Hi Pietro. No, of course not, not an Italian, an American. From the New York branch of the family …
Diverted by that intriguing possibility, but not wanting to stare, Flora shifted her gaze slightly and observed the other girl’s reflection in the mirror opposite. She looked away. And then back again, so swiftly that she felt her hair swinging against her cheek. The perfect double take, she thought. The classic double take.
It was herself.
But it wasn’t herself because there were two reflections in the mirror.
The newcomer, unaware of Flora’s mesmerized gaze, pulled a bright silk scarf off her head, shook back her hair, and then reached into a black crocodile bag and took out a cigarette and lit it from a book of matches that lay in the ashtray on the table. At once the air was filled with the smell of strong French tobacco. She stuck out a booted foot, hooked it around the leg of the table, and yanked the table toward her. She leaned forward, twisting her head away from Flora, and called again, “Hi, Pietro!”
Flora could not drag her eyes from the mirror. The girl’s hair was longer than her own, but shining and the same dark mahogany brown. She was carefully and elaborately made up, but that only served to emphasize the strong features and the mouth that was too big for her face. Her eyes were dark brown, the bristly lashes sooty with mascara. She reached out to pull the ashtray toward her, and Flora saw the dazzling, chunky ring and the scarlet nails, but the hands were slender and long-boned, their shape identical to Flora’s own.
They were even dressed alike, in jeans and turtleneck sweaters. But the other girl’s sweater was cashmere, and her jacket, which had been slung around her shoulders and was now shrugged aside, was a dark, gleaming mink.
The young waiter, having dealt with the customers at the bar, answered her summons, suddenly appearing almost at a run.
“Signorina, I am so sorry, I thought that…”
Slowly, he came to a standstill, his movements, his words, his very voice seemed to run down to a halt, like an old-fashioned gramophone that nobody’s remembered to wind.
After a little, “O.K., so what did you think?” said the girl who sat beside Flora. “You must surely realize I’m needing a drink.”
“But I thought … I mean, I have already…” He had gone quite pale. His dark eyes traveled cautiously to Flora’s face. So obviously shaken was he that Flora would not have been surprised if he had crossed himself, or made that sinister Mediterranean gesture which is meant to ward off the evil eye.
“Oh, Pietro, for heaven’s sake…”
But in the middle of that small burst of exasperation, she looked up and saw Flora watching her through the mirror.
The silence seemed to go on forever. Pietro broke it at last. “It is amazing,” he said, his voice scarcely audible and full of wonder. “It is amazing.”
They looked away from each other and into each other’s eyes and it was still like looking into the mirror.
The other girl recovered herself first. She said, “I’ll say it’s amazing,” and she did not sound nearly as sure of herself as she had before.
But Flora could think of nothing to say.
Pietro broke in once more. “But Signorina Schuster, when the other signorina came in, I thought it was yourself.” He turned to Flora. “I am sorry. You must have thought that I was very familiar, but I naturally mistook you for Signorina Schuster, she comes often, but I have not seen her for some time, and…”
“I didn’t think you were being familiar. I just thought you were being very kind.”
The girl with long hair was still staring at Flora, her dark eyes moving over Flora’s face, like an expert assessing a portrait. She said now, “You look just like me,” and she even sounded a little annoyed, as though this were some sort of an affront.
Flora felt moved to defend herself. “Well, you look like me,” she told her mildly. “We look like each other.” Still unnerved, she swallowed. “I think we probably even sound like each other.”
This was instantly confirmed by Pietro, who still stood rooted to the ground, his head going from one face to the other, like a spectator at a tennis match.
“That is so. You have the same voice, the same eyes. Even the same clothes. I would not have believed it unless I had seen it for myself. Mamma mia, you could be twins. You are…” He made finger-snapping motions, searching for the right word. “The same. You know?”
“Identical,” said Flora, flatly.
“That’s it! Identical! It’s fantastic!”
“Identical twins?” said the other girl, cautiously.
Their astonishment, the way that they couldn’t take their eyes off each other, finally got through to Pietro.
“You mean that you have never seen each other before?”
“Never.”
“But you must be sisters.”
He put his hand over his heart. Suddenly, it seemed, he could take no more. Flora wondered if he was going to faint, and hoped that he wasn’t. Instead, he took more practical action. He said, “I am going to open a bottle of champagne. It is a present … on the house. And I am going to drink a glass, too, because a miracle like this has never happened to me before. Just wait there…” he added, unnecessarily straightening the tables before them, as though afraid they might escape. “Don’t move. Just wait there,” and he bolted back to the bar, his starched white jacket alert with importance.
They scarcely heard him, scarcely noticed his going. Sisters. A strange obstruction had suddenly manifested itself in Flora’s throat. She made herself say it. “Sisters?”
“Twin sisters,” the other girl amended. “What’s your name?”
“Flora Waring.”
The other girl closed her eyes and opened them again, so slowly that it couldn’t be called a blink. She said, with studied calm, “That’s my name, too. Only I’m Rose.”
3
ROSE
“Rose Waring?”
“Well, not strictly speaking. Rose Schuster, really. But Waring’s my middle name, because my father was called Waring, but my stepfather’s called Harry Schuster. And he’s been my stepfather for years and years, so I’ve always been called Schuster, but Waring’s my middle name.” She stopped, having apparently run out of breath. They continued to gaze at each other, still astonished, but with a growing sense of recognition, of realization.
“Do you know who your real father was?” Flora asked at last.
“I never knew him. He and my mother separated when I was a baby. I think he was a schoolmaster.”
Flora thought of her father. Vague, loping about, maddening, but always totally honest and truthful. She thought, He couldn’t have. He couldn’t have done such a thing and never told me.
The silence between the two girls lengthened. Rose seemed to have nothing more to say. With an effort, Flora searched for words.
“Your mother. Was she called…” The name, scarcely ever mentioned, swam up out of her subconscious. “Pamela?”
“That’s right.”
“How old are you?”
“Twenty-two.”
“When is your birthday?”
“The seventeenth of June.”
Now, it was final. “Mine, too.”
“I was born under Gemini,” said Rose, and it was disconcerting to hear Marcia’s words of that very morning repeated so naturally. “The sign of the twins.” She smiled. “That’s appropriate enough, if you like.”
My twin. My sister. “But what happened?” asked Flora.
“Simple. They decided to separate, and they took one each.”
“But did you ever have the slightest idea?”
“Not the slightest. Did you?”
“No. That’s what shakes me.”
“Why should it shake you? It’s perfectly normal human behavior. Very tidy, very fair.”
“I think we should have been told.”
“What good would that have done? What difference would it have made?”
It was obvious
that Rose was more amused than shattered by the situation. “I think it’s hysterical,” she went on. “And the most hysterical part of the business is that our mother and father have been found out. And what a fantastic coincidence that we should meet up like this. Out of the blue. Have you ever been to this restaurant before?”
“Never.”
“You mean, you just walked in?”
“I only arrived in London this evening. I’ve been in Cornwall for the past year.”
“That makes it more unbelievable than ever. In the whole of this immense city…” She spread her hands, leaving the sentence to finish itself.
“They always say,” said Flora, “that London is made up of a lot of villages. I suppose if you stick to your own village, you’re bound to meet someone you know.”
“That’s true enough. Walk into Harrod’s and you bump into acquaintances all the way through. But it still doesn’t stop it being the most extraordinary thing that’s even happened to me.” She pushed her hair back from her forehead with her fingers, a gesture that Flora recognized, with some shock, as one of her own. “What were you doing in Cornwall?” Rose asked, as if it could make any difference.
“My father and I went to live there. He still does. He teaches there.”
“You mean he’s still a schoolteacher?”
“Yes, he’s still a schoolmaster.” It was ridiculous to continue to feel as shaken as she did. She decided to be as matter of fact about the uncanny coincidence as Rose was. “And what happened to you?” she asked, sounding unreal, like a person at a formal cocktail party.
“Mother married again when I was about two. He’s called Harry Schuster and he’s an American, but he’s spent most of his life in Europe as representative for his firm.”
“So you were brought up in Europe?”
“You could say that. If it wasn’t Paris it was Rome, and if it wasn’t Rome, it was Frankfurt. You know how it is.…”
“Is he nice? Mr. Schuster, I mean.”
“Yes. Sweet.”
And terribly rich, thought Flora, eyeing the mink and the cashmere and the crocodile bag. Pamela, ditching the penniless schoolmaster, had done a good deal better for herself the second time around.
She thought of something else. “Do you have any brothers or sisters?”
“No. Just me. How about you?”
“I’m an only, and likely to stay that way. Pa’s just married again. She’s called Marcia and she’s super, but she’s not exactly a chicken.”
“What does your father look like?”
“Tall. Scholarly, I suppose. Very kind. He wears horn-rimmed spectacles and he forgets things. He’s very…” She searched for some brilliant word that would describe her father, but only came up with “charming.” And she added, “And very truthful. That’s why I find this all so extraordinary.”
“You mean, he’s never palmed you off with a fib?”
Flora was a little shocked. “I never imagined he was capable of suppressing a truth, let alone telling a lie.”
“He must be something.” Rose stubbed out her cigarette, thoughtfully grinding it to pieces in the middle of the ashtray. “My mother is perfectly capable of suppressing the truth, or even telling a wing-ding of a lie. But she also is charming. When she wants to be!”
Despite herself, Flora smiled, because Rose’s description matched so exactly what she had always imagined for herself.
“Is she pretty?” she asked.
“Very slim and young-looking. Not beautiful, but everybody thinks she is. It’s a sort of confidence trick.”
“Is … is she in London now?” Flora made herself ask, thinking, If she is and I have to meet her, what will I say to her? What will I do?
“No, she’s in New York. Actually, she and Harry and I have been on a trip; I only flew in to Heathrow last week. She wanted me to stay, but I had to come back, because…” She did not finish the sentence. Her eyes slid away as she reached for another cigarette and burrowed in her bag for her lighter. “… Oh, various reasons,” she finished unsatisfactorily.
Flora waited hopefully to be told the reasons, but they were interrupted once more by Pietro returning with the champagne bottle and three glasses. With some ceremony he drew the cork and poured the wine, passing the neck of the bottle from glass to glass without spilling a drop. He wiped the bottle clean with a starched napkin, picked up his own glass, and raised it to them.
“To the reunion. To sisters finding each other. It is, I think, an act of God.”
“Thank you,” said Flora. “Happy days,” said Rose. Pietro departed once more, by now quite moist at the eyes, and they were left with the bottle to finish between them. “We’ll probably get plastered,” said Rose, “but never mind about that. Where had we got to?”
“You were saying you had to come back to London from the States.”
“Oh, sure. But now, I think I am going to Greece. Perhaps tomorrow or the next day. I haven’t exactly decided.”
It sounded a marvelously jet-set, spur-of-the-moment existence.
“Where are you staying?” Flora asked, expecting to be told the Connaught or the Ritz. But it appeared that Harry Schuster’s job carried with it a flat in London as well as the apartments in Paris, Frankfurt, and Rome. The London flat was in Cadogan Gardens. “Just round the corner,” said Rose, casually. “I always walk round here when I want something to eat. How about you?”
“You mean, where do I live? Nowhere at the moment. I told you, I only came up from Cornwall today. I was going to stay with a girlfirend, only it didn’t work out, so I’ve got to find a flat. I’ve got to find a job, too, only that’s beside the point.”
“Where are you spending tonight?”
Flora told her about the Shelbourne, the luggage dumped in the hall, the potted palms, and the suffocating atmosphere. “I’d forgotten how depressing it was. But never mind, it’s only for one night.”
She became aware that Rose was watching her with a cool and thoughtful expression in her dark eyes. (Do I ever look like that? thought Flora. The word calculating sprang to mind and had to be hastily slapped down.)
Then Rose said, “Don’t go back.” Flora stared. “I mean it. We’ll have something to eat here, and then we’ll find a taxi and go and collect your luggage, and we’ll go back to Harry’s flat, and you can stay there. It’s vast, and there are loads of beds. Besides, if I go to Greece tomorrow I shan’t see you again, and we’ve got so much to talk about, we shall need an entire night to ourselves. And anyway, it’s super, because you can stay in the flat after I’ve gone. You can stay there until you’ve found somewhere else to live.”
“But…” For some reason Flora found she was searching for objections to this apparently delightful plan. “But won’t anybody mind?” was all she could come up with.
“Who should mind? I’ll fix it with the hall porter. Harry never minds what I do. And as for Mother…” Something amused her. She left the sentence unfinished and began to laugh. “What would she say if she could see us now? Getting together, making friends. What do you think your father would say?”
Flora shied from the idea. “I can’t imagine.”
“Will you tell him that we’ve found each other?”
“I don’t know. Perhaps. One day.”
“Was it a cruel thing to do?” asked Rose, suddenly thoughtful. “Separating identical twins. Identical twins are meant to be two halves of the same person. Separating us was perhaps like cutting that person in half.”
“In that case, they may have done us a kindness.”
Rose’s eyes narrowed. “I wonder,” she said. “why my mother chose me, and your father chose you.”
“Perhaps they tossed a coin.” Flora spoke lightly, because for some reason, it didn’t bear thinking about.
“Would everything have been upside down if the coin had fallen the other way?”
“It would certainly have been different.”
Different. She thought of her father, of Seal
Cottage by winter firelight, and the tarry smell of burning driftwood. She thought of tender, early springs and summer seas dancing with sun pennies. She thought of red wine in a carafe set in the middle of the scrubbed table and the comforting sound of Beethoven’s Pastoral thundering from the record player. And now, she remembered the warm and loving presence of Marcia.
“Would you have wanted it to be different?” asked Rose.
Flora smiled. “No.”
Rose reached out for the ashtray and stubbed out her cigarette. She said, “Nor me. I wouldn’t have changed a thing.”
* * *
Now it was Friday.
In Edinburgh, after a morning of cloud and rain, the sun had finally struggled through the murk, the sky was clearing, and the city glittered in a brilliant autumn light. To the north, beyond the deep indigo of the Firth of Forth, the hills of Fife lay serene against a sky of palest blue. Across Princes Street the municipal flower beds of the Waverly Gardens were ablaze with fiery dahlias, and on the far side of the railway line the cliffs swept up to the theatrical bulk of the castle with its distant, fluttering flag.
Antony Armstrong, emerging from his office into Charlotte Square, was taken unaware by the beauty of the afternoon. Because he was taking a long weekend, it had been an exceptionally busy morning. He had not bothered about lunch. He had not even raised his eyes to glance out of the window, imagining that the day was continuing much as it had started.
Preoccupied and anxious, he hurried to get to his car and drive to the airport. He was to catch the London plane and go in search of Rose. In spite of all that he was brought to a standstill by the unexpectedness of the sunshine reflected in still-damp pavements, by the glittering, coppery leaves of the trees in the square, and by the smell. It was a country smell, of autumn—a suggestion of peat and heather and wild uplands. It blew in with a freshening breeze from hills not after all so very far away. Antony, standing on the pavement with his raincoat slung over his shoulder and an overnight bag in his hand, took a few deep sniffs and was reminded of Fernrigg and of Tuppy. That he found comforting. It helped him to unwind and stop feeling so anxious.