Accidents in the Home

by Tessa Hadley

  —I’ve edited those sequences we shot on the river, said Nick to David. There’s some excellent stuff; the water in that weird light lapping at the piers of the old iron bridge looks completely abstract. Why don’t you come by now and have a look at it? My place is only round the corner. If you’re not doing anything else.

  David stood up, his thighs rather thick between the bench and the table, and frowned and hummed as if in a dilemma, biting his lip and running his hands up through his thick brush of hair. She saw something about him that she hadn’t seen before; she was reminded that she hardly knew him. He wasn’t just being over-friendly to try and put this man off the scent, he actually found it hard to resist his suggestion, he really wanted to have all these pleasures that offered themselves, wanted to fit in being the man’s friend as well as the other things he had planned for that afternoon. Helly had said he could never turn down an invitation; they hardly ever went out on their own. He was like a friendly dog, she had also said, wanting to lay his head on everyone’s knee.

  —We could, I suppose, he said, pleading to Clare. Just for half an hour. We could just have a look.

  —Well, as I’ve finished at the library now, said Clare stiffly, not looking at the other man.

  —Exactly.

  —Although we were going to go to that exhibition at the ICA.

  —But just half an hour, said David.

  —OK, she said, putting her head on one side and smiling hard at him, to communicate her resistance.

  Nick’s flat was farther away than she had expected. David carried her heavy briefcase, which held her night things and her toothbrush as well as her notebooks and papers, but her new shoes began to hurt. David and Nick walked ahead, talking. The long London streets seemed implacable; a hot wind blew up dust and litter and smells of dog shit and rank vegetation from the locked gardens in the squares.

  Inside, the flat was stylish and made her feel that her clothes and her hair were provincial; she sat on a long cream and chrome sofa afloat on a sea of waxy boards and slipped off her shoes and was suddenly overwhelmingly sleepy after the beer and food and the walk. Nick laid out papers and tobacco and grass wrapped in a twist of newspaper on a table of thick green glass and told David to roll up while he made more coffee. While he was out of the room David took the opportunity to reach over and stroke one fingertip down her cheek and promise they would only be half an hour.

  —I just didn’t want to make it too obvious, he said.

  The doorbell rang and someone else arrived, a friend of Nick’s David didn’t know, a fattish man with a shaved head and a thick short neck in folds and little gold-rimmed glasses, the producer for a music video Nick was working on. They all three became very absorbed in watching the material Nick had shot for David on a huge television screen. The picture was mostly rippling water, black and white. It was going to be the back projection for a crossover concert at the Queen Elizabeth Hall. They talked about what cameras Nick had used.

  The fat man hardly said hello to Clare. She imagined how archetypal a situation this probably was, the three men excitedly involved together over some project or other while a bored unidentified girl dozed on the sofa, put down by one or other of them on the way in to be picked up again later when they had finished. It seemed astonishing that she, who believed her life so important, should be that girl. An hour passed. Dutifully, every time the spliff went around one of them brought it back to the sofa to offer to her, and she smoked it because otherwise they might forget about her altogether. She noticed that the two other men treated David as just slightly their junior in status, leaving some of his remarks unanswered, their enthusiasms cooler and more measured than his. She judged that they were cleverer than he was.

  The grass made her feel sick and she went to find Nick’s bathroom. It was all white-tiled with a line of crimson tiles at waist height and a crimson shower curtain. She threw up in the toilet and then had to borrow Nick’s bristle toothbrush and his specialist bicarbonate toothpaste to freshen her mouth, guiltily washing the brush over and over for him afterward in case she had tainted it. In the mirror over the sink she saw that she had a clown’s face now, white and staring with black pits of smudged eye makeup. Eros and farce were always very close together, and now the switch had been thrown: everything that had been blissful was now ridiculous. There would be some image in Eastern philosophy to express how these two worlds were packed together, folded inside one another: one world taut, alight, meaningful, so you stepped out and were borne up on the insubstantial rainbow; the other gray and deflated, where the deepest desire was for a safe dark hole in which to hide yourself.

  On her way back to the room with the sofa—someone had put music on, trancy electronic music—Clare saw her coat and briefcase on a chair by the front door. She imagined going to her B and B after all, burying herself in anonymous clean sheets, drinking tea and nursing her hangover, watching television all alone. It seemed to her a desperate and dreadful eventuality, an absolute defeat for ever and ever; but it was also all she had it in her to desire, now her gods had abandoned her, and she suddenly longed for it. She was sick and shivery and her head pounded. She slipped on her coat, picked up her briefcase, and let herself quietly out the front door.

  * * *

  HELLY HAD INSISTED on stopping to buy alcohol: she put a paper-wrapped bottle in the car boot that Bram presumed was wine but turned out to be Armagnac. They didn’t drink enough of it to get drunk—he never did—but after he had put the tent up they poured out some into the plastic beaker he had in his kit and shared it. It was early evening.

  —It lowers your body temperature, he said. It only makes you feel warm.

  —I’m happy with feel warm, she said, although she seemed cold all the time. She kept wrapping herself up further and further in the big sweater she had on under Clare’s borrowed raincoat, pulling it up over her chin and down over her hands. He offered to take her to the pub for supper, but she shook her head.

  —I like it here. Do what you would do if you were alone.

  —Well, I’d probably go for a walk, look for some birds before the light goes. Then I’d come back, make tea, and eat some bread and cheese.

  —Go for your walk. I’ll stay here.

  —I think you’ll get very cold. You ought to come with me.

  —OK. If you don’t mind.

  —I don’t mind.

  They went down the track through a wood where a flock of goldfinches was feeding on the rowan berries, then out on the sandy road that led past closed tea shops to where they could see the sea. The sky was overcast with thick clouds like gray wool, the sea was gray and whipped by the wind into little dirty waves; they walked on the beach, and Helly picked up stones, making a collection of white quartz. He saw redshank and dunlin; she was quite interested; she told him her brother used to be a birdwatcher. He was surprised how he really didn’t mind having her there. He had nursed the idea of his solitude, and when he finally gave in to her he had driven down full of furious resentment (and with a pounding headache). But probably he had been fooling himself. You dreamed of these precious spaces—the rowan trees, the dry-stone wall, the hillocky field—but when you arrived at them you still weren’t where you’d dreamed of; no matter how close you got they didn’t let you inside finally. Before they left the beach Helly threw all her pieces of quartz back into the sea one by one, with a good throw like a boy’s.

  Back at the tent in the sheltered field he got the spirit stove going and they drank tea and ate bread and cheese and chocolate companionably. Helly put brandy in their tea. He noticed that his headache had gone, blown out of him beside the sea. Now the wind dropped. The light drained out of the field until it was just twiggy bushy silhouettes against a still luminous blue sky, noisy with the rustling of animals and the liquid whistles of birds settling for the night.

  —So what would you do now? she asked. If you were alone? Time for worms and folk songs?

  —Turn in, he said. Nothing much else t
o do, in the dark.

  —I’m sorry for spoiling your weekend, she said. I was very selfish. Now I’m here I can imagine you here by yourself, and what you get out of it. It’s a lovely healing sort of place. I don’t get enough of this, the way I live.

  —You haven’t spoiled it, he said. I was just thinking how glad I was you came. I’m not sure being by myself was really a very good idea.

  —Oh, thank you, she said, sounding surprised and pleased. But I never think you like me.

  —I feel such a fool, he said. About this business.

  —I suppose that’s what we are. The fools, the rejected ones.

  —It’s painful.

  —Did you guess all about it?

  —More or less. I didn’t know you knew.

  —What will you do?

  —I don’t know. What will you do?

  —I don’t know either.

  An owl hooted, and a few moments later they saw his shape glide over from a copse of trees in the next field.

  —It’s nice in the dark, said Helly. It’s amazing. But I don’t know how you could manage here all on your own. I’d die.

  —But then you die rather often. From the sound of it.

  —You’re teasing me. But it’s the truth.

  They couldn’t see each other’s faces any longer; Bram switched on the torch and crawled into the tent to sort out the sleeping bags.

  —I’ll sleep in the car if you like, offered Helly quaveringly. The car was parked two dark fields away.

  —But you might die.

  —I might.

  —And that would be awkward. So you might as well stay here. It makes no difference to me.

  They took off their raincoats, kept on most of their clothes, climbed into their separate sleeping bags, and said good night lying decorously side by side. Bram turned his back on her and fell asleep easily, not troubled by Helly’s presence beside him, even soothed by it—he dreamed of something from childhood, a boat and a river and a long ago innocent excitement.

  But in the night she was cold and woke up shivering and couldn’t fall asleep again. And although she tried not to wake him, awareness must have reached him—even in the deep chambers of his sleep—of her consciousness, active, close to him: and he surfaced. She was shuddering; her teeth were actually chattering together. He reached out an arm from his sleeping bag, touched the canvas of the tent above his face, found her huddled shape.

  —Are you cold?

  —Bram, I’m so cold, she said, muffled, from her clenched jaws. I can’t get warm, what’s the matter with me?

  —I don’t know. It could be shock, perhaps, because you’re upset.

  —I’m so sorry.

  He half sat up. I could unzip these sleeping bags and zip them up together. If you’d like. If you think that would help.

  For a minute she didn’t say anything. You don’t think I set this up deliberately, do you? I know how you might think I’m using this, to get my way.

  —I don’t.

  —OK, then.

  He found the torch and by its light he sorted out the sleeping bags into one double one, and then climbed back in beside her: before he switched the torch off the beam picked out a tangle of fair hair and a triangle of creamy skin behind her ear: her face was buried against the rough sleeve of her sweater. In the dark he pressed himself against her where she was turned away from him and put his arms around her. It was strange that she could be cold; she felt like a flood of warmth against him which he then poured back into her; gradually, as he held her, her shuddering eased off and her rigid limbs relaxed. They didn’t speak another word. After a while she turned around in his arms and they found each other’s faces in the dark by kissing.

  It should have been awkward, making love through all the layers of their clothes, but perhaps because he’d wakened out of deep sleep and was still half dreaming, he seemed to find his way through them with supreme ease, parting them and pushing them aside; they seemed in his dream organic layers through which he was penetrating to the hot center of her.

  TOBY BOOKED A FLIGHT home from Kathmandu on what turned out to be a bandh, a holy day when all wheeled vehicles are forbidden and those who venture out risk being set alight or stoned. He could not find anyone willing to take him to the airport. So at dawn he climbed over the wall of the compound where he was staying, walked with his pack for about a mile, then managed to hail the driver of a stray tempo, a motorized rickshaw, who was prepared to risk it before the 6 A.M. bandh deadline. The airport was shut when he got there; he leaned his pack against the concrete guard post at the entrance, sat down beside it, and waited. After a while they opened up and let him inside. It was evening before he got on a flight to Delhi. From Delhi—after a night spent asleep in a hard plastic waiting room seat, embracing his pack—he flew to Rome, where there were more delays; and from Rome to Heathrow. He arrived at Heathrow at eleven o’clock at night, the second night of his journey home.

  From Heathrow he telephoned his mother. Angie answered the phone.

  —Could I speak to Naomi, please? he asked.

  Her voice was gruff and terse. Who wants Naomi?

  Toby cleared his throat. He was embarrassed to say; he and Angie hadn’t parted on good terms when he left to go on his travels three months before.

  —Naomi doesn’t live here. Naomi’s over. Naomi’s dead, said the voice, not bothering to wait for him to go on.

  Then she hung up.

  Toby frowned. He gave up the phone booth to a girl backpacker waiting behind him, went to an empty seat, and carefully counted over the English notes in his purse. There was not enough for a coach ticket home; he would have to hitch. He did not really believe that his mother was dead; if she had been dead, her friend would have listed those three things differently, surely: death would have come first. If someone was dead, you did not begin with other things about them. But nonetheless, an anxiety about his mother took up its old place in his chest like a little hard ugly manikin.

  After waiting for about an hour at an intersection, he got a lift with an all-night lorry driver going west who took him to the nearest motorway junction to home; then he had to walk for three or four miles through the sleeping outskirts of the city, hoping he’d see a bus or a taxi or a phone booth. When he did find a phone he discovered that all the coins left in his pocket were rupees. He decided to go to the house in Benteaston where his half sister Tamsin lived with her mother; his father’s house was another long walk across the city in Kingsmile. Benteaston was on his way in from the motorway, Victorian and Edwardian terraces crawling up and down the hills; always respectable, now even desirable and professional.

  He didn’t want to wake Tamsin’s mother by ringing the doorbell, so he left his pack in the front porch, went around to the back lane, and climbed the wall into the garden. Tamsin’s room was upstairs at the back. He couldn’t find any gravel—it was very dark, it was three in the morning—so he had to scoop up a handful of earth to throw at her window; it hit the glass with a soft spattering thud. On the third attempt Tamsin came to the window in pale pajamas and opened it.

  —Fuck off! she hissed loudly into the garden. Whoever you are, fuck off, you stupid bastard, or I’ll come down there and blow your fucking head off with my shotgun.

  —Tamsin! It’s me! It’s Toby! I didn’t want to wake your mum, but I’ve just come home.

  —Toby! You dickhead, you complete dickhead. Why didn’t you phone like normal people do? Wait there!

  Lights went on: a few moments later she was opening the back door for him, then he was inside the kitchen, blinking and grinning while Tamsin kissed and hugged him, not quite able to believe it was possible to wander so very far away on such a long leash and then wind it in again and find oneself back here in the exact same small familiar place, the neat modern kitchen with matching oven mitts and tea towels, fresh herbs growing on the windowsill. And he had managed somehow to forget while he was away Tamsin’s precise aura like a groomed fastidious cat
; even woken in the middle of the night in pajamas she was neat and self-possessed and her straight dark shoulder-length hair looked brushed. She had long dark eyes full of cat scorn, too, and eyebrows that met in the middle: an Aztec, their father called her.

  —Have you really got a shotgun?

  —Oh, yes, Toby, really, I keep a shotgun under my bed; didn’t you notice all the holes in the wall where I’ve been practicing? Idiot; what do you think? And I suppose you’ve had all your luggage stolen, have you? That would be so typical!

  —It’s on the front porch.

  —So go and get it! And you probably want me to make you a cup of tea. Although I ought to warn you before you touch meat or drink in this house that it seems to have become some weird sort of women’s refuge. Seething with evening primrose oil and female angst and synchronized menstruation and all that. We have refugees. First Naomi moved in with us, then Clare.

  —So Naomi’s here! And she’s all right?

  There was a sulky downturn of the mouth whose edge was as sharp as if it was outlined in pencil. All right?

  —I mean, alive. And well. Reasonably well.

  —Oh, we’re all all right, if that’s what you mean by all right.

  —Good. That’s good.

  —As far as it goes.

  Marian, Tamsin’s mother—tall and heavy and gray-haired, belted into an old-fashioned man’s dressing gown—came downstairs, woken up by the noise; then Clare, Tamsin’s older sister—pale and serious, with her hair in a plait. They stood sleepily around him in the kitchen in their nightclothes with puffy faces and frizzy hair, giving off the warmth and the yeasty smell of bed, exclaiming and smiling and touching and kissing him. Marian put the kettle on.

  —Oh, Toby dear, she said, your mother will be so delighted to have you back.

  —Shall I wake her? asked Clare.

  —I don’t know. Maybe. Has Tamsin told you, Toby, that Naomi’s staying with us for a while?

  —I did phone the Leigh Mills number and spoke to Angie, but she was pretty weird.

  —You didn’t mention that your mother might be here?