A Tale of Two Sisters

by Anna Maxted

  I just wondered what Barnaby’s parents would think.

  ‘They do!’

  ‘How do they . . . feel?’

  ‘Mother loves babies. I believe she’s very much looking forward to biting Baby Clyde’s bottom. At the risk of sounding too familiar. I have no doubt she’ll want to shake his hand and exchange pleasantries first. Father says he’s never changed a nappy in his life and he isn’t going to start now. Which is a lie. Mother says he’s changed approximately ten thousand nappies. He’s merely hoping to get away with it.’

  ‘Barnaby! I’m serious! Really. What do they think? Come on! I can hardly be what they expected for you. What they –’ I injected a little steel into my voice as, to my horror, I realised it was in danger of cracking – ‘hoped for you.’

  Barnaby placed the screwdriver on the floor, and smiled at me. ‘Cass,’ he said. ‘What my parents hoped for me is that I’d find a woman who’d make me happy.’

  I rolled my eyes. ‘Barnaby, you’ve been reeled in by parent propaganda. They all say that. But they want for you what makes them happy.’

  ‘Is that what your parents want for you? They seemed jolly friendly when I met them. Were they secretly disappointed that I was a gentile?’

  ‘Oh!’ I wanted to give him an honest answer. ‘I think,’ I said, ‘that there will be a few cousins who will mutter and disapprove. But the people who matter – Mummy and Daddy – I think they can see how much you . . .’

  ‘See how much I adore you?’ said Barnaby.

  I blushed. Nodded. ‘And that’s enough for them.’

  Barnaby beamed. ‘And so, why should my parents be any different?’

  ‘Because what with the horses, the nannies, the estate, the boarding school, they’ve been gearing you up, your entire life, for a grand society wedding to the daughter of an earl!’

  Barnaby curled over towards the floor, and shook, and – I would have jumped but – I got up slowly in a panic. ‘What’s wrong? Barnaby! Are you OK?’

  He uncurled, and I saw to my relief – and surprise – that he was laughing. ‘Cassie,’ he said, ‘you always get a few bad apples, but you can’t write off the whole cart! That would be ridiculous! Not to mention, offensive to a lot of decent people.’

  ‘You’re right. I’m sorry. My persecution complex. Down, boy!’

  ‘I think it’s time you met my parents.’

  My heart thumped. ‘Are you sure? But I have nothing to wear! I’ve only got these ghastly maternity trousers, and this top is stretched so tight it’s see-through. And I have nothing to take! They’ll expect jam from Harrods, a pashmina for the dog basket, won’t they?’

  Barnaby helped me stand up, and then he kissed me, long, slow, and sweet. ‘That didn’t help my giddiness at all,’ I said.

  ‘Come on,’ he murmured, ‘let’s go.’

  ‘Let’s go . . . after a bit.’

  ‘For the record,’ said Barnaby, as he drove us along the North Circ, a while later, ‘I approve of your delaying tactics.’

  ‘So how long is the journey?’ I said, as the car chugged through West Ealing – a neat suburban district of North London, green as well as grey, served by the usual suspects: Blockbuster, Woolworths, Sainsbury’s.

  ‘I forgot to bring food and water. We might need to stop for supplies. If I don’t eat for a few hours my blood sugar drops and I get light-headed. So, where is the family, er, seat, again? Cheshire? Hertfordshire? I can’t remember what you said.’

  ‘I didn’t,’ said Barnaby, pulling into a crazy-paved driveway. ‘Here we are! The family seat!’

  I sat in mine, and didn’t budge. We were looking at a sprawling semi, with whitewashed bricks and a green roof, a varnished wooden door, and the largest burglar alarm I’d ever seen. Barnaby’s car was squeezed in between a blue Ford Fiesta, parked at a rakish angle, and a grey Mercedes.

  All I could say was, ‘Is this a joke?’

  I was certain that we were trespassing on a stranger’s property and in three seconds, a madman was going to storm out of the house and bash in our windscreen with a cucumber.

  As I spoke, the front door opened, and out scurried a tall, slim woman with a honey-blonde bob. She wore black jeans, sling-backs, and a white open-necked blouse. She was followed by a man, slightly shorter than she, with a shock of grey hair and a shy smile. He was wearing hospital scrubs (not the mask though).

  ‘It’s not a joke,’ I breathed. And then, ‘Your dad’s a surgeon!’

  ‘No,’ Barnaby said. ‘He was in shoe shops. Now he repairs saxophones.’

  ‘Oh! But the scrubs . . . ?’

  ‘He says they’re jolly comfortable. He gets a friend in LA to send them over – they sell them in Costco for next to nothing.’

  ‘Hello, precious!’ said the woman to Barnaby, tapping gently on the glass with French manicured fingernails. She smiled at me. ‘Look at you, my dear! Well, it must be a boy – they say that girls take away your beauty!’

  ‘Hello, son!’ said the man. He peered into the car, and grinned at me. ‘And this must be Cassie, who we’ve heard so much about! Get the door, son! Where are your manners!’

  ‘Dad, Cassie; Cassie, Dad; Mother, Cassie; Cassie, Mother!’ said Barnaby. ‘Mother!’ he added. ‘You look lovely!’

  ‘Thank you, presh, and so do you!’ She darted a mischievous look at me. ‘Honestly, Cassie. He wasn’t like this when he left for Oxford. He was dropping his aitches then!’

  The next morning, I lay in bed eating buttered toast, thinking, this maternity leave’s a riot! when the phone rang, I picked up, sure it was Barnaby.

  ‘Hello?’ said a quiet voice. ‘May I speak to Cassandra, please?’

  ‘This is she,’ I said, trying to swallow the toast – suddenly a dry lump in my mouth. I struggled to sit upright.

  ‘Cassandra! You sound . . . so grown up! It’s Lucille. I’m Sarah Blatt’s elder sister. Thank you! Thank you so much for writing back to me. It meant so much to receive your letter – you have no idea. And such beautiful handwriting!’ There was a pause, and a small sniffle. ‘Excuse me. It sounds as if you have become a . . . most accomplished young woman. I’m so glad. I . . . can’t believe this moment is here at last. It’s incredible to be speaking to you. Did you like the photo of Sarah?’ She hesitated. ‘Or was it . . . too much?’

  I cradled the phone to my ear with both hands, and smiled into it. ‘It’s incredible to be speaking to you too,’ I said. I hauled myself out of bed, lumbered into my study, and pulled out the file marked ‘BABY’. I riffled through the papers, and out fell a small black-and-white photo of a young woman with a clip in her curly hair. She had a cheeky grin, and naughtiness in her eyes.

  ‘The photo of Sarah is lovely,’ I said. Now I looked at it properly, I decided that we had the same nose. Genes. Crazy.

  ‘I have so many more. I could send them, if you like.’

  I said, ‘You could. Or you could always bring them over.’

  I wasn’t a tactile person – not like Lizbet, who would hug a cat, a tree, anyone, anything – but Lucille was so very huggable. She was short and tubby, with hair like straw and a ruddy face. I, being the shape of a beach ball, was less huggable, so she hugged me from the side. When she finally released me, her face was streaked with tears. The white roses she’d bought me were also a little squashed.

  I could have cried, but I kept it bubbling under. There was great joy and great sadness. I squeezed her hand, and let it go.

  ‘Look at you,’ she said. ‘Just look at you.’ She shook her head.

  I was dizzy suddenly. ‘I have to sit down,’ I gasped.

  ‘Of course! I’m sorry! If you tell me where the kitchen is, I’ll get you some water. It was so good of you to invite me! I won’t stay long – well! I’d love to stay for a week – I’d sit in a corner and look at you and admire, I wouldn’t say a word! But that would be odd, wouldn’t it! I don’t want to overwhelm you! You must have so much to do! How long is it before Baby arrives?’
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  I giggled. ‘My due date is in two weeks,’ I said, and she clapped her hands like a small child. I liked Lucille – she seemed nicely nutty – and the relief swept over me like a cool breeze. The last thing I needed was another dull relative.

  Lucille fetched me a glass of water – I had to persuade her to get one for herself, as she didn’t want to ‘make work for a pregnant woman’.

  ‘I can stretch to putting two glasses in the dishwasher,’ I said.

  ‘Top or bottom stack?’

  ‘Top,’ I said, and she relented. Then we sat on two hard chairs (unless I remained ramrod straight I couldn’t breathe so I had to sit there like a ruler) and Lucille pulled a wad of photographs out of a tapestry bag.

  ‘This is another one of your mother, around the time she had you,’ said my aunt, and the words resounded in my ears as I stared at the young woman in the photo. She had me. I came out of her.

  Her hair was wavy, and mine was straight. Her eyes were blue, and mine were brown. But there was something in the shape of her face, and her cheekbones that was familiar. I held the photo, and I wanted to leap into it, and hug her. It was hard. It was hard to bear.

  ‘She’s so pretty,’ I said. It was all I could manage.

  Lucille was still, beside me. She didn’t move, but I could feel the warmth radiate from her. ‘Sarah would have loved this,’ she said.

  Lucille kept her promise, and stayed for exactly one hour. I was glad. I was so happy to meet her, but her scrutiny was so intense – I could sense her desire to inspect me, pick up strands of my hair in her fingertips, like an ape. I needed time, space, to breathe, and adjust. We had the rest of our lives to become close – and I felt we would.

  We hugged again, on the doorstep and, with both hands raised, she traced the line of my jaw without touching my skin.

  ‘My baby sister’s baby,’ she said. ‘Thank you, for coming back to us.’

  She ran to her car, her head bowed, so she didn’t notice Mummy, who marched past, one arm raised to remote lock the Tornado Red Beetle. Click-click!

  My heart constricted as I saw Mummy’s face. ‘Who was that?’ she said, and I knew she knew.

  It was strange, how life worked. All those years ago, when she and Geoffrey had announced I was adopted, I’d been coldly satisfied, planning my escape, my reinvention. And now, when I had the freedom to go, I found that I couldn’t leave. Lucille was wrong. I hadn’t come back – I hadn’t gone anywhere – both sides had come to me. There was a part of me that wished I could split in two, like an amoeba. Lucille, adoring as she was, hadn’t asked one question about my adoptive family. And I looked at Mummy and saw a blank lack of comprehension that strangers would seek me out, after all this time.

  ‘What does she want from you?’

  Mummy wasn’t interested in the semantics of emotion. She felt what she felt, and if she didn’t like it, it showed. She was like a feral cat, guarding her young. There was no tolerance or understanding of someone else’s claim.

  I smiled at her. ‘A relationship,’ I said. ‘Oh! And my firstborn.’

  Mummy didn’t smile back. She seemed to deflate. She handed me a bag from Baby Gap, in silence.

  ‘Mummy,’ I said, and I touched her shoulder, ‘you know, this isn’t instead of. It’s as well as.’

  I wanted to tell her of my recent discovery. That while the heart is a small, ugly misshapen organ, prone to spill with jealousy or rage, like any muscle it expands with use, and its capacity for love is curious and infinite. I didn’t, though. I knew it, and she knew I loved her. And that was enough.

  Lizbet

  Chapter 41

  The white lorry rumbled past, ‘CHILD DISTRIBUTION’ emblazoned on its side in black. I blinked, looked again, my heartbeat frantic. This was a new thing. Chilled distribution. Oh. It was refrigerated. Bloody hell. Who was I fooling? Cassie was right: I wanted to be a mother more than anything.

  Desire was blinding me – at the very least, it was making me hallucinate. I’d climb mountains, eat a bucketful of slugs, sell my soul – ask me! – I’d do anything to have a baby to hug.

  Cassie was also right in her assessment of Tim. He loved me. I loved him. I was just being a brat about it.

  The second I reached the office, I sat down and wrote to him. I told the editor I was composing the short story. Often, she’d skulk behind my computer – she was anxious, control-freaky, quite frankly a person who needed to be around cats, to maybe learn something about poise – but she left me alone that day. There was a crisis. We’d had three irate phone calls before ten thirty which – let me translate this into mainstream journalism – was like ten thousand readers ringing The Times to complain.

  Lily, our features editor, wasn’t paid much, and was bent on becoming an entrepreneur (entrepurrneur, as she called it. I’d been at the mag for two months, and the purr/miaow/tail gags showed no sign of wear). Her Bengal – Miss Aphrodite Leopardtail – had given Lily the idea of Purr Therapy. This was similar to music or dance therapy. Patients would come to Lily’s house, lie down in a big fancy cat basket, right up against the beautiful spotted belly of Miss Aphrodite – a gentle, maternal feline – and she would purr away their stress and troubles.

  Like any cat lover, I could vouch for the soothing properties of a deep crackling purr. What I couldn’t vouch for was the reaction of a cat to a succession of strange humans sticking their great heavy heads into her delicate stomach area. Despite the glorious puff piece we’d run the previous week, Miss Aphrodite Leopardtail had emerged as an unwilling – dare I say, unprofessional – therapist. Every single patient’s head had been furiously clawed with all four paws (Miss A. L.’s back legs kicking and pummelling the scalp), as if it were a large ball of catnip, or an oversize mouse.

  Tim’s letter was a lot harder than I’d imagined. I tried to think of it like a maths problem. Tim didn’t think that I loved him. I had to convince him that I did. He was a confident man – I must have done an awful lot of unravelling to make him doubt me. This letter would have to be the length of the Bible. I’d have to explain my behaviour over the miscarriage – how, when he said ‘I love you’, I couldn’t say ‘I love you’ back, because to love requires joy and every scrap of joy was gone out of me.

  I’d have to make him understand that I knew that my love for him was for ever, so I’d thought it could be put on hold while I devoted myself to being miserable. And that now, I realised how wrong I’d been. I needed him to know that my love for him was not conditional on having babies, but that I would like us to have a pop at conjuring up a few.

  I wasn’t sure if that last bit was love-letter language. In fact, I wasn’t sure about love-letter language at all. It was hard to stop it from sounding like an over-blown open letter in Chatter Weekly, where they got some poor woman to confess her dreadful life story – bankruptcy, murders, fraudsters masquerading as wealthy husbands, etc. – and the subs frillied-up the language until it was rancid with emotion and sure to squeeze a few sobs out of their readers, who only felt a tea break was worthwhile if they’d shed tears into their PG Tips, alongside the digestive crumbs.

  The exercise would have been easier had Tim had zero emotional radar, like our mother. The other day, out of nowhere, my sister had said to me, ‘Lizbet, do you think Mummy knows that I love her?’

  ‘Cass,’ I’d said, ‘it would never occur to Vivica that you wouldn’t.’

  I laboured over the keyboard for five hours. I waffled on about seeing Tim lying on the bed, eyes wide and blank, Sphinx purring in the crook of his arm – how it made me feel lousy. How I should have been the one to comfort Tim, but I’d left it to an animal. How I knew that feeling of being so lost and broken, that words of comfort are too much, all you can bear is to curl up with a creature that won’t judge you, doesn’t need anything from you. It was one up from a good book.

  I wanted to tell Tim that I knew all this. But I thought he would cringe.

  In the end, I deleted all of it (one thousand,
three hundred and seventy-nine words) except for one or two paragraphs.

  Tim, this is a love letter. I’d like to spell that out.

  I love you as I breathe the air. You have no idea how much I love you – and that is my fault. It isn’t easy, being in love, or showing it, or telling it, giving it, or receiving it.

  I’m so sorry that I made it worse for you.

  I think of you, and I wonder if you still lie on the bed and let the cat purr you to sleep. But this time, I want it to be me who makes it better. Please let me,

  Love,

  ‘Elizabeth!’

  I quickly pressed ‘close’ and the file shrank to a small rectangle on my screen, entitled ‘timstail.doc’. (The ‘tail’ bit was me covering my tracks. I didn’t need to be fired from Pussies Galore! as well as Ladz Mag. That might look bad to prospective employers.)

  The editor peered over my shoulder. ‘What’s that you’re working on?’

  ‘The short story.’

  ‘How’s it coming along? Can I take a look?’

  ‘Gah! No. No. It’s going well. It’s just going to be . . . short.’

  ‘A Manx tail!’

  ‘What? Yes!’

  ‘Fine. We’ll pad it out with a huge shot of . . . hm . . . I wonder . . .’

  ‘A cat?’

  ‘Great idea! It’s only going to be a page. The other page is –’ she sighed – ‘an apology and full retraction about the benefits of Purr Therapy to each of the twenty-seven named victims.’

  I made the appropriate noises, then bashed out a truly toe-curling short story: lonely woman has cat, cat keeps disappearing, turns out it’s playing away at a lonely man’s house (he eats a lot of fish), except it’s spraying his furniture, he rings up the number on its collar to complain, she comes round to collect cat and pay for the carpets to be cleaned, obviously they fall in love – despite the fact that his house stinks of fish and cat wee (subtext: love conquers all, even ammonia, so romantic!), they sell the cat, buy a shih-tzu. (The ending needed work.)