Stephen Baxter - Coalescent

“England swings, Dan.”

He asked about my flight and my hotel, and I was gratified that Michael started telling him about my robot kit. We played for a while. Then we took a walk along the beach — sandy and empty, a private stretch reserved for the estate of which this house was a part.

As the boys ran ahead, still impossibly full of energy, Dan and I walked together. Dan Bazalget was a big man, built like a rugby player. I knew he had played football at college, thirty years before, and his bulk seemed too large for his short-sleeved white shirt. His face was broad, his eyes small. He was bald, and had shaved the remnant fringe of his hair, so that his head gleamed like a cannonball.

Dan was good at conversation. He asked me about the aftermath of Dad’s death, and unlike my sister drew me out a little about the state of my life, my work. But there was always an odd reserve about him, his deep brown eyes unreadable. He would look at me and smile, ostensibly generous, neither judging nor caring. To him I was surely just an appendage of his wife’s past, neither welcome nor unwelcome in his life, just there.

As the sun began its journey down the western sky, we returned home for dinner, the boys running ahead, still whooping, hollering, and fighting.

The meal was strained. The kids picked up on the tension and were subdued. Gina was polite enough during the meal, and her gentle chiding of her children for lapses in manners and so forth was as calm and efficient as ever. But her smiles were steel and fooled nobody.

Before the dessert she went to the kitchen, and I joined her, ostensibly to stack dishes and help make coffee.

“I’m sorry,” I said.

“For what?”

“For springing that on you about Rosa. It wasn’t fair.”

“No, it wasn’t.” She loaded her dishwasher with as much aggression as her expensive crockery would allow her.

“But I know she exists, Gina. Or at least existed.” I told her about the photograph.

She sighed and faced me. “And now you’re asking me.”

“ You must know. You must have been — what, twelve, thirteen? You saw her born, growing up—”

“I don’t want to think about this.”

“I need you to tell me the truth,” I said, my voice harder. “I think you have a duty, Gina. You’re my sister, for Christ’s sake. You’re all I’ve got left. Et cetera. I even know where they sent her — to some kind of school, run by a religious order in Rome. The Puissant Order of—”

“Holy Mary Queen of Virgins.” I knew she must have known, but it was still a shock to me to hear those words from her lips. “Yes, they sent her there. She was about four, I think.”

“Why send her away — why to Italy, for God’s sake?”

“Remember I was only a kid myself, George … Take a guess. The simplest reason of all.”

“Money?”

“Damn right. Remember, I was about ten when you were born. It had been a long gap. Mum and Dad had taken a long time trying to decide if they could raise another kid. You know how cautious Dad was. Well, along you came, but they hadn’t banked on twins — you and Rosa.”

“We were twins?” Shit, I hadn’t known that. Another kick in the head.

“And then, just after you two were born, they ran into trouble; Dad lost his job, I think. The timing of it all was one of God’s little jokes. They didn’t tell me much, but it was going to be a struggle: I remember they talked about selling the house. They wrote to relatives, asking for help and advice. And then this offer came in, from the Order. They’d take in Rosa, school her, care for her. Suddenly, with just you , they were back to the position they’d bargained for when they decided to have a second kid.”

I felt a complex melange of emotions — relief, envy. “Why her, not me?”

“The Order only takes girls.”

“Why didn’t she come back?”

She said, “Maybe the Order has rules. I don’t know. I wasn’t privy to the discussions.”

I wondered briefly why, if my parents had always been as hard up as they claimed, my dad had continued to send money to the Order, long after Rosa must have completed her education.

“They never told me about Rosa,” I said. “Not a word.”

“What good would it have done? … I swore it would never happen to me,” Gina said suddenly.

“What?”

“Being so poor you have to send your kid away. Et cetera.” She was staring at the wall.

For once I thought I could read her. I’d only been seeing this from my point of view. But Gina had been old enough to understand what was happening, though of course she’d only been a helpless kid herself. When Rosa was sent away, she must have been afraid it would be her next.

Impulsively I put a hand on her arm. She flinched away.

She said, “Look, Mum and Dad believed they were doing the best for Rosa. I’m sure of that.”

I shook my head. “I’m no parent. But I don’t see how any mother could send her little kid away to a religious order full of strangers.”

She frowned. “But they didn’t. How much do you know about the Order?”

“The name. Rome.” Apart from a request that I keep up Dad’s payments, which I’d refused, the Order hadn’t responded to my emailed requests for information. “Oh, the genealogy business.”

“George, that’s not even the half of it. The Order are family. Our family. That’s how Uncle Lou made contact with them in the first place.”

“Lou?” He was actually our mother’s uncle, my great-uncle.

“He was in the forces — the American forces — during the war. He was in Italy at the end, and somehow found them. The Order. And he found out they saw us as a kind of long-lost branch of the family.”

“How so?”

“Because of Regina.”

“Who? … Not the Roman girl. That’s just a family legend.”

“Not a legend. History, George.”

“It can’t be. Nobody can trace their family tree that far back. Not even the queen, for God’s sake.”

She shrugged. “Suit yourself. Anyhow Lou always kept the contact to the Order, and later when Mum and Dad got into trouble—”

I eyed her. “Dad sent money to this damn Order. Do you?”

“Hell, no,” she snapped back. “Look, George, don’t cross-examine me. I don’t even want to talk about this.”

“No, you never did, did you?” I asked coldly. “You left it all behind, when you came here—”

“Yes, away from that cramped little island with its stifling history. And away from our murky family bullshit. I wanted my kids to grow up here , in the light and the space. Can you blame me? But now it’s all chased me here …” She became aware she was raising her voice. Only a screen separated this part of the kitchen from the dining area.

“Gina, do you think all families are like ours?”

“One way or another,” she said. “Like huge bombs, and we all spend the rest of our lives picking our way through the rubble.”

“I’m going after her.” I was making the decision as I spoke. “I’m going to find Rosa.”

“Why?”

“Because she’s my sister. My twin .”

“If you think that will help you sort out your screwed-up head, be my guest. But whatever happens, whatever you find, don’t tell me about it. I mean it.” She actually shut her eyes and mouth, as if to exclude me.

“All right,” I said gently. I thought fast. “What about Uncle Lou? Is he still alive? Where does he live?”

He was alive, and lived, it turned out, not far from Gina. “Florida is heaven for the elderly,” she said dryly.

“You have his address? And you must have a contact for the Order. An address — maybe an intermediary … Dad gave you a damn grandfather clock. I can’t believe he wouldn’t have given you a contact for your sister. Come on , Gina.”