Brother and Sister (12 page)

Cora sat down and shrank herself back inside her coat. Trust her to pick up that magazine of all magazines, trust her to go
on looking at worthless rubbish just one page too many. So much of her life had been dedicated to making sure that these accidents
didn't happen, that she didn't get into situations where she would be reminded, and in consequence dragged back to a place
she could hardly bear to remember, let alone revisit. There'd been a colleague at work once, a woman with a social-science
degree who taught classes in citizenship, who'd been very keen that Cora should unburden herself, should recall every last
word and deed from that dark time, so that she could do more than just limp along through the years, getting by, and really
start to live again.

"Denial," she said to Cora, "is only ever a coping mechanism. It's no more than that, believe you me."

But Cora wasn't in denial. Cora was instead in a place of privacy, where all the things she knew had happened, had been felt,
had been said, were to be kept safe and not spread out for someone else to pick over, like rubbish at a car-boot sale. It
was acutely painful going back to the private—private, not secret—place where all these memories were stored, which was why
Cora had chosen to do it as seldom as possible, but that didn't mean Cora was remotely pretending that what had happened hadn't
happened. She wasn't denying anything, she finally told the citizenship teacher with the energy that was the closest to anger
Cora ever got, but she was guarding something, and she had a right to guard it, thank you very much, because it was hers and
it was precious, however much heartache it meant. And, she added as an afterthought, her personal growth was her business,
and if she chose to stop growing that was her business too, and hers alone.

"You haven't lived my life," Cora said. "Nobody's lived it but me."

Yet, she thought now, sunk down inside the collar of her coat and staring over the dark gray roofs to the paler gray sea and
sky and the wheeling gulls, you couldn't blame the woman for trying. She taught citizenship, after all, her mind was geared
to the communal, to the collective, it wasn't the kind of mind that could understand the safety of living your life on your
own without manipulation or disturbance. If she was honest, Cora had felt like that—separate, contained—even before the baby
and all those horrors. Perhaps it was that extra sense of self and distance that had caused her to allow Craig Thomas to take
her to that party where they put something in her cider, and where the sailor was. Perhaps she thought, somehow, that she
wasn't touchable, that she was far enough away in her inner self not to be affected by the cider or the sailor. When Mother
had, among all the other accusations, screamed at her that she was such a slut she didn't even know the sailor's name, it
had seemed to Cora that this was just part of her pattern, part of her not belonging—not needing to belong—to a world where
everything had to have names and labels. Why on earth should it matter knowing someone's name, when you could hardly remember
what he'd done to you? Or, to be fair, and Cora wanted to be fair on account of the baby that came after, what you'd done
together? Cora had never blamed the sailor, never wanted to, had never blamed Craig Thomas or the spiked cider. If she'd blamed
them, the baby would have known it, wouldn't it? The baby would have known, she was sure, that it wasn't wanted, and Cora
wasn't having that. Oh no. Cora was, had always been, very clear about that—she'd wanted that baby from the moment she knew
it was coming, and she'd never stopped. Ever.

It was other things that were less clear, things that happened after her baby was born, things that were said, things she
was told. She remembered them all talking at her, social workers, the adoption people, her parents, and they said to her that
if she was selfish enough to keep the baby that showed she was immature and an unfit mother. When she said that maybe if she
had enough support she could manage with the baby, even finish her schooling, they said her feelings were not now of consequence,
that she had used up her share of indulgence in that department with her promiscuity and her fertility. When she said what
about bad luck, what about all those millions of women who have sex outside marriage and don't get pregnant, they told her
that if she wanted to get away without a stain on her mental-health record she would do well to accept that there was a wonderful
social mechanism in place—adoption—which would give her baby the chances that she, having given birth outside marriage too
young, in poverty and in the wrong class, would be totally unable to do. Did she want to be that deviant? Did she want to
be that destructive? If she wanted to repair the damage she'd done to an innocent baby, she should let it go.

"If you really love that baby," the social worker said, sitting there with Mother beside her, their eyes like jet beads, "you
should give her up to a
proper
home and parents."

Cora gave in. Worn down she was, worn out, nothing left to fight with, powerless. Looking back, she realized that there hadn't
even been someone to rehearse the options with, not even Betty, despite hearing Mother and Betty screaming at each other like
fishwives in the kitchen, and Dad going coughing off to the pub where the talk could be relied upon never to touch on women's
things. Alone in her bedroom, disgraced, guilty, dirty, broken-hearted, Cora told herself that nothing would ever hurt this
much again, that in order to stay alive for—Samantha (only whisper her name, whisper it in private), even if she never saw
her again, she must live life in such a way that she never need plunge in again, never be in that seething mess of things
where other people could tell her what to do.

It was getting cold. Cora's hands in her coat pockets, tense with the tension of her thoughts, were beginning to stiffen and
throb. Someone at work said stay off cheese and chocolate; someone else said try extract of green-lipped mussels. They came
from New Zealand or somewhere and you could get them in the health-food shop behind the Parade. Sounded disgusting. Cora stood
up, painfully flexing her fingers. She'd make another appointment to see the doctor, she'd go round to the surgery on the
way home, and make it now. What was arthritis anyway, compared? When did pain, however acute, in your body ever hold a candle
to pain in your mind and heart? Yet that other pain—well, Cora wouldn't have been without it now, not for a moment. If it
went away, if her mind and heart were cleared and calmed, she'd be scared that her love had gone, and that was the most unthinkable
thought of all.

"She never gets letters," Betty said. She had propped the envelope against the china cottage in which she kept sugar, just
as Mother had always done.

Don was reading the paper, the editorial page where all the rabid opinions expressed consoled him in his own abiding moderation.

"Perhaps it's a job offer—"

"From London?"

"Why not? Why shouldn't they need art teachers in London?"

"Not Cora—"

Don shook the paper.

"You don't know."

"Of course I don't know. But I'm wondering." Betty looked at the clock. "She should be back by now. Her appointment was two-thirty."

"They're never on time—"

"It worries me," Betty said. "She'll never have said how bad it is. You can tell, just by looking at her, how bad it is, but
she won't say. She never does. She's never said how bad anything is, ever."

"Makes a nice change then," Don said, "from the rest of us."

Betty picked the envelope up again.

"Not typed," she said. "Handwritten."

"Boyfriend."

"Don't be daft."

Don looked up from his papers.

"Betty," he said, "as it's for Cora, whatever it is, it won't stop the clocks. OK?"

CHAPTER TEN

P
olly had decided that, when her uncle David came round, as her mother had said he was going to, she would sit on his knee.
She had taken to doing this lately, capturing all the men who came to the house—Titus from Daddy's office, Grandpa Ray from
the Royal Oak, even her father if he looked as if he might be paying attention to her mother—by hitching herself into their
laps and staking her claim on them. Her uncle David always said he liked her on his knee. He said Ellen was too old for it
now, and Petey was too wriggly and Daniel was a boy, so that only left Polly. Polly, safe inside the clamp of his forearm,
could then survey her mother from her citadel, with a cool and appraising gaze which left Nathalie in no doubt that, as a
mother, she was somehow currently being found wanting.

"You're getting quite heavy," David said.

He was wearing a green jersey and the sleeve round Polly was speckled with little twiggy and grassy bits that had got caught
in the wool. Polly began to pull some of them out, with elaborate concentration. Nathalie, across the kitchen table, was wearing
the kind of expression that usually led to Polly's being asked to go and play in her room for a while. Polly didn't want to
play in her room. There was something about the atmosphere in the kitchen, and David's being there, and her mother having
poured some wine out even though it wasn't nearly dark—grown-up drink, in Polly's view, should only begin after her bedtime—that
made her feel she didn't want to leave, that she didn't want to be left out of anything that might be happening. When her
mother looked as she was looking now, as if there was something secret inside her that was longing to burst out, Polly had
no intention of missing the bursting. She began to lay the tiny pieces of twig from her uncle's sweater sleeve in an elaborately
neat pile on the table.

"Polly," Nathalie said, leaning forward, "would you go and play with your Barbies for a while?"

"No," Polly said politely. She balanced a fragment of feather on her pile.

"Polly—"

"I am very comfortable," Polly said, leaning closer to David's sleeve to examine a shred of grass very minutely.

"Polly," Nathalie said in an extremely level voice, "I want you to go and play in your room for just five minutes and then
you can come back and have a bag of your special crisps."

"
Or,
" Polly said, "I could have them now. Here."

David's arm moved a little, loosening his hold on her. She felt his mouth come down against her hair, near the ear that wasn't
very good at hearing things.

"Polly—"

Her eyes slid sideways.

"Mmm?"

"Do as you're asked," David's voice said, close to her ear.

She wriggled. She pushed her lower lip out and hung her head. It occurred to her that tears might be coming on account of
losing, on account of not wishing to displease her Uncle David. She sniffed.

"Good girl," David said.

She felt his arm move away some more and then his hands were on her sides, under her arms. Next thing, she was on the floor.
She leaned against David and pushed her face into his sleeve.

"Five minutes, Poll—"

She tore her face away from David's sleeve and charged out of the room, slamming the door so hard that the wine on the table
jumped in the glasses.

"No flies on Polly," Nathalie said. "She knows there's something going on."

"She's right."

"It's just that I can't explain about this extra granny thing yet. Not until I've sorted it myself a bit."

David moved his wine glass an inch to the left.

"It isn't an extra granny anyway—"

"It is!"

"It isn't, Nat. Not yet. It's about mothers."

Nathalie said in a whisper, "I know. Really, I know."

David moved his glass again.

She said shyly, "I feel kind of thrilled. I didn't think I'd feel like this, I didn't think it would be—exciting—"

"And frightening."

He looked at her.

"Yes."

She said, "I keep thinking about that saying that you must be careful what you wish for in case you get it."

He slid one hand across the table towards her.

"Don't chicken out on me now, Nat."

She smiled.

"Wouldn't dream of it."

He said wonderingly, "She's called Carole. I didn't even know her name."

"But she knew yours."

He smiled, an inward, private, pleased smile.

"She
gave
me mine."

Nathalie put her hand on his.

"Yes," she said, "she did."

"And there she is, in London, in her posh flat. And—I've got two brothers. Two brothers—"

"Never any substitute for a sister—"

He turned his hand over to grasp hers.

"
Never
that."

Nathalie said, "Cora hasn't married. She never did."

"Are you pleased?"

She nodded. She was coloring a little.

"Yes. Yes, I am. And she had her own name for me."

He gave her hand a squeeze.

He said, "Samantha."

"Mum called me Nathalie. After her sister that died."

"That's nice, though—"

"Yes. Yes, but it's nice to have mattered enough—"

"Of course we
mattered?.
"

She gave him a sharp glance.

"You didn't used to think like that."

He smiled again.

"I didn't know about Carole. Did I?"

She pulled her hand gently out of his.

"Don't get carried away."

"I rather like it—"

"Dave, the next bit might be much harder."

"Disappointing?"

"Maybe—"

"I don't think so," David said. "It's exhilarating."

"So far," Nathalie said carefully, "it's been easy. And we haven't had to do any of the work."

David picked his glass up and held it so that the light shone through the wine.

"I have a fifty-nine-year-old mother who was a company director!"

The door burst open. Polly stood there wearing her pajamas and a defiant expression.

"Heavens, Poll. Is it bedtime?"

She glowered.

"What were you talking about?"

David smiled at her. He moved slightly sideways and patted his knee.

"Mothers."

Polly came forward to be lifted on to his lap.

She said carelessly, "I don't want one."

"Don't you?"

Polly glared at Nathalie.

"Don't
laugh.
"

"Why not?"

"It's rude," Polly said. "It's rude to laugh when there's no joke."

David said, "But you're quite funny."

She considered this. She looked at her mother again.

"You're a rude laugher."

"I'm happy," Nathalie said.

Polly rolled her eyes to the ceiling.

"Can't I laugh when I'm happy?" Nathalie said. "Can't we both laugh?"

"I'm not laughing," Polly said stonily. She pointed to her mouth. "Look."

"No, darling. Not you. David and me. We're laughing because we're happy." She glanced at him across the table.

"Aren't we?"

"
Yes,
" he said.

Steve had tried to persuade his mother-in-law to stay and have coffee after lunch.

"No," Lynne had said, gathering up her bags and her scarf. "No, dear. Thank you, but no. I've taken up too much of your time
already."

"You haven't," Steve said patiently. "You haven't. I've liked it. I'm glad you rang."

She glanced away from him.

"It took a bit of courage—"

"To ring your own son-in-law and ask to have lunch with him?"

"You're so busy—"

"Not that busy," Steve said. "And certainly not when we're in the same boat."

She'd put down her bags again then.

"Are we?"

"Aren't we," Steve said, "somehow being made to feel that we've failed where we thought we'd succeeded?"

She gazed at him. He looked back at her face, at the slightly pleading quality in her eyes that must have seemed so appealing
to Ralph once, like the eyes of a young deer.

"I always felt I had to be pitied," Lynne said. "Because I couldn't have children. And I hated that, I
hated
being pitied. And I don't want to go back there, I
don't.
"

"Nobody can take away what you've done, what I've done—"

Lynne dropped her gaze to the table, to the remains of her chicken salad.

"It wasn't just that I wanted a baby, you know," she said. "It wasn't just going on and on wanting that. It was that I was
scared of the future, too—I was scared of my private life just thinning out without children, without grandchildren, thinning
out until there wasn't anything there, really, and I was just left with the wanting." She stopped and took a breath and then
she said, "It's so terrible, that wanting."

Steve put his hand over her nearest one for a moment.

"But you
have
got children. And grandchildren. You've got all that."

Lynne began to gather herself up again.

"Not with all this. Not with all these—discoveries. I feel—" She stopped again.

"What?"

"I feel I've gone from being the goodie to being the baddie."

"Lynne—"

"Nathalie told me this wasn't my journey."

Steve said, almost bitterly, "If it's any consolation, she's made it pretty plain it isn't mine either."

"That's what you mean about being in the same boat—"

"Yes."

Lynne stood up finally, struggling to arrange her burdens.

"Ralph says there's nothing I can do but wait. He always says things like that. Present Ralph with a problem and he says well,
the only way to the other side is
through.
Drives me mad."

"He isn't the same person as you. He isn't the same person as me. Maybe his emotions don't trouble him so much."

She gave him a quick smile.

"No."

Steve stood too.

"You take care."

She reached up to give him a quick little kiss on the cheek.

"Thank you, dear. Thank you for listening. It—it isn't that Ralph doesn't understand—"

"No."

She took a step away.

"Give my love to Nathalie. And a kiss to Polly."

"Course."

He watched her go out of the lunch place, bumping her bags against other tables and chairs as she went. She was like someone
who'd had a sad, fearful secret that had been forgotten for years but which had now somehow surfaced in all its old misery.
She'd always been someone Steve saw as vulnerable, someone you'd take care not to be careless with, but today her back view,
moving awkwardly away from him, looked defeated, as if some long, brave struggle had finally come to nothing. He sighed. Beyond
sympathy, there was nothing he could do for her, nothing he could give her to restore Nathalie to her as her child and hers
alone.

"Don't you go being selfish," his own mother had said to him. "Don't you go behaving like your dad and just riding roughshod.
We've all got our feelings about what Nathalie's doing, we're all affected, but I've got my own children, same as you have,
and Lynne hasn't, and don't you forget that."

Steve paused by the cash desk and paid the bill. The girl handing him his change had a bluebird tattooed on her cheekbone
and fine blonde hair cut so short that it merely lay on her skull like a dusting of icing sugar. Steve had never really liked
short hair on girls, had always loved the luxuriance of, say, Nathalie's hair, but recently he'd begun to see something edgy
and attractive in short hair, something almost challenging. It was as if short-haired girls were daring him to think of them
as boys. Steve grinned. He put three pound coins in the plastic pot by the till with "Tips thank you!" crudely inked on it
with magic marker.

"So long," Steve said to the bluebird girl, and went out into the street.

From across the office, Justine could see that Titus was doodling. Instead of being crouched intently in front of his computer,
as if coiled to spring right into it, he was slouched against the back of his chair, one hand in his trouser pocket, the other
stretched out across his desk making the easy looping movements that people who can really draw make when they're not trying.
It looked as if he was scowling, too, not because she could see his face, but because his whole demeanor looked gloomily,
angrily slumped from behind, a sort of scowl of the neck and shoulders.

She glanced around the office. Steve wasn't back from lunch yet, and Meera was sorting invoices with an intensity of concentration
that made her look almost spiritual. She got up and smoothed down the hair at the base of her skull, hoping it was lying in
funky little straight strands and not curling up babyishly as it had seemed to want to do ever since she cut it. She yanked
her jeans down half an inch so that the ring in her bare navel showed, and sauntered over.

"It's like trying to work with the lights out," she said. "You in that mood."

Titus was drawing a fanciful elephant with an elongated trunk and ears like wings.

"Sorry."

Justine hitched one thigh across a corner of his desk.

"What's up?"

Titus heaved an enormous, fed-up sigh.

"I just feel—that the
energy's
gone out of things—"

Justine swung her leg.

"Happens to everyone."

"Not to me," Titus said. "I
invented
energy."

"Come to think of it," Justine said, "I can't imagine a
languid
small man."

"I am not small."

"Aren't you?"

"No. I am short but I am not
small.
"

She grinned.

"Quite right. Nor you are."

"I am short," Titus said, "and square. And fed up."

"With what?"

"Every bloody thing."

"Like Sasha, you mean."

Titus threw his drawing pencil so that it spun in an arc away from him and landed neatly in Steve's waste bin.

"Why do girls
always
think it must be love?"

"Because," Justine said, "it mostly is."

"What about the atmosphere in this office, then? What about Steve being in a permanent mood so we all have to tiptoe round
him in case we step on the fuse and all get blown to perdition?"