‘Bugger the crutches. I can manage. I’m not hobbling around on them like some loser. I’ll see you back at the flat.’
‘Are you sure? I’ll go and get them for you.’
But he was leaning over to tell the driver to take him back to Wapping.
He waved at me and winked and smiled and I had no choice but to go back to my friends in the pub. Disappointment mixed with hurt that he’d left so abruptly. But I was beginning to understand that there was so much more to his injury than the physical demands of having to learn to walk again. It had affected his confidence, his self-esteem, his sense of self and his pride. I was only just realising this. Only just taking in how vast the repercussions were for him.
‘Blimey! That was a speedy departure,’ Louise said. ‘What brought that on?’
I sat down. Ben was at the bar, Caroline with him.
‘He gets pain sometimes,’ I lied, ‘since the accident. Has to deal with it. He sends his apologies.’
‘Hmph,’ she said. ‘He might have said goodbye. It looked a bit rude. I don’t mind, but it was a bit hurtful to you, Ellie.’
‘I’ll see him later. He didn’t want to spoil my evening. He was being thoughtful.’
Finn leant towards me.
‘So that’s the new man.’
‘Yes.’
‘Are you sure you know what you’re doing?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘He doesn’t look your type. Chiara says you’ve already moved in with him!’
‘Yes, I have, Finn. But in a way, it hasn’t anything to do with you.’
‘You haven’t known him that long. Are you sure it’s a good idea, to live with him, so soon?’
‘Finn! Please!’
‘But look at him. Designer clothes, buying everyone drinks, calling you his guardian angel? It’s not you, Ellie! It’s all so superficial. You’re deeper than that!’
I looked at my ex-boyfriend, trying to form a response that wouldn’t sound defensive. This was typical of him, pigeon-holing me so there was no room for me to grow or change.
‘And there’s something fake about him,’ Finn went on. ‘I don’t trust him. He might only have one leg, and a chip on his shoulder about it, but he looks like a player. You should be careful.’
‘You want to watch out you don’t start to sound bitter, mate,’ Ben said, sitting down on the bench next to Finn. ‘It’s sounding a lot like jealousy. Looked like a nice guy to me.’ Thank goodness for my brother. ‘Where’s he gone though?’ he said.
I explained again.
‘There was something familiar about him, I thought,’ Caroline said. ‘I only saw his back, but he reminded me of someone.’
‘He’s called Patrick,’ I said. ‘Patrick McIntyre. He sails in Southwold. Perhaps you’ve seen him down there.’ Ben and Caroline had met in a pub in Southwold five years before; she had grown up in Halesworth, nearby.
‘The name doesn’t ring a bell,’ said Caroline. ‘Anyway, poor guy. Sounds like the accident was pretty serious. It’s amazing he’s up and about at all. Does he realise he’s left his crutches?’
‘He felt ashamed,’ I told her quietly. ‘He didn’t want to be seen on them. I suppose that’s part of it. Getting used to how people see you.’
‘It must be hard. Especially when he was obviously so fit before – he’s pretty athletic-looking,’ Ben said.
I could feel something well up in me now my brother was here. A need to share my happiness, but also to shed all the anxiety I was still carrying about my role in Patrick’s accident. I wished we could find somewhere to talk, on our own.
Ben put his arm around me.
‘The cottage is looking great, Els,’ he said. ‘It’s so nice now it’s de-cluttered.’
There was no hint of resentment or hidden meaning on his face. How was it he accepted everything with so little complaint? Our Aunty May – our aunt, both of ours – had died and left me her house by the sea. Why wasn’t my brother green with envy, or at least a little angry? It wasn’t fair, even I could see that, but he didn’t object. Aunty May and I shared our artistic interests, always had done, and I’d loved her, but so, I guessed, had Ben. I wondered what it was about Ben that must have convinced May she didn’t want him to benefit from her the way I had done. Or what it was about me that meant she did. That photo came back to mind, the one I’d found in the cottage. With me cut out. Was May making up for something she’d done to me maybe? She’d left Ben in the picture so perhaps leaving me the cottage was some kind of atonement.
I shuddered.
Ben was three years younger and six inches taller than me. When he was little and ill, or frightened, or just unable to sleep, I let him crawl into my bed, wrap his hot sticky limbs about me, breathe into my ear. Now Ben lived in a kind of golden bubble, I sometimes thought, where bad thoughts and uncomfortable feelings such as envy, anxiety or guilt simply didn’t penetrate. That was how it appeared anyway. So why had I been hounded by anxiety and a sense of guilt and responsibility all my life? I wanted to discuss all this with my brother, as well as my new relationship, but we were surrounded by friends – it wasn’t the place.
Anyway, Ben had Caroline, who was smiling at him adoringly. She was like a thoroughbred horse – a Palomino, I thought, with her bronze skin and her blonde hair. Together she and Ben seemed to skim over the surface of life, partying, drinking, laughing, working at jobs they felt neither a great vocation for nor frustration with, earning enough for a mortgage on a flat in Clapham, spending their weekends throwing parties in their patio garden or going down to Caroline’s parents’ place in Suffolk to windsurf and sail.
‘Hey, cheer up, Els,’ Caroline said then. ‘Look, let’s finish this bottle of wine. You look glum. We’ll meet your guy another time. Here.’
And she refilled my glass. I needed it.
‘You and Ben,’ she said to me, ‘it’s hard to believe, seeing you together, that you’re brother and sister. Ginger Ben and Dark Ellie, did you get on when you were kids?’
‘I did and she didn’t,’ said Ben, and Caroline laughed.
‘What’s that mean?’ she said.
‘It was just that I felt responsible for him,’ I said. ‘I was always made to watch him, even when I was quite little. I was terrified something would happen to him while I was looking after him.’
‘It’s damaged her irreparably,’ said Ben. ‘Look at her, she has a need to save people.’
‘You were very lucky to have her,’ said Caroline. ‘I always wanted a big sister and I never got one!’
‘Actually, Ben keeps me grounded,’ I said. ‘Ben’s the calming influence now we’re grown up.’
‘I know what you mean,’ she said, and kissed his cheek.
‘Anyway, I’m so sorry, guys,’ I said when I’d finished my drink. ‘But I think I’d better go. Patrick will be waiting for me. I need to check he’s OK.’
I couldn’t bear to be apart from Patrick any longer. And I wanted to know the real reason he’d left so abruptly.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
‘I didn’t want to go to start with,’ Patrick said when I got back to his apartment. ‘I hate those dives. They’re for losers. I need to drink in decent places. Luckily I’ve got some champagne for when you get in tomorrow night. We’ll drink it before I take you to Moro’s. Nowhere is too good for us, Ellie.’
‘Patrick, I do understand how you feel, about being seen with your injury. . .’
‘It’s not an injury, Ellie. It’s a life-changing bloody disability.’
‘Yes, I know, but people aren’t going to judge you, especially not my friends. Or my brother.’
‘I was in top athletic condition before I was run over,’ he said. ‘You don’t think it’s easy for me to see people looking at me as if I’m sub-standard in some way? You have to let me deal with it, you have to let me be.’
‘Of course. I wouldn’t make you do anything you weren’t comfortable with.’
‘Well I’m n
ot comfortable meeting your mates. They’re a motley bunch anyway. You can do better.’
I looked at him, startled, but he was smiling, and I didn’t know if he was joking or not.
I settled on the joking.
The next day I managed to make some advances on the painting, adding a layer of light, leaving gaps so that previous layers could be glimpsed beneath. I deepened the lower part of the picture, using thick paint here, and texture to suggest objects beneath, like the mud on the bed of the Thames when the tide was out.
I painted all day then went over to take Dad his shopping before driving back to Patrick’s through the Blackwall Tunnel. He was waiting for me with the champagne already poured, on the balcony when I got in.
We drank while the world went on beneath us, doing busy stuff in the summer city, people hurrying hither and thither and texting and emailing and talking and tweeting, as if no one knew there was this other way to be, this blissful other world so close to their own.
We took a taxi to Moro’s and ate fabulous Moroccan delicacies and Patrick ran his hand up my leg and told me he loved me. Then we got a taxi home again.
‘Tell me something new about the river,’ I said as we lay on his bed, gazing out over its rippling surface, lights reflecting up from its depths. ‘Something nice.’
‘I can’t think of anything that nice at the moment. The river is a monster at times, Ellie, however benign it may appear.’
I looked at him.
‘It looks pretty nice at the moment,’ I said.
‘Maybe. But it’s deceptive.’
‘Actually, I know,’ I said. ‘It’s what I try to show in my painting. The darkness that lies beneath an apparently benign surface.’
‘We’ve got so much in common, darling,’ he said, tugging off my jeans and turning me over.
‘What do you mean?’
‘That we know that things that look benign can be deceptive. Now sshhh, while I kiss you, all the way down your back.’
Later, I awoke in his bed. Patrick wasn’t there, but I could hear movement in the kitchen across the other side of the vast open space, could just see a soft light, hear the clatter of cups. A silvery light was pouring in through the curtainless windows from the city buildings all around us that meant it never grew completely dark outside. Lights flashed on and off at the top of tall buildings, and bright windows reached to the sky in towers of glass and steel while the spire of the Shard glowed tall and ghostly up to the sky.
On the cabinet on my side of the bed was the photo of Patrick’s wife.
I picked it up, feeling a stab of jealousy that I tried to quash at the realisation he had put her right there. She was dead, for Christ’s sake. You couldn’t be jealous of a dead person – could you? I remembered he had told Chiara she had died of meningitis while he had told me quite clearly she had died at sea.
I looked more closely. She was wearing a white lace dress, flimsy, blowing back against her in the wind. Her wedding dress.
She was bending forward, holding the dress against her knees to stop it blowing up. Clutching a bouquet of flowers. Behind her was the sea and then, of course, I realised she was standing on a beach. In fact, it looked a lot like the beach in front of Aunty May’s house. I squinted closer. It was the beach in front of Aunty May’s house. There was the groyne, the one I knew so well, with the ‘Danger’ sign, and in the distance you could just see the great white spheres of Sizewell power station.
I shuddered to think she was dead. She looked so pretty, so alive in this picture. So full of love. She must have felt the same way towards Patrick as I did, and it gave me an odd feeling of sisterliness for her.
Patrick came back in then and I almost jumped out of my skin.
This time he didn’t respond as I was afraid he might, the way he had been so angry when he’d found me looking at the photos of him as a child.
‘I should have put that away,’ he said. ‘It must be upsetting to you.’
‘Patrick,’ I said, ‘you told Chiara your wife died of meningitis. You told me she had an accident. What did happen?’
He came over to me, gently took the photo out of my hand and lay down beside me. I drew back from him, prised his hand off my breast where he had let it rest.
‘Ellie, Ellie, I thought you liked this?’
‘I do. I will when you’ve explained. Meningitis or an accident?’
He lay very close, his eyes shut. Was he going to speak? Or avoid telling me the truth?
‘You told me she had an accident at sea,’ I said. ‘But how exactly did she die?’
‘Speedboat,’ he said at last. ‘That’s all I want to say at the moment. It’s still quite raw. It’s still very painful to relive it. I don’t like telling people, Ellie. Especially people like your friends who I barely know. Because it wasn’t pleasant.’
‘No, I’m sure but . . .’
‘OK. You’re not going to let it drop. So I will tell you. She took out a power boat. I warned her it wasn’t safe to drive, but she got it into her head and . . . oh no, I can’t.’
‘It’s OK, if it’s too painful, you don’t have to talk about it now.’
‘Look.’ He got off the bed and stood up. He turned to face me. His expression had changed; he looked like a small boy who had been unfairly accused of something, indignant, his lips puckered.
‘She was supposed to be there for me.’ His voice had gone up a pitch. ‘She insisted on leaving me. On going back to Dunwich without me, on taking that boat. She was so headstrong, always thinking she knew better than me . . .’
‘Were you there?’
‘Of course I was there, I was telling her not to go. I saw it all.’
‘Now you’re frightening me.’
‘You asked me to tell you, so I’m telling you. Do you want to hear it, or not?’
I didn’t, and I did.
‘Go on,’ I said.
‘Exactly what I warned her would happen if she insisted on breaking up with me. The boat went out of control and there was no safety cord installed, which normally would have made the engine cut out. So. She shot out, and the boat cut her up into pieces.’
‘That’s terrible.’
‘Stef died in a speed boat accident,’ he said. ‘And her family have given me strife about it ever since. They couldn’t accept she had died in an accident due to her own headstrong nature. But that’s how it is. How it was. That’s it, Ellie. What else do you want to know?’
‘Nothing. That was all.’
‘Are you satisfied?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘You asked and I said I’d only tell you if you really wanted to hear. You insisted, Ellie, and now you’re upset. So I’m asking, are you satisfied?’
‘No of course not, Patrick. I’m shocked, not satisfied.’
‘Then stop asking about it . . . she wouldn’t want you to pry, and probe and insist.’
‘But I—’
‘Do you think she would want you, or your crusty friends, to know how her perfect body shot into the air, how the very boat she was driving walloped into her so her blood spilt onto the white froth of the waves, turning it all red? It was ghastly. And you’re insisting on making me relive it.’
‘I’m so sorry, Patrick. I really don’t want to make you relive it. Let’s stop talking about it now.’
‘Ellie.’ He moved towards me. He looked very tall, very big against the silver window, his face in silhouette, his broad shoulders tensed. His voice had gone back to normal and he spoke softly, gently.
‘I think you ought to know that she let me down badly, the way EVERYONE seems to think it’s OK to hurt me and then leave me. You’re not going to do that, are you?’
‘Of course not.’
‘So I would like you to agree something for me,’ Patrick said.
‘What is it?’
‘I don’t want you ever to make me go out to meet your friends again.’
‘Oh.’
I felt my heart sink. I h
ad so wanted them to know him, to see how happy I was, how far my life had moved on. Though now . . .
‘And I think I’d prefer it too if you stopped seeing them as well.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Just what I say. You don’t need to hang out with that bunch of hobos any more now you’ve got me. Do you?’
‘But . . .’
‘Ellie, Ellie.’ He had come over to where I was sitting on the bed and he was holding me close to him, pressing me up against him, squeezing me so the breath was crushed from my lungs.
‘You’re mine and I’m yours, and that’s all that matters. You can paint at the studio, that I have given you specifically for the purpose, and for now you can go and teach if you must, you can take your poor old dad his shopping, but then you’re to come straight back to me, OK?’
His tone changed again, to the seductive one I had first been so attracted to.
‘We’re building the perfect life between us. You with your painting. Me with my contacts. We’re both on the cusp of such exciting things, we don’t need people who will hold us back. Sometimes I simply can’t believe we met! Can you, Ellie? I want to share everything I’ve got with you, and for you to share your whole self with me. It’s what’s meant. But I don’t want to share you with anyone else.’
And he began to kiss my face so gently, so slowly I didn’t think I had any strength left to object.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
Although my teaching job was hard work I always found it grounding after the art I did in the week, which was solitary and about ideas. But today it also came as a welcome escape from thinking too much about everything that Patrick had said the night before.
I had awoken in the small hours in a cold sweat. There had been no covers over me. I’d sat up. Looked around. For quite some time I had no idea where I was. It seemed to be dark, but I could see a pink streak in the sky visible through the window and the usual lights blinking on and off across the city.
Then, it came back to me – I was in Patrick’s apartment, my apartment now I’d moved in. I could see now the shapes were his strange, spartan industrial furniture, the white faces just the blown-up photos he kept on his walls. Then the sensations of earlier began to slide back into my mind, the drink he’d kept on pouring, saying it would make us both feel better, that it was too painful reliving that day, the day Stef died, that he hadn’t meant to get angry with me. At first, I’d been so taken aback by the switch in his character I had considered leaving then and there. But as he apologised, his face a picture of remorse, I softened. It’s OK, I had told myself . . . I can always run. He can’t. After this I’d forgiven him and told him I understood. He’d repeatedly filled my glass, apologising, telling me I needed the drink to soothe me after his outburst. I accepted drink after drink from him. Then the vague awareness that I would no longer be able to run, and anyway, where would I run to? That I could barely stand up, but that it was all fading, everything was fading and I must have fallen asleep.
A Trick of the Mind Page 17
