"Something like that," Sam mumbled and dodged into the bathroom, where he was afraid he might be sick. Instead he had to watch his penis empty itself, his treacherous tube of flesh that had failed to! recognise his aunt except as an irresistible partner. At least now her pregnancy stood between him and her attractiveness. Once he'd finished watching himself drip he was confronted by his face in the mirror. He couldn't think when he'd last seen anything that had less to say to him. When his meaninglessness sent him out of the room, his father! called
"Are you joining us now?"
"Depends who us is," Sam muttered, but seemed to have no other option than to trudge downstairs.
"I hope nobody thinks I'm unapproachable. You can tell me whatever you like."
His father had lowered his voice. For a dreadful moment Sam imagined that the invitation was addressed to Sylvia, and nearly lost his footing in his haste to limp downstairs. She and his mother were indeed with his father in the front room. His mother looked ready to defend Sam, but Sylvia's face was keeping its plans to itself. His father barely waited for Sam to enter the room before he said "Here you are, sit down. Let's feel at ease if we can."
Sam's mother gave that an askance blink suggesting she thought his father had forgotten whose house this was, then turned to Sylvia. "We'll leave them to talk, shall we?"
Sylvia was lowering herself beside Sam's father on the couch. "Isn't this for the whole family to hear?" she said as she settled her bulk or it settled on her.
"You won't mind that, will you, old chap? It can help to have someone with a different perspective around when you've a problem to solve."
"I don't see how."
"I wouldn't expect you to till we've given it a try," his father said with just a flash of sharpness. "Apologies to anyone if they've heard it all before, but off you go, Sam. Tell us exactly what happened yesterday, only do sit down first for heaven's sake. I'm always scared you'll topple over since you fell out of your tree."
Sam dropped himself into an armchair. "I told you."
"I want to hear it all from you. I didn't understand half what I heard on the phone."
"Then you couldn't have been listening properly," Sam's mother said.
"Let Sam talk."
His father said this with a trace of weariness she could have taken as quite an insult, and Sam felt compelled to respond before she did. "lost my way, that's all."
"Give it some consideration, old chap. That won't be all you'll be telling Fay Sheridan, will it?"
"I don't know what to say except the truth."
"Nothing but the whole of it. That's what we're waiting to hear.'
As Sam flinched inwardly at the prospect his father sat forward clapping a hand on either thigh. "So where was the problem really What are we going to tell Fay after she was expecting so much?"
"Maybe she shouldn't have been."
"Does anyone else think we're hearing the problem? You won't get far by underrating yourself, Sam. Everyone here thinks you are, don't they?"
"I don't believe anybody could overrate you, Sam," his mother said Sam was preoccupied with dreading that his aunt would join in and she did.
"There's more to him than most people realise."
That brought the whole truth close to escaping his lips. It felt as though an insect was writhing inside them. As he did his utmost to swallow, his father insisted "Nobody's asking more of you than you're capable of, old chap. Fay wouldn't be, so I don't understand why you're looking like that."
No doubt Sam's fear of knowing how he looked did his expression no favours, which might have been why his mother said "Terry, if you could just-"
"Anything except not find out what exactly happened so it can't again," Sam's father said and pointed his upturned hands at Sam. "I know one thing you didn't tell me."
Sam glimpsed secret amusement in his aunt's eyes-amusement that he was dismayed to realise she wanted him to share. He glanced hastily away but still felt watched, and by more watchers than he could see. He only just accomplished enough of a swallow to croak "What?"
"Where you got lost."
"On the way."
"You know, I believe I could have figured that out for myself. Where on it?"
"The second junction on the motorway."
"Second from where?"
"Home." I "You're saying what, ten miles from here?"
"More like fifteen."
"It's a deal. I'll give you fifteen," Sam's father said, then let his jaw' drop in case the mirthless joke had lacked obviousness. "You won't ask Fay to accept you forgot where you were going so close to home and straight along the motorway as well. I'm sure nobody here can."
"I can," Sylvia said.
"You'll tell me how. What do you know about him that I don't and it looks as if his mother doesn't either?"
Sam saw his aunt part her lips with the tip of her tongue. He was righting to draw a breath while he thought of an interruption when his father lost more patience. "Is he on drugs?"
"Are you, Sam?" his mother said as if the direct question was an offer she was making him.
"No."
"Then what?" his father demanded. "What do you need to tell us?"
Abruptly Sam had had enough. That aspect of the truth was more than he could be bothered keeping to himself. "I can't leave here," he said.
"Of course you can," his father protested, so immediately he hadn't time to sound impatient. "It'll be easier for you than it was for me."
"I never said it was easy for you, but you wanted to go, didn't you?"
"Are you saying you don't want to make anything of yourself?"
The question and indeed the entire argument seemed dwarfed into insignificance by the visions that had come to Sam in the night. "All I'm saying is that's you," he said, and in a desperate attempt to lessen the scrutiny he was enduring "It isn't us."
"Hold on, old chap, I think that's a bit much. You can't use these ladies as an excuse for hanging about. Your mother wants to stay near Margo, maybe your aunt does as well, and anyway you know why Sylvia wouldn't want to venture far just now. Only forgive me if I'm blunt, but that's got nothing to do with you, has it? There's no way you'll be involved, so there's no point in making it sound as if the family's the reason why you won't move yourself."
Sam gazed hot-eyed at him in a vain attempt to render himself unaware of Sylvia.
"It's only you who's making out I did."
"So what reason are you giving us?"
"I told you, I can't leave. Something won't let me." As he spoke he grasped how true that was, which dismayed him so much he tried to take some of it back. "My mind," he said.
"Please promise me you won't say that to Fay Sheridan."
"You're talking as if this is all about this Fay woman," Sam's mother objected.
"It seems to me it's about Sam."
"Let's leave Fay out of it by all means."
"I won't ask if your relationship with her has to do with more than Sam."
"You can. It has."
"And was he supposed to help that?"
"You're asking if I used him to attract her, is that what I'm hearing?"
"You'll hear what you choose to hear, Terry, and it wouldn't be the first or the dozenth time either."
Sam might have been grateful that their attention had wandered away from him if that hadn't left him more aware of Sylvia's. He sensed that he wasn't alone in finding the argument wholly irrelevant, beside some much greater point, and whose view was he sharing if not hers?
"What's this got to do with anything?" he blurted.
His mother looked betrayed, his father justified. "Fair enough, you're the subject," his father said. "Tell us what you think the trouble is with your mind."
"When I tried to leave I nearly had a breakdown."
"That'll be a bit of an exaggeration, will it?"
"It won't, no. I couldn't remember where I was supposed to be going, I couldn't think at all. I couldn't do anything except come back."
He
heard his aunt's lips emit a small moist sound. When he glanced at her, unable to predict what she might say, she was gazing at him as though he'd conveyed more than he knew.
"All right, old chap, you're with the family," his father said. "What do we think he needs?"
"Understanding,"
said
Sam's
mother.
"To stay," Sylvia said almost as immediately.
"We can do better than that, can't we?" When nobody responded other than by staring, Sam's father said "Shall I tell you what I think's wrong with your noggin, Sam?" m "Not drugs,"
Sam's mother said at once.
"Of course not drugs. He says not and I believe him. I wouldn't think he'd go anywhere near those after what they did to his grandfather.
“No, Sam, I wonder if when you fell out of that tree you hurt more than your leg."
"I
don't
know."
"It's a possibility then, isn't it?" Sam's father asked the women. Since that received only a guarded assent from Sam's mother and none from Sylvia, he went on. "Better find out what someone thinks who knows more about it than we do."
"Did you have anyone in mind?" Sam's mother said not much less than accusingly.
"I seem to recall you and Margo felt Lennox's doctor at the hospital was a good sort."
Though Sam's mother didn't quite grimace, Sam could tell she was distressed, whether by remembering how the doctor had failed to save Lennox or by the notion of sending her son to the Arbour. "Let's see if it happens again first," she said. "You'll be giving the interview another try next week, will you, Sam?"
He felt as though she'd missed the point only Sylvia had understood, but he said "I'll call dad's friend."
As her face restrained itself from showing her opinion of that, his father said "Can I ask you to undertake a bit more?"
"Depends if she wants me," Sam said, however dishonestly.
"I'll do my best on that front. What I'd like you to promise is that if you find you still have trouble leaving, you see the doctor."
"I'll see someone who knows about it."
"I expect that'll do." All the same, he let his gaze linger on Sam's face before sending himself to his feet with a slap of the thighs. "Well, if everyone will excuse me I ought to be on my way. Things to catch up with in town," he said, then grabbed Sam's hand to clasp it in both of his. "You'll be fine, old chap.
Just tell yourself you will. We all have our days off mentally, don't we, girls, but there isn't much that won't fix in my experience. Remember you've got everyone in this room, Sam, and Margo too if you need her."
Sam felt that his father's touch and his intended meaning had both fallen short of him.
When his father released him at last, Sam watched his parents make for the hall. As soon as they were out of the room he limped to close the door. He heard them murmuring outside the house, presumably about him, but that wasn't important now. He turned to Sylvia, who looked pinned down on the couch by her midriff. "You can't leave either, can you?"
"No." She said that as though the admission was a release, and he couldn't tell if the gleam deep in her eyes was of fear or delight or both, or even more that he might not want to learn. "None of us will," she said.
28
A Private View
HERE'S all my family where I live at last," Margo cried. "I just wish you could all see what I have to show you and not just all but one."
She was bustling about the living-room of her apartment, which occupied the top floor of a large two-storey house on the eastern side of Goodmanswood. Like the largest space-her studio-the room faced the restless woods that appeared to be clawing darkness down from the night sky smudged by the glow of the intervening streets. Heather found the woods as distracting as Margo's behaviour, her hurrying to refill the glasses of champagne and Sylvia's of sparkling water between repeating offers of the trayfuls of hors d'oeuvres she'd prepared as if she was determined to transform the smallish room cluttered with venerable furniture into the location of her latest opening. "Sit down then, someone," she cried now. "You have a seat, Sylvia. I do believe you're bigger than yesterday."
As soon as Sylvia deposited herself on half of the couch, Sam limped to the farthest chair. "Are you going to be lonely over there, Sam?" Margo protested at once.
"No room for that," he said, largely to himself.
"Is he a tad nervous about the imminent event? Is that the trouble?"
"Hardly imminent yet," Heather said, having gathered that Margo meant the birth rather than tonight's show.
"You'd think it was, looking at her," said Margo, holding out a tray until Sylvia took a morsel in each hand. "I'm right, though, aren't I? Don't be afraid of our Sylvia, Sam. She's the same person she's always been. There'll just be more of her for a while."
While Heather thought Margo had identified one reason for his nervousness, she was certain that he didn't want attention drawn to it. As he performed an understated mime of not knowing where to rest his gaze, Margo turned to Sylvia.
"Maybe when he's old enough or she is you'll be bringing Natty to see my new work somewhere else."
"I'm sure it'll be a different place."
Heather tried not to feel that Sylvia was sharing a secret with herself or at least not with the person she was supposed to be addressing.
Had she felt that sometimes when they were little, perhaps in the woods? Before she could begin to grasp the memory, Margo said "I guess if we can all settle ourselves it'll be show time."
Sitting next to Sylvia, Heather felt dwarfed by some aspect of her.
As Sylvia sent down the last of her handfuls of food to the source of the hunger, Margo switched on the video camera that was hooked up to the television. "It'll be bigger when it's finished," she said.
"What will?" Sam was apparently nervous of knowing.
"The image. When Lucinda exhibits it, I mean."
"Has she seen it yet?" said Heather.
"Heavens no. This is only the raw material in no kind of shape. just wanted my family to see what I've made of the woods so far." |H Margo crossed to the light switch she added "I hope I haven't got anyone expecting too much." Heather didn't know what to expect. She seemed to glimpse still treetops across Goodmanswood raising themselves as though Margo had released them or alerted them by switching off the light. "Now it's dark," Sylvia said.
It was partly suspecting whom this was meant for that made Heather ask "Does it need to be?"
A silence gave her time to be uncertain who would answer. "Some of the footage is,"
Margo said.
She took hold of various items of furniture on the way to entrusting herself to the last available chair and picking up a remote control in either hand. The television responded first, displaying a carnivorous plant in the act of closing a beaded leaf on a fly already torpid from the effects of being snared. Though the film was speeded up, this only made the insect's feeble struggles look more desperate, while the inexorable movement of the vegetable mouth continued to appear gloating, positively conscious. Then, as Margo turned on the video camera, greyness flooded the screen like a sudden fog that momentarily hid the woods before they lurched into the room.
At least, their image did. The trees themselves and their elongated shadows were quite still. Heather deduced that they were in the depths of the forest, since there was no sound, no hint of a world beyond. The image wobbled and then stabilised as the camera began to zoom forward, appearing to pass through entrance after scaly wooden entrance on the way to some goal. The automatic focus kept wavering as if the trees were losing substance and then forming themselves afresh. As the zoom reached its limit, the clump of trees on which it settled lost all focus, swelling up like greyish tentacles or fingers full of poison, and a vague movement flickered across them. "What was that?" Heather felt delegated to ask.
"Me not getting it right first time," Margo said, presumably taking the question as a criticism. "Then I figured o
ut I ought to use the manual focus," she explained over the next shot. It could have been of the same trees, but the zoom was even slower. As each pair of encrusted tree-trunks advanced to frame its progress they grew intensely clear, and Heather could have fancied they were taking hold of layers of her consciousness. The forest was silent except for the occasional creak of the camera as Margo filmed; it sounded more like wood than plastic. Heather was thinking she ought to find something to praise when, to the extreme left of the image, a shadow or a more solid presence dodged out of reach of the zoom.
"What-" she was unable not to blurt.
"It must have been me," said Margo.
Darkest Part of the Woods Page 27
