After You'd Gone (27 page)

'I'd love to move in with you.'

His heart lifted with relief and happiness, and he leant forward to kiss her. Just as his mouth reached hers, she said, 'But . . .'

He pulled back to look at her again. 'But what?'

'I think you know what I'm going to say.'

For the next few seconds he ran through everything he could think of. 'What? I've already got rid of the futon. What is it? The decoration? The furniture? The axolotl? Tell me and I'll change it.'

'No, no, it's not the house. If I'm going to move in, we have to tell your father about us.'

John leant back into his seat. Since that drive back from the Lake District almost three months ago, his father hadn't been mentioned at all. He'd been coasting along under a ridiculous illusion that things could stay like this - him perfectly happy and in love and his father suspicious about how he was spending his evenings and weekends, but nothing more. He suddenly saw how difficult it had been for Alice, harbouring the knowledge of this problem but saying nothing to him. He was angry with himself for the level ?f his self-deception, causing her all this pain and uncertainty while he hid his head in the sand.

She laid her hand on his arm. 'John, the last thing I want to do is to upset things between you and your father. ' He saw that her eyes were filling with bright tears and that she was struggling fiercely with herself not to cry.
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broke his heart but he was unable to speak. 'But don't you see?' she continued, the tears spilling down her cheeks now. 'How can I move in if he doesn't know? What if he calls round? What if he rings and I answer the phone? He's your father. We can't live together without him knowing, and I can't move in with you if you are denying my existence to him.'

He pulled her towards him and kissed her face repeatedly,

licking the salt from his lips. 'Don't cry, Alice. Please don't cry. I'm so sorry I've been so crap about this. I'll tell him tomorrow. I promise. He'll be fine about it, really he will. Everything' s going to be all right.'

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When Elspeth returns to the house at four, she can hear the noise from the end of the drive: Alice is screaming at the top of her voice. Elspeth hurries down the path around the side of the house and opens the back door. Ann is near hysteria - clutching the edge of the kitchen table - and Alice, her hair all disarrayed and looking oddly conventional in a white shirt and school skirt, is shrieking. 'Don't you ever, ever tell me what to do!'

Elspeth shuts the door firmly and the noise stops as they both turn to look at her. 'What,' she says, 'is going on? Do you realise that people on the road can hear you, Alice?'

'I don't care!' Alice weeps and storms from the room. She crashes into the sitting room and a few seconds later they hear the piano lid being slammed open and the opening chords of a Chopin waltz banged out violently and very fast.

Elspeth turns to Ann and raises her eyebrows. 'Elspeth,' Ann begins, 'something awful has happened.'

The seriousness of her tone, the whiteness of her face makes Elspeth's heart stall. 'To . . . to Alice?'

'Yes.'

'What is it?' Already Elspeth's mind is running along pos sibilities - drugs? police? expelled from school? pregnancy?

'Not really to her . . . It hasn't· happened yet, at least I

don't think so . . . but the fact is it might . . . and it could be serious . . . serious trouble if it does . . . and I don't know how to tell her without her knowing why . . . I don't know how to stop it. ' ·

'Ann,' says Elspeth sharply, 'what is it that's happened?' 'Alice is . . . his son has fallen for Alice.'

Elspeth is about to ask whose son for God's sake, but the realisation hits her as soon as she opens her mouth. 'I see,' she says instead and sits down at the table.

Ann darts to her side, fidgeting with nerves. 'Elspeth, you've got to help me. You've got to help me stop . . . this happening. '

Elspeth turns and surveys her daughter-in-law. 'Don't you realise,' she says, 'that if you tell Alice not to do something it will more than likely make her go ahead and do it? Don' t you see that? Do you understand your own daughter so ill, woman?'

Elspeth goes into the sitting room where Alice is bashing on the piano and takes a firm hold of Alice's hands. 'That's enough of that, missy.'

'Don't you start ordering me about as well,' Alice cries, raising her red, streaked face to Elspeth's.

Elspeth sits next to Alice on the piano stool, and continues to hold both of Alice's trembling hands in her own. 'If you don't learn to curb this temper of yours, Alice Raikes, you'll one day hurt someone you really love,' she says, beginning to stroke her right palm soothingly up and down Alice's taut back. 'What a lot of fireworks over nothing. I'm not ordering you about. That is no way to treat a musical instrument, as you well know.'

The ends of Alice's hair brush the keys as she wipes the tears from her face. Elspeth holds up her left hand - spanned out - palm to palm against Alice's, lifelines crossing, finger to finger. 'Look at that,' she says. Alice looks. Her fingers extend

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above Elspeth's by the length of a whole metacarpal. 'What big hands you have.'

'All the better to play my scales with,' Alice mutters. 'Tell me, ' says Elspeth after a while, 'do you like this

Andrew boy? Do you really like him?'

Alice shrugs non-committally. 'He's all right.' 'That's not what I asked.'

'But that's not the point, ' says Alice, flaring up again indignantly.

'I would say it's very much the point. Whether he's worth all this anger and energy. Whether you really want him or not. '

Alice says nothing, sullenly jiggling her leg. 'Well?' Elspeth persists.

'He's all right,' Alice repeats. 'And nothing more?'

'No,' she admits finally, 'nothing more. '

'Good. ' Elspeth releases Alice's hands from her grasp and says, 'Now play me something nice.'

Alice's hands hover over the keyboard for a few seconds. There is a slight click as her clipped nails hit the ivory keys and then she begins to play.

He leaves at ten in the morning. Alice waves him off from the front door, 'Good luck!' she calls after him. john pulls a face.

Since getting up, they have had a forced jollity about them, both of them joking and chatting as normal, pretending that what john has to do today is not that serious at all, just another visit to his father. After his car has pulled away, Alice clears away the breakfast things, has a bath, takes a long time drying her hair and goes across the road to buy a newspaper. She can't settle at anything: she tries to read a book for a while but the words on the page jump about, and no matter how many times she rereads the opening paragraphs, she cannot muster enough interest in the characters to carry on concentrating. She keeps wondering what's happening with John. He'll have arrived by now. Has he told him yet? Will he tell him straight away or wait until they've been to the synagogue? What will he say? Will he be OK about it? Will he be angry? She flicks through the paper and reads the film reviews. At one o'clock she phones Rachel and leaves a distracted message on her answering-machine. What will he do if his father forbids him to carry on seeing her?

She decides to go out. Leaving John a note on the kitchen table in case he should come back while she's not there, she

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wanders into Camden Market. The streets are packed with tourists, teenagers with lurid hair and ethnic clothes, and dealers whispering, 'Grass? E? Acid? Anything?' The air is thick with joss-sticks and patchouli oil and the canal banks are full of people sitting in the sunshine, dangling their legs over the water. She watches a young woman with cropped blonde hair have her belly button pierced. She buys a jumper with bright yellow and blue stripes that barely covers her midriff: she wears it home, stuffing the one she came out in into the carrier-bag the stall-holder gives her.

John still isn't back when she finally returns. There is a message on the answerphone from Rachel: 'Alice? It's me. Are you there? Pick up the phone . . . You're not there? OK. Just wondering how the big confession went. Call me soon. Bye.'

She feeds the axolotl, the way John has shown her: dangling a scrap of prawn from plastic tweezers in front of its snubbed nose. 'Come on,' she murmurs to it, 'aren't you hungry today?' It looks straight ahead, mournfully, and just when her arm is beginning to ache seriously, it flashes forward and seizes the prawn scrap from the tweezers in one abrupt gulp.

At about four she hears John's key in the lock. She leaps on to the sofa and affects a relaxed position, as if she's been lying there reading all afternoon.

'Hello?' he calls. 'Hi.'

He comes in through the sitting-room door and gives her a weak smile. He looks exhausted and drained. She gets up, goes over to him and hugs him. He rests his forehead on her shoulder.

'Come and sit down, ' she says, peeling his jacket off his back and pushing him towards the sofa. 'Do you want a cup of tea?'

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He knits his brows. 'Um. I'd rather have a whiskv.'

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She pours him a double, spilling a few drops on the table, and hands it to him, standing in front of him. He takes a swig and, putting his arms around her middle, buries his head in her exposed midriff. 'I like your jumper,' he says, his voice muffled.

She strokes his hair. 'I bought it today. I was so worried about you I had to go shopping. How was it? Do you want to tell me now or later?'

'We-ell, ' he says slowly, and she gets the feeling he is keeping his face buried in her stomach so that he doesn't have to look at her, 'it was no worse than I thought it would be.'

'That bad, eh?'

He nods, 'Yes. Just about. ' 'John, I'm sorry.'

His arms around her tighten. She lets her fingers stray through his hair.

'Alice,' he says, 'you've got to learn that none of this is your fault. You do know that, don't you?'

'I suppose so, but I can't help feeling responsible, can I? I mean, if it weren't for me-'

'He'll come round, ' he interrupts, 'once he's had a few days to think about it.'

They're both silent for a moment. Alice cannot bear to see

him crushed and hurt like this, and feels incensed. 'But what did he say? Does he hate me?'

'Of course he doesn't hate you. He's going to love you.' 'We're going to meet?' she says to the top of his head,

alarmed.

'Well, yes, one day. Not yet, maybe. But when he's got more used to the idea, I'll take you to meet him. He'll love you when he knows you.' He sounds grim, determined to convince himself.

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'But what did he say?' she persisted. 'You don't really want to know.' 'Oh. '

She pulls away from him, walks to the back window and looks out into the garden, twining and twisting her fingers. It is beginning to get dark and the trees are being tossed by the wind. The reflection in the window has projected the room into the cold , dark garden. Everything is reversed and in it John is looking at her over the back of the sofa.

'Alice?'

'Yes?' She doesn't turn round, watching him instead in the reflection.

'Talk to me, please. Don't go silent on me. Tell me what you're thinking. '

She shrugs, as if to free herself of a stiffness in her neck. 'I don't know. I don't know.'

'What don't you know?'

'I don't know . . . I don't know ifl like not knowing what he said.'

'What do you mean?'

'Well . . .' Alice wonders what she does mean. She feels unbelievably confused, her thoughts all whirled in a tangle. 'I suppose I mean . . . I find it astonishing that it matters to him so much, but how can I ever hope to understand it if you won't tell me?'

He doesn 't reply straight away. She sees from the reflection that he sits on the sofa for a few seconds then he stands and comes across the room, slipping slightly in his socks on the bare boards. He takes her firmly by the shoulders and turns her round to face him. 'Alice, I . . . ' Then he stops. He smooths his palm over her forehead, then rests it in the curve of her neck. 'It's difficult to explain,' he says, in a lower tone of voice. 'To tell you what he said might be . . .' He stops again and takes

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a deep breath. 'You see, I can kind of understand, after my lifetime of conditioning, where he's coming from. Do you see what I mean?' he asks her.

She nods impatiently. 'Yes. But, John, why don't you just tell me what he said?'

'Because . . . because I'm afraid it would sound ridiculous and divisive . . . and . . . and extreme to you.'