Gemini Girls

by Marie Joseph

  ‘It’s time to go now.’ Carrie walked over and opened the door. If Libby could keep from crying, then she would too. But thinking about the miners did seem out of place that day. It wasn’t right, somehow. Then, as they went down into the hall and she saw Harry Brandwood, subdued in a dark suit with a black tie, come forward with his hands outstretched to her sister, Carrie felt the tears spring to her eyes.

  Libby had Harry, while she had no one. Then as she blinked the tears back she realized that she too was crying for entirely the wrong reasons on that sad and doleful day.

  Poor father, she thought, as with Sarah Batt beside her Ettie came down the stairs to ride into town for the first time in years, her head tilted as if it were a celebratory outing she was going to and not her husband’s funeral.

  Poor, poor Father . . . Carrie walked out to the sleekly polished black funeral car, her throat tight with the tears she swore she would not shed.

  Although by northern standards it was a very quiet funeral, Westerley opened its doors that day to more people than Carrie could remember. There was the vicar and his wife, Harry’s parents, Mr Crankshaw from the mill, the family solicitor, two of Ettie’s cousins from Manchester visiting the big house for the first time, and even little Jimmy Earnshaw, the tackler from the mill. Ettie had seen him standing on his own, well back from the funeral party at the graveside, and had gone over to him to whisper a few words as he stood there, twisting his flat cap into an unrecognizable shape. And now there he was in the lounge, holding a glass of sherry carefully by the stem, an embarrassed captive audience as Libby chattered non-stop beside him on the chesterfield.

  Mrs Edwards had done them proud, and the dining table, with two extra leaves slotted into position, groaned with a spread that was more like a banquet than a funeral tea. There was a side of ham, a pressed tongue, bowls of salad, a huge fruit cake, plates of scones, fairy cakes and a fresh fruit salad flanked by a jug of thick yellow egg custard.

  It was just like a party, Carrie decided, a party that would never have taken place if the master of the house had been present. She watched carefully as Martha Cardwell jerked nervously from sideboard to table, handing round cups of tea from the Rockingham tea service. To Carrie’s knowledge the cups and saucers had only been taken out of the display cabinet before to be washed and replaced.

  There was no sign of grief on Martha’s flat expressionless face, and yet surely she was feeling something? Carrie shuddered, then turned her head swiftly as a burst of laughter came from the window seat where two of her father’s old Rotarian friends shared a joke together. Why had they come? What was the point in paying respect to the dead, when during his life Oliver Peel had earned far more dislike than respect?

  And look at her mother – talking animatedly to the vicar’s wife about the Christmas Bazaar and promising to help with the handicrafts stall. It was years since Ettie had been to church. Only the week before she had explained to Libby that it would be impossible for her to go and hear the banns for the wedding read out.

  ‘I can’t kneel, and I would only have to go out halfway through the service. You know what being shut in with a crowd of people does to me.’

  And yet here she was, excited at having her two cousins to visit, plying them with food, and being the perfect hostess.

  It was as though, with Oliver’s death, the whole house had suddenly come to life.

  Leaving unnoticed, Carrie walked across the hall, curled her fingers round the brass doorknob of the billiard room, opened the door and slipped quietly inside.

  Although the blinds had been lifted and the long plush curtains drawn back in the other rooms of the house, this room, her father’s special bolt hole, had been left shrouded in funereal gloom. Carrie walked over to the window and slid the heavy dark green curtains back, hearing the brass rings clink together as the room was flooded by the grey diffused light of a winter’s afternoon.

  Bolt hole. Yes, that was the word for it. This was where Oliver had escaped night after night to sit at his desk, the whisky decanter to hand, working on his papers, a lonely man unable to delegate even the smallest part of his worries to his workforce. His own fault, oh, certainly his own fault. Carrie sat down in the chair with its hand-carved, curved back and arms, and ran her fingers round the leather-bound blotter. And as she sat there she became for one moment her father, sitting alone, hearing the sounds of footsteps on the stairs, the telephone ringing in the hall and Libby’s voice or her own answering. Seeing Martha coming in to make up the fire, and swivelling round in his chair as she bent over the coal scuttle, her small rump outlined in the too-short skirt. Simple, unlessoned Martha, to whose arms he had crept for comfort.

  Carrie shivered, crossing her arms and trying to rub away the chill seeping into her bones. Now she was seeing him grope his way in the fog down on to the canal bank, bent on revenge. Why else had they found the slip of paper in his pocket with Mungo’s name and address written on it in his decisive hand? And no matter how many times Carrie had told herself there was no love behind Oliver’s intentions, she still felt it was her fault.

  Pushing the chair back and jumping up so quickly that it spun round of its own accord, Carrie almost ran from the room, wrenching open the door and stepping into the hall to meet a burst of chatter, the clatter of crockery and the sight of Mrs Edwards, flushed with the excitement of it all, bustling into, the dining room with yet another loaded tray of food.

  ‘I’m going out for a walk.’ Running down the stairs with her black coat flying open and a scarf tied round her hair, Carrie bumped into an astonished Libby who was busily chivvying Jimmy Earnshaw into the lounge for a final cup of tea.

  ‘You can’t go out! Not now!’ Libby gripped her arm. ‘What will people think?’ She stepped back as Carrie pushed her none too gently aside. ‘And anyway it’ll be dark soon.’ She followed her sister to the door and into the vestibule. ‘Are you all right? You look terrible. What’s wrong, Carrie?’

  As Carrie opened the big front door the late afternoon dampness wrapped her round like a soggy blanket.

  ‘What could be wrong? It’s only Father’s funeral, isn’t it? Why don’t you go back in there and put a record on the gramophone? Then maybe you can all have a bit of a dance.’

  She was running away from the house, dodging round the parked cars, down the drive, out into the lane, taking in great gulps of cold air as if it were the first proper drink she had had that day.

  The tears were there, a solid wedge of grief, an overwhelming pity for the father she could not love. Turning left at the end of the lane she walked away from the direction of the town, past the detached houses set high up from the road and fronted by flights of stone steps. As the smart black coat had no pockets she wrapped her cold hands in the ends of the woollen scarf, and walked on with head bent, letting the tears flow, feeling them running down her cheeks.

  She saw the man’s shoes first, black lace-up boots like her father’s weavers wore, but different in that they were polished until the toecaps gleamed. He was walking quickly, and when she expected him to pass he stopped and spoke, so that she raised her tear-drenched face in startled surprise.

  ‘Libby Peel! Why are you crying? What are you doing out all alone in the dark like this?’

  The voice was unrefined, but not unpleasant. Even in her distress Carrie noticed that. He was staring at her in amazement, his dark eyes puzzled, stretching out a hand to her, then letting it drop back to his side.

  ‘But you’re not Libby, are you?’ He shook his head from side to side, taking in the face he thought he knew – same nose, same mouth, same high cheekbones, but with one startling difference. The eyes. These eyes, brown and long-lashed, wet with tears, were gentle and kind, not bold and challenging. He frowned. He had kept that face in his memory not for any sentimental reasons, but because Libby Peel’s face was one not easily forgotten. And yet . . .

  Carrie took a hand from the enveloping scarf and dashed the tears from her cheeks. ‘I’m Libby
’s twin sister,’ she said softly. ‘Did she not tell you about me?’

  The man shook his head again. He seemed unable to take his gaze from the tear-drenched face staring up at him, and again he felt the overwhelming urge to take this girl into his arms and comfort her. Not as once he had trailed a finger down her sister’s face in teasing fashion – nothing like that.

  ‘She said she had a sister, but not a twin.’ He smiled, ‘But now I see you are not really alike, not really, not at all . . .’ His voice trailed away, but he made no move, just stood there, looking hard in disbelief.

  ‘My name is Tom Silver,’ he said at last, and held out his hand.

  Putting her own into it, Carrie felt in the strong, firm clasp the first sensation of peace that had come over her that day.

  CHAPTER NINE

  ‘AND HE THOUGHT you were me?’ Libby threw down the almost finished pair of pink crêpe-de-Chine camiknickers into which she was stitching a lace insert. Her face was suddenly as rosy as the material. ‘Well, go on. Tell me what else he said.’

  Carrie stared with surprise at her sister’s flushed face. For a reason she couldn’t quite fathom she had put off telling Libby about her meeting with Tom Silver until the week after the funeral, and now her twin was demanding to know why.

  ‘Why didn’t you tell me about this before?’ Libby lowered her head. ‘Did he ask you about the wedding?’

  Carrie was sweetly reasonable. ‘Love, it was the day of Father’s funeral. If you must know, we talked about funerals, not weddings.’ She smiled gently, remembering. ‘He agreed with me that there is something pagan about burying a person with a ham and tongue spread, and relatives you haven’t seen for years appearing as mourners. I was surprised how understanding he was.’

  Libby picked up the sewing and stabbed her needle into the lace. Her voice was sharp. ‘Well I hope he didn’t say he was sorry to hear that Father had died. Our father was one of the bloated capitalists Tom Silver despises. He has real Bolshie ideas, that man. He was sacked from his job on the Weekly Times because of them, and he was going to work at a jobbing printer’s out Hoghton way. Did he tell you how he was getting on there?’

  ‘He only stayed three weeks.’ Carrie bent her head over her own sewing, a pale blue trousseau nightgown for Libby, with fine feather stitching down the bodice. ‘He starts work on the evening paper in the New Year. He said the other place was soul-destroying.’

  Libby sniffed. ‘Not enough scope in small business for bother-making, I expect. I’m surprised the evening paper is taking him on. I would have thought that after being victimized he would automatically have been blacklisted. The two weeks the paper was out of print during the strike must still rankle with the management. Maybe Mr Silver is learning to keep his mouth shut.’

  ‘It’s obvious you don’t like him very much.’ Carrie winced as she noticed the size of the stitches in Libby’s sewing. ‘You’ve never talked about him. I would have thought you would have to know someone pretty well to dislike them so much.’

  ‘I know his sort!’ Libby pricked her finger, sucked at it furiously, then hurled the half-finished camiknickers to the far corner of the chesterfield. ‘Oh God, how I hate sewing!’ She ran her hand through her fringe until the calf-lick at the hairline pushed the hair up on end. ‘So he thinks there’s something pagan about funeral teas, does he? Well, I think there’s something even more pagan about a bride tarting herself up in pink camiknickers just because she’s getting married. Are you sure he never mentioned the bloody wedding?’

  Calmly Carrie went on with her sewing. When Libby swore it was a sure sign something had upset her badly, something far more important than the sewing she detested so much.

  ‘He never said a word about the wedding,’ she said gently. ‘Why? Should he have?’

  ‘No!’ Libby shouted the denial. ‘Are you seeing him again?’

  This time it was Carrie’s turn to put down her sewing and push it to one side. ‘Seeing him again? Good heavens, no. I met him accidentally, we talked for a while and that was that. What are you so agitated about?’

  ‘I am not agitated.’ Libby spoke through clenched teeth. ‘It’s just that Mr Silver is not a man I would like to see you getting friendly with. He’s only one step up from one of Father’s weavers, even if he does fancy himself as an equal.’

  ‘Libby Peel!’ Carrie’s voice was teasing. ‘Listen to who’s talking! I thought you were the one who always said all men were equal in the sight of God.’ She wagged a finger. ‘That used to be one of your favourite sayings, and anyway Tom Silver doesn’t wear clogs and a greasy muffler. He even sounds his aitches, and blows his nose into a handkerchief instead of through his fingers.’

  ‘That’s not funny!’ Jumping to her feet, Libby made for the door. ‘That was crude, not funny. And don’t you go thinking that just because you talked to him for a few minutes means you know him better than I do. Because you don’t! Tom Silver is a jumped-up, arrogant man. It amuses him to pretend to be friendly with people out of his class. He mocks all the time, yes he does, and envies those who live in better houses and don’t go on strike just to get their own way. He’s got a chip on his shoulder as big as a whole forest of trees. He should have been working in Moscow, not Hoghton! He probably prays to Lenin instead of God!’ She turned, her face contorted with an anger bordering on terrible despair. ‘So don’t go mentioning his name to me ever again. Not ever! Do you hear?’

  When the door slammed to, Carrie sat with a hand to her mouth for a moment, staring out through the big bay window at the scudding clouds. So her mother had been right last night when she had said that Libby was suffering prewedding nerves. ‘Just let’s keep our fingers crossed that she doesn’t change her mind in the next few weeks,’ she had said. ‘Libby will never meet another man more right for her than Harry. He has the patience of a saint with her, and he’s going to need all that patience in the years to come. But Harry is strong underneath all that apparently easy-going nature. He can handle our Libby, and my guess is he’s waiting until he gets married to show a bit of stick.’

  ‘Mother!’ Carrie had laughed her surprise.

  ‘And not before its needed,’ Ettie had added, softening her words with the smile that came more often to her lips lately.

  Carrie picked up her sister’s sewing from where it had been thrown in a heap, shook it out and, and with her tongue protruding slightly from between her lips, began unpicking Libby’s tortured stitches.

  On some occasion, most likely at one of the Labour meetings Libby used to attend, Tom Silver had annoyed her . . . Carrie frowned as she threaded her needle, holding it up and squinting at the light. But the man she had met and talked to that dark afternoon had no unkindness in him, she could swear to that. Why, she could never remember seeing such warm eyes in a man’s face. There had been an almost feminine understanding in them as she had choked back her sobs and told him how the funeral party had upset her. She had felt no sense of shame in talking to a stranger like that. Then look how he had insisted on walking her home, shaking his head when she had said with truth that the dark lane leading to Westerley held no terrors for her.

  ‘May God go with you, Miss Peel,’ he had said before walking away, and somehow, going back into the house with all the lights glowing and overhearing one of Ettie’s cousins thanking her hostess for a ‘nice’ time, she had been able to see the funny side. The whole thing had got into perspective somehow.

  Martha Cardwell had been sent packing by Ettie the day after the funeral. ‘So Mother knew,’ Carrie had said. ‘She must have known all the time. So why didn’t she assert herself when Father was alive?’

  ‘Because she would never have won, that’s why. Because Mother wasn’t born a fighter. She’s only coming into her own now because there is no one actively opposing her,’ Libby had declared.

  ‘The oracle has spoken!’ Carrie had teased, and their eyes had met in shared laughter.

  ‘These things will never be ready in time
for the wedding,’ Carrie now muttered to herself as she put the camiknickers down and started on a row of French knots round the neck of the nightgown. ‘Not that Libby will care. She’s only tried her wedding dress on once since it was finished, and if georgette doesn’t hang properly it looks awful. At least her veil is long enough to cover the back, and oh, please God, let it be fine on the day. It’s quite a long walk from the car to the church door, and what could look worse than white stockings and satin shoes all splashed with mud?’

  Still muttering to herself Carrie bent her head and got on with what had to be done, as nervous and worried as if she herself were the bride-to-be,

  And upstairs Libby lay on her bed staring at the wall, seeing nothing.

  ‘Tom Silver is rude and arrogant! No matter what Carrie says. I know him, and she doesn’t. He isn’t worth even the nail on Harry’s little finger. He isn’t!’

  Turning her head into the pillow, Libby bit her lips hard. ‘Oh, why did he have to come into my life again just when I thought he had gone away? Why did he have to come back?’

  There was a most terrible moment when, coming down the aisle on Harry’s arm with the ivory georgette dress hanging beautifully and the embroidered net veil caught up in a cap with pearls and orange blossom flowing out behind her, Libby thought she saw Tom Silver disappearing out of the church door.

  There was the same tilt to the dark head, the same set to the thin shoulders, but when the man turned round and she saw how mistaken she had been, the colour drained from Libby’s cheeks and her hand on Harry’s arm trembled.