Brother and Sister

by Joanna Trollope

  "Thank you," she said.

  He pressed the switches and the studio sank silently into darkness.

  "Can't promise anything."

  "No, but thank you for trying."

  He looked at her briefly and indicated that she should precede him down the stairs.

  "I'll let Titus know," he said.

  Steve cycled home. He'd had bicycles all his life, from what was excruciatingly known as a fairy cycle—given to him by a good-natured customer of his father's—to ride round the backyard of the Royal Oak when he was four, to this twenty-eight-gear mountain bike he'd found behind the cinema with its saddle missing. There was a seat attached to the back of it, for Polly, in which she rode wearing a pale-blue cycling helmet stencilled with cartoon characters from Winnie-the-Pooh. They went swimming together by bike, and shopping for all the screws and catches necessary to fix things on the weekends, and to have tea with Polly's grandparents at the Royal Oak. Sometimes Steve wondered if Polly would remember these trips when she was older, the reassuring sight of her father's back, the absurd sight of his safety helmet. Her expression on the back of the bike, Nathalie told him, was both grand and impassive, like a pasha on a palanquin.

  The street where they lived was, like the studio, on the edge of one of Westerham's better areas. It was a street of flat-fronted houses built of the pale limestone so familiar locally, with short flights of steps leading directly from door to pavement. Steve and Nathalie had found their flat five months before Polly was born, a long, ground-floor flat with access at the back to a strip of garden with a plum tree and a shed.

  "Men like sheds, don't they?" Nathalie said. She had wanted the flat much more than Steve had, because of the garden and being pregnant. "I thought a shed would swing it for you."

  Steve had had something else in mind. He'd imagined a first-floor flat, with long windows and molded cornices, something as far away as possible from the dark, crouched rooms of the Royal Oak.

  "I could have a washing line," Nathalie said, one hand on her belly and the other on the plum tree. "The baby could sleep out here."

  "Yes," Steve said.

  "It's got a good kitchen," Nathalie said. "And its own front door."

  Steve looked at her. He thought about the studio and his ambitions; he then thought about how both those would seem to him without Nathalie.

  "Can we compromise? Can we say five years here and then think again?"

  Five years were now up. Polly was five and one month, and her tiny clothes had indeed dried on a line strung between the fence and the plum tree. Nathalie had made the flat very—well, pretty, was the word Steve would choose, charming, comfortable. All those appealing, unthreatening capacities she had displayed at art school—she had specialized, in the end, in textiles—were evident in the home she had made for Steve and Polly. And it was a home, no doubt about it. If you defined a home as the setting of all your domestic life complete with all required emotional and practical attachments, that was what Nathalie had made.

  As he cycled up the street, he could see the saffron-colored oblong of his own lit front window, the window of his kitchen-living room where Polly would have eaten her supper off the pine table and possibly drawn him a picture featuring herself, very large, and her parents, somewhat smaller, and then, in purple or pink—her favorite colors—the dog she had set her heart on having. She had always liked dogs, even after being knocked over, down some steps, by a bounding Alsatian when she was two.

  "So odd," Nathalie said, "I don't like dogs."

  He dismounted from his bike and wheeled it into the dank covered area between their house and the next one. He'd had plans for this passage once, visions of pale paint and trellising, and those plans had subsided like so many, subsided into the studio, into family life, into the relentless march of the hours and days and weeks. He sometimes thought about all the time he'd had as a child, all those acres of time lying quietly, dully about him, so many of them that sometimes he couldn't think how they were to be filled. Whereas now . . . Well, now time just seemed to bundle him forward, like someone impatiently, ceaselessly dribbling a football.

  He let himself into the dark garden. A light fixed to the outside wall shone down on Polly's Barbie bicycle, lying on its side on the paving, and a neat row of flowerpots, under plastic, in which Nathalie was trying to grow auriculas. He put his key in the lock, and let himself into the bedroom, lit only by the light shining down from the passage beyond.

  "Home!" he shouted.

  There was a thud of feet. Polly came racing down the passage and then stopped, as she always did, several feet away from him.

  "I nearly went to sleep," she said.

  "You don't sound very sleepy—"

  "I was going to turn the light off. I was going to."

  He bent to kiss her. She smelled of shampoo and Marmite.

  "But you didn't," he said. "And now I'm here."

  She turned round and marched back up the passage. Her pajamas were too big for her and gave her the look of a miniature rapper. Nathalie appeared in the doorway of Polly's bedroom.

  "He's back," Polly said resignedly.

  "Sorry," Steve said, "I got caught up with some scheme of Titus's."

  Nathalie liked Titus. He came to supper sometimes and drew dogs for Polly.

  "That's OK."

  Steve leaned forward and kissed Nathalie's cheek.

  "I want Miffy," Polly said.

  "Does it have to be Miffy?"

  "Yes," Polly said.

  Nathalie moved past Steve towards the kitchen.

  She said as she went, "We saw the ear man."

  "What?" Steve said. He looked after her, irritably. She was in the habit of doing that, walking away while saying something he needed to hear.

  He followed her.

  "What?"

  Nathalie didn't turn.

  "We saw the ear man. Polly and me. You knew we were going to."

  "Did I?"

  "Yes," Nathalie said. "You did. We talked about it."

  "No, we didn't."

  "Actually," Nathalie said, "you're right. No, we didn't. I talked and you didn't listen."

  Steve took a breath, glancing to see where Polly was. Then he took another and said in a deliberately friendly voice, "Well, what did he say?"

  "There's some malformation. A sort of blockage. Something obstructing the middle ear."

  Steve said, more loudly, "There's a malformation in one of Polly's ears?"

  "He wanted to look at mine. He wanted to see if there's anything similar in one of mine. He said it was a hereditary kind of thing, a sort of quirk, like a bent finger or the way hair grows."

  "And did he find anything?"

  Nathalie shook her head.

  "No."

  Polly came into the kitchen, holding her Miffy book.

  "Miffy!" she said commandingly to her father.

  Steve glanced down.

  "Aren't you getting a bit old for Miffy, sweetheart?" He went round to the other side of the table so that he could see Nathalie's face. She was looking down at the table, and her hair had swung forward.

  "Nat. Is this serious?"

  She said, "He says it's quite a simple operation. It's just the removal of some cartilage really. But lots of aftercare, because ears are so complicated."

  "Will it hurt?"

  Nathalie nodded. He leaned forward and touched her arm across the table.

  He said comfortingly, "They'll deal with that. They won't let it hurt her. They're brilliant at pain control now."

  "Miffy!" Polly shouted.

  "Two minutes, sweetheart," Steve said. "Nat?"

  "It isn't that," Nathalie said. She crossed her arms and held herself, as if she were cold. "It's a simple operation and everything. I know that."

  "Well then. Is it her hearing? Is her hearing affected?"

  "It is now" Nathalie said.

  "Yes. Yes, I know. But will the operation improve things? Surely, isn't that the point, isn't the obstruct
ion the thing—"

  "I've been feeling sick all afternoon," Nathalie said.

  Steve waited. Polly came and stood beside him and held up her book.

  "Just a sec, Poll—"

  "No sees," Polly said. "Now."

  Steve bent down and picked her up. She held the book in both hands three inches from his face.

  "Miffy."

  "Yes. Miffy. I can see."

  "I've never felt like this before," Nathalie said. "I've never thought this way. I mean this is a small obstruction in Polly's ear, it isn't even a big, frightening thing that lots of parents have to face, it's just a little thing, a matter of mechanics, really. But—but, well, in his surgery today, I just felt awful, lost. I thought—I thought, what else don't I know?"

  Gently Steve pushed the book down with one hand so that he could see across the table.

  "Sorry?"

  Nathalie raised her head.

  "What else don't I know about where Polly's come from?" Steve looked at Polly. He gave her a wide smile.

  "Of course we know where Polly's come from. Don't we, Poll? You've come from Mummy and Daddy."

  Polly flapped her book.

  She said warningly, "I might get cross."

  "It's before that," Nathalie said. "Beyond that. I suddenly felt I was in a space. A void."

  Steve adjusted his hold of his daughter.

  "You've never talked like this before."

  "I've never felt like this before."

  "You can't mean," Steve said, "that we run up against some small problem in Polly's ear, a problem that it appears can easily be sorted, and you suddenly lose all your confidence?"

  Nathalie looked at him.

  "Why not?"

  "Because—well, because it isn't reasonable."

  "This isn't about being reasonable."

  She turned aside. She said something in a muffled voice.

  "What?"

  "I said this isn't about reason. It's about feelings. And feelings—well, feelings have memories"

  Steve swallowed. He looked at Polly. Her gaze was fixed implacably on his face, indicating that she was simply going to force him to read a book to her that they both knew was intended for three-year-olds. Steve gave Polly a smile. He wondered, even as his mouth stretched, whether it was shamefully appeasing.

  "Tell you what," Steve said. He looked at Nathalie. "Polly and I will go and read Miffy, and you ring your mum."

  "I thought of that—"

  "Well, do it."

  "But I think I would rather ring David."

  "What is the point," Steve said, his voice betraying the effort of control, "of ringing your brother?"

  "Because he'll understand."

  "Down," Polly said. "Let me go."

  Steve lowered her to the floor and stayed crouched beside her, his arms still round her loosely.

  "But, Nat, he isn't your real brother, I mean, he hasn't got your ears, or Polly's ears. He's just the brother you grew up with . . ."

  Nathalie moved away. Steve turned his face to Polly's. Her eyes were only a foot from his.

  "Which ear, Poll?"

  She touched one. And then the other, and shrugged.

  "Miffy," she said in a baby voice. "Now, now, now"

  "Yes!"

  "Two stories," Polly said, sensing victory.

  "OK—"

  "Two stories and the train-whistle song."

  "OK—"

  Steve stood up. Polly grasped his hand firmly. He glanced at Nathalie.

  "Are you really going to ring David?"

  "Yes."

  Steve made a huge effort.

  "Give him my best," he said.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Nathalie had been four when David came to join her. She'd been expecting a baby, not a silent, toddling boy with a big head and big soft hands that he wanted to lay on everything that was hers. There seemed to be, implicit in the way everyone treated David, an extra sympathy and sorrow, so that his speechlessness was allowable, even admirable, and so was the fact that he was ruthlessly determined one second and completely withdrawn the next.

  "Don't be cross with him, Nathalie," Lynne and Ralph would say. "He's only little. He can't help it."

  Privately, Nathalie thought that they could have helped it by not bringing David home in the first place. Life had been fine without David, there had been no need for David. Adding David to the house on Ashmore Road seemed a peculiarly unnecessary, arbitrary thing to do. A baby would have been fine, a baby in a cot or a pram; a baby would not have wanted to challenge or take over the life that Nathalie and Ralph and Lynne had built up together. Nathalie sensed, even at four, that she could have accommodated herself to a baby.

  She shut her bedroom door against David. She put her toys in places where David, even though he was learning to climb, couldn't reach. She ate without looking at him and, when he misbehaved at meals, as he often did, hurling his plate to the floor and letting food fall out of his mouth and spill down his front, she fixed her attention on something quite different and stared at it until her eyes watered. When David made Lynne cry with frustration, Nathalie would scream too, to show Lynne that she had good reason for crying. She fought Ralph when he tried to dress her for nursery school and, when he remonstrated, she looked blank and went speechless, like David.

  She knew she hated him. She also knew that to say she hated him was not just not allowed, but utterly forbidden. Nobody had ever spelled this out to her, but something in the almost reverential pity that surrounded David made her realize that there were some areas of human conduct that were so fenced about with outrage that penetrating them brought a personal penalty you might have to pay for the rest of your life. She had a sense that if she went down the path of saying she hated David, she could never go back. She could say she hated his big head and his dribbling and his dirty nappies and his persistence, but she couldn't say she hated him. And it was made worse, much worse, by the fact that he loved her. From the moment he came, he loved her. When he withdrew into himself and sat, bloblike and unresponsive, only Nathalie could make him flicker back to life. It wasn't that she wanted to—she'd have liked him to stay bloblike forever—but that he wanted to respond to her. When she came near him, his eyes lit up and his hands went out. She hated his hands. They were always sticky.

  It took him years to win her over. Lynne told friends that it broke her heart to see David struggling for Nathalie's attention, never mind her approval. Of course you couldn't expect a little girl to appreciate the double deprivation of David's parenting—first the loss through adoption of his birth mother, then the second one of his first adoptive parents in a coach crash on holiday in France—but it was as if Nathalie had hardened her heart to David without even thinking, without even looking at him in the first place.

  "And he loves her," Lynne would say, her eyes filling at the thought of David's infant unrequited emotion. "You can see it in his little face. He loves her."

  Even then, Nathalie was suspicious of the love word. Lynne used it a lot. Lynne said that she loved Nathalie and so did Ralph, and they loved her especially because they had chosen her to be their little girl. If you are chosen, Lynne said, that makes you special. But Nathalie was as suspicious of being special as she was of the love-word. It seemed to her, sitting on Lynne's knee in her pajamas (pale-yellow, printed with rabbits), that when Lynne talked about love and specialness she wanted something back. She wanted Nathalie to gather up all this stuff, and a bit extra, and to give it back to Lynne, like a present, a present which would somehow, obscurely, make Lynne feel better. And Lynne needed to feel better, always. Something in her thin, kind, anxious face made you realize that she carried some sort of ache around, all the time, and she thought that you, in your yellow pajamas, could assuage that ache and comfort her.

  But Nathalie couldn't do it. She liked Lynne. She liked Ralph. She liked her life in the house on Ashmore Road and her bedroom, and most of the food that she was offered, and going to school. But she could
n't go further than that. She couldn't fling herself at Ralph and Lynne and want to lose herself in them, partly because she didn't feel the necessary urgency and partly because she couldn't give Lynne what she seemed to want in case Lynne wanted more and more and more until Nathalie was entirely sucked up into her, like carpet fluff going up the vacuum-cleaner tube.

  "I always dreamed of a little girl like you," Lynne would say. "And then I got to choose you!"

  It was David, in the end, who came to Nathalie's rescue. He began to refuse food unless she fed him, and she refused to feed him if he dribbled. She'd stare at him, a spoonful of mashed carrots poised.

  "Don't dribble," she'd say.

  He gazed at her, dribbling. She'd put the spoon down. He'd make a huge effort, working his mouth, blotting his chin with his hands. She picked the spoon up again, and inserted it, without comment, into his mouth. It threw Lynne into raptures. The children took no notice of her.

  "It's adorable," she'd say to Ralph. "He'll do anything for her."

  Except ask, Nathalie thought. When she was six and David was three, it dawned on her in an unspecified way that he never asked for anything. He might demand, incoherently, that she feed him, or insist on sitting next to her, or insert himself in her line of vision, but it was perfectly plain to her that he didn't want anything from her in return, he didn't want anything except to be in her close company for his own satisfaction. And because he didn't talk—couldn't? Lynne worried, or, even more worryingly, wouldn't?—he articulated no need or wish for reciprocity. He just wanted Nathalie there. Like her, he might have been chosen, but he hadn't had any choice himself. Like her, he'd been given something he was expected to be thankful for, he'd been handed a lottery prize at random and told he was very fortunate to have it. But unlike her, he'd decided that in all this avalanche of not choosing he was going to select one thing he liked, one thing that carried no requirement for response or gratitude. And this thing was Nathalie.

  And then he grew beautiful. To Lynne's astonished delight, this lumpy, ill-proportioned, almost bald toddler grew into a beautiful little boy, the kind of little boy whose looks somehow penetrated the indifference of even bank clerks and supermarket checkout girls. Taking David about became a matter of intense pride rather than one of defensive apology, a matter almost of competition between Lynne and Ralph. Ralph even took David to his chess club, where he sat on the knee of the club's best player, a senior master who had written an acclaimed book on the strategic challenges of the end-game, and was given a king and a queen to hold. Ralph came home replete with pride. He set David on the floor as if he was a rare piece of statuary.