The Night Brother

by Rosie Garland

  ‘Or foolhardy.’

  ‘I suppose that depends on the person revealed to.’

  ‘I thought it would take longer to explain,’ I say quietly. ‘Yet here we are at the bandstand. We have walked barely two hundred yards.’

  ‘It is always desirable to be in possession of the truth. It is as though, these past few months, I have been looking at you from a great way off. Come close.’ She takes me in her arms, looks me up and down. It is the most delightful sensation. I am seen, truly seen, and accepted. ‘Edie. You know my feelings for you. At least you should do by now.’

  I am stunned by the intensity of her gaze. My heart thumps with the impossible rhythm she believes me, she loves me.

  ‘Dearest Abigail,’ I breathe. ‘With you I am a better person.’

  ‘How so?’

  ‘It is not the whole truth when I say Gnome and I have taken turns. I have been selfish. I shut him out, Abigail. I found it in my power to suppress him and I wielded that power unfairly. No wonder he is angry.’

  A pain in the pit of my stomach makes me double over.

  ‘Dearest. I did not mean to upset you …’

  I straighten up, gritting my teeth. ‘No. I must say this. I’ve lived the lie that I have been on the side of the angels. He may have made terrible mistakes, but so have I. I can change. I shall change. I am sorry.’

  ‘You are, aren’t you?’

  I cringe with shame that I should have felt years ago. Not shame about my family, but something far sharper. Shame at my lies, my selfishness, my wheedling excuses. I lurch against Abigail. My legs can no longer bear me up.

  ‘Please, I must …’ I moan.

  She helps me to the nearest bench. Blood rushes in my ears.

  ‘Edie, dearest. Can you walk to my house?’

  ‘It will pass. A moment. I am simply overwhelmed. It is shock. Relief.’ I try to breathe evenly. ‘My entire life, I have lived in fear of this moment. Now it is here …’ I laugh. ‘I wonder why I was ever so afraid. Oh.’

  The trees shimmer.

  ‘Press your forehead to your knees,’ says Abigail from a long way above me. ‘It helps with such a fit. Dash it all,’ she exclaims. ‘I did not think to bring smelling salts.’

  I obey. The roaring does not lessen, nor the nausea. I am halfway to losing sense of my separate self in the tornado boiling between my ears. My chest heaves. The front of my blouse sags as it finds less and less to fill it. I feel the unmistakeable quaking in my limbs. I shake my head: no. Our limbs. Not mine. I must change everything, down to the words I use.

  Forgive me.

  I don’t know which of us says it. I slip from the safety of the bench and Abigail’s arms, and down.

  GNOME

  JANUARY 1910

  A pair of hands, firm about my shoulders. A voice, gentle with concern.

  ‘Edie?’ it says.

  I fight past the thump, boom-boom commotion in my head. A gravel path presses its teeth into the back of my neck. My breath, tight-bound in a corset. Edie’s corset. I haul myself to my knees, groaning with the stretching of flesh as I become man. I turn and see Abigail. A smile breaks on her face, more blinding than any sun. This is what love looks like, I tell myself. My heart judders.

  ‘Oh,’ she says. ‘You’re not …’

  I throw my arm across my eyes. ‘Don’t look at me,’ I wheeze.The banging between my ears grows louder. A steam hammer on an anvil. Abigail clasps my throat. Now she will throttle me. She pinches the buttons, undoes the collar. Breath dashes in. She helps me to my feet.

  ‘Come with me,’ she says, so low the hum communicates itself through my skin and into my gut. ‘Both of you.’

  There’s a heartbeat. A breath.

  ‘Both?’ I hear my voice say both. I am sure it is my voice. I’d recognise it anywhere. My palms prickle with cold sweat. ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’

  ‘Edie has told me about you.’

  ‘She’s lying!’ I cry. ‘You can’t possibly believe that nonsense!’

  My words hiccup to a stop. Her eyes flame with knowledge. I melt in the crucible of her fearsome understanding, that fire of love that burns but does not destroy. She raises an eyebrow.

  ‘Indeed? Edie was here. Now she is not and you are.’

  ‘No!’ I no longer know whom I’m bellowing at: Edie, Abigail, myself. ‘I’ve lost. She’s won,’ I moan. ‘Let me go away.’

  ‘I shall do no such thing.’ She skewers me with her look, straight through to the back of my head and deeper, into that dank and dingy corner where I’ve booted my soul. I slam my eyelids shut, but it’s no use. She sees what I am.

  The twilight sickens. On the far side of the pleasure lake huddles the wreck of the Pavilion. I sniff charred timber, scorched tar-paper. The walls are blotched with a broth of mould. My stomach lurches at the memory.

  ‘Mr Latchford. Gnome. You are not well. Please let us leave this place.’

  ‘I’m not to be trusted! Look,’ I say, pointing at the ruin. ‘I did that. Everything I touch, I destroy.’

  ‘You were angry, and stupid.’

  ‘I am hateful. I am broken.’

  ‘Stop this, I entreat you.’

  ‘I tried to hurt you.’ I twist my head. I mustn’t look her in the eye. ‘I would have …’ I gulp. ‘I’m a man. I can’t be trusted.’

  ‘There are innumerable men who wish to wreak that particular violence upon women.’ She puts her arm around me. ‘You are not one of them.’

  I can’t shake her off. I should be able to. My teeth knock like clouted skittles. ‘Maybe I won’t be able to help myself next time.’

  ‘You did not harm me. More’s the point, you could not.’

  ‘How can you know that?’

  ‘You and Edie are too closely interwoven to do me any harm.’

  ‘That’s what you think.’

  ‘Yes, it is.’

  ‘Wrong! Wrong!’ I raise my hand to strike her, but am as impotent as yesterday evening. ‘Let me prove how terrifying I am!’ I cry. ‘Let me hurt you!

  ‘Stop this, now.’

  My body sways, legs treacherous, disobedient. I slump to the ground. I curl my hands into fists, pound them against my ears.

  ‘Let me have my anger,’ I plead. I am swaying on a boat, lost upon the ocean. ‘Don’t take it away. It’s all there is to me. It’s all that’s kept me going. Please. I’m nothing without it.’

  ‘For God’s sake!’ She shakes me and my brains rattle. ‘Away with this self-pity! Edie is sorry and so are you. It is possible to be repentant without the world coming to its end.’

  I hang on to her skirt. If I let go I will drown. I plunge my face into its folds and weep. She is at my side, kneeling in the dirt.

  ‘Come to me,’ she murmurs. She cups my chin and turns my face to hers. A clutch of pigeons flap dirty wings. ‘Yes,’ she murmurs. ‘Even now, Edie is with you. I can see her in your eyes. She does not want to lose you.’

  ‘She does.’ I wipe my nose on my sleeve and print it with a line of silver. ‘You belong to Edie.’

  ‘Don’t you understand the first thing about love?’ she says. ‘If what Edie tells me is true – and I have no reason to doubt such an outlandish confession – then I am bound to love you, for you are part and parcel of her. She is part and parcel of you. How can I sever either of you from my life?’

  ‘You might as well. Everyone else does.’

  ‘What nonsense you talk,’ she gasps. ‘I’ll say the same to you as I said to her. I belong to no one, neither man nor woman. I am not a thing to be fought or haggled over, like a piece of land.’

  I blink. She said the same to Edie? No. It is not possible.

  ‘I’m not worth the effort,’ I sniff. Did I always sound so petulant? ‘I don’t want to be redeemed. I don’t want to be whole. I’m filth.’

  ‘Do you hate yourself so much that you would destroy yourself to prove it? Is love so terrifying?’

  ‘Yes,’ I whisper
. A squeeze of air from a bellows. The fight pours out of me like beer from a staved-in barrel.

  ‘For heaven’s sake. It is time to get out of your gutter.’ She takes my hand and with remarkable strength pulls me upright. Her eyes roar with fire. ‘Be grateful for what you are not. Hell is not some afterlife. You are making one for yourself; making it now and forever. You do not want that.’

  Something stirs, something new. It is as frightening as standing on a cliff edge, and as exhilarating.

  ‘No, I don’t,’ I gulp.

  She presses her mouth against mine. Edie rushes forward and tastes the fierce kiss. I surrender. This time she will find a way to keep me gone for good. I cannot blame her. I deserve it.

  However, she does not shove me aside. We balance in that place of both and neither, that rope bridge strung between us I have not walked since childhood.

  Gnome, says Edie, without speaking. I have missed you. I have missed us.

  Water runs down my cheek, trickles into my ear. We weep. For the waste, the mess, the complete fist we’ve made of both our lives. When we could have—

  ‘Stop it!’ I cry, slapping hands over our ears. ‘I can’t do this, Edie. I can’t live with myself. Get rid of me. I’m poison.’

  I need you, Gnome. I’m not going back to that time.

  ‘You’re better off without me. Happier. You said so often enough.’

  I was wrong. I’m not real without you. Something is missing; some spark.

  ‘Edie. I – tried to hurt her.’

  I know.

  ‘You stopped me, didn’t you?’

  No. When it came to it, you stopped yourself.

  ‘I was angry,’ we say at the same time. With the speaking of the words the fury is gone, as if it was never there.

  ‘I’m sorry.’ We do not know who is speaking. It could be either. Or both.

  I know.

  ‘We have wasted—’

  So much time, we say together.

  ‘We were not so very different.’

  We are not so very different.

  ‘Will this be difficult?’

  Yes. But we will be working together.

  There is a silence, a long one.

  ‘Edie?’ says Abigail. ‘Are you there?’

  We open our eyes. Caw of a rook. Black spots waver in the treetops. Dusk sucks colour from the sky. Abigail is bending over us. Her expression uncreases from worry into relief.

  ‘You’re here,’ she says. ‘You went away.’

  ‘Was I …’ we stutter. It will take a while to sort out the I and the we. ‘Was it a long time?’

  ‘A few moments only. You fell. Let me …’ She cradles our shoulders, raising us from the bed of rotten leaves. ‘Your clothes are wringing wet. The last thing you need to do is catch a chill. Come. We must talk. All three of us.’

  She helps us to our feet. My head spins away and we stumble, but she is ready to catch us as we fall.

  ‘You did not leave me here.’

  ‘No,’ she declares. ‘I would not. It is not possible.’

  With an elegance that makes me catch my breath, she bends and retrieves Edie’s hat from a puddle. She surveys the bedraggled feathers before shrugging and placing it on our head. We make our way towards the gate.

  ‘You are what you are,’ she continues as we go. ‘I said you should trust me, and I am a woman of my word.’

  We can find neither words nor gestures to express our gratitude. We will need a lifetime.

  ‘Look,’ cries Abigail.

  She points upwards, voice crackling with excitement. The winter sky is crisp with stars. A haze of light is rolling along the tops of the trees, like a scarf knitted of diamonds.

  ‘A firework,’ says Gnome.

  ‘A comet,’ corrects Edie.

  ‘Is it Halley’s?’ asks Abigail.

  ‘Too early. Not due till April.’ In answer to her raised eyebrows, we remark, ‘I have spent a lot of time in libraries.’

  ‘A new one, then.’

  We consider the orbits of wandering stars, the ages that pass. ‘They are the opposite of new.’

  We take her hand and she leads us out of the park as the keeper is closing the gates. We falter, unsure as a child taking its first steps. It could be the shooting star, or the alien yet familiar simultaneity of Gnome and Edie together. Perhaps it is the presence of Abigail: this jewel amongst women who knows what we are, has witnessed our ugliness and persists in her belief that we may strive for beauty. We are her moon: half-hidden, half-known, changeable. Towards her we turn our face, bright and hopeful.

  We slip through the maze of houses, talking of the lonely path of this comet in the frozen wastes beyond the earth; the countless aeons as it circles the universe; how we hope it will find us a more peaceable people when it returns. Words guide us, as sure as Ariadne’s thread, to her driveway.

  We take the few remaining steps to her door. She turns the handle and, together, we step inside.

  ABIGAIL

  I am an arrogant female. I have cosseted myself with the belief that I’ve dared all, done all, seen all this world has to offer. How often have I leaped into the fray, full of satisfaction at the sound of my own voice, the certainty of my arguments. I thought books furnished the answers to all possible questions; thought my lexicon inexhaustible.

  How humbling to find my smug intellect challenged by so simple a thing as a pronoun: that he and she are not sufficient to encompass this new heaven, new earth. I have witnessed what I thought impossible: a woman make the journey into man, and return.

  Lacking fresh words to describe my emotions, I shall do the best with those at my disposal: confusion, wonder, disbelief, fear. Yes, fear: that I should lose my Edie as she obeyed her body’s imperative to emigrate from female to male. Fear I should not see her again.

  That first time, I held her hand. Whether she was my anchor, or I hers, I know not. I watched her flesh transform into a twilight and sink, as day fades into evening. Second by second she dimmed. I waited for the moment when I could state with certainty: She is gone and he is here. However, just as it is not possible to point to the precise moment when day ends and night begins, so I cannot say for certain when she ceased being Edie and became Gnome.

  How marvellous to be both and neither. How terrifying.

  I am humbled by far more than my slippery grasp on syntax. I am in awe of their persistence, their grit, their will to survive against greater odds than we ordinary mortals can ever envisage.

  They are my dearest loves. Infinitely precious, infinitely strange.

  After experiencing them as two beings of such startling contrasts, my greatest surprise has been their similarity. They teach me how different we are not, none of us. Garb a woman in trousers, a man in a skirt and I dare say – comedic moments aside – far more would pass along a street unremarked than we would credit.

  In their protean flesh they demonstrate how foolish are petty distinctions of masculine and feminine. How pointless to separate our selves into empty polarities of north and south. After all, at each extremity, there is nothing but lifeless ice. It is between that our earth spreads its wondrous glory: desert and jungle, tundra and taiga, mountain and ocean.

  My schooldays are come round again. I am learning to guard against easy answers that have quicksand for a foundation. I am compelled to question: the greatest gift for which anyone could ask, and the most taxing.

  There are a hundred stories to tell and a hundred ways to tell them.

  We are learning to accept our contradictions. As time goes by, I am less and less certain with whom I wake, with whom I retire. Less and less does it matter. I thought my heart, given once, might not stretch to encompass two souls. Here is another matter in which I am a student. I am learning how elastic a thing the heart is. How far love can reach, of how much affection I am capable.

  Perhaps I should not be so surprised. I love Mama, Papa, Guy, Mabel, any one of a multitude of friends, and that has never struck me as str
ange. Perhaps this is another of those falsehoods of convention, that we are only capable of loving one person. Perhaps the fire of love is infinite, inexhaustible, and can light a hundred lamps from one flame. Perhaps love is measured not by how much radiance it keeps to itself, but by how much it shines upon the world.

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  This is a work of fiction.

  I am grateful to Manchester and all its glories, past and present. There is definitely something in the water, for it to be so steeped in radical history. I have been blessed with abundant resources upon which to draw. Far too many to enumerate, they include The Portico Library, The John Rylands Library, The People’s History Museum, The Pankhurst Centre, Manchester Histories Festival, the local history publications produced by Neil Richardson in the 1980s and the copious archives held at Manchester Central Library, especially those relating to nineteenth century night-life. Thanks also to Brian Selby and Frank Rhodes for their invaluable work preserving the history of Belle Vue Zoological Gardens. A visit to the Nereid Temple in Room seventeen of the British Museum proved illuminating, and I heartily recommend one of the enjoyable Manchester Ship Canal cruises organized by Mersey Ferries. I wish I could say that doctors like Zambeco did not exist. They did, and chillingly, still do.

  Thank you to Aly Fell, for everything. To Charlotte Robertson, who introduced me to the wonderful team at The Borough Press; especially Katie Espiner, Cassie Browne, Suzie Dooré, Charlotte Cray, Holly Ainley and Ann Bissell. Thank you too to my agent Anna Webber at United Agents who guided me on this journey. And a tip of the broad-brimmed hat to Jennifer Garside, seamstress extraordinaire, who pointed me in the direction of Miss Sanderson and the womanly art of parasol self-defence.

  About the Author

  Rosie Garland is a novelist, poet, performer and singer with post-punk band The March Violets. Her award-winning short stories, poems and essays have been widely anthologised. She is the author of Vixen, a Green Carnation Prize nominee. Her debut novel, The Palace of Curiosities, won Book of the Year in the Co-op Respect Awards 2013 and was nominated for both the Desmond Elliott and the Polari First Book Prize. She lives in Manchester.