The Accidental (15 page)

She is nearly asleep in the stifling hottest-ever heat when she hears a door across the hall open and close, then hears her own door open and someone come into the room and the door close again.

She pretends to be asleep. There is someone there in the dark, someone not moving so you can’t be sure, but some different filled kind of silence definitely there in the room.

Astrid knows the scent, clean, like clean leather and a little like oranges, clean skin, talcum powder, maybe wood, pencil shavings, a pencil that’s just been sharpened is what she smells like.

She stands over the bed for a long time before she moves. The bed shifts as she gets into it. Astrid keeps her eyes shut. She pulls in closer, slides in close to Astrid’s back. She blows warm breath into Astrid’s hair, right into her head. She wraps her arms one around Astrid’s middle and the other over her shoulder round her front, and breathes the same warm breath into the back of Astrid’s neck.

Astrid feels her own bones underneath the warm breath, thin and clean there like kindling for a real fire. She thinks her heart might combust right out of her chest id est the happiness

the middle of dinner with everybody there listening she says:
if you’re going to give anybody a hard time, give it to me
.

Then she winks at him, right at him, right in front of his mother, right in front of Michael, who haven’t a clue. A hard time! Give it to me! Then winks right at him. Magnus feels the reddening rise of his prick thickening against his jeans, his heart a hot hole into his chest, his head burning, his face, a burning feeling all up the back of his neck.

Magnus, his mother says a moment later. You’ve really caught the sun today.

Uh huh, Magnus says. He can hear himself mumble. He sounds like a stupid child. Too much in the sun, he says.

Ha! Michael says as if Magnus has said something very clever. His mother says he’ll go a nice shade of brown tomorrow. Astrid doesn’t say anything, is being quiet so as not to attract attention to herself. Magnus knows the tactic, she learned it from him. Look at them all. They know nothing. A minute ago they were arguing about something pointless, Astrid losing a camera that cost a lot of money. But Amber covered for her. It is what Amber is like.

Amber = unbelievable.

He can’t look over at Amber or he will go an even worse colour of red.

He looks at his mother instead, who is telling Amber about when she was a girl again. His mother has been twittering all evening like one of those little birds that people who live in Mediterranean countries keep in cages outside their windows, the songbirds that start singing when the sun hits their cages in the afternoon or the early evening.
We sang I Love To Go A-Wandering, we sang Had a little fight with my mother-in-law, Pushed her into the Arkansaw, Little old lady, she could swim, Climbed right out to push me in. We were a generation of girls strung between these types of expression. One minute it was Calypso Christmas carols, the next it was nymphs, shepherds, Flora’s holiday, I actually used to imagine someone called Flora packing her case for going on holiday when we sang This is Flora’s ho-li-day
.

Ha! Michael says again like everything’s a great in-joke. Amber is leaning on her elbow at the table. She yawns without covering her mouth. His mother = small bird blinded by sunlight into forgetting it’s still in a cage.

It makes Magnus feel something, to think this. The feeling is equivalent to a kind of sorry. He feels it too, though he doesn’t know why, for Michael sitting forward in his seat, peeling back the petals of that small salad flower so carefully. He feels it for Astrid sitting next to him, lost. But she isn’t lost at all–she’s right here. There’s nothing wrong with her. But something feels lost. He can’t explain it.

He puts a piece of bread in his mouth. He wishes he could put a stone or something in his mouth, something that wouldn’t just dissolve, that wouldn’t alter because of humans having digestive juices that rot everything, something he could concentrate on without it changing. But stone = Lapidary Club = the sorriness dwarfs him, towers up out of him, as big as what? as a lighthouse on a rock with a glare of light coming out of it hitting each of the people at the table. Magnus has to look away because of what it lights up.

His mother = broken. There is something broken about the way she says what she says, the way she leans forward so brightly at the table saying
it’s such a lovely night, it’s been such a lovely day, it’s such a lovely supper
. Michael = what? His glasses are on squint. His body is at an awkward angle. He looks dated. He looks like an Airfix model put together by a boy not concentrating properly, so a wing got stuck on a little crookedly, a wheel got superglued out of joint with the others; dull blobs of too much glue on it in all the wrong places.

Magnus glances at Astrid.

She looks back at him, right in the eyes.

What? she says.

Astrid isn’t totally broken yet. But if a window could throw a brick at itself to test itself that’s what she’ll do, she’ll break herself, Magnus thinks, then she’ll test how sharp she is by using her own broken pieces on herself. Everybody at this table is in broken pieces which won’t go together, pieces which are nothing to do with each other, like they all come from different jigsaws, all muddled together into the one box by some assistant who couldn’t care less in a charity shop or wherever the place is that old jigsaws go to die. Except jigsaws don’t die.

Magnus’s stomach starts to really hurt.

What? Astrid is still saying, making a face at him. What? what? what? what? what? what? what? what? what? what? what? what? what?

Astrid, Eve says.

What? Astrid says.

Amber laughs. Eve laughs too. Stop it, she says.

Stop what? Astrid says.

Everybody laughs except Astrid.

I didn’t actually do anything, if anyone actually cares, Astrid says. It’s him who was looking at me funny.

In a funny way, Astrid, Eve says.

What? Astrid says.

Looking at me in a funny way, Eve says.

I am
not
, Astrid says. It was
him
looking at
me
.

No, not
at me
, I mean the way you said it, Eve says. You said: looking at me funny. You should have said: looking at me in a funny way. Ask Michael.

Amber puts the flat of her hand on top of Astrid’s head, takes it off again. Astrid sinks back in her seat, rolls her eyes, sighs. It is Amber who makes things okay. If Amber is a piece of broken-up jigsaw too, Magnus thinks, then she is several pieces of blue sky still joined up. Maybe she is a whole surviving connected sky.

Idiom, Michael says suddenly like a mad person, looking up from the flower on the end of his finger. He shrugs. Attic, he says. He shrugs again. Amber smiles a lopsided smile at Magnus over the table so that he can’t not think about her broken-open mouth moving there above him next to his own eyes, then his own mouth, open too, totally amazed at what the rest of himself is doing below, pressed hot right into her.

You’re very quiet, Saint. What are you thinking about? Amber says across the table. (In front of everybody.)

Nothing, Magnus says.

What exactly were you thinking about it? Amber says.

About what? Magnus says.

About nothing, Amber says.

Everybody laughs.

No, Magnus says. I was thinking, um, lighthouse. If you wanted, for instance. I was trying to work out, to measure the total inside area in cubic metres it would be really difficult because of the changing size of it as you went further, uh, further up inside.

Magnus has gone a really really red colour, Astrid says.

God, yes, darling, his mother says shaking her head. Is it sore? Run upstairs, Astrid, get the aftersun. It’s in my soapbag.

No, Magnus says. I’m fine.

I think you should definitely use it tonight, Eve says.

It’s all right, Magnus says.

It looks very raw, she says. Weren’t you using any protection?

Amber looks straight at Magnus, raises one eyebrow. She laughs out loud. Magnus can’t not laugh. He laughs too. In front of everybody, still nobody getting it, nobody knowing, nobody even beginning to work it out. They all start laughing along anyway, even though. They laugh like a family all laughing together at something.

Amber = what?

The Jordan Curve Theorem. Every simple closed curve has an inside as well as an outside. Amber’s bare breasts hanging down above his head were two perfect bell curves. She is a torus. Inside her is curved space. It was late afternoon. He came out of his room. Amber was whistling, standing on the upstairs landing looking at the ceiling like she was some kind of house expert off a tv programme.

Wait here, she said. Don’t go away.

She fetched a stick from the garden to shift the loft hatch open. She gave him a leg-up into the loft. She climbed on to the banister to get in after him. He leaned out, helped pull her up. The floor is bare boards up there, unvarnished. There is a small skylight blackened with old dirt. There is a lot of stuff in boxes, a lot of dust. It is even hotter than the rest of the house. Amber wiped her hands on her shorts, crouched on the floor for a minute, looked right at him. What about here? she said. He didn’t know what she meant. He didn’t know what he was supposed to say. While he was trying to think of something she slipped away down through the hatch again.

He noticed how his heart sank. Her going felt like he’d done something wrong. But she came straight back below the hatch with a blanket coverlet kind of thing out of one of the bedrooms.

She was pretty fit for someone quite old. She balanced on the banister again, reached for his hand. She levered herself up barefooted off the wall. She slid the door-cover across the hatch with her foot. She straightened up. She looked round, still holding his hand.

This’ll do, she said.

Dark, he said.

She let go of his hand. But then she took off her t-shirt. The tips of her breasts were white around the nipples. She took off her shorts. Parallel postulate. Incalculable x. She took his hand again. She put it on her thigh, then put it further up her thigh. Point of contact. She undid his belt. It leapt out, it formed a parabolic curve (roughly speaking y = x squared). She squeezed him. It shot out, like out of a spot.

Then she said, lie down here.

Manifold = aggregate.

Aggregate = formed of parts that make up a whole.

Infinity = never-stopping.

A sequence which repeats itself at regular intervals, once, then again, then again, then again = periodic.

Point of intersection. She made him lie on his back, she was perpendicular, right-angled. She added herself to him.

The line going from Amber’s eyes to his at one precise moment had the most unbelievably beautiful gradient in the world.

Inside her was like going inside a boxing glove, or a room made of pillows, or wings. Magnus exploded into a billion small white feathers.

The smell of the hot summer attic, the smell of them both, stuck with amazing sweat. The lean of her up against him afterwards, laughing against his ear. The lean of her whole body as she walks, as she talks, as she sits saying nothing at all, smiles at him across the table over supper with nobody else knowing. Her hidden miraculous curves.

Amber = angel.

They have sex in the loft three more times. Twice when the house is too full of people they have quick (quite sore) sex in the garden behind the bushy hedge. Once Amber comes to Magnus’s bedroom after everyone has gone to bed. This is one of the best times.

It is unbelievable.

How wet it all is is a little shocking. Magnus had no idea. He is also always a little shocked, no matter how many times he sees it, by Amber having hair, like that, down there. It simply hadn’t occurred to him women would. It is of course obvious when you think about it. Of course they do. Presumably they remove it with hair-removing products before they go online or have their photos taken or are filmed. Or maybe, like boys, like men, some women just have it, some just don’t. Maybe older women have it. He looks at his mother as she walks across the garden. He wonders if she removes it, or if she hasn’t any, or if she has a lot. He wonders in what area of cm squared. Then he has to blink a lot, he can hardly think straight.

I’m taking St Magnus for a walk into the village, Amber announces to Eve. We’ll be away about an hour, long enough for me to ravish him sexually then bring him back safely, is that okay?

Magnus feels all the colour drain out of him. When he can hear again he can hear Eve, Astrid too, laughing like they think it’s a hilarious joke.

We’ll be reasonably private, Amber is saying. We won’t alarm the good people of the village, not this time anyway. Will we?

Mmphgm, Magnus says looking at the ground.

Can I come? Astrid asks.

No, Amber says. But if you’re good today I’ll take you shoplifting tomorrow.

Have a nice walk, Eve says not looking up as they go. Don’t go too far.

Amber = genius, Magnus thinks. Amber = genius squared for thinking to find a man who has a key to the church in the middle of the village. The next time she goes to London she gets a copy of the key made. This is genius to the power of three.

They go there most days after that. They aren’t disturbed once.

Why do you always wear that stopped watch? he asks Amber one afternoon in the church. Amber, kneeling on the floor between his legs, has just finished taking the tip of him in her mouth, coaxing him out of himself again. As she did he saw the flash of her arm with her watch on it that always says seven o’clock no matter what time it actually is. For example it is about five o’clock now.

Amber leans back against the pew, pushes her hair back off her face with her hand.

I need to keep an eye on the time, she says.

Yes, but it’s always the wrong time, Magnus says.

That’s what you think, Amber says.

Then, with her watch hand, she reaches down. What she does next blanks his mind completely of time.