Her Fearful Symmetry

“I do, but according to Elspeth you don’t.”

“But she knew I knew. I mean, pregnancy really changed her body-apparently Edie was the only one who didn’t realise…Maybe this was all some weird thing Elspeth was doing to Edie? Look, I know you can’t tell me anything,” Jack said. “But what if I tell you the situation as I understand it? And you can just, you know, elevate your eyebrow a little when you hear something that makes sense. Could we do that?”

“All right.”

“Okay.” Jack sipped the whisky. “I don’t drink at this hour. Usually.”

“No. I don’t either.” Until recently. Robert poured some whisky for himself. He thought the smell might turn his stomach, but it didn’t. He drank, cautiously. I love the smell of napalm in the morning.

“So,” said Jack, “it’s 1983. Edie and Elspeth Noblin live together in a little flat in Hammersmith, in bohemian squalor and at great expense to their mother. The twins are recently down from Oxford, and I am working at the London branch of the bank I still work for. I am engaged to the woman we both know as Edie, but who back then was known as Elspeth. I’ll stick to calling them by their current names, to avoid confusion.”

“Okay.”

“Elspeth-your Elspeth-was not fond of me at all. She wasn’t actively hostile, she just did that British thing, you know, where somebody doesn’t want to know you so they freeze you out. I don’t think it was personal, but she knew where things were leading: I was going to take her twin to America. I don’t know how much the twins issue affected your relationship with Elspeth-?”

“Not much. Edie was gone. Elspeth very rarely mentioned her. But Julia and Valentina have been educational.” Robert wondered what Julia had told her parents about his dealings with Valentina.

“Well, the thing about twins: no one can ever replace the missing twin. I mean, Edie and I, we love Valentina-but Julia…I don’t know how she’ll…” Jack looked at his hands. Robert found it hard to breathe. “Anyway. The twins-Edie and Elspeth-started acting weird. You never saw them together. They were a lot alike, but not as much as they thought they were. When they were impersonating each other there was always this extra thing, the acting, going on. I mean, you don’t have to work at being yourself, but when one of the Noblin sisters was being the other there was a noticeable smell of effort.

“So Edie started to impersonate Elspeth-that is, my fiancee started pretending to be her sister-and she started coming on to me, which is something your Elspeth would never have done in a thousand years, because she genuinely disliked me, in that impersonal way she had.”

“Why did she do that?”

Jack shook his head. “My wife has always been pretty insecure about herself. She was the weaker of the two, but over the years she’s taken on some of her sister’s personality. I think she was testing me, to see what I would do.”

“So what did you do?”

“I got mad. Then I made a big mistake. I played along with it.”

“Ah.”

“Indeed. So, yadda, yadda…things got complicated. I’m ninety-nine percent sure the woman standing next to me at the wedding was Edie. My Edie, you know what I mean. The switch happened when we got on the plane to Chicago.”

Robert imagined Elspeth sitting next to Jack on a plane. “Elspeth was terribly afraid of flying.”

“They both were. That’s why Edie and I didn’t come over to visit the girls, though it seems crazy, now. That isn’t what tipped me off.” Robert waited for him to elaborate. Instead Jack said, “Please-the answer must be in Elspeth’s papers. Why else would she be so hellbent on keeping them away from us?”

Robert said, “But I don’t understand-what is it you’re hoping to find out? Elspeth was pregnant, you were the father-it seemed obvious to them, in their self-absorbed way, that they should just trade identities and everything would be fine.”

Jack said, “I never slept with Elspeth.”

Robert thought, My brain is going to explode. “Stay there,” he said. He got up and went to the servant’s room, found the last box of diaries with Elspeth’s letter and carried it all to the kitchen. He extracted a diary and paged through it until he located the entry. “April Fool’s Day, 1983,” he said, and handed the diary to Jack. “At a party, in Knightsbridge. You were drunk. I think the joke was supposed to be on Edie, somehow.”

Jack held the diary at arm’s length, reading. “She doesn’t mention my name.”

Robert replied, “They wrote the diaries together.” He leaned over Jack and pointed to the entry just below the first one. “That’s Edie’s reply.”

Damn you. Can’t I have anything of my own? Jack read. He looked up, confused.

Robert said, “They tried to make it right, but they didn’t understand what would be involved. I can’t imagine they wanted to hurt you.”

“No,” said Jack. “I just happened to be there.” He put the diary on the table and closed his eyes, pressed his lips together. Robert thought, He didn’t know he really was their dad. Oh God. He thought of Valentina, and felt helpless, furious. Robert was unable to speak. Finally he gestured at the other diaries and said, “You’re welcome to look through all that.”

Jack replied, “No, thank you. I found out what I needed to know.” Jack stood up, disorientated and a little buzzed. They looked at each other and then away, mutually unsure suddenly on how to proceed.

Robert said, “I’ll see you at Lauderdale House.”

“Yeah. Um-thanks.” Jack lumbered off. Robert heard him treading slowly up the stairs. A door opened and closed. Robert got his wallet and keys and went out to buy flowers.

Valentina’s funeral was held at Lauderdale House, a sixteenth-century manor where Nell Gwyn had once lived, which now functioned as an art gallery/wedding hall/cafe. Her funeral was in the big upstairs room where the figure drawing and yoga classes usually met. The room was half-timbered and half- unfinished, as though the carpenters’ elevenses had lasted several decades. The coffin stood at the front of the room on trestles, covered in white roses. Folding chairs filled the rest of the space. Julia sat between her parents in the front row, staring out of the window. She remembered a story someone had told them about Nell Gwyn dangling her baby out of one of the windows at Lauderdale House. Julia couldn’t remember why this had happened, or which window.

The coffin was white, with simple steel fittings. Sebastian moved around the room, placing a water pitcher and empty glasses at the podium, depositing a newly arrived wreath at the front of the coffin. Julia thought he was like a butler in his super-efficiency and preternatural tranquillity. I’ve never met a butler. Sebastian glanced at Julia as though he knew she was thinking about him and gave her a calm smile. I’m going to cry, and if I start I’m not going to stop. She wanted to disappear. Sebastian put a box of tissues next to the podium. He does this all the time, as a job. Julia had never thought of death as something that would happen to her, or to people she knew. All those people in the cemetery were just stones, names, dates. Loving Mother. Devoted Husband. Elspeth was a parlour trick; she had never been really real to Julia. Valentina is in that box. It couldn’t be true.

I want to be haunted, thought Julia. Haunt me, Mouse. Come and put your arms around me. We’ll sit together and write our secrets with the plan-chette. Or, if you can’t do that, just look at me. That’s all I need. Where are you? Not here. But I can’t feel you gone, either. You’re my phantom limb, Mouse. I keep looking for you. I forget. I feel stupid, Mouse. Haunt me, find me, come back from wherever you are. Be with me. I’m afraid.

Julia looked at her mother. Edie sat stiffly, white-knuckled hands gripping her small handbag. She’s afraid too. Her father sat over-spilling his chair, smelling sweetly of unsmoked tobacco and alcohol. Julia leaned against him. Jack reached over and took her hand.

People filed in and took their places on the folding chairs. Julia turned to see, but most of them were strangers. There were people from the cemetery. Jessica and James sat behind the Pooles. Jessica patted Julia’s shoulder. “Hello, dear.” She wore a little black cloche with a veil that was like stars caught in a net. The Mouse would have been wild for that hat.

“Hello.” Julia didn’t know what else to say, so she smiled and turned to face the coffin. I would get through this better if I could sit at the back.

The officiant stood at the front of the room holding a clipboard and watching as people took their seats. She wore something red draped over her shoulders. Julia wondered what was about to happen. They had asked for a nonreligious ceremony. Robert had arranged everything through the Humanist Society. He had asked Julia if she wanted to speak. Now she had a much folded and crossed-out speech tucked into her bag. The speech was all wrong; it was inadequate and somehow untrue. Martin had read it for her and helped with the phrasing, but still the speech did not say what Julia wanted to express. It doesn’t matter, Julia told herself. Valentina won’t hear it anyway.

The red-shawled officiant spoke. She welcomed them and said some nonreligious things that were meant to be comforting. She invited people who had known Valentina to speak about her.

Robert stood at the podium. He peered out at the room, which was half filled. The Poole family sat a few feet away from him, regarding him stoically. Valentina, forgive me. He cleared his throat, adjusted his glasses. His voice, when he found it, was first too soft, then too loud. Robert wished to be anywhere else, doing anything else. “This is a poem by Arthur William Edgar O’Shaughnessy,” he said. His hands held the paper steady.

“I made another garden, yea,
For my new Love:
I left the dead rose where it lay
And set the new above.
Why did my Summer not begin?