Brother and Sister (3 page)

Marnie said nothing. In her view, David and Nathalie were lucky to have Lynne, lucky to have a mother who lived close enough,
and was enthusiastic enough, to be an excellent grandmother. Mamie's own mother lived in Winnipeg, where Marnie had grown
up, and lectured on company law at the university. Every summer—with or without David—Marnie put her three children on a plane
and took them to Winnipeg for a month. Every summer the children came back saying loudly that they would far,
far
rather live in Canada. Their grandmother took them on camping trips to her cottage on a nearby lake and every meal was a cookout.

"Anybody can do that for a month," Marnie would say to Lynne. "It's the Monday to Friday stuff that counts. It's the Monday
to Friday that
I
value."

"We all want each other's mothers," Nathalie said.

"Oh, I want mine all right," Marnie said. "It's just that I don't want her all the way off in Winnipeg."

Nathalie let her hair fall. She liked Marnie, loved her even for giving David such a rooted, equable life, but every so often
she ran up against something that was unavoidably like complacency, something that slid quietly from the accepting to the
smug and seemed, in so doing, to imply judgment.

"It wasn't anything much," Nathalie said. "I just needed to have a little whine."

"Why don't you whine to me? I have the time. I'm giving the kids supper late tonight. Ellen's got a rehearsal."

"Because," Nathalie said, abruptly irritated by the vision of comparative domestic busyness and order conjured up by Mamie's
last speech, "you make me feel bad about whingeing about her at all."

"She's a good woman," Marnie said. "A good mother."

"There you are!" Nathalie cried. "Listen to yourself! Anybody normal would have said, 'No, I don't, do I? God, how awful,
I really didn't mean to, d'you want to know what drives me mad about
my
mother?' "

Marnie said calmly, "I don't think that way."

"No. Nor you do."

"I'll tell David you called. Do you want him to call you back tonight?"

"No," Nathalie said miserably. "The moment has passed. The fire has gone out."

"I'm glad I could help—"

"It was a
real
fire, Marnie. It
meant
something."

"I'm sure David will call you from work tomorrow."

Nathalie shut her eyes.

"Give my love to the kids."

"You bet," Marnie said, comfortable, collected and Canadian.

"Bye."

Nathalie put the receiver back in its cradle on the wall. She leaned against the wall beside it. From Polly's bedroom, she
could hear Steve's voice reading the elegant humorous cadences of Beatrix Potter. He had plainly triumphed in the matter of
Miffy, but then, once she had re-established her dominion over him, Polly would have allowed him to triumph. She also openly
preferred Beatrix Potter, loving the way the animals took their clothes off when they reverted to behaving like animals, loving
the language. She was reading along now with Steve, her voice slightly strident to prevent his skipping so much as a syllable.

" 'I am
affronted,'
" Polly shouted. " 'I am
affronted,
said Mrs. Tabitha Twitchett.' "

Nathalie peeled her shoulders away from the wall and slid into the nearest kitchen chair. Across the table's dully gleaming
surface she could see a scattering of crumbs and a smear or two of milk or yogurt left over from Polly's supper. She reached
out and pressed her forefinger down on some of the crumbs.

"That's real," she thought, "
real.
That's
here.
So's Polly. So's Steve. They're real like they were yesterday, like they'll be tomorrow. Nothing has changed. Nothing is going
to."

The telephone rang. Swivelling in her chair, Nathalie reached behind her to unhook the receiver from the wall.

"Am I interrupting your supper?" Lynne said.

She always said something like that: "I'll only be a moment," or, "Is this a good time?"

"I haven't started it," Nathalie said. "In fact, I haven't even thought about it."

Lynne laughed. She admired that in Nathalie, that modern female nonchalance which felt no compunction about not setting regular
meals before men. Ralph was undemanding, heaven knows, but Lynne still felt an obligation, a need, to lay tables at seven
in the morning and seven at night and place upon them these—well, they were kinds of offerings really, offerings of affection
and dutifulness. And mollification. Try as she might, Lynne could never quite leave conciliation out of any relationship.

"I rang to see about Polly," Lynne said. "I was thinking about you. All afternoon."

Nathalie looked at the clock. The appointment with the ENT consultant had been at three-fifteen. It was now ten minutes to
eight. She leaned her head against the wall.

"He was a really nice man—"

"Was he?"

"He's got children of his own. It makes a difference, don't you think?"

"Oh
yes
" Lynne said, with fervor.

Nathalie knew she was waiting for more.

She said, "He was very kind to Polly. Very thorough."

She stopped. Lynne waited.

Nathalie said, "He examined her for ages. Both ears. He told her to put her hand up if he hurt her and she said, 'Can't I
scream?' "

"Bless her," Lynne said.

"He said, 'No, because you'll wobble my instrument.' She thought that was terribly funny. She loves words like wobble."

"Nathalie," Lynne said carefully. "What did he say about the problem?"

"What problem?"

Lynne sucked in her breath, a tiny almost inaudible gasp. She had always done that when her patience was tested, drawing in
a quick little breath as if this was a necessary physical check on a rising temper. Nathalie had played on it as a teenager,
idly provoking and provoking until Lynne conceded a victory of nerve and took her betraying breath.

"The problem with Polly's hearing, dear. The reason why she is having difficulty at school—"

"She isn't having
difficulty . .
."

"The reason, then, for her not seeming to be able to concentrate very well."

Nathalie said easily, "It's a tiny thing."

"
Is
it?" Lynne's voice rose in relief.

"Oh yes. A tiny thing."

"What kind of tiny thing?"

"A little extra piece of cartilage blocking her ear. Like a little spur."

"Can—can he take it out?"

"Oh yes," Nathalie said, almost carelessly.

"But that's wonderful. What a relief. Did he say why she might have it?"

"Have what?"

"This little extra piece of cartilage. I mean, could it be hereditary? Did he examine you?"

Nathalie looked at the ceiling.

"No. Why should he?"

Lynne said tiredly, "Never mind."

"Mum, he examined Polly and found she has a minute malformation, which he will correct."

"Yes."

"No big deal."

"No. Will he do it soon?"

"In the next three months."

"I'm so glad, dear. Really I am—"

"Me too."

"I was worried," Lynne said. "I was thinking about you." She let another small silence fall and then she said, "Would you
like me to babysit this weekend?"

From her bedroom, Polly was shouting "'—which much disturbed the dignity and repose of the TEA PARTY!' "

"I don't know what we're doing yet," Nathalie said. "But thank you. I'll let you know."

"Give Polly a kiss from me . . ."

"I will. Mum, thanks for ringing."

"I'm glad all's well—"

"Yes."

"Night night, dear," Lynne said.

Nathalie slammed the receiver back in its cradle. Then she went over to the fridge and took out a plastic box of fresh pasta
and half an onion on a plate and some minced beef sealed in thick white plastic and threw them on the table. Then she went
back across the kitchen and found her bag and rummaged in it for her mobile phone.

"Mummy will come," Steve said from the passage, "but
not
if you get out of bed."

Polly wailed something.

"You've
got
a drink of water.
And
blue rabbit. And Barbie has both her shoes on, they are
not
lost."

Nathalie pressed the buttons to send a text message. "Ring me," she wrote, "soonest." David's number came up on the tiny screen.
Steve appeared in the doorway.

"Will you say goodnight to her?"

"Of course—"

"The phone rang—"

"It was Mum. Wanting to know about this afternoon."

"And?"

"I told her it was a tiny thing and a tiny operation."

Steve looked at the phone in her hand.

"True or false?"

"Literally, true."

"Mummy, come
here
—"

"Nat, I thought you said—"

"At
oncel
" Polly shouted.

Nathalie slipped past Steve into the passage. It was dark, as was Polly's room except for a night light shaped like a small
glowing teddy bear plugged into the electric point by her bed.

"Daddy only read a tiny story—"

"No, he didn't. I heard him. He read you all of Tom Kitten."

"I really wanted Mrs. Tiggy winkle," Polly said. "I wanted that
so much.
"

"Tomorrow," Nathalie said. She leaned down over Polly and breathed her in.

"Will I have a bandage?" Polly said.

"When?"

"When the wobble man does my ear. Will I have a bandage? Will it go all around so I have to suck through a straw?"

"No, darling. It will be a tiny cut right inside. You won't even be able to see it."

"I
want
to see it."

"Polly," Nathalie said, "it is sleep time now. You can talk your head off in the morning but not now."

"Blah blah blah," Polly said, turning on her side away from Nathalie. "Blah blah
blah.
"

"Same to you," Nathalie said. She kissed Polly's cheek, "Sleep tight."

"Only," Polly said, her eyes shut, "if I don't
wobble.
"

In the kitchen, Steve was slicing the onion. He sliced like a chef, using a big knife and rapid, precise practiced movements.
There was a glass of wine beside him, and another glass on the table, which had been cleared of crumbs.

"Titus has a new girlfriend," Steve said.

"Oh?"

"Rather gorgeous, in a weird way. Sort of Jamie Lee Curtis type. About a foot taller than he is, as usual."

"It would be hard to be a foot
shorter.
"

"He has no trouble pulling them, does he?"

Nathalie opened a cupboard by Steve's knee and took out a skillet.

"He's very attractive. As a person, I mean. Funny and sympathetic."

"You," Steve said, taking the skillet from her, "like anyone who's nice to Polly."

"Of course. And if they're nice to me too, I adore them."

"Like me."

Steve poured olive oil into the skillet and set it on a cooker ring.

"Titus wanted me to ask you something. Or at least he wanted something on Sasha's behalf."

"Sasha being the new girlfriend?"

"Yes."

Nathalie picked up the bag of mince and tore it open.

"She's doing some kind of counseling course. She's got a project on identity, how we identify ourselves, whether or not we
need to know where we've come from." He lifted the board on which he had chopped the onion and tipped it into the skillet.
"She—well, she wondered if she could possibly talk to you."

Nathalie carried the split bag of mince over to the cooker.

"Why?"

"Because Titus told her you were adopted and I said it had never troubled you."

Nathalie let the mince fall into the onion.

"How does Titus know I'm adopted?"

"I must have told him—"

"How many
other
people have you told?"

"Nobody. No one. I can't actually remember telling Titus, but he said I did—"

"Does it
matter
" Nathalie said, "my being adopted? Does it make any
difference?
"

Steve began to break the mince up with a wooden spatula.

"Not to me, Nat. And I thought not to you."

She said emphatically, "Certainly not to me."

"Then that's what
does
make you different. Apparently. Not feeling set apart. That's why Sasha would like to talk to you."

Nathalie turned back to the table and picked up her glass of wine.

"Well, she can."

Steve turned round.

"She can?"

"Yes. Why not?"

"I thought—well, I thought after what you said just now about feeling lost, about being so thrown in case you don't know everything
Polly might have inherited, that—well, that you wouldn't want to talk to anyone. I felt I had to ask because I told Titus
I would but I didn't think you'd say yes."

Nathalie said quietly, "Well, I have."

"Did you talk to Dave?"

"No. It was a chess night. I forgot."

"But—"

"It doesn't matter now," Nathalie said. "Sorry about earlier. Anything to do with Polly—"

"
Tell
me about it."

"I know. I'm sorry."

"So I can tell Titus that this Sasha woman could at least ring you?"

"Of course," Nathalie said.

She picked her hair up and began to twist it behind her head.

"I don't mind telling her how I feel."

Steve watched her, spatula in hand. Behind him, the onions and meat spat and sizzled.

"Which—is?"

"That being adopted," Nathalie said, "allows you to choose to be the person
you
want to be. I can shuffle the cards of my past at will." She smiled at him. "You can't do that. Nor can she."

CHAPTER THREE

W
hen David Dexter was eighteen, he told his parents, Lynne and Ralph, that he wasn't going to
take up the university place he had won to read business studies. He was going instead, he said, in the flat voice he had
learned to use if telling them something that might cause a stronger reaction than was comfortable for him to deal with, to
agricultural college in the West Midlands to study horticulture. He intended, probably, to be a landscape gardener or something
of the sort. He wasn't sure. He just knew he didn't want to go to Leicester, and study business.

Ralph thought of all those weekends spent cajoling David to help him in the garden.

"But you don't even
like
gardens, David."

"Perhaps," Lynne said quickly, anxious as ever that none of the children's apparent enthusiasms, however hard to understand,
should go without encouragement, "he just doesn't like
this
garden."

David said, "I just want to learn about something living. That's all."

Ralph, who had run his own small engineering company until it was bought up by a rival, rattled the change in his trouser
pockets.

"I think you'll find there's something pretty
living
about the business world—"

"
Directly
living," David said. "Cyclical. Organic. Something I can
touch.
"

They let him go. They had to, just as, Ralph had pointed out, his own father—whom he had detested—had had to recognize that
Ralph was not going to follow him into accountancy. Ralph's father had expressed his resentment by leaving the bulk of his
meager estate to Ralph's sister, which decision, Ralph suspected, had no doubt given him considerable vengeful satisfaction.
So David went off to horticultural college with everyone's hearty outward blessing, and gained an adequate degree and then
proceeded to set up a small lawn-mowing and hedge-trimming business which had now blossomed into a busy garden-maintenance
company with three vehicles bearing his name on the cab doors, and a staff of ten.

It was, in his very early days, cutting the long, sour privet hedges in front of a row of substantial Victorian detached houses,
one of which had a nursery school in its basement, that he had met Marnie. He'd heard her voice—American, he thought—organizing
her little chattering charges in a way he found immediately attractive. She'd sounded friendly and interested and affectionate,
but also as if she knew what those children should be doing, and she also knew that very soon they would all be doing it,
without argument. David had played a kind of game with himself, wielding his electric hedge-cutter out of sight of the owner
of that appealing voice, imagining what she would look like. She was possibly in her mid or late twenties: she was quite tall,
and slight, with perhaps Nathalie's coloring, pale skin and darkish hair and those clear, strongly colored eyes which give
their owners such a particular intensity of gaze.

When he finally trimmed his noisy way round the hedge and into view of the back windows of the nursery school, he found, to
his intrigued excitement, that he had only been right about one thing. Marnie was tall, almost as tall as he was, taller if
she wore anything other than the peculiar blue canvas sandals she was wearing then. But she was young, not more than twenty-two
or -three, and solid with the big supple grace of a girl brought up on sport. And she was fair, very fair, Scandinavian fair,
with her hair pulled smoothly back from her face and hanging right down her back in a thick, even pigtail. There was no ribbon
on the end of the pigtail, only a plain rubber band of the serviceable kind used to bundle up mail.

Three days later, having covertly watched her as she came and went from the school—on foot, carrying a backpack rather than
a handbag—David lay in wait for her. He was in his work clothes, his hands and forearms smeared with green from the hedges,
having not given any thought as to the impression he might make on account of being so wholly taken up in his mind by the
impression that Marnie had made on him.

"I looked up," Marnie said later to Nathalie, "and there was this
fabulous
man."

He asked her if she would have a drink with him. He told her that it was her voice that had caught his attention, and her
manner with the children. He said he'd never asked an American out before.

"Canadian," Marnie said. "Winnipeg. Listen to my r's."

They drank cider on a peeling bench outside a pub on the edge of the canal. Marnie said she had done preschool teacher training
in Canada and had come to England because she needed to get out of Winnipeg and had felt that Toronto wasn't far enough. She
had almost immediately landed a nursery-teaching job in West London, where she had so impressed one of the mothers there—"She's
been so good to me, but really, she wants to run my life for me, and live it too"—that she had been helped, within two years,
to set up her own school in her benefactor's home town. She was twenty-four.

"Me too," David said. "Do you play tennis?"

"Sure," she said.

She played golf as well, and swam and skied, and was taking climbing lessons on the purpose-built wall at the local sports
center. She appeared to possess none of the mysterious complexities and maneuverings of the girls David had been involved
with before; he didn't feel, as he so often had, that he abruptly had to leave the straightforward highway and plunge off
into the shadowy labyrinths either side, in pursuit of a girl who'd suddenly gone elusive and baffling on him. Yet even he
was baffled now. Here he was, irresistibly drawn towards this uncommon girl, almost exotic in her seemingly serene otherness
to all the English girls he'd known—and she wasn't remotely like Nathalie. David had always supposed, hoped even, that when
he found the girl he would like to share his life with she would be so like Nathalie that he would feel no sense of added
loss. It was, after all, the loss he had always dreaded, the loss he had wrestled with painfully when Nathalie met Steve Ross
at art school and began to turn away from David, in the ineluctable way of a sunflower turning its face towards the sun. He'd
always imagined, after that, that his consolation would come in the form of finding a girl just like Nathalie. But Marnie
wasn't like any woman David had ever met, even up to the point of, within eight months of meeting, directing her warm brown
gaze straight at him and suggesting that they get married.

He was astonished, astonished and relieved.

He leaned across the Cheddar ploughman's lunch they were sharing in a pub outside Westerham and said firmly, "Of course."

Marnie smiled.

"When it's right, go for it."

It was all so easy. He could hardly believe it. Lynne and Ralph were delighted, and Nathalie was too taken aback by Mamie's
complete absence of challenge to her on any grounds to do anything other than echo them. Marnie took him to Winnipeg and introduced
him to her kind, straightforward academic parents and a handful of approachable, easygoing brothers, and David had an eerie
sensation that all this had somehow been guided by an unseen hand, and that the path that had been so treacherous and stony
in his early life was now being superbly smoothed for him as a kind of almost unearthly compensation. He looked round his
new Canadian family and considered his English one and it suddenly seemed to him that all kinds of disturbing inner battles
had not so much been won as simply melted away without a blow being struck. He told Marnie he loved her in a voice that even
she, almost dazed by him as she then was, could hear was heavy with gratitude. It was deeply, wonderfully thrilling.

They were married in England (Mamie's decision), honeymooned by hiking (Mamie's decision) through the Pyrenees from France
to Spain, and returned to set up house in a cramped flat ten minutes' walk from Mamie's nursery school. Ellen was born—and
named for her Canadian grandmother—eighteen months after they were married, and Daniel two years after that. The gardening
business expanded, as did the nursery school to new premises with enough space for fifty children, and they moved to a detached
house with a long garden—long enough to hit a cricket or tennis ball—running down to the edge of Westerham golf course. On
weekends, Daniel collected lost golf balls from the bushes along the fairways and behind the greens, and sold them back to
the members for five or ten pence depending upon what he thought he could get away with. From the lawn of the long garden,
Ellen watched this minute commercial enterprise with scorn: her own aim was to be famous, but whether as an actress or as
a tennis player she had not yet decided.

After nearly fourteen years of marriage, Marnie became pregnant once again. The result—Petey—turned her instincts all homeward,
and she gave up the nursery school to gratifying laments from all the parents, in order to devote herself to motherhood and
domestic life. After all, she said to David, she'd never had the full-time chance for either, and she was going to take it
now, while Petey was still small.

"Of course," David said. He had said, "Of course," a great deal in the fifteen years they had been together and most of the
time he had meant it. But this change in Mamie's life was weirdly disconcerting and his "Of course" didn't have quite its
usual ring of conviction.

He wondered, staring at the input invoices for Value Added Tax on his computer—he still preferred to do these quarterly returns
himself—what it was that alarmed him about the prospect of Mamie's not working. It wasn't really the money, because in the
first place he was doing well enough to keep them all comfortably if not luxuriously, and in the second, the nursery school
had never been run for a profit. It was more, he thought, scrolling pointlessly up and down, how their life would be when
all Mamie's quiet, formidable energies were focused in just one area instead of two.

You couldn't, exactly, call Marnie bossy. She didn't domineer or nag or insist for no good reason. But she had a very clear,
certain view of how human beings should conduct themselves, both as individuals and even more importantly in relation to one
another. Marnie saw people in terms of community; she talked in terms of groups and teams and families. This had worked wonderfully
at the nursery school where such principles were both practical and healthy. But when it came to family life, it didn't seem
to work out so naturally. Marnie made it very plain to David, as the children came along, that he was no longer a priority
to himself, nor even to her, but rather a leading team member in this new group, and the new group took precedence over everything.
Everything.
Family, it became clear, was Mamie's religion.

Part of David loved this, adored it, believed that it was helping to restore, deep down, the great torn gashes left by having
his own blood family ripped away. He would look at his children asleep and feel an intensity of possession that was to do
with something far more visceral than even paternal love. But for all this savage sense of physical belonging, part of him
still strayed away by itself, part of him that was still engaged upon the lifelong struggle—he supposed every human to be
similarly engaged—of discovering exactly who he was and how to live with that person. This struggle, which seemed to preoccupy
the less conscious parts of his mind for most of the time, was in no way eased by his unquestioned love for either Marnie
or his children. Only two things eased it, two things that he knew Marnie felt were, if not actually disloyal to the family,
at least not contributory to its welfare. She would never prevent him from doing either, but she silently conveyed to him
the fact that she considered the time and energy he devoted to these other pursuits was time and energy the family both deserved
and could well have profited from. These two pursuits were playing chess, and seeing his sister Nathalie.

Ralph had taught David to play chess when he was seven, and even at seven, David had sensed a kind of rivalry at stake which
excited him. Ralph was a good, steady player, a member of a local club, and he had said to Lynne that he wanted to teach David
various skills and games that they might share, perhaps, when talking was simply too difficult. Lynne thought it was a wonderful
idea. Her eyes shone. They shone with a gratitude to Ralph, which she was always thankful to feel, because it diminished her
abiding sense of being let down by Ralph in the matter of babies.

Ralph had a soapstone chessboard that Lynne had given him, and a set of heavily carved wooden pieces which had belonged to
his grandfather. He set David down one side of the board on a stool.

"Now," he said. "Before I tell you what's what I want to tell you two things. One is that, because all the moves in chess
are up to you, you soon find out your own limitations. The second thing is—you could beat me."

David's head came up. His eyes were bright.

"
Beat
you?"

"The only aim in chess is to checkmate the king. You could capture all the other pieces on the board and still lose. But if
you checkmate the king, you win. So a boy can win over a man."

It was evident quite quickly that David was going to be good, very good even, better than Ralph had bargained for. By the
time he was twelve, Ralph, saying bravado things like, "Well, I always said the game was greater than the players," ceased
to play with him. David noticed this, but took no account of it, so obsessed was he by then with this mesmerizing activity,
where thought seemed to replace action, where he could move without really exposing himself, where he felt both his emotional
and intellectual defenses were safe.

"Why do you play?" Nathalie said, declining to let him teach her. "Why do you keep on and
on
playing?"

He was tearing an envelope into smaller and smaller squares.

"Because I can control it."

"No, you can't. You don't always win. When you lose, you've lost control."

"But I can play again," David said. "There's always another game. Every time I lose, I look forward to winning the next one.
It keeps me hoping." He balled his fist up round the envelope pieces. "And I can't get lost."