Weird Sister (2 page)

At the Black Hat Mr Drury steps out from behind the bar. He’s in a good mood tonight and he feels like a proper and benevolent pub landlord; he always tries to look benevolent but it is all too rare when he actually feels it. He is a small man, tidy, neatly dressed in a white shirt, tie and black trousers, ironed by his wife Lolita – it’s a curse, that name, Lolita says, now that she is fifty and having to diet – Jim Drury steps out from behind the bar and slaps Ronald Oxford on the shoulder heartily, laughing at the man’s poor attempt at a joke. Ronald Oxford, the village bore, no one likes to end up seated beside him. It’s a fact. Jim likes to keep his customers sorted according to what he considers to be their most salient personality trait; at the bar there is Ronald, the village bore, and Geraldine Andley, the village tart (she’s not a real tart, the real village tart – if there was one – would drink in the Marquis of Granby, of course). Over by the window is Geoff Henderson, the village athlete, captain of the cricket team. ‘Can I get you a drink Geoff?’ Jim says. He likes to keep Geoff, and his team, sweet. A loud guffaw resounds behind him and Jim turns to look. It’s Graeme Throckmorton, the village bully. The village no-hoper, the village bad guy, Graeme Throckmorton you belong in the Marquis of Granby, although Jim Drury would never say that, no matter how much he longed to.

‘I hear your team lost, Geoff,’ says Graeme. ‘You don’t deserve a drink.’ He laughs loudly, a joyless laugh.

Jim straightens his tie nervously. All his life he has avoided trouble in the pub, his is the good pub, there is never trouble in his pub, which is why he would love for nothing more than to get rid of Graeme Throckmorton once and for all. But getting rid of Graeme Throckmorton is not in his command.

‘It’s true,’ admits Geoff Henderson, because he is a good bloke, he was born a good bloke and will one day die a good bloke, ‘it’s true Graeme. My team plays like crap on occasion. On too many occasions.’ He laughs and his laugh is genuine and the two women he is sitting with – his wife Marlene and her sister Dora who is visiting from Germany – laugh too. ‘Not like,’ Geoff says smiling, ‘when you played for us.’

Graeme looks down into his drink and Geoff regrets what he said, he meant it kindly, Graeme was once a great player, the best. Geoff worries that when Graeme looks up again he will be bigger, angrier, meaner than before because that’s what happens when you rub Graeme the wrong way these days, and it is well near impossible not to rub Graeme the wrong way. And Jim, who still stands between the two tables, gets so rattled he lets the cloth he wipes the tables with fall to the floor.

But just then the door at the bottom of the stairs swings open and the reason why Jim Drury is feeling exceptionally benevolent, the reason why he feels pub landlording is a noble and dignified profession once again, walks through. ‘Ah-ha!’ says Jim, blushing, bending over and retrieving his cloth with a balletic swoop, ‘it’s you, love.’ And he walks quickly toward the woman standing there.

Everyone in the Black Hat has stopped talking. Everyone is staring. Agnes Samuel heats up the room with her smile. ‘I think it’s hysterical,’ she says, her voice quiet, confidential, ‘that everyone calls me love.’

Jim snorts a big laugh and smiles and blushes a deeper red. He takes Agnes by the hand and, before he can stop himself, he bends down and kisses it lightly. He looks up into Agnes’s face – he is a small man, after all, and Agnes is a tall American – and he says, ‘Let me show you to your table.’ Which is ludicrous because this is a pub, not a hotel restaurant with reservations and flowers on the tables, but a pub where you take what you can get and that often means standing-room only. Yet suddenly the table closest to the fire is Agnes’s table, the best table, the table with the view of the rest of the pub, the table the rest of the pub can most easily view. Jim leads her over – it’s a real fire, wood, and it sparks and crackles at Agnes’s approach – and she sits down gracefully. She is wearing high-heeled pumps with her slim trousers and a skinny top with a scooped neck that reveals some of her white, white skin. She has one of those impossible figures at which other women marvel – long legs, narrow hips and a flat belly that runs all the way up to her high, round breasts.

‘Miss Samuel,’ says Jim to whomever may be listening – everyone is listening – ‘is a bed and breakfast guest of the Black Hat. Miss Samuel is in Warboys to seek out her roots.’ As he speaks Jim looks into Agnes’s eyes and her gaze does not flicker nor flinch. ‘And what would you –’ his diction is laborious, as though he is suddenly aware of how his English accent must sound to her American ears – ‘be drinking?’

‘Oh,’ she says lightly, ‘I’ll have a whisky.’ And Jim scurries to the bar to fetch it. An out-take of collectively-held breath fills the pub, booze and nicotine, and the noise level gradually begins to build as people return to their conversations, to their gossip and their pub philosophy. These people all know each other, they know each other all too well. Everyone in the room continues to gawp at Agnes, even if with only half an eye or ear. Some with less discretion than others. Some with none at all. Graeme Throckmorton stares at Agnes, he stares and stares, his face gone pale, his eyes electric. Geoff Henderson turns and notices Graeme’s expression, and if Graeme had been a different man Geoff would have slapped him on the shoulder and said, ‘What’s up, mate? You look like you’ve seen a ghost,’ but instead he says nothing and returns to Marlene. Behind the bar Jim Drury is breaking the seal on a bottle of his favourite single malt. His wife disapproves for a moment. ‘She’s got to learn,’ mumbles Jim, ‘I said I’d teach her about whisky.’ When Lolita looks toward the young woman, she softens. At her table Agnes has shifted in her seat toward the fire and the light cast on her face is very becoming.

Graeme Throckmorton stands suddenly. He takes a step forward, a lurching step, which brings him up short and reminds him to grab his cane. Cane in hand, he walks, a tall straight-backed man with a broad chest and long thick thighs, black unruly hair that hides a scar that runs across the top of his head; Graeme’s body is covered with hidden scars – rugby wounds, fist fights, accidents. His right leg stiff as though it has no knee, he swings it round closely like a big club he’s trying to hide up his sleeve. He makes his way toward Agnes’s table and the noise level in the pub rises again, as though everyone is shouting in an effort to mask how closely they are listening.

Jim arrives with Agnes’s whisky. ‘Laphroaig,’ he says. She smiles at him and takes a sip and is about to speak when Graeme overtakes her.

‘What are you doing here?’ Spoken harshly as though he knows her intentions.

Agnes turns toward Graeme. ‘Excuse me?’

The hub-bub in the pub grows louder still.

‘What brings you to Warboys?’ As though he thinks he knows what she has in mind.

Later Jim will feel stunned when he remembers how he crossed Graeme Throckmorton that evening. He will wonder how he did it. And, foolishly, he will take credit for saving the situation.

‘Graeme,’ he says, ‘I think you should let the lady drink her whisky in peace.’

Graeme is dragging his stormy gaze away from Agnes, he is turning his attention to Jim. Little Jim Drury, who is in his way. He opens his mouth, he is not going to be polite, when Agnes speaks first. ‘Oh Jim,’ she says, ‘can’t you see the man’s a cripple?’ She smiles benignly at them both. ‘Now what was it you wanted to ask me? Love.’ With that last word she slides her tongue across her teeth.

Graeme snaps his mouth shut. If he was an animal, he would roar. Furious, he lifts his cane and Jim cringes as though it is coming toward him already. But Graeme uses it to punch the door of the pub open wide and, without pausing, he walks outside. He feels the weight of the pub’s scorn on his back and it burns at him, but he does not care. He is used to hatred, it doesn’t touch him.

Back inside the pub Jim Drury can’t believe his luck. Trouble averted – forgotten – he looks at Agnes and is freshly amazed that a woman like this should happen to come and stay in his pub. He doesn’t notice how she stares at the door Graeme Throckmorton has just walked through, how she stares as though she is sending a message. He straightens his tie again and pushes back his hair. ‘Madam,’ he says and after a moment Agnes looks up at him with her green, green eyes, eyes he could look into forever, ‘the drink is on the house.’

Outside the Black Hat Graeme Throckmorton does up the buttons on his black suede jacket. It’s a well-made, expensive jacket, he bought it in London, his wife Karen doesn’t know how much it cost. He sniffs the night air as he puts on his gloves, the cane standing dormant against his hip. Then he swings out and crosses the street and goes home to where his wife and family are waiting.

Robert Throckmorton does not see his brother leaving as he hurries along the pavement toward the Black Hat. He walks in the same door through which Graeme exited and doesn’t notice how people glance up and double-take. He is used to it, and so are they, although the people of Warboys still double-take. Robert looks just like his older brother, only where Graeme is thick and muscley, Robert is lean and taut. Where Graeme is brooding and angry, Robert is calm and quiet. Both men are arrogant, it is a Throckmorton condition, but where Graeme spells it out, Robert keeps it hidden. At least, he thinks he keeps it hidden. Women can see it though, they can see it in his face. They find it appealing.

They all live together, the Warboys Throckmortons, in one big extended family. Robert and Graeme, brothers, Robert thirty-four, Graeme two years his senior. Graeme’s wife Karen and their two little boys, Andrew and Francis. Jenny, Robert and Graeme’s teenage sister, and Martin, paterfamilias, wheelchair-bound, silent. All together under one roof, one big family. ‘Happy?’, Robert would say, ‘I suppose so. In our way.’

Robert is known in Warboys as the village bachelor, everyone agrees with Jim Drury’s private label in this case. The most eligible man for miles around. Robert has dated all the best-looking women in the village and he is feeling a little fed up. When he was a teenager he had secret rendezvous with older women, not all of them unmarried. In his twenties he went through the women his own age as though operating to a system. Now the women he sees are getting younger and younger, even he has begun to notice. He can’t follow their conversation anymore, pop stars he’s never heard of, movies he wouldn’t dream of going to, clubs in distant towns that make him feel like a statesman from another generation. He wouldn’t admit it out loud, but Robert is getting tired of being eligible. All this time he has only been looking for love. He is hungry for love.

Robert’s evening is going rather badly. He hadn’t recognized Lucy Hill, he hadn’t seen her since she was about ten years old, and now she is sixteen, the same age as his sister Jenny. Except Lucy Hill doesn’t look sixteen, all Wonderbra and tight trousers, or perhaps Robert doesn’t know what most sixteen-year-olds look like these days. He was in the Marquis of Granby, the other pub, the pub the upstanding citizenry of Warboys consider to be the bad pub, the topless darts on telly pub, the lager and lime shandy pub, the pub with the mottled red carpets and torn, sodden upholstery. Drinking there gives Robert a low-life kind of thrill, lets him think he lives dangerously. She’d been standing in the dark corner. ‘Hello there,’ he said, easing himself out of the banquette, ‘can I buy you a drink?’

The girl smiled confidently. ‘Sure,’ she said, ‘G & T.’

‘I’m Robert.’

‘Lucy.’ They began to chat. Robert felt happy.

Later, when Robert stepped up to the bar to refresh Lucy’s drink, he found himself next to Derek Hill. Derek Hill is the same age as Robert, they went to school together. Derek was the son of a building labourer and Robert was the son of – a Throckmorton. ‘Robert,’ Derek says, raising his drink and one eyebrow, ‘who’s your victim this evening?’ People who drink in the Marquis of Granby are used to Robert Throckmorton and his parade of women.

Robert ducks his head and smiles sheepishly, he too is accustomed to – rather fond of – this routine. He fetches the girl, cajoling, arm around her waist. ‘Lucy,’ he says, showing off to the girl how he can get on with anyone, how anyone can be his friend, no matter how lowly, ‘this is Derek’.

Derek grabs Robert by the collar. ‘Don’t you ever lay your hands on my daughter,’ he says. ‘Do you hear me?’ He gives Robert an acid shake, ‘She’s sixteen, you filthy beast.’

Robert jerks his shirt away from Derek’s grasp. Lucy laughs out loud. Robert is shocked and flustered and he doesn’t want to show it. He’s an amiable bloke, the kind of fellow who can get on with anybody. He’s only looking for love, he didn’t set out to be lecherous. That’s not me, he says to himself, that’s not me. He turns on his heel and leaves the Marquis of Granby without saying another word to anybody.

And makes his pre-occupied way to the Black Hat. How was I to know the girl was Derek Hill’s daughter? Jesus Christ, it’s not the kind of thing you think to ask. He might as well have had a drink with his old friend – his oldest friend – Elizabeth.

He walks into the Black Hat. At first all he sees is the fire. It is bright and warm after the cold dark of the street. He moves close to the flames, holding out his hands which are reddened and chafed from the cold, this unseasonably cold October evening. He gives a great shiver and allows the muscles in his back to relax, release their tension. Warmth floods through his body and he closes his eyes.

When he opens them he sees a face. She has sea-green eyes and dark wavy hair that shines. Her face is heart-shaped, it starts with a widow’s peaked forehead and ends in a chin that is just a tiny bit pointed, and she is smiling at him through red lips, small white teeth.

Robert lowers himself into a chair. ‘Hello,’ he says, extending his cold hand toward her.

‘Hello,’ she replies, taking his hand with both of hers. When she touches him he feels it throughout his body. He looks at her and thinks he has known her all his life.

‘Agnes,’ she says, ‘Agnes Samuel.’

‘Robert Throckmorton,’ he replies.