Sylvie

'Sylvie'

Marcus stood for a moment staring at the house. It was still imposing
despite the peeling paint work. Its granite facade was austere and
unchanging. The slate roof glittered with stubborn morning frost. He
felt again the
curious collision of emotions that coming home provoked in him.
Regret. An aching nostalgia. An obscure
feeling of relief that the mundane and occasionally miserable years he
had spent here as a child were over. He was afraid too, although he
would never admit this to anyone. He lingered in the cold, breathing
air that felt raw and full
of frost, watching his breath form billowing clouds in front of his
face. Glancing up, he noticed a wisp of smoke
rising from the chimney into the still winter air and thought of his
mother waiting for him inside. She'd be in her
sitting-room perhaps, swathed in photogenic black, sipping Earl Grey
or something stronger. He was late. It was already 4 o'clock. She
would, by now, be listening, keenly, for the sound of his footsteps on
the York stone paving. Quelling his habitual anxiety, he pushed open
the gate and walked briskly up the path to the font door.

It was so typical of Aunt Sylvie to die in December. She'd hovered on
the brink for years before succumbing to her tumour a few days into
advent. Further evidence of her perverse desire to disrupt the lives of
those around her. The romance of her mid-winter funeral had bordered on
the ludicrous. Too cinematic by half. Relatives and ex-lovers came from
miles around, gathering like extras from a cheap adaptation of 'Anna
Karenina', they'd followed a coffin heavy with Poinsettia laden with
enormous lillies into a crematorium decked out in festive evergreen.
Then, to the irritation of most of those present, they'd been called
upon to ape expressions of grief all the more extreme because it was
Christmas. Sylvie would have been pleased. It had been an elegant
finale to a life spent gossiping or seducing boys in the kitchen.
Marcus could imagine her now, chilly in the afterworld, a smile of
satisfaction on her red painted lips.

He knocked on the door and waited. A wreath of withered ivy looked
suitably funereal taped to the knocker and he
found himself suppressing a desire to laugh. A few moments passed and
his mother opened the door and smiled,
showing him her expensive new teeth . She looked immaculate in a black
gown of some shimmering material more
suited to film premieres or metropolitan cocktail parties. She had
powdered her face to a smooth alabaster.

'Marcus, darling, come in.'

'Hello, Mother.'

'I do wish you'd get the hang of calling me 'Magda'. It is my name
after all. We should rejoice in our individuality and not be so
conventional.'

These bohemian pretensions irritated Marcus but he indulged her.

'Hello, Magda. Feel better now?'

'Much better. Thankyou, darling. You look tired.'

'I am tired.'

He stepped over the threshold into the hall, closing the door behind
him and inhaling odours of bee's wax and lilies,
an ever present undertone of booze. The olfactory background of his
boyhood. Shutting them into to the fire lit sitting room, she turned
and appraised him critically.

'And you look thin. '

He lowered himself into the overstuffed armchair, warming himself at
the hearth like a stiff old cat. She leant down
and kissed him lightly on the cheek. Her perfume was complex and
vaguely intoxicating.

'I'm glad you've come. She would be pleased. ' She looked at him sadly
and he could tell she'd been crying.

'I could make you some tea. Or would you prefer something stronger?
There's whiskey.'

'Tea would be great. It's freezing out. We'll have snow
tonight.'

'You should take more care of yourself. You're not getting any
younger.'

'I'm forty-two, not ninety-two.'

'Your uncle was dead by your age. It doesn't do to be complacent.
'

She drifted abstractly from the room and Marcus could hear her busying
herself in the kitchen, opening cupboard doors and rattling crockery.
He gazed into the fire, glimpsed embers subsiding into ashes and
shuddered at the thought of what he had come here to do. She returned
with a tray which she set down on the coffee table in front of the
sofa. She lifted the lid of the teapot and stirred the contents
contemplatively. He'd been right about the Earl Grey. The smell of
bergamot was subtle but unmistakable. She'd brought lemons, freshly
sliced, for the tea and there were some dreary ham sandwiches, too,
left over from Christmas. She smiled apologetically.

'We can liven them up with some pickles.'

'Where is she?'

He watched her pouring the tea, admiring her hands, her nails polished
to a glossy garnet colour, the skin pale and unblemished despite their
seventy years.

'Where's who?'

'Aunt Sylvie, of course. Where've you put her?'

'She's over there.'

The urn was a rich emerald green and was made of some darkly gleaming
mineral of the kind Marcus imagined
would be found in meteorites or in the craters of extinct volcanoes.
It stood in isolation in a display cabinet next to
the door. So striking was its appearance that it seemed odd to Marcus
that he had not noticed it before.

'It's Art Deco. I'm sure she would have approved. It's been under my
bed for years. '

'Are we going to bury her in it, mother?'

'Good god, no. That thing's worth a fortune. A simple scattering is
what I've got in mind. Sprinkle her somewhere picturesque. We can use
it again some other time. You might find yourself in it one day,
Marcus, darling. If you play your cards right.' She put down her cup
and walked purposely over to the cabinet and opened it. 'It's amazingly
heavy. And Sylvie was so slim. I suppose she must have had very dense
bones.'

She lifted the urn gingerly from its position and brought it back to
where Marcus was sitting.

'There.' She said brightly, depositing it on the tray next to the
sandwiches. 'We don't want her to feel left out do we?'

They eyed the urn silently for some minutes. Little flames bust into
life and crackled in the grate.

'I think I will have that whiskey.'

The fact of death made Marcus nervous. The thought that Aunt Sylvie,
vivid and over decorated in life, had, in death, been reduced to white
dust and sealed inside what amounted to an antique vase, was
disquieting. His mother poured him a large one from the decanter and
cleared her throat.

'I've invited your father.'

Marcus felt the blood drain from his face, a fist of anxiety clenching
in his gut.

'What?' His voice sounded shrill and faintly ridiculous.

'Well, he and Sylvie went back a long way. I'm convinced their affair
started long before I married him. And of
course, I caught them in bed together many times before we finally
divorced. '

'Must we rake over the past?' His father's drunken infidelities with
his wife's sister had been the stuff of myth.

A Greek Tragedy played out in a suburban setting. 'And you know I've
not spoken to him for years.'

She contemplated him imperiously.

'He has a right to be present when we finally dispatch his mistress,
don't you think?'

'He didn't make it to the funeral.'

'Too busy Christmas shopping, I expect. ' She sipped her tea,
absently. 'Anyway, he'll be here at five. I know that you two have
never seen eye to eye but I'm relying on you to behave yourselves
today. It's a solemn occasion, after all. Think of Sylvie.'

Marcus knocked back the last of his whisky and poured himself another,
thinking of his father.

Of course, he was late, too. The crystalline twilight of late afternoon
darkened into evening and still there was no sign of him. Marcus
brought in extra fuel for the fire. Magda lit the lamps and filled the
room with a soft amber glow, adjusted the trimmings on the melancholy
Christmas tree. They nibbled more of the food left over from
Christmas and talked about Sylvie. At eight, they heard an abrupt
knock at the front door. Marcus stiffened, felt his
heart start to thump in his chest. Magda raised herself from her
chair, weaving a little from the gin.

'I'll get it.'

Marcus could hear them in the hall. His mother's voice was light and
overly casual. His father's, gruff and business-
like. They walked into the room, stony-faced.

'Your father's here, Marcus.'

He looked older. His hair was silvery. The skin around his dark eyes
was baggy from booze and recent bankruptcy. His suit, though, was well
cut and his face retained a little of the colour his travels in Italy
had given him. There was something of the Bon Viveur about him still.
They shook hands, stiffly.

'Terrible business, this.'

It was the same voice Marcus remembered from his childhood. Polite but
steely. They stood for a moment,
enduring a painful silence. Then Magda smiled and wandered unsteadily
over to the drinks cabinet.

'Would you like something, Francis? I've a nice brandy.'

'Can't we just get on with it? I don't have very much time.'

He settled himself on the sofa and lit a cigarette eyeing Marcus
suspiciously. He smelt of tobacco and Hermes cologne. His self
possession was disquieting.

'You're not looking good, Marcus. Not good at all.'

Marcus said nothing, shrinking from the corrosive effects of his
father's presence.

'Have a brandy, for god's sake. ' Magda was nervous, flapping around
them like a trapped sparrow. ' It might
help you to relax. Would you like something Marcus?

Marcus looked at her and felt a sudden overwhelming surge of
pity.

'Er, a little more of that whiskey, please.'

Magda handed them their drinks and sat next to Francis who stared at
her for a few seconds.

'Is that her?'

He pointed a nicotine stained finger at the urn.

'Well its not the butter dish is it?' Alcohol was making her
fractious. 'If you're both ready, we can get started.'

The night air was freezing. The garden, all evergreens and leafless
sycamores, was austere.

'It's a lovely night.' She stood with the urn, gazing up a sky bright
with stars. 'The Plaides., look. And there's

Venus.'

'What exactly do you intend to do, Magda?' Francis, elegant in his
long winter coat was getting impatient.

Ignoring him she pulled a trowel from the pocket of her Mac and handed
it to Marcus.

'Dig a small hole at the foot of the holly tree, Marcus, darling.
We'll put her there.'

'But I thought- '

'Just do it, darling, will you? Your father's a busy man.'

Marcus trudged over to the ancient holly tree and knelt down, thrusting
the trowel into the ground. The earth was hard, a network of cold roots
sparkling with microscopic particles of ice. The hole he made was
shallow but adequate. He stood up and stepped back. The holly leaves
stirred in the icy breeze. Magda unscrewed the urn.

'Do you want to say something, Francis?'

'No.'

'No? After all she meant to you?'

'She was your sister.'

'She was your lover.'

Marcus gazed up into the sky for a moment. Shooting stars flashed above
the northern horizon. Then he watched
his mother bend down and pour the fine white dust into the frozen
earth.

'Cover her over.' she said briskly, popping the lid back onto the urn
and heading back to the house.

Marcus walked back with his father. They didn't speak. Once inside,
Magda turned to them and said sharply:

'Call your father a taxi.'

'I don't need a taxi. I'm in my car.'

Within minutes he was gone, banging the door behind him, leaving the
echo of his cologne in the unheated air of the
hall.

At 3am, Marcus stood at the window watching the snow. Flakes, soft and
slow moving, drifted down from clouds the colour of rose quartz. The
holly tree was quickly covered with a fine frosting of pristine white.
He padded back to bed, thinking of Sylvie, of her curious laughter, of
that way she looked at him in the days before he knew about
sex, of her silky underthings crumpled up into a ball at the bottom of
his father's wardrobe. At 5am, he went down to the kitchen for
something to drink. The urn was in the sink, immersed in tepid soapy
water. He imagined his mother rinsing it out in the small, silent hours
after midnight, washing what little remained of Sylvie down the drain.
He switched off the light and stood in the dark gazing out across the
garden. No stars were visible.

Ends.

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