The Other Me (16 page)

‘I didn’t notice.’ I look towards the forest. It’s thick as a maze. Somewhere inside its interior is the cottage Sarah mentioned. The place they go to get away from things. I chew the end off a stalk of grass. It’s spiky and fibrous, alien on my tongue; I pull it out between my lips like a green worm. Sarah is really pretty. Prettier than Bettina. Not that I can say that to my brother.

‘Don’t you fancy anyone?’ He pokes me. ‘What’s the matter with you?’ He leans close and flicks a mucky finger at my ear. It stings. ‘You know we have to make lots of babies for the Fatherland. It’s our duty.’

‘Stop it!’ I cup my ear with my hand. He flicks me again on the other side. Bits of mud fly and splatter against my cheek. My lobe throbs.

I roll over onto him and grab his shoulders. He wrestles me, pushing and pulling until he slides out from under me. We both struggle to our feet. We’ve trampled the wild garlic and I inhale its bitter, pungent smell. He grabs the jumper tied around my waist by a sleeve, and yanks hard, stretching it.

‘Look out, you’ll break it!’

The knot of sleeves unravels and he’s left holding the jumper in triumph. With a shout he hurls it high into the air. We both watch it float up over the lake and come down with a gentle splish onto the surface. The fabric fills with water, darkening, spreading out. Soon it will sink.

I scratch my head. ‘Idiot!’ I say between clenched teeth. ‘You threw it. You get it.’

Otto laughs. ‘No way! It’s too cold.’

The one thing in the world I can do better than Otto is swim. I know he doesn’t like deep water. Is afraid of it.

‘Oh, of course. I forgot,’ I say casually, turning away. ‘Don’t worry. I won’t make you get in.’

I kick off my shoes. The mossy ground cushions the arch of my soles, is ticklish under my bare toes. I begin to hum, as if getting into the water is something delightful and easy.

He pushes me to one side. ‘I’ll get the damn thing,’ he says roughly, pulling off his own shoes and stamping out of his shorts, wrenching his top over his head.

He wades in naked, wincing at the cold, a flush of goosebumps rising on his arms. But he strides on, up to his thighs in the freezing water. His hands paddle beside him, pushing through lumps and tangles of weed. I cover my mouth with my hand. It’s important that he doesn’t see me laughing or I’ll be dead.

‘Watch out for the eels!’ I call, my voice concerned and innocent.

He stops for a second and then throws himself headlong into the lake. Its mirrored surface wrinkles under a gust of wind. The jumper has drifted further out. He swims towards it with hesitant strokes keeping his head above the water level. The surface is black in the evening light and glistening with silver reflections. Suddenly he lets out a yell. ‘Something bit me!’

He turns, eyes wide and swims for the shore, his arms flailing, splashing. For a moment I’m concerned. But I realise that he can stand where he is. And, as if he can read my thoughts, he stumbles and pushes himself upright. I know his feet will be sinking into thick, slimy mud. I see distaste and fear in his stretched mouth, his wide eyes.

He collapses on the bank next to me, clutching his calf. There’s a cut there, blood leaking out in a smudged red line over his wet skin. He gasps and winces, rocking his knee into his chest, his shoulders rigid as he curses through clenched teeth.

‘Don’t be a baby.’ I stand over him. ‘You must have scratched yourself on something.’

‘It’s not a scratch!’ he shouts, hauling himself back onto his feet and fumbling with his clothes. He hops on one leg, attempting to pull on a sock. ‘The bloody thing had teeth.’

‘What about my jumper?’

I can just make it out: a dark splodge of bloated wool sitting under the surface, like the humped back of a water goblin.

‘Get it yourself.’

He pushes a hand through hair turned greenish brown with river water and scowls at me; but I notice a blurry film over his eyes and immediately my victory evaporates. I want to sling my arm around his shoulders, and give him a reassuring squeeze. But I know better. I leave him to stomp back to the farm without me. And I watch him pull his elbow across his face; brushing away the tears he thinks I didn’t see.

KLAUDIA

1996, London

‘The buzzer’s broken. Come in,’ Scarlett says.

The hall light goes off with a click.

‘Keep the door open a minute,’ she yells.

I stand, my hand on the handle to stop it slamming shut behind us. Naked electric light floods the bare hall.

‘Quick!’ She beckons. ‘Up the stairs before the damn thing goes off again.’

At the top of the stairs she turns a key in a lock, and I peer through a dusky jumble of shadows, inhaling joss sticks, overripe fruit and the sour tang of milk that has gone off. It reminds me of my shared house in Leeds, of Meg and Lucy, and I feel a pang of homesickness for my lost life. She sets off down a narrow passage, dropping her coat on a crowded table as she passes. ‘Kitchen. Living room. The can,’ she intones, motioning into darkened rooms. I nearly trip over a pile of shoes and boots as I follow her, squeezing past boxes on the way to another flight of stairs.

‘It’s what you guys call a maisonette. Two floors. Neat, isn’t it?’ Scarlett leads me upwards. ‘We can get onto the roof extension as well. Barbecues in the summer. Well, except for the bees maybe…’

She carries on talking. ‘Luke and Cosmo are in the two rooms across the landing.’ I glance at the closed doors. I want to ask her which one is Cosmo’s. I try to sense if he’s there, behind a door, just an arm’s length away from me. I’m suddenly breathless with the fear that he’s about to come out. We’ll be crushed together in the narrow corridor, and I’ll feel the weight of his disappointment, his embarrassment at seeing me.

She turns a handle. ‘This is my room. Welcome to my boudoir.’

I dive past her, clumsy in my haste, and she shuts us into a space that’s crammed with a bewildering jumble of clothes, accessories, different colours and textures; winking rhinestones and sequins.

A battered wooden wardrobe gapes, its doors flapping apart, hinges straining under layers of costumes. A dressmaker’s dummy leans drunkenly to one side like a headless, subdued ghost. Rows of shoes and boots line one wall, arranged in heel height from fluffy flat slippers to thigh-high boots with towering platforms. I smell face powder and the floral, waxy scent of lipsticks. A large mirror is propped on a table that’s spread with bottles, tubes and pots of make-up. The bed is draped with tasselled shawls, and silk cushions covered in Chinese dragons.

She indicates that I sit among the shawls. Immediately I leap up. Something sharp has attacked my bottom.

‘Oh jeez! Sorry. Forgot about these.’ She scoops the heap of gleaming pins into a pot as I rub my right buttock.

‘In the middle of hemming something.’ She tilts her head towards a sewing machine that I’d failed to notice on a table on the other side of the bed. ‘I make pretty much all my own costumes.’

I finger the silky folds of a diaphanous cape. ‘You made this?’ It takes a moment for me to adjust my image of the Scarlett I know swaying across a stage in a suspender belt and nipple tassels, to someone crouched over a sewing machine, industrious and neat, with pins in her mouth.

‘Wanna try something on?’

‘No,’ I laugh. ‘Not now. Thanks.’

‘You can borrow a hat if you like. I haven’t seen you out of that red beret once.’

I reach up and touch the felt. ‘I’m growing my hair out. It’s a mess at the moment.’

‘I know that one. Well.’ She shrugs. ‘Lucky you look cute in red.’

She leans over and reaches behind one of the pillows, takes out a bottle of vodka and waves it at me. ‘Let’s see if either of the boys is around. I might even share this with them.’

There’s a large man in the kitchen. He has a thick, brown beard. A green T-shirt strains across his round belly. It says ‘Blue Note, New York City’ in white letters. The beard can’t hide his cheeks, broad and pink as a giant toddler’s.

‘This is Luke,’ Scarlett says. ‘My other flatmate. Luke. Meet Eliza.’

‘Want some tea, Eliza?’ He motions to a packet of PG Tips.

‘I’ll have mine with some of this.’ Scarlett plonks the bottle on the table and sits down, crossing her long legs. Luke adds generous splashes of vodka to three cups of tea. He tells me he plays saxophone in a jazz band. He’s just got back from a three-month tour of Europe.

‘Berlin was the best,’ he says. ‘Best beer, best women and best musicians.’ He grins into his drink at some undisclosed memory. ‘Spent my last night talking to this chick who’d grown up in East Berlin. Said the worst of it wasn’t empty shops and lack of news.’ He shakes his head. ‘It wasn’t even having spies for neighbours – it was the fact of this immovable thing blocking your life, holding you back, like a weight in your mind.’ He presses a fleshy hand to his head. ‘The night the wall came down, she said you couldn’t move for crowds. People chucked fireworks, went crazy. Next day they were chipping at the wall, smashing it with hammers. Anything they could get hold of. Man. It would have been cool to be there.’

We’d watched it on the news at home, on the little black and white TV in the living room. I remember my father’s rigid gaze, his hands clasping the arms of his chair. There had been flickering images of people hammering away, confusion and euphoria on faces grinning into the camera, and old newsreels of soldiers and barbed wire. My mother had been knitting me a cardigan. I was more interested in choosing buttons for it, sifting through circles of plastic in her sewing box, than listening to the news. It was Germany. Anything to do with Germany embarrassed me.

Luke digs around in his pocket and pulls out a large wallet. Unzipping it, he extracts a small lump and holds it out to me. ‘She gave me some. Looks like an ordinary chunk of concrete, doesn’t it?’

I touch the fragment. It’s cool, the surface rough. It isn’t grey, but pale pink with a patchwork of tiny bits of glinting white stone, charcoal and dark brown.

‘Ever been to Berlin?’ He slips the piece of wall back into his wallet.

‘No.’

I open my mouth again, looking from Scarlett to Luke. I want to tell them that I am half German. They think they’re talking to Eliza Bennet – a girl who doesn’t exist – it makes me feel as if I’m not really sitting here at all. I curl my fingers tightly around my cup.

A shape moves at the threshold, blocking the light. Cosmo stands in the doorway. I duck my head, afraid that I’m blushing again.

‘Here he is at last.’ Scarlett taps the table. ‘Join us. Have a drink. Does this mean you’re finished?’

Cosmo pulls up the chair next to mine. I sit up straighter, aware of the force between us, a hum of energy, pushing and pulling like a magnet gone wild. Can he sense it as much as me?

His face is stern. He nods, avoiding my eyes. ‘The designs are ready. I’m moving my gear down to the club later. I’ll make a start tonight.’

‘The mural?’ I dare to lean closer, catching his scent, ink on his fingers, a clean tang of soap and lemony aftershave, the underneath musk of his skin. His sleeve is pushed back and I can see his watch, the shine on his skin, black hair. I remember how I’d tweaked his cuff to tell the time before I knew him properly, and I can’t believe how familiar I’d been then, how presumptuous.

‘Yeah. I’ll be working on it late at night – after you lot go home.’ He looks at the other two, not me. The lack of his gaze feels cold.

‘Like a vampire,’ Scarlett says.

‘It’s the best time to work,’ Luke grins. ‘I’m a late-night, early-morning person myself. The world is a different place then. Looser. More exciting.’

I clear my throat, and glance down at my cup to hide my disappointment. If he’s going to be painting the wall after the club is closed then I won’t see him. I know it’s for the best. But I feel cheated just the same.

Days have passed and I haven’t seen Cosmo. He comes to the club after I’ve gone home. I appear the next day to see the evidence of his night’s painting. We are like ghosts whispering around the edges of each other’s lives. Or perhaps it’s more like a cruel farce with one of us entering the stage, just as the other leaves.

The mural grows in the same way a flower opens: slowly, in an unfurling of texture and colour. It’s a delicate, tantalising reveal – like burlesque itself. His first dancer is finished; she smiles at me as if she has a secret to tell – her face is luminous, one eye winking. He’s begun to paint the background. Colour seeps out around her head like a halo, gold and red bleeding into an inky blue. He’s started on another dancer. This one leans against a pillar. She’s still just a sketch. But soon he’ll breathe life into her too. Looking at the first dancer, I get the feeling that she’s about to sashay off the wall into the room. The painting fills me with pride. I want to share my feelings, exclaim loudly over his talent. I say nothing. Sometimes, when no one is looking, I rub my finger against the paint to see if it comes off on my skin. It never does.

When I’m not working, I spend my time training in my room. I’ve pushed the furniture back to give me some floor space, rolled up my rug, and I use a chair as a barre. I’m going over the routine that Voronkov choreographed for me. I dance to different tapes, trying out modern and classical music. I’m back in shape after weeks of inactivity. I remember a saying that Meg recited to me once: miss three days’ training and the audience will know; two days and your teacher will; one day, and you’ll know. As I pull my forehead to my knee, flattening my back, I feel the fibres of my muscles opening, softening, molecules expanding into the stretch. I can’t work at the club for ever. I need to get back into proper training. I should apply for dance school. But the fear of performing is there inside me. And I can’t see a way round it.

Mrs Perkins from next door is standing on her doorstep. She and her husband haven’t spoken to our family for years. My mother tried hard to make amends after the cat incident, offering gifts of fairy cakes, cuttings from the garden, and going out of her way to be friendly whenever she saw them, but all she got in return were short, grudging nods. A faint meow comes from a cat basket in her arms. I see a glimpse of grey fur.