Anne Berry - The Hungry Ghosts

‘In September I’ll be joining you,’ I told her with a grin. ‘We’ll shake things up, Jilly.’ She managed a weak smile.

‘I hate it there,’ she said brokenly.‘I’m miserable.’ She took off her glasses and I saw her eyes were swimming with tears. ‘The nuns are bitches!’

I tossed in a T-shirt with a picture of kittens on it, shunted the case along the bed, and sat down next to my sister. I put an arm over her shoulder. This was an awkward gesture for me. I am not a touchy-feely person. It is nothing personal but I experience a kind of revulsion when things get sloppy. That day there had been a scene at lunch, a spectacular scene. It was a roast dinner. We generally have a roast on the weekends. Jillian, already feeling as if she was fading away, as if she was only half visible, with her return to England imminent, was upset even before we sat down. Alice kept asking her silly questions. What was it like at boarding school? Did she have a boyfriend? Was she excited about the flight tomorrow? That sort of thing. Jillian loathed Alice. She had told me late one night that she would like to slap her, that she could not bear her enthusiasm, her eagerness, her desire to please.

‘She can afford to behave like that,’ Jillian had said bitterly, screwing up her eyes behind their lenses, as she watched Alice chatting to one of the amahs.

I sympathised with Jillian. From time to time Alice got on my nerves too. But it was plain to me that my elder sister hadn’t thought this through. Anyone could see that Jillian’s vendetta against Alice did not work in her favour. For a start it maddened Father, who seemed to feel he had to keep riding to Alice’s rescue, like some paternal knight in shining armour.

‘Why not make a friend of Alice, then make that friendship work for you,’ I suggested reasonably to Jillian.

But to no avail I’m afraid. Jillian’s revulsion for our little sister knew no bounds. She gave long-suffering sighs when Alice walked into a room. On car journeys she insisted on winding up the window, claiming the draft was blowing her hair out of shape, knowing full well that Alice was prone to travel sickness. And she would stoically ignore our little sister when she bounded up to her full of adoring compliments. How lovely Jillian was looking, Alice would say. How she wished her brown hair was fair like Jillian’s, and would Jillian help her pick out some new clothes because she had no idea what was fashionable in London at present. It astonished me that Alice did not seem to realise she was antagonising Jilly. But then she can be a little obtuse sometimes.

So when we all trooped into lunch that day, I had an idea that something was going to happen. Father carved the meat. It was roast beef. Jillian wanted an outside cut and so did Alice. Neither of them liked bloody meat, whereas I liked mine nearly raw. I was happiest with a middle slice, all pink and oozing blood. Father served Alice before her older sister, and Jillian clearly felt the snub. She made up her mind that all the best bits had gone to Alice, and that the cut she was dished up was undercooked. She took Father to task over this, complaining that Alice always got the choicest pieces of meat. Mother piled in.As a matter of course,Harry,son and heir,had been taken care of first. Now he looked perturbed by the delay. Catching his mother’s eye, he was given the go-ahead to start his meal. So while hostilities were breaking out, Harry was slowly masticating a mouthful, like a cud-chewing cow. All the while, his eyes focused hypnotically on two black and silver angelfish, gliding about in a tank, set up on the dresser behind the dining-room table. Then Alice made matters much worse by offering Jillian her meat.Typical.Why couldn’t she just shut up?

‘Here Jillian,we can swap plates if you like,’Alice suggested,lifting her plate and offering it to her sister.

‘I don’t want it now you’ve touched it,’ Jillian cried, shoving the plate back towards Alice, so hard that the piece of crispy outside meat was launched off it, orbited briefly in the air, before landing with a ‘plop’, quite fortuitously as it happened, on Harry’s plate. Harry’s eyes rolled from living fish to dead meat, and stayed glued to the unexpected arrival, his jaws temporarily locked.

‘That was uncalled for,’ Father said angrily, hurriedly flipping over the joint, carving a slice from the other end, and delivering it to Alice’s plate.

‘No,’ pleaded Alice. ‘I don’t mind really. Jillian can have it.’

‘Didn’t you hear me the first time?’ Jillian shrieked, shooting a slaughterous look in Alice’s direction. ‘I don’t want anything of yours.’

Alice began protesting that she hadn’t touched it, so it couldn’t be called hers yet.Then Mother, who kept running a thumb up and down along the blade of her own knife, where it lay at the side of her plate, told Alice to be quiet and to get on with her dinner.The colour was draining from Alice’s face now, and she began clearing her throat as if she had something stuck there. Father wanted to know if she was okay and would she like some water.

‘Oh for goodness sake, if you’re feeling sick,Alice, leave the table,’ Mother snapped.‘You’re ruining everyone’s dinner.You are making us all lose our appetites.’

As Mother spoke, I saw she had taken up her own knife and fork. She was grasping them about their middles as if they were weapons, and then suddenly she threw them tetchily a little way from her, across the table. Her fork struck a serving dish full of vegetables, and her knife clanged against the metal gravy boat.Alice rose slowly from her chair. She looked bewildered, unsure if she should go or stay. Father smiled kindly at her and told her to stay put. Mother looked livid. Jillian slid malevolent eyes towards her sister, but her head remained motionless. Staying calm amidst the storm, Harry was moving his fork imperceptibly to snag Alice’s slice of meat, all his concentration focused then on edging it towards the centre of his plate. At last Alice moved away from her chair and backed out of the room, bumping into the dining-room door once, before turning, opening it and disappearing through it.

‘Come back as soon as you feel better,’ Father called after her.

Alice closed the door with infinite care, as if terrified she would disturb a sleeping baby. After Alice’s departure, I had thought things would improve, and was just tucking into a succulent morsel of red meat when father placed two fat roast onions on Jillian’s plate. Now, if it was a fact known to one and all in our family that Jillian and Alice preferred outside cuts of meat, it was also virtually printed on Jillian’s birth certificate that she hated onions, that no earthly force could induce her to swallow what she described as a single slimy mouthful of them, that even God would have his work cut out if he wished Jillian to polish one off, let alone two. Jillian eyes were riveted on the onions.Mother made a squeaking noise.Harry jumped, and then started mashing up a roast potato with admirable intensity. Father sat back in his chair, and with immense care loaded tiny portions of meat, potato, vegetables and onion onto his fork, patting the whole into a small, sausage shape with his knife, inspecting it for a second, popping it into his mouth, and chewing energetically before washing it down with a glug of red wine. Mother had more than a glug, polishing off nearly her entire glassful. The appearance and following inquiry from one of the amahs as to whether she should clear away, and were we ready for dessert, was met with sour faces, and she quickly scurried off again.

‘I will not eat an onion,’ announced Jillian in a voice of reinforced steel.

This was ignored by Father who made a great drama of having forgotten to say grace, something he hardly ever remembered anyway. He bowed his head piously.