The Outcast (35 page)

Lewis stood alone. He looked at Dicky and then around – at the faces that all stared back at him – and then back at Dicky.

Then he went after Kit.

Everybody watched Lewis until he was out of the church, and then they turned back to Dicky and there was stillness again. Dicky felt eyes on him, examining him. He tried to make himself look at them; he couldn’t, and Claire and Tamsin stood quietly by, unprotesting.

Lewis got out of the church and the day was bright and still. There was nobody watching any more; just Kit walking away and the graves and the bright light. He went after her, but slowly.As she reached the road she stopped and turned to him. She had her arms around herself and she was crying.

‘How could you? How could you do that to me?’

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‘There was nothing else! There was nothing else I could do.

I had to protect you.’ ‘Protect me!’

‘I have to go away.’ ‘What?’

‘My National Service. I got my enlistment notice and it’s that or prison again, and I didn’t know what to do.’

‘I waited for you! I waited two years, I’ve loved you for as long as I can remember. I wanted to be all grown-up for you – and look at you!’

‘I’m sorry.’

‘You’re nothing but chaos and disgusting. And God, Lewis, how could you – go to bed with her?’

He felt very quiet. He’d known it would be like this, but it hurt anyway.

‘It wasn’t that simple,’ he said. ‘You’re not who I thought you were.’ There was quiet for a moment.

‘No,’ he said, ‘I’m no good. And the world’s no good either, but you – you’re something else. Kit. Listen.You’re the only thing I’ve ever seen that’s right. Just the way you see things makes them better – and I thought you’d make me better too, but you can’t.And I thought I could save you. But I can’t. I can’t seem to.’

‘No. I’m fine!’

She held her head up and fought back and he wanted to give her a medal and he said,‘You’re not fine, Kit.You’re just brave.’

She turned away from him. He looked at her back, and how tough she was trying to look, and at her bare neck.

‘You’re beautiful. And you deserve everything. I wanted to tell you that – and that I love you.’

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She didn’t turn around. He waited. He had known she wouldn’t turn around and that he’d lost her, and he felt tired and hurting again now it was over.

‘Well. I’ve done it,’ he said.

The church bells started again and people came out of the church and Kit didn’t wait, but walked away from Lewis and away from the people and back to her house.

Lewis watched her go. No beating would have absolved him.

Afterwards it was all very odd because people came out of the church and there was no scene or shouting or police, and every- body pretended they didn’t see him and carried on as usual. Lewis wasn’t sure where to go or what to do. He hadn’t thought that far ahead. He was vaguely interested to see if he was going to be arrested for smashing up Dicky’s house – they had been looking for him after all – but nobody spoke to him and there was no Wilson at his side with handcuffs, or anything to show he was even there. He stood in the graveyard as they all went home and he could have been a ghost, for all the notice they took of him. He watched Claire andTamsin follow Dicky to the car, and thought it had all probably been for nothing.The world had exploded, but Sunday lunch would go ahead as usual.

He saw that his father hadn’t left. He and Alice were waiting by the wall of the church and murmuring to each other and not looking at their friends as they passed them. After a while Gilbert came over and they spoke a few words. There was nothing conclusive; there was no reunion and no statement of loyalty. Gilbert asked him if he was all right and wanted to know if he’d be coming home, and Lewis said he wouldn’t, but he might spend the night, and that he had his enlistment notice through – and then they went. He was left with not a person in

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sight. He glanced over at his mother’s grave before leaving, but she’d never really been there, and it didn’t mean anything.

He walked down the middle of the road, towards the edge of the village and his father’s house, and the Carmichaels’. It wouldn’t have mattered, except for Kit. He’d thought that if he could shine a light into the dark places of her life, they would disappear, but he had thought wrong. No-one wanted to look.

‘Lewis?’

Lewis turned and saw Dr Straechen.The doctor was standing on the pavement and Lewis thought how he must look, in the middle of the street, blood down his shirt and not even able to walk straight.

‘Why don’t you come with me to the surgery?’ ‘I’m all right.’

‘I think you should.’

They walked down the main street to his house, which had the surgery in the front of it, and Lewis could smell lunch cooking and hear Mrs Straechen moving around in the kitchen behind the white-painted door at the back of the hall.

They went into the consulting room. Dr Straechen closed the door.

‘Why don’t you sit down? I’ll clean you up – that cut over your eye looks rather nasty.’

Lewis sat in a metal chair by the curtain that you could pull across to divide the room. He watched the doctor go about collecting cotton wool and other things. He was grey-haired and his suit was a dark pinstripe and worn to softness. He put the things on the small table nearby and pulled up another chair and sat close to Lewis, looking at him.

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Lewis felt very tired. The doctor didn’t speak, but watched him, steadily, and Lewis looked around the room. There were framed photographs on the desk of Dr Straechen’s sons and of his wife. There were flowers that needed changing and a hat- stand with the doctor’s hat and coat hanging on it.

‘I delivered you.’

‘What?’ He looked back at the doctor.

‘I delivered you. I’ll always remember your mother, the way she was about it. She wasn’t very frightened, like lots of new mothers; she was extremely brave, and she kept saying she couldn’t wait to meet you.Your father was downstairs, waiting, and he was terribly nervous, of course. It was a good straight- forward labour and nothing remarkable, just the sort I like, and your mother, Lewis, your mother was a natural. Now, let’s have a look at you.’

He looked, and he wiped the blood away while he looked, and asked which bits hurt.

‘I imagine you’ve a concussion.You may have fractured your cheekbone. I can stitch the eye up for you. Do you remember that day?’

‘What day?’

‘The day – after the church – when I came to see you at the police station.’

Lewis nodded.

‘It was distressing to see you like that . . . I’ve got two boys. They’re older than you, of course. Both married now. My elder son’s in Egypt, with the British ambassador there.Younger one’s in the City.When they were younger it didn’t always look as if things might turn out so well. Each of them had a difficult time in one way or another. But things did work out in the end, do you see?’

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‘Yes.Thank you.’

‘I’ve always thought you were a good boy.’ Lewis sort of laughed.

‘Aren’t you a good boy? I mean, I’ve always liked you.’

Lewis looked down because he was going to cry and he felt stupid about it.

‘You know you should go to hospital with this.’ ‘It doesn’t matter.’

‘It does matter. Lewis, here—’ He put his hand on Lewis’s head and rubbed his hair and held the back of his neck, looking at him and making Lewis look back.‘It does matter,’ he said.

He had Lewis lie down on the metal bed that was there, like a hospital bed, with a cotton blanket, and he put four stitches in his eyebrow. He gave him some painkillers and Lewis fell asleep almost straight after, and the doctor went away and had his lunch.

The long dining table at the Carmichaels’ house had been extended to its full length. Silver and china and linen had been laid at sixteen places during the morning, and flowers had been cut from the garden and put in small vases along it. The flowers were August yellow and pollen dropped onto the varnished table.

When the family returned from church there was a nothing, a silence, a regrouping. Claire and Dicky went into the drawing room where there were more yellow flowers, andTamsin stood in the hall. Kit went upstairs, but stopped in the corridor on the way to her room and sat in a high-backed chair she had never sat in before. She looked up at a painting of a child with a dog.The corridor to her room was to her right and the stairs to her left and she was nowhere, just waiting.

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In the hall,Tamsin took off her gloves, slowly.The telephone rang. She picked up the receiver.

‘Guildford 237?’

It was Mary Napper cancelling lunch. Joanna was home unexpectedly. They were sorry. Immediately she put the tele- phone down, Dora Cargill called to say they were both unwell and wouldn’t be able to come to lunch. The Turnbulls’ butler called, and then David Johnson and then the Pritchards. Every- body was terribly sorry.

The family sat at one end of the table and the lunch was brought in. It took the housekeeper and the maid to carry the side of beef, which had been for sixteen, into the room.They put it in front of Dicky. Dicky picked up the carving knife.

The maid stayed to finish clearing the extra places at the table and, as she finished, looked up and caught Dicky’s eye. She hadn’t meant for him to see her looking at him, but, when he did, she didn’t look away – not until he did.

The housekeeper came back in with vegetables.

‘Just leave them,’ said Claire, ‘we’ll manage’, and she put them near her on the table and they went out and closed the door.The air in the dining room was still and warm.

‘Do you know,’ saidTamsin,‘I heard on the wireless, it hasn’t rained since the sixteenth of June.’

‘It has been terribly dry, but I had no idea it had been that long,’ said Claire.

‘The garden looks absolutely flat.’ ‘We’ve done our best with it.’

‘There’s not enough humidity for a thunderstorm.’ ‘No, it’s been very dry, hasn’t it?’

This went on for a while between Claire and Tamsin, with

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Dicky coming in occasionally and all three exchanging smiles, smiles that weren’t to do with the conversation.

‘It’s still hot enough to swim,’ said Kit.‘May I go after lunch?’ ‘They say the reservoirs are drying up,’ said Dicky, not looking up from his plate. His hands felt very painful, but he

was cutting the food up all the same.

‘Well, I hope they’re not going to start that water-rationing nonsense,’ said Claire.

‘Mummy? May I swim?’

‘Do you remember in ’38, when none of us were allowed baths?’

Tamsin laughed. Kit began to feel desperate. Maybe they couldn’t hear her.

‘I said, could I swim after lunch?’

Dicky and Claire and Tamsin all stopped and turned to Kit and looked at her.Then they carried on.

‘Robins spoke to the boy who comes on Tuesdays for the vegetables and he said . . .’

Kit stood up and they didn’t acknowledge that she had stood up. She looked around at them. She thought she might laugh; she wanted to laugh at them for being like the girls at school, for being so stupidly mean to her, but somehow she couldn’t. She pushed back her chair and left the room.

She went up the stairs and felt a hot feeling in her chest, and the feeling grew and she knew it was all the tears she had been not crying and not feeling, and she felt desperate and that she mustn’t cry them and mustn’t think about her family hating her, or what her father might do if he found her alone, or of Lewis and what he’d done and how hurt he’d been and not having any hope . . . She wouldn’t think about it and she would be strong, and she would endure it and hide herself and be brave. Brave,

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but not fine. She got to her room and went inside and closed the door.

She went to the floor by her bed and started to tidy the records that were lying there. She knelt, picking them up, and tried not to think about the world being hard and broken or that she was alone and broken too, and with nobody to help her.There was nobody, and she felt weak and faithless. Her tears were hot and hurt her eyes, and she was angry and clumsy, trying not to feel them and losing her battle.

The door opened. Kit scrambled up from the floor. It was her mother. Claire stood in the doorway, with one hand still on the doorknob, not committing to being there. She looked around the room and her look made the room invaded and shameful.

‘You’ll be going to Sainte-Félicité early,’ she said. ‘And you can remain there for two years. I telephoned them before lunch.You will take the train on Wednesday. We won’t expect you home for the holidays. At the end of your stay there you’ll be almost eighteen. Do you understand?’

Kit looked at her mother and she didn’t fail herself. ‘Perfectly,’ she said, ‘but when I’m gone, don’t you think it

will be your turn again, Mother?’

Claire stared at her. Neither one said anything else. Kit clenched her fists and waited for Claire to go and close the door behind her, and then she sat down on the bed.

She was leaving in two days. Not some time in the future, not weeks; two days and not coming back.

She sat on the bed as the feeling came over her and she surrendered. She pressed her face into her pillow and her tears wet the eiderdown that covered it and made dark marks, and she cried and muffled the sound in the pillow. She gave herself

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up to it and it hurt. It hurt, but the hurt had relief in it because she was getting out. Because of Lewis, she was at last getting out.

Lewis spent his last evening at home outside the house, waiting, while Alice and Gilbert performed their evening in the lit-up drawing room. He stayed outside, where he felt more at home. He told himself that the next day would come and that he would be away and he’d look back at this and it would be just something that happened to him, like Jeanie, or school – just something that happened and not everything, the way it felt

now.

It wouldn’t always be so very bad. It wouldn’t always be like a death. His face was still hurting, but he reckoned it was just mending like all the other things that faded away. It hadn’t been the absolution he had needed. He didn’t think anything could be.