Two Is Lonely

by Lynne Reid Banks

  She misses W. She misses Carrie. She misses you. Sometimes I feel a bastard. What am I talking about? I feel a bastard the whole bloody time. I know I didn’t succeed in making you understand why I had to come here. But W. understood, I think. You know we’d often talked about coming together. Oh well—water under the bridge.

  I won’t bore you about the work. I’ve done three months on irrigation. It’s not bad, though it often means very long hours. There’s been a drought . . . There’s something satisfying about it. Two mornings a week I’m let off to teach English and learn Hebrew. The latter is easier than the former! I had heard Hebrew was not so much difficult as impossible, but some sort of ancestral memory must be operating for me here—I feel as if I were simply being reminded of a language merely forgotten. The teaching is ghastly, I haven’t the patience. I find myself behaving like the old-type Englishman, when they don’t understand, I shout! I think I’ll be taken off it soon—I hope so. Now you’ll be asking, what about writing? Sorry chum, there just ain’t none. At the end of the day I’m so buggered I just lie around. I can’t even claim the heat as an excuse—it’s cold! Maybe as I get used to manual work . . . Or maybe not. I feel as if something packed up in me when W. and I split up and I lost Carrie. Or maybe that’s just an excuse too.

  Now to the point of all this, which I’ve been nerving myself for. I nerved myself to say it to you, face to face, before I left, but as is obvious, I “copped out” as the local American draft-dodgers say. I know you never really wanted W. to marry me, and you were right, as we now know. What I want to say is, that it was good of you to be so fair and even-handed through the years, dealing with our infantile brawls and reconciliations as if W. and I were equally your children. I never blamed W. for behaving like a kid—that’s all she was when I let myself marry her. But you always treated me with the same tolerance and warmth and restraint as you did her, and with far less reason. I don’t think one could find such an objective, unbiased mother-in-law in a long day’s march, and I think, after all that’s happened, it’s something of a marvel that you’re still prepared to be friends with me and handle my stuff as always. It’s a pity there isn’t more to handle. If there ever is again, I mean if the block breaks and I start to write again, it’ll be because you made me into a real, serious, working writer, and I liked myself that way. That part at least I could still respect, even while I was bitching up my marriage and your daughter’s stability. It’s ironic, isn’t it?

  I’ll be keeping in touch with W. to let her know how R. is, and to hear about Carrie. I don’t know when I’ll see any of you again. There’s something here that I have to find out, in connection with myself—no more or less than whether I belong here. If I don’t, I shall come back to England. I feel very alien here in some ways—in others, more at home than I ever did at home (England is still home for the moment.) Let me know at once if enough money stops coming in to keep W. and Carrie—I don’t need any here, so they can have the lot. If you manage to flog How Long for a film, that should keep them ticking over nicely for a while.

  Meanwhile there’s just one other thing. I know you’re in touch with Jane Graham from time to time. I suppose you know I haven’t been, since before I married W. With that Yiddish horse-sense you specialise in, you probably know why, better than I do. I just knew it was dangerous. The minute I was free I let myself start thinking about her again. I won’t go into it, but I had the strongest possible urge to go and see her. The reason I didn’t was because I’d decided to come out here, and I thought, if I saw Jane even once, I wouldn’t come. And if I hadn’t come, I’d never have known whatever it is I need to know—and, oddly, I don’t think the broken-marriage scars would ever have healed. (Here, they will, though so slowly I sometimes doubt it.) Jane once said something to me about how she didn’t want to bring me her need, she wanted us to be two whole people when we came together. This stuck. I don’t know if I was whole then, but I’m damn sure I’m not now. (I have to keep quiet about all this here; the Israelis at once begin to suspect you if they think you’re treating their country as a hospital to heal yourself in. They naturally only want people who are looking for ways to contribute, not for alms or wound-patches or miracle cures for themselves. It all has to be done quietly and inwardly; but then that’s the only kind of cure that works in the true sense anyway.)

  So if you see Jane, give her my love, but tell her she’d better not wait. I know she is waiting, in some way or other. Tell her this will take some time. And remind her that I’m a Jew, more of a one than either of us realised. She once said “So what?” The answer is, “So everything.” If there’s one thing in this damned world that’s harder to be than a Jew, it’s the goyishe wife of one. Even being true-Jew didn’t help W. to be married to me.

  Love from me and Rachel,

  Toby’

  Despite having agreed with Jo that Georgie wasn’t experienced enough to be left alone, I left her alone that morning. I got into the car and sat in it for a long time, just trying to approach the meaning of that letter. Then I did something odd. I went home and put slacks on, and drove to Jo’s place. It had started to rain; the ponies were still out in the paddock, placidly cropping. I parked the car and knocked on the playroom window, through which I could see David and Amanda doing a jig-saw on the floor. David looked up, grinned with delight, and ran over.

  ‘Darling,’ I said in a flat voice which told me, if not him, how close I was to tears, ‘if you’re not going out on him, may I ride Bee for a bit?’

  David looked comically astonished. ‘Mummy! You? Have you gone bonkers?’

  ‘May I?’

  ‘Of course. Mind out though, his back’s all slippery from the rain. Put a blanket on under the saddle. Where are you going?’

  ‘Just around.’

  ‘But why?’ he shouted as I retreated.

  ‘I feel like it,’ I called back without turning.

  I hadn’t finished saddling up Bee when Jo came running out with a mackintosh draped over her head. My heart sank. Explanations . . .

  ‘What goes on? Have you shut up shop?’

  ‘No. Georgie’s there. We won’t have much on today with this weather. She’ll manage.’

  ‘Are you crying?’

  ‘Not yet.’

  ‘Ducky! What’s up?’

  ‘I have to think. I feel like a ride.’

  ‘I’ll saddle up Ant and come with you.’

  ‘No! Please don’t.’

  She said no more, but watched me tighten the girth and clumsily mount. ‘Here,’ she said, ‘take this mack at least. What about a hat?’

  ‘Haven’t got one. Never mind. Go on indoors, you’ll get soaked.’

  ‘There’s a headscarf in the pocket.’

  I put this on, grateful for the chill wet drops on my face. My throat was aching and I wanted desperately to be alone.

  ‘Take care. Don’t ride too fast on this mud.’

  ‘I won’t.’

  I kicked Bee and he walked sedately off down the lane, shaking the water off his ears. Amanda’s mongrel followed a little way, but returned to Jo’s whistle. I could sense Jo was still standing there at the gate of the paddock, watching me out of sight.

  That ride is a blur in my memory, as if I was drunk when I took it—I remember only a few isolated moments in it, though it was well past lunchtime by the time I got back, soaked to the skin but feeling much calmer.

  I remember spending quite a long time on the site of the new house. I hadn’t looked at it carefully the day before, and the blueprints, which I had seen some time ago—prior to the alterations which I now knew for certain had been made to accommodate me and David—had not made much impression. The foundations were laid, and the men were at work on the walls, though they had knocked off when I was there because of the rain so I had the place to myself. The living-area, as delineated by the foundations, was roughly Y-shaped, with the three trees which Andy had been able to spare growing in between the fork at the top. One of
these trees was an oak, somewhat stunted, which spread out gnarled branches quite close to the ground. Andy had mentioned it once, and had called it ‘David’s climbing tree’. I remember dismounting and standing, with the wide arms of concrete almost encompassing me, my hand on the lowest branch of this tree, simply asking myself: is this going to be the sort of house, designed by the sort of man, you could live with? The answer could only be yes.

  Then I scrambled up on Bee’s back again and we went jogging off through more quiet lanes, and I touched the letter in my inner pocket and thought, with a wild unrealism no longer characteristic of the sensible, practical woman I had assiduously turned myself into: If I sell my interest in the shop to Jo, rent the cottage, take David out there, find him . . . I shook the rain out of my eyes with a sudden sharp, irritated movement. Ludicrous! People don’t do things like that, certainly not people like me. Israel indeed! Where was it, even? Those little sketch-maps in the papers merely accentuate one’s geographical ignorance, personally I can hardly tell which is sea and which is land. I certainly doubted if I could put my finger straight onto the place on a map. The only association I could rake up regarding it merely linked it in my mind with Vietnam and Ireland—a vague impression of intermittent military outbursts, a recurrent, superficial reaction on my part amounting to no more than a passing ‘They’re at it again’ whenever it was mentioned on the news—as, now I stopped to think about it, it seemed to have been rather often lately. And now Toby was there somewhere with his daughter, and no matter whether I married Andy or not, I would never be able to hear the word Israel without a clutching at the heart for fear their stupid ‘incidents’ might endanger them. But if that were true, what right had I to marry Andy? Or anyone?

  At this point I remember hauling Bee to a halt under a tree and standing there for a long time, while the rain ran down inside my collar. I was in the dark shade of the tree, but it was the backward shadow which made me shiver repeatedly. A strong, strange, growing guilt stirred inside me, not its first stirring by any means, but now it was not merely moving in its sleep but beginning to wake, like the mythical kraken of the deeps. Something had happened recently which had set up a chain-reaction of disturbance. David and I had been at the breakfast table, and I had been wondering, for the hundredth time, whether Andy knew about David’s birth or not, and rehearsing in my mind how I would tell him. Suddenly David startled me almost out of my wits by announcing through a mouthful of Fruti-Fort:

  ‘I saw Daddy yesterday.’

  I nearly dropped my coffee-cup. ‘What?’

  ‘Not him himself. I’m not even sure it was him. But it looked like that photo you showed me once.’

  ‘What did?’

  ‘A picture in a magazine of Auntie Jo’s. Full of film-actors and junk. I don’t mean Daddy’s junk, if it was Daddy.’ He went back to his food with a slight frown.

  ‘What was he doing—in the picture?’

  ‘Nothing. Just smiling. He’s got a nice smile, hasn’t he?’

  He had your smile, I thought, before he got his teeth fixed. Well, it was only a matter of time. I had been half-expecting it from the moment I read that Terry had gone out of publishing and back to acting. Sensible of him to pick films, where his tall good looks would count and his weak voice-projection and rather smudgy-round-the-edges personality wouldn’t. Or maybe I was just being a bitch? I actually had nothing against him any more, except the nagging fear that he’d run us to earth one day and upset David. I knew he wanted to. If he’d been a more determined or ruthless sort of person (or even just a bit cleverer) he’d have found us long ago. But after all, he was married, and, I had inferred, to a rather difficult sort of woman. When I’d spoken to him on the phone he had not been too frightened of the consequences to be prepared to come at once to see what he was pleased to call ‘my son’ (with whom he had had nothing at all to do since he’d conceived him); on the other hand, he had been unwilling to tell his wife of David’s existence, even when she was blaming him for their childlessness. It sounded like a pretty uneasy ménage, just the sort that provides a breeding-ground for those ‘double life’ situations you sometimes hear about, secret weekends and so on to start with, and then something approaching bigamy. Terry was not imaginative or far-sighted enough to anticipate any such thing, but I was, and even though David was wringing my heart with his pitiful little efforts to equip himself with a paternal identity, I had had to be very firm.

  I’d thought about it a lot after I’d hung up the phone without giving an address. What it came to was that I felt it was better for David to have no father at all, than to have Terry. Was this not taking a very personal view? After all, he hadn’t behaved that badly, I mean he had wanted to help financially and so on. He’d even asked me to marry him, though we both knew he’d have died if I’d said yes. In fact he wasn’t a bad sort at all—just weak. Two-dimensional, like the photo with the nice smile David had now unluckily stumbled on. Fancy him remembering that face, after nearly four years! The picture I’d shown him was years older than that, too, taken when Terry and I were in rep together.

  I decided to be quite casual and let it, if it would, float by on the tide. But later on while he was waiting for Amanda to come over he brought it up again.

  ‘Can I see that photo again, Mummy?’

  ‘Which one, darling?’ (Oh God.)

  ‘You know, the one you showed me of Daddy.’

  ‘I don’t know if I’ve still got it.’

  A pause; then, in a rather shocked voice: ‘You wouldn’t get rid of it, would you? You said it was the only one you’d got.’

  That sent me upstairs in thoughtful and disquieted silence to look for it. Of course I hadn’t got rid of it. One doesn’t. I took it down and put it wordlessly into his hands.

  ‘Oh yes, that’s him all right,’ he said. He looked at it a long time—too long. ‘He’s got a lot older of course, and he’s different somehow. Is he in a play here?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I thought so, because of his clothes. Is that you?’ he noticed suddenly. I admitted it was. ‘You look pretty in that long dress. Is he a good actor?’

  ‘I think he was rather, then. Of course for a long time he wasn’t acting. He’s only just started again.’

  ‘Under the picture I saw in this mag, it said he was going to be in a new film. They’re making it at a place called Elm Tree. Can we go and see it, Mummy?’

  ‘What’s it called?’

  ‘I can’t remember. It’s not made yet, I don’t think. But can we, when it comes to Dorking?’

  ‘Films take quite a while to make. You’ll have forgotten all about it by then, I expect.’

  He looked at me, his brown eyes surprised. ‘Oh no, I won’t forget. How could I? Daddy’s going to be in it.’

  ‘David,’ I heard myself suddenly saying. ‘Why do you call him Daddy?’

  ‘Well, he is, isn’t he?’

  ‘No,’ I said, more sharply than I’d intended. He looked at me questioningly.

  ‘You told me he was.’

  ‘Listen, David.’ How to do this? To do it or not to do it? ‘You remember ages ago you asked me how babies get into their mummies and I told you about the father’s seed going in and starting the egg growing?’ He nodded. ‘Well, that’s all that a man has to do to be the father of a child. It’s a very easy thing, a very small thing. It doesn’t take long, and it doesn’t cost him anything. He gets pleasure from it. Then the baby grows and is born and he’s the father of it. But he’s not—don’t you see, David, a Daddy is something else. Daddy is what you call a man who’s been around while you were growing up, a man who looked after you and played with you, who worked to buy your food and—and that sort of thing. And who took care of your mother. Now that man—’ I pointed to the picture—’he’s your father. He’s the one who started you growing. But that’s all he did. You can’t really call him daddy, darling, I don’t think.’

  David looked at me while I said all this, and then looked
away and fiddled with the rug for a while and then he asked his questions.

  Number one: ‘So can I call John Daddy?’

  ‘No, darling. He’s not around enough. Anyway he wouldn’t like it. The man you call Daddy has really got to be married to me.’

  Number two: ‘If you married him’ (pointing to the picture) ‘then couldn’t I call him Daddy?’

  ‘But I’m not going to marry him, David.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Because I don’t love him.’ As I said this I shrank inwardly, sending up a prayer of gratitude that the question I deserved would not come yet, because he was too young to ask it. But I underestimated him.

  ‘Then why did you let him start me inside you?’

  Honest—be honest, it’s the only possible way. ‘I made a mistake, and so did he. We thought we did love each other.’

  Long, long pause. I hoped with all my heart that the inquisition was over for this time. But it wasn’t.

  ‘Then I’ll never have a Daddy.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘You said, the man who plays with you while you’re growing up.’

  ‘Well, you’re not grown up yet.’

  ‘Can I still have one?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said. I gazed at him—my beloved son. ‘And you will.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Someone who’ll be good for you.’

  ‘You mean I can choose?’ he shouted excitedly.