Sister Crazy, page 2
Something thrown up in the drift of Jude’s wake, in his flow toward other people, was a new game we tried out together once or twice, a game involving my sister’s Barbie, a game that held him for a little while longer.
Barbie could not go far with us without overstretching the boundaries of truth. She could be a sort of Mary Ure in The Guns of Navarone, a commando with useful feminine wiles and a gift for disguise and languages. Or a nurse maybe, caught up in a daring mission and proving invaluable, Sylvia Syms in Ice Cold in Alex. An obvious choice was Barbie as French Resistance fighter, headstrong and relentless, going boldly where no French woman has gone before. There was also the aristocratic English girl, a master code-breaker for MI6. Women with no spare time on their hands, no time for dates, which is what I suspected Jude craved above all. And so most often, Barbie was a glamorous double agent, passing secrets to her man as he breezed through Occupied Paris, always an occasion for champagne and smuggled Russian caviar. Silk stockings and Virginia tobacco, rare as golddust, were regular features.
Something happened. I became tongue-tied and short of breath. My dramatic abilities failed me. My temples hurt. Later in life, in cases of sudden awareness on dates (Oh, I thought I liked you), when the urge to escape the sexual showdown is sharp as a fire alarm and you want to flee in cartoon time – in the first frame, one arm in a sleeve and coattails flapping; in the next, home in bed, reading a Tintin book – I would remember this atmosphere of disquiet and asphyxiation that came upon me with Jude and my sister’s Barbie. All I could do was stall.
‘Just a minute here! How did your man enter Paris? Subterfuge? Fake passport? Is my man with him? Shouldn’t he be? What mission is this? Shouldn’t he be in a hurry?’
Even episodes with the French Resistance girl of the one-track mind (Vive la France!) degenerated into dates. Crawling through darkened forests, sabotaging power lines, setting booby traps and gathering secret munitions drops, Jude’s man still managed to suggest dinner and dancing. So I revolted. I started to get silly as the walls of illusion came tumbling down, exposing the scene for what it was – sex – and Jude either got slaphappy along with me or stalked off in a fury. End of game. The second thing I would do was dry up, a startled and exhausted actor. I dithered and looked spacey and we would have to pause for peanut butter sandwiches. The third ploy was to say quietly, in a fit of uncommon generosity, ‘We should invite Harriet to play, you know. We shouldn’t take her Barbie and not ask her to play.’ End of game. Harriet was only six and extremely hopeless at serious games; even Gus could do better, and he was a baby still, two years old and not ready for war. So finally, in the absence of Jude, it was my fate to learn to play with her.
Explaining any new discipline to Harriet, you had to tether her to reality by introducing minor rules and practicalities, although never too many at once or she was liable to break off in the middle of things and start dancing to an unidentifiable tune of her own. Looking for Harriet, calling her to supper, say, or for school, you were likely to find her skipping around in the garden, a fairy on a happy day out in the ether. Harriet’s fierce whim was for collecting stuffed animals of all sizes, chiefly lambs and bird life, especially chicks, as well as a few bears and rabbits.
I gave her the lowdown on World War II. She needed to know the rugged truth in order to play, although she would dwell on the least vital points.
‘Yes but …’ Then the dancing around began, inducing wide-eyed exasperation in me. If I gave up, she wailed.
‘I want to play! I want to!’
Oh God.
I rehearsed her, but it was no good; before too long, there would be Barbie with her deranged look, handing out minute teacups containing drops of water to my Action Men, surrounded by the beasts of the field.
This was not like playing with Jude. Harriet didn’t really need me at all. I even left her with Talking Man, making out that this was something of a sacrifice, as if he were my favourite man. I watched her for a short while as I edged my way out. She was squeezing Talking Man into some of Barbie’s more loose-fitting garments – Transvestite Man now – and submitting him to minor indignities such as talking to animals, dancing and singing in his flounces, and preparing refreshments for a lot of chicks and little lambs. Meanwhile Barbie preened quietly, looking on from the sidelines, happy in a sort of maniacal way, grateful for the company. My sister even pulled Talking Man’s ring, suffering a jolt of alarm at the blurt of officious speech that issued forth. Harriet was simply not used to gruff commands except in fun, in our dad’s voice, say, the monster one he used when chasing her, stomping around the house with his hair all mussed. She did not like Talking Man’s voice at all. I saw her give him a startled look, then a cold one, as she went about wiping the event from her memory. She was really good at that, breezing on by things she didn’t like.
Jude and I had discovered one use for Talking Man’s urgent monotone. It was easy to induce dementia in him by making incomplete jerks of varying lengths on his vocal cord so that he’d only speak fragments of his stock phrases, which you could interrupt at random until he sounded ready for the white jacket with the long sleeves tied up at the back. This game had limited amusement value and Jude and I indulged in it only when flagging and war-weary and vulnerable to hilarity. I yanked Talking Man’s ring pull in jerks. ‘ATT-’ … ‘-DOWN BE-’ … ‘-HANDS ON-’ etc. We started yelling at each other.
‘Make me a peanut butter sandwich now!’
‘Have you done your homework!’
‘No!’
‘What’s for supper!’
‘Ask Mummy!’
‘Ask her yourself!’
‘Dismissed!’
‘Okay!’
‘Shut up!’
Jude and I are only fifteen months apart, and in spite of ourselves, I guess, we have a twin mentality, which time and distance cannot take away. Those are the facts. Jude likes to say from time to time, ‘You were a mistake. You were not supposed to happen.’
Considering I am not my parents’ last born, I do not take this seriously. I came too soon, okay, I can deal with that. I let him have his fun, though. I let him think I am slightly alarmed, but I am not. I have doubts about many things but I am absolutely sure that I was born out of love, despite my affinity for wartime.
Jude and I were steeped in World War II, although we were born some fifteen years after it ended. Knowing about the war gave me a sense of distinction, as if I, too, had suffered and overcome, emerging with my own badge of courage. I knew it as a black-and-white time, a place of shadows and relentless drizzle and austerity, of necessary violence and amazing resilience, a world in bold focus. I was there and Jude was with me.
Now I am in the room full of clocks where the voice calls out, WAKE UP! MOVE ALONG! HONEY, IT’S TIME!
I look at Action Man in 1999 and connect only with the name; everything else is strange to me. The packaging screams its gaudy colours of fire and blood and tropical locations, having all to do with fantasy and nothing to do with the high stakes and redemption that we played for. Even the man looks different, rubbery and matte-finished, with a sunbed tint and the vain five-o’clock shadow of the gigolo, not of the man suffering sleep deprivation and high anxiety. The men are marketed now under different names, clamorous titles of hollow intensity: ‘THE BOWMAN!’ ‘ROLLER EXTREME!’ ‘AGENT 2000!’ ‘SKY DIVER!’ ‘CRIMEBUSTER!’ ‘OPERATION JUNGLE!’ ‘SURF RESCUE!’ They have special vehicles: GYRO COPTER, and POLAR MISSION TURBO 4x4 fires as you drive! Mission cards are included and a disclaimer is written on the boxes, in more demure print: ‘Action Man™ does not identify with any known living person.’
Picking up these packages in the toy department, pretending to be shopping for a son or nephew, I feel a little scornful and superior. But what do I know about war? I crave the old me. Now I miss things like decision and certainty, beginnings and endings. In grown-up life, there are few demarcations. It is a great battlefield with constantly shifting fronts, that’s how I see it. Where, for instance, do I end and Jude begin? When does childhood end? No one ever said anything.
We were all corralled by our parents into watching a Steinbeck dramatization one evening in extreme youth, probably The Grapes of Wrath, and we lay on the floor in front of the TV stunned, literally, by the Great Depression. Everyone in the drama wandered about wearing skimpy, threadbare clothing and droopy expressions, speaking in defeated monotones, going to sleep on hard floors after a meal of one bulbous parsnip. The mother woke up the children at five in the morning, nudging them into readiness for another cotton-picking day. ‘Honey,’ she said to each one of them, followed by a gloomy pause, ‘it’s time.’ This scene happened at least eight times in the drama. My sister and I were sniggering wrecks by bedtime, hardly able to negotiate the stairs for hilarity. Waking up for school from then on we would say to each other, ‘Honey.’ BIG PAUSE. ‘It’s time.’
1914–1918. 1939–1945. I marvelled at a world at war and I could not fathom anything but conflict, beginning and ending with shocking decisiveness. I could not imagine the home front. I could not picture any casual activity at all. Surely shops were empty and gardens overgrown and any person without a gun in foreign fields could only stand on a rooftop with a helmet and torch or sit fretting by a window in a darkened house, straggly-haired and wide-eyed with grief and worry but steeled by virtue. Films, therefore, that showed the truth – that is, some semblance of normality going on at home while battles raged – were downright distracting to me.
‘I don’t understand, Jude. Why are they in a restaurant? Jude, why is she laughing? Jude, when is this happening? What is going on?’
Jude did not always answer me, at least not right away. Sometimes he would answer me several hours from the time I asked a question, or even the next day. I was used to this. That time, for instance, Jude came back from one of his Robin Hood sorties to the sweetshop. Jude stole sweets with his friends and shared them out at home. I found this diligent generosity poignant. So Jude said to me suddenly, passing me a red fruit gum, my favourite, ‘He is on leave. He is home recovering from a wound. She is hysterical due to war. It is not really a happy laugh.’
‘Oh,’ I said. ‘Okay, thanks.’
I always knew which conversation he was resurrecting. I just did.
We were leaving home, where we were born, and moving to my dad’s country, where he was born, and we were sailing there on the SS Pushkin. We packed. Action Man packed. Jude decided we had to be a bit ruthless and thin out the equipment and the wardrobe. We could not take everything with us, so we made packages to sell to Jude’s friends. I did not know any girls in my convent school who played with Action Man; it was not a suitable marketplace. Besides, a convent does not encourage the entrepreneur.
Jude and I took shirt cardboard from Dad’s drawer and sewed on items of uniform, ironing the clothing first of all. The tunic would be displayed just so, one arm flung out and the other laid across the chest at an angle. The trousers we attached by two stitches and set in profile, the waistband tucked under the skirting of the jacket. Jude had stronger fingers and he stitched the shoes below the trousers and attached the hat or helmet above the jacket collar, where the head would be. The accessories were arrayed to one side, under the outstretched arm: gun, belt, pouch, water bottle, etc. There might be extras of our own design such as a book, a hanger, real braces with snaps, undies, or a vest. This gave the package real distinction. Jude then wrote out prices – £1.10, £1.70, etc. – and some slogan in eye-catching lettering: ‘MAKE YOUR MAN THE SMARTEST IN THE NEIGHBOURHOOD!’ for instance. He even supplied stars at the bottom of the cardboard display sheet which you could collect and redeem against further purchases.
‘But Jude,’ I said, ‘what will we give away? We are taking the rest of the stuff with us. And we won’t even be here.’ I had visions of irate schoolboys clutching stars and yelling our names accusingly, forcing their way through a crowded quayside where the SS Pushkin was docked. But Jude waved all objections aside simply by looking at me with his slow gaze and not answering. In a finishing touch, we covered each cardboard sheet with cellophane and Jude took the packages with him to school.
I had an idea we could sell Talking Man. He could be marketed as a sort of special business extra – Casualty Man. Because mostly you would not want to sacrifice your best men in a scene with a lot of extras, and it was realistic to have strewn bodies, it would be a bonus to have a Casualty Man just for the sake of verisimilitude. I said we could advertise Talking Man right away as the FREE GIFT with stars, which would solve that little deception in one stroke. People would know what they were aiming for and it might even quicken sales.
Jude said, ‘I’ll think about it.’ This meant no.
What should I do with Talking Man? He was too pathetic to take with us and to me he suggested unmarked graves and dead men in transport ships, only recognizable thanks to identity bracelets. I thought of dockside welcoming committees, wailing women and stoical fathers with bleeding hearts and stone-cold corpses under shrouds on stretchers. And so I left Talking Man behind, accidentally on purpose. Forgive me, Talking Man, Ugly Man, One Foot, Enemy, Traitor, LMF Man, Shell-Shock Man, Missing in Action Man, Transvestite Man, Misfit Man – over and out. Au revoir, old thing; cheerio, farewell, goodbyee.
Jude is a foreign correspondent now.
I had a dream recently that I was on assignment with him. Real Action Men now. We are running in a crouched position in the water, along the edge of a river. We have automatic rifles. I am thrilled and I feel safe. My brother is a war correspondent and he cannot be killed. He fires at snipers while we scamper along but misses intentionally, signalling to them merrily. I am charged with pride. I glance back at the snipers and see in their faces a calculated pretence of gratitude. They do not care that Jude spared them and suddenly I know they will shoot him. I need to warn him but it is too late. They shoot me. My face is falling into the water, I fall slowly. Oh-oh. My back feels hot.
‘Jude, am I hit? Jude, am I?’
Jude says, ‘No. No.’
‘Oh, I think so,’ I say, smiling a little. ‘Yes, I think so, Jude.’
I am aware of the coming oblivion, the terrible loneliness of death, and I see this reflected in Jude’s eyes as I fall into his arms. I know we are too far from help. His look is grave, wary; he is speechless with impending loss, although his actions are careful and practical, plugging the exit wounds with his fingers, supporting my drooping head, as if in not recognizing death rushing toward me, he can prevent even this.
Jude has a knack of choosing to investigate a place that is about to be torn apart by hostilities, a place rife with fanatics and con men. He has a tendency to stand up in press conferences and ask provocative questions in the most unassuming way, with gravity and charm. He is probing and brave and he rallies people to him. I hope his charm will protect him. I hope his charm is bulletproof.
I watch him walk away from me after sharing a drink on the eve of an assignment and I note the loping strides he takes, even though he is not a tall man. I note his head tilted to one side slightly, tilted in thought, and that he moves away at a pace never faster than ambling, although I know his bags are not packed and he leaves in less than three hours. To my surprise, I think of Talking Man. I imagine I hold the ring pull of his speech cord and the farther Jude walks from me, the longer and tauter the cord becomes. I must hold tight because if I let go, Jude will find himself, I envisage, rooted to the spot, and with the release of the tension he will feel real fear for once, and there will come from his mouth a vulnerable rush of speech, a babble of strange words, and he will be lost.
Wherever he is, and no matter what, even flying gunfire and so on, Jude calls me on the telephone when he is reporting from a war-torn place. Wherever he is. He might ask me a sporting question. How is my team doing? Who scored? He might send me on an errand. Please water my plants. Please call my office. Please prune the peony bush. He might describe the meal he just ate, his room, or some arresting vision he has seen in the strange place he is in. This time, though, I have not heard from him in twenty-three days. I wake up sometimes in the middle of the night. I am wide awake, my heart is hammering, my throat parched, my teeth aching from clamping my jaw shut in fitful sleep. I call out his name and I ask, ‘Where are you?’ I say it a second time, more quietly, ‘Where are you?’
I am in the room full of clocks and now there is no voice, just ticking. It’s okay. I’m holding tight, I won’t let go.
Angels’ Share
My dad is really grumpy now. It happened somewhere back on the road, sometime between his slouching into the driver’s seat and the end of this fifteen-minute journey from our summer cottage to the next village. I don’t know. Maybe he spotted Indians in the hills. Maybe he felt our little wagon train was under threat and we are far, far from any army outpost. Rescue is not likely. He won’t say a thing about it, though, to my mother or to me, his sole passengers. He is a tight-lipped man. Being provider and protector is one devil of a job in a big country, I can see that.
It’s a fine afternoon and the sky is a slaphappy blue but I wish there were a slight breeze, just enough to ruffle the leaves a little, enough to break up the menace of a still, hot day. I want to open the window but my dad would not like this, so I don’t. If you open the window, the air conditioning in the car, one of the few features he knows how to operate without having to ask anyone, will not work properly. I would rather have real air play over my face, but I try not to think about it. I try not to feel tyrannized by air conditioning. We are nearly there. I hope I will not be sick. I feel hot and cold and somewhat nauseous and the tension level in the car is high, pressing on my temples, making my heart race. My mother is looking out of her window and she says something in febrile, purposeful tones. She is always ready to dispel gloom.
