The Outcast (29 page)

He shut his eyes. He felt the hopes that he’d had, and prison, and his father, and that he was lost.

His hand wiped the blood over his arm as his head rested back against the tiles, but he couldn’t feel it, just his loss.

* * *

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Kit heard her father coming along the corridor to her room. She had known when she thought of taking Lewis away that Dicky would punish her. She had thought it was a fair swap, a beating, for Lewis’s alibi, but it hadn’t worked and he was being blamed anyway and now it seemed a silly and babyish sort of plan that never could have worked, and she regretted being upset when she thought of it and not thinking clearly. She hoped Lewis would understand. She thought he would. She stood up to face her father.

Dicky came in, and he was carrying his stick, and he stared at her for a moment.

‘Give me a reason, young lady,’ he said. He often said that before hitting her.

‘I took the car. It was my idea,’ said Kit.

He walked over and smacked her on the side of the head.

‘I hate you,’ she said and he hit her again, knocking her down. ‘I don’t care,’ she said and started to get up.

He hit her with the stick, casually, in the soft part of her body, and then he held her up from the floor by her arm and he did it again. He let her go and smacked her face, and carried on smacking her face between the blows with the stick, but always flat-handed and carefully, so it wouldn’t bruise. He had a lot of technique about his violence with Kit, because he did it often and he was cold about it.Tamsin’s beautiful face was precious to him, and while he was beating Kit he remembered hitting her and it took some of the pleasure away because he felt ashamed of himself. Kit was good for it though, and her silence was provocative and he liked to carry on until she cried, or made some noise of pain, which often took a long time because of her defiance.

When he had hit her until she lost control of herself, he left

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her on the floor and went to his bedroom for privacy, and to calm himself.

Alice looked at her watch. It was a Cartier one that Gilbert had given her and had a tiny face and Roman numerals. It always made her feel pretty and like a proper wife. Lewis had been upstairs for half an hour. She picked up the telephone and rang Gilbert in London and told him to come home. She needed him. She needed him to come and take charge of it, and deal with his son and take the burden away from her.The house was desperate, with her and Lewis in it. If she could make Gilbert come and take control and see what had happened to Lewis, he might feel some pity and help him.

Gilbert took Alice’s call and said that he would come home. He sat at his desk thinking about what to do. He wasn’t happy that Alice was there alone with Lewis, after what he’d done to Tamsin. He telephoned Dr Straechen in Waterford and asked him for the name of a psychiatrist.The psychiatrist had his offices in Harley Street and Gilbert was surprised because he didn’t know doctors like that worked out of Harley Street; he imagined them in Victorian hospitals, with bars on their windows. The thought of Lewis being in a place like that was appalling. The thought of him staying at home was intolerable. Gilbert made an appointment with the man, a Dr Bond, to talk about Lewis and then he set off for the station. It wasn’t the usual train and when he got to Waterford there was nobody at the station apart from himself and a woman with her child, which she was dragging along by the arm and shouting at. She was nobody he knew, and not the sort of person he would know.

He took a taxi home, dreading it. He remembered driving

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home after work in the autumn evenings just after Elizabeth had died. He remembered Lewis waiting at the end of the drive, and starting to smile when he saw him. Gilbert remembered that he hadn’t been able to smile back, or look at him properly, and although he didn’t remember Lewis being bad at ten years old, he had been repelled by him so perhaps he had been. He seemed to see Lewis standing there like a little ghost as the taxi turned in – then he saw Alice waiting in the doorway for him and pulled himself together to face her. She had something of the same look, needing him, and he wanted to tell her she had the wrong man.

He paid the driver and turned to her and her smile was eager and close to crying.

‘He’s upstairs,’ she said,‘in the bathroom. It’s been more than two hours, Gilbert. I just haven’t dared.’

When the bathroom door opened, Lewis didn’t look up. There was a moment when Gilbert saw the blood and that Lewis wasn’t moving and thought he had slashed his wrists, but then he saw it was the same as before, just this sickening muti- lation. It was only the blood and the way Lewis was staring that were so frightening.

Gilbert opened the bathroom cupboard and took out a clean, white bandage. He held it out to his son.There was a pause and Gilbert saw Lewis’s eyes flickering, and then he took the bandage obediently and held it. Gilbert was in his dark suit and his tie and clean shirt, and he was still wearing his hat and felt entirely out of place, and protected by his strangeness.

‘Dr Straechen has recommended a man in London,’ he said. ‘I think the best thing would be if you were to go away for a while. Somewhere you can get better . . . Lewis?’ He didn’t think Lewis could hear him. He waited.‘Lewis?’ he said again.

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He thought Lewis seemed to nod. He must see it’s the best thing, he thought, and he went out, leaving the door open, and went downstairs. He saw Alice in the hall, waiting, and he didn’t want to speak to her about it. He reached the bottom of the stairs.

‘Is he all right?’ asked Alice, which seemed an absurd thing to say.

He needed a drink. He went into the drawing room and poured himself three fingers of Scotch, and drank it standing. Alice came and stood near him, watching him.

‘Was it very bad?’ she asked. ‘Yes.’

‘Is he coming out? Was he talking?’ ‘No. I don’t know.’

‘Gilbert, I don’t think he hit Tamsin.’

He looked at her. ‘Don’t be silly,’ he said, and finished his drink.

‘He’s never been violent – not like that. Why would he do that?’

‘Will you be all right? I’m going over to Dicky’s. I don’t like to leave you with him.’

‘I told you, I don’t think he did it.’

‘I heard you. I don’t know why you’re defending him. Have you seen him? Don’t you remember what he did?’

‘Please don’t shout at me, I’m just saying—’

‘I’m not shouting at you. I’m going to the Carmichaels’. I’ll see what I can do there and I’ll come back.’

He left then, and Alice stood in the hall. She’d wanted Gilbert to see Lewis like that, but it hadn’t been as she’d hoped; he had just been scared.

* * *

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Kit’s ribs were hurting her to breathe, but she didn’t think anything was broken.They had hurt like that before and it was just bruising and went away. Her head hurt, under her hair, where she had hit the floor, and it made her whole head feel full of tears that she couldn’t cry.

Her father hitting her and her loneliness were much worse now, and wrong, because of Lewis holding her hand, and the way he had held her when they danced. He was gentle to her and she wanted to tell him her hardest secrets.

Tamsin brought Kit a tray of supper in her room and put the tray on the bed and looked at her curled up on the window seat.

‘Oh, you look all right!’ she said.‘Have you seen my face?’ ‘Does it hurt?’

‘Not really. How is it the only time he does it to me, he has to make it show?Yours never do.’

Kit shrugged. She didn’t trust herself to ask what had happened to Lewis.

‘You are feeble,’ said Tamsin. ‘You should come down and apologise.’

She went out and shut the door behind her. Kit began to cry, but then stopped herself. She took a breath and held it a moment, looking at the faces on the sleeves of the records around her room, imagining they were giving her courage, and then she made herself eat something from the tray.There were sandwiches, and a plate of biscuits, and the taste of them was horrible, but she made herself eat them because she had always thought that part of winning her battle was looking after herself, being someone who still looked after themselves. She ate a sand- wich and a biscuit and she drank the water, and after she had eaten she went back to the window and climbed out of it.

* * *

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She ducked into the bushes at the side of the drive when she saw Mr Aldridge’s car arriving. She wiped her face with her hand, and her hand was dirty from climbing out of her window and it left marks on her face. Her legs were still humming inside from being jarred, dropping down onto the hard grass. She kept hidden as much as she could, and she went towards the village and the police station to see if she could see Lewis there, or find something out. She knew she mustn’t be seen and she thought she’d try to look in the windows at the back, where the building faced onto the golf course.

There was still heat in the air and her legs were scratched by brambles as she walked, and her head was still beating pain from her father. She knew she wasn’t sensible. For the first time in her life she wanted to surrender; she wanted to surrender to Lewis and have him hold her and let herself be weak. She needed to feel that: Lewis holding her. She wanted refuge.

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Alice waited until she was feeling as strong and as calm as she could before she went up.

When she opened the bathroom door, Lewis was sitting on the edge of the bath. He was trying to rinse his arm off under the tap and holding the bandage at the same time. He looked clumsy doing it and she saw the child in him again. She didn’t know if she’d ever see him just at one age. She wondered if that was what being a mother felt like. She didn’t think she would ever know. He stopped when she opened the door, not moving. She turned off the tap and sat next to him on the edge of the bath.

‘I know you didn’t hurt that silly girl,’ she said.

He shook his head and bowed it down so that she couldn’t see him. She looked at the pale blood on the tiles, and the blood on his arm that was dark and smeared, but dry.

‘Why don’t we go downstairs and clean you up?’ she said.

Downstairs she put him in the chair by the doors to the garden, and she fetched a bowl with water and disinfectant and cotton wool and took the bandage from him. He watched her and he felt quiet and more himself, but he didn’t have any hope. She knelt in front of him and wiped away the dried blood and was very careful around the straight lines of the cuts and the

places they crossed each other.

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‘This is a bad one, isn’t it?’ she said.

He held out his arm and kept it still and his fingers trembled while she did it.When she had finished she wrapped the clean bandage around the arm, very neatly, and tied it, cutting the end in two pieces to do it.

‘I’m sorry,’ he said, and looked at the top of her head as she knelt.

‘Don’t be silly.’

‘What you call just like old times.’

She looked up, and she had warmth in her look, and then her face seemed to break up, and she bent her head to hide from him.

‘What am I going to do?’ she asked. ‘I’m not exactly the person to ask.’

She didn’t look up again, so he touched the side of her cheek so that she would.

‘I can’t bear to look at myself in the mirror,’ she said.

They were the same then. She rested her face against his hand and her doing it made him feel strong. He bent down to her and lifted her face and kissed her cheek and she closed her eyes and put her hand on the back of his head to hold him and to keep the feeling of not being alone and being forgiven for a little while longer.

To be so lost, and then to find comfort, was strange for Lewis and he didn’t trust it, but it did feel good, that they should be kind to each other, and that being kind to each other – even with what they had done – was a precious thing.

Kit came through the trees, and the trees hid part of her view of the back of the house, and she could see them through the open door, but it wasn’t until she came onto the lawn that she saw more clearly. It was the feeling of intruding upon

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something that struck her before anything else, before she consciously thought how wrong it was that they should be holding each other like that. Alice was kneeling at his feet and it was that, and her hand on the back of his head and their faces touching, that was all wrong. She walked slowly towards them, without knowing she was still walking, and saw that they didn’t move and that Alice’s eyes were closed. She couldn’t see Lewis’s face because it was behind, but his hand stroked Alice’s hair and Kit thought: it’s all right, he’s comforting her – but then they turned and saw her and she knew it wasn’t all right. They were ashamed and shocked to be seen, and couldn’t hide it. Lewis looked straight at her and Kit stopped noticing Alice, because all she could see was Lewis and try to understand that he was involved somehow with her.

He got up and started to come towards her and she didn’t know what they could say, and didn’t want to say what was in her mind, so she turned away, turned and started to run away. He came after her and grabbed her wrist. He grabbed her wrist very hard and it hurt her and she was frightened. She had never been frightened of him before; it was because of what she had seen.

She pulled her arm away from him and he saw her fear and stopped coming after her. She was almost at the trees and she could have got away, but she stopped – because she had to know.

‘You and her? Is it true?’ ‘Yes.’

There was a short silence and then she was very distressed and crying out with it,‘But she’s your stepmother! It’s like she’s your – she’s your—’

‘No! She isn’t!’

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He shouted it because hearing that was intolerable, but she was frightened of him again and he started to talk just to say anything.

‘Kit, it was once.We didn’t mean to – I – she was—’

She turned away from him, and held on to herself with her arms.

He waited and was helpless, watching her back, as she fought with disgust, and when she turned back to him she was calm, and quiet, and closed up.