The Outcast (17 page)

She came down the stairs and watched her father and mother as they put on their gloves, not speaking to each other.

Lewis was lying on his bed. He wasn’t drunk enough for lunch with the Carmichaels. He didn’t think you could be drunk enough for lunch with the Carmichaels. He heard Alice laugh. He called it her ‘love me, love me’ laugh. He lay back and shut his eyes and heard the car arrive and thought about getting up.

‘Lewis! They’re here.’

He had a bottle of gin under the bed and he stood up to see if he should have some more of it now or save it for later, when Dicky and Claire and Alice and Gilbert were in full flow. Later, he decided.

He washed his face in the bathroom and made sure his sleeve was down and done up. It was, but there was dried blood on it. He went back to his room and put on a clean shirt and went downstairs.

* * *

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Claire and Alice stood by the door to the garden looking up at the bare winter border. Kit was in a chair by the fire, biting her thumb- nail. Dicky and Gilbert stood in front of the fire with drinks.

Lewis sat at the card table by the window and went invisible. ‘And alchemilla is so pretty,’ said Claire, looking at the bare

earth.

‘Well, it is, but the slugs always eat it.’ ‘Hostas.’

‘Oh hostas, sorry, not alchemilla.Alchemilla . . . pretty when it rains.’

‘What about some campanula in there? That might cheer it up.’

‘Yes . . .’

‘It is rather cottagey, but it’s not a large bed, is it?’ ‘Campanula is pretty,’ said Alice.

Lewis stared straight ahead. Come on Alice, he thought, tell her you don’t know what they are, stick up for yourself.

‘I thought a rose would be nice,’ offered Alice. ‘Don’t you think you have enough roses?’

Kit looked at Lewis, and he saw her looking and she looked away again. She should stop chewing that plait and biting her nails, it bordered on self-cannibalism. He watched his father and Dicky at the fireplace and marvelled at Gilbert’s ability to laugh so very jovially at Dicky’s stories. Gilbert rocked slightly on his heels, which made him look like a dog waiting to have a ball thrown for him.

Gilbert’s threats of special school hadn’t materialised. Somehow the very bad consequences of Lewis’s behaviour never did seem to happen. If Lewis was careful, he could keep it all under control, and still get by at school, just about. He just had to balance it right. He just had to keep control.

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‘Of course, it looked all right in the summer,’ said Alice, and Lewis agreed with her, everything had looked all right in the summer.

The summer had been long and lazy and there had been ecstasy in it, even in the solitude.There had been London, a few times, and just the beauty of being alive and hoping. In winter it was harder to feel like that.

Kit stole another glance at him and wondered what was going on in his head. How could he just sit like that? So still? He was staring at the wall and everybody else was pretending he wasn’t there, or that it was normal to have someone sit like that and look so separate and – she thought about it – to look so wrong.

‘I think it’s time for lunch,’ said Alice, and they went into the dining room.

There was something in aspic to start with. They ate with small mouthfuls and talked about the golf club and possible changes in the rules of membership. Lewis’s arm was hurting him and itching; he rubbed it against his leg and felt the cuts move and thought maybe they’d opened up. He excused himself and went upstairs. In his room, he rolled up his sleeve and saw the cuts were bleeding – if he didn’t stop them, he’d bleed on through his shirt. He felt sick and tired and didn’t want to go back down. He took a hit of gin from the bottle under his bed and then went to the bathroom and bandaged it up. He was a little drunk and it was always tricky with one hand. One of the cuts was too deep and went too far into the flesh, that was why it had opened up the way it had and it was hurting.

‘Lewis, what’s going on?’

Alice was in the doorway and he hadn’t even heard her come up. She could see everything. His arm was a mess, he’d cut it

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recently on top of cuts that hadn’t healed. She stared at him and looked very pale.

‘What’s that? What have you done?’

All of his coldness, all of his safe numbness, began to melt away under her look. She looked so upset, so emotional, he couldn’t remember feeling like that for weeks. He supposed it was upsetting to see the arm, it looked pretty bad.

‘Lewis? For God’s sake, what have you done?’

He felt shame, sickening and, somewhere, relief, and the relief grew.

‘I hurt myself. I’m sorry.’

She looked over her shoulder, panicking, thinking about the people in the dining room.

‘You’re bleeding. Wait, wait. Wait here.’ She almost pushed him out of the bathroom and went in and closed the door and leaned against it and felt faint.

She tried to make sense of what she’d just seen. She came up to go to the bathroom because she was frightened she had started her period and hadn’t wanted to be anywhere near the dining room. She remembered that now, and lifted her skirt and pressed her finger into herself. She wiped it on some lava- tory paper. It was pink, just faintly pink and the small, nagging pain in her abdomen started again. She felt as if all the colour had drained out of the world. She opened the bathroom cupboard and found pads and belt. No baby. Not this time. She closed the lavatory and sat down. She sat very straight and opened her eyes wide so they wouldn’t get filled with tears. She remembered Lewis and what she had just seen and her mind seemed to shift, jolt against the shock of it.

She stood up and opened the door, but he wasn’t on the landing any more. She could hear Dicky laughing downstairs.

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She saw the door to Lewis’s room was closed. He couldn’t leave the lunch table, neither of them could – what would Dicky and Claire think? She wanted to cry. She went to Lewis’s door and opened it. He was trying to bandage his arm again.

‘Here. Let me do it.We have to go downstairs.’

She went over to him and took the bandage from him. She felt him watch her doing it and she could smell alcohol on him, and she realised he’d been drinking. She wanted a drink too now, she wanted one very badly.

‘Did you do this?’ she asked and he looked at the floor and didn’t speak and she felt his weakness. She didn’t have time for him. She didn’t have time for any of it.

‘Why would you do this?’ she said. She fumbled with the bandage.‘God, Lewis, this is—’

It was so horrible, this blood, these wounds – what was he thinking? It was appalling. And then she remembered no baby, no baby again, and she’d been counting on it this time, and she’d been waiting so long.

‘This is a disgusting thing to do. It’s
disgusting.
’ ‘I know.’

‘Everybody’s downstairs.’ ‘Yes. I’m sorry.’

‘There. It’s done.We’ll talk about it later.’

He looked at her then, and he looked just like he had when he was ten.

‘Don’t tell Dad. Please.’ ‘Lewis—’

‘Please?’

‘I won’t. I promise. Let’s go down.’ They went.

‘You go in first.’

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She shoved him in the back and waited on the bottom step for a moment. She made her face bright again, she thought she wouldn’t look at Gilbert, he might know, and then she wouldn’t be able to pretend.

Kit saw Lewis come back in and made sure she didn’t stare at him.The two men didn’t stop their conversation, still about golf, but now the condition of the greens, and then Alice came in and sat down. Mary cleared the first course and, after a pause, during which a different wine was opened, the beef was brought in. Claire and Alice discussed the butcher and how much trouble they both had with him.

Lewis found that he felt quite calm and as if the scene with Alice hadn’t happened at all.

‘So, Lewis,’ said Dicky, as Gilbert carved,‘how’s Harrow?’

Lewis looked at Dicky’s face leaning towards him and tried to bring himself back into the room.

‘Not bad, sir.’

Alice admired his blankness and thought of the bandage under his shirt, and she remembered tying the knot and the sight of the drying blood. Her throat tightened. No baby, she thought, no baby.

‘Treating you all right?’ ‘Yes.’

‘Still a keen cricketer?’

Lewis couldn’t be bothered to answer him. ‘Rugger this time of year, I expect.’ Gilbert looked over at him, waiting.

‘Cat got your tongue?’ said Dicky. ‘No, sir.’

‘Still getting into trouble?’ ‘What d’you mean?’

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‘Whenever your father mentions you, you seem to be in some kind of trouble.’

Lewis had had enough. The numbness had all gone and he hated this man and he could feel rage starting. He looked at him and let what he thought of him show, instead of hiding it.

‘Trouble?’

‘Yes, boy, trouble. Always getting flogged for something, aren’t you? Can’t seem to get along?’

‘Things aren’t going too badly, are they, Lewis?’ This was Gilbert, trying to help him out. He didn’t want to be helped out.

‘You’ve just been sixteen, haven’t you?’ ‘Just after Christmas,’ said his father, jolly.

‘You’ve still got nearly three years of schooling left then?’ ‘So?’

‘Lewis—’This was Gilbert again, warning him.

‘Seems to me they might throw you out, the way you’re going.Then what will you do?’

He was sick of this.

‘I don’t know what you mean.’

‘Your father says you’ve been fighting, that you hit another boy. Bit of a habit, isn’t it?’

This wasn’t fair, it had been a fight and Holland had started it, and it was his own fault for making it impossible not to hit him; it was his housemaster who’d written to Gilbert about it, because he’d hurt him quite badly, but apart from that things were all right and his marks were all right, mostly, and just because he kept to himself – he couldn’t help it if he couldn’t understand how to speak to any of them any more.

Lewis was aware everyone was staring at him. He could feel Kit practically leaning over the table. Gilbert was just carving

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and putting the slices of meat on the plates. Lewis wanted to tear his nails down his arm and rip it to shreds, he wanted to take a knife and stick it into Dicky’s neck and watch the blood pour out.

‘I said, bit of a habit, getting in fights.’ ‘I heard you.’

‘Well, you should answer when you’re spoken to. Under- stand?You know your father’s worried about you, don’t you?’

Gilbert finally spoke, but his voice was small.

‘Dicky, it’s all right.We’ve got it under control, haven’t we?’ ‘Have you?’ said Dicky and he laughed, loudly. ‘For God’s

sake, Gilbert, look at him!’

Lewis got up and left the room. Nobody else moved. Claire said,‘So, Alice, have you thought what you’ll do with the front at all?’

‘No,’ said Dicky, ‘no, I’m sorry, that’s very rude. You shouldn’t allow him to be so rude.’

Kit felt herself go very red. ‘Shut up!’ she shouted and she knew her anger was ridiculous. ‘Just shut up, you’re horrible! Why can’t you leave him alone!’

The adults looked at her mildly. Claire put her knife and fork down.

‘Leave the table, please, Kit,’ she said, and Kit left. Claire picked up her fork again.‘It’s her age. She’s terribly wilful.’

Kit slammed the door as hard as she could and sat on the stairs and fought her feelings. Her outrage and her fear were impos- sible and made her helpless. She hadn’t had the words to say what she thought and had sounded like a little girl and not how she felt inside at all. She knew Dicky would hit her for it later, and she shook with the fear of him.There were footsteps down

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the stairs and Lewis came past. He was wearing his coat. She shuffled along the step for him to get by.

‘Cheer up,’ he said and sounded just like he’d used to, ‘it’s just lunch.’ And he went out of the front door.

When Lewis hadn’t come home, and Mary had cleared and left them alone,Alice and Gilbert sat in the drawing room. She put the wireless on to break the silence. She couldn’t tell him about not being pregnant. She couldn’t say it. She felt she’d never be able to say it.

‘Alice, come and sit with me,’ he said.

She got up and sat on the floor by his chair. He stroked her light brown hair very gently.

‘Not this time, then?’ he said.

She, looking up, had light in her face, because he had noticed. ‘No, not this time.’

That he could make her feel better about being childless was frightening to him.

‘It will be all right, you’ll see,’ he said.

She looked down and rested her head – not on his knee, but on the edge of the arm of his chair, as if she didn’t want to presume too much. He stroked her hair again.

She shut her eyes and the memory of Lewis and his hurting himself came back to her in a rush and she felt the weight of the knowledge pressing her down.

The cuts on his arm were very clear in her mind, and that she didn’t know where he was. I’m his stepmother, she thought, I let him go off like that, knowing what he’s been doing to himself and I didn’t even get up from the table, and I’ve no idea where he is now, no idea at all. She felt the cold guilt of an inexcusable wrong and denied the feeling immediately. There

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was nothing she could have done. She was helpless, and relieved to be. She thought of his face – please don’t tell Dad – and she resented being dragged into the darkness he put around himself. She wasn’t prepared to be Lewis’s ally in this, or anything. She would tell. She decided to tell, but then she couldn’t seem to say it out loud, the appalling thing he’d been doing to himself, that she had seen he’d been doing.

They went upstairs together in the dark and she forgot about Lewis and was grateful for her marriage and her house, and tried to believe the promise she made herself that she would have a child and she would be happier and it wasn’t all for nothing. In the picture she had of the future there was no Lewis, the house with a baby in it didn’t have him in it. He was erased.

Kit couldn’t decide whether to go to her room and wait for her father to come or stay downstairs and get it over with. She followed her parents into the study where the fire was lit and Claire settled with her tapestry. Kit thought she might provoke him a little to get it going; like ripping off a plaster, but she was always pretty good at that, and she felt completely cowardly about this.