Mum, I tell her silently, you don’t have to worry. I’m home. I’m Klaudia again. I’ll take care of him. It doesn’t matter what I feel about him. I’ll do it for you.
I wish I could hear her now: her melodious words, soft as moss. I used to think she spoke the way clouds would if they had voices. I find a pen and begin to compose a list: bread, milk, apples, cereal. My closed throat aches.
1996
On New Year’s Eve I lock myself in the bathroom and wash my hair. As I bend over the bath, blood rushes to my head, bubbles trickling into my ears and stinging my eyes. I soap and soap, scrubbing hard, then rinse until the wet ends squeak between my fingers, and the hot water runs cold. But as I dry it off, staring into the mirror, I see that no color has come out. The dye is stubborn.
I have a fleeting memory of my bleary face in the mirror as Cosmo waited in my bedroom. Missing him is a stone in my belly.
* * *
The third of January is the date we’d arranged to meet in Leeds. He’ll be there now, wondering where I am. He thinks I spent the whole of Christmas in Paris. Maybe he’ll presume I haven’t come back yet, that I’m staying on for a while, and haven’t let him know. I dig my nails into my palms. I’ve made so many mistakes. It’s important that this time I do the right thing. No more lies. No more Eliza. There are pale roots growing through my dark dye—feathery and light as a child’s hair—Klaudia coming back.
* * *
Every morning I haul myself out of bed and begin the slow trek through the day, counting minutes and hours until it’s late enough to go to bed. Each measure of time weighs heavily. There is so little to do. I shop and clean. I feed the birds. I cook for my father and watch him pushing the food around his plate.
I’m using the supermarket on the high street. My father insisted that I should. “Don’t go to the Guptas’,” he told me. “I don’t trust them. They overcharge.” He frowned. “Their things are out of date.”
Mum would call in at the Guptas’ several times a week for things we’d run out of—a pat of butter, loaf of bread or pint of milk—and she and Mrs. Gupta always had a chat across the counter. They were friends. I’d never heard Mum complain of items being out of date or overpriced, although of course, my father was right about the supermarket being cheaper.
He’s kept everything exactly as it was when Mum left the house for the last time. Her side of the wardrobe is full. Nothing has been packed away. I go into their room when he’s not there and lean my face into her clothes, inhaling the talcum powder scent of her, Yardley English Lavender. I press my hands into her shoes, laying my fingers inside the worn leather, feeling the impressions her toes have made. The November issue of Woman’s Own is in the magazine rack in the living room; a recipe has been neatly cut out of the well-thumbed pages. Mum’s toothbrush and Pears soap are still on the sink in the bathroom; the bristles on the brush are dry, and her soap is riddled with cracks like parched mud.
There is a novel under the Bible on her bedside table. I sit on their bed, over the wires of the cold electric blanket, and open it at the marked page. It’s a love story—light commercial stuff—my mother had never been interested in literary fiction. Every week she borrowed romances from the library. The covers all looked the same. Purple lettering. Breathless women swooning in men’s arms. She was an intelligent woman. She just had a weakness for the idea of happily ever after.
I turn the leaves of the book to the front and see that it is long overdue. The library stamp is for the twentieth of November. My mother usually got through a novel a week. I expect that she’d begun her Christmas preparations. Once she’d begun on all her baking, she’d be too busy to read. And I think of Mum getting everything ready, excited about me coming home.
My father hardly leaves the house. I find him hunched in his chair in the living room listening to opera, and when his precious records reach the end, he doesn’t seem to notice or care that they go on spinning soundlessly except for the click-clicking hiss of the needle running on empty grooves.
As I put crumbs and bacon fat on the bird table, I notice snowdrops showing pale against the earth. Green leaves poke up from untidy beds and through straggly grass. I’m guessing they are crocuses. Other bulbs are fattening under my feet, new shoots exploring delicate paths through darkness towards the light. Inside the porcelain belly of the urn, my mother’s ashes are packed, cold and gray, like another kind of bulb.
* * *
I can’t ever go back to Leeds. How can I? I was Eliza there and now Eliza is dead. She died the minute I arrived home. Guilt and grief have finished her off. I will never forgive myself for running away from Mum. I wish I could explain to her why I’d disappeared.
Cosmo and I were going to have our own Christmas, a belated one, just the two of us. I have his presents in my case: a book about Matisse and a wallet engraved with silver. I chew my thumbnail, imagining him hurrying to the door each time the malfunctioning bell lets out its strangled sound. He’ll be worried. Lucy doesn’t know my real name, my address here, or my telephone number. He won’t find me. The girl he’s looking for doesn’t exist. The pain of losing him digs in under the pain I feel about Mum. Two losses. Two wrongs. A snag of nail rips off between my teeth exposing the raw underneath.
It wasn’t until I arrived at university and everyone was introducing themselves that I realized I didn’t have to drag my background with me anymore. I could leave it behind in Croydon. Be the person I wanted to be. I’ve always liked the name Eliza. It’s so English. It was easy to buy a packet of brunette hair coloring, and ask a hairdresser to chop it short. Then I dropped out of university, found a part-time job in a coffee shop and took my dancing seriously. Contemporary, ballet and tap lessons. It felt like I was suddenly set free from prison. In a different city, away from the bureaucracy of university, I could reinvent myself properly. I met Meg in a ballet class and moved into shared digs with her and Lucy. I had a post-office box for any mail with my real name. My surname was almost never used. If anyone asked, I said it was Bennet, because Pride and Prejudice is my favorite book, and Elizabeth Bennet the perfect heroine.
I made up a whole and detailed past for myself. It was like a game at first. Telling my new past to other people felt odd. I was sure that I would be exposed. Who would believe me? The story I was making up seemed incredible. But nobody doubted me. And I’d experienced a sense of power then—I’d altered my history. It made me feel in control of my destiny too. Despite the fact that I was living a lie, I’d never been happier, never felt more like myself. My lie seemed to be the truth.
But there is a cost for everything. And it was my mother who paid the price.
I can’t stop touching her things. I’m looking for her—even though I know that she’s gone.
I sit before Mum’s beveled mirror in her bedroom and pick up her powder compact, an oval disc of plastic. I flip it open. The metal base is showing through the worn circle of make-up. I rub my finger onto the powder and press it onto my cheek. It looks ghostly against my skin. Her complexion was paler than mine. Her tube of lipstick is old too; the gold has been rubbed away where she grasped it. I twist up the tube of familiar apricot, smelling perfume and wax. Leaning into my reflection, I work color onto my mouth. It looks orange on me. “Cariad,” she’d cupped my chin in her hand when she’d discovered the ten-year-old me experimenting with her cosmetics, “you don’t need any help in looking beautiful.”
I never said goodbye. I close my eyes, tasting the thick and greasy layer, remembering that I sometimes found the print of her lips on my cheek after she’d kissed me goodnight.
“Klaudia.”
I jump, opening my eyes. My father stands behind me. He stares at my face in the mirror. It occurs to me that he must have wished for a daughter that looked like his wife, feminine and small with glossy dark hair. Mum said that before she was pregnant with me my father could span her waist with his hands.
I feel caught out. My heart beats faster.
He
ignores the lipstick on my skin and sighs. “Isn’t it time that you went back to your studies?”
“I’ve taken … leave of absence.”
“You need to return to university life.” He frowns. “There’s nothing more for you to do here.”
“I’ve deferred for a year,” I say quickly. The lie slides out of my mouth like a tongue.
He looks startled. “Why?”
“I just want to be at home,” I tell him. “So that I can be here for you.” The words feel awkward.
He moves his head as if a fly is bothering him. “I don’t need a nurse maid.”
I begin to protest, but he speaks across me. “You’re making a foolish choice in my opinion. But if you’re staying, then you’d better look for a job. It’s not healthy to mope about all day.”
My mother used to stand between us, softening edges, interpreting and explaining. I don’t know how to talk to him. He moves aside to let me leave. As I go, heat glows in my cheeks, as if I’m guilty of something.
I am guilty. I always will be.
* * *
I stride out along the pavement, avoiding dog shit, overtaking dawdlers and young mothers gossiping across their prams. I know where I’m going. A few minutes later, I’m turning into Mercers Road.
Kelwood High looks exactly the same. The playground is deserted. The school day has already begun and pupils will be inside sitting at their desks. I stop and stare through the wire fence. Looking at the brick building makes me remember the itch of socks at my knees and the claustrophobic grip of my top button and knotted tie. Tall windows hold dark shadows. I think I hear the murmuring of trapped voices.
Shane Stevens was expelled after he and his crowd of followers attacked a group of Asian pupils; Shane broke someone’s jaw, knocked him unconscious. A year after that, my father retired. But it’s not easy to get rid of a reputation. A new girl came into our class in the Lower Fifth. She’d sat next to me, glancing across anxiously, eager to make friends. I’d wanted to smile. She didn’t know me. But she’d find out soon enough. There was no point. It occurred to me then that my life would be so much better if I could simply begin again, be someone different.
Eliza was the person I’d always known I could be.
I haven’t contacted Meg since I waved to her in the departure hall at the airport. I can’t just disappear out of her life as well. I need to tell her who I really am—explain why I lied. I turn away from the bulk of school buildings and wire fencing and walk in the direction of home with my hands deep in my pockets. There is a cold wind, despite the blue sky.
I could write to her. Writing it down will mean I can choose my words carefully. It will give me space to explain. As soon as I have the thought, it becomes urgent that I act on it immediately. I go past the Guptas’ shop. I haven’t been in to buy anything since my father told me not to. But it doesn’t make any sense. If I’m going to send a letter to Meg, I need stamps.
The familiar bell jangles above me and Mrs. Gupta glances up from behind the counter. She nods. “Klaudia. We haven’t seen you for a long time.”
She opens the register stiffly, with the expression of someone who has been misused. But then her face softens. “I’m sorry for your loss,” she says quietly. “Your mother was a lovely person.” As I hold out my palm for my change she takes my fingers and squeezes.
My throat is suddenly tight. Her kindness is too much to bear. I wanted to talk to her about Mum, but now I need to leave before I break down in tears.
At home, I shut myself in my room. I must write before I lose my nerve. I find a pen and paper and sit at my desk, head in my hands, thinking. I make several false starts, wasting paper, crumpling sheet after sheet, ripping each one into shreds and dropping it in the bin. In the end, after lots of crossings-out and re-writes, I manage something that will have to do. I worry that it sounds too plain, too cold. But I don’t want to beg or make excuses.
Dearest Meg,
I should have written before to thank you for having me to stay in Paris. I’m sorry. But after I left you something happened to change everything. I found out that my mum had been killed in a car accident. I know that this will seem very odd, as I’ve always told you that both my parents are already dead. But I lied to you. I am so sorry.
My real name is Klaudia Meyer. I was ashamed of who I was while I was growing up, because my father is German and he was in the army in the Second World War and he did some terrible things. My mother forgave him. But I was teased and bullied all my life for being his daughter. The daughter of a Nazi. Since the war he’s become very religious. I was brought up a Methodist. For years he was the caretaker at my school, so there was no getting away from him. I suppose that coming to Leeds gave me an opportunity to run away from all that, to start again. It was my chance to dance and to be the person I wanted to be.
I’m not crazy. I was just desperate, and unhappy.
I know I shouldn’t have lied to you. Nothing excuses it. But I am still your friend. I will always be your friend. Underneath the lies, I’m the same person. I hope more than anything else that you can forgive me. If you can, please write to me here, at my home in London. I will wait for a message. I can’t bear to lose you. But I will understand if you don’t want to see me again.
With all my love,
Klaudia
My hand shakes when I sign my name. What if she can’t forgive me? I push away the fear. I have to take this risk; otherwise I’ve lost her anyway. I don’t know how much it costs to send a letter to France, so I put two first-class stamps on just to make sure, and seal the envelope.
Then I scribble a note to Cosmo. I can’t leave him to wonder what happened to me any longer. It isn’t fair. I keep it short. I don’t put in any endearments. But they sound inside my head. Darling Cosmo. Dearest Love.
Cosmo, I’m so sorry I didn’t meet you on the third like we’d planned. Things have changed for me and I’m not coming back to Leeds now. Please don’t worry about me. I’ll contact you when I can and explain. But meanwhile, don’t wait for me. It would be better to forget me.
Eliza
I reread the note, hearing how awkward and abrupt it sounds. But I can’t explain it properly. Not yet. Maybe Meg’s response will give me the courage. If she forgives me, perhaps it will make it easier to tell Cosmo the truth. I walk to the end of the street to the mailbox. I push both letters quickly through the dark opening. They fall inside and it’s too late to change my mind.
* * *
My father is standing in the kitchen staring out into the garden. The kettle begins to boil and he turns. He starts when he sees me.
“Do you want a cup of tea?” I try and sound cheerful, walking over to the cupboard and taking out two cups.
We sit across the table from one another. I fail to find anything to say. Silence stretches between us. He frowns into the bottom of his cup, clears his throat. “Have you started to look for a job?”
I shake my head.
He twists his mouth. “You can’t stay at home and do nothing. I live on my pension. If you are here for this academic year then you must contribute.” He taps his long fingers on the table.
I know he’s right. I want to pay my way, but I can’t because I’m broke. I’ve just sent the last of my money to Lucy to cover the rent and told her I wouldn’t be coming back. Giving up my life in Leeds means no more Voronkov. I need to find classes here. But I can’t afford them. And a part of me thinks I don’t deserve them—not after I let Mum down.
“You must keep up with your studies too. Don’t get behind. Get a temporary job in a shop or restaurant,” he adds.
I wonder what he would say if I told him that the only job I’ve ever wanted is to be a dancer. But he knows already. “Dancing is not a career,” he told me years ago. “It is a frivolous hobby for silly girls.”
ERNST
1933, Germany
IT’S A BEAUTIFUL APRIL EVENING. Clusters of daffodils gather under the trees, bright as fallen suns. Doves
coo from the poplar branches. Soon, I realize, the swallows will be back, darting from under the eaves of the barn, flying in airy loops above the house.
I’m off to the lake. Mrs. Meyer is expecting perch for supper. Otto is furious because he’s been made to stay behind and mend the orchard fence.
It’s good to be on my own. It’s always me and Otto, stuck together as if we’re twins; whereas, actually, there is probably about a year between us. We don’t know our real birth dates. He’d been a tiny baby when we were found. I’d been older, able to stagger about on plump legs. He’s taller than me now though. One night those bony knees of his cranked out another half inch of cartilage.
I pick a switch of willow on my way past the pond and whip the tops of grasses, thrashing the air as I walk. Over the dyke, the windmill is turning slowly, white sails cutting a softer path through the sky. The rod and tackle box that’s slung across my shoulder bumps against my hip. I like the measure of my own stride, the way I step as I please, stop and start, grow slower or faster. I don’t enjoy marching in a troop. Being forced to go at the same speed as the rest. It’s a relief to be just me, alone with the meadows and singing birds, the sunlight and the wind in the trees.
There isn’t another person at the lake. The soil is churned up with animal prints by the water’s edge. I walk farther along the bank, finding a patch of firm ground. I keep my back to the fields, so that I’m facing the dark expanse of forest across the water. I like to be able to keep my eye on its borders. You never know what might rush or creep from between its trunks. Branches and leaves rise in dense banks of green, different shades, darker and lighter. There used to be wolves in the forest. There’s still wild boar though—even more dangerous, people say. I don’t like the rustling depths of the trees, the impossibility of seeing anything properly once you’ve stepped inside.
I bait my line and cast off. The air is colder, the sun beginning to drop below the trees. I wait, hunched inside my jacket. Sometimes there’s the splash of a perch rising. I stare at the surface, my hands on the rod, fingers alert for any tremble of movement. The lake is deep. There are eels under its calm: dark snakes writhing out of the muck at the bottom. We’ve caught some big ones in the past. I wouldn’t like to be in the water with their muscular bodies pushing close, snouts full of sharp teeth.
The Other Me Page 9