What the Nanny Saw

by Fiona Neill

  She could feel Jake’s hand beside her own and wondered how long it had been there, and whether he was aware that the tip of his little finger was touching the tip of her little finger. Her whole body was focused on this tiny connection. She hardly dared to breathe in case it was broken. This can only end badly, Ali thought, as she felt the surge of energy between them, as though their fingers were conducting electricity. The sun edged around the top of the tree, and Ali squinted against the glare and the heat.

  She didn’t look down. They both stared ahead. Then she felt Jake’s finger creep closer until it was on top of her own, and any ambiguity disappeared. He stroked her hand slowly from top to bottom with the tip of his thumb. Much later, she would look back at this moment and consider how such a tiny gesture could change things in ways that you couldn’t possibly imagine at the time. She would wonder if she knew what was to come, whether she would have pulled away and insisted it was time to go home, and how that would have changed the course of events. At the time, however, she was too filled with desire to speak or move. She felt nauseous with longing and, apart from that, nothing except the rapturous “nowness” of being lost in the moment.

  “This is clearly a really bad idea from many different points of view,” Jake said slowly, without looking at her. Ali nodded in agreement. His hand was now completely on top of hers. He had made the first move, but she hadn’t resisted. Their fingers curled together, and for a few minutes they sat without speaking, staring vacantly ahead at the Japanese bridge, even though the twins were now on the other side of the garden.

  • • •

  They came out of the park through the little-used gate on the west side because there was less chance of bumping into anyone they knew. It was a cut-through that led them almost opposite Foy and Tita’s house. As they passed the carefully tended containers outside the front door, Ali looked up and saw a light on in the upstairs sitting room. Through the window she could see Tita sitting at a desk reading the newspaper. She had on bifocal glasses that she used only when she was sure she was alone.

  Ali was almost certain that Tita had told Nick and Bryony she wouldn’t be home until tomorrow. She wondered whether they should ring on the doorbell and go in for an impromptu cup of tea, then decided Tita might not approve of such spontaneity. Ali didn’t particularly trust any of her instincts right now. Besides, Alfie and Hector were fighting over whose turn it was to go on Jake’s shoulders, and after what had just happened it was a relief to be arguing with them and to physically separate herself from Jake.

  “I’ll time you,” she heard herself say. “Five minutes each.”

  “Then I need a rest,” said Jake.

  Ali felt breathless. Her senses were heightened, so that she could smell the Chinese jasmine growing up the side of Tita and Foy’s house all the way up the street, she could feel the beat of music from the house opposite in her stomach, and when Jake bumped into her and put his arm on her shoulder to steady himself, she was sure Hector could feel the charge between them.

  It doesn’t matter what you know about the illusionary or transitory nature of lust, it’s a higher force, decided Ali. It reminded her of being caught in a rip current, of being dragged from shore in a narrow channel of water, unable to swim against the tide. She remembered her dad’s advice: Don’t try to get back. Stay calm. Eventually the rip will lose strength and you can swim diagonally back to shore. Aim for locations where waves are breaking. Applying the theory in a threatening situation was the biggest psychological challenge, he used to say, but if you didn’t you could drown.

  Ali didn’t dare catch Jake’s eye, in case he suddenly decided he had hit a false note.

  “Do you want to go and see Granny?” Jake asked the twins. They nodded enthusiastically. A few minutes later, Ali and Jake found themselves heading home alone.

  22

  Apart from the Darkes, who were more interested in discussing the new surge of journalists in the street than in the twins’ movements, no one else noticed Jake and Ali come back into the house. Leicester was sunning himself on one of the areas of the lawn that wasn’t strewn with dog shit. He lifted his head sleepily and then dropped it back onto the grass in disgust at the hand that life had dealt him since Malea left.

  The television in the kitchen was switched on to CNBC, but there was no one watching it. An American commentator was talking about the crisis at Lehman’s and interviewing a British banking expert. Jake and Ali stood for a moment in front of the screen, careful not to touch each other.

  “There are fears Lehman will have to take further asset write-downs and could face funding problems if the U.S. Federal Reserve removes the emergency borrowing window for investment banks that it opened after Bear Stearns collapsed,” said a voice that Ali recognized as belonging to Felix Naylor. He had become ubiquitous.

  “It’s your godfather,” said Ali, turning the screen toward them.

  “The stock is coming down at the rate it’s coming down because a number of people believe strongly that the company is headed for bankruptcy.” A banking analyst explained that the bank’s share price had dropped to $9, its lowest since 1998, and there were rumors that a buyer was sought to prevent it from being the next domino to fall after the collapse of Bear Stearns earlier in the year.

  “What has caused the credit crunch?” the reporter asked Felix.

  “Low interest rates, cheap credit, bank deregulation, too much faith in mathematical models, subprime, hubris, greed . . .”

  “I’ve heard it all before,” said Jake.

  “It’s like learning a new language, isn’t it? Every time the same words are repeated, you understand a little bit more.”

  “Shall we discuss this in my bedroom?” asked Jake suddenly.

  “What about Hector and Alfie?”

  Jake ran a finger down the side of Ali’s face. “They’re not here. Did you know you are at your most endearing when you’re worried?”

  He took her by the hand. As they crept past the door of the drawing room on their way upstairs, they could hear Foy snoring. Ali wondered if Bryony had remembered to bring him his tea at four o’clock. They climbed the first couple of flights slowly. Once they had got past Bryony and Nick’s bedroom, their pace sped up so that by the time they reached the final flight up to Jake’s room they were bounding up two steps at a time. Then they were in his room. Ali locked the door behind them.

  The main light wasn’t working, and the curtains were closed. So the only light in the room came from a purple-and-red lava lamp on a desk in the corner. Both of them were out of breath. Ali tried to speak, to say something that would take some of the intensity out of the moment, but when the sound came out she didn’t recognize her own voice. Maybe lust affected the brain in the same way as a stroke, she thought, reminded of the way Foy described himself as an actor who could find the right lines but was unable to deliver them.

  Instead she leaned back against the door and found her head cushioned by a purple dressing gown that once belonged to Lucy. She recognized the perfume. Floral with a hint of something fruity. Jake leaned over her, his forehead tenderly touching the top of her head so that she could breathe in his familiar smell. Her familiarity with the rest of his family made him seem like a known quantity, although she had hardly ever spent any time with him. His hair was longer than ever, a wild tangle, like his mother’s. His coloring, the exotic combination of dark hair and blue eyes, connected him to his father and Izzy. His lips, plump and slightly cherubic, belonged to the twins.

  Reminded of Hector and Alfie, Ali wondered whether she should try to pull back from the brink. Jake was right, this was obviously a bad idea. His breath against her neck made her shiver with longing. That was the wonderful thing about the alchemy of passion, thought Ali, the slightest gesture became something beautiful.

  Jake said something, which could have been either “I
t’s so hot” or “You’re so hot.” When she replayed the scene afterward, Ali tried both versions and then opted for silence because it meant she could focus better on remembering the lazy watchfulness of his eyes, or the way he chewed his lower lip.

  It gave her time to recall the exact sensation as he doodled small circles down the side of her neck with the same finger that had touched her in the park, and she pulled him toward her. They kissed almost chastely on the lips and then looked at each other, as if confirming the reciprocity of the situation. They were on the brink of something. It reminded Ali of when she jumped off Cromer pier.

  They kissed again for what seemed like ages, but was probably a couple of minutes. Kissing sometimes seemed more intimate than sex, thought Ali. He tasted salty. This time, Ali could feel the intent in Jake’s body. He pressed himself against her, one hand in her hair, stroking the back of her head, the other roaming over her buttocks through the soft cotton fabric of her skirt. She could feel his erection hard through his jeans.

  Without letting go of each other they made their way to the bed, tripping over shoes, books, and dirty clothes. Jake fell back on the bed and pulled Ali on top of him. She straddled him and leaned toward his face so that she could see the way his mouth opened slightly wider and his eyes clouded over with pleasure. It was both exhilarating and terrifying to discover that someone needed you as much as you needed them.

  “I’ve imagined fucking you at least a couple of times a day since the party,” Jake whispered.

  “Me, too,” said Ali, leaning over to undo the buttons of his shirt. His skin was dark and smooth. There were thin wisps of chest hair, more than last summer, thought Ali, as she languorously stroked him with the fingers of her right hand and watched his eyes half shut in pleasure. His hands tugged down the straps of her top and her bra until her breasts were exposed. He pulled her toward him and took a nipple in his mouth. Ali felt more waves of pleasure surge through her body.

  She couldn’t remember afterward exactly how she found herself underneath him with her knickers halfway down her legs and Jake inside her. That first afternoon they had sex so many times that later, it was difficult to distinguish between each entanglement. When they tried to map out the genesis of their sexual relationship months later, they argued over the exact order of events. His fingers inside her, her mouth moving down his body, his mouth between her legs, her hand around his cock. Ali had previously considered herself a person capable of restraint, but Jake made her feel completely untethered.

  They probably wouldn’t have emerged that night, but at about seven-thirty in the evening the internal phone rang. It was Bryony asking Jake if he knew where Ali was. Ali looked shocked, less by the question than by the fact that another world coexisted alongside the one inside his bedroom.

  “They’re all at Granny’s,” he said sleepily, as he looked at Ali sliding down his body.

  “Granny is down here with Hector and Alfie,” said Bryony.

  “Well, she was most definitely there when we left them,” he said, trying to keep his voice even.

  “Who is we?”

  “I mean me. I think Ali went somewhere else.”

  “Are you all right? You sound strange.”

  “Just a little worried about things.” Jake groaned.

  “Will you come and join us? Hester and Rick are coming over.”

  “Sure, just give me five minutes,” said Jake, closing his eyes in pleasure as Ali took him in her mouth. The phone dropped to the floor.

  • • •

  Ali hastily pulled her skirt and top back on and found her knickers tangled in the duvet. She came out of Jake’s room tentatively, trying to work out a plausible excuse for being there, in case someone was outside on the landing. As she went downstairs, reason seeped back. She worked out how long she had been in his room and calculated she had been gone for almost three hours. She started to worry about Hector and Alfie, and whether anyone would have bothered to give them tea. She considered what had just taken place and was surprised to find that she didn’t feel guilty. For the first time in two years she wasn’t concerned with what Bryony thought.

  She went down into the drawing room and apologized for falling asleep in her room. Bryony gave a sweep of her hand to indicate that it didn’t matter, although just three days earlier the same infraction would have met with a round of tongue twirling and possibly a few words of disapproval.

  The room looked different. It took a moment for Ali to realize that the Jupe table had been moved from the dining room and now sat beneath the window at the far side of the room. Izzy was carefully examining various objects on the table, trying to find the jauntiest angle to show off a sculpture or the best arrangement for the set of tiny painted enamel boxes that usually sat on the mantelpiece in the dining room. It was an incongruous sight. The teenage Goth handling these delicate antiques. She looked up at Ali as she came into the room and gave a small smile.

  Ali curled her toes in the carpet as she decided where to sit down, but the pile between her toes was sensory overload after what had just happened. She felt almost nauseated. Everything seemed to suggest sex: the curve of the mantelpiece, the sylphs on the side of a vase, the glimpse of Izzy’s thigh, the peonies Tita had picked from her garden.

  “Do you want me to put Alfie and Hector to bed?” Ali asked, hoping she could extricate herself from another evening in this room with the extended Skinner family.

  “Later,” said Bryony vaguely.

  “You forgot to bring me tea,” Foy admonished her. He spoke slowly, and his words were slightly garbled, but there was no mistaking his tone.

  “I was out with the twins,” Ali apologized.

  “Well, the sunshine has obviously done you good,” said Foy, looking her up and down appreciatively. “I think your legs have grown.” Then he returned to the pile of newspapers on the table beside him. The newspaper in his hands trembled.

  Ali sat down next to Tita, who was reading yet another historical biography. She slumped back into the sofa, hugged a cushion to her chest, and curled her legs beneath her, trying to make herself as small as possible. She noticed a scratch that started above her knee and stretched up toward her thigh, and the idea that it was Jake’s nail that had made this mark made her want to leave the room and go back upstairs to his room again. She absentmindedly touched the beginning of the blemish with her finger and immediately missed him so much that when he came through the door into the drawing room she heard herself emit a low moan of desire. “Was it a good book you were reading?” Tita asked Jake as he came over to kiss her on the cheek. Jake glanced at Ali, wondering what she had told them.

  “Very good,” said Jake. “Tom Jones by Henry Fielding. It’s one of my set texts. I’ve got a copy of the original edition with all his drawings.”

  “I had a walk-on part in the film,” said Foy. “With Susannah.” No one reacted.

  “Wonderful,” said Tita, her eyes narrowing as she glanced from Jake to Ali and then back to Jake. “Didn’t Fielding end up marrying his wife’s maid because she was pregnant?”

  “After his wife died,” Ali confirmed.

  Ali flushed and put a hand to her cheek. Her features had softened. She felt immobile with torpor, so that even if Bryony asked her to get up to check on the twins, she wasn’t sure that her body would cooperate. Jake sat on the floor between her and Tita, so that his shoulder touched the ball of Ali’s foot. The proximity was exquisite and unbearable at the same time. She was relieved that Nick was somewhere else, because he would surely have noticed.

  “I hope you’ll show some self-restraint from now on, Jake,” said Tita, pointing at the Daily Mail. “We’ve been dragged through the mud enough. Even that ridiculous woman from next door refused a cigarette from me as though I might be a drug hustler.”

  “‘Pusher’ is the right term,” Jake corrected her. From
the other side of the room, Ali saw Izzy smile.

  Ali was relieved when the telephone rang and everyone switched their attention to the imminent arrival of Hester and Rick. Bryony instructed her sister to avoid the press by coming through the ground floor of the Darkes’ house, but she ignored her advice and even paused on the top step for a few photos.

  Hester gave a round of extravagant hugs to everyone as soon as she came into the room. She was wearing a black dress, which added to the general feeling that she was treating what had happened as a kind of death. Perhaps Hester was right, thought Ali. To judge from the behavior of people around them over the past forty-eight hours, it was certainly a kind of social suicide.

  “Dad, you look terrible,” said Hester as she bent down to kiss her father on the top of his head. “I hope they’re trying to protect you from the worst of the stress.”

  There was a delay as Foy summoned an appropriate response.

  “Women in black dresses always send me into a decline,” said Foy, “but I’m not dead yet.”

  “It’s because someone gave him a bottle of Tenuta dell’Ornellaia last night,” said Tita. “I found the evidence in his bedroom. He’d drunk the whole bottle.”

  When Hester came to Ali she offered sympathy for the situation she found herself in.

  “So dreadful for you,” Hester said, clutching onto her, so that Ali’s top started to slide down her shoulder. “It must be so difficult dealing with the emotional fallout. The poor children.” She turned her attention to Jake, who looked so relaxed that Ali kicked him with the tip of her foot. “Where are Hector and Alfie?”