Tessa Hadley - Sunstroke and Other Stories

Becky told Neil flirtatiously that he would have to be on his best behaviour, while Hilary was staying. — No swearing, she said. — ’Cause I can see she’s a nice girl.

— Fuck, he said. — I hadn’t thought of that. Fuck that.

Hilary thought of the farm boys at home, who called sexual words when she and Sheila had to walk past them in their school uniform. She had always thought, however much it tortured her, that they had an obscure right to do it because of their work. In the winter mornings from the school bus you could see the frozen mists rising up out of the flat colourless fields, and figures bent double with sacks across their shoulders, picking Brussels sprouts, or sugar beeting. But Neil was here, wasn’t he, at university? He’d crossed over to their side, the lucky side. Whatever she thought of her life, she knew it was on the lucky side, so long as she wasn’t picking Brussels sprouts or meat-packing.

No one had said anything since she arrived about where Hilary was to sleep. Sheila was supposed to have booked a guest room for her at Manor Hall, but of course she couldn’t go there now. When she couldn’t hold herself upright at the kitchen table any longer she climbed upstairs to ask what she should do, but Sheila was asleep, breathing evenly and deeply. Her forehead was cool. Hilary kept all her clothes on and wrapped herself in an old quilt that Sheila had kicked off; she curled up to sleep on the floor beside the bed. At some point in the night she woke, frozen rigid and harrowed by a bitter draught blowing up through the bare floorboards; she climbed into the bed beside Sheila who snorted and heaved over. Under the duvet and all the blankets it smelled of sweat and blood, but it was warm. When she woke again it was morning and the sun was shining.

— Look at the patterns, Sheila said.

She was propped up calmly on one elbow on the pillow, and seemed returned into her usual careful self-possession. Hilary noticed for the first time that the room was painted yellow; the sun struck through the tall uncurtained windows and projected swimming squares of light on to the walls, dancing with the movements of the twiggy tops of trees which must be growing in a garden outside.

— Are you all right? she asked.

Sheila ignored the question as if there had never been anything wrong.

— How did you get on with everybody last night?

— We went to a pub.

— Oh, which one? She interrogated Hilary until she was satisfied that it must have been the Beaufort. — We often go there, she said enthusiastically. — It’s got a great atmosphere, it’s really local.

— When I told them we lived in a vicarage, Hilary said, — one of them asked if we were Catholics.

— That’s so funny. I bet I know who that was. What did you think of Neil?

Hilary was cautious. — Is he from the north?

— Birmingham, you idiot. Couldn’t you tell? Such a pure Brummie accent.

— He wasn’t awfully friendly.

Sheila smiled secretively. — He doesn’t do that sort of small talk. His dad works as a toolsetter at Lucas’s, the engineering company. No one in his family has been to university before. His parents don’t have money, compared to most of the students here. He gets pretty impatient with people, you know, who just take their privilege for granted.

Hilary felt like a child beside her sister. What had happened yesterday marked Sheila as initiated into the adult world, apart from her, as clearly as if she was signed with blood on her forehead. She supposed it must be the unknown of sexual intercourse which could transform things in this way that children couldn’t see: Neil’s self-importance into power, for instance. At the same time as she was in awe of her sister’s difference, Hilary also felt a stubborn virgin pride. She didn’t want ever to be undone out of her scepticism, or seduced into grown-up credulous susceptibility.

— But doesn’t he think that we’re poor, too? she asked fiercely. — Have you told him? Does he have any idea?

— It’s different, said Sheila with finality. — It’s just different.

When Hilary drove in the summer with her father in the Bedford van, to pick up Sheila and all her things at the end of her first year, she was waiting for them of course at Manor Hall, as if there had never been any other place, any squat whose kitchen was painted with giant mushrooms. Hilary understood that she was not ever to mention what had happened there, not even when she and Sheila were alone. Because they never wore the memory out by speaking of it, the place persisted vividly in her imagination.

She had stayed on in that house for almost a week: she had arrived on Monday and her return ticket was for Saturday. Sheila rested for the first couple of days, sleeping a lot, and Hilary went out on her own, exploring, going round the shops. On Sheila’s instructions she took several carrier bags of bloody sheets and towels to the launderette, where she sat reading Virginia Woolf while the washing boiled. There seemed to be a lot of hours to pass, because she didn’t want to spend too much time in Sheila’s room; she shrank from the possibility of getting in the way between Sheila and Neil. A couple of times she went to the cinema in the afternoon by herself. They all went out to pubs every evening and she got used to drinking beer, although she didn’t get to like it. While the others joked and drank and smoked she sat in a silence that must have looked gawky and immature, so that she was sure Sheila despaired of her, although Sheila must also surely have known that she found the conversation impossible to join because it was so tepid and disappointing, gossip mostly about people she’d never met. Sheila, who had been aloof and not popular at school, seemed to be working hard to make these people like her. She made herself brighter and funnier and smaller than her real self, Hilary thought. She surrounded Neil in particular with such efforts of admiration, prompting him and encouraging him and attributing ideas to him, while he smiled in lazy amusement, rolling up his eternal cigarettes. At least they weren’t all over each other, they didn’t cling together in public. Hilary even feared for Neil, thinking that he shouldn’t trust her sister, he should wonder what dark undertow might follow after such a glittering bright flood.

By the end of the week Sheila was well enough to go to lectures again, and on the Saturday she came to the bus station to see Hilary off. She insisted on carrying Hilary’s suitcase, which swung in her hand as light as if there was nothing in it, now that their father’s old dictionaries of classical mythology had been unloaded.

— I didn’t feel anything, you know, Sheila said as they walked, as if she was picking up on some discussion they had only broken off a few moments before, although in fact they hadn’t talked once, since it was over, about what had happened to her. — I mean, apart from physically. Just like a tummy upset. That’s all it was: a nuisance.

— All right, if you say so.

For the first time Sheila talked about her studies. She had to write an essay on the Oresteia which she said was all about the sex war, female avenging Furies and male reason.

— The gods are disgusted at you , she said gleefully. — Apollo to the Furies. Apoptustoi theosis. Never let your filth touch anything in my sacred shrine.

When Hilary was in her seat in the coach, Sheila stayed hanging around outside the window although Hilary signed to her to go, there was no need to wait. They laughed at one another through the glass, helpless to communicate: for the first time they were in tune together as they used to be. Sheila mouthed something and Hilary mimed elaborately: frowned, shook her head, shrugged her shoulders. She couldn’t understand. Sheila put her face close to the glass and cupped her hands round her mouth, shouting. She was wearing a woollen knitted hat with knitted flowers pulled down over her ears.