Cause of death – drowning. It made me think of The Tempest and those are pearls that were his eyes or pearl fishermen diving for oysters in the Southern China Seas, but it didn’t make me remember anyone called Pearl and it certainly didn’t make me remember a twin sister.
Did I drown my own sister? Could such a thing be possible? I couldn’t even drown myself. I opened the silver locket and there again were the two pictures of me as a baby that I had found once before in Bunty’s bedside table and it took me a long time, staring hard at the twin images in the diptych, to realize that one of them wasn’t me at all, but my sister. I stared and stared until my eyes ached trying to work out which one was me and which one wasn’t. But if one of them was the false Ruby and the true Pearl, I couldn’t for the life of me say which.
I put all the papers back in the shoe-box and closed the door of the wardrobe. By the time Mr Belling brought Bunty home I was already in bed and was feigning sleep when Bunty looked in on me as she usually does these days – to check if I’m still breathing, I suppose. But then something made me change my mind and I sat bolt upright in the bed so that she gave a little scream as if I was a zombie suddenly getting up from its grave. I switched on my bedside light and waved the silver locket at her. ‘Why have we never talked about this?’ and Bunty’s silence was frightening because I didn’t know what it contained. Finally, I heard her swallow, nervously and say, ‘You forgot.’
‘I forgot? What do you mean, I forgot?’
‘You blacked it all out. Amnesia,’ Bunty said shortly. She still managed to sound slightly irritated, even when telling me these momentous, earth-shattering things. ‘Dr Haddow said that was probably for the best – after what happened.’ Half of her had already disappeared round the door but something stopped her from leaving. ‘We all thought it was for the best,’ she added. ‘After all, nobody wanted to be reminded about what happened.’
‘But you can’t just blot something like that out,’ I yelled at her. ‘You can’t just pretend somebody never existed, not talk about them, not look at photographs—’
Bunty had slipped even farther round the door so that she was little more than a hand and voice. ‘There are photographs,’ she said. ‘And, of course we talked about her; it was you that blotted her out, not us.’
‘It’s always my fault, isn’t it?’ I screamed, and then a silence fell between us that stretched out and expanded and took on a strange watery kind of substance, trap-ping us until I dropped the question that couldn’t be avoided any longer into the pool of silence and felt the ripples moving outward. ‘How did I kill my sister?’ The ripples reached Bunty and she sighed. ‘You pushed her in the water,’ she said flatly. ‘It was an accident, you didn’t know what would happen, you were only four years old.’
‘An accident?’ I echoed. ‘Bernard Belling talked about it as if I was a cold-blooded murderer—’ My mother had the grace to sound annoyed, ‘Well, he shouldn’t have been talking to you about it—’ She hesitated. ‘At the time, I did blame you, but of course it was an accident . . .’ Her voice trailed away and then finally she said wearily, ‘It was a long time ago, there’s no point in bringing it all up again,’ and she finally managed to disappear behind the bedroom door.
But a few minutes later she came back and sat on the end of my bed. Then she took the locket from me and opened it up and sat for a long time without saying anything. ‘Which one?’ I said finally. ‘Which one is Pearl?’ and she pointed to the photograph on the left and said, ‘My Pearl,’ and began to cry.
Oh no, here we go again – down, down, down – into the dark backward and abysm of time. Will it ever end? There goes Sweep holding onto Denise, followed by Daisy and Rose’s doll’s house, and I think to myself, Ruby and Pearl, Ruby and Pearl, the jewel twins, and immediately see the witch’s treasure chest from Hansel and Gretel, overflowing with opals the size of duck eggs, rubies like hearts, diamonds like ice-floes, emeralds like glacier-lakes, sapphires like pieces of the summer sky and pearls – huge, iridescent globes of pearls stranded together in great ropes, tumbling down the sides of the treasure chest, and I reach out my hand and try to grab onto a rope of pearls but my fingers slip along the smooth spheres and I plunge on, through a hail of pins and a shower of buttons like meteors, past an invisible Eamonn Andrews saying, ‘Ruby Lennox – This is Your Life!’ and then the Parrot squawks, right next to my ear and, given the gift of speech by the Cupboard says, ‘Shutuprubyshutupruby.’
Then just blackness, a profound deaf-dumb-and-blind darkness that goes on for ever and ever and ever as I dive down like a diver fishing for pearls until – Flash! There’s a light ahead and I think, The Light of the World, and know that I must be coming to the bottom of the Cupboard. In the middle of the light there’s a little figure and the closer I get the brighter she gets, standing, like Botticelli’s Venus, in a great, gleaming shell made of mother-of-pearl, pale and opalescent, and I can almost touch the figure now, the one who is my twin, my double, my mirror, wreathed in smiles, saying something, holding out her little arms to me, waiting for me, but I can’t hear anything at all except for a clock chiming in my head four, five, six and the sound of something whimpering and scratching at the door; then there is more blackness, blackness like a woolly shroud, blackness that’s trying to get inside me, stuffing itself into my mouth and nose and ears like a thick, black fleece and I realize that I am being buried alive and the earth is raining down on my coffin and coming in through tiny little cracks. Cracks of light—
‘Ruby?’ In one of the light-cracks is a pair of lips and slightly yellow teeth, an eye-tooth that glints gold and the mouth is saying something over and over and with the greatest effort I concentrate on the shape that the lips make until I realize with some surprise that they’re saying my name. ‘Ruby.’
‘Ruby? How do you feel now, Ruby?’ and the mouth smiles and pulls back and I can see a funny-looking woman, quite old, with plaits wound round her ears like headphones and spindly gold spectacles hanging round her neck. I can’t speak, my throat feels as if it’s been washed with gravel and my head is throbbing. I squint my eyes up against the sunlight which is pouring through the hospital window and spilling onto the green linoleum in big geometric pools. ‘Hello, Ruby – I’m Dr Herzmark, and I’d like to help you, is that all right?’
Dr Herzmark’s room is always very hot and stuffy. I think she keeps it like that on purpose to make you sleepy. She has cakes in her drawer, strange sticky cinnamon cakes and syrupy lemon buns, and pours bitter coffee which I drink to stay awake. Or I suck on one of the knobbly brown sugar cubes like pale compressed sand that she has in a bowl on her desk. Then, in her funny German accent, she says, ‘Do you want to lie down, Ruby?’ because she never tells me, only asks me, and then she covers me with a blanket – dark blue with red stitching like a horse blanket, and says, ‘Now then, Ruby, I want you to imagine that you’re wrapped in one of the colours of the rainbow and start counting down from ten . . .’ and every time I try to choose a different colour to see what it feels like and I can tell you that red is the colour of rubies, of course, and orange makes you feel as if you are full of light. That yellow makes you feel fizzy as if you’ve breathed in sherbet lemons, and that green is the smell of summer grass after rain (a melancholy colour). Indigo is the colour of magic and violet tastes of flowery cachous. Red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, violet. Rowntree’s Of York Give Best In Value. From Dr Herzmark’s window you can smell the factory and the scent of strawberries because this is the time of year they make the strawberry jellies. ‘I like the smell of cocoa best,’ I murmur. And Dr Herzmark says, ‘Mmm,’ in a very foreign, expressive way.
And what about blue? Blue is the colour of memory. And all the prettiest flowers – bluebells and hyacinths and the tiny starry forget-me-nots in Uncle Tom’s field, but not today because it’s the middle of winter and they’re covered in snow. It’s the second of January 1956 – and this is the first time that patient Dr Herzmark has managed to tak
e me back to this fateful day, and yet suddenly here I am, sitting at Uncle Tom’s dining-room table in his cottage in Elvington on a dutiful New Year family visit. His wife, Auntie Mabel, is saying to Bunty, ‘It is lovely to see you,’ and she turns to Gillian and Patricia and says, ‘Are you looking forward to going back to school after the Christmas holidays?’ and Patricia says, ‘Yes,’ and Gillian says, ‘No.’ Uncle Tom turns to George and says, ‘I thought the road might be blocked – it was a real white-over last night,’ and George says, ‘I know. We had quite an adventure getting here.’
Auntie Mabel has put on an unseasonable salad for our dinner and even the sight of the round lettuce leaves and pale icy green cucumber discs is enough to make you shiver and I say, ‘We had a tongue salad,’ to Dr Herzmark and laugh and tell her about Gillian tucking into the thick slice of cold tongue that Auntie Mabel has just carved – from an ox tongue that she has pressed herself especially for our visit. Gillian takes a big bite and, swallowing quickly (I think in a former life she died of starvation), she says to Bunty, ‘Why can’t we have this? I like it,’ and then watching Auntie Mabel carving another piece, adds, ‘What is it?’ Auntie Mabel smiles, ‘Tongue, Gillian.’
Gillian’s forehead creases in a little frown as she digests this information – both literally and otherwise – and she repeats the word, ‘Tongue,’ to herself and then ‘Tongue,’ again, feeling the word on her own tongue as it touches her palate, more uncertainly this time, before laying down her knife and fork and staring at half a tomato on her plate. Patricia laughs cruelly at the expression of discomfort on Gillian’s face and Pearl joins in even though she doesn’t know what Patricia’s laughing at. Pearl likes to laugh, she is all light and sunshine to my dark brooding. ‘That’s enough,’ Bunty says because the sound of laughter worries her, touching some deep, unhealed part of her soul. ‘You can play in the snow after dinner,’ George says. ‘We put your wellingtons in the boot.’
‘And make a big snowman?’ Pearl asks excitedly, and Uncle Tom laughs and says, ‘You can take some coal from the scuttle for his eyes.’
‘That’s enough,’ I say abruptly to Dr Herzmark. Because it tears something inside me to see Pearl so clearly in my mind and know that she’s so utterly beyond reach. Dr Herzmark says, ‘Another day, Ruby,’ and offers me a piece of toffee cracked from a slab. When I hold it up to the light, the sun shines through it like amber and the smell of strawberries follows me all the way home.
Bunty and Auntie Mabel are buttoning us into duffle-coats and scarves and mittens. Pearl and I have little woollen bonnets – mine is red, hers is blue – with white pom-poms on top. Pearl is so excited by all the snow that she paddles her feet up and down impatiently and can hardly stand still long enough to get her wellingtons on. ‘Stand still, Pearl!’ Bunty says, thrusting a boot awkwardly onto her foot. Bunty finally decides that we all have enough clothes on and Auntie Mabel opens the back door and we stream out into the cold, our voices ringing like bells in the clear air. ‘Mind you don’t go near the duck pond!’ Auntie Mabel shouts after us as we flounder in the virgin field and her words echo across the whiteness.
‘That’s enough.’
‘Another day then,’ Dr Herzmark smiles. ‘Did you see the tanks in Prague on the news?’
‘Awful,’ I agree, munching my way through a Russian caramel. A siren sounds from the roof of Rowntree’s and we both start but Dr Herzmark says, ‘It’s only a fire drill.’
Auntie Mabel might as well have said, ‘Mind you go straight to the duck pond,’ because as soon as we’re in the field we make a bee-line for the big pond where Auntie Mabel’s ducks and geese congregate. We have held the little egg-yolk yellow chicks in spring and taken home the huge blue duck eggs that look so beautiful and taste so horrid but we have never seen the duck pond in winter before and for a second we all pause and look in astonishment because it is a magical place, a frozen icescape of sparkling white and all the snow-covered trees on the island in the middle look as if they would chime if you shook them, like trees in a fairy story. The duck pond is so full of winter water that it has flooded out onto the field and in places you can look through the glassy ice at the edge and see the green grass below.
A few geese waddle at the edges of the pond while one or two ducks are swimming in lazy circles moving a slurry of ice crystals around on the surface of the water to stop it from freezing, but most of the birds are ice-bound on the little island in the middle and set up a flurry of quacking and honking when they see us approaching. ‘Oh, we should have brought some bread!’ Patricia wails. Gillian yelps with delight when she finds a solid sheet of ice at the far side of the pond, banging her foot on it like a demented Disney rabbit. ‘Be careful, Gillian,’ Patricia warns and wanders off, walking a pair of ducks around the pond. Pearl rushes after Gillian, jumping up and down as she watches our sister perform the miracle of walking on water. Gillian has nearly reached the island when the ice gives a frightening Crack! and moves a little so that you can see the edges of it where it dwindles away and becomes liquid again, thanks to the ducks’ marathon swimming efforts. Pearl has already got both feet on the ice and Gillian is laughing and shouting at her, ‘Come on! Come on, don’t be a coward! Cowardy-custard Pearl!’ because she knows that’s the one way to goad Pearl into doing things. I shout at Pearl to come back and Gillian is furious with me, yelling, ‘Shut up, Ruby! You’re just a big baby!’ and I look round wildly for Patricia, but she’s disappeared behind a clump of frosted trees and I can’t see her. Pearl has walked nearly half-way out onto the ice and I can actually see it moving, with a slight see-saw motion, and I begin to cry. All the time Gillian continues to shout, ‘Come on, come on, Pearl!’ when all of a sudden the ice that Pearl is standing on tilts and I watch in horror as she simply slides off as if she’d been tipped on a chute and slips into the water, quite slowly and feet first, and as she drops into the water her body twists round so that she’s facing me and the last thing I see is her face, stretched in horror, and the last words she ever says, before the black water claims her, hang on the freezing air, forming ice-crystals of sound long after the little white pom-pom on her hat has disappeared.
All I can do is stand there with my mouth open wide, one long, unwavering scream of hysteria coming out of it, and although I’m aware of the dreadful ululating noise that’s coming from inside me, and aware of Gillian on the island screaming at Patricia to hurry up and Patricia herself sprinting round the pond towards us, despite this cacophony – joined now by all the geese – all I can really hear are Pearl’s words which have found a home inside my skull, creating dreadful ricocheting echoes – Ruby, help me! Ruby, help me!
Patricia dives into the water and comes up again almost immediately, retching with the cold, her stringy hair plastered to her head, but she blinks like a strange amphibian and forces herself under the water again. By this time the commotion has reached not only Uncle Tom’s cottage but the neighbouring farm as well and people seem to come running from everywhere churning up the smooth white snow. Someone drags a shivering, blue Patricia out of the water and wraps her in a rough, dirty jacket and carries her away and one of the farm labourers wades confidently into the water but has to start swimming almost straight away, gasping with shock, because the duck pond is unexpectedly full.
But Pearl has floated away under the ice somewhere and refuses to be found. It is only several hours later when the men have brought hooks and long sticks to fish for Pearl, that she agrees to come out of hiding. One of the men, big, with pocked skin and a heavy jaw, carries her in his arms, holding her away from his body as if she was something immensely fragile and important, which she is, of course, and all the way across the trodden snow of the field his body judders with the sobs he’s trying to suppress.
And my heart is breaking, breaking into great jagged icy splinters. I breathe in big noisy gulps because I’m drowning on air, and if I could cast a spell to stop time – suspend it for ever and ever, so that the cobwebs grew over my
hair and the ducks stopped in the middle of their circles and the feathers lay still on the air, drifting through time for ever – then I would do it.
Pearl’s limp little body is laid on the kitchen table but Auntie Mabel shoos us out of the room and across the passage to the front parlour. Patricia has already been dispatched to hospital. Gillian sits in an armchair and stares at her feet. The parlour smells of camphor and old wood. The only sound is the ticking of a carriage-clock which chimes the quarter-hours with a tinkling carillon. I don’t feel up to sitting in a chair and curl up instead in a little ball behind the sofa and I lie there, quite numb, hearing – not Pearl’s dreadful words – but Gillian’s.
As Patricia was dragged out of the pond, screaming and kicking, desperate to get back into the water and find Pearl, Gillian remained stranded on the island (they fetched a little rowing-boat eventually to get her off). As the men began their search for Pearl, Gillian jumped up and down like a savage in a story book, executing her own personal tribal dance. Terrified that she’d be blamed for what had happened, she pointed at me and screamed until her lungs gave out, ‘It was her, it was her, it was her. Ruby pushed her in, she pushed Pearl in the water. I saw her! I saw her!’ and I just stood there, dumbstruck, staring at the frozen grass under the ice, where a long white feather from one of Auntie Mabel’s geese had found a cold nest.
‘All right?’ Dr Herzmark asks, holding me like a baby and rocking me back and forwards. And after a while I grow quiet and we sit in a strange companionable fashion, listening to the whizz whizz of bicycle wheels as Rowntree’s day-shift goes home; then she hands me a Lyons chocolate cupcake from her drawer and I peel the stiff pleated silver cup off it. ‘My mother really did blame me. She packed me off to her sister in Dewsbury because she couldn’t bear to look at me.’
Behind the Scenes at the Museum Page 33