The Sisters: the ending

In the kitchen, Esther was stirring a pan of soup on the stove. The table was set with bowls, mugs, a butter dish and teapot. 

            ‘Is Rose coming down?’ Esther asked. ‘Everything’s about ready.’

            ‘Yes, she’ll just be a moment. Can I do anything, Esther?’ Betty craved employment, busyness, purpose. If her hands were busy, maybe her mind would be soothed. 

            ‘Could you get the scones out of the oven please, Aunt Betty.’

            Betty moved mechanically, not seeing the striped oven-glove in her hand or the tray of scones she carried to the table. Pictures and remembrances were opening and unfolding in her mind, like the petals of a terrible flower: Rose’s months of unspecified illnesses following her attack, the confinement to her childhood bedroom with its curling posters and draped silk scarves, the pile of bloodstained sheets in front of an open range, the police cars racing like white wolves in the direction of Twelfth Street. Betty was beginning to understand the winding pathways of memories and coincidences they had journeyed that day were leading to one unspeakable destination. 

She placed the scones on the table and walked to the kitchen doorway to hear what Dina was saying on the telephone. Suddenly, the phone call seemed portentous. 

            ‘Duncan. Thank you for calling. Yes, yes, I’ll ask Rose to call you after we’ve had supper. . . Goodbye Duncan, goodbye.’

            Dina put the phone down and rested her head on the oak banister. Behind her in the kitchen, Betty could hear the rattle and clang of a cutlery drawer opening and Esther’s sandals slapping against the slate floor. Upstairs, in the blue room, Betty imagined Rose in front of the dressing table mirror, powdering her lovely alabaster face. Everything seemed stilled, suspended, like the moment of stasis before a tide turns. Betty spun on her heels and returned to the kitchen. The final act was about to begin. 

            ‘Well, that was Poor Duncan. He called to say he’d taken a drive down to Twelfth Street to see what was going on. Rose has trained him well in surveillance, obviously.’

            ‘Hold on a minute, Rose told me Duncan couldn’t drive because of his gout. That’s why I’m here!’ Esther spluttered. She stirred the soup furiously. 

            ‘You mean you aren’t delighted to be here?’ Dina teased.

            ‘Of course I am, Aunt Dina. It’s lovely to be here again. I just don’t like being lied to, that’s all.’

            Dina walked over to Esther, wrapped her arms around the girl’s waist and hugged her tightly. ‘I’d rather have you than Poor Duncan any day of the week,’ she said in a stage whisper. ‘That soup looks ready. Bring it over. Let’s start.’ 

            ‘What did Duncan say, Dina?’ Betty asked. Her voice was so flat and colourless, the other women stopped what they were doing to look at her. ‘What did Duncan say?’

            Dina crossed to the table and sat down, ‘Well, it is big news really. The body was found in number thirty-two. People in the street are saying it had been there some time, years even.’

            Esther had heaved the heavy pan to the table and begun ladling steaming soup into brown earthenware bowls. She stopped, ladle in mid-air. ‘Thirty-two, isn’t that the house you grew up in, Dina? Dad’s house? Rose’s?’ 

            ‘It is. It is.’ Betty answered for Dina. ‘It is.’ The dreadful pieces were beginning to fit.

            ‘Not that our family has lived there for years, decades. And it has been empty, boarded up since the pit closed anyway, I believe. So who knows what has happened in there.’ Dina continued. ‘Betty, I know it’s a shock, but there’s no need to look quite so, so – horrified.’ 

            Betty felt helpless, paralysed. It was a feeling she’d experienced before when she and Arthur had been suspended at the top of a ferris wheel. She had been terrified every second of the journey up, and would be every second of their inevitable descent. The wheel was moving now. This was the descent. Nothing could stop it.

            ‘Did Duncan say anything else?’ Esther asked.

            ‘Yes, yes he did.’ Dina buttered a scone. She spoke in a light, lilting voice as if discussing trivialities. ‘Apparently, the body was in the attic, of all places. New people were moving in and were turning the attic into a third bedroom. How can a body be in an attic and no one know? How does one get a body into an attic? It is rather perplexing. A real mystery.’ She took a bite of her scone and looked at Betty’s appalled face. ‘Oh, I am sorry, Betty. This is a gloomy conversation for the supper table. And where is Rose? Is she coming down or not?’

            A deep, resonant chime echoed from the grandfather clock in the hallway: it was seven o’clock. Dina skipped to her feet and hurried to the radio by the sink. ‘Shall we listen to the local news and see if Twelfth Street is mentioned? There might be more information. An arrest even.’ She began to frantically turn the dial, searching for the right station. Ghostly fragments of songs, voices and empty static crackled and hummed in the square kitchen. 

Betty could not endure it. She put her hands to her ears. ‘No!’ she cried out as if in agony. ‘Stop it, Dina please. Stop!’

            Dina clicked the dial off, instantly quelling the babble of the radio. All activity in the kitchen stilled. Silence descended like dusk.   

‘Betty?’ Dina turned to face her sister. ‘Betty, what on earth is wrong?’

‘I think I know. I think I know what happened and I can’t bear it,’ Betty said quietly. She was wringing her hands and looking at her sister-in-law with an unseeing stare. Dina sat back at the table. She reached out and took Betty’s hands in her own. Betty’s anguish was painful to watch.

‘Betty, you’re scaring us,’ Dina murmured. 

Esther looked from Betty and Dina. Dina was right. She was scared, she realised. Terrified of what Betty was about to say. She turned to the window to try to compose herself and noticed a sudden rushing and murmuring of green leaves. A restless wind had begun to stir. It seemed to speak to Esther. It spoke of great distances travelled, messages delivered and changes to come.

‘It’s a baby.’ Betty said simply.

‘A baby, Betty? What’s a baby?’ Dina asked, frowning. She shuffled her chair closer to her sister-in-law.

Esther squeezed her eyes, as if to shut out the inevitable blast, but she could still hear the relentless wind and Betty’s haunted voice.

‘The body in the attic is a baby.’ Betty spoke with the simplicity of a child. ‘The body in the attic of number thirty-two is Rose’s baby.’ 

The impact of the revelation was magnetic. The women were frozen, paralysed by the force of Betty’s words. They looked at each other with stunned faces, each waiting to see what would happen next, each powerless to move or speak.    

And then, the eerie stillness of the room was dreadfully and irrevocably broken. It was broken by a sound that did not seem human; it was the unearthly scream of a snared animal. Betty turned and saw Rose crouched in the doorway. Her eyes were large and vague and her crimson mouth was open in frozen agony. Dina rushed to her sister. Rose tottered forward like a marionette and fell into Dina’s arms.

Dina managed to direct Rose into a chair. She was sobbing now, her body juddering violently with each jagged breath. Fat tears rolled from her eyes leaving raw, ruddy streaks in her lovely porcelain make-up. 

‘What is she saying?’ Esther asked. ‘My God, what is she saying?’

The feral sobs were taking shape, becoming words. Terrible words. Betty wanted to press her hands over her ears to shut out the words, and yet she knew that she had to hear them and that Rose had to speak them.

‘Tiny, tiny, tiny. He was so tiny.’ Rose’s voice was breathless and broken. She held out her hands as if in supplication ‘I didn’t hold him. I didn’t touch him. He was this small.’ Her lovely white hands trembled as she demonstrated how tiny her baby was. She was gradually becoming more composed. More still. With her outstretched hands, she looked like a marble statue of mourning.

‘Rose, Rose, Rose why did you not tell us?’ Dina asked gently. 

But Rose could not hear. She was not listening. She had found her words and they needed to be spoken without interruption. 

‘He did not make a sound. Not a sound. He didn’t cry. He didn’t cry. Mam took his little body and put him in a box. A shoe box. She said there was no use looking or holding, he was gone and that was for the best. It was God’s will and that I would come to see that. I slept. Then I woke up. Mam was there watching me. It’s done, she said. It’s done. It’s over.’

Betty felt the room spin and the objects in front of her fall away vertiginously. All her life, she had been nourished by love: her parents, Arthur, the ladies at the church, Esther, even little Napoleon. She had known it, had felt it, was sure of it every single day of her life. It was as real to her as the earth beneath her feet and the sky above her head. It was the nutrient that fed her and sustained her. She saw now Rose had never known love, it had been denied. She had been nourished on shame, silence, guilt and worthlessness. And yet, she had survived; she had survived and she had endured. How extraordinary she was. Like a flower surviving in the most brutal of deserts. Betty’s heart swelled with love and compassion for her sister-in-law. How unknowable we are to each other, she thought. What a mystery this world is. 

The words had been spoken. There was nothing left to say. The silence that followed was purposeful and unexpectedly nurturing. The women sat in its gentle embrace for the longest time.

As the shadows deepened, Rose stood up and quietly walked into the garden. She stood at the top of the stone steps leading down to the lawn. Betty and Dina followed and stood on either side of her, each taking her hand. Esther sat on the steps at the women’s feet like a silent acolyte. There was a vagueness about Rose as if she was moving silently through her own hallucinatory world. Her hair was falling from its careful arrangement of pins, her clothing was dishevelled and tears had washed away her make-up. She looked like one of Shakespeare’s mad, tragic queens.

‘People will know. Everyone will know,’ she said with heartrending simplicity. In the blue twilight, her eyes looked large and dark.

Betty looked at her sister with love. The scales had shifted. They inhabited a new world. She squeezed Rose’s hand. ‘All will be well, Rose. All will be well. All will be well.’

‘You’re the bravest of all of us. You truly are. You are a miracle.’ Dina said.

The women stood on their stone stage and watched as the last light of a rosy sun sank beneath the horizon of trees and a watery black ink seeped down from above. The lonely evening star was sailing above the jagged arrow of a pine tree. Rose squeezed Betty’s hand and turned to smile at her. The sisters stood waiting for the velvet darkness to fall, wishing that moment could go on forever.