Gregory Hall - A Sleep and A Forgetting

And what was that? Flora had threatened suicide, no, had stated in so many words how and when she was going to kill herself. That much her letter made plain. But then he would inevitably want to know about the contents of the letter, about Flora’s reasons for taking this extreme step, reasons about which hitherto he knew nothing. She could not, would not explain those to him. Whether to do that had been Flora’s choice, and she had chosen not to share her past – and thus her sister’s past – with the man with whom she shared her life, sparing him the anguish and the burden of that knowledge. Catriona, who shared her life with no one, had never been faced with that decision, had determined never to be faced with it. She could certainly never contemplate breaching a twenty-four-year wall of silence to Bill of all people, a man to whom she was not in the least close, whom she neither liked, nor trusted.

But the truth was also that there was as yet no body. And without a body there could have been no suicide. And without a suicide, there could only be an absence. But what was the nature of that absence? Had Flora thought better of what she had intended and simply gone away in distress? Would she return in a manner that made it clear that the idea of suicide was merely an episode, a fugue that had passed? In that event, the content of the letter was in the nature of a trust which it was incumbent on Catriona not to break, certainly not to a man who might react with anger and bitterness, a man who might reject her if he knew.

There was another explanation: that Flora’s departure was intended to be permanent. That she had deliberately abandoned Bill, Charlotte and Catriona. That somewhere she was adopting a new identity. That in that new life, she would no longer be Flora Jesmond, née Turville, but someone else entirely. Catriona shuddered at this thought.

Would she, could she have done that? Catriona then really would be entirely alone in the world. Alone with the dreadful memories, which from time to time, as if from the depths of a still lake, attempted to rise like the kraken.

What most tore and worried at her as she contemplated the situation was that what had happened, what appeared to have happened, was not the act of the sister she had thought she had known. Like an eruption, the events of Saturday had overlain with alien matter all her familiar features. But, on reflection, that was not the right image. The ash and rock of a volcanic explosion buried and obscured. Saturday’s cataclysm had revealed. It had shown Catriona a different Flora, a Flora who was more like Catriona herself.

She was stunned by this epiphany. Her image of her sister, from earliest childhood, had been founded on the concept that they were polar opposites – in appearance, in everything.

Little Flora was the blondest of blondes, and wore her hair either in long and luxuriant straight tresses, or wound and plaited into complex braids and chignons, from out of which her bright complexion shone like a sun. Young Catriona’s abundant black hair had a naturally stiff and awkward curl, and it surrounded and hung in tangles over her face, obscuring her pale features, like streaks of dark cloud across the moon. Flora was a neat, clean and tidy girl. Catriona was constantly rebuked for her personal habits; she cared not a fig for clothes or cleanliness and her room was always a mess. Flora was animated, effervescent, social, loving parties and company. Catriona was quiet, dour, shunned society, and hated social gatherings. Flora had had boyfriends and admirers by the dozen. Catriona was aloof and cold, and scorned any boy who came near her.

As they grew up, Catriona even as she loved and cherished Flora, was inclined to patronise, even to have some measure of contempt for her younger sibling’s character, regarding it as less interestingly complicated than her own. Flora, she decided, lacked intellectual or emotional depth. She did not read the kind of books that Catriona read; she did not think about the kinds of issues which her sister constantly pondered; she did not respond to the power of literature or the arts generally, with one exception: she did like some music. This taste, though, was another area of difference between them.

Flora loved folk songs, genuinely traditional or in the style of Bob Dylan and his followers. The better to enjoy these, she taught herself to play, or rather, in her modest words, strum the guitar and sing along to it. On several occasions, the endless repetitions of ‘Mr Tambourine Man’ or ‘Blowing in the Wind’ provoked Catriona to fury, the only occasions when they had had real rows. Catriona’s prejudice – and perhaps her jealousy, as she could not herself play a note – blinded her to the fact that Flora actually had some real talent, which she later exploited to her advantage.

This ability was the only one that had given Catriona the least pause, however. In everything to do with school, the elder had been far and away the champion. She had been the keenest and most driven of scholars, top in every subject, whilst Flora, with no sense of shame, had bumped along at the bottom of her class, a cheerful, unaffected presence who regarded the classroom activities as a distracting irrelevance compared to the important things in life: personal grooming and appearance, physical health and fitness, make-up, and fashion.

Not that she had been a troublesome pupil, far from it. She had always been polite, helpful, and, ultimately, uninterested. The only thing the school offered in which she could have excelled was drama, where she proved, like her sister, to have a natural talent as an actor. Typically, though, although she loved costumes and dressing up and being a presence on the stage, she found plays boring, the learning of words tedious; yet another aspect of education which held no interest. As soon as she was able to leave school, she left, with only a few paper qualifications.

Her first job was as a junior dogsbody in a travel agency in the West End. In no time at all she had revealed a flair for the work. Her people skills were good, she was told. She was being groomed for management. But Flora had had her own ideas. She had saved her money assiduously, and one fine morning, just after her eighteenth birthday, she resigned from the agency, but not before she had bought a clutch of budget air tickets. For the next year, she travelled the world, seeing the exotic destinations that she had spent her days selling to customers. She took her guitar, and worked bars and clubs and cafes en route, or busked in the streets.

On her return, her travel bug had not left her. She had applied to British Airways and been accepted for training as a flight attendant. Catriona remembered, guiltily, the scorn with which she had greeted Flora’s proud announcement. She knew now what she hadn’t known then: that it was actually incredibly difficult to get onto the training course, still less to pass it with such élan as Flora had managed.

By that time, Catriona had her starred First and was beginning her doctoral research. The fact that her sister was an air hostess was not something she wished to broadcast amongst the sage and serious feminist community of St Hilda’s College.

Flora had flown for several years. Then she had met Bill Jesmond and married him.

That was the first thing her sister had done which Catriona had found did not accord with her view of Flora’s character. However, this going against type did not raise her opinion of Flora, rather the reverse. Bill was the last man in the world Catriona could have imagined any lively, attractive young woman wishing to marry. He was a tall, rather gangling and awkward man. Though he was only thirty-five and his chestnut curly hair bore no hint of grey, he talked and behaved as if he were at least ten years older. He was undoubtedly brilliant, possessing a string of chemistry degrees from the Cambridges in both England and the United States, but, despite this intellectual achievement, he was, as a personality, unspeakably dull.