The Other Me (7 page)

Mrs Gupta is sitting behind the piles of newspapers at the counter; she gets up when I come in, the bell clanging behind me. When I go to the till to pay for the flour, she presses a lemon bon-bon into my palm. ‘Tell your mother I said hello,’ she says.

Saliva floods my mouth at the thought of the citrus tang. I nod and unwrap the sweet, placing it on my tongue, testing the hard surface against my teeth.

Mrs Gupta tips her head from side to side, and the red dot between her eyebrows dances.

Aseema Choppra is coming into the shop as I’m leaving. I smile, my mouth too full to speak. But she clenches her jaw, lips tight. ‘You should pick your friends more carefully.’

I gawp at her, not understanding. And then I realise she means Shane. I flush hot and cold, and I want to protest, tell her that he’s not my friend, but the bon-bon stops my tongue. She turns away and I crunch down hard, shards of lemon in my teeth, sticking in my throat.

Gingerbread men lie in rows on the cooling tray: neat ranks of soldiers, arms and legs touching. Our kitchen is full of the smell of ginger and risen dough, the windows misty with steam. My father is reading the paper in the sitting room with opera on the turntable. He’s turned the volume up. Foreign words vibrate through the house, bellowing voices filling every corner.

Mum is putting the baking things away, running water into the sink; she pushes the big bowl over to me with the wooden spoon.

I lean against the table and lick sweet, grainy dough from the spoon, and then stick my finger into the bowl and draw pale, greasy lines across the cool, ceramic inside. Mum smiles. ‘You’ve been doing that since you were a tiny thing.’

She glances out of the window. ‘Look bach,’ she beckons to me, her voice hushed. ‘The robins are back.’

We stand together, her hand finding mine, watching two birds peck at the bag of nuts on the bird table. She squeezes my sticky fingers. ‘Oh, Klaudia. It makes me happy to see a pair in the garden again. Such clever little birds. And so loyal to each other.’

She goes back to the washing-up and I begin to dry, but the music pulls at me, and I step away to dance around the kitchen table with the tea towel in my hand, exaggerating my movements to match the grand sweep of the singer’s trills and soaring high notes. Each stretch of my arm, each bend and dip feels like a relief. I take my memories of school, of Shane, and throw them out into the warm kitchen, flatten them with the push of my hands. Those girls who smile at me and then turn their backs, they too are caught up in the swing of my arms, sent spinning towards the ceiling as I pirouette round and round. The music crashes and blazes, and the cloth flaps like a flag. All that matters is this moment, the smells of baking, robins in the garden, and being warm and safe with Mum.

She laughs, rubbing her soapy hands on her apron. ‘You’re making me dizzy.’

Breathless, I push the hair from my eyes. ‘Can’t I have dance lessons?’

It isn’t the first time I’ve asked. I’ve looked through the window of the Catholic church hall when the ballet class is on: pupils in pink shoes and black leotards doing exercises while an old lady beats out time with her walking stick. I want to be there with them, moving my feet on the chalky floor. I dance outside, on the pavement, copying what they do, holding my arms out to the side as if I’m lifting up enormous petticoats.

She shakes her head. ‘There isn’t the money, love. And you know what your father thinks of the idea.’

‘Yes, but…’

‘There isn’t a but,’ she says. ‘Nothing to stop you dancing at home whenever you like, cariad.’

She glances up, over my head, and her expression changes, mouth pulling down. I follow her gaze and see the tom from next-door balancing in our apple tree, his tail thrashing. He’s climbed higher than the bird table. Every fibre of his body twitches with desire. Mum rushes to the door and yanks it open. ‘Shoo!’

She’s too late. The Perkinses’ cat has something in its mouth. Other birds flutter and call in a fever of terror and rage. The cat has dropped to the grass, and slinks low at the edge of the garden, a growl in its throat, tail thrashing, feathers between its teeth. My mother runs unsteadily through the wet grass after it, flapping a tea towel. The cat, turned to liquid and shadow, slips through the bushes and disappears.

My father stalks into the kitchen, the creased newspaper under his arm, and hurries out to her. He accompanies her back into the house, guiding her by her elbow, his face set. ‘I’m sorry, Gwyn. The bugger got away this time.’

‘It’s killing them for fun.’ She closes her eyes, her voice flat. ‘That’s what I can’t bear. It’s not for food. Just for amusement.’

He puts his hand on her shoulder. The music in the next room rolls to its conclusion, swirling voices and a crisis of strings.

It was later in the day that I saw it again. It was crouching in the shade of the rose bed, gazing at the bird table with a quivering mouth. My mother was upstairs putting a pile of ironing away, so I called to my father quietly, ‘The cat’s back.’

Minutes later there was an explosion. A single crack: shocking in the suburban air, making every bird in the garden swoop high on beating wings. I caught a glimpse of fur where the cat had been, the outlines of its body half-hidden in grass. My mother, breathless from her dash down the stairs, pulled me to her, hiding my head in her breasts as my father went past. Despite my mother’s dress bunching against my mouth, her flesh folded into my face, I saw the pistol in his hand.

The glow of my bedside light falls across the open book on my lap, illuminating pages. But I can’t concentrate. My eyes are sore from crying. I can’t stop thinking about the cat.

I’d tried to run into the garden, but Mum grabbed my arm, shaking her head. She wouldn’t let me go. From the window, I watched as my father took a spade and dug a shallow hole, rolled the lifeless body in and covered it with dirt.

The Perkinses came knocking at our door a little later. They’d heard a shot. They were sure of it. Had we seen their cat? I’d crouched at the top of the stairs, heart beating wildly. My father murmured at the threshold. Words of denial. His pistol had been returned to the locked portmanteau. Later I’d heard my parents talking in low, urgent voices. I couldn’t pick out any phrases, just the backwards and forwards swell of an argument.

There’s a quick knock and Mum puts her head around my door.

‘Said your prayers?’

I nod, keeping my eyes fixed on the blurred lines of print.

She comes to sit beside me, her weight making the mattress ping. She presses her hand against the eiderdown, smoothing the pale pink fabric. ‘Are you all right?’

I put the book down and move my head. ‘I didn’t know he was going to kill it… I’d never have told him… not if I knew…’

‘Come on, now.’ She places a palm against my cheek. ‘You’re not blaming yourself, surely?’

‘But… how could he?’ Tears crowd my voice. I stop and swallow.

‘He wanted to protect the birds,’ she says quietly.

Anger burns a hole inside me. I shake my head. ‘It wasn’t the cat’s fault… that’s just what cats do.’

She sighs. ‘He did it for me.’

‘But you’d never want that!’

‘Hush,’ she sighs. ‘I know, love. Of course I didn’t want to shoot the poor creature.’

‘He’s a murderer.’ I push my bottom lip out.

‘Don’t.’ She places her hand over my rigid fingers.

‘Why does he have a gun? It’s horrible.’

‘Oh,’ she lets out a sound of distress, as if the mention of it has wounded her. ‘I wish he’d get rid of it. Evil thing.’ She opens and closes her mouth. Her lips make a damp sound. ‘He got the gun years ago, as a precaution. He felt he needed to.’

‘A precaution against what?’

She sighs. ‘I suppose we don’t talk about those days, when your da and I first got married. It’s so long ago now. And we wanted to put it all behind us.’ Her eyebrows knit together. ‘But after our marriage there were some threats. Some… difficulties. There was resentment. Suspicion. But the gun was only for show. To make me feel safer, probably,’ her lips wobble around a smile, ‘only of course I was more scared of it than I was of any busy bodies.’

I bite my lip. I’d never thought about what it would have been like to be married to a German back then. If I got teased at school now, it must have been so much worse for her, straight after the war. It’s the first time I’ve thought about what being his wife meant. It’s not just me that’s been punished.

‘If it was so difficult – why did you marry him?’ I ask, breathless with my presumption. The need to know is more urgent. ‘Did you love him?’

She looks surprised. ‘Of course.’ She moves her hand to the base of her throat, touching the soft hollow there. ‘You know I grew up in Wales, in the mountains?’ She glances at me and I nod. ‘It’s tough country. Sheep farmers are the only people who can make a living.’

I sit up straighter, dropping my book, and hug my knees under the covers.

‘I found a hawk once, injured. There was a man in our village who could cure creatures and I took it there. He let me help him. I bound up the wing and weeks later we let it fly free. There’s something about wild creatures, damaged things… I want to care for them.’

I frown, not understanding the connection.

‘Your da was like that. Fierce and proud. Oh, Klaudia, you should have seen him. He was tall and handsome. So blond his hair was nearly white.’ Her eyes are far away. ‘There was no one like him in the valleys. Didn’t say much. But I could tell he was in pain, inside.’ She moves her hand to pat her chest briefly.

I lean forward. ‘How could you tell?’

She raises her eyebrows and smiles. ‘I just could.’ She laughs. ‘Come here, cariad.’ She folds me inside her talcum-powdered warmth to kiss me goodnight. Her cheek is downy soft as a small silk cushion. ‘When a man falls in love with you, it’s a powerful thing. It sweeps you away,’ she says against my ear. Then she pulls back, her smile gone. ‘It was hard, because my parents were against him. In the end I had to run away.’

‘Is that why we never see them?’

She nods. ‘They couldn’t understand. We eloped.’

‘Eloped!’ I can’t imagine my father doing something so romantic and impulsive.

She tips her head on one side as if she’s thinking of what to say. ‘Yes,’ she says. ‘It does sound romantic doesn’t it? And in a way it was. But after the war my parents weren’t the only ones to keep hatred in their hearts.’ She looks at her hands. ‘It wasn’t easy, settling down, trying to make a home. But we believed, Klaudia. We put our trust in Jesus.’

The next morning I find a carving of a bird on my bedside table looking at me with unblinking eyes: a perfectly crafted creature with folded wings and a curl of claws tucked up. I realise that my father must have stood by my bed in the darkness while I was sleeping. Perhaps he’d touched my hair after he’d left his offering, or rearranged my covers. I take the bird into my hands. It feels cold and hard.

ELIZA

1995, Leeds

November

We spend most of our time at his place. He shares a house with two others from teacher training, and his friend, Mike. They’d tossed a coin for bedrooms. Cosmo won. His is the largest, at the top of the house, with views over rooftops and church spires to a glimpse of brown and green moorland, and most importantly, it has a double bed.

He’d swung his door open, standing back to let me enter, and I’d caught a tremor of uncertainty in him. I’d thought it was the anticipation of sex: nervy and necessary, a quickening in the air between us. But then I understood.

His walls were covered with paintings and sketches. Canvases, stacked together, leant against a table. Colour and shape leapt out at me, so that I didn’t notice anything else. I went closer, staring at the pictures, recognising faces of his friends, scenes from the city. And there were other paintings, like dreams; a shifting fantasy of mythological creatures, floating stars, moonlit woods.

When I turned to him, he was standing in an agony of waiting, twisting his hands, holding them out as if waiting for a gaoler to clamp his wrists. His gaze was on my face, analysing, dissecting. I didn’t have to speak. He knew. Relief sank through him. He dropped his hands to his sides and grinned at me.

‘Why are you teaching?’ I went to him. Indignant. Excited by his talent. ‘You should be an artist. You
are
an artist.’

My words were caught by his tongue moving between my lips, asking without speaking, and we were falling backwards onto the luxury of his double bed. His hand behind my head to cushion me made me want to cry. Rain tapped against the window. A sudden squall of winter. He was pulling my jumper over my shoulder, kissing my collarbone, licking at the curve of clavicle, feathering my ear with his breath.

The outside is full of the hiss of sparklers and snap of bangers. Gangs of children run giggling in the streets, full of the energy of the night, emboldened by the shrieking sky and smoky darkness. Everyone is going to Roundhay Park to see the fireworks display, but Cosmo pulls me back. ‘I have a better idea,’ he whispers.

There’s a pull-down ladder that leads up to the Velux window in the sloping ceiling of his bedroom. He goes first, leaning down to help me up through the gap and out onto the slippery tiles of the roof. I catch my breath: the view of treetops, spires and buildings is eclipsed by the huge swing of the sky. Then I look down and my stomach lurches at the drop.

He holds out his hand. ‘Trust me?’

I nod, placing my fingers inside his.

‘I know it’s an old line. But I won’t let you fall,’ he says.

A breeze tugs at my hair and I hang onto him, snatching glimpses into the void below, where a sea of rustling shapes moves. The bushes and trees of the garden transformed into an ocean.

It’s a short shuffle across a stone ridge till we reach the big chimneystack and can crouch beside it. Hugging the cold, solid weight of bricks, we cling together and marvel at explosions of colour which become bigger and brighter, shattering the darkness around us, as if we’ve flown closer to the moon. I want to tell him how much Mum loves fireworks. Instead I squeeze into his chest, laughing as a shower of hot cinders falls onto our heads.