The Lion Tamer’s Daughter (23 page)

She sounded really upset.

“Melanie says Melly's gone. She was here. They were both in Melanie's body …”

“Are we all crazy?”

“No, we're not.
It's
crazy, but … I mean, weren't you talking to Melly just now? Didn't she tell you what had been happening?”

“Somebody I thought was Melly was telling me something I thought was a lot of nonsense, and I don't understand it and I'm extremely upset … wait … someone seems to be looking for me …”

I heard voices, then Janice again, crying as she spoke.

“I've got to go, Keith. I'm in the sister's office. That was the nurse. She says Melly's woken up and she's asking for me. I'll try and call you back.”

I went and told Melanie and then I pretty well collapsed, sitting at the kitchen table with my head in my hands, shuddering with relief.

After a bit Melanie said, “That was an effing close thing, Keith. Christ, I'm shattered. Is there a fag anywhere?”

I found her a pack of Mum's, and an ashtray, and took her into the lounge, where she slumped on the sofa. She hadn't finished her eggs, but they were cold, so I took a loaf out of the freezer and defrosted it in the microwave and made her a peanut butter and red-currant jelly sandwich, which Melly had a craze for, and she wolfed it, so I made her another. When the water was hot I ran her a bath and pretty well forced her to go and get into it and while I was there I made up the spare bed, and then I put a message on the answer-phone saying I'd be back in twenty minutes and went round to Ken's to tell Maisie I really was all right, and to borrow some milk—we'd used up what I'd got for the cats.

When I got back I found Melanie had fallen asleep in the bath and I had to yell at her to wake her up. She got out grumbling and swearing, and dried herself, sort of, and staggered out in the pajamas I'd given her, tripping over the trouser ends. I pushed her into bed and tucked her in and turned the light out. When I said good-night she didn't answer.

Now there wasn't anything to do except fix myself something to eat and wait for Janice to call and worry about how I could skip school next day, let alone the rest of the week until the opera finished in Edinburgh. Janice did ring in the end. She was still upset, but differently. She said Melly was OK as far as anyone could make out, but they were keeping her in hospital for observation. And she'd told Janice everything she'd done since the phone call—everything Melanie had done, that is—being beaten up by M. Perrault, and getting away, and sleeping out, and hitching over to Glasgow and finding our place and waiting for me to get home, the lot. It was the bit about M. Perrault that convinced Janice. He'd been her husband, remember, but Melly couldn't possibly have known what he was like.

“I absolutely hate this,” she told me. “I find it extremely stupid and extremely frightening, and I think I'd rather we were all crazy. But I have to accept that it's happening.”

I told her I felt the same, and asked her to give my love to Melly. I said I'd ring Mum and tell her what had happened.

In fact Mum rang me from the theater during the last act. I could hear the singers shrieking and bellowing away in the background. I said it looked as if Melly had got back somehow, and she was out of her coma and so on. I asked her to call my school and tell them I wouldn't be in because I wasn't feeling too good—and what about the rest of the week? She told me she'd found someone to take over the costume job, but she would have to go in in the morning to show her the ropes, and she should be home by teatime. Was I relieved! I flopped into bed and slept till the middle of the morning, when the telephone rang. It was Janice, saying Melly seemed pretty well normal and the hospital were letting her go home. I told her about Mum, and fixed that they'd talk that evening.

Melanie was still asleep, but she looked OK and was breathing easy. I had some Weetabix and was grilling bacon when she groped her way into the kitchen, all woozy and pathetic in my old dressing gown.

“That smells effing good,” she said. “Do some for me?”

I told her about Janice and Melly. I wanted to talk about what had happened so that we'd know what to do next time. I mean, was it the tranquilizer, or talking to Janice, or something just snapping? I thought this was important, but Melanie wasn't that interested.

“Next time we're stuck with it,” she said. “So it's effing well got not to happen.”

We got dressed and watched idiot afternoon TV, and a video, and I went out and bought stuff for supper. I was almost at our road when I saw Ken coming along from the other direction, so I walked on and met up with him. He was on his way round to our place to tell me about this bird he'd seen at the weekend which might have been something crazily rare but was probably just an albino blackbird. I said I couldn't ask him back in as our friend who wasn't well was asleep now and I didn't want to disturb her. It worked out OK, but it made me realize we'd got to have a story about Melanie. We'd got to have something for her to do, and we couldn't leave her alone in the house all day, either. It wasn't just that she'd have gone crazy with boredom—she didn't feel as if it was safe to leave her alone that long.

When I got home Mum was there, so of course we started talking the whole thing through again.

“At least it's taught us a lesson,” Mum said. “We don't understand what we're dealing with, but at least we know from now on that we've got to be extremely careful. You aren't going to try calling Melly again, are you?”

“Course not,” said Melanie, “and neither's she—but it's going to be effing hard. Sorry, Trish. But you don't understand. Nobody can understand but us. We're each calling the other, calling and calling … When Keith was away just now, and before you were home, it swept over me till I was screaming inside me, shaking and sweating and holding myself down so that I didn't go running off to hitch my way to Coventry. And the same with her, and that isn't guessing. It's a thing I ken. But I dinna ken how long I can take it.”

“It isn't like when you're having one of your dopy fits?” I said.

“No, nothing like. That was before I kenned for sure she was real, and in a place I could be going to—I could walk into a room and she'd be there, waiting for me. Before, I was only watching, seeing what she was seeing, and she'd not have kenned I was there. Now I can feel her. Put a cloth over my eyes and spin me around, and I'll point you where she is. I could walk straight to her, and maybe I'd weary on the way and fall asleep, but my body would go on walking to her.”

Then the phone rang and I went to answer it. It was Janice.

“Melly thinks this is safe,” she said. “I hope to heavens she's right. Is Trish back yet? Can I talk to her?”

Mum came and I went back into the kitchen. In spite of what Melly had told Janice I was pretty anxious. I thought any sort of connection between where the two girls were might make something happen, but when I asked Melanie she shook her head.

“It isn't that way,” she said. “Just now I ken with my mind she's there, and that's our ma talking with Trish, and that's it. It's the other times, when the whole of me's aching and screaming for us to be together, body and soul, just the one body, just the one soul … Mary, mother of God, help me!”

She wasn't swearing either, she was praying. I'd never heard anyone do that before, not for real. I took hold of her hand and held it and she started to cry, quietly, wiping the tears away with her sleeve and swearing under her breath and crying again. This is going to sound really stupid, but I was glad she was doing it. She needed to cry, and she needed to hold my hand so that she could do it, and she trusted me enough to let herself go like that. Yes, I was glad.

The next few days were a real muddle. I'm not going to write down all the different telephone calls and so on, mostly Mum and Janice, but sometimes me talking to Melly and sometimes Melanie and Janice trying to get to know each other a bit. It was specially hard on Janice, Mum said, getting used to the idea that there was this other daughter, or other half of one daughter, depending how you looked at it, who she'd never met and who'd lived this life she didn't know anything about. And on top of that Janice still hated the idea that there wasn't some kind of ordinary, real-world explanation for what had happened. That's why I put in that bit about the other daughter or the half daughter. Melanie and Melly were absolutely set, certain, sure that they were two halves who'd somehow come apart, but Janice was just as certain they were two different people, and always had been and always would be, and what was happening between them was some kind of psychic freak.

“She thinks she might have had twins without knowing it,” Mum said. “She had a perfectly appalling labor, in their caravan, with the horrible sister and a couple of old hags from the circus acting as midwives. It was extremely primitive and full of superstitious nonsense, and she passed out several times, so I suppose it's just possible. I know in some places people are very superstitious about twins, because they think one of them must have come from the devil, though I've never heard of that happening in France. But I can tell you one thing—the little boy I was looking after when I was an au pair was perfectly obviously left-handed, but when I suggested he might be, the family was very upset, and the grandmother wanted the parents to sack me on the spot. There'd never been the slightest taint of left-handedness in either family, she said. So what Janice thinks now—or rather what she seems to be trying to persuade herself—is that she had twins without knowing it and they took the left-handed one away …”

“You said there didn't have to be a left-handed one,” I said.

“No, I don't think so, and I wouldn't have thought you could tell that small. But these are very superstitious people and perhaps they believed they could. Anyway, let me go on.… Then, when she ran away with the baby and they came after her and took it away, what they did was exchange it for the other one, which they'd farmed out somewhere, and bring that one back. I must say I don't believe that either. You know your baby and it knows you, however like the new one might be, though according to Janice it cried and cried and wouldn't stop for days after they brought it back.”

“But you don't believe it,” said Melanie. “Tell me you don't believe it, Trish. It's …”

She was trying not to swear when Mum was around, and sometimes it was pretty funny when she bit something back at the last moment, but not now. She was really upset.

“No, I don't,” said Mum. “I can believe in somebody having twins and not realizing it, in circumstances like that, but not in people discovering at once that one of them was left-handed …”

“They didn't have to know then,” I said. “They could just believe one of them was going to be, and take the second one away and keep it until they found out, and then do the swap. And they were just about ready to do that when Janice cleared out, so they had to come after her. And you did say the baby cried a lot, after.”

I could have kicked myself. I'd only just registered that Melanie really couldn't cope with Janice's kind of explanation, about twins and so on, and I needn't have blurted that out, even if it made a sort of sense. Anyway, Melanie totally lost it.

“That's crap!” she yelled. “I tell you it's effing crap! We're one! I'm her and she's me, and the eff with anything else!”

“I believe you,” said Mum. “You know it's so and Melly knows it's so, and that's all the argument I need. What Keith said was perfectly sensible, but what's happening isn't sensible.”

“We can't go on this way,” said Melanie. “I tell you, we can't go on this way!”

Another evening I was doing homework in the kitchen—you get a lot of that in Scottish schools. Mum was at the theater and Melanie was in the lounge watching TV. I was steaming along through some math when she yelled at me to come and see. I yelled back I was busy and she came rushing out and started trying to pull me out of my chair, yelling at me it was important and I'd got to come. I could see she was on one of her highs so I said I'd come for a bit.

It was a program about Siamese twins. There'd been stuff in the news about a pair who'd been born in Liverpool and they were going to try and separate, and this was some kind of documentary about other pairs. It wasn't my sort of thing. Given the chance I'd have zapped to another channel, but Melanie made me watch the lot. Some of the twins hadn't got a chance. They'd got shared livers and kidneys and things, and there was no way they could be cut apart and both of them live. The ones who were more lightly joined the surgeons could do something about, but it was always chancy. We were looking at a pair who were joined at the chest when Melanie pressed the mute button.

“That's us,” she said. “That's me and Melly.”

I stared at the screen. They were babies still, about a year old, I guessed. Two heads, four arms, four legs, and this body thing in the middle. It was a still photograph, not film. Both faces were screwed up, both mouths seemed to be crying, all eight limbs struggled and threshed. It was horrible.

“They canna live like that,” said Melanie, “and you canna cut them free of each other.”

She always sounded much more Scottish when she was upset. After a bit she pressed the button again.

“… died at two and a half years,” said the voice-over. “Even with modern surgical techniques, it is unlikely that either of them would have survived an operation to separate them.”

She didn't say anything else until the program was over and she'd switched off.

“Do you see now, Keith?” she said. “It isna livers and that we share, but try and make us two, the way you and my ma are trying, and one of us will be dead. Both of us, very like. We must be one, like we were when we were born. We must be
made
one.”