Parallel Life

by Ruth Hamilton

  Miriam shuffled some papers and tried not to smile. ‘Sit down, please.’

  ‘Have you nothing I can break?’

  ‘Not today, no. Would you like a jelly baby?’

  .Not unless it comes with a knuckleduster or a shotgun.’

  ‘All right.’ The doctor grinned. ‘I could buy seconds from the market and you could smash crocks later in the backyard.’ She shook the jar of sweets. ‘There are black ones. I always think black ones taste best, don’t you?’

  ‘I’m not racist, so I’m not bothered.’ Harrie chewed a nail instead. These visits were a waste of time. She had stuff to do. Waiting at the shop were two rings with suspect settings and some new stones to be sorted. ‘Ben’s at the dentist,’ she murmured. ‘This is his first time on his own, and he’ll be terrified.’

  ‘Where’s your mother?’

  ‘God knows. Or perhaps the devil does. She’s having dinner and bridge tonight with some of her cronies. She can’t play bridge for toffee.’

  ‘Try her on jelly babies.’

  Harrie flopped into the chair for clients. ‘You should see someone about your fixation with those sweets.’

  ‘Physician heal thyself?’

  ‘Exactly. Go on, I’ll have a yellow one.’

  While Harrie chewed, Miriam Goldberg hung on to her exasperation. ‘At eighteen,’ she began eventually, ‘your brother is old enough to cope with his own teeth.’ Why should this poor girl take all the flak? ‘And, if he can’t manage by himself, shouldn’t your mother go with him?’

  Harrie raised her shoulders. ‘I have no answer to that one.’

  The psychologist reined herself in. She was here as a professional to listen to Harrie, to help her externalize her feelings and cope with daily disaster. ‘How’s your grandmother?’

  The girl swallowed the remains of her sweet and smiled broadly. ‘Utterly and dreadfully wonderful. She got Sky Plus, so she’s happy. My grandmother is now self-crowned queen of UK Drama. She watches anything and everything, though I am slightly concerned regarding her new affiliation to the crime channels.’

  ‘And your parents?’

  Harrie sighed. ‘What good is this doing, Doc? What am I to say? I don’t know. I don’t know how they feel about anything. Dad seldom shows emotion, because he’s too busy trying to save the world from the little people. He says it will not be a neutron bomb, but a microbe that will see us all off. And as for Mother, after so much Botox, her face shows hardly any reaction, and she was never one for words.’

  Miriam shook her head slowly. The Compton-Milnes were round the twist, and Harrie was paying the price for all of them. ‘But she’s a jeweller – she has to talk to people.’

  The young client shook her head. ‘But not to me – never in depth. Anyway, don’t make the mistake of oversimplifying the dynamics within my family. It’s easy to say that my father is a boffin, my brother a genius, my mother a fool.’ She leaned forward. ‘Do you know how long it takes to make a diamond?’

  ‘A million years?’

  ‘And the rest.’ Harrie picked up a pencil and twisted it in her fingers. ‘To explain humanity would take the same period of evolution, and we don’t have time to start planting trees.’

  Miriam Goldberg frowned. ‘Harrie, what about you?’

  ‘Me?’ She leaned back in her chair and stared at the ceiling. She was a qualified jeweller and was carrying on in the business created by her grandfather after the collapse of the cotton industry. She could match stones, mend a watch and make platinum shine like an item stolen from clear night skies. ‘I’m just here,’ she concluded. ‘I’m just carrying on carrying on.’

  ‘Still taking the don’t-jump-off-the-roof pills?’

  ‘Of course.’

  Miriam shifted in her chair. This girl was stunning enough to be a fashion model, though she was no coat hanger. All curves were present and correct, so she wasn’t sufficiently skeletal for a life of cocaine and catwalks. She had brains enough to have passed with flying colours every exam on her list, yet she had chosen to sell fripperies in the bigger of the family’s two shops.

  ‘When are you going to start thinking about yourself, Harriet?’

  ‘Harrie.’

  ‘You are brilliant, talented and beautiful.’

  ‘Gee, thanks.’

  The therapist stood and walked to the window. She knew Harrie’s reasons for staying in Bolton, but they were as flawed as any impure diamond on a cutting bench. ‘There are carbon deposits in your arguments.’

  ‘Then I’ll never be set in eighteen carat.’

  ‘The flippancy hides a multitude of worries. When did you become a worrier?’

  ‘Can’t remember.’

  ‘It’s been always, hasn’t it?’

  Harrie indulged in a second jelly baby. She chewed thoughtfully, taking care to swallow before replying. ‘I can’t remember not being worried. Dad’s never been there, Mum’s always seemed an airhead, and no one ever took care of Ben. Woebetide has been the nearest thing to a parent since Gran lost the use of her legs.’

  Miriam turned. ‘Tell me about Woebetide.’

  Oh, God. Harrie thought about the woman who had slipped easily into the position of Gran’s carer. Woebetide was no oil painting. In fact, her exterior had frightened off a long line of Jehovah’s Witnesses and double-glazing salesmen, yet she had intelligence to spare and an accent that had defied thirty years of exile from her beloved Mayo. She was kind, noisy, firm and loving. With no children of her own, she had been nanny and housekeeper for the whole of Harrie’s lifetime.

  ‘How did she get her name?’

  Harrie laughed aloud. ‘She woe-betided everything. It was, “Woe betide anyone who breaks one of the new plates,” and, “Woe betide whoever took the cream off the top of me trifle,” – except, of course, she says “troifle”. The house has staircases, bedrooms, bathrooms and a Woebetide. She’s part of the scenery that comes to life occasionally. If the house were sold, she’d be included in fixtures.’

  ‘So she comes to “loife”?’

  ‘Yup.’

  ‘And you love her.’ This was not a question.

  ‘With all my heart. And Gran. She’s always been a marvellous woman. Even with MS, she never complained. I remember when she first found out she had it – she came home and said that she would soon be able to sit down and forget all about jewellery. Sometimes, when she thought no one was watching, she would shed a tear. But she’s brave and naughty. She’s exactly how we should all be in old age. She certainly rages against the dying of the light.’

  Miriam Goldberg smiled and returned to her seat. ‘Harrie, the tablets are helping, but only you can climb out of the pit.’

  ‘It’s not a pit; it’s a swamp. Quicksand.’

  ‘Suicidal?’

  ‘No. I’m not brave enough and not sufficiently cowardly.’

  Miriam sat down and placed clasped hands on her desk. ‘Stop being a martyr.’

  ‘I can’t leave him. Anyway, there’s always the Open University, though they do seem to offer a whole bundle of Mickey Mouse subjects. But Ben needs me. He’s the one who’ll do really well at university.’

  ‘No. I think Ben needs me.’

  ‘You’d never get through to him. He’s closed down.’

  ‘Like your parents?’

  Harrie nodded. ‘He works hard, never plays, talks only to me. At school, he keeps his head down and carries on with his work, gets bullied, comes home, fears doctors, dentists, fears most people. He has me and only me. And I am forbidden to discuss him.’

  ‘And you will dedicate the rest of your life to him?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  Miriam glanced at the wall clock. It was plain that Miss Harriet Compton-Milne had set herself in reinforced concrete. A clever and capable girl, she had denied herself the chance of a future because she dared not leave her brother in the care of his own parents. ‘They’d still take you at Oxford.’

  ‘I’m past it.’
/>   ‘At twenty-one?’

  Harrie shrugged. ‘I may go yet, I suppose. But it would have to be—’

  ‘It would have to be with Ben. You are your brother’s keeper.’

  No reply was forthcoming. No matter what, Harrie would keep the promise she had made to her brother. She was to tell ‘them’ nothing about him.

  ‘Well?’

  ‘No comment.’

  Miriam sighed and settled back into her chair. This was promising to be a waste of tremendous talent, but the girl was fixed into her own claw setting, and the person whose talons held her there was a beloved brother. Harrie was clearly bent on hiding all that cried to be released from her troubled mind. ‘You tell me nothing,’ grumbled the therapist.

  ‘It’s stopped raining. There’s a bit of information for you.’ Harrie rose to her feet and walked to the door. Turning, she delivered a beaming smile that almost failed to reach her eyes. ‘I’d try liquorice allsorts if I were you,’ she pronounced before leaving the room. ‘You might get somewhere with those.’

  ‘In truth, you are not ill,’ said Miriam. ‘You have a difficult life – and that’s different.’

  Ben was wet through because of the recent downpour. He watched his sister as she descended steps cut into a hilly part of Wigan Road during the building of several terraces of Edwardian houses. She was beautiful and clever, and he was holding her back.

  ‘You’ll catch your death,’ Harrie warned. ‘Get into the bloody car.’ She sat in the driving seat and hid her exasperation when he spread his own towel across the passenger side before climbing in. He was getting worse, and she was probably keeping pace with him. At three years of age, Harrie had fed Ben his bottle – under the watchful eye of Woebetide, of course. Even now, she remembered how he had stared at her, how he had chosen her as his sole ally before he could even sit up without cushions.

  ‘I didn’t go,’ he said now.

  She wasn’t going to ask for a reason, as she already knew the answers. It wasn’t the pain, wasn’t the smell of mouthwash or the whirr of a drill; he didn’t like to be touched by anyone. Life, for Ben, was about not making contact. ‘You’ll have to phone and apologize.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I can’t always be there, Ben.’ Terrified eyes. If she closed her own, she could still see fear burning in his; it had burnt for many years. But, as long as he could keep Harrie with him, he could manage within certain boundaries. Was he mentally ill, and were such diseases communicable? Had her poor little brother made her sick?

  ‘What did your shrink have to say for herself?’

  ‘Nothing much. Too interested in jelly babies and a calm atmosphere.’ She started the car. ‘What’s going to be done about you? If you can’t even get your teeth polished, what about uni?’

  Ben shrugged. ‘I’ll go to Manchester and come home each evening. You didn’t tell her about me, did you?’

  ‘Of course not.’ She turned a corner and headed for Chorley New Road. ‘University is about getting away and broadening your horizons. You’re expected to want to leave home. Leaving home is normal.’

  ‘I’m not normal.’

  Harrie dragged the car over to the pavement’s edge, braked and turned off the engine. It was the same circle all the time – look after Ben, see to the shop, do the books, visit Gran upstairs, look after Ben, keep an eye on Mum’s progress in the other shop, look after Ben, look after Ben . . .

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he whispered.

  ‘So am I.’ It wasn’t his fault that his mother hadn’t been well enough to want him. Gran had seen to him in the night, while Woebetide had covered days. All the time, he had cried out for his sister. He screamed when she went to school, when she left a room, when his cot was moved into a separate bedroom. He never played with other children, was reading fluently by the age of four, and kicked up a fuss when forced into school, when left behind during Harrie’s riding and dance lessons. ‘You do need help, Ben.’

  ‘Can’t let anyone in. You know that.’

  ‘At some stage in your life, you’re going to have to trust someone other than me and Woebetide.’

  ‘Gran’s OK,’ he muttered.

  ‘Gran’s moving towards a world of her own.’

  ‘Lucky Gran.’ Ben hugged his bag of books. ‘Get me home, please.’

  Home contained the strangest of Ben’s many symptoms.

  When Gran had invaded the roof, builders charged with the task of creating her suite of rooms were also bidden to do Ben’s wishes. Two of five bedrooms on the first floor had been converted into a bed-sitting room, a kitchen and a bathroom for him. His living quarters lay behind a proper front door with several locks and bolts. Inside, the place was pristine at all times. The only visitor was Harrie, and she seldom failed to comment on the fact that Ben would make an excellent housewife, while she, untidy and disorganized, declared herself to be a slob. She dropped on to his brown leather sofa. ‘I am knackered,’ she announced. ‘Put the kettle on.’

  Through the open doorway between living room and kitchen, Harrie watched her brother as he peeled back cling film from the hob of his cooker. He wiped the kettle before filling it, set it to boil and reached a tray from the top of his fridge-freezer. The cling film was a new development. He lined up two mugs on the tray, taken from a row of hooks beneath the cupboards. Every hanging item faced the same way, and all were graded according to size and colour. No one was allowed to use his personal cup. No one ever came, but even Harrie was not allowed to touch the stainless steel mug.

  In the living room, where Harrie sat, floor-to-ceiling shelves flanked the chimney breast. Books were kept in sections, each stretch labelled with a piece of laminated card. He had trouble with books, Harrie knew, because authors allowed their work to be published by untidy characters with a tendency to make changes in the dimensions of their wares. The desk held two computers, one a normal size, the other a laptop. Wire cages contained disks in an order understood only by their owner – Harrie would never dream of touching anything in there.

  A calendar on a wall served only to make the rest of the room bare and lifeless. He was a sad, sad boy. She cleared her throat. ‘The lavatory thing, Ben.’

  ‘What about it?’ he called from the small kitchen.

  ‘You can’t bike home from Manchester at lunchtime – you’ll have to use a public loo.’

  He came in with the tray. ‘I don’t need to go to every lecture. Anyway, Gran promised me a car if I passed my test, and I did.’

  Harrie snapped her mouth shut so suddenly that she imagined toothache. ‘What? You got in a car with a stranger? You went and did the theory without me to hold your hand?’

  He nodded.

  ‘You must be getting better.’

  ‘I must, indeed.’

  Ben was of the ‘milk second’ school. He poured tea, was dissatisfied with its colour, stirred the pot, poured again. When milk had been added, he passed a mug to Harrie. ‘There you go, sis.’

  ‘When did you do the test?’

  ‘Yesterday. It was a piece of cake. Would you like a scone?’

  She shook her head. ‘Then why not go to Oxford or London? It’s time to get away from here, you know.’

  ‘Manchester will do. I have to do things an inch at a time – you know that. It won’t be easy in Manchester, either, but at least I’ll have this bolt-hole.’

  She felt trapped, wondered when her own life might begin. Guilt moved in immediately, and a panic threatened. Miriam Goldberg had instructed her to go ‘happily’ into her panics, because they were proof that she was one of the truly alive. ‘We live among zombies,’ she had said. ‘Let that surge of adrenalin remind you that you are one of the few thinkers left.’

  Ben’s eyes were asking questions, so Harrie told him about the so-called ‘happy panics’ she was meant to enjoy. ‘The doc says that the world wears rose-tinted specs and sits at computers all the time. I wonder if the glasses will reduce damage from the screens?’

  He stoo
d up. ‘It’s all my fault,’ he began. ‘If I could—’

  ‘Neither of us was welcomed into the world,’ she reminded him. ‘Dad wanted a boy, a projection of himself, so he was satisfied when you were born. Not that he contributed to your development, of course. He and Mum scarcely speak, so we are bound to be odd.’

  ‘What is normal?’ Ben asked.

  ‘How the bloody hell should I know? I’m too busy having happy panics. Anyway, congrats on passing your test, old fruit. What sort of car will you have?’

  He smiled wryly. ‘A van type of car with a chemical lavatory in the back.’

  ‘You’re joking.’ But, as she left the room, Harrie wondered about that. It was just the sort of daft thing Ben might do.

  Gran sat riveted to her TV. Christopher Timothy was trapped in snow on the less gentle slopes of the Pennines, the Siberian side. With no fear of hypothermia, he and his television crew made unsteady progress across a whited-out Yorkshire moor. Knowing when to be quiet, Harrie sat and waited for credits to roll. During Gran’s favourite programmes, speech could be employed only if fire or war broke out.

  But Gran was the one who fractured the silence. ‘Have you been with that Jewish doctor again?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Are you sane?’

  Harrie laughed. ‘Definitely not.’

  The old woman laughed. ‘Good – I like a bit of company of my own sort. That’s not proper snow.’ She waved a hand at her thirty-two inch plasma screen. ‘It’s just white stuff. They blow it out of a machine.’

  Advertisements were helped along by Hermione’s running commentary. ‘Have you seen this one? They play make-yourself-at-home music, then show a household where one child’s mislaid her shoes and the other’s lost his scooter. In the middle of all that, the mother borrows thousands of pounds on the phone. What sort of a message is that?’ She then proceeded to berate a shampoo that stuck split ends together and some ghastly Australian females who sang the praises of a car insurance firm. ‘Nonsense,’ pronounced Hermione before turning off the set.