Brother and Sister Page 5

  Standing now beside the telephone in the hall, with Petey asleep in his cot upstairs—it was really time, she knew, to move him to a bed—and the prepared vegetables just waiting to be cooked for supper in the kitchen, Marnie thought hard about Nathalie. Nathalie had not rung to complain to David about Lynne. That was perfectly plain. Nathalie had rung about something quite different, something she was not prepared to tell Marnie about, something which related to that place where she and David had first clung together after the shipwreck of their early lives. Marnie looked at herself, at the regularity of her features and teeth, at the way her striped cotton shirt had been competently ironed. A small but unmistakable anger rose up inside her, hot and red. You'd think, she said to herself, that I'd done enough, wouldn't you? You'd think that to give a man the first three blood relations of his life was the most any woman could do?

  Nathalie drove out of Westerham in the rain. There was something oily and sticky on the windscreen and an exasperating long smear formed and re-formed with every sweep of the wiper blades. She sat leaning forward in her seat, craning this way and that to see round the smear and devoting far too much energy to the decision as to whether to stop and get out into the rain and clean the glass with a sheet of last week's local paper which was lying in the floor-well by the passenger seat, or whether to stay dry and dangerously maddened. She chose the latter, and drove on, muttering.

  David had rung and asked her to meet him at a site he was working on seven miles from Westerham. It was the substantial garden of an impressive mock-medieval house whose new owners had asked David to design the basic layout of the garden as well as get it into shape. David was pleased about this. It was the best creative commission he had yet had and he was enjoying it. He wanted Nathalie to see it in its worst state, at the very raw beginning, before he started to impose pattern and order on it; he could show it to her while she said to him whatever it was that she wanted to say.

  In the drive of the house stood a little Mercedes town car, a big four-wheel drive and two dark-green pickup trucks with "David Dexter—Gardens" painted on the doors in cream. Nathalie pulled up beside one of them, reached into the back seat to retrieve the Minnie Mouse umbrella, complete with big black ears, which Lynne had given Polly, and got out into the rain. It had slowed to a drizzle. Nathalie squinted up at the sky and put up the umbrella. Then she made her way around the house to the gardens beyond, where David had said she would find him.

  The whole area seemed to be nothing but a sea of mud with islands of heaped building materials here and there. A small digger was chugging purposefully up and down and in one corner, huddled together as if for mutual comfort, stood a sad collection of spindly trees, their roots bundled up in sacking. In the middle of this discouraging scene, David was standing, holding a plan sheathed in plastic. Nathalie called out to him.

  "Dave!"

  He turned and waved. Then he shouted something to the boy on the digger, and came stamping through the mud towards her.

  "Very sorry," Nathalie said, gesturing at the muddy desolation, "but I cannot begin to see what will emerge from this—"

  David bent to kiss her cheek. Then he straightened and waved his right arm.

  "Long terrace there, raised grass terrace all down that side, curved stone steps, lawn, grove, space for swimming pool, formal garden, brick paths."

  "If you say so," Nathalie said.

  David glanced at her umbrella.

  "Like the ears—"

  "It's Polly's," Nathalie said unnecessarily.

  "There's a sort of pavilion over there," David said. "A summerhouse thing. We could go there for five minutes. Are you OK?"

  He put a hand under Nathalie's bent elbow.

  She said, "I don't usually ring you if I'm OK, do I?"

  He put his garden plan in his pocket and began to guide her round the edge of the mud.

  "I like to think I have a sense if you're not OK—"

  Nathalie thought briefly how oppressive she would have found such a remark if Steve had made it.

  She said, "Well, you did. You wouldn't have rung back if you hadn't. You'd have texted me, saying, 'What's up?' "

  "Yes," he said. "What is up?"

  Nathalie said nothing. She concentrated on putting her feet down carefully to divert herself from thinking of how she was going to say what she was going to say. She let David lead her up a short flight of crumbling stone steps to a little grass platform on which sat a greenish wooden building shaped like a pagoda. She looked at it.

  "Is this staying?"

  "Certainly not. Fake, pretentious and out of keeping."

  "But dry—"

  "Certainly dry," David agreed, pushing open a half-glazed door.

  She stepped inside. The interior was raw and untreated, and contained nothing but a broken plastic chair and a drift of dead leaves.

  "Charming—"

  "I'm replacing it with stone. Circular, like a little dovecote."

  "Dave," Nathalie said abruptly, "you know how we've always been—"

  "How?"

  "Not looking back, not saying 'if only . . . ,' not wishing we had what we haven't got—"

  He closed the door behind them and stood looking out into the faint rain.

  "Yes?"

  Nathalie glanced at his back.

  "Well, something's happened."

  There was a pause, and then he said, "Tell me."

  She looked at his back again. He was wearing a waxed jacket over overalls, and the wax had worn thin here and there and she could see dark patches where the damp had seeped through to the underlying cotton.

  "I want you to help me do something," Nathalie said.

  He turned round.

  He said, smiling, "Nat, you only have to ask—"

  "But you won't like this."

  "Won't I?"

  "No. Because I've sort of broken the rules."

  "What rules?"

  "The pact we have. About making something of being adopted, about making it a plus not a minus?"

  "Yes—"

  "Well, I'm going back on that."

  He waited. Nathalie realized that she was still holding the Minnie Mouse umbrella over her head even though she was inside. She lowered it carefully to the floor, crumpling the ears.

  "Dave—"

  "Yes."

  "I want to find my mother."

  David gave a small, sharp intake of breath. He put his hands out towards her and then pulled them back abruptly and jammed them into his jacket pockets.

  "You—you can't."

  "Why not?"

  "You'll upset everything. Everyone. Mum, Steve, Polly, yourself. Me. There's no point."

  "I need to," Nathalie said.

  He looked at her. His face was full of misery.

  "But why? You never—"

  She put a hand up to stop him.

  "No, I never did before. I never wanted to before. Or at least, I never let myself want to. I told myself that I wasn't going to be that kind of adopted person, lugging a grievance around and wanting people to make allowances for me. But suddenly—" She leaned forward and looked earnestly up into his face. "Suddenly I do need to. I need to for Polly, but I need to for me. I need to stop being this person of my own creation and find out what really happened. I need to stop feeling so separate."

  He said hopelessly, "You've got me—"

  "You're separate too."

  "Please, Nathalie—"

  She shook her head.

  "Sorry, I can't not. It started with Polly's ear thing, and then I had this session with Titus's girlfriend and I could hear myself coming out with all this stuff about being a lottery determined by no one but me except I have more numbers than most, and I suddenly thought I can't stand this crap anymore, I can't stand hearing myself lying about liking my life story beginning with me, I can't stand pretending any more, I can't stand not admitting that I have to confront whatever it is, whatever she is—and make good somehow."

  He said, almost in a
whisper, "But it's been good. It is good."

  She moved to grasp the damp folds of his jacket.

  "But not anymore, Dave. Something has changed or got unblocked or got released. I used to want to give back to the adoptive process, d'you remember? When we were having such trouble making Polly, d'you remember me talking about adopting myself because I'd been so lucky? Well, I don't believe that now. I wonder if I deep down believed it then. I want to be like people who know where they've come from. I want Polly to know. I want to look the truth in the face even if I don't like it." She shook his jacket. "I want to find my mother."

  "You've got a mother—"

  "Shut up."

  "You'll break her heart."

  "Possibly. And Dad's. And maybe my own. I won't start without telling her."

  David shivered.

  "I suppose you want me to help you tell her?"

  "Yes."

  He closed his eyes.

  "Let me adjust a bit. Let me think—"

  "There's something else."

  He opened his eyes again. She was still holding his jacket and her face was very close.

  "Go on."

  "I want you to do it too."

  He stared.

  "Me—"

  "I want you to look for your mother, too. I want us to do this together."

  He stepped back sharply, yanking his jacket out of her hands.

  "No," he said. "Sorry."

  "Dave, please, don't you see—"

  He put his own hands up to his ears.

  "No, Nathalie. Not that. I don't want to, I don't need to, I can't even think about it."

  She stood in silence, watching him. He took his hands away from his ears.

  He said, "Sorry, Nat. No. Now and forever, no."

  "Dave—"

  His face was suddenly completely desolate, as if he'd heard that one of his children was hurt.

  "She gave me away!" he shouted. "She bloody gave me away!"

  Nathalie moved closer and slid a hand up against his cheek. He put his own hand up to cover it. He was shaking.

  "Don't ask me."

  "No. Sorry."

  "I'll help you," David said, "if that's what you want, if that's what you really want, but don't ask me to join in."

  Nathalie said softly, "You aren't really controlling things by just being passive—"

  "We're not talking about control."

  "Aren't we? Aren't I trying to take it?"

  "Don't go on, Nat, don't go on at me—"

  "Sorry—"

  He took his hand away from covering hers and put his arms round her.

  "I'll have to tell Marnie."

  "Of course. Don't you tell her most things?"

  "Most." He took his arms away. He said in a different voice, looking away from her, "I've never told her about the cutting."

  "That was years ago. You were fifteen, sixteen—"

  "Nobody but you knows about the cutting. She thinks the scars were some skin allergy."

  Nathalie looked up at him. She remembered standing guard outside the bathroom door while David's meticulously organized sessions with razor blade, tissues, disinfecting cream, plasters were silently, appallingly performed, and how he'd look afterwards, relieved as if he'd had a holiday from himself.

  She said comfortingly, "It's over, the cutting. I'll never tell anyone about it."

  "No—"

  "Why—why did you mention it?"

  "Because when you told me what you wanted to do, I suddenly felt like I did when I needed to cut, I suddenly felt that everything was spiraling out of control, that I couldn't keep hold of things, that I couldn't keep hold of you—"

  "You'll always have hold of me," Nathalie said.

  He gave her a shaky smile.

  "Just don't ask me to do more than I can—manage."

  "Forget it."

  "I'll help you—"

  "Dave," Nathalie said, "please don't worry. I shouldn't have asked you. I'm a selfish cow."

  He gave her another doubtful smile, then he stepped back and opened the door of the summerhouse and took a gulp of damp air.

  "No. You're brave."

  She put a hand out and touched his sleeve.

  "Can't I be brave for both of us?"

  He didn't look at her. Instead, he took his plastic-covered plan out of his pocket and stepped out into the rain.

  "No," he said, over his shoulder. "No."

  CHAPTER FOUR

  The coffee shop was furnished with chic metal tables and chairs imported from the Continent with, at the back by a window looking into a small paved garden somebody had devised for the use of summer customers in optimistic defiance of the climate, two black-leather sofas. On one of these Sasha was sitting, leaning back with one arm along the back of the sofa and her long legs crossed. She wore black trousers and a little cream-colored cropped jacket and the kind of heavy black laced-up boots that Steve associated with long-ago Mods and Rockers. He also noticed—he hadn't seen this on their first meeting—that she had a tiny jeweled stud in her nose, which flashed when she turned her head, a glint of blue-green, like a kingfisher.

  He sat opposite her on the second sofa, leaning forward, his elbow on his knees. He had bought them both lattes—hers with an extra shot of espresso—and these were on the low table between them in heavy white mugs. When Sasha had rung to thank him warmly for passing on her request to Nathalie, his first impulse had been to say, "No problem, glad it worked out," and put the phone down. But something else had intervened, an uncomfortable something about the way Nathalie was behaving at the moment, about the atmosphere of distinct but undefinable edginess there was in the flat which was making—no getting round it—both Polly and Steve behave edgily too.

  So instead of putting the phone down on Sasha, he'd found himself asking her to meet him for coffee, and then was disconcertingly pleased when she didn't sound even much surprised, and said she'd love to.

  "A sort of debrief," she said.

  He'd given an anxious little laugh.

  "All above board—"

  "Oh yes," Sasha said. She managed to sound both reassuring and at the same time shocked that disloyalty to Nathalie was even a possibility. And now here she was, almost sprawled on the black sofa, telling him with perfect ease all the things he realized he'd needed to know, to be comforted about.

  "She was wonderfully straightforward with me," Sasha said. "I mean she said, 'Look, absolutely no therapy-toting, understood?' "

  "She hates that—"

  "Of course. It can be such an intrusive approach. Anyway, I was there to ask, not tell, thanks to you."

  Steve's eyes fell from her face to her boots. They had scarlet-edged eyelets and scarlet laces. They were brazenly unwomanly and therefore—Steve swallowed.

  He said, "Nothing to it. She wouldn't have agreed if she hadn't wanted to see you."

  "She told me her father's theory. So interesting. He used to tell her and her brother that adoptive parents don't feel as guilty about their children's personalities as birth parents do, so that frees them from the responsibilities that encourage resentment. And I don't know about you, Steve, but my family heaves with resentments, and we're all far too involved with each other. Nathalie said she's always had space, that her parents have always given her space."

  Steve thought of Lynne, of those persistent unspoken needs and wishes, of the anxious, silent pleadings for recovered hope. He picked up his coffee mug.

  "Of course we talked about it when we first met. We talked about it a lot then. But she really wasn't bothered and if she wasn't, I wasn't going to push her."

  "You wouldn't need to," Sasha said, "she was perfectly clear. She said she was thankful to be free of all that genetic claustrophobia. She said she knew all she needed to know about herself from her birth papers but that she'd far rather have had the freedom to make herself and her own way than have the path mapped out for her, which is what would have happened if she'd known any more. She said she never doubted she
'd been loved."

  Steve took a mouthful of his coffee. Then he smiled, almost privately.

  "Oh no."

  "I can think," Sasha said, "of so many of my friends who can't say that of their natural parents."

  Steve thought about his father. Then he considered mentioning him and decided, reluctantly, against it.

  He said instead, "I wonder why people still feel so uneasy about adoption?"

  "Oh, that's just numbers," Sasha said. "It's just less common. IVF, legal abortion, less stigma about illegitimacy. One study I read said there are only about a quarter of the adoptions now than there were thirty years ago." She uncrossed her legs and leaned forward to pick up her coffee. "Social attitudes are so different. I mean, in Nathalie's day there were two social improprieties to wrestle with—her natural mother being not married and too fertile and her adoptive mother being married and infertile. All that's gone, thank heavens."

  "Has it?"

  "Oh yes," Sasha said confidently. She smiled at Steve over the rim of her mug and her nose stud blazed with a sudden tiny turquoise fire. "As a society, we talk about everything now, don't we? I mean, can you imagine Nathalie's mother and mine having the kind of conversation Nathalie and I had?"

  "No—"

  "She's a stunning woman," Sasha said. "Lucky you. A stunning woman with no hang-ups."

  Steve said awkwardly, "I just had a feeling that maybe I wasn't doing enough, being sympathetic enough. That maybe this whole adoption thing was some kind of problem for her and I wasn't helping, I was just making assumptions—" He stopped and then he said awkwardly, "I'm grateful."

  Sasha's eyes widened.

  "Who to?"

  "Well, you. You've—you've set my mind at rest."

  "Good," Sasha said. She smiled again. "Just think of the selection procedures Nathalie's parents went through to get her. Pretty rigorous. They must have wanted her very badly."

  Steve looked into his coffee again. He nodded.

  Sasha said, "Can you imagine wanting anything that badly?"

  He shrugged.

  "Career things, maybe. I certainly wanted my daughter, but far more when she was actually here than before she was born."