The Sister

while. Finally he said, “I’ve been thinking that if you could find a way to tag other species radioactively you could make some great progress with migratory patterns. There’s been so little research in that area, Ginny. The society might like that.”

I didn’t reply. At that moment I didn’t care what the society might like and I could hardly believe that he could.

“Yup,” said the man at the end of the bench eagerly, and for a few seconds I thought, perhaps, that I’d walked into someone else’s conversation. The man and I exchanged a pleasant look. Perhaps he’d only worried it was his conversation because no one else had replied. I glanced at Clive, who stared distantly at the cobbled square and the statue. He seemed altogether older—a real old man—and something else had changed about him too. It was as if Maud’s death had shaken the character out of him, his enthusiasm for life and everything that made him who he was, turning him limp.

“What did Vivien say?” he asked after a while.

“I haven’t seen her. She won’t come to the house.”

There was a long silence.

“You’ll tell her I love her, won’t you?” he said at last, and, although that should have been a happy tribute, there was something too absolute and eternal about it, and I couldn’t help feeling a little sorrow spill from my heart.

Two men bailed out of The George, shouting at each other and scaring the pigeons to the safety of the clock tower. When they had passed, the bravest of the birds flew down to reclaim Titus’s head.

“I’m pregnant,” I said, in a moment of unnecessary candidness. It was true, but I wasn’t so much telling him because he should know it, but because I wanted to tell him something happy, or perhaps to shock him— anything, in fact, to get a recognizable reaction from him. All he said was, “Very good.”

“Congratulations,” followed the old man on the far end of the bench.

“Thank you,” I said to both of them.

After a short silence the other man said, “Are you eating broad beans?” I found it impossible to know if he was now talking to me, or to Clive, or to the pigeons we were all looking at, or to some imaginary person, and I didn’t know whether to reply or to ignore him. I ignored him.

“You must eat broad beans,” he ordered firmly, “if you don’t want a spastic.”

“Thank you,” I told him, now understanding it was directed at me, and that he must surely have lost his marbles.

“Every day,” he said.

“Every day,” I repeated.

“Then you won’t have a spastic. Nobody wants a spastic,” he observed finally. There was a silence.

The old man leaned forward on his stick in a posture suggesting that he’d had his say and now he was finished.

Clive looked at his watch.

“You’ll be all right,” he said, and again I thought it might have been to either of us. “Well, I must be going now. I have flower-pressing class in ten minutes.”

And he went.

When I got home Arthur had let himself into the house. He was in the kitchen, waiting for me. It was lovely to see him and he gave me the first hug, a great big, long, silent one, that anyone had offered me since Maud’s death.

“I was worried about you on your own,” he said, letting me go.

“I’m fine. How’s Vivi?”

“Not good, I’m afraid. She says she’ll never come back.”

“Oh no.” I sighed, and felt the pain of my entire family crashing down round me. I wanted to find a way to bring them back, to hold them close.

“I think she feels it was…preventable,” he said.

I thought of the cold steep cellar steps and the darkness of the stairwell. I thought of how the two doors stood side by side, like twins—the same moldings, the same handles—but one with a deadly drop on the other side. I thought I was perhaps the only person who knew quite how drunk she would have been, how perfectly preventable it might have been, had she not been drunk.

“She won’t even talk to me about it. All I know is that she’d been quarreling a lot with Maud.”

Had she? It must have been on the telephone because Vivi hadn’t been home for months.

“Didn’t you know?” he said, as if it was impossible for me not to.

“No. What was it about?”

He didn’t answer for a while.

“I think she was worried about everything,” he said vaguely. “You know how Vivi always worries about everything,” but I had no idea what sort of everything he meant.

Just then the phone rang. There was silence when I answered it and I knew it was her. “Vivi?” I asked. “Is that you?”

“Yes, Ginny, it’s me,” she said quietly.

I couldn’t tell if she was crying, or angry, or tired, or all of them, but I knew she wasn’t herself. “Are you okay?” I asked, wishing I hadn’t as soon as it was said.

For a while she didn’t answer. “Oh, wonderful,” she said sarcastically. “Is Arthur there?”

“Are you angry with me?” I said.

“Not especially.” She sighed. “I’m angry with everyone and everything.”

Well, that didn’t make any sense to me, and such a broad sphere of anger doesn’t naturally offer a starting point to help, so I didn’t try. I decided, as always, to come back to the practical issues. “When shall we have her funeral?”

“We’re having it next Friday,” she stated. “I’ve already arranged it with the rector.”

“And Clive? Does he know?”

“I have no idea, darling,” she said.

“I’ve just seen him,” I said. “He says to tell you he loves you—”

Vivi butted in. “I’d like to speak to Arthur, please. Has he arrived yet?”

I handed the phone to him and went into the back pantry to find some eggs to make a cake for tea. When I came back Arthur was staring disconsolately out the kitchen window at the gloomy day beyond, the phone call over. I was surprised how glad I was that he had come. I was usually happy with my own company—I’m extremely self-sufficient—but I was so much happier now that Arthur was there. I didn’t want him to leave. I studied his back for a moment, his thickly knitted navy polo-neck, the black curls at the back of his head, slightly bowed shoulders, and I thought how wonderful and thoughtful and interesting he was, and how comfortable and easy I felt with him. I cracked an egg against the side of the mixing bowl and he swung round, surprised that I was back in the room. I smiled into the bowl and imagined the baby growing inside me—our baby—and, I’m ashamed to admit, allowed myself to fall into a daydream that Arthur and I were married and we lived here with a houseful of children, as it had been when the evacuees were staying all that time ago.

I pulled myself out of it quickly. “How was she?” I asked.

“She and Clive have completely fallen out,” he said, glancing at me and widening his eyes.

That must have been why Clive was worried about her, I thought. My family was disintegrating before my eyes, despite my efforts to keep it together. I cracked three more eggs, one by one, against the side of the bowl. “It’s not the time to fall out, for goodness’ sake, not when Maud’s just died. She would have hated it. It’ll be something ridiculous. Was it about the will?” I asked.

“I don’t know, she won’t tell me, but she’s consumed by anger. I’ve never seen her like this before. She’s turned into a raging bull,” he said, clearly exasperated. “And I don’t know how to calm her down,” he added, staring out of the window onto the drive.

“Oh, Lord. She must be unhappy about something in the will or in Clive’s handing over the estate to us,” I reasoned, “but she ought to just tell me and then we might be able to sort it out, talk it through. I can’t be expected to guess what’s got to her. I’ve never been able to and she knows that better than anyone.”