‘Not any longer.’
‘I am – different,’ I whisper. ‘More than you can know, or understand.’
‘I cannot understand? Yet you do not try me.’
‘It is too difficult. Within me – part of me – dwell monsters.’
‘And you consider me too feeble to face them? Edie, if you can’t trust me with the whole of you, then there is no more to be said. This grieves me more than you can know.’
‘You have thrown down a gauntlet.’
‘Perhaps I have. Whether or not you pick it up is up to you.’
She tilts her face aside, as if in search of inspiration. But she is merely checking the time by the clock over the till. A muscle in her cheek tightens under the force of powerful emotions and I glimpse the pain this has cost her.
‘It is twelve o’clock. I have a meeting to attend.’ She prises open the clasp of her purse, withdraws a florin and sets it between us.
‘That’s more than enough,’ I say helplessly. ‘We’ve only had tea.’
She does not respond, nor does her expression alter. She pushes back her chair.
‘Wait.’
‘What for, Edie? For you to speak to me truthfully?’
‘Please, Abigail,’ I beg. ‘Give me a little time. I will. I promise.’
She pauses, gripping her bag in readiness to leave. ‘It is a simple thing to find me when – if – you wish to meet me equal-hearted. I hope you do. Until then, goodbye.’
I watch her weave between the tables. A gentleman tips his hat and opens the door. She nods graciously and passes through into the morning sunshine. The clouds have peeled away. It is a beautiful January morning. All is well with the world. She shades her eyes, looks to the left and to the right, crosses Market Street and is swallowed by the crowd.
The newspaper spreads across the cloth. I lay my palm over the spot where she pressed her fingertips, and close my eyes.
‘Sorry to startle you, miss,’ says the waitress. ‘Are you done here?’ She eyes the florin longingly.
‘Yes,’ I stutter. ‘Quite finished.’
She brings the change on a saucer. I stir the coins with my finger. Enough for a teacake. Two teacakes. With jam. I twist the newspaper into a tight roll and make my way to the door, pursued by the waitress.
‘You’ve forgotten your change, miss!’
‘It is quite all right.’
She beams. ‘Thank you, miss!’
The trek to The Comet is a long one. I enter by the back gate to avoid fighting my way through the bonhomie of the public bar. Most of all, I do not want to go eye-to-eye with Ma and see that conquering smile as she reads the defeat printed upon my features.
I sit on my bed and stare at the wall, counting cracks in the plaster. The sound of lunchtime drinkers filters through the floorboards. I am a hundred miles from them, and more. I have spent my life surrounded by crowds and have as much in common with them as a blob of tar in a bucket of water.
The scales have fallen from my eyes. Gnome is not the harmless boy he pretended. I curse myself for an idiot. I should have expected it. He’s been up to his destructive tricks all along and now he dares come between Abigail and myself. He is the cause of our disagreeable argument. That’s all it is, I reason. A disagreement. One of those clouds blotting the sunshine of our affection. Like a cloud, this will pass over. Harmony will exist between us once again. All shall be well. All manner of things shall be well.
Despite my brave talk, I seethe with doubt.
None of this is my fault. It is his. It is Nana’s for making me agree to sharing. It can no longer be countenanced. I groan. What, then, is the alternative? I shudder at the thought of a return to self-wounding to keep him away. Five years’ worth of scars silver my flesh. What will my body look like after ten years, fifteen? I’ve no one to turn to. If I tell Uncle Arthur, Ma will find out. As for Nana, she’ll pontificate how I’ve brought it down on myself.
There is nothing I can do. The walls of my life press in as blankly as those of this room. I had such hopes, made such brave steps: employment, lodgings, friends. I experienced love and had it reciprocated. All of it dashed to pieces. Perhaps Ma was right all along: happiness is not for the likes of us. I am shackled to an empty future. No way out. Nothing but this family. I may as well cast off my foolish dreams of love, quit the Telegraph Office and resign myself to working behind the bar of The Comet. I may as well start now.
I regard my possessions, imagining Gnome’s eye upon the cards and letters from Abigail. With a sinking certainty, I know he has read them all. I imagine the tip of his tongue running back and forth across his lips as his grubby fingers trace the words. I laid my heart before him, as plain as an account book. If only I’d laid my heart before Abigail so openly.
The door opens and my grandmother comes in.
‘Come to gloat?’ I say. ‘Look at what your interference has brought me to.’ I shake out the newspaper and thrust it under her nose. She reads it without taking it from my hand.
‘He wouldn’t—’
‘Who else? Share with Gnome, you said. Find a middle way, you said. It is better that way, you said. He is uncontrollable. He will never change. I should never have listened to you.’
‘I stand by every word, Edie. A balance is your only hope. Look at how bitter your mother—’
‘Oh, don’t start again with that old tune. At least Ma lets Arthur out once a month. When do you let your other half out, eh?’
She chuckles. ‘You have no clue, have you?’
‘Laugh if you want. I know enough to know you’re a hypocrite. First in line to dole out advice, but I don’t see you practising what you preach. I cannot recall one single, solitary instance when I’ve set eyes on – well, I don’t even know his name.’
I expect her to snipe and sneer. Ma would. But this is not my mother.
‘You cannot see what is before your very eyes. I expect nothing better from them.’ She flutters her fingers at the world beyond the window. ‘But you. For goodness’ sake, can’t you tell?’
‘Tell what? What on earth are you on about? And will you forever stop smiling.’
‘You are looking at your grandfather.’
‘What? No I’m not,’ I snort. ‘Shut up with your nonsense.’
‘It is anything but. This is what I mean by sharing.’
I stare at her: the whiskery chin, the broad features. ‘You aren’t my grandfather,’ I say. ‘You can’t be. He’d wear trousers.’
‘Good grief, Edie. What a stupid thing to say. I don’t care what I wear as long as I am decently covered. A skirt is an eminently practical garment and I can’t be doing with britches one day, petticoats the next. No one remarks on one more old biddy on the street. I’d rather pass unnoticed than be tarred and feathered.’
‘I don’t understand. Who are you at the moment?’
‘I swear I shall box your ears if you don’t stop asking ridiculous questions.’
‘Please. Are you Nana or Grandfather?’
‘I am me. We. Us. Both. Neither. All. Choose your word. I care not one jot.’
‘At the same time? How …’
‘This is my way. My balance. I hoped you might find yours as joyously.’ She looks wistful.
‘Why didn’t you tell me?’ I moan. ‘I could have—’
‘Because there’s no fool like an old fool. I wanted you to find your way by example rather than instruction. Your mother nagged from noon to night and I wished to show a kinder face. I did wrong by you.’
‘It’s too late now. Gnome has ground any hope into dust.’
‘Has he?’
How smoothly the accusation slips from my tongue, slithering out like a mouthful of blancmange. I am at a crossroads. I can continue to parrot a lifetime’s worth of easy platitudes: Gnome is angry, Gnome is hateful, Gnome is greedy, it’s not my fault. I know why Gnome is the way he is. How easily I’ve shrugged off any personal responsibility in the matter. I am perilously close to becoming m
y mother, with no desire to learn, to understand, to change.
‘No,’ I say, staring at my empty hands. ‘I have managed that by myself. I was offered love and all I had to do was trust. I could not. I threw away my chance.’
‘That Miss Hargreaves?’ she asks. I nod. ‘Do you trust her?’
‘Yes. With all my heart.’
She grasps my shoulders. ‘Don’t you dare give up. It’s too late for me and your ma, but not for you. If you’ve met a creature with the strength of character to love you, tell her.’
‘I can’t.’
Her eyes shine with a faraway look. ‘Ask yourself: if she told you a secret about herself. Not something she’d done, but something she was. What would your answer be? There is your truth.’
‘You make it sound easy.’
‘I know it is not. What is the worst that might follow? That she does not believe you? That she thinks you deluded?’
‘All of that.’
‘It seems to me that if you don’t tell her what you are, you will lose her. If you do, there is a small chance you will not. A small chance is better than none at all.’ She stands, puffing with the effort, and points at the newspaper sprawled across my lap. ‘Don’t let it end like this.’
After she has gone, I stand before the mirror: head up, shoulders back. I have spent my life whining that I am hard done by, plagued with an incorrigible other half. We have both committed acts of cruelty against the other. Both of us frightened, angry, vengeful, at odds with our odd selves. I must hold myself to account for my part in the sorry mess we have made of our life.
I can avoid it no longer. I can’t live on this tightrope for the rest of my days. I will breathe the air of the world’s possibilities rather than sleepwalk through a half-dead existence. I will prove to my grandmother, to Abigail, to myself that I am worthy of love. I will face my terrors, before my courage fails. She may very well call me mad – for what other outcome can there be? – and send me packing. At least I will have tried.
I walk to Whalley Range in a turmoil and, all too soon, come to her door. I grip the sunflower door-knocker and crack it hard. A young woman opens up. After a momentary look of confusion, she gathers herself and asks for whom I am calling. Abigail appears at the foot of the stairs and rescues me.
‘Thank you, Betty. Miss Latchford is expected.’
I blink. ‘Am I?’
Abigail motions me indoors. I pause on the mat, afraid to enter. A grandfather clock thumps the seconds. I never knew the passage of time could be so deafening.
‘Against my better judgement,’ she says. ‘I cannot snap my fingers and cease loving you merely because I ought.’
‘Abigail. I have come to apologise. More than that. I am here to offer what you ask for. The truth.’
‘I too owe you an apology,’ she replies. ‘It was unworthy of me to shout at you in the café.’
‘On the contrary, you were quite fair.’
Betty flits back and forth across the hallway, pausing to dust a spotless umbrella stand. Abigail gathers her coat and hat and raises her voice a notch.
‘It looks to be a fine afternoon for the time of year. Let us take a turn around the park before dusk sets in.’
I walk, stiff-legged, at Abigail’s side. She does not touch me, nor I her, as if by brushing against each other the world might explode into a firework show. The park-keeper tips his cap as we pass through the gate.
‘I’ll be closing up in half an hour,’ he says. ‘Don’t you ladies be getting locked in.’
We roam along an avenue of new elms, planted by a gardener who knew he would never see them grow to maturity. An act of faith and generosity for the enjoyment of future generations.
‘These saplings are quite bare of leaves,’ I remark, breaking the silence. ‘They look rather lonely.’
Abigail gives me a crisp look. ‘Have we come here to discuss the traits of deciduous trees?’
‘No.’
‘I thought not.’
A brace of swells give us the eye and I wait for disagreeable comments about two females walking unchaperoned. Something in Abigail’s bearing makes them demur and they scuttle away with the mildest of salutations.
Conversation ceases. My mind tumbles as I search for words that might frame the impossibility that I am. My bravery falters. How can I watch her face – that beloved face – twist into repulsion? After a few moments, we find ourselves by the pleasure lake. I lean on the fence and look at my reflection.
With each breath of wind my features distort. One moment I look like Gnome; the next, Edie. All it takes is a trick of the light and there I am. There we are. How very ridiculous to say me and him. I drag my gaze upwards and face Abigail.
‘Very well. It is time.’
She nods and takes a deep breath. ‘I am listening,’ she says, extending her hand. ‘But let us be away from this awful place. It reminds me how easily hopes can be destroyed.’
I glance across the icy water and see the ruins of the Pavilion on the far side. ‘Oh! I am sorry. I did not mean to bring us so close to …’
‘It is no matter.’
I hold her gaze. If I am not to see her after this evening, and that seems likely, then I shall take my fill of her while I can. We proceed along the darkening avenue, arm in arm.
‘I shall speak as plainly as I am able,’ I say. ‘You deserve the truth. If, afterwards, you wish to sever all connection, I shall understand. All I ask is that you keep my confidence.’
‘Of course.’
‘What I am about to say cannot be taken back. I conceal a secret about myself – not from you alone, but from the whole world – that could taint you with association and bring down shame upon your head.’
‘What have you done?’
‘It is not what I have done. It is what I am.’
‘Oh,’ she says, her face clearing. ‘Are you ashamed of the passion we feel for each other? I am surrounded by women far more abandoned to physical pleasure than we two.’ The heat of her glance strengthens my nerve. ‘Indeed, I wish I could persuade you to abandon yourself further.’
I press my lips to her palm. ‘So do I,’ I whisper. ‘It is not that, not at all. What if I am not all I seem?’
She cocks her head. ‘I do not follow.’
‘What if, one night, we held each other close and you discovered alien flesh? What if my body changed before your eyes?’
‘I should still love you. These are wild speculations, Edie. You are affrighting yourself with imaginings.’
‘This is not imagination. I wish it were. This is more than possible. It is true and, sooner or later, will happen.’
‘Edie. By all that is holy, speak.’
I open my mouth, not sure what will emerge. ‘My body is protean. Changeable. Stranger than the chameleon. Tiresian.’
‘You are talking in riddles,’ she says. ‘Maybe it would help if you stopped being poetic.’
I blush. ‘It is somewhat indelicate.’
She comes to a halt and looks me in the eye. ‘No one is listening other than myself. Do not slip behind propriety, with me of all people. Out with it. Tell me, in plain words.’
‘I am not a woman,’ I say. The words have the weight of a cannon-shot in the tranquil park. Abigail stands so still I wonder if time has ground to a halt and we are suspended in some place outside of its forward movement. I take another breath. ‘Nor am I a man. Not entirely.’
‘Not entirely,’ she repeats.
‘Not all of the time, leastways. I shift back and forth. Female to male, male to female. There you have it.’
There is a pause. I wait for the trees to tear up their roots and crash to the ground, for the earth to open and belch fire. No such disaster takes place. Her lower lip sticks out a little, in that way it does when she is thinking.
‘So,’ she says. ‘You exist between the sexes?’
It is part question, part statement. The words come as effortlessly as an observation that I come neither fro
m Liverpool nor Birmingham, but a place between the two.
‘I do,’ I reply as simply. ‘Gnome is not my brother.’
‘Ah. Of course.’
‘Two souls, one body. We take – turns. Night and day.’
‘This is what you have hidden from me.’
‘And the world.’
‘I can see why. It is indeed difficult to comprehend.’
‘I knew it.’
‘Do not look so crestfallen. I said difficult, not impossible.’
‘You believe me?’
‘I’ve heard plenty of lies in my time,’ she says dryly. ‘This is too strange to be a fabrication. I do not believe you would invent something so outlandish when you could concoct a more reasonable tale of – I don’t know – a child born out of wedlock, prostitution, forced marriage.’
I gawp at her. ‘You are not disgusted?’
‘As the Bard says, there are more things in heaven and in earth. I have female friends who are very like men; equally I know fellows who display all the habits of women.’ She smiles. ‘I have simply never met anyone who … vacillates. In truth, I am relieved.’
‘Relieved?’ I splutter. All those years of terror, stoked by Ma’s admonishments never to let down my guard. A door creaks open in my whirling brain and a shaft of light breaks out.
‘Yes. You have held yourself so distant that I feared some abominable duplicity. A number of my sisters warned me off, saying you were planted amongst us by private detectives employed by disapproving husbands, sent to spy on our meetings and beat us at our own game. It has happened in other cities.’
‘Oh!’
‘I even began to wonder if you had a husband somewhere, a hulking fellow who would dash my brains against the nearest lamp-post if he knew of our desires.’
‘Oh,’ I repeat, lacking a more articulate response.
‘Do you not think I am relieved to find that you are different rather than dishonest?’
‘I have been afraid, very much so.’
‘That does not surprise me. I can see why you might hesitate to share such information. The world is both prurient and judgemental, particularly regarding issues of such an intimate nature. You must have lived in terror of discovery. You are courageous, Edie.’
The Night Brother Page 33