Copycat

by Gillian White

  Sam spent his time sailing with Dad.

  My parents were close, thrilled to have us but very far from needy – so unlike poor Stella. One day, I supposed, this might be different, when one of them died, or grew senile or ill. But what was the point of worrying – those thoughts were cold and frightening.

  This was the nostalgic influence that had drawn Sam and me to the cottage in Hertfordshire, the one we’d originally wanted to buy before we moved to the Close. Since then we’d reconsidered. Country life was not the same… no work, communities broken; leaving pretty pickings, such as old chapels and schools for the rich, retired or elderly, who fought like dogs on committees to preserve the stagnant picturesque, something to hang on their walls and stare at, while the dying went on all around them.

  ‘Perhaps we ought to move,’ I told Sam.

  He thought I’d gone mad. ‘Where to?’

  ‘Just anywhere… for a change.’

  ‘But what for?’

  ‘Because of Jennie, of course.’

  ‘I’m not being sodding well driven out of my house for anyone,’ Sam said.

  ‘Just listen to me for a moment. If what Alice has read is true and there’s no easy cure for this fixation, then how long are we going to be stuck with it?’

  ‘That’s their problem. Let them move.’

  ‘They’d never go.’

  ‘Well then, maybe we’ve got to learn to be tolerant.’

  ‘Hah!’ I was staggered. ‘Listen to who’s talking!’

  But I understood his new attitude. From the woods and hedgerows of Dorset our problems at home felt unreal.

  That was until we set foot inside our spanking clean house. Then we were back on dangerous ground.

  ‘It’s like it’s all brand new again,’ shouted an excited Scarlett, exploring her neat-as-a-pin toy cupboard and finding things she’d forgotten she had. But I couldn’t help feeling unaccountably disturbed to see that even the paintboxes had been cleaned. None of the colours ran any more.

  It was just as if nobody lived here.

  ‘What are we going to do, Sam? I think we need a new strategy.’

  ‘What we need is a drink,’ he said, but he paused for a moment over my question. He was still amazed by the transformation and kept wandering round the kitchen, opening cupboards and peering into the fridge where even the clogged-up light worked again. ‘We could do one of three things,’ he announced. ‘We could try to start from the beginning and pretend that nothing was wrong.’

  ‘If Jennie would let us.’

  ‘Or… we could ignore her completely. Gut her off. Send her to Coventry.’

  ‘Out of the question, she’s too near. I couldn’t live like that, and what about the kids?’

  ‘Or,’ he turned and smiled at me, ‘we could give her a job as our char.’

  ‘And that’, I said, smacking him on the head, ‘would be pandering to her masochistic desires, compounding her low self-esteem, and I’m not going along with that.’

  But I couldn’t help my growing unease. Even the way she had made our bed was disturbing. No place for cosy love-making, it was more suited to deathly repose.

  Before we knew it, we were on normal terms. I use the word ‘normal’ loosely, but we did seem to have found a way to rub along together.

  There wasn’t much choice – we lived next door and our little girls were closer than sisters.

  ‘And we won’t discuss what has happened,’ I told her, ticking off what felt like an errant child.

  ‘But I can’t pretend I’ve stopped loving you…’

  ‘No, I know that. But I don’t want to hear about it and I won’t have any more histrionics.’ I shook my head disbelievingly, knowing I sounded like a tight-arsed headmistress. ‘For the kids’ sake, Jennie, you must see that. They’re older now, they’re aware of atmospheres and they sense if there’s antagonism. So let’s agree, I’m aware of your feelings and will try not to make matters harder, but, in return, don’t burden me with them. If you feel yourself cracking, go home, shut the door, put the music on and scream, dance, shout, punch the cushions, whatever you need to do until the urge subsides.’

  Jennie nodded obediently, and I thought Alice would be proud of her daughter’s command of the situation.

  Now that I’d started, I might as well finish. ‘And I’m telling you right away that Scarlett is going to the nursery for five days a week next month, and Mrs Cruikshank will have Lawrence so I can work full time. I won’t be around in the week, Jennie, and there’s nothing you can do, so don’t try…’

  ‘No, Martha, I won’t.’ And she stared abjectly down at her feet.

  ‘Come off it! Don’t start on that fawning respect crap. Haven’t you heard a word I’ve been saying? Games! You’re so bloody transparent, it’s pitiful. If you want us to be friends again, you’re going to have to pack that in. I just can’t take it, Jennie, I don’t know how to react to that shit.’

  ‘I didn’t mean to, I’m sorry I’m sorry.’ She looked up and smiled at me normally. ‘I swear this is going to be different.’

  ‘Good, I’m glad that’s out of the way.’ And then I tried out my only idea. ‘Why don’t you go back to school, get some qualifications, get a life, get some courage? That’d stop you wallowing in self-pity.’

  She shocked me rigid by staying calm. ‘You’re right, and I’ll do it tomorrow.’

  ‘You will find out about courses?’

  ‘I promise.’ She looked pleased and this odd pleasure came from her obedience to me. I was still delicately balanced on that pinnacle of power. So I turned away, defeated.

  But Jennie was as good as her word.

  And incredibly it appeared to be working. We spent time together – whole families, whole weekends – and it was fine, really fine. We had good times again. We laughed and I was beginning to trust her, just as I had once before. She could be sweet, very lovable and hilariously funny. Graham was relieved just to see Jennie happy and enthusiastic about the timetable they were working out for her at the tech. Back To Work was the course, specially designed for women who had missed out first time round and needed to find new confidence. Jennie showed me the prospectus, which looked perfect in every way.

  ‘You’re not alone,’ I reminded her. ‘See how many other poor sods are desperate to climb out of the trap. You’re going to feel so different, your life is going to take off from now.’

  ‘Do you honestly think so?’

  I wasn’t going to let her turn morbid. ‘I know so, Jennie. If you stick with it, you’re going to get there.’

  ‘But only with your help,’ she said shyly.

  Damn her. ‘You’ve got it,’ I said.

  And she did have my help.

  Almost undivided.

  She still kept her house as antiseptic as a hospital, while mine was like a council tip. Her kids left home with a proper breakfast, while mine left chewing floppy toast. Every morning we delivered the kids, first the babies to Mrs Cruikshank, and then we rattled on to the nursery where Poppy was as keen as Scarlett. Then it was on to the town centre, where the technical college was a five-minute walk from the offices of the Express.

  Mostly we had lunch together. If I had somebody with me, Jennie stayed well behaved, normal if a little reserved. But then she always found it hard with strangers – you could never call Jennie a social animal.

  ‘If I’m not at the pub by one, then I’m on a job,’ I told her, ‘so there’s no point being wounded and saying I didn’t explain. My mobile won’t be on, so there’s no way to warn you.’

  She accepted this, she seemed contented.

  I kept hoping she’d bring a friend of her own.

  Hilary Wainwright still called on Jennie on a regular, thoughtful basis like a prison visitor; and so did Angie, the builder’s wife. But as far as I was aware Jennie wasn’t telling fantastic tales or putting untruths about.

  The outside world was absorbing her more than her old life in the Close and this had to be healt
hier. If either Hilary or Angie still questioned my cold reaction to Jennie’s lethal cry for help, then I was too busy to notice. The support I was giving her now was far more useful than sympathy and tea – both as dangerous as Twiglets and booze – and that self-indulgent twaddle, stirring up the wriggly pond life it was better to be ignorant of.

  Naturally, I stayed cautious.

  One day at a time, I told myself, let’s not run before we can walk.

  TWENTY-ONE

  Jennie

  ONE DAY AT A time, I told myself, let’s not run before we can walk.

  This was the person I wanted to be: I went to Martha’s hairdresser, Snips, and they chopped off my childlike shoulder-length bob. I had it highlighted in rich rusts, and cropped, and I was transformed into a Dickensian urchin, so thin by now that I looked anorexic. I didn’t know what to do with it.

  ‘Just let it stick up,’ said Martha, laughing. ‘That’s how it’s meant to be.’

  Secretly I was thrilled with the look, just so long as I didn’t appear to be mutton dressing as lamb, or slightly clownish. That winter I went into stylish rags as befitted my student status, wearing long, shapeless skirts, clumping boots and skimpy tops which made me look thinner and, I suspected, more interesting. I lined my eyes as Martha directed; I didn’t need shadows, they were already there.

  Every day I walked my tightrope, knowing that one stupid mistake would launch me into a chasm of despair from which there would be no reprieve.

  How I scorned the small concerns of my schoolgirlie colleagues, my fellow students, some of whose computer classes we mature women joined, sticking out of the crowd with our bigness. I hadn’t noticed before how long it took teenage girls to grow to full adult size. As the smallest and boniest of my group, I felt I almost fitted.

  It was hard to remember that I’d once been normal like the rest of these middle-aged mothers, inhabiting a world of pot plants and potpourri, worried about sterile surfaces and whether the mint sauce would go round, or if Mr Muscle would live up to his promises. But you needed such concentration to enter the world of Windows and Quark, not a head bulging with passions and anxieties of a fantastic kind.

  It was so incredibly boring.

  I had no capacity for learning, not one spare patch of my brain was free; it was dangerously overloaded. Anyway, Graham could teach me all this on his emerald iMac at home. My daughter had already begun to learn.

  Fantasy gripped me. Any quiet moment – time given for reading, note-taking, attending lectures – and my eyes glazed over. I was back with Martha again, planning what to say and how to say it during the next blissful telephone call or the next agonizing journey to town.

  In many ways I’d been kept busier and had more to distract me at home.

  And what the hell was I doing here learning to be a dogsbody again?

  They must have thought me dull-witted. I spent my time alone, not mixing, rushing off to the pub at lunchtime to be sure not to be late for Martha, hanging around after four o’clock to catch her for a lift home.

  ‘Are you having an affair?’ asked one middle-aged stop-at-home who had clearly been watching too much TV. ‘You’ve got that look about you.’

  The others smiled awkwardly. I froze, telling myself, it’s a joke, it’s her sense of humour, before I bit back my guilty fury. ‘How did you know?’ I asked archly. ‘The only trouble is there’s too many offers to know which to choose.’

  ‘You can always dump one on me,’ joked the group jester behind pebble glasses. I nailed a monkey grin to my face.

  I found their mindless world nauseating.

  There were times when I longed to strip, dance on a desk, shriek depravities, just to bring these deathly classes to life.

  I reminded myself I was here for Martha and there was satisfaction in that. I was here for Martha and so must endure, not miss one seminar, attend every lecture, hand in my homework on time, and make her believe I was improving. I couldn’t get over how lucky I’d been landing on my feet again, after exhausting everyone’s patience. For the time being, I controlled my feelings and all was going to plan.

  There was something about me my group distrusted, and I learned to deal with some sudden attacks. ‘And you leave your baby with some minder – at his age. The poor little mite won’t know who you are.’

  I used Martha’s arguments to shoot down my old opinions. ‘Better a contented mother than a vegetable.’

  ‘Well,’ said my self-righteous friend. ‘I managed to wait until mine were in school before I enrolled.’

  I wouldn’t be undermined by her censorial comments. I turned the other cheek like Jesus, the victim, and sat at the back until lunchtime.

  One hour to go until I saw Martha.

  I was proud of how well Poppy had settled at the Humpty Dumpty Nursery. ‘She’s a very popular little girl and certainly one of my brightest,’ Mrs Tree told me. ‘Of course, she and Scarlett won’t be separated so it’s rather like dealing with twins, confusing to know what’s coming from who. Rather too much huddling and whispering for my liking.’ If Scarlett hadn’t been so dark and Poppy so contrastingly fair, it would have been hard to tell them apart because their build was the same, their clothes were the same and so were their hairstyles. They rang each other up every morning to discuss what to wear; it was so sweet to hear them. I went along with the dungarees and the bicycle shorts, but I stopped short at the teeny skirts and glitter sandals so beloved of Scarlett. Clarks Start-Rite for Poppy: I did insist on those and refused to listen to her furious cries. Care of growing feet is important and Scarlett did lean towards the tarty – navy nail polish and vulgar tattoos, at her age, ridiculous. But one of the blessings of my hospital stay was the new independence my daughter was showing.

  It looked as if my shy little girl wouldn’t suffer as I had done. She’d manage to avoid my frantic desire to please. Next term she’d be in the infants’ school along with Scarlett.

  And Josh was a more settled, happier baby. I put his earlier problems down to colic and teething difficulties which, luckily, he had now grown out of. Mrs Cruikshank was a gift, Martha was right, and even Graham accepted the fact that children can be happy when loved and cared for by more than two people.

  Howard and Ruth, Graham’s mum and dad, were put off from visiting quite so often because there was no-one at home to wait on them. Their stays were limited to weekends which, between us, we could just endure. And with me away and busy all week, their mean criticisms over the lack of home-made cakes and puddings, and my new dependence on fast food, fell on deaf ears.

  ‘Have you made your blackberry and apples yet, Jennie?’

  ‘No, Ruth, and it doesn’t look like I’m going to get round to it this year.’

  ‘Oh, what a pity,’ she’d say. ‘My freezer is already full, what with the plums and Howard’s string beans.’

  I was immune. She could no longer touch me.

  Martha and I laughed about this. ‘You’re a different person already, you’re free of all that old crap.’

  Martha would never understand why so many women weaker than her used this trivia as stabilizers to stop them wobbling. Because who is brave enough to confront that vast, unfulfilled void in their heads? And if I let go of my obsession with Martha, neither plums nor blackberries – nor cleaning the windows – would fill the empty universe that would be left inside me. Where would I put my passion?

  That day, confident, strong and beautiful, she presided over chaos: slicing tomatoes, searching for glue, answering the phone, bawling instructions about clean socks. I knew I could never tell her that only last night I had seen Sam almost eating a woman alive in the jeep, down a side street, outside the China Garden. When I got home with my takeaway I wasn’t hungry, I couldn’t touch it. Why had I gone myself? Why hadn’t I let Graham collect it?

  Pity and sorrow did not suit Martha’s image – those descriptions were mine, not hers. I couldn’t abide the idea of a Martha made weak. And, quite apart from keeping quiet
from a selfish point of view, I knew I was on shaky ground; I had no illusions – Sam’s betrayal of Martha was no worse than mine of Graham. And going on past experience, Sam’s flings were normally brief.

  But I did confide in Mr Singh on my next monthly visit to the clinic.

  ‘And does this discovery make you feel powerful? You are obviously more in control of your life than your idol, Martha, is.’

  I said, ‘I don’t see it like that. If Sam left her she would recover – she runs the house single-handed, shops, cleans and pays the bills. Sam doesn’t lift a finger. She moans about him but he gets away with it.’ I was curious to note that I found it threatening to diminish Martha in the doctor’s eyes. ‘She’d find someone else, she’s fun, she’s lovely. With Sam she asks to be taken for granted, she fusses over him, cooks his favourite meals, drives when he’s pissed, and you should see the trouble she goes to to find him exactly the right present. It takes her hours and he’s never grateful.’

  ‘Jennie, are you jealous of Sam?’

  ‘It’s the kids, even the cats,’ I blurted out without thinking, and in Mr Singh’s pause I had the time to realize how silly this sounded.

  ‘Could this be because they belong to Martha in a way that Sam does not?’

  How could I know? I was annoyed. All I had demonstrated were my unhealthy feelings: suspicious and abnormal. I hated this intimacy with a virtual stranger. Talking about Martha was fine; I loved to talk about Martha and I did half hope he could cure me, but I wasn’t even certain that I did envy the cats and the kids, and now he would labour the point, wasting time on me.

  ‘Let me rephrase my original question. Are you saying you’re not jealous of Sam, but you are jealous of the cats and the children?’

  I felt my eye begin to twitch; there was no way I could control it. The man would be bound to interpret this as some deep, subconscious response.

  Leave me alone, let’s talk about Martha.

  But I thought of the times I had kicked the cats when Martha wasn’t looking. Surely this was mere annoyance because they would jump on my shoulders or sharpen their claws on my knee? Cats frightened me and they sensed that. Hers were assertive, menacing cats, and the only time Martha ever smacked Poppy – well, more of a tap, but even so – was when she was tormenting Honey. I couldn’t share Martha’s blind devotion to these stealthy, flea-ridden creatures, and it irked me. No big deal. That’s all.