The Ugly Sister Read online

  ‘A pity you have had no time to learn whist,’ said Aunt Anna.

  ‘Do you never persuade the Admiral to take a hand?’

  ‘Oh,’ with a sniff ‘the Admiral cannot concentrate. Put him in a chair before a card table and he will grunt and wriggle his posterior as if he had the worms, and frown and grunt again and trump his partner’s ace. I do not know how he controls men when he cannot even control himself.’

  Place was never exactly quiet: with four children growing up in it and eight indoor servants supervised by the saturnine Slade, there was constant movement and activity, but when Aunt Anna was having one of her illnesses, the noise was muted. Parish, who had clearly been trained as a puppy that barking was forbidden, still snuffled and snorted as he padded up and down corridors or wriggled his way through a door that had been left ajar. Only when Uncle Davey arrived did he make himself scarce.

  Sometimes the head of the house would come in in a bad mood; he would shout at the servants, swear at Slade, quarrel with Aunt Anna, saying the house was like a jakes, the walled garden neglected, the lawns a disgrace; and everyone would tremble. But at other times, especially if he brought one of his elder children with him (particularly Anna Maria, the eldest and favourite), he would have half the house laughing. His own laughter, Aunt Anna said, would no doubt be taken as a signal for sending out the pilchard boats from St Mawes.

  ‘Beware of him,’ Aunt Anna whispered to me once, ‘he’s a great practical joker. D’ye know what happened on our honeymoon? He put honey in my evening shoes!’

  All the time we were growing up Mama would be here for a week or two, then gone off to London or Scotland or Bath. She would seldom tell me when she was going, but kiss me goodnight and the next morning be gone. As she seldom showed me much affection (she doted on Tamsin) I became accustomed to her absences and transferred most of my affection to Sally Fetch, who seemed to show less aversion than most adults for my battered face. In no time, it often seemed to me, Mama would be back again smelling of new perfumes and fresh clothes – for in spite of her protestations she earned good money and freely spent it. She usually travelled by sea, sailing in a ‘tin boat’, and left the same way. Possibly her experience of coach travel when she was carrying me had put her off land travel when another choice was available. Aunt Anna constantly warned her of the danger of French or Algerian pirates, showing an unbecoming lack of confidence in her husband’s ability to keep them out of the Channel.

  Not that this was an unwarranted apprehension. The St Anthony in Roseland promontory was specially vulnerable to a raider, as in fact was all of Falmouth. During the war, which ended while I was still a child, the defence of Pendennis Castle overlooking the great harbour had depended solely on the threat of three field cannon which dated from Blenheim; and St Mawes on the other headland had been commanded by a seventy-year-old captain of artillery, with two crippled soldiers and a range of antique musketry to support him. There had also been a battery mounted near Zone Point; but through the last years of the Napoleonic Wars the Sprys had paid for two marines to keep watch for their own defence, since Place House was the only substantial property on this promontory. In time of war a landing there would have proved a considerable embarrassment – most particularly to the Sprys themselves – and however short-lived the occupation, it was likely to have outlived the inhabitants of the house.

  Even in peace it was a succulent morsel for corsairs – a place to sack and steal from before vanishing into the night – and the end of the war proper had not pacified everyone. There were plenty of discarded, out-of-work soldiers and dispossessed sailors from a number of countries for the hazard to exist. But I do not remember the two marines, and the only guard we had when I was growing up was the lookout who manned the signal station at the head of the promontory about half a mile from the house.

  Once when I was about ten Mama came home for Christmas and stayed on well into the New Year. There was no doubt that she had for some time looked ambitiously at Cornish society, for she must have seen that it would be much more likely to be open to her than London society would ever be. A beautiful woman who knew her manners and brought with her an air of metropolitan sophistication and with Place House as a springboard, Mrs Aubrey Spry would be quickly welcome almost everywhere. But the fact that she was an actress, which had a raffish not quite respectable implication – quite different had she been just a singer – her frequent and haphazard absences, the peculiar unwelcoming circumstances of the house in which she lived, together with her own chronic shortage of money, put a brake on what she had so far been able to do.

  But now, evidently better off than usual, she began to go about. Taking the bit between her teeth, she went uninvited to Tregolls in Truro, to meet some of the rest of the Spry family. On her way home she called at the new house, Killiganoon, and discovered why Uncle Davey had bought and rebuilt it.

  She invited herself or contrived to get invited to a number of the great houses flanking the River Fal, and the new houses – not so great but large and substantial – being put up along the coast between Falmouth and the Helford River, mainly by the Foxes, a large Quaker family who had settled in the district in recent decades and were making fortunes from the shipping and ancillary trades of that prosperous town.

  Possibly too by this time she was beginning to have thoughts for the future of her daughters – or at least one of them – who were growing up and who in the course of time she would want to see launched and favourably married. So whenever she could she took us with her, and we met young Foxes, young Boscawens, young Warleggans, young Carclews. Parties were held in the vicinity of Falmouth and Truro, but for me these largely tailed off. During that winter I overheard two of the Carclew boys discussing a party they were going to hold. One said: ‘ What about the Sprys? Tammy is excellently beautiful.’ The other said: ‘ Oh yes and jolly too. But do we have to have the fat little one? She’s so exceeding disfigured and monumentally dull.’ ‘ I’ll see what my mother says. Maybe we could have one of ’em without t’other.’

  When the invitation came it was for both of us, but at the last minute I developed a severe toothache and could not go.

  A succession of ailments began to plague me when other invitations were about to be accepted. Of course Mama soon saw through the deception, but what was she to do – take a miserable daughter with tears of pain streaming down her cheeks? Perhaps, I thought, when I was thankfully alone with Sally Fetch, that Mama and Tamsin were also thankful – to be rid of me and my ugliness while they went to enjoy their party.

  Chapter Two

  I

  DURING MY childhood changes occurred in Place House, particularly to Aunt Anna. My early memories are of tottering naughtily into the north drawing room when three tables of whist were being played, and being hauled out by Sally Fetch as if I’d wandered into church in the middle of the service. Whist was sacrosanct; whist was played five days out of seven. Aunt Anna never went out to play: it all happened in the house. Sometimes while playing, apart from sitting on her handkerchief for luck, she would smoke a cheroot. The smell of that smoke will bring back my childhood almost more than anything else.

  One splendid Christmas Uncle Davey arrived with both Anna Maria and Samuel and we had a gay and noisy time; but it was soon after then, after they had all left, that Aunt Anna had an unusually bad turn and was confined to her bed for three weeks. Slade said she was convinced her two dead children were alive and were coming to see her next week. Whist appointments had to be cancelled. Mary, the younger daughter, who had still not gone away to school, was in constant attendance: she continued to have a governess, though now nineteen.

  From this point on it became known in the house that Aunt Anna had gone ‘a bit maggoty’ – Cook’s phrase. For two or three weeks she would be quite normal, playing whist with all the usual determination; then the fancy would take her, and she would be caught wandering about the house looking for Clive and David. Sally Fetch at length explained to me what
Cook had told her: Aunt Anna had been childless for six years after they were married; then she had miscarried at five months with twin boys. Of course they had not been christened, but Aunt Anna had given them names in her own mind, and often now referred to them as if they were midshipmen at sea. It was a sign of an onset of one of her turns when she started looking for them.

  A nurse was engaged, and between the three of them, her daughter Mary, Elsie Whattle, her personal maid, and the new nurse, Mrs Avery, she was well cared for in her bad times. As the years passed her periods of full lucidity became less frequent: she sniffed more frequently, smoked more cheroots and played whist ever more eccentrically, so that her partners, who did not like to say this to her face, began to invent reasons of temporary illness not to come, just as I invented them not to go out.

  Yet there was much pleasure in growing up in such a home, especially in the summer. Apart from the property itself with its orchards, beehives and willow gardens, there were gorgeous walks all round the promontory. A beach called Cellars which was only a half mile from the house was a favourite for picnics: it was a sandy cove, at one end of which when the tide was out you could search for and sometimes find cowrie shells. Apart from two fish cellars, a large hut was the only building on it, and this was used to store or repair our boats. We sailed in the estuary and landed wherever the fancy took us. We bathed and swam in the sharp sea, laughing and squealing with delight. We walked often as far as Portscatho and down to Porth Beach, which also belonged to the Sprys. We rode ponies and got sunburnt and climbed the rocks and ran down steep slopes and grew up healthy and full of the joy of life.

  Even in the winter we were able to be much out of doors, coming home drenched in spray or rain or making the most of the fitful sunshine.

  Sometimes Uncle Davey would have a shooting party, for duck or pheasant, or he would go out on his own, when we could follow and join in the excitement. Or he and two or three of the farmers would course hares, and make bets on the outcome. Or if he was in a very good mood he would take us fishing.

  Uncle Davey, I presently learned from Fetch, had a mistress, whom he kept at the new house of Killiganoon he had bought for her. Her name was Betsy Slocombe, and she was a farmer’s daughter from Manaccan-in-Meneage. The Admiral did not care ever to upset his wife by bringing his lady to Place, nor did he want to have her among his relatives or children at his Truro house. So she lived in comfortable isolation between the two main houses, with five servants to tend her. Uncle Davey seemed to divide his time more or less equally between Plymouth and Killiganoon, with odd forays to Place to see his wife and two children, and spare weeks at Tregolls.

  II

  IF THERE was a shadow over our childhood – apart from my personal disfigurement – it was the bulky presence of Slade. Without there being very much substance to the apprehension, his mere presence cast a threat. Nobody knew quite what he did all day. Sometimes he would be absent for hours, and then he would abruptly appear, smelling of rum, having been indoors all the time. At the far end of the house under the kitchen were extensive cellars. Here the wine was kept, the coal stored, the potatoes stacked, the apples shelved. Just by the main cellar steps was the well, from which all water had to be drawn to supply the house. It had been the duty of the scullery maids, or a boots boy with the unusual name of German, to fetch up the water as it was needed, but during our time there a suction pump was fitted so that, suitably primed to begin, it would by working the pump handle in the kitchen bring water up a flight and into buckets and a sink.

  This first cellar, and the fruit and vegetable and coal cellars, were accessible to all, but beyond that was a locked door to which only Slade (and presumably Uncle Davey) had the key. Like most children, we were inquisitive and would go down there and poke about the shelves and the sacks and the discarded pieces of furniture. Fetch could not enlighten us as to what happened beyond the locked door, how many more cellars there were and what they contained. No one was allowed in. The cellars were not completely underground, and netted and barred slits at the top of the walls let in a weak light. Outside we tried to trace how far these slits could be found in the foundations of the house. The chute in the coal cellar was easy to identify; but beyond that the house ended and so must any light or ventilation.

  Tamsin and I began to make up stories about it.

  Then one ugly day in November, when the greyness of the scudding clouds outside reduced the normal twilight of the cellars to a greater dark, Slade caught us down there trying the locked door and peeping through the keyhole. In fact Tamsin had found a bit of wire and was experimenting with it to try to pick the lock.

  Because I was the smaller and because Slade knew Tamsin was her mother’s favourite, he grabbed me. I yelped, partly from the awful shock of being found out and partly from the pain in my arm, for his grip was not tender.

  ‘Caught you, eh? Prying, eh? Meddling, eh? What business ’ ave you down here? You deserve a good leathering for this!’

  ‘S-sorry,’ said Tamsin, so much the elder in manner and bearing. ‘It was a dark day. We were just looking round. We wondered what was in the next cellar.’

  Although only a servant, he was the superior servant in the household and in that slanted twilight he looked a very dangerous man.

  ‘Wine,’ he snarled. ‘That’s what. Just wine. And what business is it of yours? We don’t like Nosy Parkers round ’ ere.’

  ‘But we’ve seen in the wine cellar,’ said Tamsin. ‘There’s a door beyond.’

  ‘And if there is, what’s it to you?’

  She shrugged her slim shoulders. ‘Nothing of course. It was just that we were wondering.’

  I wriggled to get out of his grasp. ‘You’re hurting me, Slade.’

  ‘Little girls is meant to be ’urt, when they poke their noses. Yes, there’s a door beyond and a door beyond that. And it’s none of your business what goes on or don’t go on. It’s mine only, I tell you.’

  ‘Yours?’ said Tamsin haughtily. ‘Why yours? It all belongs to Uncle Davey. And I’m his niece. It is not for you to own parts of the house.’

  His manner changed. He said: ‘Look, little Missy.’ (It was a form of address he knew Tamsin hated.) ‘What’s between the Admiral and his old shipmate is none of your business. See? But if you want to know I’ll tell you. I’ll tell you both. Then it’ll be a secret between the three of us, won’t it now.’

  He smiled, but in the half dark with his pigtail, his bootblack hair, his thick lips, his bluely shaven chin, he looked no less sinister. I freed myself from his grasp and made a move to escape, but he said:

  ‘Wait! You wanted to know, so I’ll tell ye. When I came here first I ’ ad two pretty little daughters. They lived ’ere but they was noisy, bad behaved – a bit like you two – they used to upset the Admiral. In the end he said to me, “I can’t keep ’em, Mr Slade. They’re too much trouble. I’m afraid they must go, Mr Slade, my old shipmate. If you don’t get rid of ’em you’ll have to go yourself.” So I says to myself: Their mother, God rest ’er, has long since gone to be one of the blest above, and I’m sure they’ll be pleased to join ’er … So one day I shut ’em up in this cellar, the one just beyond the wine cellar, and there they still are.’

  He smiled at us again, showing a few yellow teeth.

  ‘There they still are. They’ve gone rot long since, of course. Their clothes’ve fallen off and their flesh’s fallen off, but the skeletons are there. One day I’ll show you. Sometimes too, when the wind’s in the right quarter, you can still hear ’em calling and knocking.’

  Tamsin, of course, told my mother, who was very upset, and when Uncle Davey called in the following week she complained angrily at Slade’s behaviour. To her great annoyance he roared with laughter. It was the sort of laugh Aunt Anna said would be heard in St Mawes. The episode appealed precisely to the Admiral’s perverse sense of humour. If not exactly a practical joke of his own devising it was the next best thing, and Slade did not receive the mildest re
primand. Nevertheless Tamsin and I half believed his story, and several times on windy nights we thought we heard the knocking.

  As we grew older we were ashamed of having taken Slade seriously, but even so there was never much accord between us and him. And even though we eventually saw it as just a nasty joke, there was enough of the sinister about him to make us feel he wished it had been the truth. He never put his hands on me again, but I never went near him if I could avoid it. And sometimes he would squint at me as if relishing my disfigurement.

  III

  OF COURSE I was bitter about my appearance. My face might make people wince, but it did not absolve me from the normal feelings of adolescence. I wanted to be pretty – like Tamsin. I wanted to enjoy high spirits – like Tamsin. I wanted young men to look at me as they were now looking at her. That I was fat as well as ugly added gall to the wound. I had a quick enough brain – Fetch said I was too sharp – but in social conversation, because of a feeling of inferiority, my tongue suffered paralysis and I could only mutter monosyllables in reply.

  My mother had a good singing voice, which was of great value in her work. Tamsin had no voice but I was coming to possess one just like my mother’s, only lighter. I would practise it sometimes in one of the empty bedrooms of our back wing where I knew, or thought I knew, no one would hear.

  I would have given much to have some instrument to strum on – such as the harp that stood in the library – but by the time I was old enough to ask to use it, Aunt Anna was prescribed absolute quiet, and the house went on tiptoe.