The Sick Rose (21 page)

‘Why Guinness?’ asked Paul, who would have preferred lager or cider.

‘It’s traditional, innit?’

‘That’s St Patrick’s day, you fool,’ said Ross, cracking open his can. They took the crate up to the Lodge. Paul racked his brains for a reason to go back to Leamington, even contemplating running away while they weren’t looking, but his thoughts kept turning to his long-term problems and brainwaves were thin on the ground. At five, he found himself waiting at the bus stop with the rest of them, drinking in the shelter, Ross flicking Jodie with the tip of his scarf until she screamed and ran out into the road. A car kerb-crawled its disapproval then sped up again when Dilan grabbed his crotch and made an unmistakable gesture in the driver’s direction. Paul found their good cheer unbearably oppressive. If he had anything more to drink, his guard would slip and he would surrender to his growing compulsion to recite the CJS letter word for word. And if he stopped drinking he would stay edgy and oversensitive throughout the party, on high alert for fake blood, real blood, dead men who haunted him and the living ones out to get him. Whatever he did, he was damned. Five minutes before the bus was due, he clapped his hand to his jeans pocket and said:

‘Shit! I’ve left my phone behind. I’ll catch you up, OK?’

‘You’ll miss the bus,’ said Ross.

‘I won’t, I’ll leg it,’ said Paul, breaking into a run that slowed as soon as he was out of sight. He froze at the top of the newly planted ride, waiting for the sneeze of brake and door that would tell him their bus had gone and he was alone. A breeze sent the saplings swaying in their high collars. In the shifting twilight the ride seemed twice its usual length. The Lodge presided over all, its spikes and spires blacker than ever, scudding clouds behind it giving the illusion that the ruin was thundering down the avenue towards him. He was suddenly, childishly aware that it was Hallowe’en. He had drunk enough to make him paranoid but not enough to make him forget. The obvious solution was to keep on drinking, and he knew that Dilan had left a few cans under a tarp in a corner of the Lodge. He looked at his phone; there was still an hour before the next bus to Leamington left. He texted Ross a promise that he would catch them all up later and climbed the knoll. Four cans of Guinness remained. The crack of the ring-pull echoed like a gunshot.

Sometimes alcohol worked for him, sometimes it didn’t. Today was one of the bad times. Instead of obliterating his worries it intensified them. He pictured the inside of a courthouse and could draw only on television dramas, all old men in grey wigs. It would be the first time he had ever really stood up to Daniel. A crown court was a pretty public place for their first confrontation. He got to the bottom of the fourth and final can and still relaxation did not come. He grew reckless. There seemed little point in self-control when his fate was so clearly in the hands of barristers and policemen. He took a noisy piss over the side of the Lodge, then climbed onto a crumbling ledge. The dark was broken only by a few sequinned clusters denoting villages, and that orange glow rising from behind the low hill in the distance must be Leamington. He twisted his body and saw another light, a silver glow rising over the crooked horizon of a brick wall, which meant that Louisa was at home. He rose on his tiptoes to gain a better view. Something underneath his feet shifted and gave way. Paul teetered over the steep edge of the knoll and only a valiant windmilling of his arms made him fall back into the shell of the Lodge. He landed on his coccyx and burst into short-lived tears. He was shocked rather than badly injured, but the pain brought everything into focus, his loneliness and his fear. Suddenly he wanted physical comfort; he needed to be held by someone or soothed by a soft voice, but his mother was miles away, Emily would never touch him again and even Christine, whose soft voice had promised protection, had betrayed him. He just wanted someone gentle to tell him everything was going to be all right. It didn’t have to be true – it couldn’t be true, he had long passed the point of anything being all right ever again – but he still needed to hear it.

The wind blew the smell of stale water into his nostrils as he fought his way through the wickerwork of naked brushwood. He kept one hand on the boundary wall. Turning a degree or two in the wrong direction might mean that he stumbled into one of the murky puddles that surrounded the Mere, or disappeared into the trees and spent the night here. Louisa might be able to walk this path blindfolded but he had only ever trodden it in the day and his way seemed strewn with traps and trips. Branches rattled like bones around him; twice he almost lost his nerve but he was driven by a primal need for the comfort of touch. The light grew subtly brighter as he made his clumsy progress along the gentle curve of the wall. He fumbled with the latch until the gate opened, light shining through the arch as though from a room.

‘Who’s there?’ came a tremulous voice from within. Too late, he realised that his bumbling passage must have been a racket of snapped twigs and swearwords. She must be terrified. He stopped dead.

‘Louisa, it’s only me, it’s only Paul.’ Shadows shifted inside and then there was the sound of a bolt being drawn. Louisa opened the door; hot air blasted from inside like an oven. It took the breath from his lungs and the words from his lips. She looked different, both younger and older than usual, with her hair teased over one eye and her face painted with dark colours. She was wrapped in a navy blanket brocaded with moons and stars. Only her feet and neck were visible but both were bare. She held out her arms and wrapped him in the soft folds of cloth. Beneath it she was naked, as soft and hot as he was hard and cold, but she didn’t flinch from his touch. He could not say who initiated the kiss but it was as inevitable as it was natural. She tasted like whiskey. He kicked the door closed behind him and surrendered to the warmth of her wordless welcome. Anyone would think she had been waiting for him for years.

Chapter 27

June 2009

Daniel’s suit was by Paul Smith and brand new, purchased on a rare father-and-son outing to the West End. He modelled it for Paul, sardonically walking an imaginary catwalk in the tiny living room, striking ridiculous poses, pointing into the middle distance like a catalogue model and pouting at a pretend camera. Paul, who was finding it hard to even look at Daniel after what happened with Emily, laughed despite himself. He might be sending himself up but he looked the business and he knew it. The logic behind the purchase was unclear, however. It had cost £650; for that, Daniel could have bought himself an entire wardrobe of clothes that he was actually likely to wear.

‘Is someone getting married?’ he had asked Carl. It was easier to talk to him than Daniel at the moment. He hoped it wasn’t a funeral. They all reminded him of his father’s.

‘No,’ said Carl.

‘Christening?’ said Paul, knowing how unlikely this was.

‘Nope,’ said Carl, enjoying the game.

‘So what’s the occasion?’ said Paul. ‘Why the suit?’

‘It’s for court, you bell-end,’ said Carl affectionately. Daniel scowled, the spell of his suit broken. Paul took time out from being angry with Daniel to be angry on his behalf. At that point Daniel had been cautioned by the police, but nothing more. It was bad enough for society at large to write you off as a member of the underclass, but when your own father assumed you would need a defendant’s outfit you didn’t stand a chance. He knew that Carl would never have seen it that way, that he saw the suit as a rite of passage and the pre-emptory purchase of it as a way of investing in his son’s future the way other parents bought driving lessons.

Paul only saw Daniel in the suit once after that. He had arrived at college without the memory stick containing his history coursework, a lengthy assignment due in by noon that day. He had been working and reworking the essay until the small hours and upon waking (late), been so tired that he had forgotten to bring the bloody thing with him. It was only ten o’clock when he got back to the Scatlocks’. With the likelihood that Daniel and Carl were both still asleep, he let himself in quietly. Diesel, snoring at the foot of the stairs, opened one eye, registered Paul and gave his hand a half-hearted lick before falling back into his doze. Paul took his shoes off and tiptoed up the stairs, hoping that he could retrieve the stick without waking Daniel.

Daniel was already up. Through the crack in the bedroom door, Paul saw him, hair done, suit on, in front of the full-length mirror. For a bewildering moment Paul wondered what the appointment was that could get Daniel into a suit this early in the morning. Then he noticed what Daniel held across his palm. It was a history textbook, a fat account of the Civil War, a dense, dry text that even Paul, who loved the period, was struggling to read. It was open at the halfway mark. Daniel was flipping through the tissue-thin pages, occasionally looking at his own reflection. These glances were furtive, fleeting, as though he would catch himself reading if only he were quick enough. Paul was mortified. Better to catch him on the toilet or masturbating than to intrude on his wretched little fantasy. Daniel shifted position, sat down on the edge of the bed which was Paul’s customary studying place. Again, he leafed through the pages that could not have meant anything to him. At one point, he looked in the mirror and nodded to himself, as though considering and agreeing with the point he had just read. That was the part that went straight to Paul’s heart, bypassing their recent history and taking him back to the early days of their friendship.

He wished he could turn off the umbilical tug of guilt, wear lightly the knowledge that when he abandoned Daniel for bigger, better things, this was the life he would leave him to. He held his breath all the way back down the stairs. In the hallway he slammed the front door loudly and began to make an ostentatious fuss of Diesel before heading to the kitchen where he made toast with percussive exaggeration. By the time he went up to the bedroom to retrieve his memory stick Daniel was down to his boxers, standing by the unmade bed as though he had just got up. Only his hair, slick with gel, gave him away. The Civil War textbook was second from the top of the pile, exactly where Paul had left it.

Chapter 28

May 1989

Louisa pulled the grey hood of Miranda’s sweatshirt over her head and checked her reflection in a shiny black car. She didn’t recognise herself, in any sense, but Adam had left her with no choice. It was the only way she could think of to get to know him properly. Not knowing where he went when he left her bed was torture. The obvious thing was to ask him, but even asking for an invitation to his house was enough to tip him headlong into one of his sulks. Every day she swallowed so many questions that the words were pushing against the side of her throat like little hands. She tormented herself with worst-case scenarios and when he arrived, surreptitiously checked his clothes for long red hairs. This was the kind of stress that gave people cancer; she could almost feel her body changing at a cellular level. She was living off Bach Rescue Remedy rather than food but the little phial wasn’t strong enough to work its magic any more. Knowing was the only cure. She had more or less resigned herself to another woman. Now it was all about the details.

She bolted through the mews gate just as it was closing. He was a hundred yards ahead of her. Instead of doing the expected right turn for the Cromwell Road and the bus that would take him home to Shepherd’s Bush, he took a left. She had been following him for thirty seconds and already she had caught him out in a lie. He came to a halt at a stop where all the buses were travelling in the direction of Hammersmith. She leant on a wall and watched him wait. He took his Walkman from his backpack, plugged himself in and closed his eyes. Louisa was too far to catch the metallic overspill from his headphones but she read his lips and saw that he was listening to his own music. She dared not risk lowering her hood even though she was starting to feel as though she was wearing a bearskin on her head. A Sloaney-looking girl walking her poodle stopped in her tracks to admire him. Louisa had a brief and vivid image of pushing her under the wheels of the approaching bus.

It was the easiest thing in the world to jump on the Routemaster behind him. He took the stairs two at a time: she clung to the pole until the bus was on the move before following him up. She peered over the handrail, slowly, like an animal emerging into unfamiliar territory. He was in the front seat, thank God, so she went to the back. When the conductor asked her where she was going she realised she didn’t know, so she whispered, ‘To the end,’ and he charged her 70p. Adam had a Travelcard, the kind that was kept in a wallet with a photo ID card. She had never seen it before. She wondered what else he kept in his pockets and if it was time to start going through them. That would depend on what today yielded. An appetite-sapping adrenaline coursed through her as they rode along Hammersmith Road, passing Olympia at a pace that she could have outwalked in heels. There was some kind of wedding show on; young couples and daughters with their mothers spilled onto the pavement clutching branded carriers. Adam had his feet up on the ledge below the front window, the soles of his boots pressed against the glass, and he kept checking his watch.

She went over the facts and the fantasies. He had a history of promiscuity. He was mysterious and made himself unavailable. And she had caught him out in a lie. The conclusion that he was meeting someone else was inescapable but the possible details and specifics were as numerous as the women in London. Was he going to meet the redhead? To the house of some married woman while her husband was out? A schoolgirl on her lunch break?

The windows opened only fractionally and the top deck of the bus was hot and airless. Swooning beneath her hood but afraid to take it off, she wondered when she had become the kind of woman who had to skulk around on buses following her lover. It was Adam’s fault, he had driven her to this with his secrecy and his lies. A conversation with an old boyfriend echoed in her mind; what had he said? ‘If I’m possessive it’s only because I love you so much.’ She been unspeakably turned off and had dumped him, of course, but now she forgave him because she understood. She knew now that jealousy wasn’t a choice but a curse, that no one would ever choose to feel this.