Brother and Sister

by Joanna Trollope

  "He'd charm the glaze off a doughnut," Ralph said.

  David's charm lay in his beauty and his passivity. The obtuseness he had seemed to demonstrate as a baby could now be seen, more acceptably, as compliance. He could be left to play for hours with the same two cars on the rug whose stripes made useful roads; he could even be trusted on the rocking horse Ralph made him, rocking and rocking, and rocking, with an absorption Lynne saw as simply being good. It seemed especially good, compared with Nathalie. The older Nathalie grew, the more she seemed to need to do what Lynne's American friend, Sadie, called "acting out". She became provocative and touchy and unpredictable, sometimes clinging, sometimes rejecting Lynne's proffered cuddles. She made intense friendships at school and then gratuitously destroyed them and sobbed wildly over their demise.

  "I don't like it," Lynne said. "I don't like the child she's becoming."

  Ralph was mending a toy which David had uncharacteristically broken. He didn't look up.

  He said slowly, "What you don't like, dear, is that there's a pain you have to live alongside that can't be made better."

  Lynne froze. She looked at Ralph's bent head, at his deft hands among the bits of bright plastic. Then she went back into the house and stood by the washing machine, with her fists clenched under her chin, and gave way to a rage that was murderous in its brief intensity. How could he? How dare he? How dare he remind her of her abiding disappointment—hers—in his lack of potency?

  Later that night, she shouted at Nathalie. It was over something entirely trivial, a matter of not brushing teeth or hair, and she horrified herself. She waited, in the midst of her despair, for Nathalie to be horrified too, for tears and trembles and consoling reconciliation. But they didn't come. Instead Nathalie looked at her with an expression that darted between triumph and relief, and then she turned and padded into David's room and climbed into bed with him. Lynne saw David turn to look at her, amazed and pleased, and then she felt she must look no longer, she must leave them there together, saying nothing, side by side.

  "At least," she said to Ralph later, exhausted by emotion, by a sense of having let everyone, including herself, down, "at least they have each other."

  Lynne still said that. It irritated Nathalie when she said it because it still seemed to Nathalie that Lynne wanted to be reassured about it, even thanked, and even though Nathalie loved Lynne, even though she acknowledged what a support Lynne had always been to her, how Lynne had ever been on her side, she still could not get her mind comfortably around the idea that Lynne felt she owed her something.

  This problem over Polly's ear was exactly a case in point. Polly was Lynne's granddaughter and Lynne would want, would expect, to be included in any anxiety surrounding her, large or small. It would be a mark of the closeness between Nathalie and Lynne—a mark of the no difference there was between their relationship and that of a natural mother and daughter—that Nathalie should confide to Lynne all maternal preoccupations, everything that had to do with this bond that Nathalie had now achieved so properly, so primitively, with Polly.

  But David had silently taught Nathalie otherwise. Watching him as he grew from a child to a boy to an adolescent, she had seen that he quietly went round things; he didn't charge through the middle, breaking the china. He made it plain that if Nathalie needed to break the china he was prepared both to share the blame and help clear it up, but that she didn't have to do things that way to get what she wanted. Over time, cushioned by his undemanding constancy, she began to relinquish some of the assertiveness of her power over him, to begin, even, to seek him out to give her the unarticulated satisfaction of his presence as hers had always seemed to give him. Leaning against the kitchen wall now, about to dial David's number, she suddenly had a memory of herself, crouched on the landing floor outside the locked bathroom door in Ashmore Road. David was inside, singing. He was about fifteen and he was obsessed with being a blues singer. He talked about bayous and catfish and getting no satisfaction and he was saving up for a slide guitar. Crouched on the gray marl carpet, Nathalie could hear him singing "This Train" and she knew he'd be lying in the bath, with everything but his nose and mouth submerged in the water, fixin' to die.

  It made her smile, remembering that, remembering him writing songs with titles like "Ain't No Way Out", remembering him before he met Marnie and became a businessman, and a father of three. She was still smiling when she picked up the receiver and dialed his number.

  "You sound happy," Marnie said.

  "Oh," Nathalie said, "I was just grinning about something when I picked up the phone—"

  "Polly?" Marnie said. In Mamie's steady, practical, comfortable life, most sources of pleasure and humor lay with children.

  "No," Nathalie said. She began to twist her hair up behind her head as she always did when unrelaxed. "No, not actually. It was about Dave, remembering something about Dave when we were kids. Is he there?"

  "Well, no," Marnie said.

  "Shall I guess?"

  "Wednesday night, Nat—"

  "Chess club. Of course. I should've known. What is it with men and chess?"

  "Only some men—"

  "My father," Nathalie said, "Dave—"

  "He wants Daniel to play," Marnie said. "But he won't."

  "Why?"

  "He says he's not interested."

  "Perhaps he isn't—"

  "Exactly what I say. At ten, he knows what interests him. Of course, his refusal makes Ellen want to play and David's taught her but you can see his heart isn't in it. She's not a boy."

  Nathalie pictured Marnie standing in her hallway, looking at herself in the mirror that hung by the telephone. She'd be looking at herself, with the kind of easy acceptance with which she looked at most things, touching her thick, majestic fair plait which she wore pulled over one solid shoulder. Sometimes Nathalie imagined how the plait would look when Marnie was older, wound into a dense carved bun like an illustration from Heidi. When David had first met Marnie—capably running a small private nursery school—she'd sometimes worn her hair loose, a heavy corn-colored curtain, crinkled from so much plaiting.

  "Anything I can help with?" Marnie said.

  "Urn," Nathalie said. She paused and then she said untruthfully, "It's a Mum thing."

  Marnie said nothing. In her view, David and Nathalie were lucky to have Lynne, lucky to have a mother who lived close enough, and was enthusiastic enough, to be an excellent grandmother. Mamie's own mother lived in Winnipeg, where Marnie had grown up, and lectured on company law at the university. Every summer—with or without David—Marnie put her three children on a plane and took them to Winnipeg for a month. Every summer the children came back saying loudly that they would far, far rather live in Canada. Their grandmother took them on camping trips to her cottage on a nearby lake and every meal was a cookout.

  "Anybody can do that for a month," Marnie would say to Lynne. "It's the Monday to Friday stuff that counts. It's the Monday to Friday that I value."

  "We all want each other's mothers," Nathalie said.

  "Oh, I want mine all right," Marnie said. "It's just that I don't want her all the way off in Winnipeg."

  Nathalie let her hair fall. She liked Marnie, loved her even for giving David such a rooted, equable life, but every so often she ran up against something that was unavoidably like complacency, something that slid quietly from the accepting to the smug and seemed, in so doing, to imply judgment.

  "It wasn't anything much," Nathalie said. "I just needed to have a little whine."

  "Why don't you whine to me? I have the time. I'm giving the kids supper late tonight. Ellen's got a rehearsal."

  "Because," Nathalie said, abruptly irritated by the vision of comparative domestic busyness and order conjured up by Mamie's last speech, "you make me feel bad about whingeing about her at all."

  "She's a good woman," Marnie said. "A good mother."

  "There you are!" Nathalie cried. "Listen to yourself! Anybody normal would have said, 'No, I don't
, do I? God, how awful, I really didn't mean to, d'you want to know what drives me mad about my mother?' "

  Marnie said calmly, "I don't think that way."

  "No. Nor you do."

  "I'll tell David you called. Do you want him to call you back tonight?"

  "No," Nathalie said miserably. "The moment has passed. The fire has gone out."

  "I'm glad I could help—"

  "It was a real fire, Marnie. It meant something."

  "I'm sure David will call you from work tomorrow."

  Nathalie shut her eyes.

  "Give my love to the kids."

  "You bet," Marnie said, comfortable, collected and Canadian.

  "Bye."

  Nathalie put the receiver back in its cradle on the wall. She leaned against the wall beside it. From Polly's bedroom, she could hear Steve's voice reading the elegant humorous cadences of Beatrix Potter. He had plainly triumphed in the matter of Miffy, but then, once she had re-established her dominion over him, Polly would have allowed him to triumph. She also openly preferred Beatrix Potter, loving the way the animals took their clothes off when they reverted to behaving like animals, loving the language. She was reading along now with Steve, her voice slightly strident to prevent his skipping so much as a syllable.

  " 'I am affronted,' " Polly shouted. " 'I am affronted, said Mrs. Tabitha Twitchett.' "

  Nathalie peeled her shoulders away from the wall and slid into the nearest kitchen chair. Across the table's dully gleaming surface she could see a scattering of crumbs and a smear or two of milk or yogurt left over from Polly's supper. She reached out and pressed her forefinger down on some of the crumbs.

  "That's real," she thought, "real. That's here. So's Polly. So's Steve. They're real like they were yesterday, like they'll be tomorrow. Nothing has changed. Nothing is going to."

  The telephone rang. Swivelling in her chair, Nathalie reached behind her to unhook the receiver from the wall.

  "Am I interrupting your supper?" Lynne said.

  She always said something like that: "I'll only be a moment," or, "Is this a good time?"

  "I haven't started it," Nathalie said. "In fact, I haven't even thought about it."

  Lynne laughed. She admired that in Nathalie, that modern female nonchalance which felt no compunction about not setting regular meals before men. Ralph was undemanding, heaven knows, but Lynne still felt an obligation, a need, to lay tables at seven in the morning and seven at night and place upon them these—well, they were kinds of offerings really, offerings of affection and dutifulness. And mollification. Try as she might, Lynne could never quite leave conciliation out of any relationship.

  "I rang to see about Polly," Lynne said. "I was thinking about you. All afternoon."

  Nathalie looked at the clock. The appointment with the ENT consultant had been at three-fifteen. It was now ten minutes to eight. She leaned her head against the wall.

  "He was a really nice man—"

  "Was he?"

  "He's got children of his own. It makes a difference, don't you think?"

  "Oh yes" Lynne said, with fervor.

  Nathalie knew she was waiting for more.

  She said, "He was very kind to Polly. Very thorough."

  She stopped. Lynne waited.

  Nathalie said, "He examined her for ages. Both ears. He told her to put her hand up if he hurt her and she said, 'Can't I scream?' "

  "Bless her," Lynne said.

  "He said, 'No, because you'll wobble my instrument.' She thought that was terribly funny. She loves words like wobble."

  "Nathalie," Lynne said carefully. "What did he say about the problem?"

  "What problem?"

  Lynne sucked in her breath, a tiny almost inaudible gasp. She had always done that when her patience was tested, drawing in a quick little breath as if this was a necessary physical check on a rising temper. Nathalie had played on it as a teenager, idly provoking and provoking until Lynne conceded a victory of nerve and took her betraying breath.

  "The problem with Polly's hearing, dear. The reason why she is having difficulty at school—"

  "She isn't having difficulty . . ."

  "The reason, then, for her not seeming to be able to concentrate very well."

  Nathalie said easily, "It's a tiny thing."

  "Is it?" Lynne's voice rose in relief.

  "Oh yes. A tiny thing."

  "What kind of tiny thing?"

  "A little extra piece of cartilage blocking her ear. Like a little spur."

  "Can—can he take it out?"

  "Oh yes," Nathalie said, almost carelessly.

  "But that's wonderful. What a relief. Did he say why she might have it?"

  "Have what?"

  "This little extra piece of cartilage. I mean, could it be hereditary? Did he examine you?"

  Nathalie looked at the ceiling.

  "No. Why should he?"

  Lynne said tiredly, "Never mind."

  "Mum, he examined Polly and found she has a minute malformation, which he will correct."

  "Yes."

  "No big deal."

  "No. Will he do it soon?"

  "In the next three months."

  "I'm so glad, dear. Really I am—"

  "Me too."

  "I was worried," Lynne said. "I was thinking about you." She let another small silence fall and then she said, "Would you like me to babysit this weekend?"

  From her bedroom, Polly was shouting "'—which much disturbed the dignity and repose of the TEA PARTY!' "

  "I don't know what we're doing yet," Nathalie said. "But thank you. I'll let you know."

  "Give Polly a kiss from me . . ."

  "I will. Mum, thanks for ringing."

  "I'm glad all's well—"

  "Yes."

  "Night night, dear," Lynne said.

  Nathalie slammed the receiver back in its cradle. Then she went over to the fridge and took out a plastic box of fresh pasta and half an onion on a plate and some minced beef sealed in thick white plastic and threw them on the table. Then she went back across the kitchen and found her bag and rummaged in it for her mobile phone.

  "Mummy will come," Steve said from the passage, "but not if you get out of bed."

  Polly wailed something.

  "You've got a drink of water. And blue rabbit. And Barbie has both her shoes on, they are not lost."

  Nathalie pressed the buttons to send a text message. "Ring me," she wrote, "soonest." David's number came up on the tiny screen. Steve appeared in the doorway.

  "Will you say goodnight to her?"

  "Of course—"

  "The phone rang—"

  "It was Mum. Wanting to know about this afternoon."

  "And?"

  "I told her it was a tiny thing and a tiny operation."

  Steve looked at the phone in her hand.

  "True or false?"

  "Literally, true."

  "Mummy, come here—"

  "Nat, I thought you said—"

  "At oncel" Polly shouted.

  Nathalie slipped past Steve into the passage. It was dark, as was Polly's room except for a night light shaped like a small glowing teddy bear plugged into the electric point by her bed.

  "Daddy only read a tiny story—"

  "No, he didn't. I heard him. He read you all of Tom Kitten."

  "I really wanted Mrs. Tiggy winkle," Polly said. "I wanted that so much."

  "Tomorrow," Nathalie said. She leaned down over Polly and breathed her in.

  "Will I have a bandage?" Polly said.

  "When?"

  "When the wobble man does my ear. Will I have a bandage? Will it go all around so I have to suck through a straw?"

  "No, darling. It will be a tiny cut right inside. You won't even be able to see it."

  "I want to see it."

  "Polly," Nathalie said, "it is sleep time now. You can talk your head off in the morning but not now."

  "Blah blah blah," Polly said, turning on her side away from Nathalie. "Blah blah bl
ah."

  "Same to you," Nathalie said. She kissed Polly's cheek, "Sleep tight."

  "Only," Polly said, her eyes shut, "if I don't wobble."

  In the kitchen, Steve was slicing the onion. He sliced like a chef, using a big knife and rapid, precise practiced movements. There was a glass of wine beside him, and another glass on the table, which had been cleared of crumbs.

  "Titus has a new girlfriend," Steve said.

  "Oh?"

  "Rather gorgeous, in a weird way. Sort of Jamie Lee Curtis type. About a foot taller than he is, as usual."

  "It would be hard to be a foot shorter."

  "He has no trouble pulling them, does he?"

  Nathalie opened a cupboard by Steve's knee and took out a skillet.

  "He's very attractive. As a person, I mean. Funny and sympathetic."

  "You," Steve said, taking the skillet from her, "like anyone who's nice to Polly."

  "Of course. And if they're nice to me too, I adore them."

  "Like me."

  Steve poured olive oil into the skillet and set it on a cooker ring.

  "Titus wanted me to ask you something. Or at least he wanted something on Sasha's behalf."

  "Sasha being the new girlfriend?"

  "Yes."

  Nathalie picked up the bag of mince and tore it open.

  "She's doing some kind of counseling course. She's got a project on identity, how we identify ourselves, whether or not we need to know where we've come from." He lifted the board on which he had chopped the onion and tipped it into the skillet. "She—well, she wondered if she could possibly talk to you."

  Nathalie carried the split bag of mince over to the cooker.

  "Why?"

  "Because Titus told her you were adopted and I said it had never troubled you."

  Nathalie let the mince fall into the onion.