Kingsley Amis - Dear Illusion - Selected Stories

(‘I’ve been over this so many times I have it off by heart.’)

Both men, aged thirty-nine when studied, had married a woman called Linda, divorced her and subsequently married one called Betty.

One twin had named his first son James Alan, and the other had named his James Allan.

Both had been employed by McDonalds and as a filling-station attendant.

Both had white benches built round the trunk of a tree in the garden.

‘I’m particularly fond of that last one,’ said Leo. ‘I have fun imagining some guy who likes to think we’re shaped by our environment rather than by our heredity explaining that either as a coincidence in itself or as the result of coincidental similarity in upbringing. Like the paddling in what comes next.’

From twenty-five resemblances in a study of a pair of female twins:

Both had fallen off a fence in childhood and bore scars in the same place.

One had a reasonless chronic pain in the right thigh, the other had a wasted muscle in the right hip but suffered no pain.

They folded their clothes in the same way, and when putting blouses and shirts in drawers, both did up every other button.

Both had developed the habit of walking backwards into the sea when going paddling.

‘And just in the event that’s not enough to convince you of something,’ said Leo finally, ‘and before we go any further, my wife, whom I married seven years ago, is called Ruth.’

‘Does she look like me?’ asked Ruth Davidson.

With only a brief hesitation, Leo said, ‘My Ruth is roughly of the same physical type as yourself, fair-complexioned, vivacious in appearance if that’s physical. But here, you can see for yourself’, and he took a photograph out of his wallet and laid it on the table between them.

Ruth picked it up, studied it briefly and passed it to Daniel, who saw a pretty woman of about thirty looking rather like his wife, about as much like her as a sister of hers of similar age might have done, perhaps a fraternal twin. He got up and opened the French door into the garden. In fine weather like this the small kitchen could begin to get quite stuffy in the middle of the day. He filled a glass with tap water but set it down after only one sip.

‘What sort of temperament would you say your wife has?’ he asked Leo.

‘As to temperament, well, what shall I say, not as vivacious as her appearance.’

‘Depressive?’

‘Well, Daniel, I think depressive just like that might be going a little far, you know? But in the right direction. Let’s say anxious, nervous, ah, apprehensive? Inclined to fear the worst, is that enough?’

‘Yes,’ said Ruth, avoiding her husband’s eye.

After a silence, Leo went on, ‘But I didn’t come all this way just to compare notes with you, Dan. It’s been wonderful and extraordinary finding you like this, but there’s more than that at stake. First, though, do you want us to go to Minnesota and have ourselves examined by scientists? I have to say they’d pay our expenses if we did.’

‘No, let’s keep this to ourselves.’

‘My thoughts exactly. Now, you no doubt recall that when you told Irving Rothberg that by profession you were a minister of religion, he became agitated, because my—’

‘You’re a clergyman too.’

‘Correct, Daniel, and not only that, but a minister of the Episcopal Church, which is the name for the Anglican communion in the States, which makes me as close a replica of you as I could possibly be in that rather important department.’

‘Which must have struck your friend Rothberg as a coincidence so far-fetched as to be uncanny,’ said Ruth, looking at Daniel now.

‘So that was how you knew about the General Synod and the rest of it,’ he said.

‘Correct again. Now… brother… do you want to go on a little further, or do you want to stop? For now, that is. Maybe you’d like to stop.’

Looking into the bright blue eyes that were so like his own as seen for dozens of years in mirrors, even looking into them quite briefly, made Daniel feel almost dizzy, if not terrified, then in more serious danger than he had ever thought of in his life before. But as soon as he could he said, trying to sound like a man filling in a form, ‘I’d like to go on a little further, such as, when were you ordained, Leo? Of course you know the exact date.’

‘Of course. It was March 22nd, 1985.’

‘I was 4th April in the same year.’

‘Not the same day, at least,’ said Leo. He put out his hand in an odd gesture, as if he wanted to give comfort or reassurance, hesitated and drew back.

‘Close enough. Nine, thirteen days. And one more thing, if you will. Was your ordination the result of a sudden decision or did you approach it gradually, through stages of belief and conviction and…’

‘It was sudden. Do you want me to tell you about it?’

‘No. No, not now. We’ve come a long way in a short time. I’d like to have a chance to adjust.’

‘I hoped you were going to say that. In fact it wouldn’t be overstating the case to say I knew you were going to say that.’

‘Oh, I knew it too,’ said Ruth. ‘That or something to the same effect. Easy enough to see it in his face, sorry, darling, your face, just before you spoke. Anybody could have seen it who happened to be watching you attentively.’

‘Which you were certainly doing,’ said Leo with a smile.

‘Yes, I’ve been watching you both attentively most of the time we’ve been down here. And comparing how you look. Now there was a pair of identical twins at my school, at least they said they were identical and they should have known, but they didn’t look identical much. They were dressed the same sometimes, but nobody ever had any trouble telling them apart. Well, one of them even wore glasses most of the time and the other didn’t seem to need them. And one was fatter than the other. Identical — no, what’s needed is a word meaning rather more alike than similar. That’s what you two are to look at, all you are. Dozens of differences, mostly small, shape of lower lip, left ear, really both ears, where the nose starts — dozens of them. You’d only look very much alike at a distance, which is how you first saw each other. There.’

‘I never realized you were as observant as that,’ said Daniel.

‘But what’s it all in aid of, you mean. Just, you don’t want the two of you to be too much alike, do you?’

Leo nodded vigorously. ‘Right, Ruth, right.’

‘It’s true,’ said Daniel. ‘I want to be told we’re not.’

‘Here’s another way we’re not,’ said Leo. ‘I’d be — let’s say I wouldn’t give a damn if we were utterly alike in every way there is.’

‘That would make us completely unlike in the most important way of all.’

‘Like you said, old buddy, we need to have time to adjust. How are the two of you fixed for later? Can I take you out to dinner?’

‘Thank you, Leo, but speaking for myself I don’t think I’d feel comfortable. Too much risk of you and me being stared at. You come here.’

Leo grinned. ‘I see I mustn’t forget that as well as being my twin brother you’re an Englishman.’

‘True enough. I was thinking we’d find it easier to talk with just the three of us.’

‘Well, it’s your town. Which I mean to go out and take a look at meanwhile. It’s the first time I’ve ever been in it.’

They made their arrangements and Leo soon went off to the small hotel quite close by where he was staying, setting off on foot as a way of starting his look at London.

‘He’s got your walk,’ said Ruth. ‘Or you’ve got his.’ She seemed charged up by recent events, her curiosity and alertness whetted.

‘I suppose that’s only to be expected.’