The Outcast (25 page)

‘I’ll come out.’

He heard her come out of the water and bare feet scampering and then quiet. He guessed she was dressing.

‘I simply hate Sunday lunch en famille, don’t you?’ she said. He saw the wrecked table, and himself going out of the window – and he smiled and the very bad things in his head

stopped and left him quiet. ‘Can I look?’ he said.

‘I s’pose.’

He turned around. She was wet still, and half in her dress, which she was trying to do up at the back, twisting around. Her hair was wet and gleaming.

‘You look like a baby otter.’

‘Excuse me, I’ll be sixteen in October. Switzerland and everything.’

She gave up with the dress and smiled at him. He went a little closer to her.

‘Everything work out the other night?’ she asked with studied carelessness, and he had a picture of that night and Kit sitting forlornly in his car, and him trying to drive, and Alice . . .

‘Fine, thanks.You?’

‘Oh, you know.Thing is, my father hates me.Yours does too, I think.’

‘Mine has a reason.’

‘What’s his reason? The church and everything?’ ‘And everything.’

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It was no good. ‘What?’

She waited, looking at him. She was waiting for him to speak, and he needed to speak and he needed to tell her something of himself.

‘Sometimes . . .’ He struggled. ‘I feel like I’m falling away from everything, like the world’s just far away from me. And dark. And I’m dark too. Just recently I don’t know if I can get back . . . Have you ever felt like that?’

He was frightened by saying it. Kit regarded him briefly. ‘Of course,’ she said, and he saw she knew exactly.

It was enough. She didn’t say anything else. They walked a little way. The bank ahead of them narrowed and there were trees in the way of the path. Lewis stopped, and Kit stopped too. He looked at her.

‘Why would he hate you?Your father.’ ‘He thinks I’m detestable.’

‘You seem all right,’ he said and was happy to see she was pleased.

She was turned away from him, and her neck and shoulder were tanned against her faded dress with its buttons done up wrong at the back and half open. She made him smile. He thought that she had always made him smile. She was a baby, and so easily pleased, and she was too serious and needed teasing. She wouldn’t look at him and he remembered her saying that she was in love with him. He wondered how she could be, and what she’d meant by it, or if he’d heard her wrong. Her shyness seemed to invite something, though, and he needed her atten- tion, so he touched her with his finger on the ribs, poked her in the ribs, until she laughed.

‘Don’t!’

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He loved her laughing and did it again. ‘Stop it!’

She tried to hit out at him, and he put his hands up to protect himself from her. She had a look about her, like a fighter, and he had to grab her wrists in his hand and hold them together, and even then she tried to kick him.They were both laughing and it was either fight her or take a fall, so he took a fall, and lay on his back looking up at her. She stood triumphantly over him.

‘Yah-boo!’ she said and he laughed.

She stood over him for a moment, with the sunlight behind her head. He sat up and Kit kicked the ground about a bit and neither one said anything. She saw an interesting stick on the ground and picked it up, and sat against a big tree to play with it, drawing lines in the sandy ground.The tree was big enough for them both and he went next to her, and lit a cigarette, and leaned back, shutting his eyes to smoke.

It was nice to be with her. It was much better than being alone. ‘Dora Cargill walloped you.’

‘Yes, she did.’

‘She’s mad.’ ‘So I hear.’

‘What’s prison like?’ ‘It’s all right.’

‘Were they mean to you?’ ‘I kept my head down.’ ‘Is it like school?’

‘Except you learn things.’ ‘What sort of things?’

‘I can make wooden tables. And I can attach wheels to them.’

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‘Gosh. I should think life as a trolley-maker would be very pleasing.’

‘Restful, you mean?’ ‘Somewhat. Ow!’ She had a splinter. ‘Show me.’

She held out her hand. He bent over her, looking. ‘Actually it hurts quite a lot. Don’t squeeze it!’ ‘How am I going to get it out?’

She took her finger back and sucked it and it was childish, and not childish, and unsettling.

‘I’ve got a knife,’ he said. ‘You have not.’

‘Yes, I have. I’ll do it. Show me again.’ ‘No!’

‘I thought you were so tough.’ ‘I can be.’

‘Here, let me.’

He pretended to reach into his pocket. ‘No! . . .You haven’t?’

‘No. I haven’t.’

He sat back against the tree and she went back to her finger, trying to grip the splinter, concentrated. A drop of water reached the end of her hair and splashed onto the dry ground. Her dress was damp and sticking to her. He looked at her bent head, and cheek and shoulder. If she had been a drawing, she would be drawn with few lines, and strong ones.

‘Why did you cut your hair?’

‘I saw a lovely film with a girl with short hair, and I thought it would be glamorous.’

‘Not a boy with very short hair?’

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‘No, a girl – shut up.’ ‘It’s nice.’

‘Daddy was furious. I did it myself, and it looked absolutely shocking and I had to go into the barber in Turville to sort it out.They want me to grow it, but I’m not going to.’

‘Don’t.’

It was soft hair, and dark, and the fine shortness was beautiful against her neck. Not beautiful like women were beautiful, he thought, just like something very beautiful, something else.

‘Why did you burn the church down?’

It was a silly question, and his look said it was. ‘Honestly, why?’

‘I don’t know. It happened. I just had to see it.’ ‘It was a sight.’

‘It was.’

‘You should have seen all the fuss.’ ‘You should have seen the judge.’ ‘They had meetings.’

‘They nearly hanged me.’

She laughed.There was a silence.

‘They buried my mother there, and she never even liked the place.That wasn’t why. I don’t know why.’

Kit nodded.

‘How is it?’ he said, looking at her finger, still held out, and she showed him. He went near to her to look and Kit felt his nearness go through her.

‘KIT!’

They both jumped.Tamsin was by the river.

‘I’ve been calling for hours! You know we’re going for a drive! We’ve all been waiting.’

‘Sorry.’

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Kit scrambled up and she had dirt and bits sticking to her dress and her feet.Tamsin was still in her church dress and she was immaculate and cross.

‘Hello, Lewis,’ she said, and met his eye, and was charming, and Kit looked at Lewis and his reaction toTamsin, and saw that he had forgotten her.

‘Hello, yourself,’ he said.

‘Well, come on then, if you’re in such a hurry,’ said Kit, and went to Tamsin and grabbed her hand and pulled her away. Tamsin threw Lewis a look over her shoulder as she went.

‘Bye, Lewis, I’m going to bring you lunch at your very important office next week.’

‘Thanks,’ he said and watched them go.

The woods were quiet when the girls had gone. He felt much better, but he waited as long as he could before he went home and it was dusk when he came into the garden.

Alice was standing on the grass.

She had seen him come out of the trees from the house and had come out to meet him.

Lewis stopped some way from her and couldn’t get to the house without passing her.

‘Where’s my father?’

‘He’s inside.Where have you been?’

She wasn’t a stepmother asking him, she was a woman asking him, and he didn’t answer her. His father’s house was behind her with the sky reflected in the windows that were opaque and staring. He wouldn’t look at her. She was trying to make him, but he wouldn’t.

‘Lewis? You’re just going to pretend? Are you? You’re just going to keep pretending?’

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‘Yes.’

‘Lewis?’

‘WHAT?’

‘What do you think I want from you?’ ‘I don’t know. I don’t. Leave me alone.’ ‘You act as if—’

‘Stop it!’

‘Please don’t be so –You’re so . . .’

She was starting to cry and he couldn’t stop himself looking, and when he did he wanted to comfort her and it was unbear- able. He went past her and felt as if she was reaching her hands out to grasp him as he passed – but she wasn’t, she didn’t move

– and he didn’t look back, but went inside to his room and didn’t feel safe there, or calm, but walked up and down and tried not to want to do the bad things he needed to, to release himself and to sleep.

It was early morning when Gilbert knocked and came into his room. Lewis was putting on his shirt and thinking it was very bad that his hands were shaking so early in the day when he hadn’t got a hangover.

‘I’ll be off in a minute. I’m leaving you the car.’ ‘Thank you.’

‘I’ll see you at the end of the week.’ ‘Yes.’

Gilbert didn’t leave, but stood in Lewis’s room, waiting. He was holding a book in his hands and he turned it over as he spoke.

‘What you did yesterday, at lunch, losing control of yourself like that, it worries me. It was frightening. Can you see that?’

‘Yes, sir.’

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‘Lewis . . . Sometimes when things seem overwhelming, we have to remember that we have a choice. I wanted you to have this.’

He put the book on the bed between them and bent down to open it at a marked page, fumbling.

‘This sort of thing probably seems old-fashioned to you. But it’s always meant a lot to me.We can find solace. If we look for it.’

It was the poem‘If’. Lewis couldn’t speak to him. He stared at the page.

‘Lewis, this can’t go on.What’s going to become of you?’ ‘Dad . . . I’m sorry.’

After a silence Gilbert said,‘Sorry isn’t good enough, is it?’ ‘No, sir.’

The water washed the last of the soap away and Lewis rinsed off his face, and the razor, as his father left the house. He didn’t close the razor. He looked at it, he looked at the blade and its straightness, and very carefully he traced a line down his forearm, hardly touching the skin, feeling the whisper of it, gentle on him. He was holding the razor so hard his hand was shaking, but the blade was very light against his skin, barely touching.Then he put the razor down.

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C
hapter
F
ive
‌

If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you, But make allowance for their doubting too;

If you can wait and not be tired by waiting, Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies,

Or being hated, don’t give way to hating . . .

Alice was in the bathroom and Lewis was on his bed and they were alone in the house. It wasTuesday morning. He could hear the water splashing. She could have been washing herself, between her legs, where he had been. The bathroom door opened and he held his breath as she went to her room, and didn’t start to breathe again until the door closed behind her. There was so much of his mind taken up with the not thinking of things that the rest of it was having some trouble thinking at all. They hadn’t had breakfast together, or supper the night before. He thought if he could just get through this day, and then the next . . . He picked up the book again,‘If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew . . .’

He got up. Phillips would be happy to see him arrive early; there were definite advantages to sleeplessness. As he came down the stairs he saw a brown envelope on the mat. There were no other letters. He kept his eye on it as he went

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down; knowing what it was and feeling nothing.

He picked up the envelope:‘Ministry of Labour and National Service’. He put it in his pocket and waited until he had stopped outside the quarry office to open it.

It was a brown notice, with his name in crooked type that fell off the dotted line,‘Lewis Robert Aldridge’. Then, below, ‘In accordance with the National Service Act, 1948–1950, you are called up for service in the regular army and you are required to present yourself on Monday the 26th August 1957 between 9 am and 4 pm to the Officer Commanding of the Royal West Kent Regiment,The Barracks, Maidstone, Kent. A travelling warrant for your journey is enclosed.’With the notice was a card, with ‘Description of Man’ at the top, which made him smile. It said: Date of Birth: 29th December 1937; Height: 6 ft and 1
3
/
4
ins; Colour of Eyes: Grey; Colour of Hair: Brown.’ Well, he thought, it’s definitely me.

He had known he would get his enlistment notice. They’d given him his medical in prison; now that he had been locked up for two years, he was apparently not the unstable delinquent the army had felt him to be when he went in. He hadn’t thought the notice would come so soon. He put the envelope in his pocket and went into the office.

He and Phillips were a happy team now. It looked as if shrinking your brain down to a tenth of its capacity and pretending you were a small and unsophisticated machine paid off in the world of filing. Lewis wasn’t sure what appalling acts Phillips had thought he would commit, but it seemed that he could delight him simply by being there every morning and getting on with it and going home again at the end of the day. Phillips had checked on him and given him strange glances for the first few

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days, but now he seemed more genuinely fond of him than anyone else Lewis could think of. Lewis took his approval and shored it up against his crimes.When Phillips dumped the dusty boxes of files on his desk, pointless files – from the 1940s, some of them – he gave him friendly looks that said ‘Here we go again’ and ‘Good lad’, and Lewis was reminded of the Kafkaesque nature of his work and of Dicky’s words, ‘I’m paying you almost nothing to do a worthless job . . .’Well, he was going off to the army soon to do another worthless job for almost nothing, and didn’t give a damn either way. The sound of a horn distracted him from ‘Unpaid invoices, 1950’ and he looked up.Tamsin pressed the horn again and waved and beck- oned him out.

‘I said I’d feed you, didn’t I?’

Lewis leaned against the wall of the building and watched her. She had spread a cloth on the bonnet and was unloading things from a basket onto it, bread and cheese and bottles of lemonade.