Her Fearful Symmetry, Page 3

  Martin always dressed in sober, dark clothing; he exuded formality. He did not go so far as to wear a tie around the flat, but he always looked as though he had just removed one, or was looking for a tie to put on before he rushed out the door. Since he had stopped leaving the flat, his ties stayed on the rack in his wardrobe.

  Dressed, Martin walked cautiously through the hall and into the kitchen. His breakfast was laid out on the kitchen table. Weetabix in a bowl, a small jug of milk, two apricots. He pressed the button on the electric kettle, and in a few minutes the water boiled. Martin had few compulsions associated with food (they mainly involved chewing things a certain number of times). The kitchen was Marijke's domain, and she always made him take whatever was bothering him to another part of the flat. He tried never to turn on the stove, because he found it impossible to be sure that he'd turned it off again and would stand for hours with his hand on the knob, turning it back and forth. But he could make tea with the electric kettle, and he did so.

  Marijke had left the newspapers next to his bowl of cereal. They were pristine, still neatly folded. Martin felt a little surge of gratitude - he liked to be the first to open the fresh newspapers, but he never got to them before she did. He unfurled the Guardian and went directly to the crossword.

  Today was Thursday, and for Thursdays Martin always set a crossword with a scientific theme. This particular one concerned astronomy. Martin scanned it briefly to be sure that everything was correct. He was especially proud of the puzzle's form, which sprawled across the grid in the shape of a rather boxy and completely symmetrical spiral galaxy. He then turned to the solution for yesterday's puzzle, a strict Ximenean which had been set by his fellow compiler Albert Beamish. Beamish set under the name Lillibet; Martin had no idea why. He'd never met Beamish, though they spoke on the phone occasionally. Martin always imagined him as a hairy man in a ballet costume. Martin's own setting name was Bunbury.

  Martin opened The Times, the Daily Telegraph, the Daily Mail and the Independent and began combing through them for interesting news items. The crossword he was working on at the moment was about the history of warfare in Mesopotamia. He wasn't sure if this was going to fly with his editor, but like any artist he felt the need to express his preoccupations through his work, and Iraq had been much on Martin's mind lately. Today the news was full of an especially bloody suicide bombing in a mosque. Martin sighed, got his scissors and began cutting out the articles.

  After breakfast, he washed up (in a fairly normal fashion) and stacked the papers neatly (though they had become somewhat lace-like). He went into his office, bent over to turn on the desk lamp. As he straightened up something brushed his face.

  Martin's first thought was that a bat had somehow got into the office. But then he saw the envelope, swinging gently on its thread, hanging from the ceiling. He stood and considered it. His name was written on it in Marijke's bold handwriting. What have you done? His mind went blank, and he stood in front of the dangling envelope with his head bowed and his arms crossed protectively over his chest. At last he reached out and took it, giving a little tug that detached the thread from the ceiling. He opened it slowly, unfolded the letter, groped for his reading glasses and put them on. What has she done?

  6 January

  Lieve Martin,

  My darling husband, I am sorry. I cannot live this way any more. By the time you are reading this letter I will be on my way to Amsterdam. I have written to Theo to tell him.

  I don't know if you can understand, but I will try to explain. I need to live my life without being always vigilant to calm your fears. I am tired, Martin. You have worn me out. I know that I will be lonely without you, but I will be more free. I will find myself a little apartment and open the windows and let the sun and the air come in. Everything will be painted white, and I will have flowers in all the rooms. I will not have to always enter the rooms with my right foot first, or smell bleach on my skin, on everything I touch. My things will be in their cupboards and drawers, not in Tupperware, not wrapped in cling film. My furniture will not wear out from being scrubbed too much. Maybe I will have a cat.

  You are ill, Martin, but you refuse to see a doctor. I am not coming back to London. If you want to see me, you can come to Amsterdam. But first you would have to leave the flat, so I am afraid that we may never see each other again.

  I tried to stay but I failed.

  Be well, my love.

  Marijke

  Martin stood holding the letter. The worst thing has happened. He could not take it in. She's gone. She would not come back. Marijke. He bent slowly at his waist, hips, knees, until he was crouching on the floor in front of his desk, the harsh light shining on his back, his face inches from the letter. My love. Oh my love ... All thought fled from him; there was only a great emptiness, the way the water draws back before a tsunami. Marijke.

  Marijke sat on the train, watching the flat grey land along the track from Schiphol Airport as it blurred past her. It had been raining; the sky was low. I'm almost home. She checked her watch. By now Martin must have found her letter. She took her mobile phone out of her bag and opened it. No calls. She snapped it shut. The rain streaked sideways across the train's windows. What have I done? I'm sorry, Martin. But she knew she would not be sorry once she was home, and only Amsterdam could be home to her now.

  FEBRUARY

  ROBERT HAD GIVEN a special tour of the Western Cemetery to a group of antiquarians from Hamburg, and now he stood under the arch by Highgate Cemetery's main gate, waiting for his group to buy postcards and collect their belongings so he could shoo them out and lock up. In the winter there were no regular weekday tours. He liked the subdued, workaday quality the cemetery had on these quiet days.

  The antiquarians straggled out of the former Anglican chapel that served as a makeshift gift shop. Robert shook the green plastic donation box at them, and they threw in their change. He always felt embarrassed at this little transaction, but the cemetery didn't pay VAT on donations, so everyone at Highgate begged as enthusiastically as they could manage. Robert smiled and waved the Germans out, then turned the old-fashioned key in the massive gate's lock.

  He went into the office and put the key and the donation box on the desk. Felicity, the office manager, smiled and dumped out the contents. 'Not bad, for such a dreary Wednesday,' she said. She held out her hand. 'Walkie-talkie?'

  Robert patted his mackintosh pocket and said, 'I'll bring it back.'

  'Are you going out, then?' Felicity asked. 'It's starting to rain.'

  'Just for a bit.'

  'Molly's on the gate across the way. Could you give her these?'

  'Okay.'

  Robert took the pamphlets from Felicity and an umbrella from the stand by the stairs. He headed across Swains Lane. Molly, a lean elderly woman who wore green dungarees and an anorak, sat on a folding chair inside the Strathcona and Mount Royal memorial, which lurked in pink granite splendour just beside the Eastern Cemetery's gate. She peered out of the gloom patiently and took the pamphlets from Robert, tucking them into the little rack that sat beside her. The pamphlets featured Karl Marx on their covers; he and George Eliot were the star attractions among the dead on this side of the cemetery.

  'D'you want to go in and warm up?' Robert asked her.

  Molly's voice was slow, raspy, sleepy; she had a slight Australian accent. 'I'm all right - I've got the heater on. Have you had your visit?'

  'No, I just got done with the tour.'

  'Well go on, then.'

  As he recrossed Swains Lane, Robert thought about the way Molly had said 'your visit' as though it were now part of the official daily schedule of the cemetery. Perhaps it was. He thought about the way the staff had made space for his grief as if it were a tangible thing. Out in the world people drew back from it, but at the cemetery everyone was accustomed to the presence of the bereaved, and so they were matter-of-fact about death in a way that Robert had never appreciated until now.

  The drizzle turned to
rain as Robert came to Elspeth's mausoleum. He put up his umbrella with a flourish and sat down on the steps with his back against the door. Robert leaned his head back and closed his eyes. Less than an hour ago he had walked right past this spot with his tour. He had been chatting to the group about wakes and the extreme measures the Victorians had taken for fear of being buried alive. He wished that the Noblin tomb was not on one of the main paths; it was impossible to give a tour without passing Elspeth, and he felt callous leading groups of gawking tourists past the small structure with her surname carved into it. It had never bothered him when it was only her family's grave - but he had never met her family. For the first time he properly understood why Jessica was so adamant about decorum in the cemetery. He had been inclined to tease her about that. For Jessica, Highgate was not about the tours, or the monuments, not about the supernatural or the atmosphere or the morbid peculiarities of the Victorians; for her, the cemetery was about the dead and their grave owners. Robert was working, rather slowly, on a history of Highgate Cemetery and Victorian funerary practices for his doctoral thesis. But Jessica, who never wasted anything and was supremely adept at putting people to work, had said, 'If you're going to do all that research, why don't you make yourself useful?' So he began to lead tours. He found that he liked the cemetery itself much better than anything he wrote about it.

  Robert settled into himself. The stone step he sat on was cold, wet and shallow. His knees jutted up almost to shoulder height. 'Hello, love,' he said, but as always felt absurd speaking out loud to a mausoleum. Silently he continued: Hello. I'm here. Where are you? He pictured Elspeth sitting inside the mausoleum like a saint in her hermitage, looking out at him through the grate in the door with a little smile on her face. Elspeth?

  She had always been a restless sleeper. When she was alive her sleep was punctuated by tossing and turning; she often stole all the blankets. When Elspeth slept alone she lay spreadeagled across the bed, staking her territory with limbs instead of a flag. When she slept with Robert he was often awoken by a stray elbow or knee, or by Elspeth's legs thrashing as though she were running in bed. 'One of these nights you're going to break my nose,' he'd said to her. She had acknowledged that she was a dangerous bed mate. 'I apologise in advance for any breakage,' she'd told him, and kissed the nose in question. 'You'll look good, though. It'll add a certain hooliganish glamour to you.'

  Now there was only stillness. The door was a barrier he could have passed through; there was a key in Elspeth's desk, in addition to the one in the cemetery office. Elspeth's body sat in a box a few feet away from him. He chose not to imagine what three months had done to it.

  Robert was struck once again by the finality of it all, summed up and presented to him as the silence in the little room behind him. I have things to tell you. Are you listening? He had never realised, while Elspeth was alive, the extent to which a thing had not completely happened until he told her about it.

  Roche sent the letter to Julia and Valentina yesterday. Robert imagined the letter making its way from Roche's office in Hampstead to Lake Forest, Illinois, USA, being dropped through the letter box at 99 Pembridge Road, being picked up by one of the twins. It was a thick, creamy envelope with the return address of Roche, Elderidge, Potts & Lefley - Solicitors debossed in glossy black ink and the twins' names and address written in the spidery handwriting of Roche's ancient secretary, Constance. Robert imagined one of the twins holding the envelope, her curiosity. I'm nervous about this, Elspeth. I would feel better if you'd ever met these girls. You don't have to live with them - they could be awful. Or what if they just sell the place to someone awful? But he was intrigued by the twins, and he had a certain irrational faith in Elspeth's experiment. 'I can leave it all to you,' she'd said. 'Or I can leave it to the girls.'

  'Let the girls have it,' he had replied. 'I have more than enough.'

  'Hmm. I will, then. But what can I give you?'

  They were sitting on her hospital bed. She had a fever; it was after the splenectomy. Elspeth's dinner sat untouched on the wheeled bedside table. He was massaging her feet, his hands slippery with the warm, fragrant oil. 'I don't know. Could you arrange to be reincarnated?'

  'The twins are rumoured to be pretty close copies.' Elspeth smiled. 'I'll make them come and live in the flat if they want it. Shall I leave you the twins?'

  Robert smiled back at her. 'That could backfire. That could be quite ... painful.'

  'You'll never know if you don't give it a whirl. But I want to give you something.'

  'A lock of hair?'

  'Oh, but it's bad hair now,' she said, fingering her downy silver fuzz. 'We should have saved a bit when I still had my real hair.' Elspeth's hair had been longish, wavy, the colour of winter butter.

  Robert shook his head. 'It doesn't matter. I just wanted something of you.'

  'Like the Victorians? It's a pity it isn't longer. You could make earrings or a brooch or something.' She laughed. 'You could clone me.'

  He pretended to consider it. 'But I don't think they've worked all the bugs out of cloning. You might turn out morbidly obese, or flipper-limbed or whatnot. Plus I'd have to wait for you to grow up, by which time I'd be a pensioner and you'd want nothing to do with me.'

  'The twins are a much better bet. They're fifty per cent me and fifty per cent Jack. I've seen photos, you really can't see him in them at all.'

  'Where are you getting photos of the twins?'

  Elspeth covered her mouth with her hand. 'Edie, actually. But don't tell anyone.' Robert said, 'Since when are you in touch with Edie? I thought you hated Edie.'

  'Hated Edie?' Elspeth looked stricken. 'No. I was very angry with Edie, and I still am. But I never hated Edie; that would be like hating myself. She just ... she did something quite stupid that bollixed up our lives. But she's still my twin.' Elspeth hesitated. 'I wrote to her about a year ago - when I first got diagnosed. I thought she ought to know.'

  'You didn't tell me.'

  'I know. It was private.'

  Robert knew it was childish to feel hurt. He didn't say anything.

  She said, 'Ah, come on. If your father got in touch would you tell me all about it?'

  'I would, actually.'

  Elspeth put her thumb in her mouth and bit gently. He had always found this highly sexual, a huge turn-on, but now it was somehow devoid of that power. She said, 'Yes, of course you would.'

  'And what do you mean they are half you? They're Edie's kids.'

  'They are. They are her kids. But Edie and I are identical twins, so her kids equal my kids, genetically.'

  'But you've never even met them.'

  'Does it matter so much? All I can say is, you haven't got a twin, so you can't know how it is.' Robert continued to sulk. 'Oh, don't. Don't be that way.' She tried to move towards him, but the tubes in her arms overruled her. Robert carefully set her feet on a towel, wiped his hands, got up and reseated himself on the arc of white sheet next to her waist. She took up almost no space at all. He placed one hand on her pillow, just beside her head, and leaned over her. Elspeth put her hand on his cheek. It was like being touched with sandpaper; her skin almost hurt him. He turned his head and kissed her palm. They had done all these things so many times before.

  'Let me give you my diaries,' Elspeth said softly. 'Then you'll know all my secrets.'

  He realised later that she had planned this all along. But then he had only said, 'Tell me all your secrets now. Are they so very terrible?'

  'Dreadful. But they're all very old secrets. Since I met you I've lived a chaste and blameless life.'

  'Chaste?'

  'Well, monogamous, anyway.'

  'That'll do.' He kissed her, briefly. She was more feverish now. 'You ought to sleep.'

  'Do my feet more?' She was like a child asking for her favourite bedtime story. He resumed his place at her feet and squeezed more oil onto his hands, warmed it by rubbing it between his palms.

  Elspeth sighed and closed her eyes. 'Mmm,' she said after
a while, arching her feet. 'That's bloody marvellous.' Then she had slept, and he'd sat there holding her slippery feet in his hands, thinking.

  Robert opened his eyes. He wondered briefly if he had fallen asleep; the memory had been so vivid. Where are you, Elspeth? Perhaps you're only living in my head now. Robert stared at the graves across the path, which were dangerously tilted. One had trees growing on both sides; they had lifted the monument slightly off its base so that it levitated an inch or so in the air. As Robert watched, a fox trotted through the ivy that choked the graves behind the ones on the main path. The fox saw him, paused for a moment and disappeared into the undergrowth. Robert heard other foxes howling to each other, some close by, some off in the deeper parts of the cemetery. It was the mating season. The daylight was going; Robert was chilled and wet. He roused himself.

  'Goodnight, Elspeth.' He felt silly saying it. He got up and began to walk back to the office, feeling much the way he had as a teenager when he realised that he was no longer able to pray. Wherever Elspeth might be, she wasn't here.

  THE MIRROR TWINS

  JULIA AND VALENTINA Poole liked to get up early. This was curious, because they were out of school, unemployed and rather indolent. There was no reason for the twins to be up with the dawn; they were early birds who weren't particularly interested in getting the worm.

  On this particular Saturday in February the sun was not quite up. The twelve inches of snow that had fallen overnight looked bluish in the half-light; the huge trees that lined Pembridge Road bowed under the weight of it. Lake Forest was still asleep. The yellow-brick ranch house where the twins lived with their parents felt quiet and snug under the snow. All the usual traffic, bird and dog noises were stilled.

  Julia turned up the heat while Valentina made hot chocolate from a mix. Julia went into the family room and clicked on the TV. When Valentina came into the room with the tray, Julia was standing in front of the TV flicking through the channels even though she knew what they wanted to watch. It was always the same, every Saturday. The twins loved the sameness, even as they felt incapable of enduring it for one more minute. Julia paused on CNN. President Bush was talking to Karl Rove in a conference room. 'Nuke them,' said Valentina. The twins gave the finger to the president and his aide in unison, and Julia changed the channels until she got to This Old House. She turned the sound up, careful not to blast it and risk waking their parents. Valentina and Julia settled onto the couch, wrapped around each other, with Julia's legs resting on Valentina's lap. Mookie, their aged tabby cat, sat next to Valentina. They pulled the plaid wool blanket over themselves, warmed their hands with their mugs of chocolate and stared at the TV, lost to everything else. On Saturday mornings they could watch four reruns of This Old House back to back.