Ritual

by Jo Mazelis

  Her glass was wet as if a small damp hand had touched it. All around the table, she seemed to see stumbling little footprints as if a child had run around in giddy circles, revelling in this new sensation, this drunkenness.

  ‘So, where did you go?’ he asked.

  ‘Huh?’

  ‘Where did you go while they were here?’

  ‘Who-oo?’ she said thinking guiltily of the little ghost.

  ‘The owners. You said they’d be back for the holidays.’

  Had she said such a thing? Even sober it was hard to keep track of all her lies.

  He was watching her face, waiting for an answer.

  ‘They come and go,’ she said. ‘Like little ghosts.’

  He laughed.

  ‘You’re funny,’ he said. ‘I missed that. I missed you.’

  This was too much. She rose to her feet, swayed for a second, then walked, her upper body tipping forward perilously, from the room.

  Upstairs, she collapsed on her bed fully clothed, then passed out. In the night she drifted in and out of watery dreams and at times awoke to the sounds of rattling pipes and gurgling water. At dawn, with her bladder full and her head throbbing, she tiptoed to the bathroom, relieved herself and drank handfuls of cool, clear water from the tap. The house was silent and still, the door to his room was closed. He had said he missed her, she remembered; that she was funny. He’d laughed and smiled and lit the candles and put on that mysterious and strangely seductive music.

  She stood in the hallway gazing towards his room. Should she go in there? Silently climb onto the bed beside him? But there was no soft duvet to lift so that she could snuggle under. He would be in his cocoon of a sleeping bag, the mattress beside him, pink and bare, slippery, cold and unyielding.

  In the morning she would make up his bed properly, take away that sleeping bag, put it in the wash or at least turn it inside out and put it on the line to air in the spring sunshine.

  She might also confess her lies.

  She took a few steps closer to his room, wanting to sense his nearness, to hear his breathing. Then smiling to herself, she returned to her room, undressed, got properly into bed and in seconds she was asleep.

  She was awoken by a door banging downstairs and ran to the window in time to see Lawrence jogging down the path towards the gates. She could just make out the thin white wires of an MP3 player trailing from the pocket of his sweatshirt.

  She took a long shower, shaving her legs, then applying body lotion. She had neglected herself for too long. She put on a dress she’d found in one of the wardrobes. It was worn soft with age and there was a tear beneath one of the arms, but it was a pretty print and a flattering style.

  She made up the bed in the master bedroom and hung his sleeping bag on the line to air. She was in the kitchen waiting for the kettle to boil, when a sudden breeze fluttered at her bare legs, preceding the slammed front door.

  ‘Do you want lunch?’ she called.

  He came and stood beside her, gently touched her shoulder. ‘This is nice. You look pretty in a frock.’

  He paused a moment, then kissed her cheek.

  ‘I need a soak,’ he said. ‘Not used to this much exercise. Won’t be long.’

  She switched the radio on, turned up the volume and fairly danced about the kitchen, washing lettuce, chopping tomatoes, cucumber, spring onions. She fried mushrooms, leftover potato, onions and ham, then set them to one side, meaning to add the beaten eggs at the last moment.

  Everything grew cold in the pan as the minutes went by. She sipped her tea and went to the window, the apple tree was in blossom and the rhubarb was unfurling its giant leaves. His sleeping bag was hanging on the line like a great bat, its wings folded and its head down. Lifeless.

  How long had he been upstairs?

  Too long, she thought, and her heart seemed to flutter inside her chest, to quiver like an insubstantial jellyfish. She raced up the stairs, the bathroom door was shut and no sound came from behind it. As she looked she saw a trail of watery footsteps stepping from the bathroom and crossing the landing. Each print evaporated as a new one appeared.

  *

  He did not drown. It had been something to do with his fall from the cliff two years before, a small bleed seeping slowly into his brain that the doctors had missed. There was no water in his lungs, they said, it could have happened at anytime, anywhere, but she – because she had been the caretaker – she knew better.

  MECHANICS

  Georgina and Charlotte left the field where the circus tent was, and walked to the top of the hill that overlooked it. They went together. They always went together. They had no choice.

  They were twins. Or more precisely Siamese twins, joined at the hip (or so the story went). There was no escape. Only this walk together in their artfully constructed twin dresses. Georgina with her right arm around her sister’s back. Charlotte, likewise, with her left arm around Georgina’s, their legs hidden under their long skirts and petticoats, their waists narrow and tightly corseted, swelling into shapely hips. Each bowed slightly towards the inclined scrub grass as they climbed upwards.

  Sometimes one of the girls might slip or stumble on a loose rock or wet grass, but the other would tug her upright, then jostling a little to right themselves, they continued on their way. At the top, if it was dry, they would seat themselves on a grassy hummock and gaze down at the brightly painted tents and vehicles of the circus gathered in a familiar cluster below.

  The year was 1932, though the style of dress they habitually wore belonged to an earlier age. This was their mother’s idea, and Father, as was his habit, readily agreed.

  They were not beautiful, at least not in the conventional sense, but had good figures and clear skin, and long curls of glossy brown hair, which was usually worn with a scarlet ribbon tied in a bow at the crown. It was a hairstyle that their mother herself had worn when she was a girl of thirteen in 1904.

  Once the twins were comfortably installed on their grass throne, one took from her pocket a silver case in which a row of thin brown cheroots were imprisoned. She selected two, while her sister fished in her pocket for matches.

  Charlotte had the advantage of a free right hand, while Georgina had to either struggle with her left hand, or use her right, but first she had to wriggle to free it from the press of her sister’s body which ruined the effect of their unusual appearance. This was how their mother had instructed them to do everyday things; as if they were a single entity with only two arms, but four legs and two heads. They had also been trained to speak as one, saying in perfect chorus, ‘Hello, how do you do? I do believe that the weather is improving, don’t you think?’ In order to make these seemingly spontaneous and simultaneous speeches they had rehearsed multiple variations along with a series of subtle gestures that communicated which phrase should be uttered. It was Georgina who usually took the lead in these transactions with the world, but Charlotte could at times be singular in transmitting different choices that made for bizarre conversation. For example, only days before the leader of the local town council had asked the girls if they enjoyed the rolling hills and lush pastures of that part of Wales, Georgina twirling a finger through a glossy ringlet, signalled that they should say, ‘Why, thank you kind sir, everything has pleased us greatly!’ But Charlotte had petulantly (as much as sneezing can be petulant) sneezed three times, which was the code for, ‘Our dear mother wept bitterly over it and cannot be consoled!’ Georgina sensing the comedy in this answer took a deep breath before they spoke the words in unison together. The council leader was taken aback, ‘Is she an invalid?’ he asked. To which the girls replied, somewhat mysteriously, ‘It is said there are two ways to milk a cow.’ The poor man had tried on such a variety of expressions in quick succession in his confusion and grown redder and redder in the face until they thought he might suffer an apoplexy. After that they took their leave with haste as both were stifling a great fit of the giggles.

  But now, as each held an aromatic
cheroot close to her lips they spoke to one another in a whispered conversation that made it clear that their joined bodies contained two distinct personalities.

  ‘Shall we write to Mother tonight?’ Georgina asked.

  ‘Oh, I suppose we ought. Otherwise there’ll be hell to pay.’

  ‘And when we go to town, shall we also go to the bank.’

  ‘Oh, yes. Good idea. How much do we have this time?’

  Georgina thought about this and then said, ‘Almost five pounds.’

  ‘So tonight we’ll write, then in the morning?’

  ‘First thing.’

  ‘To the post office.’

  ‘Then the bank.’

  The girls’ aim was to save enough money to go to America, a plan which their parents would not approve, so much of this business with bank accounts was kept strictly between themselves.

  Charlotte took one last long and satisfactory puff on her cheroot, rolling the smoke around and out of her mouth like a cloud of unspoken thoughts, then dropped the remains onto the earth and ground it out with the heel of her black leather boot.

  The following day, the sisters walked towards the track on the northern side of the field and followed a rutted path that in turn led to the road into town. They passed an apple orchard with new young apples, gold and green hanging from the branches, and a field whose only occupant was a single brown bull who occasionally took short exploratory runs, his mind full of soft-eyed, soft-flanked cows, or perhaps of the farmer himself tossed high in the air on his horns, then caught – a ruddy-cheeked Welsh matador skewered like a cherry on a cocktail stick.

  The sisters spoke excitedly of America and their dreams of going there. They would join Barnum and Bailey’s Circus, they’d appear on stage at Dreamland in Coney Island, they’d be the toast of New York City.

  They passed along the dusty road by the edge of St Madoc’s Church, with its marble headstones and simple wooden crosses, whispering excitedly about Broadway and neon lights and all the handsome swells they’d meet.

  So far they had saved up sixteen pounds, two shillings and nine-pence ha’penny. They needed quite a bit more, but they have been living frugally, having made an arrangement with Pedro the Marvellous Four-Legged Boy to (for a share of the food) cook supper for him every evening, then wash the dishes and sweep his caravan floor.

  They have been offered very large sums of money to undress for certain men – some of them purporting to be scientists or doctors with a purely professional interest in the sisters’ bodies. Others made no pretence of their real purpose and, when rejected, looked at the twins in frank amazement to have their good, hard-earned money turned down – the girls did work for the circus after all, which made them, like actresses and dancers, certain to be prostitutes.

  However the sisters have always said no to these proposals to show themselves naked, and the careful styling of their hair, the turn-of-the-century costumes added to their image of old-fashioned modesty.

  They were aware of the desire they provoked in certain men; the idea of a double conquest, a two for one body, the unavoidable presence of a voyeur as envious or frightened witness to the deflowering. Yes, that combined with hungry curiosity; the need to investigate whatever fleshy ligaments or muscle joined these two, to see and touch and invent all sorts of erotic possibilities.

  The sky was milky with clouds, pale grey and yet also bright. Perhaps it would rain later, or not. The sisters had no shadows.

  They walked in silence for a little time, enjoying the sound of the birdsong and the quiet scrape of their feet on the dry earth. Then suddenly, exploding into sound and vision up ahead, a flock of cyclists poured around the twisting road. The cyclists were three, four or even five abreast. Girls with pigtails and scrubbed faces, boys with pomaded hair, faces slick with sweat, most of them in khaki and sand-coloured clothes, baggy shorts and neat shirts with breast pockets and lapels. A beret here. A gay cotton headscarf there. One boy brazen in an undervest. Indecent. His arms from the wrist up, white as milk, his hands and face and neck nut-brown.

  The twins responded by moving quickly sideways like a crab. Georgina stumbled into a ditch. Charlotte very nearly followed.

  There was a screeching of brakes, a chorus of dringing bells. The boys’ voices, deep and resonant, let rip with daring curses, the girl cyclists shrieked with fear. The lead bicyclists somehow escaped unscathed, but in the middle there was a tangle of collision amidst the clouds of agitated dust.

  Charlotte helped Georgina onto the path. The cyclists who hadn’t fallen, dismounted and propped their bikes against the hedge which bent obligingly, then entered the fray of spinning wheels and grazed knees to separate the people from the machinery.

  Charlotte and Georgina were only a few feet away, but crept closer. They wanted to help but their linked bodies were cumbersome and awkward, besides which they are shy amongst these young people – who while they may have noticed that the two women were identical twins, wouldn’t have understood quite how remarkable Charlotte and Georgina were.

  At the centre of the chaos, one girl with pink skin and straw-coloured hair was lying tangled and slain, her beautiful dimpled knee and round weighty leg calf seemingly pierced and twisted in the spokes of a wheel. A fine trail of bright red blood coiled towards her ankle, then slowly dripped into the dust. Her eyes were closed and her breath came out in shallow gasps through pursed lips.

  The twins understood from the rallying cries of the flock that this felled bird was called Edna.

  There were moments of horror. One girl was violently sick in the ditch. A tall, very thin, pale-faced boy swayed vertiginously as if he was pretending to be a sapling in a high wind.

  But then a miracle. Edna was untangled and swept up in the arms of the tallest, most handsome boy. His jaw was square; his anthracite hair oiled into a warrior’s helmet, he wore God’s thumbprint on his chin, but the devil had joined his black eyebrows together at the bridge of his perfect nose. He carried Edna over a nearby style and into a field full of frightened sheep which immediately raced in terror to its opposite end.

  Everyone, including at the rear (with only the slightest difficulty) Charlotte and Georgina, followed.

  Edna was draped across the half-kneeling hero like Bernini’s Pieta. Her face was an ecstasy of pain or perhaps orgasmic joy at the romantic manhandling she was getting, and in front of so many witnesses too.

  ‘Will she be alright, Gerald?’ another girl asked, using the opportunity to kneel down next to him, thigh to bare thigh, as she gazed worriedly at Edna.

  ‘Yes, I should think so,’ he said, prompting Edna to open her eyes and stare blinkingly at everyone.

  ‘What happened?’ she said, then her gaze happened on the twin sisters, and she smiled in greeting.

  The others all looked in the same direction. Eighteen pairs of eyes appraised the sisters. Georgina gave a signal to her sister by pressing the thumb of her right hand onto Charlotte’s shoulder. Both sisters took an intake of breath and began to speak, as they have been taught, in unison.

  ‘Hello, we’re the Kennedy sisters; we’re very pleased to meet you!’

  They delighted in the astonished looks they received from the gathered crowd.

  The handsome boy stepped forward and offered his hand. Charlotte shook it with her right, and then more awkwardly Georgina shook with her left.

  ‘Pleased to meet you!’ the young man said. ‘I’m Gerald Davies, and this,’ he swept his arm in a broad circle indicating the other cyclists, ‘is the Cwm Bach Cycling and Rambling Club.’

  The club members all offered a greeting, some saying ‘hello’ or ‘good morning,’ others just waving or smiling.

  There was something terribly wholesome about the young people, they exuded fresh air and energy and freedom. The twins felt the pinch of envy as they appraised the young ladies in particular with their comfy shorts or culottes, their muscular legs and no-nonsense hairstyles and shoes. The company of such handsome young men was not to
be overlooked either, especially this one, Gerald; he would certainly be a catch.

  After a lot of debate among the group it was decided that in order for Edna and some of the others to rest and recover, they would have their morning tea break immediately and, like ants each certain of their particular purpose, the group set about making a fire, boiling water and swilling out a huge enamel tea pot and many tin mugs.

  Edna begged the twins to join them and the twins, without a nudge or pinch or cough of consultation agreed.

  As luck would have it, here near the edge of the field was a felled tree that the farmer had not yet cleared, and the sisters sat on it. They were watched. They knew that they were being scrutinised, but subtly, politely, with warm smiles and eyes that do their interrogative work askance.

  Gerald brought them their mugs of tea and Edna offered them buttered scones, which she said, with a smiling gaze that flickered mostly in Gerald’s direction, she had baked herself last night.

  The club members arranged themselves in a loose circle around the twins, and chattered amongst themselves, giggling and exchanging silly banter.

  The sky began to clear and grow bluer. It would not rain today after all.

  ‘We had an awful fright back there,’ said Edna who was sitting near Gerald and breaking off bite-sized chunks from her scone before eating them.

  ‘Oh yes, but you’re alright aren’t you, Edie?’

  Edna touched her bandaged knee, in the centre of the white cloth a pink stain the size of a penny was beginning to show. ‘Yes,’ she said, ‘I suppose so.’

  ‘You see, she’s awfully brave, not like a girl at all,’ Gerald said.

  Edna looked uncertain at this. Being brave was good, but not being like a girl wasn’t so good. Edna looked at the twins carefully, they were so strange, like china figurines with their long skirts and old-fashioned hair and tiny waists. Edna was used to identical twins as her cousins were also twins, but Betty and Joan were never like this, so strange and secretive.