The Sister

Mrs. Axtell’s flower borders to her personality, the next she’d have taken on one of Clive’s pompous colleagues in a make-believe row. Maud had never talked to me in that way before. It was like some of the conversations she used to have with Vivi.

The second phase was when Maud turned. I was usually out of the room well before she turned, but that day she’d drunk too much too fast, and the lucid phase skipped by too quickly. Something trapped and dissatisfied was gathering buoyancy, pushing its way to the surface. She transferred herself to the sofa to sit next to me.

“Well, what do you think, darling?” she whispered hoarsely.

“Think of what?”

“The boyfriend. Bit stiff, darling, don’t you think?” Maud said, discarding the whisper. “Tight-arsed, don’t you think? Tight-arsed,” she said, even louder. Her head flopped against the back of the sofa and she laughed.

“Bloody London bloody little tight bloody arse,” she said, laughing at her moment of inspired rhapsody.

I didn’t say anything.

Then she turned on me, her mood switching suddenly. “What’s wrong with you? Can’t you talk?” she snapped.

I didn’t say anything.

“You can wipe that bloody look off your face, Ginny,” she said. “You’ve really got some cheek, you know. You’re not so damn perfect yourself.” She’d consumed an entirely different personality.

Just then we heard Arthur’s laugh burst out down the hall and luckily her attention was thrown back to him.

“Tight-arse,” she shouted to the ceiling. Then her eyes searched me out again. “Well, don’t you think, darling,” she said more softly, “bloody tight-arse?” I glanced nervously towards the door, as if to judge how far through it her voice might travel. Maud caught me. “Oh, Ginny, darling, please don’t be so bloody pathetic. I’m just telling the truth, darling,” she complained peevishly. “Can’t you see he’s a bloody tight-arse? God, I think I might have to go and live in Spain, yes, that’s not a bad idea, is it? What do you think? Get away from here for good and sit in the sun and look at the sea, darling, what do you think?”

I knew I had to leave.

“Tight. Arse.” She laughed again, as if it were just saying the words that she found so enjoyable— therapeutic, even.

“I’m going to do the washing up and then I’ll be back,” I said quickly, and left before she had a chance to protest. I knew the only possible way to extricate myself was on a promise to return, and I was relieved when I’d closed the door behind me. I stayed to listen. It was my responsibility to make sure no one saw her drunk.

There was silence for a second, then the clanking of glass on glass. Maud was going to make trouble tonight. I took a deep breath and rubbed two fingers along the key in the door’s lock. I balanced the risks: I could faintly hear Vivi and Arthur chatting in the drawing room farther down the hall; Clive was either in the cellar or the attic; Maud’s sherry supply was plentiful and I doubted, anyway, that she’d be able to get up from the sofa for the rest of the night. My mind was made up.

I held my breath, pulled the door tightly towards me so the lock wouldn’t click and, very slowly, very quietly, turned the key.

It felt good. A problem locked up for the night.

I went to clear up the kitchen. Tonight’s outburst had been less manageable and had felt more sinister than any of the previous ones. It was not only my job to hide her behavior from Clive, Vivi and the rest of the world, but also my solemn promise to the other Maud, my mother Maud. Vivi was in the house and I would have to be on guard all night. All at once the house, and everything in it, felt extremely precarious.

I had nearly finished the dishes when I heard a dreadful thudding at the library door and Maud shouting, her voice distorted with rage. “Ginny, come and open this door at once!”

I could hear the pounding and crashing of books being flung at the inside of the door. What had I been thinking to lock her in?

“Ginny, do you hear me? How dare you lock me in.”

I was outside the door now, silent—and uncertain whether or not to open it. I wasn’t sure that anyone else could hear her. I didn’t want to enrage her further but I didn’t know what I would be faced with if I opened it. I was weighing the options when she whispered through the door. Surely she couldn’t have known I was standing there.

“Ginny…I promise that if you don’t open this door right now, I promise, I’ll kill you,” she threatened in a low growl.

I turned the key, the door flew open and three large hardback books hurtled towards me, glancing off me as I ducked. Then more books came, one or two at a time, as I cowered on the hall floor.

Vivi opened the door to the drawing room and stuck her head out. “What the hell’s going on?” she said. “What are you doing, Ginny?”

Thankfully she hadn’t witnessed any books in flight. She saw me kneeling in the hall with books scattered around me and I quickly busied myself with collecting them up and sorting them into piles. As soon as Maud heard Vivi, she had shut the library door on herself.

“I’m just chucking out old books. We’re finally sorting the library,” I lied impressively.

“Well, you don’t have to throw them around, do you?” Vivi said, slightly irritated, and went back to Arthur.

I pushed the books against the wall and went to bed. I was relieved that Vivi would be gone tomorrow and we could get back to our normal routine without any added constraints.

The flying books marked the start of violence that seemed as addictive as the drink. When she was drunk Maud looked for a fight—only with me—and the more I tried to appease her, to say the right thing, to tell her what I thought she wanted to hear, the more aggressive she became. It was a good day when I suffered merely a little shouting, and increasingly normal to suffer worse. I didn’t resent her for it. I felt sorry for her. I saw how she couldn’t help it, how she went away and something else filled her place that didn’t resemble her old self in any way at all. It took hold and possessed her, gaining in strength daily, feeding off her weakness. At those times she wasn’t my mother: she’d been ravished by a demon, overtaken by uncontrollable anger and aggression. Strangely, she was physically far stronger too, than my mother ever was. I found her lifting tables, smashing doors, throwing chests, things Maud would never have been able to move, as if her muscles, during those rabid moments, received a secret gift of strength. But it was her eyes that were most severely altered. They quickly became another’s. Clear, hard-edged and determined. Eyes that saw everything darkly. And I knew that Maud would never conquer this thing. Its force and ambition grew more palpable each day.

But one thing I could never understand. Even though I’m sure she was, for the most part, oblivious to her attacks, she would always stop the instant she heard Clive coming, and switch to a task close at hand. She was like a five-year-old who, even if she seemed completely out of control, still knew somewhere in her heart that she shouldn’t be behaving as she was.

When I closed my eyes at night, I’d remember my mother, the sober Maud, who’d hold me in her more lucid moments, stroke my hair and tell me she loved me so much it hurt. And then she’d thank me for being me, and I’d almost imagine her eyes were wet with tears, and I’d wonder if she was ever aware of the terror that daily turned in her.

Chapter 12 I Spy

Vivien’s been home for a day now, almost exactly twenty-four hours. I’ve been lying on my bed all morning. The last time I saw her was earlier this morning, when I was holding my glass of milk as a prop and it had become quite obvious we had very different memories of our late father.