The Other Me

by Saskia Sarginson

  Dearest Meg. I love you and I’m so sorry about lying to you …

  I stop because I’m crying. My tears fall onto the paper, blurring the ink. I wipe my eyes with the edge of my T-shirt. I can’t send this. It wouldn’t be fair to Meg. She’s made it clear that our friendship is over.

  I begin to rip it up. Then I stop. My fingers are trembling. I have to try one more time. I can’t let her go yet. I smooth out the paper and scrawl my name.

  * * *

  The heat in the street is worse. There’s a clogged smell in the air, tar melting on the roads. The pavement is streaked with dog shit. I drop the letter into the mailbox on the corner. I don’t hear it fall. It simply disappears, swallowed up, and I’m suddenly afraid Meg will never open it.

  In the Guptas’ store, the bell clangs above me. It’s stuffy and dim. An electric fan whirrs in the corner. I rummage through the clutter on the shelves, picking out a packet of teabags, just to give me an excuse to talk to Mrs. Gupta.

  At the register, she takes my purchase from me with methodical care, ringing it up, and placing it in a brown paper bag.

  “I’d just like to say,” I begin awkwardly, my voice sounding thin, “that I’m sorry if you think my father is avoiding you or anything like that…” I force myself to speak up. “He doesn’t mean to be rude. He’s taken my mother’s death very badly.”

  She shakes her head gently. “I can understand his problem.” She counts out my money as she slips it inside the register. “Our shop is an unpleasant reminder.”

  “Oh, I don’t think it’s that. He’s just … he’s just keeping himself to himself at the moment.”

  “But there is no denying that I myself will remind him of that unfortunate day.” She crumples the top of the bag with nimble fingers, folding it closed.

  I open my mouth to ask her what she means, but the bell clangs as a couple of people come into the shop, and a telephone begins to ring, loud and insistent behind the plastic strands hanging at the door, the noise coming out of the mysterious, unseen spaces of the Guptas’ house. Mrs. Gupta turns away from me, distracted by the phone, which stops suddenly, as an elderly woman leans against the counter, repeating a question. “I said, do you have prunes, love?” The woman speaks loudly, as if her hearing isn’t good. Her thin hands fidget over a stack of newspapers. “Tinned prunes?”

  I wait, clutching my bag, while Mrs. Gupta points the woman in the right direction, and rings up a can of lager for a man in a tracksuit, his bullet head shaved like Shane’s.

  “You saw Mum the day she died?”

  Mrs. Gupta nods. “I thought you knew.”

  I want to ask her if my mother had said anything on the day she died, if she’d seemed happy or sad, but a wavering voice comes from behind cans of baked beans. “Can’t find them.” And Mrs. Gupta hurries away, her fleeting look of exasperation quickly erased.

  * * *

  It’s just half an hour before opening time. Josh has switched on the sound system and Frank Sinatra is crooning into the empty room. The bar stands polished and ready, and all the lamps are lit, shedding small pink moons onto each table. I’m in the office standing behind Scarlett, helping her into her corset. She is damp with sweat. My fingers slip as I tug at ribbons, heaving her waist into its hourglass shape.

  “Did you hear about Cosmo?” she pants, her hands on her hips.

  I stop pulling; the ribbons slacken and coil around my hands.

  “Cosmo?” There’s no moisture in my throat.

  “Yeah. He’s got a job in Rome. Lucky thing.”

  “Rome?”

  Scarlett’s mass of red hair, her white shoulders, and the office with its clutter of costumes and paperwork, hurtle away from me. Air rushes through my lungs. My fingers scrabble at my chest, expecting to grasp a sword. I feel skewered through.

  She’s nodding, red curls bouncing and tumbling. “He’s gone already. Won’t be back for weeks, months even. It’s a new mural job—something big.”

  She’s still talking. Her words blur into nonsense. I can’t concentrate on anything. I’m in the room with her, but it all seems magnified and unreal; I stare at her spine, at the individual shafts of hair that stick to her skin; a freckle floats towards me like an island on a pale map. I bite the inside of my lip and try to focus on doing her up. I yank and squeeze, fumbling around the shapes of knots with shaking fingers. Her skin spills from the top of the corset. I smell men’s cologne and nicotine.

  Rome. He didn’t say anything about it. He didn’t even say goodbye.

  * * *

  “Eighty-five degrees!” my father tells me, tapping the barometer.

  I used to sit under the apple tree for hours when I was a child, with a book in my hands. The pleasure of outdoor reading was one of the best things about the summer. I loved romantic classics like Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights. Then I discovered Austen and fell in love with Elizabeth Bennet and Mr. Darcy, along with the rest of the world. Except Mum. She sometimes sat on the lawn with me, slumped in a green deckchair. She always wore a hat to protect her skin. And in her lap would be some simmering modern love story.

  The radio is full of the latest facts about the heatwave. It’s all anyone talks about. The newscaster reported delays on trains due to speed restrictions for fear of buckling lines. Fires are breaking out in forests around the country. There are constant reminders about the garden-house ban.

  My father takes no notice of the ban. Every evening he is out there aiming a jet of water into the flowerbeds. “It rained all spring. And now they have no water!”

  I watch drops of moisture shivering on leaves and hot soil. The earth has split and torn apart into fissures. Ants surge out of one crevice in a seamless ebony trickle. The wet earth releases a stench of fox. I know the Perkinses will be peering from behind their curtains and I’m certain that they will report us. I keep expecting a formal knock on our door. A man in a suit handing over an envelope. A fine to pay.

  “Maybe you should use a watering can instead,” I suggest. But my voice is dull. It lacks conviction.

  Cosmo left without saying goodbye. He’s far away in Italy, and I feel as crushed as the brittle seedpods on the ground.

  My father shrugs off the suggestion. “I won’t have Gwyn’s flowers dying because other people didn’t do their job.”

  I think he wants an argument. Hopes for one, even. He sits and broods for most of the day. He looks through the photo albums. He’s put more pictures of Mum inside frames he’s made in the shed. He props them up on the mantelpiece among the figures of Jesus and the wooden crosses. He keeps a vase there full of fresh flowers. Mum’s half-finished knitting is arranged on the coffee table with her reading glasses. Our sitting room looks like a shrine. Anyone would think we were Catholics. Mum never really approved of my father’s carvings. It didn’t sit with her beliefs. But she knew it made him happy. Her mute face shines out at me from behind squares of polished glass, and I know she wouldn’t like any of this.

  * * *

  It’s impossible to sleep. The nights are hot and sticky. I leave my window wide open, letting in soupy air and the smell of melting tarmac. I lie in tangled, sweaty sheets listening to the distant roar of traffic coming from the main road, and think of Cosmo. I wasn’t brave enough. I keep reliving the moment he stepped away from me in the restaurant, the way his voice sounded. Closed off. Resigned. I feel a quickening inside, and my lungs can’t get enough air into them. He’s gone.

  I hate Eliza. Hate myself for what I’ve done. I can’t erase it, can’t change all the mistakes, can’t take back the untruths and the hurt I’ve caused. The heat is suffocating; it closes around me. I wish I were on a beach far away with cool sand between my toes, nothing but the undulating ocean before me. When I was a child I used to think that ice creams at the beach would taste different from those bought from the van at the end of the street: impossible not to lick up the thick fumes that belched out of the van’s exhaust, swallowing them along with a melting Popsicle.r />
  In my head I saw translucent water, white spume, the ticklish tumble of tiny fish, and longed for the sensation of waves, the playful roll and splash of them as they slapped against my knees. I couldn’t swim. But in my dreams I found myself walking in fearlessly, floating out towards the horizon, swimming with ease through sinuous ribbons of seawater.

  We didn’t have the money to go on holiday. We never went to a beach. Not even for a day.

  I’m awake when the electric milk truck rattles down the street. I listen to the stop-start whine of its engine and the jingle of glass as the milkman sets pints down on doorsteps. There are a few hours of almost complete quiet just before dawn. But now I can hear the sounds of the city waking up: cars and motorbikes. A distant siren. A dog barking. Birds’ voices. The mutter and hum of unseen machines, the rumble of trains. An airplane passing.

  I stumble into the bathroom and splash my face, leaning under the cold tap, letting it gush into my mouth, tasting the metallic tang. The house is silent. My father must still be asleep. It’s early, even for him. I pull on my clothes and go quietly down the stairs into the kitchen. I fill the kettle and switch it on. Set out a cup, dropping a tea bag inside. I get a teaspoon out of the drawer and place it next to the cup. The comfort of ordinary actions. Padding across the floor, I unlock the back door and push it open, letting in summery smells and the early-morning air.

  There is a pile of earth under the apple tree. It looks a bit like a molehill. We’ve never had moles before. I wander out over the dewy grass and my heart judders. An animal has been digging between the roots of the apple tree. Scrape marks gouge out the ground. Fresh earth thrown up and scattered over the damaged lawn. I peer into the raw wound at my feet. At the bottom, something glints: a small square of white, about the size of a stamp.

  I don’t know what to do. A fox must have unearthed what should have stayed hidden; but now that it’s visible, I feel a need to see inside.

  Kneeling on the wet ground, I begin to scrape at the earth with a trowel, working carefully around the curve of china. I thrust the sharp point deeper. The soil is wetter, darker. It smells rich and musty. Fine shreds of roots interlace the earth, making my job harder. A writhing worm, vulnerable and naked, burrows away from the light.

  Now I can push my hands underneath the urn and lift it clear. I slump sideways, cradling it on my lap, staring at the long-tailed birds and the boughs heavy with pink blossom. I run my filthy fingers across the delicate lines of them, trace the gold encircling the lid.

  It feels heavy. But it’s so small. How can she be stored inside a container this size? I brush away clinging mud. My fingers move to the lid, twisting, and it gives, scraping as it turns. My heart is beating hard. I close my eyes for a second. Not knowing if I can look. I’ve never seen human ashes before. I don’t know what to expect. Taking a deep breath, I open my eyes.

  Gray matter fills it to the brim. It seems natural to dip my fingers into the ashes. They are silky fine as the ashes from a fire. It could almost be water lapping against me. I scoop up a handful, holding that tiny weight in my palm. “Mum,” I whisper, curling my fingers and shutting my eyes. Something inside me shuts too: an end to any hope that she will return, whole and alive to me.

  I replace the urn back in the hole, because I don’t know what else to do, and push the earth back on top. I kneel, my filthy hands pressing the ground, my head bowed, and all the tears that I’d been holding back rush to my eyes. My face is wet. A bird stirs in the branches over my head. I hear the fluted trilling of a thrush.

  She was proud of me as a child, proud that I’d gone to university. I don’t want to think that she might somehow be looking down, witnessing my lies and broken promises. I don’t know what went wrong—I had every intention of being Klaudia again. My hair has almost grown back, the blonde threading into white, bleached ends. But it’s not about my hair. I should be defined by who I am to the people I love: daughter, partner, lover and friend. My lies have corrupted every role.

  I wish for the feel of Mum’s cool hand on my forehead, and close my eyes, finding that I can breathe calmly under her imagined touch, as if all the tangled threads have been cleared away.

  * * *

  I’m waiting in the kitchen when my father comes down for breakfast. There’s something I need to ask. It came to me as I’d reburied the urn. I was thinking of Mum and her tough upbringing on a mountain. How she’d transferred her love for a Welsh wilderness to a small London garden. And I realized, suddenly, that I had no idea how she met my father. She’d never told me how he’d arrived at her village.

  My father sits heavily at the table and I push scrambled eggs and grilled tomatoes onto a plate and set it before him. I pour a cup of tea, strong and sweet, as he likes it. Then I take my place opposite him.

  “I was wondering,” I say, leaning forward, “how you met Mum?”

  It sounds blunter than I’d intended. I’d rehearsed the question while I cracked eggs into a bowl, and sliced tomatoes.

  He blinks at me.

  Other questions are bursting through me.

  “I mean, what made you want to go to Wales?” I push on, aware of his blank face. “Did you go straight after the war?”

  He chews his mouthful steadily, staring down at his plate. I stop myself from fidgeting. The subject of war is unmentionable. Only this is different, I tell myself. This is about the time that came after. I brace myself, expecting him to snap. Or he might ignore me. He’s done that before. I shift in my chair, cross my legs and uncross them.

  “It wasn’t afterwards.” He wraps a hand around his glass, takes a long drink of water. “We met during the war.”

  I frown. “But how?” He’s not meeting my eyes. “You mean you were in Wales during the war?”

  He nods. “I was a prisoner, in a camp there.” His voice is curt and matter-of-fact.

  I put down my fork and stare at him. “I had no idea that you were … captured. When…”

  His mouth tightens and I see the muscle jump in his jaw. “It’s not something I talk about. As a soldier,” he pauses and straightens his shoulders, “there is a sense of shame. It happened early in the war. I was in a U-boat. It was tough work. But it was considered important.” He looks at a spot past my head when he talks, no emotion in his voice. “We were sunk. I was rescued by the English. We prisoners worked on the local farm. Your mother was the daughter of a farmhand.” His gaze moves to my face. “Gwyn was so good. So pure. She changed everything. By the end of the war we knew we wanted to get married. She was old enough by then to know her own mind.”

  His extraordinary revelations spin inside me, making me dizzy. I want to ask him more questions—what was it like in the camp; how did he first come to talk to Mum; were they allowed time alone together? But I can see by the hard line of his mouth that he won’t answer. He averts his eyes, continuing to eat. I watch him finishing his food. He puts his knife and fork together neatly, dabs his mouth on the napkin, stands up and leaves the room. I gather his plate and cup, put them in the sink, run the hot water, squeeze out some washing-up liquid.

  The idea of being cooped up inside the narrow metal tube of a U-boat gives me claustrophobia. I don’t know how he could have borne it. And then to be torpedoed: water pouring through the damaged hull, the alarm screaming, trapped men scrambling through water in darkness. I imagine my father falling through a cold sea, being hauled aboard a British boat, half drowned. Then he’s in a field dotted with sheep, loading hay onto a truck with a pitchfork as a pretty young girl walks by. He stops, wiping the sweat from his eyes to stare; she glances over her shoulder, blushing.

  What he’s told me makes sense of so many things. I’ve never thought about it properly, but how would my father have gotten from Germany to Wales? Math has never been my subject, and I squint, jumbling numbers in my head with an effort, struggling to get at the answers. My mother must have been only about fourteen when she met her German prisoner. And seventeen or eighteen when they ran away t
ogether. She was young and impressionable, and it must have felt to her like being Romeo and Juliet. She was too young to understand what she was doing. But people grew up quicker in those days, I remind myself. Boys were sent to war at the age she married.

  I see my young, handsome father standing behind barbed wire, resentful, ashamed, deprived of his part in the fighting, as he stares out towards the coast and the war happening without him over the sea. I slump forwards, my hands hanging loose in the warm bubbles. Tension leaves my body as I understand. He isn’t guilty. He wasn’t in the SS. He wasn’t part of any atrocities—he wasn’t there at all. And the photograph. It wasn’t him. It wasn’t him, after all.

  ERNST

  1940, Germany

  BETTINA THROWS HER BICYCLE DOWN in the yard. “Come quick! They’re deporting the Jews!”

  Meyer fastens the horse to the trap and we all clamber up. He flicks the reins over the chestnut back and she trots past fields of rye, her nostrils flaring at the pigs, snuffling as usual, noses deep in the mud. As soon as we round the corner to the station, we see the crowd. People have gathered to watch the Jews as they file past onto the platform. My eyes go to the shuffling line, and I recognize nearly all of them. Have known them since I was a child. None of them meet my gaze. I see the chemist and his wife. They carry suitcases; mothers hold the hands of children and hug smaller ones against their shoulders. They are bundled into coats and hats. It is cold. Winter is coming. The train isn’t a passenger train. It’s a goods train, and they climb up onto the boxcars, helping each other.

  “Where are they going?” Bettina asks.

  “To a camp,” her father tells her. “The Lublin Reservation.”

  “What will they do there?” Agnes wants to know.

  “They’ll work and be given somewhere to stay and food to eat.”