Suicide Club, The

by Quigley, Sarah

  After she’s spoken for a minute or two, it’s obvious that Geoffrey and Dr Mallory have been mistaken. Worried for no good reason, unnecessarily alarmed. Hormones, homesickness, a few minor headaches: these have been wrongly interpreted as more serious issues.

  ‘So you see,’ finishes Lace, pushing back her frothy hair with sunbeam fingers, ‘there’s no earthly need for me to go to hospital. I’m sure that The Palace is the right place for me.’

  ‘Quite.’ Dr Mallory removes her glasses and rubs her eyes.

  ‘Right,’ Geoffrey closes his folder.

  It’s important to leave, as swiftly as possible. She’s eked out time until it’s dangerously thin; one can only fly for so long on borrowed wings. ‘I’m glad we’re in accord.’ She stands up abruptly, her head swimming.

  But just as her fingers reach for the door handle —

  ‘Are you sure,’ asks Geoffrey suddenly, ‘that your determination to stay here isn’t related to your old friend Gibby?’

  Lace stares at the smudged handle: her fingers slip. ‘Of course not. We see each other all the time back in England.’

  ‘Or your new friend Bright?’ Now his voice is more persistent, boring into her back. She feels it happening. The colour is starting to pour out of her. If she stays a second longer, she will crash to the floor and be taken away. Fatally wounded.

  ‘Of course not.’ Her voice is faint: she pulls at the door, arms shaking.

  ‘Remember that intimate relationships are not allowed between residents at The Palace.’

  ‘He means nothing to me. Nothing at all.’

  It’s her final lie, delivered with the force of an executioner’s sword. Out in corridor she staggers against the wall and wipes the sweat off her face. Gibby, Bright? Impossible to judge which is more important in her refusal to leave. But there’s another, simpler reason why she must stay here. The effort of moving will kill her.

  MAKES THE WORLD GO ROUND

  BRIGHT’S DIET IN THE past days has consisted of:

  — weak orange juice

  — stringy white cabbage

  — rye bread

  — tasteless vegetable mush

  and a few other dishes, all salt/preservative/flavour-free, that he can’t put a name to.

  In other words, he’s been ignoring the siren call of the snack bar and going to the dining hall for meals. He writes to Eduardo on a creased Alpine-view postcard found down the back of the games-room sofa:

  NO CHOCOLATE OR CRISPS FOR THREE DAYS! PLENTY OF SAUERKRAUT. EXPECT MAX. FARTING ON MY RETURN.

  He’s scribbling at his usual solitary table, buffered by books and newspapers, a silent island in the dining-hall babble. Around him voices rise to fever pitch. Familiarity is breeding quarrels. Whenever a Twin approaches him on hopeful tiptoe — ‘I’m working!’ he says quickly.

  Is it the truth? Hard to tell, especially with someone whose job is to tell tall stories. He sits with his feet up on a chair, boiled meat and pale vegetables in front of him, and adds a P.S. in a lower-case whisper. ‘All the food has become the same colour. Germany is a beige nation.’

  He may appear to be writing nothing but disposable quips — but when he lays down his pen, tilts his hat over his eyes and stares into the darkness, it’s there. Some glimmer at last, a chink, an inkling. He knows enough to know that this will grow, and the expectation and hope feels like coming up for air.

  HALF AN HOUR LATER, when he arrives at Lace’s door, Gibby is already there, patiently holding a plate of bread and fruit, looking as if he might have been at his post forever.

  ‘I’ve got it covered.’ Gibby looks displeased at the sight of his rival. ‘You don’t need to bother.’

  ‘It’s no bother. I’ll go on doing it as long as she goes on missing meals.’

  Gibby peers at Bright’s laden tray. ‘She doesn’t like goat’s cheese. Don’t you even know that? She won’t touch any of it.’

  Testily, they deposit their offerings one each side of the door, then leave in awkward silence like politicians from different parties who’ve ended up supporting the same cause. Neither of them speaks for the length of the corridor nor on the first flight of stairs. But on the landing, drenched in colour from the stained-glass window, Bright grabs Gibby’s arm.

  ‘Hey!’ Gibby pulls away. ‘Get off me.’

  ‘Why are you so weird around me?’

  An almost shocked look flicks over his face. ‘I’m not weird! Well, all right, I am. But not especially towards you.’

  ‘In truth —’ Too late Bright realises that he’s picked up Geoffrey’s phrase. ‘You treat me like a leper and you have ever since we met. It’s okay not to like me, loads of people don’t. But is it because of her?’

  It’s difficult to tell if Gibby’s flushing; the light from the window has painted him red all over. ‘Look, I’m sorry! Mea culpa. Is that what you want to hear?’

  ‘Not really.’ Bright sighs. ‘I don’t want to tread on toes. She told me — assured me — that you’re just friends.’

  ‘We are!’ Gibby brushes his hand across his red-hot forehead and puffs like a dog.

  ‘I suppose you’re always seeing men falling in love with her.’ Bright is also feeling a trifle overheated, even though he’s standing in a patch of deep green. ‘Who wouldn’t? She’s, she’s — well, you know what she is. Anyway, I get the feeling she might need me. And maybe she even likes me a bit.’

  ‘For Christ’s sake,’ bursts out Gibby, ‘the whole of Bavaria can see that she likes you.’

  ‘Really?’ Relief makes him weak. ‘That’s good news. I mean, I thought so, but I wasn’t sure… There were indications, but one never knows.’ Even as he says it, the kiss comes back to his mind, turning his knees to water, collapsing his heart. You’re sure, she’s sure, there’s sureness all round, and — oh god, this is totally fucking wonderful!

  ‘I’ve got a session to get to,’ says Gibby abruptly. ‘Have you finished?’

  ‘Actually no. There’s one more thing.’ He’s only just realised it, as they stand three feet apart, divided only by colour. ‘Why don’t you ever look me in the eyes?’

  Uffff. Gibby makes a strange extended noise that doesn’t consist of words, and then he bounds away. His trainers are still suffused with a red glow — of embarrassment, or rage?

  Bright can’t help himself. ‘Aren’t you going to ask me if my intentions are honourable?’ he calls. ‘Or tell me to look after her, otherwise you’ll break my legs?’

  The only reply is a door slamming below, followed by an echoing thud elsewhere in the building. ‘Lace?’ He treads quietly back up the stairs and peers along the hallway but sees only the untouched plates floating on their white serviette rafts.

  DOWNSTAIRS, BRIGHT’S EXIT ROUTE is blocked by Dr Mallory and some of the girls. Wild chatter rises like helium balloons from the foyer. Honeymoon suites! Limousines! Something borrowed, blue and new! He creeps down to the very bottom stair, hiding in the shadows like a fox. Fortuitously, the hens scatter, calling out promises and exhortations to each other.

  He rechecks the lay of the land. All clear! Good to go!

  Only the sign-out book, open on its pedestal, stands between him and the door. He gives the blank page a slap with his hand as he flies past. Geoffrey would say he’s commitment-phobic, refusing to pin himself down. Admin would say if he does this again, he’ll be expelled from The Palace, progress or no. Only Dr Mallory might understand the importance of his mission.

  ‘Back soonish,’ he calls to the building, lying in its hollow of dying brown grass. The crisp note lent to him by Admin (saved for days by forgoing sugary treats) crackles like fire. He puts his hand to his breast pocket: heart-warm, headstrong, this is the way to be!

  Twelve minutes after his illegal departure, he’s haring back across the town square. His backpack, inherited from Savage, is stuffed full of a light promise.

  Sixteen minutes after his speedy exit, his toe crooked but increasingly strong inside his sh
oe, he’s sprinting back down the gravel path.

  Eighteen minutes after his illicit mission began, he sees the shape of a woman at the gate of The Palace: blonde, curvaceous. She’s peering up at the windows. Her clinging black skirt, the curve of her arse: these things slow him in his tracks, in spite of the time pressure and the perishable gift he bears. Not bad. (He is, after all, only human.) Could it be Dr Mallory’s sister, or Dr Mallory’s niece? He strolls the last short distance so he can arrive in a fit state to say —

  ‘Oh, fucking hell. It’s you.’

  It’s the last person he’s expected to see. The Wolf in Foxy Clothing, the Old Man’s Blind Spot, the Lady-and-the-Tramp, the Paper Doll. His stepmother.

  Fortunately she makes no move to kiss him; they’ve never pretended to like each other, not even when the Reverend’s around. ‘Thank goodness you’ve turned up, Brian. I had no idea about access. Am I allowed in?’

  ‘There’s only one point of access. You’re blocking it.’ He edges around her and leans on the gate, swinging a little like an Irishman chatting to his neighbour. Nonchalance is his best defence. ‘What brings you to this neck of the woods? Business, or business?’

  ‘Pleasure, actually.’ Her lips are poutier than he remembers, painted a deep pink. ‘I’m going to a luxury spa in Munich for the weekend. And your father asked me to stop in on you.’

  ‘Stop in?’ He laughs slightly breathlessly. ‘It’s hardly on the way.’

  ‘Well, it’s closer to Munich than Mumbai, which is where your father is.’

  ‘Slumming it?’ quips Bright. ‘To impress on the Archbishop et al that he’s worthy of promotion? Who knew that courting poverty could bring one closer to earthly riches!’

  The Paper Doll tosses back her flat-ironed hair like a skittish filly. ‘He would have come if he could have. He’s worried sick about you.’

  ‘In truth…’ begins Bright. The phrase sounds more convincing than it had earlier, so he repeats it. ‘In truth, I don’t want to hear how worried my father is, nor what he would have done for me if things were different. You know what? I wouldn’t be here now if it weren’t for him.’ This sounds more ambiguous than he wants it to, almost like an acceptance speech in which he’s waving a golden statue at his parent in mutual appreciation. But his stepmother isn’t listening: the rising wind is whipping her hair into a mess, and she’s asking plaintively if, after unendurable airports, interminable taxi rides, and a long wait in the foreign chill, she might be allowed inside. ‘Just for a minute,’ she says almost sarcastically, closer to the linguistic currency he understands.

  ‘You can come in if you promise not to say a word about me being off Palace grounds.’ Reluctantly, he stands back and lets her through the gate, still feeling slightly nauseous that he found her attractive, albeit from a distance and with sweat in his eyes. ‘Keep your distance,’ he adds in a warning tone. ‘I’m particularly toxic today.’

  ‘From the medication they’ve put you on?’ She sounds sympathetic. ‘Poor darling.’

  ‘Don’t call me that!’ He peers into the foyer: still empty, thank Christ. ‘Okay, hurry up. Don’t dawdle.’

  Standing in the middle of the scratched floor, the Paper Doll looks like a beauty queen from a former Eastern Bloc country. Her eyelashes dip in disdain at the sight of the chandelier with missing light bulbs and the cracked lectern displaying its stained ledger. ‘Not very glamorous, is it? My friend Cindi went to rehab in Maine and she said it was like a four-star hotel. They even served lobster.’

  Bright eyes her stonily. ‘This isn’t rehab.’

  ‘Oh, I know! Technically not. But I’m telling people that’s where you’ve gone, it sounds better. Considering the money we’ve paid, I expected something a little more glossy.’ Her red-tipped hands hover in the air, as if unwilling to touch anything around her.

  Yes, careful now, you don’t want to catch mental illness! says Bright in a chatty voice. And come off it, who do you think you’re fooling, pretending you’ve paid a penny towards sending me away? Out loud he says, ‘I’m not allowed to take you to my room. Inter-gender visits are frowned upon.’ Where in the Palace grounds can he take her — and how long before she gets bored enough to leave?

  The Paper Doll laughs gaily. ‘Always so formal! Your father often expresses surprise at how he, of all people, has a son with so little humour. Although he says some people find your writing extremely funny.’

  ‘Oh, yes, the Reverend’s a riot, isn’t he. It’s a wonder you haven’t died laughing, living with him for so long.’

  His stepmother doesn’t know how to react to this; she glances uncertainly down at her crease-free cleavage and smoothes her skirt. ‘I really need a bathroom,’ she says, sounding peevish.

  Out in the garden they come across Raven and the Swede, sitting cross-legged, huddled in army jackets like sinister garden gnomes. The Paper Doll sticks to the path and walks quickly past. ‘Are all the inmates like that?’ she hisses. ‘So dowdy, so secretive?’

  ‘They all have the necessary qualifications for entry,’ counters Bright. ‘Mad, with money.’ As light as it is, he readjusts his backpack, trying to remind himself of how he felt before. This will soon be over, and then —

  — and then he sees her, stooping under the green-gold poplar tree. From a distance, she looks frailer than she is in his mind’s eye. Gold hair tied in a yellow scarf, midnight-blue jacket, dark denim legs that go on forever. She’s gathering up skeleton leaves in her thin white hands.

  ‘Who’s that?’ The Paper Doll stops and stares.

  ‘Can’t you hurry the fuck up?’ says Bright rudely and quickly. ‘I thought you needed a bathroom.’

  But his stepmother is caught, brightening up at glamour in the shape of Lace. ‘She looks more interesting. Such striking clothing, and those long faun-like legs! She could be what I need to front my next campaign.’

  ‘No hope of that. Strict religious upbringing: they’d never allow it, especially not bikinis. Besides, she doesn’t speak English. In fact she hardly speaks at all. That’s why she’s here. Socially phobic.’

  ‘Oh, she’s no good to me then. Still, at least with looks like that she won’t have problems catching a husband.’

  The New Building is as unsatisfactory to the Paper Doll as the Old One. If she weren’t so wary of lines forming between her eyes, she’d be frowning now. ‘God, what a dismal colour! And it reeks of cabbage — or it is swede?’

  ‘It could be either,’ muses Bright. ‘Dull vegetables comprise the primary food group here. Fortunately the dining hall’s closed until later, but I can take you to the snack bar, as long as you pay.’

  Standing at the plastic counter, his stepmother disconsolately surveys what the caterers categorise as snacks. ‘Where’s the Nespresso? Cindi’s rehab place had Nespresso.’

  ‘As we’ve ascertained already, this is neither rehab nor Maine.’ He seizes up three bags of crisps and two Kit-Kats. ‘Put the money in that box there.’

  ‘Green tea, chai tea? No? Not even a Diet Coke!’ She looks as if she might stamp her foot.

  ‘Be sure to tell my father what he’s spent his money on,’ nods Bright. ‘Why not try the Orangina. Live a little!’ Stepping back, his crisps rustling, he hears an answering rustle from his backpack. It gives him strength.

  The Paper Doll flounces off to the bathroom to make herself look better than anyone else in a hundred-mile radius, and he leans on the wall, waiting and eating. The green-onion grease coats his mouth in a comforting way. When he hears the roar of the hand dryer, signalling the imminent return of his stepmother, he gets neither a pain in his stomach nor a blackness in his head. Nor does he want to flee. I’m becoming immune. The realisation is enough to make him smile, even as the Paper Doll emerges in a rage, waving some kind of electric wand.

  ‘You can’t find a power point?’ Calmly, he surveys the hallway. ‘There’s one just there.’ He watches his stepmother kneel on the floor, ironing imaginary kinks out of her poker-st
raight hair, and suddenly someone speaks from behind him.

  ‘Do we have an unexpected visitor?’ Geoffrey looks impassively at the Paper Doll’s black satin rump.

  ‘I’m as surprised as you are,’ replies Bright, munching on.

  The Paper Doll swivels on her knees. Exactly the right position to perform sexual favours on Geoffrey, thinks Bright interestedly. What now?

  Certainly his stepmother’s face becomes livelier at the sight of a reasonably handsome man in a suit jacket. ‘I’m Mrs Reverend O’Connor,’ she says, standing up quickly. ‘Mrs Reverend the Second.’

  ‘We don’t encourage visits without prior arrangement,’ says Geoffrey without preamble or apology. ‘We do have the occasional Family Day, but only on longer residential courses.’

  ‘The thing is, I happened to be in the area.’ She peeks out at him under her newly flattened fringe. ‘And Brian’s father expressly asked me —’

  Geoffrey interrupts, unmoved by her extravagantly curled eyelashes. ‘I’m sure you’ll understand that the well-being of our guests is our top priority.’

  ‘But it’s my top priority, too!’ With a hint of covert triumph, the Paper Doll delves into her Louis Vuitton handbag and extracts two large envelopes.

  ‘What’s this?’ Bright takes them gingerly by the corners.

  ‘Money from your father — and something from your publishers.’ She darts a strange look at Geoffrey, half-coquettish, half-venomous, as if trying to decide whether to try harder or give up and loathe him.

  Bright stares at the letter. ‘Foreign rights? They’ve sold my book to —’ But when he looks down the list of countries, and then at the figure on the bottom of the paper, his eyes start to stream.

  ‘All right?’ Geoffrey darts him a look that’s close to anxious.

  ‘Ah, crisp went down the wrong way.’ Bright coughs to give the story credibility, and then holds out the paper for Geoffrey to see. He hadn’t expected to be alive for this moment; had never expected to see such a miraculously crisp silver-grey day, filled with Lace — astonishing, beautiful — and lucid words forming once more in his head, at last.