The Memory Tree by Tess Evans Page A

shortest possible time, they all scuttled away to their own concerns.
    After some months of this, the advent of the Barrett twins completed the membership. They arrived without warning, just as the service was about to begin. Godown saw them first from the vantage point of the lectern. It seemed that two Pre-Raphaelite angels stood in the doorway, dressed incongruously in blue, spotted dresses and wide straw hats. It was sunny outside and the church was dark, so it seemed to Godown that they were floating in light.
    The pastor found his voice. ‘Welcome, sisters,’ he boomed, causing one of the women to jump at the sound. ‘Spiros, please find the ladies a seat.’ This wasn’t hard, given that there were twice as many seats as people, but Spiros guided them to two of the folding chairs, where they sat, slender as willow wands, demurely smiling their thanks.
    It was Fellowship Sunday, and the congregation could hardly wait for the closing hymn. Jockey beat Spiros by a nose as he galloped up to offer the newcomers a cup of tea. Spiros countered with sponge and even Bert beat Hal to the sugar. The twins accepted the attention gracefully and sipped their tea, regarding their surroundings with equanimity. Up close, the twins were not as young as Godown had originally imagined. Nor were they old. They seemed ageless, he thought. It was also evident that they were mirror images of each other. Chloe was left and Ariadne right-handed. Chloe’s dimple was on her left cheek, her sister’s on her right. Each had one green and one blue eye, a slightly disconcerting attribute that, together with their abundant greenish-blonde hair, reminded Hal of mermaids rather than angels.
    Most astonishing of all was that fact (explained by Chloe in her carefully enunciated vowels) that she was deaf while her sister was mute. ‘We manage quite nicely,’ she assured them. ‘Ariadne does the listening and I do the talking.’
    Jockey asked the question the others were all too polite to ask. ‘How do you know what to say, if you can’t hear?’
    ‘We don’t know how,’ answered Chloe. ‘It’s always been like this, hasn’t it Ariadne?’ Ariadne nodded and turned gravely to listen to Godown’s introductions.
    ‘We’re so pleased to meet you,’ Chloe said as she and her sister shook hands with each of them in turn. In all the time Hal and Godown knew them, she never used the pronoun ‘I’.
    On that first morning, Godown had looked at them in dismay. There, in the door to his church was temptation on a scale he had never experienced before. Spiros, Jockey and Bert, felt the same surge of lust at first sight, but they soon understood that the twins were untouchable. ‘Way above our class,’ as Jockey said. Why then had they come to the strange little church?
    ‘We are believers in search of a home,’ Chloe said. ‘Large groups distress us.’ Godown felt he was drowning in the strange, sea-water eyes.
    ‘You’re safe here,’ he said gently.
    ‘They’re mighty unusual women,’ he ruminated as he shelled the peas with Mrs Mac the following evening. ‘It’s like when you hear Chloe speak, you’re hearin’ Ariadne as well.’
    ‘They’re very beautiful, you say,’ she responded wistfully.
    ‘They are that.’

    For Hal, however, the twins were more than beautiful. There was something elemental about them and they were connected to him in a way he couldn’t quite determine. They seemed so virginal, complete in themselves—day and night, life and death. He pondered, speculated, and just when he thought he could grasp their essence, it trickled through his fingers like water.
    Nevertheless, his life had taken on a steadying rhythm. From Monday to Friday he went to work and came home to share the news of the day with the family. On Thursdays before dinner he took Sealie to ballet classes and on Mondays after dinner he studied scripture with Godown. On Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays, he, Godown and sometimes Mrs Mac