Her Fearful Symmetry (28 page)

“We do! We have our own lives together-”
Valentina!

“That’s not what I mean!” Valentina threw the shoes across the room. They bounced harmlessly on the carpet. “You know what I mean-I want my own life. I want privacy! I’m sick of being half a person.” She burst into tears. Julia stepped towards her and Valentina shrieked, “Don’t touch me! Don’t-” and ran out of the room.

Julia stood with her arms at her sides, her eyes closed.
Tomorrow she’ll be normal. It will be like this didn’t happen.
She got back into bed and lay there trying to hear Valentina somewhere in the flat. Eventually she fell asleep and dreamt she was upstairs in Martin’s flat, wandering by herself through the endless paths between the piles of boxes.

Valentina put herself to bed in the spare bedroom. The sheets were clammy and she felt oddly sophisticated sleeping in her underwear.
I can’t remember ever sleeping by myself.
She was too excited to actually sleep. The fight with Julia occupied her mind; the evening with Robert seemed weeks ago, a dim and pleasant interlude in the real battle. She saw herself as rational and victorious:
I won,
she thought.
I said exactly what I wanted to say. She was wrong. She knew I was right. From now on things will be different.

In the morning the twins met shyly in the kitchen. They made scrambled eggs and toast, and had their breakfast together in the cold light of the dining room without saying very much. Things between them went back to normal, but things were different.

Y
OU LOOK terrible,” Julia said to Martin a few days later. “I’m going to buy you some vitamins.”

“Now you sound like Marijke.”

“Is that good or bad?” They were in Martin’s office. It was late afternoon; Valentina was at the cemetery with Robert, so Julia had come upstairs like a stray creature, complaining loudly that she had been deserted and hoping that Martin would watch TV with her. But Martin was working, so she hovered around him, bored but expectant.

Martin smiled and swivelled to look at her. In the dim light of the computer screen he seemed otherworldly; Julia thought him beautiful, though she knew it was the beauty of damage. His face was bluish and his hands were an extraordinary blood-orange colour in the warm desk-lamp light. “It’s nice. It’s good to have someone worry about me, just a bit. I wouldn’t want you to worry too much, though.”

An idea was forming in Julia’s mind. “I won’t. But would you take vitamins if I got you some?”

Martin turned back to the screen. He was building the grid for a crossword. He clicked and three squares went black. “Maybe. I’m not very good at remembering to take pills.”

“I could remind you. It could be my job.”

“I suppose it’s easier than actually eating fruit and veg.”

Julia said, “Okay, I’ll go to Boots tomorrow.” She hesitated. “Are you going to work all night?”

“Yes, I should have started this yesterday, but I got sidetracked. It’s due day after tomorrow.” Martin made a note on his handwritten sketch of the crossword. “If you want to watch TV, go ahead.”

“No, I don’t feel like watching by myself. I’ll go downstairs to read.”

“Well, sorry to be such poor company, but I really do have to finish this or my editor will be at my door with a truncheon.”

“S’okay.” By the time Julia was back in her own flat her plan was complete.

“You can’t do that,” Valentina said when Julia told her. “You can’t just give him medicine and not tell him.”

“Why not? He says refusing treatment is part of the disease. So I’m going to sneak it into him. He’ll be glad when it works and he can go outside.”

“What about side effects? What if he’s allergic? And how are you going to get your hands on medicine for obsessive compulsive disorder, anyway?”

“We’ll just go to the doctor and pretend to have OCD. I’ve been reading about it, it’s not hard to fake. I was thinking I would tell the doctor I’m super afraid of snakes. And maybe pluck out all my eyebrows.”

“Whadaya mean
we
? I’m not going with you.” Valentina held onto the arms of her chair as though she thought Julia might pull her out of it.

Julia shrugged. “Okay, fine. I’ll go by myself.”

It was much more complicated than she had anticipated, but Julia did eventually manage to get a prescription for Anafranil. She decanted the capsules into a vitamin bottle and presented herself in Martin’s office one evening after dinner.

“Look, I remembered,” she said, shaking the bottle so the pills rattled.

He was bent over some photographs, lost in another language. “Sorry, what? Oh, hello, Julia. What’s that? That’s very kind, thank you. Here, I’ll put them next to the computer so I remember to take them.”

“No,” said Julia. “I’ll keep them and make sure you take them. That’s our deal, right?”

“Was it?” he said. She went to the kitchen to get a glass of water. When she handed him one capsule and the glass, Martin let the pill rest in his palm and glanced at it. He looked up at her inquisitively but didn’t say anything.

“Aren’t you going to take it?” she asked nervously. ANAFRANIL 25 MG was printed right on the capsule; she was counting on Martin’s near-sightedness to conceal that.

“Hmm? Oh, yes.” He put the pill in his mouth and gulped it down with water. “There you are, Nurse.”

Julia laughed. “You look better already.” She rattled the vitamin bottle flirtatiously and went downstairs. Valentina was sitting on the floor of Elspeth’s office peering into her laptop.

“You’re going to kill him,” Valentina said.

“No, I’m not. What are you talking about?”

“Look at this.” Valentina swivelled her computer towards Julia, who sat on the floor next to her. “Look at the side effects.”

Julia read.
Blurred vision, constipation, nausea, vomiting, allergies, heart palpitations…
It was a long list. She looked at Valentina. “I’m up there a lot. I see him more than a doctor would. I just have to monitor him, that’s all.”

“What if he has a heart attack?”

“That’s probably not going to happen.”

“What if he gets seizures? He’s not going to tell you if he’s suddenly impotent or constipated.”

“I just gave him a little dose.”

Valentina logged off and shut down the computer. She stood up.

“You’re an idiot,” she told Julia. “You can’t just decide things for people. And you look weird without eyebrows.”

“You haven’t even met him,” Julia said, but Valentina had already left the room. Julia heard her walking through the flat, out the front door and down the stairs. “Fine,” Julia said. “Be like that. You’ll see.”

R
OBERT’S BIRTHDAY dawned clear and balmy. He had gone to sleep at a reasonable hour the night before, so he bounded out of bed feeling oddly joyous and expectant. “
Dadadadadada-blahblahblahblah BIRTHDAY
…” He sang in the shower and ate a soft-boiled egg and toast. He spent a luxurious morning rewriting the chapter of his thesis devoted to Stephen Geary, Highgate Cemetery’s architect. He presented himself at the cemetery before noon and pottered in the archives with James until it was time to give the two o’clock tour. All the familiar memorials seemed to salute him:
Eventually you’ll be dead, too, but not today.
When he returned from the tour he found the ground-floor office empty except for Nigel, the cemetery’s manager, and a young couple who were discussing the funeral arrangements for their baby. Robert hastily withdrew and went upstairs.

Valentina was perched on one of the office chairs, effacing herself. Jessica was on the phone; Felicity was making tea and talking softly to George, the stone carver, about a memorial he was designing; James called down to Jessica from the archives; Edward was photocopying and Phil was unboxing a cake. Thomas and Matthew came in, rather shyly, and the office seemed suddenly overfull as the burial team seldom came indoors and both of them were very tall.

“Look,” said Phil. “I had them do the Egyptian Avenue in icing.”

“Wow,” said Robert. “That’s really-unappetising.”

“Yeah,” Phil said. “Grey icing is not enticing.”

Felicity laughed when she saw the cake. Then everyone shushed, remembering the bereaved parents in Nigel’s office below. “That’s brilliant,” she said in a whisper. She started placing little pink candles on the cake. Jessica put the phone down and said, “Behave yourselves,” to no one in particular. She winked at Valentina and went downstairs.

The only people Valentina had met before besides Robert were Jessica and Felicity. When Robert came in he’d smiled at her and Valentina felt a jolt of confidence. She watched with surprise as Robert bantered with Phil and parried jokes about his advancing mortality with Thomas and Matthew.
It’s like being a zoologist, watching the rare animal in its natural habitat.
Robert didn’t seem at all shy here. He summoned Valentina from her chair in the corner and began to introduce her around, one hand touching her back lightly. Valentina was excited to be seen by Robert’s friends as part of a couple, even as she was conscious of how much this would have irritated her if it was Julia claiming her instead of Robert.

James came down from the archives and gingerly settled at Jessica’s desk. Jessica walked into the office followed by Nigel. “Oh-” he said. “What’s the occasion, then?”

“We’re having a twentieth of April party, Nigel,” Felicity said. “Didn’t you bring your costume?”

“It’s Robert’s birthday,” James told him.

“Of course it is,” said Nigel regretfully. “I’m afraid my mind’s somewhere else.”

“Is it all arranged?” James asked.

“Yes,” he replied. “The funeral is on Monday at eleven.” A pall came over the office; no one liked babies’ funerals. Robert thought,
It
always rains when we bury the babies.
Then he thought that couldn’t be true really.
But I’ll bring an umbrella just in case.

“Oh dear,” Nigel said, noticing the cake. “What happened there?”

“Hey, now,” said Phil, “don’t disrespect the cake.” He took a picture of it with his phone-“for the archives.”

Felicity lit the candles. Everyone clustered round Robert who stood looking self-consciously pleased as they sang “Happy Birthday” to him. Valentina sang and felt as though she’d known all these people for years: Phil with his leather trench coat and tattoos; George with his shirtsleeves rolled up and his baritone voice, a pencil sketch of a gravestone loosely held in his graphite-smudged hands; Edward who reminded Valentina of a leading man in an old black-and-white movie, dignified in his suit and tie, singing with his hands clasped in front of him, as though he were in church; Thomas and Matthew in their high boots and braces smiling as they sang; Nigel sad-faced as though the singing was a very solemn task which might have unpleasant consequences; Felicity kind and clear-voiced; Jessica and James singing breathily like overblown flutes-all singing together,
Happy birthday, happy birthday to you.
At the end of the song Robert closed his eyes and wished
just to be happy again
and blew out all the candles but one. There was a murmur of not-quite-concern in the group, then he took another breath and finished off the last candle. Applause, laughter. Robert cut the cake and gave Valentina the first piece. She held the paper plate in one hand and the plastic fork in the other, and watched him hand out slices. Felicity poured tea into the cemetery’s motley collection of mugs and china cups. Robert ate a bite of cake; the grey icing tasted just like any other colour. He glanced at Valentina and found her staring at him, solemn and silent in the midst of the conviviality. Suddenly Valentina smiled and he felt lighthearted: the past seemed to dissipate and it was all about the future now. Robert walked over to Valentina and they stood side by side, eating cake, happily quiet together amid the humming birthday party.
It’s going to be all right,
he thought.

Jessica watched them.
She looks so much like Elspeth,
she thought.
It’s quite unnerving.
She thought of the couple she had just met, the young parents. They had leaned into each other as they went out through the cemetery’s gate as though confronting a strong wind imperceptible to anyone else. Robert and Valentina were not touching at all but Jessica was reminded of that leaning together.
He seems happy enough.
She sighed and sipped her tea.
Perhaps it will be all right.

E
LSPETH WAS working with dust. She couldn’t think why she had not understood before the communicative powers of dust. It was light and she could move it easily; it was the ideal medium for messages.

When the twins first arrived in the flat, Julia had idly run her finger across the dust on the piano, leaving a shiny trail. It had been bothering Elspeth, and she had begun to laboriously put the dust back, to erase Julia’s thoughtless defacement, when she realised that she had stumbled across what amounted to a
tabula rasa
. Dust was a megaphone that could amplify her distress call. She was so excited that she immediately went to her drawer to think over the possibilities.

What to say, now that she finally had the chance? “
Help, I’m dead.” No, they can’t do anything about that. It’s better not to seem too pathetic. But I don’t want to frighten them. I want them to know it’s me, not a trick.
She thought of Robert. She could write to him; he would know she was here.

The next morning was Sunday. It was raining and the front room was suffused with an even, feeble light. Elspeth floated above the piano. If she had been visible to anyone, she would have appeared as only a face and a right hand.

The twins were in the dining room, lingering over coffee and the remains of toast and jam. Elspeth could hear their amiable, desultory conversation, the midmorning debate over what manner of amusements to pursue today. She shut them out and concentrated on the dull dusty expanse before her.