Barry Maitland: The Marx Sisters

She found herself in a lift. Someone spoke to her and she mumbled a reply. Then she came to a bright foyer area, passed through swing doors and out into the cold night air. A couple got out of a taxi in front of her. She stumbled past them and collapsed into the back seat, her side on fire.

The man’s eyes in the driving mirror looked concerned.

‘What you say?’

‘Jerusalem Lane.’

‘Where’s that, then? I dunno it.’

‘Marquis Street,’ she said urgently. ‘Corner with Carlisle Street. East Bloomsbury.’

When they reached the end of Jerusalem Lane, the man had to open Kathy’s door and help her out. She screwed up her eyes with pain as she straightened her back to stand on the pavement.

‘There’s some money in the right pocket of my trousers,’ she gasped. ‘Can’t get it. My arm.’ She swung the cast helplessly.

He looked doubtful as he came round behind her right side and reached towards her pocket. Suddenly he pulled away his hand and held it up under the light that illuminated the gates to the building site.

‘Jesus! You’re bleedin’! Oh gawd!’ His mind leapt to the risk of AIDS. ‘You need an ambulance, not a bleedin’ taxi!’ He thought of the blood on his seats.

‘Please,’ she said struggling to reach into her right pocket with her left hand.

‘Forget it.’ He was already back in his cab and pulling away.

‘Kathy?’ Peg’s voice, mechanically distorted, sounded in surprise from her intercom. ‘Come in, dear.’ The door clicked and Kathy limped slowly up the two flights towards the diminutive figure waiting for her at the top.

‘Oh my, dear! Is that really you? What a state you are in!’ Peg clucked around Kathy who shuffled into the lounge room and sank into an armchair, gasping for breath.

‘Should I get you a doctor, dear? You look terribly white! And those bruises!’

‘No. I want to talk to you, Peg.’

‘Of course, dear. What about?’

‘About Eleanor, and Meredith. It’s time you told me the truth.’

‘Oh… I see. Are you up to it, though, dear? You really don’t look well. You’re trembling.’

‘A glass of water would be wonderful.’

‘Of course.’

Peg went off to the kitchenette and busied herself for what seemed a long time. Kathy was grateful to be able to remain still and soak up the heat from the gas fire blazing in front of her.

Peg at last returned with a glass, not of water but of a steaming brown liquid the colour of weak tea.

‘This is what you need, my dear. Our father was a Scotsman, and this was his infallible cure for any ailment, especially in the winter. A hot toddy. You get this inside you and it’ll warm the cockles of your heart.’

She stirred and then removed the teaspoon. She offered the glass to Kathy, who held the potion to her nose, inhaling the fumes of hot whisky. She sipped and almost choked on the burning spirit. She could taste the sweetness of the sugar swirling in the bottom of the glass. Gradually her throat accustomed itself to the whisky as it filled her with reassuring warmth.

‘Was it the books, Peg? Is that why Eleanor did it?’

‘Did what, dear?’ Peg asked cautiously.

‘Killed Meredith.’

All of a sudden Peg seemed filled with confusion. She ducked her head, put her knuckles to her mouth, looked this way and that, as if seeking advice from the sisters who were no longer there to give it.

‘Oh,’ she whimpered. Then she gave a long sigh, plucked a dainty handkerchief from the sleeve of her cardigan and pressed it to each eye. ‘How did you find out?’

‘Just tell me,’ Kathy said.

‘The books…’ Peg began slowly, shaking her head. ‘They were only the final straw. Eleanor was so very upset when she discovered that they were gone. But there had been other precious things which Meredith had been taking. At first Eleanor didn’t realize. There was a letter in a frame which she kept in an old suitcase under her bed. One day she noticed that it was gone. Then later, one of her books from the bookcase was missing, and more papers from the suitcase. She was quite beside herself. She even thought she must be going senile and mislaying things, although of course she had the clearest mind of any of us. It wasn’t until she saw the book in Meredith’s flat that she realized that Meredith must have been taking them. When she confronted her, Meredith was quite unabashed.

‘How is your toddy, dear? Do you feel any better?’

‘It’s just fine, Peg. Go on.’ She had nearly finished the drink, and the warmth inside and outside her body was easing her discomfort. Even the stabbing pains in her side had diminished to a steady throb.

‘One can’t really blame Meredith. She just didn’t realize what she was doing. She had become so very worried about money in recent months, and we were very little help to her in that respect. I’m afraid that neither of us was in a wellpaid job, and we didn’t have the superannuation schemes people have now. Over the past ten years our funds had run down almost to nothing. Meredith saw the problem most clearly, and she was under so much pressure, from Terry, and then from the people wanting to buy the house. And then there were the leaks in the roof, and the wiring. I think she must have felt she was having to hold the world together entirely on her own. So when Eleanor accused her of stealing her things, she was quite brazen. She said that she had been forced to do something, and Eleanor should feel pleased to help. In any case, she said, the old things had come from our mother, and really belonged to us all. You see, she just had no idea of the value which Eleanor attached to those things. She had never been interested in the history of our family, and the things which had come down to us.’

‘But to murder her… her own sister.’

‘I know, dear. It was quite terrible. Terrible.’ A single tear ran down Peg’s cheeks, leaving a tiny trail of reflected firelight. ‘But Eleanor said Meredith simply couldn’t be trusted. When she realized that the things were worth a lot of money, she insisted that they must be sold. She said she would get lawyers to take them from Eleanor. She was the eldest sister, and said they were rightfully hers. So like her to say that, just as she did when we were little girls.’

‘I don’t understand, though, why Eleanor wouldn’t be happy to sell them to Judith Naismith’s university.’ Kathy was feeling much more comfortable. The tension in her body had been replaced by a warm glow. The alcohol had gone to her head a little, and her tongue slurred over the last words of her sentence.

‘Oh dear me, no,’ Peg clucked her tongue. ‘Dr Naismith is an academic. She sees the papers as simply some kind of valuable historical relic, like the Dead Sea Scrolls or something.’

‘Well, they are, aren’t they?’

‘Oh no!’ Peg’s voice dropped to a whisper. Her eyes shone with the same inner light that Kathy had seen before. ‘Do you know what is written on the monument on our great-grandfather’s grave? Beneath his famous words “Workers of all lands, unite” is a second quotation from his writings. It says, “The philosophers have only interpreted the world in various ways. The point, however, is to change it.” ’

Kathy stared blankly at her, uncomprehending.

‘Eleanor said that the papers belonged to the future, not to the past. Not even to the present, when the works of Karl Marx are so universally misunderstood and misrepresented. You see, our great-grandfather maintained that the revolution could only be achieved in the most advanced societies, not in the backward peasant countries where so-called Marxist revolutions have occurred in the past seventy years. That is logical, you see, because he understood that it was only by passing through the complete cycle of capitalist development that a society would experience its inner contradictions to the full, and thus be capable of transforming itself and achieving the final goal of true socialism.’