She finished her cutting in silence.
“Ginny,” she said, studying the pinking shears as she chopped at the air with them, “don’t you ever feel you need to break out and get away, get your own life back? Maud and Clive make all the decisions for us, always. Why can’t we decide what we want to do? It’s not fair. Do you ever feel like that, Ginny?”
I knew I never did. “I don’t think so,” I admitted.
“Really?” She shook her head with resignation, as if she were disappointed in me.
I concentrated on pouring wax into the last jam jar.
“Isn’t it obvious how unhappy I am here? Haven’t you noticed?” she said.
“I knew you were unhappy about being expelled.”
“Only because this is the alternative,” she snapped, as if she’d been ready for my reaction. “This isn’t a life, this house and Clive’s damn moths. What am I supposed to do here? Grow old and dissect insects?” she said, as if his life was abhorrent to her. By answering I’d inadvertently given her the go-ahead for a small tirade. “I can’t stay here, Ginny. I had friends at school. There’s no one here but you and me. I’m not staying here to melt wax on top of Maud’s jam. That might be all right for you, but it’s not all right for me.”
Vivi was in one of her moods and there was nothing I could say to change it. I skimmed off some of the wax at the top of the pot. It was just starting to form a skin so it creased a little as I drew the ladle through. I put the back of my hand out under the ladle and dribbled wax onto it, bit by bit, watching the little translucent domes turn opaque.
“Maud and Clive don’t even try to understand me. I get so”—she searched for the right word—“lonely. Do you think there’s something wrong with me, Ginny? I’ve been trying to work out what’s wrong with me.” She turned in her lips and rubbed them together to stop herself crying but tears gathered anyway along her lower lids and spilled over, running down the crease of her nose.
“I think they can be quite reasonable—” I started.
“They’re reasonable to you,” she butted in, sniffing herself together. “They don’t listen to me. They only listen to you.”
At the time I found Vivi’s attitude surprising, but I realize now that she hadn’t left school with the same advantage as me. You see, Maud had never got round to proclaiming Vivi’s future to an interested neighborhood during a drinks party so, although it was generally understood I would now stay and help Clive with the moths, Vivi (along with the rest of the village) was at a loss for what she was going to do. Maud and Clive didn’t seem the least bit concerned, and I could understand Vivi’s frustration. They had this way of shrugging off her worries. “Vivien will be all right,” they’d say. “Don’t worry about Vivi.” But, between you and me, I think they got it back to front: I was the one who was fine and Vivien the one who was always in some sort of quandary or getting herself worked up over the next life hurdle. After all, it was Vivi, not me, who had fallen off the bell tower and ruptured her womb, Vivi who had got us expelled and Vivi who didn’t want to be here sealing jam.
Later that night, Vivi slid into bed beside me. I felt her search for my hand and entwine her agitated fingers with mine, playing with them, curling them and uncurling them with urgency, rousing me. I could tell she wanted to wake me, that she wanted to talk.
“Are you awake, Ginny?” she asked finally.
“Yes,” I said, sitting up, befuddled. “What is it?”
“You do understand why I can’t stay, don’t you?” she said. “You know I have to leave, don’t you?”
I wondered if I did. I’d never thought of myself without Vivi being somewhere in that thought too. I’d never dreamed a dream that she wasn’t in. I only seemed whole when I was with her, as if she somehow made up the parts of me that were lacking. I couldn’t imagine living without her.
“What about me?” I asked.
“You’ve got the moths,” she said vaguely, as if she thought they could substitute for a sister.
Then she stretched up and kissed my cheek. “Thank you, sis,” she said. “Even if Maud and Clive don’t understand, I knew you would.” She squeezed my hand again, and all of a sudden I felt very specially connected with my wonderful, spirited little sister, and everything seemed to make sense: we understood each other.
Then she told me the plan.
It was after supper the following day when Vivi showed me where she would hide. She took me into the back pantry and shut the kitchen door. Climbing onto the workbench, she reached up to dislodge a rectangular panel above the architrave of the door. It was painted white, the same as the walls, and although I had vaguely noticed a square of beading there, we had lots of empty air spaces and access panels about the house and I’d never thought to take them off and have a look. Vivi obviously had. She crawled right in through the square hole. She’d already described—in the middle of last night—how, once she was in, she could crawl along the rafters in the empty space and end up behind the study wall, above the door to the kitchen.
I went into the study and waited until I heard her knock three times. I knocked back and went to call our parents into the study as a matter of priority.
“What is it, Virginia?” Maud asked, perplexed. I’d disturbed her on the telephone. She perched herself on the window seat, Clive sat at his desk and Vivi stayed very still on her hands and knees in the wall, listening to her scheme being put into place.
“I wanted to talk to you about Vivi,” I started.
Maud glanced at Clive, narrowing her eyes.
“Go on,” Clive said, but he seemed uninterested, opening the top drawer of his desk and fiddling with his pens.
“I think you should let her go to London to do a secretarial course,” I blurted.
I think Clive was about to say something when Maud cut in. “You do, do you?” I thought she almost laughed. “And why is that?”
Clive only seemed interested in the leads of his pencils. He looked intent and serious as he took them out of the drawer one by one, pushing the tips against the pad of his middle finger to gauge their sharpness. I wished he’d join in and have an opinion for once on something so important to Vivi.
“Because she really wants to go and do this and I think it’s unfair not to let her. She’s not going to be happy here—and I won’t be happy either, if she’s so sad,” I said.
“Oh Ginny, reeeally,” said Maud. “Don’t you worry about Vivien. She’ll be fine.” That made me want to shout at her, to tell her to stop saying it, to tell her that Vivi was far from fine—had they not noticed how unhappy she was? But the words got stuck in my head and never made it out.
Maud looked at Clive again. “Vivien put you up to this, didn’t she?” She sighed. Vivi had told me Maud would say that.
“No.”
“Well, she’s fifteen and she’s not going anywhere,” said Maud definitively.
I glanced up at the boarding above the door to the kitchen and imagined Vivi’s hopes soaking into the rafters behind it.
“She’s going to stay right here and—”
Maud was interrupted by Clive slamming his desk drawer back into place. “Sorry,” he said, because the noise had broken off our conversation. “Virginia, thank you for coming to tell us.” He stood up. “Now, if you could leave us, your mother and I will think about what you’ve said.”
Of course I didn’t believe him. He hadn’t seemed interested in the slightest in what I was saying. I wanted to stay. Vivi would be disappointed I hadn’t talked for longer; she’d say I hadn’t tried hard enough. I wanted to think of a way to prolong the conversation, put forward a different viewpoint, anything to make them reconsider. But Clive had cut me short. He’d made it clear he didn’t want to talk about it anymore. Perhaps he had blunt pencils to attend to, I thought unkindly.