The Outcast (14 page)

After breakfast he went upstairs and lay on his bed. He stared at the crack in the ceiling that he’d always stared at when he was little, that had been a river and a coastline and a cliff edge. It wasn’t any of those things; it was a crack in the ceiling and he wanted it to split apart and the house to fall into rubble.

He picked up his watch. It wasn’t yet ten o’clock. His room was cold and dim and he could hear rooks in the woods and a

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car drove by the house. He had two and a half hours until lunchtime and the afternoon after that and the endless night and breakfast and church and school and just empty waiting for something better that never happened.

He stood up. He took his coat and his birthday money and he left the house and walked to the station in the dead cold weather and bought a ticket to London.

He was very cold and frightened his father would come in the car to take him back, but he didn’t come, and the train arrived and Lewis got onto it.

He watchedWaterford station getting smaller as the train got faster, until he couldn’t see the station any more and was on his own and away from them.The suffocating feeling left him and he felt bright and fast and full of something good.

It started to snow, wetly, as he got off the train and he left the station and walked down towards the river and then along it. There were high buildings around him and the pavements shone with rain and melting snowflakes. It was almost dark now and bitter cold and his hair got wet with the snow and he felt connected and alive.There were people walking by and talking to each other and nobody paid him any attention. Black cars passed him; their tyres spattered the dirt and slush.

On one side of him was the water and all the boats on it, moving slowly with coal on them and covered loads and men standing at the front of them with lights. On his other side was the street and the buildings. He was surprised when he saw the Houses of Parliament and Westminster Bridge, and it seemed amazing to him that all of these things and places he recognised were just there in front of him, laid out for him to look at.

He walked alongWhitehall and intoTrafalgar Square and the

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city was vast and battered and mysterious.There were cars and people, but also a feeling of giant brokenness that was romantic. He walked to the National Gallery and stood in front of it. It was unlit, and he pictured all the paintings on the walls in the dark inside and it was a nice thought. He saw big dark rooms with Caravaggios and Constables and huge canvases, crowded with angels. He carried on walking, past the gallery and up Charing Cross Road and saw the theatres ahead of him. There were more people around him now; people in evening dress outside the theatres and others in coats and hats pushing past. There were women wrapped in furs and the sound of metal tipped heels on stone as they climbed out of taxis, and the noise of conversation. He thought the plays must be about to start because the pavements and the steps to the theatres were crowded. He kept his head down, suddenly thinking he might see some friend of his father and have to explain himself. He turned off the main road into a street that was much narrower

and dark.

The small dark street felt completely different. Behind were lights and taxis and people you might know and ahead it was just strange to him. There were people and pubs, but they looked different and even the sound of them was different.

He looked at the people drinking and standing in the street talking, and just the way they talked was incredible to him; he couldn’t understand them half the time. It was like another country – or a mess of other countries – and he passed coffee bars with dirty windows you could hardly see through, that were full of people. He looked at all the women walking around without men and it took him ages to realise they were prostitutes. He’d heard about prostitutes, he knew there
were
prostitutes – and he even knew some of the things they did for you – but he just didn’t

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expect to see them walking about on the same streets. He was shocked and then delighted with it.This was real life and he could just get on a train and be in it and nobody knew him here.

He walked up and down the streets; Lisle Street, Old Compton Street, Frith Street, Greek Street, and he tried to remember where he was, but really only knew that it was the roughest thing he’d ever seen and that he loved it. He stopped at the end of a street, not knowing which way to go, and saw a black unmarked doorway on the corner opposite. Some people stopped by it and a panel slid aside for the unseen doorman to check who was there, then the door opened, letting them in, and closed quickly behind them and Lewis forgot about going anywhere else and stayed, watching.

The rain was dripping down the back of his neck and he was very cold and shaking with it. He didn’t want to go home. Some more people knocked and the panel slid back again and when the door opened Lewis heard music – jazz trumpet and drums – and he crossed the road, quickly, towards the sound. He tried to get close enough to the people so that he’d look as if he was with them, but the door closed in his face and he felt desperation.

He had been too long on the wet streets in the dark. He didn’t know where he was, he didn’t know what to do next and home was drawing him and mocking him in his child’s attempt at escape. He should have had a stick with a handkerchief on the end, he should have had boiled sweets in a paper bag in his pocket.

Then the panel in the black door scraped open. Lewis looked for eyes, but saw only darkness.

‘Come on then’, said a reluctant voice.

The door opened. Lewis stepped inside.The noise and warm

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smoke-filled air touched him and he looked for the person behind the door, but glimpsed only a white shirt and crooked bow tie. He smelled whisky and was transported, briefly, to his father’s chair at home. Then he started down the stairs, forgetting.

The walls were painted black, and peeling. Lewis could see the end of a bar at the bottom of the stairs and people’s legs and a woman’s green dress, glittering, as she climbed onto a bar stool. The noise made it easier – nobody was watching him – and when he got to the bottom of the stairs he stopped. There was a band playing, and a crowd at the bar, but it was still early and there were empty tables and a damp chill in the air.

Lewis tried to get to the bar, hunching deeper into his coat and feeling in his pocket for his birthday money. He had to turn sideways and put his back to the woman in the green dress to do it, looking down, trying to get served and be invisible at the same time.

‘Do you mind,’ said the green-dress woman and Lewis saw he’d pushed her arm and was going to apologise when the barman saw him.

‘How old are you?’

The barman was black and spoke with an accent and Lewis stared at him blankly a moment before remembering to speak.

‘Eighteen.’

‘You want to get me into trouble? When’s your birthday?’ ‘December.’

The green-dress woman laughed and the barman smiled a big smile and looked at her.

‘All right, Miss Jeanie?’

‘All right, Jack,’ said the woman.

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‘What’ll it be?’ ‘Gin.’

‘Gin and?’

‘Gin. Please.’

Jack poured the gin into a short glass and pushed it across the bar.

‘Thank you.’

Lewis handed him money and hoped it was enough. Jack put his change down on the bar and turned away to serve some- body else. Lewis looked down at his drink. He wasn’t used to glasses. He drank half of it straight down. His fingers still hurt with coldness and he looked around at the band and at the other people and waited for the gin to reach him.

The band was a five-piece jazz band, playing songs Lewis knew from his childhood, but almost unrecognisable. It was like
Alice in Wonderland,
things were the same but different. The drummer was sweating and lit by a white light, and Lewis had never seen anyone that age sweating like that, like they’d been cross-country running, and never seen a white light filled with dust and smoke, and never seen a saxophone or people dance the way the couple by the stage were dancing.

He finished his drink. His hand was shaking, but not with cold or fear, just trembling with all the new things, and he had to concentrate hard to keep from smiling and to keep from betraying himself. He felt braver now and turned back to the bar. It was much more crowded since Lewis had come in; Jack was busy, putting drinks onto a tray the waitress was holding. Lewis waited and looked at the bottles behind the bar and the mirror behind them and the people reflected.

He saw the woman in the green dress. She was next to him. They looked as if they were together. She was looking down,

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getting cigarettes from her bag, which was green like her dress. Her skin was very pale and she had dark copper hair, piled up, with a diamond clip. Seeing her in the mirror was like watching a painting or a film and Lewis was absorbed in it and in looking at the woman. She lifted her head suddenly – turning to the boy next to her, and Lewis realised she was looking at him.

‘So what’s the story?’ she said.

She was close to him. She had painted lips. ‘A kid like you.What are you doing here?’ ‘I’m sorry—’

‘Why?’

‘You want me to leave.’ ‘Did I say that?’

Jack leaned across the bar to him. ‘Another?’

Lewis nodded. Jack took his glass and the woman turned her eyes on Lewis again.

‘My name’s Jeanie Lee.What’s yours?’ ‘Lewis.’

‘Lewis what?’

‘Lewis Aldridge.’ Lewis had a sudden picture of it in ink, at the top of essays at school, but she didn’t seem to know it was a child’s name, she didn’t laugh.

‘You were looking at me, Lewis Aldridge. Do you always look at women like that?’

‘Like what?’ ‘Dirty.’

He couldn’t believe she’d said it. He tried not to look as shocked as he felt. He didn’t know if he had looked at her like that or if he should apologise. She patted his cheek and he was embarrassed and didn’t know how to feel about it.

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‘Don’t worry about it, sweetie. It’s not rude dirty, it’s good dirty.’

She came near to him, scrutinising his face, as if she were counting the rings on a tree trunk.

‘You’re just a baby,’ she said.

Lewis wasn’t breathing. She was very close.Then she picked up her glass.

‘I need to see some people. Don’t go away,’ she said.

She turned away from him and started talking to a short wide man who looked like he slept in his suit. After a moment they both went into the back.

Jack put the new drink down in front of Lewis and he drank it quickly. He was still reeling from her talking to him and touching his face and calling him dirty. Jack carried on serving customers, shaking hands with some and calling others ‘sir’ and switching back and forth easily. Lewis sat at the bar waiting for Jeanie and thinking about women.

He thought of Tamsin Carmichael, and her prettiness was familiar and he knew all about it. It was to do with her coolness and the way she looked just like the girl you imagined yourself with. He’d thought about Tamsin a lot, because of course he would, but there was something obvious about wanting her, and he’d always been able to want her when he felt like it and forget her the rest of the time. He knew this made no sense because in real life she’d never have anything to do with him, but in his mind her prettiness was something he could walk away from. He thought of one of the master’s wives at school who had been a bit of a pin-up for the older boys until she got pregnant. Lewis had never seen what it was about her. He thought about actresses and people’s mothers, and how with people’s mothers they weren’t usually like women, but

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sometimes were; and it was unsettling and much easier if they weren’t.

So Tamsin Carmichael was definitely a girl, and Mr Stevens’s wife was definitely a woman, but this woman, this green-dress Jeanie Lee, she was nothing like either of them. She wasn’t like people’s mothers, she wasn’t young or old, but she was beautiful. She’d asked him not to go away. He got another drink and waited for her, like she’d asked, and missed his train home and didn’t care. Home seemed entirely distant and unreal and the music was very loud and the crowd thick and moving around him.

Finally Jeanie came out. He couldn’t stop looking at her. He didn’t try. She crossed the room to a table which had been empty all night. Her table, Lewis thought. She sat down. She looked up and met his eye as if she’d been waiting to do it, and gestured him over.

‘Here – take this,’ Jack handed him a soda water in a tall glass and Lewis took it to her, feeling conspicuous and strange.

‘Well, sit,’ she said, and he did.

The band was playing Cole Porter tunes and Lewis gripped the remains of his gin in his hand and tried not to stare at her. He knew he should say something.You were supposed to say things to girls. He didn’t know what.

Her eyes were restless, looking past him at somebody, and he tried to think of conversation and failed. It didn’t matter though, because she got up almost immediately and spoke to some people and when she sat down again she scanned the crowd like before, and Lewis might as well not have been there. She said a few things to him, not paying much attention, and when people stopped at the table and interrupted her she seemed happy to be, and never carried on talking to him or apologised.

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It got late. She was the one who had wanted him to wait for her. She was the one who’d wanted him to sit with her and spoken to him so nicely like that, acting as if she liked him . . . He was hungry and he’d drunk too much and missed his train, and he didn’t know what he was doing here anyway.

‘What’s up, baby boy?’ ‘Nothing. I have to go.’ ‘Where to?’

‘It’s late.’

‘So where’s home?’ ‘It doesn’t matter.’ ‘Yes, it does.’

‘It doesn’t matter. I’m going.’ ‘Don’t get up.You’re angry.’ Looking down,‘No, I’m not.’

He knew it was crazy, how could he be angry? She didn’t owe him anything, he didn’t even know her and he wasn’t anyone. ‘Yes, you are. You’re jealous.’ She laughed and leaned in towards him and was gentle.‘Don’t be jealous. I have to talk to people. It’sTeddy’s place, my brother, it’s sort of my place. Baby