by Sadie Jones
He wasn’t sure exactly where he was, somewhere on Pitt’s property probably; there was a barn in the distance and the field was bright with stubble. He stopped. The landscape was wide and still and he felt uncomfortable in it. He didn’t want to panic, but he could feel it starting. If he’d had someone there to talk to he could break the silent feeling, but he couldn’t think of anybody.
He started to walk around the field with the vague idea of making a big circle home. He guessed he should apologise to Ed, but the thought of his face and what he’d said made him feel sick and he wanted to go and find him and make sure he had broken his nose and then break his legs for him, too. He let his mind play pictures of violence; it was better than feeling sick and the weakness and panic at any rate.
He had ended up walking all the way around the wood so as not to go back into it and that took ages. He hid himself and didn’t go into the house until after supper.
He’d thought when he got home he could explain to his father about what Ed had said – anyone would see how bad it had been – but when he got there he couldn’t make himself think of it, let alone use it to get himself out of trouble. He and his father sat opposite one another by the fire and Alice sat at the card table by the window with a drink and watched them. Lewis wished she’d go and find something else to do.
‘Why would you do a thing like that?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘You seem pleased to have done it.’
‘No, sir.’
‘Well, tell me then! I’d like to know what possessed you—’
‘Nothing, sir.’
‘Nothing? You broke a boy’s nose – you hit the son of good friends for no reason? You punched him in the face—’
‘I had a reason.’
‘What was your reason?’
‘He – It was – I was trying to stop him.’
‘Trying to stop him what?’ Silence. ‘Stop him what, Lewis? You were trying to stop him? What was he doing?’
‘… Nothing.’
‘Lewis! This is absurd – you have done a violent, horrible thing and you have taken pleasure in it. And you have no explanation? What’s wrong with you?’
There was always that, the thing that was wrong with him; he didn’t know what it was, either, but he knew there was something.
‘Why can’t you get on with people? Do you see how hard it is to look after you?’
Lewis kept quiet and his quietness made his father worse, he seemed determined to break him in some way, but Lewis didn’t know what he wanted from him. He sat and listened and couldn’t think clearly enough to find a way to please him.
When he was finally sent upstairs he hadn’t been able to stop walking up and down the room. He couldn’t remember what had happened, or why he’d done what he’d done, only that his father hated him and he thought he was right to.
He kept walking back and forth in his room, from door to window, and he couldn’t stop; the door came towards him, then the window and then the door, and he kept walking the little distance again and again.
He heard his father and Alice come upstairs and go to their room and the house was quiet, except for his head. He stopped, listening. He was numb. He thought if he could feel something it would be better. He had been scraping his nails up and down his forearm trying to feel pain – sometimes that worked if he did it hard enough – but the scratching wasn’t doing anything, even though his arm was raw. Then he remembered what Ed had said about his mother. It wouldn’t leave his head. He couldn’t breathe. He left his room and went downstairs, thinking he might get out of the house.
The stairs were dark and it felt strange being out of his room when Gilbert and Alice were asleep. He saw the drawing room door open and the drinks table. He went in and shut the door, so that if they came to the top of the stairs they wouldn’t see him, and looked at the bottles and wondered what could be in them all. He couldn’t remember ever tasting alcohol before, sips of grown-ups’ drinks maybe, at parties as a child.
The whisky looked dark and he’d never liked the smell of it on his father. He chose the gin, and when he drank it – from the bottle – it nearly took the back of his throat off, but the taste of it, bitter and sugary, was familiar; it was like a taste he’d always known and it was very normal to him. He drank some more and looked at the wall in front of him and waited for something to happen.
The drink felt hot in his empty stomach. He felt his throat burning drily and the strength of the gin in his mouth, and after a few moments the hit of it in his blood and his heart felt it too. The hit went through him and it was dangerous and comforting. And then it slowed his head down. His thoughts were slowed down, and the repetitive, loathing rush of them eased.
He lifted the bottle and drank some more, and even smiled. He knew he’d found something then. He knew he’d found something that worked.
Chapter Two
December 1952
After everybody had left and while the servants were clearing up and Dicky and Claire and Tamsin were picking over the party, Kit went from room to room and found little things people had left. She found Alice Aldridge’s red silk evening bag with her lipstick and cigarettes in it. She found a stiletto shoe under the dining table. She found three lighters, two of them gold, but only one engraved. She went quietly around, sorting through the mess for treasures, and thinking about the party.
It had been mid-afternoon when she had got up the courage to speak to Lewis.
‘What are you doing?’ she had said, leaning against the wall in the hall and propping her foot up behind her.
‘Nothing.’
She’d spent the whole party wanting to talk to him, and it wasn’t as if anyone else was.
‘Happy Christmas.’
‘You too.’
‘How is it?’
‘It’s all right, thank you.’
He didn’t seem to mind being spoken to.
‘Where’s your father?’
‘In there with Alice and everyone. Where’s yours?’
‘Shouting at the servants. He’ll come out through there in a minute.’
They were in the hall, where it turned the corner behind the stairs, and they had a good view of both party rooms, the baize door, the stairs and the front door. It was quite dark, so nobody walking by paid any attention.
‘I’m eleven,’ she said, and felt an absolute fool and wanted to die.
‘Congratulations.’
She decided not to talk any more, it only made her look ridiculous. She would keep quiet.
‘When’s your birthday?’ she said, ‘You’ll be fifteen, won’t you?’
Why couldn’t she shut up?
‘Thursday.’
‘Oh, happy—’
She had run out of words at last, but at the wrong time.
Lewis looked at Kit, standing there on one leg, and took pity.
‘Do you remember that time we went down New Hill on my bike?’ he said, and was rewarded by her smile, which was transforming.
‘I was six! I was terrified!’
‘So was I.’
‘Were you?’
It had never crossed her mind that Lewis would be frightened.
To begin with, when she was very little, he had been a hero to her and not distinguishable from the ones in books; she used to muddle him up with them, pointing him out to her nanny, ‘There’s Lewis!’ ‘No, dear, that’s the boy in the story …’ Then, through her childhood, when she’d seen him in the holidays she’d been too small and a girl, and couldn’t be his friend exactly, but he’d always been kind. He either hadn’t noticed her, or he’d been kind. Now she was eleven she knew she was in love with him. He was her secret. He was her imagining. She didn’t long or yearn, or other things she had read about being in love, but she had him in her heart. Sometimes she felt surprised that he didn’t know it.
‘You’re never out with everybody any more,’ she said.
‘No. I’m at home mostly. Reading and things.�
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‘I read too!’
He stopped himself from making a crack about successful schooling or medals, she looked so earnest and it was a relief to talk to someone; he was beginning to forget what his voice sounded like.
‘What are you reading?’ he asked her.
‘Anna Karenina.’
‘Getting through it all right?’
‘Yes, thanks.’
‘I liked the bits with Levin. On the farm.’
‘Me too. I don’t like Anna, she’s a drip.’
‘What else?’
‘Dickens?’
‘Soppy.’
‘Yes!’
‘Hardy?’
‘Not yet. I liked Somerset Maugham, but Mummy stopped me.’
Dicky came out through the baize door then, and they watched him march off into the drawing room. Lewis turned back to her, seeing her face as she watched her father go, and how it changed.
‘Are you one of those child prodigies?’ he asked.
‘I don’t think so, why?’
‘You seem pretty brainy.’
‘Well, I’m not thick.’
‘Glad to hear it.’
He smiled at her, and Kit forgot to speak.
Ed Rawlins crossed the hall and passed them, going into the drawing room, and Kit started to laugh. Ed ignored them and Lewis started to laugh too, and they stood laughing at him until he’d gone.
‘Isn’t he noble-looking?’ said Kit, and they were laughing and leaning against the wall, not looking at each other.
Ed went into the party and didn’t acknowledge either of them, but he heard their laughing after he’d passed. They were giggling and bloody babyishly laughing at him. He stood in the door of the long drawing room and looked for Tamsin and his face was red with rage and embarrassment. Laughed at by Lewis Aldridge and Tamsin’s kid sister; it was so uncivilised – first that awful violence in the summer and now this – if he wanted he could knock all Lewis’s teeth out. Ed stepped aside for some people to leave the room and saw Tamsin by the fire with her father. He leaned against the door and waited. He didn’t want to go and talk to her while his face was still red and he was terrified of Mr Carmichael. Tamsin had her hand resting on Dicky’s shoulder while they talked to someone. She looked up at him as he spoke, and Ed imagined her looking up at his face admiringly like that.
‘Look at Ed Rawlins!’ laughed Alice, pointing, ‘he simply drools over Tamsin Carmichael! He’s not the only one.’
Gilbert wanted her to keep her voice down. She was drunk. It wasn’t funny drunk, or sweet, it was just dull, coarser-than-usual drunk and he hated to see it.
‘I’m going to talk to Mackereth. Duty chatting. See you later.’
Alice looked around at everyone and smiled. She took another drink from a tray; she wasn’t sure what it was, a champagne cocktail, possibly. She wanted to adjust her roll-on, which was digging into her hips, but she couldn’t do it while people could see. She smoothed it down at the back, hoping it wasn’t spoiling the line of her dress. The dress was new and she’d had it made for the party. It was dark-red shot silk and extremely glamorous. Alice had taken two hours to get ready and they’d been late. She had hated arriving. She looked around the room knowing she looked prettier than most of the women there, and that at thirty she was younger than most of them too, but she felt terribly self-conscious. She smiled at Bridget Cargill and tried to remember when she and Gilbert had last made love. She’d just had her period and it certainly wasn’t since then. She tried to remember when her last period had been … before Lewis broke up, when they had the Johnsons to lunch; she didn’t think they’d made love more than once since then, either.
‘Alice, Gilbert run off has he?’
Claire Carmichael was in front of her.
‘Yes, but only with that accounts man.’
Claire made small talk while Alice drank. Across the room, Ed fought bravely through the crowd to Tamsin, who was lovely but on her way somewhere else and he had to endure being interviewed about school by Dicky. Gilbert found Mackereth in the drawing room and they talked numbers for an hour, while in the hall – after little Kit Carmichael had reluctantly left him for nursery duty – Lewis was alone. He thought he’d see what he could find to drink. He went into Dicky’s study.
The study was empty, with a fire burning and one lamp lit on Dicky’s desk. The rest of the room was dark. There were drinks laid out on a tray and Lewis took the gin bottle, went over to the window, opened it and stepped out onto the grass. The grass was frozen hard and brittle to walk on and the cold was a relief. He opened his bottle and wandered off towards the garages. He could hear the talking from the party, and the music, and he still felt hot from being inside, and the gin was very good and he drank slowly. He had to hold the bottle down when he passed a couple of drivers, who were looking at Dicky’s cars and talking about them, but they hardly looked up. He walked on down to the tennis court. The night was black, with a small, silver moon high up in a blank empty sky.
Kit held her collection of things in a napkin and cast her eye around the room for more. Her eyes were hot with tiredness and she felt restless. She found a handkerchief, quite clean, with the initials T.M. on it and tried to work out whose it was. The fire was a smouldering heap of ashes and cigarette ends, almost more cigarette ends than logs. She opened the window and the cold air came straight in and moved the hanging smoke around the room.
She went into the hall. Her father was there.
‘Hello, Daddy. Look.’
‘What’s that?’
She tipped her spoils onto the hall table. ‘Things people left.’
‘Why aren’t you in bed? It’s past ten.’
‘Mummy said I needn’t.’
‘You should have gone to bed when the children were taken home. You weren’t meant to stay up.’
‘Sorry.’
‘Go now.’
She hated the way he spoke. She felt cross and irritated by it all. He was the main one. Of all the people she hated for their smugness and bullying and picking on Lewis and talking like they were better than everybody, of everybody she hated, he was the main one. She bent to pick up the stiletto shoe, which had fallen, and didn’t look at him.
‘All right.’
‘Did you hear me? Go now and don’t speak to me in that tone.’
‘I said all right!’
She straightened up and he smacked her, with a hard open hand across the face.
They both stood there waiting.
He had never smacked her before; he’d never touched her at all that she could remember. Claire came out into the hall; she stood away from them, watching from the door and not saying anything.
Kit’s face burned, but she didn’t touch it and she didn’t look away from Dicky, she kept her eyes on his face. She saw excitement.
He raised his hand again, quickly, and she flinched, and hated herself for flinching, but he didn’t hit her; he smiled at her, and they both knew this was the beginning.
‘Go up to bed,’ he said.
‘Good night, Daddy,’ said Kit, ‘good night, Mummy.’
She went upstairs and Dicky turned to Claire.
‘Why don’t you get on with what you were doing?’ he said.
Kit went up the stairs and along the landing to her room, which was past Tamsin’s and on the other side of the house from Dicky and Claire’s rooms. She sat on her bed.
She felt she was meeting an inevitable fate. Part of her wanted to run away and cry and find somebody to save her, anybody at all, but most of her felt strong, like a soldier. She thought of being brave and coping. She thought, I’ll have to be very strong to manage this, and I won’t let him see how frightened I am. She got up and went down the corridor to the bathroom.
The bathroom was freezing, she could see her breath and there was cold air like a knife coming between the window and the sill. She undressed, shivering, and wishing she had brought her dressing gown. She pulled off her hated party dress a
nd stepped on it for warmth while she took off her underwear. She saw in her knickers that she was bleeding. For a silly moment she thought it was because of her father hitting her and then she realised it was her first period. She thought of Tamsin and Claire and their resigned and conspiratorial conversations about the curse, and she felt tired and at the beginning of something she had no interest in. She held her dress up over herself and ran barefoot down the corridor to Tamsin’s room, with the gloomy portraits of other people’s ancestors staring down at her as she ran. She looked in the dressing table and found all the clumsy, quasi-medical equipment she knew you had to use and, holding it, ran back to the bathroom again.
She dealt with it and put on her nightdress and did her teeth. She wrapped the knickers in lavatory paper and hid them at the bottom of the wastepaper basket. She could hear her mother and Tamsin talking over one another and laughing as they came up the stairs. Looking into the bathroom mirror she saw that she still had the red mark on her face from Dicky’s hand hitting her. It wasn’t a complete print because his hand was much bigger than her cheek and hadn’t fitted on.
Chapter Three
1953
At the beginning of the Easter holidays Alice met Lewis at Waterford station. She stood at the end of the platform wrapped in her coat with her fur hat pulled down. Lewis thought she looked like Anna Karenina and wished she’d jump under the train. Anna Karenina made him remember little Kit Carmichael for a moment; he wondered if she’d ever finished it. Alice didn’t throw herself under the train; she waved in that awful false way she had and started towards him.
‘Hello, Lewis! Jolly cold. I’ve got the car. Come on.’
When Gilbert came home that evening he paid the taxi and stood on the gravel as it drove away. He had to make himself go inside. Alice paused brightly in her drink-making and greeted him. Lewis began to smile. Gilbert looked at his son’s face. He saw Elizabeth and Lewis’s own increasing presence. It was unsettling. He saw Lewis, observed, stop smiling. The three of them stood, forming a triangle – schoolboy, father and wife – speechless, facing three weeks together.