Eliza
The doorbell rang the evening after my return from Sweden. I was sitting at the kitchen table working on a Staffordshire piece of Little Red Riding Hood and the Wolf that some misguided interior designer had made into a lamp. I was at a critical point of my work. It was the turn of the Wolf’s grin to be retouched. The painter’s vision appeared to have been of a wolf who grinned sheepishly. Not my take on the story, but I had no right to interfere with the creator’s vision, so I would make sure it remained sheepish. I decided to ignore whoever it was. The bell rang a second time and for longer. Reluctantly I got to my feet and ran down the stairs. I looked through the peephole. It was Ruth. Ruth is my stepsister, my mother having married her father, Claude, the summer after I left school. Ruth, her husband Robert and their daughter Lottie, had remained safely on the other side of the world until six months ago when they had moved, rather suddenly, to London. My mother had muttered something about ‘a fresh start’, adding that her lips were sealed. She had gone on to say that it would be nice if I introduced my stepsister to some of my friends. After a pause she had added, ‘Well, to Beatrice.’
‘I have other friends.’
‘Of course you do,’ my mother had said.
‘Eliza, is that you?’ Ruth called through the door.
With a sigh I hoped she had not heard I unlocked the door. We touched cheeks. I realised I had paint on my fingers so I wiped my hands on the back of my dress.
‘Oh I’m sorry.’ She looked me up and down. ‘Should I have phoned first?’
‘No no, this is fine.’ I stood by to let her through, as it appeared there was no polite way of stopping her.
She followed me up the stairs to the little landing. Looking around her she said, ‘So this is where you live.’
‘But you’ve been here before, haven’t you?’
‘No. Never. I told Olivia I understood if you were feeling a bit embarrassed. I’ve seen pictures of that lovely mews house you and Gabriel used to live in when you were still together.’ She glanced around her at the narrow hall, which was painted in a ‘neutral’ colour like the rest of the place because the landlord had been watching too much Property Ladder. ‘This is a bit different, isn’t it?’ She turned back to me. ‘But I told Olivia, Eliza should know by now that I’m the last person to mind that sort of thing.’
Until then it hadn’t occurred to me to be ashamed of my flat. It was perfectly comfortable and most importantly I could afford it without taking any of my ex-husband’s money.
Ruth gave a skittish little laugh. ‘Or else there’s some other reason why you haven’t wanted to invite me.’ She led the way to the kitchen. ‘At least there’s no danger of getting lost.’ She indicated the kitchen table that doubled as a workstation and at the brushes and pots of pigments and Little Red Riding Hood herself. ‘You’re working.’
‘Yup.’
‘Busy time?’
‘Absolutely. We’re preparing for the opening of the new gallery so we’re flat out. All hands to the pump, that kind of thing.’
‘Is that so,’ Ruth said and sat down.
It happened quite a lot when I was working at home, that people phoned or visited unannounced, observed I was busy only to proceed as if they had caught me reclining on the sofa watching daytime TV with a box of Turkish Delight at my side.
People before porcelain, people before porcelain, I told myself and I thought of Uncle Ian’s mopping-up operation, or search for closure as Ove the vicar had termed it. If I were to die tomorrow, did I want to go to my grave having added unkindness to a large woman with tiny feet and wistful eyes to my list of sins? I think not. So I moved my work to the far end of the kitchen table and lied with a smile, ‘It’s lovely to see you.’
‘Well, I thought when you couldn’t make our lunch . . .’
‘I’m sorry.’
‘But we saw you at our barbecue so that’s nice.’ She sat down, checking the floor before putting down her embroidered velvet bag.
‘I cleaned up all the mouse droppings this morning,’ I said.
‘You have mice?’ She snatched her bag up into her lap.
I sighed. ‘Alas no. They are completely useless around here. Pigeons come to my window, though, and help me with my chores.’
Ruth put the bag down on the floor again. ‘What are you talking about?’
‘It was a lovely party,’ I said, changing the subject back to her barbecue. I had turned up expecting family and a dinner of sausages and chicken legs on paper plates only to find at least fifty people in their garden-party best and a man in a chef’s hat roasting a pig on a spit.
‘You were so embarrassed.’ Ruth laughed uproariously. I tried and failed to laugh with her.
‘But honestly there was no need. I don’t expect you to remember my birthday. Although Olivia might have reminded you. I did feel for you, though; turning up without a present and wearing that old cardigan.’
‘It was cashmere.’
‘Whoops.’ Ruth slapped her neat little hand across her mouth.
‘What is hateful to you do not do to your fellow man.’ The Golden Rule as expressed by the great Rabbi Hillel. And it would be hateful to me to be thrown out of someone’s modest but perfectly adequate flat by the scruff of my neck without as much as an offer of a hot drink so I assembled another smile and asked, ‘Would you like some coffee?’
‘I’d prefer tea. Peppermint.’
I shook my head. ‘Sorry.’
She smiled the smile of one used to disappointment. ‘Builder’s will do.’
‘I’ve got Earl Grey.’
‘No really, builder’s is fine.’
‘Lapsang it is, then,’ I said.
Ruth sipped her tea. ‘Olivia told me your news. I wanted to make sure you were all right.’
‘What news?’
‘ “What news?” she asks. You are a funny one.’
This made me none the wiser so I waited for her to continue. Usually, with Ruth, you didn’t have to wait long.
‘She told me your godfather had got in touch. The father of . . . you know, your friend.’ She lowered her voice as if she were speaking of some fatal disease.
‘Oh. Yes. He did.’
‘Olivia said you went to see him, in Sweden. It must have been difficult for both of you. I mean, after all this time.’
‘It was fine.’
Ruth looked disappointed. ‘No awkwardness?’
‘Not really.’
Ruth had a way of being interested that invariably resulted in me being determined to give away as little as possible. It was the way she looked at you, her eyes growing even larger, her head tilted, her ears back – no, perhaps not the latter, but there was definitely a quickening of the breath. It made me think she wanted to eat me.
‘It was good to see him.’
‘Really?’
Smile still in place, I shrugged in a non-committal way.
‘Well, isn’t he marvellous. After everything that happened.’
My smile disappeared. I could have sworn I heard it clanking as it hit the floor. Ruth took my hand across the table. I resisted the impulse to snatch it back.
‘As I said, it was fine. We met. I said, “Goodness, we haven’t seen each other since I suggested to your daughter that it would be a spiffing idea to go to an ice-cold lake in the middle of the night – doesn’t time fly when one’s having fun?” Then we moved on to talk about the weather.’
‘Did you really?’
‘No. No, not really. So tell me about you. How are you? And Robert? And Lottie?’
‘I’d much rather hear about you than talk about boring old me. So he’s stopped blaming you? I always thought that was so unfair anyway. I mean, how old where you when it happened? Nine?’
‘Sixteen. We were sixteen.’
‘Oh, that old?’
I wondered if she had intended to punch me in the gut or if she had been merely clumsy. With Ruth you never knew, just as you never quite knew if the stories she told you about her life were true or fabricated. This was made all the more disconcerting because of her voice, the way she had of enunciating each word with the perky, precise diction of a 1950s BBC presenter.
‘But he’s decided to let bygones be bygones?’ She nodded vigorously. ‘That’s good. That’s really good.’ She leant back in the chair and sipped her tea. She wrinkled her nose then smiled as if she were about to go Over The Top before having another taste.
‘Tea all right?’ I asked.
‘It’s quite strong for Lapsang, isn’t it? Anyway, your godfather is obviously a very generous-spirited man.’
I looked into her eyes, searching for the answer to the question: was it possible that, whereas I just didn’t much care for Ruth, she might actively dislike me? But no answer was to be found in her polite visitor’s gaze. I offered her cake. This was a pointless thing to do because there was no cake, I realised as I searched the larder cupboard.
‘So sorry. Don’t seem to have any biscuits either. Anyway, enough about me. I mustn’t bore you with all that stuff. After all, you and I didn’t even know each other when all that . . .’ my voice trailed into nothing.
‘Bore me?’ Ruth’s cheeks coloured. She was a handsome woman in her way, with her large deep-set eyes, fresh complexion and mass of dark hair. It was the kind of looks that made you think she would have felt right at home at some old sixties festival sitting cross-legged in the grass with a guitar, singing protest songs, rather than being what she was, a put-upon wife and mother and part-time PA.
‘Bore me, you say.’ Her voice rose half an octave. ‘How could I possibly be bored? I mean, your issues have been my issues for the past twenty years. It’s not as if I’ve had any choice in the matter.’
I shot her a questioning glance.
She raised her eyebrows. ‘Take your first year at Leeds. Our parents had barely got married yet I appeared to have acquired not so much a stepsister as a goddamn case history.’
I couldn’t help laughing, then I apologised. ‘I’m sorry. It just sounded funny. Of course I know you’re being serious . . .’ my voice slunk back into my throat.
‘And it didn’t end once you’d got your degree, did it? How anyone could have that many accidents in the space of such a short time is beyond me. “I’m afraid we won’t make Lottie’s first birthday party after all. Eliza’s collided with a wall and we need to fly over right away.” ’
‘I never collided with a wall.’
‘Actually, preposterous as it may sound, you did.’
‘My car did hit a wall. You’re right. I’d forgotten about that.’
Ruth looked back at me as if she were issuing a challenge. ‘Then there was the time you gave all your savings to the Lifeboats? I’m not saying the Lifeboats aren’t a worthy cause and I’m sure it made you feel a whole lot better but the result was actually that Daddy and Olivia had to bail you out for months afterwards. We were struggling ourselves at the time, with a young family and Robert’s situation. We could have done with some help from my father and stepmother but no one thought of that. Oh no. Even when you were trying to sort yourself out, when you were at the clinic, even then everything somehow revolved around you.’ She sat back abruptly, arms folded across her chest, causing the old chair to creak in pain. ‘. . . so when you asked if your affairs bore me, well . . .’
I didn’t know what to say to her. I had had no idea that my behaviour during those years of misery and turmoil had affected my stepsister in this way. Or maybe I just hadn’t cared enough to wonder about it. Now, what I heard appalled me. I looked up at her, helplessly, not sure what I might say or do to make it better. Ruth looked back at me. She was waiting. A pound of flesh might do, but I never had had much stomach for blood. ‘I’m so sorry,’ I said finally and uselessly. ‘I didn’t mean for it to be that way. Please believe me.’
She gave a little shrug. ‘Maybe, but whether you meant for it or not that’s still the way it was.’ Her eyes narrowed. ‘ “I’m afraid we can’t have Lottie this weekend. We’re visiting Eliza in the clinic.” And “We don’t really feel like a big family Christmas with Eliza having had a setback, you do understand, don’t you?”
‘No. No, I didn’t. And I should have said so. I should have said, “No, I don’t understand why my stepsister going off the rails instead of being grateful for the opportunities afforded to her by a first-rate education at a leading UK university should impact in such a negative way on me and my family.” ’
I gave a regretful shrug. ‘At least you’re saying it now.’ I waited. I was pretty sure there was more to come. I really didn’t want to hear it. I thought of sticking my fingers in my ears and singing very loudly, but apart from being unfitting behaviour for anyone over five it would also be no more effective at shutting out painful memories than had been the years of rude drinking and gentile drug taking and night-before-the-morning-after sex.
‘You all right?’ Ruth asked.
I nodded. She was still looking at me but her expression had changed and now her eyes were shiny with excitement, like those of a child who, having dropped a slug in an anthill, was sitting back to watch what would unfold.
‘I’m fine,’ I said.
‘Good. And I’m sorry to go on but . . .’
So don’t, I wanted to cry. Really, we can just leave it at this.
‘. . . but I think it’s important that I tell you, finally, how I feel. I mean, I still don’t think you fully understand. Take my fortieth birthday. I don’t suppose you even remembered it was my fortieth? You managed to get yourself arrested. I assume you remember that. So of course your mother spent the whole evening in tears fretting about whether they should jump on the first available flight and Daddy spent the whole evening trying to comfort her. Quite the celebration that ended up being.’
It felt like being savaged by an old teddy bear, strangely painful and ultimately shocking. I tried to make excuses, at least for this last transgression. ‘I really did believe I was witnessing a mugging. I couldn’t just stand by and do nothing. The police could have been a bit more understanding. It wasn’t at all obvious that there was filming going on. There was no sign or anything and I don’t remember seeing any camera crews, so how was one meant to know?’
Ruth was shaking her head. ‘That’s all irrelevant.’
I hung my head. ‘Yes. Yes, of course it is. I do understand what you’re saying.’ I looked up at her. ‘Ruth, I’m sorry. I really am.’
‘Well, good. Because what I am trying to explain to you is that your self-destructive behaviour doesn’t only affect you.’
‘I really am so sorry,’ I said again. ‘I never realised.’
Ruth paused. Then she said, ‘No, I don’t suppose you did.’
The silence had been expertly positioned. It might not have told more than a thousand words but it certainly managed about twenty. Some of these being: but you would have, had you ever shown any real interest in me or in my family. ‘No man’s an island sufficient unto himself, Eliza.’ Ruth winced suddenly, straightened in her chair and arching her back.
‘I’m sorry. Is the chair uncomfortable?’
‘No, no, it’s fine. It’s my old disc problem. Just remember . . .’
I had been fingering the TV remote control and now I pretended to press the pause button, pausing Ruth before she could say anything else.
‘. . . that if your godfather wants to help you then you should let him. It would be one thing less for your poor mother to worry about. She worries a lot about you, you know. Especially since you refused to take any of the money you were entitled to in the divorce.’ As she spoke, Ruth was watching me the way a laid-back bird might watch a worm making its painstaking way to the surface of the soil. Now she said, ‘I haven’t upset you, have I?’
I gave her a newscaster’s smile. ‘Of course you haven’t.’
Next thing I knew she was crying. I stared at her. ‘All right, you have. I am upset. There, you can stop crying now.’
Ruth looked up at me with tear-blurred eyes. ‘What are you talking about?’
‘You. You’re upset. Because I’m not upset. But you needn’t worry. I am. I just wasn’t . . .’
‘Will you listen. I think my husband might be having an affair.’
‘Oh.’
‘You don’t seem very surprised.’
I gave a regretful shrug. It was hard to believe that anyone, Ruth included, could be truly surprised. Having affairs was what her husband did. Ruth herself had been an affair once when Robert was married to his first wife. I had thought that kind of a start to a relationship might give a person a clue as to what the future was likely to hold, but it seemed it seldom did. Then again, what did I know? Gabriel had never been unfaithful in any relationship before he cheated on me. There were some situations where being the first was not at all flattering.
‘I had rather hoped that fresh start would be for us together,’ she said.
‘That’s funny,’ I said.
Ruth looked up at me, her fine dark eyes glittering with tears. Then she grinned. For a moment I felt comfortable with her. ‘I’ll get a tissue,’ I said.
She blew her nose and tucked the tissue up the sleeve of her wine-red jersey. ‘I’m sorry. I came here to talk about your problems not whinge about my own.’
‘I don’t have any problems,’ I said. ‘And I am just pleased you wanted to talk about yours with me. It seems I owe you.’ I didn’t add that I liked hearing about other people’s troubles – as long as those people were ones I didn’t particularly like. It perked me up. Until I remembered that wasn’t very nice at all and then I got depressed again.
‘No, really. I have not the slightest evidence against my poor boy. I’m being silly, aren’t I?’ She looked up at me as if she were expecting a reply.
‘More tea?’ I asked.
She shook her head. ‘But thank you. I should be on my way. I just wanted to make sure you were all right. As I said, Olivia was worried.’
I fetched her coat and walked her to the front door. There she turned round and looked at me with a peculiar little smile. ‘I don’t know what I would do if it was happening again. And do you know, the worst of it is that I can feel people looking at me and then looking at him and thinking, “What else could she expect?” If they see me at all. Being large doesn’t stop you from being invisible, you know.’
I felt suddenly defensive of her. ‘You’re worth ten of him,’ I said.
Ruth frowned. ‘Why do you say that? Most people think Robert’s quite a catch. Maybe not compared with your Gabriel but then I don’t set my standards quite that high.’
I put my hand out and touched her arm. ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to dismiss Robert. I simply wanted you to see that you have no reason to feel grateful or inferior.’
Ruth clasped her shoulder bag to her side with her elbow and opened the front door. ‘Well, don’t be a stranger,’ she said. ‘Although now I know what you really think of Robert . . .’
I closed the door behind her, my head feeling like a snow-globe that had been given a good shake. I tried to get back to my work but when after several attempts the Wolf’s sheepish grin still looked more like the smirk of a psychopath, I gave up and put my things away. Then Uncle Ian called.
He hoped he wasn’t interrupting my supper and I told him not at all; the timing was perfect.
‘Good,’ he said. He went on to say that he had spoken to my mother, who agreed completely.
‘I can’t see how she could,’ I said. ‘She always gets the timing wrong when she calls.’
There was a pause. ‘What are you talking about?’ Uncle Ian asked.
‘Timing. What were you talking about?’
I heard the impatient sigh at the other end of the phone. ‘The house.’
It was like listening to the radio with only intermittent sound. I must have missed something.
I decided that asking, ‘what house?’ would irritate him even further so instead I tried an, ‘Aha, the house.’ Hoping this would lead him to reveal more.
‘As I told your mother, people are apt to make their wills with the excitement of buying Christmas presents, forgetting they won’t actually be there to witness the unwrapping.’
I paused, still confused as to where exactly this was all heading. ‘Ain’t that the truth,’ I said finally.
‘You’re not an American.’
‘Ain’t . . . No, no, I’m not.’
‘So what do you say?’
‘Good-oh?’
‘So you agree. Excellent.’ The ‘excellent’ came out like the sound of a starting gun. ‘I’ll call your mother and tell her the good news. She’ll be thrilled.’
‘Uncle Ian.’
‘Yes.’
‘I don’t have the faintest idea what you’re talking about.’
There was silence. I crossed and uncrossed my ankles. I did good toes and naughty toes. Eventually he spoke. His voice was a model of enforced patience. ‘Olivia told me your rental agreement on your current place runs out on the second of April. If we start looking now you might just get somewhere in time.’
‘Ah, I see. And thank you . . . for caring, but I’m not worried. I’m on to it. I’ve got plenty of time to find another flat.’
‘We think a house.’
‘I wasn’t thinking of a house.’ This was not strictly true. I was often thinking of a house, a house like the one that Gabriel and I had lived in when we were married or some house in the abstract, a house just for me with a workshop and a garden where I could grow bluebells beneath a small pink magnolia. But in the sense of actually living in one I was not thinking about it. I wanted to stay in the area and the rental on even a tiny flat like this one was on the edge of what I could afford.
‘With a flat you’re always in the hands of other people, even when you own the lease. You have very little control over matters such as when maintenance and repairs are carried out, or by whom, or over the cost. No, your mother agrees, a house is a better idea.’
I reminded myself that age had had its way even with Uncle Ian and that he was now a very different man from the one I had once known. ‘I can see a house might be better but then you’re still in the hands of the landlord and the rental prizes around here are astronomical.’
‘I remember you being much quicker, Eliza. Are you getting old? The whole idea is that we buy you your own place rather than wait for the money to come to you when I’m dead. It could still take a while, you know.’ He laughed happily.
‘No,’ I realised that I had raised my voice. ‘Sorry, I mean I don’t know what Olivia said to you for you to make such an incredibly generous offer but really, no.’
‘I have to go now; it’s time for my pills but if you would be kind enough to think over my offer and maybe also have a word with your mother. Goodnight.’
‘Goodnight.’ My voice was a squeak and I stood holding the receiver long after Uncle Ian had put the phone down, right through the beeping and the schoolmarm voice telling me to please hang up and try again later.