We moved slowly through the packed room, Victoria stopping every now and then to shake hands and occasionally hug someone. Most of the people seemed old to me, and not just parent-level old but grandparent old. It was a fragrant mass, of fur coats, powdered hair and pearls. Up-dos and expensive bags. And people smoking thin cigarettes and flicking the ashes into conveniently placed, heavy, crystal ashtrays. She didn’t really introduce me to anyone but I didn’t mind. I was like her shadow, head down, a few steps behind her. She spoke of tennis and a trip to Italy. Everyone agreed the holiday would be a marvellous experience for her. I wondered why she had not mentioned it to me.
There was a baby grand piano beside the French doors that led to the garden. We took refuge there and Victoria left to get plates of food for us. I looked down at the wide varnished floorboards. Everyone I knew had carpet in their good room. If they had a good room. I will have varnished floorboards with rugs, I thought to myself, when I am older and fabulous, and free. As I raised my head, I met the gaze of Helen. She was with her parents, or that’s who I presumed they were. The woman beside her had faded copper hair and was waving an arm laden with gold jewellery at a piece of porcelain on a side table beside them. Helen looked sour as usual and pointedly looked me up and down before turning her head away from me.
‘You didn’t tell me she was coming,’ I said to Victoria when she returned with plates laid high with potato salad and mushroom vol-au-vents.
‘Oh yes, didn’t I? Sorry. Our parents are the best of friends. I told you it would be dismal,’ she responded.
We started eating.
‘Mother’s canapés,’ said Victoria, sighing. ‘She likes food that is bitesize and comes with a helpful stick in the middle of it.’
‘You’re good at this,’ I said, nodding towards the crowd. ‘All the small talk and stuff.’
‘I was raised on it,’ she said. ‘It’s all about appearances and maintaining them.’
‘Kind of shallow,’ I said.
‘Well, yes, but it serves a purpose. You can get away with anything, if you just keep the outside shiny and perfect,’ she said. ‘See him,’ she nodded in the direction of one man with a moustache. ‘He’s a politician, always does the readings in church on Sunday, fully paid-up member of the morality police, and you know what, he’s screwing his au pair. Everyone knows but no one says anything. She’s had to leave, gone back to Barcelona for a few months. . .’ She raised her eyebrows.
The room filled up, and thankfully Helen disappeared from view. I thought the miniature food was delicious. Every now and then a waitress would walk past with a silver tray with wine on it and cheese cubes on sticks. We each took a glass of wine. It tasted sharp and bitter and I wondered why people drank it so enthusiastically. We took another two glasses without anyone noticing and soon I began to understand. I started not to care what I looked like, or who was watching. We observed the crowd around us and Victoria filled me in on their backstories, like who had affairs, had gone bankrupt, or had a drink problem.
Her uncle, a priest, talked to us at one point. He was quite young, an enthusiastic type who might hold youth clubs and take kids on hikes. He had a beard and glasses and looked to me like he was wearing one of those funny disguises that you buy in a joke shop. He asked us about the subjects we were taking and what college courses we were considering. For a laugh I said I was planning to study Russian and theology as I thought it would be interesting to combine the two opposing views of society. Victoria made faces behind his back and drank more wine. I attempted to keep my lies coherent but could feel my cheeks flushing and my head turning soft, fuzzy. I finally asked him if he thought priests should be allowed to marry, and not just nuns but normal women. Atheists even. Maybe Russians. Then Victoria said didn’t he think divorce should really be allowed and not just for rich people? He left soon after this.
‘Job done,’ said Victoria as he walked away. ‘He is vaguely ridiculous. Actually, not vaguely. They all are. Charlatans. That’s why I needed you. It was our destiny to meet.’
I turned to look at her.
She held her head high and was watching the room as if everyone around us had the plague. I was swaying slightly from the wine. I felt like I needed air or I would vomit on the perfect floor. I gestured to Victoria and we opened the French doors and went out into the garden.
It was damp and cold. The terrace was covered in fallen leaves and was slippery. We sat on black wrought-iron chairs that were rusting slightly. I thought it might mark my dress but then didn’t care. Victoria had concealed a bottle of wine under her top and poured some more into my glass. We laughed as she did so. I had taken some mince pies and laid them out on a napkin on the table.
‘I have something to tell you,’ she said.
She looked hot and elated, despite the chill in the air.
‘I’m planning – we, I mean, are going to go, to leave the school, here, everything.’ She threw her arms out as she spoke.
‘What are you talking about, are you moving?’ I asked, though I knew before she answered that this was probably not what she meant.
‘No.’ She laughed excitedly. ‘Me and Mr Lavelle. We’re leaving, running away, after Christmas.’
I felt like falling backwards, like the earth was upending me.
‘We have it all planned out: first France, then Spain and then on to Morocco,’ she spoke triumphantly. ‘But you can’t breathe a word, obviously.’ She laughed again.
‘Aren’t you so excited for me?’ she asked, tilting her head back to look at the stars in the black sky.
My face betrayed me. I could hear her voice describing his house in the village.
I felt my hands start to tremble, and I put down my wine glass.
‘But it’s illegal, you can’t run off with your teacher. I mean, the police, your parents – they will all come after you. And school, exams, you won’t have any. . .’ I said.
My voice didn’t sound like me. There was something choking and uneven about it. Like I couldn’t get the breaths right.
‘Oh please,’ she said. ‘I couldn’t care less. I am an artist, a writer. And anyway, we are in love. How does that even compare to some piece of paper?’
I felt less drunk now. The words ‘we are in love’ tumbled on to the wet ground at our feet. She had never said it before.
‘Look, I don’t mean to be totally boring, but it’s just a really huge thing and you could get into a lot of trouble,’ I said. ‘I’m worried about you, that’s all.’
I wanted to say, But he painted Helen. And sometimes he looks at me. And you can’t leave me alone. I need you.
I didn’t say any of that.
‘When are you going?’ I asked, trying to rearrange my face and my thoughts. The rule was to act casual and uncaring. She had taught me that.
‘January, after the holidays. My parents are going to Rome then. I am going to claim illness and stay here. We are going to get the boat the day after they’ve gone,’ she said.
So soon.
‘And money and stuff, what are you going to live on?’ I asked.
‘Oh, that’s all taken care of. I have been saving all my pocket money and he’s going to teach along the way, and paint, of course,’ she said.
I felt a weight settle on my shoulders. And in truth it has never really left me. It alighted on me that cold, damp night and I would carry a part of this despair for ever.
‘But you and him, I didn’t know you were. . .’ I fell over my words, lying to her and myself.
‘Louisa, you are so innocent sometimes. Didn’t you guess?’ she said. ‘We’ve had this connection,’ she leaned forward, ‘since the day he arrived in the school.
‘I was standing in the Maiden’s Chamber and he drove up. I watched him get out of the car, and for a minute he just leaned against it and looked out to the sea. It was like he had been sent there – sent to me, really.’
She took a long drink from her wine, nearly emptying the glass. She immediately r
efilled it and didn’t offer any to me.
‘I ran down the stairs, like I just had to be there when he walked in. Because if I missed him arriving it would mean something. Anyway, he walked past me; he had this leather bag over his arm. And his hair, it was longer than it is now, scruffy, and then he turned back, just for a second, and looked at me.’ She laughed, a light laugh.
She was somewhere else, clasping her hands in front of her as she spoke. Elated and triumphant in a place where I didn’t exist. I took the bottle and poured some wine into my glass. I noticed my hands were shaking.
‘And you know, you just know. Like everything is as it should be. The first conversation we ever had, it was in the summer house, he spoke about shame, about having failed in college.’
She looked up at me. Her eyes were full of hope.
‘And it hit me, here,’ she poked at her chest, ‘like this hole opened up in me. And I had to fill it with him, with healing him, making him better. He is this great man and. . .’ She was shaking her head and seemed to have run out of breath.
And superlatives, I thought meanly, and this thought surprised me. Nothing she had said since we first met had ever struck me as not agreeable, or not identical to my own world vision. In my head I saw my mother painting the thin walls of her crappy town house and eating a cheap takeaway with her new love. Their table covered in foil tins and plastic lids that they used as ashtrays.
‘We haven’t slept together, though, not yet.’ She leaned forward and took my hand.
I nodded. Her hand was tight and uncomfortable on my wrist. She felt icy cold.
‘I am waiting,’ she said, her eyes big in the half-light, ‘because we could have, I mean loads of times, but it’s better if we wait.’
She sat back in her chair. She was like a child for whom disappointment was an alien concept.
‘I didn’t know if love would be like they said in the books. Like a sickness, a desperation even, like I can’t live,’ she said. ‘But it is.’
I drank some wine, quickly. It made my mouth burn, as though it were full of acid.
‘And of course the Helen thing, in case you’re wondering, it’s all fine. I confronted him last week and it’s nothing. I mean, she is totally in love with him, has been writing him love notes. He showed them to me. I took one actually, I’ll show it to you. She even wrote him a poem, can you imagine.’ Her eyes were bright as she spoke and I wondered if she might be about to cry and not really with joy.
‘But he feels nothing for her. He really regrets the painting too, he’s going to destroy it. She just read too much into it. I mean, you know how he is, so charismatic,’ she said, drinking a large gulp of wine and taking some cigarettes out of her jeans pocket.
She was rubbing her fingers together in a circular, agitated fashion and I wondered if they had lost feeling in the cold night. As she tried to light the cigarette her hands were shaking also. I leaned over to shield the lighter from the breeze. She took a deep drag. She looked pale in the half-light. Inside the house I could hear glasses being clinked, and there was laughter.
‘Do your parents know you smoke?’ I asked.
She laughed. ‘I think that is the least of my worries, but actually yes, they do. My mother says there is no problem, if you moderate it and only do it every now and then. It keeps you slim. Same as eating food on sticks,’ she added before laughing again. The sound was high-pitched and artificial.
I thought how the calm of the last few weeks was gone. How I had only seen the surface of things.
The door to the terrace opened then and we both turned, startled. A man with a cigar walked out. He did not look at us, just stood facing the garden, blowing large smoke rings and wiping his brow with a white handkerchief.
‘We better go in,’ she said, dropping the half-finished cigarette on to the ground and stepping on it.
As I stood up, she started to take off her necklace, an oldfashioned gold, heart-shaped locket.
‘Here,’ she said, handing it to me, ‘it will be something to remember me by. You can put a photo in, or maybe we can get it engraved with our names. I won’t forget how good you have been to me these last months.’
‘Put it on me,’ I said.
She gestured to me to turn and clipped it around my neck. It felt heavy and expensive. Something that belonged to another world.
‘I’ll never take it off,’ I said, touching it gently.
I don’t think she heard me, though.
‘He’s coming tonight. Well, he might be,’ she said in a whisper.
I should have asked why he was coming and was that wise for him to be here, but I didn’t. I was envious and fearful. He was taking her away.
Also, a very small part of me thought she was stupid. People in love are stupid. No one ever said it, or wanted to admit it, but it seemed like they were. Like that myth of the half-male, halffemale creatures, cut in two and forever running around looking to be completed. A pointless chase because nothing would ever fit you right anyway. We are broken to begin with, our original sin.
‘I didn’t know what this term would be like, whether’ – she lowered her voice – ‘he still wanted me. You, you helped distract me from all that. You came at just the right time.’
A distraction. That’s how she saw me. She had a way of hurting me. I felt like crying and rubbed my eyes trying to hide it from her. To pretend it was the cold.
And I wanted to say, But Helen. He painted Helen. Not you. And he holds my arm sometimes.
And don’t do it. Of course. I wanted to tell her, Don’t do it. Stay with me.
For what was it he had said in the summer house? Nothing is ever as it seems.
* * *
Victoria was accosted by guests as we walked in and I let her go and disappeared into the crowded and by now hot and smokefilled room. I wandered back towards the hallway. I needed space to process what she had told me, that she would be leaving, they would be leaving. As I walked back on to the shiny tiles I could hear music again. And it was only then I realized it hadn’t been playing in the room where the party was on. I wandered through another door off the hall, following the melody. It was Cole Porter, ‘Night and Day’.
The narrow corridor off the hall was lined with photographs, family pictures. Trips to Disneyworld in Florida and Victoria standing en famille in front of the Eiffel Tower. There were degrees and awards too, words written in Latin so I did not know what they were for or why they had been awarded. I wondered how she could leave all this and her place within it behind and how it was to be afflicted with a dream. The things it made you do. But then I too was willing to leave my family behind. Sometimes you had to burn down everything behind you, a scorched-earth approach to life. Then you could start again. With no marks, or signs of who or what you had been before. And maybe he did love her, maybe they did have this union that was unstoppable.
They were rule breakers, not followers, both of them. And over time, maybe the scandal would die down and she could write home and everyone would know that it had been true love, and not a folly or a madness. And not illegal.
The music was getting louder.
And then she could come back maybe and visit. I would have my own place to live by then, with an elegant drawing room and varnished floorboards. And if she felt like she couldn’t come home, I’d have the money to visit her so it wouldn’t all be lost. We could lie on beaches and drink cocktails with umbrellas in them or visit ancient ruins buried among the sands. We’d wear white hats with veils, like the ones on the stern lady in the painting in the hall. And maybe sit atop a camel. And Mr Lavelle would have a tent and be dressed like Lawrence of Arabia. Everything we had wouldn’t be lost. It would be different but the same.
She might not forget me.
I was not worthy of the kind of attention Victoria had aroused in Mr Lavelle. Or he had aroused in her. They were the kind of people that this type of love happened to. They had the leisure time for it. They were the sort of people who pulled the s
ky down, and burned things, and laughed, laughed when all around them cried.
I needed water and I needed to sit down. And to get away.
I felt tears again behind my eyes. I could not survive alone in that school without her, they would finish me. And I was jealous, deeply, darkly jealous, though I could not fully admit it. For it was manifesting as a restless energy and a sense of panic. Nothing ever happened to me. I was a person on the sidelines. This being part of something was going to end. She was leaving me.
And I realized I wanted to go home. It was the first time I had wanted that in a very long time. My narrow room, the posters of the Smiths on the wall that had replaced the earlier ones of Madonna. The pictures of endangered seals and Nelson Mandela. My small bookcase, the one I had reclaimed from a skip and painted white. My typewriter that didn’t work, and my record player that did. And the view from my window, looking out at houses that were mirror images of my own, net curtains and chipped paint on the window frames. And the way the tree outside on the street seemed to be growing inwards, towards my window, and soon the branches would reach across and form a bridge. I could almost touch it.
A door was slightly open at the far end of the corridor. The music was coming from there. I could hear voices, low ones, on the other side. I paused before touching the round porcelain handle that had tiny red roses on it and looked back up the hallway. And something made me think I could see myself, like there had been a slight delay in reality and I could glimpse myself walking the corridor in the gloom, touching the pictures with my hand and thinking about love and about being left behind. A hiccup in time, a jump cut. But I didn’t stop and go back to meet myself, I pushed open the door because that’s what I had come here for.
The Temple House Vanishing Page 12