Her Fearful Symmetry

“Look, Julia-an owl!” It hung suspended from the high ceiling, in place of an absent light fixture that had left a small hole with wires coming out of it. The owl’s wings were spread and its talons were open to grasp some small prey. Julia reached up and carefully touched one of the feet, which set the owl spinning, slowly. “It’s an owlicopter,” she said, and Valentina laughed.

Elspeth stood in the doorway watching the twins. Oh, I missed you. I wanted to see you again, and now you’re here. She hugged herself, eager and apprehensive.

As Edie had predicted, all of the furniture was heavy, ornate and old. The sofas were pale pink velvet, beast-footed, many-buttoned. There was a baby grand piano (the twins were distinctly unmusical) and a vast Persian rug which was chrysanthemum-patterned, soft to the touch, and had at one time been deep red, now faded in most places to dull pink. Everything in the room seemed to have been drained of colour. Julia wondered if the colour had all collected somewhere else; perhaps it was in some closet, and when they opened that door it would all flood back into the objects it had deserted. She thought of Sleeping Beauty, and the palace, still for a hundred years, full of motionless courtiers. Edie and Jack preferred new things. Julia ran her finger across the piano, leaving a trail of shining black amid the dull dust. Valentina sneezed. Both girls looked at the doorway as though expecting to be caught intruding on the silence of the flat.

Elspeth stepped forward, about to speak, then realised they couldn’t see her.

There were books everywhere: entire walls of bookcases, piles of books on tables, on the floor. Valentina knelt to collect the pile she had tripped over, a little island of bestiaries and herbals. “Look, Julia, a manticore.” The twins wandered back into the hall. Elspeth followed them.

They crossed a rather bare dining room which contained only a formal table and chairs and a large sideboard; a little tufted ottoman stood orphaned in a corner. Bleak daylight seeped in through huge French windows that led to a diminutive balcony. The twins could see the church rising over a wall of ivy.

Next, a room that was meant to be a parlour but had been used by Elspeth as an office. There was an enormous, ornate desk with a clunky fifties office chair. On the desk sat a scruffy computer, heaps of papers, more books, a credit-card-processing machine, a delicate white and gold teacup with long- evaporated tea at the bottom and apricot lipstick staining the rim. Bookcases lined the walls, stuffed with reference books and a complete OED. An anomalous shelf was bare and dust-free. The room was bursting with flattened packing boxes, bubble wrap, file cabinets and a small stuffed ermine, which peered at them from its perch atop a set of library card catalogue drawers. The room seemed to have been neatened without actually becoming neat. Valentina sat down at the desk and pulled out the centre drawer. It contained invoice pads, Smints, paper clips, rubber bands and business cards:

Elspeth Noblin

Rare and Used Books

Bought and Sold

[email protected]

Valentina said, “Do you think all these books were for her, or to sell? I wonder if she had a shop?”

“I think this was the shop,” said Julia. “None of these receipts has an address on it. I bet she worked from here. Besides, the will didn’t mention anything besides this place.”

“I wish Mom knew more. It’s so lame that they didn’t talk to each other.” Valentina got up and examined the ermine. It stared back at her, insouciant. “What do you suppose his name was?” Valentina asked. She thought, It’s sad that we don’t know.

Margaret, Elspeth thought. Her name was Margaret.

“He looks like George Bush.” Julia headed back through the dining room as she spoke, and Valentina followed her.

A swinging door at the far end of the room led to the kitchen. It was old-fashioned, and the appliances were, by the twins’ American standards, dollhouse-sized. Everything was compact, serviceable, white. The only thing that seemed new was the dishwasher. Valentina opened a cupboard and found a washing machine inside. There was a contraption that sprung into a complicated configuration of clothesline and metal. “Guess that’s the dryer,” said Julia, refolding it. The electrical outlets were shaped differently here. All the kitchen implements were subtly weird, foreign. The twins exchanged uneasy looks. Valentina turned on the tap, and water spurted out with a grunt. She hesitated, then ran her hands under the rust-coloured stream. It took awhile to get warm.

Elspeth watched the twins puzzling over her very ordinary belongings. She listened to their American accents. They’re strangers; I didn’t expect that.

Behind the kitchen was a small bedroom. It was full to the brim with boxes and dusty furniture. There was a tiny, plain bathroom attached to it. The twins realised that it must have been intended for a servant. Here was the back door and the fire escape, here an almost-empty pantry. “Mmm,” said Julia. “Rice.”

Back to the hall (“We should collect two hundred dollars every time we go through here,” said Valentina) and into the bedrooms. There were two, connected by a splendid white marble-tiled bathroom. Each bedroom had a fireplace, elaborate built-in bookshelves, windows with window seats.

The other bedroom, which had obviously been Elspeth’s, overlooked the garden, and Highgate Cemetery.

“Look, Julia.” Valentina stood at the window, marvelling.

Vautravers’ back garden was small and austere. Though the front yard was a deranged tangle of bushes, trees and clumpy grass, this little back garden was almost Japanese in its arrangement of gravelled sloping walks, a stone bench and modest plants.

“I can’t believe it’s so green in January,” said Julia. Back home in Lake Forest the snow lay ten inches thick on the ground.

There was a green wooden door in the brick wall that separated the garden from the cemetery.

“I wonder if anyone goes in,” said Valentina. The ivy around the door was tidily clipped back.

“I will,” said Julia. “We’ll go on picnics.”

“Mmm.”

Beyond the wall, Highgate Cemetery spread before them, vast and chaotic. Because they were on a hill, they might have seen quite far down into the cemetery, but the density of the trees prevented this; the branches were bare, but they formed a latticework that confused the eye. They could see the top of a large mausoleum, and a number of smaller graves. As they watched, a group of people strolled towards them along a path and then stopped, evidently discussing one of the graves. Then the group continued towards them and disappeared behind the wall. Hundreds of crows rose into the air as one. Even through the closed window they could hear the rush of wings. The sun abruptly came out again and the cemetery changed from deep shade and grey to dappled yellow and pale green. The gravestones turned white and seemed to be edged with silver; they hovered, tooth-like amid the ivy.

Valentina said, “It’s a fairyland.” She had been nervous about the cemetery. She had imagined smells and vandalism and creepiness. Instead it was verdant, full of mossy stone and the soft tapping noises of the trees. The group of people wandered away from them, strolling down the path on the opposite side from which they’d come. Julia said, “They must be tourists, with a guide.”

“We should do that. Go on the tour.”

“Okay.” Julia turned and considered Elspeth’s bedroom. There was a huge nest-like bed, with numerous pillows, a chenille bedspread and an elaborate painted wooden headboard. “I vote we sleep in here.”

Valentina surveyed the room. It was nicer than the other bedroom; larger, cosier, brighter. “Are you sure we want the room that overlooks the cemetery? It seems weird, you know; like, if this was a movie, there would be all these zombies or something creeping out of there at night and climbing up the ivy and grabbing us by our hair and turning us into zombies. Plus it was Aunt Elspeth’s bedroom. What if she died in here? I mean, it seems like we’re sort of asking for it, you know?”

Julia felt impatience rise up in her throat. She wanted to say, Don’t be an idiot, Valentina, but that was not the way to soothe the Mouse when she was being irrational. “Hey, Mouse,” she cooed. “You know she died in the hospital, not here. That’s what the lawyer told Mom, remember?”

“Ye-ssss,” Valentina replied.

Julia sat down on the bed and patted the coverlet, inviting. Valentina walked over and sat next to Julia. They both lay back on the soft bed, their thin white legs dangling over the edge. Julia sighed. Her eyelids wanted to close for just a second, just a moment more, just one more minute…

“This must be jet lag,” Valentina said, but Julia didn’t hear her. In a minute Valentina too was asleep.

Elspeth walked over to the bed. Here you are, all grown up. How strange this is, you here. I wish you had come before…I didn’t realise, it would have been so simple. Too late, like everything else. Now Elspeth leaned over the twins and touched them very lightly. Her reading glasses hung around her neck, and they brushed against Valentina’s shoulder as Elspeth bent over her. She saw how the little mole by Julia’s right ear repeated itself by Valentina’s left ear. She put her head on their chests and listened to their hearts. Valentina’s had a disturbing swoosh, a whisper instead of a beat. Elspeth sat on the bed next to Julia and petted Julia’s hair: it barely moved, as though a miniature breeze had come in through the closed windows.

Like, but unlike. Elspeth saw in Julia and Valentina the strangeness, the oneness that had always so discomfited people in herself and Edie. She thought of things that Edie had written to her about the twins. Do you mind Julia bossing you all the time, Valentina? Have either of you got any friends? Lovers? Aren’t you a bit old to be dressing alike? Elspeth laughed. I sound like a nagging mother. She felt exhilarated. They’re here! She wished she could welcome the twins somehow, sing a little song, do an elaborate pantomime demonstrating how glad she was that they’d arrived to alleviate the boredom of the afterlife. Instead she gave each twin a delicate kiss on the forehead and settled cat- like on the pillows to watch over their sleep.

Almost an hour later, Valentina stirred. She had a little dream as she woke. She was a child, and Edie’s voice came floating into her ears, telling her to get up, it was snowing and they would have to leave early for school.

“Mom?”

Valentina sat up hurriedly and found herself in a strange room. It took her a moment to think where she was. Julia was still asleep. Valentina wanted to call their mother, but their cell phones didn’t work internationally. She found a telephone by the bed, but when she raised the receiver it was disconnected. No one can call us, and we can’t call anyone. Valentina started to feel lonely, in the enjoyable manner of those who are