You

by Joanna Briscoe

  ‘No!’ said Dora. She glanced around. ‘Look, the bracken’s taken on a life of its own.’

  ‘You won’t come back with me?’ said Elisabeth, a thinness appearing in her voice.

  ‘It’s so beautiful out here,’ said Dora, not looking at Elisabeth.

  They walked along a bracken-lined path trodden by cows that led to the trees beside the river, leaves reaching over their heads. The Wind Tor land could be seen from there across the water, the river field visible through the little island with its branching birches.

  ‘Let’s sit down,’ said Elisabeth and she created a space in the bracken a few feet from the river, trampling down stems and tugging at fronds, but they were too young and strong and resisted her. ‘I have green streaks on my hands,’ she murmured. ‘I was trying to make a nest for you.’

  ‘I need to go home soon,’ said Dora, sitting down. ‘I have to wrap Izzie’s present.’

  ‘I’ll take you back.’

  ‘Thank you. No,’ said Dora, and she managed to make her voice steady.

  ‘You really don’t want me to come there today, do you?’ said Elisabeth, an element of soft teasing entering her voice. ‘What are you hiding?’

  ‘No. Thank you,’ said Dora.

  ‘Always so polite. Well brought up. My Kentish good girl.’

  ‘I don’t think my mother would think I had been good.’

  ‘For consorting with me, you mean?’ said Elisabeth, and ran her hand lightly up Dora’s calf, skimming her thigh.

  Dora knew in that moment what she was going to do.

  As the dusk deepened, Ruth began to yawn.

  ‘Are you tired?’ said Cecilia, stroking her forehead.

  ‘Yes,’ said Ruth, avoiding her mother’s eye, and she went to bed at eight o’clock in order to placate the ceiling gods before she floated to cleanse herself in a river where her skin would whiten and become flower-tangled.

  Cecilia came up and hugged her in bed and kissed her cheek with small kisses in a row.

  ‘I want Daddy too,’ said Ruth.

  ‘He’ll come up in a minute and tuck you in,’ said Cecilia. ‘Goodnight,’ she said, then sensed Ruth watching her and veered back to hug her again. ‘Goodnight.’

  Cecilia shut the door and glanced down the corridor. Hearing Ari energetically unpacking and stacking books in what would now be his study, she recalled a fire juggler with henna-purple hair who had once inhabited the room and alarmed Patrick with her practice. ‘The thatch,’ he always said to her. ‘The thatch.’ Cecilia thought with a small twinge about how straightforwardly she had always loved her father, and still did.

  She checked her emails in her old bedroom. There was one from James Dahl.

  Can you talk? it said. She glanced at her watch. He had emailed her seventeen minutes before.

  Yes briefly, she wrote back. Ring now?

  She shut the door and sorted through papers by the phone, waiting for ten minutes in a turmoil of anticipation and guilt, then picked up her laptop with an abrupt movement, still strongly averse to behaviour that recalled the past. Too late, she wrote. Talk tomorrow?

  The phone rang as she sent the email.

  She snatched up the receiver. ‘Hello,’ she said in a voice intended to be hushed but which merely sounded odd.

  ‘Hello,’ he said. ‘Is that you? I’m glad you’re still there.’

  ‘Yes I – just briefly,’ she said.

  ‘How are you?’

  ‘I’m fine.’

  ‘I miss you,’ he said.

  She was momentarily silent. ‘Me too,’ she said, glancing in the direction of the room where Ari was unpacking.

  ‘Your husband is back,’ he said.

  ‘Yes,’ she said.

  ‘I’m not sure I like it,’ he said.

  She hesitated.

  ‘You’ll have to get used to it.’

  ‘I’m not sure I shall be able to,’ he said.

  ‘Well you,’ she said, ‘you live with your wife, as you have for decades. You work with your wife even.’

  ‘I’m sad he’s back,’ he said levelly.

  Cecilia hesitated. ‘Well you –’ she said, seemingly unable to vary her tone. ‘In any case, it’s irrelevant. You would never leave Elisabeth.’

  He paused.

  ‘You’re not ever going to leave her, are you?’ she had said, at seventeen, in Elliott Hall gardens. She remembered it with absolute clarity, that stupefied inability to process the death of hope in his answer, its intimation of later pain. She remembered blossom wet on the ground; his shoes; the Madame Isaac Pereire. ‘I can’t do that,’ he had replied.

  ‘Yes I would,’ he said now.

  ‘Oh –’ said Cecilia.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Well I – I should go now,’ she said rapidly.

  ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I’ll come and find you in the archive.’

  ‘Sixteen tomorrow, sweet bint,’ said Dan to Izzie, and smiled at her.

  ‘Oh my God!’ said Izzie. She grinned, radiantly. ‘Like, adult. You look like a calf. Your eyelashes. Calves’ eyelashes.’

  ‘Still a pampered little dipstick,’ he said, but he kissed her, and they laughed and rolled around in a heap. He placed a magic mushroom on her tongue.

  ‘Because you are so hard, naturally.’

  ‘Cosseted. Milk fed. Spoilt sick,’ he said, tapping a different part of her body with every word. He hesitated over her pubic bone and then formed a small precise circle. He threw open the window, the bedroom an overheated fug of hash and tobacco smoke. ‘You need to stuff that crack,’ he said, nodding at the door. ‘Look at that gaping girt great crack, my lover.’

  Izzie bent over to press a T-shirt from her bed into the space between the door and the carpet, swaying as she did so, and Dan came up to her and put his hands against her hip bones. ‘At least you’re legal later.’

  ‘Sixteen!’ said Izzie. ‘Sixteen whole years since I came shooting and shouting out of my old mother’s fanny. Then she dumped me. Like, thanks, Mum!’ She grinned.

  ‘Not that story again,’ he said.

  Footsteps sounded along the passage, coming towards the bathroom.

  ‘That kid,’ he said. ‘The little shorty strange one. What’s her name again?’

  ‘My sister’s not strange,’ said Izzie.

  ‘She’s not your sister.’

  ‘What?’ said Izzie.

  Dan gazed at her.

  ‘Oh!’ said Izzie, screwing up her face. ‘She is. Of course she is. God.’

  She knelt and peered through her keyhole. She rolled away the T-shirt with her toes and opened her door very slightly. ‘Ruth!’ she hissed.

  Ruth jumped and turned round, her eyes distracted in pinkened skin.

  ‘Oh!’ she said.

  ‘It’s all right, little smelly,’ said Izzie. ‘I’m not going to bite you. Quick! Come in.’

  She grabbed Ruth’s shoulder and hurried her roughly into the room.

  ‘It smells weird here,’ said Ruth, her eyes widening at the sight of Dan. She wore a white traditional nightdress that was now too tight so that it clung to her chest and stopped short of her knees. Her hair flopped over her shoulders, its waves even angular ridges as though she had slept in plaits.

  ‘Don’t stress about it. Here’s Dan,’ said Izzie. ‘Don’t worry. Don’t tell Mum or I’ll . . . I’d be gutted. And no way tell Dad. OK? Then you can play with us.’

  Ruth nodded. She was silent.

  ‘I have to go to bed,’ she said. Her eyes were so dark, they looked magnified, her pupils seeming to merge with her irises in the shadows.

  ‘What? Normally you want to stay up and play and stuff,’ said Izzie. ‘Sit down. Dan’s made it so this is a super-nice place to chill.’ She put up the volume of the music. ‘We’re thinking we might have a baby?’ she said, glancing at Ruth. ‘It would be really lovely for it up here.’

  Ruth said nothing.

  ‘Don’t you think?’ said Izzie.

&nb
sp; Ruth nodded. Her hair wriggled in the dull light.

  ‘Have some,’ said Dan gently, and held out a tooth mug of magic mushroom tea.

  Izzie put her hand out and took it from him instead. She hesitated, glancing at Dan. ‘You can have a bit,’ she said then, turning to Ruth.

  ‘What is it?’ said Ruth in a croaky voice.

  ‘It’s just this tea Dan makes. It’s awesome.’

  ‘What is it?’ repeated Ruth.

  ‘It’s magic mushroom tea. Magic. You can only have a tiny bit? It makes things all glittery and floaty and sparkling. You’ll love it. All that stuff you like. Kind of magic stuff like in those books?’

  ‘Oh,’ said Ruth.

  ‘You’re smiling!’ said Izzie, suddenly hugging Ruth, and took a sip. ‘I love you, sis,’ she said.

  ‘Float?’ said Ruth.

  ‘Makes you feel floaty. It makes your head all light.’

  Dan took the cup from Izzie, filled it, handed it silently to Ruth and waited. She blushed and, tentatively, she sipped.

  ‘Would the water glitter?’ said Ruth.

  ‘Yes,’ said Dan.

  ‘You weirdo. Have another,’ said Izzie. ‘Then that’s enough.’

  Ruth nodded. She took a mouthful, gazed around the room, then picked her way across piles of clothes towards the door. ‘Look at those moths,’ she said, inclining her head at a lamp and smiling. ‘They love your lights, don’t they?’

  ‘You don’t have to go yet,’ said Izzie, glancing at her alarm clock. She started to roll a cigarette.

  ‘I need to go to bed.’

  ‘This is soooo not like you!’ said Izzie, and laughed and blew Ruth kisses as she left the room. She stuffed the door with the T-shirt.

  ‘She won’t know what’s hit her,’ said Dan.

  ‘It’s not, like, dangerous, is it?’ said Izzie.

  ‘She’ll just have a few pleasant hallucinations and giggle herself stupid.’

  ‘Cool,’ said Izzie. ‘She needs to chill a bit. Poor kid.’

  ‘None of you are poor kids. You’re all brats. You the most. Queen brat of brats.’

  ‘You never fucking stop,’ said Izzie, dragging on a cigarette and passing it to him. ‘Give me a break. You’re probably some lord git yourself. Most likely a snooty. Django.’

  ‘How do you know that?’ said Dan sharply. Moths beat against the window with solid taps.

  ‘Saw it on your driving licence. Django! Tragic!’

  ‘I know. That’s why I don’t use it,’ said Dan in a steady voice. ‘A tosser’s name.’

  ‘Um. Ye-es . . . What were your parents thinking?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Dan.

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘I don’t know what they were thinking about most things.’

  ‘Don’t you get on with them?’

  He shrugged.

  ‘You never, like, talk about them.’

  He was silent. He gave two rapid blinks.

  ‘Well?’

  ‘They weren’t up to much,’ he said bluntly. ‘They’re OK.’

  ‘How?’

  He shrugged again.

  ‘Go on,’ said Izzie. ‘Tell me about them.’ She took him in her arms and stroked his shoulders. He softened, and stayed still until she stroked him more, then he kissed her suddenly on her arm.

  ‘They’re all right,’ he said gruffly. ‘I just didn’t really see the point of them.’

  ‘Not see the point of your parents?’

  ‘We didn’t really – suit each other.’

  ‘What is there to suit?’

  ‘Oh you haven’t got the first idea,’ he said dismissively.

  ‘Dan! Don’t be so harsh! You get all like really furious the least thing I say? At least you had your parents. No one dumped you.’

  ‘How do you know?’ said Dan, moving abruptly.

  ‘That hurt!’

  ‘What did?’

  ‘When you stood up. Who dumped you? No one!’

  He stood still and shook his head at her with the slightest movement, radiating hostility with the set of his lips and his stiff-spined stance. He wouldn’t meet her eye.

  ‘I’m getting out of here,’ she said, and scrambled to her knees.

  ‘Same as you.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Who dumped me? My mother dumped me.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘You heard.’

  ‘Who – how? Do you mean –’

  He pulled a face. A moth collided with the window and they both looked up.

  ‘You – you’re adopted? Too?’

  ‘Not too.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Not like you.’

  His breathing was rapid.

  ‘Like how?’

  ‘Not all cosy cosy, ooh Mummy.’

  ‘Don’t say that.’

  He scratched his scalp hard.

  ‘What, then?’ she said.

  ‘Taken in by some woo-woo arseholes.’

  ‘Who? What?’

  ‘My so-called parents.’

  ‘God, Dan. Why didn’t you tell me?’

  ‘Why? What have I got in common with you? A princess case whose “mother” thinks the sun shines out of her arse?’ He shifted his weight with a jerking movement on to one hip.

  ‘Dan, don’t.’

  ‘Don’t you want to find the real ones?’ he said.

  ‘These are the real –’

  ‘How did I know you’d say that?’ he said abruptly. ‘Don’t you just want to see who you grew inside? Who – gave you –? I always did.’

  ‘Mine’s dead,’ said Izzie in the lowered voice that angered him.

  He shook his head at her, his lip stiff with undisguised derision.

  ‘I’m going to fuck off now,’ he said, kicking a pile of clothes so that they flew through the air and landed slowly, a sock catching the door handle. ‘Now the old man’s back. He might shoot me.’

  ‘He doesn’t know you’re here.’

  ‘She’ll tell him.’

  His eyes shone. He bent over and began to cough, wheezing with a phlegmy clearing of his throat.

  ‘Dan! Who?’ said Izzie.

  ‘That cow. Bitch. Cunt.’

  ‘Who –’ said Izzie breathlessly, still crouching near the door.

  ‘Her.’

  ‘You mean Mum?’ said Izzie, her mouth open. Her eyes were wet.

  ‘That whore.’

  ‘God, Dan. Dan! Don’t speak about her like that!’ said Izzie, beginning to cry.

  ‘I’m going.’

  Izzie stared at him. She shook her head at him.

  ‘I want you,’ she said quietly.

  He was silent. A streak of cooler air ran into the room.

  ‘I really want you,’ she said, crying again. ‘I thought you might, like, stay here. You were going to – hold me. Stay with me.’

  His face softened. His lower lip was unsteady. ‘We were going to do it again,’ he said, almost absently.

  ‘At legal time.’

  He peered at her clock in the gloom. He turned to her, blank-eyed, and picked up a lock of her hair.

  ‘You’re just about legal,’ he said. ‘I’ll have you illegally again now. Then when the clock bangs . . .’

  ‘Then?’

  ‘Then we’ll fuck. Again.’

  ‘And then?’

  ‘And then I’ll fuck off.’

  ‘No no!’ cried Izzie, throwing her arms round his chest, clinging to him.

  Thirty-three

  June

  Dora and Elisabeth had walked back towards the cottage in the half-darkness to the sound of late birdsong above the trickle of streams.

  ‘Let me come with you,’ said Elisabeth.

  ‘I don’t want you any more,’ said Dora, the shadows cast by arching bracken lending her boldness.

  ‘I don’t see why not.’

  ‘You don’t?’ Dora shook her head and smiled. ‘No, darling.’

  ‘Oh
,’ said Elisabeth, at a loss.

  ‘We can talk in the garden,’ said Dora as they approached Wind Tor Cottage and she pushed the gate against the topple of honeysuckle that slowed its path.

  ‘Why?’ said Elisabeth.

  ‘It seems artificial but . . .’

  The gate tore stems with a straining sound.

  ‘But I’m too dangerous to be let into your house?’ Elisabeth emitted her rich laugh.

  Dora caught the edge of her breath. Elisabeth appeared human, vulnerable, as she had so rarely seemed, and even faintly ordinary in her mortal form.

  ‘Yes,’ said Dora.

  ‘Breathe,’ said Elisabeth, ignoring her. ‘It smells of hay, but with the damper grass that’s always in your garden.’

  ‘This is a damp spot,’ said Dora. ‘I always wonder if I’m being punished! The past seeping in.’

  Elisabeth pressed Dora’s arm. ‘You are more fanciful than your daughter, I sometimes think.’

  ‘You don’t know my daughter,’ said Dora stiffly.

  ‘My husband does,’ said Elisabeth, and paused. She raised one sharp eyebrow. ‘I suspect he meets her more than he lets on. I’ve seen them together.’

  ‘Oh, she told me she’d met him,’ said Dora.

  ‘He goes off every lunchtime. He never did that before. Free periods –’

  ‘She’s working very hard to finish her book.’

  ‘Is she? I wonder. What trouble . . . Of all teachers . . . Wouldn’t one have imagined James would be the last?’ said Elisabeth, stretching delicately as if to demonstrate her indifference. ‘I almost admire him for it sometimes . . . And that she would have been the last pupil . . .’

  ‘I cannot bear to think about this,’ said Dora, holding her hands over her ears. ‘There’s no point now. It’s appalling. I will be angry.’

  Elisabeth laughed, but gently. ‘There’s a lot you can’t bear to think about.’

  ‘And yet,’ said Dora. ‘Now that I’m not sure how much longer . . . Things seem clearer. I do think.’

  She walked around the garden with Elisabeth beside her, warm clusters of gnats shadowing the hedge and trees. Elisabeth took Dora’s arm.

  ‘Clearer. About what?’

  ‘About the baby.’

  ‘What baby –?’

  Dora turned on her impatiently, extricating her arm. A blackbird sang loudly on the hedge above them.

  ‘There is only one baby in my life. The others all grew up.’