Her Fearful Symmetry (31 page)

I
T WAS very early morning and Valentina woke before Julia, as she often did. She gently disengaged herself from Julia’s arms and sat up in bed. The curtains were not quite closed; the light was pale and diffused. Something moved. Valentina wasn’t properly awake and she saw it without really seeing. She thought it was the Kitten, but the Kitten was sleeping beside her on the bed. Valentina looked harder, and as she did the thing unfolded itself from where it had been sitting by the window and Valentina realised that she was seeing Elspeth.

It was like seeing from a long distance; Elspeth was faint and not sharply defined.
She looks just like Mom
, Valentina thought, but there was something about the way the ghost looked back at her that was unfamiliar and alien. Elspeth moved her mouth as though she were speaking and began to walk towards the bed. Until that moment Valentina had not been afraid but suddenly she was. The fear woke her up completely: Elspeth vanished. Valentina felt a cold touch on her cheek, then nothing. She slid off the bed and ran out of the flat, down the front stairs, then stood panting next to the mail baskets in her pyjamas.

Robert had only been asleep for an hour or so, and it took him some time to become aware of the knocking at his door. His first thought was that the house must be on fire. He came to the door in his underwear and poked his head out, squinting.

Valentina said, “Can I come in?”

“Ah. Minute.” He walked to his bedroom and put on trousers and yesterday’s shirt, then went back to the door and opened it wide. He said, “Good morning,” and then, observing her more carefully, “What’s wrong?”

“I saw Elspeth,” she replied, and began to cry.

Robert put his arms around Valentina and said, “Hush,” to the top of her head. After she had recovered somewhat, he said, “I’ve been trying to see her for weeks. How did she look?”

“Like Mom.”

“Then why are you crying?”

“I’ve never seen a ghost before. I mean, you know, she’s
dead
.”

“Yes. I know.” He led her into the kitchen. She sat at the table, and he began to make tea. Valentina blew her nose on a paper towel. Robert said, “Did you have the impression that she was trying to appear to you? Or what happened, exactly?”

Valentina shook her head. “I think when I first saw her she was sitting in the window seat looking out. It wasn’t like she was especially trying to make me see her. When she noticed I was looking at her she came over to me and then I got scared and she disappeared.” Valentina paused. “Actually, what I think it was, I don’t think I was totally awake.”

“Oh,” Robert said. “So you dreamed her?”

“No-I don’t think so. But maybe it’s like-you know how when you try to remember something, and you can’t think of it, and then later when you’re not trying to think about it any more it just pops into your head?”

“Yes?”

“Maybe I saw her because I forgot I couldn’t see her.”

Robert laughed. “I’ll have to try that. Of course, she’s not speaking to me lately, so I don’t imagine she’ll appear. How did she seem? Was she angry with you?”

“Angry? No, she was trying to tell me something, but it wasn’t like she was mad or anything.”

The kettle boiled and Robert poured water into the teapot. He said, “Don’t you and Julia talk to her?”

“Sometimes. But she doesn’t want to answer the questions we want to ask.”

Robert smiled and put the tea things on the table. “Perhaps if you let Elspeth do the asking you’ll eventually find out whatever it is you want to know.” He sat down across from Valentina.

“Maybe. I wish you’d just tell us.”

“Tell you what?”

“Whatever it is-we’re not exactly sure, but there’s some big secret about Elspeth and Mom. I mean, they were
twins,
and then they never spoke to each other again. What was that about?”

“I’m sure I couldn’t say.”

“Couldn’t, or wouldn’t?” Valentina said irritably.

“Couldn’t. I have no idea why Elspeth and Edie parted ways. It happened long before I met Elspeth, and she hardly ever mentioned your mother.” He poured out the tea.

Valentina watched steam rise from her mug.

Robert said, “Why do you need to know? Your mother doesn’t want to tell you, and Elspeth took great care not to leave anything behind that might cause anxiety. Of course, that’s assuming that there actually is a secret.”

“Mom is afraid we’ll find out.”

“Isn’t that a good reason to
leave it be
?” He said this more vehemently than he meant to; Valentina looked startled. “Listen,” Robert said more quietly, “sometimes when you finally find out, you realise that you were much better off not knowing.”

Valentina frowned. “How would you know? And besides, you’re a historian. You spend all your time finding out stuff about other people.”

“Valentina, it’s one thing to research the Victorians, it’s completely different when you unearth your own family skeletons.”

She didn’t reply.

“Here. I’ll give you a cautionary tale.” Robert drank some of his tea, and experienced a qualm.
Do I really want to tell her this?
But she was looking at him expectantly. He said, “When I was fifteen, my mother suddenly came into a great deal of money. ‘Who gave you the money, Mum?’ I asked her. ‘Oh, my Great Aunt Pru died and left it to me,’ she said. Now, I come from a family with a prodigious quantity of aunts, but I had never heard of this one; my mother’s family could trace itself back to the Crusades but they didn’t any of them have a bean. But that was her story, and she stuck to it.

“Then, about two weeks later, I was watching television and they were interviewing a new cabinet minister-and it was my father. He had a different name, but there he was. ‘Mum,’ I said, ‘come and look at this.’ We both sat there watching him do this interview, looking terribly smarmy and respectable.”

Valentina knew what was coming. “So, the money came from your father?”

“Yes. He had finally got to a point in his career where she could ruin him quite spectacularly if she went to the tabloids. ‘Cabinet Minister’s Double Life’ would have been the headline, I suppose. So he paid up and I never saw him again. Except on TV, of course.”

Valentina understood something she had been afraid to ask. “So that’s why you don’t have a job?”

“Yeee-ss,” Robert said. “Though eventually, when I’m done with my dissertation, I’d like to teach, I think.” He sighed. “I would rather have gone on being poor and seeing my father now and then.”

“I thought you didn’t like him.”

“Well, he didn’t care much for children, and I had just got to the age where we might have developed an actual understanding-but it was all a sham, anyway.”

“Oh.” Valentina thought she ought to say something. “I’m sorry.”

Robert smiled at her. “You’re sounding more English by the day. No need to be sorry.” They heard Julia’s footsteps in the kitchen above them. “Should you go upstairs?”

“In a while.”

“Would you like some breakfast, then?”

“Sure.”

Robert collected eggs, bacon, butter and various other items from the fridge. “How do you like your eggs?”

“Fried?”

While the bacon and eggs cooked he set out plates and cutlery, jam and juice; he made toast. Valentina watched him, comforted by his efficiency and delighted by the novelty of having a man serve her breakfast while he pretended not to notice that she was wearing pyjamas.

Robert slid the food onto their plates and sat down. They began to eat. Upstairs, Julia stomped across the kitchen. “Somebody’s not happy,” Robert said.

“I don’t care.”

“Ah, well,” he said.

“I wish I could just leave,” Valentina said.

But you just got here.
Robert said, “Why don’t you, then?”

Valentina sensed that he was-
what? Offended?
She said hastily, “I don’t mean you-I mean Julia. She thinks she owns me. She’s, like, a total dictator about it.”

Robert hesitated, then said, “At the end of the year, you can sell the flat and do what you like.”

Valentina shook her head. “Julia won’t sell it. Julia won’t do anything that would let me be independent. I’m stuck.”

“You could go to Xavier Roche and ask him to divide the estate. There’s enough money in the trusts that Julia could keep the flat and you could take your share in cash,” Robert said.

Valentina brightened. “I could do that?”

“It’s provided for in the will. Didn’t you read it?”

“We did,” Valentina said vaguely, “but I wasn’t paying attention to the small print.”

“Elspeth said she regrets having stipulated that you both live here for a year. She’s rather worried about you.”

“When did she say that?” Valentina asked.

“Last week.”

“Too late.”

“Yes,” Robert said. “I think that watching you and Julia come un-glued is too much like whatever happened to her and Edie.”

Valentina finished her eggs and wiped her mouth. “I wish she’d tell us.”

Robert said, “I think she would-I think it’s your mother who doesn’t want you to know.”

“What would you do if you were me?”

Robert smiled and ran his eyes over her pyjamas. “All sorts of things,” he said. “Shall I list them?”

“No-you know what I mean.” She blushed.

He sighed. “I would make friends with Elspeth.”

“Oh.” She thought about this. “I’m frightened of her.”

“That’s because you only know her as cold blasts of air and such. She was wonderful when she was alive.”

“Why is Elspeth not speaking to you?”

“Sorry?”

“You said she wasn’t…”

“Oh, so I did.” He got up to clear away the dishes. “It’s just a misunderstanding. It will pass.”

“Was she…was she more like Julia, or me?”

Robert shook his head. “She was herself. She was plucky, like Julia, but also restrained, like you. She was very clever and she liked to have her own way. But she usually worked it so that I enjoyed whatever it was she’d manoeuvred me into doing.”

“It freaks me out that she watches us and we don’t know she’s there.”

“Perhaps you could use that as an excuse to treat each other more kindly?”

“What did she tell you?” asked Valentina.

He looked surprised. “I can use my own eyes.”

She coloured deeply but did not reply. Robert said, “From what I’ve been able to glean, Elspeth and Edie had an agreement that Elspeth wouldn’t have anything to do with you and Julia. Elspeth seems to feel that she kept up her end of the bargain.” He returned the juice and butter to the fridge. “But now I think she would like to get to know you a bit. Since you’re here.” He began to run water into the sink. “If it’s any comfort, she probably spends less time hovering round than you imagine. She liked to be off on her own. If you put out a few books where she can get at them, or leave the TV on for her, I’m sure she’d let you be.”

“The TV’s broken,” Valentina reminded him.

“Let’s cope with that, then, shall we?” Robert was standing at the sink with his back to Valentina. He stared out of the window and thought of Elspeth.
You must be bored silly. No one to talk to, nothing to read.
He tried to imagine how Elspeth had felt when Valentina ran away from her in a panic. He turned to Valentina and said, “Do you mind if I go up later and try to talk to her?”

Valentina shrugged. “Sure, no problem. But why even ask? You’re in our flat all the time, talking to her.”

“I hadn’t realised I was so obvious.”

“We can use our own eyes.” She smiled.

“Touché.”

Valentina stood up and padded over to Robert. “Thank you for breakfast.” He had his hands in the soapy water and she darted a kiss at his face just as he turned to her.

“Ouch,” he said. “Let’s do that properly.” Each kiss was a little lesson. Robert enjoyed them, though he was beginning to wonder if they would ever lead to a more advanced curriculum. His hands were wet but he slid them under her pyjama top and ran his palms over her breasts.

She whispered, “That’s nice.”

“It could be much nicer,” he offered.

“Mmm. Not-yet.” She stepped back, looking confused. Robert smiled.

“I have to go upstairs,” Valentina said.

“Okay.”

“I’m going to talk to Elspeth.”

“That’s good,” he told her.

“And I’ll be nice to Julia.”

“Also good.”

“See you later.”

“Yes.”

When Valentina returned to their flat she found Julia at the dining-room table, fully dressed and reading the newspaper over a cup of coffee with a lit cigarette in her hand.

“Hi,” Valentina said.

“Hi,” Julia replied without looking up.