Restoration

A story by Judy Darley

I stood wearily, plucking the gardening glove from my right hand so I could wipe the sweat from my forehead. Arnos Vale cemetery was bright in the sunshine, every tomb brought into sharp focus by the intensity of the light. A heat haze wobbled the edges of the non-conformist chapel, and I blinked as I watched two figures walking towards me, wondering if the distortion was playing a trick on my eyes.

Two women, with identical cropped red hair, identical slight frames, and identical faces with identical crow’s feet fanning out around their identical blue eyes. They reached the mass of brambles I was working on and hesitated, until one stepped forward. 

“The woman in the chapel said to come to you. I’m Pat, and this is Dinah. We’re here to volunteer. We have our own gloves, but the woman said you’d have secaturs we can use.”

“Yes, of course,” I said, forcing myself not to stare at the the pale blue gloves, pinched between wizened scarlet fingers quite unlike the healthy-looking fingers of her other hand. I glanced at the other woman and checked both her hands, both normal-looking. Not identical in every way, then, I thought. “I’m Steph.”

The twins set to work on the brambles, hacking away to untangle the vicious barbs from around the ancient headstones.

“Make sure you test the ground before you put your full weight down,” I said, “Sometimes the soil subsides over a coffin. One of the volunteers nearly ended up in a 17th century grave last week.”

“That was me, William Capperbatch,” William said with some pride, leaning on his rake, his old eyes twinkling, “And not before time, some might say.”

William was easily our oldest volunteer, pushing eighty and yet as hard-working as any of us. He looked at the two newcomers appraisingly. “Nice to have some youngsters join us. Bet you’re pleased, eh, Steph? Bit closer to your age than most of us old fogies.

He cackled good-naturedly and got back to sweeping up the shorn brambles while the two women and I gazed at each other, clocking the fifteen or so years that divided us.

“I suppose most people seem like youngsters to William,” Dinah said, smiling, “Even my grizzled old sister here.”

“Dinah,” Pat said, her tone somewhat resigned, as though she was used to jibes about her age. “Twelve minutes is hardly a huge gap.”

“Well, it’s twelve minutes I’ll never catch up,” Dinah said brightly, “Twelve minutes closer to the flames of hell!”

She froze; looking appalled by her own words, then dropped the secaturs and hurtled off across the cemetery.

“Oh, for crying out loud,” Pat exclaimed.

“Should someone go after her?” I asked, but Pat just shrugged.

“She’s always doing things like that – saying something stupid and then getting in a tizzy about it. It’s not even as though the accident was recent.”

“Accident?” I said hesitantly, uncertain whether she was talking about her damaged hand, now hidden inside the worn gardening glove.

She carried on hacking at the brambles. I watched her for a moment, and then headed off towards the thicket of trees Dinah had disappeared into. On the other side there was a row of the cemetery’s Grade II listed memorials. As I reached the broad pathway, I saw Dinah standing beside the most elaborate multi-columned monument. 

She wiped her face as she spotted me walking towards her, and did her best to look nonchalant. “I was just admiring this tomb. Marvellous, isn’t it?”

“Yes,” I said, “It’s one of our most visited, in honour of Raja Rammohun Roy. Have you heard of him? He was a great Bengali Brahmin who campaigned to ban sati, the Hindu custom of burning a widow on her husband’s funeral pyre.”

“Well, what a good man. How extreme, to have to burn just because your better half does,” Dinah said slowly, leaning against the tomb. She looked at me sharply. “What did Pat say when I ran off?”

“Nothing really. Just that you would be all right.”

“She was annoyed, wasn’t she? Did she call me ridiculous?”

I looked away, embarrassed for the pair of them, and me caught in the middle.

“It’s all right,” she said, “I know what she thinks of me.  I’m the emotional one, you see, the needy one. She’s the strong one who never needed anyone, least of all me.”

“I’m sure that’s not true.”

“Well, not entirely, perhaps. But she’s certainly never shown it. From the day we were born, I was the one trying to get her to, oh, I don’t know, act like a twin. But she was always self-sufficient. I read stories about twins who had their own secret language, so absorbed in each other that they closed off from the world. But Patricia and I barely even spoke the same language, and the only person she closed off from was me,” Dinah looked at me, “I’m sorry, I don’t know why I telling you…”

“It’s something about this place. Something about so many reminders of our mortality. It makes people open up,” I said, reaching out and touching the ivy that climbed over the neighbouring headstone. “That and all the lovely wildlife.  People forget, living in a big city like Bristol, that plants have a real affect on us – on our well-being.”

Dinah nodded, “That’s why I wanted to come here. It seemed like such a peaceful place. I’ve always loved gardens, ever since Pat and I were little. We’d go and stay with our granny in the countryside and Pat would disappear on some adventure with the little girl next door, on some expedition I wasn’t invited to take part in. I’d fret for a while, sitting in Granny’s garden, then slowly I’d get interested in my surroundings, in the ladybirds climbing on the roses or the caterpillars hiding beneath the marigold leaves, and I would forget all about my beastly sister.” She looked up at the Raja’s tomb, her eyes bright with tears.

“She says you blame yourself for her hand, that you think it was your fault.”

“It was,” she said, plucking an ox-eye daisy from the grass and examining it intently. “I lit the fire. I was burning some old garden waste, leaves, that kind of thing. I was daft though, not thinking. I was still wearing my gardening gloves and they caught fire. Pat pulled them off me with her bare hands.”

“How….heroic,” I faltered, “But the fire must have been fierce to scar her so badly.”

She shrugged and looked away from me, seemingly watching a pair of tortoiseshell butterflies dancing around the hollyhocks.

“You must be very close,” I said, trying to reconcile their behaviour with the fact that they’d come here today. The butterflies abandoned the flowers, spinning around each other into the sky.

“No, actually, we’re not close at all,” she smiled at me, “They say you can’t choose your family, but the equal truth is that you can’t make them choose you.”

The other volunteers were heading into the chapel, leaning their gardening equipment carefully against the sweep of steps that led up to its grand doorway. I saw William pause and turn, spotting us beside the Rajah’s tomb. “Come on girls,” he called, “Don’t want to miss your cuppa!”

I walked with Dinah back to the chapel, watching her sister disappear into the old building along with the rest of the volunteers, and I wondered about what Dinah had said. Something about it all didn’t ring true.

*              *              *

That night a celebration was planned in the chapel. After months of effort, the cemetery had been awarded 1.4 million of lottery funding. Every volunteer who had worked there over the past twelve months had been invited.

It was strange, and rather lovely to see everyone turning up in pretty dresses and smart shirts. The chapel was strewn with banners and streamers, and the tombstones were streaked with pink and gold as the sun began to dip. Most of us had never been in the cemetery at this time of night, and it felt like a different place. The holm oaks and yews seemed to gain a deeper presence as the light faded, as though their branches hid more furtive creatures than the sparrows that rustled through their leaves by day.

Pat and Dinah arrived as the last rays of sunlight bled away, Dinah wearing a floaty blue dress and matching cardigan, Pat dressed much as she had been earlier, with the addition of a heavy string of crimson beads and a pair of long red gloves covering her scars.

There was a lot of champagne drunk that night, along with a lethal homebrewed pear cider. I was at the rear of the chapel having a chat with William, who was flirting in a ‘harmless old man who might need a slap’ kind of a way, when there was an outraged shriek followed by the slam of the vast door. I looked up in time to see the door being wrenched open again and one of the twins darting outside. It took me a moment to realise that the second twin to exit the building was Pat, chasing after her sister.

I found them deep in the cemetery, just as Pat caught up with Dinah, standing in a pool of moonlight surrounded by tombstones. The tears on Dinah’s face shone like drops of ice, and for a moment the women seemed frozen.

“We’re almost fifty years old. Isn’t it time to grow up?” Pat exclaimed at last.

Dinah shuddered, as though someone had struck her. “Why do you have to do that, make me feel such a fool?”

“How do I do that, Dinah? Can you please explain exactly what I do to make you feel like that?” Pat’s voice was coiled tight as though with decades of frustration.

“It’s just all so one-sided,” Dinah screamed. “I’m so sick of it! It’s like I’m a stupid little puppy trying to get the attention of a person who would sooner kick her aside than waste any time on her.”

“It’s not my fault you feel that. I never asked you to behave like that, did I?”

“But I wouldn’t have to if you actually genuinely wanted to spend time with me. Not masses of time, but just the occasional day, the occasional afternoon, even, like normal siblings do. Instead of treating me like an obligation, a person you have to endure time with. I’d like us to be friends as well as family.”

“Listen to yourself!” Pat exclaimed, “You can’t decide which you want – friend or sister.”

“Why can’t you be both?”

“Why is it so important to you that we are?”

“Because, I don’t know…,” Dinah faltered, “Partly because people expect it of us. They hear I have a twin and they immediately assume we’re closer than close. I picture what they’re imagining, and find myself yearning for it. Why aren’t we close? What is it about me that prevents you from wanting to be close to me?”

“I don’t understand what you want from me.”

“I want… what you give your friends; that attention, that devotion that you give to all your friends. Why don’t I get any of that?”

“I don’t know…” Pat said, “Perhaps… because friendships take work. If you don’t put the effort in, you lose the connection. The friendship withers and dies. That doesn’t happen in a family. We’ll always be sisters. That won’t, can’t change.”

“But sometimes I wish it could,” Dinah said, her voice dropping to little more than a whisper. “Sometimes I wish I could just remove you from my life. Sometime I wish one of us didn’t exist. And I don’t like feeling like that. It’s a terrible way to feel about someone so important in my life. I’ve known you longer and better than any of your friends. I should at least be as important to you as them. You shouldn’t take me for granted because of that – you should celebrate that fact.”

“This is about the fire again, isn’t it?”

Dinah hesitated momentarily, and then threw up her hands in despair. “Of course it is. Why did you lie to everyone about it? Why did you make me join in your lies instead of letting me take the blame I deserved and move on with my life?”

Pat shrugged, “Don’t be stupid. Why would I let you take the blame? I started the fight. You were just defending yourself. If I’d moved faster, you’d be the one wearing these rotten itchy gloves instead of me!  

“Is that what you think? Is that what you’re doing when I hear you moving about the house at night – plotting ways to get back at me?”

For a long moment the two women gazed at each other, breathing heavily, then I saw Pat shake her head slowly.

“Don’t be ridiculous, Dinah. I’m an insomniac, not a maniac!”

Dinah wailed with frustration, grasping Pat by the shoulders and shaking her so hard that the string of Pat’s necklace snapped and the crimson beads scattered like unseasonable holly berries.

“Granny left me those!” Pat screeched, shoving Dinah hard. Her sister staggered backwards onto the crumbling slab of a tomb. There was loud cracking noise, and she disappeared.

“Dinah!” Pat screamed, darting forwards, but I grabbed her from behind, holding her back.

“No, Pat, don’t! Sometimes these tombs are layered one on top of another. If you jump down there with her, you might unsettle it further,” I told her urgently, still holding her until I felt her muscles relax. “Dinah, are you ok down there?”

There was a pause, and then Dinah called out, her voice sounding strained and distant. “I’m fine, but I don’t think I can get out.”

“I’ll go and get someone to bring some rope,” I said, “Pat, I mean it, you can’t climb down there or you could both be seriously hurt.”

She nodded and I ran back towards the chapel to find someone sober enough to help. As soon as I had a team of people searching for rope, canvas, anything that could be used to lever Dinah out of the grave, I ran back to check that Pat hadn’t ignored me and thrown herself in after her sister.

But she was sitting beside the tomb, hugging her knees and talking earnestly.  I slowed just before I reached her, reluctant to intrude. 

“That’s just it, Dinah. We may be identical on the outside, but inside we couldn’t be more different, could we? We’ve each got our own character traits, own preferences, own skills. We balance each other out, and yet we’re each a complete, separate person. That’s why I never understood why you thought you needed me.”

There was a long silence, and then Dinah’s voice rose from the hole, sounding calmer now.

“So why did you pick that fight with me all those years ago? I never did understand what had set you off. Then afterwards I was too mortified to ask. Your poor hand…”

“I think we were both a bit raw, weren’t we? We’d just been to Granny’s will reading,” Pat ran her left hand over the red silk of the other glove, as though she was stroking a cat. “I was looking at the house she’d given us, and wondering what it was about me that made her give me that stupid necklace, while she left you her pride and joy – her garden. When you immediately began tidying up and building that bonfire, I felt like you were taking ownership, rubbing in the fact that Granny loved you more than she loved me. I was so bloody jealous! That’s why I went for you with that lighter fluid – if you hadn’t knocked it out of my hands, over my hands…”

“But you’re so wrong about Granny,” Dinah said sadly, “She didn’t love me more, just differently. Don’t you remember what she used to tell us? ‘Everything she is, you’re not.’”

“’And everything you are, she isn’t. Two separate branches on the same family tree.’”

“Branches? I thought she said we were apples!”

“Don’t be ridiculous, Dinah. Apples fall off the tree, then where would we be?”

“That’s the weirdest thing about us,” Dinah said, laughing “Even our childhood memories are completely different.”

“Surely not completely,” Pat said, “I mean, what’s your strongest memory about Granny?”

“Her garden,” Dinah said promptly, “You?”

“The same.”

“I don’t believe you!” Dinah exclaimed, “You never spent anytime in it – you were always off playing with that little cow from next door.”

“She was a cow, wasn’t she?” Pat said, “I always got fed up with her after a bit and came back through the hedge into the garden, but by then you’d be absorbed in your own world.”

“I never saw you.”

“Of course not. I’d be stuck on the outside, watching you wandering around, looking as though you were exploring each plant in turn. I never really grasped what you were doing, but you looked so intent that I didn’t dare interrupt, so I’d sit in the hedge and watch you until Granny called us in for tea.”

“I never knew that,” Dinah said softly.

“Well, now you do,” Pat said briskly, standing up as a group of lads approached with ropes, torchlight swinging through the trees. “Hold on sis, we’re going to get you out of the hole.”