And I know for certain too, Nick, that if it had turned out the other way round, if you’d suddenly found a boy’s strength that your sister didn’t have, it would have been just the same, you’d have gone down with her. She’d have led, you’d have followed.
I didn’t hit you, Kate, I hugged you. You must have seen my anger drop from me like something dropping through water. I hugged you so tightly that you must have thought, after nearly being drowned, that now your mum was going to smother you.
Among all the “what-ifs” of that day, there’s one that’s even more unthinkable than all the others, that’s even more unthinkable — can it even be said? — than the thought that we might have lost you both. That we might have lost, Mike might have saved, just one of you. That there might have been, even now, even on this night, Nick without Kate, or Kate without Nick.
This family would have had its irretrievable history.
I’m only your mother. What do I know about how it really works between you? You’re a mystery, you’re a joy, you’re an anguish. Is it a blessing or a curse being what you are: wedded, if that’s how it is, from birth? You have it easy, you have it made? You won’t ever need to find, either of you, that other one in life who’ll make you complete? Or being what you are will just make it harder? You’re a little afraid, even now, of beginning? None of those other ones will ever be good enough or come as close. You’ll never have your Brighton beach.
You’ve known from the start the cruel rule of coupledom: one day there has to be only one. But that day, at least, you would have defied it.
I’m afraid that tomorrow’s only going to pull you back to that day. Not that you will ever get away from it. I’m afraid that tomorrow’s only going to be like that invisible rope already being stretched and strained between you (who’s going to cut it first?) but which then might have pulled you swiftly, surely, one after the other, under those waves.
At Grandpa Pete’s funeral you must have had your teenage pangs, so far as it’s possible, for Grannie Helen. Poor Grannie Helen. And then, perhaps, a premonitory pang for Mike and me: one day, one of them too. And then, perhaps, with that day in Cornwall behind you, a pang, a double pang, for yourselves.
Your first taste of death? Of course it wasn’t. You carried yourselves with such dignity, such seeming seasonedness and wisdom. Look, Dad’s trying not to cry, Mum’s holding his arm. A cold clamminess hung over the churchyard. Every tree dripped. An early frost had melted to a sticky dew, the grass under our feet was wet and chewed. A day like cattle’s breath. The tops of the Downs, where Grandpa Pete had died, were hidden in a sort of steam.
I gripped your father’s arm, remembering his hand on my arm at Invercullen. If Grannie Helen had broken down and wept then I’d have had to yield, to step aside, to be the tactful, deferring daughter-in-law. But it was your dad who wept. Grannie Helen stood dry-eyed on that sopping grass. And I’d had the sudden thought (since that secret was out now): she’s standing where one day she’ll be. And then I’d had the extra thought, coming from nowhere: are there graveyards, are there instances (I suppose there must be) where twins get laid side by side?
With twins it’s somehow insupportable, as if the second heart must simply stop beating too.
I fear for you sometimes. I fear for your future. Your future? Your futures? I don’t even know which is best to say. I want each one of you to have, to know something at least as good as Mike and I have known. And still know. Is your mother just becoming a heavy mother — a clinging, burdensome, smothering mother? Well, your dad, you’ll soon discover, could hardly be lighter, or more disengaged.
I think you’re still a virgin, Kate, and I think your brother won’t make a move before you do. What’s new in that? But then, for all I really know, each of you may already have had your string of episodes, you may even compare notes frankly with each other. I’m seldom around at what must be the witching hour, immediately after school, and perhaps you find it inconvenient these days that your dad sometimes is — working at home in his study. But then again, perhaps for each of you it’s the other one’s presence that’s the real, inhibiting factor. Compare notes? Hardly.
In any case, I’ve been looking for the telltale signs and I don’t think either of you yet has some special friend, some really special friend, to whom you might just go and blab everything you’re about to learn. Or find it hard not to. Perhaps Mike and I should be grateful. You’re late and cautious beginners, it seems, for whatever reason. Though tomorrow, for all we know, may deliver you a pretty hefty kick-start. If your mum could do it with a test tube — what’s keeping you?
I fear for both of you. Mothers fret and wonder and lie awake at three in the morning. Tell me I’m foolish. I fear for you in ways that have nothing to do with tomorrow. As if tomorrow won’t be enough for you, anyway, to be getting on with.
29
YOUR DAD’S TURNING in his sleep. Don’t wake yet, Mikey, not yet. For a little while yet he can still be that: “your dad.” He’s snuffling softly like some rooting animal. How I want to hold him tight, but I’m afraid to wake him. In a few hours he’ll be in your hands. I’ll have to hand him over to you.
And it’ll be up to you then what you call him. It seems to me that he’s going to speak to you, one last time, more like a father than he’s ever done, a big, stern, serious daddy. Listen to your father, he’s got something important to say. And then he’ll be nobody, he’ll be what you make of him. If you want, you can even tell him to leave.
But I hope you know that if he goes, I go too. That’s how it is. I’m your mother, he’s not your father, but we go together anyway, just as surely as the two of you. Have I made that clear? When push comes to shove, that’s how it is. I’m your mother, but you’re sixteen now, and how much longer will you even need me around? That indefatigable maternal instinct eventually found its way from me to you, but I’m not sure if biology rules. Is that heresy? Your dad was never your biological father. That disqualifies him? How many real fathers are qualified biologists?
Tomorrow — if you decide in his favour — you’ll agree to make him, artificially, your father, as we once agreed to make you artificially (according to that ugly phrase) our children. But then, you’ll quickly discover, the artifice doesn’t stop there. It’s not just the truth you’ll be getting tomorrow, it’s that whole issue of pretence.
That little side-question of next weekend, of the Gifford Park Hotel, to let us go or not, will seem small stuff in comparison. Though I’ve already imagined how it might be — should it work this way — your neat means of revenge. Forgive me. I see you, next Saturday morning, after a remarkably calm and uncatastrophic week (but one in which you’ve had time to plan), standing at the front door to wave us off on our silver weekend — with all the ceremonial good grace, in fact, that you displayed at Grandpa Pete’s funeral. I even imagine Mike and I feeling for a moment like the spoilt (but humbled) children, while you stand there like the magnanimous householders of 14 Rutherford Road.
Except that when we come back next Sunday evening, you’ll have gone. The house will be ransacked, wrecked. Could you be so cunning? Pretence and dissimulation all round. My little pretence with your father in a five-star hotel, in a four-poster bed in Sussex will have been the least of my worries.