The Lion Tamer’s Daughter (24 page)

“Made one? How?”

“I dinna ken. All I ken is when I was a wee bairn I was one, and Papa took me away and made me two, and one he gave back to my ma and one he kept for himself, but we couldn't live long like that, no more than the bairns in the program. I tell you this, Keith. If you hadn't been coming down the steps by Princes Street the morning you were, there'd have been some other thing happen to pull us together again.”

“What would happen if you just met, and got it over with?”

“The one of us would be dead, and the other would go crazy past curing.”

I'd never said anything to her about doppelgangers, and nor had anyone else as far as I knew. I didn't bother to ask how she could be so sure. She wouldn't have been able to tell me.

When Mum came home she called Janice, which she did most evenings. Janice said that Melly hadn't watched the TV program, but she'd described the Siamese twins to her and said almost exactly the same things that Melanie had been saying to me.

I had three weeks back at school after Edinburgh, before the summer holidays started, so we had to work out what to do about Melanie. We couldn't risk leaving her alone. She said so too. I'd be doing homework and she'd be listening to a tape on my Walkman and she'd jerk up and stare in front of her. Or maybe she'd be watching TV in the lounge and she'd come sort of sleepwalking into the kitchen and mutter to me in a dead kind of voice, “Hang on to me, Keith,” and I'd stop what I was doing and simply hold her tight, ten minutes, quarter of an hour sometimes, and she'd give a big sigh and say, “Ta, I'll do now,” and I'd let go. If anyone had come in and found us they'd have got the wrong idea. OK, I was keen on her in a way I'd never been on Melly, or anyone else come to that, but what was happening to her was too serious for that kind of messing around.

Janice couldn't leave Melly alone either, but that wasn't as much of a problem, because Melly had school, and friends, and all her usual life to hang on to. Melanie didn't have any of that, nothing to anchor her down. Mum arranged to go in to the opera afternoons and evenings, and she took Melanie in with her to give her a hand. Then I'd take the bus in after school and bring Melanie back to Bearsden, though sometimes we hung around in Glasgow for a couple of hours so she could buy a few clothes and get to see a bit of life. Mum and I'd only been a few months in Bearsden, so people didn't know that much about us. Our story was that Melanie was half French, and her mum was a friend of Mum's, but her parents had split up and she was staying with us while things got sorted out, and we were being careful in case her dad showed up and tried to take her away. That was all pretty well true, in fact I gave myself nightmares about M. Perrault somehow nosing her out, the way he'd found Janice at the hotel when she'd run away from the circus. Luckily there are pages and pages of Robinsons in the Glasgow phone book. I suppose if he'd gone to the police about Melanie going missing, and told them it might have something to do with Mum, they'd have tracked us down, but Melanie said he wouldn't because he didn't trust policemen. We didn't see anything about her in the papers or on the local news.

Mum worked in the sewing room in the theater, next door to what they called the Wardrobe, which was a regular room stacked with racks of costumes and shelves of boots and hats and shoes and gloves and sword belts and so on for all the different productions. They'd have two or three operas on the go, and maybe a couple of others being got ready, and there might be fifty or sixty people in the cast, what with the chorus and everything. That's a lot of costumes.

Usually there'd be half a dozen women in the sewing room, stitching and cutting, but with the opera on tour it was just Mum in the evenings. I got there one time and found her sitting on a pile of clothes with Melanie on her lap, rocking her to and fro like a baby. They both looked utterly exhausted.

“Thank God you're here at last,” said Mum, though I wasn't any later then I'd said. “I don't know what's up, but Melanie's been having a very bad time. I haven't sewn a stitch for the last hour and I've a pile of work to do. Do you think you can take her home, darling? She seems to be quieter now. You'd better take a taxi. My wallet's in my jacket pocket. Will you be all right with Keith, Melanie? You can call me if it gets bad again and I'll come straight home.”

Melanie stood up, shivering. I could see she'd been crying.

“I'll do fine,” she muttered. “Sorry about that, Trish. I couldn't stop myself.”

“That's all right,” said Mum. “I could see you couldn't. I'm going to start sewing, but don't let Keith take you away till you're ready.”

“I'll do fine,” said Melanie again. “I'll just be going to the toilet.”

As soon as she was out of the room I asked Mum what had happened.

“I'm not sure,” said Mum. “I was sewing in here and Melanie had wandered out and after a bit I went to see where she'd got to—I can't help feeling anxious about her, you know. She'd wandered into the Wardrobe and she must have been trying on some of the costumes—she's done that before—I told her she could … Anyway I found her sort of stuck in front of the mirror—you know, the full-length one—wearing one of the green cloaks from
Trovatore
—far too big for her but just right for her coloring. I asked if she was all right and she didn't seem to hear me, so I asked a bit louder and she still didn't. But when I actually touched her she spun round and screamed, and stared at me as if I was some kind of wild animal. Next thing she was yelling and swearing. She didn't know me at all. And we had auditions going on so all I could do was drag her in here and shut the door and try and get her calmed down. And that's what I've been doing ever since. I'm desperately behind, darling. I'm going to be late back—well after ten, I should think. Are you sure you can cope? You'll call if you need me, won't you? The receptionist's name is Mercy. She's much less of a dragon than she tries to sound. Anyway I'll warn her you may be calling …”

Then Melanie came back and said thank you and sorry again to Mum, and Mum gave her a hug and we left. I started looking for a taxi, but Melanie said she'd rather walk a bit. In the end we walked the whole way back to Bearsden, which is all of seven miles. We didn't talk much at first. I didn't want to bother her. We must have been nearly halfway home when she said, “I was blowing around, Keith, blowing around this great cold empty space. Like … you've seen a paper bag blowing along a street on a windy day, high up between the buildings, whirling and jinking wherever the wind tells it? Like that. And you know what was in there with me? The creature, the one in the traveling cage, like I told you about in my nightmares. And there was this wee glass door I must get to, if ever I was to come out of that place. And I could see myself standing in my green cloak on the other side of the wee glass door … It wasn't any dream, Keith. It was the worst thing that has ever come to me in all my days.”

It was after half past nine when we got home. Melanie had a bath while I fixed supper. She came down in her dressing gown and we ate off our knees in the lounge, watching the telly. Then I went into the kitchen to get on with my homework. After a bit I looked into the lounge to see if she was OK, and she was curled up asleep on the sofa, so I got a duvet and put it over her and went back to my homework. Somewhere around ten Janice rang and I told her Mum was still at the theater.

“Well, will you tell her Christine has confirmed she can have Melly this weekend?” she said. “So I'll definitely be coming up, late on Friday.”

(She'd been going to come the weekend before. She was desperate to meet Melanie, of course. But at the last minute Christine had had something happen which meant she couldn't look after Melly, and there was no one else Janice felt it was safe to leave her with. I don't know what she'd told Christine—as much as she could without sounding crazy, I expect.)

“Great,” I said. “I'll pass that on. I can't tell Melanie now because she's asleep … Is Melly OK?”

Janice hesitated. I guessed she'd sooner have talked to Mum about it. She's not as good as Mum is at letting me (or Melly, come to that) in on things.

“I think she's all right now,” she said. “Why? Did something happen your end?”

I told her, except for what Melanie had told me. I felt that was private to Melanie.

“About what time would this have been?” said Janice.

I worked it out. Mum had said two hours.

“Around half past five,” I said.

There was another pause while she made up her mind whether to tell me any more.

“I'd rather talk to Trish about it,” she said. “I'm sorry, Keith, but it's all a bit private and personal. It's not that I don't trust you …”

“That's all right,” I said, though actually I felt pretty miffed—I'd told her about Melanie, hadn't I? “Mum should be home about … oh, any minute now. I'll get her to call you, shall I?”

“If she's not too tired,” she said, and we rang off.

I told Mum when she got in, and she rang and talked for getting on an hour, but I was still doing my homework when she finished so she came into the kitchen and told me what had happened while she made herself her bedtime tipple, which is chamomile tea and a slug of scotch.

“Melly went to a therapist this afternoon,” said Mum.

“Did she actually want to?” I said. “Or did Janice make her?”

“It was Janice's idea,” said Mum. “She still thinks what's happening is some kind of fixation the girls have got. But Melly thought it might help too, she says. Janice dropped her at the therapist—his name's Dr. Wilson—at five and went off to do some shopping, and when she got back—she was a bit late—she found Melly looking very shaky and dazed, and it was obvious that she'd been badly upset. Dr. Wilson was seeing another patient by then, but he came out and said he thought it was all right to take Melly home, but she shouldn't be left alone and he'd telephone as soon as he could, and explain what had happened. Melly insisted she was all right, but she didn't want to talk …”

“Just like Melanie,” I said.

“Yes, I suppose so. Well, they got home and Melly seemed to settle down, and then Dr. Wilson rang at about half past eight. Apparently Janice had told him what was going on, both about Melanie now, and about what had happened at Arles when she'd run away from the circus, so he'd asked Melly if she wanted to talk about any of that. She was quite open about it, he said, and was talking without any sense of strain or unease, though just like Melanie she tended to get upset at any suggestion that the two of them are actually two separate people, and then all of a sudden she regressed. Do you know what that means?”

“Went back?”

“Well, yes. They use it in some kinds of therapy. The therapist helps the patient go back to an earlier phase of life, sometimes almost as soon as they could walk or talk, and remember what it was like to be that child, and things that had happened to them then. It's more than just playacting—it's as if they actually become that child …”

“Sounds interesting,” I said.

“I believe it can be,” she said. “But it's not the sort of thing anyone should try without trained help. They probably wouldn't get anywhere, but if they did it might be really dangerous for them. Anyway, Dr. Wilson wasn't even trying that with Melly when it happened. Without any warning she collapsed onto the floor and lay on her back with her arms and legs flailing and screamed and screamed like a very unhappy baby. Babies cry quite differently from small children, even. It's not a noise Melly could normally make, if she wanted to. Dr. Wilson said he had never seen anyone regress so far back. And she wouldn't stop. He had great difficulty bringing her out of it. I think this must have been going on almost the same time that Melanie was having her outburst at the theater.”

“It would be,” I said.

“When she did come back she was still extremely upset,” said Mum. “She didn't want to talk about it, but later on she told Janice that she'd been blowing around in an empty gray place and there'd been a small door she couldn't get to …”

“You're going to tell Melanie about this, aren't you?”

“I expect so. Why?”

“Just tell her. Go on.”

“Well, Dr. Wilson said that it looked as if something extremely traumatic had happened to Melly very early in life, and that possibly it was connected with being separated from her twin …”

“That doesn't work. It happened as soon as they were born.”

“But not as soon as they knew each other, darling. They'd been together for nine months before they were born.”

“You aren't serious, Mum?”

“I am, as a matter of fact, but don't let's argue about it now. I want to get to bed.”

“And I've got to finish my homework. Go on.”

“There isn't much more. Dr. Wilson said, of course, that we'd all got to be extremely careful about how we approached that period of her life. The same applies to Melanie, I should think. We don't talk about it unless she positively wants to. And he also said that we should respect what the girls say about their meeting. If they believe it's dangerous, however much they long to meet, then they're probably right. We mustn't try to push them into a meeting until they themselves think they're ready.”

“He sounds as if he's got his head screwed on. I thought those types were all nutters.”

“Just what your father would have said, darling. Well, I'm going to bed …”

“One thing, Mum. You've got to make sure Janice does come this weekend. It's important. If Christine falls through again, I'll go down and be with Melly.”

“That's nice of you, darling. Let's hope it doesn't come to that.”