The Changeover (11 page)

I'm normal then I am normal ... talking of which, there was something I was going to ask you."

The flat greyness of the estuary made Laura's heart (furious a moment ago) begin to feel flat and grey, too. She tried to think beyond Sorry's tale back to Kate and Chris Holly.

"Just because things have been worse for you," she said slowly, "doesn't make any difference to me ..." But, for all that, the place, the time and the story had had an effect. Her indignation had been altered, had almost gone, but it's place was taken by a bleak depression and she began to cry, not for any one reason, just for the breakdown of her life into pieces that no longer held to a safe pattern. What she had been warned of in the beginning had come to pass. A week ago she had been complete and continuous with a true face turned to the world, but now she had come entirely to bits.

"Don't cry!" said Sorry, without much sympathy. "Don't cry! I'm starting to feel I've got all the disadvantages of being married to you and none of the advantages."

Laura found it was possible to sniff furiously.

"What advantages?" she yelled at him. "Come on! What advantages? You want to make out? All right then. It doesn't take long does it? And then you can just shut up about it. It'll be over and done with."

Sorry stared at her in consternation.

"That's really terrible," he said at last. "Is it my fault?"

Laura looked down at her hands, locked together so tightly that for a moment she could not be sure herself just which fingers belonged to which hand. "See, I admit I do have the odd thought about you, Chant, stalking around in the school playground — a sort of grey heron girl, angular and a bit knobbly, but graceful too, and you recognized me, so I've watched you— and you've grown up over the last year and just look as if you might... The really awful part is that you've only offered because you're miserable and even then ..." He laughed to himself. "Well, I'm not a hero," he said. "That's for sure— but I can pretend to be one. Let's go back and see how your brother's getting on."

Perversely enough, Laura now found she was really longing for Kate once more, as if by offering herself so insultingly to Sorry she had in some way caught up with her mother or got her own back on her. She felt suddenly easier, smiled shakily and let Sorry pull her to her feet. She began to feel free of the gnawing anger that had been eating her.

"I'm a bit jealous of Chris Holly, I think," Laura said, and became even lighter as she named her demon.

"I don't get jealous," Sorry answered, "but I can't congratulate myself on it really."

"If I had a boyfriend wouldn't you be a bit jealous of him?" Laura asked.

"No!" said Sorry and then asked "Who? Anyone in particular?"

"No — well — say Barry Hamilton," Laura suggested.

"Barry Hamilton!" exclaimed Sorry. "Barry? Surely not!"

"He's very good-looking — and he's got a car," Laura pointed out.

"But he can barely spell his name," Sorry exclaimed.

"He can. He's not stupid!" Laura cried. "You're so busy praising yourself you probably wouldn't notice. And he's got a car," she repeated.

"Holy cow!" said Sorry, startled. "I've got a rival— and a bloody fifth former at that."

He looked at her, and for a moment the enhanced— the magnified — quality he had shown in the study the night before shone out in his more commonplace face. Laura, with astonishment, alarm and unexpected pleasure, felt the glance like a little electric shock affecting not so much her heart as the pit of her stomach. She looked away from him.

"Hey," said Sorry as they came up to the Vespa and looked in the long grass for their hidden helmets, "I dare you to make me another offer, Chant."

"You turned me down," said Laura. "You missed your chance."

"Hang on tight, then," Sorry commanded. "I can't really roar away on a Vespa, but I'll do my best."

Chris's car was still outside the house, and Laura went in, while Sorry, like an obedient dog, waited outside with the Vespa.

Kate sat at the table in the very place where, in happier days, she had done her bookseller's course, and Chris Holly sat beside her talking to her in a soft, urgent voice which broke off as the door opened and they both turned to look at Laura. Kate had been crying, though she looked calm now, and she was messy, even for Kate, for she had not brushed her hair, which hung around her in disordered curls, duller than it should have been, while yesterday's mascara was smudged under her eyes, recalling the bruises which Sorry's violent memories had projected into his present skin.

"I'm glad to see you back," Kate said in a careful voice. "I wasn't expecting you to turn up quite so early in the morning."

"Anyone could have told that," Laura said, pleased to hear herself sound easy rather than angry. "It's all right! It gave me a surprise, but I've got over it. How's Jacko?"

"Dreadful!" Kate answered bleakly.

"I'll make you both a cup of coffee," Chris said. "It's one useful thing I can do. And then I'm going to go home, have a bath, tidy myself, meditate a little and come back to collect you."

Kate turned her apparently battered face to Laura as soon as he was out in the kitchen.

"It wasn't that I didn't care about Jacko," she said. "It was because I care so much. I felt so dreadful I needed some sort of consolation and escape."

"I wanted to comfort you," Laura cried. "I'd have kept you company — me, not a stranger."

Kate looked around the room as if she might see some advice written up on the walls.

"It's the wrong time..." She sighed. "It's the wrong time to say these things. But it's the only time, as it turns out. Everything happens all at once. First I met Chris, and then Jacko grew ill, and the two things have run into one another so that they've become part of the same thing. I've got to say things, even though I know it's the wrong time to say them. Laura, you are a consolation to me, but you can never be an escape, because I feel responsible for you. I have to try and protect you and look after you, and anyway one of the things about sex ..." She stopped and began again. "You make me more myself than I want to be, at times, you and Jacko between you. And there are times when people make love that they get a rest from being themselves. Just for a few moments they can become nothing and it's a great relief. That's what I mean by escape. I've been myself, unrelieved, for a long time now and I've loved it, loved being with you and Jacko, even loved work, although I grumbled so much. But I wanted escape. Chris didn't ask me last night— I asked him."

"Suppose someone like Chris isn't around?" Laura asked. "What do people do then?" She thought of herself watching the heron fly and longing to dissolve into nothing. Her voice sounded severe in her own ears, but Kate said mildly, "They get by, and I would have got by." Then she gave a grin which, weak as it was, was still her own grin. "It was just my good luck that this time I didn't have to. Lolly, I've said enough. I'm not going to apologize because I don't feel ashamed enough for that. I'm sorry if you were upset, but not enough to wish I'd done anything different."

This speech made Laura think she had forgotten something and a moment later Chris came in and said, "Is that your boyfriend waiting out there at the gate, Laura? Do you want to ask him in? What's his name again — Sorrow?"

"Sorry!" Laura cried. "No! I'll just yell to him from the door."

From the door she shouted, "I'll ring you later! OK?" and Sorry gave her a thumbs-up sign and rattled away down Kingsford Drive.

"He's kind of spooky," Chris said to her when she came back. "I don't know why I think so, but I do."

"Don't start her on that," Kate begged. "It's only Sorensen Carlisle, the dark secret of the Carlisle family recently brought out into the open."

"He certainly suggests more middle-class affluence than we usually see around these parts," Chris said critically.

"Oh, they're a well-to-do family... spread all over the city." Kate sounded careless. "Every now and then one of them is mentioned in the New Year Honours for services to industry or something. There are two women and that boy living not very far from here. Goodness knows why they stay. I'm sure it's not really their scene."

"He doesn't look as if he's got much to put up with," Chris said disapprovingly. "I thought the other day that the cost of his haircut alone would keep a family of

refugees in food for a week."

Laura felt moved to defend Sorry.

"At least he's not going bald," she said, and was forced to like Chris, rather against her will, because he laughed and passed her her coffee as if he were giving her a prize.

"Chris has never forgiven himself for being a well- off middle-class boy instead of a refugee," Kate said almost cheerfully. "He feels obliged to be hard on others for his own good fortune."

"Sorry wants to be a hill-and-beach doctor," Laura said, "and make sick forests better. Or help with rare birds."

"So he's into conservation, is he?" Chris said. "Well, it's better than nothing, I suppose," and a few minutes later he went off in Kate's car, starting it perfectly because, while she was at the hospital, he had taken it to a weekend garage and had the battery recharged. "Though you really need a new one," he said. "I'll pick you up in three-quarters of an hour."

Left alone, Kate and Laura looked at each other cautiously, like people just getting to know one another after a long and transforming separation.

"Even if you just did it for consolation and all that," Laura said after a moment, "doesn't sex ... I mean it only works with enthusiasm too, doesn't it?"

"I did feel enthusiastic," Kate said, getting up, "but I've dealt with enthusiasm before now. I can manage enthusiasm. It's sadness I find difficult. Laura — they think Jacko is going to die ... I know they think it. They haven't managed to do anything much to help him. He's just got worse and worse and worse. I've rung twice this morning and they say there's been no change except that he's got a bit weaker. I can't help knowing what that means. I didn't really want another baby, you know. I only had Jacko because I thought your father might leave — he was already having an affair with Julia then and I knew that this time it was serious, so I had Jacko! Still it's a rotten reason for having a baby, just to tie someone to you, isn't it?"

"Jacko didn't care," Laura pointed out. "He has always behaved as if he thought life was lovely."

"Yes, that's the wonderful thing," Kate said. "Given half a chance, babies are certain that the world wouldn't function without them. They know they're marvellous. Once I stopped caring about your father so much ... I really loved my days with you and Jacko and now it looks as if.., I really don't believe it's my fault— yet in a superstitious way I feel that it's a sort of punishment for past mistakes."

"I don't believe that for a moment," Laura cried. "But I know more about Jacko's sickness than you do. It's just that you won't believe me. Can I come with you? Can I see Jacko?"

"May I," corrected Kate. "Yes— you probably may, though really you'd do better to remember him as he was, bright and cheerful and always ready for some sort of mischief. Still, of course you can come with me. There's a sort of sitting room, a little waiting room with TV where Chris spent a lot of yesterday, and I'm allowed in Jacko's room at any time. They offered to make up a bed so that I could stay with him, and I'll probably do that tonight. Now let's get going. Bags I first bath."

From the bathroom she called a moment later, "You know, Laura— you should be pleased that I can go out and get involved with someone like Chris. The day's going to come when you want to be free of me, and it'll be much easier for you if I've ... if you don't have to leave me always on my own."

But Laura was staring into her mirror wondering just what sort of face Sorry had seen looking across the playground at her and just what she'd think of her own face if she hadn't grown up with it day after day.

She decided that she would put on her best clothes in case she saw Sorry later, for she thought it would do no harm for him to see her wearing her one nice dress, even if it was only a sundress that had been too small for Sally. She brushed her hair hard until it actually shone a little, though its lambswool surface did not really give light a fair chance. She put on her best sandals and asked if she could also put on some makeup.

"A little bit of lipstick to brighten yourself up, if you feel you must," said Kate, but Laura couldn't resist using eye-liner and mascara and thought she looked like the heroine of some foreign film.

Later, at the hospital, staring at Jacko, all this seemed childish. He had become part of a hospital's machinery. Fluid dripped into his arm, a plastic tube was taped up his nose. Hospital sheets and blankets did not so much tuck him in as strap him down and he lay beneath them looking like a shrunken doll, but still unmistakably Jacko, still her brother. All the upside- down events of the last twenty-four hours, the intrusive new people like Chris Holly and the three Carlisle witches, grew faint, like memories from an earlier less important life. Laura longed to pick Jacko up and hold him, to remind him somehow, even in his coma, that he had a sister who loved him and would do anything to stop the shadows inching up over him. But all she could do was look at him and say his name to herself in a stubborn voice.