“Dyslexia,” Grundo said bitterly.
“Don’t believe in it,” she told him. “It’s just a fancy modern word for mixed up. You turn yourself right-about, and you’ll be fine. What’s your mother doing to let you get so scrambled in the first place? Who is she? Oh, I see. It’s that Sybil Temple. Always was a greedy, selfish wifty-wafty, that girl. Trust her to mix a child up! You ought to be living with your father, my boy.”
I wanted to shake Heppy. Grundo was shamed and embarrassed and shifting from foot to foot. “Nobody knows where my father is,” he muttered.
“Ran away from her, ran away from Court,” Heppy said. “I know. You should go and find him. It doesn’t do a child any good, being dragged round the country after the King all the time, if you ask me. That goes for you, too, Arianrhod.”
“Er—Heppy, could you call me Roddy?” I said. “I do prefer it.”
“Whatever for? That’s a boy’s name!” she squawked. “You ought to be taking up your true heritage, my girl, not trying to be someone else.”
I felt my face flooding hot with annoyance. I knew it would take very little for me to have a real row with my grandmother. I didn’t like her. And I had a feeling she didn’t like me either.
TWO
Luckily, before things got any worse for me or for Grundo, a kettle whistled over on the stove, and Heppy went trotting and clacking over there to make tea. She shortly came trotting and clacking back, carrying a vast teapot in a knitted cozy. Grundo and I watched her tottery high heels both ways in nervous fascination. We expected her to tangle with a rug and trip at any moment, but she never did. It was like a miracle.
Judith meanwhile was setting the table and laying out covered plates of small sandwiches. “These are only cucumber,” she apologized. “We’ll do better for supper.”
“Tea!” Heppy shrieked. “Tea’s up!” The nearest I can get to describing my grandmother’s voice when she screamed is a parrot imitating a steam whistle. We heard a lot of her screaming later, but I never found a better description.
Her voice must have carried out into the back garden with no trouble at all. They could probably hear it a mile away in the village. The back door burst open almost instantly, and almost before it had hit the wall with a crash, two small girls bounded in, followed by a large, curly, yellow dog. A black cat, which had been snoozing on a cushion up to then, woke up and bolted. Grundo said later that the cat’s behavior was highly significant. “And sensible,” he added.
One of the small girls was wearing baggy trousers and a white vest. The other was in a trailing, shiny, pink tea gown which almost certainly belonged to Heppy. Otherwise you would never have told them apart. They both had the same light brown hair falling in twists to their shoulders, and the same pale, pert little face with huge blue eyes.
There was a brisk minute of pandemonium. The dog barked. Heppy screamed, “Shut the door, Ilsabil! Isadora, you’ve been at my clothes again!”
At the same time, Judith was saying, “These are my twins. This is Isadora, and this is Ilsabil. Girls, come and meet your cousin Arianrhod and her friend Ambrose.”
Also at the same time, the twin in trousers screamed, “Oh, my God!” and backed dramatically against the wall. “It’s a boy in here! Don’t let it near me!” She made fending motions at Grundo. But the twin in the silk dress put on a sickly, gushing smile and glided up to Grundo with both arms out. “A boy!” she cried, in a deep, actressy voice. “Let me at him!”
Then, just as I was thinking, in a slightly stunned way, that this behavior was the way you told these twins apart, the one in the dress recoiled from Grundo with a scream. “Mother!” she howled. “How can you let a great rough boy in here?” Instantly the other twin put on the sickly, gushing smile and undulated up to Grundo, stretching her arms out and yelling, “A kiss, my lover, a kiss!”
Grundo’s face was a study, and I didn’t blame him.
“Shake hands with your cousin!” Heppy screamed.
They didn’t, of course. Shaking hands would have been too normal for these twins. Ilsabil sank to her baggy-trousered knees. “Oh, my!” she yelled. “Have you really spared time from Court to come to our humble house?” while Isadora swished her pink dress and said, “Of course, when I come to Court, I shall outshine everyone there.”
“That could be true,” I said. “And you might not like it.”
Neither twin listened to me. They hurled themselves into chairs round the table shouting, “What’s for tea?” and dragged the covers off the plates. “Oh!” screamed one of them, “I hate cucumber! I’m allergic to it!” while the other one yelled, “Cucumber! I love it!” Again, just as I was thinking this was another way to tell them apart, they swapped roles, and the one who hated cucumber shouted, “Snatch! Seize! I’m going to eat all these delicious sandwiches myself!” Meanwhile the other one whined, “Moth-ther! I can’t eat this! I’m electric to cucumber!”
“Allergic, dear,” Judith said anxiously. “And I don’t think you are.”
“Yes, I am,” whined the twin.
“Yes, she is,” whined the other one. “She fizzes all over.”
It was like this the whole time. At first, I tried telling myself that all the children at Court had to be so well behaved that I’d forgotten what normal little girls were like. That may have been true, but I very soon decided that Ilsabil and Isadora had never been normal in their lives. Neither of them was the same person for more than two minutes. Neither of them seemed to care what she did or said, as long as it fixed everyone’s attention on her.
Judith watched them all the time with an anxious, pleading smile.
Heppy gazed at them proudly. “Aren’t they a caution?” she said several times. Then she asked Grundo, “Can you tell them apart?”
“No, and I’ve given up trying,” he said. “I’m calling them both Izzy.”
“Pathetic!” squealed both twins. “Per-thetic! Izzy, izzy, is he stupid!” This was followed by “Mother! I’m very hurt and insulted!” from one twin and “Oh, gorgeous boy! He’s calling me Izzy!” from the other. And then the same thing the other way round.