After You'd Gone (5 page)

The telephone rang shrilly. From some depth of sleep, Ben felt Ann sliding from the bed. Later he will try to convince himself that he tensed, listening out for what was being said. But he'll know that he sank into sleep again because he'll remember waking with Ann's palm on his chest, her fingers touching his throat. His eyelids pulled up like portcullises. He couldn't see her face, the gloom smudging her features, but words reached him as individual sounds, devoid as yet of meaning: 'Accident,' Ann was saying to him, over and over, 'accident', and 'Alice' . Alice is his daughter. Accident.

'Wake up, Ben, we have to get up. Alice is in a coma. Ben, wake up.'

Is this my voice I can hear? It is as if I'm living in a radio, floating up and down on airwaves, each with their different voices - some I recognise and some I don't. I can't choose the bandwidth.

This place feels clean. The smell of antiseptic crackles in my nostrils. Some voices I can distinguish as outside myself, those that sound farther off, as if through water. And then there are those within - all kinds of spectres.

Why isn't life better designed so it warns you when terrible things are about to happen?

I saw something. Something awful. What would he have said?

Ann cups Alice's chin in her hand and scrutinises her face. Alice, unused to this treatment, looks up at her mother, attentive.

'Where did you learn that song?'

Alice had been singing while she searched the garden for flowers for a miniature garden that she was creating in an old shoebox.

'Um. I don't know. I think I heard it on the radio,' she improvises, nervous. Is she going to get told off?

Her mother continues staring. 'It's a song on a cassette that

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I only bought yesterday. There is no other way you could have heard it.'

Ann appears to be talking to herself now. Alice fidgets, impatient to get on with her tiny garden. She wants to steal some cocktail sticks for a runner-bean row.

'I have a feeling, Alice, that you are very musical. My father was a great musician and you must have inherited it.'

An unusual, effervescent feeling is creeping into Alice. Her mother is smiling at her admiringly. Alice flings her arms around her middle and hugs her.

'We'll have to get you some lessons and nurture that talent of yours. You mustn't let it go to waste. Do you know, my father could name any note that he heard? He had perfect pitch and played with many orchestras all around the world.'

'Did you go with him?'

'No.' Ann eases Alice's arms off her abruptly. Alice wanders off down the garden, her shoebox garden forgotten. She is musical! What does it matter that she isn't pretty like her sisters? She has something that sets her apart, makes her difforent. Perfect Pitch. Nurture. She rolls the new words around on her tongue.

Her grandmother comes out into the garden to take in the washing and Alice skips over to her. 'Granny, guess what? I'm musical! I'm going to have lessons.'

'Is that right?' Elspeth says. 'Well, don't go getting above yourself now.'

I was sent once a week to a woman down the road to have piano lessons. Mrs Beeson was tall and incredibly thin with long grey hair that was usually looped into clips on top of her head or sometimes spread in a greasy grey curtain over her shoulders. She wore long orange crocheted cardigans. Spit collected in the corners of her mouth when she talked. Throughout the

lessons in her dark front lounge, her large, mottled cat would lie across the piano, purring.

I learnt how to hold my hand on the keyboard as if I had an orange in my palm and how to translate the black dots on the page to the smooth, flat white keys or the thin, finger-like black ones - every good boy deserves favour, all cows eat grass. I learnt the flamboyant Italian phrases and how to alter my touch accordingly.

I practised hard. The piano in our house was right next to the kitchen and my mother would open the door to hear me play. My fingers became strong and muscular, I kept my nails short, I held in my head the precise number and types of sharps and flats in each key, at times of stress I would drum out the fingering for different scales on any available surface.

I did exam after exam, toiling over the same three pieces for months to perform them in a musty church hall to a glazed-faced examiner. I think I did believe that I was talented: my certificates, framed by my mother, said so, didn't they?

Alice had been at the party three-quarters of an hour. Mario had kept her clamped to his side for the first half-hour but as soon as he became drunk enough she had extricated herself and escaped to the corner of a room. It was a second-year's room, covered in posters of the Stone Roses and the Happy Mondays and crammed with people; the bed was sagging under the weight of six people and a girl in a tight white catsuit was dancing on the desk, shouting at a few of the goggle-eyed boys to look at her.

Alice found the boys here odd: they were either incredibly

introverted, with an excess of knowledge in an esoteric subject, or stunningly arrogant, but yet completely unsure of how to talk to her. It was the first time she'd mixed with large numbers of English people. On her first day a boy called

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Amos had asked her where she'd come from. 'Scotland,' she'd replied.

'Ah, how many days did it take you to get here?' he'd asked, in complete seriousness.

She looked around the smoky room and told herself she'd g1ve it another five minutes and then she'd leave. Mario waved from the other side of the room, Alice drained her mug of warmish, syrupy wine and smiled back thinly.

Mario was an Italian-American from New York, very rich and very beautiful. He was at the university for a year, courtesy of his father. When Alice had asked him how he'd arranged an exchange year from America, he said, 'My father opened his cheque book,' and roared with laughter.· She had met him in her first week while wandering the corridors of the university library. She'd seen him smiling at her and had asked him for directions to the North Wing. He'd offered to show her and led her instead to the tearoom where he'd bought her tea and cakes. He sent her flowers that ·soaked her room in a heavy, sweet scent, he called on her at all times of the night and day. He wanted to be an actor and would recite great chunks of plays to her in public places. He had long, wild, curly black hair that reached almost to his well-formed shoulders. She'd met no one like him in her life and he seemed large and colourful compared to the bland, well-brought-upness of most of the people she'd encountered so far. Aside from that, she was flattered by his attentions: Mario had so many women after him.

Last night, they had been walking through the deserted streets of the town centre after seeing a film. Mario suddenly pressed her up against the metal framework of an empty market stall and kissed her hard. She was amazed. His body was hard and hot and his hands travelled over her body. He was pushing his pelvis into her, making the metal pole behind her press into her back.

'God, Alice, I have the largest boner ever,' he breathed into her neck.

'Boner?' she managed to say.

'Boner. You know, erection. Do you want to see it?' She laughed incredulously. 'What? Here?'

'Yeah. Why not here? There's no one around.' He pulled open her shirt and started biting her breasts.

'Mario, don't be ridiculous. We're in the middle of town.'

Alice felt him start hitching up her skirt and feeling for her pants.

'Mario!' She wriggled and pushed him away. 'For God's sake.'

He grabbed her by the hips and went to kiss her again, but she struggled free. 'What the hell's the matter with you?' he shouted, his face red with exertion.

'Nothing is the matter with me. We're in the middle of town. I just don't want to get arrested, that's all.'

She started walking away but Mario caught her by the arm and swung her round. 'Jesus Christ, I'm only human, Alice. Don't you think I've been patient? I bought some condoms today, if that's what you're worried about. I assumed we might get around to it at some point.'

'You assumed, did you?' she scoffed. 'Well, you assumed wrong.'

'For fuck's sake, honey, anyone would think you were a fucking virgin or something.'

They stared at each other, Mario panting and Alice rigid with anger. 'Well, for your information, I am,' she said softly and walked off.

Mario caught up with her outside the darkened windows of a bookshop. 'Alice, I'm so sorry.'

'Go away.'

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'Alice, please.' He caught hold of her and wrapped his arms around her, suffocatingly, preventing her from walking any farther.

'Leave me alone. I want to go home.'

'Alice, I'm so sorry. I was a jerk to say those things. I had no idea. I mean, why didn't you say?'

'What do you mean, why didn't I say? What was I supposed to say? Hello, I'm Alice Raikes, and I'm a virgin?'

'I just had no idea. You seem so . . . I don't know . . . I mean, I couldn't tell.'

'You couldn't tell?' She was angry again. 'How do you usually tell?' She struggled but he held her fast. 'Let go of me, Mario.'

'I can't.'

She felt that his whole body was shaking and she realised in horror that he was crying. He hugged her and sobbed loudly into her hair. 'Alice, I'm so sorry. Please forgive me. Please forgive me, Alice.'

She felt a mixture of disgust and guilt. She'd never seen a man cry before. There were people walking past, staring at them. She put her hands up to his shoulders and shook him. 'Mario, it's all right. Don't cry.'

He released her at last and, holding her at arm's length, gazed at her searchingly. His face was desperate and tear streaked. 'God, you're beautiful.Idon't deserve you.'

She fought an impulse to laugh. 'Mario, come on, let's go.

People are staring.'

'I don't care.' He flung himself against the wall. 'I've upset you and I can't forgive myself.'

'Mario, you're being ridiculous. I 'm going.'

He seized her hands. 'Don't go. Tell me you forgive me.

Do you forgive me?' 'Yes.'

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I

M a g g i e O ' f a r re ll

'Say, "Mario I forgive you.'" 'Don't be stupid.'

'Say it! Please.'

'All right. Mario, I forgive you. Right. I'm going now.

Goodbye.'

She walked down the street, leaving him slumped against the wall in an attitude of profound grief. Just as she was about to turn the corner, she heard him shout her name. She turned. He was standing in the middle of the road, his arms flung wide in an expansive theatrical gesture.

'Alice! Do .you know why I got so upset tonight?' 'No.'

'Because I'm in love with you! I love you!' She shook her head. 'Good night, Mario.'

The next day, Alice was reading some critical theory when he knocked on the door. He smiled at her radiantly and offered her a bunch of wilting chrysanthemums.

'Mario, I told you I couldn't see you today. I've got work to do.'

'I know, Alice. I just had to come over. I've been up all night, just walking by the river.' He clasped her around the waist and kissed her deeply. 'I meant what I said last night, you know.'

'Oh. Right. Mario, you have to leave. I've got an essay to write.'

'That's OK. I won't disturb you, I promise.' He ran his hands down her sides.

'You're disturbing me already.'

He walked to the other side of the room and sat down on the bed. 'I won't do it again. Promise.'

She carried on reading. He made a cup of tea in the tiny kitchen in the corner of her room. He flicked through a couple of her books and put them down with a slap. He fiddled with

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her stereo, looked through her CD collection and then began doing press-ups.

'Stop that.' 'What?'

'That panting. I can't concentrate.'

He rolled on to his back and looked up at her. 'You work too hard , you know.'

She ignored him. He began stroking her ankle. 'Alice,' he whispered.

She kicked him off. He grabbed her ankle. 'Alice. ' 'Mario. You're really getting on my nerves.'