Believing the Lie (34 page)

“A quarter of an hour, I expect.” Deborah tried to sound jolly: nothing to fear from me. “It’s the drawing room I’m interested in, actually. There’s good ambient light and some background interest as well.”

Reluctant
didn’t do justice to the manner in which Alatea admitted Deborah into the house. Deborah could feel tension virtually oozing from the woman, and she was forced to wonder if Alatea had a man other than her husband inside somewhere, playing at Polonius behind a convenient arras.

They went towards the yellow drawing room, passing the main hall, whose sliding doors were closed. These revealed more impressive panelling along with windows combining translucent glass and stained glass fashioned in the shape of red tulips and green leaves. Someone, Deborah decided, could indeed have been lurking in that room, but she couldn’t imagine who it might be.

She made light chat. The house was remarkable, she told Alatea. Had it been featured in any magazines? The Arts and Crafts movement was so clean and sympathetic, wasn’t it? Was Alatea interested at all in a documentary about the restoration of this building? Had she been approached by any of the myriad television programmes that featured period homes? To all of this, Alatea’s answers were monosyllabic. Bonding with the woman was not going to be a simple matter, Deborah concluded.

In the drawing room, she switched to another topic. How did Alatea like living in England? It had to be very different from what she was used to in Argentina, Deborah expected.

Here, Alatea looked startled. “How do you know I’m from Argentina?”

“Your husband told me.” Deborah wanted to add, Why? Is there a problem with your being from Argentina? but she did not. Instead, she examined the room. The object was to get Alatea over to the
bay window where the magazines were, so Deborah took a few shots of prospective areas in which interviews could occur, easing over in that direction.

When she got there, though, the first thing she saw was that
Conception
was gone from the fan of journals. This was going to make things tricky but not impossible. Deborah took a photo of the two chairs and the low table in front of the bay window, adjusting for the light outside so as to show both interior and exterior equally. She said as she did so, “You and I have something in common, Mrs. Fairclough.” She looked up from her camera and offered a smile.

Alatea was standing by the door as if ready to bolt. She gave a polite smile and looked supremely doubtful. If they had something in common, it was clear she hadn’t a clue what it was, aside from being women who were, at the moment, standing in the same room of her house.

Deborah said, “We’re both trying for a baby. Your husband told me. He saw I’d seen the magazine.
Conception
?” She added a helpful lie, “I’ve been reading it for ages. Well, for five years now. That’s how long Simon and I—that’s my husband—have been trying.”

Alatea said nothing to this, but Deborah saw her swallow as her eyes moved to the table where the magazine had lain. Deborah wondered if she’d removed it herself or if Nicholas had done so. She wondered, too, if Nicholas worried about his wife’s state of mind and state of body as Simon worried about her own.

She said, as she took another photo, “We started out au naturel, Simon and I, hoping that nature would take its course. We went from there to monitoring. Everything from my monthly cycles to my daily temperature to the phases of the moon.” She forced a chuckle. It wasn’t pleasant to reveal this sort of thing to anyone, but Deborah saw the importance of doing so and, even, the potential for comfort that such a revelation could bring. “Then, there were the tests,” she said, “which Simon less than adored, I can tell you. After that were the endless discussions about alternatives, visits to specialists, and talks about the other possibilities for parenthood.” She paused in her photographing to say to Alatea with a shrug, “Turns out I’ll never carry a baby to term. Something’s wrong with
the way I was manufactured. We’re onto adoption now, or something else. I’d like surrogacy but Simon’s not on board.”

The Argentine woman had come into the room, closer now but still at a distance. Her colour had altered, Deborah saw, and she was clasping and unclasping her elegant hands. Her eyes were bright with unshed tears.

Deborah knew what she was looking at. She’d felt the same for years. She said quickly, “I’m terribly sorry. As I said, I saw the magazine when I was here earlier. Your husband said you and he were trying. He said you’d been married two years, and…Mrs. Fairclough, I’m
very
sorry. I hadn’t meant to upset you. Please. Here. Sit down.”

Alatea did sit, although not where Deborah would have wished it. She chose the inglenook of the fireplace, a padded seat just beneath a stained glass window that sent light streaming onto her crinkly hair. Deborah approached her but remained a safe distance, saying, “It’s difficult. I know. I actually lost six before I found out the truth about my body. They might be able to do something about it someday, all things about science considered. But by then I’ll probably be too old.”

A tear streaked down Alatea’s cheek. She adjusted her position, as if this would keep her from shedding more tears in front of a relative stranger.

Deborah said, “I find it odd that something so simple for some women is a complete impossibility for others.”

Deborah kept expecting the other woman to respond in some way other than with tears, to admit to a fellow feeling somehow. But Alatea did not, and the only thing left was for Deborah to admit the
why
behind her intense desire to have a child, which had to do in part with the fact that her husband was disabled—
a cripple
, he called himself—and in part with what that disabling had done to his sense of himself as a man. But she had no intention of going to that place in conversation with Alatea Fairclough. It was difficult enough admitting it to herself.

So she settled on another course altogether. She said, “I think this room has better possibilities for a filmed interview than what I saw
outside. And actually, where you’re sitting is a wonderful location, because of the light. If you wouldn’t mind, I’d like to take a quick photo of you there to illustrate—”

“No!” Alatea leapt to her feet.

Deborah took a step backwards. “It’s for—”

“No! No! Tell me who you are!” Alatea cried. “Tell me why you’re really here! Tell me,
tell
me!”

BRYANBARROW
CUMBRIA

T
im hoped it was Toy4You when his mobile chimed because he was sick with the waiting. But it was bloody stupid Manette. She acted as if he’d done nothing to her. She said she was ringing to talk about their camping adventure. That was what she called it—an
adventure
—as if they were going to Africa or something and not where they would probably end up, which was in someone’s bloody paddock, where they’d be cheek by jowl with sodding tourists from Manchester. She said cheerfully, “Let’s get the date into our diaries, shall we? We’ll want to go before it gets much later in the year. We can cope with the rain, but if it snows, we’re done for. What d’you say?”

What he said was, “Why don’t you leave me alone?”

She said, “Tim…,” in that patient voice adults tended to use when they thought he was barking, which was most of the time.

He said, “Look. Drop it. All this bollocks about you ‘care about’ me.”

“I
do
care about you. We all care about you. Good grief, Tim, you’re—”

“Don’t give me that shit. All you ever cared about was my father and don’t you think I know that? All
anyone
cared about was that filthy bastard and he’s dead and I’m glad so leave me alone.”

“You don’t mean any of that.”

“I bloody well do.”

“No. You don’t. You loved your father. He hurt you badly, but it wasn’t really about you, dearest, what he did.” She waited, as if for a reply from him, but he wouldn’t give her the satisfaction of hearing
anything
in his voice. She said, “Tim, I’m sorry it happened. But he wouldn’t have done it if he could have seen any other way to live with himself. You don’t understand that now, but you will. Truly. You
will
someday.”

“You don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about.”

“I know this is difficult for you, Tim. How could it be otherwise? But your father adored you. We all love you. Your family—all of us—want you to be—”

“Shut up!” he screamed. “Leave me alone!”

He ended the call with his insides raging. It was her tone, that bloody soothing, motherly tone of hers. It was what she said. It was everything in his life.

He threw his mobile onto his bed. His body felt strung as tight as part of a high-wire act. He needed air. He went to the window of his bedroom and forced it open. It was cold outside but who bloody cared?

Outside across the farmyard, George Cowley and Dan came out of their cottage. They were talking, heads bent as if what they were saying to each other was of deadly importance. Then they approached George’s wreck of a car: a Land Rover thoroughly crusted with mud, not to mention sheep shit, which was thick in its tyre treads.

George opened the driver’s door and hauled himself inside, but Daniel didn’t go round and get in as well. Instead, he squatted next to the door and fixed his attention on the pedals and his father’s feet. George spoke and gestured and worked the pedals. Up, down, in, out, whatever. He climbed out of the wreck and Dan got in, in his place. Dan worked the pedals in a similar fashion while George nodded, gestured, and nodded some more.

Dan started the ignition then, as his father continued to talk to him. George closed the door and Dan rolled down the window. The vehicle was parked in such a way that he didn’t need to reverse it to set it going, and George gestured round the triangular green. Dan set off. First time with the clutch, the accelerator, and the brakes, he went in fits, starts, and lurches. George ran alongside the vehicle like a third-rate carjacker, shouting and waving his arms. The Land Rover got ahead of him, lurched, and stalled.

George dashed over, said a few words into the driver’s window, and reached inside. Watching this, Tim reckoned the farmer was going to give Dan a smack on the head, but what George did was ruffle his hair and laugh and Dan laughed as well. He started the Land Rover again. They went through the process a second time, this time with George remaining behind and shouting encouragement. Dan did a better job and George punched the air.

Tim turned from the window. Stupid gits, he thought. Two lame bastards. Like father like son. Dan’d end up just like his dad, walking in sheep shit somewhere. Loser, he was. Double loser. Triple. He was
such
a loser that he needed to be wiped from the face of the earth and Tim wanted to do it. Now. At once. Without a pause. Storming from the house with a gun or a knife or a club, only he had none of these and he needed them so badly, the worst, how he wanted…

Tim strode from his room. He heard Gracie’s voice and Kaveh’s answer, and he went in that direction. He found them in the picture room at the top of the stairs, an alcove that Kaveh used for his office. The bugger was sitting at a drafting table working on something and Gracie—dumb old stupid Gracie—was at his feet with that bloody stupid doll in her arms and wasn’t she even
rocking
it and
crooning
to it and didn’t she need to be brought to her senses and wasn’t it time she just
grew
up anyway and what better way to do it—

Gracie screamed like he’d stuck her in the arse with a pole when he grabbed the doll. He said, “Fucking bloody idiot, for God’s sake,” and he slammed the doll against the edge of the drafting table before he pulled off her arms and her legs and threw her down. He snarled,
“Grow up and get a life, you freak,” and he spun and made for the stairs.

He stormed down them and out of the door and behind him he heard Gracie’s cries, which should have felt good to him but didn’t. And then there was Kaveh’s voice calling his name and the sound of Kaveh coming after him—Kaveh of all people, Kaveh who’d created this whole pile of shit that was his life.

He thudded past George Cowley and Daniel, who were standing by the Land Rover, and while he didn’t need even to go near them, he did anyway, just so he could shove that limp-wrist Daniel out of the way. George yelled, “Just you bloody—”

“Fuck you!” Tim cut in. He needed, he wanted, he
had
to find something because everything was cresting inside of him, his very blood was cresting and he knew if he didn’t find something, his head would explode and the blood and the brains would surge out of him and while that didn’t matter a whit he didn’t want it to be this way and there was Kaveh calling his name, telling him to stop telling him to wait only that was the last thing he’d ever do: wait for Kaveh Mehran.

Around the side of the pub and through a garden and there was Bryan Beck. On the stream the village ducks floated and on the opposite bank wild mallards rooted through the heavy-topped grass for slugs or worms or whatever the hell it was that they ate and oh God how he wanted to feel one of them all of them crushed beneath his fist or his feet it didn’t matter just to have something die die die.

Tim was in the water without knowing he was in the water. The ducks scattered. He flailed at them. Shouting was coming from every direction and some of it he realised was coming from him and then he was grabbed. Strong arms came round him and a voice in his ear said, “No. You mustn’t. You don’t mean to. It’s all right.”

And goddamn, it was the bumboy himself, the limp wrist, the queer. He had his arms and his hands on Tim and he was
holding
him God he was actually holding him touching him the filth the filth the filth.

“Get away!” Tim shrieked. He fought. Kaveh held on harder.

“Tim. Stop!” Kaveh cried. “You don’t mean to do this. Come away. Quickly.”

They wrestled in the water like two greased monkeys till Tim squirmed away and Kaveh fell back. He landed on his bum and the frigid water was up to his waist and he was struggling to get back to his feet and Tim felt such triumph because what he wanted was the stupid git struggling, he wanted to show him, he wanted to prove—