Claire woke to the persistent ringing of her alarm clock. She reached drowsily to switch it off. Her stomach was rumbling reminding her that she had had no dinner the previous evening. She recalled the events of the evening with a sense of unreality. She glanced at Kirsty’s white face, thought how young she looked and felt a twinge of remorse. She pushed it to the back of her mind as she remembered Kirsty in Alan’s embrace. “How dare he,” she seethed. Kirsty was just a child, he was a grown man. “No! She wasn’t sorry. What she’d done was for Kirsty’s own good.” Some thought struggled to surface in her consciousness, but afraid of what it might be, she pushed it away. She rose and dressed.
After breakfast, just before she left, she brought Kirsty a mug of coffee, but Kirsty groaned and pulled the duvet over her head.
She yanked it back. “Have a drink of coffee, it will make you feel better. I’ve taken the battery out of the doorbell. If that swine calls, don’t answer the door, remember your promise.” Kirsty groaned again, and Claire saw her pull the duvet back over her head as she left.
Alan staggered out of bed groaning. He felt his head, it was throbbing, but the cut seemed to be healing. He shaved, had a shower, soaked the bloodstained handkerchief and pillowcase in the sink, then sat with a mug of sweet coffee, going over and over in his mind the events of the previous night. He hoped desperately that Kirsty was alright, but surely, Claire even in a rage wouldn’t harm her sister? He tried to make sense of what had happened. Claire had called him a pervert but all he’d done was kiss Kirsty, but even if he’d gone further it certainly wasn’t unnatural. He was a little older than her but less than five years, and in the relationships, he knew of, this was the norm rather than the exception. Kirsty was old enough to get married!
Desperate to find out what had happened, he decided to go to Kirsty’s house. Claire would be at work. so, it should be safe enough. Worry gnawed at his stomach on the bus. He jumped off and hurried to her house. He pressed the doorbell twice. He knocked and waited in vain. The curtains were still drawn in the lounge, so he couldn’t see in. He walked round to the back of the house and peered in Kirsty’s bedroom window. Her bed was made up and nothing was out of place. She didn’t have an exam, so she wouldn’t be at school. It occurred to him that she might have gone to the university in search of him. He decided to go back to his room and return to Kirsty’s house later.
Kirsty hid under the duvet, feeling thoroughly miserable, because of the previous day’s events and the after effects of the alcohol, but most of all at the realisation she must never see Alan again. She heard the knocking at the door, guessed it was Alan, but she felt too ill and hopeless to get out of bed.
“I trusted you Alan,” she sobbed. “Why did you hurt Claire?”
She knew that it wasn’t his fault, but he’d still hurt her sister. Her thoughts went around in circles. She loved Alan, but she loved Claire too and Claire had done so much for her. It would be disloyal, No! It would be a second betrayal, if she continued to see him. So, she told herself between sobs, yet her heart was telling her something different. But her head won the battle. She shut her feelings away and refused to let them influence her.
Chapter 31
Alan phoned Kirsty’s number repeatedly but there was no reply. He started to panic. He went back to her house but there was still no answer to the doorbell or his knocking. He imagined her lying in a pool of blood then realised the lounge curtains were drawn, so she must have returned from wherever she’d been.
He looked in her bedroom window again but there was nothing to be seen. Again, he left wondering what to do. He decided to come back in the evening even if Claire was there.
He returned to the university where he found a note from Doctor Taylor on his desk, telling him he’d been accepted as a member of the field trip to Iraq and asking him to see him as soon as possible. He found Doctor Taylor in his office and they had a lengthy discussion. While at Edinburgh University, as part of the Ecology course, Alan had been on a three-month field trip to Cyprus, so he had some idea of what was needed. He was given a list of the more immediate tasks and a note of the immunisations and vaccinations necessary, which he would have to arrange quite soon with the university doctor, as a few required a second dose a few weeks afterwards. He looked down the list and cringed.
Yellow fever: Hepatitis A
Cholera: Hepatitis B
Tetanus: Typhoid
Rabies: Polio
Then he remembered he’d had many of them for the Cyprus trip and they still might be valid.
He went back to his flat, worried sick about Kirsty. He moped about, then nerving himself, he left to try to see her again.
Claire answered his knock. The change in her shocked him. Her face seemed sharper and there was something malignant in her eyes. She looked coolly at him, then asked as he was a salesman calling at her door.
“Yes?” Alan pleaded. “Claire, can we talk?” Her smile, seemed to Alan to be more like a snarl
“I think we have said all that needs to be said, don’t you?” Her eyes went to the bandage on her wrist, he felt guilty and apologised.
“I didn’t mean to hurt you Claire, but you went mad.” Anger flared in her eyes.
“What do you expect, invading my home and panting after my little sister like a dog in heat? She’s just a child.”
For a moment the logical part of his mind questioned ‘Dog in heat?’ then he tried to explain. “We were waiting to see you Claire, we were going to tell you. It just happened, we couldn’t help ourselves.”
Claire looked him up and down as if he was something fit only for the rubbish bin “Spare me the details.”
He took a deep breath. “Can I speak to Kirsty?”
She eyed him in silence. “I’ll get her,” she muttered. She shut the door in his face and he heard her shouting, “KIRSTY?” Claire stopped Kirsty halfway along the hall and quietly primed her.
“Remember your promise. Tell him not to come back.” She saw Kirsty open her mouth to argue, but she hissed in her ear.
“Better to get it over with.” So, Kirsty confronted Alan at the door, with Claire standing behind her. She looked once at Alan’s face then didn’t dare look again.
“Kirsty,” his voice felt like a caress. She felt her resolve start to crumble.
“You’ve something to tell him,” Claire reminded her.
Kirsty stared down at her feet and muttered, “I don’t want to see you again Alan.” Alan looked dazed, his face ashen. “I’m sorry Alan,” she almost choked on the words. With a last despairing glance at his face, with a breaking heart, she shut the door, mindful of Claire at her shoulder.
Kirsty turned from the door, tears streaming down her cheeks and walked straight into Claire’s arms.
“It’s for the best” Her sister comforted her. “In a couple of weeks, you’ll have got over him.” Kirsty burst into a fresh bout of sobbing.
Alan stared at the closed door. It was as if it had closed on all his hopes and dreams. He wanted to push his way in, demand an explanation, but that was not in his nature. He stood for ages, his gaze fixed on the door, his mind blank. At last he turned and staggered away, feeling more, lonely than he’d ever felt in his life, trying to comprehend the situation on the long walk back to the centre of Dundee. He decided that he was going to get drunk, but not in company, he needed to be alone. He stopped at a late-night supermarket and bought a bottle of whisky and some cans of beer. When he reached his room, he sat drinking and brooding until the early hours of the morning. He came up with the hopeful conclusion that Kirsty was afraid of Claire and was speaking out of fear. After determining to go back the next day when Claire was at work, he drunkenly fell into bed and slept. He tried three times to see Kirsty the next day without success.
Not daring to face Alan alone, in case her resolve broke, Kirsty made sure she was not in the house when Alan might call. She went shopping in the morning then visited Marylin in the afternoon, hoping that her chatter would
stop her thinking about Alan. But Marylin was full of questions about how the romance was progressing.
“It’s over,” Kirsty muttered, her face set.
Marylin put on a sympathetic expression. “What happened?” she asked, eager for details. Kirsty, tight lipped, shook her head.
“You can tell me,” Marylin assured her. Kirsty turned away to hide her face. And was relieved when her friend changed the subject.
She didn’t go home until she knew that Claire would be back, then spent the rest of the evening studying for her math’s exam the following afternoon.
When Alan woke the next day, his first thought was of Kirsty. He felt frantic, then convincing himself that Claire had frightened her, and if he could get her alone everything would be alright, he decided to meet her at the school, since he knew she had an exam that afternoon. He arranged an appointment with the doctor for his vaccinations then started on the work needed for the trip to Iraq. He was at the school gates in good time waiting for her. After hanging about for half an hour, he saw her approaching chatting animatedly to Marylin and Dorothy. His heart gave a leap at the sight of her, the way she walked, the way she held her head, the indescribable loveliness of her. His chest ached.
As she came out of the gates, he smiled and called, “Kirsty,” but she didn’t seem to hear him. He tried to touch her hand, but she pulled it away and walked past him with a face like stone. He stood confounded, as the three strode quickly away with Marylin and Dorothy casting sympathetic glances back at him.
He stared after them as they disappeared into the crowds of shoppers, not knowing what to do. Eventually, in a daze, he returned to sit on his bed, his head between his hands. If only he could talk to her, find out what had happened, shake her, get the truth out of her, but another part of him flinched at inflicting his attentions on a girl who didn’t want them. He groaned, he needed to get away from Dundee for a while for the sake of his own sanity. He decided to visit his parents for a long weekend.
Kirsty, on seeing Alan waiting at the gate, had felt her heart start racing, but hiding her emotions behind a façade of smiles, she started chatting to Marylin. When Alan called her name and she felt like throwing herself into his arms, but she concealed her feelings and walked past him, holding back the tears. She saw Dorothy exchange a meaningful look with Marylin, then diplomatically start discussing the exam. It was only when she reached the privacy of her home that she let her tears flow freely.
Alan’s mother knew at the first sight of her son. The woebegone, distracted look, the fever in his eyes, girl trouble. He picked at his food and moped around the house, looking miserable, disturbing it with the yearning of his lovesick spirit. She eventually felt compelled to penetrate his misery.
“You are wandering about like a bear with a sore head. What’s the matter Alan?” she asked.
Alan gave her a stricken look. “I’ve met this girl.”
“And?” she inquired.
He muttered. “We had a kind of misunderstanding and she won’t see me.” She tried to console him.
“Well faint heart never won fair lady.” Alan looked even more miserable. She gave up. She sighed, remembering her own girlhood, being in love, balanced on a tightrope between agony and ecstasy.
“Well enjoy your misery while you’re young. When you get to my age you won’t feel emotions nearly so intensely.”
“Thanks mum, that helps a lot,” he groaned.
Alan tried to pull himself together. “You’ve only known her for just over a week,” he told himself, but almost immediately he was again submerged in his memories, tasting the sweet fire of her mouth.
His sleep when he did sleep, was wracked with fevered visions of her, when he would touch her and taste her kisses. He would wake sweating and pace around his room or sit on the edge of his bed and try to hold the pain in his stomach in. With every breath he took he tasted her skin and her hair. His fingers remembered the feel of her hand, his ears the sound of her voice, his eyes … He remembered her drying her hair in his room, naked to the waist, her breasts and rosebud nipples visible through the veil of her hair. “OH! GOD!” he screamed.
Alan’s father sat up in bed with a start. “What was that?” he queried sleepily.
“It’s just Alan.” His wife shushed him, “He’s in love.”
“Bloody hormones,” he muttered and went back to sleep.
Alan’s mother listened every night to the groans and sighs from Alan’s room when the rest of the house was quiet. She heard him rise and pace restlessly downstairs. He’s got it bad, she thought. She worried. He’d hardly eaten a bite in four days. She shook her head, there was nothing that she could do, only time would cure him. When he left, still looking miserable, she worried about him.
Kirsty not having seen or heard from Alan for five days, was frantic with worry. Although she’d spurned him, and would continue to do so, the knowledge that he’d been near and trying to continue the relationship with her, was her only comfort in her self-imposed misery. She wanted him to break down the walls she’d built around herself, the walls she couldn’t break down herself without betraying Claire.
She answered the doorbell to find him on the doorstep. Sternly suppressing a surge of gladness as she remembered Claire’s tears, she barked.
“I told you I didn’t want to see you again.” Alan just looked at her, misery etched on his face.
She felt suddenly lost. She took a grip on herself. To counter her own surging feelings, she snapped. “You’re embarrassing me.”
She saw him flinch, saw the hurt in his eyes, but gritted her teeth, ignoring her pain. He tried to touch her hand, but she pulled back and looked at him as if he was contaminated.
“Don’t touch me!” she shouted and slammed the door. The surge of adrenalin left her, and she stood shaking. “You rotten bitch,” she sobbed. “Why did you do that?”
She ran to her bedroom, flung herself on her bed and cried. She heard the bell ring again but put the pillow over her head.
“Why did you do that?” she sobbed again. “Why did you hurt him?” She pounded her pillow. She didn’t want to think. She wanted him to drag her out and overpower her, force her to do anything that he wanted.
“Don’t be a fool, you hate him.”
“You love him.” The unspoken dialogue went on.
“You’re disgusting, you don’t need him.”
“Yes, you do, you love him.” Her heart insisted.
“YOU DON’T!” her head contended.
She knew she couldn’t keep this up. Every day, every hour, she had to fight the battle all over again. She felt worn down. She dissolved into wracking sobs, trying to ignore the frantic whisperings coming from her heart
After getting no reply when he rang the bell again, Alan, feeling gutted, turned to see Kevin and another youth lounging near the gate, smirking at him.
Sudden rage made him want to smash his fist into their faces, but instead, he glared at them and snarled. “What are you looking at?”
Fearful of his hostility, they turned and hurried away.
He got a mountain of work done at the university, sticking at it from morning to late afternoon. He also saw the doctor, who gave him the vaccinations he needed, which thankfully were not many. Having collected his immunisation certificates for the Cyprus trip in Edinburgh, he’d found many of them were still valid.
He tried to phone Kirsty that evening, but Claire answered. He almost felt the animosity emanating from the phone.
“Look Claire,” he explained. “I’m sorry if I hurt you, I never intended to, but I do love Kirsty. Why has she turned against me?”
“You have the nerve to ask that?” she barked. “I’ve got bruises on my face where you hit me, and my wrist is broken. Do you think she will have anything to do with you after seeing you beating me up? She doesn’t want to see you again. Your pestering is making her very unhappy.” He was too shocked to reply.
He heard the phone click as he was cut off. He tr
udged back to his desk and sank his head onto his arms, wallowing in his misery.
Marc looked in. “How’s the romance?” he asked.
Alan looked up and groaned. “Bloody awful.”
He saw Marc examining his face. “Women!” He sympathised. “Your girlfriend giving you a hard time?”
“Her, her sister,” he paused remembering, and added, “and her bloody cat.”
“I bet it’s a female.”
“It is.”
“Typical.” Marc sympathised. “Life sucks. I think that you need a good drink.”
“I need to get blasted,” Alan groaned. They went on a pub crawl, spending most of the night verbally abusing the whole female race.
When he got back to his room, drunk and maudlin, Alan apologized. He remembered where Kirsty had sat on his bed and rubbed his face on the depression he still imagined he detected on his duvet.
“I didn’t mean it Kirsty,” he moaned.
He remembered the look on her face when she’d shouted to him not to touch her, as if he was something beneath contempt. He groaned in despair. He started on the remains of the bottle of whisky, drunkenly considering committing hara-kiri on Kirsty’s doorstep. Eventually he fell on his bed and slept fully dressed, his mind anaesthetised.
It was well into the next afternoon when he woke. He felt feverish. His mouth tasted like a sewer and he had a splitting headache. A longing like hunger was gnawing at him, he had to see Kirsty again. He hung around the school, hoping for a glimpse of her but was disappointed. He went for a long walk, shoulders sagging, hands in his pockets, aimlessly trudging along, his thoughts going around in circles. He came back to conscious awareness to find himself in familiar territory, with darkness falling.
Love Patterns Page 21
