It seemed to me that we were both struck by the same emotions. We saw each other, would have liked to pretend not to recognise each other: we accepted the inevitable.
She smiled, I smiled. She beckoned me to join her.
‘It was at Mauro,’ I said. ‘In Provence- ‘
‘But of course I remember. Thea and Suze, the American couple with the charming daughter. And you’re you staying at La Fontana? What a coincidence!’
She insisted on buying me a drink, I ordered a Coke. I spoke of Bobbi, and how difficult it could be to keep a child entertained. I suggested (my voice almost shaking, I had such a bad conscience about my suspicions) she must have the same problem with Marianina. Maybe the two little girls could be company for each other?
Mrs Brown said ‘perhaps’ in a tone that meant refusal. We looked at each other through our sunglasses. I thanked her for my drink, and went on my way.
It was all so normal. A holiday acquaintance, that neither of us really wished to pursue. Why did I have the strange conviction that as soon as I was out of sight, Mrs Laura Brown would leap up, rush into the hotel, collect her family, pack her bags and flee—like someone guilty of a monstrous crime?
I was wrong. The next day, Suze and Bobbi and I went together to the very nice, very clean beach. Almost at once I spotted Mrs Brown and her daughters. The twins, in matching green and gold bikinis, were unmistakable. The little girl, as usual, was sitting on her own, ignored by her sisters. I tried to stop myself from watching them. The beach was expensive (Suze muttered bitterly about the entrance fee) but it was beautiful. The Mediterranean, whatever the actual analysis of the water, was on its best behaviour: warm, silky, crystal clear. We sunbathed, we swam, we played ball. We had a delightful picnic, we lay in the sun.
‘Tuscany?’ murmured Suze, ‘Culture for you, the beach for me.’ She touched my hand, as we lay in the shade of our jaunty umbrella, while Bobbi splashed in the sea. ‘Here?’
But I was distracted. ‘I think I’ll take a little walk.’
I thought I would go up and say hi. I would say hi, and get a close look at Marianina. Your Cinderella daughter, Mrs Brown. Do you treat her badly? Do you use her worse than a servant? I felt myself a sadly inadequate fairy godmother, but at least I would try to assure myself that there was no need; that the problem was in my imagination. Mrs Brown and her twins were lying on identical hired loungers. Laura Brown was reading a paperback. Celine and Carmen no longer looked so beautiful now that I believed their sister was being in some way abused. They were giggling and chatting, heads together.
Marianina didn’t get a lounger, she was sitting on the sand.
As I approached I was feeling extremely self-conscious. My courage failed: maybe I would give them a wave and walk on by. The sunlight glittered. Suddenly, in the twinkling of an eye, where there had been three sun-loungers there was only one. Mrs Brown and la cenerentola were alone.
So then I did go up to them, propelled by sheer amazement.
‘Hello.’ I said. And stood there, dumbstruck.
‘Hello,’ said the lady, putting aside her book. I noticed that her bikini was also green and gold. Her eyes were hidden, her smile was frost in the sun.
‘There were three of you here just a moment ago,’ I blurted: and corrected myself in confusion. ‘I mean four. You and the twins, and the little girl.’
The cold smile faded. ‘It’s Thea, isn’t it? How nice to see you again. Good day.’ Mrs Brown returned to her book.
La cenerentola was sitting at her mother’s feet, wearing only a pair of dark blue bikini pants. Her nipples were crusted with sand. She stared at me without speaking.
I went back to Suze, extremely confused. ‘Suze, you’ll never believe this. The clones, Mrs Brown’s beautiful twins, I just saw them disappear. They vanished right in front of my eyes! Do you think I’m going crazy?’
Suze rolled over, and glared at me. ‘Save it for your paper, Thea.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘I mean I’m tired of this. What is your problem with that family? What is so fascinating about them? You’ve talked about nothing else for days.’ She jumped up, and stalked off to join Bobbi.
Suze didn’t say another word about the Browns, but she must have been looking out for them. When we were leaving, at sunset, along with everyone else, she marched us across the carpark to a big white Mercedes-solar that I remembered having seen in Mauro. Marianina was in the car. The twins were helping their mother to pack their beach stuff into the trunk.
‘Hi Laura,’ said Suze. ‘Hi Carmen, hi Celine.’
‘Hi Mrs Bonner,’ chorused the twins sweetly, with their identical smile.
We walked away, Suze glowering triumphantly. I thought I’d better not mention that to me the beautiful twins had looked somehow diminished…Like two coloured shadows of their former selves.
The next morning I saw Mrs Brown again, for the last time. I was up early, Suze was in the shower. Mrs Brown and her family were checking out. Germaine, the nanny, was directing the porter, who was carrying their bags out to the car. Marianina was with her. Celine and Carmen stood looking a little lost, while their mother validated her credit by passing an imperious hand across the ID screen. Mrs Brown gave a sharp glance up at the stairs, where I was standing. She moved towards the door. Then Celine and Carmen…They melted. They flowed, they ran like liquid glass through the air. There was only one golden-haired figure, walking away.
I rushed up to the desk. ‘Did you see that?’ I demanded. ‘Did you see? Flavia! Tell me!’
The desk clerk was our padrone’s daughter, a sensible and intelligent girl. For a moment I thought she was going to deny everything. Perhaps she realised the truth was the best way to suppress my curiosity. She looked up, with wise young eyes.
‘Dottora Lalande, two weeks ago a gentleman stayed here who was travelling with an eidolon, a hologram of his dead wife. We must set a place for her, serve dishes to her, arrange her room. He spoke to the digitally generated image as if it was alive. And though I know this is impossible, I am sure I heard the lady answer.’
‘What are you telling me?’
‘And there was the family from Germany, with the teenage boy who had taken gene-therapy to cure a terrible wasting disease. He was completely well, it was a miracle. At night this boy stayed out late. He came back to La Fontana not quite himself, you understand? Luckily, he could leap and hit the night-bell with his muzzle, so the porter would let him in. It was easy enough to wash the pawprints from the sheets.’
‘What are you saying?’
‘One sees everything, in the hotel trade, and one mentions nothing. These things happen, they happen more and more. It’s best simply to accept them…and look the other way.’
Mrs Brown had left no address, but I managed to get Flavia to tell me she had been heading north, to the Lakes. Over breakfast I tried to convince Suze that we had to follow and somehow track them down. I knew she was already angry with me over the Browns, but I couldn’t help myself. I felt there was a disaster that I must try to avert. Suze accused me of being infatuated, either with Laura Brown or the heavenly twins. She refused to consider the idea of leaving Santa Margarita.
When Suze and Bobbi went to the beach I stayed behind.
I took our guide-book and set out to explore the town, in the hope that some distraction would help me to think. I had not dared to tell Suze about my second strange experience. For one thing, I suspected that young Flavia wouldn’t back me up. But much as I hated to fight with Suze, I was desperate to unravel the mystery. What was happening to Celine and Carmen, and why? Had the desk clerk and I shared a hallucination? Or were Cinderella’s sisters really capable of vanishing into thin air?
La cenerentola was there. She had climbed on the railings outside the Renaissance chapel. She was swinging from them, head down, her feet kicking in the air and her hair brushing the ancient stone of the porch steps. As I approached she flung herself down, carelessly scattering the p
assers-by, and stood glaring at me. She was wearing her favourite grubby shorts and tee-shirt. As soon as she saw that she’d been recognised, she ran away.
Of course, I followed.
Marianina didn’t run too fast. She made sure that I could keep up. Before long I found her waiting for me, in the small formal garden that surrounded the much-eroded remains of a Roman temple, on the edge of the pedestrianised centre. It was a quiet place. This was the end of summer; the flowerbeds had been allowed to fade. The roman fountain in their midst was dry, the benches round about stood empty. There was a chirping of insects, clear above the distant hum of traffic.
Children, when they’re left to run wild, are uncouth creatures. They’ll tell silly, arbitrary lies if they feel caught out, but not one in a thousand will naturally invent the concept of polite conversation. Marianina didn’t say a word to me at first. She sat on a lump of carved stone, its meaning eroded beyond recognition, and examined a graze on her knee.
‘I thought you guys had left Santa Margarita.’ I offered, oppressed by her silence.
‘We moved to a different hotel. We’re leaving tomorrow.
‘At the campsite in Mauro,’ I said, ‘they called you la cenerentola: Cinderella, because of your sisters. Is it true? Did they make you feel left out?’
The child flashed me one of her sly, hostile glances. ‘Mummy said to tell you, leave us alone. Stop following us. There’s nothing you can do.’
Prince Charming, I thought, rejected the step-sisters, their artificial finery and their contrived attractions. He chose the dirty girl: with her little hands as rough as the cinders, her careless rags, her knobbly knees, her insouciant independence. It was the same with Laura Brown. I had thought I understood everything: right from that first night, when she told me her story at L’Ecureuil. It had been obvious that she had not been interested in either of her children’s fathers. There was no adult lover in her life. Maybe she was one of those people who cannot tolerate another adult as a lover…That was why Marianina, scorned in public, had become the secret object of her affections, as the twins grew older.
I could understand how a child like this, deliberately humoured in all her native childish awkwardness (the sequences of DNA randomly recombined, no perfections but those of untamed chance and necessity) might seem the fairest, the true beauty. I could feel her troubling allure myself, and I’m no paedophile. She was so real. The Italian woman at the campsite had made up a vicious story which probably had no basis at all in fact. But a child can be corrupted, without any gross abuse…Now I saw that whatever the relationship between Marianina and her mother, the situation was not that simple.
‘What about your sisters. Will they be travelling with you?’
‘Oh, them.’ A smug grimace. ‘I don’t think they’ll be around much longer.’
I felt suddenly chilled. ‘What do you mean, they won’t be around?’
‘She hasn’t said. But I think Mummy’s taking them back.’
Marianina slid to the ground, scouring the backside of those long-suffering shorts.
‘Taking them back? Back where?’
‘Back where they came from, of course.’
La cenerentola had performed her errand. She’d had enough of my solemn eyes and stupid questions. She left, jumping over the stones and skipping away, without another word.
Interlude: The Philosopher’s Dream
I see a room in an appealing little hotel, somewhere in the north of Italy. It’s a room that Suze and Thea could have chosen: deceptively simple, with every modern comfort hidden in a tasteful, traditional disguise. Through the window I see (but this is pure invention) a view of forests and mountains, a long blue lake under a cloudless fairytale sky. There’s no getting away from it, we are in a fairytale. Mrs Brown and her daughters, Thea and Suze; everyone else who shares our affluence. Our lives have become magical, by any sensible standards. Nothing is impossible, the strangest things can happen.
I see a beautiful woman, and the twin daughters who might be her sisters: daughters with that uncanny, replicant perfection of the optimised clone. She told me that their creation was her husband’s idea. I don’t know if I believe that, but in any case she has become tired of these flawless, sweet-natured dolls. The double mirror irritates her. The twins are sitting in a window embrasure, talking softly with each other. Perhaps they are deciding what they will wear tomorrow. They take comfort in clothes and make-up, because they know they have been superseded. I witness the transformation scene. I see how the two bodies are magically drawn across the room, and melt—at first resisting desperately, but finally calm- into the original of their flesh.
It is a triumph that la cenerentola in the story might have longed for, before she dreamt of going to the ball. Fathers are chancy creatures, the handsome prince is a shadowy promise. But mother, even if you are not completely her own creation, is the first object of any child’s desire.
Now Cinderella is alone, with the only handsome prince this version of the story needs. Poor Carmen, poor Celine. This time it is forever.
Finale
I don’t believe we’ll ever get tired of Bobbi. I don’t know which of us loves her more. But a long vacation brings out the strains in any relationship, and sometimes I wonder what would happen if we should tire of each other. We walk hand in hand, Suze and Bobbi and I, and suddenly I suspect that we’re taking up more space than three people should. I look up and see Suze a little further away from me than she ought to be. The air shimmers. For a moment there are two Bobbis…I am afraid that these moments may grow longer in duration. It won’t be possible to hide the embarrassing thing that has happened, except by moving on: going our separate ways with our separate daughters, and praying that no further dilution occurs.
We have beaten the stern old gods of the nineteenth century. But in escaping from them, could it be that we have let something wild and dangerous back into the world? Our magical technology may have unsuspected costs. In the end, stretched and spread over the world as we are by our desires, perhaps Suze and I will vanish like Mrs Brown’s perfect twins. We will lose hold of our fantastical riches and fade away, like the ball-dress, the pumpkin-coach, the rat coachman…in this case leaving nothing behind, not even a glass slipper.
DESTROYER OF WORLDS
I’m trying to create in my mind the image of a little boy. He’s four years’ old, his hair is brown and not clipped short; it’s long enough to curl in the nape of his neck like a duck’s tail. He is wearing a blue jacket with green facings, green lining to the hood. Red mittens dangle on a woollen cord from the cuffs of his sleeves, his little hands are bare. I remember him clearly, but it isn’t enough. I want to see him. I’m walking around the park, called Delauney’s park, though who Delauney was no one has any idea. There’s a playground with squishy asphalt so the children won’t break their heads. There’s a gravel football pitch, there’s a shelter with toilets (always locked), and a space of turf, greenery, shrubberies, trees. The park is small, tired, urban. It was all the world to us. We used to come here, not every day but very often, right from the beginning. I remember playing hide and seek. It was a winter’s day, the winter before he started school, the rosehips bright red vase-shapes on the bare bushes. I saw him walk out from behind the shelter, having failed to find me, those little mittens hanging pitifully. Head down, so utterly lost and bereft, oh dear sweet child. I was hiding behind a tree.
I walk around and around, a woman alone, staring at toddlers. I’m not trying to control myself, I know that the expression on my face looks frightening but I have licence. I don’t have to make that slight constant effort we all make in public, maintain the barrier, don’t let your emotions leak out. Tell any one of these mothers-with-small-children, and even fathers-with-small-children, what has happened to me, and whatever I do, they will accept. If I lie down and kick my legs and scream and mash my face into the ground that will be fine. As if I was three years’ old.
He never did that. He was a swee
t child.
And out of the tail of my eye I see him. He’s there, there he is. I turn my head, very, very slowly. I can hold him in place, I can see him, the little boy standing by the corner of the shelter, looking to and fro, looking for me. I don’t have to concentrate, he’s there independently, no effort, I am really seeing him…It lasts only a fraction of a second, like the existence of a rare, fragile element in a scientific experiment. Then I’m fighting the whole weight of reality again. He’s there still but it’s an effort to hold the image, quivering like a stilled frame on a TV screen, and that’s no good. It was my imagination.
Up in the back of the park, furthest from the road and the playground, there’s a certain bend in the path, a corner that is always in the shadow of tall laurel bushes. A place you think dogs wouldn’t pass, they’d crouch with hackles raised and back away. He was afraid of that spot. We used to tell each other maybe it was haunted. He liked to be frightened, children do like to be frightened, just a little. Really it was the deep shade he didn’t like, I’m sure; but a child’s uneasiness is convincing. You think they must know something they haven’t the words to tell. I’m walking around and around, mad woman staring. I come to the murky corner because I must, and I see him again. The little boy is there, completely without my volition.
I went home. My husband was curled in a fetal position on the couch in the living room, daytime TV on the screen. My mother had left the day before. She’d been wonderful, bearing up with a brave face, cooking meals for us and so on. I think we were both relieved to be alone again, although there is no relief when a thing like this has happened. But her departure means we have moved into the next phase. We’ve brought the baby home from the hospital, we’ve had the few days’ buffer state of importance and fuss, we’ve reached the point when we are on our own and the task opens up, limitless, this time our baby is his death. I’m trying to recapture this little boy: putting him to bed, his bathtime, his sweet little body, he’s giggling, running all wet and rosy from the towel that’s trying to catch him, miniscule little erection. I want him here, I want to see him here. ‘I saw him,’ I said. ‘In the playground. Eric, listen. I saw him. I really did.’
Grazing The Long Acre Page 18