Alys, Always

by Harriet Lane

  It turns out that Polly has been so bored this afternoon that she has spent ages decorating the table on the terrace. I’ve never known her to concentrate on anything for any length of time, so the spectacle takes me by surprise. She has put out a white damask tablecloth and the ancient gold-edged Spode which usually lives in the sideboard in the dining room. There are jam jars crammed with lavender and blowsy roses arranged between the candle lanterns at either end. When I follow her out with some salads, she stands back, arms complacently crossed, admiring it and, to a lesser degree, my reaction.

  I don’t say anything, but the weather isn’t on our side. Because of the motionless grey sky the daylight seems to be fading earlier and faster than usual; the flares which Polly has lit along the paths and set out on the terrace steps are burning with a smoky intensity, creating strange leaping shadows at the edges of the garden. It’s still very hot: sticky and airless.

  ‘Oh – how pretty!’ says Selma, when we call everyone out to eat.

  Teddy, drawn and distant, sits next to Charlotte. Polly grabs the chair on her other side. I’m left to slide in between Selma and Honor. While the salads and the rolls are passed around, I see Honor nudging her empty glass towards Laurence, who is opening another bottle of white. ‘Do tell me how far you’re getting with your new project,’ I hear her saying.

  While Selma begins to steer us towards the subject of her recent divorce I nod and look stricken on her behalf, but really I’m concentrating on the conversation Laurence and Honor are having on my right, with all its false steps and misapprehensions and dead ends. Honor really must be completely off her face already, I think, because Laurence’s reluctance seems barely to register with her. She just keeps on at him, her fingers toying with the horseshoe on its silver chain, drawing attention to the length and shape of her neck.

  ‘Where do you get your ideas from?’ she’s asking, and, ‘What would you have done if you hadn’t become a writer?’ and, ‘Do you use a word processor or do you prefer pens and stuff?’ and, ‘Do you have, like, a routine when you work?’

  She’s asking the questions you’re never meant to ask and now he’s actually giving in, he’s taking her seriously, he’s starting to answer them. I hear him lowering his voice and out of the corner of my eye I see him spreading his hands expansively, and I think: Oh no, he’s confiding in her, he’s enjoying it a little. She’s actually making some headway.

  And in the meantime, here I am, stuck with Selma and the dreary story of Steven Carmichael’s midlife crisis and the charity motorbike rally around South America from which he never returned, instead falling in love with a girl from Chile and taking up a position in Santiago as a TEFL teacher. I could scream. But I don’t. I just nod slowly and frown and nod slowly again, while doing my best to eavesdrop. I hate hearing Laurence talking like this, but at the same time I’m unable to tear myself away.

  Honor is crunching through a stick of celery and asking, ‘And was Daniel Day-Lewis, you know, really intense?’ when I hear Selma say, ‘So, Frances, are you happy where you are?’

  For a moment I can’t think what she means, and I sit there with a fork in my hand, gazing at her blankly, hoping for clues; and then I realise that she’s trying to find out how I feel about the Questioner. So I say that apart from the general air of uncertainty, I’m not exactly unhappy there: Mary’s a decent person to work for, I’m interested in books, I like most of our contributors.

  She pops a piece of bread into her mouth and says, ‘Because I’m about to start looking for a new deputy, there’s going to be an opening, and I was wondering whether you’d be interested in applying.’

  ‘Me? Really?’ I say. ‘Because I’m not all that experienced, really. I mean, I’ve been subbing the pages for ages, and commissioning and editing the odd thing, working with writers quite closely, but I’ve only really been writing for Mary for a few months.’

  ‘Oh, I know all that,’ says Selma, spooning some cucumber salad on to her plate. ‘But you’re a safe pair of hands, that’s obvious enough. Only last week Audrey Callum was singing your praises. You know how it works, you’ve clearly got the contacts. Well, why don’t you think about it.’

  ‘I will,’ I say. ‘Gosh. Thanks. I will.’ Then I accept the bowl of cucumber salad and help myself, and then I turn to pass it to Honor. But she’s distracted; she’s leaning away from me, resting her cheek on her hand, staring up at Laurence. I can’t see the expression on her face but really I don’t need to: this has been building for some days, like the break in the weather.

  I wonder what Teddy makes of it. When I glance over at him, I see he has a bright artificial smile on his face as he pretends to enjoy a story Charlotte is telling about an Australian author she had lunch with last week, a story which makes Polly double up with laughter. All the drama on the other side of the table seems to be passing her by. No surprises there, then.

  Poor Laurence, I think, as Honor tilts her glass, inviting a refill, which flashes green-gold in the candlelight. He doesn’t have a clue. For a clever man, he really is rather stupid. He can’t resist Honor’s attention tonight; he’s dazed by the velocity of her interest. And of course she’s young and terribly pretty.

  So he sits there, eating salad and cold chicken, talking in a rather sheepish voice about the habit he has of mapping out plots using different coloured Post-its; about ‘the legwork’ mostly getting done first thing and in the late afternoon; about his early superstitious devotion to American legal pads, which he stockpiled whenever he went to the US, and how much easier things are now he’s used to a Mac. ‘I never quite know how novels begin,’ he’s saying now. ‘Sometimes you start with a sentence. Sometimes it’s something you hear someone say. Or maybe you get stuck on an image, an image that holds your interest for some reason, and you can’t work out why, and then you realise you have to write about it to find out what it means.’

  I don’t want to hear this. There’s no magic in what he’s saying. It’s as if someone has let the genie out of the bottle, only it’s not a genie, it’s just some stale, sour-smelling air.

  I scrape my fork across my plate.

  It’s almost a relief when Honor, making some big encapsulating gesture, knocks over her water glass. The wet races steadily across the damask. ‘Whoops!’ she says, giggling and pushing her chair backwards, sending her knife skittering on to the brick beneath. When she stands up, she weaves a little on her heels.

  ‘Oh, for God’s sake …’ says Teddy, unable not to.

  ‘It’s only a bit of water,’ she hisses at him. Polly’s staring at her now, nose wrinkled in distaste.

  ‘I really think you should try to eat something,’ I say in a low voice, trying to catch Honor’s arm, and I see Laurence – the spell broken – swiftly glancing over at me, noticing my intervention and grateful for it; but she ignores me, she’s giddy with relief at the public break with Teddy, and she’s full of adrenalin because of all the attention from his father, the Great Man himself. She thinks she’s flying. I’m fairly sure she’s crashing, but I wouldn’t stake my life on it.

  Now Laurence is standing up too, his sleeve dark with water. ‘If you’ll excuse me,’ he says with a rather stiff smile, pulling his chair back and crossing the terrace.

  It seems obvious that the first course is over. Selma and Charlotte and I start to collect the plates while Polly and Teddy walk off down the lawn between the flaming torches, their pale heads close together.

  ‘Oh dear,’ says Charlotte, pausing to watch them. ‘ “Take Honor from me and my life is done.” ’

  ‘Do you think she’s on something?’ Selma is whispering excitedly. ‘She seems rather high.’

  Honor has vanished. The sky over the copper beech is darkening to lavender now, the colour of half-mourning. Rain is on its way. I wonder whether there’s any point in bringing out my apple tart, the neatly fanned slices glazed with apricot jam. It took me hours to make it look beautiful and now no one will notice it.

  I p
ick up the stack of gold-deckled plates and go indoors.

  All the lights are off in the hall, and I can’t switch them on because my hands are full. But as I pass from the soft oriental rugs of the sitting room on to the hallway parquet, I look up and see Laurence and Honor at the top of the stairs, lit by the little red-shaded lamp which stands on the table there. For a moment I can’t work out exactly what’s happening, I hear only the indistinct murmur of their voices. Then there’s a flash of sudden movement. I see he’s shrinking away from her, his hands raised in a gesture of apology, of helplessness, possibly of fear, while she tries angrily to catch his wrists. ‘You do, I know you do,’ she’s saying, and then she’s craning up towards him, reaching for his face, pulling it towards her, and he’s pushing down her hands, breaking away, walking off towards his room, not saying anything.

  I wait in the shadows, half-expecting her to follow him, but she doesn’t. She stands there for a moment or two as if indecisive and then I hear her going into the room she shares with Teddy, and the door closes.

  I’m in the kitchen, rinsing cutlery under the tap, when she puts her head around the door. ‘Do you know any taxi numbers?’ she asks. Her cheeks are faintly flushed, but otherwise she looks quite normal.

  I find the little cards which are kept in one of the dresser drawers, along with the string and candle stubs and plasters and the big box of cooks’ matches, and then I hear her booking a cab ‘as soon as possible, please. I’ve got to catch the nine fifty.’

  When she hangs up, I say, ‘Are you feeling OK?’

  ‘Fine, thanks,’ she says. She goes to the sink and fills a glass with water and drinks it down.

  ‘Let me make you a sandwich for the train,’ I say. ‘You hardly ate anything at supper. You’re going to feel awful in the morning.’

  ‘Oh, don’t bother,’ she says, but I’ve got nothing better to do, so I quickly cut some bread and wrap it, with some ham and cornichons, in clingfilm. And I cut her a little triangle of apple tart, too, just in case; though (as Teddy said, all those days ago) she never really eats anything, even at the best of times.

  ‘Aren’t you going to say goodbye to everyone?’ I ask, as the lights of the taxi briefly flood the kitchen window and then sweep on, over the outhouses, the wall of hollyhocks.

  ‘I don’t think so,’ she says. ‘I think I’ve overstayed my welcome. Just say something came up. An emergency.’ Then she shoulders her bag and goes out into the hall, her shoes sounding assertively on the parquet, and a minute later there’s the noise of the taxi moving off, scattering gravel.

  The house is very still for a moment, and then suddenly there’s a burst of wind, startlingly cold through the wide-open kitchen window, and after that I hear it: the rush and rattle of rain. Charlotte and Selma and Teddy and Polly come hurrying in from the garden, incredulous, already soaked; and there’s laughter, as if the weather has given them something else to think about, and they’re all rather relieved.

  I tell them what she told me to say – ‘Honor got a call and left in a hurry, she said it was an emergency’ – but to Polly I say, in an undertone, ‘I think she was embarrassed, I think that’s why she went.’

  Polly says, ‘Honor doesn’t do embarrassment, haven’t you noticed?’ She assumes the break-up with Teddy is the whole story: that Honor just took off because after that little scene at supper there was no reason to stay. I don’t say anything to correct that impression.

  Laurence comes down in a dry shirt and says, ‘I thought I heard a car,’ when told the news, and then there’s a halfhearted attempt to extend the evening over apple tart and coffee in the kitchen, but it all feels very flat, even though Teddy strives to crack some jokes, just to prove how fine he is.

  The rain is ferocious, squally, beating against the house like something trying to get in.

  When I go up to my room, I see that I’ve left both windows wide open. The sills are soaked, sopping wet, and water has sprayed over the carpet and a corner of the bed. I shut one window and then I stand at the other one, feeling the roar of the weather, taking deep breaths of the mineral-scented air, staring out at the glittering darkness. Then I close that window and mop things up as best I can.

  Later, the dream comes at me with force. I am hurrying over an endless stretch of hot sand, horribly exposed, too frightened to look over my shoulder at the thing that is chasing me, and I’m faltering, stumbling and tripping, my feet forever losing purchase; all my efforts counting for nothing.

  The storm moves off some time in the night. As usual I’m the first person downstairs in the morning and when I step outside to drag the sodden stone-heavy damask off the table, the sky is a bright sharp blue and the air has a freshness to it, a suggestion of the year on the turn.

  I wring most of the water from the cloth and have just put it in the washing machine when Laurence appears in the kitchen, saying he intends to spend the morning in his study. We have a brief conversation. I tell him I’m planning to leave before lunch, and he says, ‘Well, see you again soon, I hope,’ and then he goes off carrying a cup of coffee and an apple, a piece of buttered toast clamped between his teeth. I can’t help feeling a little flat as I hear the study door closing behind him.

  Selma and Charlotte are the next to appear. They’re on their way to the swimming pool – ‘A last dip before we leave for Bunny’s’ – and they wonder whether I want to join them.

  When Teddy comes down a little later, he’s glassy-eyed, as if he too has slept badly. He sits in front of his cornflakes, moving the spoon in the bowl and hardly eating anything.

  ‘Are you OK?’ I ask, but he just makes a vague noise and turns a page of the newspaper.

  I’ve tidied up the kitchen, and I’m about to go upstairs to pack my bag when Teddy pushes his bowl away and says, ‘Oh, and Frances. I’ve been meaning to ask you something.’

  I wait with my hand on the door handle. I have no sense of what is coming next.

  ‘I know you lied to us about the accident,’ he says. ‘I know what you told us wasn’t exactly the truth.’

  I stare at him, looking blank, confused, but of course I know precisely what he means. Blood starts to sound in my ears.

  ‘I’m sorry?’ I say, and because I suddenly feel unsteady I sit down opposite him at the table, though really my instincts are telling me to get out of there and as quickly as possible.

  ‘I know you lied,’ he says again. ‘I saw your statement, the statement you gave to the police at the scene. I asked Kate Wiggins if I could see the police report and she made it available to me.’ He sits there, leaning back in his chair, arms folded, regarding me with those cool, pale Kyte eyes – Alys’s eyes. It all makes perfect sense: humiliated by last night’s events, Teddy has chosen this moment to show his hand. His vulnerability has made him vicious. He doesn’t want to be the only one suffering.

  ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ I say. ‘I didn’t lie.’

  ‘Oh no? You didn’t invent my mother’s last words? That little killer detail at the end? “Tell them I love them”? Because as far as I can tell, you first came up with that when we met you. There’s no record of it before that point. And I understand you’d been through events with two individual police officers before then.’

  I lower my gaze. I can’t meet his eyes. I don’t want him to look me in the face. I don’t want him to see how angry I am.

  Of course, most of the anger is directed at myself. I hate that I gave into temptation all those months ago. I hate that I took the risk, even though at the time it was what I needed to say in order to forge a connection with Polly and with Laurence. And I hate that he has this to throw at me when he is at his most wretched.

  ‘What I don’t understand,’ he’s saying, very slowly, carefully emphasising every word, ‘is why you felt you had to do it. Why would you lie about something like that, to perfect strangers?’

  The ambient hum of the washing machine in the utility room next door changes pitch as it progre
sses through the cycle. The herb garden is bathed in sunshine. A blackbird flies down on to the sundial, and flies off again.

  ‘It was a stupid thing to say,’ I say eventually. ‘I’m not sure if I can really explain it. It’s unforgivable, of course.’

  He waits.

  ‘Was it so harmful?’ I say in a sudden rush, raising my head. ‘Was it so wrong to want to give you all a little scrap of comfort?’

  He hasn’t moved, but there’s a subtle change in his expression. He’s not unreachable, I think. He wants to trust me. He wants me to make this OK. The insight gives me courage. ‘Yes,’ I say, ‘it was completely wrong of me. But, oh, Teddy – when I came to the house and met you all … well, I can’t quite explain it. I felt it was what you were waiting for. I wanted to help, even in some tiny, insignificant way. I got carried away, I suppose. I am so very sorry if I’ve caused you more unhappiness.’

  We sit there in silence for a moment.

  ‘Please believe me,’ I say.

  He pulls his hands through his hair, and sighs. ‘I do,’ he says. The relief spills through me. I feel quite giddy with it.

  ‘Do you want me to tell Polly?’ I ask. ‘Does she know? Have you talked about it with anyone else?’

  He puts his head back and looks at the ceiling, considering. ‘No, I haven’t mentioned it to her, or anyone,’ he says. ‘I’m not sure what to do. What do you think? Should I tell her? Should you?’ Then he gets up and carries his bowl over to the sink and stands there, gazing out over the gravel drive to the croquet lawn and the field beyond, drumming his fingers lightly on the kitchen counter.

  ‘Look, let’s keep it between ourselves,’ he says finally. ‘No point in causing anyone more distress. I don’t think Polly would handle it very well. Dad neither. You did it for the best of reasons, I accept that.’

  ‘Oh, Teddy,’ I say. ‘Thank you for being so good about it. I feel like a total idiot.’

  He comes over to me and gives me a hug. ‘You are an idiot,’ he says, half-laughing, and when he puts his arms around me I sense the relief in him, too: a sense that he is off the hook somehow, and is grateful to me for that.