The Other Me

by Saskia Sarginson

  “Want some tea, Eliza?” He motions to a packet of PG Tips.

  “I’ll have mine with some of this.” Scarlett plonks the bottle on the table and sits down, crossing her long legs. Luke adds generous splashes of vodka to three cups of tea. He tells me he plays saxophone in a jazz band. He’s just got back from a three-month tour of Europe.

  “Berlin was the best,” he says. “Best beer, best women and best musicians.” He grins into his drink at some undisclosed memory. “Spent my last night talking to this chick who’d grown up in East Berlin. Said the worst of it wasn’t empty shops and lack of news.” He shakes his head. “It wasn’t even having spies for neighbors—it was the fact of this immovable thing blocking your life, holding you back, like a weight in your mind.” He presses a fleshy hand to his head. “The night the wall came down, she said you couldn’t move for crowds. People chucked fireworks, went crazy. Next day they were chipping at the wall, smashing it with hammers. Anything they could get hold of. Man. It would have been cool to be there.”

  We’d watched it on the news at home, on the little black and white TV in the living room. I remember my father’s rigid gaze, his hands clasping the arms of his chair. There had been flickering images of people hammering away, confusion and euphoria on faces grinning into the camera, and old newsreels of soldiers and barbed wire. My mother had been knitting me a cardigan. I was more interested in choosing buttons for it, sifting through circles of plastic in her sewing box, than listening to the news. It was Germany. Anything to do with Germany embarrassed me.

  Luke digs around in his pocket and pulls out a large wallet. Unzipping it, he extracts a small lump and holds it out to me. “She gave me some. Looks like an ordinary chunk of concrete, doesn’t it?”

  I touch the fragment. It’s cool, the surface rough. It isn’t gray, but pale pink with a patchwork of tiny bits of glinting white stone, charcoal and dark brown.

  “Ever been to Berlin?” He slips the piece of wall back into his wallet.

  “No.”

  I open my mouth again, looking from Scarlett to Luke. I want to tell them that I am half German. They think they’re talking to Eliza Bennet—a girl who doesn’t exist—it makes me feel as if I’m not really sitting here at all. I curl my fingers tightly around my cup.

  A shape moves at the threshold, blocking the light. Cosmo stands in the doorway. I duck my head, afraid that I’m blushing again.

  “Here he is at last.” Scarlett taps the table. “Join us. Have a drink. Does this mean you’re finished?”

  Cosmo pulls up the chair next to mine. I sit up straighter, aware of the force between us, a hum of energy, pushing and pulling like a magnet gone wild. Can he sense it as much as me?

  His face is stern. He nods, avoiding my eyes. “The designs are ready. I’m moving my gear down to the club later. I’ll make a start tonight.”

  “The mural?” I dare to lean closer, catching his scent, ink on his fingers, a clean tang of soap and lemony aftershave, the underneath musk of his skin. His sleeve is pushed back and I can see his watch, the shine on his skin, black hair. I remember how I’d tweaked his cuff to tell the time before I knew him properly, and I can’t believe how familiar I’d been then, how presumptuous.

  “Yeah. I’ll be working on it late at night—after you lot go home.” He looks at the other two, not me. The lack of his gaze feels cold.

  “Like a vampire,” Scarlett says.

  “It’s the best time to work.” Luke grins. “I’m a late-night, early-morning person myself. The world is a different place then. Looser. More exciting.”

  I clear my throat, and glance down at my cup to hide my disappointment. If he’s going to be painting the wall after the club is closed then I won’t see him. I know it’s for the best. But I feel cheated just the same.

  * * *

  Days have passed and I haven’t seen Cosmo. He comes to the club after I’ve gone home. I appear the next day to see the evidence of his night’s painting. We are like ghosts whispering around the edges of each other’s lives. Or perhaps it’s more like a cruel farce with one of us entering the stage, just as the other leaves.

  The mural grows in the same way a flower opens: slowly, in an unfurling of texture and color. It’s a delicate, tantalizing reveal—like burlesque itself. His first dancer is finished; she smiles at me as if she has a secret to tell—her face is luminous, one eye winking. He’s begun to paint the background. Color seeps out around her head like a halo, gold and red bleeding into an inky blue. He’s started on another dancer. This one leans against a pillar. She’s still just a sketch. But soon he’ll breathe life into her too. Looking at the first dancer, I get the feeling that she’s about to sashay off the wall into the room. The painting fills me with pride. I want to share my feelings, exclaim loudly over his talent. I say nothing. Sometimes, when no one is looking, I rub my finger against the paint to see if it comes off on my skin. It never does.

  * * *

  When I’m not working, I spend my time training in my room. I’ve pushed the furniture back to give me some floor space, rolled up my rug, and I use a chair as a barre. I’m going over the routine that Voronkov choreographed for me. I dance to different tapes, trying out modern and classical music. I’m back in shape after weeks of inactivity. I remember a saying that Meg recited to me once: miss three days’ training and the audience will know; two days and your teacher will; one day, and you’ll know. As I pull my forehead to my knee, flattening my back, I feel the fibers of my muscles opening, softening, molecules expanding into the stretch. I can’t work at the club forever. I need to get back into proper training. I should apply for dance school. But the fear of performing is there inside me. And I can’t see a way round it.

  * * *

  Mrs. Perkins from next door is standing on her doorstep. She and her husband haven’t spoken to our family for years. My mother tried hard to make amends after the cat incident, offering gifts of cupcakes, cuttings from the garden, and going out of her way to be friendly whenever she saw them, but all she got in return were short, grudging nods. A faint meow comes from a cat basket in her arms. I see a glimpse of gray fur.

  “A kitten?” I give an encouraging smile.

  She looks startled and tightens her grip on the basket. “What’s it to you?” She has her snub nose in the air, as if scenting prey.

  “Nothing.” I make an awkward noise in the back of my throat—a questioning half-laugh. “I like kittens.”

  She leans over the low wall between our front gardens, and the full bouquet of her sugary perfume catches in my mouth. A mask of orange pancake makes her look like a cross between an ancient Geisha girl and a frog.

  “You tell your father he’d better not try any funny business this time.” She jabs a finger in my direction. “He kills my cat, and he’ll answer for it.”

  My heart flips inside my ribs.

  “We know he shot poor old Bill. We just never had any proof. He’s a cold one, isn’t he?” She arches a penciled-in brow. “All Germans are the same, my Harry says.” Her padded shoulders roll and tremble. “We’re keeping our eye on him, so you can tell him that from us. God knows what he gets up to in that shed.”

  “The shed?” My voice comes out as a whisper.

  She nods, jowls wobbling. “Always in there, isn’t he? Always got the door shut. Stays in there for hours.”

  “He makes things. Out of wood.” I release a sigh, realizing that I’ve been holding my breath.

  Her mouth pinches. “Well, you can say what you like. We know what we know. And there was all that carrying on before Christmas. Terrible to hear, it was.”

  “What … what do you mean?” My spine sags.

  “Screaming. Shouting. And I could hear crying at night.” She lowers her voice to a hiss. “It was your mum, God rest her soul.”

  My mother never raised her voice. She cried easily over small things, sentimental things, sobbing quietly, dabbing at her eyes with the edge of a tissue. But she didn’t make a so
und in front of my father. He hated any kind of scene or drama.

  Mrs. Perkins is lying. Her eyes bulge and she pants slightly, her wet mouth open. Tiny flecks of spittle have collected at the corners of her lips. I turn my back on her and slip in through the front door, closing it behind me. All I remember are Mum’s anxious attempts to befriend Mrs. Perkins, her desire to make things all right again. My father was wrong to shoot the cat, but he’d been right when he’d said the Perkinses were spiteful people. I lean my forehead against the cool of the frosted glass.

  I hear a drag of breath, and turn to find my father standing there: a long, looming shape in the hall. I put my hand to my cheek. “You startled me.”

  His mouth twitches. “That woman.” He takes a step closer. “What was she saying?”

  I shake my head. “Nothing.”

  He waits. I hear the click of the minute hand coming from the clock. I feel like a little girl again, made to stand before him with my hands spread wide for him to inspect.

  “She said you mustn’t shoot her cat,” I say quickly. “They’ve got a new kitten.”

  “Hope they get the bugger neutered then,” my father says.

  It is dim in the hallway, the light muted through the glass. But I think he winks at me.

  * * *

  As soon as the mailman’s cart rattles down the street, I’m on the alert for footsteps approaching our front door. I rush to the mat every time I hear the slide of envelopes, the metal snap of the letterbox opening and closing.

  Nothing from Meg. It’s been weeks. She’ll have received my letter by now. I’m trying not to panic. On my last night in Paris, we drank a bottle of red wine and ate bowls of onion soup before walking through the freezing night, arms linked. Looking down into the black depths of the Seine, she’d squeezed close. “It’s been amazing having you here. I really miss you, you know.”

  I look at my reflection in the bathroom mirror and grimace. Meg would despair if she could see me now. She wouldn’t let me leave the house looking like this. Blonde roots clash with dark brown ends. I run my fingers through the half-tone strands and realize that it will take months to grow out completely. I can’t go on wearing hats. I’ve bought a cloche hat and alternate between that and the beret. People must wonder why they never see me without them.

  There is a small hair salon on the high street. I pass it on my way to the train station. I have the morning before I go in for work.

  An elderly woman sits under a large dryer, a magazine splayed on her lap. A girl looks up from filing her nails when I push the door open. She sits me down opposite a mirror and whisks the cloche hat off my head. She stares at my hair, nostrils flaring in disapproval; then she sucks her bottom lip in. “Well, what did you have in mind?”

  I explain that I’m growing the blonde back in. Could she match up the colors?

  “Nah.” She sighs and shakes her head. “You could bleach the lot. Then cut the bleached ends off once you’ve got enough re-growth,” she offers. “You could do with a cut, too. Chop off the split ends and some of the dye.”

  I allow myself to be tied into a pale blue gown and led to a deep sink. The girl scalds me with boiling water. Her nails graze my scalp. My neck, tipped back at an awkward angle, aches; I’m finding it hard to swallow. Eventually, she releases me from the torture and applies a product. She says she has to put eraser on the brown first. My eyes sting. But when she pastes on the bleach, I can smell something rotting, like dead animal.

  “Yeah. Stinks, doesn’t it?” She wrinkles her nose. “It’s the ammonia. But it’ll be worth it.”

  Hours later, after she has set to work with her scissors and a hairdryer, I look at myself. My hair is white. It’s as fair as it used to be when I was a child. Except that now it has no tone to it, no mix of other shades. It is cropped short, my jawline exposed. My mouth and eyes look bigger. I seem vulnerable. Naked.

  I put a hand up towards the unfamiliar style, touching my neck. The floor around my feet is speckled with curls and tufts of brown.

  “That’s more like it,” the girl says. “You look all right now. Modern. Trendy.”

  I leave the salon on stiff legs. My shorn hair feels weightless, as if I have feathers on my head. The breeze moves through it.

  * * *

  Josh is at the bar unpacking boxes of crisps; he glances over his shoulder as I push open the door. The look of relief on his face changes to surprise when he notices my hair.

  “Whoa! I had to do a double-take!” His eyebrows rise in startled arcs. He pauses, as if working out what to say. “Like the new look.” He clears his throat and gestures towards the opened boxes. “Give me a hand, would you? For some reason they’ve only sent us prawn cocktail flavor.”

  Scarlett, coming in through the velvet curtain, stops and grins, throwing her arms into the air. “Hallelujah! She’s got rid of the hat at last!” She touches my hair briefly. “Platinum as Marilyn. Very sexy.”

  I smile and shrug off my jacket, glancing across at Cosmo’s painting on the wall. I go closer, taking in the latest changes.

  Another world stands there, inviting me inside its crimson glow: in dusky shadows strange creatures lurk, winged lions and unicorns. The burlesque dancers are half dryads, half human. Boughs heavy with grapes wind fleshy leaves around the line of the ceiling. The dancers pull down fat globes of fruit, putting them to their lips as they shimmer and smile, enticing as sirens.

  Josh appears beside me. “Got to hand it to him. The guy’s got talent.”

  “Is it finished?” A sudden panic grips me.

  Josh scratches his neck. “Only a few final touches left, he says.”

  * * *

  It’s a quiet night. I polish glasses and watch Scarlett’s performance. My eyes keep returning to the painting. In the pinkish glow and the dim shadows and glittering lights of the club, the dryad-dancers seem to move before my eyes. The green boughs above their heads, weaving across the line where wall meets ceiling, appear to shimmer with moisture. If I were to touch them, I’d feel their fleshy fiber, the softness of leaves, the wet dew beneath my fingers.

  Scarlett finishes her set with a flutter of ostrich feathers as she brushes a large fan across her naked stomach. She winks at the audience, bowing to accept the smatter of applause. As the stage lights darken, Peggy Lee is singing “Fever.”

  I sense a customer approaching and turn with my attentive smile fixed.

  But it’s Cosmo. His eyes widen. “Your hair!”

  I swallow my smile, ducking my head, disconcerted by the reality of him. He’s taller than I remember. My mouth is dry. I pat the short feathers around my ears with uncertain fingers. “Radical, I know.”

  “Yes, but…” He smiles. “It suits you. You look good as a blonde.”

  I think about telling him that I am a natural blonde, but that seems vain. My happiness at seeing him is hindered by wariness. I don’t know what he’s thinking. The lack of connection makes me feel untethered.

  I point to the mural. Something safe. “It’s amazing.”

  He looks pleased. Then he leans on the bar, conspiratorial across a couple of empty beer glasses. I catch the taste of his breath. My insides lurch.

  “I miss you.” He holds up a hand as if I’m going to interrupt him. “Don’t worry,” he says quickly. “I’m not here to try and persuade you to come back to me. I heard what you said. It’s over. But there’s nothing to stop us being friends, is there?”

  I shake my head, unsayable words shriveling inside my mouth.

  “As I’m going to be free in the evenings again … I wondered if you’d like to have a drink or something. I know you’re busy here,” he makes an apologetic gesture, “and you have … things going on with your family. But if you want to…” He breaks off, leaving the question hanging, tantalizing and dangerous.

  I pick up the beer glasses as if they have become an urgent task, and bend to put them in the machine. I pull air in quickly, lungs fluttering. His generosity makes me ashamed. But
can we really be friends? Doubt pulls at me. I dash it away, because I need to see him again, just to be in his company, to hear his voice again.

  When I’ve composed myself, I turn back. “Sure.” I cross my arms. “A drink. Why not?”

  He straightens up and shrugs, suddenly casual. “Sunday?”

  I nod, watching him walk away.

  * * *

  The congregation have stopped talking about my father and me. At chapel, the whispering clusters have moved on to other topics. Invitations for my father to join discussion groups or go on rambling jaunts along the Thames have dwindled away. He declined every offer. He no longer has nutritional offerings thrust into his unwilling hands from women in the congregation: home-cooked pies wrapped in foil or cakes in Tupperware boxes presented to him after services with damp smiles. He made it quite clear that he thought the food parcels were ill-advised charity.

  The last hymn is announced and we stand. My book is open. But my father knows the words by heart. He opens his mouth and sings with the vigour and enthusiasm that I remember from my childhood. I am conscious of my shorn and silvery hair. It feels bright and frivolous in the confines of the chapel.

  When Mum was alive, we usually stayed for tea and biscuits in the hall afterwards, but my father isn’t interested in making small talk over chocolate bourbons. Straight after the service, we make our way down the aisle, my father’s chin jutting, a look of endurance etched into his stern expression, as if he is barely prepared to tolerate the polite greetings people give us as we pass. And I see the effect he has on others, the restraint, even nervousness, he inspires in them.

  It’s a short walk home. The trees are pink and white with blossom. Behind the traffic fumes and taint of petrol, there is the green and certain scent of spring. My father hums one of the hymns from the service. Turning into our road, I notice two familiar figures, one in a red sari: Mrs. Gupta and her husband approaching along the pavement. I can feel my father tensing. He increases his stride. As we get closer, I prepare to give them a casual greeting: something to break the ice. I clear my throat.