by Sadie Jones
‘Don’t be frightened, you know Daddy’s not that bad. I’ll wait.’
As Lewis got out, Tamsin put the radio on, it was Fats Domino singing ‘Blueberry Hill’ and it sounded pretty good, and he would much rather stay outside with Tamsin in the sun than go into the office and talk to her father. He went up the metal steps to the door and knocked and entered.
There was a man of indeterminable age sitting at a desk. He had glasses and a side parting, slicked down. He looked up.
‘Lewis Aldridge?’ It was an accusation. Lewis nodded. ‘Mr Phillips. D’you do?’ He half-rose in his seat and gestured at another door with his pencil, ‘Mr Carmichael is waiting for you.’
He said it with such deference Lewis thought he was going to touch his forelock. He knocked on the other door, watched by Phillips, who sat down again and cleared his throat, never taking his eyes off Lewis.
‘Come!’
Lewis opened the door.
‘Lewis. Phillips!’ barked Dicky. ‘In here please!’
Phillips leaped out of his seat, like something out of Dickens, and shot past Lewis into the room. Dicky stood by the window in customary hands-behind-the-back pose. It had been a long time since Lewis had seen anyone like Dicky, or maybe there wasn’t anyone else like Dicky. His blazer and his ruddiness and the squeak of his shoes as he approached were laughable.
‘Gilbert all right? Alice?’
‘Very well. Thank you, sir.’
‘Now, your father’s spoken to me and I’ve asked Mr Phillips here to find you something. Phillips?’
‘In filing,’ said Phillips, and Lewis nodded; filing sounded fine, he could do that. Dicky nodded to Phillips, and Phillips approached Lewis and went quite close to him.
‘I don’t want any funny business from you,’ he said.
It was almost funny, the way he said it, but actually not, because of his closeness and the way Dicky was looking at them from across the room. Dicky’s presence in the room was oppressive and Lewis remembered how much he had always hated him and then tried very hard to forget.
‘No, sir,’ he said.
‘You’ll be on trial,’ Phillips went on, and Lewis could smell his breath and his hair oil. ‘On Mr Carmichael’s say-so. I’ll expect you on Monday morning, nine o’clock, and I’ll show you the ropes then. All right?’
‘Thank you,’ said Lewis.
There was another exchange of glances and Phillips left the office, and shut the door. Dicky walked over to Lewis.
‘I don’t usually employ young men straight out of prison, you know.’ He paused. ‘I want to make it perfectly clear that I’m doing this for your father because he’s worked for me for so long. I wonder if you know what this means to him?’
Dicky took a step closer to him.
‘In actual fact, I neither like nor trust you, but should you lose this job, it would be to his detriment. Your – father – wouldn’t – like – it, do you understand?’
‘Yes, sir.’ Lewis concentrated on the windows of the room. The windows were sealed all around, they didn’t have catches to open them.
‘Let’s not imagine this job is any more than it is. This is my company, and I need to protect it. I’ll be paying you almost nothing to do a worthless job. What do you think about that?’
Dicky had every right to talk to him that way; he wasn’t going to be angry, he would make himself quiet. He had spent two years making himself quiet with people who wanted him to lose his temper.
‘I’ve less than no interest in you personally, Lewis – you’re a troublemaker. I’ve never had any time for these excuses about your mother and so forth, for God’s sake, we’ve all had problems. There was a collective sigh of relief when you finally got put away and I don’t imagine—’
They wanted him to lose his temper so that they could beat him or lock him up, or prove that he was nothing – as if that needed proving – but he wasn’t going to be angry, he was going to be quiet. Dicky had stopped talking, and Lewis hadn’t noticed that he’d stopped. There was silence in the room.
‘Go on then. Get on with you.’
Dicky laughed and shoved his arm and Lewis saw that he was close up and staring at him, but he couldn’t remember what he had been saying.
There was a blank in his head, like a missed step. He guessed the interview was over. Dicky seemed to be waiting for something. Something other than having his tongue ripped out of his mouth.
Lewis concentrated very hard.
‘Thank you, sir,’ he said.
Outside the office, Lewis got back in the car with Tamsin. His hands were shaking.
‘You were ages!’ she said, and started the engine and the car bumped down the track and out onto tarmac. ‘Well? How’d it go?’
‘What?’
‘Did you get the job?’
‘Oh. Yes.’
‘WEEE!’ she cried, and laughed, and waved her hand out the window, ‘well done you!’
She laughed again, and he closed his eyes. He was frightened he couldn’t remember what Dicky had been saying to him, or how long he’d been in there. He needed not to be like that. He wasn’t going to be like that again. He hadn’t been in prison, and he was home now.
She was stopping the car. She pulled over to the side of the road and turned off the engine. He looked at her.
‘What?’
He saw her take a breath and, breathing, flex her body very slightly against the seat, as if adoring being Tamsin.
The road was empty and sun poured down on the car, which was dark inside where they were. He waited. He had felt paralysed – and now he was filled with the small darkness of the car and Tamsin, looking at him.
‘Would you take the top down?’ she said.
He got out, and did, and tried not to stare at her while he did it.
He got back into the car. She didn’t start the engine. She took off her cardigan. She took it off very consciously, demonstrating the removal of it, and that she was luxuriating in the air.
‘Gosh,’ she said.
‘Hot?’
‘Awfully.’
She looked like a girl who wanted to be kissed. No – he wanted to kiss her; it wasn’t her wanting to be kissed. Why would Tamsin Carmichael want to kiss him? He tried not to think about it, but she seemed to present herself to him, and she still hadn’t started the engine.
She tucked her hair behind her ear, slowly, and he couldn’t stop himself staring now; at the hollow between her collarbones and her dress, which was light cotton and covering the shape of her, but letting you know it was there underneath. He kept himself still, and looked at her, and thought about kissing her and tried not to look as if he was thinking about it.
‘Do you remember how we all used to play together as children?’
She said it quietly, as if she was about to tell him a secret. He nodded, watching her closely. She leaned a little towards him.
‘I remember your mother so well,’ she said, looking into his eyes. ‘She was a wonderful woman. A beautiful woman – and when I heard she’d died like that, I cried.’ Her eyes were wide, looking into him. ‘Do you remember how patient she was with all of us? All our noisy games? You were ten when she drowned – I’m sorry, my maths! So I must have been twelve …’
She didn’t seem to notice what she was doing to him, or perhaps she did, and enjoyed it. He said quietly, ‘We don’t talk about her.’
‘Well, of course!’ she said, blithely. ‘Your father met Alice that same year! I shouldn’t think she could stand the sound of her name! How horrid for you, though.’
He’d had enough. ‘Yes, look—’
She put her hand on his shoulder.
She was wearing her short, white gloves and she rested her hand there and it wasn’t like her flirting before – he must have been wrong about her flirting, he didn’t know now – this was horribly kind. Still, her fingers were light on his shoulder and he felt her all through him.
‘Would you all like to come up to the hou
se for lunch and tennis on Sunday?’
Lewis tried to regain some hold.
‘Yes. Thanks.’
‘Good,’ she said, and started the engine.
She seemed very pleased, and didn’t speak again except to say goodbye when she let him out of the car.
Lewis went into the hall. The house was silent. He loosened his tie and sat on the bottom step. The kitchen door opened and Mary put her head out and, seeing him there, narrowed her eyes slightly and then shut the door again.
He’d had an interview with the governor at Brixton the week before they let him out. There had been posters on the walls advertising jobs with various skills Lewis didn’t possess, and the governor had asked him questions about his schooling and his plans. There had been bemusement that a ‘posh boy’ was in Brixton in the first place. Well, the governor would be pleased. He was going to a tennis party at the weekend and had a job starting on Monday. It looked as if he was being rehabilitated. Lewis smiled down at the floor, bringing his hand up to half cover his face like he didn’t want to be caught doing it. It seemed a risky thing to be doing, smiling, and he wasn’t sure he should commit himself. Then he lay back on the stairs and thought of Tamsin Carmichael, and smiled some more, and got up and went out into the sunny garden.
Chapter Three
Lewis didn’t go to church with Alice and Gilbert on Sunday; it was bad enough for them to have to put up with people knowing he was back, without him actually being there.
They drove back through the heat and sunshine to pick him up before going on to the Carmichaels, and didn’t speak, except for Gilbert saying, ‘Do you remember when Lewis played that tennis tournament against the other prep school, which one was it?’
‘I don’t know,’ said Alice, ‘I think it was the summer before we met.’
And he turned to her and said, quite sweetly, ‘Looking forward to the party?’
‘Very much,’ said Alice.
‘I think it’s going to be jolly nice,’ he said, ‘don’t you?’
At the Carmichaels’ house, Preston got out of the car and opened the door for Claire and then for Dicky, and then came around to let out Tamsin and Kit. When she was released, Kit galloped into the house and up to her room, pulling off her dress.
She put on her shorts and splashed her face with cold water and ran down, fast, and out into the garden, grabbing her tennis racket from the stand by the back door. The housekeeper was laying out glasses on a long table on the terrace. Kit got halfway to the tennis court and stopped, skidding, and remembered Lewis. She looked down at her bare brown legs below her shorts and her plimsolls, which were battered. She wondered if there was anything to be done about the way she looked. Maybe she ought to put a frock on. She didn’t want to. He wouldn’t look at her anyway. She could look at him, couldn’t she? She set off running again, and laughed.
Tamsin stood still in front of the glass and smiled at her reflection. She stopped herself kissing it, as she had used to when just a little younger. She could hear people arriving and wondered if any of them were the Aldridges, and thought of her mother’s face when she had told her about asking Lewis specially. She saw her eyes smile and brighten and she opened her mouth as if about to speak, to see the way her lips moved when she did that. Then she smiled at herself, a little shyly, glancing over her shoulder at the glass again as she left the room.
The gravel in front of Dicky Carmichael’s house was covered with cars. The front door was open, with the maid standing neatly by it. Lewis followed Alice and Gilbert into the house, which was dark after the bright day. The polished wood was almost black around them and the sun didn’t penetrate. It wasn’t a house suited to summer.
They went through the hall and the drawing room and they could hear the people first and then see them through the windows.
‘Gilbert—’ said Alice and he took her hand, and Lewis saw that they were having to get their courage up, and that it was because of him.
Then they went out onto the glaring terrace where the people stood out harshly against the hot flagstones.
Lewis looked at the big garden and the long terrace and the tables laid out and the people spread out over the grass. It was an enormous bright canvas of familiarity and pleasantness and it was shocking to him. He had become used to quite different views. He was allowed back. He was grateful.
Gilbert and Alice were a little ahead of him and Alice put her hand on Gilbert’s arm.
Mary Napper was talking to Harry Rawlins and they stopped talking when they saw Lewis and stared. The people next to them noticed and they stared too, and after a moment the whole terrace paused. It could only have lasted a moment, a few seconds, and Gilbert had expected it and told himself he didn’t mind, and smiled around at the faces and waited.
The conversation started up again, but falsely, and Gilbert rocked a little on his heels.
‘I wonder where they all can have got to,’ he said, smiling affably around, and Lewis hurt for him.
‘Gilbert! Alice!’ Claire had come out of the house with the maid and came over immediately when she saw them.
‘I’m so pleased you could come. Don’t you have a drink?’ she asked and the maid offered them one, and Lewis pretended he wasn’t there.
Gilbert and Alice stood very close to each other and talked about nothing, and then David Johnson came up and spoke to Gilbert and he didn’t look at Lewis at all, and Lewis took a step backwards and thought about leaving.
‘There you are!’
Tamsin was by him. She seemed to have turned her brightness up for the brightness of the day. He felt separate and strange even to be looking at her. She was wearing creamy white, or white and pink, he didn’t really look, but she was light and gold.
‘Thank goodness you’re here!’ she said, and took his hand, quite naturally. ‘It’s been absolutely deadly.’
She pulled him away and he saw that people stared at them, that people stared because of who she was and how she looked, and the fact that she was holding his hand and was not put off by him, and he was amazed at her. She pulled him fast, almost running across the lawn. There were people on the grass and Tamsin stopped in front of two ladies in hats.
‘Mrs Patterson, you remember Lewis Aldridge?’ she said.
‘Of course,’ said the woman, and her friend nodded, and they walked on and didn’t smile.
‘You do have an effect!’ said Tamsin, delighted, and laughed over her shoulder at him, and he saw that she was excited by people hating him.
The tennis court was some way from the house and it was a grass court and smooth and perfect. Around it were fruit trees with roses climbing through them and past that were the woods. The younger people were near the court and Kit and a boy were playing. Tamsin and Lewis got to the edge of the court and the boy served to Kit and she demolished his serve and laughed, and then saw Lewis and stopped, and the boy hit the ball straight past her, and she didn’t notice.
‘Come on, infant!’ called Tamsin, ‘we’re playing now. You’ve had ages.’
She went onto the court and held out her hand. Kit gave her the racket and scowled at her.
‘Hello, Lewis,’ she said.
‘Hello, Kit, wind’ll change.’
She frowned some more and looked at the ground and rubbed her face, which was sweaty, with her forearm. The boy came over and handed his racket to Lewis.
‘Thanks,’ said Lewis and he and Tamsin went out onto the court.
Kit flopped down on the ground to watch and chewed a piece of grass and stretched her legs out.
Lewis could look at Tamsin now and not have to pretend not to. He wondered if she had really got so much more lovely between nineteen and twenty-one or if it was just that all women looked fascinating to him because of not having seen any. Whatever it was, she was gorgeous and she was paying attention to him and he should just enjoy it; there was filing with Mr Phillips in the morning.
Tamsin picked up a ball and struck a pose and looked at Lewis chal
lengingly.
‘Ready?’
He nodded.
‘I said “Ready”?’
‘Yes!’
She laughed, and he laughed too and she served a ladylike serve. He tapped it back to her, careful.
‘Don’t be polite,’ she called, ‘I’m terribly good.’
Kit got up from the grass, disgusted with them both. She went up to the house and around the corner to where there was nobody and sat against the wall.
She could hear the party, and the stone was cool on her back because she was in shadow. She shut her eyes up tight. She hadn’t imagined he’d fall in love with her or anything like that. She’d thought it would be enough to see him, like when she was younger, but it wasn’t. Her loving him had been patient before, and slow, but it hurt now and she didn’t know what to do. She felt she knew him, but he was other to her, too; almost impossible to look at, he was so different to her. She could have stared and stared, but had to run away because it hurt too much. She hadn’t thought it would be like that and Tamsin behaved as if it was all just normal to play with him and draw him in, and Kit felt helpless. There was a wave of adult laughter as everybody drank more and the talk got even smaller. She could hear her father’s voice rising over the others like a clenched fist, and she put her hands over her ears.
Tamsin lifted her hair from her neck and fanned herself and smiled and Lewis tried to work out if her flirting was deliberate or instinctive.
‘Come on,’ she said, ‘hit it to me properly, I shall frighten you with my athleticism.’
He served to her, hard, and the ball bounced near her so that she hardly saw it and she squealed.
‘No fair! You absolute swine!’
She glanced around for a ball. There were none nearby and she looked back at Lewis and said, very deliberately, ‘I think it went over here, don’t you?’
Then she walked off the court with a little glance over her shoulder at him. Lewis dropped his racket and followed. He didn’t think anyone saw them go. He didn’t care.
He followed her to where they were hidden by trees and roses, and she walked slowly and stretched out her arms and then stopped and turned and he stopped, too.