You (17 page)

He slipped again. Mud slapped against his trousers as he walked. Water pooled into her shoes. The river glittered, ribboning at the end of the field. Cecilia looked up and saw it, like a live entity waiting for them beneath the density of the trees. The shifting weight of him was beside her as he slithered and helped her stay upright. He skidded; he mildly cursed and laughed. Her pulse seemed to burn just below her ribcage.
Carpe noctem
, she reminded herself, gathering her resolve.

The tumble of the river rose like mist. The orange-lit house crouched across the field. She wondered whether she could hear it boom, then realised that it was silent beyond the river’s rush. Diana was in there waiting for her, she thought. Her mother. Elisabeth. All sealed from them.

She turned to him. The dampness of rock and chilled water lined the membranes of her throat.

‘There’s a little island,’ she said. ‘In spring it’s full of bluebells and wild garlic.’

‘It’s beautiful; so beautiful. Listen to the sounds. We could be by the sea.’

‘I think that at night sometimes.’

‘You come down here at night?’

‘Yes.’

‘On your own?’

‘Well yes. To think – I think about – people.’

The water threw a glow of foam where it fell over rock into rapid curves. It streamed past the island that was almost tethered to the bank, caught in a pausing spiral where its path was narrowest.

‘You can jump on to it from here,’ she said. She raised her voice above the flow. ‘I always land on that rock first, and then sit against the tree.’

He stood, a leaning angle bent towards the river, the stars and moon rocking on its surface.

He jumped. He leapt in two movements, on to the stone, on to the island.

She swallowed as he went: a streak shifting through the night away from her into the river, his shoe squeaking on the grass by the bank. She leaned as she stood, the wine rolling darkly in her head. She jumped.

‘Oh God,’ she said. She caught her shin on the stone, felt it clatter and tug; she tilted, then twisted herself upright and launched herself from the stone on to the island, tugging at grass as she landed.

‘Shit,’ she muttered.

‘Here,’ he said, standing and helping her. Water stormed around them, its surface close to their feet, its noise amplified.

‘God,’ said Cecilia.

He didn’t hear her. She feared she would vomit.

‘Sit,’ he said, clearly unaware that she had hurt herself, and she lowered herself beside him against the birch that grew there.

She swallowed. Her calf bone was ringing with soreness, layer washing over layer. Tears of simple pain had sprung to her eyes. Now they fell, invisible to him.

‘It’s a very mild, clear night,’ he said, his head tipped back against the tree as he looked at the sky.

She nodded. She said nothing. She could feel blood running through her tights.

‘We should go back, perhaps,’ he said.

‘No,’ she said. Her voice wobbled.

He glanced at her. ‘Are you all right?’ he said.

She paused. ‘My leg,’ she said.

‘Your leg?’

‘I – hurt it.’ Her breath was uneven. ‘On the rock.’

‘Cecilia,’ he said. ‘Where?’

‘Here.’

He lowered his face nearer her leg, widening his eyes in the darkness. He pulled out his handkerchief and laid it over her. He began to knot it. He stopped. ‘Tie it,’ he said. ‘Tie it tightly at the back.’

‘Oh God,’ she muttered.

‘Can you do it?’

‘Yes.’

‘We should go back,’ he said.

‘No,’ she said as the wound pulsed beneath his handkerchief.

‘Are you all right?’ he said in a concerned voice.

She nodded.

She couldn’t speak. The pain in her leg was so strong, her emotions towards him so overburdening, that she couldn’t regain her breath.

‘How is it now?’ he said, the water’s movement loud beneath them. There was cool river mist in her mouth, flecks of leaf or insect in the darkness, the sharpness of winter against her lungs. The grass was cold. Her leg was swelling. She shivered with an uncontrollable tremor.

‘It hurts,’ she said, and she was relieved when she said it, and tears flowed hotly over her skin. She averted her face from him, her hair obscuring her. She cried in silence with pain and the misery of longing.

‘Does it hurt still?’ he said. He was holding her arm.

‘No,’ she said. Her voice was a shameful squeak.

‘Cecilia?’

She was silent. Involuntary shivering still gripped her body. She was aware of it in the space of air between them.

‘I’m all right,’ she said. A sob rose through her, humiliating her.

He put his arm round her. ‘Cecilia,’ he said, ‘you’re hurt.’

‘No,’ she said.

‘We really ought to get back.’

She shivered more violently. His arm was curved over her shoulder. She was pressed against his ribcage.

‘No,’ she said, tears flattening over her cheeks. She lay her face against him.

‘You’re crying,’ he said, looking at her.

‘Sorry,’ she murmured. ‘Sorry.’

‘Does it still hurt?’

‘Yes. No.’

Her tears heated her face, scoring her skin with irritation.

‘Why are you crying?’ he said in a gentler voice.

‘Because –’ she said. ‘Because –’

She shook her head. Her hair was pushed upwards, rumpled against his arm as she moved. ‘I can’t say. I can’t say it to you.’

‘Can’t you?’

She shook her head.

‘Why?’

She was silent.

He said nothing.

She waited. She rested against him, breathing him in. She trembled still, unable to stop.

‘I think I understand,’ he said.

‘Do you?’ she said after a while.

‘I think so,’ he said with no detectable emotion.

She looked up at him. He gazed straight ahead. She looked again. He didn’t glance down at her. Her mouth was open; her face was prickling with the after-effects of tears, small starbursts of soreness tightening her skin. She could feel his pulse through her hair. She was aware of the smell of his neck, traces of others’ tobacco smoke, clean skin, mature male scents. He looked down at her for a fraction of time and pulled back from her slightly, jerking his body away from her. She shifted. She turned to him. He looked away. He turned back to glance at her and she murmured as their faces moved closer, and there was a noise from him, a vibration in his throat, the half-heard sound of relinquishment, and she pressed her mouth to his. For a moment, he was still. She drew in her breath.

His harder lips moved against hers. His stubble burned her. His cool mouth was on hers; she felt the edge of his tongue; she moved her mouth and she lay down, lay on the grass beneath him. She opened her mouth further, the inner surface of her lip catching his teeth, his tongue, his taste, and she felt the hardness of his body, the pain of his coat and weight against her, the animate scents of him.

‘No!’ he said, pulling his head away from her. He jolted upwards with a clumsy rearrangement of his body, hurting her hip. ‘Absolutely not.’

River air spiralled over her neck.

She rose from where she lay, her vision seeming to follow her with a delayed movement. She murmured in confusion, her hair falling over her cheek. Fragments of dead leaf stuck to her coat.

‘I’m so sorry,’ he said rapidly. He caught his breath. ‘Good God.’

‘No!’ said Cecilia.

‘I’m so sorry,’ he said, his voice higher, strained. ‘I – it’s unforgivable.’

‘It’s not!’ she said, propping herself awkwardly, holding his arms.

‘Absolutely –
unacceptable
,’ he said with an abrupt shaking of his head.

‘No. Please.’

He stood, his height an immense shadow above her. He bent over and reached firmly and almost roughly under her arms, making her stand. ‘I must take you back home,’ he said.

Thirteen

The Window Seat

When Dora opened the staircase door, she heard her baby’s cry as a keening blanketed by floorboards. The sound entered her brain with a hiss of panic. She ran up the stairs. He might have been crying since she had last looked in on him, she thought, but no one else would dream of extricating themselves from the warmth and music to negotiate their way through the corridors and check on him.

‘Dora . . .’ called someone as she tried to find a light above the staircase. She heard the crash of glass breaking.

‘Barnaby,’ she called, guided to his cot by his bee-shaped nightlight.

He was wet and hiccuping. She lifted him and pressed her cheek to the heat of his face.

‘Sweetheart,’ she murmured, stroking him.

He gasped against her neck. She kissed the mucus on his face, tasting the salt of his tears, murmuring apologies and comfort to him. He had wet through his nappy.

‘Dora!’ called Patrick up the stairs, his roar a distant vibration. ‘More glasses?’

‘Go away,’ she muttered, her mind automatically roaming the pantry in search of spare glasses and landing on enamel mugs whose spider remains she wiped as she peeled the sleepsuit from Barnaby. Cannabis smoke edged along the corridor into the room and she questioned its effect on babies. Perhaps it would make him drowsy, she hoped guiltily.

He held out his arms to her when she settled him back into his cot, initiating a chug of protest while the party thumped through the floor, and she moaned through clenched teeth, producing a sound of frustration that was, to her ears, satisfyingly demented. She repeated it in a less pleasing echo. She went back and stroked his head. He sat up. She considered taking him downstairs: an infant plump in a sleepsuit to hand around. She hesitated. She knew it would cause chaos.

Benedict was calling up the stairs now, hunting her down and demanding her. She pulled Barnaby to her chest and sat there rocking. All she wanted to do was to lie in the bath and hide from them all, breathing slowly.

Someone walked along the passage outside Barnaby’s room. Dora kept her head bowed, anticipating a lodger or Benedict, impatient for whatever it was he wished her to provide. There was a pause as the person negotiated the semi-darkness between the corridor and the bedroom, footfall muffled by the shufflings of the water tank.

‘Dora,’ came Elisabeth’s voice softly.

Dora heard it with a delay. It was so unexpected, so outside her sealed cavity of misery that it was momentarily unwanted. She emitted a murmur.

Elisabeth was blurred in the shadows. Barnaby stiffened, straightened his legs hard against Dora’s torso, and grinned.

‘He’s really rather sweet,’ said Elisabeth absently.

Barnaby began jiggling on Dora’s thighs, shifting his weight painfully from one side to another. He gurgled and laughed. He began to bounce.

‘Oh God. Not now,’ muttered Dora.

‘Poor darling,’ said Elisabeth in the rich old voice that recalled so many complexities.

Dora breathed slowly. Elisabeth’s presence was now filtering through to her, stinging her with an erotic charge and its accompanying pain.

‘Did you have to do this to yourself?’ said Elisabeth lightly.

‘It was – a mistake,’ said Dora, biting her lip at the word. ‘You know that. But I love him. So he wasn’t. Just wait a minute.’

She lifted Barnaby, hesitated, the instinct to put him in someone else’s arms forestalled in the presence of Elisabeth, and she went off to the bathroom where she dropped a Junior Disprin in a glass of water. Trembling, she fed Barnaby a full dose and then a dribble more. He licked his mouth, and let her stroke his forehead and lower him back into the cot. With uncharacteristic swiftness, he fell asleep.

Elisabeth looked at him and breathed through her nose with a cynical exhalation as if to say,
Really, what have you done?

‘Don’t,’ said Dora, kissing Barnaby’s cheek.

‘Don’t what?’

‘I know he put you off me.’

She heard her own statement, baldly expressed. The darkness covered her face.

‘And what of your own endless shilly-shallying, my darling? Your ladylike horror? Your fits of duty?’

‘It was my pregnancy that really put you off me,’ said Dora steadily.

‘Nonsense.’

‘Nonsense back – really,’ said Dora. ‘What did you say when you heard? When you
guessed
in fact? You said – Our coffin nail. Our exit strategy. This is a message to us.’

‘Well a torrid Sapphic liaison is barely compatible with domestic life as a mother of four. Of a newborn,’ said Elisabeth, spelling their situation out so that Dora cringed.

‘Much as I loved you. He’s a little older now,’ said Elisabeth, glancing at Barnaby. ‘One tends to forget and forgive when they’re sleeping sweetly.’

She took Dora’s arm and guided her to the wide window seat with its brown cushions home-sewn in early days, its curtains forming a hiding place to the children who had played houses when younger; and she laughed and kissed her.