The Other Me

by Saskia Sarginson

  “Delirium? I’ve never heard of it.” I shake my head. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  He begins to make strange, choking sounds. Harsh, dry sobs. I shift in the dim light, not wanting to watch him. I’ve never seen him cry before.

  “I thought I could cure her with my love.”

  I catch something in his voice: behind the grief, he is like a petulant child. I can hear myself breathing. He lets his shoulders slump heavily.

  His head lolls forward. “I didn’t want people to see her like that. She would have hated it too. I didn’t want you to know. What was the point? I didn’t want you to remember her that way.” He wipes his eyes with the back of his hand. “She was different, you see. She wasn’t my Gwyn anymore. I thought if I waited it out, she’d come back. The way she was before. Perfect and pure. My angel.”

  “I think I knew … I knew something wasn’t right.” My voice is thin.

  The shed is dense with dust, chemicals and the sharp scent of wood. I back away, through the door. “You kept her prisoner,” I say quietly. “You kept her here, when she needed help.”

  I want to hurt him. He is responsible for her death.

  There’s no point. It’s too late. He’s lost her. There is no greater punishment. On the way past the apple tree I pause and place my hand on it. I slump against its rough bark. I can’t forgive him. My conscience whispers inside my head—what about me? If I’d come home when term had finished, if I hadn’t gone to Paris, she might still be alive.

  * * *

  It’s early morning. As I leave the house, I feel a splatter of rain on my forehead. Another hits the pavement, making a dark splotch. I begin to jog in the direction of the playground. I need to run. I can’t face my father. I hardly slept last night. My chest has been buttoned tight since he told me. I looked up delirium. He was telling the truth. It’s a sudden dementia that older people can get, with symptoms of disorientation, delusions and paranoia. Sometimes it’s a sign of another, life-threatening illness. Then I read that it can be reversible, if sufferers get help quickly enough. The thought of her desperation and fear, the image of her scratching those words into the wallpaper—that useless, pathetic gesture—makes me sick with shame. Yesterday, I caught a glimpse of something evil in him. But I’ve always known it was there. The running; the dancing; my new identity: they were all just ways of trying to blot out the knowledge, sever the connection. Only how can I escape something that lives inside me? I am his daughter.

  The roads are wet, sharp with grit, puddled with oily water. The rain feels liberating, cleansing, the way it hits my skin, coating it with a cold membrane. I have to make a sudden jump to avoid a trail of rubbish dragged across the road. A large bin lies on its side on the pavement, innards sprawling, ragged scraps of plastic, an old tin can, sodden cardboard boxes and half chewed bones. I jog on, growing warmer. When cars pass, there’s a swish of tires and spray splatters my legs.

  I run and run, wanting to tear off all the lies, rip away the fibs and half-truths. I feel grubby with them, polluted, unclean. My legs are shaking. Rain slicks my hair, dribbles into my eyes, soaking through my clothes. I’m glad of it. But I can’t push myself anymore. I’m exhausted.

  * * *

  As I approach our house, a black taxi pulls up. It stops, engine running, diesel fumes pumping from the exhaust. The cabbie climbs out, wincing in the rain as he holds the passenger door open; he reaches in and slides a suitcase onto the pavement and a man unfolds himself, looking up at our house. I blink through the downpour, not understanding why my father is arriving in a taxi, when I left him not more than an hour ago at home.

  But it’s not Dad. Of course not. It’s a similar-looking man, eerily similar: tall and thin, with the same distinctive straight nose and big, sloping brow. The cab moves away from the curb, the yellow light flickering on. I am closer now, staring, a nagging memory pulling at me. I lick my lips, my breath coming faster; I think I recognize him. Except, doubt trips me up, as I realize that this man is older than I’d first thought. And under his loose clothes, he is bone-thin. He leans heavily on a stick, knuckles pressing through thin skin. Perhaps I’m mistaken. But as he turns towards me and I see his pale, blind eye, the weave of scar tissue distorting his cheek, I know I’m right.

  “Ernst?” I touch his sleeve. “Uncle Ernst.”

  * * *

  I thought he wouldn’t recognize me. I’d been a child after all, a little girl with long blonde plaits. But the anxious speculation in his face disappears and he says, “Klaudia,” as if my name is something rare and elegant, like a piece of antique glass.

  He doesn’t seem to notice that we’re standing in the rain. I take his arm, leaning to pick up his suitcase with my other hand.

  “I didn’t know you were coming … Dad didn’t say,” I say over my shoulder as I unlock the door, guiding him over the step and into the hall.

  “Your father doesn’t know,” he admits. “I didn’t tell your parents, I’m afraid. It was an impulse.”

  An impulse? I push wet hair out of my eyes. “Don’t you live in New York?”

  He murmurs an agreement, but he’s looking around him, distracted and expectant. “Are your parents here?”

  I feel a jolt of pain. In his mind, Mum is alive, could come down the stairs or through a door at any moment. I don’t want to tell him about her. Not now. He looks exhausted. One thing at a time, I think.

  “Come and sit down. I’ll fetch Dad.”

  I settle him on the sofa. He notices Mum’s knitting, and his eyes go to the photographs—nobody could fail to see the banks of images, arranged in rows—and he leans towards them eagerly. While he’s staring, I persuade him to part with his damp jacket. He slips it off absentmindedly.

  “I’ll get you some hot tea,” I tell him, the jacket folded over my arm. It’s good-quality fabric, I notice, soft and supple.

  He pulls his attention back to me, and he’s smiling. “You sound like your mother. This reminds me of a time, many years ago, before you were born, when I came to visit and she fetched me tea. There was cake, I seem to remember…”

  “No cake this time.” I would like to stand and listen to him reminisce, but water trickles under my collar. “Back in a minute.”

  Upstairs, I shrug off my wet top and towel-dry my hair. Pulling on a shirt, I run down to the kitchen to make tea. I stand over the kettle, waiting for it to boil, glancing towards the living-room door. I find it hard to believe that Ernst is in there, sitting on the sofa as if he’s just popped in from across the street, instead of across the Atlantic Ocean. My father comes out of the shed, hurrying through the rain across the garden with a new wooden sculpture in his hand.

  “We have a visitor,” I tell him in a hushed voice. “Your brother. Uncle Ernst.”

  My father’s face is utterly blank, stripped of expression, as if he’s spun back through the years into a state of pre-baby nothingness. His mouth sags. Then he recovers and gives me a severe, accusing stare. “Why are you saying this?”

  “I know. It’s unexpected,” I say soothingly, trying to make him understand that this is not a trick that I’m playing on him, something that I’ve conjured up. “But he is here,” I insist, keeping my voice gentle, even though I don’t feel like being kind. “He’s in the living room.”

  “He can’t stay. I won’t have him in my house.”

  The words are blunt and sudden as stones thrown through a window. The kettle is screaming beside me, steam billowing between us. I automatically switch it off and pour water into the teapot.

  “He’s very frail…” I flounder. I know they didn’t get on. But my father’s lips are twisting in disgust or hate, or both. “We can’t ask him to leave. He’s come all the way from America.”

  “What does he want?” My father sways back onto the heels of his feet, wraps his arms across his chest, as if he’s hiding something. “Does he know about Gwyn?”

  I shake my head. He slams the sculpture down onto the kitchen counter, w
here it wavers like a drunk and topples onto its side, rolling onto the floor with a muted clatter. As I bend to pick it up—another bearded disciple—he strides past me into the living room.

  I hurry behind, bearing a tray heavy with the pot and cups. An atmosphere gathers around the brothers, tight and menacing as a fist. Ernst had been standing, but I watch him crumple, stepping backwards, a hand flailing beside him as if he’s searching for a support that isn’t there. I put down the tray in a hurry, tea slopping out of the spout, and step forward to curl my fingers around his. He sinks onto the sofa. I sit next to him, his hand caught in mine.

  His is all bone and sinew. I notice his shortened fingers in mine, the nubs of swollen flesh and missing joints. A blue-black vein pulses under the blotchy back of his hand. He’s ill, I realize. I can smell it on him—an oily, rotting, sickly scent, and a tang of chemicals.

  “Gwyn,” he murmurs, his voice cracking. “I never thought … never imagined she wouldn’t be here.” He raises his head and looks at me. His blind eye is weeping. “I’m sorry, Klaudia. So sorry.”

  Tears sting my eyes. I swallow. “We should have contacted you. Let you know.” We should have. I feel guilty.

  “Where are you staying?” my father asks from his position by the mantelpiece. He’s standing stiffly as a soldier. A force field radiates from him: an impenetrable shield.

  “With us, of course,” I say quickly.

  “No. I wasn’t presuming…” Ernst leans back against the sofa wearily. “I’ll book into a hotel.”

  “Nonsense.” I look at my father. “Mum wouldn’t hear of it if she was here. Would she, Dad?” I add pointedly.

  My father tears his gaze away from Ernst and stares at me, the corners of his mouth tightening. “Ernst must do what he thinks is right.”

  The force field is hard and bright. I look away from it.

  “You are staying with us. I can make up the spare bed in a few moments. I’ll show you where it is.” I hear Mum’s voice in my head. I let her use my tongue. “Perhaps you want to use the bathroom or rest for a little while? You’ve had a shock.”

  He pats my knee. The effort seems too much for him. “You are kind.” His voice is a whisper.

  * * *

  Ernst is settled in the spare room with his suitcase, and I’m on my way up, my feet on the stairs with an armful of clean sheets, when my father beckons me into the living room with a curt nod. He shuts the door.

  “I don’t want him staying.” He glances down.

  “Why?” I hug the bundle of sheets closer. “I know you two don’t get on, but he’s your brother.”

  He sucks his bottom lip under his teeth. “Ernst isn’t like us. He’s an American now. He has different values. He’s not … a believer.” He paces the floor. “He’s an atheist,” he hisses.

  I don’t react. I lift my shoulders and let them fall. “So?”

  “I didn’t want to tell you this, but he’s an alcoholic. He’s unreliable. I don’t trust him. He’s not a good person, Klaudia.”

  I seem to remember my mother mentioning something about Ernst being unreliable years ago. But what my father is saying doesn’t add up. I didn’t smell drink on Ernst. He doesn’t have the bloated look of a heavy drinker. He just seemed tired and ill.

  “I don’t care about that.” I fumble for the door handle with my free hand and turn it. “Apart from you, he’s the only relation I’ve got. Whatever’s happened in the past … it was a long time ago. I’m going up there to make his bed. He needs a proper rest. We can’t turn him out on the streets in his state. Let him stay for a couple of nights.”

  My father has forfeited his power in this house. There has been a shifting of guilt and blame, a resettling of authority. I leave without waiting for a reply, gripping the pile of sheets, breathing in clean washing-powder scents and my own determination.

  I am excited by Ernst’s arrival. Something warm and bright flickers inside me, a kind of hope, unexpected and startling: I’d given up on seeing him again. It’s extraordinary to think that there’s someone else in this house with the same blood as mine. Someone who met me as a child, and who knew Mum too. There will be time to talk, to discover stories perhaps, stories that might color in some of the missing pages. I’ve lost so many people. I won’t be that scared girl anymore. I won’t be a liar. I feel a hunger for the truth. Whatever happened between my father and his brother, they will be able to sort it out now, under this roof. I want Ernst to stay.

  ERNST

  1996, London

  PAIN AXES DEEP UNDER my breastbone, cutting me down. Gwyn. My love. My lost love. I’ve been imagining you safe in your home, alive and well, content in your routine. The effort it has taken to get here, Gwyn, I wasn’t sure if I’d make it. When the plane hit turbulence, quivering and dropping over the ocean, I moaned in my seat like a child. I wanted to land safely, because I needed to get to you. I believed that it would be enough to see you—not to touch you or hold you; not to tell you that I love you—just to watch you move around your living room, to set tea on the table, put a hand to your hair, patting a stray wisp into place. Being in the same house, I’d smell your cakes baking and hear the murmur of your voice next door. I didn’t come to make trouble. Just to see you. To see Klaudia. To say goodbye.

  Gwyn. Darling Gwyn. I don’t have a photograph of you in my wallet. I’ve had nothing to remind me of you all this time. Just your signature on a Christmas card once a year, some little note with news about your lives in England. A few scribbled lines.

  That afternoon in Wales, after we’d disentangled ourselves, you sat up and leaned over to switch on a sidelight, picking up your watch to peer at its face. Do you remember? I resented the intrusion of that bright beam into the place we’d lost ourselves, the way it found us out.

  “We have to get up. Your taxi will be here.” Your voice was trembling, and you hurried out of bed, wrapping the sheet around you with anxious fingers. “Otto might even come back.”

  “Gwyn.” I grabbed your wrist, felt the slight tug as you resisted.

  “This can’t happen.” You looked exhausted. “I wanted … I wanted…”

  But you never said what you wanted. I watched you stumble about the room gathering clothes, holding them in a bundle to your stomach.

  I struggled onto my elbows and sat up. “Don’t worry,” my voice croaked, the effort of being noble almost killing me, “I won’t interfere with your life, your marriage.”

  God. I wanted to pull you back into bed with me. “I’m here if you need me,” I managed. “I’ll always be here for you.”

  But you shook your head as if I was the inexperienced one. “Find yourself a wife, Ernst. You’re still young. You deserve to be happy. Settled.”

  As we dressed in our separate corners, it seemed that with every new item of clothing, we moved further apart. The loss hollowed me out. I followed you onto the landing, but you disappeared into the bathroom, shutting the door. I carried my bag downstairs into the hall and waited for you impatiently. It was a new experience for me, that sense of yearning. Never before had a woman made me feel incomplete when we were apart—no one except Sarah.

  The house seemed to close in on me. Everywhere I looked I was reminded that it all belonged to Otto, that this was a home you’d made with your husband. I could hardly catch my breath. I loosened my collar, and prayed that Otto wouldn’t come back to say goodbye. He’d told me in his gruff way that he probably wouldn’t be able to get away in time. If he came, he would sense the atmosphere, he would know. My nerves startled at every noise.

  My taxi was due. You came back and we stood in the hall, my suitcase between us, your skin smelling of Pears soap, your blouse buttoned to the neck. I tried to give you some money, but you folded your arms, shaking your head. “For the extra food,” I insisted. “Please.”

  I longed to look after you, to spoil you. If I couldn’t do that, at least I could give you something useful. Your pride got in the way. Or perhaps you were like him.
Perhaps you saw money as sordid too.

  “Otto wouldn’t hear of it.”

  It was as if we’d done nothing more than take tea. You were being so careful, my brother may as well have been standing over us. But we still had a few moments alone together, and I wanted to hold you close, push my nose into your hair. In bed, the pale cushion of your skin had turned pink where I’d touched you, and I’d wondered if those faint marks lingered under your clothes.

  A sharp ring on the bell made us both jump.

  You opened the door before I could stop you. It was just the taxi driver by his cab. But the world had come rushing in. Life pulling us apart. Seconds ticking away.

  “You should go.” Your face was stretched with the effort of not crying.

  “Darling.” I mouthed the word silently.

  Your eyes glittered with tears. One spilled onto your cheek. “Goodbye, Ernst,” you said, keeping your voice steady.

  I dragged my feet over the threshold, aware of every passer-by in the street, the driver’s watchful gaze. I had to keep up the performance. So I leaned forward in my seat and raised my hand cheerfully, as if this was a casual goodbye, as if we would see each other again. Then the taxi pulled away, and I turned in sudden panic to stare through the back window. But a bus had blocked my view, and I’d lost you.

  * * *

  I kept my promise, Gwyn. I went back to New York. My only communication was to send Christmas cards. I had no return mail, no messages at all for the first couple of years. And then a Christmas card arrived, with your new address in London. Inside you had scribbled a couple of lines to explain that you’d had a daughter. A daughter! Imagine what I thought. Of course, I wondered if she was mine. But you didn’t say anything. So I began to doubt it. And it was your prerogative to keep it a secret. Otto would believe that the child was his. He had no reason to think otherwise. Perhaps she was. I had to respect what you wanted. I sent a telegram with my congratulations, addressing it to both of you. I meant what I said. I wasn’t going to interfere with your marriage. Not if you didn’t want me to.