a work in progress

Penelope Evans

Imagine. A world without mirrors. No glass, no flat reflective planes to greet the eye, no polished metal to introduce us to ourselves. It was like this once for all of us, thousands of years ago; did we ever wonder then about our own faces? Did we ever try to imagine, or search for our image in the eyes of others? What if there were no others? What if no one would look us truly in the eye?

            In a world without mirrors, water would be all we had in which to see ourselves. Pools to hold and reflect us. Puddles or lakes, every drop of water precious, offering a fractured image of what we are.

But what happens when the water drains away, when it returns to the clouds or melts into the sea. What’s left? Where else are we able to meet ourselves?

            There have always been the few who don’t need mirrors. Who need only to turn, to right or left. And in turning, meet themselves, the honest reflection of who they are. Twins don’t need mirrors or glass. All they need is each other.

Chapter One

A fat, five-year-old boy sits with his colouring pencils in a window looking out onto a street where banks of terraced houses line the road, front doors giving straight onto the pavement. Early in the morning and late in the afternoon this same road will be a slow stream of cars and bicycles heading to and from the factory at the far end. Now, though, a minute before ten in the morning, nothing is moving.

The fat boy turns from the window, reaches for a blue crayon and draws a face. Round. Dots for eyes and a curl of hair on top, stylised as a cartoon. He observes it a moment, blinks, then draws another a head beside it, identical to the first.

            He puts the crayon down and reaches inside a paper bag for a pear drop, pushes it into his cheek, waiting for the sweetness to flood that side of his mouth. And looks again into the street.

            On the pavement a woman has appeared, wheeling a pram. He watches her with a tutored eye. Only five years old, already he can recognise a good coat, worn to mark the wearer out as different. Good shoes and a mouth set just so, making it clear she doesn’t come from round here.

            Except that she does, of course. She lives two streets away, is no better than anyone else. That’s what he’s heard his mother say. And just to prove it, here she is, pushing her pram towards their front door, just like everyone does sooner or later.

            He raises his voice so that it will reach up the stairs. ‘She’s coming.’

            There is no answer. He stares at his drawing of the two identical heads side by side. Frowns. Picks up a red pencil and crosses one out.

            Outside, the woman has stopped. She has taken a compact mirror out of her handbag. He sees her quickly lick her index finger and run it along her eyebrows. Women often check their faces before they enter his mother’s house. Out of nervousness, excitement. Boredom even. This woman licks the lines of her face for a different reason altogether. She is like a cat, the spiteful sort. The kind that purrs from contact with itself. Her mouth gives her away, pursed as a cat’s arse.

            He climbs off his chair, and with small plump fingers sets about lighting the incense sticks, adding spice to air already asthmatic with old incense and clarted with the fatty odours of his mother’s rouge. Five years old, he’s too young to be playing with matches, but he isn’t playing. He sets fire to the tapered ends of joss sticks, watches the perfumed grease flare, then blows out the match flame like an old hand.

            Overhead there is a banging against the ceiling. It means his mother must be on her way down, because here’s his grandmother, bedbound, already whacking the floor with her stick, demanding that she come back.

            Sure enough, on the stairs comes the sharp, castanet sound of his mother’s mules. He checks the street again; the woman with the pram and the mouth like a cat’s arse is standing at the door, hand raised, about to knock.

            He goes back to the table beside the window. Climbs onto his chair and pops a second pear drop into his other cheek. Waits.  On the dot of ten there’s a smart rap on the door, and walls festooned with shawls, rugs whose patterns still writhe despite the tread of endless feet, tassels and beads and small cascades of dusty glass – all shake slightly as the front door opens and after a long space of moments, closes again.

            He sits by the window with his pencils and his pear drops and listens to his mother usher Agnes Howe into the house.

*********

Already they’re off to a bad start.

            Having settled Agnes Howe into a chair, his mother, like the professional she is, sets out her terms.

            ‘That’ll be ten pounds, dear. Then I can begin.’

            Agnes Howe gives a small start, as if she’s been stung. ‘Ten pounds? Whatever for? Five pounds you told me on the phone.’

            His mother nods. ‘That’s right dear. Five pounds per reading. You’re going to want two.’

            Agnes Howe’s mouth tightens, sucking in air. ‘Well I don’t quite see...’

            ‘Twins dear.’

            ‘Even so.’

            There is a silence. The fat boy watches his mother with interest. People don’t often quibble like this. Her terms are simple enough to understand. Five pounds to be paid before the reading and no money back if someone doesn’t like what they heard. But that doesn’t happen much either. His mother can tell what somebody wants before they have even opened their mouth. She can see it from the clothes they wear, from the way they walk, from eager nods and reluctant shakes of the head. People don’t come to his mother to go away unhappy.

            So what will she do now? Behind the rouge, behind the lipstick coat of many applications, her face gives nothing away. Only her fingers, weighed down by rings, tap slightly against her knee.

            Two women, they couldn’t be less alike. One in her smart coat, the other in layers of fake fur and velvet, fringed shawls and beads, more than ever-so-slightly grimy. But still he can see something there. They could have been sisters in the way each waits for the other to blink first.

            And then. A flash of blue eye paint, lapis lazuli flickering just for an instant. Over in a fraction of a second. But he sees Agnes Howe’s mouth twitch with triumph.

            ‘Have it your way, dear,’ says his mother lightly, and Agnes sits back in her chair thinking she has won.

            ‘Now then. Let’s take a look at them. Little cherubs I’ll be bound. A fortnight old, you said? Don’t suppose you’ll be getting much sleep.’

            Agnes Howe shrugs. She doesn’t look like a woman who isn’t getting her sleep; her eyes are bright and hard. Somewhere in the background, not mentioned, someone else is getting up in the night. Someone else is doing without his sleep, and quite right too because who else is there to blame that she’s here, a mother at an age when most women are turfing their children out of the house, weighed down not with one, but two babies clamouring for attention?

            And already with people trying to charge her double for something that isn’t even her fault. Well - not if she can help it.

            ‘Try not to wake them please.’ Her voice is brisk.

            The boy holds his breath at this. But his mother only nods mildly. Stands up so she can bend over the pram.

            ‘Ah,’ she croons. ‘Didn’t I say? Look at this one.’ She points to one end of the pram. ‘Little angel! Sweet little angel, all rosy and warm. Bless her. Bless her because that’s just what she is - a blessing. Remember my words, dear, you’re going to idolise this one, all her life long. And quite right because she’ll never put a foot wrong. A credit to you, dear, that’s what she is. The absolute apple of your eye.’

            Agnes Howe looks faintly surprised. Rises slightly from her seat to glance at the pram, as if there were something here she hasn’t realised – till now. Her mouth softens, despite itself.

            ‘And the other one?’

            She sinks back in her seat and waits for her money’s worth.

            Which is when Dolores Gunn, palmist and fortune teller, reader of tarot cards and all round clairvoyant, gives her just that. Her money’s worth.

            She shifts her gaze to the other end of the pram. And shudders. ‘Oh my dear lord. Oh lord, oh lord, oh lord.’

            She steps back from the babies, staggering slightly.

            Agnes Howe has given another start. ‘What? What have you seen?’

            For a moment there is no answer. Dolores is fanning herself and clutching her beads. ‘Nothing,’ she says hoarsely. ‘Nothing, don’t you mind me.’

            But Agnes Howe has got to her feet. Suddenly there is colour in her cheeks. ‘No. You tell me. I paid you the money. You tell me.’

            Dolores puts her hand on the pram to steady herself. Then, as if remembering what it contains, snatches it away again. ‘I don’t know dear. I don’t know if I should.’

            ‘Dolores Gunn, you tell me this instant.’

            A pause as they look at each other.

Dolores sighs - and relents. ‘All right. I suppose I must. It’s the other one.’ She nods at the second baby. ‘What’s she called?’

            ‘Dorothy,’ says Agnes.

            ‘That’s the one – Dorothy. She’s the one you’ve got to look out for. She’s the worm in your apple, dear. The snake in your bosom. She’s the devil’s own work, that one, and she’ll let you know it. You’ll never have a moment’s peace with her, and not one scrap of happiness. She’ll be there to blight your lives till your dying day.’

            Agnes Howe sits down with a thump. Her mouth is no longer tight but slack. Bigger, altogether shapeless. ‘I don’t believe you,’ she whispers.

            ‘And I don’t blame you,’ says Dolores. ‘It’s a terrible thing. But I speak as I find.’

            Agnes shakes her head. Then a thought occurs to her. She seizes her bag and opens it. Pulls out another five pound note. ‘Here,’ she says. ‘Take this. Look again. Take a proper look and see if there’s not been some kind of mistake.’

            Dolores shakes her head. ‘Oh no, dear. I’ve done all I can. It’s just a sad thing when women like me are forced to tell what they know.’ She taps the side of her nose. ‘Sometimes it’s better just not to ask.’

            A silence then. But already Agnes is pulling herself together, gathering resources. Talented in her way.  A minute of gathering, and then she is on her feet, straight backed, shoulders well and truly squared.

            ‘Oh well,’ she says. Her voice is almost perfectly calm. ‘It’s all a load of old nonsense.’ She glares straight at Dolores, to show she has seen right through her.

            ‘Course it is,’ says Dolores comfortingly. ‘A load of old nonsense. You just forget I said a word. Best if you do.’

            And Agnes’s glare drops, falling under its own weight.

            All the same, ready to manhandle the pram out of the room, she looks round, desperate for one small act of defiance. Something to show she is not beaten. Her eye lights on the fat boy sitting in the window.

            ‘What’s he doing here? Shouldn’t he be at school?’

            Dolores’s gaze swings round to her son. ‘Who? Damian? He’s poorly. Ever so unwell he is. Never quite right, poor lamb.’

            The boy – Damian - sits in his chair. He has inserted a third pear drop into his mouth. Sweetness fills his cheeks, floods his tongue - a wall of sweetness to stand between him and the two women who face him, as alike and as different as sisters.

            And thinking of sisters…

            He leans his soft fat body forward, over the pencils and the pear drops and the picture he’d been drawing, gazes into the pram. Two heads lie either end. Identical balls of rose and white, eyes screwed up tight in sleep. Nothing on their scalps but a single curl.

            A look of bewilderment enters his face. He turns to Mrs. Howe, and says: ‘How are you going to tell which is which?’

            Agnes Howe takes a sharp intake of breath. She grips the handle of the pram and propels it out of the door, into the small hall and onto the street. But outside, on the pavement, he sees her stop and delve once more into her handbag. A frantic moment of searching before she comes up with what she was looking for.

            A small length of pink ribbon. He watches her bend and tie it round the wrist of one of the babies, which one though, he can’t tell.

            Good baby, bad baby. How else would anyone know the difference?

*******

The babies sleep on.

Home again, she leaves them in the back garden for the sake of fresh air. And never mind the magpies seated on the roofs watching for things that could be plucked from holes - tiny, nourishing blobs of jelly; or the hawk that circles the town in wait for the homing pigeons making for their roosts; foxes that prowl the herbaceous borders, stalking skin and feathers. She leaves them between earth and sky and all the waiting, watching things.

Laid at either end of the pram, as if at different poles, the babies sleep. And do what they always do when their mother is not there to stop them. They move. Each baby breath, each infant stirring, propelling the one imperceptibly toward the other. A steady, minutely executed progress until at last they lie, head to tail, bodies pressed against each other, exactly as they had been in the womb.

In sleep, their mouths find each other’s toes, and suck gently, and in sucking their sleep grows deeper still. Utterly content.