While they laughed though he was able to step forward, to get closer to her. He said, ‘I must go,’ very softly, almost into her hair.
‘Yes. You should.’
He bent, and kissed her cheek. ‘Goodbye, Grace.’
‘Goodbye,’ she said, and then he was able to put his arms round her. Of course his Uncle John came calling straight away, no stopping that dirty old dog. But he felt safe enough, his coat on, and in any case they weren’t pressed right up, just standing together, warmly embraced. A long moment passed. He felt love, felt loved. It was like a dream of happiness, smooth within, untroubled, a deep enfolding.
Then she pulled away, she opened the door, and the cold damp air flowed in harshly, emblem of the outside world, always waiting.
‘You gotta go,’ she said, and she wouldn’t look at him. He gave the hand on the doorknob the barest touch with his own, as he went. The door closed behind him.
And there he was, outside in the dark, awash with feelings he had – he quickly told himself – not much use for. Pete’s sake. This wouldn’t do at all. Grow up, he told himself as unkindly as he could. What was he playing at, what was he getting into? He didn’t want this. He wanted out, out of Silkhampton, out of England, out of all dull backwatery hopelessness; what was she up to, talking about walking out? Catch him walking out with anyone!
And yet, and yet … he remembered that long sweet embrace. He remembered that he had not wanted it to change, had not wanted to take it further.
Why, taking it further hadn’t even occurred to him! What a cowardly fool, what a waste! What might have happened if he’d only chanced his arm!
Oh, but it had felt complete in itself, that long enfolding.
Girls’ talk, that was. Soppy girls’ talk. Just standing there cuddling!
He walked home feverish with argument, unable to agree with himself about anything.
16
The following Saturday afternoon, as the market was packing up, Violet made the journey to the station, the old special bag in her hand, co-opted as suitcase, and caught the train to the coast. The special bag held her toothbrush and one or two other personal items, a large rabbit pie in an old biscuit tin, and a fruitcake wrapped in waxed paper, for Bea to keep or cut as she chose.
She boarded the train with a heavy heart. Bea had done her best to avoid her, to avoid Gracie. So Violet was doing something she had always tried to avoid her whole life long, pushing herself in where she knew she wasn’t wanted.
But what else can I do, Bea? It’s driving me mad, not knowing. Half and Half. And I told May Givens I’d talk to you.
Violet looked out of the window at the late spring fields. There had been several soldiers on the opposite platform, boys in uniform, being seen off, some she recognized; one or two her own. Gerry Ticknell had followed his older brother, she had lately heard, and joined up; getting ready to leave a perfectly good job at the solicitor’s office.
She remembered the day she had held Gerry Ticknell’s whole body in her left hand, the tiny chest fitted into her palm, turning him so gently from side to side to free each little shoulder, drawing down so carefully each little arm, freeing the face and holding him there in stillness, refusing to let him rush, so that he would hurt neither himself nor his mother in his final entry into the world.
She rose stiffly as the train drew into the right stop. The last time she had done this journey alone, she realized, had been the time she came to collect the sick baby, nameless then, from the Home; just a few weeks after visiting Bea that time, because of the horrible dream of drowning that had come to them both. Bea’s dream, somehow sent to her. A lot had happened because of that dream, she thought, as she climbed down on to the empty platform. Her legs felt heavy, the bag almost too much to carry.
She set off grimly, turning as before away from the village and along the stretch of winding lane that led to the Home. Few now, she thought, would remember as she did the days when the Home had been Rosevear Manor, and a fine house for the gentry. She herself could remember the carriage the old family had used, the crest painted on the side of it. She remembered a wedding that had taken place at St George’s, the crested carriage then all tied about with hoops of flowers and white ribbon, and the ancient gentleman, father of the bride, or maybe grandfather, who had stood on top of the portico of the George and Dragon afterwards, flinging down money to the local children waiting below, she and Bea among them, scrabbling in the dirt, and hopping and crying out, for the coins had been heated almost red-hot before he threw them. And for the first time it occurred to Violet that this trick, this heating of the money the old gentleman threw, was actually a mean and nasty thing to do, and all for his own pleasure, him in his thick gloves.
He must have had a spirit stove up there with him, Violet thought. Burning on the portico, going to all that trouble, the old beast. And yet we thought nothing of it at the time. We burnt our fingers, but we kept the pennies.
At last she reached the gateposts, where once before she had sat down on the market box and decided not to bother the Almighty about what mood her sister might be in. There it stood, the Home, the old Rosevear Manor. She thought of that silly goose Mrs Ticknell filling Grace’s head with nonsense, stories best forgotten, then remembered abruptly that Aggie Ticknell had more serious things to worry about now. Sorry, Aggie. I know you’ve been good to my girl.
Oh, how reluctant she was, to go any further! The closer she got the more peculiar she felt, so weighted down all over. Were these Bea’s own feelings? Was she sitting in the housekeeper’s little cupboard-room sending out waves of dejection?
Give over, thought Violet, and made herself quicken her pace. It was getting on for four, but dry and bright still; there were grey-clad children playing in the meadow about the great house, and one or two enormous perambulators parked in the sunshine. Violet waved austerely to the nursemaid sitting by with her knitting, and walked round the side of the house as she had all those years before, the day she first saw Grace. She made her way to the housekeeper’s room along the stone-flagged corridor, through the same smells of laundry overlaid with cabbage. Was Bea in, after all? Suppose there was no answer to her knock?
Violet felt herself tremble a little, standing in front of the half-glazed door, the same net curtain. She was not expected. She was not wanted either, she knew that much.
She rapped on the door, and after a little pause, Bea opened it.
For a long moment neither spoke. Bea stared out, startled, frankly horrified; Violet stared in, startled, frankly horrified. We are playing Mirrors, came the thought both shared.
‘You bin ill – Bea, what’s wrong!’
Me, she heard Bea’s thought, grim, amused.
‘Alright, you,’ said Violet, forgetting in her distress that usually she refused to countenance the very idea of transferred thought, between twins or anyone else. ‘Am I coming in or what?’
Bea eyed her briefly, then stood aside. Violet entered. The place was certainly not as it had been, she saw straight away. It had a smudged look, cluttered; the tablecloth was surely last week’s, or even older, there was a tumble of inelegant bits and pieces on the dusty mantelpiece, a broken plate, a lamp covered in black, a saucerful of old bread crusts. Bea took a couple of newspapers off the second chair, looked round idly, and dropped them on the floor, where they slewed sideways.
‘Sit yourself down. Cuppa tea?’
She moved all the time with a strange heavy slowness, as if just standing upright was an effort, and one she could hardly bring herself to make.
‘Bea? I make it, shall I?’
And instead of casting her a sharp look, instead of instantly giving out something hot and strong about whose place it was and whose kettle and so on, this strange new Bea gave a weak little shrug and sat down at the table, without so much as a word.
Violet checked the kettle – heavy enough – and lit the spirit beneath it.
‘Bea, you ain’t – you ain’t lost your place, hav
e you?’
For clearly Bea was not doing much housekeeping, for all her title. But she shook her head, with a sigh that was something like a laugh.
‘Oh, they’d never sack me here,’ she said, and for a moment Violet thought she was going to say more, but she just looked away. In silence, trying to collect herself, Violet rinsed the thick old brew out of the teapot, and found the tea caddy sitting on the dresser shelf with its lid not put on properly.
‘I dint hear you was ill. Or I’d a come sooner. Got any sugar?’
There was a sugar basin on the dresser, but when Violet took off its cracked lid there was nothing inside it but a few crusted tea-stained old smears.
‘’Ave a look in the cupboard,’ said Bea, leaning her head on her hand, and didn’t so much as stir when Violet opened the middle cupboard, and things piled there rolled out on to the floor – several wrinkled nearly empty paper bags, a packet of tea. One of the bags held sugar. Violet tidied everything back and used a teaspoon in the sugar bag.
Tentatively she set the dirty sugar basin beside the sink, a declaration of war on any other day. She even waited a second, for the first explosion. But nothing came; Bea seemed not to have noticed anything at all.
It seemed to Violet that she had come across something like this before, more than once, in the old days; but Bea was far too old for the strange languid melancholy that now and then afflicted women after childbirth.
More than melancholy sometimes. Violet sat down, resisting the impulse to brush the stained tablecloth free of crumbs, and gave the teapot a stir. She remembered Hetty Whitgift, who had trembled all over on first holding her baby, as if he were made of petals ready to bruise at her touch, who had taken all day (said her mother-in-law, disgustedly) just to get the baby dressed; who grew more and more quiet until you could hardly get a word out of her, and who went running down the street in her nightdress early one morning (the nightdress not fit to be seen, either, for various reasons) crying that the Devil himself, pink and bristly as a full-grown pig, was sitting stark naked on the stable-roof, playing with himself, and scraping his sharp little hoofs on the tiling.
But it had not been childbirth that prompted this particular melancholia of Bea’s. Or only, perhaps, in a manner of speaking, thought Violet, with an inner qualm. What was it May Givens had said?
‘How’s young Miss Half and Half, he asks her, only out of fondness, but your sister, ma’am, she flared up proper! She laid right into him, ma’am, she ain’t let him near her since!’
Bea hardly looked capable of flaring now. She had flared up too much, thought Violet, and burnt herself out like a firework.
‘I get a coupla plates out?’ She spoke almost to herself, expecting no answer, getting none. She opened cupboards until she found the china, took out plates, found a cake stand made of crinkled glass. She took the cake out of the special bag and unwrapped it, instantly releasing its warm toasted smell. It looked very well, too, she thought; she had studded the top with almonds, and glazed it with a glistening wash of apricot jelly. She found the knife drawer, selected the sharpest-looking, gave it a quick furtive wipe with the waxed paper she had wrapped the cake in, and plunged it in. The caramel smell intensified, irresistibly. She set a slice in front of Bea, and was ready.
‘You ain’t yourself, Bea,’ she said. She slid a full teacup over, well-sugared.
Bea took a sip, set the cup down again. Her hands trembled, Violet saw, with a constant fine tremor.
‘I am myself,’ said Bea, with a sigh. ‘That’s the trouble.’
Violet felt a little flash of the usual scorn; Bea striking one of her poses, even now. The sarcastic words rose to her lips: What’s that supposed to mean? She managed to keep them in though, said nothing at all, but broke off a small corner of fruit cake, and put it in her mouth. It felt inedible there. She swallowed it with some difficulty.
‘Left Gracie at her work,’ she said at last. ‘Aggie Ticknell’s got her doing all sorts these days, alterations, she brought home a jacket from Wooton last week, going to put in a whole new lining all by herself. What colour then, she asks the maid, and she says, Oh, you choose, just like that! So Gracie’s doing the sleeves in sky blue, and the rest in bottle green. Won’t you drink your tea, Bea?’ she added, in a different voice. ‘The sugar’ll do you good.’
Bea said nothing. Her head was bowed, so it was some time before Violet could be sure that she was crying. Finally a tear dripped down on to the tablecloth.
‘Bea? I know you don’t want to see me. But I couldn’t keep away no more. See?’
Bea took her hand away, and raised her head. She looked so much older, thought Violet (noting her own lack of pleasure), that their days of playing Mirrors properly were surely over for good. Her skin had a horrible puffy gloss to it, her jaw had sagged.
‘May Givens come to see me,’ Violet said. ‘Because you won’t let them the summer place, or talk to her George, on account of something he said, about Grace.’
How silly it sounded! Like a children’s argument. She said you said he said –
‘Don’t care about that,’ muttered Bea. It was as if she could hardly be bothered to move her lips.
‘What is it then? I know what he called her, Bea. I know, see.’
That made her look up. ‘Oh yes? And what do you know? What do you know about anything?’ This said in spiteful anger. Violet put her hands together in her lap, folded them together as she did sometimes in church. The touch of her own trembling fingers reminded her of Him who was always there to comfort and direct her, if she was only wise enough to ask.
‘Please – ent I your sister?’
Bea sneered. ‘You’re my sister alright.’
‘What have I done?’
‘Been born. Been there all the time. Been there all my life. That’s all.’
‘What are you talking about?’
Bea leant her head on her hand again, as if her sudden burst of fury had worn her out. ‘You,’ she said sullenly. ‘Miss Butter-wouldn’t-melt. Miss Righteous and Sober. It ain’t fair!’
‘What isn’t?’
‘Everything I do is wrong, it all goes wrong! And all the time I got you, being right all the time. How d’you think that feels, eh? Being me but getting it right! It ain’t fair! Others go wrong, don’t have to look at themselves getting it right! See?’
‘So –’ Violet began and stopped. It seemed clear enough what Bea meant: that the likeness between them, the mirror image, was an added burden; but she was surely getting things the wrong way round, thought Violet. It was she, Bea, who had always done best, been most loved, liveliest, done so well; had adventures and travel and a good husband, and a fine business all her own, and how many women in this world could say that? Say as much as half of it? Not Violet Dimond; all she had done was copy their mother, and stay at home.
‘But I ain’t done anything,’ she said, and then without a moment’s thought added the truth she had kept hidden all her adult life: ‘I always thought it was me, had to look at you being better all the time.’ Her heart was pounding away though, as if in a panic all by itself, at seeing how lightly she had given up the secret.
Bea gave a tired little snuffle of laughter.
‘I always could fool you.’
‘Could you?’
‘Easy. Tell me: you ever ask yourself why you took up with Gracie? Why you took her in that time?’
‘Well, ’twas my duty –’
‘Oh that stuff,’ Bea broke in. ‘Why her, I mean.’
‘You know why – she looked so, she looked so like my Ruth. You know that.’
‘But why?’
‘How d’you mean?’
‘Why’d she look like your Ruth, eh? Why did she?’
Ah. Now we come to it. Violet felt her lips stiffen: ‘I thought coincidence. That’s all. That’s what I thought then.’
‘Funny, ain’t it,’ said Bea. ‘That’s what I thought too. And you know why. On account of her being black. See –’ s
he leant forward, ‘suppose she weren’t. Suppose she was the same colour as you and me, little girl lying there, spit a your Ruth. What would you have thought then, eh?’
‘I don’t know,’ said Violet faintly.
‘Yes, you do,’ said Bea. ‘If she was white you’d a put two and two together same as anyone else. You’d say to yourself, well, I knows my Bobby, he’s over to Canada, so this ain’t no by-blow of his. What’s going on here then? Could this here baby be anything to do with my sister, ooh, is there something I don’t know about my own dear twin sister Bea?’
‘But she ain’t white, is she!’ said Violet pleadingly. ‘So what are we talking about?’
‘She ain’t white,’ said Bea viciously. ‘But she ain’t black either.’
Violet half-rose in her seat and now her own voice shook with rage. ‘You know something, you better tell me – this is my daughter!’
Bea rose too, and shouted back: ‘No she ain’t, you grabby bitch!’
With one push of her strong right arm Violet swept all the china in front of her, loaded cake stand and all, sideways off the table with a terrific crash, and then with her other hand seized her sister’s nose between finger and thumb, and yanked it hard downwards.
‘Ow!’
Bea tore herself free and snatched wildly at Violet’s blouse front, grabbing and twisting it, her other hand raking back for the furious blow. But she did not deliver it. Her hand stayed where it was for a second, then fell. She let go of Violet’s blouse; it gaped where a button dangled. Bea’s reddened nose was bleeding, and both were breathing hard. For a second there was a curious crackle in the air, as of laughter.
Then Violet sank down trembling on her chair, and hid her face in her hands. She barely heard the noises, the scrape of a stool, a cupboard opening, a chink of glass.
‘Here,’ said Bea hoarsely.
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