The Outcast (22 page)

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Lewis didn’t go to church with Alice and Gilbert on Sunday; it was bad enough for them to have to put up with people knowing he was back, without him actually being there.

They drove back through the heat and sunshine to pick him up before going on to the Carmichaels, and didn’t speak, except for Gilbert saying,‘Do you remember when Lewis played that tennis tournament against the other prep school, which one was it?’

‘I don’t know,’ said Alice, ‘I think it was the summer before we met.’

And he turned to her and said, quite sweetly, ‘Looking forward to the party?’

‘Very much,’ said Alice.

‘I think it’s going to be jolly nice,’ he said,‘don’t you?’

At the Carmichaels’ house, Preston got out of the car and opened the door for Claire and then for Dicky, and then came around to let outTamsin and Kit.When she was released, Kit galloped into the house and up to her room, pulling off her dress.

She put on her shorts and splashed her face with cold water and ran down, fast, and out into the garden, grabbing her tennis racket from the stand by the back door. The housekeeper was laying out glasses on a long table on the terrace. Kit got halfway

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to the tennis court and stopped, skidding, and remembered Lewis. She looked down at her bare brown legs below her shorts and her plimsolls, which were battered. She wondered if there was anything to be done about the way she looked. Maybe she ought to put a frock on. She didn’t want to. He wouldn’t look at her anyway. She could look at him, couldn’t she? She set off running again, and laughed.

Tamsin stood still in front of the glass and smiled at her reflec- tion. She stopped herself kissing it, as she had used to when just a little younger. She could hear people arriving and wondered if any of them were the Aldridges, and thought of her mother’s face when she had told her about asking Lewis specially. She saw her eyes smile and brighten and she opened her mouth as if about to speak, to see the way her lips moved when she did that. Then she smiled at herself, a little shyly, glancing over her shoulder at the glass again as she left the room.

The gravel in front of Dicky Carmichael’s house was covered with cars. The front door was open, with the maid standing neatly by it. Lewis followed Alice and Gilbert into the house, which was dark after the bright day. The polished wood was almost black around them and the sun didn’t penetrate. It wasn’t a house suited to summer.

They went through the hall and the drawing room and they could hear the people first and then see them through the windows.

‘Gilbert—’ said Alice and he took her hand, and Lewis saw that they were having to get their courage up, and that it was because of him.

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Then they went out onto the glaring terrace where the people stood out harshly against the hot flagstones.

Lewis looked at the big garden and the long terrace and the tables laid out and the people spread out over the grass. It was an enormous bright canvas of familiarity and pleasantness and it was shocking to him. He had become used to quite different views. He was allowed back. He was grateful.

Gilbert and Alice were a little ahead of him and Alice put her hand on Gilbert’s arm.

Mary Napper was talking to Harry Rawlins and they stopped talking when they saw Lewis and stared.The people next to them noticed and they stared too, and after a moment the whole terrace paused. It could only have lasted a moment, a few seconds, and Gilbert had expected it and told himself he didn’t mind, and smiled around at the faces and waited.

The conversation started up again, but falsely, and Gilbert rocked a little on his heels.

‘I wonder where they all can have got to,’ he said, smiling affably around, and Lewis hurt for him.

‘Gilbert! Alice!’ Claire had come out of the house with the maid and came over immediately when she saw them.

‘I’m so pleased you could come. Don’t you have a drink?’ she asked and the maid offered them one, and Lewis pretended he wasn’t there.

Gilbert and Alice stood very close to each other and talked about nothing, and then David Johnson came up and spoke to Gilbert and he didn’t look at Lewis at all, and Lewis took a step backwards and thought about leaving.

‘There you are!’

Tamsin was by him. She seemed to have turned her brightness

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up for the brightness of the day. He felt separate and strange even to be looking at her. She was wearing creamy white, or white and pink, he didn’t really look, but she was light and gold. ‘Thank goodness you’re here!’ she said, and took his hand,

quite naturally.‘It’s been absolutely deadly.’

She pulled him away and he saw that people stared at them, that people stared because of who she was and how she looked, and the fact that she was holding his hand and was not put off by him, and he was amazed at her. She pulled him fast, almost running across the lawn. There were people on the grass and Tamsin stopped in front of two ladies in hats.

‘Mrs Patterson, you remember Lewis Aldridge?’ she said. ‘Of course,’ said the woman, and her friend nodded, and they

walked on and didn’t smile.

‘You do have an effect!’ said Tamsin, delighted, and laughed over her shoulder at him, and he saw that she was excited by people hating him.

The tennis court was some way from the house and it was a grass court and smooth and perfect. Around it were fruit trees with roses climbing through them and past that were the woods.The younger people were near the court and Kit and a boy were playing.Tamsin and Lewis got to the edge of the court and the boy served to Kit and she demolished his serve and laughed, and then saw Lewis and stopped, and the boy hit the ball straight past her, and she didn’t notice.

‘Come on, infant!’ called Tamsin,‘we’re playing now.You’ve had ages.’

She went onto the court and held out her hand. Kit gave her the racket and scowled at her.

‘Hello, Lewis,’ she said.

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‘Hello, Kit, wind’ll change.’

She frowned some more and looked at the ground and rubbed her face, which was sweaty, with her forearm.The boy came over and handed his racket to Lewis.

‘Thanks,’ said Lewis and he and Tamsin went out onto the court.

Kit flopped down on the ground to watch and chewed a piece of grass and stretched her legs out.

Lewis could look atTamsin now and not have to pretend not to. He wondered if she had really got so much more lovely between nineteen and twenty-one or if it was just that all women looked fascinating to him because of not having seen any. Whatever it was, she was gorgeous and she was paying attention to him and he should just enjoy it; there was filing with Mr Phillips in the morning.

Tamsin picked up a ball and struck a pose and looked at Lewis challengingly.

‘Ready?’ He nodded.

‘I said “Ready”?’ ‘Yes!’

She laughed, and he laughed too and she served a ladylike serve. He tapped it back to her, careful.

‘Don’t be polite,’ she called,‘I’m terribly good.’

Kit got up from the grass, disgusted with them both. She went up to the house and around the corner to where there was nobody and sat against the wall.

She could hear the party, and the stone was cool on her back because she was in shadow. She shut her eyes up tight. She hadn’t imagined he’d fall in love with her or anything like that. She’d thought it would be enough to see him, like when

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she was younger, but it wasn’t. Her loving him had been patient before, and slow, but it hurt now and she didn’t know what to do. She felt she knew him, but he was other to her, too; almost impossible to look at, he was so different to her. She could have stared and stared, but had to run away because it hurt too much. She hadn’t thought it would be like that and Tamsin behaved as if it was all just normal to play with him and draw him in, and Kit felt helpless.There was a wave of adult laughter as everybody drank more and the talk got even smaller. She could hear her father’s voice rising over the others like a clenched fist, and she put her hands over her ears.

Tamsin lifted her hair from her neck and fanned herself and smiled and Lewis tried to work out if her flirting was deliberate or instinctive.

‘Come on,’ she said, ‘hit it to me properly, I shall frighten you with my athleticism.’

He served to her, hard, and the ball bounced near her so that she hardly saw it and she squealed.

‘No fair!You absolute swine!’

She glanced around for a ball. There were none nearby and she looked back at Lewis and said, very deliberately, ‘I think it went over here, don’t you?’

Then she walked off the court with a little glance over her shoulder at him. Lewis dropped his racket and followed. He didn’t think anyone saw them go. He didn’t care.

He followed her to where they were hidden by trees and roses, and she walked slowly and stretched out her arms and then stopped and turned and he stopped, too.

They were away from everyone now, and the smell of the

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roses and heat and the stillness were like a separate place. Tamsin looked right at him and didn’t speak.

She was waiting for him to tell her how good she looked. ‘You’re beautiful,’ he said.

‘Rubbish.’

‘Why do you bother with me?’

‘Why wouldn’t I? I like to help people.’

He smiled then, it was such a young thing to say. ‘Is that what I need?’

‘You used to frighten me.’ She said it a little breathlessly. ‘Did I?’

‘Are you a reformed character?’ ‘Don’t I look it?’

He imagined going over to her, and holding her, and how she would feel to him, and she looked into his eyes while he thought about it. They couldn’t have held the moment any longer without one of them doing something, and she laughed and took her skirt in her hands and fanned her legs with it.

‘I say!’ she said.

It was a schoolgirlish gesture, but showed her legs all the same. She was deflecting him. She was tantalising him. It occurred to him he might actually ask this girl out.That would be the normal thing to do.

‘How would you like to—’

‘There it is!’ She was kneeling suddenly and had picked up a tennis ball and showed it to him, as if he cared, and before he could get any further she’d turned away.

‘Come on,’ she said,‘I don’t want to play any more, do you?

Would you get us some drinks?’

She went off through the trees and he followed her out onto

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the grass and towards the house and the people. It was as if he wasn’t there, and though he walked next to her there was nothing to say. He didn’t know why she had changed suddenly; he hoped he hadn’t said anything wrong.

‘Ed!’ she said, and Lewis saw Ed Rawlins coming up to them both.‘Did you come down today? Just for this?’

‘This morning,’ answered Ed, and then,‘Hello’, to Lewis. ‘Hello,’ said Lewis back.

Tamsin took Ed’s arm and they went off together.

This was more like it, this was like being home. He wasn’t sure where to go. He wasn’t about to go following afterTamsin and Ed. He looked up at the terrace. The adults were still drinking and standing in groups talking, although what they all had to say to each other year after year he had no idea.

Alice had walked down the garden and watched some tennis and then come back up through the people. She could spend the whole day smiling and walking. Everyone around her smiled and walked too, so there was just a whole garden full of smiling walking people, gliding past one another.

She felt Gilbert watching her from the terrace and looked at him. He wanted her to come and stand by him and he wanted her to stop drinking. She stared back at him until he looked away and she felt triumphant about it. She saw a maid with a tray of cocktails go by and had to sidestep quite quickly to get her attention. She took a drink and stopped herself from raising her glass to Gilbert on the terrace. She thought she’d smile and walk again – but in his direction, so as to please him. She wanted to please him. She wanted Lewis to please him, but she thought there was slim hope of either one of them doing it, with her stupidity and Lewis having already been ruined by both

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of them.Alice knew she was quite drunk; she thought she’d get drunker. She wondered how drunk she could be before Gilbert was really angry with her; she wondered if it was possible she was angry with him. She reached his side and stood by him.

‘Darling,’ he said, and smiled and turned back to Dicky, who was telling a joke about a Frenchman.

Alice smiled very brightly.

Lewis was standing apart from the party with his hands in his pockets, wondering what to do. He saw Alice go up to Gilbert on the terrace, where Dicky was holding court. His father was laughing with the others at something Dicky had said. He thought he might go and tell him he’d walk home. He didn’t want to draw attention to himself. He had made an appearance, he’d shown willing and not broken Ed’s nose again or fallen over drunk, and it was time to go. He’d call the day a success. He didn’t want to eat lunch with them. He could see the servants laying out a buffet and the thought of jostling with old ladies for cold cuts and trifle was appallingly silly.

He started across the garden, slowly, and glanced over at his father and Alice. Lewis could see, even at that distance, that Alice was drunk.

He paused, watching. She was adjusting the strap at the back of her shoe and holding her empty glass in the other hand. She put the glass down on the terrace and started to fiddle with her dress, laughing later than everyone else, and then too loudly. Gilbert picked up the glass and handed it to the maid and then put his hand on Alice’s arm. He saw Gilbert look at Dicky and saw his fear of everyone noticing, and felt it as if it were his own.

Gilbert looked up at him suddenly and caught his eye and

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Lewis had been so absorbed in watching them, he felt caught out. His father gestured him over and he went immediately.

Gilbert held onto Alice’s arm and stepped a little apart from the group as Lewis reached the terrace. Lewis saw Dicky noticing and turned his back to him, shoulder to shoulder with his father and blocking Dicky’s view.