by Tim Pears
‘You, James, are not allowed to ask that kind of question.’
‘I’m sorry. It’s none of my business.’
‘It looks that way,’ she told him curtly. ‘Listen, I’ve got to go downstairs, get ready for the late-nights. Why don’t you stay? We’re showing Withnail and I.’
‘Never heard of it.’
‘It’s a cult film, James. We show and sell it out every three or four months. Do yourself a favour.’
James would remember little of the film, apart from the fact that he couldn’t understand why people found it funny, and also that they seemed to know the dialogue in advance and laughed before lines arrived, which irritated him. The auditorium – the larger of Zoe’s two screens, holding a couple of hundred people – was full. As he was shuffling slowly out James saw Laura in the crowd ahead of him. He was about to push forward when he saw that she was with a tall, distinguished-looking man with silvery hair, who stood out among the young audience. Instead of greeting her, James stopped still; people pushed past and around him.
When each of their children was born, the next thing Harry and Alice did after registering their birth was to enter their names on the waiting-lists of prep schools near Harry’s office in the north of town, and of boarding schools further afield – including Alice’s ladies’ college for the three girls.
By now Sam had joined Amy in reaching school age and the next two, Tom and Susan, were old enough to attend the pre-school kindergartens attached to the boys’ and the girls’ prep schools. Harry left the house early and Alice drove the children to school. In the afternoons she sometimes brought them by the office on occasional, pre-arranged days: not, as might have been expected, when Harry knew his diary was free, but rather when he was meeting an important client. He found it took the tension out of such meetings when his well-behaved children trooped into the office, showed their father drawings done in school, answered Harry’s client’s questions with impeccable politeness and left the office in a well-ordered line. His clients realized they weren’t dealing with an awkward, obstinate stonewaller, after all, but a pleasant family man with a lovely wife and enchanting children; and negotiations resumed in relaxed fashion.
Adamina had started attending a local playgroup in the mornings. Picking her up at noon, Laura sometimes slipped in early and observed a while. She was surprised to see that her daughter was the bossiest child in the group: she created games, and then ordered other children into position and allotted them their roles, not by the threat of force but by some other power. She simply gave instructions in a quiet voice, with a slight lisp, and they obeyed her. When the playgroup leaders stopped the games Adamina created, or took children from her charge and back into their own, she didn’t stamp her feet or make a fuss but frowned, as if disappointed that they were so stupid. And then she resumed playing on her own, just as content with her own company.
One afternoon Harry came home from work and found four of his children playing with Adamina in the back garden. Amy and Sam were older and bigger than Adamina, yet she was arranging them all in some unfathomable formation from which all five proceeded to walk or toddle across the grass from one place to another, stopping to perform a hop or a skip on a signal from Adamina. Harry watched them for a while, bemused by the mysterious choreography, and disconcerted by his own children’s acquiescence.
That evening, when he and Alice were in bed, he said: ‘You know, my love, I’d rather the children didn’t play with Adamina.’
‘What do you mean?’ Alice asked.
‘She’s a little odd. Haven’t you noticed?’ Harry said.
‘She’s a little girl,’ Alice pointed out. ‘They’re small children, Harry.’
‘Well, I’m just giving you my opinion, my love. And to be honest, I’d like to give you something else.’
‘You’re mad, Harry,’ Alice giggled. ‘Don’t we have enough by now?’
‘It’s all right,’ he assured her. ‘It’s perfectly safe. It’s June. You know you only get pregnant in August or September. It takes you all summer to become fertile, my love.’
‘You’re right so far,’ Alice agreed.
‘And I think I’m going to enjoy this summer,’ Harry proclaimed, easing himself into his wife’s embrace.
Simon took his annual holiday in June every year, and every year he set off, alone, for a Greek island, having spent winter evenings studying a brochure offering ‘Holidays for the Mind, the Body and the Spirit’. Simon took a different option each time; this year he’d been dithering between ‘Honouring the Child Within’; ‘Astrology: The Logic and the Mystery’; and ‘The Shaman’s Path’. But he’d made a number of friends on the island over the years and during long telephone conversations discussed courses they’d done and swapped notes. In the end he set off for Heathrow Airport and the way of the Warrior of the Spirit.
Simon always returned from his holidays sun-tanned, fit and contented, free of the symptoms of ill-health about which he moaned the rest of the year. The only surprise was that he didn’t proselytize: the family were so used to Simon’s regaling them with the curative wonders of his latest diets and remedies, it was a miracle that he didn’t bore them to death with details of the one course of treatment that even he had to admit clearly worked.
Only Natalie knew why Simon was so reticent. The others were too relieved by his silence to risk asking him what kind of a time he’d had, in case the floodgates might open. And so they didn’t think to notice that the holistic holidays lasted for a fortnight, and Simon went away for a month.
Natalie was the only one to suspect that there was more to Simon’s vacations than met the eye, because she had friends in her own community of women in the town who went to certain Mediterranean islands. Natalie’s suspicions were confirmed that year by eyewitness reports, and the Sunday after Simon’s return – in his annual state of being at one with the world – Natalie hauled him outside for a walk around the garden. Dick the terrier followed them, and scuttled along behind Simon on his tiny legs like an eager courtesan. The fragrance of honeysuckle drifted across the lawn.
‘So you had a good holiday?’ Natalie asked.
‘It was marvellous,’ he smiled.
‘You look like the cat that’s licked the cream. Did you make new friends?’
‘Masses,’ Simon declared. ‘You should take a holiday yourself, Nattie,’ he advised. ‘Get rid of that wan pallor, darling.’
‘Simon,’ she said. ‘You know it’s the Pride march in London next weekend.’
‘I’m quite sure no one can have possibly failed to notice the poster on your bedroom door,’ Simon pointed out.
‘Why don’t you come along?’ Natalie asked him. Simon stopped walking, and Dick bumped into the back of his calves.
‘I know where you go, Simon. I know people who have been to the same island. You’re hardly anonymous at the best of times.’
She was right: Natalie and Simon were much the same height; but he took up three times as much space in the world. Simon lifted his feet as if out of mud and resumed walking, without looking up from the ground.
‘They said you were the life and soul of every beach party going,’ Natalie resumed. ‘Simon,’ she said, ‘I don’t get it. Are you some kind of animal that only mates in season – in your case a fortnight in the second half of June? On a distant island in the sun? Why don’t you come out? It’s not like it would surprise anyone, for Christ’s sake.’
Simon stopped again, and this time looked Natalie in the eye. ‘I have no intention of upsetting the old man,’ he told her. ‘And I trust you won’t either.’
‘OK,’ she conceded, ‘he’s the one person who might be surprised. He still imagines you’re screwing half the typing-pool.’ She laughed, and Simon’s unusually solemn bearing began to lift. ‘He thinks your hypochondria’s just an excuse to seduce nurses,’ Natalie joked.
‘Taking care of oneself is not hypochondria,’ Simon admonished her.
‘Sorry,’ she said.
‘But you can’t live for your father. Anyway, he knows I’m lesbian, Jesus, he doesn’t care. It’s 1991, Simon. And you’re thirty-six years old.’
‘Age has nothing to do with anything,’ he said. ‘You don’t understand, Natalie, you’re not family. He’s my father and I’m not going to hurt him.’
‘What about you?’ she demanded. ‘Being honest and open for yourself, instead of living a lie? I think the stuff about your father is bullshit, Simon. I think you’re a coward.’
Simon straightened his silk tie and his gaze wandered around the garden as he pondered her accusation, as if a riposte might appear from among the roses or over in the fruit trees.
‘I may be a coward,’ he replied at length. ‘But I’ve never hurt anyone,’ he said, in a tone of voice that told her the conversation was over.
They strolled back to the house in silence, until Sam spotted Simon coming and shrieked, and the others joined him in running towards their portly uncle; Simon curled up in an ample ball on the grass and they launched themselves like miniature Cameroonian footballers onto his already chortling, trembling frame.
Harry and Alice threw one of their parties one Friday evening late in July. They planned it to take place outside, with croquet and flowers, and Pimms replacing the customary cocktails, but it rained all afternoon and so was held as usual in their drawing-room in the east wing.
It was summer rain, on what was a hot and humid day, and people drank more than normal. The barmen were kept busy, while trays of stuffed mushrooms and canapés carried around by the children were returned to the kitchen largely untouched. Laura threw them away before Natalie saw them, because she knew Natalie would want to put them into cardboard boxes and drive them to the refuge, or the night shelter in town, despite having only just knocked off after another of her non-stop working weeks.
Charles drank with the panache of a genial host, sweeping himself a glass off every tray that passed by, and exhorting others to do likewise. In actual fact he took no more than a perfunctory sip before putting the glass back down on the nearest surface: Charles managed to convey the impression of a merry dipsomaniac while imbibing no more than a single glass of champagne all evening.
Harry was practically teetotal, while Alice was unable to resist one or three White Russians. Natalie only drank beer and had to provide it herself, entering Harry’s parties with a four-pack of Ruddles Bitter under her arm and drinking straight from the can. Simon, despite his size, became tipsy from half a glass of wine. He was known to vanish from social occasions and be found on his back, snoring, in some quiet room.
Robert, on the other hand, could take any amount of alcohol. He drank steadily, with no visible effect except that at some point he became even more silent than usual, standing in a corner, surveying the room with dark, unfocused eyes.
Charles restrained himself at the end of that evening and allowed Harry and Alice to see their guests off by themselves, soon after dark. In the kitchen, Laura let the barmen out and finished clearing up with help from Natalie.
‘Pop over later if there’s a good film on,’ Laura offered on her way out.
‘Thanks. I might,’ Natalie replied.
It was a moonlit night. Laura walked over to her cottage, fifty yards from the back door of the house. She entered through the porch and straight into the large kitchen that constituted the whole of the ground floor. She walked through the ice-blue room and up the stairs. The light was on in Adamina’s room: Adamina often put herself to bed, and Laura would find her talking to her teddy bears or already sleeping. It was one of the advantages of Laura’s job and of living in the cottage, safe within the walled grounds of the house on the hill. Laura walked past the open door of the sitting-room and her own bedroom and into Adamina’s: her daughter was asleep, curled up across the bed, her feet against the wall, half-way through the unconscious process of turning right around in her sleep, a habit she hadn’t quite grown out of. Laura put her hands under Adamina’s light little body and shifted her round so her head was back on the pillow; Adamina frowned, without waking, and Laura kissed her forehead.
Laura went into the bathroom opposite Adamina’s room and peed, without turning on the light. She looked through into the darkness of Adamina’s room: the moon’s illumination faded before it reached the bed, but Laura was able to imagine her daughter’s sleeping body there as clearly as if she could see it. The question that often came to her mind at this moment of the day did so now: she wasn’t sure whether her life was one of enclosure or freedom. The cottage in which she lived with her daughter was like her own space inside a larger prison. Within a defined orbit she was free. She flushed the toilet and the noise was loud, then drained away in the silence of the cottage.
She went into the sitting-room. The moonlight was uncanny, making the familiar space and objects strange, casting them in a cool, blue light. It seemed a shame to disturb it with electric glare. She thought she’d like to lie in it a while, listening to music. To what? Miles Davis, she decided: Concierto de Aranjuez. Laura moved across towards her stereo, looked for the tape. When suddenly her heart slammed to a stop: she wasn’t alone; there was someone else in the room. She lost coordination of her limbs but managed to reach to the light switch, fumbled it on and turned round.
Robert was sitting in the armchair: he had been sitting there – how long? – in the dark. He closed and lowered his eyes from the bright light, and then raised them again. His arms hung heavy either side of the chair and a bottle drooped loosely from one hand, its bottom resting tilted on the floor. His eyes were dead.
Laura got her breath back and spoke, in a voice she heard as higher and wilder than her own.
‘What the hell are you doing in here?’ she demanded. It was weird the words formed at all; her tongue and her mouth were spastic, she felt like a puppet.
Robert gazed at her. ‘I came to see my daughter,’ he said. ‘I’ve been watching her sleeping.’
Anger swelled in Laura’s throat. ‘How dare you? Go away,’ she told Robert.
‘It’s time we had a little talk,’ Robert declared. ‘Sit down.’
‘Get out,’ Laura said, with as controlled a voice as she could. She wanted to scream at him, but it occurred to her that the most important thing in the whole world was that Adamina didn’t wake up. She thought of the open door to Adamina’s room, and promptly went through and closed it, before returning to the sitting-room. Those few steps helped restore her equilibrium, and to still her hammering heartbeat.
‘Get out of my house, Robert,’ Laura said.
‘It’s not your house. I came to see my daughter and now we’re going to talk.’
‘You bastard,’ Laura exclaimed. ‘I told you: we don’t need you. She’s almost four years old and you come in here like a thief. Get out, Robert.’
‘Are you going to sit down?’ Robert asked. His eyes were dead and his gravelly voice was a drone.
Laura leaned a hand on the back of the sofa behind which she stood, and with the other rubbed her forehead and her closed eyelids.
‘You fucked me like I fucked you,’ Robert said. ‘You may not like it but she’s mine as much as yours. I want to see her. I want to give her things. I want—’
‘Get out!’ Laura screamed.
Robert pushed himself up from the chair, stumbled, got his balance back and advanced towards Laura. He stepped onto the sofa and lurched forward to grab her; she jumped aside as the sofa fell backwards and Robert rolled over it, landing on the floor and against a sideboard. Books toppled onto him.
Laura didn’t know what to do; what could she do? She couldn’t run and leave him there in the cottage with Adamina. She crossed to the other side of the room and stood behind the chair he’d just been sitting in. Robert staggered to his feet, breathing heavily, and came towards her again.
‘You think you’re so fucking clever,’ he said.
‘No, Robert,’ Laura mumbled. She didn’t know what to do and she realized she was about to cry. She be
gan to prepare to shield herself from the blows to come, a submissive victim, she was fourteen again and her knees were giving way.
The first blow hit her hand covering the side of her face and sent her reeling. She prepared for the next. She could hear his footsteps, feel his body come close, smell his whisky breath, sense his hand withdrawing …
An incredible noise rent the air: a raucous, angry animal shriek that stunned both Robert and Laura. Their heads turned slowly to the doorway, and there stood Natalie, staring at Robert. Laura gasped with relief; it swelled inside her. She blinked her wet eyes and wiped them and stood up straight. When she looked again at Natalie, and then at Robert, she saw that neither of them had moved a muscle: both were locked into the other’s gaze. The relief Laura felt began abruptly to drain away. She knew what both these people were capable of. She realized that the three of them were on the brink of something far worse than what might have happened a moment before.
Now, however, the fear didn’t overwhelm her. Her mind instead became lucid, her body icy and under control.
‘Natalie,’ Laura said in an easy, welcoming voice. ‘Hi. Robert dropped by for a coffee. Do you want to see that film on TV?’ She spoke warmly, normally, and she began slowly to move: sliding the armchair as if just easing it back into its proper position, stooping to pick up the bottle that lay on its side, whisky draining into the carpet.
‘What time’s it on? Soon? Do you want a coffee? Robert, you can stay too, though I guess you may want to get going.’
The other two – first Natalie, then Robert – began to relax the frightening postures their bodies had adopted.
‘Check the paper, see what time it’s on, Nat,’ Laura suggested, nodding towards the television in the corner to the left of the door. Natalie looked at Laura questioningly. Laura nodded again. ‘Over there,’ she said. Natalie moved cautiously away from the doorway.
‘Have you had enough coffee, Robert?’ Laura now asked him. His gaze had followed Natalie and now turned to Laura; his drunkenness meant his confusion took longer to resolve.
