The Sick Rose (28 page)

The university bus that so many of the Lodge workers relied on stopped running on the 16th of December and would not recommence its timetable until the second week of January. Christmas holidays at Kelstice Lodge were therefore academically long. One by one the staff had fallen away. Nathaniel and Ian were staying with friends in a Portuguese villa, in one of the flashes of glamour that illuminated their ostensibly mundane existence. Ross was going back to Scotland (‘The McProdigal returns,’ said Ingram darkly), and Jodie, no longer welcome in her own parents’ home, was going to stay with Dilan, who was still welcome, or at least tolerated, in his.

Without discussion, Paul stayed on. Ingram had found him cross-legged on the floor of the office one afternoon, making little newsprint jackets to keep Louisa’s hyssop saplings warm while she was away. Ingram’s reaction was the closest he had ever come to an outright declaration that he hated Demetra’s rehabilitative notions about garden restoration and confirmed Louisa’s suspicion that he was simply enduring the young people because of the cheap labour. He had actually taken her by the arm and marched her outside into the shadow of the Lodge.

‘What do you think you’re doing?’ he barked.

‘What d’you mean?’ she said. ‘It’s another pair of hands. The more prep we do now, the less work you’ll have to do in the holidays.’

‘I’ll be glad when this bloody grant comes through and we can afford to hire proper workers. I know Demetra’s vetted them and everything but I worry about you alone on the site with them. I mean, this Paul. You don’t know him from Adam, do you?’

For a chilling second she wondered how he knew, but when she saw his puzzled blinking eyes she laughed as she had not laughed since she was a girl, although these were not the carefree giggles of youth. This was a raging, hysterical laughter that threatened to turn into something else: tears, a panic attack, an aneurysm.

‘What is
wrong
with you lately?’ said Ingram.

It was funny because she
did
know him from Adam, or she was beginning to. She no longer had to pause before speaking his name in case the wrong one came out. After over a month in his company, he was Paul, a beautiful boy who, in a certain light or an uncertain mood, looked like Adam. After the initial awkwardness, his company had turned out to be surprisingly easy. She was careful to guide the tiller of their conversations through the shallow waters of work and their mutual acquaintances, in case either of them went under in the swirling seas of their hearts. They never discussed their pasts, or if they did, it was only in playful terms that made light of the years between them.

She was unused to having anyone in her space and initially worried that she would hate the intrusion, that she would have to entertain him and that this would drain her. As it was, Paul made few demands on her attention, happy to curl up and read in silence. He got through a novel every few days, always worlds of wizards and warlocks, and they seemed to occupy him completely in a way that created space between them, even when they were spending twenty-four hours a day together. Miranda, when in a restaurant or travelling, was only ever completely at ease when her children had a book or a toy on the go to distract them; Louisa understood how she felt now. He drew out another instinct in her too; the unaccustomed joy of looking after someone. She had replaced her old butane gas canisters with the odourless propane because butane gave him headaches. She started to eat meat again because, while he professed to like the one-pot vegetarian stews and curries she cooked, he said they were starters, not mains, and a man couldn’t live off them. He looked bashful when he referred to himself as a man.

She felt as though she had entered a period of hibernation, of suspended reality. The sexual stamina of teenage boys was legendary but she had forgotten how much young people could
sleep
, and with relief she had surrendered to his own circadian rhythms, marathons of sleep followed by marathons of sex. Her desire to somehow recapture Adam had meant that she did not give up on Paul after that first, disastrous experience. It took a dozen times or more, drawing on non-verbal communication skills she didn’t know she had – a carefully placed hand here, a well-timed sigh there – before he had interpreted them in a way that made the teacher proud of her pupil. She was happy to ride it out until the sex wore off, as people said happened if you kept sleeping with the same person for long enough. Even at thirty-nine, she had no experience of this. Her three months with Adam remained the longest relationship of her life.

She was aware that when things cooled off between her body and his, when the chemical hit of attraction inevitably succumbed to the law of diminishing returns, she would be left with a situation that was bizarre, even grotesque. Every now and then he would do something, like eat sweets for lunch or turn the
Today
programme over to a music station, that made her wonder what the hell she thought she was doing, but he also had an endearingly unguarded romantic side that she would never have found in a man her own age. Everything was new to him.

‘We’d never have got away with this in the olden days,’ he said suddenly one day when they were walking through the middle of the Lodge. ‘Can you imagine what it was like here? Everything would have happened right here in this spot. In the olden days, the
real
olden days, I’m not talking about the 1980s,’ – he ducked to avoid her swipe – ‘they’d have done everything in the same room. The whole household would have lived together. Had all their meetings, eaten all their meals, traded, argued, had sex, given birth, died. At this time of year there would have been a great fire and people would have slept under furs and skins if they were rich and hay and sacking if they were poor.’ He paused, his eyes half-closed. He had a way of looking like he was
remembering
something rather than simply imagining it. Then he smiled. ‘Can you think of a worse passion-killer than having Ingram snoring and farting in his bearskin a few feet away?’

When he made her laugh, she forgot about his age.

It was as though two relationships were glinting in and out of view, like two different images contained within the same hologram. It was easier to see it for its surface attractions of sex, playfulness, comfort. But there were flashes and winks of something deeper, a concern for his happiness, a need to know he was going to be there tomorrow, that bore no resemblance to the panicked possessiveness she had felt with Adam. The images changed places daily, sometimes hourly. Louisa genuinely did not know whether the image would ever still, and if it did, which of the pictures it would be.

She did not plan to tell him. It happened so quickly, as incidents of life-changing stupidity always do. They were in the greenhouse, working under artificial light, even though it was only three o’clock. It was 21st December, which last year she had thought of as the shortest day of the year, but this year, with Paul in her bed, she had reframed as the longest night. Louisa had inevitably flirted with paganism in her teens and could never forget that this was the winter solstice, one of the most sacred days of the pagan calendar. Although she was trying to put away the childish things of esoterica and arcana, the 21st of December never lost its significance, not least because of its terrible opposite.

Paul had been behaving strangely all day, saying her name as though he was about to tell her something and then mumbling, ‘Oh, nothing,’ as soon as he had her attention. He had not spoken for hours, unnaturally absorbed in the unpleasant task of scrubbing the empty benches and shelves with an organic disinfectant. Louisa was dressing the smaller plants in their newspaper jackets and wrapping the fruit trees in large horticultural blankets. She whispered soft season’s greetings to her plants as she went, and internally debated whether to leave Radio 4 on over the Christmas period. A thought suddenly struck her. Had he been building up to ask her if they could spend the holidays together? Was that the question he’d been trying to ask her all day?

‘You are going back for the holidays, aren’t you?’ There was a world of difference, a universe of difference, between enjoying his company and his body here and taking him to stay with Miranda and her family in London.

‘Yeah, I’m gonna see my mum. I booked my ticket online last week, I’m travelling tomorrow.’ She sagged with relief. ‘I get the train from Leamington to Marylebone, then the Tube to Victoria, then another train to Sussex.’

‘I’ll come down with you. I’m going to stay with my sister in London.’

‘That’ll be nice,’ he said to the wooden slats. He had been scrubbing the same area for about ten minutes; if he kept going, the wax would come off and the wood would rot.

‘Paul, is everything all right?’

He shrugged.

‘Is it to do with us? Because, you know, I’m very happy with what we’ve got.’ She paused. ‘The way things are.’

Violent shaking of the head.

‘OK, if you’re sure . . .’

She tucked the hyssop saplings into their winter coats. ‘I thought you came from Essex?’ she said, and immediately wondered if this was something he had ever told her, or if it was part of the information she had scraped together from Ross and Demetra. How awful, at this stage, for him to find out the reason for her initial interest in him. She shuddered at the thought of him discovering her hidden reliquary, the tapes and the photographs of his likeness. How incriminating for her, and how hurtful and awkward and—

‘I can’t go back there!’ he burst out. ‘Not
ever
.’ His reaction was violent, like steam suddenly blowing the lid six inches off a pan. ‘It’s more than my life’s worth. Have I ever said the name Daniel to you before?’ Louisa pretended to consider this, knowing that Paul had never mentioned a single name from his past any more than she had. ‘Daniel is – he was my – I suppose you could say he was more like a brother than a friend. That was certainly the way he saw it, anyway. We looked after each other; he stopped the bullies from kicking my head in and I helped him read and write. No, that’s not true, I did it for him. He couldn’t read at all, apart from his own name and a handful of words. God, it feels so weird telling you that. He never wanted anyone to know. He would have killed me for saying it, I never would have dared.’

‘What do you mean, “was”, “would have”? Is Daniel dead?’

Paul exhaled, sending a plume of steam into the air. ‘I used to wish he was, but no. He’s in prison. Basically, I put him there. For the last couple of years, we used to, ah, you’re not going to like this, we made money by nicking scrap metal and selling it on. Not violent robbery, we never did anything like that until . . . one day, in August, we were on a job and something really bad happened. If I’d thought for a second that . . . we didn’t mean, we didn’t
plan
. . .’ He cracked his knuckles and looked over his shoulder before continuing. His voice had dropped half an octave and grown so quiet that she had to lean close to make out his words. ‘Someone – we – a man died, Louisa, because of us. I’m the only one that saw it happen – well, apart from him, obviously. That’s why I’m here. The police put me here until the trial, so that I’m out of the way of his dad. It’s my statement that’s going to get Daniel sent down for murder. I’m their star witness.’ He spread his fingers, held out his hands in star shapes, grimaced. ‘He’d kill me to stop me testifying, he’d do anything.’ Louisa put down the terracotta pot she was holding and sank down onto a bench. It felt as though something inside her had burst open. ‘The trial’s in three months. You can’t imagine what it’s like to have a date looming in your future like that, a day you know is going to be terrible but there’s nothing you can do about it.’

Try me, she thought. There were only three months to go until the meeting with Joanna Bower, the Trustees and their film-maker, a date which, to her, was as terrifying as any courtroom cross-examination.

‘I was his only friend and I betrayed him, d’you get me? Daniel would never ever have done this to me, he’s not a grass. He still hasn’t sold me out.’ He was whispering now, perhaps to cover the crack in his voice. ‘Guilt is the worst feeling in the world. And do you know what the worst part is? If I had to do it again, I would.’

His terrible secret made her feel less alone. But she was so caught up in the magnitude of what he was saying that she was in danger of losing the detail. Was he saying that Daniel hadn’t killed the man, or that he had? She must choose her words carefully. Paul was in full but fragile flow. If she misjudged her reaction he would retreat into silence again. He was standing before her in his muddy T-shirt looking absolutely horrified, as though he had been the recipient of shocking news and not its bearer. He looked about twelve years old.

‘It doesn’t matter,’ she said. ‘Come here to me.’ For a moment she thought he was going to try to sit on her lap, but instead he burrowed into her arm.

‘How come you’re not angry with me?’ he said, into the fold of her fleece. ‘How come you’re being so nice?’

‘Because I understand.’

Pity and gratitude did battle on his face.

‘It’s nice that you’re trying,’ he said. ‘But you
can’t
. The only way you could understand guilt is if you’d been through it yourself and I’m not being funny, but someone like you, you’re . . . all clever, and
good
, I mean that’s why I like being with you, but please don’t think you can understand.’

At the time, it felt like his speech had been designed to drag the confession out of her. She rolled the words around her mouth, murmuring them to herself for the last time before speaking them aloud. They would either bind her to Paul or sever the link forever. She felt a strange calm steady her voice.