THENEWYORKER, OCTOBER 28, 2019 65
S
erena was out in the garden in
the early morning, before her two
sisters got up. It was the best time.
Reflected off the estuary water, the
light seemed a blond powder, sifted
through the summer air onto grass
that grew waist-high, its mauve seed
heads heavy with dew that soaked her
skirt. She dipped to wash her arms
in it, even her face—she was fanciful
and ecstatic, and she loved long grass.
Earth smells and the pungency of
privet and balsam were still acute at
this hour, unmingled; the shadows
were as bold as in a child’s picture book;
swifts and house martins tracked across
the pale sky overhead, shrilling in
thrilled anticipation. Everything was
to come! This unknown day! The gar-
den was so much more lovely now,
Serena thought, than in the past, when
it was scrupulously cared for. A crim-
son rambler rose, unmoored from its
trellis, had flopped fatally forward into
the grass, where it bloomed copiously
but mostly unseen; flower beds were
knotty with convolvulus and bramble;
the dense hedge of blackthorn and
holly had grown too thick and high
for her to see over the top. She was
alone, enclosed with everything en-
chanting, hidden.
And yet the house itself was unro-
mantic: a stolid Victorian villa, built
of massive blocks of red sandstone, on
a steep hill overlooking a small sea-
side town. Beyond the house, the road
meandered upward past more villas,
then dustily through a cluster of old
cottages around the medieval parish
church, which had a distinguished
rood screen. It opened up, above the
town, onto headlands scrubby with
gorse and heather, with views of the
water all the way across to Wales, be-
fore dwindling into a gravel car park,
where it ended. Here, on the hill’s
lower reaches, the old-fashioned ho-
tels and detached large houses had
been intended to accommodate a cer-
tain sort of privileged, discreet, unex-
ceptional, unchanging middle-class
existence—which had changed after
all, because it hardly existed any lon-
ger. A number of the houses had been
turned into nursing homes. The hill
looked across, with a distaste that it
mostly kept to itself, at the white faux
pavilions of the holiday camp on the
other side of the town, which hosted
wrestling weekends or heavy-metal or
evangelical ones.
W
hen Pippa, the eldest of the sis-
ters, ventured out from her bed-
room with sponge bag and towel to use
the bathroom, Gillian, the middle one,
was also venturing. “Beat you!” Gillian
even said, dashing ahead through the
door as if they were still fifteen and sev-
enteen. But they were middle-aged now,
self-consciously aware, as they performed
their jokey girlishness, of the heavy shelves
of bosom under their nightdresses. They
had outgrown Fern Lodge, the house
that had seemed so spacious and gracious
when they were children in it. Pippa and
Gillian both had adult children of their
own, and careers behind them; they lived
in two different northern cities and each
owned, jointly with a husband still more
or less on board, a big house with en-
suite bathrooms for every bedroom. Gil-
lian, who was the most businesslike and
got on with things, had grandchildren,
too. Serena, the youngest sister, was differ-
ent; she lived alone in London. The three
of them were assembled in their child-
hood home because a week ago their el-
derly widowed mother had fallen and
was now in hospital. They were taking it
in turns, two at a time, to drive the for-
ty-five minutes to the hospital and spend
the day with her, although she seemed
barely to know that they were present.
Waiting in her bedroom for the bath-
room to be free, looking out through the
gap where the curtains never quite met
in the middle, Pippa caught sight of Ser-
ena drifting in the garden and was irri-
tated—partly because the neglected gar-
den made her feel guilty. If Serena wanted
to commune with nature, she thought,
she might as well take the secateurs with
her and achieve something. Or the strim-
mer—Pippa had bought a strimmer at
Argos the last time she’d visited, though
no one had tried to use it yet. Still, the
morning was lovely, and she lifted her
face to the yellow light and heat that
splashed through the curtains’ gap. Hadn’t
she made these curtains herself, more
than forty years ago? Unconsciously, her
fingers sought out a place where the thread
on the sewing machine had snarled under
a seam and she couldn’t be bothered to
unpick it; she had been too eager to see
the curtains’ finished effect. The mustard-
yellow Laura Ashley print was peppery
with age now, faded almost to white. Pippa
met her own eyes in the round mirror
that hung above the chest of drawers;
those same eyes had once concentrated
on themselves in that mirror with keen
hope, as she painted on her first eyeliner.
Now she was in her late fifties, with a
craggy, plain face—which was partly a
relief. At least I’ve got that over with, she
thought. Her love for certain unattain-
able rough town boys had been an an-
guish, she remembered then, surprised,
because she was used to thinking of them,
if she ever thought of them, with fond
condescension, as a bit of a joke.
M
eanwhile, Gillian shuddered at
the bathroom’s dubious flecks and
stains and gritty surfaces, the yellowed
toilet brush clogged with paper, the pack-
ets of laxatives and Tena lady pads out
on unapologetic show. Their mother
had a cleaner, but she wasn’t much good;
Gillian and Pippa had worked up quite
a head of indignant steam, uncovering
the signs of her neglect around the house.
Gillian had meant, on her days off from
hospital visits, to give the whole house
a deep clean, and then was taken aback
by the depth of her own reluctance to
tackle the job—but why should she,
after all, if the others didn’t care? In-
stead, she’d trekked sturdily in the sun-
shine, pleased with herself, three miles
each way along the coastal path, using
the expensive boots and walking poles
she’d bought last year for a holiday in
the Lake District, taken without her
husband and with a woman friend—al-
though nothing sexual. In the bathroom
now, she managed fastidiously by stand-
ing on one clean towel and drying her-
self with another. How long, actually,
had it been since their mother had had
a proper bath? She wouldn’t hear of in-
stalling a shower, and yet even Gillian
didn’t find it easy to climb in and out
of the deep tub, its enamel dulled to
gray by the innumerable baths the fam-
ily had run in it over the years. Such
thunderous floods of hot water, walls
and mirror dripping time and again with
condensation; such intimate smells,
pleasant and unpleasant; such fun, the
bubble baths and slippery, screaming
games; then, later, such secret longings
and excitement and dread, solitary be-
hind the locked door—hair dye and
