The Half Sister Page 38

  ‘We went there once,’ remembers Diana.

  Margaret leans in to hear her. ‘To Stourhead?’

  It was a son et lumière. There were friends, or acquaintances as they turned out to be, they brought tartan rugs, although they all sat on expensive folding chairs so what was the point of the rugs? Perhaps the rugs are a false memory, because in books and films and other lives people take tartan rugs to picnics, not because that’s what happened in her life. The same with the champagne and fireworks. One picture does feel like hers and hers alone: a disappearing point at the end of a long avenue of trees, a hilltop horizon and a clear black sky, then a magic trick, out of darkness, out of nothing, a blaze of lights and a tall tower appeared like a shining vision and everybody gasped. When the music stopped, it was gone and someone said it was a folly.

  ‘I don’t think I’ll go, Margaret.’

  ‘Then that’s your choice, Diana. I would say a trip out would do you good, but you make up your own mind. Don’t let yourself be bullied into things you don’t want to do. Shall we go back inside?’

  The pain in her neck is relentless and her brain receives scrambled messages from parts of her that have given up communicating sensibly, but her body panics and translates them anyway and she sweats. In the afternoon she accepts more medication, drifts in and out of sleep. Once or twice, half awake, she thinks Edmund is with her, or maybe they are in a garden somewhere and he is asking her to come home to Wynhope. The scene replays on a loop, coming and going, barely changing; she never seems to get round to answering, but the next morning she feels stronger and her reply has come to her in the night in a way she doesn’t understand, but with a degree of conviction which surprises her. If he ever asks her to return to Wynhope, she’ll say no. Not because she doesn’t love him. Not because of Michael, although even to think of the child frightens her. Not because she hates Wynhope, because she doesn’t think she does, despite all that has happened there. But because she does not want a gilded prison. She does not want to implement her bowel-control programme in a newly adapted guest bathroom where the sun used to light up the morning room. She does not want someone else to operate her stair lift, hauling her past the peeping eyes of generations of men – imperialists and perpetrators, every one of them. The thought of the three of them handcuffed to each other and to Wynhope makes her thin wrists sore.

  The leaflet Margaret brings shows a smiling woman in a wheelchair and dark glasses planting a rose. All around her are roses, Ballerina, Tranquillity, Anne Boleyn. ‘There is no horticultural task we cannot do, we just have different ways of doing things,’ it says. Inside are quotes from people who she now knows are people like her. The other booklet looks as though it used the same woman to demonstrate the newly built flats in southwest London. Diana comments wryly to Margaret that she could forget the gardening and have a new career as a model for disability brochures.

  ‘And a very beautiful model you would be too,’ says Margaret.

  She’s not beautiful any longer, though; it took a long time before she could look in a mirror, but she knew before she looked, the looking was just the proof.

  ‘And don’t go telling me you’re not beautiful. I’m sure you’re different. I never knew you before, but beauty is on the inside and you get more beautiful every day.’

  That’s another thing, thinks Diana, she does not want to be surrounded by people who only see what she is no longer and only notice what she has lost; if she is to live, she needs to belong to a present-tense club. She would like to decorate her own flat, she used to be good at interior decoration, she had a job like that once.

  When Sally visits her, they had planned to venture out into Eastham for the first time. Her friend has identified a little café looking out over the harbour, very old-school, darling, but loads of room for the wheelchair and they serve evil-looking brownies. Unlicensed, unfortunately. They were going to have a cup of coffee (that sounds easy, doesn’t it?) and count the masts of the mud-marooned boats and then come back to the Angeline. But Diana explains that she needs all her energy for talking, does Sally mind staying here?

  ‘You’re asking me if I mind talking? We used to talk for England, darling. I can’t tell you how happy it makes me to hear you say that. So what is it to be? Just a minute? Shall I pick a topic?’

  ‘No. I talk. You listen.’ Diana wills the forefinger of her left hand to point to the miniature fridge. ‘Wine. Like old times.’

  Sally pours herself a big one and Diana a thimbleful. Go on, treat yourself.

  ‘Edmund is coming on Monday. To take me out. There are things I want to say to him, I get in a muddle, I want to practise.’

  ‘Be my guest.’ Sally rolls up her sleeves, spreads her legs and leans forwards in the manner of a man, if not exactly Edmund.

  Diana closes her eyes and concentrates. ‘I do not want to return to Wynhope.’

  Silence used to be so difficult, but she doesn’t mind it now, she needs conversations to be slow.

  Finally, Sally replies. ‘I hope it’s not because of Mikey, or Grace with her broomstick frightening you off.’

  ‘I’ve nothing left to be frightened of,’ says Diana. ‘And look at me, I’m not a threat, am I?’

  ‘I wouldn’t put it past you, darling, you’re armed and dangerous. The amount of metal plates they’ve stuck in you, one swipe and she’d be out cold. And you could always secrete poison in the arms of your wheelchair, Bond-style.’ Sally sings the theme tune.

  ‘I want Mrs, Mrs A? Mrs thingy to stay to help with Michael. We can put things right one day if she’ll let me.’

  ‘Don’t do this to be a martyr. Ed still loves you, Diana, he’ll do anything for you. There were a few old tarts giving him the eye on New Year’s Eve, but it’s obvious it’s you he wants, you and Mikey. He’ll want to look after you. It’s all he’s ever wanted.’

  Edmund has clearly not confided in Sally so Diana concludes there is no reason why anyone should ever know what she asked him for and what he was going to give her. She stays with explanations of how she wants to live, rather than how she wanted to die. She wants to see Edmund, she explains, and Michael, just visits, short, taking things slowly.

  ‘I’m not the only one who needs to learn how to walk and talk,’ says Diana.

  Uncharacteristically quiet, Sally moves to the window and stands with her back to Diana. If she could, Diana would embrace her. Before she leaves, Diana has one more favour to ask.

  ‘Will you come to Stourhead with us? I might need help.’

  As her friend bends over and kisses her goodbye, she is christened by the tears on Sally’s face.

  ‘I will count it as an honour to be your interpreter.’ Sally buttons up her leather jacket and winds her scarf around her neck, then winks. ‘I’m very expensive, mind you, but I do accept cases of Merlot if you can’t get to the bank.’

  There is an Easter feel to the Angeline. Everything is yellow: the primroses on the tables in the dining room, tiny bags of chocolate eggs in gold foil tied up with yellow ribbon, great bunches of daffodils and forsythia and euphorbia at the entrance to the chapel. Margaret has given her an Easter card, she won’t be working the weekend, Easter Day is the most important day of the year for her and the church will be full to overflowing, and not just with people, but with joy. Margaret thinks yellow is the colour of joy, and if she ever got her own place, she would paint it yellow.

  Diana offers her one of Sally’s expensive truffles. ‘You said your aunt lived in Bracknell. Do lots of your family live there? Do they all go to church?’

  Because if they do, Diana wonders if they might know the man called Solomon who was her sister’s partner. She thinks he had a job with a church in Bracknell. It would mean a lot if he would visit her.

  When Margaret has left, Diana manoeuvres her way to the little dressing table and studies the small array of miscellaneous things which were returned to her by the hospital when she was transferred. Her wedding ring is in there; it was sawn in hal
f to get it off her finger and has not been repaired. There is also a folded-up page torn from a Bible, with the bottom ripped off. It was in her pocket when they found her and someone must have thought it important and they were right. Diana reads it again now, as she often does. She knows the beginning off by heart and it feels like a poem which has been everywhere in her life and nowhere. She thinks that when she can place it, things might become clear. It’s something to do with rivers and there is even a tune to some of it; she has a memory of someone singing it, although that seems unlikely, not Edmund, not Michael. Valerie. Yes. Valerie. This memory is a true memory, the two of them singing and dancing in a tower, just her and her little sister.

  Chapter Forty-Six

  It is getting dark. Mikey can make out the patterns on the other side of the river, but only because he knows what they look like already. This should be the best time, when the baby trout play over there by the fallen tree or behind him under the weeping willow, but this evening even the fish must be scared. No one can know everything. For a start, Edmund does not know what he’s thinking right now, and he’ll never know, not if he doesn’t tell him. A circle of ripples disturbs the pool beneath him; the trout is hungry after all, the flies never stop dancing.

  Mikey surfaces. ‘I didn’t know she was unhappy.’

  Edmund looks up towards him. Mikey can’t tell what he’s thinking either, his face is in the shadows, but his whisper is very loud and clear because everything else is so quiet and wrapped up in the evening.

  ‘Nor did I,’ says Edmund.

  ‘Or that she was sorry. She never told me.’

  ‘She didn’t tell me either, Mikey.’

  Mikey’s bottom lip is distorted. ‘I wanted her to be dead.’ He holds his hands to his ears and closes his eyes, screws up his face so the truth can’t get in.

  Sandpaper words these, for Edmund. ‘And so did I.’

  As he reaches out, the boy struggles to escape his grasp, but then gives in, folds up on himself. ‘I almost killed her,’ he whispers.

  ‘And so did I,’ says Edmund, keeping hold of him as best he can. ‘Do you know, I wasn’t entirely truthful with you? Diana did speak to me when I visited her a few weeks ago.’

  Sliding towards Edmund, Mikey crouches down close to him, finds a stick and pokes the ants which scurry away but always return to their chosen route. He will concentrate on the ants.

  Edmund ploughs on. ‘Do you know what she didn’t say?’

  Shake of the head.

  ‘She didn’t say anything about what happened when I was away. About any of what’s in the file, or what you did. That’s very brave of her, isn’t it? I think she wanted to put things right, she took all the blame herself.’

  Nod.

  ‘Who do you think is to blame for everything that’s happened?’

  ‘Me,’ says Mikey. His stick cracks in two, and he breaks it into three pieces, four, five, six.

  ‘And?’

  ‘Diana.’

  ‘And?’

  Mikey throws the splintered fragments into the water.

  ‘And?’

  Hanging around close to the bank where the river goes nowhere, the twigs turn circles on themselves until something invisible calls them into the mainstream and off they sail, one after the other in a line, a little bit like the ants, all moving off together past the safe-as-houses islands and the snagged branches and then they’ll slow over the top of the three-fathom pool and then they’ll skim over the glistening weir and . . .

  ‘And you,’ says Mikey.

  ‘Yes, and me. Everyone except Monty, everyone except your mum.’ Edmund tries a smile and Mikey hugs the dog who lies chewing a stick beside them. ‘I’ve got it all wrong. All along I’ve been thinking that there is not enough love to go round. It has to be me and Diana, and not you. Or you and Diana here at Wynhope, while I go away. Or me and you, with no Diana, she has to stay at the home. But I’ve got it all wrong, Mikey.’

  He is talking to himself, but he can see the child finds his words soothing, in the manner of their speaking if not their meaning. Mikey strokes the dog, over and over and over again.

  ‘The challenge is not in how to find ways to live without each other, but how to live with each other. I’ve done a lot of thinking this afternoon. Do you know what I think should happen next?’

  ‘She comes home.’

  ‘Diana comes home to Wynhope. It’s a terrible punishment to be banished, it’s like a sort of death, Shakespeare knew that,’ says Edmund. The quote is just out of reach, it is something to do with walls – no world for me outside these walls, that’s it. ‘And do you think that’s the right thing to do?’

  Nod.

  ‘I can’t hear you, Mikey.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And do you think you can manage that? Living here, Diana and me and you. And Monty. Do you think we can make a go of it?’

  Mikey is doing the maths. Does it mean he will only have half of Edmund? Because from what he’s seen, half of things is never enough.

  ‘Mikey? I asked if you thought we could make a go of it.’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  It is perhaps the most honest thing Edmund has ever heard Mikey say.

  ‘Now we have work to do.’ Awkwardly Edmund pushes himself to his feet. ‘Fetch me some stones, go on, two or three big ones.’

  Stones for throwing, stones for skimming, stones for damming the stream, he dare not ask what these stones are for. Mikey has a terrible feeling he gave the wrong answer to the question. He should have said yes, he can manage Diana coming home, then he’d definitely be staying at Wynhope as well. In class, the teacher stares around the room with that expression on her face which says has anyone else got a better answer? Wading into the shallows, he reaches into the water, soaking his sleeves; the cold numbs his hands as he grasps a stone and heaves it to the bank. Back in again, stumbling, he almost loses his footing. What if he falls? Would Edmund come in after him and save him? He’s never been frightened here before now, but the current is pushing at his legs and the river is creeping up over the top of his boots as he tugs on a second, heavier rock, his fingers scratching into the gravel until he prises it from its bed and the water turns cloudy with all the thousands of bits of stuff which have been stuck underneath it for years and years, all free and floating now like they are in space. He will go back in one more time, if he’s brave enough. For the last stone, he searches for something special and he finds it, the perfect stone. Smaller, smoothed and rounded and polished, it fits in the palm of his hands like a miniature globe.

  The stones are not for keeping. They are to go in the bottom of the sack. This is how people drown kittens, Mikey saw it in a cartoon once, and his mum said he shouldn’t watch things like that on the telly, not with the cat in the room. In the low light, Edmund’s shadow is huge, his enormous hands are holding the mouth of the sack open wide; behind Mikey the river rushes away into the dusk. Paul put his mum’s head under the taps in the bath one night, he saw through the door, hair held, face down, shouting, the smell of soap and the splatter of water. Edmund has got rid of people before. He had two wives before Diana and where did they go? At times like this, there has only ever been one person who could make everything all right again and even though she is gone and cannot hear, it is her name he calls inside his head as though he could summon her out of the tower. Gripping onto Monty’s collar for dear life, his heart beat-beat-beating, he has never felt so small and so completely powerless. He has never wanted his mother as much as he wants her now.

  A man’s arm across your shoulders is a heavy arm, a man’s breath this close to your neck is hot. Edmund is crouched beside him, pulling him close, pointing at the file.

  It is the file he is going to drown.

  The file.

  Picking it up, sideways, Mikey checks Edmund’s face for confirmation, receives a nod. It is the file that’s going to die.

  This is the child’s process, Edmund is not going to interfere
. He forces himself to wait in silence and to wait with patience as behind him he hears the click of the metal clips being snapped open and shut; he wonders what Mikey is going to leave and what he is choosing to keep.

  ‘Ready now.’

  All the pieces of paper are dropped into the bag; only the empty file itself is left out, the label peeled away from the front.

  ‘Why?’ asks Edmund.

  ‘It isn’t biodegradable,’ says Mikey. ‘We did that in science.’ Sometimes Edmund is quite stupid.

  ‘True,’ replies Edmund, twisting the top of the sack.

  With Mikey holding the twine with his finger and thumb and Edmund tying the knot, tight as you can, they close the bag. It is too heavy for a child, so Edmund carries it for him and together they scrabble back up to the drive to the edge of the old bridge. Beneath them, the water is over thirty feet deep, even in the hottest of summers. All sorts of things have probably met their end in that pool, thinks Edmund; we will not be the first or the last to ask the river to take things away for us.

  ‘One, two, three.’

  Together they heave the bag onto the ledge.

  ‘Are you ready? Are you sure?’ asks Edmund.

  A nod.

  ‘I can’t hear you, Mikey.’

  ‘Yes, I’m sure,’ says Mikey. ‘Are you?’

  ‘Yes, I’m sure too.’

  It’s quite hard to push it, it’s an ungainly, ugly thing, this sack, and the hessian snags on the stonework before it topples and tumbles in slow motion like a man from a roof, but there is no body, no questions, no siren, even the ripples last only a minute or two of waiting. Edmund realises that time is not linear; these are the patterns not just of what has happened, but of what is going to happen, of what might have happened, different dimensions contained in a series of perfect, concentric circles.

  ‘All gone,’ says Edmund. ‘Shall we stay down here a while?’