Brother and Sister

by Joanna Trollope

  They'd all gone to bed early. Daniel didn't think anyone was particularly tired—he certainly wasn't—but there didn't seem to be anything else much to do or say. And he'd only been in bed an hour or so, waiting for it to be Jonathan Agnew's turn to commentate on the cricket from Australia, when the door had opened and Ellen had come in and, without a word, climbed over him to the wall side of his bed and slithered down beside him under his duvet.

  "Ow," he'd said, and, "Your feet are freezing."

  "I've been in Petey's room," Ellen said, "sitting on the floor."

  "Why didn't you take your duvet?"

  "Didn't want to."

  "Didn't think."

  "Didn't want to."

  Ellen humped herself sideways until she was facing Daniel. He shone his torch in her face.

  "You've been crying."

  Ellen shut her eyes. She took a breath and then she said fiercely, "I don't want her."

  "Who?"

  "This Dad-mother-granny person."

  Daniel shone the torch on the ceiling, on the rusty stain where he'd once successfully flicked a melted piece of chocolate, on a hot day, with a plastic ruler.

  "We don't have to."

  "What?"

  "She's nothing to do with us," Daniel said. "She's nothing to do with us at all."

  "But she is" Ellen said, "because of Dad. It'll make her be something."

  Daniel said stoutly, "I shan't."

  "You'll have to."

  "I shan't. I'll go to Canada."

  "Oh," Ellen said sarcastically, "wave a little Harry Potter wand and zoom off to Canada."

  "You could come too. And Petey."

  "And Mum."

  "Course."

  "But," Ellen said, "I don't want to be without Dad. And I don't want Dad to be like this."

  Daniel turned the torch off. It occurred to him to ask Ellen why their father should want to do this, to do something that they didn't want to join in, couldn't join in, and then it struck him that Ellen couldn't answer him any more than he could answer himself, and that the reason she was in his bed, and taking up too much space, was precisely because she didn't know the answer. And, like him, didn't like the question.

  After a while, Ellen began to snuffle. At first Daniel thought she was crying again, but then he realized that she was actually snoring faintly, that she had fallen asleep with her mouth open, taking up most of his pillow and with his right leg imprisoned under hers. He sighed. He supposed he couldn't even turn the radio on again now, because Ellen, sad but asleep, was more manageable than Ellen sad and awake, and anyway, if he was honest, there was a peculiar comfort in having her there, snoring or not, and in a frame of mind in which contempt for him and his pitiful gender was not uppermost.

  He gave his leg an experimental twitch. Ellen grunted and muttered something, moving just enough for Daniel to ease himself free. He assessed the position. He was more comfortable, but not quite comfortable enough. He gave Ellen a nudge with his right shoulder.

  "Shove over," he said.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  When the photograph came Cora rearranged the shrine in the corner of her bedroom. She didn't move the little Buddha from his central position—there was something about gods that required the limelight—but she moved him back a little, back among the candles, and the black lacquer vase of incense sticks, and the silk orchid rooted in its water like block of resin, in order to be able to put the photograph in front, where she could see it. At first, she just propped it against the Buddha, but that seemed disrespectful to both of them, so she put the photograph in a frame she had made herself, years ago, from scraps of Oriental brocade glued round cardboard and stood it independently in front of the flames and the flowers and the Buddha's removed and timeless smile.

  Samantha—Nathalie—had sent her the photograph. It showed a dark-haired woman and a curly-haired child in an armchair together, looking at a book. It wasn't a very big picture but it had enough detail in it for Cora to devour with her eyes: Nathalie's earrings and Polly's red cardigan with buttons shaped like ladybirds and the outlines of their cheeks and noses.

  "She's the image of you," Betty had said, "the image."

  "Yes," Cora said, delighted and disbelieving. "Yes."

  Betty put the picture down.

  "But that's enough."

  "What d'you mean, that's enough?"

  "That picture's enough," Betty said. She turned away and began to rummage in the vegetable rack. "You've seen this photo of her, you know she's got a little girl, you know she's well. Just let that be enough."

  Cora looked at the picture, at the stylish modern armchair, at Nathalie's hand holding the book open for Polly to see.

  "What d'you mean?" she said again.

  Betty dumped a double handful of carrots on the draining board.

  She said, her back to Cora, "You'll only get hurt."

  "Hurt?"

  "Yes," Betty said, clattering in the drawer for the peeler.

  "If you go any further with this, you'll only get hurt again."

  "Why will I?"

  "Because," Betty said, spinning round, "that's what will happen. She may be a lovely girl but you've gone your different ways, you've lived your different lives and nothing but hurt'll come out of trying to go back anywhere."

  "But I'm not—"

  "Of course you are," Betty said. "What else are you trying to do but make what went wrong go all right instead? I don't blame you, Cora, but you can't. She's not baby Samantha. You're not schoolgirl Cora. I wish she'd never rung you."

  Cora said quietly, "I liked it."

  Betty pulled a chair out from the table and sat down opposite her sister.

  "She's not angry with me," Cora said, gazing at the picture. "She said so."

  "Why should she be angry, for Christ's sake?"

  "I was careless," Cora said, "wasn't I? I was careless enough to let myself get pregnant, and it was her life I was being careless about."

  Betty gave an exasperated sigh.

  "You were drugged. You were raped—"

  "I wasn't raped," Cora said. "Don't ever say that. Don't ever say that baby was forced on me. Don't ever say I didn't want that baby."

  Betty leaned across the table.

  "I'm just not having you hurt again. You're a single woman, Cora, and we all know that whatever might be good for a married woman isn't so good for a single one."

  Cora put the photograph down flat on the table and covered it with one of her painful hands.

  "All my life," she said, without particular resentment, "I've been on the receiving end of other people's views."

  "Yes. Well?"

  "You all describe me. You always have. It's as if I've got a whole lot of labels stuck on me, as if I've got to be explained away."

  "Not away, dear—"

  "You've been good to me," Cora said. "You've been better to me than anyone, but even you haven't let me express my feelings."

  Betty sat up straight.

  "I'm protecting you—"

  "Yes, but sometimes it's support I need, not protection. It was support I needed in that Salvation Army home for unmarried mothers, it was support I needed when they took Samantha away, when they told me that I wasn't fit to keep her, I wasn't fit to be a mother. I tell you," Cora said, leaning forward over her photograph, "what they meant was that it was wicked to be fertile. It was wicked to be poor and working-class and fertile."

  Betty sniffed. She bent her head towards her folded hands on the tabletop.

  "So, right or wrong," Cora said, "this photo isn't enough for me. If Sam—Nathalie wants to meet me, I'm meeting her. It may throw me back where I started, but I'm taking the chance. All these years, I've been in agony that she'd hate me.

  It's all I've worried about, all that's really haunted me. Would she be angry, would she hate me. Well, she didn't sound angry. Not at all. In fact, she sounded quite surprised I'd asked her. So if I want to meet her to make sure she isn't angry, if I need to do this
to put myself out of all the misery I've been through all these years, then I'm going to do it, risk or no risk. I can't be in more pain than I've been already, Betty, I can't. But if I'm going to do this, and I am, if she'll let me, then I'd rather do it with your support than without it. Not protection, Betty, not that. Support."

  There was a pause. Betty raised her head and looked at Cora. Her eyes were red.

  "I'll support you," she said, "but don't say I didn't warn you either."

  From the street outside her flat, David could see that Nathalie was in the kitchen. He stood there on the pavement and watched her for a while, watched her as, propped against the table and quite unaware of being watched, she read something in the local newspaper, her arms spread wide to hold out the pages. She had her hair pulled back behind her head with some kind of red scarf or band and there was music playing. He couldn't hear the melody, but he could hear the beat.

  He looked at the gap the basement created between the pavement and Nathalie's kitchen window. It was just too wide to lean across, just too far to touch the glass and alert her. He considered. He could do the conventional thing, of course, and ring the doorbell, but that didn't seem to him quite to chime with the mood of the moment, the mood that had impelled him to make a detour through this part of Westerham and surprise Nathalie at eleven o'clock in the morning. He took a deep breath and sprang in the air. Nathalie went on reading her paper. David took another breath and sprang again and again, shouting. Nathalie looked up from her paper and saw him.

  "You're crackers," she said through the window glass. He nodded, beaming.

  "Let me in—"

  She vanished from the window and reappeared at the street door, still holding the newspaper.

  "What are you doing?"

  "What are you doing," David said, "reading the paper during working hours?"

  She reached up, the newsprint crackling, and put her arms round his neck. He held her.

  "I can't settle to much."

  "Me neither."

  "How's Marnie?"

  David released his hold a little.

  "Um. Calmer. Very reasonable. Very reasonable. Buying tickets for Canada for the summer. And Steve?"

  "Fine," Nathalie said. She stepped out of his embrace. "Lovely, actually. Kind."

  "Right," David said, "so, good or bad?"

  Nathalie led the way into the kitchen.

  "Just—just, well—better. Nicer."

  "Mamie's always nice. It's just that she can easily make me feel I'm not being nice at all."

  Nathalie opened the fridge.

  "Define nice."

  "Good family man."

  "Is it too early for a drink?"

  "Yes."

  Nathalie put a bottle of wine on the kitchen table.

  "Perhaps we aren't very good at family."

  "What?" David said. "You and me?"

  Nathalie took two wine glasses off a shelf.

  "Yes. Perhaps we have problems with intimacy."

  "Oh, give me a break."

  "It's a phrase of Sasha's."

  "Who's Sasha?"

  "Titus's girlfriend. She's doing a thesis or something. She's got a phrase for everything. Psycho stuff."

  "Sounds a bit wacky—"

  Nathalie poured wine into the glasses and pushed one towards David. He picked it up.

  "I'm driving—"

  Nathalie said, "D'you know what I've been thinking? About this intimacy stuff?"

  "Tell me."

  She folded her arms.

  "Perhaps we are a bit removed. Perhaps we do make it difficult for people to get close to us. Perhaps that has always been our sort of defense mechanism."

  David took a tiny sip of wine.

  "And?"

  Nathalie looked down.

  "You know this feeling—"

  "What feeling?"

  "Well, this feeling we've always had, however kind people are, however much they love us, however much they say we're just the same as everyone else—" She stopped.

  David waited. He waited for several moments and then he put a hand out and touched her shoulder.

  She said slowly, "There's always this unspoken thing, isn't there, if you don't know who your parents are, if you don't know where you come from. There's always this little kind of whisper, this echo, as if society is saying, 'Let's just disappear you.' "

  "Rubbish."

  She looked up at him.

  "Not literally. Not, let's let you starve. But more, let's forget who you really are, let's rub out your real name, and start again, on our pattern."

  "Real name," David said.

  She nodded.

  He said, "You know yours."

  She nodded again. "And you know yours."

  "But not," David said, "my father's name. Not that name."

  Nathalie picked up a glass of wine and looked at it and put it down again.

  "So, if we discover these things, if we discover these names and things, these histories, then maybe we'll be able to join in. Properly."

  "Is that what you've been thinking?"

  "Yes."

  "I wish," David said, "that I could think like that."

  "You've got me to do it for you."

  He put his hands in his pockets.

  "I wish you could come and see Carole with me."

  Her eyes widened.

  "You're seeing her!"

  "Yes. That's what I came to tell you."

  "Oh my God."

  "I know."

  "Did she ask you?"

  "No. I asked her. I had to ask her several times."

  "Didn't she want to?"

  David shook the change in his pockets.

  "She sounds frightened."

  "Aren't you?"

  "Oh yes," David said. He took his hands out of his pockets and put his arms round Nathalie. He said, his face against her hair, "I don't think I've ever been so nervous about anything."

  Carole had imagined meeting David in a bar, a bar somewhere perhaps like the Portobello Road. She had visualized somewhere trendy, somewhere where David's age would pass unnoticed in a crowd of similar ages, a place where she would be the oddity and therefore unlikely to be spotted by anyone she knew. She had been, covertly, on a small mission or two to find such a place, and thought she had found one, near the old cinema, with a smart restaurant upstairs and downstairs something much more relaxed and casual, a kind of brasserie cum bar, with sharp young waiting staff dressed entirely in black. It seemed to Carole that in such a place David would pass without comment, and she would be invisible. When he next telephoned—and he was telephoning with a quiet regularity that threw her into a turmoil every time it happened—she was going to say to him that this was the place where they should meet, and that she would be wearing a brown suede jacket and carrying a copy of the Financial Times.

  But then Connor intervened. His superb and stately response to her revelation had continued almost without a hitch, as if, she sometimes thought spitefully, looking at his well-shaven face, his well-ironed shirt front, he had at last found a role in which he could see himself as he had always wanted to, calm and majesterial, possessed of the kindest, most reasonable of powers.

  "Where do you propose to see the boy?" Connor said, his eyes on the crossword on his knee.

  "He's called David," Carole said.

  Connor raised his glance and looked steadily, significantly at her.

  "I think you heard me."

  "I haven't decided," Carole said. She ran a hand through her hair. If she told him the truth, he would try and change her mind. "I haven't really thought."

  Connor took his reading glasses off and laid them on the folded paper.

  "May I make a suggestion?"

  Carole waited. Two weeks ago, a week even, she might have said appeasingly, "I'd be so glad if you did." Now, newly stubborn in the face of her conflicting hopes and apprehensions, she waited.

  "Carole," Connor said, "darling, I think you should see him here."
/>   She stared at him.

  "Here!"

  "Yes," he said. "Why not?"

  "But we live here!"

  "And so that's where he should see you."

  She pushed herself back into the cushions of her chair.

  "No."

  "Why not?"

  "Because—because it's got to be somewhere impersonal, somewhere neither of us belongs—"

  "Why?"

  "Because," Carole said, almost shouting, "I don't know how it will be!"

  Connor cleared his throat. He put the newspaper and his spectacles down on the low table beside him.

  Then he said, in a much less portentous voice, "He's your son, Carole, and nothing's going to change that. He ought to see you in your home, the place that reflects your life, and who you are. He'll be pretty at sea as it is, coming to meet you. Why make it worse by inflicting a hotel lounge on him?"

  Carole said stupidly, "I wasn't thinking of a hotel."

  "You should see him here," Connor said. "You should invite him here and give him a whiskey." He paused, and then he said, "Don't you want to help put him at his ease?"

  Carole looked down. She looked at her hands in her lap, at her well-shaped nails, at her wedding ring.

  She said faintly, "What about the boys?"

  "I'll talk to them," Connor said, "I'll explain why David is coming here."

  "Martin won't like it—"

  Connor said, "Martin doesn't like anything much at the moment."