I slammed up the sash and leaned out. The air was cold and tasteless, like water. It was all I wanted. Sweat had come out on my forehead and I shivered as it dried.
‘Are you all right?’ asked Rob. ‘You look awful.’
‘I’ll be all right in a minute.’
There was a thick, hazy thudding in my head. I folded up and sat on the floor by the window, leaning my cheek against the wall. Cold air washed deliciously around my head.
‘I’ll ring for Kate,’ said Rob’s voice through the clamour in my head.
‘No, don’t.’
I was coming back to myself. I felt him watching me.
‘It’s all right now,’ I said. ‘I’ll get up in a minute.’
‘You’ve spent too long in this fug with me,’ said Rob, ‘and aren’t you eating? You don’t look right.’
I thought back. ‘I did eat something this morning. Porridge.’
‘It’s four o’clock, Cath. Here. Have some of these grapes of Livvy’s.’
‘No, I’ll get some tea in a minute.’ I got up carefully and crossed the floor to Rob’s bed. He took my wrist in his hand.
‘You’re cold. You aren’t well. Stand up a minute, Cathy.’
I stood up.
‘Pull your dress tight round you. There, I thought so. You’ve got thin.’
‘Thin? Of course I’m not.’ I’d never been thin.
‘Have you looked at yourself in the glass lately?’
No. For the past two weeks I’d been scrambling my clothes on and off by candlelight. If my face looked different, I thought, it was from tiredness.
‘I ought to have seen it before,’ he said.
‘I’m all right,’ I said. If I wasn’t careful I was going to cry. Now he told me, I could feel my own weakness. I couldn’t even begin to want to eat.
‘Go on,’ he said, ‘have a grape. Open your mouth.’
He held the purple grape against my lips, but I shut them tight.
‘I don’t like them.’
‘You do. You like grapes. And they’re such good ones. Open your mouth.’ I shook my head, but he rubbed the grape against my lips, first gently, then harder, until the skin of the grape burst and I felt the wet, sticky juice sliding down my chin.
‘You’ve got to eat it. I’ll make you.’
I was sealed against him, like a cell closed with wax.
‘It’s running down your dress. I shan’t stop.’ He held the bunch of fat, bloomy grapes in front of my eyes. I closed my eyes and felt thick, burning tears gather behind them. But I wouldn’t cry and I wouldn’t open my mouth.
‘Cath. Cathy. Cathy darling, what’s the matter? Are you ill?’
I twisted sideways, pulled my wrist out of his grip and stood back from the bed.
‘I don’t want to eat her grapes. And don’t call me Cathy darling. What if someone hears? What’ll they think?’
‘They won’t think anything,’ he said. ‘You’re my sister. That’s how I think of you.’ He said it simply, as if it were the truth.
‘We’ve still got her to think of. Miss Gallagher.’
‘Oh, she’s forgotten the whole thing already,’ he said easily.
‘You can’t possibly believe that.’
‘As soon as I’m back on my feet I’ll deal with her.’
He would be back on his feet any day now. He’d be as strong as ever in a week or two, with only the pale chip of a scar under his hairline.
‘I feel like John the Baptist,’ I said.
‘What?’
‘He must increase, and I must decline.’
‘Rubbish. You must eat. Then you’ll increase, too.’
But I knew that the engine of sickness in me was like a fire, banked down so as to spring up stronger the next day. I felt it, but I didn’t understand it. I’d always been at home in my own body and now there seemed to be no room for me in it. It had been taken over by something more powerful than I was, with a mind of its own. My sickness swept back over me and I shut my eyes.
‘I want Kate,’ I said. The meagreness of my voice in my own ears frightened me. I was shrinking everywhere, dwindling until I could not find myself. Soon there would be nothing left. Through the turbulence in my head I heard Rob ring the bell, once and then again and again, more urgently.
Fifteen
The room was dark and quiet. Kate had gone. I was sleeping in Rob’s bed.
‘It’s happening at last,’ I thought, ‘we’re turning into one another.’
His bed smelled different from mine. The sheets were slightly dirty, and smooth. Kate had not bothered to change the bed since Rob had had his fall. There were his heap of pennies and his little tin of lead shot on the bedside table. I was alone for almost the first time in two weeks.
I lay and looked down my body. He was right, I’d become thin. I needed looking after. My legs were long and white and useless looking, and my hipbones jutted. But my stomach was still soft and round, and my breasts were even bigger than they had been. Blue veins wriggled across them. I wondered what Rob would think of them when he touched them. I touched them. They felt hot and taut. My heart was beating fast as if I’d been running, but I’d been lying still for hours. Kate said I was to stay in bed for the rest of the day and she’d bring me a glass of port with an egg beaten into it. I couldn’t eat it, I said, it was disgusting to think of strands of egg floating in dark red wine. All right then, she would bring me the port on its own.
‘A glass of port is good for you. It builds up your blood.’
My blood needed building. It needed to be thickened and slowed. It was running too quickly around me and burning me up. At night when I wanted to sleep I was kept awake by the bumping of my heart.
Say you’ll believe, O say you’ll be true
to a heart which beats only for you.
That was love. It was what everyone wanted. But I didn’t want the beating of my heart inside me, like an animal padding up and down, up and down. I lay awake staring into the hours between midnight and morning, and when the morning came I was too tired to eat. Even the smell of Rob’s coffee nauseated me.
Kate came in with the glass in her hand.
‘Shall I light the lamp?’
‘No. My head aches. I only want a candle.’
She put it on Rob’s bedside table, and the glass of port next to it so that a thin red rim shone around the dark liquid. It looked exactly like blood.
‘Mind and drink it,’ said Kate. ‘Oh, and she’s here. Euniss. She wants to come up and see you.’
‘Tell her no. Tell her I’m ill.’
‘I told her that but she’s still here waiting. She’s been talking to your grandfather, telling him you need looking after. She’ll be digging your grave for you if you aren’t careful.’
I had a brief vision of Miss Gallagher spading clods of earth out of a raw clay grave. The earth was as greasy as her mackintosh, and the sky so wet it squeaked. Talking to your grandfather. ‘Did you hear what she said?’
‘Why would I want to listen to her?’
‘But did you?’
‘It was only the usual old nonsense. Lie down now. You won’t get well if you don’t rest, and I can’t have the both of you on my hands.’
‘Help me drink the port. I get dizzy when I sit up,’ I said, to keep her there. As long as Kate was with me Miss Gallagher could say nothing, even if she came in, and I didn’t think she would unless I was alone.
‘Let’s get you up then. Dig in with your heels and push yourself up the bed. That’s it. I’ve got you.’
I felt her strong hand knuckling my back. She wedged me in with pillows until I was half-sitting and then lifted the glass of port. But as the smell of it came close to me my lips puckered with nausea.
‘Take it away. I can’t drink it.’
‘Course you can drink it.’ But she didn’t insist. Kate had the kind of tact in her body that would never let her force anything on anyone. Already she had put the glass down on the table.
br /> ‘What’s the matter with you? Tell me now.’
‘It makes me feel sick. Everything makes me feel sick.’
She sat back, rimmed by the candle. I couldn’t see her face. Then there was her voice with a laugh in it. ‘If it was another girl and not you I’d be worried by now.’
‘What?’
‘Sick. Dizzy. Thin as a stick except for those big buzzies. There could be a bad reason for all of it.’
Her meaning struck me and I almost laughed back. Then it hit me again. She was still talking.
‘But I can’t have the pair of you taking to your beds, and me running between you. Should we put you in the one bedroom the way we used to do?’
I stretched my face into a smile. ‘No need for that. I’ll be better by tomorrow. I’m not really ill.’
‘Oh God, and here’s Euniss coming. Lie down, shut your eyes and I’ll get rid of her for you.’ We listened to the flat slap of Miss Gallagher’s footsteps. I slitted my eyes and saw her poke her head around the door. There was a frill of light round her big shape.
‘Only me!’ she trilled. ‘How’s our invalid?’
‘She’s asleep,’ said Kate.
‘Is that so? And I could have sworn I heard voices as I came along the corridor. Never mind. I’ll sit with her for a bit, Kate, and you can go and attend to Robert.’
‘She’s best left quiet, after going off like that.’
‘Of course. Quiet company, that’s what she needs. She’s been too much with her brother. It isn’t good for her.’
‘What could be better for anyone than their own flesh and blood? Though of course you’ve no family yourself.’
‘Allow me to know best, Kate. I think I may claim to understand Catherine.’
It was hopeless. I opened my eyes as if waking. ‘It’s all right, Kate. She can stay.’
‘And who’s she, I should like to know,’ bridled Miss Gallagher automatically, plumping herself down in the chair where Kate had been. Her buttocks spread out sideways, straining against their harness of scratchy cloth. Her scarab pin winked at me, and the candle flame blew sideways, elongated itself then shrank down. She was here and there was no getting away from her. But it was time. I’d been tensed, waiting for this.
‘It seems so long since we’ve had a chat,’ said Miss Gallagher, ‘just the two of us. It’s quite cosy with the candle, isn’t it? Of course, you’ve been very taken up with him, haven’t you? Robert. Since he had that nasty fall. But it’s the horse I feel sorry for. Why should a dumb beast suffer? Not that I expect you to see it as I do, Catherine.’
‘No,’ I said. ‘What do you want?’
‘Good gracious, as if I ever wanted anything. My wants are very few, Catherine. I’ve just come to keep you company.’
Most of her face was in shadow but I saw the shine of her teeth. She kept them spotlessly clean, she told me. Ten minutes’ brushing, morning and evening. They had never been white, she’d told me: yellow was the natural, healthy colour of the enamel. Her lips were parted over something like a smile, but behind it there was the hungry acreage of her face, sucking at me.
‘You know what I mean,’ I said. ‘I haven’t forgotten, if you have. What do you want now?’
‘What nonsense you talk, Catherine. But of course you’re not well.’
‘Why is it nonsense? It wasn’t nonsense before.’
I stared at her. Oddly it made me bolder to be lying down and helpless. I could outface her with my illness. She made a sudden, awkward dab at the bedclothes over my legs, and gave me a pat on my knee like one you’d give to a dog with an uncertain temper.
‘We’ve always been good friends, Catherine, haven’t we? Why, when you were a little girl you wouldn’t let me go home without saying good night to you in bed.’
I couldn’t remember. It might have happened once.
‘My Miss Gaily, you used to call me.’ Her voice dripped a fond treacle. ‘You were such a dear little sprite, Catherine.’ I watched her hands crisping as if they held a small paper doll called Catherine. For a little while it would dance its papery dance, then those hands that made it would tear it to pieces. ‘Of course you were a motherless child,’ she went on, ‘that made us closer. A boy hasn’t got the same feelings. I never heard Robert mention your mother’s name from the day she went. Not from that day to this.’
‘Don’t talk about Rob like that,’ I said. My power was swelling. I was going to meet her head-on. We were going to fight again and this time I was going to win. She was not going to hang over my life breathing her threats like sugar.
‘Very well,’ she said, ‘the less said about him the better. To anyone. Don’t you agree, Catherine?’
‘I do,’ I said.
‘When you’re well, you’ll see things more clearly. We can have such happy times.’
‘Happy times,’ I said. ‘I’ll take you for a walk when I’m better. We’ll go in the woods and I’ll show you my secret places. The weather will change soon and it’ll be spring. I know a clearing where there’s a bank of wood anemones, just where the sun strikes down. There’s a fallen tree and they grow beside it. They flower each year but no one else sees them. You know what they look like, don’t you? White and tender, with tiny mauve veins in them when you look close. People call them windflowers because they’re never still. Even when we can’t feel the breeze the flowers are moving to it. The leaves aren’t so pretty, though. I always think they’re like claws if you look close. I’ll take you there.’
‘Oh,’ she said. ‘Oh, Catherine. I’d never hurt you. You know that, don’t you?’
‘Because you love me,’ I said.
‘Yes.’
I shut my eyes again. ‘I’m very tired. My head aches so.’ I knew she would go now. I did not have to open my eyes to see her timid, joyous face as she tiptoed towards the door. I’d silenced her for a while. Long enough for me to think about what I had to do next.
Suddenly I was putting on weight again. I could eat like a wolf. I woke hungry in the mornings, longing for eggs with dark yellow yolks which spurted when I dug in my spoon, new bread and salted butter. I poured cream on to my porridge and drizzled golden syrup over it. I ate all this and then I was still hungry for crisp, slightly burnt slices of toast with Gentleman’s Relish. I dug my knife deep into the paste, already tasting the smokiness of anchovies. I came down to breakfast early and sat over it late, drinking fresh tea, shutting my eyes and basking in the pale flood of winter light through the windows.
‘Good girl. You’re looking better,’ said my grandfather one morning as he passed me in the hall, but he didn’t touch me.
Rob could walk again. I lay in bed each night waiting for his slightly irregular footfall. The first night he came again he hurt me when he lay on top of me and drove into me. My breasts were tender and all I wanted was for us to lie still and close. He knew it straight away. I never had to explain things to Rob. There were other things I could do for him. He showed me and I showed him. It never mattered who knew first how to touch and where to touch.
In the middle of the night I was always hungry. He crept downstairs to the kitchen and brought back a wedge of cold apple pie or a rice pudding. I broke its stretchy skin with my tongue and lapped up the delicious cold creaminess of it. It was cool because it had been kept on a marble slab in the larder.
‘You’ll get fat,’ said Rob. ‘Look, you’re getting fat already. We needn’t have worried about you. Did you know Miss Gallagher told Grandfather she thought you had consumption? Of course he didn’t take a blind bit of notice. What a perfect fool that woman is.’
‘I feel better than I’ve ever felt in my life,’ I said. ‘I like being fat. And I don’t feel sick all the time any more.’
‘That was just nerves. It was her fault: I believe she really frightened you.’
‘She won’t give us any more trouble.’
‘No, she’s eating out of your hand these days, isn’t she? I’ve noticed. What have you done to her?’ r />
‘Oh nothing. She’s rather pathetic, really. Anyway she isn’t important.’
‘You’ll need to be letting that skirt out,’ said Kate. ‘Look at the way the darts are pulling. It’ll ruin the cloth.’
‘It’s all the food you’ve made me eat. I’m getting fat.’
‘Yes,’ she said. I was standing in the window, against the light. I looked down at the white points around the stitching of my skirt, where the cloth strained away from it. The seams creaked as I moved.
‘Turn sideways,’ said Kate, and I turned.
‘Jesus,’ she said. ‘How long is it since you’ve had your visitor, Catherine?’
I had to think. I never liked to think about it since it first came and made me different from Rob for ever. It had stopped because I was thin.
‘Not long,’ I said.
‘Are you sure now?’
‘I’m perfectly well, Kate. Look at me!’ I spread out my arms and felt the cloth tighten around my waist. She was right, it ought to be let out.
‘Catherine, do you know how you look now? But no, of course it couldn’t be.’ I had never known Kate hesitate in anything she wanted to say. It irritated me. Why was she looking at me like that?
‘What, Kate?’
‘It couldn’t be that you were going to have a child,’ she said in a rush. Her colour was high and fierce, the way it was when she was angry, but this wasn’t anger.
‘Going to have a child? Oh no. It couldn’t be that. He made sure of it,’ I said, the words falling out of me like eggs. She stared at me.
‘What did you say?’
‘What did I say? Of course I’m not going to have a child. I can’t. It might be a monster.’
She took hold of the top of my arms and shook me. ‘You’re not well yet, you don’t know what you’re saying. Have you been going over there, Catherine?’
I saw what she was thinking of. It was as clear as if it were written, like the sky explaining things to me.
‘You mean to Ash Court?’
‘Yes.’
I just looked at her and saw her believing it. Why had I said that about monsters? But she wouldn’t guess, because that was too bad to be true. Kate was on her own trail and it led to Mr Bullivant.