by Robin Byron
‘That’s all your aunt is to you then – an unfortunate coincidence?’
Jake sighed. ‘You’re picking out words. Look, I’m as upset about her decision as you are. For what it’s worth I think she’s wrong. Her life is still worth living – no question – and I don’t agree with what she is doing, but the only person who has any chance of making her change her mind is your father.’
‘I’ve tried. Dad says she might still change her mind, but if she doesn’t we have to respect her decision.’
‘Well then…’
‘Why don’t you speak to Dad – to him I’m just a child. He might listen more to you.’
‘Fine. I will if you want me to.’
‘Promise?’
‘Of course.’
‘Tomorrow?’
‘If you want.’
‘Sweet. Thank you – sorry for going on at you. It’s just that no one is arguing against her. Dad should be on his knees pleading with her not to do it. That’s what I would do. Can I get into your bath? I’m shit cold.’
‘Sure.’
Leah stripped off quickly and stepped into the opposite end of the bath from Jake, sinking slowly into the hot water and causing it to rise perilously close to the rim. Wrapping a towel over the taps, she lay back and stretched out her legs between Jake’s, letting her feet rest either side of his chest. ‘I got really cold feet coming here,’ she said.
Jake took one of her feet and began rubbing soap into it. ‘Better now?’
‘Mmm, good as, you can do that all day if you like.’
After a few minutes Leah said, ‘I haven’t done this since I used to bath with Emma. Did you bath with Fran?’
‘Of course, when we were young. I mean, being twins it was logical for our mother to bath us together.’
‘So, like, for how long did you go on bathing together?’
‘Probably till we were about eight or nine.’
‘What made you stop?’
‘Well, you get to a certain age…’
‘Yeah, but I just wondered, which one of you didn’t want to go on…’
‘Actually, I think it was our mother. She just said, “I think you’re getting a bit old to bath together,” and that was it.’
‘I’ve always wondered what it would be like to have a brother. I mean, did you fancy your sister?’
‘Come on…’
‘No, I mean, seriously – I know you’re not supposed to, and it’s, like, forbidden and all that, but when you hit puberty and there’s this cute girl living with you…’
‘You just don’t allow yourself to think like that.’
‘But if you did allow yourself – I mean, what you say suggests you actually did find her attractive, or is there some mechanism which makes a sibling repellent…?’
‘Leah!’
‘OK, sorry, forget it. I’m getting out. Let’s hurry to this pub of yours in case they run out of food. I’m starving.’
Fortunately, the pub had not run out of food when they arrived and the small bistro-style restaurant was busy with Saturday night diners. Jake cursed himself for not making a booking, but to his relief a table came free almost immediately and they took their seats and studied the menus.
As the meal progressed, Leah resumed her enquiries about Jake’s twin sister. ‘So, tell me more about Fran,’ she said. ‘Like, when you were kids.’
‘Well, as I’ve said, we were twins with no other siblings, so we did a lot together.’
‘What sort of things?’
‘Pretty much everything kids do. Play games, watch TV and movies, sometimes we would go swimming together, either at home or if we were on holiday.’
‘… and fight?’
‘Actually, not much.’
When Leah said nothing, Jake sipped from the glass of Côte du Rhone the waiter had just delivered and continued: ‘I think it was her courage that was her most striking feature; not just physical bravery, although she had plenty of that, but her readiness to say whatever she wanted regardless of the audience.’
‘Like what?’
‘I remember once at school; we were about eleven and were in the same class for maths. The teacher – a large, overweight man with a foul temper who was a natural bully – was picking on a boy who was hopeless at maths, mocking his answers until the boy was almost in tears. The rest of the class was largely complicit in what was happening. The boy was slightly odd-looking and far from popular. Then Fran stood up and said, “Excuse me, sir, I think you are being unfair to Simon. You know he finds maths very difficult. You need to explain the concept again rather than make fun of him for not following what you said.”’
‘What happened?’
‘Well, it’s hard to convey what an electrifying effect this had on the whole class. The teacher went a deep shade of purple and responded in a sarcastic way about not needing her help to run the class. But he stopped bullying the boy.’
Leah looked at him but said nothing.
‘Sometimes she would do this kind of thing at home,’ Jake continued. ‘Challenging our parents when she thought they were being illogical or hypocritical, as all parents are sometimes – and I must say, I found these occasions quite uncomfortable myself. I know that her directness would sometimes hurt them, but that’s the way she was.’
‘Sounds like a precocious brat to me.’
Jake flinched. He knew he was overprotective of Fran’s memory, but any criticism was always painful. It was one of the reasons he hated talking about her and he was irritated now that he had been drawn into this conversation. No one, he felt, had really understood her like he had. He remained silent, looking past Leah towards the entrance of the restaurant.
‘No,’ he said finally. ‘That’s quite wrong.’
‘I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have said that. I apologise.’
‘OK, but perhaps I’ve given you the wrong idea; she was actually very down to earth, clever without being brilliant, amusing and generous, but most of all she was fun to be with.’
‘What about when you were older, in your teens – did she have boyfriends?’
Jake hesitated. It was a question he had generally avoided thinking about as he didn’t know the answer. ‘Well, at thirteen we went away to separate schools so I didn’t see much of her during the term time, but we still got on very well in the holidays.’
‘Was she at a co-ed school?’
‘Yes, it was a boarding school, but co-ed.’
‘So she must have had boyfriends?’
‘Why does it interest you whether she had boyfriends? Maybe she did, but I don’t think anyone serious. She never brought any boys home.’
‘I guess she didn’t need to.’
‘Sorry?’
‘Forget it.’
Leah suddenly seemed aware that her persistent questioning about Fran had spoilt the atmosphere between them. Jake became taciturn, drinking more than usual. She tried to repair it with talk of Australia and amusing stories about her own childhood, but as the meal limped to its conclusion she was unable to re-kindle their usual warmth and sparkle.
Later that evening, as they got into bed together, Leah returned to the subject of Jake’s twin sister. ‘Tell me what happened to Fran,’ she said, ‘and then I promise I won’t ask you any more questions about her.’ Jake said nothing. He had wanted to tell Marianne earlier but she hadn’t been inclined to listen. Now here was someone who wanted to know. Suddenly it seemed to Jake that Leah was the perfect recipient for his long-awaited confession.
There were two versions of the story. One was the version he had told to everyone who had ever asked; the version his parents believed, the version he would have liked to have believed himself if he could have rid himself of the other version, la vérité vraie, as he thought of it – using the French phrase to wrap the concept up in hi
s mind and keep it hidden, even from himself.
He shut his eyes. For nearly ten years he had fought to supress the memories; now he relaxed his grip on the safety valve and up they came from the depths, like so many giant bubbles of gas bursting through a murky pond.
The sun is hot on his back as he lies on the grass watching his fishing line – nothing has bitten all day. He gazes down at the river washing past, tugging at a branch caught between two rocks. For a hundred metres below where he lies, the river cascades through rapids before flattening out again and rushing along a narrow valley. Opposite him, the river has bent around a sheer rock face where a deep natural pool has been formed, perfect for swimming. But he is bored with swimming. And he is bored with fishing. Without Fran, there is no fun. She is back at the house, unwilling that morning to cycle down to the river with him.
If they had the kayak, he thinks, they could shoot the rapids together as they have done in the past. He decides to call her. She answers, but she is not impressed by his suggestion. She wants to finish her book. He presses her. ‘Come, and bring the kayak,’ he urges. ‘It’s already on the roof.’
‘There’s only Auntie Manne here, stupid,’ she replies, ‘and she doesn’t drive in France, remember?’
‘You could drive.’
‘What, the old van? Are you crazy?’
‘Why not?’
‘Ah – let me see: haven’t passed my test, no licence, no insurance, only had three lessons in my life – and they were in an automatic – and the shitty old van has gears, if you remember. We’re in France, where, in case you hadn’t noticed, they drive on the other side of the road. Auntie Manne would probably stop me anyway and Granny would be furious if she found out. So, no real reasons, I guess.’
‘You’ve driven a car with gears – remember?’
‘Yes, a couple of times on the beach in Wales.’
But he doesn’t give up. He keeps on at her. ‘You could easily do it,’ he tells her. ‘Auntie Manne is usually having her snooze at this time. It’s a quiet little road – hardly any traffic – just the main road to cross over, which we do on our bicycles every day, then you are in the lane leading down to the river.’
‘I’m trying to finish my book,’ she says again, ‘and, frankly, I’d rather do that than come down to the river to entertain you.’
Why doesn’t he just give up? Let it go? Treat it as the joke it should always have been? But he doesn’t. To his everlasting shame he plays his trump card. ‘You’re scared to do it, aren’t you? I’d drive it if I was at the house. It’s not such a big deal. I’ll drive it back if you like.’
She says nothing. He continues his assault. Plays on her pride. The girl who is never afraid, who is defined by her fearlessness; who cannot resist a challenge.
She listens to him in silence. Then suddenly, switching into French and using that voice she sometimes uses which makes it hard to judge whether she is being serious or ironic, she says, ‘Mais oui, pourquoi pas?’ and immediately hangs up.
He believes she will come and he is happy; she was just being lazy, wanting to read her book. Such is his confidence in his twin sister that he foresees no danger in the enterprise. There is almost nothing that she cannot accomplish successfully. He waits impatiently, then decides he will cycle up the lane and perhaps meet her halfway. Maybe he will drive the van down the last part of the lane himself. He arrives at the crossroads and waits. The traffic is passing at speed, coming around the tight corner in the way it always does, which means you have to be quick and decisive when crossing – but they have done it many times before. Then he sees her: the blue Renault van with the kayak on its roof arriving at the crossroads. He gives her a wave which she acknowledges with a brief smile and a few fingers raised from the steering wheel. She waits for a lapse in the traffic.
Now the picture becomes jerky; a gap appears in the traffic, the Renault leaps forward at the same time as a white truck appears from around the corner. It shouldn’t matter. Fran will be well across by the time the truck reaches her. But to his horror he sees that the Renault is stationary in the middle of the main road. His brain calculates the distance and angles. There is room for the truck to go behind her. All will be well. But it isn’t. At the last minute, the truck swings across the road as if to pass in front of Fran, and at exactly that moment the Renault leaps forward for the second time.
There is noise, far too much noise, and he hears a scream he recognises – his own voice. He tries to move into the road but is forced to retreat as another car narrowly misses the tangled wreck of the Renault wedged underneath the overturned truck. Soon other cars have stopped and he is kneeling, looking into the space where Fran should be. What is left of her body is folded in on itself at impossible angles. Bone protrudes from where an arm should be, raw and bloody.
Later, he is there when they cut her out and lay her mangled body onto a stretcher. An airbag has protected her face: except for a trickle of dried blood from her nose, it appears undamaged. Her mouth is half open and the expression is one of mild surprise. Tubes are put into her body. An oxygen mask over her face. By some extraordinary miracle it seems she is still alive. A germ of hope begins to take hold but it is soon snuffed out. Someone tells him she is dead.
Lying on his back and gazing at the ceiling, but seeing only the memories parading before him, Jake told his story to Leah; without embellishment but unsparing of himself. ‘And you see,’ he said, ‘within the family, Marianne was blamed because she had been asked by Claire to “keep an eye on the twins”, which was ridiculous given our age – and hers. Several times I have tried to tell her this – tell her that it was all my fault – but she just won’t listen.
‘The point, though,’ and now Jake raised his voice. ‘The point is that I asked Fran to come. I summoned her; I provoked her into doing a foolish and illegal act, and what’s worse, I never told anyone – not my parents, not the French police, though they could have seen from her phone that I had called her a few minutes earlier – but then no one asked. You see, it was so much in her character to do something reckless that no one thought to blame me. And all the time I said nothing. I didn’t even tell anyone I had seen the crash. I said I had arrived after it had happened. I’ve lived with this ever since. I’ve known that if I hadn’t used those words – made that foolish suggestion, urged her to do it – she would still be alive today. By my own stupidity and selfishness, I killed the person I loved best in the world.’
For a while they both lay there in silence, Leah seeming unsure how to respond to the weight of his confession. Then she said, ‘It was an accident, Jake – you can’t go on blaming yourself.’
Jake sat up, pushing back the duvet. ‘Oh, but I can, Leah,’ he almost shouted, ‘and I do. Don’t you see? We are not talking wings of a butterfly here – this is direct cause and effect. She died because of me – because on a fine August afternoon in rural France, her stupid brother, in a moment of ennui, without much thought, asked his sister – urged her, dared her even, a girl who had never been afraid of anything in her life – dared her to drive down to the river; to drive a car she had never driven before in a foreign country when she barely knew the rudiments of how to drive at all – he sent her on this frolic to her death, to her final and everlasting oblivion. Because he was bored.’
Dammed up and contained for years, the sluice gate had now opened and the words poured from Jake as if he had been practising this speech for half a lifetime. Perhaps sensing the depth of his pain, Leah moved closer to him, nestling her head on his shoulder and running a hand down his chest. ‘I don’t blame you and nor would she. You have to let her go. It’s nearly ten years. She’s gone, Jake – you’ve got me now.’
Whether it was Leah’s touch – or her words – or something inside him which triggered the response, Jake couldn’t afterwards be sure, but without warning he turned towards Leah and rolled on top of her.
�
��Jake?’ she said.
He said nothing – pushing her legs apart with his knees.
‘Hang on…’
Ignoring her incipient protest, and without words or preliminaries he shoved at her clumsily and hard, entered her, and thrust forcefully until he reached his climax.
After he had rolled away, they both lay still for several minutes, before Leah whispered, ‘I feel as if I’ve just been raped.’
Jake said nothing. He was too confused by his own actions to know how to respond.
‘Jeez, Jake,’ she said, now sitting up in bed. ‘What the shit was all that about? Were you fucking me or your beloved sister? What’s with all this aggression? I don’t get it.’
Jake put his arms out and pulled her close to him. She allowed herself to be drawn towards him, though her body remained tense. Hugging her tightly, and pressing her face into his neck, he whispered, ‘I’m sorry. Christ, Leah, I’m so sorry.’
Part IV
’tis not so difficult to die.
29
It started in the way it always did, wriggling under the wire, sliding on the ice, the freezing water, the struggling boy, but this time she is the one being pulled down; there is water in her mouth, in her throat, she tries to cough but there is no air to breathe, only icy water in her windpipe and paralysis in her chest. With all her strength, she fights to get to the surface, she fights to get to the air, but it’s impossible, something is clinging to her legs, pulling her down.
Slowly at first, but with ever increasing speed, she is falling; no longer in the water she is plunging through the air – only there is still no air to breathe – her lungs are screaming but she cannot take a breath. She is hurtling down through a deep crevasse; the walls press closer and closer but never quite touch her body. On and on she falls into the dark abyss and she knows what is going to happen; she will reach the bottom and her body will shatter like an egg dropped from a great height – and what was once the perfect form of life will be no more than a dark stain on the earth floor, and then the world will come to an end. In one moment of terrifying finality it will all be as if it had never been. Unimaginable oblivion.
