by Sadie Jones
They were away from everyone now, and the smell of the roses and heat and the stillness were like a separate place. Tamsin looked right at him and didn’t speak.
She was waiting for him to tell her how good she looked.
‘You’re beautiful,’ he said.
‘Rubbish.’
‘Why do you bother with me?’
‘Why wouldn’t I? I like to help people.’
He smiled then, it was such a young thing to say.
‘Is that what I need?’
‘You used to frighten me.’
She said it a little breathlessly.
‘Did I?’
‘Are you a reformed character?’
‘Don’t I look it?’
He imagined going over to her, and holding her, and how she would feel to him, and she looked into his eyes while he thought about it. They couldn’t have held the moment any longer without one of them doing something, and she laughed and took her skirt in her hands and fanned her legs with it.
‘I say!’ she said.
It was a schoolgirlish gesture, but showed her legs all the same. She was deflecting him. She was tantalising him. It occurred to him he might actually ask this girl out. That would be the normal thing to do.
‘How would you like to—’
‘There it is!’ She was kneeling suddenly and had picked up a tennis ball and showed it to him, as if he cared, and before he could get any further she’d turned away.
‘Come on,’ she said, ‘I don’t want to play any more, do you? Would you get us some drinks?’
She went off through the trees and he followed her out onto the grass and towards the house and the people. It was as if he wasn’t there, and though he walked next to her there was nothing to say. He didn’t know why she had changed suddenly; he hoped he hadn’t said anything wrong.
‘Ed!’ she said, and Lewis saw Ed Rawlins coming up to them both. ‘Did you come down today? Just for this?’
‘This morning,’ answered Ed, and then, ‘Hello’, to Lewis.
‘Hello,’ said Lewis back.
Tamsin took Ed’s arm and they went off together.
This was more like it, this was like being home. He wasn’t sure where to go. He wasn’t about to go following after Tamsin and Ed. He looked up at the terrace. The adults were still drinking and standing in groups talking, although what they all had to say to each other year after year he had no idea.
Alice had walked down the garden and watched some tennis and then come back up through the people. She could spend the whole day smiling and walking. Everyone around her smiled and walked too, so there was just a whole garden full of smiling walking people, gliding past one another.
She felt Gilbert watching her from the terrace and looked at him. He wanted her to come and stand by him and he wanted her to stop drinking. She stared back at him until he looked away and she felt triumphant about it. She saw a maid with a tray of cocktails go by and had to sidestep quite quickly to get her attention. She took a drink and stopped herself from raising her glass to Gilbert on the terrace. She thought she’d smile and walk again – but in his direction, so as to please him. She wanted to please him. She wanted Lewis to please him, but she thought there was slim hope of either one of them doing it, with her stupidity and Lewis having already been ruined by both of them. Alice knew she was quite drunk; she thought she’d get drunker. She wondered how drunk she could be before Gilbert was really angry with her; she wondered if it was possible she was angry with him. She reached his side and stood by him.
‘Darling,’ he said, and smiled and turned back to Dicky, who was telling a joke about a Frenchman.
Alice smiled very brightly.
Lewis was standing apart from the party with his hands in his pockets, wondering what to do. He saw Alice go up to Gilbert on the terrace, where Dicky was holding court. His father was laughing with the others at something Dicky had said. He thought he might go and tell him he’d walk home. He didn’t want to draw attention to himself. He had made an appearance, he’d shown willing and not broken Ed’s nose again or fallen over drunk, and it was time to go. He’d call the day a success. He didn’t want to eat lunch with them. He could see the servants laying out a buffet and the thought of jostling with old ladies for cold cuts and trifle was appallingly silly.
He started across the garden, slowly, and glanced over at his father and Alice. Lewis could see, even at that distance, that Alice was drunk.
He paused, watching. She was adjusting the strap at the back of her shoe and holding her empty glass in the other hand. She put the glass down on the terrace and started to fiddle with her dress, laughing later than everyone else, and then too loudly. Gilbert picked up the glass and handed it to the maid and then put his hand on Alice’s arm. He saw Gilbert look at Dicky and saw his fear of everyone noticing, and felt it as if it were his own.
Gilbert looked up at him suddenly and caught his eye and Lewis had been so absorbed in watching them, he felt caught out. His father gestured him over and he went immediately.
Gilbert held onto Alice’s arm and stepped a little apart from the group as Lewis reached the terrace. Lewis saw Dicky noticing and turned his back to him, shoulder to shoulder with his father and blocking Dicky’s view.
‘Your stepmother is feeling unwell. I want you to take her home.’
He spoke very quietly and looked at Lewis steadily.
‘Now?’
‘Yes, now.’
Alice watched them talking about her; Gilbert exerting his will and Lewis looking like a child – closed up and frightened – and she wanted to shout at Gilbert for bringing him into it, and at Lewis for being so proud to be trusted.
Gilbert handed Lewis the car keys.
‘Just drive her straight home. I’ll walk back later. Alice?’
Alice didn’t answer. She was looking down.
‘Alice? Will you go with Lewis?’ said Gilbert.
She nodded, hardly looking at either of them. Lewis couldn’t take her arm, like Gilbert had done. He started walking and hoped she’d follow him, and she did.
‘Thank you,’ said Gilbert.
Alice followed him from the terrace and around the corner of the house, and Lewis thought about Tamsin and nearly kissing her. His body felt like it was still there with her, in the roses and the grass, and he didn’t want to be here at all. He’d get Alice home and then go somewhere by himself. He hated this; he hoped she was drunk enough to forget it – and then Kit bobbed up next to him, appearing from nowhere at his side.
‘Mrs Aldridge? Are you all right?’
Alice stopped, annoyingly, and swayed about.
‘Little Kit Carmichael. Such a sweet girl.’
She patted her face.
‘Can I do anything to help?’
Embarrassment made him angry, ‘Thanks. We’re fine.’
He got Alice walking again and Kit let them go, and he was aware of her oddly stricken expression as he left her.
Preston had moved the car and Lewis parked Alice by some rhododendrons while he went to find it. She weaved about and he had to stop her from sitting down to wait. He wished himself anywhere but there.
He brought the car around to the front and opened the door and waited while she got in. He had to lean across her to shut the door.
She was glazed, but her make-up was still perfect. He didn’t think he’d ever seen her without it. She was sitting with her hands in her lap and staring straight ahead like a doll. They started down the drive – and it was good to be driving a car, he almost enjoyed it – but then Alice started to talk.
‘Like a child! Taken home!’ She put on a mimicking voice, ‘She’s not behaving properly. She’s so difficult. Why can’t she behave herself?’
This was all new, her being like this, like the arguments. Lewis paid her no attention. He started to tap the steering wheel to a rhythm in his head.
‘What does she think she looks like?’ said Alice, her words falling over themselves. ‘W
ho does she think she is? One really can’t have people being so very badly behaved, can we? Jesus God! Lewis – God!’
He turned into the drive and stopped the car by the house.
She shouted suddenly, ‘Look at me when I speak to you! You’re just like your bloody father. Look at me!’
Her eyes were bright and furious and when he looked at her, she looked away and was quiet.
He got out and opened her door for her, staring at the ground. She scrambled out of the car and he didn’t help her. She went to the front door and got her key from her bag, but she couldn’t open the door with the key and she started to cry.
‘Oh my God. Lewis. I’m sorry. I can’t. Oh God, I’ve no excuse at all …’
He went over to her and took the key and opened the door and gave her the key back.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said, and she kept crying.
‘Don’t cry. It’s fine.’
She leaned on him. He took her into the hall, supporting her, and he took pride in it.
The hall was dark and cooler, and she made herself upright and seemed to pull herself together. He took a breath and stepped away from her again.
‘I’m sorry, Lewis.’
‘I don’t mind.’
‘Really, I—’
‘It’s fine.’
There was the sound of the clock ticking and the smell of the flowers in the vase on the table and the polished wooden floor and Alice stood there damply, clutching her bag and hat, bewildered by herself.
‘Oh, gosh. What a fool. I expect you detest me. Of course you do. You’ve always hated me. I know that you have.’
There was only one response to her. There had always been only one response to her.
‘I don’t hate you.’
‘I don’t feel very well at all,’ she said, and went to the bottom of the stairs, holding onto the banister.
‘I’m—’ she tripped and he went to help her and they went up the stairs together.
At the landing they stopped, and he let go of her arm.
The moment trembled and held still. It didn’t move on to the next moment where he would go downstairs again. Instead, she spoke.
‘The thing is, I feel so very badly about everything.’
He didn’t look at her.
‘About what?’
‘About you.’
There was silence. He was still.
He felt the crisis, the glimpsing of a truth, but it was a murky sort of instinct, and he wanted to get away.
‘Lewis?’
He held up his hand to stop her. She took his hand.
She took his hand and held it. It was wrong that she did that. They both looked at her holding his hand like that. Her hands were small and white and they felt hot from her twisting them together and holding her bag so tightly in the hot car. She gripped onto his hand.
‘You don’t know how it feels,’ she said, ‘looking at you and knowing it’s my fault. I should never have met him. Or I should have been better, but I couldn’t be.’
She looked up into his face and her need was so great he couldn’t look away from her.
‘You were just this little broken thing and I was too young to mend you, and I’m sorry.’
He felt sick with himself and as if he had forced her to say it. He wasn’t her fault. The wrongness inside him wasn’t because of her and he didn’t want her apology.
And then she undid the button on his sleeve. She pushed the sleeve softly up his forearm, and he wanted to pull his arm away, but the fascination was too much and he couldn’t move. She pushed up his sleeve and looked at the scars on his arm and, holding his hand with one hand, traced the whiteness of the thin scars with her fingertips.
She touched his scars so lovingly, it seemed.
‘Are you still broken?’ she asked.
She shouldn’t ask a thing like that. He didn’t know the answer. She was undoing something in him and he tried to turn away from her, but he couldn’t turn away.
‘Are you? … I need you to forgive me. Can you?’
She went closer and kissed his arm, she kissed the scars on his arm, and it was as if the world quivered all around them.
‘Are you better now?’ she said and came up closer; he could feel her clothes lightly touching him and she kissed his arm again, holding his hand.
‘Don’t do that.’
Alice looked up and her face and her mouth were close to him.
‘Don’t you want to be close? Don’t you? Don’t you want not to be alone, just for one moment in your life? For one single moment to just not be completely alone?’
‘Jesus Christ!’ He pushed her away from him hard, and she went backwards against the door frame.
‘Don’t!’
She was scared of him, so he went to her and he took her face in his hands and soothed her, and kissed her, and felt her tears on him as they kissed.
There was a moment where they both knew they could choose, but then it started, and his mind was nothing but heat. She held onto him tight from the beginning. She was desperate, and she pulled at him and kissed him, and all he could think about was that he mustn’t. She had her back against the door frame still, and as they slid down to the floor she pulled his shirt out of his trousers, yanking at his belt; she couldn’t get it undone and he helped her. It was fast and hot, and she was kissing him all over his face and licking him and holding on and digging her nails into him. Lewis closed his eyes and felt his face covered in Alice’s kisses and her tongue licking his neck and her hands gripping him, and it was dark and absurd and irresistible. Her skirt was very full and the mat erial got between them and he had to push it out of the way. She pulled at her underwear, taking his hand and pushing his fingers hard inside her, and she was wet and hot and like a dark and clawing thing and he was pulled in and, forcing in, felt horror and lust together. She got herself nearer, wriggling along the carpet and opening up her legs for him, and when he was inside her she started to cry and he hadn’t known you could feel such shame and still be hard and able to carry on. She was tilting her hips up at him, driving herself against him, but she was making gasping sobs and he started to stroke her face to console her, not wanting her to be in such pain. She kept crying, though, and got her foot wedged against the floor so that she could force herself up faster and harder against him. He felt the need for her going, as the horror got bigger than the need to do it, and there was too much darkness. As he got quieter, going away inside himself, she was grasping him harder and clinging onto him, and she came then – and cried out loudly with it, her nails digging into his arm, but before she had even finished coming, still shuddering with it, she opened her eyes up wide and stared at him. She pulled herself away, as if she was being burned, and scrambled across the floor. Her hands held onto the door frame, gripping, and she looked at him a second more, before getting inside the room and slamming the door shut.
He was half on his knees on the floor of the landing, his trousers and shirt undone and sweat coming off him, and the blank closed door to his parents’ room in front of him. He heard his own breathing and no sound from behind the closed door.
He got up and did up his trousers and his belt and went down the stairs. He crossed the hall and saw his hand reach out to the front doorknob and – like in a dream – saw his father on the other side of it, with his key in the door, but when he opened the door there was just the car and the empty drive.
He went back to the drawing room and took the bottle of gin from the cabinet by the door.
The car keys were in his pocket. They hadn’t fallen out while he was fucking Alice.
He went out of the front door and got in the car. He drove out onto the road, holding the bottle in one hand, and drank as much as he could without choking.
The day was hot and sunny; it didn’t know what had happened. You’d think the sky would be black and stormy once you’d had your stepmother on a Sunday afternoon, but it wasn’t. It was high and blue and empty. The road was twisting an
d Lewis drank some more and then put the bottle between his legs to steer better. He went fast and couldn’t feel the gin at all, and thought that if he could kill himself driving it would be a good thing. The hedges went by and the road straightened out, and he drank some more and went faster and felt darkness. He closed his eyes and drove blind for a while, and fast, and waited, and didn’t feel any fear except that it got funny. He opened his eyes and started to laugh, and driving is hard when you’re laughing that much, and he thought of all the people at the party and of his father and of himself fucking Alice on the landing; and he laughed so that he had to lean his head on his arm to keep it upright and drank some more, and it stopped being funny again. There was a bend coming up and he went into it fast, and crashing wouldn’t have mattered if there hadn’t been a car coming around it towards him. He saw the black bonnet of the big car, swinging sedately around the corner towards him, and the face of the driver, staring, and he hit the brakes and hauled the car over and it went up on the bank. A second later and he would have killed himself, and the other man too, but as it was he had time, and the black car swerved and there was a screeching sound from one or both of them, and his car went up on the verge and tilted and nearly rolled, and the other car got by; and Lewis pulled the wheel hard over again, and came to a stop across the middle of the road after the bend, and the engine died. He had spilt some of the gin on himself as the car tipped. He saved the bottle from falling. He wiped the sweat off his face.
After a while he moved the car. He got it as far as a shallow ditch and stopped there. He got out of the tilting car and sat at the side of the road with his head down on his arms. The sun was very hot on the back of his neck and his shirt, and it felt like it was holding him down. His head was crowded. He saw Alice up close to him and her mouth open and trembling as she came; he felt her tongue, licking him, and he heard her shouting at him to look at her. He saw his father’s face and his own slashed up arm and Alice looking at the blood on him when she’d bandaged him up, and how she’d hated it. He could smell her face powder as he kissed her tears, he could feel the starched layers of the material of her skirt knotting around his hands and the blank bare skin underneath, and he felt her hands, pulling him. Then, like a shadow over him, he felt his father standing behind him – and he looked up – opening his eyes quickly and straight into the sun, and in the pain he thought he saw the black shape of his father, looking down at him, and thought he was always there, only now he could see him.