Carol was a hunched ball under the covers, and the room smelled heavy with sleep. She stirred as I watched her, turned over and opened her eyes, tousled and frowning.
“It’s only me,” I whispered. “Sorry...”
“Ben.” Her voice was only a croak, but she managed a smile regardless. “Hi.”
“Can I come in? Just for a bit?”
“Sure. Welcome. Long as you like, fool.”
She twitched the duvet back and slid over, to make room. I shucked off my jeans and slid into the warmth and softness, the comfort that she offered; and there I could sleep after all, nestled in against her and if not Laura, she surely was a substitute for something.
It wasn’t till I woke, to bright sunlight and an empty bed, that I thought again of Marty in this room, or of Steve and the night just gone.
o0o
Carol had left the curtains open, so that the sun fell directly onto my face, tingling sharp and fresh like aftershave. I stretched into it, like a cat stretching into its skin again after sleep; the duvet fell away, and oh, this was my time and no question who was in possession of my body now. Before I knew it I’d walked all the way forward into light and was standing naked by the high window, wrapped in radiance brighter than any body was ever lit by sun.
Caught myself at it and frowned, shook it out of my head and turned away; felt the tingle still on my back and stepped deliberately out of the fall of light. I’d get used to it, sure; but at the moment magic was nothing but distraction, and I really wanted to think.
So I scuttled upstairs in my jeans again, meeting no one on the way, hoping everyone but Carol would assume I was simply sleeping in. Desperately hoping no one had looking in on me already, or tried to...
When we were teenagers, the attics had been made over almost into a private flat for us, our own distinct domain. Privilege without responsibility, this was, we didn’t even have to keep it clean. There was Marty’s room, and Jamie’s, and my own; there was a phone on the landing, on a separate line; there was a wee little kitchen corner with a fridge and a Baby Belling cooker and a sink, a cupboard for tins and a couple of shelves stacked with old saucepans and cracked plates; and there was a bathroom with a shower and a deep old Victorian tub, where I’d first discovered the pleasures of long immersion and slow contemplation.
No one around up here either — or no one in Jamie’s room, at least; I didn’t try Marty’s — so I could take all the time I wanted, run the bath hot and deep, relearn the habit of luxury...
But I’d long outgrown my life here, and dressing myself in old and ill-fitting clothes wouldn’t make me young again. I had a shower instead, scalding water hammering on my neck and shoulders, beating out residual tensions from the long night. Then I raided my cousin’s room for clean clothes — ignoring what was scattered across the carpet, Jamie’s rig from last night and Laura’s also, both of them cruelly intermixed — and went downstairs.
o0o
The big kitchen at least showed signs of recent occupation, though it was empty now. There were wisps of steam coming from the kettle, smells of bacon and burnt toast, plates heaped in the sink, a bottle of milk left out and wet mug-rings on the long deal table. Aunt Lucy’s maid must be busy somewhere else in the house, and Lucy herself gone off to a coffee-morning or whatever. She would never have tolerated such a mess being left unsorted.
I went in search of company, and was drawn again by the open door to the big room, and the sounds of talking inside. I was just a step or two away when I heard my own name mentioned, in Laura’s clear warm voice; and shame on me, I stood still and breathed quiet, and listened in.
“The trouble with Ben,” she was saying, “is he builds these dreams, and then makes out that they’re real. Makes out to himself, as much as to the rest of us. That’s the problem, really, is that he believes them absolutely; and they give him such a bent picture of the world.”
“Like how?” Jamie, of course. He sounded dead interested, like this was a whole new perspective on someone he’d grown up with. “What sort of dreams?”
“Well, there’s this group of us at college, for a start. We’re friends, and sometimes we do things together. Three, four times a term we’ll all go out. But talk to Ben and you’d think we were inseparable, blood brothers or whatever. And that’s just not true. I’ve got a theory about it, mind.”
“Sure you’ve got a theory,” Jamie said, chuckling. “You’ve always got theories, you.” And then he yelped, and there were a couple of seconds of scuffle-noises before they settled down again. “So what’s your big theory on this one, then?”
“It’s just, what it is, I reckon after he walked out on you lot, he needed to find himself a new family. Some sort of emotional security, yeah? And he met us, we were all freshers and we had some fun together, and we got appointed. So he’s created this whole thing in his head about how close we are, and how important to each other; and it worries me. It’s not safe, him building so much on an assumption that’s fundamentally false.”
Rick and Angie, Dermot and Vanessa, Colin and Laura and me: my clan, yes, my substitute family if she liked. Fundamental, and nothing false. So all right, I’d barely seen any of them except her since Marty died; but Christ, that was fair enough, wasn’t it? This was crisis time. And we’d all get together again when it was over, when things were normal again if they ever could be normal after this. Of course we would, we were bonded; and none stronger than Laura and me, I couldn’t believe that she didn’t see what I saw...
“And then there’s me,” she said more softly, sighing. Into his shoulder, at a guess; it was harder now for me to overhear, I really had to work at it.
And did, and heard:
“What about you?”
“You must have noticed. He thinks he’s in love with me.”
Thinks? Thinks? Jesus, if she’d sat in my head at all, any time these last two years...
“It’s the same again, only bigger. He was so insecure when he cut himself loose, I’d say he desperately needed something to hang on to, to give himself some kind of value in his own eyes; and he fixed on me. I mean, I love the guy, I do; but not like that, it’s hopeless.”
“You’d better not,” Jamie said, trying to lighten the mood a little; and yelped again. Meeting Laura’s fist, I imagined.
“Shut up, this is serious. I’ve told him and told him, but oh, he’s stubborn. Won’t look at other girls, gets mad jealous if I show any interest in a boy. Come on, you must have noticed, he’s been dead difficult with you.”
“Ben and me is difficult anyway,” Jamie said slowly, accepting the inevitable, that he couldn’t tease her out of this confessional. “And just now, with everything else that’s happening — well, no, I hadn’t really noticed. First time, maybe, when I met you; I could see he didn’t like that. But I thought that was just because of who I was. And what about Carol, then? I mean, those two, I thought...”
“Yeah. I don’t know about Carol. I think, maybe something could happen there; but...”
I was just thinking that I didn’t know about Carol either, and that I was glad Laura didn’t know about what had happened already, when a cool hand closed over the back of my neck and I startled around to find Carol right there, eyeing me curiously.
“What are you up to, then?” she demanded, keeping her voice cautious.
“Eavesdropping,” I admitted, just as quiet. “Did you know I suffer from terminal self-deception?”
“Yes,” she said. “You’re a bloke.”
And smiled, and slipped her arm round my waist and towed me through the door with her, so that I lost my chance to learn any more about the way Laura saw me in the world.
o0o
They were curled up together in one of the big armchairs, Laura and Jamie, right by the door there; and Laura smiled a greeting at me, pushed a hand through her hair, said, “Hi. Thought you were going to snooze all day.”
I just shook my head, I couldn’t talk to her. I was muddled, mostly,
but how I felt was angry. The sun was blazing in through all the windows; I pulled away from Carol and walked over to where it lay bright on a clear stretch of carpet. Sank down into it, tilted my head back and closed my eyes to its fierce touch, closed my ears and my mind to the company and centred in on my confusion.
It felt like coming home. I’d done a lot of this here, feeling totally adrift, feeling all my securities snatched away from me. Feeling hollowed, meaningless, no part of the life of this or any house...
o0o
If they spoke to me, I didn’t register. I was sinking badly, losing it altogether, when the sound of a car door slamming finally penetrated my misery. I opened my eyes and saw Uncle James out there, crunching over the gravel.
A minute later, he came in to talk to us. To orate, rather. He took up his favourite position by the fireplace, and said, “Now listen, all of you. Benedict, your Uncle Allan agrees with you, that whoever it is we’re facing here most likely draws on the same sources that we do, and largely to the same effect. He left very early this morning, to see whether he can come to any further conclusions about the nature of their talent, or who they are.” His voice said he thought that was improbable. “Jamie, I want you with me today. If they operate as we do, they are powerless by day; but we are not. We have an organisation in this town, and we should be able to find them. We must be able to find them,” and his voice promised desperate retribution to anyone who hindered the search. “You others,” he said, “you may stay here for the day,” and once more his voice was saying more than his words, saying that we were insignificant to him and tolerated only for his son’s sake, to assure his son’s obedience: our presumed safety the price he bought it with.
“No,” I said flatly.
For a second, he didn’t seem to understand at all. Then, “No?” he repeated. “In what sense, no?”
Jamie was making urgent faces at me, I could just make them out in the corner of my vision; but I looked straight at Uncle James and said, “I want to come with you.”
Useless to my friends, apparently I was; deluded, even, lacking those meaningful relationships that I’d been so sure of, that I’d built my new life upon. I couldn’t spend all day with Laura, knowing now how she thought of me; didn’t want to spend a minute more than necessary with her, and what a change was there.
“For what purpose?” Uncle James enquired, while his eloquent voice added a subtext, what use are you to me?
And I remembered Steve’s death last night, and how he had screamed when he felt his blood turn bad in his body, how he had lashed out blindly with his talent and shattered every window in the alley; and I turned my face to the sun and slowly and deliberately punched out every one of the many windows in that big room, and never moved once from where I sat on the carpet.
Eighteen: More Bricks than Kicks
Of them all, only Carol took it with anything approaching cool; and she looked anxious, as if she thought I should have kept my secrets better.
Laura was frightened, which was sour Pyrrhic victory for me: don’t know me so bloody well after all, do you, girl? But however bitter my feelings, it was more bitter still to see her so, dark eyes wide in a pale face and her hands white-knuckled on Jamie’s arm, and to know that I had caused that. I’d dreamed of her wide-eyed and clinging tight, but not for this and surely not to him.
Jamie himself was looking gobsmacked, with a bit of a stretch to his own hazel eyes; but his mouth was stretching also, coming up into a wide grin — as a young man ought to grin, perhaps, seeing his brother come unexpectedly good.
Uncle James, though — Uncle James was so shocked it would have been comic, only that I didn’t feel in the least little bit like laughing.
His head turned between me and the windows and back to me again, and it was his turn to say no: “No,” he said, “that’s not possible.”
“Tell that to your glazier,” I suggested, pushing myself now to my feet, to meet him eye to eye.
Only he wouldn’t do that; his eyes were shifting still, all around the room and the long lawns and gardens outside, as a fresh breeze wound its way into the room through the jagged ruins of his glass.
“It’s a trick,” he said, “that’s all, just a cheap and stupid trick. You’ve got someone out there with an air-rifle, shooting out the windows...”
“Try again, uncle,” I said, regretting almost that I couldn’t raise a laugh, his response was so contemptible. It did tickle the back of my mind for a moment, to wonder quite why he was trying so hard to deny this; but that was just Uncle James and the world he lived in, where things were so or not so and not subject to debate. Talent was starlit and always had been, therefore what he’d just seen demonstrated was a lie. Some manner of illusion, it had to be, if he could only figure it out...
“All the glass fell outwards, Dad,” Jamie pointed out, still cradling Laura in the chair. She was still and silent, accusation in her eyes as she watched me. I gazed back at her, just as accusatory and let her figure that out if she could.
Seeing Uncle James baffled and snorting and perhaps a little afraid himself, heavy with anger and still fighting to reject what was manifest, I changed my mind. Did I really want to spend all the day and likely the night following with this man, in this mood? Did I hell.
So I turned away from him and from the sun both, and from the spoiled beauty of that long-remembered room; and I said to Carol, “I’m getting out of here. Want to come?”
At first I didn’t understand why she looked to Laura; but of course, if Jamie went with his father and Carol came with me, that left Laura alone. Alone with my aunt and the household staff, at least, and anyone else who came along through the day, be they friend or family or foe. Or any combination thereof.
Laura hesitated, took silent counsel with Jamie — and then slithered herself awkwardly out of his entanglement and onto her feet, and said, “Can we both?”
A little tic in my mind, a spasm of meanness that wanted to say no, wanted to say, No, you chose him, you take what comes with him; which means his family, which means being left with the women while the men go out to play.
“Sure,” I said, shrugging. “If someone’s got the bus fare.” Alone I might have walked it, to work some of the muddle and temper out of my head and leave it in the road; but it was five miles or so along the river, and the mood wasn’t right for a quiet amble. I wanted to storm, and I couldn’t drag the girls along for that.
“Take one of the cars,” Jamie said instantly. “Take the jeep.”
“You sure?”
“Yeah, go on. I won’t be using it.” And then, just as a reminder, maybe, wanting to stake out his territory a little more clearly in view of what she’d told him, “Leave it with Laura, yeah?”
I nodded, jerked my head at the girls, follow when ready, left my cousin and my uncle without further ceremony. Didn’t look back, to see if Jamie claimed a final kiss before parting. At least he didn’t come with, to wave goodbye.
Jamie’s jeep had been his delight when he was seventeen; I was glad he still had it, and kept it on the road. The keys were hanging where they had always hung, just by the back door in the kitchen. I twitched them down and went on out, with the girls quietly at my back, murmuring between themselves.
o0o
They were quiet also on the drive into town, sitting together in the back. I watched them in the mirror, each hanging onto the roll-bars with one hand. I thought probably their other hands were tightly linked, down out of my sight. Warm sun, wind in our hair and all day ahead of us: ach, we should have had the world at our feet. We should have been laughing and yelling and whooping at the sky, not trapped in these terrible tangles, grief and fear and confusion conspiring to bind our tongues and our spirits.
The hurt of it killed the anger in me, but I still couldn’t talk to Laura. I drove straight to her flat, parked neatly in front of her door and climbed out, pressed the keys into her hand before she’d even set a foot on the ground; and she didn’t speak ei
ther, and her fingers seemed to flinch away from mine as if she were frightened even of my touch now. Maybe she was, maybe she understood that Macallan tingle better now. She was sure to have a theory, at any rate, to explain why my skin was suddenly as electric as Jamie’s, though far less welcome to her.
The hell with it, the hell with her and her theories both; I turned and walked off, finding my anger again as quickly as I’d lost it in that pang of wishing for our ravaged innocence. I could have my walk now, it was a long stretch from her flat to my own; and if I walked streets rather than river paths, so what? This was where I belonged, and I could be just as alone here, among the crowds. Ask Laura, she’d probably say I’d always been alone, even when I thought I was with twin souls, the friends of my heart...
Steaming up the hill, I heard running footsteps behind me. Didn’t turn to look, because actually I didn’t care just then, neither one was welcome. Still, no surprise when it was Carol who grabbed my arm and hauled me to a stop, breathing hard. What did surprise me, she seemed pretty much as angry as I was.
“Ben, what the fuck is the matter with you?”
Me, I was breathing just as hard, though I hadn’t had the sprint to set me off. I yanked my arm free, so violently that her feet stuttered for balance on the pavement; and I said, “Do you want me to enumerate?”
Good word, enumerate. It blocked her, just for a moment; and that gave me the time to look back, to see Laura disappear behind her front door and slam it behind her. The sound of it came up the hill to chase us. Another time, that might have hurt the most; but today I just hoped she’d be sensible, she’d shove the bolts over and put the chain on and camp inside all day and all night and well into tomorrow. The streets would not be safe, I thought, for anyone tonight.
Carol must have done some quick enumerating of her own, because all she said was, “No. Don’t bother. You want to sulk, you go ahead and sulk.”
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