My Brother's Keeper (3 page)

"I'm afraid we have a problem—a new one. He's awake, but he's rambling, something about being watched by a policeman."

"I'll be in in a moment," said a deep voice. "I don't like the sound of it, but all his other signs look good."

It was my fat friend again. There was another mumble from the nurse that this time I could not catch, then he appeared, grinning at me as he entered my limited field of vision. The nurse was behind him, a dark-haired woman with a great figure and with worry lines in her forehead. She was frowning at me accusingly.

"He did say it," she said. "I'm sure he did." Then, to me, "What was it you were telling me about a policeman?"

My left arm seemed unwilling to move when I tried to lift it. So even though my right forearm was a mass of IV tubes and monitor contacts, I managed to raise it far enough to point.

"Him," I said. "The policeman. Why is he here guarding me?"

She put one hand up to her mouth and her eyes widened. The worry lines vanished. "Ooh," she said. "Sir Westcott." And without another word to either of us she hurried out of the room.

The fat man pulled a chair towards the bedside and sat down on it with a grunt.

"She'll be back." He was scowling. "Gone to have a good laugh, if I know her. I think mebbe it's time I introduced meself. I'm Westcott Shaw. I'm the one who operated on you when you were brought in."

I looked at the hand resting on the back of the chair—the fingers were like a fat bunch of sausages—and shuddered at the thought. If he'd been pawing around in my delicate insides . . .

"Where am I? Is my brother Leo all right? And how long have I been lying here?"

"One thing at a time, and let's not rush it. You're in the Queen's Hospital Annex, just outside Reading. Tomorrow it'll be four weeks since you were admitted."

That was a bad shock. Four weeks, and in that whole time I must have been conscious for a total of five confused minutes.

"What about Leo? Is he here too? Is he all right?" The questions came buzzing up without any conscious control.

"No, he's not all right." He saw my expression. "But it's a lot more complicated than you think. I don't want to start on that now, but I promise you I'll tell you all about it next time." He looked down at the catheters, intravenous feed tubes, monitors, and sensors that ran from my body to a variety of drip-feeds, waste bags, and electronic recorders. "I even think we can start to get rid of some of this plumbing, You're coming on faster than I hoped. We'll get Tess to take care of some of that this afternoon. How much do you hurt?"

"A lot."

"I'll believe it. You've had a fair hack about. I'll put you under again if you want me to, but if you can stand to stay awake for another half hour I'd like you to do something for me."

"I'll try. But it will have to be something easy. My brain's like cottonwool."

"It should be easy. I want you to think about your childhood, and about your life before you came in here. Just let your thoughts run where they want to, but do it in as much detail as you can. Don't worry about forgetting, or making any sort of note. Just let yourself go." He stood up. "I know it sounds daft, but it's important for your treatment and recovery."

He came closer to me and peered into my face. "You're coming along fine. Anything coming in yet from that left eye? Blink each one, and try and look at my finger here."

Sausage—no sausage—sausage—no sausage.

"No. My right eye seems fine, but what's wrong with my left one?"

"Nothing. You'll see all right in a while. Give it time." He was off around the end of the bed before I could ask more, and I heard again that familiar squeak of boots—somebody should tell him he needed oiling. I closed both my eyes and felt dizzy again. Why couldn't I see out of my left eye? That hadn't been injured, I was sure of it—I had seen things with it right after the accident. What had happened when they brought me in here? And what had happened to Leo? It was difficult to see why the surgeon didn't want to talk to me about him.

In a minute or two I heard the nurse beside me, muttering and grumbling to herself. "I knew it, I knew he'd get you all excited. Your pulse is up again and so's your blood pressure. I
told
him to wait a couple of days more."

She saw that I had opened my eyes and was staring up at her miserably. She shook her head.

"Honestly, a
policeman
." She smiled, the worry lines disappeared, and she was suddenly very attractive. "I had to leave when you said that."

"Are you Tess?"

"Nurse Thomson to you." (But her smile took the edge off it.) "I know how you felt, when I first saw Sir Westcott I thought he must have stopped in at the hospital to deliver meat to the kitchen. A policeman's a new one, though—what made you think that?"

"It was his fault. He said he was guarding me."

"He meant he was keeping his eye on you—you're his prize patient." She had finished checking the monitors, and seemed happy with the result.

"Tess, what's happened to me?"

"Nurse Thomson." She bit her lip. "I shouldn't talk about it, really I shouldn't. But you're going to be all right—you've got the best doctor you could ever get. You were in a very bad accident." She moved to look into my face, studying it. "I'll be taking the catheters out later, and I don't think you want to be awake for that. I can tell you're hurting, but Sir Westcott told me to leave you as you are if you can stand it. Will you be all right to stay awake for a few minutes more?"

"If you'll stay to hold my hand." As I said it, I wondered what was happening. I would
never
try a line like that—particularly when I was quite incapable of following up on it. My concussion must be worse than I knew.

She just smiled. "I'll be back in twenty minutes. It's always a good sign when a patient gets fresh. Shout if you need me sooner."

I lay back and closed my eyes again, to assess my pains jointly and severally. Right leg, ribs, and head were the worst, with stomach and neck a close second. They competed for attention. It was a poor time to try for boyhood reminiscence, or for thinking of any kind, but if it would speed my recovery, I ought to at least give it a try.

Being drugged is certainly no obstacle to recalling your childhood; I would say that it even helps. In the next twenty-four hours, drifting in and out of sedated sleep, I tried to obey Sir Westcott Shaw's request and worked my way forward from my earliest memories. I took his word for it that the exercise would have some value, and the order of recollection didn't matter.

I suppose that by my third birthday I already knew that I was a "twin," and that being a twin somehow made me special. It was unfair. I didn't know my twin, and Uncle Fred and Aunt Dora did. They would talk about him and about me when I was presumed to be asleep or watching the television.

"It's not fair to bring them up apart like this," Uncle Fred would say. "They have to get to know each other. We should send him out there for a visit with Leo."

"Don't be daft, Fred. We don't have the money for anything like that, and you know it."

"Well, mebbe Tom could find some way to send Leo over here for a holiday to see Lionel."

"It's a long trip from out there. It would cost a lot."

At the age of six I knew that "out there" was Los Angeles, a location as far away to me as the Moon. It seemed farther away. After all, I could see the Moon. In a way, Leo and I were true Moon-children. We were born on July 20, 1969, the day that humans first landed on the Moon and so far as we were concerned the Space Age began.

When we were one year old, Mum and Dad had been killed. They had gone down to Leeds for a day out, a casual shopping expedition, and they had stayed there for dinner. At seven o'clock in the evening, a big truck had gone out of control in the middle of the town and smashed in through the front of a restaurant. Fourteen people were killed. That was a statistic. Mum and Dad were at a window table and died instantly. If that was also a statistic, it was one that changed our lives forever.

Big Brother Leo went to live with Mum's brother and his wife, Tom and Ellen Foss. In 1972 Tom lost his job with Marconi and was offered a good one with Standard Oil of California in La Habra. Leo and I, two years old, had a final meeting in December, 1972. Later we both claimed to remember it, but I think we were recreating it from other people's descriptions.

I stayed on in Middlesbrough, living with Dad's brother, Fred, and Aunt Dora.

They could have no children of their own. It took me many years to learn that the two deaths they would have given anything to prevent had enriched their life together and given it a new meaning.

The earliest memory I can positively identify came at Christmas, when I was four years old. We had a telephone call from America and I talked to Leo. I was enormously excited when I was told that my "twin" was on the phone, and enormously disappointed when he said nothing more than the sort of things I might have said myself.

Memories came thicker after that. As I lay there in the Reading Hospital I did my best to work my way steadily forward in time, but it was hopeless. Either I was too sick, or I was too full of drugs and mental confusion. Instead of the quiet years at Middlesbrough, through elementary school and then on through grammar school, I conjured up a distorted, surrealistic collage of events. The cold front room where I had practiced on the black upright piano was there, but the used-only-at-Christmas furniture with its shiny covers had vanished in favor of casual, low-slung chairs and couches with bright patterned upholstery, lit by a fiercer sun than the north of England ever knew. My solo performances on the piano, at school and later in the Town Hall, were clearly remembered; but they had acquired a different audience, full of tall, tanned girls with long hair and perfect teeth. They were noisy and cheerful, crowding in toward the stage while I struggled with a Mozart sonata.

I sweated in the hospital bed, tossing and turning, peering into the past until the night nurse, looking in, gave me an injection to bring the relief of a deeper sleep.

The next morning I couldn't avoid trying again, the way we tend to pick at a half-healed scab once we realize that it's there. Memories came easier after Leo and I had our first
real
meeting—which is to say, the first meeting where we were able to understand our relationship to each other.

It happened when we were nearly twelve. A big medical conference took place in Edinburgh, and one of its key sessions had as a theme the psychology and physiology of identical twins who had been reared apart. Uncle Fred had the brain-wave of his life. At his suggestion, the conference committee arranged for Leo and me to attend together and to submit to a couple of days of tests and questions. All our expenses were covered.

My inferiority complex probably began with that meeting. Raised in a house with no other children, I had become used to spending time alone and I was shy with strangers. My public recitals somehow didn't count; they were encounters with an anonymous and faceless audience. Leo had the advantage of me. Tom and Ellen Foss already had one child, a girl, before they took Leo, and a year later they had another daughter. Leo grew up in what sounded to me like a rowdy, active household, full of visiting California nymphets who came to see his sisters. At the conference in Edinburgh I met a relaxed, tanned version of myself, already a bit taller and heavier (blame those American meals and vitamins), far more self-confident, and with a developed line of small talk that allowed him to meet and impress any girl he happened to fancy. I watched and imitated, but there was no doubt who was the expert.

We had a great time in Edinburgh in spite of all that. Even the tests were fun. We came out with the same IQ's, rather differently distributed as to skills.

Our memories were about equally good, but I knew more English words. Thank crossword puzzles for that—the only Sunday newspaper that Uncle Fred would allow in the house was the
Observer
, and I cut my teeth on the "Everyman" crossword puzzles.

In spite of that evidence of wordpower, it was Leo who showed more aptitude for and interest in languages. Concert travels eventually have brought me to the point where I can ask my way to the airport in half a dozen foreign tongues (and sometimes even understand the answers). But Leo was really interested, and by the time he was twenty-five he was fluent in five languages, and had a passing acquaintance with three or four more.

When the Edinburgh conference was over we had a few hours to ourselves before we had to take the train back to Middlesbrough. There was no need to sit and talk any more—we already knew that we got on better together than anyone else in the world. So we hit the fleshpots. I introduced Leo to skate and chips with salt and vinegar, and then to knickerbockerglories, with five flavors of ice cream, pineapple crush, whipped cream, strawberry sauce, chocolate flakes and grated nuts. He insisted he could eat another one. So did I.

On the train back to Middlesbrough I was sick out of the window on one side and Leo was sick out of one on the other. Two days later we watched a shuttle lift-off together on the television in Aunt Dora's bedroom. That same afternoon we had our first fight.

I was trying to bring back some details of that when I fell asleep again, and woke to find Sir Westcott Shaw sitting in his favorite place at the end of the bed.

He was holding two apples in one paw (did the man live on them?) and nodded amiably to me when he saw my eyes were open.

"How are you feeling?"

"Terrible." My ribs were killing me, and so was my right leg.

"Right. I thought you might be. I dropped your dose of painkillers in half."

"You're very kind."

"I thought you ought to be as alert as possible for this session."

"How's Leo?"

"If you'll give me a minute, I'll tell you. But first off I want to ask you just a few questions. All right?"

"Whatever you like." I didn't try and hide my impatience.

He reached down and picked up a pad from the floor next to his feet, then fished out a stub of pencil from his inside jacket pocket. I looked again at the heavy boots, and the fat, banana-bunch fingers.