The Outcast (2 page)

He walked up to the house and felt as if he was doing it in a dream.When he knocked,Alice opened the door immediately, smiling very brightly.

‘Lewis!’

‘Alice . . . You knew I was coming?’

‘We knew they were releasing you. Sorry. Hello.’

He went into the house and she shut the door and they

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looked at each other in the dim hall for a moment and then she kissed his cheek.

‘You’ve grown,’ she said. ‘We just didn’t know whether to expect you.You look so different.Your room’s ready.’

Lewis went upstairs and Alice stood in the hall wondering if she should phone Gilbert and tell him Lewis was back, and if Lewis really looked as different as she thought, or if she had just remembered him wrongly.

It was like having a man in her house.A man she didn’t know. He had been in prison and she had no idea what he’d been through there and he had never been predictable. She felt alarm and she waited in the hall, but Gilbert would have left his office already and there was no phoning him.

Lewis’s bedroom was roughly the same size as his last cell in Brixton; a little bigger, maybe. That had been green and not white and he had shared it. He put his case on the bed and went over to the window and lit a cigarette and looked out at the garden.

There was a bluebottle crashing against the glass. It explored the edges, and seemed to search for an opening and then went straight at the panes of glass in a series of small assaults and then back to the edges again, and then it rested and then it went for the glass again, hitting itself, and it didn’t stop, but carried on with it, trying to get out and not getting out and trying again.

The mantelpiece clock had a light, metallic chime and the sound of it striking six reached Lewis in his room.

Alice quietly started to assemble the ingredients for her jug of Pimm’s, which would be ready at exactly six-thirty, just

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before Gilbert walked through the door. She made it slowly, and a small one for herself as a taster, to get the Pimm’s and gin mix right.When she went into the kitchen for mint and apple and ice, she tried to make things better with Mary. Mary hadn’t known Lewis was coming out; the first she knew of it was hearing his voice in the hall, and she was angry and she didn’t want to be in the house with him. There had been a row and Alice had to beg her not to give notice. Now she found herself practically following Mary around the kitchen trying to ingra- tiate herself, and after a while she gave up and took her mint and her slices of apple and went back into the drawing room.

When Lewis heard his father’s key in the door he went to the top of the stairs. Gilbert stood in the doorway with his briefcase in his hand, still wearing his hat. Alice came out of the drawing room and watched them. Gilbert took off his hat and put it on the straight-backed chair by the door.

‘You’re home.’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Come with me.’ He said it quietly, but with rage. ‘Gilbert—’

‘Come!’

Lewis started down the stairs to his father and followed him out of the house.They got into the car without a word.

Gilbert drove quite fast towards the village and Lewis didn’t need to ask him where they were going. It was hard to be next to his father again and to have his presence filling the car up like that and Lewis tried to remember what he’d planned to say.

Gilbert pulled over and stopped and turned off the engine. Lewis found he couldn’t raise his eyes, but stared down at his

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hands. He’d been going to make a promise. He’d been going to make his speech and his promise and reassure his father, but now he couldn’t even raise his eyes from his hands and Gilbert said,‘Look, can’t you?’

He looked, obediently.

The church was ahead of them, warm with evening sunshine and very quiet and peaceful.

‘It’s just the same,’ said Lewis.

‘Yes. We wanted it to be just the same. Lots of people chipped in. Dicky Carmichael helped enormously. It was very important to everybody that it be just the same.’

Lewis looked at the church and there was silence as he looked.

‘Well?’ said Gilbert, ‘Do you have anything to say?’ Lewis said nothing.

Gilbert started the engine and drove home without speaking to his son again.

The family sat in the dining room by the open window and Mary brought in the dishes and put them on the table before she left for the night. The sky was still light and the candles stood unlit. Lewis was distracted by the things on the table. There were holders and containers for everything; silver and glass and lace that were almost hypnotically diverting. He worked hard not to think about the wine that Gilbert was pouring for himself and Alice. He could smell the red wine as it was poured, mixing with the smell of the damp vegetables. The only talking was to do with the passing of things, and thanking, and Lewis wanted to laugh because he was nostalgic for the huge noise of the mass mealtimes in prison. It had been not unlike school, and quite relaxing, but this was just

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self-conscious and tense and everything he’d hated about home before. He thought there must be something really wrong with a person who would rather be in Brixton prison than their own home.

Gilbert made a speech about what was expected of Lewis; how he must behave and get a job and be polite and not drink and as his father spoke, Lewis kept staring at the things on the table, but he couldn’t see them properly any more.

Alice stood up, pushing her chair back crookedly. She excused herself and left the room and Lewis and his father finished their supper in silence. Gilbert placed his knife and fork together and wiped his mouth carefully. He put the napkin on his side plate and stood up.

‘Good,’ he said.

He waited to see if Lewis would get up too, but Lewis continued to stare at the table. After watching him for a moment Gilbert went to join Alice in the drawing room.

Lewis waited until he heard his father say something to Alice, and then the sound of the door, closing.The wine bottle on the table was empty. He looked at the liquor on the sideboard. There was no gin.There was brandy and whisky, in decanters, and glasses next to the decanters. He hadn’t had a drink since the night he’d been arrested. He could have one now. It wasn’t as if he’d decided not to drink, he wouldn’t be breaking any promise. He took a breath and waited and then got up and stepped out of the open window onto the grass and walked up the lawn.

The woods were dark already. The sky was pale and the house was lit up behind him, but there was dark ahead. Lewis looked into the trees and he thought he could hear the river – but he

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couldn’t hear the river, the river couldn’t have got closer. He felt a coldness go over him at the thought of the water coming closer to the house.

‘All right?’

Alice was standing next to him and he hadn’t realised and he hadn’t heard her.

He looked at her and tried to pull his mind back to where they were.

‘I wanted to say,’ she began,‘I wanted to say – let’s try and be friends, this time, shall we?’

‘Of course.’

She looked so worried, he couldn’t disappoint her. ‘Your father,’ she said, ‘he missed you.’

It was kind of her to say so, but he didn’t think it was true. ‘Was it bad?’

He wasn’t sure what she meant, and then realised she was asking him about prison. She didn’t really want to know, though.

‘There are worse things.’ ‘We didn’t come.’

They hadn’t come. At the beginning, when he was so fright- ened, it had been unbearable that they didn’t, and he had written to them a few times, asking, but after that it was easier not seeing them and hardly hearing from them, and he’d forgotten about it – or nearly.

Alice let the silence go on as long as she could and then she tried again. She put her hand out, indicating his arm, stretching her fingers lightly towards it.

‘No more silliness?’ she asked.

He pulled his arm away and put his hand in his pocket. ‘Right,’ she said,‘right,’ and she smiled again, apologetic this

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time. The grass was wet with dew and she had taken off her shoes to come out to him and carried them now as she went back to the house.

It was the same dream, and when he woke in darkness and sweat, and cold with the fear of it, he had to sit up and put his feet on the ground, and make himself keep his eyes open, and tell himself he wasn’t there and it wasn’t true, or even if it was, it was an old truth and he should forget it. He’d had the dream while he had been in prison, but much less than before and sometimes not for weeks at a time and he’d hoped it was leaving him.

He waited for the fear to drain away and to feel like he was breathing air again, and not water, and he kept his eyes open and looked for a moon outside the window, but there wasn’t one. He thought of Alice, pointing at him like that, and his forearm reminded him of itself, like a separate thing making him look and, after a while, he did. It was too dark to see the scars, but he could feel them with his fingertips, both numb and raw; a feeling of wrongness.

He went to the window and tried to make real things from the shapes of the garden. He could see the apple tree and past it he could see the line of the woods meeting the sky. He made himself stand still, but it was very hard to be still and very hard to stand there, and he would have clawed out of his skin if he could, just to get away from himself. He told himself it was a luxury to be able to get up in the night without disturbing anyone and a blessing to be able to walk to a window if he wanted, and there to be no bars on it, and a garden beneath. He told himself all that, but it didn’t mean anything.

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PART ONE
‌

C
hapter
O
ne
‌

1945

Gilbert was demobbed in November and Elizabeth took Lewis up to London to meet him at the Charing Cross Hotel. Lewis was seven. Elizabeth and he got onto the train atWaterford and she held his hand firmly so that he wouldn’t fall when he climbed up the high step. Lewis sat next to the window and opposite her, to watch the station get small as they pulled away, and Elizabeth took off her hat so that she could rest her head against the seat without it getting in the way.The seat was itchy against Lewis’s bare legs between his shorts and his socks and he liked the way it was uncomfortable and the way the train moved from side to side.There was a feeling of specialness; his mother was quiet with it and it changed the way everything looked.They had a secret between them and they didn’t need to talk about it. He looked out of the window and wondered again if his father would be wearing his uniform and, if he were, if he would have a gun. He wondered, if he did have a gun, if he would let Lewis hold it. Lewis thought probably not. His father probably wouldn’t have one, and if he did it would be too dangerous and Lewis wouldn’t be allowed to play with it.The clouds were very low over the fields, so that everything looked close up and flat. Lewis thought it was possible that the train might be standing still and the fields and houses and sky

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might be rushing past. That would mean his father would be rushing towards him standing in the Charing Cross Hotel, but then all the people would fall over. He thought he might feel sick, so he looked over at his mother. She was looking straight ahead, as if she was watching something lovely. She was smiling so he pushed her leg with his foot so that she would smile at him, and she did, and he looked back out of the window. He couldn’t remember if he’d had lunch or what time of day it was. He tried to remember breakfast. He remembered going to bed the night before and his mother kissing him and saying, ‘We’ll see Daddy tomorrow’, and the way his stomach had felt suddenly. It felt that way now. His mother called it butterflies, but it wasn’t like that, it was more just suddenly knowing you had a stomach, when normally you forgot. He decided if he sat and thought about his father and his stomach any more he’d definitely feel sick.

‘Can I go for a walk?’ he asked.

‘Yes, you can go for a walk. Don’t touch the doors and don’t lean out. How will you know where to find me again?’

He looked around,‘G’. ‘Carriage G.’

He couldn’t open the door; it was heavy and they both fought with it. She held it open for him and he went down the corridor, one hand on the window side, the other on the compartment side, steadying himself and saying under his breath,‘along-along-along’.

After Elizabeth had spoken to Gilbert on the telephone the day before, she had sat on the chair in the hall and cried. She cried so much that she’d had to go upstairs so that Jane wouldn’t see her, or Lewis, if he came in from the garden.

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She had cried much more than any time they had parted since he had first gone away and more than she had in May when they heard the war in Europe had ended. Now she felt very calm and as if it was normal to be going to see your husband whom you had been frightened might die almost every day for four years. She looked down at the clasp on her new bag and thought about all the other women seeing their husbands again and buying handbags that wouldn’t be noticed. Lewis appeared through the glass, struggling with the door, and she let him in and he smiled at her and stood balancing with his arms out.

‘Look—’

He had his mouth open with the effort of not falling over and his tongue to one side. One of his socks was down. His fingers were each stretching out. Elizabeth loved him and missed a breath with loving him. She grabbed him around the middle.

‘Don’t! I wasn’t falling!’

‘I know you weren’t, I just wanted to give you a hug.’ ‘Mummy!’

‘Sorry, darling, you balance.’ She let go, and Lewis went back to balancing.

They took a taxi from Victoria to Charing Cross and they looked out at the buildings, and the big holes where buildings had been.There was much more sky than there had been and the gaps looked more real than the buildings, which were like afterthoughts. There were lots of people on the pavements and the road was crowded with cars and buses. The weather made it look as if the broken buildings and people’s coats and hats and the grey sky were all joined together in greyness