Joanne Harris - Sleep, Pale Sister

It’s easy to disappear in London. People come and go, all wrapped in their own business; no-one noticed an old woman with her basket of cats as they made their way through the soft snow. I left all my things in Crook Street; I suppose the girls sold them when they finally understood I was never coming back: I hope they did; they were good girls and I was sorry to leave them. But life’s like that. Travel light and fast, that was my motto, even in the old days when Marta was a little chit-and we’re light and fast twenty years on, with the snow at our backs like the Angel at the gate.

The Romanies took us without a word-they know all about hunting and hunted-they even gave us a wagon and a horse. Some of them still remembered my mother and said I had the look of her. I make potions and philtres to cure the gout-or a man’s hard heart-and I’ve got more friends than you ever had with your church and your preaching. They gave me a new name, too, though I’ll not tell it you, a gypsy name, and I sometimes tell fortunes at country fairs with my Tarot cards and my crystal ball and the green scarf draped over the light. But I won’t tell my cards for just anyone. No, it’s the young girls I like, the tender ones with their eyes shining and their cheeks flushed with fairy-tale hope; and maybe one day I’ll find a special one, a lonely one like Effie who can learn to fly and follow the balloons…

We keep on hoping, Marta and I. Last time was so close, she tells me, so heartbreakingly close. And we are closer now than we ever were; the memory of Effie, the grief of Effie, binds us together, not with bitterness but with a gentle melancholy at what might have been. Effie, our little girl. Our pale sister. We loved her, you know, more than either of you ever did; loved her enough to want her with us for ever…and in a way she is with us, in our hearts; poor, brave Effie, who brought my lost Marta back home.

On winter evenings I sit in my caravan with the blue candle burning and Tizzy, Meg and Alecto curled at my feet by the stove and I sing to Marta as she sits purring on my knee:

‘Aux marches du palais …

Aux marches du palais …

’Y a une si belle fille, lonlà

’Y a une si belle fille …’

We’ll find her one day, Marta, I promise her as I smooth her soft, midnight fur. A sensitive one with bright, innocent eyes. A lonely one who needs a mother, a sister. We’ll find her one day. One day soon…

It was Effie all right. They took me to identify the body as it lay in the morgue and they were polite throughout, with the quiet courtesy of the hangman. I could feel the noose tightening around my neck at every breath I took…She was lying on a marble block, slightly tilted, and in a gutter at my feet a strong disinfectant flowed, making tiny trickling sounds in the huge silence of the morgue.

I nodded. ‘That’s Effie.’

‘Yes, sir.’ Sergeant Merle remained impassive, as if he were discussing some matter of little interest. ‘The doctor says that the body was in the grave for some time. Since Christmas Eve, or thereabouts. The cold appears to have slowed the…er…degenerative process.’

‘But, damn it, I saw her!’

Merle looked at me expressionlessly, as if too polite to comment.

‘I saw her… days after that!’

Silence.

‘Besides, if I had known she was really dead, why on earth would I have told you where she was?’

The sergeant looked apologetic. ‘Mr Chester had already informed the police,’ he said. ‘The…er… responsibility , he said, was preying on his mind.’

‘Henry’s a sick man!’ I snapped. ‘He’s incapable of distinguishing fact from fantasy.’

‘The gentleman is certainly in a very disturbed frame of mind, sir,’ said Merle. ‘In fact, Dr Russell, the nerve specialist, feels that his mental health is uncertain.’

Damn the man! I could see Henry’s game: Queen’s evidence, and the word of a well-known doctor might mean that he never had to stand trial for Effie’s murder. But I’d be damned if I let him pin it on me.

‘Have you seen Fanny Miller?’ I could hear the desperation in my voice but was not able to curb it. ‘ She’ll tell you the truth. It was all her idea in the first place. Effie was staying with her.’

Again the expression of respectful reproach. ‘I did send a man to Crook Street,’ said Merle stolidly. ‘But unfortunately the premises were empty. I posted a watch on the premises, but so far Miss Miller has not returned there. Nor has anyone else, for that matter.’

The news was like a blow to the neck.

‘The neighbours!’ I gasped. ‘Ask them. Ask any-’

‘Nobody remembers seeing a young lady answering Mrs Chester’s description on the premises at any time.’

‘Well, of course they didn’t!’ I snapped. ‘I tell you she was in disguise!’

Merle simply looked at me in mournful scepticism and I could not stop my hand from creeping up towards my neck. The invisible noose drew tighter.

I suppose you know the rest of the sordid tale-everyone else does. Even here among the racaille I have achieved a certain fame; they call me ‘Gentleman Jack’ and speak to me with the respect due to a gentry-tyke facing the Drop. Sometimes my guard slips me a greasy pack of cards and I deign to join him in a quick game of brag.

I always win.

My trial was a good one as they go: actually, I rather enjoyed the drama. The defence was plucky but easily winded-I could have told him that his plea of insanity wouldn’t wash-but the prosecution was a mean-mouthed old Methodist, who dragged out all the details of my chequered career, including some episodes even I had forgotten, with a lover’s attention to detail. There were a lot of women there too, and when the judge put on his black hat his quivering old voice was almost drowned out by the sounds of wailing and sobbing. Women!

Well, I got my three Sundays’ grace-and I didn’t see the priest on any of them-but at last he came to see me. He said that he couldn’t bear to see an unrepentant sinner go to the gallows. That was easy to solve, I told him: don’t hang me! I don’t think he appreciated the humour. They hardly ever do. With a tear in his rheumy old eye he told me all about Hell: but I remember my final triumphant painting, Sodom and Gomorrah, and I think I know even more about Hell than that old lecher. Hell is where all the wicked women go-I told you I liked them hot-and maybe from down there I’ll be able to look up the angels’ robes or habits or whatever it is they wear and discover the answer to that old theological question.

I can tell you’re shocked, padre; but remember that if there were no sinners in Hell, there’d be no entertainment for the folk at the balcony-and I always said I should be on the stage. So put those beads away and have a drop of something warm-money buys anything in here, you know-and maybe a hand or two of brag, then, when you leave, you can tell them you did your bit. Give the girls a kiss from me and tell ’em I’ll see them at the dance. Well, I do have a certain reputation to keep up.

But sometimes as I lie awake in the small hours I can’t help but wonder how they did it, Fanny and her dark daughter. And sometimes, as the seconds fall away relentlessly into nothing, I can almost find it in me to believe…in dreams, in visions…in cold little nightwalkers with light, freezing fingers and hungry mouths and hungrier hearts. In vengeful dreamchildren…in a love greater than death and stronger than the grave.

And within that twilit border of sleep, a picture seems to emerge-I always was good at pictures when I was sober-a picture which, if I narrow my eyes, almost comes into focus: a picture of a mother who loved her dead daughter so much that she brought her back to inhabit the body of another girl, a sad and lonely girl in need of love; and the need and the love together were so strong, calling her across the dark spaces, that she came, longing for her chance to live again. Oh yes, I know all about that longing. And together, the unhappy pale girl and the lost, frozen dark one created one woman, with the body of one and the mind of both and experience beyond human imagining…