You

by Joanna Briscoe

  ‘Exactly.’

  ‘How do you react to them? Are we supposed to rein them in? Look at Benedict. He’s a boy still – an unwashed youth. He smells. I’m sorry. He’s blundering, but she’s aware. Do you think . . . ?’

  ‘Virgins, the pair of them,’ said Beatrice briskly.

  ‘Yes,’ said Dora, still watching Diana and Cecilia deep in conversation on a small settle at the other end of the room, absorbed in each other yet feverishly aware of their imagined audience, of the import of their gestures and muttered secrets.

  ‘She’s the one we always parade for the grandparents,’ said Dora. ‘The one least likely to upset them. The rest are such scruffs. I wonder quite what they’d think of her in that get-up?’

  Beatrice laughed and Dora watched her seventeen-year-old daughter, her features almost transparent with youth, as though the new hormones in her blood were visible beneath her skin, its faint freckles like flecks of vanilla, her hair a contrasting dense red-brown. There was, thought Dora, something disturbingly young-animal-like, fawn-like, calf-like, about her, her arched mouth so full that it was held slightly open by the set of its own curves. In its translucency, Dora thought now, it was almost like glass.

  Cecilia had, that afternoon, pinned and tightened a dark velvet dress bought in a second-hand clothes shop in Exeter. She wore lipstick, small diamond earrings and thin black tights. She had dressed in a careless good mood while engaged in a shouted conversation above the sound of the Doors with Gabriel Sardo, who was staying there for the beginning of the holidays. She had begun to understand which colours suited her, the clashes and opposites, the dusty pinks and moss greens that enhanced her, and so she displayed her colouring, no longer hiding it like a shameful rash.

  ‘He’s not talking to me,’ muttered Cecilia to Diana in a voice of muted panic. ‘It’s already nearly nine thirty.’

  The heat and volume were escalating; the floorboards jumped.

  ‘He’s your teacher. He’s surrounded by work people. He’s not just going to saunter up to you,’ said Diana.

  ‘I know,’ said Cecilia. ‘I know.’ She glanced at her watch. ‘Come with me. He’s just not leaving that end of the room. Look how much he has to stoop below the beam. I’m going to make my way to the middle. Can I? Can I?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Really? Can I?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Cecilia walked to the sofa, urgently speaking nonsense to Diana, her gestures lively and amused in an effort to seem engaged, to appear incidentally vibrant in snapshots caught by his eye.

  ‘What?’ said Diana.

  ‘Nothing. Yes, well. It’s a nice evening, isn’t it? Fuck. Talk to me. I don’t know. Come on. Look. Talk. Look at the fire. What shall I say?’

  ‘I. Yes . . .’

  ‘I’m –’ she said, taking a big mouthful of mulled wine, then a smaller one, feeling warmth fanning through her blood. ‘I’m going to go up to him.’

  She approached the section of room in which James Dahl stood talking to a group of colleagues. He wore corduroy trousers, an open-necked shirt, a brown tweed jacket. His bleached-out 1940s appearance was exacerbated by the firelight, the flames rendering his hair and eyes a uniform pale sepia that painted out signs of maturity so that he looked disconcertingly youthful: he was a surreal celluloid apparition standing against familiar beams and books.

  ‘Hello,’ said Cecilia from too far a distance, and then coughed. She tried again, almost calling, finding she had little control over the volume of her voice. ‘Hello.’

  He turned around and glanced at her, looked away, finished a conversation, his manner considerate, old-worldly almost, then turned to her again.

  ‘Cecilia,’ he said, smiling and stepping towards her. ‘Many congratulations on your offer,’ he said warmly, and shook her hand. ‘That is excellent news. Excellent. I was very pleased for you indeed when I heard.’

  ‘Thank you,’ said Cecilia, smiling, faltering. ‘Lilith got in too. She’d be better than me in interview,’ she mumbled.

  ‘Probably,’ he said matter of factly. ‘But your written work is generally stronger. The others didn’t receive offers. It’s an achievement to celebrate.’

  ‘Thank you,’ she said, unable to look at him, ‘for the classes. Thank you. Thank you so much.’

  ‘Oh –’ he said, dipping his head at a beam. Mistletoe brushed his ear and he moved away with awkward rapidity. ‘You’d have achieved it anyway –’

  ‘No! I’d have had to have been taught by Wiggy. It’d have been experimental monologues inspired by Kerouac’s travels,’ she said, too fluently, reciting examples pre-prepared in fantasy conversations in the bath. She hesitated intentionally. ‘Milton as viewed by Lawrence Ferlinghetti. I’d have ended up at Torquay Tech.’

  He smiled.

  ‘Mr Wigram, I’m sure, inspires certain students . . .’ he said.

  ‘Oh come on,’ said Cecilia, helping herself to wine and filling his glass with a proprietary air. ‘Students who want to create “narratives” to perform in the “drama space”. He,’ she said, feeling the renewed heat of alcohol pluming through her, ‘he’s the type to encourage the writing of horrible haikus when – when people should be studying their Shakespeare set texts.’

  James Dahl laughed.

  ‘Ridiculous place,’ he murmured, sinking his words into his glass. His fringe fell on to his forehead. Laughter rose from the end of the room.

  ‘What?’ said Cecilia delightedly.

  ‘Oh, I –’

  ‘Come on, tell me,’ she said rapidly with a new carefree happiness so that she touched his arm as she said it. ‘Do you think so too? Oh God. I – I think it’s maddening. Farcical. I’d love it to burn down. An enormous spontaneous conflagration.’

  ‘Of course,’ he said, looking at his feet, ‘this is – a purely subjective view. But – I do think it’s an absurd institution.’

  Cecilia let out an abrupt gleeful laugh. ‘Sit down,’ she said.

  She hesitated, then sat next to him on a chair near a bookcase. The babble of the party rose.

  Patrick could be heard telling a nostalgic anecdote to a small audience by the woodburning stove at the eastern end of the room. Guests clustered on the rug around the flames of the fire on the other side: various artists whose wooden carvings and monochrome prints had been bought, ill-afforded, by Dora, were nodding, expounding with expansive gestures. Benedict and his friends were stationed by Patrick’s old gramophone, a sheet of Indian printed cotton draped over the back of a young farrier met travelling and semi-encasing two others like a yurt in the corner of the room.

  ‘I loathe it,’ said Cecilia, her voice deeper as she drank wine.

  ‘There is a bewildering culture of underachievement,’ said James, pausing. ‘I think it discriminates against those – the pitifully few – who want to learn.’ He bent his head, seemingly addressing his polished brown shoes. ‘I do find it self-indulgent and ultimately nihilistic. I’m sure many feel excluded. Far more than you may imagine.’

  ‘But they all seem so . . . to fit in.’

  ‘Of course. But an exclusion complex can be almost universal.’

  ‘Oh . . .’ said Cecilia. ‘God. Yes. God.’

  He looked at the ground, frowning. He hesitated. ‘I feel as though I’ve been wasting time,’ he said, a characteristic quarter-rotation of his head making his hair glow dully in the firelight. ‘With – with exceptions, of course,’ he said, lifting his eyes, nodding gravely at Cecilia, then turning to the floor once more. ‘At least where I was – a, well, boys’ public school – those boys were expected to learn, and so they did.’

  ‘Why did you move to Haye House?’

  ‘Oh, my wife, my wife wanted a change. To work. She had largely been a full-time mother until that point, and here was both job and studio. It was a promotion for me. A challenge.’ He smiled wryly, faintly grimaced.

  ‘Where is Mrs Dahl?’ said Cecilia, looking around.

  ‘I don’t
know,’ he said, following her gaze.

  ‘It’s meant to be this idyll. It’s not. One day someone should write about it.’

  ‘You will,’ he said.

  ‘No no. So – do you write?’ said Cecilia, blushing. She was aware of Diana on the outer edge of her vision, silently willing her to look up. Elisabeth Dahl was out of sight, the party extending to the kitchen and the other sitting room, shouts emerging from the garden, a cacophony of laughter by the fire. Most teachers were now behaving more wildly than they did at school.

  Cecilia glanced down. James Dahl’s long corduroyed leg was inches away from her on a chair; his shoulder was freakishly close to her nose and mouth. The experience seemed too intense and improbable. He shifted in his seat, apparently considering her question.

  ‘Oh,’ he said, shaking his head. ‘No. No. I tried and tried. I think I had little to say. Or I had a perfect vision in my head and nothing could equal that. I was always surrounded by better works.’

  ‘But you know that aiming for perfection can be an excuse for inactivity.’

  ‘Can it?’ he said, briefly turning to her.

  ‘Of course! What a great excuse: Shakespeare did it better. You have to abandon that idea of perfection or you do nothing. Even in an essay. You must know that. It can never possibly fulfil that glorious complete vision lodged in your mind.’

  ‘You’re right,’ he said, looking at her, pausing and catching her eye, then lowering his gaze again. ‘You’ve worked that out before I fully did.’

  Drumbeats vibrated through the floor. Lodgers were rolling spliffs in a huddled production line. A gardener, his Adam’s apple echoing the movement of his knuckles, was tapping a group of slender drums pressed between his thighs like a clump of toadstools, his eyes closed as he nodded to the rhythm. A friend of Benedict’s joined in with what was clearly intended to be an African-inspired cry, and Jocasta from Haye House began to sway, her hands closed in a praying position above her head as she undulated, laughingly glancing round for an audience.

  ‘Lord,’ muttered Cecilia. ‘Take me to civilisation.’

  He laughed, a laugh distinctively his that only occurred outside class: an almost silent shaking of amusement, his lashes lowered.

  ‘You know . . . one can never get it right,’ he said. ‘I fear we brought our boys up too conventionally. With my – my wife there was an artistic input at least, but what did I have to offer? Trying to teach them poetry. Latin and tennis. Then there are these more, well, bohemian upbringings, and so often they seem to instil a desire for convention.’

  ‘At least yours had a solid upbringing. No phoney Communists in your barns. No wankers imagining they’re African in your sitting room.’ A smile crossed her lips. She drank more wine. ‘God!’ she said as the swirling jacket hem of a woman who had joined Jocasta flapped across her cheek. ‘I’m going for a walk.’

  She rose and the room swelled, woodsmoke meeting cigarette, skirts ballooning in front of her. A game involving monologues and clapping was interspersed with laughter. He was below her, a corner of his jaw visible at the outer edge of her eye; his wedding ring was smooth when she glanced at it on his thigh. Someone banged into her.

  She looked at the window, colour rising in her cheeks. Branches were stacked in old silver vases from the Dublin Bannans, winter berries gathering on sills. He hesitated, then stood.

  ‘I’ll show you the grounds,’ she said.

  A warm cloud of dope smoke wafted from a little group gathered beneath them on the floor.

  He half-nodded.

  Dora registered Cecilia walking through the room with an averted gaze, and she began to call her for help, but the sound of a glass breaking set her searching for a brush as she smiled reassurances at the glass dropper, and it was too late.

  In the kitchen, bodies hovered in clusters around food, and Dora pushed her way towards the smaller pantry where the brushes were kept. Her smile tightened. Elisabeth Dahl stood in the corner shadows talking to Cally, the science teacher, who had openly hinted for an invitation. Why am I so passive? Why am I so stupid? Dora muttered to herself. She entered the pantry, poked around for a dustpan, her spine contracting, her heart racing, and rested against the wall where she could listen.

  ‘What?’ Elisabeth was saying. Her voice, so defined, was quite audible to Dora. She remembered certain things she had said to her: kind words, loving statements, sudden sexual assertions.

  ‘Come on now,’ said Cally, and added something else in a murmur.

  ‘No,’ said Elisabeth. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I mean,’ said the science teacher, ‘I mean – you’re not really talking to me.’ She laughed slightly.

  ‘What am I doing now?’ said Elisabeth, barely patient.

  ‘Talk to me properly,’ she hissed.

  ‘Cally,’ said Elisabeth. Her voice dropped. ‘I do not think it’s – appropriate – to spend an evening à deux in the corner of someone else’s kitchen.’

  ‘Oh,’ said the science teacher, her words lost among other conversations, and Dora waited, alert in the semi-darkness, until she heard Elisabeth being greeted by another teacher. She left the pantry and moved through the crowds, and glass was already ground into sisal, a grape crushed on a shard, and Patrick was veering into a chorus of a Van Morrison song to cheers and whistles. Come back, she thought tearfully as she glimpsed Elisabeth’s shoulder.

  Cecilia found her coat and took down James Dahl’s without feigning uncertainty, the corner of it vividly recognisable among a pile of others. She handed it to him, walking with the ease of ownership out of the front door. The wine swayed in her head.

  He stood on the path with his hands in his pockets, his fringe slanting over his forehead, his body tall against the long low house, looking as displaced as a soldier freshly billeted to an estate. The coldness, mild as it was for December, constrained their speech as the party boomed through the windows at one remove, the garden echoing with space to be filled. Guests stood shivering in groups on the front lawn, their cackles pricking the tension of the cold in a self-conscious attempt to transport the mood of the party into the garden.

  Cecilia walked with James Dahl down the path to the gate. She heard her own chat as a chirruping in the silence.

  He said nothing.

  She talked on. Her voice echoed and trailed into the airy distance. She pressed her teeth into her lip and attempted to terminate her babbling.

  He was silent still, walking tall beside her across the lane to the fence of the river field.

  ‘Look,’ he said finally, lifting his head, ‘at the stars. Extraordinary. More than you ever see on the edge of the moor where I am. They light the sky, the wings of night.’

  ‘Take him and cut him out in little stars,/And he will make the face of heaven so fine/That all the world will be in love with night,’ said Cecilia in a rapid monotone.

  ‘I look at the stars and think of that,’ he said. ‘And wonder who’s up there. Who did someone – love – who’s not here?’

  ‘Wait,’ she said suddenly. ‘Promise you’ll wait? Look – look at the river there. I’ll be one minute.’

  She ran back into the house. Ducking and burrowing through bodies, she pushed past guests, heads turning as she passed, and she grasped the handle of the door to the staircase, muttering apologies to force it open. She ran up two steps at a time, tripping, and sped into her room where she grabbed a book from under a pile of papers inside her desk. She kicked off her high heels, found other shoes and checked her appearance in the mirror: almost maddened with nervous anticipation, she made faces in the glass, widening her mouth and eyes as though expressing frantic, cartoonish incredulity to herself, her only audience.

  ‘Celie!’ called Dora, but Cecilia hurried to the hall.

  James was still standing there, leaning against the fence and facing the river. The blot of a cow patterned the fields beyond. Night furred the thatches of the hamlet.

  ‘This,’ she said breathlessly, ‘I
got this for you.’ Her feet scraped gravel in a small skid as she stopped beside him. She handed him the book. ‘It’s – I saw it. I thought you’d like it. Thank you. It’s to say thank you for all that – all our teaching, those extra classes. Well . . . Thank you.’

  Her breath flared, wine-tinged beneath her nostrils. She shivered. Calm down, she told herself. She cursed him for making her shy. Charm him, she told herself. She made a promise. She dug her nails into her palm.

  ‘Lyrists of the Restoration,’ he read. ‘Collected by Masefield . . . 1905. This is a first edition. Are you sure it’s for me?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Cecilia.

  ‘What a fine and lovely book,’ he said, shaking his head. ‘I’m – I’m very touched.’

  ‘I thought you might like – the Rochester, and the Abraham Cowley – and the Marvell.’

  ‘I’ve never been given a present like this,’ he said, turning the book over and smiling.

  ‘Oh,’ said Cecilia. She returned his smile; she shrugged. She felt the velvet of her sleeves rubbing against her coat lining. She drew in her breath and pulled her shoulders back.

  ‘Thank you,’ he said solemnly, his head slightly bowing.

  She laughed. ‘Come on!’ she said. ‘I have to show you.’ She walked ahead. She turned to him. ‘Here’s where the stream goes under the lane to meet the river. Over here – look, over there – are the stables. I used to think I would keep Dalmatians in them.’ She pulled her coat to her.

  ‘Which Dalmatians?’

  ‘Oh, stray Dalmatians kicked from Dartmoor farms – found in winter snows and rescued and groomed by me. They’d emerge all plumply silken from the mud of neglect, of course. Cadpigs would be kept inside.’

  ‘A children’s novel?’ he said, and he smiled.

  ‘Dodie Smith. This is the dove barn,’ she said. ‘I used to think I’d . . .’

  But she couldn’t say it. She was unable, with anxious superstition, to say that here she had planned to house orphans. Orphans scuttling round in faded floral prints, rescued, reading her books, eating the flapjack she would deny herself and hide in there with stolen milk. The proposed orphans had once almost merged with animals in her mind: large-eyed infants covered with grime or fur, in heartbreaking need of petting and shelter.