by Sadie Jones
She took his hand and her hands were firm, and he’d always loved that they were strong and not fragile. She held his hand and leaned over him, his mother, and looked at him. She was wearing her pearls and they swung forward minutely as she leaned down. She kissed him on the forehead. Then she sat back up and she was very happy and very normal.
She didn’t go; she waited with him and he was too tired to keep looking at her, even though he wanted to, and he shut his eyes. She held his hand a little longer and then she slipped her hand away from him, and when he woke up there was a lot of birdsong and a heavy dew and the early sun, just up, was coming sideways through the trees.
The sky was extremely pale blue.
He got up. He was cold and his clothes were uncomfortable from the sweat and the dew and the dirt from the woods. He stood by the water and listened to the birds singing; there were blackbirds and lots of other ones he didn’t know. He felt how uncomfortable he was, and how dirty, and then he got undressed and went into the water. The river was icy and he stopped himself from yelling and swam a little to keep moving, and then put his head under and came out and shook the water off and washed his face. He drank some of the river. It tasted wonderful and cold and soft. He hoped it was clean enough to drink and wouldn’t make him sick.
He picked up his shirt from the bank and washed it and then twisted the water out and hung it on a tree with the low sun hitting it. He put on the trousers and brushed off as much of the leaves and dirt from them as he could. The bandage on his arm was wet from swimming, but there was no blood coming through.
He felt hungry. He had his wallet in his back pocket, but he didn’t think it was a good idea to go into the village, or any village. He counted his cigarettes. There were six, not very many. He lit one and his fingers were wet and soaked into the paper.
He was cold, so he went out to where it was sunniest, drying his hands some more on his trousers, and stood and smoked and thought what to do. The cold made everything bright and clear. He would have to go back. He would have to not get caught.
He put on his wet shirt and started back through the trees. The woods looked very pretty in the early morning and the air was fresh. His shirt began to dry on him as he walked.
Chapter Eleven
Lewis lay in the branches of an oak tree that was about fifteen feet into the forest and gave him a clear view of Dicky Carmichael’s house.
He was hidden, and the branch that he was on was wide enough for him to lean back against the trunk of the tree with his feet up and be comfortable and still be able to see. He was nervous to begin with that he’d be discovered, but he was screened by the tree and nobody came up to the top of the garden, which was unplanted and the day passed with spacing out his cigarettes and watching and thinking. He had to be in Kent for his National Service on Monday. It was Friday.
Not much happened in the early morning. The gardener came and weeded the beds near the house, which was something to look at for a while, and at about ten o’clock Dicky left. Lewis heard the front door and saw the Rolls turning in front of the house, and the back of it as it went down the drive. After that he was more relaxed and, apart from waiting to see Kit, didn’t think too much about the house, but let his mind go.
He thought about Dicky. He thought quite a lot about killing him, but also tried to work out how a man like that must think. He kept himself from picturing how Dicky might harm Kit because he needed to stay quiet and keep thinking sensibly, but he let himself think about other things: how Dicky would justify it to himself, how he would keep it a secret. He thought of Kit saying that she had never told anyone, and of how bad her bruises were. She was very proud, and he loved her pride, but it was a stupid pride if she hadn’t asked for help from anybody and her father had hurt her for a long time. He imagined her at school and wondered who she could have told and thought if she was like him, then there would be no-one. Telling hard things like that was impossible, he knew it was. He thought she might feel ashamed somehow and he hoped she didn’t. She was lovely and mustn’t feel that. He wondered what Dicky had done to Tamsin. He hadn’t seen Tamsin since the woods and he wasn’t particularly interested in her, but she didn’t deserve hurting and he hoped she wasn’t hurt badly. He remembered her light blue shoes lying in the dirt after she’d run away from him. He had been angry with her then, but it didn’t matter any more. She didn’t understand him any more than he understood her. He hadn’t been clear in his mind. He felt clearer now.
He heard the sound of a telephone ringing and a little while afterwards a van arrived and was sent round the back, and he heard the engine go away from him and then the sound of it in the stable yard. He lit his third cigarette and after a few minutes some workmen came round with the butler and Claire, and started to look at the damaged windows. Some of them were smashed and the lead bent in places. After feeling very conspicuous, and putting out his cigarette against the tree, Lewis realised they weren’t going to see him and enjoyed being able to watch them. He regretted panicking and putting out his cigar ette. He only had three more and it wasn’t lunchtime. He wished he hadn’t thought about lunch. He watched the glass being brought round and the panes being cut and fitted. He wanted to see Kit. He wanted her to come out. Then she did come out, as if she’d heard him.
She had a book and an apple and the kitten under her arm, but the kitten ran away immediately she put it down. She came up the terrace steps towards him and then stopped on the grass and lay down on her front and read her book, with her feet swinging occasionally and taking bites of her apple. The workmen carried on behind her and she lay in the sun reading, and she was about sixty feet away from Lewis and he could watch her.
She had shorts on, and a shirt that could have been part of her school games uniform, and her feet were bare. He loved her ears. He noticed the way she held her apple, in her whole hand, and took big bites out of it. He tried to see what she was reading, but couldn’t. She was tanned and smooth-looking and every part of her fitted with every other part. She had a practical sort of body, he thought, the sort of body that looked better naked than with clothes; good with clothes, but even better without. He tried not to think about her being naked because she didn’t know he was there and it wasn’t fair. He shut his eyes. He wanted to stroke the soft backs of her knees. He wanted to find out what her hipbone felt like and put his hand there, and on her back to find out the slope of it into her waist, and the texture of her skin. He wanted to feel her hair again as it went softly into her neck, like a boy and not like a boy.
Not thinking about her body wasn’t working, so he opened his eyes and tried to think of something else. He thought about what he could do to help her and that made him remember she didn’t want his help. Maybe she had wanted it, but she didn’t want it now. She knew now, about Alice, and because of it she wasn’t going to love him and he had to forget about that. It wasn’t a new thought for him, that he wouldn’t be loved, but it did seem hard that Kit had loved him and now, knowing, didn’t love him any more. He wouldn’t let himself think about how things might have been between them if he were better. He knew he wasn’t all right for a girl like that. He would have been sweet to her, he would be gentle and quiet with her – but he had to remember she wasn’t for him. She wasn’t for him, but he needed to help her if he could.
Her house rose up behind her. Everything was different. The house had stopped being something that was good and secure and had become a bad place. It seemed to Lewis that the repairs that were being done to it were like repairs being made to a fortress in a break in the fighting. This was a break though, and the day was warm, and Lewis felt nothing very bad could happen for a while, so he watched Kit some more and loved watching her and let himself feel that.
Claire came out occasionally and checked on the workmen and at one o’clock they stopped and went away. The gong rang for lunch and Kit got up and stretched herself and went down the garden.
There was nothing to look at now and Lewis was warm and let hi
mself sleep. It wasn’t a real sleep, it was a half sleep and in it his mind kept going over and over familiar things and changing them and he began rebuilding the picture he had of the world. His mind, freed up with not eating, seemed to lose its edges and he saw that the assumptions he had always made were false, and broke apart when he looked at them. His thoughts ran away, and flowed away, and made pictures.
It was an odd feeling, a looking-glass feeling, that he had, that all his life he had been on one side of the glass with everybody else on the other and now the glass had broken and the thick, broken pieces were at all of their feet.
That morning Gilbert had left for work at the normal time, but he was only at his desk for an hour before leaving for his appointment with Dr Bond. He took a taxi to Harley Street and found that he was checking nobody was looking as he entered the building.
There was a lift with a metal gate you pulled across to take him to the third floor and he watched the red-carpeted landings passing him. He felt terribly embarrassed giving his name to the receptionist and hated waiting. He looked at the closed door and the brass plaque with ‘Dr W. Bond’ that was screwed onto it. A woman came out of the door and she held a handkerchief up to her eyes as she went by. She was wearing a suit and a little hat tipped forward and Gilbert didn’t know if the handkerchief was just to hide her face, because she didn’t want to be seen either, or if she’d been crying. The whole place seemed to be fake; pretending to be respectable when it was full of damage, pretending to be quite open when it was full of shame.
He fidgeted and waited and got angry about waiting. When he finally went in, he was surprised by the size of the room. The big net curtain on the window shone bright white with diffused sunlight and the air was stuffy. He sat opposite Dr Bond, who had the light behind him so that his face wasn’t quite clear. Gilbert put his briefcase down.
‘This is about your son, isn’t it, Mr Aldridge?’
‘Yes. Lewis.’
‘Tell me about Lewis.’
‘… What do you mean?’
‘He’s having a difficult time?’
‘Yes. He’s—’ It was still horrible to say it out loud, ‘He’s recently come out of prison. He was in prison for two years. For arson. He’s nineteen now. When he came home, it seemed at first that he was better. He seemed to want to behave and he got himself a job, or I got him a job.’
‘When was this?’
‘Just over two weeks ago.’
‘When you say better?’
‘He has problems. He drinks—’
‘How much does he drink?’
‘He drinks secretly. He wasn’t drinking at first. Then he started to. But I haven’t explained.’
‘It’s all right, Mr Aldridge, take your time, you’re doing very well.’
Gilbert felt patronised and irritated and wondered if this man had any proper qualifications. He looked professional enough, he was in his fifties and had grey hair and a neat suit and held his glasses in one hand as he made notes with the other. Gilbert felt scrutinised and judged and he wanted to say: don’t look at me, it’s my son we’re talking about. He had a silly fear the doctor would suddenly accuse him of some mental problem and recommend that he be treated immediately.
‘I need to explain. He … when he was younger he had a habit of, well, he would – if things went wrong at all – he would cut himself. With a razor. On the arm.’
‘I see. Not his wrists?’
‘No. It wasn’t like that. Here,’ he showed him, ‘on the arm.’
‘You say when he was younger?’
‘Yes. We think he didn’t do it while he was away. He seems not to have got into any trouble there. Then, just recently he did it again, very badly.’
‘Do you know what could have caused him to do it?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Well, what might have happened that made him do it?’
‘He was arrested. It was when they let him go. He took a girl into the woods and he – hurt her – he didn’t, well, it wasn’t like that, at least I don’t think so, but he – he gave her a black eye and he ran away, he stole a car and he ran off with another girl – her sister, who is very young – and he was arrested again.’
‘And then he was released?’
‘She didn’t want to press charges against him. The family are our neighbours. Her father has a lot of influence. It could have been much worse. They’ve been extremely understanding. But now he’s run away—’
‘Let’s go back a little. When would you say this behaviour started? What sort of a boy was he?’
Gilbert felt impatient again; this was all the sort of nonsense he had expected.
‘He was a normal boy. Like any boy.’
‘Until?’
‘I don’t know. He seemed all right. His mother died a few years ago. Of course it affected him.’
‘How old was he when his mother died?’
‘Ten.’
‘How did she die?’
He didn’t have time for this.
‘She drowned. In the river near our home. Lewis was the only one there. We don’t know what happened.’
‘I imagine it was a terrible shock.’
‘Of course.’
‘Would you say it was after that he became difficult?’
‘Not really. He was quiet. He got on all right. I remarried. It was when he was fourteen or fifteen that he became unmanageable, with the things he did and the drinking.’
‘This terrible event. This drowning … Tell me about your wife.’
‘I don’t see why.’
‘It must have been very difficult.’
‘Of course.’
‘You say he was the only one there.’
‘Yes.’
‘He never said how it happened?’
‘He wouldn’t speak. He was quiet. He was oddly quiet.’
‘What are you saying?’
‘I’m not saying anything.’
‘You appear to be saying the events were mysterious in some way.’
‘I don’t know what you mean. Mysterious. It was very sad. Lewis was a little boy. He was a strong swimmer. The water wasn’t very deep. I don’t know. I wasn’t there.’
‘You seem upset.’
‘I’m not at all upset. My son is missing. He may go back to prison. He’s not a child now. He’s nineteen and he’s violent and he’s a drunk and he’s harming people, and you seem to want to talk about an unpleasant event that happened many years ago.’
‘I don’t want to upset you.’
‘I would like to keep to the point.’
‘Are you all right?’
‘Will you, please!’
‘Would you like some water? Would you like a drink?’
Gilbert checked his watch.
‘A brandy?’ said Dr Bond.
Gilbert had a drink, and thought how excellent it was that medicinal drinking in doctors’ offices allowed you to break the not-before-twelve rule. He felt a little better. He told Dr Bond about Lewis attacking the Carmichaels’ house and disappearing. He told him about the blood on the bathroom wall and that he had seen Tamsin and how shocking that was. He told him about Lewis’s blankness and sudden, unprovoked rage.
‘We don’t know where he is,’ he said. ‘That was yesterday. He ran away after that and we don’t know where he is now, or what may happen to him if he’s caught.’
‘What are your thoughts?’ The question was weighted with significance. Gilbert felt very emotional suddenly, and found it hard to speak.
‘I’m very concerned for him.’
‘And?’
‘I’m very concerned for my wife. My second wife. And for the other family I told you about, my neighbour and his daughters.’
‘When you say concerned …’
‘I fear for them.’
‘Would you say your son was a danger to himself?’
‘Yes.’
‘Would you say he was a danger to others?’
‘
… yes.’
‘Sometimes … when a person doesn’t accept they need treatment, a committal order can be a way of initiating the process.’
There, he’d said it; Gilbert had wanted him to say it, but now that he had he felt sick with himself, and frightened. He looked down at his glass and waited. The doctor’s voice was very gentle.
‘It’s a legitimate route to take.’
Gilbert nodded and didn’t look at him.
‘You’re not betraying your son, Mr Aldridge.’
‘… no.’
Lewis’s sleep was like diving into something. The layers were pushed back, his mind kept dropping, deeper and deeper, and when he woke it was a sudden waking and it was much hotter. He didn’t feel peaceful any more, he felt restless. The workmen were at the windows again, and it seemed so dogged and stupid the way they were putting back each little diamond pane he’d broken.
He had always thought he had been wrong. He hadn’t been wrong. His heart got faster and he felt weak and strong together. He wanted Kit out of there and didn’t know how he could stand it or what he was going to do. He looked at his hand shaking in front of him and willed it to stop and it did stop, and he lit his second-last cigarette with a steady hand.
He smoked and tried to make it enough, so that he wouldn’t be so hungry, and watched the smoke, and imagined his father at work in his office and what he might be doing.
As a child, the idea of his father’s work life had been impressive – he imagined a leather-topped desk and important papers that needed attending to – but as he grew older he lost respect for it. He remembered one day when he was sixteen he’d got out of bed with Jeanie in the afternoon and gone out into the street. He’d walked away from her flat and down towards St James’s and bought a bottle of gin in an off-licence there. He had put it in his pocket and then seen his father coming out of his club after lunch. He had stood on a corner, with the bottle of gin in his pocket and Jeanie in his mind and on his body, and seen his father in his suit and hat, talking to some people. He’d watched him say goodbye and get into a taxi and his father hadn’t seen him, and Lewis had gone back to Jeanie’s bed and been with her until night-time. He had lain in bed while she slept against him and felt completely alone. He didn’t have any idea what his life would be like, and it had terrified him that he didn’t, but he knew it couldn’t be like his father’s, even if he had wanted it.