‘Don’t be an idiot.’
‘I’m not. Why do you say that? I was only …’
Mother rests her head in her hands for a moment before looking up.
‘Don’t you see, Eros? It’s that kind of short-sighted behaviour that’s landed us into trouble in the first place; just getting mortals together willy-nilly with no thought to whether there’s any true compatibility, any real chance of lasting love and respect. And before you say anything’ – Mother raises her hand – ‘I know that sometimes there’s a place for the short term-affair. I know that there have even been times when I have positively encouraged you to cause mischief with your arrows, but we can’t afford that kind of behaviour now. This time we have to get it right. Now, if you would be so kind as to fast-forward just a couple of years or so.’
When Rebecca was younger she did somersaults and cartwheels when people visited. Nowadays she was more subtle. This afternoon the Cadwells were coming for tea. Tom Cadwell was Laura’s friend. He couldn’t walk or talk either.
By the time the doorbell rang to let in Tom and his parents, Rebecca was already in position, perched in the drawing-room alcove engrossed in her book. It would look good, she thought, a mere child reading Voltaire. As it happened no one took any notice of her but by then she was enjoying the book so it didn’t really matter. That is, she had been enjoying it but then Dr Pangloss opened his big mouth and said, ‘“All is for the best in this, the best of all possible worlds.”’ She reread those words, as stricken as when Dennis, her grandfather, had admitted the truth about Father Christmas; in fact, she felt worse. Her father was dead, her mother’s heart was broken and her only sister, aged fourteen, was stuck in a wheelchair for the rest of her life, and this was the best there was?
‘All right, Rebecca?’ her mother asked as she passed with a plate of scones.
Rebecca opened her mouth to cry out, ‘No. No, I’m not all right. Just read this and tell me it isn’t true,’ but her mother had already moved on. No wonder, Rebecca thought, that she turned to her imaginary friend; he was the only one as interested in her as she was herself.
Bloody hell, Coco. What if it’s true. What if this really is the best there is? Laura would never get wings and be God’s special angel and Rebecca would not be rewarded for being such a good sister. Shit! And she gazed out of the window as dusk enveloped the high street and the buildings opposite. She didn’t like dusk. It made her sad even when there was nothing in particular to feel sad about. Usually she would turn away from the window and read a book but this book was no help at all. She decided not to carry on with it. She slipped down from her seat and went into her room picking out The House at Pooh Corner from her bookshelf.
‘Rebecca, where are you, Rebecca!’ It was her mother calling.
It made you wonder, Rebecca thought, being noticed when she wasn’t somewhere rather than when she was.
At breakfast the next morning she turned to her mother.
‘You could say we’ve been lucky with Laura.’
Her mother frowned at her piece of toast – a tiny buttered triangle with no crust, covered neatly from edge to edge in home-made marmalade – as if it had been speaking and not her youngest child.
Maybe her mother’s toast did have the gift of speech, Rebecca thought. It wouldn’t be altogether surprising. She herself quite liked the crust as long as it wasn’t burnt, and she actually preferred jam to bitter-orange marmalade, but still she coveted her mother’s toast. It always looked so especially delicious, as if it belonged to a whole different species from that which everyone else ate.
Her mother was still frowning although she was biting into her toast now. Rebecca tilted her head towards it, listening for its screams.
Toast always suffers in silence, Coco informed her. It’s one of the reasons it’s such a popular breakfast food.
‘What are you talking about, Rebecca?’ her grandmother asked.
Rebecca looked at her sister, whose perfect features were scrunched up in one of her involuntary grimaces.
‘Laura, I’m talking about Laura. I’m saying that we’re very lucky and all is for the best in this …’
Her mother had put the remaining piece of toast back on her plate and now her large blue eyes filled with tears.
Rebecca’s grandmother got to her feet and went across to her daughter-in-law, who was sobbing.
‘Let’s go and lie down, shall we?’ she said, leaving Rebecca to bathe in her grandfather’s disappointed gaze.
‘What did I say? I mean it’s Voltaire. You always say how Daddy loved Voltaire.’
‘Never mind, Rebecca.’ He too got to his feet. ‘Help Laura finish her breakfast, will you, there’s a good girl.’
‘Where are you going?’ Rebecca’s voice was shrill. She couldn’t bear to be excluded.
‘I’m taking the dog for a walk.’
They didn’t own a dog. This was her grandfather’s way of saying he needed to get away from them all for a while.
‘So much for a nice family breakfast,’ Rebecca said as he shut the dining-room door behind him.
She looked at Laura and as she looked she felt herself growing meaner.
‘Oh, so you’re still here?’ She stuck her tongue out.
She was sorry right away. None of this was Laura’s fault. Nothing was ever Laura’s fault. Her poor arms jerked and her withered legs kicked as she tried to conquer her disobedient features. Rebecca could see that she was trying to smile by the way her mouth lifted in one corner only to collapse then lift at the other in a lopsided grimace.
Rebecca, from a mixture of guilt and pity, got even crosser.
‘Oh give up, why don’t you. You can’t do it. You can’t do anything.’
Laura was trying to say something. There were times when she could make herself understood, at least to her family, but instead of trying to decipher the words Rebecca just sat there, arms crossed over her thin chest, enveloped in meanness as if it were a cloud of sulphur. Laura, in her effort to make herself understood, leant further and further in her chair until finally she toppled over on to the carpet. She lay there, silent. Laura never cried. Rebecca stared at her in horror then rushed up from her seat and across to Laura, pulling her back up, hugging her close and staying that way until her sister’s heartbeat had slowed into a steady rhythm.
Their mother returned to see her two girls hugging.
‘You’re a good kind girl, Rebecca, and I’m sorry I got upset with you.’ She put her hand on Rebecca’s shoulder briefly as she passed. ‘But I rely on you, you know, with everything …’ Her voice trailed off as she picked up the magazine she had been reading over breakfast and was gone once more.
Rebecca let go of Laura and stared at the closed door. Had her mother still been in the room she would have told her no, pleaded with her to believe that Rebecca was neither particularly kind nor sweet and nor could she always be relied upon. In the best possible world her mother would then have taken her in her arms and told her it was all right, she loved Rebecca anyway. But her mother wasn’t there so Rebecca said nothing at all, which was probably just as well. To her grandparents, who had lost their only son, and to her mother, who had lost the husband she adored and whose firstborn child was a broken doll that could never be mended, Rebecca was a comfort and a joy, that’s what they told her. It was an important job and today she had failed. If Rebecca was the light, Laura was their angel. On a bad day Rebecca thought that angels had it pretty easy. They didn’t have to do anything other than just be because it was all in their nature: that’s why they were angels.
That evening she sat in Laura’s room until her sister’s eyelids drooped and she fell asleep. They all loved watching Laura sleep because then her features relaxed, allowing the perfect beauty that was Laura’s face to show, and her lips moved in symmetry the way they never managed to when she was awake. Rebecca wondered what the dreams were that made her sister smile so sweetly. But Laura, of course, could not tell. Rebecca stayed and imagin
ed herself a dream-stealer. With steps as soft as night she would enter children’s rooms and hovering above their beds like a giant hummingbird she would steal the dreams right from their lips.
The door opened: it was their mother. She didn’t see Rebecca, who was seated on the floor away from the night light. She perched on the edge of the bed stroking Laura’s hair, humming softly. Rebecca didn’t have to see to know the look in her mother’s eyes. It was a look that said she wanted nothing but to wrap her oldest child in velvet and put her in her pocket so that she could carry her safely with her always.
That would be the look exactly, Rebecca thought, that her husband would have when gazing at her, his darling wife.
As I watch the poor kid I tell myself that if I ever have any myself, kids, that is, which doesn’t seem all that likely seeing as I’m stuck in this early-adolescensce phase for what seems like for ever, I’ll do something really radical and actually listen to them. Not pretend to while I’m thinking about something else. Not think I am because I am so convinced that I know best, but actually listen.
Mother waves her hand at the video player.
‘I’ve learnt all I need to from her childhood: please fast-forward to her teens.’
It was the summer they were all in love. Seeing that they were pupils at an all-girls’ school, finding objects for their ardour was a challenge but one that, being teenage girls, they were equal to. Caroline was in love with Amy’s brother, Andrew. Amy was in love with her cousin, John. Leonora was in love with Mr McCall, the new physics teacher. Matilda was in love with Adam Ant and Rebecca was in love with Jean-Luc Régnier, her French pen pal.
It was morning break and seated on the grass in the furthest playing field the girls were busy with their needles, scratching the initials of their beloveds on their wrists. Matilda was the bravest; she had done this before and within minutes tiny ruby beads rose to the surface of her skin to form the letter A. Leonora was dithering because she had just realised that she didn’t know Mr McCall’s first name.
‘Do an S, for sir,’ Rebecca suggested and was rewarded with a shove that sent her flat on to the grass.
‘Anyway,’ Leonora said, as Rebecca scrambled back into a sitting position, ‘at least I’ve met him.’
Amy looked at Rebecca, her eyes open wide in a show of astonishment.
‘You haven’t met Jean-Luc?’
‘Of course she hasn’t,’ Matilda said. ‘That would spoil all the fun.’
Mother asks me, ‘Did she ever meet that boy, the one from France?’
‘Dunno.’
‘Well, of course you don’t. I don’t know why I bother asking you anything. But I have to tell you that it’s exactly that attitude that will ensure that you remain a minor figure, and you have no one to blame but yourself.’
‘That’s so unfair …’
‘It’s perfectly fair, I’m afraid.’ Mother points to the remote. ‘I believe she got married very young, barely twenty, yes? Forward to the time leading up to her marriage. You must have had your reasons for bringing her together with Tim Lodge.’
I’m feeling just a tad uneasy. It’s all pretty hazy but I’m beginning to think that I’ve cocked up somewhere along the line; I’m just not sure when or how.
It was New Year’s Eve and the girls were getting ready in the second bathroom of Amy’s parents’ cottage in the country. Amy and her brother Andrew were giving a party, together with Lance Cooper, who lived next door.
‘Has he got a girlfriend?’
Amy lowered her mascara wand and turned to Rebecca.
‘Who?’
‘Lance.’
‘Do you like him?’
Rebecca shrugged.
Then she said, ‘Maybe.’ Then she blushed. ‘Actually, we kind of have a date for this evening. Do you think I’m his type?’
‘Sure. I mean he usually goes for blondes but you’re almost blonde, aren’t you?’
Rebecca was gazing into the mirror trying to decide whether to wear her hair up.
Now she sighed impatiently.
‘Laura’s the one with the amazing hair. You’ve seen it; all gold and ringlets.’
Rebecca’s hair, although thick and wavy, was that annoying in-between colour that was neither truly brunette nor quite fair enough to pass for blonde. Once, a couple of years back, she had said to her mother in a moment of despair that she wished she looked like Laura. Her mother had asked her if she wished she had been dealt the rest of the hand that Laura had been dealt as well.
‘But why could I not have her looks and my life? Why is it always one or the other? Why does everyone your age always seem so pleased when they can say you can’t have it both ways? I want it both ways. That’s going to be my aim in life, to have it both ways.’
So far, she thought, she had not got very far in her ambition.
‘Have you still got that bleach kit?’ She turned to Amy.
Amy disappeared into the bathroom, returning with a bottle and a pair of rubber gloves.
‘How long should I leave it in for?’
‘I’ve lost the instructions, but about half an hour should do it.’
‘Is your cousin coming?’
‘John?’
Rebecca nodded, almost dropping the towel wrapped around her head.
‘He’s supposed to be,’ Amy said, ‘if Aunt Violet lets him.’
‘If she lets him? How old is he?’
‘Do you know the difference between my Aunt Violet and a Rottweiler?’
‘No. What is the difference between your Aunt Violet and a Rottweiler?’
‘A Rottweiler eventually lets go.’
‘Do you still fancy him?’
‘When you see him you’ll get why I did, but he’s my cousin. It’d feel weird if anything actually happened. Pity, though. He’s gorgeous.’ Amy looked appraisingly at Rebecca. ‘You should have a go.’
‘I like Lance,’ Rebecca said, sounding prim.
The party was well under way when Rebecca finally arrived. Her hair had taken rather a long time to style as somehow the bleach had made it quite a lot wavier as well as drier; on the other hand it had turned really blonde. Standing in the doorway she gazed out across the vast room, peering through the cigarette smoke. Amy was by the drinks table with Matilda and Leonora, handing out cups of fizzy white-wine punch.
When she spotted Rebecca she said, ‘Wow!’
‘You really think it suits me?’
‘Yeah. Don’t you think it’s good, Matty?
Matilda nodded.
‘You know, you actually look a little like the blonde one in ABBA, but curly.’
‘Lance will love it,’ Amy said.
‘Where is he?’
‘I don’t know. I haven’t seen him for a while, actually.’
There was still no sign of him when Robert came up to her and asked her to dance. She nodded and downed her drink. She danced as if Lance was watching her. He wasn’t. After three tracks she excused herself and went back to the trestle table, pulling out a bottle of Bacardi from beneath the long tablecloth and tipping some of it into her glass of punch. She downed the drink as she pushed her way through the throng.
‘There you are,’ Matilda said, barring her way. ‘You’re pissed.’
Rebecca shrugged.
‘Have you seen Lance?’
‘You still haven’t found him?’
Rebecca shook her head.
Matilda looked at her friend’s shiny bright eyes and flushed cheeks.
‘You sit down,’ she said, pointing at one of the bales of hay left behind as seats. ‘I’ll go and find him.’
Rebecca grabbed Matilda’s arm.
‘Don’t tell him I asked you to.’
She waited a full ten minutes and finally Matilda returned. Rebecca knew from the look on her face, pity mixed with the tiniest bit of excitement, that the news would be bad.
‘Bastard.’ Matilda sat down next to Rebecca and picked out two Marlboros from the packet in her pock
et. She lit them both and handed one to Rebecca. ‘Bastard,’ she said again.
‘Why?’ The word came out in a squeak.
‘He’s with that slag, Julie.’
‘With Julie? What are they doing?’
Matilda gave her a pitying look.
‘Oh.’ It was a long oh, said in a small voice.
They each inhaled deep on their cigarettes.
‘Oh,’ Rebecca exhaled. She got to her feet.
‘Now where are you going?’
‘Out,’ Rebecca said and weaved her way across the dance floor towards the exit, pushing through the gyrating, stomping, hip-swinging, hand-waving crowd, grabbing her coat and her red woolly hat from the seat where she had left them. She pulled on the hat but dropped her coat to the floor as she spotted Lance locked in an embrace with Julie FitzGerald.
Her feet thumped the frosty ground and she got into a rhythm, her breath creating little cloudbursts. She kept on running as the track turned into a road. She turned a corner and ran straight into the headlights of an oncoming car. There was a screech of tyres as it slid to a halt no more than a foot away from her. She stood where she was, half blinded still by the lights. The driver was young, her own age or there-abouts, fair-haired, white-faced. That was all she saw.
The headlights dimmed and the door opened.
‘Are you OK?’
Rebecca didn’t reply. The shock had sobered her enough to know exactly how stupid she had been; she did not intend to hang around to be told as much. Instead she turned and headed back to where she had come from, slip-sliding down the bank and on to the farm track, hurrying off into the night.
‘Are you OK?’ the boy called again.
The church bells started to chime midnight.
Without looking back or stopping she raised two fingers to the starry sky and yelled, ‘And a Happy fucking New Year to you too!’
The next morning she woke with a headache and a …
‘Stop! Stop the tape right there,’ Mother orders. I do what I’m told. ‘Rewind,’ she says. ‘No, stop. What’s that, in the top left-hand corner?’ We both stare. ‘Goodness, Eros, it’s you. What are you doing there? Forward. No stop. You’re shooting! You’ve shot the girl Rebecca … forward … and she stumbles and then the car … you shot the boy as he was driving. So that’s it: their eyes never meet. Oh for heaven’s sake, Eros, what were you thinking of? Who is the boy? Had I asked you to shoot him or was this one of your own harebrained little schemes?’
Aphrodite's Workshop for Reluctant Lovers Page 7
