ANNA-BELINDA
A short story by Jeannie van Rompaey
Smashwords Edition
Copyright Jeannie van Rompaey 2012
Smashwords Edition License Notes
This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.
Anna-Belinda, born one bright morning in June, just as the sun came up. Starsign: Gemini. Appropriate for us. Twin minds, twin souls, created to love and hate as one, until death do us part....
What shall I do with your ashes, Anna? Keep them beside me forever? Or scatter them over this field, white ash on green grass, where you rode your black horse, Mountbank, with a passion that made him breathe fire and sweat red hot coals? Or shall I enact the other ritual I’ve planned?
You were always in a hurry, couldn’t wait to live, to love, to die. Me, slower, always a few steps behind. Why did you leave me? I hate you, Anna.
No, not true, I don’t hate you, I ....
There. I can’t say it. The word sticks in my throat. Remember what Mother says. Belinda is like me, she says. Undemonstrative. Not one to show her feelings.
We are three years old. You, on father’s knee, snuggled into his shoulder, soft, blonde curls licking his throat, trusting cornflower-blue eyes looking up at his red farmer-face, as his rough farmer-hands stroking your china-doll legs. Me, several feet away, standing, thumb in mouth, watching.
Come on, Belinda, he says. Come and join us.
I stay where I am and suck my thumb extra hard. Don’t think I’m not tempted, wanting and not wanting to cross that space, wanting and not wanting that caress, but I stay where I am. I don’t want to share.
Mother says: Belinda bottles up her feelings just like me. I don’t want to be like mother, thin-lipped, bottled up.
Sulky little thing you are, says Father. Why can’t you be more like Anna?
I’m not sulking now, Anna. I’m grieving. I want you alive, next to me, not imprisoned in this casket. A handful of dust. Why did you have to be in such a hurry to die?
On that other June morning, you are in a hurry to live, can’t wait to see the sun and claim it for your own. Out you pop into the light, leaving the B-team, me, Belinda, behind in the dark. The warm, cosy dark, where I lie curled up asleep, safe. A minute, an hour passes, perhaps two or three. Who knows how long I lie in the moist timelessness of that secret place? I hear a sound that, already, in my pre-birth state, is familiar: your yell, as you bawl at me to follow you. I have no choice but to obey. Out I struggle into the glare of that June morning to join you. We bawl in unison while the pale moon-face above us, grins through the pain and announces our names. Anna-Belinda. Your name first, as always.
Identical twins. Equals. But one is more equal than the other. Like on that farm run by animals where some are more equal than others. The pigs. I’m not saying that Anna is a pig, but she can snort all right. She’s the first to stand up on her pretty little trotters and snort with pride.
We are both blonde, blue-eyed, delectable; but one is just a little bit blonder, with eyes a slightly deeper shade of cornflower than the other. I am the other. Anna is perfection. Extra-delectable.
My first memory? A succession of wrinkled faces, magnified in close-up, leaning over the pram, baying at us. Grandparents, aunts, neighbours with goggle eyes, long noses, toothy grins: a dynasty of wolves.
What big eyes you have, Grandmother.
Look at the little darlings. Aren’t they gorgeous?
What a big nose you have, Aunt Jane.
Don’t babies smell appetising?
What big teeth you have, Mrs. Johnson.
Couldn’t you just eat them up? Oh dear, one of them is crying. She really thinks you mean to eat her. But look at this one, the one who’s a teeny bit fairer than the other. I swear she winked at me. Babies can’t wink, they say, but this one did.
See, even in her pram, Anna has the edge.
A concert in the village hall. A talent contest. We are going to win, says Anna, with a tap dance and a song. Mother will make the dresses. We must rehearse every day. We have to be the best, Anna says, to win the prize.
What’s the prize?
A silver cup.
I’d rather have a gold one.
Don’t be silly. Cups are always silver.
No they’re not. Ours are made of porcelain.
I’m talking about competition cups silly. Like in horse-racing or dog shows.
I’m not a dog.
No, you’re a tap dancer.
Unfortunately, I’m not. I seem to have two left feet.
Listen to the music, says Mother. Keep time. Shuffle, shuffle, hop, hop, turn and curtsey. Chin up Belinda. Take the thumb out of your mouth. Smile!
Perhaps I’ll do a solo, Anna says.
She’s got her eye on that cup and means to win it, with or without me.
Tell you what, says Mother. You can do “Me and my shadow.” You can be at the back, Belinda, and copy everything Anna does. That way you can’t go wrong.
Want a bet?
One day when Anna is in a mood, she tells me I don’t exist. You’re only my shadow, she says. That’s why your hair is darker than mine and your eyes are murky blue, not bright pools of light like mine.
Liar! You’re the one who doesn’t exist. You’re too good to be true.
That makes her think. I’ve never seen her lost for words before. But actions speak louder than words. She punches me on the nose and makes it bleed.
Real blood. That proves it. I do exist.
That’s not real blood. It’s tomato ketchup.
I give her a punch on the nose to show her my fist is real all right.
She runs off to tell Father I’ve been bullying her again.
I’ve had enough of being her shadow. I stamp my feet and scream. I don’t want to be in the concert. Anna says she doesn’t care. I can sit in the audience and watch her win the cup. So I do. I pray that she will trip up the steps when she goes up to collect it. She doesn’t. She’s a wonder. Everyone says so.
She shows off a bit afterwards. Did you see that triple shuffle? Did you hear that high C? Have you ever, in all your life, heard such a clear note? She puts the cup in the centre of the mantelpiece where everyone can see it. She never polishes it. Mother does that.
I am a good actress, singer and dancer. But only in private.
In an unused barn, over the stables, we find a chest full of old sheets, curtains, cushions, counterpanes, jewellery…. This will be our theatre.
We’ll make this barn a palace, says Anna. Come on, Belinda, gold velour for the walls. Strawberry, orange and gold cushions on the floor.
She drapes me in silks of crimson and satins of vermilion, pins on multi-coloured brooches, slings ropes of shiny beads around my neck, slips gold and silver bangles on my wrists and crowns me with a wine-gum-studded tiara. I am a princess.
A length of peacock-coloured silk, she swathes round her own body and up between her legs. Turkish trousers. She adds a turquoise cravat and an emerald scarf to make a turban. She is a prince. I’m full of Eastern promise, she says.
We improvise the scripts of a thousand plays, all with exotic settings and elevated language.
How art thou today, my lady?
All the better for setting my sights on thee, my prince.
We languish on velvet cushions and whisper amore, cherie and cariño. The prince holds the princess in his arms and asks her to be his wife. They have a magnificent wedding, both attired in white, wild silk and live happily ever after.
Father buys us a pony. We call her Honey because she’s the colour of honey. Anna on the pony, showing off, waving. The sun streams through her hair and through the pony’s mane, the same colour as her hair. Anna laughs with delight and strikes the pony with the crop again and again, to make him go faster, faster, faster.
My turn now. I’m nervous, but I manage to mount him. Honey turns stubborn and refuses to move.
Show him who’s boss, says Father.
He knows who’s boss all right. He’s off. Away he goes. On and on. Slow down. Stop! He won’t stop. I can’t make him stop. Stop! Stop! Honey crashes into the copse. The sun disappears. The world turns black.
Father says, when a pilot crashes his plane, he must go up again, straightaway. Up you get. Up in the clouds and far away. Off you go. And he gives Honey a slap on her rear.
I’m not suited to riding, I tell Anna.
I am, she smiles. Father agrees.
What a picture she makes as she canters across the meadow, first on Honey, then, when she outgrows him, on Mountbank, a real horse. Mountbank is coal black, his nostrils are fiery. They are made for each other.
Anna writes a poem about her horse, Mountbank. She’s going to perform it in the school hall on Speech Day, in front of all the parents.
I love Mountbank,
He’s big and strong,
Elegant and noble.
He has a bold bright eye,
His mane and tail streak out in the wind,
His jet black coat shines in the sunlight.
I’m going to ride him to heaven
I’m going to ride him, ride him
To heaven and live on cloud nine.
Angels will serve us nectar and honey and
Play sweet tunes on their harps.
And Mountbank, black and glossy, will lie at my feet.
My sister’s a poet. I’m very proud of her. But I don’t tell her that.
It’s not bad, I say, but there’s a lot of repetition and the ending is ominous. A portent. It means you’re going to fall off your horse and die.
No it doesn’t. It’s a metaphor. It means riding Mountbank is like being in heaven.
What do you know about heaven? Nectar and honey and harps indeed. What nonsense. Your poem is riddled with clichés.
What do you know about heaven or poetry? Have you ever written a poem?
Not yet, but I know a cliché when I see one.
Miss Robertson says it is brilliant and she knows what she’s talking about. She teaches literature. So there.
Anna has to have the last word. I don’t mind. I like to see the triumphant look on her face as she sticks her nose in the air and strides away. And really, it isn’t a bad poem. Just a bit pretentious.
Next thing you know, we fall in love for real, not with each other in the barn, prince and princess, but with a boy. His name is Luke and he’s devastatingly good-looking. I write a poem about him, but I don’t show it to Anna.
Luke, Luke, the son of a duke
With eyes so green it must be a fluke.
He is so cool
I can’t ever imagine him going to school.
In church he never sings a hymn
But saves his energy for the gym.
My poem hasn’t got any metaphors in it. Luke isn’t the son of a duke though. That’s to make it rhyme. Poetic licence.
Luke and I are getting married.
I am resplendent in white lace. I walk down the aisle on Father’s arm. Anna walks behind us, like a shadow, my bridesmaid, dressed in dusky pink. There’s a scowl on her face because she doesn’t like pink. And because she is jealous. It’s not my fault Luke chose me. I can’t let her share him with me because bigamy isn’t allowed in Northamptonshire. I expect you’ve guessed that this story is a dream, a figment of my imagination. A kind of wish that I hope will come true one day.
Luke has a horse. A chestnut. Anna has written a poem about Luke’s horse, but she won’t show it to me. That’s really mean of her.
Why do you always write poems about horses?
I don’t always. I write poems about all kinds of things.
So do I.
You’ve never written poem in your life. You can’t.
Can.
Can’t. Show me then.
No. Don’t want to.
You can’t show me because you haven’t written one, you rat-faced liar.
I have so, you smelly piglet.
Big bum liar
Big bum yourself!
I hate you.
Hate you too.
We love calling each other names.
Love is a thing of beauty, pure but full of pain. Luke is the son of the Carstairs of Stapleton Manor. They’re the nearest thing to gentry we know. They dine with the Sitwells and the Heskeths. Regularly, so Mother says. Luke goes to boarding school but in the holidays he comes home - unless he’s off skiing. On Sundays he goes to church. So do we. Mother thinks we’re paragons of virtue because we’ve become so keen on churchgoing.
Luke sits in the pew in front of us. His hair grows in a clump at the back of his neck, trying desperately not to curl. I find that so endearing, it makes me want to cry. He turns round and smiles at me. Anna smiles back. She thinks he is smiling at her.
When Luke goes back to school, Anna cries herself to sleep, but I suffer more. I bottle up my feelings. My stomach is a tangled ball of knotted string. I have stomach cramps. Mother says it is constipation and that I should take some castor-oil.
Anna says Katrina is her best friend. Twins can’t have best friends, I tell her. They have to be best friends with each other, but she doesn’t spend lunch hours with me any more. She’s too busy whispering secrets to Katrina. Twins shouldn’t have secrets from each other. I follow them into the woods. They have straws in their hands and white sticky stuff round their noses.
What are you doing?
Just sniffing something. If you tell, Mother, I’ll kill you.
She knows I won’t tell. There’s such a thing as honour among twins.
What do you want to do when you leave school, Anna?
I think I’ll be a famous actress or dancer or singer or show-jumper. Or an ice skater.
You can’t skate.
I can learn. I bet I’d be good at it.
I bet she would too.
On the other hand, I might decide to get married and have lots of babies.
Who are you thinking of marrying?
Aha. That would be telling.
Why is my heart beating so fast. Does she mean HIM?
“God help the Mister who comes between me and my sister.
And God help the sister who comes between me and my man.”
Anna and Mountbank ride off into the sunset. They’ve been gone for ages.
Where have you been been? It’s dark.
You don’t need to worry about me. I can take care of myself.
I’m not worried. I just want to know where you’ve been.
Anna’s cheeks are flushed. Her eyes bright. Riding, she says.
It’s the school holidays. Luke is home. Have they been riding together in the dark?
I don’t ask. Afraid of the answer.
I have found something I’m good at. Tennis. I’m in the school team. It gives me an interest. Takes my mind off Luke. At least I fool myself it does.
Tennis is a silly game, Anna says. Hitting a ball back and forwards over a net.
My turn to smile. She’s not very good at tennis, keeps missing the ball and when she does hit it, it goes out.
I’m giving up tennis, she says.
You can come and watch me play, if you like. In the final.
I might, she says, if I can spare the time.
Anna has a lot of boyfriends. Mark and Adam, Leroy and Craig. But I’m still faithful to Luke. He’s going to university in October. To Oxford. So am I. At least I hope to. But not ´til next year. Luke joins the tennis club in Brackley. So do I. Guess what? Luke asks me to be his partner in the tournament. Guess what? We win the doubles. He lets me keep the silver cup. I put it on the mantelpiece next to Anna’s. Guess what? Luke asks me to go to the tennis club ball with him. Mother is so pleased for me she buys me a beautiful new dress. I’m so excited. I can’t wait to tell Anna.
You and Luke Carstairs? I don’t believe you. It’s not possible. He wouldn’t.
Why shouldn’t I have a boyfriend? You’ve got lots. Mark, Adam, Geoffrey, Tim, Leroy and Craig…
That’s different, she says, her face white with anger.
She storms out of the house and next thing I know she’s riding Mountbank into the sunset again, in the direction of Stapleton Manor.
Luke has to go to London. A family crisis. He’s sorry but he won’t be able to make the ball after all. I don’t fancy going without Luke. I give the dress to Anna who wears it to a party with Mark or Adam, Geoffrey or Tim. Or maybe with somebody else. She’s becoming a bit of a tart. Someone ought to tell her that. Me I suppose, but we don’t talk much any more.
Everything is changing. Anna is changing. She goes to raves and gets high on drugs and drink. A lethal combination I tell her.
She shrugs. So what? It’s my life.
Or possibly your death, I tell her.
She sleeps around. She acts as if she doesn’t care about herself - or anyone else. If she wants to do something she does it. Regardless.
Everyone lives like this, she says. It’s a sign of the times.
I imagine her with Mark, dark and intense, riding him with a passion once reserved for Mountbank. I imagine her with Adam, white-skinned, white-haired Adam. It must be like fucking a ghost. I imagine her with potato-faced Geoffrey and weak-chinned Tim. Urgh! Then there are her two bits of rough: black is beautiful, Leroy, with his gleaming muscles and Craig, the bull. Leroy and Craig, they fuck like a dream, she says.
But their teeth are sharp. I’ve seen the scars.
You’re really fucked up, I tell her.
You’re the one who’s fucked up. You never go anywhere. Never do anything. Too scared to breathe you are.
I’m studying. I need a scholarship to get to Oxford to read Classics.
Oxford. Classics. What’s the use of that? Get a life.
At least, I’m not a slag. At least, I’m in control.
She laughs. You’re unbelievable. Unbelievable.
In different ways we’re both fucked up. Like most people. You’ve only to read the papers or watch TV to see that. There’s very little point to anything.
Let’s go on holiday, Anna says. To Greece. Spend some quality time together. You look as if you could do with a holiday. Father will cough up the money if I ask him nicely.
In Sciathos, Anna meets Georgio. She spends most of her time on his yacht. Fucking.
I thought we were going to spend quality time together, I say.
Don’t be a pain, Belinda. Don’t you see? This could be a turning point in my life.
It isn’t. Back in England, Anna never hears from Georgio again.
For our eighteenth birthday we have a party in the village hall. Lots of people there: family, friends, nearly everyone we know. Everyone but Luke. He sends us a card.
To Anna-Belinda
All the best for a wonderful birthday.
Wish I could be with you.
Love
Luke.
He’s hedging his bets. The bastard.
I’m depressed. Mother complains about my long face. What have you got to be depressed about? She asks.
Where shall I start?
The war in Iraq. Ditto Afghanistan. body bags, unrest in the Middle East, unemployment, pollution, poverty, child abuse, violence, injustice, corruption. Take your pick.
Yes, says Mother. We know all about that. But what have you got to be depressed about?
I’ve got a place at Oxford, but I don’t want to go. Anna’s off to London. To drama school. RADA. I’m sure she’ll do well there. There’s nothing she likes better than being centre stage.
Anna’s thinking about giving up acting and going to Australia with chinless Tim and puffy-faced Geoffrey. The drama thing didn’t work out. Most of the men on the course were gay. Anna dumps Tim and Geoffrey. Mark has a new girlfriend. Anna doesn’t care. She’s in love with Adam she says.
In lust more like, I tell her.
She gives me a withering look.
So you’re not going to Australia after all?
Adam and I may live in the south of France, she says.
He’ll burn up in the Summer for sure, I warn her, with his pale skin.
At least France is not so far away as Australia. Something to be pleased about.
It seems that Anna is going to marry Adam. I’m to be chief bridesmaid. She wants me to wear dusky pink but I’m not keen on pink. Mother’s been busy with the wedding preparations. Just as well somebody is doing something. Anna hasn’t shown much interest, hasn’t done a thing.
On the eve of the wedding, Anna rides off on her big black horse, Mountbank, and doesn’t come back. That’s when I have, what Mother calls, a breakdown. I’m sure Anna’s gone off with Luke Carstairs. She’s a fool. He’ll never marry her. He loves me. Mother says my imagination is too vivid for my own good. I swallow a whole bottle of aspirins. It isn’t easy. They stick in my throat. I’m carted off to hospital to have my stomach pumped.
Mother says it was a cry for help, but that’s not true. I’m absolutely devastated when I wake up in the hospital bed and find I’ve bungled it.
Faces peer at me. Wolf aunts, neighbours and grandmothers with sharp noses. They lean over me and talk about me as if I’m not here, as if I can’t hear or understand what they’re saying. I feel like screaming, but I can’t open my mouth, can’t move. I’m stuck.
Father can’t understand what all the fuss is about, says I should pull myself together. Mother says I’ve always been highly strung, but even she doesn’t understand why I should want to take my own life. She says I have everything going for me. Someone as talented as me has the world at her feet.
She’s got it wrong. Anna is the talented one. Not me. All I can do is translate a little Latin and Greek. And I haven’t the will to do that any more.
No one speaks about Anna. She doesn’t exist. She’s gone. No one understands what it’s like to lose a twin sister.
I sit at home, convalescing, watching TV. It’s getting worse, man’s inhumanity to man, woman’s inhumanity to woman. All people care about is money, money, money, buying clothes, cars, electronic toys. Spend, spend, spend. Meanwhile, the poor are dying of starvation. Nobody cares.
I wish it was true that she rode off into the sunset on Mountbank and never returned. That would be a romantic ending. But that’s not what happened. She was killed in a car crash. Luke was in the car. He survived. He needn’t think he can crawl back to me now. I won’t have him even if he goes down on bended knee and begs me to marry him. Fat chance of him doing that anyway.
No, I must face the truth. No stories any more. There was no accident. Anna did come back. In the middle of the night, she came into my room. She smelt of Luke but he didn’t want her. He told her he’d never been interested in either of us. It had just been a game. She won’t marry Adam, she says. She just can’t. We took the aspirins together, diluted in gin and tonic. They took us to the hospital, pumped both our stomachs. It was no use. She didn’t make it. I did. I live on, without her.
Mother says I need special treatment to help me come to terms with what happened. She says I should go twice a week for therapy, that I’m schizophrenic. A split personality is the way she puts it. I think what she means is this: I have been split in half by Anna’s death. One half of me wants to be with Anna, the other half wants to live.
I’m quite looking forward to meeting the psychiatrist. He’ll let me talk about Anna. No one else mentions her. No one else wants to hear about her. It’s as if they’ve all forgotten her. Even Father.
Father thinks therapy is a waste of time and money. He says I’ve always been a bit strange and nothing will change that. But then Anna was his favourite. He never knew me.
The psychiatrist’s name is Mr. Carson but he says to call him Bill, because I must learn to think of him as a friend. That won’t be difficult. He is young, American and easy-going. He’s an optimist. He believes he can cure me. I tell him that we Brits think Americans a bit naïve.
Better than being cynical, he says. Look Belinda - I can call you Belinda can’t I? You’ve gotta think positive. That’s what you’ve gotta do. (I love the way he says gotta.) You can’t take all the wrongs of the world on your shoulders. That’s a sure route to disaster. (I love the way he says route, rhyming it with shout). OK so we’re living in a shitty world. We all know that. But we’ve each gotta do our own little bit to change it. Right? Think positive, Belinda, and you’ll do fine.
Don’t you want to ask me about my childhood?
Do you want to talk about it?
Yes, I rather think I do.
OK. Go ahead. I’ll listen. I’m a real sucker for childhood memories. Even if the recall doesn’t help you, it will entertain me.
Entertain you?
You’d better believe it. So don’t leave out the juicy bits - child abuse, mental and physical, incest, the lot….
Look Mr - er Bill, I think I’ll give that a miss - if you don’t mind.
I don’t mind. It’s up to you what you tell me and what you don’t. To be honest, all that Freudian stuff is a bit out-dated.
He’s a one off, Bill. I like him. He makes me laugh.
Bill says I should try to stop thinking about Anna now she’s gone. He doesn’t mean I shouldn’t think about her at all, but that I should think about her less. Not be obsessed with her. I don’t think I’m obsessed with her, but Bill does. He says I must start to think of myself as one person. A complete person. Not a half a person and certainly not as the B- team. B for Belinda is bad for my self-worth. He says it would be better if I could stop thinking about myself as a twin.
I tell him that will be very difficult. Perhaps impossible.
I sit in a café in Oxford, drinking black coffee,
Practising being a student.
An acting exercise: imagine what it would feel like to be an undergrad in Oxford.
On the menu there is a saying attributed to Napoleon Bonaparte. It reads:
Strong coffee, much strong coffee, is what awakens me.
Coffee gives me warmth, awakening an unusual force
And a pain that is not without very great pleasure.
Suddenly I know what I have to do, what will awaken me. And it’s not coffee.
Bill says it’s worth a try. We all need our rituals, he says. That’s how we cope with the bad things in life. Yeah, you go for it. Do what you gotta do. (I love the way he says gotta).
So, here we are, Anna, in Mountbank’s field, only he’s not here any more. Sold to another pale rider I shouldn’t wonder. Are you ready for the ritual, Anna? Remember Napoleon and the coffee that awakened him? I want you to awaken me, Anna, awaken me and give me warmth. I will spread your ashes over my head, rub them into every pore of my skin, embalm my face with your ashes, bathe my body, my arms, my legs in your ashes. Let them seep into me, give me strength. I have to let you go, Anna. You have to become part of me. I’m sure you will understand. Not B for Belinda anymore. My name will begin with an A. Anna-Belinda is me. Not us. Me.
Thus I anoint myself with your ashes. Thus I imbibe your spirit. Thus empowered, you can awaken me with an unusual force. I take a deep breath. Now I can be strong. Now I can face the pain of your going. A pain that - I must admit, dear Anna - a pain that is not without very great pleasure.
Ah….. here I am. Anna-Belinda at last.
###
If you enjoyed this story why not discover other titles by Jeannie van Rompaey at Smashwords.com