Her Fearful Symmetry

  'Where's Robert?' Valentina asked, as though she hadn't heard their conversation.

  'He went to Boots,' Julia said.

  Valentina got into bed without comment. Julia gave her the hot-water bottle, set up the vaporizer, fetched the book Valentina had been reading, made tea; she did all these things purposefully and quite happily, humming to herself as she accomplished all the little comforting tasks. She came into the bedroom with the tea to find the Kitten curled up near Valentina's head and Valentina herself asleep. The Kitten stretched out a paw and placed it protectively on Valentina's shoulder, eyeing Julia with suspicion. You too? Julia thought. We all want to be her only one. She set the tea tray on the bedside table. It occurred to Julia to wonder, If I got sick, would everyone rush to my bedside? The thought made her irritable. She never got sick; what was the point of wondering that? Valentina's breath rattled in her throat. Julia settled herself in the window seat with her own cup of tea, causing Elspeth, who had been there all along, to get up and stand next to the bed, biting her thumb, worrying. It was an anxious day for everyone: humans, cats and ghosts.

  *

  Edie sat at her dining-room table drinking coffee with the telephone at her elbow; she was not actually looking at the phone, just having it near because it was going to ring in a few minutes. Jack wandered over, carrying the Sunday Times. He began to separate it into his and hers piles. Edie put her hand out and he placed the business section in it. She flipped it open and ran her finger down the stock tables, making little tsking sounds as she did so. The phone rang. Edie took a sip of her coffee as though she were in no hurry and let it ring three times. Jack went down the hall to pick up in their bedroom.

  'Mom?'

  'Hi, Julia,' said Edie.

  'Valentina?' said Jack.

  'Hi, Dad,' said Valentina. She tried to make her voice sound normal but the effort sent her into a coughing fit.

  'Oh my God,' said Edie. 'That doesn't sound good.'

  'It's just bronchitis,' said Julia. 'We went to the doctor.'

  'I'm better today,' Valentina said. She put her phone down and went into the bathroom to cough. Julia watched her standing bent over, elbows on the sink, hand over her mouth to suppress the sound of the coughing.

  'Did they give you antibiotics? Are you taking that mucus-reducing stuff Dr Brooks gave you?' Edie and Julia embarked on a leisurely and detailed discussion of everything they could and should do for Valentina's bronchitis. Eventually Valentina came back to the phone.

  'We met Robert Fanshaw,' she said, mostly in order to change the subject.

  'Finally,' said Jack. 'Where's he been all this time?'

  'He's helping us get signed up for the NHS,' Julia said.

  'Oh,' said Edie. 'Huh. What's he like?'

  'Mopey,' said Julia. 'Kind of freaky and weird. If he was our age he'd probably be a Goth, you know, all pierced and tattooed.'

  'No,' said Valentina. 'He's nice. He's kind of shy, and you can tell he misses Elspeth. He has little glasses like John Lennon.' She wanted to say more, but had to put the phone down and cough.

  'Valentina has a crush on him,' Julia informed them. Valentina drew her finger across her throat. Don't, Julia.

  'Surely he's a bit old for her. He must be our age?' Jack said.

  'I think he's younger. Mid-thirties, maybe?'

  Valentina came back to the phone. 'I don't have a crush on him. But he's nice.' Edie thought, Uh-oh, but she knew better than to say anything. The conversation turned to the weather, movies, politics. After they all hung up Valentina said crossly, 'Now they're going to obsess. Why did you say that?'

  'It will distract them from you being sick,' Julia replied.

  'It's not true, though.'

  Julia just laughed.

  Edie and Jack hung up simultaneously and met in the hallway. 'Don't look so worried,' Jack said. 'She says it's nothing.'

  Edie snorted. 'That's exactly when you should get very worried.'

  He put his arm around her. 'She did sound awful.'

  'Maybe we should go there. We wouldn't actually go to the flat, but just be in London. We could rent a flat nearby ...' Edie nestled into him. She loved how big Jack was, how small she felt next to him. It was very comforting.

  He stroked her head. 'How would you have felt if your mom followed you across the ocean and moved in across the street from us?'

  'That was different.'

  'They're managing. Let them be.'

  Edie shook her head, but smiled at him. That's it, just smile and be my Edie, that's enough for me. He kissed the top of her head. 'It'll be all right.'

  Robert and Jessica were having their afternoon tea in the upstairs office at Highgate Cemetery. Jessica fixed Robert with a Purposeful Look, and he steeled himself for one of her Talks. He expected the Talk to be about Not Letting The Tourists Slow Down The Tour By Taking Endless Videos, or even possibly Please Remember Not To Go About With Your Hands Thrust Into Your Pockets As It Looks Undignified, but she surprised him.

  'Don't you think,' asked Jessica, 'that she is a bit too young for you?'

  'A bit?'

  'Ridiculously young for you?'

  'Maybe,' Robert said. 'How young is too young?'

  'Not so much in years, because I have known many people at twenty-one to be quite mature - but both of them seem so very young. They remind me of my girls at sixteen.'

  'That has a certain appeal, Jessica.'

  She waved her hand at him. 'You understand me. It seems strange that after Elspeth, who was such a dear girl, so level-headed and not a flibbertigibbet ... Valentina seems an odd match for you.'

  'Some people thought I was too young for Elspeth.'

  'Did I say that?'

  'I believe you did, actually. Here in this very office, as I recall.'

  'Surely not.'

  'I'm nine years younger than Elspeth. I'm catching her up, though.'

  'Yes ...'

  'You're younger than James.'

  'James is ninety-four. I'm eighty-five this July.'

  'I wonder why it's more socially acceptable for the man to be older?'

  'I believe the men arranged it that way.'

  'Ah. I don't think you've ever mentioned how you and James met?'

  Jessica hesitated before she answered. Robert thought, It must be something rather risque. She looks as though I've asked for her bra size. 'We met during the war. I was James' assistant at Bletchley Park.'

  'No kidding? I'd no idea. You were code breakers?'

  'Actually, what we did was more ... administrative.' Jessica pursed her mouth, as though she had said more than she thought strictly necessary.

  'I thought you read Law.'

  'One may do many things in a long life. I also played a great deal of tennis and brought up three children. There's time for all sorts of adventures.'

  'And you saved the cemetery.'

  'Not single-handedly, as you well know. Molly and Catherine, Edward ... we had help from a great many dear people. Though of course there's never enough help for all the little things that need doing. That reminds me, would you take these with you up the hill on your way home and just drop them in Anthony and Lacey's letter boxes? It will save the stamps.'

  'Of course.'

  Jessica sighed. 'I must say, I do feel just a tiny bit fatigued thinking of all the letters I have to write.' She put her teacup on the desk and held out both hands to him. 'Come on, help the old thing out of her chair.'

  Robert spent the afternoon sitting in the Strathcona mausoleum by the Eastern Cemetery gates, selling tickets and watching the landscaping team trimming trees. It was a slow day, and he had time to wonder if Jessica was right. Perhaps Valentina was too young for him. Perhaps he should let her be and go back to mourning Elspeth. Not that he had stopped; the thought of Elspeth was a sharp ache. But Robert had to admit that he didn't think of her quite as often as before, and that the arrival of the twins had coincided with this slackening of Elspeth's presence in his every waking t
hought. He felt ashamed, as though he were a sentinel who had abandoned a guard tower to the enemy. But Elspeth wouldn't want me to spend the rest of my life mourning her. Would she? It was not exactly something they had discussed, but he felt wrong whether he devoted himself to her memory or allowed Valentina to waft into reveries that would have once featured Elspeth. He lived in a state of aroused guilt. It was very confusing, but somewhat pleasurable.

  Early one morning Robert found Valentina sitting in the back garden with a Thermos of tea. He was letting himself in through the green door and had no idea she was there until she said, 'Good morning.'

  'Good lord,' he said, after he'd stepped backwards and nearly broken his ankle on a gravestone. 'I mean, good morning.'

  Valentina was sitting on the low stone bench and wearing a quilted dressing gown. Her feet were bare. 'Oh - I'm sorry!'

  'Aren't you cold?' It was going to be a warm day, but the dawn was chilly.

  'Yes, I am now. My tea's gotten cold.'

  'Come in, why don't you?'

  She glanced up at the first-floor windows. 'Julia's still asleep.'

  Valentina picked her way across the damp moss and Robert held his door open for her. When she went in under his arm he felt as though he'd caught a bird.

  'Do you want a jumper, or anything warm?'

  'No, but maybe some more tea?' Robert put the kettle on. He went to change his muddy clothes. When he emerged Valentina was standing at his desk. 'Who are all these women?'

  The wall above Robert's desk was covered with postcards, magazine clippings, images printed off the Internet and copied from books, all of women. They radiated in a boxy sunburst pattern from the centre of the wall; there were clusters of them, as though they charted solar systems in a galaxy of women. 'Oh. Well, that's Eleanor Marx, Karl's daughter. That's Mrs Henry Wood. This is Catherine Dickens ...'

  'They're all buried at Highgate?'

  'Yes, exactly.'

  'No men?'

  'The men are over here.' He had another galaxy tacked to the adjacent wall. 'I'd rather stare at the women when I'm blocked; the men are collectively somewhat dour.'

  Valentina turned on the desk lamp, to see better. The kettle whistled and Robert bounded out of the room. He returned with Valentina's tea and she said, 'We saw that painting at the Tate.' She pointed to a postcard in the centre of the wall. 'Who is she?'

  'That's Millais' Ophelia. The model is Elizabeth Siddal.' Robert felt his face flush just as Valentina turned to him. She said, 'You have lots of pictures of her.'

  'She was Dante Gabriel Rossetti's muse. He painted her over and over. She was the It girl of the Pre-Raphaelites. I'm a little obsessed with her.'

  'Why?'

  'Why, indeed? She doesn't seem to have been especially attractive as a person; she was rather needy and sickly. Perhaps because she was beautiful and died young.' Robert smiled. 'Don't look so worried, it's a very mild obsession.'

  'You seem to have a thing for dead girls,' Valentina said.

  She was joking, but Robert replied defensively. 'Not because they're dead. Though unattainability is always attractive.'

  'Oh.' What does he mean by that?

  Robert cleared a space in the piles of paper and sat down on his desk. He offered her the swivel chair and she spun around 360 degrees with her bare feet stuck out in front of her, holding the mug of tea carefully level. She looked so childish that Robert found it painful to watch her. I think dead girls are the least of my problems at the moment.

  Valentina said, 'You don't have very much furniture.'

  'No. This place is far too big for me. And too expensive, really.'

  'How come you live here, then?'

  'It's all Elspeth's fault.'

  Valentina grinned at him and spun around again. 'Same here.' She stretched out one bare foot and stopped her revolution, then spun slowly in the other direction. 'Did you move here because she was here?'

  'We met in the front garden, actually. I was poking around because there was a To Let sign and I'd been looking for a flat that bordered the cemetery, because I wanted one of those little doors, you know, in the garden wall ... So there I was, writing down the estate agent's number, when Elspeth hops out of the front door and says she's got the key and would I like to see the flat? Of course, I say Yes, please, because I did want to see it. And she showed me round. And it's immediately obvious that it's far too large, but there's nothing like an attractive woman in an empty flat ...' Robert was lost in his story and temporarily oblivious to Valentina. 'So I ended up moving in. Though I must say, I was so thick-headed that it took me years to work out that she'd picked me up and not vice versa. I was very young.'

  'When was that?'

  Robert calculated. 'Almost thirteen years ago.'

  'Oh.' We were eight years old then. Valentina had a sudden thought. 'Why didn't you live together? I mean, these apartments are huge, it seems funny to have two giant flats for two single people. And it's not like you have a lot of stuff.'

  'No. I don't, do I?' Robert stared at Valentina's knees. 'Elspeth wasn't keen. She'd lived with someone once and hated it. I think she felt differently towards the end, when I was taking care of her all the time, I think she realised that it could have worked, us living together. I'm fairly self-sufficient and so was she. She liked to be alone, knowing I was nearby if she wanted me.'

  'Our mom is like that.'

  'Is she?'

  'I think Dad is always kind of confused, you know, sometimes Mom seems like she's just visiting, she's super detached, and then she'll be, like, really fun and sort of more present, you know?' Valentina peered up at him. 'Was Elspeth like that?'

  Robert paused to sort out her syntax. 'Yes,' he said. 'Sometimes she was far away, even when she was right there.' He was thinking of a certain way Elspeth had, after they'd made love, of seeming to forget him even as he lay sweat-sticky collapsed over her.

  'Yeah, totally. Did Elspeth like to boss everyone? Our mom is always in charge of everything all the time.'

  'Hmm. I suppose she did, but then, I enjoy being bossed. I come from a family of aunts, I spent my childhood being ordered about by women.' He smiled at her. 'I get the impression that Julia bosses you.'

  'I don't like it.' Valentina made a face. 'I don't want to boss anyone and I don't want to be bossed.'

  'That seems reasonable.'

  'What time is it?' Valentina asked. She sat up and put her mug on the desk, suddenly anxious.

  Robert glanced at his watch. 'Half seven,' he told her.

  'Seven thirty? I've got to go.' She stood up.

  'Wait,' he said. 'What's wrong?' He slid off the desk and stood facing her.

  'Julia will freak if she wakes up and can't find me.'

  Robert hesitated. She'll come back. Let her go. He felt acutely alone even before Valentina turned to leave. He followed her to his back door. She put her hand on the doorknob. Awkwardness overcame them.

  'Would you like to have dinner with me sometime?' he asked her.

  'Yes.'

  'This Saturday?'

  'Okay.' She continued to stand there, waiting. It occurred to Robert that he might kiss her, so he did. The kiss surprised him because it had been so long since he'd kissed anyone but Elspeth. It surprised Valentina because she had hardly ever kissed anyone that way - to her, kissing had always been more theoretical than physical. Afterwards she stood with her eyes closed, lips parted, face tilted. Robert thought, She's going to break my heart and I'm going to let her. Valentina let herself out and padded up the steps. He heard their door latch. Robert stood there trying to sort out what had just happened, failed and gave in to giddy confusion. He made himself a drink and went to bed.

  The following Saturday evening Robert presented himself at the twins' front door wearing a suit. Valentina slipped out and said, 'Let's go.' He had a glimpse of Julia in the hall mirrors, standing forlorn in dim light. He started to wave to her but Valentina was hurrying down the stairs so he followed. He glanced up just
as Julia poked her head into the hallway. She scowled at him and closed the door.

  He had ordered a minicab. 'Andrew Edmunds, in Soho,' he told the driver. They sped through Highgate Village, Kentish Town. Robert looked more attentively at Valentina and saw that she was wearing Elspeth's clothes, a black velvet dress and a white cashmere wrap which awoke memories of other evenings, years ago. Even the shoes had been Elspeth's. What does she mean by that? Then he realised that Valentina might not have brought evening clothes with her from America. He thought rather irritably that Elspeth had left the twins more than enough money to buy new clothes. Valentina seemed older in Elspeth's clothes, as though she had taken on bits of Elspeth. She was staring out of the window. 'I never know where I am.'

  Robert glanced past her and said, 'Camden Town.'

  Valentina sighed. 'It all looks alike. And there's so much of it.'

  'Don't you like London?'

  She shook her head. 'I want to like it. It isn't home, though.'

  It hadn't occurred to Robert that she wouldn't stay once the year was up; now he felt an urgency, a need to convince her of London's desirability. 'I can't imagine living anywhere else. But then, I grew up here. I think if I left I'd feel a bit cut off. All my memories are here.'

  'Well, exactly. That's how I feel about Chicago.'

  He smiled at her earnestness. 'Aren't you terribly young to be so nostalgic? I'm a fusty old historian, I've a right to be calcified. But you ought to be out having adventures.'

  'How old are you?' she asked.

  'I'll be thirty-seven the week after next,' he told her. He noticed that she did not contradict his description of himself as old.

  Valentina smiled. 'We should have a party for you.'

  At first Robert thought she meant we to mean the two of them, himself and her; then he realised she meant herself and Julia. He imagined Julia's likely reaction and said, 'I think we're having tea and cake at the cemetery; why don't you come by and meet everyone?'

  'Okay.' She smiled. 'I've never been to a birthday party at a cemetery.'

  'Oh, it isn't a party, just ourselves having a slightly more elaborate tea than usual. There won't be presents or anything of that sort.'

  They began to exchange birthday stories: 'We went to the circus for the first time ...' 'I ended up in hospital having my stomach pumped ...' 'Julia was so mad ...' 'My father showed up that morning and I had never met him before--'

  'What?'