The Ice Twins (27 page)

There is my dad at the end of the pew, in his dusty black suit, which he wears these days only for funerals. He looks old and jowly, his once dark lustrous hair is now completely white, and sparse. His watery blue eyes still have a glint, though, and when he sees me looking across, he gives me a weak yet hopeful smile, trying to reassure, to comfort. He also looks guilty.

That’s because my dad feels guilty about everything. The way he shouted at us kids when we were young. The way he was unfaithful to my mum and the way she stood by him nonetheless – making him feel guiltier. All that guilty drinking which damaged his career, which made him more resentful, a vicious cycle of very male frustration.

Like Angus.

And then Dad stopped the shouting and drinking, and he retired with what little he’d kept. And he learned to make Portuguese
cataplana
in the big kitchen at Instow. Where his great joy was the Twins, and their many happy holidays in Devon.

‘I am the resurrection and the life, saith the Lord: he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live.’

Something buried deep within me echoes this passage, quite ardently, because in my case it is literally true: even as my other daughter dies, for the second time, my Lydia is resurrected. Born again. And standing six feet away, reading a Gaelic bible, with scarred fingers.

I grasp at the railing of the pew. Keeping it together. Just keeping it together.

‘Please rise.’

We are standing to sing a psalm and I stutter out the words, and I look at Molly across the aisle of the church, and she blushes – and gives me another one of those small, humble, you-can-get-through-it expressions; the same expression that everyone is wearing when they look at me.

‘Merciful Father, whose face the angels of thy little ones do always behold in heaven; Grant us steadfastly to believe that this thy child hath been taken into the safekeeping of thine eternal love.’

It’s nearly over. I am making it through. My little Kirstie, my little daughter, is being released. Her death is acknowledged, her soul is unclutched and sent to join the clouds that rinse the Red Cuillins. And again I don’t believe any of this. Kirstie is probably still here. In her own way. In her twin.

The priest is stiffening his words as we approach the climax.

‘O God, whose most dear Son did take little children into his arms and bless them; Give us grace, we beseech thee, to entrust the soul of this child, Kirstie Moorcroft, to thy never failing care and love.’

I have a tissue in my left hand and I am crushing it, with my fist, to stop myself crying.

Nearly done, Sarah, nearly there. I remember this so well. There’s just one more line. Everything is repeated. And everything ends.

‘The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Ghost, be with us all evermore. Amen.’

The funeral is over, the ordeal is complete.

Now I’m crying. As we file out into the refined and delicate drizzle of a December day in Skye, my tears fall unabated. The swathes of rain are sweeping down the Sound, from Shiel Bridge to Ardvasar. Veiling and unveiling. I see Josh talking to Angus, my dad is holding Lydia’s hand. My mum is stumbling; I wish my damn brother was here to help, but he is trawling salmon in Alaska. We think.

So let the tears fall. Like the endless sleet over Sgurr nan Gillean.

‘It’s such a view—’

‘Yes. And such a pity.’

‘Well now, Mrs Moorcroft, please don’t be strangers, come over any time.’

‘I hope the wee one is happy at the school. Hear we’ve bad weather coming!’

I stammer my answers, bewildered. My black heels scrunching in the damp gravel of the churchyard path. Who are these people? With their pleasant fibs and lying pleasantries? I am nonetheless grateful for their presence, to stave off the moment. As long as there are people around, the terrible climax – which I know is coming – is temporarily postponed; so I shake hands and accept consolations, then I climb in a car by the church gate and Josh drives me and Lydia to the Selkie, where he and Molly have helped us arrange a kind of wake. Angus is driving my parents. He probably wants to do this so he can bicker with my dad in the car.

I sit in the back of Josh’s car with Lydia, my arm around her slender shoulders. My daughter in black.

As Josh takes a curve, Lydia tugs at my sleeve, and says, ‘Mummy, am I invisible now?’

I am so used to the strangeness I am barely fussed. I just shrug. And say: ‘Let’s look for otters later.’

The car pulls off the main road and rolls down to Ornsay village, with Torran looking beautiful beyond. A break in the clouds is shining a light directly on our white cottage and our white lighthouse, with Knoydart and Sandaig forbidding, and grey, beyond: the scene is so dramatic it is as if Torran is floodlit.

An empty stage, impatiently awaiting the actors. For the final scene.

Where am I going? A wake?

Can you have a wake for a person who has been dead over a year? Perhaps it is just an excuse for everyone to drown themselves in Old Pretender Beer, and Poit Dhubh whisky.

My dad, of course, needs little excuse. Twenty minutes after we have gathered in the pub he is downing his third or fourth very large glass and I can see the tiny beads of sweat on his forehead as he squabbles with Angus. They’ve never got on. Two would-be alpha males. A clash of antlers in the forests of Waternish.

The tension of this moment has only made their antagonism worse. I hover at the edge of their conversation, wondering if I should try to make peace, wondering if I can be bothered. Dad is holding up his glass of pure malt Scotch, to the wintry light from the window.

‘Here is the outcome of the mystical alchemy of distillation, turning the rain-pure water into that golden liquid of life, of the immortal Gaels.’

Angus looks at him. ‘Prefer gin.’

Dad says: ‘How
are
the loft extensions, Angus?’

‘Grand, David, grand.’

‘Guess this kind of local architecture, this vernacular stuff, it must allow you a lot of time off so you can come down here for a snifter.’

‘Yeah. It’s ideal for an alcoholic like me.’

My dad glowers. Angus glowers right back.

‘So, aye, David, have you stopped making the TV commercials – what was it, tampons?’

How can they still be bickering? Today? After a child’s funeral? But then again, why should they stop? Why not just carry on? Nothing is ever going to stop, it is all going to get worse and worse, until. Perhaps they are right to just carry on as they have always carried on: their mild and mutual dislike is a kind of normality, something comforting and reliable.

But even if they’re not going to cease, I’ve heard enough of this verbal skirmishing for three lifetimes. Turning to my left, I see my mother standing just yards away, glass of red wine in hand. I walk over, and tilt a frown at Dad and Angus. ‘They’re at it again.’

‘Darling, they like it. You know that.’ She puts a wrinkled hand on my arm. Her dreaming blue eyes are as bright as ever though; bright as my daughter’s. ‘I’m so glad that’s over. You did well, Sarah. I was proud of you. No mother should have to go through what you’ve been through.’ A glug of wine. ‘Two funerals? Two!’

‘Mum.’

‘And what about you? Are you feeling better now? Darling? You know – inside? Are you and Angus OK?’

I don’t want to get into this. Not today. Not now.

‘We’re OK.’

‘Are you sure? It’s just that you seem, I don’t know, there’s some tension, isn’t there?’

I gaze back. Unblinking.

‘Mum. We’re fine.’ What should I tell her? Hey, Mum, turns out my husband slept with my best friend, maybe a month after my daughter died? At least no one, here, has mentioned the marked absence of Imogen from the funeral; perhaps they sense the fracture. I did get several imploring emails from Imogen – and ignored them all.

My mother gleans the meaning from my silence, and moves on. Nervously.

‘So, has the move helped? It is such a lovely spot here, despite all the weather you have. I can entirely see why you love it so.’

I nod; and my mother babbles away: ‘And Lydia. Lydia! Of course it is terrible to say, but there is a chance, darling, that now Lydia is alone she may lead a more normal life, you know, twins are so different, now she is more normal, in the most terrible way, of course.’

‘I suppose.’ Part of me wants to be offended by this, but I do not have the energy. Maybe my mum is right. She sips too much wine and a little dribbles down her chin, and she goes on:

‘And of course they fought didn’t they? Lydia and Kirstie? I remember you telling me, Lydia was the weaker one, in the womb, don’t twins fight for nutrition? They were great friends, inseparable, but they certainly fought for your attention, and Kirstie complained more, didn’t she?’

What is all this about? It barely matters; I am hardly listening. I can see Lydia at the edge of things. Lydia, standing in the doorway of the Selkie looking out, through the glass door at the rain.

How is she coping? What is she thinking? She is as alone as a human can be. The love and pity rises in me as nausea, once more, and I quit talking with my mum, and push through the drinkers to Lydia.

‘Lydia, are you OK?’

She turns and gives me a brief smile. ‘I’m still here, Mummy, but I’m not. Not any more.’

I stifle my pained response, and smile back. ‘Are you annoyed by the rain?’

She frowns. Not understanding. I take her softly scarred hand and kiss it, and brush her pink cheek.

‘Sweetheart. You’re looking at the rain.’

‘Oh,’ she says, blankly. ‘No. Not the rain actually, Mummy.’ She points at the door, her thin arm elegant and somehow adult, in that long-sleeved black dress, ‘I was just talking to Kirstie in the car, Mummy: she was in the mirror Daddy uses.’

‘But—’

‘But now she’s gone, and I remember the priest saying she has gone to heaven, and I wanted to ask him where it was.’

‘Lydia—’

‘And no one would tell me, so I searched for Kirstie, Mummy, because I don’t think she’s in heaven, she’s in here. With us, isn’t she? Remember how we played hide and seek, Mummy, in London. Remember?’

Oh yes. I remember. The memory makes me sadder than sad. But I have to stay sane for Lydia.

‘Of course, darling.’

‘So I thought she was playing hide and seek again. And I looked in all the places like we used to hide when playing hide and seek at home, Mummy. But Kirstie was squeezed behind the wardrobe thingy over there.’

‘What?’

‘Yes, Mummy, I felt her hand.’

I gaze at my daughter. ‘You felt your sister’s hand?’

‘Yes, Mummy, and it was scary. I have never felt her before. I don’t want to find her if she is going to touch me, it’s too scary.’

This is too scary for
me,
let alone my daughter.

‘Lydia …’

How can I calm her? I have no idea. Because Lydia seems to be regressing. She is talking more like a five-year-old in her perplexity.

I need a child psychologist. I’ll have an appointment with Kellaway, next week. But can I last until then?

‘Mummy, do you ever talk to Kirstie?’

‘Sorry?’

‘Can you ever hear her or see her? I know she wants to talk to you.’

How can I distract my daughter? Perhaps I should ask her questions. Perhaps I should ask her some
serious
questions? It would, after all, be difficult to make things more distressing.

‘Come on,’ I say. ‘Let’s go outside. There may be otters by the pier.’

There won’t be otters by the pier, but I want to talk to her alone. Obediently, Lydia follows me out, into the chilly afternoon air. The drizzle has gone, leaving a ghost of dampness behind. Together we walk to the pier, and kneel down on the moist concrete, and gaze at the rocks and shingle, the complex seaweeds wafting in the tide.

I’ve tried to learn the names of these seaweeds: scentless mayweed, sea milkwort, sea holly – the tidal shoreline plants. Similarly, I’ve tried to learn the names of the little fish that live in Torran’s rock pools: the shanny, the butter fish, the stickleback, with its vivid, orange-scarlet scales.

But still something escapes me. Something vital. Still I don’t quite grasp the language.

‘No otters,’ says Lydia. ‘None. Never see otters, Mummy, not yet.’

‘No. They are very elusive.’

I turn to my daughter. ‘Lydia, do you remember if Kirstie was angry with Daddy, um, on the weekend that she fell?’

My daughter looks at me. Blank. Passive. ‘Oh yes. She was.’

The moment tenses.

‘Why?’

‘Because Daddy kept kissing her.’

A herring gull calls, solitary, and maddened.

‘Kissing her?’

‘Yes, kissing and hugging.’ Lydia is looking at me, unblinking, looking me honestly in the eyes. ‘He was kissing her, and hugging her, and she told me she was scared. He did it a lot, all the time, all the time.’

She pauses, gazing blankly at me. I try not to show my thoughts, my lurid memories, returning: the way Angus kissed his daughters, especially Kirstie. Over the years. He was the hugger, the kisser. The tactile one.

I picture Lydia on his lap, after the accident with the window. The sense of awkwardness; the sudden thought that she was too old to be sitting on Daddy’s lap. But he liked it?

The herring gull wheels away. I feel as if I am crashing. In mid-air. Falling to earth.

‘Think it scared her, Mummy. Daddy scared her.’

Is this it? Is this what I was looking for, and not seeing?

‘Lydia, this is very important. You have to tell me the truth.’ I swallow my fury, and my grief, and my anxiety, together. ‘Are you saying that Daddy kissed and hugged Kirstie, in a certain way? A way that made her upset? And scared?’

Lydia pauses. Then nods. ‘Yes, Mummy.’

‘You’re sure?’

‘Oh yes. But she still loved Daddy. He’s Daddy. I love Dada. Can we look for otters over by the other beach?’

I restrain the urge to scream. I have to stay on top of this. I have to go off and talk to Kellaway again. Have to. NOW. Who cares if this is Kirstie’s funeral?