A Tale of Two Sisters

by Anna Maxted

  Lizbet could dither for days over one word. She was a journalist, but it wasn’t that. Each word had to create the correct image in her head, or it felt wrong. Her imagination ruled her, which, if you were an excitable person like Lizbet, bordered on dangerous.

  ‘Review?’ I said.

  ‘Yes! I re-view our childhood. And—’ She stopped.

  I felt my heart curl like a dried leaf. ‘Yes?’ I said.

  ‘I hoped that knowing this would make sense of it. Make it better. But I don’t think it does.’

  She was thinking of Mummy. Favouring me.

  Her shoulders sank. I reached out, touched her hand. ‘Mummy was tough on you. They were too aware of the possibility of the adopted child feeling second best. They overcompensated. They’re not sensitive people. Mummy is not a passionate woman. She’s not maternal. Not in that slightly unhinged way that core maternal women are, throwing themselves in front of buses to save their babies. You get the sense that Mummy would . . . hesitate in the hope that some kind passer-by would do it for her. But they both love you a lot, in their way, and I think, that after you had the miscarriage –’ I looked her in the eye as I said it – ‘you might have seen that quite clearly with Mummy. And Daddy, even.’

  Lizbet was quiet, nodding. I saw that she’d tugged her sleeve over her thumb and was making her front teeth squeak on the material. It was a habit she’d formed aged three, according to Mummy, and the last time I’d seen its resurrection was when Great-Uncle Keith had invited himself for dinner (without Scottish Miriam), whipped out the latest copy of Ladz Mag – in front of Tim’s parents – and read out Lizbet’s column on blow jobs, with greasy relish, from beginning to end.

  ‘We weren’t a bad family,’ I added quickly. ‘We rubbed along ok; the main unit, the four of us. I’m not talking about the Gargs, you mustn’t be sad about the Gargoyles, darling. Yes, Mummy is away with the fairies, and Daddy never had a clue, but the heart was there.’

  Lizbet stopped the teeth-squeaking and pouted instead. ‘Well, that’s a lie,’ she said, but there was a smile in her voice. Her eyes narrowed. ‘How old were you when they said you were adopted? I bet you were over the moon!’

  I assumed an indignant expression, but she wasn’t fooled. ‘Don’t forget, Cass,’ she said, wagging her finger like I was five again, ‘I know you better than any of them. And I’ll bet you loved finding out you were adopted. I bet you thought you were a princess!’

  I blushed.

  She shook her head, slowly. ‘So,’ she added, ‘what about the rest of the . . . your family?’

  ‘My aunt wrote the other day. Wanting to meet me.’

  Lizbet gasped. ‘Oh, my God! I’m so excited for you! What did she sound like?’

  I shrugged. ‘Great. Nice.’

  ‘That’s amazing! And what did you say? What did you say in your reply?’ I shrugged, and she said, ‘Cassie! You haven’t written a reply? Oh! How can you not? How can you not reply?’ She paused, and said more quietly, ‘I’m sorry. I do realise that you need to mourn Sarah Paula. It’s the most grievous loss. Just because you never knew her, people might think . . .’

  ‘I know,’ I said. ‘I know.’

  She nodded, a quick, fast movement. Then she said, ‘But you have an aunt, a lovely aunt who is desperate to meet her dead sister’s daughter. Who could, maybe, help you, in some small way, to heal. How can you not reply? I mean, presuming she’s not a psychopath, how can you reject a person who wants to love you?’

  I raised an eyebrow and said, ‘How can you?’

  That particular evening wiped me out – I was a wimp anyway, falling into bed at ten – so I was not delighted when I returned from work the following night to find George on my doorstep. (I’d had the locks changed, of course.)

  ‘Your sister has clarified everything,’ he announced, with an air of petulance, as though, while I had been proven innocent, I remained guilty.

  I sighed. So, despite what I’d said, she’d given Tim a miss and gone to see George.

  He glared at me, adding, ‘Why aren’t you wearing a jacket? It’s freezing! There’s a chill!’

  George had a tiresome belief in ‘The Chill’ and its insidious desire to infiltrate and overpower the madman fool enough to incite attack by leaving his coat on the hook.

  ‘Have you had a break-in?’ He barked the words like an Alsatian.

  I looked him up and down. ‘Apparently not,’ I said, and smiled.

  ‘Then why have you changed the locks?’ he snapped, not getting it. ‘And why on earth didn’t you tell me the truth? My parents were going spare! And how did you think I felt? Hm? Hm? Torturing myself with the thought that I’d played tennis with the man who was stirring my porridge! I’d taken him to the Lloyd!’

  ‘I am not your porridge,’ I said.

  ‘I felt diminished as a man,’ added George. ‘I could actually sense the ego reducing. My core identity was fragmenting inside me. At one point I was lying on the floor in the foetal position—’

  ‘Hey, is that the one traditionally assumed before doing a roly-poly? Well, fun as this is, chatting in the cold, I suppose you’d like to come in and collect your things?’

  George stamped his foot, and shouted, ‘Did you hear what I said? How dare you be flip with me? If a woman said that, and a man said what you said, you’d lynch him!’

  ‘No, I wouldn’t,’ I replied. ‘I’d tell the woman to butch up.’

  George glowered. ‘I don’t know what you think you were playing at,’ he said.

  I was losing patience. ‘George, I am not a woman who fucks around. You have been married to me for long enough for me to assume you know that. That you don’t is a grave source of disappointment to me, to say the least.’

  ‘Stop speaking in that pompous way!’ yelled George. ‘It’s like you’re summing up!’

  I was, sort of. ‘I gave you my best assurances that I’d been faithful. However, you persisted in your pernicious suspicions.’ (I couldn’t resist.)

  ‘Just speak English!’

  ‘I was sick of it!’ I shouted. ‘I wanted a bit of peace! And if you were dumb enough to think I’d shag Tim, you deserved every bit of crap that went with it!’

  George looked mutinous. ‘Your sister’s nuts,’ he said.

  ‘So,’ I said, ‘your core identity is fragmenting. But she’s nuts.’

  ‘Telling lies! Emasculating me in front of your entire family! This isn’t her still banging on about the miscarriage, is it? That mishap was in the bloody Ice Age.’

  ‘George,’ I said, a great anger igniting, ‘you say that and I’m standing here with your child inside me? God knows what you feel like, but I’m a mother.’

  I didn’t realise I was till I said it – but it was true. I was shocked at the might of my emotion for this tiny scrap.

  ‘It might be a blur on the screen to the rest of the world, but this is my baby. You think Lizbet is any different? Lizbet lost her child. She lost her hopes, her dreams, her future. The pain of it has felled her. It’s dredged up every misery she ever suffered.’ I paused. I was no longer talking to George, really, more myself. ‘I was our parents’ favourite. That was tough on her.’

  ‘Oh, so the miscarriage is an excuse to get attention from Mummy and Daddy.’

  ‘There’s no point, with you, is there, George? But if Lizbet wanted an excuse to get attention she’d wear a big hat.’

  ‘Right,’ he said.

  ‘Every loss . . . rose to the surface.’

  ‘Fascinating. I’d like to get into my house, now?’

  ‘Your house?’

  ‘Our. House.’

  I unlocked the door and walked in, squeezing past the row of cardboard boxes to turn off the alarm.

  ‘What’s this?’ said George. ‘Baby stuff?’ He flipped open a flap. ‘That’s my leather jacket! And my baseball cap! Why have you packed up all my clothes?’

  ‘You wouldn’t make a detective.’

  ‘I thought the back roo
m was the baby’s room. Babies are tiny! You think it needs the master bedroom and an ensuite?’

  I gazed at him to see if he was joking. But that I might have tired of him hadn’t occurred. He thought his stuff was in boxes while our room was being adorned with bunny rabbit motifs. I doubted his ego had reduced. It appeared to be suffering from gigantism.

  ‘George,’ I said, ‘how do you feel about becoming a father?’

  He shrugged. ‘Great.’

  ‘How do you see your role?’

  He sighed. ‘As you know –’ I didn’t, although perhaps he had told me – ‘I’ve just started work on a play that I plan to submit anonymously. That’s going to eat up my time. Don’t get me wrong – I’ll help out. I can’t wait to see what my kid looks like! They’re supposed to look exactly like the dad, right after they’re born, did you know? To prove to him that he is the father, encourage him to stick around.’ He grinned, and for a second I was tempted to smack him. ‘But,’ he added, ‘there’s only so much I can do. You’re the one with the tits.’

  ‘Indeed. How do you intend to support me?’

  ‘Why? You get paid maternity leave. And when they accept the script, that’ll be money in the bank.’

  ‘I don’t mean financially.’

  ‘You’re not still banging on about cups of coffee in the morning, are you?’

  George was a sensitive, forgiving, emotionally perceptive guy, when it came to himself. Other people’s feelings were dandelion fluff.

  ‘Forget the coffee,’ I said. ‘Let’s get divorced.’

  Chapter 31

  It wasn’t good timing. But it was time. Despite the Hershlags and – maybe – because of them. Because, in fact, of all the couples I knew who were happy together.

  I thought of Lizbet boasting about Tim, in the guise of complaining. She’d tell Tim an important piece of information, and he wouldn’t listen. So Lizbet would demand, ‘What did I say?’ Tim would look up, and parrot her last sentence. ‘But like a robot! He can say the words but they might as well be in Latin – it’s so annoying!’

  Boasting, plainly. Whereas George had an identical talent, and I found it annoying.

  I thought of when George and I had spent a Saturday with Sophie Hazel Hamilton at the family home in Chelsea. Sophie’s husband, Mark, was a wisp compared to the mighty force that was Sophie. (I always thought of Sophie as big, when she was actually tiny – five foot two. I confused her physique with her personality.) Their three elder children ran around the garden while Sophie fed baby Justin.

  ‘Ma-ark!’ called Sophie, as Justin drained his bottle. ‘Set up the trampoline!’

  Mark was an artist – a real artist who painted real, recognisable paintings of objects, and sold them to galleries, and banks, and collectors – unlike George, who merely used art as an excuse to feel himself up. I could see that George was in awe of Mark and wanted to be his friend. Mark, however, cared very little for anyone except his wife. I heard him say to George, ‘There should be a limit on how many two-syllable “Ma-arks” she’s allowed a day. Ten?’

  Mark made the comment with a grin, and I saw that he didn’t mind a bit.

  George side-stepped a speeding child, and replied, ‘Yeah. You know how you cue up a radio jingle? You should have a response cued up. She says “Ma-ark!” and you press a button: “Ff-fer-fuck off!”.’

  Mark laughed, but he shot George an odd look. Then, a second later, he looked at me. I looked away. It was embarrassing.

  I’m not a dimwit. I do know that even happy couples have their lows. But whereas everyone else had dinky little dips, our married life was one big slough of despair.

  Even our parents laughed together. Even if the key to their harmony was to lead almost independent lives. Daddy wasn’t quite the gentleman he thought he was, Mummy was shallow and wrapped up in what could have been. But intermittently, he found her amusing, and she found him dependable. That doesn’t sound like a great love story, or even a great compliment, and it isn’t. But Mummy’s way of coping with imperfection was to block it out, a Berlin Wall way of thinking, and with this defence in place, she coped very nicely. As for Daddy – a practical man – the luxury of dawdling over your sadness never occurred.

  One time, I went food shopping with them. Without exchanging a word, Daddy got the trolley and pushed it, while Mummy marched into the supermarket, and beelined for Fruit. Daddy hadn’t seen her take the left turn, but took it himself without hesitation. I watched the entire process – from Daddy paying for the parking ticket, to him packing the bags into the boot, from Mummy selecting a Galia melon, to her folding the receipt into her purse. They didn’t confer once. It was like a beautifully rehearsed ballet, and if the manager had run out at the end and presented Mummy with a bouquet, I wouldn’t have been surprised.

  There was comfort there, while George and I were itchy with each other. And now, bitterness with his career had turned him into a monster. He was unpleasant – it was the main thrust of his personality. It made me dislike the quirks that in a nicer person I would have found charming. For instance, George couldn’t hoard enough Brillo Pads – little wire pads infused with pink soap, popular with fifties housewives. George treated them with reverence, carefully ripping them in half, so as not to waste an entire pad on one saucepan. He refused to throw away a Brillo Pad, instead placed it under the sink, where it rusted red until I threw it.

  George couldn’t win. He made me aware of my faults – the only good thing about him, yet, of course, I didn’t thank him for it. I was incensed by his comments about Lizbet, because I was guilty of having similar thoughts myself. But when he made remarks that I might have made, I found myself leaping to her defence. I would have said any old thing for the satisfaction of a sharp argument with George, but, in fact, it hit me that my explanations of Lizbet’s behaviour made sense.

  ‘What! Don’t be silly,’ said George. ‘You’re hormonal. We’re having a baby together.’

  I would say that the barrister in me picked a thousand holes in his words, but a monkey could have done it. (‘Don’t be silly’ – dismissal of my opinions as unintelligent; ‘You’re hormonal’ – the universal excuse used by men to discount women’s emotions; ‘We’re having a baby together’ – au contraire: I was having it, he’d just hang around the hospital. (We’d attended one ante-natal class. The midwife had emphasised the need for the partner to support the woman during the birth. ‘So,’ said George, ‘how do we distract them? Do we talk about the weather?’)

  There was no together with us. And George – who seemed to have studiously avoided any person under two foot for all of his life so far – bought into the Pampers version of a baby: clean as a whistle, big padded bottom, dimpled cheeks, no bother.

  I had no doubt that when Junior finally arrived, with sound and fury, nocturnal tendencies, reeking and leaking from all orifices, George would be laid flat with the shock of it and no help at all. It would be like having newborn twins, and that was the least of it. George believed that when new parents moaned about sleep deprivation, he understood because he’d stayed out late at a few clubs. He presumed that babies goo-goo glued falling-apart relationships together. He didn’t get that if mummy and daddy were loose at the seams, a baby would tear them asunder. Like Mike Tyson ripping a tissue.

  I didn’t want to wait for that. I wanted the baby to be born into a calm environment. I wanted to get all the shit out of the way now. Without being overly poetic, my love for George was cold, and nothing he could do was going to reheat it. I’ve microwaved yesterday’s mashed potato, forever with hope, but it always tastes old and wrong. I wasn’t as naïve about my relationship. George was, though.

  ‘Everything you just said is irrelevant,’ I said. ‘You are going to be a father. That doesn’t change. And we are going to get a divorce.’

  George said nothing. I wondered if he might start shouting.

  ‘You had to be expecting this,’ I said, prompting him.

  He just looked at me,
like you’d look at a princess who’d just turned into a frog. ‘Expecting this?’ he said. ‘How would I be expecting this? It’s like my mother turning round and saying she’s a lesbian.’

  ‘What? What are you talking about?’

  ‘What are you talking about? You’re talking shit! We’re married! What do you want from me? Rose petals on the floor every time you get out of bed?’

  ‘George,’ I said, ‘what I want from you is a divorce.’

  George turned and punched the wall with his fist. He gasped, doubling over in pain. ‘Dial 999! I’ve broken my hand!’

  ‘I want a divorce, and I won’t say it again. The next time I’ll bike round the affidavit.’

  George shook his head, still wincing and squeezing his eyes shut, brave soldier that he was. ‘Listen, you mad cow, you don’t know what you’re saying. We’re fine.’ He added, ‘I’m crashing at Mum’s tonight, though. You’re really freaking me out.’

  He stormed past and slammed the door in my face. I felt a ripple of anger, or maybe the baby was making its first butterfly moves. George was the one person I knew who made me feel powerless.

  Hubert Fitzgerald, however, came a close second. The judge had made her intentions clear in the middle negotiation hearing, describing Hubert’s offer as ‘unrealistic and unreasonable’, and telling him, ‘You will provide Mrs Fitzgerald with a better house than you are proposing.’ A bunch of similar threats followed, which couldn’t have been clearer had she grabbed Hubert’s collar with both fists and heaved him off the floor by the scruff of his neck. But Hubert wasn’t taking her seriously!

  He’d instructed me to write to Alissa’s mother, ‘she’s eighty-six, doddery as fuck,’ to ask if she was holding any funds for her daughter. Although I’d sworn to Barnaby that I’d find something on his client, I didn’t want it to be this. I felt sorry for Alissa. The truth was, I wanted her to exit court shouting, ‘Ching!’ I was sure she hoped for this too, but I knew that for most women, no amount of money compensates for the emotional disappointment of a marriage not working out.