The Sister

out how the street had got its name, but I had the impression he didn’t think Clive was being altogether serious.

Once that conversation was over and agreed on, I was about to prepare for an uncomfortable silence when Vivi saved the moment in one swoop, as easy as a stroll in the park. “Clive is very clever, aren’t you, Clive?” she teased.

“Well…,” Clive started seriously, missing Vivi’s playful sarcasm.

“But the thing, Arthur, that he’s particularly clever at is bringing absolutely any conversation round to moths. Most people find it incredibly difficult to put anything about a moth into a conversation, but Clive finds that most conversations naturally come to moths in the end, don’t you, Clive?” It was only when Maud and I started to giggle that Clive understood he was being gently teased and braved a small smile. Arthur was gazing at Vivi adoringly.

“Clive,” Vivi continued bossily, “why don’t you show Arthur some of your specimens? He’d love to see them.” She turned to Arthur. “Clive’s got moths from all over the world. Some are bigger than your hand.”

I relaxed a little, letting my responsibility lighten. Vivi was taking control. She was pure, fresh air, and slowly she was filling up the house with it, resuscitating the space and pulling us all back together.

Caring for caterpillars is like caring for the young of any animal. They require constant attention. Our attic and our drawing room and, incidentally, much of our south terrace were full of larvae boxes housing our self- created plague of Brimstone caterpillars. Once we’d given Arthur a tour of the museum, he volunteered to come on our rounds of the caterpillars, helping to clean them out, give them fresh food and check them over.

The Brimstone is a shady brown caterpillar tinged with green and spends much of its time clasping a twig with its back legs, sticking its body out in front of itself, rigid yet crooked, looking uncannily like the twisted twigs of the bramble it’s most often found on. To complete the general effect, it has two growths midway along its back that look exactly like a pair of buds. It took Arthur a while to find one, but once he caught sight of it he was so thrilled that he made a game of seeing how many others he could spot in each cage. He asked a torrent of questions with boyish enthusiasm so we were spurred into explaining to him the basics of their daily care. Clive gradually assumed his lecture voice, giving Arthur tips—their leaves should be fresh but not the youngest and most succulent in case the richness gave them diarrhea.

“The onset of diarrhea spreads through a box of larvae like a virus and it’s nearly always fatal to the whole batch,” Clive informed him. I could see he was beginning to warm to Arthur. “You also need to check for flu, fleas, parasitic flies, wasps, mites, and, because caterpillars are little more than a bag of fluid, they’re particularly susceptible to desiccation, drowning, sweats, salt—”

“The odds don’t sound good for a caterpillar,” Arthur interrupted gamely.

“And their worst enemy—earwigs,” Clive replied.

“Earwigs?”

“Terrible. Terrible,” Clive said, shaking his head vehemently. “If I could destroy an animal species on earth forever it would be the earwig. They manage to invade even the most indestructible box to ravage my caterpillars—”

“What’s this?” Arthur interrupted him. He’d picked up a jam jar of leaves and was peering into it, searching it for a less upsetting subject than the earwig one.

“Why’s this poor fellow all on his own?” Arthur asked once the occupant had been spotted.

“He’s a cannibal,” said Clive, almost proudly, a parent blind to his offspring’s antisocial habit.

“Oh?” Arthur said, regarding the jar now as if he might drop it.

“Some are born with a taste for their brothers and sisters. All of them eat their shells once they’ve hatched, but some then carry on and eat through their siblings.”

“That’s quite disgusting,” Arthur said definitively, placing the jar down carefully.

“Well, it’s all good protein,” Clive reasoned. “Some species, like the Privet and the Death’s-head, the whole lot of them are cannibals and will never let up on a chance to gnaw into each other, but with the others you might get just one or two in a batch. The trick is to spot them before they start because once they get going that’s it, they’ll finish off all the others pretty quick.”

“So you have to sit and watch them once they’ve hatched, at the ready to pick out the cannibals?”

“Well…yes.”

“But how long do you have to watch them for? I mean, how long before you know they’re not going to start eating the others?” Arthur asked, obviously worrying that too much time was spent on this one exercise.

Clive looked at me and smiled wearily. I knew he was thinking that such details were a little tricky to explain.

“No,” I butted in abruptly, “you don’t really need to watch them at all. You can usually just guess— instantly—which ones will be cannibals.”

Arthur raised his eyebrows and I realized that wasn’t a sufficient answer for him. He was genuinely interested.

“You just know,” I tried to clarify. “They’ve got a look about them.”

“Vivi!” Arthur shouted playfully to her in the next room. “You’re going to have to clear this one up for me.”

“How can you tell a cannibal?” he asked her as she glided into the room.

“Well, they’re the only ones left, silly,” Vivi replied cheekily.

“No, before they’ve eaten the others,” he said.

“Oh, that,” she said, affecting mystery. “They’ve just got a look about them,” and Arthur and I, we started laughing.

I found Maud keeping herself busy in her potting shed. I’d hidden her sherry today, as we’d agreed, and as soon as she saw me she said—very politely—“I need a little drink, Ginny.” I didn’t say anything. It was half-past four. She was trying to separate some bulbs as she said it, and I remember watching her shaky hands, which looked like mine do now, swollen round the joints and bent at the knuckles. All they were achieving was to strip off layers of the bulbs’ papery skin, as if her fingers couldn’t get a proper grip. Now that I know how hard my own hands are to manage I realize her arthritis might have impeded her, but back then I was shocked by what I thought were clearly withdrawal symptoms.

It was only after supper, when Maud seemed choked with desperation, that I finally helped her into the library. I was proud of her, like a nurse might be proud of a patient, and I told her so. She said nothing. She sat stiffly on a small upright chair by the window and looked at her feet, lifting them up and down to exercise her ankles.

Since I’d become her official collaborator, we’d normally have gone through a little role-play at this point: I’d ask her if she wanted a drink, she’d say, “Go on, then, just a small one,” and chide me for not joining her. We’d talk about whatever sprang to mind, and for a while it would seem a most congenial affair. Then, when her sense started to leave her, I’d go and let her slip inside herself to reflect on the darker side alone.

That night, however, she sat there on the chair, loosening her ankles and rubbing her clenched hands up and down her legs to encourage the circulation. When I asked if she’d like a drink, she didn’t answer. Her jaw was taut and I wondered if she was even capable of speaking. Then, when I poured her drink, she couldn’t muster the coordination to hold it steady, so I wrapped my hands round hers and together we lifted the glass to her mouth and tipped it. At that moment I felt us take another secret leap together. The role-play, the polite ceremony, the pretense, it was all gone now and her crude addiction was laid bare between us. By the third glass she’d refueled and discovered a moment of equanimity. She relaxed into the chair.

“Ginny,” she said, “what would I do without you? Thank you.” This was the first phase—I called it her lucid phase—when she was replenished but not too drunk, when the sherry had loosened her tongue, but not her mind, and she would pour out funny stories and scrutinize the world.

I’ll tell you something now, something I’m ashamed to admit, one of those honest little secrets that are hard enough to admit to yourself, and I can only hope that you’ll try to understand why I felt it. You see, I began to covet the intimacy that Maud’s reprehensible secret brought us and I really enjoyed—looked forward to, even—the entertaining moments her lucid phase would bring. One minute she’d have found a way to relate the pattern of