1001 Nights Cast

Every year the arrival of the twins signalled the proper start of summer—the terrible twins, as my mother called them, were English, and in her book that meant they didn’t know how to behave properly. They came to our sleepy seaside village with their father who spent most of the day fishing; with no sign of a mother the twins ran wild. They were identical girls and my older brother and I teamed up with them, forming the Gang of Four; we spent the long summer swimming and diving and scouring the rockpools for crabs or playing football in the alley behind the church; and when we got bored with all that we created mild mischief in and around the village. The local policeman—‘Plod’ as we called him—had his eye on us, as he grandly informed my mother. Every year we looked forward to seeing them again and there was no hiding our excitement when my mother announced one evening that the terrible twins were here, this news accompanied by the usual stiff warning about behaving ourselves, and, in a softer tone, something to the effect that we might find them a wee bit changed.

Next morning we were up early and barely breakfasted before setting off to the house where they always stayed. Coming up the road we could see two figures sitting on the low wall, each clad in a red dress. We ran the rest of the way whooping like Red Indians but pulled up short when our usual greeting was not returned. They were the same twins and yet they were definitely not the same. Somehow in the space of a year they had changed shape, most noticeably in the upper body but also in the narrowing waists and curving hips. We stood goggle-eyed until my brother finally found his voice: ‘How are ye, girls?’ he asked, as if they had been in a big car accident that had resulted in all this bulging and indentation. ‘We are very well, thank you “, they replied in unison, and with a cold politeness that was even more bewildering than their torsos. ‘Are ye coming to the rockpools?’, my brother asked, his voice uncertain. ‘No thank you!’, came the joint reply: ‘We are waiting for someone!’ ‘Who?’, demanded my brother, but the answer came in the sound of an approaching car.

Taking the corner at speed and handbraking to a stop came ‘Flash’ Harry and his brother Jimmy in their father’s convertible. Ignoring us, Jimmy got out and came round to the driver’s side and with mock gallantry opened the rear door. The twins got in and off they drove. We went down to the rockpools in silence. Eventually, my brother announced: ‘We’ll have to borrow a car’ ‘Who from?’, I asked. ‘Uncle Jerry’, he replied, as if it was the most natural thing in the world. And Uncle Jerry’s response also seemed the most natural thing in the world: ‘Not a chance in Hell!’ ‘What about the old Chevy?’ my brother persisted. ‘Hah’, Uncle Jerry replied, ‘Ye won’t get far in that; the engine’s been taken out of it!’. ‘We’ll take it’, said my brother.

That evening under cover of darkness we manoeuvred the Chevy out of Jerry’s yard and down the hill onto Main Street, parking it outside Morelli’s Ice Cream Parlour. This was the cultural centre of the village and if we waited long enough the twins were bound to show up there, if not for an ice cream, then in response to the gossip that we were waiting there in our car. Next morning, after an hour’s wait they appeared; even their walk was different now and my brother’s voice was husky as he advised: ”Leave the talking to me!’. As the twins drew level with the driver’s door, he leaned out of the window and called ‘Good morning Ladies!’ They were a bit taken aback by this but recovered with a cautious ‘Good morning to you too’, scanning the inside of the car, noting its plush leather seating, the outsized steering wheel and the extended tailfins. ‘Nice motor, eh?’ suggested my brother. They nodded. ‘Fancy a spin?’ They nodded again. In a flash I was out to open the rear door and in they slid, ghosts of smiles on their pert faces. ‘Where to, Ladies?’, called my brother over his shoulder. ‘Wherever you like’, they replied. ‘Or we could just sit here for an ice cream…’ he offered.’ ‘That would be perfectly fine’, they replied.

As I opened the door, the shadow of Plod appeared. ‘Ye can’t be parking here’, he said, ‘unless you’re loading or unloading, so move on!’ My brother inserted the key in the ignition and twisted it; nothing; he tried again and again, nothing. ‘I seem to be having a bit of trouble starting’, he said to Plod but Plod was otherwise engaged, having just made the discovery that the terrible twins had become young women. But he recovered and, shaking his head in disbelief, he said to my brother, ‘Open the bonnet and we’ll have a look’. He went round to the front and raised the bonnet. From behind, the twins announced: ‘We think your car is lovely’. My brother raised a hand as if to say ‘O just a car’ while implying that even greater riches and sophistication and ice cream were theirs for the taking.

Then the bonnet came down with a crashing finality. Plod came slowly round to the driver’s window. He looked like a man who had seen too much for one day. He gazed again on the transformed twins and then back to my brother and me. ‘I think it needs a fair bit of work’, he said. ‘Why don’t you young folk go off to the rockpools and I’ll get your Uncle Jerry to sort this out’. And off we went.