The Outcast (26 page)

‘I do think you’re mean not coming for a picnic. I’m sure that little man has more important things to do than spy on you. Check gravel and so forth.’

Seeing Tamsin was more and more like being visited from another planet. She amazed him with her blitheness and her confidence and he envied her. He couldn’t think what her life must be like, or what her interest in him was, and while he appreciated being able to look at her, he felt no connection with her at all. He would have liked to be able to join in. He didn’t know how.

‘What do you do, mostly?’

She looked up,‘What do you mean?’

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‘You and most people. Do you stay at home? What?’ ‘I try to have fun.’

‘Meaning?’

‘Lewis – gosh, I don’t know. I see friends. I go up to town. There are parties. Theatre sometimes and all sorts of charity things.You know.’

He didn’t know, did he, he’d been in Brixton prison – he’d barely heard of Elvis, he had no idea what people did or where they went. There were great chunks of him missing. He wondered if she really questioned her life so little that being asked what she did produced genuine surprise, or if it was an affectation, and she actually had it all designed, her place in the blueprint for society. She handed him a sandwich and he sat down against the wall while she arranged herself in the passenger seat of the Austin and sipped her lemonade at him.

He didn’t eat. He looked at the way she sipped, and it was adorable, the way she did it, and he thought she was the sort of girl you were supposed to want. She was the kind of girl people married, were lucky to marry. He didn’t want to be her charity case.

‘Those things you do,’ he said,‘do you want to do them with me?’

She’d been asked out so many times, she didn’t pause at all. ‘You’re sweet, I don’t know what Daddy would say.’

‘I’ll ask him,’ said Lewis, and it seemed perfectly simple and the sort of thing people did, and she laughed.

‘I dare you!’

He walked over to the Carmichael house, not through the woods, but along the road, to arrive the proper way, and his feet were noisy on the gravel as he went up to the front door.

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He remembered playing on bikes with the others in the gravel and how they had made tracks through it, loving the skidding, and been told off by Preston and had to rake it all flat. Kit opened the door to him and he didn’t recognise her again, because he’d been remembering them all as children, and the sight of her was odd. She lit up when she saw him and he could feel her joy. He wondered what made her so happy.

‘Hello!’

‘Hey, Kit. Is your father in?’

‘Library,’ she said, and disappeared into the dark hall before he could say anything else. Like a shadow in the shadows, she led the way and knocked on the door.

‘Lewis is here,’ she said, and went, giving him a resentful glance that made him want to chase her and make her laugh.

He went into the library. Dicky was by the desk. ‘Well?’

There was nothing for it. Perhaps he hadn’t locked himself out of the normal world; perhaps Dicky would see that his intention was good. He’d given him a job, hadn’t he? And Lewis had stuck at it.

‘I wanted to ask you, I wanted to know – if I could take Tamsin out one evening.’

Dicky turned to face Lewis, taking a step towards him. ‘You think not burning anything down for a few days quali-

fies you as some sort of beau for my daughter?’ Lewis was taken aback. He thought about it. ‘Probably not, but I think she’d like to.’

‘You think she’d like to?’ ‘Yes.’

‘If you imagineTamsin’s interest in you is anything other than

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pity – altruistic pity – then you’re mistaken. She’s kind to people. She’s helped you. Don’t get above yourself.’

There was silence.

‘I expect you’re right,’ said Lewis. There was another silence.

‘Now would you mind getting out of my house?’

Kit hid around the corner as he came out of the study, but she was too angry just to let him go and she followed him out and caught up with him on the drive. He kept on walking and didn’t look at her, and she went along next to him in a rage.

‘Why did you let him talk to you like that?’ ‘You shouldn’t listen at doors.’

‘Why did you?’

‘Because he’s right,’ he said, still not looking. She could see he wanted to be away from her and it was horrible.

‘No, he isn’t! And anyway, you should be pleased. Tamsin’s not nearly so lovely as she thinks she is.’

He stopped and when he looked at her she knew she looked tearful and mean and she didn’t feel pretty or like a girl should look.

‘Put away your claws, Kit, it’s none of your business.’

She stopped and he walked on. He didn’t know he was hurting her, she thought. He didn’t do it on purpose.

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C
hapter
S
ix
‌

There was no let-up in the weather.There was no let-up in the heat, or the dryness, and the summer was empty, with no flowers left in it and just dust, and the fields being cut, and the dark green of the woods. It was very near the anniversary of Elizabeth’s death.

He was by the river. He was always there.The sky was white and pressing down and the slow, fat raindrop fell on his arm, and the feeling of it falling and the trickle of it were sickening. The water was very dark, and the woman in it was dead already this time, and it wasn’t his mother, it was Alice. She was dead, but she was looking at him, and he still couldn’t move in the hot day, and the heat was the thing that woke him.The closeness of the suffocating heat woke him, and when he did wake he was shivering and his face was wet and he thought it was sweat, but it wasn’t, he’d been crying in his sleep. He never cried normally, just in his sleep, and he could never remember what it felt like afterwards to cry like that. He wasn‘t crying now, but he was scared.

He sat on the side of the bed and he wiped his face and thought of Alice, and how frail she was, and that he’d always assumed she’d be there in her strange, brittle tenacity. He put the light on to check his watch. It was three o’clock and the

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window was black. He put the light out again and got up. He could get a drink. He was trying not to do that. He thought of Alice again, and was frightened.

He went out onto the landing, and wasn’t sure if he was dreaming he was doing it, or if he really was doing it. Her door was ajar and he went to the gap. He didn’t want to open it, he just wanted to check she was there, but he couldn’t see her through the gap and he stood listening to his heart beating and trying not to make a sound. He wasn’t going to open the door. He told himself he was being stupid; of course she was there, of course she wasn’t dead, why would she do a thing like that? But then he thought of her helplessness, and that she was unloved. He pushed the door open with one finger and prayed she’d be sleeping.

She was lying on her back, across the bed, with her body nearly all uncovered by the sheet and wearing her nightdress. Her mouth was open a little and her breasts rose and fell in shallow time with her breathing. She opened her eyes. He stepped back onto the landing.

He didn’t think she’d seen. He waited, out of sight, not daring to go back to his room. There was silence and then he heard her move, her body move on the sheet, and a whisper.

‘Lewis?’

He waited long minutes before moving, he waited until he could be sure she slept.Then he went back to his bed.

They didn’t see each other in the morning and he left for work before she got up. He understood people’s previously mysti- fying attachment to the world of work – it got you out of all sorts of things.

‘1949,’ said Phillips, and dumped another box on his desk.

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You are required to present yourself on Monday the 26th August . . . He picked up his pencil. Shooting a gun would be good, but he didn’t much fancy the prospect of killing anyone. He’d tell his father he was going at the end of the week. Gilbert wouldn’t be impressed; he had been a proper soldier with a just war to fight. Lewis pictured himself in a uniform, saluting, and being given a medal, and imagined Gilbert and Alice clapping and dressed up.Then he thought it more likely that, given a gun and a bad day, he’d find the urge to put a bullet through his own head irresistible, and get himself off their hands that way. He continued writing:‘80 lbs aggregate, £5 6s 4d . . .’

Leaving the quarry office, and driving home, was at first actu- ally joyful, with the road twisting down the hill in the sunny evening.There was relief and beauty in the country around him and in being away from his terrible desk. Then came the straighter part of the road, towards the village, and he would start to picture home, and Alice, and what she’d be doing, and he’d find himself driving slower and sometimes just stopping and waiting. He didn’t do that now; he made himself drive on and he hardly realised he was home already until he sawTamsin waiting at the bottom of his drive. He slowed down and looked at her, absurdly pretty and pale against the dark leaves. He imag- ined her walking out to meet him, waiting for him there, and wondered why.

As he got nearer to her, standing there in her bright summer dress, he felt more a part of the dark behind her than the light she stood in. She raised her gloved hand and waved to him. He stopped the car.

‘I thought you hadn’t seen me!’

‘I saw you.’ He left the engine running.

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‘It’s been ages.What have you been doing?’ ‘Working.’

‘Daddy said no, didn’t he?’ ‘Of course he did.’

‘Will you come for a walk with me?’ ‘Now?’

‘Unless you don’t want to, of course.’

He glanced up the drive, to his home – and Alice – and he cut the engine.

‘All right then.’

They walked along the verge a little and stopped at the stile into the field that ran along the road to the station. It was a long, narrow field, with a path worn through the grass up to the woods. The sun caught the trunks of the trees sideways and made them glow against their shadows, but the field was all in light, and golden.

Tamsin gave him her hand and stepped onto the stile. She climbed over, and carried on holding his hand and looked into his eyes.

‘Let’s go into the woods.’

Lewis felt the look. He wasn’t sure he should go anywhere with her.

‘All right,’ he said, and they walked up the field towards the trees.

He lit a cigarette and looked down as he walked, and she seemed happy to walk in silence for a while. He was far away from her in his mind.They reached the wood, and it was cooler between the trees. She walked with her hands behind her back, glancing sideways at him. He knew she was looking, and he knew she wanted him to think she was attractive, but there was

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nowhere to go from there and he didn’t want to get involved with it.

‘Don’t you like me any more?’ ‘You’re fine.’

There were trees all around them now. Tamsin stopped and leaned against the wide trunk of an oak tree. He stopped too, half turning to look back at her. She took off her shoes and her bare feet were neat and perfect like the rest of her. She undid the button on her glove and took it off, and then the other one, and she held them both and looked up at him, letting the wave of her hair fall forward. He dropped his cigarette and crushed it under his foot and looked at her standing there. He was begin- ning to feel angry.

‘I think you’ve gone off me,’ she said. ‘You used to think I was so pretty, I know you did.’

‘What do you want with me?’ ‘What on earth do you mean?’ ‘Why are you nice to me?’

‘I told you, I want to help you.’ ‘Help me what?’

‘Lewis, you’re—’

He saw her falter. He enjoyed it. ‘When’s your birthday?’ ‘What?’

‘When is it?’ ‘May.’

‘Twenty-one in May. Did you have a party?’ ‘Course, big one.Why?’

‘Lots of friends. At home?’ ‘Lewis?’

‘Was it at home?’

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‘Yes, it was at home! What are you asking me about it for?’ ‘I’m talking to you like people talk to each other. I’m having

a normal conversation like normal people—’ ‘But you’re not normal people, are you?’ ‘Aren’t I? Why aren’t I?’

‘Well, really! If you need me to tell you—’

No. He didn’t need her to tell him. She had her back to the tree. She seemed small against it and he took a step towards her.

‘Have you had a boyfriend?’

‘I’m twenty-one, don’t you think I’ve been out with men?’ ‘You wouldn’t want a boy, you mean?’

‘You’re not a boy.’ ‘Well, what am I?’

She – laughing,‘I should think you’re a problem!’

‘I’m a problem. I don’t like normal things. I can’t do things like normal people. I could take you to the pictures. I could buy you dinner somewhere.’

‘Silly, I don’t want you to.’

‘So what do you want? What exactly do you want,Tamsin?’ ‘I want to talk to you.’

‘Talk to me about what?’ ‘About things.’

‘Plays. Books.What?’

‘About, well – gosh, about your problems, I suppose. I want you to feel better.’

‘
You want me to feel better?
’ ‘Your mother—’

‘My mother drowned. It was nearly ten years ago. I was pretty much a mess for a while, but I’m all right now. What else?’

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‘Well—’

‘What else do you want me to feel better about?’ ‘Can we stop this?’

‘You don’t want to talk?’ ‘I do, but—’

‘Not about that? About what, then?’ ‘You know people say you killed her?’

She was smiling as she said it; she was leaning against the tree and looking up at him and smiling.

‘. . . What?’

‘People say you killed your mother. Didn’t you know? When you got so wild, running away and drinking, that’s what everybody said, that it was guilt for killing her. Didn’t you know?’

Lewis was quite still and lost.

‘I was ten years old. Sh – she drowned.’

He heard his own voice stupidly clumsy like a child’s and didn’t know if he was defending himself or making a confession.

‘She was swimming and she . . .’

Tamsin laid her hand on his arm and came up close to him. ‘Oh gosh, Lewis, I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have said anything.’