by Sadie Jones
When he was in jail, and letting his mind go, he would think of the lives he had seen or heard about: businessman, barman, musician, cleaner, prison officer, policeman; but when he looked at the future, he didn’t exist. There was no place for him. He was a wrecked person.
The difference now was that all his life he had thought his father and Dicky and Alice and Tamsin and all of the people who managed in the world weren’t wrecked people, and now he knew they were. It looked like everybody was in a broken, bad world that fitted them just right.
Kit wasn’t, though. Kit was too beautiful and too shaming, and he lost all his thought then.
Gilbert returned to his office after his meeting with the doctor. He worked hard and took the normal train home. When he came into the hall Alice was in the drawing room as usual, by the drinks cabinet with the broken doors. Gilbert couldn’t go in to her. He sat in a chair by the door and put his briefcase on his lap, and after a while she noticed and she came out.
‘Gilbert?’
‘Yes?’
‘You’re home.’
‘Yes.’
‘What’s the matter?’
He got up and went into the drawing room and she followed him and handed him his drink.
‘Did you see the doctor?’
‘Yes.’
‘And?’
‘And?’
‘What did he say?’
‘Oh, he gave me a form to fill in. We talked about Lewis.’
‘What form?’
He gestured at his briefcase and took his drink and sat down by the empty grate. She went to the briefcase and opened it, struggling with the lock because she wasn’t used to it, and got out some stapled pieces of paper. She knelt there, reading them.
‘What’s for dinner?’ he asked.
‘Gilbert – this is to have him committed. You can’t have him committed. Gilbert?’
‘For God’s sake, what?’
‘You can’t do this.’
‘No. We have to bloody find him first. They think he may have gone to London—’
‘When he hurt himself this time—’
‘It’s not just that!’
‘I know he didn’t hit Tamsin.’
‘Have you seen her face?’
‘Please stop shouting. You can’t do this to him, Gilbert. It will break him.’
‘He’s broken already.’
‘Gilbert—’
‘I’m not discussing this with you, Alice. You’re not his mother and it’s not your decision. Another topic, please, or if you can’t find one, why don’t you go to your room until dinner time?’ Alice stood up and she still held the paper in her hands. ‘Well?’
‘When we met,’ she wasn’t going to cry, ‘and you were so very sad, Gilbert, I thought I could make you forget her and be happy. But you’ve guarded your misery, haven’t you? … You’ve let it turn black. I’ve no idea how you can live with me and be so hard and so cold. Did I do this? I used to blame myself … and Lewis. But perhaps it’s just you. Perhaps this is just you.’
He didn’t look at her still, but made an impatient gesture with his hand, and she turned and went out of the room and upstairs, just as he had asked.
Chapter Twelve
When it was quite dark, the Carmichaels’ house was lit up like a doll’s house. Lewis was waiting until everybody had gone to bed so he could go back to his father’s house and try to find something to eat. He would have to break in and not be caught. The family were in the drawing room. He could see the maid and the housekeeper going in and out of the other rooms and doing things. A little later they all had supper and Lewis climbed down to see better. He watched them eat and smoked his last cigarette waiting for Kit to go up to bed. The night was dark and alive around him. He felt frightened for her, and disgusted, and couldn’t leave until her light was safely turned off. When her window was dark he started back through the trees.
Kit lay still and quiet in her bed. She had wanted all evening to be by herself and cry, but now she was alone she couldn’t cry, but felt small and hard and as if there was nothing left of her. She needed to get used to Lewis not being there in her heart with her any more. She wanted not to think about him, but she thought about him all the time. She didn’t know where he was and it obsessed her, not knowing, and it went around in her mind, fearing him, fearing for him, fearing his capture, fearing his return. She couldn’t seem to adjust to this new reality. She hadn’t known she was happy before, with her loves and her dream world and Lewis in her mind, the way she had thought that he was.
There must be something else for her than this. In a month she’d be in Switzerland. There would be the holidays, though, and she would be back for those. Just like school, home to Daddy in the holidays. It was as if nothing would ever change. She had lost her will to imagine change.
The path home was well worn and Lewis had known it all his life, but felt as if he’d never walked it before. At the top of his garden he stood in the safety of the trees, looking down to the house. There were no lights showing and no sign of anyone and he came out of the woods onto the smooth lawn. He approached the house, slowly, until it stood above him, blocking the sky. He felt the windows watching him and he knew he should move, but he stood still, feeling nothing but the cold blood in his veins. He was home.
Through the long summer the windows had stood open at night to let the cool air in, but now they were locked. All along the drawing room and the dining room they were locked. He went around the house. The side door was locked too, but the kitchen window was just pulled to, and Lewis opened it wide and climbed inside. He stood in the kitchen and felt out of place, like an animal that had got in, something that didn’t belong there. He heard his heart beating.
He went to the larder and opened it, and it opened quietly. There were dishes of food, covered, and he took off the covers. There was a rice salad and he ate some of that and then he got a knife and cut pieces of ham for himself and ate them standing. There was bread in the bread bin and he ate some of that too, and didn’t bother to cut it because he was going to take it with him. He tried not to eat too quickly, but he took big mouthfuls and the ham was strong and very dry with the bread and he went to the tap and bent down to drink from it. It felt strange to be eating, as if it had been longer than two days. He waited in the dark and listened, and his strength came back. He began to notice the house more and how it sounded and how it felt to be there. He listened and couldn’t hear anything except the hum of the refrigerator. The house felt small after the woods, like a pretend thing, with the thinness of its walls and the open night outside them.
It was very dark, and darker still in the hall, and he could only just see the white of the banister as it curved up towards where Alice and Gilbert were. He worried he’d made too much noise with the tap and he waited for a while before doing anything else. His case was upstairs, and his cigarettes, and he needed a shirt and his razor. He had to get them.
He went into the hall and started very slowly up the stairs and kept his eyes on his parents’ door as he went up.
When he’d come out of prison he had felt that he had hardly been away, that two years was very short. The three days he’d been gone this time felt much longer.
He watched his father’s door as he climbed the stairs. The cold feeling left him and his mind seemed to heat up as it filled with memories and with feelings that crowded behind his eyes.
He was seven years old and shut out of the room. He was ten years old and being sent upstairs as a punishment. He was twelve and sitting on the stairs and trying to be quiet and not knowing where to be in the house because it all felt wrong to him. He was fifteen and going up to get away from them and to drink and to try not to hurt himself.
Feeling all his life playing inside him at once like that was painful and the sad, wrong feeling was very strong. He remembered his mother running up the stairs; she always seemed to run, always getting something she had forgotten and calling up or down to people while she
ran. There was no hush about her. The house had been hushed ever since.
At the top of the stairs he stood in front of the door and it seemed to him that his mind was so noisy it would shake the air in the still house and there was no way his father could not hear it and come out. He didn’t know if he wanted his father to come or was frightened he’d come because of what he might do. But he didn’t. He didn’t come out. The door stayed shut.
He went to his room and got the case from the cupboard and put it on the bed. He took his white shirt from its hanger and underwear from the chest of drawers, and his cigarettes and his enlistment notice from the drawer by the bed.
He went across the landing and reached into the bathroom and took the razor and a piece of soap, and knelt down and tucked the razor and the soap into the elastic pocket in the side of the case.
He didn’t close the clips while he was up there because of the noise, but went downstairs as quietly as he could and back into the kitchen.
He put the case on the table and took more ham from the larder and some cheese and some bread, and he wrapped them up well in tea-towels and put them in the case too, in the pocket inside the lid.
He couldn’t think of anything else. All the feelings were in his head still, and filling his heart, and he wanted to be out of the house for good.
He stood in the kitchen, by the open suitcase, and kept his head down and tried to concentrate. He noticed the dirty bandage on his arm. It was very important to take it off. He forgot about getting out and stopped to do it.
The knot was tight and small, and had got wet and dried again, and he had to use his teeth. When it was undone he unwound the bandage, and his arm emerged. The cuts were healing well and didn’t look bad at all, just raised still, and damp, and needing the air to mend them. He looked at his arm and wondered how long it would take all the cuts to heal, for all of the scars to heal completely. He hadn’t cut himself for two years in prison, and the scars from before had been fading well until he came home. He couldn’t imagine two years ahead. He flexed his hand and felt the tightness of the razor cuts and thought of how much pain he had been in, and how lonely.
‘Lewis.’
Lewis turned around. Gilbert was in the doorway of the kitchen. Lewis had the bandage in his hand. He put it down.
‘Hello, Dad.’
‘Where have you been?’ Gilbert’s voice was shaking.
Lewis was quiet and still, but with danger too, and they could both feel it.
‘Somewhere. I thought I’d go back there.’
‘I’ve been worried about you.’
Lewis didn’t think that was probably true.
‘Have you?’ he said.
‘Why don’t we sit down and talk about this?’
He said it so obviously, it was silly.
‘Phoned already?’
‘What?’
‘Who’s coming for me? The police? Doctors? How does it go this time?’
Gilbert drew himself up.
‘You have been—’
‘NO!’
He saw Gilbert stop and, stopping, hold his breath and wait. He had silenced his father and now he wanted to get out. He went to pick up his things from the table and Gilbert flinched, and Lewis saw that he was frightened of him.
‘What?’ he said, advancing on his father, and flooded with the need to hurt him. ‘What? What do you think I’m going to do? You think I’m going to hit you? You think I want that? I’d like to kill you—’
He made himself quiet and found words and it was very hard to do.
‘You’ve done nothing for me,’ he said – and didn’t know he was going to say it until he did and then the words came out of the centre of him – ‘and all of this time I’ve been trying to make it up to you. Not any more. You lose your job because of me? I’m glad. You lose this house? Your wife? I hope you do. You don’t deserve her and I’m sick of the guilt.’
‘Lewis—’
‘Why couldn’t you have faith in me? Just a little bit of faith in me? All of that locking me up, the threats, telling me I was no good, there was something wrong with me – I was a child, I was a kid – if you’d just have believed for one minute, been on my side – but you couldn’t. Yes, I drink, yes, I cut myself; God, didn’t you even want to help?’
The violence had all drained away from him and he felt weak from saying it all and like crying, and he had to get out of there. He turned to the suitcase again and closed it.
‘You were used to too much love as a little boy. She spoiled you.’
‘Well, you put a stop to that.’
He started to the door. Gilbert was trying to speak, he looked down and seemed to struggle, and Lewis knew how he felt doing that, and hated that he pitied this man who had hurt him so badly and for so long.
‘It’s not a question of wanting to help,’ said Gilbert. His lip was shaking. ‘From the day she died I just – couldn’t look at you, Lewis. You were so like her – and you were so full of your grief. You didn’t want my company.’
That was it then. That was all. Lewis felt very cool suddenly and that none of it mattered.
‘Must have been awfully difficult for you, Dad. Still. Put it out of your mind. I’ll be away again soon.’
He stopped in the doorway, remembering.
‘Don’t call anyone. Leave me alone. Understand?’
He went out of the house by the front door and left it open and Gilbert watched him go and heard his footsteps fade. He felt weak, and sat down in a kitchen chair.
He sat in the chair and when Alice heard Lewis leave, she came down and stood in the doorway and waited.
‘Lewis,’ he said. ‘Lewis was here, and he—’
He started to cry. He was broken and overwhelmed by his crying. He held on to her, gripping her nightdress in his hands and burying his face in her to cry. Alice held Gilbert’s head in her hands and stroked him and closed her eyes. She imagined Lewis walking away into the dark and she was grateful to him, and hoped he wouldn’t come back.
Chapter Thirteen
Lewis slept in the woods by the tree near the water where his mother had drowned. He put the suitcase up in the tree so that foxes wouldn’t come.
He went to sleep with his thoughts very busy about his father and trying to think what to do about Kit, and his mind worked on it in the night so that when he woke up he was clear. He knew what he had to do.
When he went to watch over Kit he felt he’d been doing it for a long time, that it was his habit to guard her. In the afternoon she came out with her book again and he could look at her and dream about her, but it was worse this time, and sad, because he knew what he was going to do and he wanted to say sorry and to explain that there was nothing else to do. He didn’t think she would see that. He wished he could see another way out of it, but he couldn’t. It was a strange and beautiful thing to watch her like that, knowing he was giving up any hope of her, but being in the heat and the gentle moment of it anyway.
When he went back to his place by the river he didn’t sleep. He thought this would be his last night free. He didn’t know if he’d be locked up again, or if he’d make it to the army, or if there was a difference, and he valued the night and being alone and the feeling of freedom that was new to him still. He hadn’t felt it when he came out of prison. He hadn’t felt it until now.
On Sunday morning the sun rose slowly after a very black time, and the sky was pale for ages before there was any real light. He was warm enough, except just before dawn and at dawn, when there was a hard chill to the air and a mist. The sun burned off the mist very quickly, but even in the heat and the dryness you could tell September was coming and the light was thicker and not blazing like it had been.
He washed in the river and then waited for the water to be completely still, and when it was still he took his razor and the soap and shaved very carefully, not breathing onto the water, but holding his breath to shave and then breathing out away into the air so that he wouldn’t disturb the r
eflection.
He rinsed off the razor and dried it on his old shirt and closed it and put it back into the case. He wet his hair and didn’t have a comb, but smoothed it with his hands and then he got out the clean white shirt, which was folded and not creased, and his clean trousers and dressed. He packed everything away, and took his case with him, and walked slowly back through the woods.
The church bells started to ring as Lewis watched the family come in for breakfast. The sound of the layers of the ringing bells went out over the country and Lewis imagined all the people at their breakfasts, hearing them.
The church bells rang and Tamsin got up from the table and Lewis saw Preston bring the car round and thought for a moment that he wouldn’t have his chance, but then Kit and Claire got up too and Dicky was left on his own in the dining room and Lewis knew he didn’t have long.
He crossed the grass quickly, and was inside the room, through the open window right by the table, before Dicky started up to shout something – but Lewis took a step towards him and he stopped.
The still dining room and the breakfast things on the table, and Dicky standing there with his napkin tucked into his neck, were all frozen, waiting for something to happen. It was important not to be seen. Lewis went to the door, fast, and closed it, and his moving jolted Dicky into speech.