Ritual

by Jo Mazelis

  Gerald said, ‘You two are very close, aren’t you? I suppose that’s because you’re twins?’

  Charlotte ran her fingers in a drumming wave on Georgina’s shoulder near the neck. Both spoke, ‘Yes we’re twins, but not like ordinary twins – we’re Siamese.’

  ‘Good lord,’ said Gerald, ‘like Chang and Eng, the original Siamese twins? How fascinating.’

  The girls nodded in perfect unison.

  ‘Oh how awful,’ said Edna, ‘do you mean that you’re joined together? How sad.’

  The twins were silent.

  ‘Well, I don’t see that it’s all that sad,’ offered Gerald.

  ‘Oh it is,’ said Edna, ‘it’s awfully, awfully sad. I mean you can’t ever ride a bike or go for a swim. Or…’ She stopped then and, blushing, lowered her head.

  The girls didn’t answer.

  ‘And you can’t ever, ever get married can you? Not either of you and that’s the saddest thing ever!’ Edna said in a rush of passion and worked herself up until she looked ready to burst into tears.

  Gerald looked at Edna, then at the twins. He suddenly grew flustered. He was imagining the mechanics of marriage. The sex act. He’d done it already, lots of times, with Mrs Dundridge whose husband had died in the war, and who lived down the road from him. Gerald’s mother had persuaded him to help Mrs Dundridge with odd jobs for a bit of pocket money; carrying coal up from the cellar, digging in the garden, moving furniture. Mrs Dundridge was lonely and still young, just 27 when he first went. He’d been fifteen. She’d said that with all his skills in the garden and the carpentry and so on he’d make a perfect husband one day. Then lowering her voice she’d added that there were other things a man should know. Mechanics. And she hadn’t meant Meccano.

  Gerald couldn’t stop imagining those two strange sisters naked. Himself naked too, and those two female bodies closing in on him like wings, or like a hinged mirror, two identical faces swooping closer, and legs and arms entangling him, hands everywhere.

  He was getting far too excited thinking about this, and so he took it out on Edna.

  ‘I think you’re being a bit rude, Edie. I mean, gosh, it isn’t our business, you know,’ he said primly.

  Edna blushed. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said, then broke off another piece of scone, but did not eat it. Instead she threw it towards some sparrows and starlings that had settled hopefully just beyond the group.

  The twins whispered to one another, taking it in turn to cup the other’s ear as they spoke. They made the decision to break with the pre-rehearsed speeches, and speak as individuals.

  ‘It’s alright,’ said Charlotte, ‘we know it’s strange for you, but we’ve been like this all our lives.’

  Edna brightened. ‘Yes, I suppose you must be used to it. People saying the wrong thing, I mean.’

  ‘People can be very cruel,’ Georgina said, ‘but they don’t always mean it. And others are very kind too.’ Georgina didn’t like Edna one bit and wished she’d go away. Charlotte felt the same. Both sisters wished Edna would go away. Silly Edna with her crocodile tears and pity.

  They finished their tea.

  ‘Well,’ said Charlotte, ‘time to get on or we won’t be back in time for the show.’

  ‘The show?’ said Gerald.

  ‘Will you escort us over the stile?’ asked Georgina, careful to hold only Gerald in her gaze.

  ‘Bye-bye,’ the girls called.

  The members of the club chorused their goodbyes in response.

  Gerald walked by the side of Charlotte. When they were out of earshot, he asked again, ‘What show?’

  ‘Oh, the circus,’ said Georgina. ‘You’ll see it a bit further down the road; there’s a painted banner with our picture on it.’

  ‘Why don’t you come and see us,’ Charlotte said. ‘We’d like to see you.’

  She was careful to emphasise ‘you’ making the word rock with significance.

  Gerald pictured the enfolding wings of their two bodies again.

  ‘Well,’ he said, ‘that’s awfully nice. I think I’d like that.’

  He watched them on their way down the lane, noticed how their arms encircled one another’s waists, how their feet worked in perfect union.

  ‘Oh, what a pity,’ said Edna when he rejoined the group. ‘Weren’t they just awfully sad?’

  ‘Oh, yes,’ he said, ‘I suppose so.’

  ‘Can you help me up, Gerald,’ said Edna and she made the pretence of a painful struggle, held her hands up to be eased to her feet, to be saved.

  Gerald hardly noticed Edna’s outstretched arms; above him in the trees he heard the sudden beating of wings. He turned at the sound but there was nothing he could see, only the quickening of his heart, which pulsed and fluttered like a trapped and dying bird.

  THE MURDER STONE

  Most dreadful MURDER!

  Here on the night of June 1st

  in the year of our Lord 1787

  did Matilda Jones wrongfully and

  most cruelly smite down

  Eliza Jones, her crippled sister.

  ‘That’s my birthday – give or take 200 years.’

  ‘Your name too,’ he said flatly.

  ‘Oh, yeah. I…’ she began, but he had walked away striding along the path to Moel Lâs. She read the text again or at least the part of it that wasn’t hidden by a thick clot of weeds.

  She turned and saw he had already put a good 200 yards or so between them. Another glance at the stone and she was running to catch up with him.

  They walked in silence for the most part, each lost in his or her thoughts. The path rose steadily passing over straw-coloured hills and plateaux under a great blue sky. Here and there it followed a tumbling stream that sparkled and gurgled. Flocks of sheep stood on higher ground eyeing them warily, or scattering in a panic, one following another, many of them swinging great pregnant bellies that broadened their already wool-swollen girths, their little legs like brittle, improbable sticks. Occasionally other walkers passed, exchanging a greeting or a comment on the fine weather after so many months of rain.

  In the distance Moel Lâs hunched its giant’s shoulder, darker than the surrounding land and reminding her of Yeats’ Ben Bulben in Sligo.

  When they reached the lake they stopped to read the information board, but she hardly took it in, she was still thinking about the murder stone.

  ‘Drink some water,’ he said, and for an instant she imagined he meant the expanse of water before them, but he was putting his bottle to his mouth and tipping back his head. She did the same.

  ‘You okay?’ he asked, looking at her carefully.

  ‘Yep, fine.’

  He had been told about her illness then; no doubt Iain had thoroughly briefed him. Perhaps, she thought, perhaps this date was undertaken as a kindness and was not driven by a real desire to get to know her, to court her.

  Court – an old-fashioned word for an old-fashioned date. A drive, then a walk and picnic. He probably already had a girlfriend. She would have been told that he was taking Iain’s sister out.

  ‘Poor thing,’ the girlfriend would have said. ‘Be nice to her won’t you.’

  The path followed a high ridge that loomed over the lake. Distant figures, groups of three, of two, of five, moved minutely along it silhouetted against the sky.

  He was tall and extraordinarily good looking. Like Iain he was studying medicine at Kings. Unlike Iain he came from money.

  They toiled upward, still hardly speaking, she might have made more of an effort at conversation, but what was the point? There was nothing to be invested in this. The further they walked the more she was certain that, really, they were going nowhere.

  ‘What about here?’ he said, stopping and unhitching the rucksack from his shoulders. She made to sit down, but he stopped her. A picnic blanket was produced, Black Watch tartan, backed with a waterproof sheet. She sat and he produced a thermos, then package after package of food. A salad of raw grated vegetables, another of brown
rice, sunflower seeds and tahini. Nut rissoles. A weighty brick of homemade wholemeal bread.

  She ate but without enthusiasm or pleasure. Without much concern either, what did it matter if some of the spinach stuck in her teeth?

  Her mind turned again to the murder stone. Her instinct had been to clear the weeds away and read the entire text. She would have copied it in her notebook, made a rough sketch of it, noted the exact place. She would have done that even without the coincidence of the date and the name. With them her interest was even stronger. She resolved to return, next time alone.

  ‘Had enough?’ he said.

  Everything was carefully packed away again and they set off, her following him and wishing she could do something to attract him to her, to see her as more than Iain’s troubled and sickly sister. She wished she could think of something funny or clever to say.

  If she married him this was how it would be, everything wholesome and healthy, nothing dark and dirty and dangerous. Sex, she thought, would be akin to a gynaecological examination and a work-out in the gym. This thought made her laugh out loud.

  ‘Something funny?’ he said, frowning as he turned to look at her.

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘Do you always laugh at nothing?’ He made it sound like an interrogation; recognition of a symptom.

  ‘There’s nothing wrong with me you know.’

  ‘I never said there was.’

  ‘Good.’

  ‘Look. We seem to have got off on the wrong foot. It’s me. Never know what to say.’

  ‘Well, let’s just walk then.’

  ‘Ok,’ he says.

  Along the high ridge they go. Down by the lake another couple are standing where they’d stood by the information board and yet another man and woman are heading away from the lake, their hands clasped and swinging like children. She might be seeing the past. Or the future.

  ‘That gravestone back there,’ she says.

  ‘It’s a murder stone.’

  ‘Oh. Isn’t that the same thing?’

  ‘No. It’s a memorial rather than a grave. Unconsecrated ground.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘I didn’t think it would interest you.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Girls don’t like that sort of thing.’

  ‘I thought it was interesting.’

  ‘Because of the name.’

  ‘And the date.’

  ‘A spooky coincidence?’ He altered his voice slowing and deepening it, intoning, ‘And two hundred years later her direct descendant, Matty was born…’

  ‘Do you know how many Joneses there are in Wales?’

  ‘You might be though.’

  ‘Who would want to be related to a murderer?’

  ‘Hey, calm down. I was only kidding.’

  Why is she so angry? Like a creature who has been cornered and is lashing out? Even if the ‘date’ is in reality only a kindness, he doesn’t deserve this.

  ‘Look,’ she says and he does just that, looks at her face and obediently awaits her next words. She shakes her head. What is the point?

  There is a silence, then he says, ‘Come on.’

  They set off again, walk to the end of the ridge, then take the path that drops down behind it, so that the lake can no longer be seen. The landscape changes, they go into a wood, the bluebells aren’t in flower yet but the ground is covered with clumps of their dark broad leaves.

  ‘We should come back in a couple of weeks,’ he says.

  ‘Come back?’ She is surprised; could it be that he really wants to spend time with her?

  ‘Well, if you’d like.’

  Would she like? Would she like what? More medicine? More well-meaning gestures?

  ‘Why?’ she asks bluntly.

  ‘Because of the bluebells.’ He is unsettled now.

  She stops walking. ‘You don’t have to do this.’

  ‘Do what?’

  ‘Be kind to me. Do Iain a favour; take his crazy sick sister out.’

  His mouth, his handsome mouth drops open in surprise. His eyes widen.

  She looks away.

  ‘Is that what you think? That I asked you out because Iain wanted me to?’

  She still doesn’t meet his eye. Of course he would deny it. Deny it until death and doomsday. She shrugs and walks on.

  ‘Matty!’

  She hears him just behind her. The path is narrow, looping up and down through trees, over rocks. Now the river is visible far below, deep and rushing, rain-filled, dirty yellow looking in places.

  She wishes he weren’t behind her, she senses his eyes on her, seeing when she stumbles or struggles. Poor cripple girl.

  And then they are out of the woods and back at the car park. Still in awkward silence they go to the car. He opens the hatchback, takes off his muddy boots and puts shoes on. She looks down at her own feet, thick mud cakes the soles like the rubber bumpers around dodgem cars and she has no clean shoes to put on. She begins to wipe them on a clump of grass.

  ‘It’s ok,’ he says. ‘It doesn’t matter.’

  ‘It does. I’ll make your car dirty.’

  ‘Take them off then.’ He guides her to the car, makes her sit on the tailgate, bends and begins to unlace her boots. He puts them next to his own, small replicas of his, brown leather, the same style and make. She hadn’t noticed that until now. She was about to remark on the coincidence, but she’s shocked into silence as he has lifted her up. One arm around her back, the other under her knees. He carries her to the passenger door, manages somehow to open it.

  ‘Have you read Tess of the d’Urbervilles?’ he says, putting her gently into the seat.

  ‘No.’

  He closes the door and goes round to his side.

  ‘Why?’

  He puts the key in the ignition. ‘I’ll buy you a copy.’

  She frowns a question at him.

  ‘If you read it you’ll know I really don’t care about a bit of mud in my car.’

  After that she avoids him. He rings several times and texts her. One text simply said, ‘Bluebells?’ She refuses to discuss it with Iain. Eight years go by, then she is at a friend’s house and they watch the film Tess. The earnest young man, Angel Clare, carries the girls one by one across the flooded lane. Tess is last. He has carried each of the others only to have a chance to lift her in his arms. To press her close to him, to feel her weight in his arms, to sense her warmth, her scent.

  She begins to sob.

  ‘I know,’ her friend says.

  ‘No, you don’t know. You really don’t.’

  More years pass and in an idle hour, she looks up murder stones on her laptop. Quickly she finds ‘her’ stone and the full text is revealed. ‘Matilda Jones was hung at Carmarthen for her crime protesting her innocence to the last. On his deathbed in the year of 1831, Eliza’s husband Thomas Williams confessed to the crime and begged forgiveness for the destruction of two blameless women.’

  Now we have gone full circle she thought, but knew in her heart that she had taken her own path and it had been the wrong one.

  A BIRD BECOMES A STONE

  The film Sarah had volunteered to act in was written and directed by a Welsh girl called Catrin, who was at college in Bristol. She’d brought a crew of other students to Wales, one to do sound, another was a cameraman. There was also a sulky girl with bad skin called Morgana whose role was not explained. They drove in a grubby white VW van up to the Brecon Beacons, careering and bumping along narrow tracks in search of good locations. The cameraman drove and the girl with bad skin sat up front because she claimed she’d get carsick otherwise. So the other three had to suffer in the back, wedged in among the film equipment and two plastic sacks of what seemed to be dirty laundry but turned out to be props and costume.

  Sarah played the main role. According to the storyboard a lot of footage would consist of her running through woods, along a shoreline (brooding clouds and crashing waves in the background) and along treacherous mountain paths. Th
e schedule demanded that they shoot with her for three days, then on the fourth and fifth days another actor would join them. He was to play a man who had molested her as a child. The chief premise of the film was that every impression in the early sequences led the audience to believe she was being chased, but actually it emerged that her character was the pursuer. The hunted becomes the hunter.

  They parked at a lay-by above a stream. The day was still and unusually warm, white puffs of cumulus clouds moved lazily across a yawning blue sky.

  ‘This weather is crap,’ Catrin said.

  The girl with the bad skin sat on a rock and stared hatefully at the rest of them as they unloaded the van.

  From eleven o’clock until almost two, Sarah helped Catrin and the sound man scatter torn white sheets along the side of the stream while the cameraman shouted directions at them. At two they stopped for a lunch made by Catrin’s mother. Sandwiches with cheap white bread, some sort of meat that might have been pork or possibly turkey, hard-boiled eggs, crisps and an assortment of chocolate-covered biscuits which were warm and sticky and reminded her too much of long journeys in the back of her parents’ car; of her loneliness as an only child.

  After lunch Sarah climbed into the back of the van and struggled into the costume they had brought for her; a grubby, ivory-coloured floor-length dress. It had a plunging front and tied behind her neck leaving her back bare. It was made of artificial satin and the rough skin on her hands caught on it like tiny barbs.

  In this scene she was meant to wander along by the stream charting a course between one discarded rag and another. Catrin showed Sarah some photographs taken after a battle; women searching for their menfolk in a field littered with the corpses of soldiers, explaining that this was the atmosphere she wanted to convey.

  Sarah set off barefoot; in places mud oozed between her toes. The dress was thin, she shivered as the sun began to drop behind the mountains, but she persevered.

  That night Sarah dreamt that she was filming the scene over and over, but her dream was invaded by the war photograph and as she stared at each flung-down rag, the torn scraps came to life turning into dreadful ghosts with scarred and half-flayed skin who moaned and tried to touch her.