I yawned and stepped into the room. There were boxes and old bits of furniture, crammed in so tightly it was hard to pick a path between them. Leaning against the wall was a rectangle swathed in a grimy length of velvet. I pulled it away and found a portrait of a pale woman with dark eyes and ringlets, wilting languidly against a landscape of cascading flowers. At the bottom of the frame it said, Elizabeth Sassoon Darnay. Lucian’s mother? No, the picture was too old, it had to be his grandmother. I leant closer, trying to see his features in hers. She had a curiously blank, melancholic cast to her eyes – nothing like his sharp cleverness – but perhaps there was a similarity in the shape of the forehead … I stepped back to take it in and blundered into a tin trunk. Something tickled my nose and I sneezed. I sat down abruptly on the trunk and nearly smashed a glass-covered case of butterflies.
There was another box in front of me. Idly I dragged it forward and opened it.
Books.
I almost pushed it away; now that I knew what they were, I was afraid to touch them, as if they were something soiled. But nothing bad could happen to me – not now, in this warm quiet attic, with Lucian asleep under the same roof. And when I lifted the top volume out and opened it, there was none of the sick whirling sensation I remembered from the book I’d bought from Wakening Fair. The words were just … words. I was in the very February of my years, being of so tender an age that the Frost of Childhood was stark and pale upon me, not yet having given way to the first Blossoms of Maidenhood, when the first touch of a Gentleman bruised my Virginal Innocence. I flipped forward. Pages of the same flat text, scattered with references to Venus and Priapus. His enormous Weapon, which he directed, not towards the open gate to my Garden of Delights but down to that Earthlier realm … I laughed.
‘What are you doing?’
I twisted round. Lucian was half-dressed, leaning against the doorway, his hair falling over his face. He was wearing my shirt, with only one button done up. He made his way towards me, smiling, his limbs loose. I thought he was going to kiss me, but he froze. ‘What’s that?’
‘A book. I found it. But it’s not – it doesn’t …’
‘I can’t believe you’re actually reading that.’ He took it from me and swung away as if he was about to throw it into a corner. Then he stopped, flipping the pages. ‘Oh.’
‘What?’
‘I think it’s a fake, actually. A novel. That must be why it’s up here, and not in my father’s … Look.’ He held it open in front of me and pointed at the label inside the front cover, against the patterned paper. ‘There’s no way this is a genuine Sourly. For one thing, they’ve left the “e” off “Madame”.’
‘I have no idea what you’re talking about.’
‘Madame Sourly? The leading binder for pornography, a hundred years ago? Wait, you mean novels?’ he added, with a flicker of mockery. ‘They’re not real books. They’re written, like magazines. They’re not actual people, or actual memories. They’re invented. Never mind.’ He closed the book and shook his head, half smiling. ‘I can’t believe how innocent you are.’
‘How’m I supposed to know about things when no one ever tells me?’
‘Of course, your pure-minded parents. Don’t worry. It’s delightful.’
‘Go to hell, Darnay.’
‘No, really. I love it.’ He leant forward, put his mouth to my cheek and murmured, ‘And I mean, innocent about everything. Never read a book, never fucked a girl – or a boy, apart from me.’ He ducked away, grinning, as I aimed a swipe at his head. Then he caught hold of me, and his smile faded. We stared at each other.
There was a distant thud downstairs. He turned his head to listen. ‘Was that someone knocking?’
‘I don’t know. Won’t your housekeeper get it?’ Suddenly the summer silence seemed fragile; I didn’t want to let the rest of the world in, not for a split second.
‘If you mean the cook, she’s only here in the evenings.’
‘What about your uncle?’
‘Hardly. I suppose I’d better go.’ He stood up and began to do up his shirt.
‘Really?’ I reached out and unbuttoned the shirt as fast as he tried to button it. ‘But what if something stops you getting dressed? Maybe you should go downstairs like this.’
‘Very funny, Emmett.’ But he was laughing. ‘It might be the baker’s boy.’
‘We’ll go hungry. I don’t care.’ The pounding reached a crescendo, and then stopped. ‘You see? Problem solved.’
‘All right.’ He sat back, letting me pull the shirt over his head. There was sweat in the notch of his collarbone. But as I leant forward, he made a tiny movement, so that our lips didn’t touch.
‘What?’
‘The book,’ he said. ‘How did you know it was a fake? You did know, didn’t you?’
‘I don’t know. It just didn’t – pull me in, somehow. Does it matter?’
‘No. But it’s impressive. My father would love you.’ There was a distant, ironic glint in his eye that made me uncomfortable. ‘You’re a mystery, Emmett. So innocent and yet …’
‘Will you shut up about my fucking innocence?’
‘All right,’ he said, and grinned. ‘As long as you’ll let me destroy it completely.’
By the time the stable clock struck four we were ravenous. We climbed out of the space we’d made for ourselves between the boxes – ‘I can’t believe we just did that in front of my grandmother,’ Lucian said – and crept down the stairs past the trophy room and into the huge, dingy kitchen. We gorged ourselves on cold pie and potted meat and tipsy cake. I hadn’t realised how long it had been since we’d eaten. At the end, the kitchen table was like a battlefield, strewn with debris and crumbs and smears of chutney, but when I started to clear it up Lucian shook his head. ‘Leave it. That’s what she’s paid for.’
‘But—’ Ma would kill me, if I left the kitchen like that at home.
Lucian picked up the last crust of pie. ‘Come on,’ he said, with his mouth full, ‘I don’t want anyone to see us here.’ He walked out. I hesitated, piled the plates hastily into the sink, gave the table a quick wipe and hurried after him.
When I caught up with him he was standing in the bay window of the hall, reading something. He looked up. ‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘I’m really sorry, Emmett.’
My heart jerked like a weight at the end of a rope. ‘What?’
‘It’s all right, don’t look so horrified, it’s just a message from my father.’ He waved a slip of blue paper in my direction. ‘I have to go to Castleford.’
‘Now? It can’t be that urgent.’
‘I’m sorry.’
‘You could pretend you didn’t get it. Messages get lost.’
‘You don’t know him, Emmett.’ He stooped to pick up the torn blue envelope from the rug, taking longer than he needed to. ‘If I disobey him, he’ll find a way to make me wish I hadn’t.’
‘Come on, Lucian. You weren’t worried about marrying Alta in secret, how can you be too afraid to disobey him over a telegram?’ He didn’t answer at once, and I took a deep breath. ‘Or were you lying when you said that?’
‘No! Of course not.’ He rolled the slip of paper into a tight baton, without looking at me. ‘But I – maybe I wasn’t thinking … I’m sorry. I’m a coward, all right?’
‘He can’t be that bad. And surely your mother …?’
‘You don’t know him! He’s – he does things.’ He folded and folded the paper until it was a tiny blue parcel. ‘My mother lets him do what he wants. She pretends not to see. It’s better that way than letting him wipe her memory every time.’
There was a silence. I stared at him. His face was drawn and distant, his old mask. I understood now why he’d never talked about his family.
I said, ‘You’d better go, then.’
‘Emmett – honestly, I’m sorry.’
‘I’m going too, I’ll just get my boots.’
‘You don’t have to go this very moment.’
‘Y
ou want me to help you pack?’ He winced, and I was pleased. I turned and ran upstairs, pounding up flight after flight until I reached the tiny hot room under the eaves. It smelt of sweat and the wine we’d drunk. Part of me wanted to stay there, gazing at the unmade bed and the little fireplace and the view beyond the window, until it was all burnt indelibly into my memory; but I grabbed my boots and shut the door behind me.
When I got into the hall again Lucian was standing by the window, staring out. He looked round, but he didn’t smile. ‘I’ll come and see you as soon as I get back.’
‘Yes.’
‘Look after Splotch.’
‘Yes.’
There was a silence. I took a step towards him. At the same moment he moved towards me, so that we stumbled and almost collided. I took his face in my hands. We kissed as if we could stop the earth turning, as if we were enemies as well as lovers, as if we’d never see each other again.
I knew what I wanted to say; but I made myself leave him without another word.
When I got home the yard was empty, lying quietly in the sunshine like a painting of a farmyard. No one was in the barn, oiling the haymaker; no one had mucked the pigs out, either. As I opened the gate Springle and Soot rushed over and barked at me as if they wanted something. Their bowl was dry. I filled it again, gave Splotch a drink too, and crouched under the pump to splash my face and neck with icy water. My head ached and my eyes were itchy with tiredness, but if I worked quickly I could make up for the work I’d missed. Maybe then no one would mind. My stomach twisted uncomfortably when I remembered how Pa had been when Alfred took two days off without telling anyone; but that had been during the haymaking, and it turned out he’d been blind drunk in a gutter in Castleford. I’d only slept one night under someone else’s roof, and now I was back, ready to work.
I went to the barn and took out the straw-fork. But the silence was so thick that I found myself leaning it against the wall of the pigsty and turning my head to listen. It was as if someone was ill; that muffled, stagnant feeling, like being underwater. I crossed the yard and went inside, and the house was the same. I tiptoed towards the stairs, my heart so loud it seemed to echo off the walls. Then someone spoke in a hushed voice, and I spun round. It had come from the parlour – which was strange, on a weekday, unless we had guests. The door was ajar, and I crept to it and looked in.
Ma was sitting on the settee, her head bowed. Pa was standing beside the fireplace.
I pushed the door open. Ma looked up and saw me. She’d been crying.
‘Emmett,’ Pa said. And I saw that he’d been crying, too.
XVIII
They stared at me without speaking. Motes danced in the air, drifting lazily in and out of the light, going from visible to invisible in a split second. Beyond the shaft of sunlight the darkness was tinged with sepia, and everything seemed faded; the wallpaper had a jaundiced tinge, and the prints on the walls were grimy and indistinct. The wax fruits in the bell jar on the dresser were touched with a faint bloom of grey; somehow dirt had got in under the glass. In the corner of the room a scrap of dead leaf clung to the ceiling, where an ivy garland had hung at the Turning.
Ma hadn’t cried since the day when Joe Tanner had sneaked into the stallion’s stall and been kicked to death; and before that, since tiny Freya Smith had gone under the mill-wheel. And I couldn’t remember seeing Pa cry, ever. Now he had a flushed raw look where he had wiped away tears; his eyes were bloodshot, and his mouth was slack and damp. There was something indecent about it, like nakedness or uncooked meat.
Something had happened to Alta.
The knowledge sucked the air out of the room, until I thought I would lose my balance. I couldn’t speak; I couldn’t bear for the silence to go on, but whatever broke it would be worse.
Ma said, ‘Sit down.’
A moment ago all my joints had been watery, threatening to pitch me forward; but suddenly I couldn’t have bent them if I’d tried. ‘What’s happened?’
‘What do you think, lad?’ Pa’s voice was weary, almost soft.
‘Where is she?’ Ma took a deep breath, and my insides turned over. ‘It’s Alta, isn’t it? Is she all right? Tell me what’s happened!’
‘Alta?’ Pa frowned. ‘She’s upstairs.’
‘It’s a bit late to think about your sister, isn’t it, Emmett?’
Silence. Ma’s face was like ice: steady, white, so unforgiving it took my breath away. I looked from her to Pa and back again; and then I understood.
‘I,’ I said, and I hated the thinness of my voice, the way it trembled. ‘I – don’t—’
‘I don’t know what to say to you,’ Pa said. I’d never thought of him as old, but he was holding on to the mantelpiece as if he’d fall otherwise. ‘My son. We thought you were a good lad. We were proud of you.’
The silence stretched on and on, settling around me until I was afraid I’d choke on it. ‘I didn’t,’ I said, ‘I only …’ It was like learning to read again: the simplest words were out of reach.
‘How could you?’ For a moment Ma sounded like Alta – only an Alta who had grown up, got old, lost hope. ‘I don’t understand, Emmett. Tell me why.’
‘Why – what?’
‘Why you chose to destroy Alta’s future. Why you lied to us all. Why you threw away everything we taught you.’
‘I didn’t do any of that!’ At last the breath hit the bottom of my lungs, and I could speak. ‘I never lied! I just – I never meant to hurt Alta.’
‘How dare you say that!’ Ma leant forward, as if she had to concentrate to breathe. ‘You knew how Alta felt. You knew how we all felt, how we hoped …’ She swallowed. ‘We let you spend time with them when you should have been working. We trusted you. And you wrecked it all. Deliberately. Why would you do that?’
‘Because I—’ I stopped. I felt my knees tremble as if I’d come upon an adder in the grass and checked just in time. I said, ‘It wasn’t about Alta. It wasn’t about you.’
Pa took a few steps into the middle of the room. ‘Don’t say that,’ he said. ‘You’re not the kind of son who would forget his family like that. Whatever you did with – that boy … It wasn’t because you wanted it. You’re not like that.’
I stared at him. He wanted me to be malicious, and jealous, and vindictive; he wanted me to have done it out of hatred. Because otherwise I would be – like that … The tremors in my legs spread upwards, shaking me like an earthquake. It was Lucian I wanted, no one else. What did that make me? ‘Please,’ I said. ‘It wasn’t like you think. It wasn’t – just mucking about, it was – we care about each other.’
Ma drew in her breath. ‘Be quiet.’
‘Please,’ I said again, and heard my voice crack.
‘Shut up!’ Pa paced to one side of the room and back.
I fixed my eyes on the remnant of ivy clinging to the ceiling. I could remember Lucian balancing on the chair to pin it up, before the Turning; that was the day we’d waltzed, and his body against mine had left me breathless. The memory caught me off-guard; I bit the inside of my cheek as hard as I could, and focused on the pain.
‘What’s done is done,’ Pa said. ‘We won’t mention this after today. If you ever do anything like this again, Emmett, you won’t have a family. That’s all. Do you understand?’
I said slowly, ‘Anything like this?’
‘If you ever – touch – another boy – another man – again. If you let a man touch you. If we hear anything – any rumour, any nasty story, anything.’ A pause. ‘Is that clear?’
I couldn’t bear the way Pa was staring at me, as if I was a stranger. If I said yes, they’d forgive me; everything would go back to how it was, and we could pretend …
‘Please,’ I said, ‘just listen. Please – Ma.’ I turned to her, forcing myself not to see the expression on her face. ‘You want Alta and me to have better lives, don’t you? He’s offered me a job, in Castleford. I could work for him.’
‘What are you talking about?’
/>
My voice was getting higher and faster, but I couldn’t stop myself. ‘Why should it be Alta, who gets to escape? You wanted him to rescue her. Why can’t he rescue me? I can leave here and be his secretary …’
Pa said, ‘You mean, be his whore.’
There was an abrupt quiet in the room, like the silence after you drop something fragile.
‘Robert,’ Ma said.
‘It’s true, isn’t it?’
Suddenly my voice was steady, although I didn’t know how. ‘You wanted Alta to marry him,’ I said. ‘Well, she still can. He’ll propose to her if I ask him to. Then that’s your happy ending.’
Ma got to her feet. ‘Tell me,’ she said, ‘do you mean that?’
I hesitated.
‘You’re thinking about it,’ Ma said, in the same quiet voice. ‘You honestly think that Alta could marry him, after you and he have – after all this … You imagine that we would allow a man like that to touch our daughter. And you think that it would be good enough for Alta to marry a man who asked her because you told him to.’
‘If she still wanted him—’
‘How dare you? What makes you think that you can do whatever you want, while Alta has to take your leavings? How dare you say that she should be satisfied with so little?’
‘I didn’t say that!’
‘That’s enough!’ Pa strode into the space between us. ‘Enough, Hilda. I don’t want to hear any more. Emmett, go to your bedroom. Tomorrow we’ll forget all this. Right now I can’t look at you.’
‘Just let me explain—’ I said, not knowing which of them I was talking to.
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