Still in darkness, he became aware that he was breathing unusually: slowly in, sharply out, pause, then again. At the same time he found he was lying on something smoother and softer than earth.
‘Are you awake?’ said Ruth’s voice quietly.
‘Yes. Yes, I’m awake now.’ In the time it took Daniel to utter these words his mind had altered what he had actually and inexpressibly dreamt into the dialogue or dialogues at his kitchen table and what had seemed to follow, and then in turn he had forgotten all that and was left with nothing but a strong, heavy feeling of loss and sorrow. ‘I must have been dreaming,’ he said. ‘Did I wake you?’
‘I was awake. Are you all right?’
‘Oh yes. Oh yes, I’m all right now.’
But he must have said it wrong, because she at once switched on her bedside light, came over and knelt down by him and took his hands. ‘Was it a very horrible dream?’
‘It was rather.’
‘But it’s all over now, darling. Let’s go down to the kitchen and have a cup of tea.’
‘Not there, not for me,’ said Daniel in a rush.
Ruth glanced at him for a moment. ‘All right, you stay here and relax. Don’t you dare go to sleep again.’
‘I won’t, I promise I won’t.’
‘I’ll be very quick,’ she said after another pause.
Alone in his workroom a minute later, Daniel knelt down by his desk and started to pray. He thanked God for preserving him from whatever had seemed to threaten him as he slept and for taking from him all memory of it. Then he stopped, stopped the silent recital of words which was his habitual form of prayer in private. Always before, God had been listening to his prayers, or he, Daniel, had believed unquestioningly that that was so, which no doubt came to the same thing. Now, he found he could not believe that his words were going anywhere. But he went on silently forming them in his mind, this time ones that asked for help.
None had arrived by the time he heard Ruth approaching with the tea-tray. He went and sat on his desk-chair, then got up again and helped her set out the tea-things on the corner of the desk he kept clear for such arrangements. She pulled up her chair and sent him a look of great friendliness.
‘You haven’t been yourself since that night you and Leo sat up talking, have you?’
‘No, I haven’t,’ he agreed.
‘And this dream you had is more of the same.’
‘It feels like that. In effect, yes.’
After a moment, she said, ‘You’ll have to tell me sooner or later, you know. And no, you’re not keeping me up.’
‘It’s painful,’ said Daniel.
‘Yes. But I’m here.’
‘Can I have some more tea?’ When this was done, he went on, ‘That night, Leo and I went over our lives in detail, starting as far back as we could remember, childhood friends, childhood ailments, schooldays, school friends, girls, university, first job, all that. Until we were in our middle twenties or so it was, well, let’s call it reassuringly boring. Quite a number of resemblances, such as both of us having a close friend at college called Paul, both of us liking The Tempest best of Shakespeare’s plays and thinking Horatio had more in him than Hamlet, but nothing on the scale of those twin brothers he told us about who had both independently had a seat built round a tree in their garden, nothing where anybody who heard of it wouldn’t think it was a bit of a coincidence and that was about that, nothing spooky. In fact, as we went on I started to feel I was going to get away with it, I started to feel safe. Meaning, as you saw from the very beginning, I was afraid of Leo, not as a person but because of what he was, what he is. And I was dead right to be afraid of him, or at least to wish more than anything that he had never existed.
‘I dare say I felt a twinge or two of a rather different sort when we got on to you, that’s to say when I got on to you and he got on to his Ruth. But the first part of it was all right, in fact it was, well, pleasant to go over our early times and sort of relaxing to find they were rather like theirs, which you’d have expected with two very similar men in pretty similar circumstances and countries. I thought there might be trouble of one sort or another when, I forget which one of us it was, but something was said that could have led to us letting on about, you know, personal things, private things. I closed up straight away, which was probably me being English again, but then he did the same thing, so perhaps Americans have their own scale of things to keep quiet about that isn’t so different from ours. Or perhaps that’s just how Leo is. After all, we are twins.’
So far Daniel had spoken in an equable, controlled way that was still not natural to him and included pauses in odd places. By now he was sitting hand in hand with Ruth, who had listened without any sign of wanting to speak. Soon he went on as before.
‘I’d better come to the crunch, my love. When you start talking about boozing, serious boozing, you find there isn’t a lot to say. For reasons you don’t understand and can’t be bothered with, it suddenly dawns on you that you’ve got to be drunk and you set about getting there by the nearest available means. You don’t enjoy getting there or anything else about it, that’s not the idea at all. So there you are, drunk, and that’s that. The rest is a matter of falling over, throwing up, stealing, fighting, waking up on a train you don’t remember thinking about catching, let alone getting on to, being locked in a police cell and, if you’re not so lucky, an epileptic fit or two to see you back to square one. Plus some other people’s chatter about tension and insecurity and feelings of inadequacy. All serious drunks are the same, except over details that can be mildly interesting, such as brainy places to hide a bottle.
‘Some people seem to get out of it on their own. I’d never have managed it like that. Then one morning I woke up lying on my bed fully dressed, doing pretty well for that time of day, in fact. But I had nothing to drink and no money, so I realized I was going to have to go out and walk some distance to the off-licence to pick up two four-packs of large cans of Aalborg Original Brew and charge them to the brother of a mate of mine. Then I suddenly thought to myself I didn’t want to do anything like that ever again, and if I could get some support or some sign from somewhere that there was the slightest chance that I wouldn’t, then I’d really try not to, and I couldn’t understand it then and even after all this time I still don’t completely, but I managed to get down on my knees and pray. I’m still not sure what made me. I’ve never told you or anyone else this before, and there’s not a lot of it I could tell anyone, but after half an hour I knew I had a personal understanding with JC that said that as long as I went on really trying he’d see me right. And he did. I can’t say much more than that, except perhaps, if I can get it across, it was a special, one-off agreement between him and me, run up for the occasion, absolutely not any kind of standard contract. I think that probably gets it as far as it goes.
‘So you can imagine how I felt when Leo told me about the arrangement he’d had with JC and it was exactly the same as mine, so exactly the same that I could tell what he was going to say next and I could have said the ends of his sentences with him, word for word. So my special understanding hadn’t been special after all, I’d just been hearing about another of the same and if there was one then why not half a dozen or a million others? A standard contract, you see, maybe different in inessentials but the same in essentials; anyone with the correct set of genes will do to accept it, so I wasn’t special after all either. But I wanted to think I was special, not because I was Daniel Davidson but because I was me, I was unique, I was an individual. But I’d just found out I wasn’t an – I’ve said it already. So what was I?
‘But Leo was delighted. It was what he’d been hoping for from the beginning, what he’d meant when he said he hadn’t come all this way just to compare notes with me. For Leo, it was a kind of final proof of God’s greatness, that in the universe he made there could be two or more things that were unique and identical at the same time. But God as I see him could never be as great as that, becau
se he’s bound by the laws of reason.’
Daniel looked into Ruth’s face and saw in it hope, trust and fear, and lowered his gaze. He went on at the same even pace.
‘There was an old Church saying that God would never let a Christian soul escape from him. It might wander to the ends of creation, but he would bring it back to him with a mere twitch on the thread. Whoever came up with that was probably thinking of something like a fishing-line, but to me God’s thread has turned out to be the sort that controls the movements of a puppet. But whatever happens I’ll always be grateful to him, because he sent me you.’
Ruth was crying. ‘I wish I could believe,’ she said.
‘So do I, my love. Now what do you say to both of us going down to the kitchen and making some fresh tea?’
‘I say yes.’
‘Thank you for not saying anything while I was maundering on.’
‘Daniel, you and I know it wasn’t maundering.’
‘Sorry.’
‘At any rate, now I know why Leo went off in such a rush.’
‘He had a lot to get back for. And his trip had served its purpose.’
Some weeks later, Daniel was saying to Greg Macdonald, ‘You mean you do want another piece from me, is that what you’re saying?’
‘Well, yes, of course, I’d like to see anything you write, Daniel.’
‘Ah, but excuse me, excuse me, but that’s not quite the same thing, is it? You might like to see something I’d written, perhaps you would, and then again perhaps you wouldn’t, but I was talking about me writing something for the paper. How about that, eh?’
‘Okay, fine, fine with me, but what subject were you thinking of?’
‘Listen, I’m a great believer in never doing a single stroke of work, however small, until either I’ve been paid for it or unless I’ve been promised payment, and thinking of a subject is work, right? As soon as you commission me, I’ll make a start on thinking of a subject, as soon as you commission me.’
‘All right then, Daniel. A piece of the usual length at the usual rates. Good.’
‘What about an advance?’
After almost no hesitation Macdonald brought out his wallet, and after only a little more hesitation took from it a twenty pound note. Daniel soon put down the glass he had been holding and had also been glancing at from time to time with great seriousness. This done, he set about ceremoniously stowing away his advance in his own wallet, but halfway through this operation the note slipped from his fingers and sideslipped to the floor. First holding up a hand to forestall any intervention from Macdonald, he retrieved the note successfully enough but not at all speedily. The performance drew laughter from near by, only a little but sufficient to cause Daniel to go and remonstrate with a group at the bar that included the urchin-like assistant editor and the stately astrologer. They were soon joined by the landlord of the Sussex, and then almost at once Daniel strolled back to where Macdonald stood, glancing condescendingly from side to side as he came.
‘This place has gone down a lot,’ he said.
Whatever hope Macdonald might have had of a word or two of thanks for somebody’s generosity with money could clearly be abandoned. He said with a bright smile, ‘Any first thoughts on a subject?’
Daniel, whose expression had grown abstracted in the past few seconds, frowned a little. ‘M’m?’ he asked with some impatience.
‘You know, for your piece. Any ideas?’
‘Oh for Christ’s sake,’ said Daniel, still with impatience rather than anger, ‘what are you burbling about? All this . . . If you’ve got anything to say why don’t you say it out in the open, for Christ’s sake.’
‘I was just wondering if there was anything special you felt like writing about for the paper.’
‘Oh, that.’ Now Daniel sounded contemptuous. Having said as much, he seemed at rather a loss, but soon rallied. ‘If you’re hoping for something about something like thoughts on stopping being a bloody parson, you’re wrong.’
‘I wasn’t—’
‘For one thing, you can’t ever stop being a bloody parson once you are one. It’s called being ordained. Ha! You’re it for life, er, old boy, and I’m not going to write about that. For one thing,’ he explained, ‘it would be . . . bad form. I told the bishop so. Too private, I told him. Now let’s have the same again. My turn.’
Daniel gave a grunt of pleased surprise at finding he had a twenty-pound note about him. His mood changed when the barman turned out to be reluctant to serve him. The landlord reappeared. Macdonald went out into the passage and activated the telephone there.
‘Ruth?’ he said a moment later. ‘It’s Mac. Yeah, in the Sussex. No, I didn’t, he just came walking in here just a few minutes ago. Yes, I’m afraid he is. Not so far, but I’d say any moment. Okay now, I’ll hang on till you get here. Ah, not at all.’
On his way back, Macdonald heard a confused shouting from the bar.
Note: Further information about identical or monozygotic twins can be found in Twins, by Peter Watson (Hutchinson, 1981), among other places. I have selected from Watson’s account of pairs of such twins who have been separated soon after birth and brought up apart. Further details of the male twins Leo describes (James Lewis and James Springer, born in Piqua, Ohio, USA in 1939) and of the female twins (Irene Reid and Jeanette Hamilton, born in UK in 1944) are given on pp. 9–11 and pp. 49–52 of Twins.
A research group to study the subject was set up under Professor Thomas Bouchard at the University of Minnesota in 1971.
TOIL AND TROUBLE
I
Adrian Hollies was a literary agent, which is to say he was a director of a prosperous firm of such, Parkes & Richards Ltd of Princess Square, WC2. One afternoon in early May he was sitting in his office in their offices talking to a well-known senior client of the firm, the novelist Jack Brownlow. Or rather Brownlow, enjoying the advantage of his valued seniority, was mostly talking to Adrian. In fact at the moment he was asking him one of those questions that no successful literary agent really enjoys being asked.
‘What’s your honest opinion, Adrian? I mean, I take it you have read the whole thing.’
‘Of course, Jack. Well, for what it’s worth, I think it shows you at the top of your form. Er, that is the character of Tom and his extraordinary relationship with Sonia, not to speak of the affair with Amanda, especially the part where they all find themselves—’
‘Because unless you feel quite wholehearted about it I think I ought to find someone who does to represent me. I’m not trying to hold a pistol to your head.’
Much, said Adrian to himself. Out loud he said, ‘I haven’t the slightest reservation. I’ve never been in any doubt about the quality of your work.’ The second part of that was not quite true. At least twice in his nineteen years with Parkes & Richards it had crossed his mind, albeit without lingering there, that against appearances there might be something to be said for Jack’s work. After all, the first novel back in 1958 had been quite readable for a global best seller.
‘One of the young fellows at Fortuitous Millennium,’ said Brownlow now, ‘was telling me they’d give me substantially better paperback terms there than what you managed to get me for my last one.’
‘Was that Mark Skinner?’
Brownlow hesitated. ‘Could have been, but I never really caught the name properly.’
‘I think at your time of life, Jack, you’d do well to consider the advantages of sticking to the devil you know.’
The devil Brownlow knew, a small firm specializing chiefly in military history and reminiscences, had had the luck to publish that runaway success of 1958, and continued to publish him now he broke a little better or a little worse than even with his chronicles of elderly daydreams. To be sure, he was still something of a name, a quality that also helped to account for his continuance in the Parkes & Richards string. But both publisher and agent were also unwilling, out of compassion or cowardice, to bring him up against the fact that at the age of sixty-
three he had ceased for ever to be the kind of literary property he had once been.
Brownlow had at any rate not cared for the last remark, had possibly sensed something of what lay behind it, but he had hardly begun the long process of asking for clarification when a nearby telephone purred. Adrian snatched it up with simulated annoyance.
‘Yes. Yes, Tania. Oh, not again. How long ago? Well, I don’t remember meeting him. Oh yes. All right.’ In the next ten seconds Adrian got his face to run quickly through some of its less welcoming expressions. ‘Mr Pennistone? No, that’s all right. Well, if I said anything at all I meant it, including that. No, I remember it well. Your book is unpublishable, and when I say unpublishable I know what I’m . . . I’m sorry, but I happen to have Jack Brownlow with me at the moment, so perhaps you’ll understand if I . . . Very well, if you say so. Of course.’ Clunk.
However this performance might have affected the unlucky Pennistone, it worked wonders for Brownlow, who did nothing more than extract from Adrian a promise to spend some thought and research on the possibility of a change of publisher, with special reference to an improved paperback deal. So all was as well as it could be.
‘Can I see you put it in?’ asked Brownlow finally.
This question surprised Adrian less than it might have done because he had heard it in these circumstances before. What was to be put in was the xeroxed typescript Brownlow had brought with him, and what this was to be put into was the firm’s vaults for safekeeping.
Dear Illusion: Collected Stories Page 48