"You're using his name. I like that," Sylvia said and smiled down herself. "We like it, don't we?"
"You don't mind my asking."
"It's the kind of thing a sister trying to be a parent would want to know. We don't mind, do we?"
"Just a sister would." Heather was near to feeling excluded from the conversation. She sat opposite Sylvia in case that reclaimed her attention, but Sylvia didn't look up. "So am I going to hear how?" Heather said.
"We met in the right place at the right time. That's the closest to a fairy tale most people get, if they ever do."
"You didn't make it sound like one when you first told me about him."
"Depends which kind of fairy tale you're thinking of."
"Which are you?"
"I don't need to," Sylvia said and raised her eyes. "I'm living the truth."
"So tell me it. Don't be alone with it."
For a long breath Sylvia seemed to be gazing out of somewhere distant and dark, and then her gaze was attracted downwards. "I'm not alone," she murmured, "am I?"
"One more question," Heather managed to ask instead of pleading.
"We're
listening."
"Where did you meet?"
"Closer to home than you'd think."
"Not-" Heather couldn't quite commit her fear to words, given its potential for offending Sylvia. Instead she tried "Not America, then."
Sylvia didn't speak until she'd regarded Heather with a sympathetic look not far short of pitying. "Not where you're thinking of."
Heather didn't care how American the father was so long as he hadn't been an inmate of the mental hospital, however unreasonable a prejudice that was. Of course, she thought, the baby must have been conceived in America, otherwise its growth would be too rapid, positively unnatural. She jumped up to deliver a hug that was intended to be both apologetic and accepting. "I'm glad we understand each other."
"Isn't that what sisters are meant to be for?" Having said that, Sylvia slipped out of Heather's embrace as though her midriff had tugged at her, "Do you mind if we lie down till dinner?"
Heather had to remind herself that she wasn't being referred to. "You get as much rest as you can," she urged. As she watched Sylvia plodding upstairs towards the insidious smell as reminiscent of dead wood as of old paper, she felt more excluded than ever. She almost felt she hadn't understood at all.
27
A Family Conference
His parents didn't know, Sam reminded himself yet again. That was the most important thing-that they never would. He and his aunt had done what they'd done, and there was no taking it back. They never would have done it if either of them had realised who the other was. Perhaps the relationship they hadn't recognised was theirs explained their instant attraction; if something else had caused them to perform, he never wanted to know. It was one of the nightmares he kept having while awake, the most immediate and real of which was that his mother would find out somehow. If she did, he could only flee to his car and drive away. It wouldn't matter if he had no idea where he was going so long as he never came back.
He'd almost reached home after failing to go for the interview when the prospect of confronting his mother had started to fill him with dread. He had been sure his guilt would be visible on his face, and had struggled to concoct another reason for it before he'd grasped that she was more than satisfied to worry about his problems with the interview, which she would also take to be causing any unease on his part-but the realisation freed his mind to wonder if Sylvia remembered as much as he did.
On her return from Margo's he thought she saw he'd learned everything. He'd kept feeling ill at ease with her ever since she'd come to stay. At least That no longer seemed inexplicable, but the more he considered her behaviour towards him, the less certain he was how she felt about him. He had to discover how much she recalled, but not while there was the slightest chance that his mother might overhear, and so he'd spent a dinner that had felt prolonged almost beyond endurance in manufacturing conversation that had struck him as either suspiciously awkward and feeble or not nearly neutral enough. Once his mother and Sylvia had settled down to watch a television documentary about a female explorer whose discoveries had been claimed by better-known male Victorians, he'd taken that as an excuse to retreat to his room. Eventually he'd crawled into bed to wait until he was confident his mother was asleep. Now it was the darkest hour of the night, and he was beginning to think he would never be confident enough.
For a moment, or it might have been much longer, he grew unconscious of the dark and of the quilt that felt fattened by the mugginess even the night and the inch he'd left the window open seemed unable to dissipate. Something that resembled sleep kept snatching at his mind like this but came as no relief. All too often it was clammy with memories of thrusting himself deep into Sylvia, the earth of the mound gritting beneath his knees, the woods encircling him and looming over him like a multitude that had crept close to watch. The recollection threatened to swell him until guilt shrank him. Other images he found in the depths of his mind disturbed him in another way; they felt like someone else's memories, of a void that teemed with unseen life, a space so boundless it contained worlds beyond imagining. Once he glimpsed an eyeless form that glided from planet to planet and held each in its many-clawed wings while it absorbed the life-force of entire civilisations of creatures whose shapes he was grateful to be unable to distinguish. Once he saw a massive globe so dark no star could illuminate it, which roved in search of inhabited worlds, distorting them and their denizens before it engulfed them to W the sound of countless pleas and screams lost in the void. Once, before he contrived to think his desperate way back to his room, he had to watch a member groping out of the limitless blackness to clutch at a whole solar system of planets, using appendages that nothing should possess, and lift its catch towards a face Sam barely managed not to discern in any detail, a presence whose glee felt like the end of all life. Now he was seeing only the woods, but all the trees were straining themselves skyward like antennae to capture some aspect of the source of these visions. He twitched himself awake before the impression had time to grow clearer, and then his breath caught in his dry throat. He could still hear the woods.
It was the wind, he told himself, though it sounded more like the irregular breaths of an entity that was trying to come to life. Even when Sam floundered onto his back and raised his head out of the darkness that the visions seemed to have lodged in his mind, it did. He widened his hot sluggish sticky eyes until his sight managed to separate the outlines of the contents of his room from the rest of the dimness, but the familiar disorder failed to ward off the notion that he was trapped in a dream or that the dream was real. He fumbled to dislodge the tangled sweaty quilt and sat on the edge of the bed, massaging some of an ache out of his leg, before limping to the window.
As he leaned across the desk to peer through the glass he felt as if the night had exhaled an unhealthily warm sweetish breath in his face. It was only a hint of the wind that set the treetops beyond the common groping for the darkness overhead that no amount of stars could relieve. The vast distant chorus sounded more like a secretive whisper now, but was that wholly outside the house? He eased the sash down until wood met wood, then raised his head and risked closing his eyes while he strained to hear.
There was a noise in the house. Perhaps it was the sound of someone, not necessarily as few as one, rather more than breathing in their sleep. He picked his unsteady way across the cluttered floor and took all the time he needed to edge the door silently open. As soon as it moved he heard somebody snoring with a discretion that bordered on elegance.
If it was his mother, he hoped she would keep it up. So long as he could hear she was asleep he would take the chance to venture into Sylvia's room, though he wasn't sure if he wanted to find her awake. When he stepped onto the landing he could tell it was his mother who was snoring. Something else was audible, if barely, in his aunt's room. Pressing an ear against
an upper panel didn't let him identify it, and so he took hold of the unexpectedly warm doorknob with both hands to ease the door inward.
Perhaps the sound had come from the forest-her window was open wide-but he couldn't shake off a conviction that more than trees had been responsible for the furtive murmur. He sidled past the door and limped into the unlit room. His aunt was lying face up on the bed. So much of her was a dark lump that he could have imagined the mound on which she'd taken him had grown within her. It was his child, he thought, his child, but the concept seemed more than his mind could encompass. He was peering past the bulk of her, and had just succeeded in discerning that she was asleep, when he grew aware of being watched from somewhere in the darkness.
The only movement he could locate was on the far side of the common. He limped to the window with as much reluctance as stealth, and the smell of Selcouth's journal rose to meet him. Just now he preferred not to recall any of the passages Sylvia had read to him. As he ducked towards the gap beneath the sash, a wind intensified the ancient smell that could have been of the book or of the woods or both. At the same time the glimmering trees made a concerted gesture that might have heralded a revelation. He was struggling to grasp what he ought to understand when his sense of being watched returned. The watcher was behind him.
He twisted around, almost falling against his grandfather's desk as his bad leg threatened not to keep up. Though his aunt's eyes were closed, she was mouthing in her sleep. He couldn't deduce her words, and was glad of it while he was conscious of being observed, perhaps not with eyes, from somewhere darker than the room. There was no point in trying to deny that the watcher was in front of him, on the bed. The knowledge paralysed him, and then it sent him out so fast that the room appeared to stagger around him.
He was forcing himself to linger until the door had been inched shut when he heard Sylvia mumble in her sleep. "Not yet, Natty," he thought she said, and "Not dark enough."
Whatever else she pronounced or came close to pronouncing was rendered unintelligible by the intervention of the door. Sam loitered only briefly before fleeing to his room and crawling into bed. No visions lay in wait for him. He was wondering uneasily whether they'd ceased because they or something related to them had succeeded in making a point when their absence let exhaustion catch up with him. For perhaps another second he was aware merely of the dark, and then not of that either.
No time at all seemed to pass before he was roused by a light someone was shining into the darkness to find him. She was calling to him. Once he began to understand her words they wrenched him further awake. "Are you staying down there all day?" she said.
At first he didn't know where he was or who. He forced his cumbersome eyelids open to see Sylvia looming over him. Her patient face appeared to be perched birdlike on top of her increased bulk. The light that was the sun beyond the window at her back showed Sam his room, but nevertheless he stammered "Down where?"
"In your lair." Presumably observing his confusion, she tried "In your bed."
"I couldn't sleep."
She gave that a smile of amused disbelief. There was no point in arguing when they had far more crucial issues to discuss. "What were you-what do you want?" he mumbled, still less than awake.
"Someone's come to see you." A His mind shrank from the possibility that she meant her child- their child, a notion that he wished the daylight could reveal to be a bad and grotesque dream.
"Who?" he found himself able only to whisper.
"Can't you hear?"
She couldn't be inviting him to listen for the sounds he'd overheard in the night, he thought or tried to think. All the same, as he shoved himself upright against the pillow he felt as though he was recoiling, and not just from her. He had to drag his mind free of the idea to be capable of hearing voices downstairs, his mother's and a man's. "Who is it?" he had to ask.
"Mr. Harvey, Mr. Harvey."
He didn't know when he'd last been called that. If he'd had time he might have wondered whether he was even sure of his own name, but he was too busy wanting to learn "What's he saying?"
"Sounds a tad serious."
His father's voice had grown lower and more intense, and Sam didn't need to hear the words to guess the subject was himself. "I'll tell him you'll be on your way, shall I?" Sylvia said.
Sam heard his mother's voice sink to meet his father's, presumably in disagreement. He couldn't think when he might have a better opportunity to talk to Sylvia without the risk of being overheard. "Wait," he pleaded.
From turning away she swung completely around and back to him, so that he imagined her midriff or its tenant acting like the needle of a compass. "Yes, Sam?"
He took a breath only to have to swallow. It felt as though all the questions he might ask were shrinking into him. As Sylvia raised her eyebrows and parted her lips he managed to say
"Will you tell me something?"
"Anything
I
know."
"When was the first time you saw me the age I am now?"
An expression that might have been some kind of smile flicker across her mouth before she said "Could be this very morning couldn't it?"
"Grown up, I mean. When did you see me grown up?"
"Last year."
"When last year?"
"Are you asking for a date?"
The possibility that she was gently mocking him infuriated Sam. "No," he not much less than snarled, "I'm asking when was the first time we-got together."
"What would Heather say?"
That put him in mind of being found out by his mother, and made him blurt "In her library."
"Are you saying she's wrong?"
"Wouldn't you?"
He heard how accusing his tone had become, but couldn't think of any other way to sound, although disbelief was catching up with him-disbelief that they could be talking or rather not talking about what he fancied they were. He was struggling not to apologise or to concede the verbal game when Sylvia's expression owned up to itself She contrived to look both suddenly aged and much younger as she murmured "What do you think you've remembered, Sam?"
"I don't just think, I know."
She glanced downwards, and he might have suspected that she was seeking instructions from the bulk of herself if he hadn't heard his parents arguing beneath her feet. Their voices seemed trapped by the floorboards-as trapped as he felt while he awaited his aunt's response.
"Then do you think there could be a better time and place to talk about it?" she said.
"I want to now."
That wasn't just childish, it wasn't even true. It had been forced out of him by the realisation that until she'd spoken, his disbelief had remained a hope too secret to admit to himself. He could only watch as her face took its expression back. "So talk," she said.
He made his mouth open without the least idea what might emerge. If it hadn't been for recognising how stupid he must look, he might have clung to his silence. As it was, he faltered.
"Did I..."
"What, Sam?" she said with a hint of a smile.
"Did we. Did we..."
His harshness trailed off, but it had driven her smile into hiding "Yes," she said blank-faced.
"You're saying," he stammered in a last attempt at incredulity "you're saying we..."
"I'm saying only you and I know who the father is," said Sylvia, her gaze drifting inwards or downwards or both. "Except Natty will, of course."
That had to be years in the future, Sam told himself, and there was a far more immediate threat. "You won't tell anyone else, will you? he pleaded.
"Wouldn't you want them to know?"
"Christ, what do you think?"
Her gaze took its time over finding him. The last expression he would have anticipated glimpsing in her eyes was hurt, and it made him more nervous still.
"As the father likes," she said.
"Promise?"
"Nobody's going to learn who it was from me. There, will that help you
sleep nights?"
Sam had to make an effort not to feel convicted of being a bad father. "Maybe nothing will," he muttered.
"If there's anything else I can do to help-"She must have sensed his inward wince, because she marched with some haughtiness to the door. "I'd better announce you," she said primly. "Mr. Harvey must be wondering what's keeping you."
Even more disconcerting than her adoption of the role of a concerned relative was his sense that she thought it only reasonable and expected him to think so too. He didn't move until she began to plod downstairs, at which point he emerged from the refuge of the quilt and limped fast to grab his robe from the hook on the door, feeling painfully conscious of his nakedness. He'd just ventured onto the! landing when his father called "Is that someone coming to life at last?"
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