Poppy Adams - The Sister

To Will Barter

Its ten to two in the afternoon and Ive been waiting for my little sister, Vivi, since one-thirty. Shes finally coming home, at sixty-seven years old, after an absence of almost fifty years.

Im standing at a first-floor window, an arched stone one like youd find in a church, my face close up to the diamond-shaped leaded panes, keeping lookout. For a moment I focus on the glass and catch the faint, honest reflection of my eye staring back at me, a lock of gray straggly hair in its way. I dont often look at my reflection and to peer at this moment directly into my eye feels more disconcerting than it should, as if I can sense Im about to be judged.

I pull my wool cardyan old one of my fathersmore tightly around me, tucking the loose end under my arm. Its dropped a degree today, the wind must have changed easterly during the night, and later well get fog in the valley. I dont need a barograph or a hygrometer these days, I can sense itpressure changes, a shift in humiditybut, to tell the truth, I also think about the weather to help me take my mind off things. If I didnt have it to ponder right now, Id already be getting slightly anxious. Shes late.

My smoky breath turns to liquid as it hits the window and, if I rub the mist into heavy droplets, I can make it trickle down the glass. From here I can see half the length of the grassy drive as it winds through the tall skeletal limes on either side, until it disappears right, curving downhill towards East Lodge and the lane and the outside world. If I move my head a fraction to the left the drive elongates and the tops of the limes veer suddenly to the side, distorted by the imperfections of handmade glass. Moving it a little to the right splits the beech hedge in two on either side of a bubble. I know every vagary of every pane. Ive lived here all my life and, before me, my mother lived here all her life and, before her, her father and grandfather.

Did I tell you that Vivien said in her letter she was returning for good? For some final peace, she said, because now, she said, we ought to be keeping each other company for the rest of our lives, rather than dying lonely and alone. Well, Ill tell you now, I dont feel lonely and I certainly dont feel as if Im dying, but even so Im glad shes coming home. Glad, and a little nervousa surge of apprehension is swelling in my stomach. I cant help wondering what well talk about after all these years and, I suppose, if Ill even recognize her.

Im not, as a rule, an emotional person. Im far toohow shall I put it?levelheaded. I was always the sensible sister and Vivi was the adventurer, but my excitement at her impending arrival even surprises me.

She is late, however. I look at my wristwatchthe digital one on my left wrist. Her letter most specifically read one-thirty and, believe me, its not my timekeeping thats gone awry. I keep a number of clocks just so I can be sure that, even if one or two let me down, I can always find the correct time. When you live by yourself in a house that you very rarely leave and is even more rarely visited, its essential that you dont lose track of the time. Every minute lostif left uncorrectedwould soon accumulate to an hour, and then hours, untilas you can imagineyou could easily end up living in a completely erroneous time frame.

Our mother, Maud, and I were always waiting for Vivi: in the hall before we went to church or shouting for her from the landing to hurry up for school. And its now, as I wait for her again, that I find snippets of our childhood jumping into my head, slices of conversation, things Ive not thought about since they happened: our first pair of boots, which Vivi had chosen for us, long black ones that laced to the top; long afternoons in the summer holidays spent damming up the brook to create our own tributaries and islands; sneaking into the loggia at harvest time to drink cider before taking it to the men in the fields; giggling with Maud at Clives rare excitement when he created a Six-spot Burnet with five spots; our first trip to boarding school, holding each others clammy hands with shared anticipation, squeezed among the chemical bottles in the back of Clives car.

It was a childhood in perfect balance, so Im wondering what it was that came along and changed everything. It wasnt just one thing. Theres rarely a sole cause for the separation of lives. Its a sequence of events, an inexorable chain reaction where each small link is fundamental, like a snake of upended dominoes. And Ive been thinking that the very first one, the one you push to start it all off, must have been when Vivi slipped off our bell tower and nearly died, fifty-nine years ago.

When Maud gave birth to Vivien, on 19 October 1940, I thought shed borne twelve other children of varying ages at the same time. I was almost three and I remember they all came home from hospital in a minibus. When I asked Maud why shed had so many she said that we had the largest house in the district and could fit them all in, and two maids and a housekeeper to help her look after them. My father, Clive, told me later they were called evacuees. They had come from Bristol to play with us and to double the attendance at Saxby village school. I always thought Vivi was one of them and when, three years later, the worst of the blitz was over and the evacuees all went home, I couldnt understand why baby Vivi had stayed.

Shes your little sister, Ginny. This is her home, Maud had said, hugging us both to her in the hallway.

I took a good look at Vivi then, in her little red woolen jumper, her fluffy hair sticking up and her big round eyes gazing at me. From that moment on, I worshipped her. Two more war years passed, and V-J Day brought weeks of celebrations. Then, while everyone else was adjusting to life in a country on its knees, Vivi and I were just getting on with our childhood together, sharing our secrets and our sugar ration.

Not only is Bulburrow Court the largest house in the district, its also the most striking. Tucked away in the soft folds of the West Dorset countryside and buttressed against the slope of its own hill, it overwhelms the village of low-lying houses below. A vast Victorian folly.

There are four stories and four wings. In the reception rooms marble fireplaces stand squarely under ornately corniced ceilings. In the paneled hall, a large oak staircase pours majestically from the vaulted ceiling onto the parquet floor, while behind the pantries at the back of the housethe north sidewinds a much smaller, secret staircase designed to shuttle domestic staff discreetly up and down. By the time we were born, Bulburrow Courts glory days were buried well within the previous century, when the house and gardens would not have run smoothly on less than twenty staff, more if you counted the surrounding tenant farmers and farm laborers, all originally part of the estate.

As we grew up, the Red House, as it was often called on account of the Virginia creeper that turns the south side a deep red each autumn, became better known as a local landmark than for its splendor. It was a reference for directions, a passing spectacle for West Country holidaymakersiced in Gothic extravaganza and topped with castellated turrets, an observatory, the bell tower and mock-Elizabethan chimney stacks that rise above the peaks and valleys within the immense landscape of the roof, all arrogance and late-Victorian grandeur.

Outside, at the back of the house, the cobbled courtyard is enclosed by stables and apple stores, an old parlor and a butchery, still stained with slaughtering devices hanging grimly from the rafters. Behind them the loggia and then, at one time, Mauds kitchen garden and cold frames, a former vegetable patch and a spinney lead up to the north water garden. To the south, meadows run down from the terraced gardens to the brook, the peach houses and the riveted tail section of a Halifax bomber that landed in our fields. Then there are the things that only Vivi and I knew about, like the holm oak that looks solid from the outside but is completely hollow in the middle. If you climbed up its branches it was possible to lower yourself into the guts of the tree, where wed agreed to hide when the Germans came.