Louis Beside Himself (24 page)

ANNE'S
car was an old Volkswagen that didn't start when she turned the key. She sat and waited, counting to ten. Then she tried again. It coughed, like someone in the last stages of pneumonia. But it didn't start.

She began counting again.

‘Sorry to interrupt,' I said, ‘but does this car usually go? Do you think maybe I should walk? It's really not far. I don't want to put you to all this trouble.' I felt awkward now, and sort of trembly, having had to act like a grown-up all this time and even giving advice to one, after I'd torn her life apart with
U
NPALATABLE INFORMATION
, as in
news
hard to swallow or accept
, and behaving as if I knew exactly what I was doing when, actually, I hadn't known at all. And there was this damn lump in my throat that wouldn't be swallowed down no matter what favourite things I tried to think about.

Anne held her finger to her lips. ‘Nine, ten.' She turned the key again, and this time the engine coughed, choked, and came to life in a full-blown, ear-splitting roar. She smiled
W
ANLY
, as in
weakly
,
not really amused
. ‘With an old car like this you have to wait, because the engine is easily flooded. One day I'll get a car that starts first time. Sorry about this.'

I felt my cheeks flame hot. ‘No, don't worry, I just didn't want you to bother and . . . I know it must be hard being on your own, keeping everything going. You've done a really good job raising your daughter— '

Anne groaned. ‘Oh yeah, so good she ran away.'

‘I've never met anyone like Cordelia – she's so brave, and kind as anything. She also has a large, wide-ranging vocabulary, and is an extremely good reader. I admire all those things, don't you? And she must have got those qualities from somewhere!'

Anne was smiling now, not the wan kind of smile (or just with one side of her face like Gus when his brother breaks wind and he's trying not to breathe it in) but as if she really, truly meant it.

‘Well,' she said, ‘well.'

We sat for a bit longer in the car as Anne revved the engine, warming it up. Then we set off. With the windows down the engine was so loud we couldn't talk anymore, which was probably good as my last words, which were still the truest, seemed to give the most satisfaction of the whole evening.

Outside my house, I turned to say goodbye. Anne was looking straight ahead. In the silvery light of the street lamp, her profile was beautiful and floaty, like an angel. But her eyes were glittering and I understood how hard it must be to sit in a car just a few metres away from your daughter and not run to her and hug her so hard that you both stopped breathing.

Then, coming from behind, the beam from a pair of headlights steadily filled the car. In the rear-view mirror I saw our old Ford pull up behind us. The lights cut off and my father got out and went around to open the door for the passenger. People always thought this was very chivalrous of him, but really it was because that door didn't work from the inside. I wanted to tell Anne this, to make her feel better about
her
car, but I was too worried about being seen by Dad.

I went very still and pressed myself flat against the seat. The passenger obviously appreciated my father's attention because she gave him a hug as she got out, and the two of them leaned against the door, wrapped in each other's arms for a full two minutes.

My stomach did an odd little flip. It was probably digesting the new information of my father and Doreen standing together without the usual space in between. Dad had obviously rescued the hippo stuck in Doreen's bathroom window, and she'd been very grateful. Something cramped inside me, and I couldn't help clenching my teeth.

‘Who's that?' asked Anne.

This time it was me who put my finger to my lips. I ducked down, banging my head on the glove box. Then I heard the gate opening and closing and Anne said, ‘You can come out now.'

I made a face as I emerged. ‘That was Dad, and Doreen. The thing is . . . I haven't told Dad yet about all this. I was sort of waiting for the right time . . .'

Anne reached into her purse. ‘I understand. Look, here's my phone number, Louis. When you've spoken with Cordelia, will you ring me straight away? I'll always be grateful to you for tonight. Always. Now get some sleep.' And she reached over to kiss my cheek.

WHAT
happened next was . . . well, it was as if the real world had got sucked down a tube into a giant electric cable attached to a movie screen. I watched from the maple tree, an audience of one,
agog
, but powerless to change what was unfolding before me.

In the pale moonlight I saw my father tip-toeing down the back lawn. He was doing an exaggerated creeping step, like a cop in an old silent movie. He put his finger to his lips,
hush
, glancing at Doreen, who flattened herself against the garage wall, trying to melt into the bricks. He motioned to her to stay there, his other hand pointing at the tent.

It was lit from inside with the yellow glow of the torch. That was bad enough. But as I watched, the light began to dance like something alive and a strange yelp went up, followed by short sharp shrieks. The light expanded, leaping to the roof of the tent, and suddenly I could
smell
something acrid and dangerous. A smoke cloud was billowing out of the tent, wafting in slow motion over the garden, and a person was crawling over the grass, crawling on hands and knees, coughing or crying or yelling, I wasn't sure which, because just then an explosion like a car backfiring ripped open the night.

For a heartbeat I wondered if it was Anne about to charge into our yard in her Volkswagen, or maybe someone had been shot. But that was crazy because right in front of me, the tent was turning into a star burning in the universe of our garden.

‘Cordelia!' I yelled.

She came streaking towards us. The fire was fluorescent against the dead black sky, slicing the garden into striped lightning. The sting of smoke cut my nostrils.

Dad shouted something. His eyes darted wildly from the fire, to the hose at the fence, to Doreen emerging slowly from her station at the garage, her high heels sinking deep into the spongy lawn. He was caught, I could tell, frozen by indecision. Then he snapped into action. In two big strides he had the hose hissing like an angry snake, and under its cobra arc of water, the fire on our lawn became a misty, smoking, stinky nylon mound of ash.

Dad threw the hose on the ground and headed towards the trespasser. I could see his shoulders squaring, preparing for battle.

This isn't good
, I told myself.
Do something
. But my legs didn't move. I felt my own shoulders collapse like faulty umbrellas in a storm. I watched Dad's steps grow bigger and angrier, until in one full long-legged charge he caught Cordelia, grabbing her by the shoulders.

‘Who are you, and what are you doing setting fire to my property?' he yelled.

She yelled back into his face and tried to push him away when Doreen, who had crept up behind Dad, said something in his ear. In that moment, Cordelia slithered free and went running . . . running towards another stranger who had appeared in our garden.

Dad and Doreen stared at the two trespassers hanging onto each other as if they'd never let go. My legs thawed and I sidled out from behind the maple, walking unsteadily towards them.

‘Anne?' I whispered.

Anne looked at me over Cordelia's shoulder. ‘I couldn't leave.'

‘Louis?' Dad was there at my side, smelling of aftershave and nervous sweat.

‘Doreen?' I said, so everyone felt included.

‘Hi, Louis,' said Doreen shyly. ‘How's it going?'

‘Not bad, yourself?'

This was perhaps the weirdest conversation I'd had so far, and in the last twenty-four hours there had been a few.

Dad took out his handkerchief and wiped his forehead. Rosie always told him he was the last man in the world to carry a real cotton handkerchief, and why didn't he use tissues like everyone else? But just now I found this familiar gesture immensely reassuring. It was civilised and polite and had nothing to do with overpowering burglars and wrestling them to the ground.

‘Can someone tell me,' he said in a pale voice, ‘what on earth is going on?'

Cordelia unwrapped herself from her mother and looked at us all. Her face was wet with tears but I'd never seen her smile like this. She looked
T
RANSFIGURED
by joy, (which is a word describing a phenomenon that usually exists in fairytales but can also occur in ordinary, real-life gardens).

‘I heard your car,' Cordelia said to her mother. ‘I was sure it was yours and I thought, Oh, you're finally coming to get me, or that maybe you were just driving past, searching for me and you couldn't find me, and I pictured your face all frightened and crying and that made me so
happy
, sorry Mum! I didn't want to miss you so I got up and, well, dropped my cigarette.' She made a face at me. ‘I bought a pack with my pay, I'll give up again I promise, for good this time, but anyway it fell on Elena's
Green Gables
and the page started burning and then the lighter fluid spilled— ' She looked up at Dad for the first time. ‘You had a can in the laundry and I was filling my lighter up and I was going to put it back, honestly . . . and then I thought that maybe it
wasn't
Mum in our car, maybe it was
Jimmy
, and at the same time everything began to smoke and the lighter fluid caught fire and I freaked out. It's so easy to freak out at night, you can't tell what's the right thing to do in the dark.' And her face crumpled as she hid in her mother's chest.

I felt the lump in my throat coming again and I looked at Dad, and then at Doreen, who had inched closer to him, and the lump grew so uncomfortable that I had to cough.

Dad swung around to me. ‘What's been going on, Louis?' ‘I think I can explain,' Anne murmured.

But Dad kept looking at me.

I tried to swallow. The lump wouldn't go down, so I tried to talk over it, or under it. ‘Well, it's kind of a long story, but Cordelia here was homeless for a bit and . . . so we let her stay in our tent. But don't get mad, she isn't some kind of burglar, and even though she smokes, she's trying to stop, you heard her, it's about the hardest thing in the world to do and really, she's a wonderful person!'

‘I'll pay for the tent,' Cordelia said. ‘I'll save up.'

Dad's expression didn't change. His face was stunned; it looked rigid and angry and amazed. It hadn't melted with understanding and sympathy, so I went on in a rush. ‘Look, Dad, Cordelia's been here about a week, and it was her that mowed the lawn and fixed the gate and did all those brilliant things, not me, so you can thank
her
, not your pathetic . . .' My voice cracked badly then, dropping an octave down to my feet like a bunch of bricks from the top floor.

Dad went on staring at me, his eyes narrowing. Then the corners of his mouth curved down. His jaw set with tragedy. He looked at me as if all his expectations, every hope he'd ever had that I might turn out to be a brave wrestling dude with the heart of a lion were completely smashed, lying like pieces of our hall mirror on the ground.

I searched for some words that might glue the broken bits of me back together for him, but there was nothing. Just a terrible echoing silence, and the last crack of my voice. I wondered if my voice had changed for ever. This dreadful donkey bray might be my new grown-up voice – high and low, up and down, totally unreliable – as unreliable as my words had become lately. I wanted to melt into the dark and fade away.

So that is what I did. I turned around and walked, one foot following another. No one stopped me. No little light glowed ahead on my long-and-winding road to the house. I had run out of hope and breath by the time I got to the porch, so I sank down on the first chair I came across. I couldn't seem to stand up anymore.

I sat there, panting, which was strange as I hadn't lifted any weights or arm-wrestled or Jerichoed anyone, and I began to mourn my dead tent. I mourned my last chance of ever gaining Dad's approval. I mourned the poor stars in the sky, shining so brightly but dead years ago, their light exploded but still travelling on, tirelessly, bringing old news – and suddenly I wondered if I was dying myself, seeing as I was so tired I could barely bother to breathe. And I thought, if I die right now of heart failure, or failure of heart, I would be just like the stars, still wearing the same old body but
snuffed out, deceased, extinguished
inside.

I closed my eyes and maybe I fell asleep for a moment because when I opened them Dad and Anne and Doreen and Cordelia were all standing around me on the porch. For a scary moment I thought perhaps I really had died and they were gathered together for my funeral.

I stared up at them in a daze. My heart was pounding oddly and I could feel sweat springing out all over me.