The Kiss

by Joan Lingard

  They finish the bottle of wine, or rather Cormac finishes it. Rachel has only drunk a glass.

  ‘Do you plan to live with him?’ asks Cormac.

  ‘Oh, no, it’s too early for that. And it would be difficult for him while we were both still married.’

  ‘A man in his position!’

  ‘Well, yes. And there’s Sophie to consider.’

  They consider Sophie, a mystery to them both. They have no idea what is going on in her head. Now Davy, that is a different matter; he tells them what he is thinking, he protests, he complains, he says I don’t want to do this, I want to do that. They are on safer ground with this conversation; their children are a unifying force.

  Rachel gets up, yawning. ‘I must go. You never know, our daughter might have come home! And, by the way, Cormac, any time you want to go out in the evening I’ll keep Davy. You should go out more often. I still do care about you, you know. I’d like you to be happy, and not just to assuage my own guilt!’ She gives him a rueful smile, then she leans over to kiss his cheek, and in the next instant has gone.

  He drops Archie Gibson’s empty wine bottle into the bin.

  Next day, he sees their daughter. At least he is fairly certain that he has seen her though when he phones Rachel afterwards to tell her she questions it.

  ‘Are you sure, Cormac?’

  Davy was going to a friend’s birthday party after school so Cormac took the opportunity to go up to the public library on George IV Bridge. He has started to read more now that he has the evenings after eight o’clock to himself. He drifted up the stairs to the art department without thinking and, finding himself standing outside the door, wondered what he was doing there. He was about to turn and go back down when he thought better of it. He pushed open the door and went in. He picked up a magazine and sat down at a table. And then he saw that he was sitting opposite Clarinda Bain.

  ‘Don’t go,’ she said. ‘I don’t bite.’ A smile flickered across her face.

  ‘What are you reading?’ he asked after a moment.

  She displayed the cover. It was a book about the Pre-Raphaelites.

  ‘Pretty romantic,’ he commented. He felt sure Mrs Bain must have some postcards in her domain somewhere. Perhaps in the bathroom where she could gaze at them from her peach-foamed bath.

  ‘There’s nothing wrong with the Romantic movement,’ said Clarinda. He was struck by how much she had matured in the past year. She had left school after the fuss and gone to a Further Education college to do her Highers. She went on, ‘It had its attractions. Still has. All great art does, doesn’t it? You said that yourself in class.’

  ‘You have too good a memory.’

  She smiled again. ‘I’ve applied to the Slade.’

  ‘Good. Not easy to get in, but you might as well shoot for the top of the tree.’

  ‘You told us that too.’

  He shifted uncomfortably on his seat. Those, like Clarinda, who listened to and absorbed his words, must wonder what he was doing now, making sandwiches.

  ‘Yes, OK, Gwen John went to the Slade. That’s what you’re thinking, isn’t it? But that’s not the reason, or the whole reason, anyway. I love her work but I shan’t attempt to copy her style. It’s too finicky for me, too miniaturist. I like something bigger and bolder.’

  ‘I know you do. You enjoy vivid colour more than she did.’

  It was easy to slip back into talking to her about things that interested them both; they had talked a lot, he realised, in the classroom after hours when the rest of the class had gone, as well as in the streets of Paris. This was no place, though, to go on talking. People were reading quietly, making notes, glancing at them. He would have liked to have asked her to have a cup of coffee with him but he knew it would be a mistake. There was no way forward with this; she was too young even though she might not think so herself, but she would, sometime.

  He got up. ‘I need to get back for my son. Good luck, Clarinda.’

  He left her sitting with her book on the Pre-Raphaelites.

  He took the Playfair Steps going down the Mound to Princes Street. At the bottom a couple were sitting with a large dog, a boy and a girl. Nothing unusual in that. Since he did not have Sophie with him he did not intend to give them anything. He recognised the boy, a sharp-faced lad with a distinctive mark below his left eye, a mark shaped like a kite. He was often there. The girl was wrapped in an old overcoat and scarf while her head was swamped by a moth-eaten fur hat. She wore wire-rimmed glasses perched on the end of her nose. Cormac gave her only a cursory glance and passed on. He stopped, looked back. She was looking away, up the steps at a woman coming down and holding out her hand in supplication. It couldn’t have been, Cormac told himself, he was having hallucinations. What on earth would his daughter be doing sitting at the bottom of the Playfair Steps begging? He must have been mistaken. And then he remembered that blue and white sports bag with the smelly old clothes in it, clothes suitable for begging.

  When he gets in he phones Rachel straightaway. It is her half day at the practice.

  ‘You thought you saw Sophie begging at the Mound?’ she says, incredulous. ‘You couldn’t have done. It must have been a girl who looked a bit like her.’

  ‘Remember that smelly old bag I found? Looks like she kept her begging kit in it.’

  ‘But what reason would she have to go begging? She’s not homeless or penniless.’

  They both fall silent. They know that Sophie would not need to have a reason, not a reasonable one, at any rate.

  ‘She might do it for kicks, I suppose,’ Cormac suggests.

  ‘Some kicks!’ says her mother.

  They discuss what to do about it. Rachel says to leave it to her, she will try to find a suitable moment to raise it.

  ‘She’ll probably just deny it,’ says Cormac gloomily.

  She would have to be caught in the act, as it were. The following afternoon he asks a neighbour who has a child in Davy’s class if she would mind bringing both boys home together. He will do the same for her another day. He goes back up to the top of the Mound by the road since, if he were to approach the steps from the foot, she would have a longer run in which to see him coming and make her escape.

  When he reaches the top of the steps he sets off running quickly down. He can make out only one figure at the bottom, plus the dog, though there are people in the way, blocking his view, but as he gets closer he sees that the boy is definitely on his own. It is the same one, though, with the mark on his face. Perhaps, seeing him yesterday, Sophie has been scared away. Perhaps he saw a mirage, a false image conjured up by his anxiety for her.

  ‘Spare twenty p for a hot drink, sir,’ the boy calls across to him. There is something about the way he says it that makes Cormac feel that he knows who he is. He stops and rakes in his pocket. He brings out a fifty pence piece.

  ‘Ta. Very kind of you, I’m sure.’

  ‘My daughter, if she were with me, would like me to be generous.’

  ‘Must be a nice girl then.’ He is quite cheeky, this boy. He thinks he is being smart.

  ‘You’ve not got your friend with you today?’

  ‘Got me dog. He’s me pal, aren’t you, Lenny? Lenny the Lion.’ Lenny is comatose.

  ‘But you had a girl with you yesterday, didn’t you?’

  ‘Did I? Can’t remember. Yesterday’s too long ago.’ The boy sees another potential customer approaching. ‘Spare ten p, miss. Aw, fuck off then!’

  Cormac goes as far as the National Gallery, then he turns back. He stops once more at the foot of the steps.

  The boy looks up. ‘Seems like you can’t stay away, don’t it?’

  Cormac bends over and says quietly, ‘Just you stay away from my daughter.’

  ‘You threatening me, then, guv?’

  ‘Just telling you.’

  Cormac walks along Princes Street, stopping at the stance of every homeless person. There’s a girl on her own enveloped in a grey blanket in the doorway of Marks and
Spencers, and one with a man outside Boots, but neither is Sophie. He goes back up to the top of the Mound and looks down the Playfair Steps. The boy and the dog are gone.

  Chapter Twelve

  On Saturday Cormac, as usual, asks Sophie where she is going and tells her to be home by midnight.

  ‘This time I mean it. Midnight. And not a minute later.’ He hopes she senses the new determination in him. He wishes he could put an electronic tag on her ankle so that he could monitor her whereabouts, as he believes they do sometimes with criminals let out on parole. An illiberal thought, no doubt, but he has it.

  ‘I’d better not drop my glass slipper on the way up the steps.’ She giggles.

  ‘One of your old rags would be more likely.’ Perhaps she is playing out the Cinderella role in reverse. The young man with the yellow-toothed dog seems a suitable candidate for an anti-prince figure. But is he what he seems, Cormac wonders. He, too, might be caught up in a game of pretence. Middle class lad pretending to be homeless? Cormac thinks probably not.

  Sophie already has her back to him, on her way out, so that he cannot see if she has reacted.

  ‘Remember,’ he warns her, ‘the stroke of twelve. Otherwise I shall phone both Tilda and Mandy’s parents.’

  She turns. ‘You can’t do that.’

  ‘Can’t I? Watch me!’

  ‘You don’t know their phone numbers.’

  ‘I got them from your mother.’

  She seems about to say something else, then she changes her mind and goes.

  The phone rings, and his mother says, ‘You’ve not rung for ages. You’re forgetting your old mother, Cormac.’ He tells her that she is constantly in his mind and that he will definitely be coming over at Easter, cross his heart he will, and with both children. He has decided to give Sophie no choice in the matter. He has been far too passive. After Belfast he will take them down to Dublin to spend a few days with Sal. He wants the children to know his family, aunts and all; they are part of their heritage, as they are his, whether they like it or not. His mother gives him an update on their activities. Mary. Kathleen. Lily. Sal. Add on his mother Maeve, and you have the five remaining O’Malley sisters. He can visualise a tableau of them.

  For once, after her call, he does not feel so depressed. He decides to go out since he is free. The pub is one of the few places a man can go on his own when he is over forty. He supposes he could pick up a woman there but when he looks round he sees as he has done before that everyone is too young. Many of the girls don’t even look eighteen. He sights Cathy and Sue, the two girls from school who were on the Paris trip and went with him and Clarinda to the Rodin museum at Meudon. They must have been questioned by the police. They may have given evidence against him. He does not blame them; that would be stupid of him. They were innocent bystanders and could say only what they thought they saw.

  They seemed very close, Mr Aherne and Clarinda Bain. They were always walking together, talking together. Half the time they didn’t seem to be aware that anyone else was present. She was crazy about him and he didn’t seem averse to her either. He gave her a lot of attention.

  It is true: he did give Clarinda a lot, more than any other pupil. And he was flattered by her attention. She was rewarding to teach, to encourage. He was able to put ideas into her head and have the satisfaction of watching them take root and sprout. She listened when he suggested a possible way to lift a piece of work, she’d consider it, and often take his advice, but if she did not she would tell him why not. They had an ongoing dialogue, a conversation that was picked up from day to day. He looked forward to her classes, to seeing her bright eager face as he came in the door knowing she was ripe for development, open to suggestion. So many of his pupils were not. And he did find her attractive, he is no longer afraid to admit that to himself. He found her attractive in every way: physically, artistically, mentally. If she had been ten or fifteen years older they might have been able to form a relationship. There was an undeniable rapport between them.

  He orders another pint and leans his elbow on the small bit of bar available. He watches his fellow drinkers as they blow streams of smoke into the air and talk and laugh in the Saturday night crush. They say you can be as alone in a crowd as when you’re on your own but tonight he does not feel that. He does not feel a part of the crowd but he is bemused by it.

  Cathy and Sue have seen him and are coming in his direction, wriggling their way through the close-packed bodies.

  ‘Hi, Cormac, how are you?’

  How are they? he counters. They have left school. Cathy is working for Scottish Widows and Sue is training to be a physiotherapist. And he is training to be a sandwich maker! He makes them laugh. He buys them a drink; they are drinking vodka and coke. They must be eighteen now though they look twenty-five, older than Clarinda looks, for they are well made-up with lots of burgundy-coloured lipstick and eye shadow and sporting trendy Saturday night club wear, or what he presumes to be trendy gear. Clarinda, when he saw her in the library, was wearing little make-up and was dressed as she used to be in a loose colourful dress of Indian cotton.

  He enjoys talking to the girls. They chat for ten minutes until they see that their escorts are growing restive and sending signals across the bar. Before they go they say they were sorry Cormac had to leave the school.

  ‘It didn’t seem fair to us,’ says Sue. ‘After all, Clarinda Bain was all out to get you.’

  ‘Boy, wasn’t she!’ says Cathy. ‘She was obsessed.’

  He shrugs, says something about water and bridges and getting on with life and the girls say, ‘Nice seeing you, Cormac. We must have a drink again sometime.’ He says he’d like that.

  He leaves shortly afterwards. It is a cold frosty night with an almost full moon, a good Edinburgh winter’s night which makes one step briskly out and have the reward of feeling a glow come into one’s cheeks. He passes the end of Rachel’s street, sees that her car is parked there but not Archie Gibson’s. She will not be seeing Archie tonight; she said she was keeping that part of her life separate from the children in the meantime. Davy will be tucked up in bed, content to have his mother close by. They have been discussing swapping the children over so that Rachel would have Davy and he would have Sophie. Originally, they thought a fifteen-year-old girl would be better with her mother. But now Rachel is not sure. She clashes a lot with her daughter. ‘Could you cope with Sophie?’ she asked him. He said he was not sure but he was willing to give it a try.

  From half past eleven onward he is watching the clock. He is surprised when only minutes later he hears feet coming running up the outside stair. He goes to the door. It is Sophie. She is holding a white tissue to her face but as she comes into the light of the open doorway he sees that blood is seeping through it and running down her fingers.

  ‘What have you been doing?’ he cries.

  ‘Nothing,’ she mutters, and tries to go past him but he takes hold of her arm. Her cheek has been slashed.

  ‘Christ, what happened to you?’

  She is crying now and allows him to lead her into the kitchen where he gently takes her hand away from her face. Blood is running down her cheek and down her neck. Anger mounts in him like a raging fire. He wants to kill whoever did this to his beautiful daughter!

  ‘Who did this to you? Who did it?’

  She shakes her head.

  He has to cool himself down in order to help her. He phones Rachel, who comes at once bringing a half-awake Davy in the back of the car.

  ‘We’ll have to take her to the Western,’ says Rachel at once. ‘This needs to be stitched better than I can do it.’

  At the mention of stitching Sophie’s sobs intensify. Cormac clenches his fists and feels helpless.

  ‘They’ll do it as carefully as they can, Sophie love,’ her mother tells her. ‘They can do it very well these days.’ But not so well that Sophie will not carry a scar for life.

  They all go in the car to the hospital. Rachel takes Sophie into the treatment
room and Cormac sits with Davy in the warm waiting area. Davy dozes and Cormac drinks cup after cup of black coffee from the machine and gets up at intervals to walk up and down in a vain effort to release some of his tension. He feels he could burst a blood vessel in his temple if not his heart.

  Rachel returns with Sophie who now has a large white dressing taped to her left cheek. The rest of her face has little more colour than the wodge of dressing. She is slightly unsteady on her feet and her mother is keeping a firm hold of her arm.

  ‘That wasn’t too bad,’ says Rachel, trying to be bright. ‘The scar is fairly near the ear so if she wears her hair long no one will notice it very much.’

  Rachel drops Cormac and Davy off on her way home with Sophie. She gets out of the car and takes Cormac aside on the pavement to speak to him.

  ‘Did she tell you who did it?’

  Cormac shakes his head. ‘No, but I have a bloody good idea. If I see him, and I will, I promise you, I’ll carve him up ten times worse.’

  Rachel puts a hand on his arm. ‘You can’t, Cormac. Don’t, please. We’ve got to call the police. We’ll do it in the morning. Not now. Sophie is too traumatised.’

  The police come to Rachel’s flat. Cormac leaves Davy with a friend and joins them. At the sight of the two constables, one male, one female, sitting on the settee, their notebooks in their laps, he feels a lurch somewhere in the region of his stomach but he quells that quickly. They are not interested in him, except as the complainant’s father; they don’t know him otherwise. Sophie is led unwillingly in by her mother, having vainly protested that she doesn’t want to talk to the police. Her parents told her she had no choice.