The Outcast (31 page)

Tamsin said something to Kit, but Lewis didn’t hear it, and Kit got up and walked away from the family. Lewis kept pace with her in the darkness and at the end of the room she stopped by the radio. She bent over it and started searching for a programme. She was about four feet away from him through the damaged window. Lewis glanced to his right, to where the man would reappear in a moment. Kit was frowning at the radio as she tuned it. She found theThird Programme and twid- dled the knob some more, and then Tamsin’s voice came down the room again and she looked up – and saw Lewis.

She fixed her eyes on him. She had changed. Lewis knew the man would come around the corner, but he couldn’t move; he just stood looking at how different she was and thinking that he had made her different.

Then Kit opened her mouth, slowly. She took a breath, ‘There!’

Lewis didn’t wait; he ran – before the policeman got around the house, before Dicky got down the drawing room to Kit, and put his arm around her, and asked her what she had seen, and held her, as they both looked out into the garden.

This time they did come after him. He hadn’t been in the woods very long before he heard movement behind him, and voices. He looked over his shoulder and there were lights, flicking as they crossed through the trees.

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He left the path and tried to go quicker, but it was too dark. He couldn’t see his arms in front of him or the trees around. It was like being blind, except that when he turned he could see the lights behind him.They could move fast because they could see, and he was like something blinded and couldn’t get away as quickly as they could follow him.They hadn’t seen him yet, but they were closer. He began to panic. He was running and falling and, when he fell, trying to get along the ground because it didn’t seem to make any difference if he was on his feet or not.

There were brambles and tree trunks and ferns and ditches and he didn’t know what he was putting his hands on.The people chasing him were closer still and he fell again, against a fallen tree, and forced himself lower to the ground and down further, as flat as he could to the ground, trying to keep still and quiet.

He could hear them coming.

He was frightened of them, but what was worse was that they were human, and comforting because of that.They knew where they were at least – they were part of something and sure.

They were getting closer.

He wished they’d find him, but that meant being held down again, it meant being hit again. He thought of being dragged out and he thought of being locked up, and he covered his mouth to stop from crying and to stop himself shouting out to them and he pushed himself lower into the ground.

A beam of light flashed past him. He could see a fallen tree, weirdly lit undergrowth, and then darkness again, more complete than before. He shut his eyes so he’d be in his own darkness.

They were talking to each other, quite relaxed and deter- mined, and not sure which way to go. They went silent for a moment and Lewis opened his eyes again and there were lights flashing around, but not near him. One of them said,‘Here!’

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It wasn’t the man just near Lewis, but another, and the man near Lewis carried on walking, and walked past him and his footfalls were heavy and close.

They moved off. They were talking, not always about him, sometimes about other things, normal things, and he envied them again and, when they had gone on, he was quiet and lay where he was.

He wiped his face, and found he’d been crying. To lie with your face in dirt and cry with fear and not even feel it because you were terrified – it didn’t seem like there was anything worse than that. And Kit looking at him the way she had.She had been hurt all of this time and he hadn’t known, and he hadn’t seen her and he was ashamed. He would be locked up and he couldn’t help her.

He got up.

He had been losing his balance in total darkness, but now he could see that ahead of him there was a difference between the ground and the trees and the sky. He went towards where the darkness wasn’t so complete. He didn’t know if it was the end of the woods or a gap in them – until he saw the river.

The air moved over his skin. The river was shining. It was shining because the sky was full of stars. He looked up at the stars. They gave a light that dimly washed over everything and wasn’t white like moonlight, and he could see the woods all around the clearing, and the water ahead.

The ten-year-old in him recognised it first; it’s the part of the river with the wreck in it, he thought. He walked over to the edge of the water, where he had stood and watched his mother swimming.

‘
Right then! . . . This dashed rudder. I’m going to get it
.
’

* * *

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The river was still, but he could hear water splashing. He felt water around him mixing with the hot air, and then less air and just water, and he put his hand out, but his hand was on the ground because he was down on his knees; he kept his eyes open and stinging sweat went into them and he felt the sand and the stones against his face. He could hear his own breathing.

He slept and he dreamed, but he didn’t know that he was sleeping, and when he remembered it later it never felt like a dream, but like something that happened to him, with all the clarity and beauty of truth, perhaps more clarity and beauty than that.

Lewis hadn’t seen his mother for nine years. He had put the part of himself that missed her away in his mind, and he had put away the part that remembered too, so that when she came out of the trees towards him it was a jolt of remembering her, more than surprise. It had been so very, very long since he had seen her and she walked towards him in her normal way. She was wearing a short-sleeved dress with a green background and pink. He must have been lying down because when she reached him she knelt. He saw her cheek and brown hair, clipped back. He looked into her face. He realised they both had the same coloured eyes. He hadn’t noticed before. There was enough light to see her by and he wasn’t sure why that was, because it was still night. It must have been all the stars, he thought.The sky was full of them.

She took his hand and her hands were firm, and he’d always loved that they were strong and not fragile. She held his hand and leaned over him, his mother, and looked at him. She was wearing her pearls and they swung forward minutely as she

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leaned down. She kissed him on the forehead.Then she sat back up and she was very happy and very normal.

She didn’t go; she waited with him and he was too tired to keep looking at her, even though he wanted to, and he shut his eyes. She held his hand a little longer and then she slipped her hand away from him, and when he woke up there was a lot of birdsong and a heavy dew and the early sun, just up, was coming sideways through the trees.

The sky was extremely pale blue.

He got up. He was cold and his clothes were uncomfortable from the sweat and the dew and the dirt from the woods. He stood by the water and listened to the birds singing; there were blackbirds and lots of other ones he didn’t know. He felt how uncomfortable he was, and how dirty, and then he got undressed and went into the water. The river was icy and he stopped himself from yelling and swam a little to keep moving, and then put his head under and came out and shook the water off and washed his face. He drank some of the river. It tasted wonderful and cold and soft. He hoped it was clean enough to drink and wouldn’t make him sick.

He picked up his shirt from the bank and washed it and then twisted the water out and hung it on a tree with the low sun hitting it. He put on the trousers and brushed off as much of the leaves and dirt from them as he could.The bandage on his arm was wet from swimming, but there was no blood coming through.

He felt hungry. He had his wallet in his back pocket, but he didn’t think it was a good idea to go into the village, or any village. He counted his cigarettes. There were six, not very many. He lit one and his fingers were wet and soaked into the paper.

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He was cold, so he went out to where it was sunniest, drying his hands some more on his trousers, and stood and smoked and thought what to do. The cold made everything bright and clear. He would have to go back. He would have to not get caught.

He put on his wet shirt and started back through the trees. The woods looked very pretty in the early morning and the air was fresh. His shirt began to dry on him as he walked.

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C
hapter
E
leven
‌

Lewis lay in the branches of an oak tree that was about fifteen feet into the forest and gave him a clear view of Dicky Carmichael’s house.

He was hidden, and the branch that he was on was wide enough for him to lean back against the trunk of the tree with his feet up and be comfortable and still be able to see. He was nervous to begin with that he’d be discovered, but he was screened by the tree and nobody came up to the top of the garden, which was unplanted and the day passed with spacing out his cigarettes and watching and thinking. He had to be in Kent for his National Service on Monday. It was Friday.

Not much happened in the early morning.The gardener came and weeded the beds near the house, which was something to look at for a while, and at about ten o’clock Dicky left. Lewis heard the front door and saw the Rolls turning in front of the house, and the back of it as it went down the drive. After that he was more relaxed and, apart from waiting to see Kit, didn’t think too much about the house, but let his mind go.

He thought about Dicky. He thought quite a lot about killing him, but also tried to work out how a man like that must think. He kept himself from picturing how Dicky might harm Kit because he needed to stay quiet and keep thinking sensibly, but

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he let himself think about other things: how Dicky would justify it to himself, how he would keep it a secret. He thought of Kit saying that she had never told anyone, and of how bad her bruises were. She was very proud, and he loved her pride, but it was a stupid pride if she hadn’t asked for help from anybody and her father had hurt her for a long time. He imag- ined her at school and wondered who she could have told and thought if she was like him, then there would be no-one. Telling hard things like that was impossible, he knew it was. He thought she might feel ashamed somehow and he hoped she didn’t. She was lovely and mustn’t feel that. He wondered what Dicky had done to Tamsin. He hadn’t seen Tamsin since the woods and he wasn’t particularly interested in her, but she didn’t deserve hurting and he hoped she wasn’t hurt badly. He remembered her light blue shoes lying in the dirt after she’d run away from him. He had been angry with her then, but it didn’t matter any more. She didn’t understand him any more than he understood her. He hadn’t been clear in his mind. He felt clearer now.

He heard the sound of a telephone ringing and a little while afterwards a van arrived and was sent round the back, and he heard the engine go away from him and then the sound of it in the stable yard. He lit his third cigarette and after a few minutes some workmen came round with the butler and Claire, and started to look at the damaged windows. Some of them were smashed and the lead bent in places. After feeling very con- spicuous, and putting out his cigarette against the tree, Lewis realised they weren’t going to see him and enjoyed being able to watch them. He regretted panicking and putting out his cigarette. He only had three more and it wasn’t lunchtime. He wished he hadn’t thought about lunch. He watched the glass

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being brought round and the panes being cut and fitted. He wanted to see Kit. He wanted her to come out. Then she did come out, as if she’d heard him.

She had a book and an apple and the kitten under her arm, but the kitten ran away immediately she put it down. She came up the terrace steps towards him and then stopped on the grass and lay down on her front and read her book, with her feet swinging occasionally and taking bites of her apple.The workmen carried on behind her and she lay in the sun reading, and she was about sixty feet away from Lewis and he could watch her.

She had shorts on, and a shirt that could have been part of her school games uniform, and her feet were bare. He loved her ears. He noticed the way she held her apple, in her whole hand, and took big bites out of it. He tried to see what she was reading, but couldn’t. She was tanned and smooth-looking and every part of her fitted with every other part. She had a prac- tical sort of body, he thought, the sort of body that looked better naked than with clothes; good with clothes, but even better without. He tried not to think about her being naked because she didn’t know he was there and it wasn’t fair. He shut his eyes. He wanted to stroke the soft backs of her knees. He wanted to find out what her hipbone felt like and put his hand there, and on her back to find out the slope of it into her waist, and the texture of her skin. He wanted to feel her hair again as it went softly into her neck, like a boy and not like a boy.

Not thinking about her body wasn’t working, so he opened his eyes and tried to think of something else. He thought about what he could do to help her and that made him remember she didn’t want his help. Maybe she had wanted it, but she didn’t want it now. She knew now, about Alice, and because of it she

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wasn’t going to love him and he had to forget about that. It wasn’t a new thought for him, that he wouldn’t be loved, but it did seem hard that Kit had loved him and now, knowing, didn’t love him any more. He wouldn’t let himself think about how things might have been between them if he were better. He knew he wasn’t all right for a girl like that. He would have been sweet to her, he would be gentle and quiet with her – but he had to remember she wasn’t for him. She wasn’t for him, but he needed to help her if he could.

Her house rose up behind her. Everything was different.The house had stopped being something that was good and secure and had become a bad place. It seemed to Lewis that the repairs that were being done to it were like repairs being made to a fortress in a break in the fighting.This was a break though, and the day was warm, and Lewis felt nothing very bad could happen for a while, so he watched Kit some more and loved watching her and let himself feel that.