Double Act

by Wilson, Jacqueline

  Oh yucky yucky yuck! What did you have to write that rubbish for? I just bunged a few bits down about robins and icicles and footsteps crunching, like the verses inside Christmas cards. That’s what they wanted, you idiot, not all your weirdo ramble.

  I’m sorry, Ruby.

  Yes, well, so you should be.

  Ruby . . . What if you get accepted for the scholarship and I don’t?

  We’re both going to get a scholarship.

  But what if we don’t? Would you go to Marnock Heights without me?

  I keep telling and telling you, we’re going together.

  Yes, and I keep asking and asking . . . if it’s just you that gets accepted, will you go?

  No. Yes. I don’t know.

  I think you should. Though it will be horrible without you. But I can’t stand it if I’m always going to be the one that holds you back.

  * * *

  Marnock Heights

  Gorselea

  Sussex

  29 May

  Dear Mr Barker

  I thoroughly enjoyed meeting you and your delightful daughters last week.

  Ruby is a charming child, so full of vim and vigour. No wonder she wants to be an actress. I am sure she will succeed in her ambitions one day. I’m afraid we can’t offer her a scholarship at Marnock Heights. She is obviously witty and intelligent and her conversation sparkles – though she tends to get rather carried away and bluffs when she’s uncertain! Her written work is lively if a little slapdash, but I’m afraid she failed several of our tests. If she could only apply herself more vigorously then I’m sure she could reach a far higher standard. I feel she’s relied on her sister to do all her work for so long that she’s failed to reach her full academic potential.

  Garnet too might benefit from a term of separation from her sister. She lets Ruby do all her talking for her, and therefore does not interview at all well. However, she came into her own in the written tests. She has a few gaps in her knowledge but on the whole she did very well. Her essay was outstanding – extremely sensitive and mature. We would like to offer her a full scholarship at Marnock Heights, commencing in the Autumn term.

  With best wishes

  Yours sincerely

  Headteacher

  * * *

  We’re not going to be held back, either of us. We’re going rushing forwards. To Marnock Heights.

  TWELVE

  WE COULDN’T BELIEVE it. We thought Miss Jeffreys had got us mixed up.

  ‘She means me,’ said Ruby. ‘She must mean me.’

  ‘Yes, it can’t be me,’ I said. ‘Ruby will have got the scholarship.’

  ‘No,’ said Dad. ‘It’s definitely Garnet.’

  ‘Let me see the letter!’ Ruby demanded.

  Dad didn’t want either of us to see it.

  ‘It’s addressed to me,’ he said. ‘And it’s plain what it says. There’s no mix up.’

  ‘She’s just got our names round the wrong way,’ Ruby insisted. ‘It’s always happening.’

  ‘Not this time,’ said Rose.

  ‘Look, it’s absolutely not fair if she’s read the letter too, when it’s got nothing to do with her. She’s not our mother,’ said Ruby.

  ‘No, but I’m your father, and I want you to calm down, Ruby, and we’ll talk all this over carefully.’

  ‘Not till you show me the letter!’

  ‘I’d show both the girls the letter,’ said Rose. ‘They’re not little kids. I think they should see what it says.’

  So Dad showed us.

  It was like a smack in the face.

  Not for me. For Ruby.

  I read quicker than she does. I watched her face while she was finishing the letter. I couldn’t bear it.

  ‘She’s written a whole load of rubbish,’ I said quickly. ‘She only met us for one afternoon and yet she thinks she knows us. Well she doesn’t, does she, Ruby?’

  Ruby was getting very red in the face. She screwed her eyes up. She looked as if she was trying hard not to cry. But Ruby never cries.

  ‘Ruby,’ I said, and I put my arm round her.

  She wriggled away as if my arm had turned into a snake.

  ‘Oh, Ruby,’ I said, and I was the one who started crying. ‘Look, I’m not going to go to Marnock Heights. I didn’t even want to go in the first place. It was you that wanted to, not me.’

  I was making it worse.

  ‘I think you should go, Garnet,’ said Rose. ‘You’ve done very well. We should all be busy congratulating you. I know it’s tough on Ruby, but—’

  ‘You don’t know anything,’ I shouted.

  I couldn’t stand it. I didn’t want them ganging up on my side. I was on Ruby’s side.

  ‘Hey, we’ll have less of that cheeky tone,’ said Dad. ‘Rose, love, could you make us all a cup of coffee? Let’s talk it over, eh? It’s been a bit of a shock for all of us. Ruby? Ruby, where are you going?’

  ‘There’s nothing to talk about,’ said Ruby. Her voice sounded awful. She was trying to make it sound couldn’t-care-less, but it kept catching in her throat. ‘Garnet’s got the scholarship. I haven’t. And that’s it.’

  ‘But I’m not going, Ruby! Please believe me. I promise I’m not going to go. I couldn’t stand going there. Especially without you.’

  ‘So why did you try ever so hard in all those silly tests and write all that yucky stuff for your essay?’ said Ruby.

  ‘I don’t know. I just didn’t think. Oh, Ruby, I’m sorry.’

  I tried to grab hold of her again but she wouldn’t let me.

  ‘You get away from me,’ she said, ducking.

  ‘Now this is getting ridiculous,’ said Dad. ‘Pull yourself together, Ruby. I’m ashamed of you. I know you’ve had a bit of a disappointment, but there’s no need to be nasty to poor old Garnet. Why can’t you be big enough to congratulate her? She didn’t act like this over that television audition, now did she? She was full of praise for you.’

  Dad was making it worse. I saw Ruby’s eyes, as she ducked. They were brimming over.

  ‘Oh, congratulations, clever goody-goody Garnet,’ Ruby gabbled, and then she rushed out the room.

  I tried to follow her, but Dad stopped me.

  ‘No, Garnet. Let her go. She won’t want you around for a bit, especially as she’s crying,’ he said. Perhaps he did understand a little bit after all. ‘But there’s no need for you to cry, sweetheart. Rose is right. You’ve done brilliantly and I’m very proud of you.’

  ‘I’m not going though,’ I wept.

  ‘Well. I can’t make you go. And this boarding school lark certainly wasn’t my idea. But I do think now that it’s a wonderful opportunity.’

  ‘I’ll say,’ said Rose, handing round the coffee. ‘You’ve got to go for it, Garnet.’

  ‘I can’t leave Ruby,’ I wailed.

  ‘But Ruby would leave you,’ said Rose.

  ‘That’s different,’ I said.

  ‘But it shouldn’t be different,’ said Dad, and he pulled me on to his lap. ‘This letter has made me see that maybe it’s bad for you and Ruby to be together all the time. You’re holding each other back, spoiling each other’s chances. You’re growing up now, and you need to develop as two separate sisters.’

  ‘But we’re not separate. We’re twins. We can’t do without each other.’

  ‘You’re going to have to learn to some day,’ said Dad. ‘You’ll both grow up and have different jobs and have different lifestyles and have different families.’

  ‘No, we’re going to stay together,’ I said.

  We’d got it all sorted out.

  We’d stick together when we were young

  and when we were old

  and when we were even older

  and if we ever wanted to get married then we’d marry twins

  and have twin babies

  and then when they grew up they could stick together for ever and maybe they’d have twins too and then they could . . .

  My head was buzzing with all
these twins. I wanted my own twin. I could hear her upstairs. She was sobbing.

  I don’t know what to do.

  It’s worse than when Ruby wasn’t talking to me.

  She’s talking now, but not properly. And she only talks when we’re with other people. When we’re together she hardly says anything. She won’t play any of our games. She won’t plan any twin-tricks so that we do things simultaneously.

  She doesn’t seem to want to be a twin any more.

  She won’t even dress like me now. She waits until she sees what I’m putting on and then she puts on something entirely different. And she does her hair in a new way too.

  I tried to copy her, so she changed it again.

  And so I changed too. And then she did something terrible. She got the scissors and I thought she was bluffing. And then I wasn’t sure.

  ‘Don’t!’ I said.

  But she did. She cut off all her hair.

  ‘Oh Ruby, what have you done?’ I said, looking at her poor head with the chopped hair sticking up like a scrubbing brush.

  ‘I’m making me different,’ she said, running her hand through the stubble. She swallowed and sniffed. ‘And you needn’t look like that. I like it. I wanted it this way for ages. It’s . . . sort of punk. Great.’

  I didn’t know what to do. We’ve always had long hair, right from when we were little. When Gran made us have plaits I would always do Ruby’s as well as my own. Sometimes when I was feeling sleepy I’d forget which was my head and which was hers.

  Now when I stared at Ruby I felt as if my own hair had been hacked off even though I could still feel the warm weight of it on my shoulders. It gave me the weirdest out-of-synch feeling, like when you watch a film and the people say things a fraction before their lips open.

  Ruby couldn’t grow her hair. So there was only one thing to do.

  ‘No you don’t!’ Ruby hissed, as I reached for the scissors. She snatched them away from me. ‘I’m warning you, Garnet. You cut off your hair and I’ll cut off your head!’

  She looked so fierce I felt I believed her.

  She looked like she hated me.

  She took the scissors and some newspaper and cut out a line of paper dolls. She cut them into twins. And then she chopped through their hands, so they were separate.

  She chopped so violently that they tore all the way up their arms.

  It’s me again. Ruby won’t write in the book any more. I don’t want to write much either. How can I give an account of us when we aren’t us any more.

  If only I could tear out all the pages about the school and the scholarship – scrub them out so that they never happened.

  Ruby’s acting like she wants to scrub me out altogether. It’s the holidays now, but she won’t go around with me. She just goes off by herself and when I try to follow her she runs away. She could always run faster than me. And she’s better at hiding. I don’t know where she goes or whether she joins up with anyone else. But she won’t join up with me.

  I asked her in bed at night if we could go back to being us if I wrote a letter to Miss Jeffreys saying I wasn’t going to Marnock Heights.

  I waited. The room was very dark but I could see her eyes open, watching me. She waited too.

  Then she said into the silence, ‘I don’t care if you go or not, Garnet. You do what you like. And I’ll do what I like. But we’re not us any more and we can’t ever be. We’ll still be split up even if we stay together.’

  But it’s not what I like. I don’t know what I like.

  I don’t want to go to Marnock Heights. Although I’ve been reading all these books. Not the twins ones. I feel sick whenever I see them. No, there’s a whole shelf of old school stories at the back of the shop – girls who go to schools in Abbeys and Chalets and Towers – and I’ve been reading one in the morning and one in the afternoon and sometimes one in the evening too and sometimes – just sometimes – it sounds as if it might be fun.

  Judy thinks so. She’s dead envious. She comes round to the shop sometimes. I’ve been to tea at her house. She’s got all these tapes and videos. You just have to sit and watch and listen. Or we go up to her bedroom and play games. Not our sort of games. Board games. And I do get a bit bored playing them. Judy’s OK but she’s a bit boring too.

  She says she’s seen Ruby going around with Jeremy Treadgold and his gang! Ruby with the Giant Blob??? I asked Ruby but she just rubbed the end of her nose, indicating that I should mind my own business.

  Ruby doesn’t want to be my business any more.

  She’s made herself different.

  She even looks different.

  People maybe wouldn’t even think we were twins now.

  Gran nearly did her nut when she came to stay for the weekend. This old man, Albert, drove her in his car. He’s her neighbour in her sheltered flats. He came and stayed too, which made it a bit of a squash. Gran said we should call him Uncle Albert, though he’s not our uncle.

  I looked at Ruby and she looked at me and just for a second it was almost like the old days.

  But these are new days and everything’s changing and Ruby’s changed most of all.

  ‘What EVER have you done to yourself, Ruby???’ Gran demanded. ‘What DO you look like? You’re such a scruff. Like a gutter child. And your HAIR! Oh my lord, have you got nits?’

  ‘Leave off, Gran,’ said Ruby, fidgeting and scowling.

  ‘For goodness sake, how could you let her run round like a ragamuffin?’ Gran said to Rose.

  Rose had tried to smarten Ruby up a bit for Gran’s visit. She’d washed all her best clothes and ironed them and she’d begged Ruby to let her try to neaten up her new hairstyle. Ruby refused. She wore her oldest dirtiest clothes and deliberately fished her old holey trainers out of the dustbin, even though Rose had bought her brand-new ones specially.

  But Rose didn’t say any of this.

  ‘Ruby likes to be comfy. And we think her hairstyle really suits her, don’t we, Ricky?’

  ‘Sure,’ said Dad, putting his arm round Rose.

  ‘Well, at least Garnet looks fairly presentable,’ Gran sniffed. ‘But what’s all this I hear about you being packed off to boarding school, Garnet? I don’t hold with that idea at all. What’s the matter, do they want to get rid of you?’

  ‘Of course we don’t want to get rid of her!’ said Dad. ‘We just think she should give it a try for a term, seeing as she’s got this scholarship. But if she hates it then of course she can come home whenever she wants.’

  But like I said, I still don’t know what I want. I’m starting to get nightmares about going to the school.

  And yet it’s horrid at home now that Ruby is a stranger instead of a sister. I’d secretly hoped that I could talk to Gran in secret and ask her if I could maybe go and live with her for a bit – but I’d forgotten how naggy and niggly she can be sometimes. And then there’s Albert who isn’t our uncle. He’s not part of our family but it looks as if he and Gran are a new family all of their own.

  Then there’s Dad and Rose. They have rows sometimes but they always make it up and when Rose tried ever so hard to cook a proper Sunday lunch for everyone, but somehow the beef got burnt and the Yorkshire pudding sulked and the potatoes wouldn’t roast and the beans went stringy and the gravy had lumps, Dad still ate up every scrap on his plate and said it was super and even asked for seconds.

  They’re a family too.

  I’m part of their family and Gran’s family and I used to have Mum as special family but even more than Mum there was always Ruby.

  Ruby-and-Garnet.

  Only now there’s just Ruby. And Garnet.

  Ruby?

  Ruby.

  Oh, Ruby.

  * * *

  THIRTEEN

  THIS IS MY written work. And I don’t give a toss if it’s slapdash. Who cares what that stupid jumped-up jelly-belly Jeffreys says?

  I wouldn’t want to go there anyway. Not now. I’m having heaps better fun here. I am.

  Any
way, I bet Garnet doesn’t have the bottle to go without me.

  Or if she does, I bet she gets terribly homesick and cries heaps and will be sent back a sodden wreck.

  She can’t manage without me. Even she knows that.

  But I’m doing just fine without her.

  This is my new notebook and I shall take heaps of notes. It says MEMORANDUM on the cover. I like the first two letters. ME ME ME ME ME ME ME ME ME ME ME ME ME ME ME ME ME ME.

  This notebook is going to be all about Me.

  I like being just me.

  I like it just me. Oh, I’ve put that bit before. Never mind. It makes it twice as true. I feel GREAT.

  I know what Memorandum means, too. I am quite intelligent actually, even if some people seem to think I’m a total thicko. Memorandum means notes of things to be remembered. And I want it officially down on paper that

  Ruby Barker doesn’t give two hoots about not getting that stupid scholarship.

  Ruby Barker doesn’t give two hoots that her sneaky sister is going instead of her.

  Ruby Barker doesn’t give two hoots about said sneaky sister.

  She is absolutely devastated (there, I’m the one who uses ever such posh long grown-up words, so it just goes to show that Miss Jeffreys is talking RUBBISH).