Philippa Carr: Saraband for Two Sisters

YESTERDAY, THE TWELFTH DAY of June in the year sixteen hundred and thirty-nine, was our seventeenth birthday—mine and Bersaba’s. It was fitting that we should be born in June, the birth sign of which is Gemini, for we are twins. In our family birthdays are always celebrated as joyous occasions. Our mother is responsible for that. There are certain women in our family who are born to be mothers and she is one of them. I don’t think I am; I’m certain Bersaba isn’t. But perhaps I am mistaken, because it can be a quality which is only discovered when one reaches the state of motherhood, and one thing I have learned is that one can be mistaken about a great deal, which is one of the less gratifying experiences of growing up. I once remarked to Bersaba that every birthday our mother thanked God for giving us to her and Bersaba answered that she did it every day. My mother, Tamsyn Landor, was married five years before our brother Fennimore was born and then another seven years elapsed before she gave birth to us—her twins. I believe she had wanted a large family, but now she would say she had just what she wanted, for she is a woman who can adjust existing conditions to her dreams of contentment which I am old enough to know is a rare gift.

We had the usual birthday celebrations. June is a lovely month for a birthday because so much of it can be celebrated out of doors. On our birthday it became a ritual that if the day was fine we rode out into the meadows and there we would feast off cold poultry and what we called West Country Tarts, pastry cases with the fruit of the season—strawberries for our birthday—in them and custard or clouted cream on the top, which were a very special delicacy. Of course there had been rainy birthdays and on these occasions the friends and neighbours who joined us would come to the house, where we would play games such as blindman’s buff or hunt the slipper and then we would dress up and act charades or produce the plays which we had seen the mummers do at Christmas time. Whatever the weather, birthdays were days to be looked forward to and I had said every year to Bersaba that as ours was two in one it should be extra special.

On this particular birthday the weather had been fine and we had been out into the meadows and the young people from Kroll Manor and Trent Park had joined us. We had played ball games and kayles—which consisted of knocking down pins with a stick or a ball—and after that hide-and-seek, during which Bersaba had not been found and caused a certain anxiety because our mother was always afraid that something terrible would happen to us. We were an hour searching for Bersaba and finally she gave herself up. She looked hurt when she saw how worried our mother had been, but I who knew her so well guessed that she was gratified to be so worried about. Bersaba often seemed as though she wanted to assure herself that she was important to us.

We all went back to Trystan Priory, our home, and there were more games and feasting, and just before dark servants came from Kroll Manor and Trent Park to take our friends home and that was the end of another birthday we thought. But it was not so.

Our mother came to our room. We had always shared a room and sometimes I thought that now we were growing up we should have separate apartments—there were plenty of rooms in the Priory—but I waited for Bersaba to suggest it and I think perhaps she was waiting for me to do so, and as neither of us did we went on in the old way.

Our mother looked rather solemn.

She sat down on the big carved chair which Bersaba and I used to fight over when we were young. It was a wonderful chair with griffins at the end of the arms and I always felt I had the advantage when I sat in that chair, and as Bersaba felt the same there was competition to get there first. Now our mother sat there and looked at us with that benign affection which I took for granted then and remembered with nostalgia later on.

‘Seventeen,’ she said. ‘It’s a turning point. You’re no longer children, you know.’

Bersaba sat quietly, her hands in her lap. Bersaba was a quiet person. I was scarcely that. I often wondered why people said they couldn’t tell us apart. Although we looked identical, our natures were so different that that should have been an indication.

‘Next year,’ went on our mother, ‘you’ll be eighteen. There’ll be a different birthday party for you. It will be more grown up and there won’t be games such as you’ve been playing today.’

‘I suppose we shall have a ball,’ I said, and I could not keep the excitement out of my voice, for I loved dancing and I excelled at it.

‘Yes, and you will be meeting more people. I was talking to your father about it last time he was home, and he agreed with me.’

I wondered idly if they had ever disagreed about anything. I couldn’t believe they ever had.

‘But that is a year ahead,’ she went on, as though she were pleased that it could be postponed. ‘There is something else. It’s a tradition in our family that the women of the household keep journals. It’s a strange one, because it has been carried on in an unbroken line since your great-great-grandmother Damask Farland began it. It is possible to follow our family history in these journals. Now that you are growing up you may read that of Damask and of your great-grandmother Catherine. You will find it of the utmost interest.’

‘And Grandmother Linnet’s and yours?’ asked Bersaba.

‘They are not yet for reading.’

‘Oh, what a pity,’ I cried, but Bersaba was looking thoughtful, and she said gravely, ‘If people knew that what they wrote would be read by those living round them they wouldn’t tell the truth … not the whole truth.’

Our mother nodded, slowly smiling at Bersaba. Bersaba had a certain wisdom which I lacked. I said whatever came into my head, just allowing it to flow out without thinking very much about it. Bersaba often thought carefully before she spoke.

‘Why should they not?’ I demanded. ‘What is the point of keeping a diary if you don’t tell the truth?’

‘Some people see the truth as they want to,’ said Bersaba.

‘Then how can it be the truth?’

‘It’s truth to them because that’s what they believe, and if they are writing for people to read who might have been there when whatever they are writing about was happening they would tell their version of it.’

‘There’s some truth in that,’ said my mother. ‘So, your journal is your own secret. It must be so. It is only years later that it becomes the property of the family.’

‘When we are dead,’ I said with a shiver, but I was fascinated by it. I thought of the generations to come reading all about my life. I hoped it would be worth reading.

My mother went on: ‘So now that you are growing up I am going to suggest that you keep your journals. I am giving you one each tomorrow and a desk in which you can lock them up when you have written in them. They will be your very own private property.’

‘Do you still write in yours, Mother?’ asked Bersaba.

She smiled gently. ‘I still write now and then. Once I wrote a good deal. That was in the days before I married your father. I had a great deal to write about then.’ Her expression clouded. I knew she was thinking of the dreadful mystery of her mother’s death. ‘Now,’ she said, ‘I hardly ever write. There is nothing dramatic to record. Life has been happy and peaceful for these last years, and happiness and a peaceful existence have one failing only—they give little to write about. I hope, my darlings, that you will find only happy events to record in your books. But write all the same … write of the ordinary happy things of life.’