The Outcast (24 page)

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Kit stepped off the road and onto the verge, into the deep grass, but the car slowed right down and, even though she looked away from it, stopped just near her.

‘Hey.’

She looked up. It was Lewis driving his father’s car and she thought she was imagining it was him, but it was him. The engine idled in the quiet; he didn’t drive on. Kit looked in at Lewis.

‘What?’ she said.

He leaned across and opened the door and she slid into the leather seats, and her bare feet felt strange on the carpet of the car.

‘What are you doing out here?’ he asked. ‘You’re drunk.’ She could see that he was.

He put the car in gear and carried on driving, very slowly, and they didn’t speak.

Kit sat in the cool dark. He was next to her and he was passive, so she could absorb him without his even sensing her doing it. It was like she was a ghost, and visiting, and she could feel him, and not be noticed.

He stopped the car near the end of her drive and waited. Kit looked over at him and couldn’t make herself get out. He was just sitting there and squinting, trying to keep his eyes open. He’d never know, he’d never remember.

‘I’m in love with you,’ she said and then felt very frightened she’d said it.

He focused on her, slowly, and she found herself looking back at him, waiting.

‘You’ll get over it,’ he said.

Then he gestured, a sarcastic, ‘get out of the car’ sort of gesture, and she got out with her head down.

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Kit watched him drive away and went slowly up to where her dark house waited for her.

Lewis got the car through his gate without hitting it and left it on the drive. The door was unlocked and he opened it and saw that his father was sitting on the bottom stair. He was wearing his pyjamas and dressing gown.

Lewis shut the door and looked at his father sitting on the stairs and concentrated on not swaying, and waited.

‘You all right?’ said Gilbert. Lewis nodded.

‘Car all right?’ There was a silence.

‘We’ll overlook it this time. We’ve both got work in the morning.’

He got up and went up the stairs. There was still to be no crisis then, no apocalypse.Things were back to normal.

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C
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‘It’s a simple alphabetical system, dockets here, buff files monies in, blue files monies out.’

Lewis watched Phillips, happy in his world, moving around the small office, getting out boxes and stationery. He felt light- headed and he wanted to laugh. He was dangerously close to losing himself. He knew he was still drunk as well as being so hungry.

He had left the house without seeing Gilbert or his stepmother. Gilbert had left him the car and taken a taxi to the station and, after throwing up in the bathroom and waiting until there was no- one around, Lewis had taken the keys from the hall table and left. ‘You’ll find 1952 from April here,’ said Phillips, in his stride, musical,‘and ascending – ’53, ’54 . . .We’ve just the one sharp-

ener, it’s in my office, all right?’

Phillips left him at the desk in the second office and Lewis looked around him, and out into the deep quarry, and picked up a pencil. He started to copy the column of figures from one file into the next and the morning passed like that, like the same moment over and over again. At one o’clock Phillips’s head came around the door.

‘That’s lunch.’ ‘Right.’

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‘Noticed you didn’t have any sandwiches. In the car, are they?’

‘No.’

‘Fancy one of mine?’ ‘Thanks.’

‘I usually head outside for lunch. Bit of fresh air.You won’t want to sit with me. I’ll leave yours on my desk.’

‘Thank you.’

Lewis ate at his desk and Phillips sat on a plastic chair in the low shade of some hawthorns that grew up close to the quarry edge. The sandwiches were potted meat, with jam ones after- wards, one of each.

Lewis finished work and got home half an hour before Gilbert. He and Alice didn’t see each other until Gilbert came home. After supper the family sat in the drawing room and Lewis listened to the clock tick and tried to count the ticks, which took a lot of concentration because he had to count very fast in his head.

‘Shall we go up?’ said Gilbert, and Alice might have answered, but Lewis didn’t know because he didn’t listen, and he didn’t know if she looked at him because he didn’t raise his head.

‘Lewis, will you lock up?’

His father was beginning to trust him. He could go to work and lock up the house alone, and he could drive his stepmother home when she was unwell.

He heard them cross the hall and go upstairs and their door closing. He got up and shut the garden door, and locked it, and then he went around the room turning off the lamps by their tiny switches.

* * *

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That was Monday. The days that followed felt wrapped up in something, but not something soft, like cotton wool, something hard like thin wire, and every day it tightened. Lewis spent the days working and the evenings in endless mealtimes with the two of them and the nights in his room. He hardly slept, but lay in stillness, with darkness all around him and trying to find something to hold onto to keep himself from it.

‘Are you sure?’ ‘Yes, of course.’

‘It’s been a week, he’s doing so well.You won’t mind?’ ‘No. I said I wouldn’t.’

‘If he comes with us to church, it’ll be done then. People will see that he’s come home, and that he’s with us, and that will be that.’

‘I know! I told you.’ ‘You seem . . .’ ‘Gilbert!’

‘All right then.’

Gilbert sat on the bed and watched Alice. She was putting on her powder, eyes down, behind a cloud.

‘I’ll bring the car round.’ ‘All right.’

He went to the door.

‘Alice—’ He saw her stop, and wait.‘I believe he genuinely wants to make amends. He’s doing his best.’

She began to flick away the extra powder from her face. ‘I’ll see you downstairs,’ he said.

Alice finished her dressing and tried to do it without touching herself, or paying too much attention to her body. She heard Gilbert go downstairs and his voice in the hall, and then

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Lewis’s – as she reached behind to do up the buttons of her skirt

– and she tried not to touch her skin with her fingers while she did it.When she was dressed she sat at her dressing table, facing away from the mirror, towards the bed, but she didn’t look at the bed, she looked at her bedside table. Her alarm clock and night cream and the book she was trying to read were there, and her watch, waiting for her to put it on. She was thirty-five years old. She thought that she was about halfway through her life. It seemed a very long time to have to wait. She got up and crossed the room and put on her watch.

Alice waited in the car while Gilbert made a speech to Lewis about getting through church. Lewis nodded his head and waited for his father to go, and then poured himself a half- tumbler of gin and drank it fast before going out to join them.

The unmarked grass was neat around the graves. Lewis stood by the car with his father, and Alice waited for them, putting on her gloves.

The family was shaded by the chestnut tree they had parked under.They stood and looked at the sunny church and Lewis’s mind faltered at the sight of it and at the idea of going into it.

Alice was in the corner of his vision and he turned his head slightly, until she was gone from it.

‘Lewis?’

There was a gap in his head again, and quiet fear at it. ‘Lewis? I know this is hard for you. Sundays are hardest of

all. Of course they are. Lewis?’ ‘Yes.’

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‘Coming?’ Gilbert came up to him. He put his hand on his shoulder.‘Let’s go in. All right?’

They walked towards the crowd of people in the graveyard.

Only a few people stared as they crossed the grass.

Kit stood in the porch with her mother and saw the Aldridges coming towards them.

Lewis saw Kit with her family in the porch of the church and she was watching him. He looked at her and she smiled. He thought he heard her say something – but he knew she hadn’t, she was too far away – still, he thought she had said something nice to him and it occurred to him he really was losing his mind, and then Dora Cargill stepped up close in front of him and smacked him in the face.

It was a hard smack and it hurt quite a bit and the shock of it was funny. Lewis smiled, but other people weren’t smiling. There was a moment of stillness and then Bridget Cargill came up and grabbed her sister and pulled her away, and Dora started to cry and there was a wave of embarrassment and confusion and Lewis found that, instead of being scrutinised, suddenly nobody was looking at all.

He felt quiet.There was honesty at last, and fairness.

He sawTamsin turn away from her family and come towards him. People were looking again as she took his arm. Her taking his arm was so kind it was painful to him, and she looked up at him and smiled.

‘Shall we go in? Would you like to sit with us?’

He felt a horrible sadness, and shame, and he couldn’t say anything to her.

Tamsin whispered,‘Everyone knows Dora Cargill is as mad as a hatter’ and then, louder,‘Come on’, and they walked into the church together and Tamsin greeted the vicar coolly as

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she held Lewis’s arm and took him up to the front with her. The hymn was ‘Onward, Christian Soldiers’, which was farcical, and Tamsin leaned close to him under the cover of the

voices.

‘You’re doing awfully well,’ she whispered.

Gilbert’s carving knife sliced the flesh of the chicken. ‘Walk or fly, Lewis?’

‘I don’t mind.’

‘Nice drumstick . . . Alice, walk or fly?’ ‘Whatever’s easiest.’

Mary brought the vegetables and Alice said goodbye to her and she left for the rest of the day. Alice passed the vegetables around and they heard the front door closing.

‘Congratulations, Lewis.’ ‘Sir?’

‘That was very difficult. You handled yourself well. That Tamsin Carmichael is a good girl. Don’t you think so, Alice?’

‘Yes.’

‘We’ve a lot to thank that family for. Alice?’ ‘Yes.’

‘Anyway. Dora . . . One of the graves was their mother’s. It was very difficult. But there we are. It’s done.’

Lewis looked at the salt and pepper shakers in their tiny silver rack. He looked at the fluted glass vase, and the pinks in the vase, and at the white tablecloth, and the small lace cloths that were on top of the tablecloth and under the other things. He looked at the silver bread basket, at the latticework of it and at the napkin inside, and at the candlesticks and thin china butter dish.

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‘I’ve got a jolly busy week next week.We’ve had all the quar- terlies in, it will be too much going back and forth all week. I’ll be staying up at the flat until Thursday or Friday.Will you both manage?’

Gilbert picked up the bottle of red wine. He poured himself and Alice a glass and then held the bottle over the table for a moment, and Lewis found he couldn’t take his eyes off it. Gilbert’s hand, and the bottle, came towards him.

‘Good boy. Well done,’ said Gilbert and poured wine into Lewis’s glass and it was as if the air snapped, he heard the tension break. He couldn’t see properly and when he hit the bottle, it smashed against the wall, and his father put his arms up to shield himself from the glass flying and the wine thrown outwards. Lewis brought his hands down onto all the perfect things and he felt the brittle breaking china and the starched cloth buckling. The table seemed to fracture and the naked wood shone out dark under the cloth. He felt his body ringing with the fast rush of it, and the things were breaking and falling and he saw Alice start back and cringing, hide herself – and then he breathed – and could see properly and realised what he was doing.

Gilbert moved quickly, and stood up and shouted blindly and his rage was tearful, but Lewis had gone, out through the open window behind, and it was pointless shouting.

He sat down again and the two of them sat, and looked at the wrecked table, and then Alice stood up and started to collect broken glass in her palm.

‘Why would he do that?’ said Gilbert, his voice weak,‘why would he do it? Is there something wrong in his head? Alice?’ He looked at her, searching, but she didn’t look up.‘. . . Alice?’ he said.

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‘I don’t know,’ said Alice and continued piling broken glass into her hand.

Lewis didn’t know how he could go home again. He knew he would go home again. He had no choices and no chances, and he couldn’t remember any more what his plan had been or why he had come back. He seemed to glimpse it dimly, an idea of himself he had made while he was shut away, which now was ruined and he would never be able to do it.

The woods were dark and hot and the sun made glowing patches of light, and Lewis walked and felt calmer and waited to be calm enough to stop walking. He thought of Alice and his father and he wished he could take a knife and cut them from his brain, and stopped walking. He seemed to see the knife that would do it and it was thick-bladed and short, and the picture of cutting the bad parts out of his living head was very clear. He and Alice – he heard water; there was the river. The river was ahead of him and he looked at it.

The trees were not so thickly crowded together. The river wound away into the woods and there were ferns around it, and oak trees, and the bank was short and went down gently. The sight of the river stopped his brain and there was only that, the soft curve away through the woods and the ferns around it and stillness. He walked towards it. It had been a still day, and just then there was a breeze and the leaves moved around and above him and made the sunlight dance over the ground.

There was somebody swimming. He saw a dark, sleek head and bare arms, moving, and the breeze stopped and the heat came back, rising. Lewis watched the dark head in the water. It was Kit.

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Kit felt him there and turned and screamed and he saw that her shoulders were bare too.

‘Oh! Don’t look at me!’

He couldn’t see anything, she was underwater and he was thirty feet from her. He turned away.