by Louisa Young
But we’re not twins anyway.
No, Janie. I’ll be responsible for your death if you like but I won’t be responsible for your life. I couldn’t have known, and the reason I couldn’t is because you covered up and you lied to me, and to Mum and Dad, very efficiently and very effectively. I’m not making up with you now by accepting all the blame.
And there’s no other way to make up. I cried a little. And while I was about it I thought it would be a good time to admit that this was what Harry thought I had known about all along. I disgusted him, and he hated me, because he thought I condoned Janie’s prostitution, and so I cried some more to think how far he had fallen, and how hypocritical he had become, that eight years ago he had deserted me because I had told him that I was not my sister’s keeper, and now he was running boy to a crook.
FOURTEEN
Unsettling
On Monday I finished reading the book – a collection of western women’s writings about what used to be called the Orient, i.e. the Middle East. It was rather good, actually. Cooper rang four times, Eddie three and Harry twice. Is that the order in which they mind about me? Fear comes first, then lust, then anger?
On Tuesday the social worker came. I must say it was very prompt, once they got going. Neil said they don’t like to keep things hanging around, because they realize how unsettling it is. Unsettling seems to be a really useful concept in this world. I shall keep it up my sleeve at all times.
I haven’t been judged since my last exams, and that was only my knowledge of Etruscan social constructs and the various natures of pantheism. I didn’t like it then either.
She was a long, intense woman with curly dark hair so limp that it couldn’t get round to curling till it was down by her chin. Her eyes were buggy and water-filled, too big and too round and too pale. Her skin was waxy and her nose was sharp and I found it very hard that she was here to judge and report on whether Lily and I should be allowed to live together. Her name was Laetitia Bailey. Be nice to her, they have a lot of power.
Her manner wasn’t actually that bad. There was something slightly apologetic about it, which I liked. So you damn well should apologize, coming into my home to have opinions about me.
I tidied up before she came. The place needed it anyway … things have been slipping around here. But I did think about it. Would it mean I was being dishonest, trying to make myself look tidier and better-ordered than I am? Would it mean I was kowtowing, playing along, sucking up? Would it mean admitting, which comes very hard to me, that I give a damn what she thinks? Well, of course I care what she thinks, because she’s going to write it down and tell the judge. But I have never cared what people think. Most people anyway. But I like to know what they think, and on occasions influence what they think.
Anyway, I took Eddie’s flowers round to Brigid’s, because I thought they didn’t really set the right tone. I wouldn’t want her thinking I had men friends. Like in the Agatha Christies: unless the neighbours could say, ‘She was a very nice girl and had no men friends’, then your reputation is shot. Oh, dear, trying to salvage my reputation at my age. What if Ben turned up, miserable and threatening again? Or Eddie, back from Paris? I had no idea when he’d be back. Or Harry, indeed, but I think not. Next time I see Harry I shall probably be lounging naked, bound hand and foot, in Eddie’s Jacuzzi full of asses’ milk and Harry will be serving the champagne with a white cloth over his arm.
I wished I could meet her out somewhere. But then that’s not the point, is it? The place still smelt nice from the flowers, though.
I bought a spray thing of disinfectant and sprayed half of it down the sink so that it would look like I used it all the time. Then by the time I’d cleaned the bathroom and the kitchen floor and hoovered everywhere and wiped the window sills and the windows and plumped up the cushions and washed up and hung out the laundry, Lily hated me because I’d been paying her no attention except when I’d tried to brush her hair, and we both hated the social worker because she was ruining our lives. So then I said all right, let’s do some potato prints, and then I had to find an old potato print picture to stick on the wall because I didn’t want Laetitia thinking we were only doing it to impress her, and I couldn’t put up a new one because it would still be wet and she would notice the several layers of my double dealings.
In the end we got into the potato printing and were having a lovely time when she arrived, giggling away over what was meant to be a princess but looked more like an umbrella blown inside out. The kitchen was a mess again but it was a clean, constructive mess. Laetitia, when she entered, did not sniff at it. I, however, sniffed at her. ‘Be calm, be nice, be calm,’ I told myself. I hadn’t told Lily who she was or what she was there for. She didn’t seem bothered.
In the end, although I couldn’t stop thinking, ‘Please like my kitchen. If you like my kitchen perhaps I can keep my child,’ it was all right. She told me she hated this part of her job because it made her feel like an estate agent (I bet she said that to all the parents). I couldn’t tell half the time if she was doing small talk or intrusive questioning (‘What do you do for a living, then?’), but I suppose she asked nothing that I wouldn’t have wanted to know in her position. She told me she knew the school, and had spoken to Holly Brownlow who runs it. She told me she knew our doctor, and had spoken to her too. I didn’t ask her what they said and she could see me not asking. She just said, before she went: ‘You know better than anybody whether you’re doing a good job.’
*
That night Harry called round.
I couldn’t remember our last meeting, or what terms we were meant to be on. It was last Friday, when he’d driven me home from Eddie’s. And before that, it was the lunch I’d walked out of. So, no, we weren’t on good terms. Funny. So close below my mistrust and my despisal was a great bedrock of familiarity with him. I kicked it, and stubbed my toe. And this man thought that I’d known about Janie all along, and that I’d approved.
‘Hello,’ I said.
‘Hello,’ he said.
We waited.
‘I imagine we should talk,’ he said.
I imagined that, yes, we should, so I took him in and gave him a nice little shot of freezing vodka in a blue and gold Moroccan tea glass. He downed it in one.
‘I’m not going to bother you,’ he said, quite coldly, ‘and I know you’re a grown woman and make up your own mind and so on, but …’
Why do they keep making speeches at me? Is it the only way they can communicate?
‘I am asking you as a favour, if you ever had any respect for me or faith in me, remember that, and take my advice, just don’t get involved with him.’
‘You’re involved with him,’ I said flatly.
‘I’m not you.’
I laughed. ‘Even Lily doesn’t fall for that one.’
He lit a cigarette and the smoke curled around his face.
‘Please don’t smoke in here. It’s bad for her skin.’
He took a long drag, then looked around for an ashtray. I took the fag off him and drowned it under the tap and binned it. For a second my hand burned where it touched his and I drowned that too.
‘For her sake don’t be involved with him. And for your own. Please don’t be proud, please just listen.’
‘But you’re not telling me anything. You’re just saying he’s not a very nice man.’
‘And he’s not. Can’t that be enough for you? Don’t do it just to get at me, Angel, please …’
‘I’m not doing it just to get at you! Don’t flatter yourself! Why should I want to get at you?’ I seemed to have forgotten that I wasn’t doing it, period. So obviously I was pretending to do it, and for what other reason than to get at him? I pretended I hadn’t noticed. ‘And, please, stop making speeches and telling me what to do all the time.’
‘I don’t tell you what to do the whole time.’
‘Only because we’ve hardly seen each other – but now you’re here, what are you doing but once again te
lling me that I have to be good, and – actually – not do anything that you think is to do with sex and therefore that you disapprove of?’
‘That’s not what it’s about.’
‘Yes it is,’ I said, forgetting that I knew that it wasn’t. This was a fight I wanted to have anyway. ‘If you’re jealous of Eddie then you should say so and not come here full of secrets, and if you were jealous of all those men who watched me dancing you should have said so and not virtually accused me of being a stripper and a whore, and if you want me back you should just admit it to yourself.’
‘I never said you were a stripper.’
‘“Whichever way you shake it it’s the same damn thing.” I quote. You thought that what I did – my dancing, the thing I loved, because I loved it, for me – was just a sex game for men to get off on because you couldn’t see any further than your own damn male nose, you didn’t understand that some female things which men find sexy are not only there to be sexy for men. If we’re pretty we’re not just pretty for you! We’re just pretty! Our legs are for walking on, our tits are for feeding babies, we sit on our arses. But you think it’s all for you.’
‘No I don’t.’
‘You plural. Sorry. I don’t mean to load all the sins of all men on to you individually. But you thought my dancing was the same … the same school as being a whore. You did. You said so.’
‘I don’t know what to do about this,’ he said. ‘I just …’
‘You’re just still being blind, or you’re refusing to talk to me or refusing to tell me why you can’t or not admitting things.’
‘I want to,’ he said.
‘But you can’t, because you’d have to kill me,’ I said. ‘I know. I tell you what we can talk about. Let’s talk about Janie. That’s another thing that’s been sitting between us like a brick wall for the past ten years. Tell me about Janie. Come on. You know everything. You know best. Tell me about how my sister became a whore.’
‘Evangeline! Jesus Christ, after all this … the woman’s dead, can’t you leave it alone now?’
‘I’ve left it alone for years,’ I said. ‘Now I’d like to know some things. Like, when did it start?’
‘I don’t believe this,’ he said.
‘And how did it work? Where did she go? Who were her clients? You know, I bet you know. Tell me.’
‘What are you doing, testing me?’ he said. ‘I knew as little as possible about it, it was not exactly my idea of a good idea, and I’m damned if I’m going to dig it all up now.’
‘Not you digging,’ I said shortly.
‘Well, stop it. Just bloody stop it.’ He got up. ‘Talk to your bloody boyfriend if you’re so desperate to go on about it. And look after your kid properly. Why was that woman leaving her with me when she hardly knows me? I could have been anybody.’
That was cruel. Harry’s face lends itself to cruelty sometimes. I hated him.
‘Well, what were you doing here anyway?’
‘I’d come to see you. As people do. You know. Visit their friends.’
Brigid was knocking on the door.
I let her in. Birnam wood was in her arms.
‘Brought back your bouquet,’ she said. ‘Hello, Harry. They were making Caitlin sneeze.’
Harry looked at the flowers. He reached his long arm out to turn the card, and scarcely bothered to read it. With his other hand he picked up his cigarettes, and then he turned away.
‘I’m not losing my temper and I’m not giving up,’ he said. ‘But, please, Evangeline, if you have any sense stop this. Please.’ And he left.
The silence hung behind him for a moment.
‘Wow,’ said Brigid, impressed. ‘Jealous or what! What a lot of activity all of a sudden.’
‘It’s not like that,’ I said.
Then I sat her down and told her everything that had happened, from getting drunk with Neil to finding out about Janie, leaving nothing out. It took about an hour. I answered her questions and at the end felt both unburdened, and newly aware of exactly how large and complex a burden mine was. Brigid, however, got hold of completely the wrong end of the stick. Sometimes you wonder about people.
‘Well, he’s got your best interests at heart,’ she said.
‘What?’
‘He doesn’t want you walking out with a villain.’
‘Who?’
‘Harry.’
‘But Harry works for him!’
‘So he’s got higher hopes for you than for himself. That’s honourable.’
‘But he won’t tell me why I shouldn’t be seeing Eddie, will he?’
‘Does he know that you know the fellow’s a villain? I don’t believe he does. He doesn’t want you to know. Probably doesn’t want you to know that he’s a villain himself. He wants you to see him in a good light. I’d say you’ve a good chance there.’
‘What?’
‘With Harry.’
I stared at her.
‘Brigid! This isn’t marriage guidance! All I want is to get out of this obligation to Ben Cooper so that I can concentrate on getting rid of Jim’s claim on Lily. I’m being blackmailed!’
‘Well, best get him what he wants, then.’
‘You mean, go back to that pyromaniac lunatic and let him rape me in the hope that I might find something – but no one will tell me what – that will get Cooper off my back and stop him from telling Jim everything?’
‘Either that, or hang around a little until the situation changes. Things always change, you know. But I’d go back to Eddie if I were you. You’re much better at dealing with pyromaniac lunatics than you are at hanging around. Anyway, what’s a fuck?’
‘Brigid!’
‘Only joking,’ she said.
I asked her if I could nip round and look at Janie’s videos on her machine. I wasn’t going to be watching them, just seeing what was on them. It shouldn’t take long.
‘Go round there now,’ she offered. ‘Maireadh’s back at Reuben’s so there’s only Aisling and she’ll be studying. I’ll mind Lily.’
I didn’t need to tell her to make herself at home.
*
Aisling was reading up on horse nutrition in the sitting room. The children were all asleep. The whole flat seemed to breathe with them. I looked in on them: the boys sprawled in their super-hero pyjamas, skinny chests and cropped hair, freckles on their otherwise blue-Irish skin. It’s the only time you see them stationary. You could almost hear the hum of them recharging so they could spend the next day clinging like monkeys upside down from the door jamb, or being Ryan Giggs. Come to think of it, Michael seemed to be wearing a Manchester United away kit replica. ‘What’s wrong with QPR, Shepherd’s Bush Boy?’ I whispered in his ear. He shook his head as if I were a fly. It hasn’t been the same for anyone since Les Ferdinand went.
Aisling said she was going to have a bath anyway. I got her to set up the video for me before she went.
*
I put on the birthday tape first, winding back to the beginning. There were no credits, just the little three-quarter circle of a clock counting down to the start, then some fizzing and squiggling on the screen, then music. Arab music. Then a belly dancer appeared, cabaret-style, westernized, in a club I didn’t recognize. I didn’t know her. She wasn’t bad. A bit obvious, very cabaret. I fast forwarded.
Another dancer appeared. It was me. My first thought was that the date must be wrong, because I hadn’t been around then. My second was that I was better than the first girl. My third was that I didn’t recall the film being taken.
I tried to date it from my costume, my moves, how I looked. It was before I travelled, that was all I could make out. The setting could have been anywhere. Some restaurant. It was interesting to watch my face. I was clearly very happy, very calm. I missed that, that happy dancing calm.
When I finished dancing there was a little glitch on the tape, a sort of blip, giving the impression it was home-made and badly edited. Then there was another dancer. Bad, very cheap.
Then there were two dancers together doing some very tacky pseudo-lesbo stuff. I fast forwarded, and bent to my bag for a cigarette. I lit it, and clicked to play again. There were two girls in pathetic harem outfits, their tits out, rolling around on a couch together. One was Noor. The other girl’s face was hidden in her thighs, and Noor turned a sickly vamp grin to the camera, and licked her thin lips. She was lying back and wriggling her shoulders – half a dance move, half an attempt to convey paroxysms of lustful pleasure. She didn’t seem to know what she was doing.
I stopped the video and stared at her poor grin, and smoked.
The next section was a version of the dance of Salome, with almost gynaecological close-ups; the next was a girl in a burka – the beak-like mask of total hajib – masturbating in a bath. At least the shape of it was a burka; the sequins were more vaudeville. The next was a woman in a chador – the great black cape that entirely enfolds Iranian and Saudi women, scalp to toe. She didn’t look Iranian. Or Saudi. As she wriggled and postured her way out of it, it became apparent she was naked underneath, unless you count an electric vibrator.
I stopped the video and lit another cigarette. Presumably it was some tool of Janie’s trade. This is what prostitution involves, no doubt. No need to be surprised. Look! Janie lies and puts footage of me dancing in her pornographic compilation tapes. Janie doesn’t give a fuck! Janie has no respect for me; in fact, I’m the only person who thought there was anything other than titillation in my dancing, my joy, my pleasure, my work. I don’t want to get on a high horse about my dignity, but, Jesus! My lover and my sister. How marvellous to find out after ten years that no one was with you after all.
And poor pathetic Noor.
They’re both dead.
I shook myself from the miasma.
What I didn’t like was the trappings. All the fake Islamic stuff. Why do that with a chador and a burka? To thrill errant Muslims. And what else? To pander to that hypocrisy, to those men who still treat female entertainers as the direct descendants of the slaves and ghawazee of yesteryear, there to be exploited sexually. I’d met enough of those men, over the years. Muslims who felt that they had sanction from their religion. Christians with their Marys and Magdalenes. That’s what you get. If you’re free, you must be easy. If your feet are muddy, they assume you’ve been to the waterhole. Why should I imagine that just because I was different I should appear different? That anyone could tell the difference? That anyone was even looking? Even her?
