Fingers Reunited

The odd thing about Catherine and Jasmine was that some people said “opposites attract”, and some people said “birds of a feather…..!”

     And they were both right. 

     They had already decided when they were six years old that they were going to be known as Cassie and Jassie. The adults around them didn’t always oblige. Cassie’s mother was laidback about it and said that one of the reasons she’d called her Catherine was so she’d have a range of variants at her disposal. True, Cassie was more often used as a diminutive of Cassandra, but fair enough. She was showing a degree of originality, and Cassie’s mother approved of originality, though she had refrained from giving her a name that would lead to teasing. She remembered how a classmate of her own had suffered by being called Marimba. Jasmine’s mother would have none of it. She had called her daughter after a beautiful flower, and so far as she was concerned, no tampering was allowed. When it came to their teachers, it varied. But sensible teachers often realise there’s sense to allowing a short form as a name as you can show you mean business by using the full one.

     The received wisdom was that Cassie was the shy one and Jassie was the bold one. Their respective looks bore that out, on the surface, though the more observant noticed the firm set to Cassie’s chin, and the way Jassie’s eyes, an unusual very dark navy blue, sometimes flickered back and forth as if she were looking for a way to escape. Cassie had said she wanted her hair short, and her mother had obliged saying it was less trouble for her, too, and Jassie had not choice but to live with her long, fine fair hair that her mother loved styling. At times she thought of hacking it off herself, but knew she wouldn’t. Even Cassie counselled against it. 

     Both of them were bright, but both of them tended not to concentrate, as their teachers lamented – though if they found something that DID interest them, they could focus and fixate on it to an almost unnatural degree. Even as young children they both had good singing voices, but Cassie’s was quite deep for a little girl, and a bit like a boy alto, whilst Jassie’s was more fluting, and especially when her hair was loose and she was dressed as an angel for the Nativity Play, it made some folk come over all sentimental. 

     When they were ten, they decided to become blood sisters. Cassie did have a little sister, Margaret, who was seven years her junior, and she thought she was quite sweet and had never been afflicted by more than merely passingly peevish pangs of jealousy, it would be years before she could think of her playing that role to any satisfaction. Jasmine, conversely, had an older brother, Basil, who had already decided to be something of a rebel and for the most part thought his sister was rather silly, though he’d defend her against anyone else who said that.

     They nearly chickened out at the last minute when it came to it, but in the end they did touch their index fingers with one of Cassie’s grandmother’s sewing needles, and pressed them together, and were convinced that their blood was intermingling. Of course they had no intention of their parents finding out, but they did. Their classmate Nicola, who wasn’t a bad sort, but had never learnt when to hold her tongue, had witnessed it (it would have been unkind to call Nicola a sneak, but she did have a capacity for lurking) and was more impressed than she told to admit, and told her mother about it. Nicola’s mother threatened her “death and judgement” (which was just one of her phrases, and Nicola knew was not to be taken remotely literally) what would happen if she tried such a thing, and Nicola’s mother was in the same Book Club as Jassie’s mother, and they were meeting that evening.

     Suffice it to say that Jassie’s mother lost all interest in The Miniaturist even though she had come up with some interesting questions. She left the meeting early and went home, and did not seem to know whether to read Jassie the Riot Act or enfold her in her protective arms. She spoke of taking her for a tetanus shock. Luckily, Jassie’s dad was present, and he managed to dissuade her, pointing to the fact that you couldn’t see a thing on their daughter’s finger and she would look rather ridiculous. “Call me ridiculous for being concerned about our daughter, would you?” she demanded. But to his relief, she reluctantly saw his point, though she liberally doused her daughter’s digit with antiseptic (which smelled disgusting and Jassie washed off as soon as she got the chance). “But how many times have I said that Catherine Wells is a bad influence?” she demanded. “This time she’s gone too far!”

     Now THAT so far as Jassie was concerned was far more worrying than the thought of a trip to the doctor for a tetanus shot (and her dad was probably right, he wouldn’t give her one). Would her mum actually forbid them from being friends? She COULDN’T, not when they were in the same class? But then again, there had been talk of that “Lovely private school, St Griselda’s”! Quite apart from being separated from Cassie, which could not be borne, the thought of St Griselda’s filled her with horror. It was a boarding school that accepted day-girls, but, she had gleaned on the effective junior school grapevine, they were always seen as second class citizens. And they wore those ridiculous straw boaters! Jassie hated any kind of hat, though she submitted to a woolly one in winter on the basis that it was better than earache, and when it came to her mother, she picked her battles. Even her mother had to admit that “she didn’t have a hat head”. 

     “If you must know, Mummy!” she said “It wasn’t Cassie’s idea, it was MINE!” She wasn’t quite sure whether she needed to cross her fingers behind her back or not. It wasn’t exactly a lie. They had sort of come to the decision together. She knew – well, hoped – her mum wouldn’t accuse her of being a liar, but accusations of Cassie being a bad influence couldn’t be ruled out. They faced each other off for a couple of seconds that seemed like an hour, and in the end, with mutterings about how she wished she could find a nice friend her mother let it drop.

     Still, Mrs Marks made sure that Mrs Wells knew all about it. They called each other Anna and Lorraine and always asked how they were and agreed that the weather was horrible/lovely, but to say that they had no wish to emulate their daughters’ friendship would have been something of an understatement. Anna Wells frankly couldn’t see what all the fuss was about. She’d made herself blood sisters with quite a few girls at school in her time and they’d made a better, or at any rate a more thorough job of it than Cassie and Jassie had. But she agreed to tell her daughter off, and did, indeed, say, “Consider yourself told off.” Later on, she did say, quietly, that though it was no big deal (she nearly said that Jassie’s mother was making a big fuss about nothing, but didn’t generally – though she was prepared to make exceptions – criticise other parents to her children) “Still, Cass, perhaps best avoid messing about with needles.”

     “Does that mean I’m excused sewing?” Jassie asked. 

     “If I had my way, you would be, I can’t see the point of forcing kids to make bookmarks that don’t look half as good as the ones you can get in the craft shop, but it’s part of the school’s curriculum, young lady, and you just have to put up with it!”

     Anna wouldn’t have said she’d never interfere in her daughter’s friendships, but she was pretty hands-off about such matters, and had no particular objections to Jassie. Still, at times she wished it wasn’t quite so hugger-mugger. She would once have exclaimed she didn’t know what her daughter saw in her apart from her having beautiful hair (and beautiful hair had never been one of Cassie’s main concerns, though she did admire her friend’s hair whilst saying it must be a nuisance at times) but now, being one of the more observant, she had more than an inkling that Jassie might be a bit more “sparky” than people sometimes gave her credit for.

     They progressed to the same high school, but it was one of those schools where they had an idea it was a good thing, wherever possible, to not always have children from the same “feeder” schools in the same class – especially when those school’s head teachers reported that some children were very “clingy” about each other. It sounded cruel, but it was for the best of intentions – and Cassie and Jassie were subject to this particular policy. Cassie was the one who seemed most upset about it! Of course, she made a point of insisting she was angry and not fretful and teary, and that she thought it was stupid.     

     “I agree it’s stupid,” Jassie said. “But the thing is, the more we make a fuss about it, the more they’ll think they’re right. And we can see each other all we want at break – they can’t stop THAT, and we’ll both join the choir, and we’re not in school all the time, are we? Anyway, I was talking to one of the second years the other day, and she said that in a lot of cases it ends up with folk from the same schools being back together again anyway after they’re proved their point.”

     Cassie saw the sense of that. She couldn’t help being a bit jealous that Jassie seemed to have been having a conversation, and quite an important one, with another girl, and an older girl at that, but as it brought good news – well, she certainly wasn’t going to be a baby about it!

     The prediction proved accurate. It was as if that irksome separation others had chosen to impose had never happened.

     Except it wasn’t.

     Jassie was the first to realise it, or at any rate, the first to admit to herself that she had. It certainly wasn’t a case of her “going off” Cassie, or finding her tiresome, or have finding any particular replacement for her or anyone who even came close. Their eyes still frequently met across the classroom with an shared glance that only they understood in its full eloquence when a teacher was boring them, or the way the girl in the middle aisle was making her chair squeak on the parquet floors was driving them to distraction. They still ate as much fruit and nut chocolate as they could afford in companionable and conspiratorial silence, knowing that not approving of this might be one of the few things on which their mothers might find a degree of agreement. Still, neither of them got spots, and neither of them got fat. Both were active and good at sports, though generally not counted as being among the “sporty ones” at school. Here there was some divergence, though, as Jassie was proving to be a deft and canny little tennis player, making up for her slight frame with a knack for placing shots and reading her opponent. Cassie was happiest on the soccer field, and the PE teacher praised her skill at “bobbing and weaving” whilst lamenting that she wasn’t quite enough of a “team player” for her liking. They were in agreement that though walks in the country could be great, cross-country running was entirely the invention of sadistic PE teachers with an almost preternatural talent for picking the routes where there was the most mud. 

     They both continued to sing in the choir, and joined the senior choir as soon as they could, as what they sung was far more interesting. But while Jassie joined the chess club, Cassie, though she theoretically knew how to play, found it highly tedious, and rather resented the time her friend spent there, though she congratulated her on her victories. Her own growing passion was for IT, and this was the situation in reverse. Of course, like any other child growing up at the time, Jassie was fairly at home with a computer and they held no mysteries or terror for her. But they were a means to an end – to Google something that interested her, or the like. She had ridiculously neat handwriting (one way in which she did take after her mother) and to Cassie’s bemusement, actually preferred to handwrite her schoolwork when it was permitted. When it was NOT, Cassie didn’t hesitate to express her opinion that it was ridiculous and that the teachers’ comments on her own handwriting were absurd. One of the kindest was “spider-scrawl”. Very gently, Jassie said, “They may have a point you know, Cass. When you sent me that postcard when you were on holiday I couldn’t work out why you were talking about seeing an opossum, until it finally dawned on me you’d visited an aquarium!” Though it was true, it was said as a joke, but Cassie wasn’t disposed to see the funny side. “Oh, go on, you pick on me, too,” she said.

     Another thing that found their mothers in unexpected unison was their relief that both came fairly late, or at least later than many of their classmates, to the matter of boys. That said, they had begun to have a thought that made them both reflect that of course they were tolerant and had no prejudices, none at all, and only wanted their daughters to be happy, but all the same ……..

     Jassie was the first. A quiet, serious boy in the chess-club called Stephen, two years older than she was, unexpectedly, and with charming chasteness, pecked a kiss on her cheek after one of the meetings, and though all he said was “Well played”, she knew it meant more than that. She didn’t keep it secret from her mother, and though Lorraine was inclined to dab her eyes and think that her little girl was growing up, she had a pragmatic side when needs must. He was, she decided, a nice boy. He was also going away to university, and it would be interesting to see how it progressed or otherwise when they were separated. It definitely progressed rather than “otherwise”. Cassie also met her first boyfriend (or no, she didn’t meet him, they knew each other already) through her over-riding interest. Tom was one of those boys who was called a Geek, but it was a compliment, at least from most people. Anna never tried to put a spanner in the works, but somehow she couldn’t quite like him, and couldn’t quite work out why. She determinedly told herself that if Lorraine could be (or at least give a good impression of being) laidback about her daughter’s boyfriend, so could she.

     Once it would never have seemed possible, but they went to different universities. Jassie had decided to study law. Oh, she had toyed with the idea of trying to play chess professionally, but she knew in her heart that though she was a very good player, she wasn’t a great player, and didn’t even think that life appealed to her much anyway. She decided to study law. 

     Cassie, to nobody’s surprise, studied computing, and at the same university as Tom. Her mother knew they were sleeping together, and accepted it. Having little choice, she wasn’t going to risk her relationship with her daughter by making an issue of it. Anyway, she was no prude – was she?

     Jassie’s tutors were universally impressed, and realised that, despite her quiet and self-possessed ways, and her lack of obvious flashes of brilliance, she had a definite vocation. She passed her exams with flying colours, and they found her a “pupilage” with a long-established firm where she was highly thought of and made good and quick progress.

     Cassie’s tutors had been universally impressed, too. At least, at first. She might lack “application” but at times she could be positively mercurial. All the same, they advised her to have something to “fall back” on and consider working as a teacher or a programmer while she and Tom started their own firm with Starshot, the computer game of their own invention, that had already received a rave review saying it immersed the player in a three dimensional representation of a familiar but transformational galaxy as no others had before.

     The trouble was, that was in the kind of magazine described as niche that was edited by Tom’s cousin. Others spoke of it having “excellent ideas but being ludicrously complicated for little reward” and of being “unreliable” and even “derivative”. 

     Anna once confronted her daughter with it, and said that she definitely should take that teacher training course. That led to a massive row between the two of them who had always been so close, and hard words were said on both sides, and they didn’t see each other for two years. Anna had to admit that Lorraine was very tactful and hardly ever alluded to her own daughter’s success. Not that even she was entirely contented. She’d had very pleasing thoughts of Jassie (who now at least called herself Jasmine professionally, and it seemed much more dignified) as one of those big-shot lawyers you saw on TV. She might even be a judge one day – women could be, nowadays, after all! But Jassie much preferred doing Legal Aid work. My daughter has a kind heart, she told herself. And that’s more to be proud of than any success. But she couldn’t entirely convince herself.

     “Got a case you might be interested in, Jass,” her boss Ella said, one day. “Not – one of our usual sorts. Very bright young woman – but her other half – I don’t think they’re married, but their business was in their joint names – got done for – let’s say creative accounting. The business went bust anyway.”

     “I’m not that great at the financial stuff,” she said, “But I’ll at least have a word with her.”

     Ella went back into the little reception room, and said, “If you’d like to come in, Catherine …..”

     “I TOLD you nobody ever calls me Catherine!”

     It was an awkward moment. No point to glossing it over. Cassie felt ashamed and defensive, but she still refused to believe Tom had done anything wrong. Not really. Jassie felt frustration mingle with sympathy. Both were highly embarrassed. Ella, a perceptive woman, realised that there was more going on here than there first appeared to be, and left the room.

     Then, in unrehearsed unison, they both raised their index fingers, and pressed them together.