Two Faces

Two Faces

         Martin picked up the keys of his late great-aunt Jilly's house from the estate agent and walked the mile of hot, white concrete footpaths through Brighton. The sun was at its peak, burning down from the azure sky and through his thinning blonde hair.

         His mother had phoned him two days ago to say that his spinster great-aunt had died. No surprise to him really - she was ninety-two. Her will stated that her house and its contents be sold and then the money divided up amongst her nephews and nieces. Knowing that Martin had, as a child, quite often stayed at Aunt Jilly's house, his mother had thought he might like to visit the old place one last time and take with him a souvenir as a reminder of his many happy times there. Martin agreed and thanked his mother, then hung up and tried to recall a happy time at Aunt Jilly's. He had not visited her since he had turned twelve, and had tried his best to forget her.

         Martin loosened his tie and collar, feeling the sweat running down his pale neck and body beneath his cheap acrylic shirt. His face, he knew, would be bright red now from the exertion of the walk and probably, by tomorrow, also from sunburn. The curse of being from English stock. He vaguely noted the shops and houses as he passed, but few of them bore any resemblance to the way he remembered them from his childhood. Things had grown; things had changed. Home units and apartments flourished where once old wrought-iron lace and weatherboards had nestled among the ivy and pink tea roses. The British flavour of the suburb was fading, replaced by the more sterile taste of money. He knew his aunt's house would likely be bulldozed and turned into a knot of trendy bed-sits, but he felt no sorrow at the loss of this piece of personal history.

         Martin opened the rotting picket gate and walked up the gravel path towards the double-fronted Victorian cottage. No longer as white and clean as he remembered, the paint was flaking and stained with rust from the few remaining pieces of wrought still attached. The garden was mainly weeds, alive with bugs and dandelion flowers, but here and there stood the huge trunks of old, blooming, pink rose bushes. He reached out with trembling fingers to touch one of the giant, sickly-scented blooms...

          "Marty! You're such a silly, childish boy. You keep away from my pretty rose bushes or you'll gouge out an eye on one of the thorns and have to go to hospital and be blind for ever and ever! Believe me, you will!"

         He retreated from the rose bush as if bitten and felt in his pocket for the key to open the glass-panelled front door. Out of the sunshine and into the coolness of the veranda, Martin felt himself sweating more.

         The door opened with surprising ease. He took a deep breath and entered the long, dim hallway, taking his time to allow his eyes to adjust. The smell of dust and something too sweet hung listlessly in the air. Aunt Jilly, he knew, had been sick for some time and was moved to a nursing home over a year ago. He had not wished to visit her. The house had remained untouched exactly as she had left it.

         The floorboards creaked as he walked into the first room, the sitting room, and stood before the old oaken fireplace. Grimly he forced himself to raise his eyes to the mantelpiece and to the picture above it that seemed to have hung there forever. It was a large, walnut-framed photogravure print of a sailboat from the late eighteen hundreds.

          "Your great-great-grandparents came here on this boat, Marty. You have to have a sense of family history. You have to know your place. Your grandfather was the captain of this boat and he had this picture made when he returned to shore. Don't you go hiding your face in your hands again, you scaredy-cat brat! Look at this, or I'll give you another good whack! This is something you must see. It'll make you strong. Don't be so weak and childish."

         He reached up and wiped a little of the clouding dust from the glass of the print. The title was "Women And Children First On The Lady Oriel". The grime obscured the fine black-and-white detail of the drawing of the schooner being ripped apart by a ferocious storm, waves taller than the masts. The women, children and wounded sailors were being piled high into the one, long, flooding dinghy. It was the detail, however, of the people within the picture that always affected Martin. They were caught in a frozen moment of terror and agony - limbs hung at wrong angles or severed and floating in the swell, while bloated bodies bobbed with those screaming as they drifted from help. To the adult Martin, it all seemed too gruesome and gory for a simple narrative. He felt that the artist had been rather over-zealous in his bloody and explicit detail of a simple abandoning of a ship.

         Martin's fingers brushed aside the dust on the one screaming passenger in particular that he remembered so well. A small boy with his face clinging desperately to the side of the dinghy...

          "It isn't you, Marty, you stupid boy! It may look like you but it isn't! He's not even a relative, and anyway he died all puffed up and drowned and full of seaweed. I'll bet he didn't listen to his aunt either. Don't you cry now! You're not going to drown! I want you to look at this picture and remember it. Remember me showing it to you. You should thank me because this will make you tough enough for the world out there. Remember this!"

         Martin wiped his damp nylon sleeve over the entire picture, smearing the dust and darkening it into mud. He rubbed harder until the dirt disappeared. Its fine detail exposed to him now, Martin studied the picture for the first time through adult eyes. For the first time in twenty years he did not shrink away and cry. For the first time he did not see his own death in the black and white line print on the wall as he had always done when his Aunt Jilly would force him to gaze at it for hours on end during each visit. He saw now that the artist had a great deal of talent for horror but not for humanity. The faces of the people were crudely sketched and out of proportion, with the exception of the drowning one that looked like young Martin.

         As Martin stretched closer he noticed that an old monochrome photograph of his face had been carefully cut out and pasted over the top of the original print. It was obvious now, but as a child he had not spotted the deception.

          "You are such a weak, frightened little boy, Marty! Even a seven-year-old has to grow up and stop being childish some time. You have to be stronger and tougher if you want to survive in this world. Look at this picture and study it closely and never forget what part it plays in your history! You'll thank me one day!"

         Martin took the picture from the wall and wrapped it in an old blanket. As he left the cold house one last time for the warmth outside, the picture beneath his arm, he could think of nothing to thank Aunt Jilly for.







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