by Pat Barker
‘Do you think it’s just a tiff?’
‘No, I don’t. I think it’ll take years. And you’ve got to ask yourself: what’s the point? Really, what is the point? I mean, okay, it was quite a nice little piece, but frankly we are not dealing with the Katherine Mansfield and Virginia Woolf de nos jours.’
‘Would it be all right if you were?’
She looked sharply at him. ‘Good question. Dennis Potter said all writers have blood on their teeth.’
‘Who’s the man sitting next to Nancy?’
‘That’s our recovering alcoholic. Wants to learn to write so he can warn others against the demon drink. Don’t let him get you on your own. He’ll tell you all about the times he was incontinent. Next to him’ – Rowena lowered her voice still further, he could feel her breath on his cheek – ‘we have the groupies: Esme, Leah and – can’t remember. Carrie. They’re out of sorts – they were looking forward to this evening. A male literary lion. They’re all right – a bit histrionic’ Rowena clearly didn’t think this was a word that could ever be applied to her. ‘Next one along’s a lay preacher. God knows what he makes of it. And coming round this way you see four extremely good-looking young men, and they’re all gay, which is nice for Angus, but rather tough on the groupies. Oh, and that very beautiful girl’s called Anya. She’s wasted on that lot.’
Tom nodded to his left. ‘And these three?’
Distaste and incredulity mingled. 1 think they just want to write.’
By the end of the meal a good deal of wine had been drunk, and a row had broken out in the kitchen between two of the extremely good-looking young men. Lucy, clearly dreading the reading, had turned an alarming shade of grey.
‘I hope somebody’s thought of the likely side effects of all that wine and beans,’ Rowena murmured, as she flowed through into the sitting room, glass in hand.
She sat in a rocking chair, a little way apart from the others, with an ashtray at her feet. Tom sat at one end of a sofa, next to another rocking chair that was clearly intended for Lucy. Esme, Leah and Carrie sat on the red sofa, facing the fireplace. The lay preacher, arms clamped tight against his sides, shared the beige sofa with three of the gay young men. The fourth, whom Tom had met in the kitchen, separated himself from his friends, and sat with dilated pupils, blowing smoke from his nostrils. The two elderly sisters, one conspicuously raw-eyed, the other glittering with defiance, also sat as far away from each other as possible. Angus took a chair by the fireplace, and set a bottle of wine down at his feet. The recovering alcoholic sat opposite him, pointing his nose at the bottle with the single-minded concentration of a gun dog. Lucy sat in the rocking chair, and swallowed twice. Angus poured her a glass of wine, though water would have been more to the point.
Angus looked around with a glint of amusement, and began to introduce the reader. Lucy blushed at the eulogistic praise delivered in a voice so ostentatiously well modulated that anything it said would have sounded insincere. Expecting a literary lion (male), obliged to make do with one small tabby cat (female), the groupies sank deeper into the sofa, a single, disgruntled heap.
Then Lucy began to read. She might have been a wonderful writer: short of snatching the book away from her and reading it yourself, it was impossible to tell. She read in a quick, anxious monotone, no eye contact, not even at the end of the first chapter. Within fifteen minutes the groupies were asleep, heads thrown back against the sofa cushions, mouths open, limbs sprawled in every direction, blowzy goddesses awaiting the judgement of a pathologically indecisive Paris.
Tom sat well forward on the sofa, looked interested, stifled a burp, tried not to laugh, dug his fingernails into the palms of his hands, became aware of the heaving sides of the lady next to him, glanced up and saw the same battle between good manners, boredom, flatulence and mass hysteria played out all around him, and hastily looked down again. By now the noise of tummy rumbles, burps and outright farts had left the realms of chamber music and reached symphonic heights, and the quick, monotonous voice ran on and on. Lucy hadn’t glanced up once, though she must have been aware of suppressed giggles spreading round the room. Why didn’t she bring it to a graceful close? Why had she selected such a long reading? He glanced sideways at the page, saw another chapter looming, and realized she was reading on because she was afraid to stop. A whickering snore from one of the sleeping beauties woke the others, who stared round them with expressions of lively interest. Tom followed the reading till the end of the chapter, and started to applaud. Everybody, relieved at the possibility of making some socially acceptable noise at last, clapped till their hands were sore. Lucy looked up, timidly, relieved to see it had all gone so much better than she had feared.
‘Thank you,’ said Angus. ‘That was memorable.’
Questions followed. Surprisingly intense this session. Did Lucy have an agent? Did she use a computer? Write every day? Plan the book before she started?No questions about her book, but then, to be fair, they hadn’t heard much of it. And then, thank God, it was over, and everybody was free to drink, especially Lucy, who’d sipped water during dinner, but now got spectacularly drunk in record time.
‘You think we’re all mad, don’t you?’ Angus said, coming up to Tom with glass and bottle in his hands.
‘Do you think we could talk now?’
Angus glanced round, and noticed the recovering alcoholic bearing down upon him. ‘Definitely.’
He pushed open the patio doors, and they stepped out on to the lawn. They walked down towards the fence, their feet leaving scuff marks in the dew.
‘He will keep telling people about crapping himself,’ Angus said. ‘There’s something repulsively self-righteous about it all. St Sebastian and the arrows. St Catherine and the wheel. St Terence and the shitty pants.’
‘I suppose he thinks the more he humiliates himself the less likely he is to drink again.’
‘I’d drink to forget I’d done it.’
Despite what he said, Angus was less drunk than Tom had supposed. Either he’d been pacing himself rather more carefully than the ubiquitous bottle suggested, or his capacity was formidable.
Angus rested his arms on the fence. ‘Do you think confession’s the only route to redemption?’
‘I’m tempted to say no, though I don’t know what other route there could be.’
Angus shrugged. If you believe in redemption.’
‘But you believe in the power to change, presumably?’
‘Presumably.’
‘And anyway,’ Tom said, ‘I thought you were rather in favour of raking up the past?’
‘Oh, I am. For its own sake. I don’t flatter myself it’s got any therapeutic value. In fact the whole idea of writing as therapy makes me puke. It amuses me sometimes to think about the talking cure, and how it’s become a whole bloody industry, and how little evidence there is that it does a scrap of good.’
‘If you mean counselling, there’s quite a bit of evidence that it’s harmful, or can be. People who get counselling immediately after a traumatic event seem to do rather less well on average than those who don’t’
Angus looked surprised. Tom wasn’t saying any of the expected things. ‘Why?’ he asked.
Tom shrugged. ‘My guess would be that people are meant to go numb, and anything that interferes with that is…. potentially dangerous. Equally, of course, the numbness eventually wears off.’
‘And then talking helps?’
‘It’s one way of getting at the truth.’
‘And that makes you feel better?’
‘Not necessarily, no,’ Tom said. ‘It’s valuable for its own sake.’
‘Well, yes, I think we can agree on that.’
As far as the theory goes, Tom thought, remembering one sister’s raw eyelids, the other’s hectic cheeks.
‘Of course we’re not talking about “the truth”, are we?’ Angus said. ‘We’re talking about different, and quite often incompatible, versions of it.’
‘I thought we
were talking about Danny.’
A pause. The sound of sheep munching grass drifted up to them from the valley, while behind them bursts of laughter came from the lighted room.
‘How is he?’
‘Reasonably well. Finding it a bit hard to adjust.’
‘How long’s he been out?’
‘About a year. He’s a student. Reading English.’
A sound somewhere between a snort and a laugh. ‘Well, he had a lot of talent.’
For some reason this remark filled Tom with antagonism. ‘I expect he still does.’
‘They’ll all be spilling out in a moment,’ Angus said. ‘Shall we go further down?’
They scrambled over the wall, and began to walk down the hill, their shoes squeaking on the moist grass. Sheep raised their heads to watch them pass, but didn’t bother to move away. The sound of voices and laughter came faintly here. They turned and looked back, and the white farmhouse, with its lighted windows, emphasized the shared isolation of the hillside.
‘Does he know you’re here?’ Angus asked abruptly. ‘No. I’ll tell him the next time I see him. There’s a general agreement that I can see whoever I want to see.’
‘Will you give him my address?’
‘Only if you want me to. Do you?’
‘Oooh. Now there’s a question.’
Angus’s voice had changed. It was less consciously well modulated; his accent had thickened; there was a catch in his breath Tom hadn’t noticed indoors. Perhaps he was asthmatic, and the night air was tightening his chest, or perhaps the silence, the watching sheep, the gulf of white light, had created another self.
‘Yes, why not? He might be curious enough to find out what he did to me.’
‘What he did to you?’
‘Yes, I suppose it does sound odd. I was in my twenties, he was fifteen. Obviously it was my fault.’ He smiled. ‘Anyway, what does it matter? Water under the bridge.’.
‘I’d like to know what happened.’
‘Why?’
Tom started on the obvious reply: because I think it’ll help me to understand Danny, and found himself saying instead, ‘Because I’m standing in your shoes, and I’m starting to think it’s a dangerous place.’
‘Don’t be alone with him, then.’
‘I’ve got to be. Anyway, I’m not worried about that.’
Angus nodded. ‘Lucky you.’
‘What went wrong?’
‘I fell in love with him.’ A pause, while Angus contemplated, with a moue of distaste, the banality of the statement: its lack of any protective coating of cynicism or self-mockery. ‘Almost as soon as I met him. I wasn’t the only one, though, it took various forms. I’m not saying it was always sexual. In fact it wasn’t. But he was directly responsible for four people –. that I know of – leaving that unit. And generally it was because they were over-involved, or jealous. I just accepted it. Not simply the fact that everybody was intensely involved with Danny, but the pretence that it wasn’t happening. That all the kids were treated exactly alike. Like bloody hell they were.’ He pulled himself up, dismayed by his own bitterness. ‘Have you seen Greene?’
‘Yes. And Mrs Greene.’
‘Oh yes. Elspeth.’
‘Did Greene know what you were doing with Danny?’
‘Sexually?’
‘I meant the writing.’
‘No, he didn’t, and he wouldn’t have approved if he had. We were always told we didn’t need to know anything about them, the past was irrelevant, their backgrounds were of no importance whatsoever. And these were kids with completely fragmented lives. I mean, Danny was brought up by his parents, but he was the exception. There were kids there who’d had five or six foster placements in one year. Just at the… real bog-level standard of who they were and where they came from, they had no idea. And I thought it was important, and I still think it’s important, to help kids like that construct the narrative of their own lives. And to help them put names to emotions. You got the impression with a lot of them that they had a kind of tension level, and they didn’t know whether it was pain, boredom, loneliness, un-happiness, anger, bewilderment, because they didn’t know the names. They only knew it felt bloody awful, and they relieved it by bopping somebody else over the head. So I don’t apologize for what I was doing. It needed doing. And it wasn’t therapy. It was supplying a basic piece of equipment that the rest of us take for granted.’
‘Did you like Danny?’
‘You mean, apart from loving him?’ He thought for a moment. ‘There was nothing to like. He was incredibly charming, shallow, manipulative. I mean, beyond belief. Control was an end in itself. And he was shut down. You were dealing with about 10 per cent of him. And not only that. He was only dealing with 10 per cent of himself. And he had this very bright, cold intelligence, and he was talented – which was gold dust in there, believe me! And it seemed such a tragedy, that he was… frozen like that.’
‘So you decided you’d thaw him out?’
‘No, that’s not true. He decided. The sort of topics I was giving him were standard English essay stuff. It was Danny who started pushing it. I did say things like, “Look, I can’t see the people.” But he took that and ran with it. He got closer and closer, until you could hear them breathing, and okay, it was dangerous, but let’s not forget, it was also something that needed to happen.’
‘Did you ever think you ought to stop?’
‘Yes. He didn’t want to stop.’
‘Did you ever say, “Slow down”?’
‘I didn’t know how close we were. You’ve got to remember I didn’t know anything about the background. He’d be describing a particular incident and I didn’t know whether it was the day before the murder, or the year before.’
‘You could have asked.’
‘Not without pushing. I never mentioned the murder.’
‘Did he write about the time his mother tried to beat him with his father’s belt?’
‘And he grabbed it and swung her round? Yes.’
‘Did he write about Lizzie Parks?’
‘Yes, I think that’s what did it. The next day I was due to see him, and he didn’t show up. And that Sunday evening after tea he went to Greene and said I’d molested him. Greene sent for me. He established that I’d spent x number of hours alone with Danny, and that was it. I was out. I left the next morning.’
‘Why do you think he went to Greene?’
‘Because he was frightened. He couldn’t stop, he knew he was going to tell me about the murder, and that was a terrible thought. Because he’d never actually admitted it.’
‘Isn’t it possible he found the sex disturbing? He was only fifteen.’
‘No.’
‘How do you know?’
Angus turned to face him, a glimmer of amusement in his pale eyes. ‘I’m going to tell you something about the sex that’ll really shock you.’
‘I doubt it, but go on.’
‘There wasn’t any. It never happened.’
Tom took a deep breath. ‘You’ve shocked me.’
‘He cut my head off.’
‘Why didn’t you insist on an inquiry?’
‘I’d been alone with him. It was my word against his.’
‘And you thought Greene would believe him?’
‘Greene didn’t want a scandal. Bad for Danny, bad for the school. Bad for Greene.’ A moment’s pause. ‘How close are you to the murder?’
‘Pretty close.’
Angus grinned, and began walking back up the hill, calling over his shoulder, ‘Watch yourself.’
They parted at the door. Angus walked away along the corridor, wine glass in one hand, bottle in the other, not looking back. Tom had no desire to rejointhe party, and instead went upstairs where he was to sleep, for the first time since childhood, in a bunk bed. The lay preacher was already there, on his knees beside the bed, praying. Tom hadn’t encountered this before either. He undressed quietly, and tiptoed off to the bathroom. A woman muffled in
a tartan dressing gown – one of the group who unaccountably wanted to write – was already waiting in the corridor.
Tom asked whether she was enjoying the course.
‘Do you know, I think I am. It’s not what I expected, but Angus is a brilliant teacher.’
Tom lay awake for a long time in the narrow bunk bed, listening to the snores of the recovering alcoholic. One of the beautiful young men came in – the sausage-squeezer, whose name was Malcolm – and got undressed in a shaft of moonlight. The lay preacher got out of bed and started to pray again. They had five days of this, Tom thought, turning on his side. He was worn out after one evening.
He must have drifted off to sleep, because the screams confused him. Somewhere out there was a woman or child in pain, and he struggled to sit up. The others were already awake.
Is it a woman?’ the lay preacher asked.
‘No, it’s an animal,’ said the recovering alcoholic.
‘Can’t be,’ said Malcolm.
He got out of bed and reached for his dressing gown. Tom and the recovering alcoholic followed him downstairs – bare feet slapping on the cold tiles – and through into the living room. Empty bottles, full ashtrays, an air of desolation. Somebody asleep on a sofa.
‘Do you suppose the doors are alarmed?’ Malcolm asked, pushing them open anyway. He strode off down the lawn, Tom following. Another scream cut the air. The ham on the nape of Tom’s neck rose. The lights went on in the tutors’ cottage. Rowena, wearing a white neglige, came out on to the grass. Then Angus, draped in a sheet. They all stood and listened. Just as they were beginning to hope it was over, another scream tore the darkness.
Rowena, her drawling voice suddenly clear and cold, said, ‘It’s a rabbit. They do sound incredibly human.’