The Other Ida (29 page)

Tom looked uncomfortable in his cheap suit, borrowed, Ida imagined, from a relative or friend, his hair washed and tucked neatly behind his ears, while Alice looked sweet and pathetic, her miniscule frame swamped in a black woollen dress that had probably fitted her a few years before. Peter, of course, looked immaculate and was being so kind and cheerful and thoughtful that he was making Ida want to cry.

The television was on but they sat round without properly watching it. Ida was relieved, as she imagined they all were, that it meant they didn't need to speak and that they could sit with their own rattling thoughts. She didn't know if Elliot would call her and she wasn't sure she'd talk to him if he did. For the first time in a very long time she had a great deal to think about, and she couldn't relax. She held her reading in her hand – Ecclesiastes chapter three – and went through it, mouthing the words.

Alice was chattering, quickly and constantly. She went over the plans for the day, wondering about the flowers and when the caterers were going to turn up.

“Do you want a Valium?” Ida asked. “Just one. It will help you relax.”

Alice nodded. “Please. I've drunk a whole bottle of Rescue Remedy but it's done fuck all.”

Ida handed Alice a pill before taking two herself.

She remembered being little, waiting next to the window for Peter to arrive, and realised she felt the same now. Nothing much changed. She was as impatient and nosy as ever.

They heard the noisy growl of an engine growing closer, then the crunch of gravel as it pulled into the drive. Ida stood and walked towards the window followed by all of the others.

A stocky driver got out of a cab, walked round to the passenger's side and opened the door. Someone took his arm with both their hands and he helped them to their feet.

It was a woman, with a pile of greying dark hair and a long black coat, checking and rechecking her bag anxiously until the man felt the floor of the car for her keys or purse or whatever she thought she'd forgotten.

Ida was finding it hard to breath.

The woman by the car held up her hand in greeting as the driver led her towards the steps. She was wearing sunglasses but there was something about the way she was moving, the way she held her head, which made Ida want to lie down on the floor.

Peter came up behind her and patted her hip. “She's here,” he whispered before walking out towards the woman and wrapping her in his long arms.

The woman who looked like Ida's mother was standing at the top of the steps now, three feet away from them.

Alice's face had gone slightly grey. Odd things – impossible things – happened to Ida all the time. It's just that they didn't normally happen to people like her sister.

The woman stepped towards them. “I'm so sorry about your ma. About turning up like this.”

Her accent was noticeably Irish, but Ida could recognise the tone of her mother's voice. She was smaller and fatter than Bridie had been, and was softer, certainly less scary. Underneath her coat she was wearing a black, silk dress, with a string of pearls brushing her cleavage.

She took off the sunglasses and put them in her coat pocket. “I put these on, thought it might soften the shock. I'm not sure it worked. I had hoped that you knew about me, before yesterday, or at least had a clue. But it doesn't seem as though you did.” She looked at Ida. “Come here, if you don't mind. Please, give me a hug.”

Ida stepped forwards and the woman rested her face on her lapel, letting out a loud and sudden sob. She smelled of cigarettes and mints and Ida was pleased and surprised. A real woman, who smoked and ate mints to cover it up. Neither a ghost, nor a square like her sister.

They stood in silence for a few moments until the woman lifted her head, wiping the make-up from under her eyes. “I said I wouldn't do this, I didn't think I would. It's been so long – too long.” She reached out and touched Peter's face, and he kissed the tip of her fingers.

“Sweetheart,” he said.

“You're Agnes,” said Alice, as though she was just getting to grips with what was happening.

They all laughed awkwardly.

The woman smiled and turned to Ida. “Yes, I'm Aggie, Agnes Ida Simpson, nee Adair. I'm your aunt. I suppose I'm the other Ida.”

Tom stayed out of their way in the kitchen, while the others huddled together in the sitting room, looking at each other, smiling, and touching occasionally.

It was impossible not to stare at this bosomy, sober woman, as though Bridie had not only come back to life but had become a proper mother in the process.

Ida spoke first. “Can you tell us then – all of it?”

“Yes, I should get on with it before I lose my nerve,” Agnes said. “I've practised this would you believe it, but I'm still not sure where to start. I'll start at the beginning. I don't know what you know. And I hope you're not easily shocked.”

“We don't know anything. And we're not easily shocked,” said Alice.

“We do know that she lied about things. And at the weekend we found her certificate of baptism. We know she was born in Ireland, not London. And that your father was a tinker,” said Ida.

“She always lied,” Agnes said, eating a biscuit. “Ever since she was a little girl. We were treated the same, like twins, really. There was less than a year between us; I was an accident. Bridie always seemed a lot older though. She was so sure of herself. And she wanted to be different, maybe that's why she made things up. Most of her stories were versions of things she'd seen at the pictures, she always loved the pictures. There was a little cinema in town that showed old films –
The Wizard of Oz
was on about every week. But the grown-up ones were the ones she loved –
The 39 Steps
and
From Here to Eternity
. Then there was one called
Road House
with Ida Lupino. She was so jealous I had her name after that. She used to tell people it was hers.”

“Right… wow,” said Alice.

“Ma didn't know where she'd got her,” Agnes said, “always tried to make her own up to her lies. But she seemed to believe her own nonsense, however ridiculous. I don't know what she remembered about the past. Maybe she blocked a lot of it out.”

“She made notes. I'll show you,” Ida said.

She went to her room and brought back the pile of papers. “Here, look,” she showed Agnes the page with her name on it. “This is where I read your name, and there are these funny words. And some stuff about the cat and Judi Dench which I suppose isn't relevant, ha.”

Agnes took the notes and started to laugh and cry at the same time. “These words are the Cant – traveller language. Our father spoke it and we did, sometimes. It's a bit like Irish, but not quite. It was our funny, secret language. Jesus, it's so sad to see her trying to remember it here.”

“What do you do? Or did you do?” Ida asked.

“I'm not retired,” Agnes said. “I was an actress, bit parts in
Crossroads
, things like that. I was never very good. Bridie was far better. And I model – well I'm a life model. At the Slade.” She took another biscuit from the tray.

“Fantastic,” Ida said, delighted.

Agnes squeezed her knee and carried on. “I still live in Soho. On my own. I was married years ago but I was never very good at picking them. He ran off with a girl who worked in the shoe shop of all things. A stripper, even a waitress, would have been better than that.”

Ida and Peter laughed.

“He had money though, thank God,” Agnes said. “I just keep working because I like the attention.”

“Brilliant,” Ida said.

“What happened, between you and Ma?” Alice asked, quietly.

Agnes brushed the crumbs off her lap before meeting Alice's eye. “Firstly, you need to know how bad things were for her. She did everything for me. Our father was God-awful, beat at least two other children out of our mother. Ma was so timid she wasn't much help. Bridie got strong. Too strong really. Something went wrong in her head and she could switch off, from anything. I want you to know I forgive her, totally. And I hope to God she forgave me too.”

Chapter thirty-two

~ 1960 ~

Bridie held the thin, rough hotel towel up round Aggie's waist while she changed into her new two-piece swimsuit. It was eight in the morning but it was already hot, and Bridie was impatient to get into the sea. Agnes fussed with her bottoms for ages, but whipped off her bra without a second thought, showing her bosoms to the world.

That was her sister through and through. Shy one minute, and brazen the next. She was an odd girl, really.

There weren't many people on the beach, only a dog walker or two, and a few old couples who, Bridie imagined, swam every day all year round. She watched an ancient woman come out of the water, bent, brown and wrinkled, a pink swimming cap on her small, shrivelled head. Bridie shuddered.

“Finished,” Agnes said, throwing her arms into the air.

Bridie looked at her sister's body. It was pale, with a nipped-in waist and full, round breasts. The two of them were similar, but she was shorter and softer than Bridie; less striking certainly, but the type of girl that men liked best.

She thought about Jacob.

She wouldn't ask yet.

They stood side by side looking out to sea. To their right, high above them, was the long pier and in the distance a few small boats floated on the glinting water.

“It's amazing out there,” said Agnes. “You always think of just blue, don't you? That's how you colour it in when you're little. But there are so many colours, it's like… I don't know, a dragon's tail.”

“Not a dragon's,” said Bridie. “That's too overblown. A fish's maybe? Come on, let's go in.”

They left their handbags and towels on the sand and held hands as they ran towards the shore. Shells crunched under their bare feet, before the icy water reached their toes.

“Jesus, Mary and Joseph,” said Agnes.

Bridie held her breath. “Come on,” she said, pulling her sister's arm. “Let's go out to the theatre, we can look at it from underneath.”

The end of the pier was further than it looked and the water got colder as they swam.

“I don't like it,” Agnes said, panting and spluttering as she struggled to catch up. “I keep imagining dead bodies and things down at the bottom, God knows how deep it is. Let's go back.”

“Come on,” said Bridie, treading water as she waited, turning her face to the sun. Why was her sister so slow? If she was on her own she'd have front-crawled there by now. “Don't be a sissy. We're near now. I think there are steps when we get there.”

They swam a little further, and Bridie went as slowly as she could, but Agnes was lagging behind.

She sounded panicky. “I'm really cold and tired. Please.”

“Let's go over there,” Bridie said, pointing at one of the huge steel posts that supported the pier. “We can hold onto it and rest.”

The post looked horrible, six feet wide, rusty and covered in barnacles, but Bridie knew Agnes couldn't refuse. They swam through cigarette ends and past a punctured dingy, the sea growing darker as they came under the shadow of the pier.

Agnes reached for the post and grasped it desperately, trying to find a footing. Above them were the wooden planks, the feet of tourists just visible as they stepped onto the gaps.

Bridie looked towards the beach and realised how far they'd come. It was a long way, it really was. No wonder Agnes was scared.

“I want to ask you something,” Bridie said.

“What?” Agnes asked, still bobbing uselessly against the post, her hands scrabbling to get a grip.

Without all her make-up she looked like a child.

“Are you sleeping with Jacob?”

“No,” Agnes said, but immediately started to cry. A small wave hit her face and she struggled to catch her breath.

“You're lying,” Bridie said.

“Yes, I mean. Not sleeping. Slept. I slept with him. Once.”

“You're still lying.”

“Please,” Agnes said.

Bridie looked at her sister, sobbing and spitting as she fought to keep her mouth above the water. She swam round, grabbed Aggie's hair, and pushed her head down, hard.

Bubbles rose to the surface while something thrashed beneath Bridie's hand.

The fingers grabbing at my thighs are fish
, she told herself,
and the hair brushing my stomach is seaweed.

She counted her breaths and looked over at the beach huts and – behind them – the hotel where Jacob was still asleep.

There were small splashes by Bridie's side. Chips hit the water as someone threw them over the railing above, and a flock of gulls, dozens of them, instantly flew down to get them.

She watched them squawk and fight until the last gull was gone, until the thing in her hand was still, and the black strands of seaweed floated slowly to the surface.

It was time to swim back.

On the beach there were more people now, families and couples, but their things lay untouched on the sand and Bridie pulled her dress over her wet swimsuit and picked up her bag.

Next to her a fat man sat with his wife, rubbing oil onto her already sunburnt back.

“Excuse me,” she said, flatly. “I saw a girl by the pier, drowning I think, could you call someone please?”

The man opened his mouth.

She didn't wait to hear his response, but turned and walked up the steps to the promenade, leaving the man now hollering behind her, while two young men who heard what he was shouting dropped their towels and ran past Bridie, towards the sea.

It was a lovely day. The sky was enormous. And the sun felt so soothing on her salty cheeks. “The greens and golds of a fish's tail,” she said to herself, as she walked through the gardens, up the hill, and back towards the Royal Bath Hotel.