The Sisters: Part 10

They crossed the garden and spoke brightly of ordinary, humdrum things: flavours of soup and favourite flowers. The downpour had conjured layer upon layer fragrance: the damp mineral smell of the earth, the freshness of green leaves and the honeyed sweetness of petals. The air was thick with the loveliness of summer. Yet the women approached at the house with an unspoken dread, as an unexploded bomb was contained within. 

‘I’ll just go and check on Rose,’ Betty said as they entered the house. She slowly climbed the wide curving staircase decorated with Dina’s paintings of flowers. Evening was gathering now with a decadent drowsiness and the light inside the house was as golden as an October apple. Rose had taken the blue room, a double bedroom overlooking the driveway and its sentinel of oak trees. Betty tapped on the door gently and was rewarded with a weak, ‘Come in.’ 

As she entered the room, memories swooped again through her mind like the swifts which twirled and shrieked above colliery roofs on summer evenings. Rose was lying curled on the bed with her back to the door, just as she had been that October night all those years before. She was looking out of the window, her head resting on her hands. She turned to see who had entered the room.

‘When I see this driveway, it brings to mind horses and carriages and balls and fine ladies and gentlemen, don’t you think, Betty?’ 

‘Oh, I don’t know Rose, it makes me think what a fuss it must be to keep the weeds down. Tarmac would be easier.’ 

Betty longed to sit on the bed next to her sister-in-law, to lie on the bed and tuck herself into Rose’s body like a blanket round a child. But, of course, that was impossible. Instead she sat in a high-backed chair next to the sash window and crossed her legs demurely at the ankles, like a lady in waiting attending a queen.

‘How are you now Rose? Do you feel rested after your nap?’

‘I’m fine, Betty. Why wouldn’t I be? What time is it anyway?’ Rose looked at her dainty wrist only to discover she had removed her watch.

‘Coming up to seven o’clock. You have slept through the most violent thunderstorm. Did it not wake you?’

Rose sat up on the bed and stretched. Although her youth had long passed, she still moved with the grace and prowess of a dancer. Betty couldn’t get up or down without an involuntary groan. Napoleon had been the same - just before he had been put to sleep - she remembered grimly. 

‘I think I heard thunder in my sleep. I was dreaming of Twelfth Street though.’ Rose replied. There was something awkward and premeditated in the way she mentioned her former home, Betty thought. 

‘Rose, you weren’t upset by what Dina said, were you. It seemed like you were. You left so suddenly.’ 

‘Why on earth would I be upset? Just because we don’t see eye to eye about her staying in this big old house? That’s silly, Betty,’ 

Betty did not find Rose’s expression of wide-eyed innocence at all convincing. She met and held her sister-in-law’s cool amethyst gaze. This directness seemed to disquiet Rose. She looked away and began to make an ostentatious performance of searching for her shoes. Finding them under the bed, she slipped them onto her feet. Betty marvelled that anyone Rose’s age would bother with high-heeled shoes in unyielding patent leather. She herself would not have tolerated such torture, even her youthful courting days. This reflection elicited another memory for Betty: Rose’s treasured shoes in redcurrant suede. The shoes that were cast adrift on the bedroom rug that October night. Whatever happened to them? Surely they weren’t burnt on the range too. 

And then it came: swiftly and dreadfully, the veiled dark memory Betty had been struggling to discern. It was early summer, the summer after Rose’s attack. Betty had been shopping in Thompson’s greengrocers and had been thrilled to find the first cherries of the year, black and gleaming and plump with juice. She bought a bag for herself, but just before she left the shop, hurried back to buy a bag for Rose. Cherries were such a rare treat, available only for the shortest of times and she remembered that Rose loved them. She hoped the gift, though small, would show Rose that she was still very much in Betty’s thoughts. Feeling pleased with the gesture, she decided she must deliver then immediately. 

It was still early when she arrived at Twelfth Street. The sky was a soft blue, strewn with white gauzy clouds like pulled candyfloss. Although Betty often dreaded her visits to her mother-in-law, that morning she felt an unusual contentment and joy: her spirit soared at the shimmering sunshine and the brown paper bag of cherries she clutched like unearthed treasure. 

She knocked and entered the kitchen with a cheery, ‘Only me!’ Iris was standing in front of the range. When she heard Betty enter she sprang guiltily around like a captured robber. Her expression was one of unchecked fear. In one hand, she held a pair of sewing scissors, in the other a large piece of dark cloth. At her feet was a pile of jumbled fabric. For some reason, Betty felt uneasy. The room seemed to pulse with the air of catastrophe. Betty noticed the fabric in Iris’s hand was not dark, it was a rose-sprigged flannel sheet deeply stained with blood. The door to the range was open. The air was tainted with the smell of scorched material and the bitterness of iron. 

Iris jutted out her chin and looked challengingly at her daughter-in-law, ‘Betty?’

‘What are you doing, mam?’ Betty asked so tentatively she could barely hear her own voice. As soon as the words left her mouth, she wished she could claw them back. Iris looked annoyed at her pert impudence. ‘Rose had some women’s troubles during the night. She’s fine now. I’m just burning the sheets’

Betty looked at the sheets pooled upon the floor. They were all terribly discoloured with dark sticky blood. So much blood, Betty felt woozy when she looked at it.           

‘What are you doing here, Betty?’ Iris asked accusingly. ‘It’s early for a visit.’ 

Betty looked at the clock on the wall, it was quarter past nine. For Iris, who was usually up at six and had all her chores done by eight, it was anything but early.

‘I’m sorry mam, I just bought Rose some cherries.’ She limply held the bag of cherries for Iris to see. The sweet black juice of the fruit was beginning to seep through the paper. Betty was sickened at the sight of it. 

‘Shall I take them up? See how she is. It looks like she had a bad time of it last night.’ Betty’s eyes unwillingly drifted again to the pile of bloody rags on the kitchen floor. So much blood.

            ‘That’s very kind, Betty but I think Rose is sleeping now. I’ll take them to her later, if you don’t mind. And now, I’d better be getting on, dear.’ She had seen Betty’s appalled stare. ‘Oh, it looks worse than it is. Rose has always had problems with her monthlies, poor thing.’ 

            Betty looked into Iris’s dark, leprechaun eyes. She knew she was lying. 

             ‘But can these not be washed, Iris? I’ll do them for you, if you like. It seems a waste to burn them all. I’m sure with a good soaking they could be salvaged, even if only for dusters.’ 

            ‘No thank you, Betty. They were old anyway.’ Iris’s voice was quivering with agitation. ‘Why don’t you run along now?’ Her icy tone made clear that this was an instruction, not a suggestion.

            Once outside, Betty took deep gulping breaths of sparkling, glasslike air, pleased to be away from the ferrous smell of blood and blistered fabric. She noticed she was still clutching Rose’s bag of cherries but nothing would possess her to step back inside that kitchen, that house.

She walked back to Seventh Street with a particular phrase echoing in her mind. They were old anyway. It was the exact same phrase Rose had use to describe her burnt clothes the day after the attack. But Rose’s clothes had not been old at all. Brand-new was how Rose had described her torn blouse. A connection between the two events flared and fused in Betty’s mind, but it was one she could not begin to understand.

With time though, she managed to convince herself that Iris’s story about the sheets must have been true. It was easier that way. And then Arthur took ill with chronic emphysema, Esther’s mum was diagnosed with cancer and Iris herself had a stroke. So much illness. So much death. Betty wondered if the family was cursed. Battered by wave after seething wave of brutal tragedy, she felt constantly unbalanced. Just to remain standing seemed to be the best she could hope for. And when the surge of ill-fortune finally eased, memories of Rose’s assault and the blood-stained sheets were washed clean away.  

            ‘I’ll come downstairs in a minute or two, Betty. I just want to touch up my face. You know what I always say, a little bit of powder, a little bit of paint- Betty, what on earth is the matter? You look like you’ve seen a ghost!’ Rose’s ringing voice brought Betty back to the present.            

            Betty opened her mouth to answer but was interrupted by the shrill ring of the telephone in the hallway. She heard the kitchen door open and Dina’s hushed and gentle voice. Betty felt a sudden compulsion to get away from Rose. 

            ‘I’ll let you freshen up then. Come down when you’re ready. Dina and Esther are setting the table for tea.’ 

            She drifted like a sleepwalker out of the room and descended the stairs, passing Dina who was sitting on the bottom stair speaking quietly into the telephone.