Toni pulled some unexpected knowledge out of whatever place she kept it in.
“Are you having a baby then, Gran?”
Gran smiled in a kind of tight way.
“No I’m not. Nothing you’d understand. I’ll probably come out feet first.”
Toni turned to Sophy with her usual air of speaking from a height.
“She means she’s going to die.”
After that Gran did a bit of packing for them which seemed mostly to be flinging things about. She seemed very angry, which Sophy thought unfair. Later when they were in bed and Toni in that sleep where she seemed not to breathe at all, Sophy lay thinking, until it was so late it was quite, quite dark. The hospital and Gran and dying, made the darkness shivery. She examined, despite herself, the whole process of dying as far as she knew about it. Oh indeed, it was shivery—but exciting! She flung herself round in bed and spoke out loud.
“I shan’t die!”
The words sounded loud, as if someone else had said them. They sent her down under the bedclothes again. It was down there that she found herself, as it were, forced to think of the place, the bungalow, as if it were now all part of this new thing, Gran’s dying—Gran’s bedroom where the bed seemed almost too big for the floor, the huge furniture crammed into the little rooms as if a great house had been contracted; the huge, dark, sideboard with carved squiggles and the cupboards you were not to open as in Bluebeard, the present darkness, that was like some creature sitting in each room; and Gran herself, made mysterious, no, dreadful, by coming out of hospital, monstrously feet first. It was at that very point that Sophy made her discovery. The mystery of things and Gran coming out feet first drove Sophy in on every side into herself. She understood something about the world. It extended out of her head in every direction but one; and that one was secure because it was her own, it was the direction through the back of her head, there, which was dark like this night, but her own dark. She knew that she stood or lay at the extreme end of this dark direction as if she were sitting at the mouth of a tunnel and looking out into the world whether it was dusk or dark or daylight. When she understood that the tunnel was there at the back of her head she felt a strange kind of shiver that shot through her body and made her want to escape from it into daylight and be like everybody else; but there was no daylight. She invented the daylight, there and then, and filled it with people who had no tunnel at the back of their heads, gay, cheerful, ignorant people; and presently she must have fallen asleep because Gran was calling them to wake up. At breakfast in the kitchen Gran was very cheerful and said they mustn’t pay too much attention to what she said, everything would be all right probably and nowadays they could do wonders. Sophy heard all this and the long chat that followed without listening to it, she was so interested to see Gran, couldn’t take her eyes off her because of this enormity, Gran was going to die. What made everything odder was that Gran didn’t understand. She was trying to cheer them up as if they were going to die which was silly and to be dismissed in view of the plainly visible outline that now surrounded Gran, cutting her off from the rest of the world in her movement towards coming out of the hospital feet first. However, there was more of interest to be extracted and Sophy waited impatiently for all the things Gran was saying to cheer them up and as soon as there was a pause in the long explanation of however much they loved her they were young and would find other people which was what she had been meaning to tell them—in the subsequent drawing of Gran’s breath, Sophy managed to get out her question.
“Gran, where are you going to be buried?”
Gran dropped a plate and burst into some quite extraordinary laughter which turned into other noises and then she positively rushed out and slammed the door of her bedroom. The twins were left at the kitchen table not knowing what to do, so they went on eating, but in respectful silence. Later Gran came out of her bedroom, kind and sunny. She hoped they wouldn’t be too sorry for their poor old Gran and would remember the good times and what fun they had had all three together. Sophy considered that they had had no fun at all, all three of them and that Gran could snap if you got your shoes too dirty but she was beginning to learn what not to say. So she watched Gran who still had that curious outline round her, watched with solemn eyes over her mug while Gran talked sunnily. They were going to be very happy when they went back to Daddy because a new lady would be looking after them. Gran called her an au pair.
Toni asked the next question.
“Is she nice?”
“Oh yes,” said Gran, in the voice that meant the opposite of what she was saying, “she’s very nice. Your Daddy would see to that, wouldn’t he?”
Sophy was not concerned to think about the new auntie because of the outline round Gran. Toni went on asking questions and Sophy was left to her own thoughts and observations. There was nothing particular about Gran (except the outline) to show that she was going to die so Sophy altered things round a bit to consider what the result would be. It was with disappointment and a little indignation that she saw how Gran’s dying might very well cut her off from the buttery meadow and the dabchicks and little Phil and the pillar-box. She very nearly put this point to Gran, but thought better of it. And there—Toni must have said something! Gran was off again, the bedroom door slamming. The twins said nothing but sat; and then, simultaneously they caught each other’s eyes and burst into a fit of the giggles. It was one of those rare moments when they really were everything to each other and enjoyed it.
Gran came out later, not so sunny, put their luggage together and drove them to the station in complete silence. This move towards home deflected Sophy into a consideration of the future. She asked a question which carefully avoided any point of contact with Gran and Gran’s future.
“Shall we like her?”
Gran understood that one.
“I’m sure you will.”
Then after a while and two traffic lights she spoke again in that voice which always meant the opposite of what it said.
“And I’m sure she’ll be devoted to the two of you.”
When they got back to Greenfield they found that the “au pair” was their third auntie. She appeared to have come out of the room across the landing like the other two, as if that bedroom produced aunties like butterflies in warm weather. This third one was certainly more like a butterfly than the other ones had been. She had yellow hair, she smelt like a ladies’ hairdressers’ and she spent a long time each day putting things on her face. She had a way of speaking that was unlike anything the twins could hear, either in the house, or down in Dorset, or in the street from white, yellow, brown or black faces. She informed the twins that she came from Sydney. Sophy thought at first that Sydney was a person and that caused some confusion. However, the au pair, Auntie Winnie as she was called, was cheerful and quick once she was satisfied with her face. She whistled and sang a lot and smoked a lot and though she made so much noise she did not irritate Daddy in the slightest. When she wasn’t making a noise herself, her transistor radio did it for her. Everywhere that Winnie went the transistor was sure to go. By listening to the transistor you could tell where Winnie was. When Sophy understood that Sydney was a big city on the other side of the world, she was encouraged to question Winnie.
“Isn’t New Zealand on the other side of the world too?”
“’Spose so, dearie. Never thought of it like that.”
“An auntie a long time ago. Our first auntie she was. Well she said Mummy was gone to God. Then Daddy said she’d gone to live with a man in New Zealand.”
Winnie screamed with laughter.
“Well, it’s the same kind of thing me old sweetheart, innit?”
Winnie changed things a lot. The stables down at the end of the garden path were now officially the twin’s own house. Winnie persuaded them that they were proud and lucky to have a house of their own; and they were young enough to believe her for a time. Then later, of course, when they got used to it, there was no need to change anything. Dadd
y was particularly pleased and pointed out to them that they would no longer be annoyed by the sound of his typewriter. Sophy, who had sometimes been lulled to sleep by the secure sound of the typewriter, saw this as just another indication of what Daddy (Daddy out there, through there, along there, Daddy at a distance) of what Daddy really was. But she said nothing.
Winnie took them to the sea. This was going to be a great thing but it went all wrong. They were on sand among a huge crowd of people, most of them in deck-chairs with children scattered between. The sun wasn’t shining and it sprinkled rain now and then. But what went wrong was the sea itself, and it went wrong even for the grown-ups. The twins were inspecting a rippled inch or two at the very edge of the water when there were shouts and people started to run away up the beach. The sea had a line of foam on it which came near and turned into a green hollow of water and this fell on them and there was a time of screaming and choking and Winnie wading with them both under her arms, then leaning forward and straining while the water tore at them and tried to take them away. So they all three went home at once. Winnie was so angry and they were all shivering and the transistor had stopped working and Winnie seemed quite different without it. The first thing she did when they were home again and dry was to take the transistor to be mended. But the wave—and no one could explain it, not even grown-ups, though they talked on the telly about it—the wave had a nasty habit of returning when you were asleep. Toni seemed unaffected by it but Sophy suffered. She woke several times to hear herself screaming. It was odd about Toni, though. Just once, when the two of them were squatting in front of the telly and watching a fun thing about all the various adventures you could get up to, as for example, hang gliding, there were included some shots of people surf-riding in the Pacific. At one moment the screen was full of a wave approaching, and the camera zoomed right up, right in, so you were right inside the immense green hollow. Sophy felt a terrible pang in her stomach and a fear of everything and she shut her eyes to keep out the sight though she could still hear the wave, or some wave, or other, roaring and roaring. When the telly said now how about a change from water to air and she knew it would show pictures of parachutes she opened her eyes again to find that her untwinlike twin, Toni of the bleached hair and indifference to everything, had fainted clean away.
After that, for a long time, weeks and weeks, Toni was more often than not up in the air in her private forest or whatever it was. Once, when Sophy mentioned the wave (it being absent) to give herself an agreeable shiver there was a long silence before Toni answered.
“What wave?”
Winnie’s transistor came back from the shop and went everywhere with her again. Once more you might hear a tiny orchestra playing in the kitchen or a man’s voice coming down the garden path at knee height. When the twins were taken up the High Street past the new mosque to the school and introduced to the milling children, the small man’s voice went with them and left them there holding each other’s hands as if they liked each other. Winnie fetched them after school which made some of the children laugh. Some of them were men, almost, at least, some of the black ones were.
Winnie lasted much longer than the other aunties, seeing how different she was from Daddy. She moved into his bedroom, transistor and all. Sophy disliked this but could not really tell why. Winnie arranged that the twins could use the old green door from the stables onto the towpath. She said to Daddy that they had to get used to the water.
This meant that for a time that summer and autumn the twins explored the towpath, from the Old Bridge with its tablet saying that someone had built it—though not perhaps with the stinky-poo urinal on the top—all the way, oh a mile or two perhaps by a path narrowed between brambles and loosestrife and stands of reed, all the way to the other bridge right out in the country. There was a wide pool by that bridge with a decaying barge in it, a boat much older than the line of motor boats and rowing boats and converted (but decaying) thises and thats across the canal from the green door. Once they even went so far they climbed up a track on the other side of the canal, up and up along a deep groove with trees hanging over on either side, up and up till they came out on the very ridge of the downs and could see the canal and Greenfield on one side and a valley full of trees on the other. They were late home that time but nobody noticed. Nobody ever noticed and sometimes Sophy wished they would. But then Sophy knew in a direct sort of way that Winnie had pushed them down the garden path into the stables—and very comfortable they were, what lucky children!—simply in order to get them out of the way and as far as possible from Daddy. They could do what they liked in the stables, dressing up from among the ancient trunks that seemed to hold the spillage of all history, the Stanhope family from way back, curling irons and hoops, dresses, shifts, materials, unbelievably a wig, faintly scented and with a trace of white powder lingering in it, shoes, and they lugged all this around and tried most of it on. Only they were not allowed to have other children in without permission. By the time the business of the wave had settled down a bit and sunk away into the place where occasional nightmares came from, Sophy began to think that she and Toni were being forced to be everything to each other again. She thought this so clearly one day that she tried pulling Toni’s hair to prove that they weren’t. But by now Toni had evolved her own way of fighting, flailing wildly with thin arms and legs and all the time looking nowhere with her big brown eyes, that it seemed she had escaped and left her thin and lengthening body behind her to inflict whatever it could of random injury and pain. Sophy began to find fighting unsatisfactory. Of course, at the school there were such tough children, men almost, it was best to keep out of that sort of trouble and leave the centre of the playground to them. So they played in the stables, parallel, so to speak, or walked primly in the High Street, conscious of difference among the black and yellow and brown, or went for quite wild walks along the towpath between the canal and the woods. They found a way of getting on the old barge, which was very long inside and had cupboards. It had an old sort of lavatory in a cupboard right up at the front end, so old it was no longer stinky-poo, or at least no more than the rest of the barge was.
So that year wore away unnoticed, what with school and living in the stables and having Mr and Mrs Bell to the stables for tea in a very grown-up way; and then they were out of thick trousers and sweaters and into jeans and light shirts and their eleventh birthday showed up on the horizon. Toni announced that it would be a good thing to go looking for books that they might like for their birthday. Sophy understood completely. Daddy would give them money, it was easier than thinking about them. Books chosen by Winnie would be ridiculous. They would have to make her mind up for her without her knowing since there was all this pretence of secrecy about birthday presents and she had to think it was her own idea. They went, therefore, from the stables at the bottom of the garden up the path under the buddleias, up the steps to the glass door into the hall, past Winnie who was playing her transistor in the kitchen, past Daddy who was playing the electric typewriter in his column room, then down the two steps to the front of the house where it looked up the High Street. They turned right to GOODCHILD’S RARE BOOKS and there they were, between the two boxes outside Goodchild’s window, the sixpenny box and the shilling box, all full of books no one would ever think of buying.
Mr Goodchild was not in the shop but Mrs Goodchild was at the back doing some writing at the desk by a door that led somewhere. The twins paid no attention to her, even after they had got the door open and been ever so slightly startled by the ting! of the shop bell. They looked round the books for children but had most of them in the stables anyway because books were the kind of thing that seemed to come from every direction, and though often interesting were not particularly precious. Sophy soon saw these books were too simple and she was about to go when she saw that Toni was examining the old books on the shelves with her particular silent attention so Sophy waited, turning over Ali Baba and wondering why anyone would want it when there were the four
thick volumes in Daddy’s column room to be taken away if you felt like it. Then the old man who was so helpful to little boys in the park came in. Toni ignored him because by then she was right inside a grown-up book but Sophy greeted him politely because though she did not like him she was curious about him; and the one thing all the aunts and cleaning women and cousins were keen on was being polite to everybody. Certainly he came under the interdict of not-talking-to-strange-men-in-the-street, but Mr Goodchild’s bookshop wasn’t a street. The old man poked about among the books for children, then he went up the shop to where Mrs Goodchild was sitting. At the same time old Mr Goodchild came in ting! from the High Street and immediately talked in a jokey kind of way to the twins. But before this had got properly under way he saw the old man and stopped. In that silence they all heard the old man who was holding out a book to Mrs Goodchild say, ‘For my nephew, you know.” Then Toni, who had had her nose in a grown-up book but had seen him out of the back of her head, said helpfully that he had forgotten the one he had put in the right-hand pocket of his raincoat. After that things were fast and mixed. The old man’s voice went shrill as a woman’s, Mrs Goodchild stood up and talked angrily about police and old Mr Goodchild walked up to the old man and demanded the book now and no nonsense or else. The old man came in a sort of dance, a twisting of the body, inward movement of the knees with arms almost flailing but not quite, and his high woman’s voice complaining, down the shop by the shelves and under the cases and Sophy opened the door for him ting! and shut it after him, because that too had a bit of the meant about it that sometimes happened. Mr Goodchild’s face stopped being red quite quickly and he turned towards the twins but Mrs Goodchild talked to him first in the voice and words they were not supposed to understand.
Darkness Visible: With an Introduction by Philip Hensher Page 13
