Dialogues of the Dead

They climbed through the hedge into the little copse that the deer had emerged from and sat drinking their coffee with the gnarled bole of a beech tree between them and the wind.

Hat said nothing, but suddenly she started to talk as if in response to a question.

“Yes, I did want to be an actress. Like you said, what else would I want to be, you know, born in a trunk, all that crap? Serge-my twin Sergius-he reacted the other way. He wanted to be a lawyer. All the drama, he used to say, and twenty times the money. I suppose I looked at the great stars while he just looked at Mum and Dad.”

“They weren’t all that successful, then?” said Hat.

“They seemed to work pretty steadily while we were young. And they always talked about the past as if they’d been really big once and, with a bit of luck, would make it to the top again. But by the time I got into my teens, even the steadiness was going. There were long periods of resting, which they seemed to do best with a glass in their hands. Every couple needs a common interest to keep them together. Theirs was drinking.”

“Seriously?”

“They were drunks,” she said flatly. “It was good in one way. Being neglected by your parents simply because they’re so self-centred you don’t rate is hard for a kid to take. But being neglected because they’ve got a drink problem makes some kind of sense. Anyway, I was stage-struck and planning to go to drama college after I left school, and I did a lot of amateur stuff and I even got a toe-hold on the pro theatre, crowd scenes and walk-on juvenile parts. What I thought of as my really big break came when I got the part of Beth in a stage version of Little Women being done as a summer show in Torquay which was where my parents were resting at the time.”

“A big break?” said Hat. “How big?”

“I was only fifteen, for God’s sake,” she snapped. Then, realizing belatedly his query rose from genuine interest and had nothing of sneer in it, she smiled apologetically and said, “I mean, it seemed huge to me. And it was a nice part, long way off a lead, but I got to be interestingly ill.”

“I can vouch you’re pretty hot stuff at that,” said Hat, recalling her opening the door to him when he paid his sick-visit.

“Thank you kindly,” she said. “Anyway, my big opening night came and my father was supposed to be driving me to the theatre but he suddenly announced that he couldn’t make it and my mother would have to take me instead. Serge got into a shouting match with him, asking him what the hell could be more important than going to my first night and Dad gave him some hammy speech about how nothing but the most urgent business affecting the prosperity of the whole family could make him miss such an occasion and if there was any chance of his getting away to catch even the briefest glimpse of his little girl on the stage, he would do it. Then he was gone.”

“That must have made you happy.”

“To tell the truth, Serge was a lot more fired up about it than I was. I wasn’t going on the stage to impress my dad, it was all those other people, those strangers, that I wanted to bowl over with my talent. But I did need a lift, and when the time came and I found Mum stoned out of her mind, then I really blew my top. Serge calmed me down and rang a mini-cab. The time came, and it didn’t. We rang again. There’d been some kind of traffic holdup, it would be with us soon. It wasn’t. Now I was getting hysterical. And Serge appeared with my mother’s car keys and said, no problem, he’d drive me.”

Hat began to see where the story was going.

He said softly, “He was how old? Fifteen?”

“That’s right. My twin and by coincidence the same age. You ought to be a detective.”

“Sorry. I meant, he couldn’t have a licence. Could he drive?”

“Like all fifteen-year-old boys, he thought he could,” said Rye. “We set out. I was late, not so late it was a real problem, but in my state of mind I played up like I was some prima donna late for a Royal Command Performance. I yelled at him to drive faster. It was a wet murky evening. Faster, I screamed, faster. He just grinned and said, ‘Fasten your seat-belt, Sis. It’s going to be a bumpy night.’ Those were the last words I heard him say. We went round a bend too fast, got into a skid …it all came back just now when you had to brake …”

Hat put his arms around her and held her. She leaned into him for a while then straightened up determinedly and pushed him away.

“We went straight into a car coming the other way,” she said in a flat voice, speaking very quickly as if this was something she had to say but wanted to get over. “There were two people in it. They were both killed. Serge died too. As for me, I remember the skid, and I remember lying there on a pavement-outside a churchyard, would you believe? — looking up at the night sky …then I don’t recall another thing till I woke up in hospital over a week later.”

Hat whistled.

“A week? That must have been heavy damage you took.”