The Summer We All Ran Away

by Cassandra Parkin

  When they lay speechless in each other’s arms, Mathilda drowsing and drifting towards sleep, he forced himself to focus on the memory of her face as she said it. The other word, naked, gnawed at him, but he refused to dwell on it.

  I love you, so -

  As if it was so obvious no-one could miss it.

  As if no-one could ever doubt it.

  He woke to an agonising cramp in his left leg and the sound of the telephone. Mathilda was still deeply asleep, her head on his shoulder, her arm flung across his chest. Trying not to yelp with pain, he eased himself out from beneath her. She sighed and stirred, but did not wake. He had noticed before that when she slept, she would stay locked in her own private realm whatever happened around her, impossible to rouse until she was ready. He grabbed his jeans, limped into the hall and picked up the receiver.

  “I’m still not doing the tour,” he said, pulling on his jeans.

  “Yes, you are, you just don’t know it yet. The kids are all set, studio at the end of next month. We’ll be in Soho, since you burned my place to the ground.”

  “I didn’t burn your office down - really, all of them? Even Joey?”

  “Even Joey.”

  “I thought he signed on with Badwater.”

  “I signed him off again. Guess how I did it.”

  Jack pulled the zip cautiously upwards. “You clubbed him over the head and dragged him away by his hair?”

  “Promised him the tour of the century.”

  “You what?”

  “You heard.”

  “You - you utter unbelievable arsehole!”

  “You utter ungrateful tosser! I have pulled off a fucking miracle here. I got your kids back from some of the hottest fucking acts on the planet, just so you can have the right backup to do this album how you want. The least you can do is - ”

  “Give you my soul?”

  “What the fuck am I going to do with your soul? Just give me thirty dates. Three months, that’s all I’m asking!”

  “No!”

  “Too late. Done deal. See you in Soho. Details in the post.

  Bye.”

  As Jack slammed the receiver down, Isaac wandered in through the doorway.

  “Oh,” said Jack, without thinking. “I thought you were out for the day.” Isaac looked towards the door. “Sorry, I didn’t mean it like that.” But of course he had, and he suspected Isaac knew it.

  Isaac picked up an envelope from the doormat and held it out.

  “Is that for me? Thanks.” He knew without looking it was from Evie. She’d written every few days since he saw her in London.

  Isaac looked at him reproachfully.

  “I’ll open it later,” he told Isaac.

  Isaac looked sceptical. In spite of himself, Jack remembered the pile of unopened envelopes stacked up in his bedroom in the hidden annexe. It was an act of cowardice to ignore them, he knew.

  “How was the boat?” he asked. Isaac mimed choppy water, then seasickness. In spite of himself, Jack laughed. Isaac was almost maddeningly likeable. Despite the rat’s gnaw of unease over Mathilda, it was impossible to stay angry with him.

  Determined not to play the jealous lover, Jack deliberately stayed out of Isaac and Mathilda’s way for the next few days. He found things to do in the garden, in other parts of the house, in the outhouses he was slowly reclaiming from the ivy. One was now stacked to the brim with load after load of logs, purchased from the imperturbable farmer, fifteen miles away, who also supplied him with meat for the panther. Jack had grown up with open fires, but had never split his own logs and kindling before. After an hour or so of dangerously hit-and-miss efforts with the wood axe, he finally began to find the rhythm, and chopped wood like a maniac until he was soaked with sweat and his palms were covered in blisters.

  “Soft Southern wanker,” he said out loud, inspecting his palms. “Never done a proper day’s work in your life.” Were you supposed to prick blisters, or leave them? He leaned the axe tidily against the wall of the shed, and wandered down through tangly rectangles crossed with thin paths that the estate agent had assured him were the kitchen garden. One day, he supposed, he would have to get around to doing something with them. Should he hire a gardener? Did gardeners even exist any more? He thought of the imperturbable farmer, whose expression had never varied from the moment they’d first met, when he had personally witnessed the arrival and installation of the panther. (“Sorry,” the vet had said, as the men unloaded a snarling, rocking crate from the truck while the farmer stood and waited for the drive to be clear so he could get his tractor back out. “I knew that dose was light but you never like to overdo it when they’re underweight.”

  “Afternoon,” the farmer had said, nodding in Jack’s direction. “Logs in the shed like you ordered.”

  “Sorry about the racket,” Jack replied. “It’s, well, to be perfectly honest with you, mate, it’s a panther. Sorry.”

  “Ah? Right you are then. You still needing that side of pork for tomorrow?”

  Jack took his boots off and padded through the house, enjoying the small sounds of wood settling and pipes creaking. The thrill of owning such a vast, impractical space – to say nothing of the incredulous shock of having enough money to run it – still gave him a childish pleasure. And now there was the delight of knowing that somewhere in these grounds, these rooms, was Mathilda, reading or learning lines or trying out speeches or simply lounging, waiting to be discovered and unwrapped like a present. He could hear her voice in the library, a low sleepy murmur like bees. The door was open a crack. He glanced through.

  Mathilda stood in the middle of the floor, looking back over her shoulder at Isaac, who sat nearly at her feet, close enough to touch her. Mathilda was naked.

  “I suppose you’re right,” said Mathilda, laughing. “But, you know - ”

  Isaac shrugged. He was concentrating on the surprisingly large and clean sheet of paper on his lap. Jack noticed that he’d taken the full-size reproduction of Birds of America to rest on.

  “The thing is,” said Mathilda, “most of the time, it’s lovely.”

  It was a terrible idea to listen. He listened anyway.

  There was a pause, and a gesture from Isaac.

  “I think he’s just got this urge to help people,” she said, as if Isaac has spoken. “You know that girl, that crazy girl who keeps writing to him, what’s her name? Evie, that’s it. She got fired from her job, so he said she could stay with him. She thought he was asking her to move in.”

  Another pause, and a low, dirty chuckle from Mathilda.

  “Yes, but that’s just Jack, isn’t it? For someone so fuckable he’s really quite lacking in self-awareness.”

  Was that a compliment? He took a savage chunk out of his thumbnail.

  “I know, I should be more grateful. A huge country house, a man who worships me. The classic fairy tale. All we need now are some enormous hairy dogs and a couple of over-privileged children.”

  He knew what Isaac was asking her. He himself had never dared.

  “Oh, I don’t know maybe one day.” She sounded impatient. “There’s so much I want to do first.”

  Isaac put his hands on her thighs and gently turned her towards him. Jack, still standing silently behind the door, glimpsed her thick thatch of pubic hair as she moved. Was that why Isaac had turned her around? So that he could stare at her? There? He was close enough to kiss -

  Stop it, Jack thought. Go outside and chop things. But the command had no power.

  “Oh, the usual.” Mathilda laughed. “Travel the world. Play every great part. Be famous. But I’ll settle for making a living.”

  Isaac glanced around the library.

  “I don’t want it all on a plate,” Mathilda said. “Life’s no good served up in bite-sized portions. You have to go out into the wild and hunt it down - savage it with your teeth.” She pushed her hair back from her forehead. “But I do love him, Isaac. I really do. I’m just afraid of what’s going to happen. I want hi
s time and his energy and his support, and his ideas, and his inspiration, and for him to read every part I play and talk to me about it, and to admire my work, but from a position of knowledge. And there’s all the other things I want that have nothing to do with him like success, and the chance to pick the parts I want to play, and space to grow, and time to myself. I want so much – so much – and I don’t know if he’s strong enough. He’d be better off with Evie. All she wants is to look after him.” Abandoning her pose, she sat beside him on the floor and rested her chin on her knees.

  Isaac laid the book and paper carefully down, then put an arm around her. Jack closed his eyes and leaned his forehead against the door jamb.

  “Having someone love you,” Mathilda continued. “That’s a huge gift. The biggest gift anyone can give you. But that’s the problem. It’s so huge, it takes all your time and strength to carry it. He’s given me this massive present, and I don’t know if I can afford the baggage.”

  Isaac patted her shoulder reassuringly.

  Later that evening, as they sat in the kitchen drinking coffee and laughing, he realised with a chill he would never have guessed any of what she felt. Mathilda leaned happily against his shoulder and laughed at his jokes, dropping grapes into her mouth and then his. Isaac was the same as he always was, shy and charming and odd. Talking to Isaac, Jack thought, was like telling the bees; they listened, but never told, and afterwards they carried on about their own complex and absorbing business as if nothing had changed. The breeze blew the distant roar across the lawn and in through the open veranda doors. Jack glanced at his watch.

  “Cat needs feeding,” he announced. Mathilda frowned. “Don’t look like that. What do you want me to do?”

  “It’s not right to keep him locked up.”

  “I didn’t put him in a cage, you know,” said Jack. “He was already in one when I got him.”

  “Why on earth did you buy him, anyway?”

  “I won him in a poker game.”

  “You won him?” Mathilda laughed. “Actually, that’s even worse. You ought to atone by letting him out.”

  “Ha ha ha. He’d starve.”

  Isaac drew a sly little sketch of a sheep on his notepad. The sheep wore an expression of beatific stupidity. In the grass behind it, two rounded ears were just visible.

  “Okay, then he’d eat the sheep and get shot. Is that any better?” Isaac and Mathilda were both looking at him with a conspiratorial naughtiness that made him feel old, humourless and excluded. “Or he’d rip Isaac’s tent to shreds and eat him instead.” Isaac laughed silently. “Don’t joke about this, mate. You do know he could do it, right?”

  Isaac held up his hands in a gesture of surrender, and wandered out onto the lawn.

  “Shit,” said Jack, feeling guilty. “Have I upset him?”

  Mathilda reached across the table and took his hand. “He’s fine, he just prefers it outside. You do know we’re not serious, right?”

  He tried not to focus on the word we. “And you do know I’m always far too serious, right? I’m famous for getting hung up on the little stuff. I’m completely missing the not-taking-things-too-seriously gene.”

  “That’s okay. It’s quite endearing really.”

  “How can it possibly be endearing? Even I can’t stand me sometimes. Is that the phone?”

  “I’ll go.” She smiled at him, a dirty come-hither smile that made his hands tremble. “You need to go and feed the beast.”

  The leg of pork was already collecting flies. He filled the water bucket, and snapped on the lid. Then he wrapped the meat in a plastic sheet and slung it awkwardly over his shoulder.

  The panther was pacing hungrily by the gate, staring intently down the path. Jack raised a hand in greeting. The panther snarled.

  “Miserable bugger,” said Jack. The panther had come to him without a name. The old man had simply called him ‘the cat’, and until they reached the cramped concrete cage with the pile of shit in the corner, Jack had thought they were going to see an ordinary moggy. The panther glared and continued pacing.

  “Clean-out day,” Jack told him, climbing the hill. He opened the chute and dropped in the meat. The panther padded inside. Jack lowered the inner gate. The panther roared.

  “I know, pal. If it’s any consolation, cleaning your shit’s no fun for me either.” He’d often wondered if the closing of the inner door reminded the panther of its previous prison, the stinking cage at the end of the neglected garden, the amiable old drunkard poking a half-frozen chicken through the bars, accidentally tipping over the dirty water bowl as he did so. Did animals other than man look back on the past and shudder? The panther shouldered the bars half-heartedly, then settled down to eat. Jack slithered back down the hill, took the key from around his neck and opened the cage door.

  Sitting cautiously on the floor of the enclosure was the closest he could get. The panther smelled wild and gamey and its teeth crunched against the bones. Would it smell that strong in the wild? Surely any prey would scent it long before it made its leap.

  The panther’s tail was a thick black rope of silk. If he reached through the bars, he could hold its warm weight in his hand; but if the panther took exception to this, it could whip around and take Jack’s hand off with one swipe of a huge front paw. Jack sat on his hands to stop himself being tempted and watched the glossy highlights on its flank as it gulped down its meat.

  He had touched the panther only once, after the vet shot it with a tranquilliser dart so he could be transported to his new home. The panther had flinched and growled, then paced around the cage before finally succumbing to the ketamine. “Want to stroke him?” the vet had asked. “Once in a lifetime chance.” So Jack had gone into the cage, knelt beside the sleeping animal and run his hands all over its rough, unkempt coat, feeling the ribs beneath the pelt, the skull beneath the velvet muzzle.

  “He’s about twenty pounds underweight,” the vet observed. “He needs to put on muscle, though, not fat, don’t overfeed him or he’ll turn into a tub of lard. Stick to the feeding plan and it should happen naturally.” He slapped the animal on its thin flank. “He’s had a shitty few years, poor wee lad. But he’ll get over it.”

  You and me both, mate, Jack had thought, and felt the tears come to his eyes.

  Threading his way between the trees, he was frozen in his tracks by the sight of Isaac and Mathilda embracing on the lawn. Mathilda’s head rested on Isaac’s shoulder, and Isaac stroked her back. They looked good together; the right age, the right height, a good mix of colouring, Isaac so dark and Mathilda so fair. The sight was both erotic and painful.

  Isaac looked up and saw Jack watching them. Without taking his arm from around Mathilda’s waist, he beckoned Jack impatiently over. As soon as Jack arrived, Isaac disappeared.

  Mathilda smiled, but there were tears on her eyelashes. He guessed what had happened before she spoke.

  “Who got it?” he asked gently.

  “No-one. A backer pulled out. The production’s cancelled. They’re going to do Oh! Calcutta instead.” She shrugged. “So it goes.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “There’ll be something else.”

  “Of course there will.” He could feel her trembling in his arms, and he kissed her forehead.

  “I’m being ridiculous,” she said. “Actors get turned down every day. At least it wasn’t my performance.” She wiped her face. “It’s because it was the only thing on the horizon. I should have had other things in the works. My own fault for being lazy. I’ll go up to London tomorrow and see Irving.”

  “Give yourself a few days first.”

  “What for? This is what acting’s like. Ninety per cent of the job is rejection. We’re not all geniuses. Some of us have to hustle a bit.”

  “Hey, I did my apprenticeship.”

  “How old when you signed your first album?”

  “Nineteen, but it barely sold - ”

  “And how old when you got the NME review?”
/>   “Which NME review?”

  “Okay, people, I’m calling it. Jack Laker won’t sell in the millions (mainly because he doesn’t feel like writing crowd-pleasing pap) but he’s going to be the musicians’ musician for the next thirty years. You heard it here first. Now worship me as the God of Prophecy that I am. And worship Jack Laker while you’re at it. That NME review.”

  “You learned it by heart?”

  “You’ve got a framed copy over the toilet, you poser.”

  “Only so I don’t take myself too seriously. Anyway, we’re talking about you.”

  “I’ve forgotten what we were saying.”

  “I was telling you to take some time.”

  “Acting doesn’t work like that. There’s no room in the theatre for delicate flowers.”

  “I thought you were modelling for Isaac.”

  “I am.”

  “And the weather won’t last. We should make the most of it.”

  “You just want me to stay here so you can carry on fucking my brains out five times a day.”

  “That’s not true.” She looked at him disbelievingly. “Hey, it’s really not. I’ll settle for four. I’m a reasonable man.”

  “I’m not sure I’ve got the energy for four. I’m getting nothing done as it is, neither of us are.”

  “Then I’ll settle for two,” he said. “Or one. Or none. I’ll settle for just having you here. That’s enough for me. Okay?”

  “I’m not earning a thing.”

  “I’ve got plenty for both of us.”

  “You’re a soft touch, Jack. I might be a gold-digger.”

  “I don’t care if you are. I love you anyway.”

  “Then you’re an idiot.”

  “You’re supposed to say, I love you too.”

  “That’s the predictable answer.” She hesitated. “Till after the weekend then, okay? Then I really have to go up and see Irving. Let’s go to bed.”