Sister: A Novel Part 13

But now I fear madness rather than look at its literary pedigree. And I realise my earlier viewpoint was that of onlooker rather than the sufferer. 'Not mad sweet heaven' - because loss of sanity, of self, generates despairing terror whatever label you want to use for it.

I came up with some excuse to leave the flat, and Todd looked disappointed. He must have thought the paintings would put an end to my 'refusal to face the truth'. I'd heard that phrase in his quiet concerned chats on the phone to mutual friends in New York, when he thought I couldn't hear; even to my boss. From his perspective, your paintings would force me to confront reality. It was there in front of me, four times, a screaming woman and a monster-man. Psychotic, frightening, h.e.l.lish pictures. What more did I need? Surely, I would now accept the fact that you committed suicide and move on. We could put things behind us. Get on with our lives. The hackneyed life-coach phrases could become reality.

Outside it was dark, the air raw with cold. Early February is not a good time to be constantly stropping off. Again, I felt in my coat pocket for the non-existent glove. If I'd been a lab rat I'd have been a pretty poor specimen at learning patterns and punishment. I wondered if slipping on the steps would be worse than gripping a snow-covered iron railing with a naked hand. I decided to grip, wincing as I held the biting cold metal.

I knew I really had no right to be angry with Todd, because if it was the other way around I'd want him to return to being the person I thought I knew too - someone sensible and level-headed, who respected authority and didn't cause unnecessary embarra.s.sment. But I think you're pleased that I argued with policemen and accosted grown men on their doorsteps and in their flats and took no notice of authority and that it's all down to you.

As I walked alone through the streets, slippery with frozen-over slush, I realised that Todd didn't really know me at all. Nor me him. Ours was a relations.h.i.+p of small talk. We'd never stayed awake long into the night hoping to find in that nocturnal physical conversation a connection of minds. We hadn't stared into each other's eyes because if eyes are the window to the soul it would be a little rude and embarra.s.sing to look in. We'd created a ring-road relations.h.i.+p, circ.u.mventing raw emotions and complex feelings, so that our central selves were strangers.

Too cold to walk any further, I returned to the flat. As I reached the top of the steps I collided with someone in the dark and jolted with fear, before realising it was Amias. I think he was equally startled to see me.

'Amias?'

'I'm so sorry. Did I give you a fright? Here . . .' He held a torch for me to see my footing. I saw that he was carrying a bag of earth.

'Thanks.'

It suddenly struck me that I was living in his flat. 'I should pay you something while we stay here.'

'Absolutely not. Anyway, Tess had already paid next month's rent.'

He must have guessed I didn't believe him. 'I asked her to pay me with her paintings,' he continued. 'Like Pica.s.so with his restaurant bills. And she'd painted ones for February and March in advance.'

I used to think you spent time with him because he was another of your waifs and strays, but he's got a rare kind of charm, hasn't he? Something masculine and upper cla.s.s, without being s.e.xist or sn.o.bbish, making me think in black and white of steam trains and trilbies and women in floral frocks.

'I'm afraid it's not the most salubrious of dwellings,' he continued. 'I did offer to modernise it but Tess said it had character.'

I felt ashamed of myself for being irritated by the lack of mod cons in the kitchen, the state of the bathroom, the draughty windows.

My eyes were further accustomed to the darkness and I could see that he had been planting up your pots outside your door, his bare hands stained with earth.

'She used to come and see me every Thursday,' continued Amias. 'Sometime just for a drink, sometimes for supper. She must have had so many other things she'd rather be doing.'

'She liked you.'

I'd realised that was true. You've always had friends, proper friends, in different generations. I'd imagined you'd do it in reverse as you got older. One day you'd be an octogenarian chatting to people decades your junior. Amias was totally at ease with my silence and with consideration seemed to sense when my train of thought had finished before speaking.

'The police didn't take a great deal of notice of me when I reported her missing. Until I told them about the nuisance phone calls. They made a big song and dance about that.'

He turned his face back to his planting and I tried to have the courtesy for him too to finish his train of thought in peace before I b.u.t.ted in.

'Did Tess tell you anything about the phone calls?'

'She just said she'd been getting vicious calls. She only told me because she said she'd unplugged her phone and was worried I might need to phone her. She used to have a mobile, but I think she lost it.'

'"Vicious"? That was the word she used?'

'Yes. At least I think so. The ghastly thing about old age is you can't rely on yourself to be accurate any more. She cried though. She tried not to, but she did.' He broke off, for just a moment, struggling to keep his composure. 'I told her she ought to go to the police.'

'Tess's psychiatrist told the police the phone calls were in her head.'

'Did he tell Tess that too?'

'Yes.'

'Poor Tessie.' I hadn't heard anyone call you that since Dad left. 'Awful not to be believed.'

'Yes.'

He turned to me. 'I heard the phone ring. I told the police but I couldn't swear that it was one of the nuisance calls. But it was immediately afterwards that Tess asked me to look after the key. It was just two day before she died.'

I could see the anguish in his face, illuminated by the orange glow of the street light.

'I should have insisted she went to the police.'

'It's not your fault.'

'Thank you, you're very kind. Like your sister.'

I wondered whether to tell the police about the key, but it would make no difference. It was just another instance of your supposed paranoia.

'A psychiatrist thinks that she was mad. Do you think that she was, after the baby, I mean?' I asked.

'No. She was very upset, and very frightened I think. But she wasn't mad.'

'The police think she was mad too.'

'And did anyone in the police ever meet her?'

He carried on planting bulbs and his old hands, the skin paper thin and misshapen by arthritis, must have been aching in the cold. I thought that this must be the way he was coping with grief: planting dead-looking bulbs that would miraculously flower in spring time. I remembered how after Leo died you and Mum seemed to spend so much time gardening. I'd only just seen the connection.

'These are King Alfreds,' said Amias. 'Her favourite variety of daffodils because they're such a strong yellow. You're meant to plant them in autumn but they come up in about six weeks, so they should have time to flower this spring.' But even I knew that you shouldn't plant things in frozen earth. For some reason thinking that Amias's bulbs would never flower made me furious.

Just in case you're wondering, yes I even suspected Amias at the start of all this. I suspected everyone. But as he planted bulbs for you any residual suspicion withered into absurdity. I'm sorry it was ever there.

He smiled at me. 'She told me that scientists have put a daffodil gene into a rice plant and made rice with vitamin A. Imagine that.'

You'd told me that too.

'The vitamin A in daffodils is what makes it yellow. Isn't that amazing, Bee?'

'Yes, I suppose it is.'

I was trying to concentrate on my design team's roughs for a new corporate logo for an oil distribution company, noting with annoyance that they'd used PMS 683, which was already used in a compet.i.tor's logo. You didn't know there was any other chatter in my head.

'Thousands of children used to go blind because of a lack of vitamin A in their diet. But now with the new rice they're going to be fine.'

For a moment I stopped thinking about the logo.

'Children are going to see, because of the yellow in a daffodil.'

I think it was the fact a colour could save sight that you found so miraculously appropriate. I smiled back at Amias and I think in that moment we both remembered you in exactly the same way: your enthusiasm for life, for its myriad possibilities, for its daily miracles.

My vision is returning to normal again, the darkness trans.m.u.ting into light. I am glad for the faulty electric light that can't be turned off and the spring suns.h.i.+ne pouring in through the overly large window. I see Mr Wright looking at me with concern.

'You're very pale.'

'I'm fine, really.'

'We're going to have to stop there. I have a meeting to get to.'

Maybe he does, but it's more likely he's being considerate.

Mr Wright knows that I am ill and I think it must be on his orders that his secretary makes sure I always have mineral water, and why he is drawing our session to an early close today. He is sensitive enough to understand that I don't want to talk about my physical problems, not yet, not till I have to.

You'd already picked up that I'm unwell, hadn't you? And you wondered why I didn't tell you more. You must have thought it ludicrous yesterday when I said a gla.s.s of wine at lunch time could make me black out. I wasn't trying to trick you, I just didn't want to admit, to myself, my body's frailties. Because I need to be strong to get through this statement. And I must get through it.

You want to know what's made me ill, I know, and I will tell you, when we get to that point in the story - the point when your story becomes mine too. Until then I will try not to think about the cause because my thoughts, cowards that they are, turn tail and flee from it.

Music blaring interrupts our one-way conversation. I am near our flat and through the un-curtained window I see Kasia dancing to her Golden Hits of the 70s CD. She spots me and appears moments later at the front door. She takes hold of my arm and doesn't even let me take my coat off before trying to make me dance too. She always does this, actually, 'Dancing very good for body.' But today, incapable of dancing, I make up an excuse then sit on the sofa and watch. As she dances, face beaming and sweating, laughing that the baby loves it, she seems so blithely unaware of the problems that she will face being an unemployed, Polish, single mother.

Upstairs, Amias is banging his foot on our ceiling in time to the music. The first time he did it I thought he was asking us to keep the noise down. But he enjoys it. He says it was so quiet before Kasia came to stay. I finally persuade a breathless Kasia to stop dancing and eat something with me.

While Kasia watches TV, I give Pudding a bowl of milk then take a watering can into your back garden, leaving the door slightly ajar so I can see. It's starting to get dark and cold, the spring suns.h.i.+ne not strong enough to heat the air for long into evening. Over the fence, I see that next door your neighbours use the same outside area to house three wheelie bins. As I water the dead plants and bare earth I wonder as usual why I'm doing this. Your wheelie-bin neighbours must think I'm absurd. I think I'm absurd. Suddenly, like a magician's slight of hand, I see tiny green shoots in the dead twigs. I feel a surge of excitement and astonishment. I open the kitchen door wide, lighting the tiny garden. All the plants that were dead have the same tiny bright green shoots growing out of them. Further away, in the grey soil are a cl.u.s.ter of dark-red leaves, a peony that will flower in all its exuberant beauty again this summer.

I finally understand your and Mum's pa.s.sion for gardening. It is seasonally miraculous. All that health and growth and new life and renewal. No wonder politicians and religions hijack green shoots and imagery of spring for themselves. This evening I too exploit the image for my own ends and allow myself to hope that death may not be final after all; that somewhere, as in Leo's beloved Narnia books, there is a heaven where the white witch is dead and the statues have life breathed back into them. Tonight it doesn't seem quite so inconceivable.

9.

Friday.

Although late, I am walking slowly to the CPS offices. There are three things that I find particularly hard in the telling of this story. I've done the first, finding your body and what's coming up is next. It sounds trivial, a bill, that's all, but its effect was devastating. As I dawdle, I hear Mum's voice telling me that it's already ten to nine, we're going to be late, come on, Beatrice. Then you whiz past on your bike, book bag looped over a handlebar, eyes exhilarated, with pedestrians smiling at you as you whirred past them, literally creating a breath of fresh air. We haven't got all day, Beatrice. But you knew that we had and were seizing it moment by moment.

I reach Mr Wright's office and, not commenting on my late arrival, he hands me a Styrofoam cup of coffee, which he must have bought from the dispenser by the lift. I am grateful for his thoughtfulness, and know that a tiny part of my reluctance to tell him the next episode in the story is because I don't want him to think badly of me.

Todd and I sat at your Formica table, a pile of your post in front of us. I found the task of sorting out your admin oddly soothing. I've always made lists and your pile of post represented an easily achievable line of ticks. We started with the red urgent reminders, then worked our way down to the less urgent bills. Like me, Todd is adept at the bureaucracy of life and, as we worked companionably together, I felt connected to him for the first time since he'd arrived in London. I remembered why we were together and how the small everyday things formed a bridge between us. It was a quotidian relations.h.i.+p based on practical details rather than pa.s.sion but I still valued its small-scale connections. Todd went to talk to Amias about the 'tenancy agreement' despite me saying that I doubted there was such a thing. He pointed out, sensibly I thought, that we wouldn't know unless we asked him.

The door closed behind him and I opened the next bill. I was feeling the most relaxed since you'd died. I could almost imagine making a cup of coffee as I worked, switching on Radio 4. I had a flicker of normality and in that brief moment could envisage a time without bereavement.

'I got out my credit card to pay her phone bill. Since she'd lost her mobile, I'd paid the landline one every month. It was my birthday present to her and she said it was too generous, but it was for my benefit too.'

I told you I wanted to make sure that you could phone me, and talk to me as long as you wanted to, without worrying about the bill. What I didn't tell you is that I needed to make sure that if I wanted to ring you, your phone wouldn't have been disconnected.

'This bill was larger than previous months. It was itemised so I decided to check it.' My words are slower, dawdling. 'I saw that she'd phoned my mobile on the twenty-first of January. The call was at one p.m. her time, eight a.m. New York time, so I would have been in the subway getting to work. I don't know why there was even a few seconds connection.' I must do this all in one go, no pausing, or I won't be able to start again. 'It was the day she had Xavier. She must have phoned me when she went into labour.'

I break off for just a moment, not looking at Mr Wright's face, then continue, 'Her next call to me was at nine p.m. her time four p.m. New York time.'

'Eight hours later. Why do you think there was such a long gap?'

'She didn't have a mobile, so once she left her flat to go to the hospital it would have been hard for her to ring me. Besides, it wouldn't have been urgent. I mean, I wouldn't have had time to get to her and be with her for the birth.'

My voice becomes so quiet that Mr Wright has to bend towards me to hear.

'The second call must have been when she got home from the hospital. She was ringing me to tell me about Xavier. The call lasted twelve minutes and twenty seconds.'

'What did she say?' he asks.

My mouth is suddenly dry. I don't have the saliva needed to talk. I take a sip of cold coffee, but my mouth still feels parched.

'I didn't talk to her.'

'You were probably out of the office, darling. Or stuck in a meeting,' said Todd. He'd come back from Amias's full of incredulity about you paying your rent in paintings to find me sobbing.

'No, I was there.'

I'd got back to my office from a longer than expected briefing to the design department. I vaguely remembered Trish saying that you were holding for me and my boss wanted to see me. I asked her to tell you I'd call you back. I think I made a note on a Post-it and stuck it on my computer as I left. Maybe that's why I forgot, because I'd written it down and didn't need to hold it my head. But there are no excuses. None at all.

'I didn't take her call and I forgot to phone her back.' My voice sounded small with shame.

'The baby was three weeks early, you couldn't possibly have foreseen that.'

But I should have foreseen that.

'And the twenty-first of January, that was the day you were given your promotion,' Todd continued. 'So of course you had your mind on other things.' He sounded almost jocular. He had single-handedly found me an excuse.

'How could I have forgotten?'

'She didn't say it was important. She didn't even leave you a message.'

Exonerating me meant putting the responsibility onto you.

'She shouldn't have had to say it was important. And what message could she have left with a secretary? That her baby was dead?'

I'd snapped at him, trying to s.h.i.+ft a little guilt his way. But of course the guilt is mine alone, not for sharing.

'Then you went to Maine?' asks Mr Wright.

'Yes, a last-minute thing, just for a few days. And her baby wasn't due for three weeks.' I despise myself for this pathetic attempt to save face. 'Her bill showed that the day before she died and the morning of her death she phoned my office and apartment fifteen times.'

I saw the column of numbers, all mine, and each was an abandonment of you, indicting me over and over and over.

'Her calls to my apartment lasted for a few seconds.'