surround himself with apparatus. Now he was rummaging around for his umbrella, looking out of the window at the sky as he did so. She watched him, thinking of the series of boulders that must constitute his day, each one to be heaved aside or negotiated somehow. The equipment he used to weigh himself down! No doubt he was right about the possibility of rain. People like that usually were, whereas people like her got drenched.

She pushed back her hair and wondered why she couldn’t be reasonable. He was only acting like any normal person, really. It was just that, because he was marrying Claire, she couldn’t feel sensible about him at all. She mustn’t exaggerate everything he did. She must try to make an effort, for Claire’s sake.

‘You’ll like the Zoo,’ she said, smiling at him. ‘And on the way we have a lovely view right down into the Avon, with cliffs and the Suspension Bridge.’

‘I shall look forward to that,’ he replied, and smiled down at her from his tall and manly height. She could admire him, perhaps, if she tried. She must.

They left the house and walked up the road. At Geoff’s car they stopped and gave the usual exclamations at its beauty. Yes, thought Laura, and at least Geoff can drive a car. She gazed with sudden sourness at Mac. She’d just discovered from Claire that the garage was still sorting out the damage done to the Morris. It would probably take weeks.

‘Yes, she’s not bad,’ said Geoff, patting the bonnet, ‘but there’s an odd rattle in the ignition, and when something small goes wrong I always think it might be the symptom of some larger problem.’

Laura was pleased; he’d actually confided in them – even if it was just about a car. Claire was looking at the Lotus, her head on one side. She said: ‘Like a dirty face suggesting that a person’s knickers are grimy too.’

The others burst out laughing. All except Geoff, that is. He straightened up and stared at Claire.

‘Sorry,’ she laughed, linking her arm with his. ‘It just slipped out.’

The problem is, thought Laura, he needs loosening up. He might be better then.

As they walked up the road Geoff, after a moment’s hesitation said: ‘I always think that with cars there are only two noises.’
He
paused. ‘Cheap noises and expensive ones.’

Never was a feeblish joke more heartily laughed at. And the longest laughs came from the two sisters, one who loved him and one who was intermittently trying to. They felt so relieved.

The famous film was bought and then they wandered along a gracious crescent that curved, columned and creepered, around the lip of the hill. Deep below lay gardens, tall trees and, still further below glimmered the next crescent. The houses might be mouldering but the harmony of stone and branches was lovely; an orchestration of man and nature.

‘Claire, remember the last time we walked through these streets?’ Laura asked.

‘Of course, when we visited those pot people. It was raining and it was still beautiful.’ How long ago it seemed when these crescents, then veiled in mist, had veiled the future too; before, in their different ways, each sister had claimed and been claimed.

‘Found anywhere to live yet?’ Laura asked.

‘No, but we’ve started looking.’

Laura gestured at the view. ‘Try and find somewhere as gorgeous as this. You must live somewhere beautiful.’

‘Actually we’re thinking of the suburbs.’

‘Claire! No.’

‘It’s the only sort of place within our price range, isn’t it, Geoff?’

Laura’s eyes swept the landscape. Don’t! she called out silently. This beauty is what you deserve. Don’t let Geoff drag you down into the humdrum; pull him out of it instead. I can’t have my sister living in a semi with a ding-dong doorbell.

‘You see,’ said Claire. ‘We both want children very soon.’

Both
. Several decisions already taken that she, Laura, knew nothing about. A lifetime of such decisions to come. Laura felt that lonely feeling again. Married conversations, unintelligible to her, from which girlish giggles would be absent. Conversations which, as the years passed, would grow denser with shared jokes and mutual happenings until they would be all but incomprehensible to herself, an outsider.

She was jealous; she had to admit it. She stole a glance at them; Geoff was bending his head towards Claire and pointing out something to her, something in one of the gardens. When we get our house we’ll get one of those – the tilt of his head said that.
Claire
nodded and murmured something. She, Laura, was with a couple now.

Geoff paid for them all to get into the Zoo and became, by this generous act, their leader. They hovered around on the tarmac waiting for him to speak. Not that they didn’t feel he was the leader anyway; there was something unmistakable about his masculinity, coupled with Claire’s desire and Laura’s more spasmodic decision to bend whichever way he wanted and thus to please him. Already, wherever he turned they would have followed.

‘White tigers?’ he suggested mildly, unaware.

‘Bet you 10p,’ said Holly, ‘they’re not really white.’