The Lion Tamer’s Daughter (22 page)

“How long has this been going on?” I asked her when I'd finished. “It's when you get those dopy fits, isn't it? You've had them ever since I've known you.”

“Always,” she said. “But not like this before. It was just bits, and I knew it wasn't real. I mean I knew I was sitting at the kitchen table or somewhere—I mean like when you're watching TV, you can get very involved, but you know it isn't happening to you, really. This time it almost was.”

“Except you couldn't hear what we were saying?”

“I can sometimes, but only when I'm not trying. It drives me crazy. You know sometimes you're reading a book in a dream and you're getting along fine until you start paying attention, and then the words won't stay still anymore. It's always been like that. When I was little, and still when I was in junior school for a bit, it used to be in some kind of circus, and I knew it was in France because sometimes I'd hear them talking French, and I'd understand what they were saying although my French wasn't really that good, but as soon as I tried to listen it didn't make any sense at all. And last night I could hear that Trish and the man were talking French but I was trying to listen to you and it was just a sort of jumble.”

“We were talking about Hole and P. J. Harvey, if you want to know. Do you have nightmares about a man leading you across a field toward a sort of circus trailer, and then you running away and finding you can fly, only something's pulling you down, following you below?… Melly?… Are you there?”

“She has that too?” she whispered. “Look, I've got to talk to her. What's her number?”

I wasn't ready. I was still trying to think what to say when she said, “No, that's no good. I can't call her at the restaurant because of him. I don't suppose you gave her my number.”

“No, but …”

“Then what's her address? Hell, I bet he opens her letters. She's calling you up tomorrow, isn't she? Hell, I can't wait till tomorrow …”

By now I was getting scared. It wasn't what she was saying, it was the way she was saying it, right over the top with excitement. Melly wasn't like that.

“Hold it,” I said. “Mum doesn't think it's a good idea, you two getting in touch. She told me to tell you.”

“Oh, come off it—that's just Trish. Anyway, we've just got to—”

“Listen. Can't you at least wait till Janice gets home? She can talk to Trish. I'll give you her number …”

“Oh, great! She's still in Edinburgh! She can get a message round, can't she? I'll call her!”

“She's working tonight, Melly. She's at the theater. No! For God's sake, listen! Mum's working, and you can't ring her there. She'll be back in her hotel room—hell, the show's a long one, she said—about half past eleven. You wait till Janice gets home, and tell her all about it, and then one of you can call Mum tonight, if you still want to. If Janice wants to talk to me, I'll be round at Ken's. The number's on that card I sent you. And Mum's going to call her tomorrow evening anyway. Got a pencil? Here's Mum's number.”

I gave it her and tried to calm her down a bit but it wasn't any use so we rang off and I fed the cats and went round to Ken's. Nobody called me there. I was exhausted, but I didn't sleep that well. The way Melly had talked had really upset me.

Next morning at school I went to the library to get Mrs. McCrum to help me look up about doppelgangers. I still felt it was a crazy notion but at least it was something I could do. Mrs. McCrum likes kids using the library for their own stuff, and on top of that she's a fantasy nut, so she dug around and found some bits and pieces, but there wasn't much and they all said the same sort of thing about German folktales and gloomy German and Russian writers. Some of the stories said that doppelgangers were the ghosts of living people, haunting them, and some of them said they were fiends out to get them, but either way if you met yours it meant you were going to die, or else it happened straight off. There wasn't anything about where they came from, or it being two real people like Melly and Melanie.

When I got home to do the cats that evening I found Melanie sitting huddled in the porch. She was wearing the gear I'd first seen her in, and looked totally done in but all the same she was fizzing. Before I could say anything she jumped up and said, “I've effed things up, Keith. Real bad. You've got to help. She's here. We're both here and we can't get her back. Listen. I was in my room and having one of my fits, real strong, just yakking and yakking into the telephone. I kenned well she must be talking with you but I couldn't hear the words, only the buzz of it going through me till I was shuddering with it. I thought I was going to fly to pieces. I couldn't bear for you to be talking with her and me so far off. I was screaming for you both to stop so I could talk to her myself. There's a phone in Annie's own room. It's another number from the restaurant. I pushed the fit aside and called Information and asked them for Perraults living in Coventry. J., I told them, and there was only the one. As soon as I saw you were finished I called that number, and she answered and said ‘Hi,' but before I could say an effing word myself she was there, with me, in Annie's room above the restaurant. Wait …”

She'd been gabbling away a hundred miles an hour while I got the door unlocked and took her into the kitchen. Now she shut her eyes and concentrated a moment and opened them and said, “I'm sorry, Keith. But I couldn't help it. It was too strong for me, and now I can't get back.”

“Jesus!” I said. “What's happened to the rest of you?”

“I don't know,” she said. “This isn't right, Keith, not like this. There's still two of us … Where's Trish?”

“She'll be at the theater now. I can't ring her there.”

Automatically I went on with putting the kettle on and getting the teapot out. I fished Melly's mug out of the back of the cupboard and put it on the table. She grabbed it and sort of fondled it as if it was some kind of magic charm which would get her out of this.

“What happened next?” I said. “How did you make it here?”

It was Melanie who answered. She didn't sound quite so off the handle, now that she'd got the mug in her hands.

“Papa came up, yelling at me for being late down, but I was near crazed myself and I began yelling right back at him for what he'd done with me when I was a wee bairn, and when he got what I was saying he really lost it. I thought he would have killed me but Annie heard the racket and came up and tried to stop him. She couldn't hold him but I got to the door and ran down, and she must have clung on to him somehow and I was out in the street and away. I had no money. I thought of looking for your ma, but I dinna ken if she'd told him she was working in the theater, and maybe he'd come for me there. Then I poked in my pocket and found the paper where you'd written your address and I thought I'd try that. I slept on a bench, and in the morning I bummed myself a cut of bread and walked all the way to the motorway, where the hitchers hang out, and I found a fellow and a girl to hitch along with into Glasgow. I was asking my way to Bearsden, saying I'd lost my purse, and a woman gave me the money for the bus. I'd heard you saying to your ma about feeding your cats, so I kenned you'd be by. But Keith, I'm effing hungry.”

“I'll fix you some scrambled eggs. That's what Melly … hell, I suppose you know that. For God's sake, which of you is it in there?”

I was watching her do exactly what Melly would have done about her tea. First, a great splosh of milk into the mug, and then a fiddling little half spoon of sugar, tipped slowly in as if she was trying to count the grains, and then stir and stir until the tea was ready to pour.

“There's the two of us, buzzing against each other,” said Melanie's voice, “and there isn't room for us both. We can't go on like this, Keith, or we'll be flying apart.”

“I believe you,” I said. Anyone would have spotted there was something wrong. She was obviously on a high, but it was a sick sort of high, spiky, edgy, dangerous-feeling. Her eyes glittered and her whole body seemed tense and twanging. She clung to her mug as if it was all that was keeping her from flying to pieces, like she'd said. I didn't know what to do. It wasn't any use calling a doctor. I couldn't ring Mum at the theater … well, I could try, if it was this important … Or Janice—she probably wouldn't be home, but it was worth a go …

I put the teapot on the table and gave Melanie her eggs. I was waiting for her to finish pouring so that I could have a cup when the telephone rang. It was Mum.

“Thank heavens you're there,” she said. “I haven't got much time, but something dreadful has happened. Janice called, early this afternoon. She got home last night and found Melly in a coma, and the telephone off the hook. She rushed her to hospital but they couldn't find anything wrong. She stayed with her all night and all this morning, until she'd talked to the doctors, and then she went home to pick up things for her. While she was there she noticed a number Melly had written on the telephone pad so she called it. She didn't know who'd be there, but there was a room number and they put it through to me. By the mercy of heaven I'd had the morning off and was just getting ready to come round to the theater. I was horrified when she told me what had happened, but all I could think of was that it might be something to do with Melanie, so I explained about all that. Janice didn't want to listen—it's not her sort of thing. I had to stop, because she was getting upset, and it wasn't until I'd rung off that I worked out you were the only person who could have given her my number. I'm stuck here now till the third act's started, and then I'm going to race up to Annie's …”

“Don't do that,” I said. “Listen. Did you tell M. Perrault you were anything to do with the opera?”

“No. Why? I did tell him I made costumes, but he seemed to think I meant I was a dressmaker. He wasn't very interested in me. He wanted to talk about himself.”

“Thank God for that,” I said. “I was afraid he might be coming after you.”

“After me? Why on earth?”

“Because Melanie had a row with him and cleared out. She's here. And so's Melly, sort of.”

“There? At Bearsden?”

I explained what had happened. She was wonderful. She just accepted it as if there wasn't anything crazy about it.

“This is dreadful,” she said when I'd finished. “What on earth are we going to do?”

“The first thing I've got to do is try and get Melanie calmed down,” I said. “She can't go on much longer like she is.”

“Try to get her to have a nice warm bath. Not too hot. You'll have to turn the water on and it'll take about an hour to get hot. I wonder if it would be safe to give her one of my tranquilizers. They're very mild. In the pink box in the drawer by my bed. Just one. I've got to go now, but—”

“Wait,” I said. “Can you ring Maisie”—that's Ken's mum—“and tell her I won't be round tonight? Say I've got a friend come unexpected, and they're not very well, and I'm looking after them.”

“I'll fit that in somehow. Good luck, darling …”

“Hold it,” I said again, because Melanie had come out into the hallway, where our telephone is, and was making signs. I nodded to her to go ahead and butt in. It wasn't Melanie, though, it was Melly.

“Give her my love,” she said. “And ask her where Mum is—I want to talk to her.”

I passed the message on. I think it shook Mum, and I can see why. It made Melly being in Bearsden real, somehow, in a way just talking about it hadn't.

“Sorry,” she said. “She'll be at the hospital—Walsgrave. The number's in my old address book. On the shelf with the cookery books. And give her all my love back. And Melanie too. I've got to go now. Good luck, darling—I think you're doing wonders.”

We rang off. I turned the hot water on and found the pills and gave one to Melanie and told her what it was. She looked at it a moment.

“I dinna ken,” she said. “Hell, we've got to try something—we're just about hanging on, only.”

I got through to the hospital but they absolutely refused to go and find Janice for me. I made it as urgent as I could, but my voice doesn't sound that grown-up and I got a bit upset, so I wasn't sure they'd taken me seriously. Then all we could do was wait. It was only half an hour, but it was forever.

“Hold me tight,” said Melanie suddenly. “Hold on to me, Keith!”

I took her into the lounge and turned the telly on and we sat on the sofa with my arms round her. That should have been fun but it wasn't. It was like holding a wild bird, one that's got into the house and you've caught it and you're carrying it out in your hand with its wings folded so it can't flap them and hurt itself, and it lies there still and quivering—like that.

And then the telephone rang and I let go and she flew to it like the bird.

I went into the kitchen but left the door open so that I could see out into the hallway, so I could check she was OK without listening in. She'd settled down on the chair with the handset in the nook of her shoulder, the way she always does, because she can't help doing body language with her hands even when the other person can't see. She did most of the talking, and cried a bit, but it didn't make any difference her being Melly now—she still had the same twanging, fizzing jumpiness pulsing out of her … And then, right in front of my eyes, she sort of slumped. The phone slid out of her shoulder but she grabbed it and took a deep, slow breath and said something, and then held it out for me to come and take.

“She's gone,” she said in her Melanie voice. “Tell her, Keith. I'm done for.”

I took the phone and said, “Janice? This is me. Keith.”

“What now, for God's sake?” she said.