Once again Ignacio marvelled at her ability to surprise him. It was this playfulness he loved in her and yet, as ever, it came with a warning.
‘OK,’ he warmed to the game. ‘Close your eyes so you can’t see who I’m choosing’. He picked a couple in the far corner who seemed oblivious to the noise around them. He looked in his mid-thirties, crisp and clean-shaven. She looked younger, and wore a provocative, strapless red dress. Their hands reached for each other again and again across the table.
‘Right, they’re on their honeymoon. They have only known each other for a year. He works in a bank and she was one of the cashiers. It was love at first sight for her and sex at first sight for him, but he liked the ambition and confidence in her and he started to fall in love with her.’ Ignacio squirmed at the trite stereotypes that came gushing out. She guessed immediately.
‘Got it. The woman in the red dress and the man in khaki shorts!’ She leant across the table, drawing him in, her voice a mock stage whisper. ‘But what you don’t know, and he doesn’t know, is that she is pregnant and desperately hoping that it’s him who is the father and not the one-night stand she allowed herself in a last moment of freedom two months before the wedding.’
‘And why doesn’t she tell him she is pregnant?’ Ignacio laughed at her.
‘Because she wants the wedding to be perfect. Because she’s not quite sure how he will react. They’ve never really talked about having children.’
Inwardly Ignacio congratulated her. Professionally he knew how frequently this was indeed the case. The couple who take their vows in front of the altar, but do not touch, until it is too late, on subjects like when and if they want children or how they want to bring those children up. ‘OK, your turn. I’ll close my eyes.’
‘This afternoon she got into his bed and they made love. When they finished he said to her, “You always give me an erection when you come near me.” She thought it an odd but flattering comment. She laughed and kissed him. She has no idea that he is deciding to leave her. No idea that that was the last time they will ever make love. Well, who do you think, Doctor?’
Ignacio was almost embarrassed by the power of her imagination, though such bursts of cynicism were not new. ‘I haven’t got a clue!’
‘Come on, you’re the psychotherapist!’
‘OK, let’s see. I think, but I’m not sure, it’s the two opposite us.’
‘Bingo! How did you know?’
‘Well, she seems totally absorbed by him, but he seems to be much more aware of what’s going on around him. You see,’ he said, diverting his eyes, ‘he just caught me looking at him, but that’s not much on which to base an analysis of what could just be male-female behaviour patterns! Have you thought about setting up a business in fortune-telling?’
They played on into three whiskies and Ignacio realised he was enjoying himself much more than he had thought he was going to on this mysterious trip into Jenny’s past. He thought of the games she had played in their therapy sessions and marvelled at the role of make-believe in her life – potentially so positive and so lacking in the lives of so many, and yet potentially so dangerous. The line between fantasy and reality. We all need fantasy, and the lines are drawn in different places and become blurred in different ways at different times for all of us. In moments of uncertainty, Ignacio had wondered if the unblurring that sometimes happened as a result of therapy was really a good thing. Like most things, he supposed that it depended.
‘Who did you invent this game with?’ He suddenly felt like the psychotherapist with his patient.
‘My sister.’ She replied simply. He was beginning to notice that whenever she referred to her sister it was in a straightforward, matter-of-fact way that stood out from the almost extravagant manner in which she talked about so many other things. It was growing increasingly clear to him that her sister was the key to whatever trail they were following.
‘Where is she now?’
‘Dead.’ That simple.
‘Wh–’
‘Shhh.’ She put a finger over his mouth. ‘Let’s make love.’
Chapter 28
Impossibly, they stood on a platform at the very lip of the top of the falls, with nothing more than a rail separating them from certain death. The vacuum carved out a u-shaped gash below them. The waters of the vast river approached from all sides in gullible readiness, swept by an invisible will, undeterred by the unfamiliar thunder that filled the air. Now caressing the curved lip of the top of the falls, they slipped, eager, snake-like . . . into hell. Ignacio and Jenny stared into the bottomless crush of water, drenched in spray. La Garganta del Diablo – The Devil’s Throat. No name could ever have been so apt.
The magic, the horror, was mesmerising and intensified by the fact that they were alone. They stood side by side, not touching, staring. At last, recoiling from the vertigo in the pit of his stomach, Ignacio raised his eyes to look at Jenny. Her face was unnaturally rigid, her hands, clenched around the railing, were white.
‘Jenny.’
She didn’t hear him.
‘Jenny!’ Ignacio raised his voice above the din. Still she stared downwards.
‘Jenny, where are you?’
‘There.’ And suddenly she was hauling herself up, stepping onto the first rung of the railing and leaning dangerously over the edge.
‘For Christ’s sake, Jenny, get down!’
Something warned Ignacio not to touch her, not to move too quickly. He was sure this was another game and suddenly he hated her for using him, hated the callousness in her. He felt a strong desire to turn and walk away from her, yet he could not afford to take the risk. Forcing himself to be calm, he used his professional voice.
‘Jenny, look at me. Just look at me.’
‘Tempting, isn’t it?’ she shouted, still looking downwards.
‘Is it? Does it really tempt you? Jenny, turn to me. Talk to me.’
Ignacio’s body was alert, ready to grab her if her hands or legs made the slightest movement.
She looked up slowly. Then she laughed, seeing him, and he hated her for it.
‘Oh, don’t worry, Ignacio, I’m not going to jump, for Christ’s sake!’
Swinging round, she skipped backwards and down from the railing, coming towards him with her arms open and laughing.
Ignacio felt his body relax and then tense again as he raised his hand and slapped her squarely and firmly round the face.
She flinched and turned away, striding ahead of him along the concrete walkway across the river. They waited in silence, distant as ice, for the next bus that would take them from the Argentine side of the falls back to the hotel. Like children, they clung to their own hurt and their own territory.
She broke the silence, however, on the bus.
‘I’m not playing games, you know. I just don’t want to talk.’
‘Jenny, why did you do that? I’m sorry I hit you, I just lashed out.’
‘I don’t blame you.’
‘So why, Jenny?’
‘Look, I said I don’t want to talk. It wasn’t about you, it was about me, OK?’
‘Isn’t it always.’ The words were mumbled, but she caught them and bit her lip.
Chapter 29
The woman in the red dress of our restaurant game must have told her fiancé she was pregnant. He was stroking her hand across the table, trying to comfort her and atone for the abruptness of his reaction, but her eyes were red from crying and a warning light flashed on and off inside her.
I looked away from the imaginary soap opera around me and into my own, searching for my sister’s voice inside my head. If I had been cruel to Ignacio at the Devil’s Throat, I knew that at some level I was lashing out at her. Where was the nagging knowledge of her voice and her reactions? What a place and a time to ‘disappear’. It was as if her death was becoming concrete for the first time and with it the sense of purpose that was holding me together was fragmenting. What had I expected? That I would achieve some kind of beyon
d-death bonding, some life-giving catharsis by virtue of following in her footsteps? It all seemed suddenly desperately childish and futile, and sour tears stung the back of my eyes.
I knew I owed Ignacio an explanation. I also knew that it was over between us. The lie was shattering into tiny pieces all around me and with it my need for Ignacio. More cruelty? I had not known I had such a talent for it. The memory of how I had left him at the transitorio flashed through me. At least I had finally been able to explain what had really been going on to him. At least that had partially undone the insult, but this time . . . I wasn’t sure that I would be able to explain the end of our relationship. What made me so sure it was over? This was material I could not process now; the knowledge of it simply lay underneath everything else that was happening in my head. Ignacio was part of a journey that was coming to an end. But the journey wasn’t over yet.
I ordered a second gin and tonic and waited for Ignacio to join me. By the time he did I was on my third and, as he sat down opposite me, I stumbled into the long-dreaded yet unrehearsed monologue that had lain dormant in me for so long, falling upon words as if I had picked them up off the floor.
‘She was the only person in the world who was always there for me. We argued, of course, but we understood each other in an unspoken way which cannot exist between two people who meet after they are born. I don’t think anyone who has not had a twin brother or sister can ever understand what that means. She was part of me in the same way that my arm is part of me.
‘Have you ever watched baby twins when they first take an interest in what’s going on around them, when they start to react to faces and shapes and sounds? They don’t react to each other, they almost seem to ignore each other, and that’s because in a way they are one. You don’t react to the sound of your own tummy rumbling, do you? Because she was there, I never really needed other people in the same way as others do. I never learnt to trust or invest in relationships, because I didn’t need to. They were a pastime, a luxury.
‘And when she died, no one was adequate. I punished those who tried hardest for not being able to reach me, for not being able to understand, for trying to understand, and no one more than Johnny. I wouldn’t let him near me, I withdrew and clawed at the cage I had closed around myself, feeling a loneliness I had never known existed. Poor Johnny did everything he could, but I lashed back at him with a viciousness neither of us knew was inside me. I felt intensely claustrophobic. The cage felt concrete, and at night I drew blood from my own skin in my sleep.
‘One morning, alone, I knew I would go mad if I stayed. Argentina, the place where it had happened, lodged itself in my brain as the only way out. It was a decision made by something in me that I didn’t recognise. It was not a decision that I thought about or weighed in my own mind or discussed with anyone. It simply made itself. And I responded like a zombie, unquestioning. In forty-eight hours I booked a ticket, withdrew all the money I had in the bank and got on a plane to Buenos Aires. I left a garbled letter for Johnny and said goodbye to no one. I was sick again and again on the flight, and for the first few days I was utterly dazed.
‘The idea, which had taken shape in the fog, was to come here, to come to Iguazu, but I needed to find some kind of calm first. I didn’t trust myself. I knew I needed to achieve some kind of stability, even if it was only superficial, before I could make the trip. Ha! Look at me now! You see it’s taken me more than a year to get here.’
‘Have you had no contact with anyone at home?’
‘Home?’ I wondered briefly what it might have been like to have had a mother and father to turn to.
‘No, I have had no contact with anyone at “home”. I told Johnny in the letter that I would never forgive him if he tried to find me and that there was no use anyway, that it was over between us. I didn’t tell him I was coming to Argentina, but he guessed and he did make one attempt. He put an ad in the Buenos Aires Herald and let it run for eight weeks. It said “I will not follow you, but if you want me to come, if you want to speak, just call.” I didn’t. I created the likeness of a life which would give me the calm and the courage to come to the place where my sister was the last time I ever spoke to her.’
The memory hung in my head, the trite exchange which had played again and again in the moments and days and months that followed the news.
Hey, how are you doing? When do you get back?
11.55 Sunday, the BA flight to Gatwick. You’ll be there, won’t you?
I’ll be there.
OK, Tootlepips. I’ve got to go. There’s a seriously good-looking man, quite obviously chilling out after a very messy divorce, lying by the swimming pool.
Glad to hear this trip has changed you! Off you go then, I’ll see you Sunday.
– Till Sunday.
Click.
‘How did she die, Jenny?’
‘She was on the Austral flight from Iguazu to Buenos Aires, the one that crashed. I had a fit in a swimming pool in England and she died in a plane crash in Argentina.’
PART TWO
Chapter 30
Jenny was the extrovert. I was the coy one. Adjectives are dangerously powerful in the life of a twin. You are not described, you are defined – not merely ‘shy’, but ‘the shy one’. We grew up in labels.
I didn’t want to hide in the attic, but Jenny convinced me no one would think of looking for us there. And maybe no one would have done if Jenny hadn’t got so hungry she decided to creep into the kitchen in search of food and run straight into Nana’s apron strings. That was the way Jenny was; she never thought things through. She would have an idea, call it a plan and persuade me against my better judgement to take part.
Putting three live frogs in Mrs Grantham’s desk was one of her most inspired plans and it won us lasting popularity with form 3B. Frankly, I thought Mrs Grantham deserved everything she got, but it didn’t seem fair that I was always hauled in alongside Jenny as the source of the trouble. People gave us labels to separate us and treated us as inseparable in the same breath. This meant that a wooden spoon across the palm of the hand for Jenny normally meant a wooden spoon across the palm of the hand for me, too.
The day Mother caught us sniffing petrol was a bad one. We were in the garage, quietly enjoying a sniff or two from the petrol can that in those days people took in the back of the car on long journeys, when in walked Mother. The irony was she was as drunk as a skunk, but at eight years old the irony was lost on us, and what was most apparent was her anger. Swearing loudly at our father, which seemed a little unfair as we had never met him and he could hardly be held responsible for the petrol-smelling tendencies we had developed, she grabbed each of us unsteadily and dragged us into the house, where we were banished to our room without supper. A wooden spoon across the hand is one thing, but a night with no food is an altogether superior form of torture and one that caused even fiercer resentment in Jenny than it did in me.
‘I hate her, Pips. I hate her.’
‘But she’s our mum, you can’t hate a mum. Mrs Green says that children who hate their mothers are unnatural.’ I was always the more conformist of the two, the more eager to please and receive approval.
‘Mrs Green is unnatural. You shouldn’t listen to anything she says, Pips. She has a nose the size of an elephant’s willy.’ Jenny could always make me laugh.
* * *
Mother told us that life had treated her very badly, but it didn’t seem so bad to us. We lived in a solid three-bedroomed house with a large garden in Surrey, and we had a live-in Chilean nanny who had been with us for as long as either of us could remember. Mother worked at a lawyer’s firm, and the name of the father we never knew had been dirt forever.
The trouble with Mother was that she treated herself very badly. She had these binges, where she would drink neat vodka and get hysterical, and we would cower in the TV room with Nana, who told us stories in Spanish to distract us. Once, Mother burst into the room and told us she was going to send us to boarding school, becau
se she couldn’t bear to be reminded of our father any longer. After Nana had calmed her down, she took us upstairs and told us not to worry, that Mother loved us really and didn’t mean what she was saying – but she did in a way.
Then Mother met a man, and life slowly introduced us to a lesson that put frogs and petrol-sniffing firmly into the realms of childhood.
Chapter 31
There was something about Frank that made me feel uncomfortable. He was strong and charming and played games with us. He made Mother laugh and put his arm around her. He was kind to Nana and offered to do the dishes if he came round for dinner. The third time we met him, Jenny asked him if he was going to become our father. She thought he was wonderful. Mother even blushed, but I didn’t like his eyes.
I asked Nana if some people’s eyes were bad.
‘No, hija mía,’ she said gently. ‘Badness is inside people and you can’t always see it from the outside. You shouldn’t judge people by the way they look.’
‘She thinks Frank’s got bad eyes, don’t you, silly?’
I hadn’t said anything to Jenny about Frank’s eyes, but this was normal; she often knew what I was thinking. Nana used to laugh at us both and say that she despaired, it was like listening to conversations with bits missing, because we would respond aloud to each other’s thoughts and it wasn’t fair on a poor soul whose first language was Spanish.
‘Well, maybe he has got bad eyes.’
‘There is a witch who lives in the bottom of Frank’s eyes and in the dead of night she will come and get you, woo-oo-ooh!’ Jenny taunted, pouncing on me.
‘Shhh, the pair of you. Your mother is happier than she’s been for a long time. Let her be.’ Nana was so trusting.
At first he used to take Mother out and then leave after dropping her home. Then he started to stay the night on weekends. We weren’t used to having a man around the house at breakfast time, and the atmosphere was positively jolly. Frank would fry bacon and eggs in his dressing gown and Mother would gaze at him like a sick child. At night we heard strange cries coming from Mother’s bedroom. Jenny told me what they were.
Twin Truths Page 7
