The Half Sister. Catherine Chanter

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СКАЧАТЬ to this nighttime dash down the deserted dual carriageway. The whole thing is like a book or a film, and Edmund permits himself the same range of arm’s length emotions as he might feel in the cinema – suspense, fear, impending catastrophe – but not really buying into the story at all. Around him, lights form patterns, elegantly lining the banks of the Thames, swarming in clusters around the edges of the parks, and beside him now, the harsh spotlights of the prison. Funny to think that Valerie’s boyfriend is locked up behind walls as tall as these. What did Diana tell him, that the man was banged up for assaulting a policeman or something like that? He’s inside and I’m out here free as a bird. Truth be told, he is a bundle of nerves. The prison disappears from view; Edmund has known his fair share of white-collar criminals, none of them convicted of anything.

      On his journey, there is no evidence of a disaster. The uniform rows of unlit houses, the brake lights on the motorway, the snouts of the woods nibbling at the suburbs, all is as it should be, and Edmund wonders if he’s overreacted, if in fact everyone’s overreacted. The environment agency and the media are always making mountains out of molehills, red weather alerts for a bit of drizzle, flood alerts for the odd puddle or two. In one of the villages about eight miles from home, a policeman flags him to slow down and he overtakes a fire engine, notices the fluorescent yellow jackets and the acrid smell of smoke seeping into the car, but statistically there could be a fire any night of the year; it doesn’t mean anything. Nevertheless, Edmund takes risks on the narrow country road, holding the bends tight and fast, and he makes it to the village in under an hour and a half from the flat, arrives at the lodge, through the gates, up the drive and he is home. As he gets out of the car, he hears the tentative dawn chorus lifting the garden.

      Through the flat grey light, which distorts perspective and which you only ever get just before sunrise, Diana is coming down the drive towards him, disordered, lumbering like a crazy woman in a Barbour over a nightdress and someone else’s wellington boots and then she is close up and with him, tying him in a tight knot. The only reason he is not overwhelmed with tears of relief at still having Diana is because he has not allowed himself to feel the fear of losing her. It is when he spots Monty bounding towards him that his eyes smart, he releases his wife and falls to his knees.

      ‘There you are, you old scoundrel, what would I have done without you?’ His smile acknowledges what is written on Diana’s face. ‘And you, Di. I was so worried about you too.’

      As they round the corner from the garages, he sees Wynhope as it exists in his mind, as it was for his father and the generations before him; the immaculate lawn mown once already this year in perfect concentric circles around the lily pond, and his friend, the bronze boy, two rabbits running from the flowerbed which lines the orchard wall, the front door open, welcoming him home. Then he registers the house as it is. He brings the two together, holding up separate postcards of the same place, before and after the war, or something like that.

      ‘I thought they said on the news it was just a tremor. What’s happened? How did it happen?’ But then his questions are overtaken with laughter, a sort of inarticulate hysteria. ‘I’m sorry, I can’t stop,’ and they come again, unstoppable soundless cramps from deep within him. ‘I can’t believe the tower’s finally gone. This is what’s meant by an act of God.’ He wipes his eyes, red from dust and crying. ‘God just comes along and does what I never dared do.’

      Diana doesn’t understand, he can see that, but it is too hard to explain. He tries to pull himself together. ‘All these years, my father and that bloody tower. God knows how much I’ve hated it and, oh, I don’t know, all the talk and plans about pulling it down which never materialised because I never quite had the guts, and now – look at it – just sky. Nothing but sky.’ Somewhere in that heap is his sampler, which he has been able to recite off by heart since he was a boy. ‘Rase it, rase it,’ he quotes to Diana, ‘even to the foundation thereof. Little Edith was a prophet after all.’

      Too late he realises how insensitive he is being; of course Diana is going to be devastated by the collapse of the tower, not to mention the fact that this has pretty much buried the pool, literally and metaphorically. He is sorry, she must be so disappointed, having spent all that time and effort decorating the place, putting her very own mark on Wynhope, that’s what she said, but he’ll find her another little project, he promises, and if he’s honest, he could never really have fallen in love with the tower, however spectacular the curtains. It was always going to take something more fundamental than a new coat of paint to put it right. The sun is rising directly behind the ruin, rays of light colour the drifting dust, and he is struck by its beauty, a Turner watercolour, Wordsworth’s Tintern Abbey, a place where the past is no longer a series of impenetrable walls and locked doors, but a softer world, a portal to a different sort of future.

      He feels a little shaky himself. ‘It’s quite ethereal in its own way, isn’t it?’

      Diana is no longer listening, she is stumbling away from him towards the coach house.

      ‘We went to my mother’s funeral,’ she hisses as she shakes herself free from him, ‘or have you forgotten?’

      ‘I haven’t forgotten, everything got so topsy-turvy. I just forgot they were staying, that’s all. I’m sorry. Where are they?’

      ‘They aren’t anywhere. The boy is in the flat. And Valerie, my half-sister in case you’ve forgotten, was sleeping in there.’ Diana flicks her head towards what is left of the tower.

      An eye for an eye. He might have known the tower would not give up that easily, and the house standing there smirking with its hands on hips. How angry he is with Diana, that she wanted a pool, because it must be something to do with the pool, that she has been here and allowed this to happen, and above all, that there is a boy, another boy with a body in the tower and a future to be faced all alone. John comes out from the flat to meet him. Edmund feels keenly his white-collared impotence as his handyman talks about tractors and ropes and heavy lifting gear. In the end, though, it is clear that any rescue attempt would not only be futile, but dangerous, and nothing can really be done until the emergency services arrive. As Edmund steels himself to go into the coach house, he acknowledges to himself that he’d rather be tearing at stones than talking to orphans and that both were probably equally ineffective.

      Now he hates me. Diana feels it like the moment the wind gets up from the beach and smashes the glasses on the terrace and the summer holiday is over. Maybe he’ll always hate me for this moment. He married me because what I brought was order, agreement, no history, no future. And now it’s all about the dead, again. Off he goes, running after the boy. That’s what it will be like, everyone worried about the child as if childhood itself is a reason. The boy will talk, no one will understand her part, no one will worry about the fact that she has lost a mother and a sister in the space of a week, but then perhaps she can tell them everything and she means everything. She can say let me start at the beginning, let me tell you the whole story. Studying the scene from the doorway, Diana makes out a still life in a dim light of a darker sort than those museum paintings: Mr and Mrs H peering out of the window waiting for the emergency services, where are they, what’s taking so long, Michael and the dog both hiding under the table, and great big scribbles in blue biro all along the bottom of the white sofa where the boy is continuing to graffiti his unintelligible message, scarring himself and his story into the fixtures and fittings, even as Edmund, perched on the armchair, is talking to him. He’s apologising, as usual. Sorry, so sorry, so bloody upper-class. Down on his hands and knees now, we’ll do everything we can for Mummy, promises promises. He isn’t getting much response, reaching into the child’s hiding place as one might coax a cat from a drain.

      Having little success, he gets to his feet and joins her.

      ‘It was pretty bad for me too, Ed,’ she says.

      ‘I don’t know what to say to him.’

      ‘What СКАЧАТЬ