Sebastian and I were rivals from the start and we both knew it. But the events in France tempered any volatility in this triangle, at least for Raymond and me. We had been through too much to make the same mistakes again. Besides, I knew instinctively that Sebastian was no Patrice. No grand passion. He was a diversion, a dalliance, a silly entanglement.
Working in a school made Raymond cautious about where he socialised. That’s why he had gravitated to the south of France in the first place. I think that sometimes he couldn’t help it and dipped into places that he shouldn’t - seedy clubs and an infamous strip joint in town that included transsexual strippers - but I deliberately didn’t ask and he deliberately didn’t tell. On the whole, having Sebastian around was enough to moderate his behaviour for a while and I accepted him on that basis.
If only he could have moderated Sebastian’s behaviour. I hated coming home from work and finding he had taken up residence on my settee. Sometimes he would have his head resting on Raymond’s shoulder and would look up at me with eyes heavy with both contentment and spite.
“You don’t mind if Sebastian stays for dinner, do you?” Raymond would ask, a little anxiously.
“Not at all.”
Strangely, I think Raymond thought he was doing me a favour. Including me, letting me see what he was up to rather than disappearing in secrecy as he had once done. We both knew where that had got us. But for his part, Sebastian never missed an opportunity to make me feel like an intruder in my own home: the gooseberry. Nor to try to shake my confidence by making me feel like the ugliest woman on earth.
“Oh my God, Marianne, come and sit down,” he would say, his high, effete voice rising and falling in that over-dramatic way he had. “You look awful! So grey and tired. Are you feeling all right?”
“How considerate you are, Sebastian, but I feel fine, thank you.”
“Really? That job is too much for you, Marianne. It’s ageing you prematurely.”
His blue eyes swam maliciously in a muddy sea of tan.
“Well, we certainly couldn’t say that about yours, Sebastian.”
Raymond got uncomfortable, I know. Sometimes, I would bite my lip, frightened that the animosity between me and Sebastian would force Raymond to choose. Even with a creature like Sebastian, I was never confident enough of Raymond’s choices to push him towards a permanent decision.
In some ways, perhaps I only had myself to blame for the sudden appearance of Sebastian in our lives. There was a short spell – it didn’t work out – when we moved from our quiet village, which was a relatively short drive from the city, to a seaside town an hour away. The move had been at my insistence. I thought if I kept Raymond away from the temptations of city life, it would help, but of course, it didn’t. He was like a dieter who had realised his secret stash of chocolate biscuits had been removed from the cupboard and panicked. The result was Sebastian.
We moved back from the seaside to the village in time – I have come here like a homing pigeon all my life - but it was an unhappy period. I hated the spells in summer when the sea haar would creep round us like rancid breath, barely lifting for days on end. The air was warm, the sun beneath the cloud fighting and failing to get through, and I’d sometimes get tired of waiting for the sunshine and go for walks on the hill above the beach, where the delicate pink- and vanilla-centered wild roses would loom suddenly through the mist. I’d arrive home, sticky and uncomfortable, my hair limp on top and frizzy at the ends with the moisture. Those days epitomised an ugly period of miserable discomfort.
“Dear GOD, Marianne! What have you been doing?” asked Sebastian once on my return.
He followed me into the kitchen.
“I have a friend who is a hairdresser. I could see if he could fit you in some time,” he said, with too much tender concern to be genuine.
I turned.
“Well I don’t suppose there’s enough of yours to keep him busy,” I retorted, deliberately looking him up and down disdainfully. It was the look, I think, rather than the words, which infuriated him.
Sebastian drew closer to me.
“Face it Marianne,” he hissed, so that our raised voices would not be heard in the other room. “You are a mess! My God, Raymond makes a more convincing woman than you do!”
I bent to take some washing out of the machine so that he would not see how much his words hurt. I could feel his eyes burning in my back.
“Why don’t you leave him, Marianne?” Sebastian taunted. “He doesn’t love you. You are just a burden. You have nothing to offer him.”
Nothing to offer him. The phrase circled my mind, returning over and over to me during the course of the next few days. I did not answer Sebastian and I am sure he thought he had defeated me. Inside, I began to make my plans.
Shona is less keen to talk since our little chat about Raymond. She smiles a lot in my direction, but moves on as quickly as possible. There is something about her that provokes cruelty in me. I enjoy the power; I have so little in other ways.
“Would you like to know more about Raymond?” I asked her today as she doled out medication. She flinched slightly and I watched her try to stifle the movement as it rippled through her.
“Tell me whatever you like, Marianne,” she said uneasily. “Tell me more about his painting…”
“No, no,” I whispered. “About the secret. The murder.”
“Oh Marianne! Are you certain about that?”
“Certain.”
“Who did he murder?”
“I didn’t say he murdered. I said he was accused of murder.”
“And did he?”
I merely smiled.
“Who… who was he accused of murdering?”
“A Frenchman. A man called Patrice.”
Shona looked at me uncertainly.
“His throat was cut and he bled through the floor to the ceiling below. Bled like a pig.”
“Oh my God…”
Shona looked round.
“Zac!” she called.
“It was the ceiling of a bar.”
“Now Marianne, let’s talk about something nicer, shall we?”
Zac came over then and I smiled at him. He looked at Shona enquiringly.
“Maybe you could help Marianne with the rest of her medication, Zac,” Shona said. She lowered her voice and turned away slightly but I heard what she said perfectly well. “I think she just plays me up. She’s better with you.”
I smiled inwardly.
“Sure,” said Zac, though I could tell he was a bit puzzled.
“Right then Marianne,” he said, as Shona walked away. “You’ve had the pink ones, haven’t you?”
I nodded.
Zac started to unscrew another bottle on the medicine trolley.
“What have you been up to?” he said, glancing at me.
“Nothing.”
“Shona seemed…”
“She’s a little squeamish. I was telling her about blood seeping through a ceiling.”
Zac paused as he emptied out the tablets.
“Why were you talking about blood on a ceiling?”
“I can’t remember.”
“I see.”
“Oh yes I can …I’ve just remembered what it was.”
“Really?” Zac looked at me a little dryly. “What?”
He handed me a glass of water.
“It was a book,” I said, “The plot of a detective book I am reading. I offered to lend it to Shona.”
“Marianne,” Zac said, “you have a very fertile imagination.”
I merely smiled.
CHAPTER TEN
Zac
It was the sudden mental image of his mother’s face that made Zac hesitate momentarily as he emptied the tablets out of the bottle into his hand. Soft brown eyes hiding in a worn face, dark streaks and shadows lending an air of permanent tiredness. Conchetta’s skin seemed to be stretched thinner over the bone these days, as if her face was losing all its stuffing, and though her hair was sti
ll thick and mostly dark, wiry grey hairs straggled through the blackness, like weeds through a rose garden. The physical changes, her vulnerabilities, made Zac feel more tender towards her than ever. He loved her. A few tablets fell back into the bottle from his hand.
But she would be better off without him, he thought. The thoughts in his head were exhausting, whirling like drifting snowflakes from every direction so that he could no longer see clearly. Such overwhelming guilt, so much unhappiness that he caused just because of who he was. Conchetta was a conflict avoider and with his father around, there was plenty of conflict to avoid. Zac always felt her pain reaching out to him when his father was at his most scathing. Of course she would be devastated at first by Zac’s death. He never doubted that she loved him. But the conflict would be gone, the sense of division, the feeling that she was torn between her husband and her son. Surely that must be a good thing?
He looked at the tablets. He was not afraid to die as much as he was afraid of how he would die. If he could be certain that it would simply be oblivion, then he would not hesitate. To be away from his own thoughts, to be released from inside his own head, to sleep peacefully. But if he made a half-hearted attempt and was discovered… well, he could not face the consequences. And if he botched it and caused enough damage to permanently disable himself, but not enough to die, then it would be yet another burden on Conchetta. A flame of anger flared inside him. He would probably botch it. He was useless. What had he ever done properly in his life?
Nothing, his father would have said. His father, who watched him silently and turned from him with barely a word, while Conchetta fluttered round trying to appease them all and pretend there was some normality in this fractured family. When he was little, Conchetta would hold Zac’s hand under the table at dinnertime, or smile at him with her soft eyes, or stroke his knee soothingly when his father’s silent disapproval was at its most withering. Little gestures, bird-like and furtive, that told him she loved him, even if she could not openly take his side. Zac felt a surge of guilt. How exhausting Conchetta’s life had been. He wondered what hope she had felt when she first held him as a baby, what disappointment had followed.
He had ruined Conchetta’s life with his freakish instincts. And then there was Abbie, who thought she loved him, but loved someone who didn’t exist. Zac looked down at himself, at his own body, as if looking at a stranger’s. It felt disconnected from the rest of him, as if he, Zac, finished somewhere round his neck. The rest of it was…well, he didn’t know what it was. Flesh. Bone. Muscle. That was all. He would be doing Abbie a favour. The way things were, they were destined for years of tension that could only end one way. If he died now, she could move on, love someone else who was capable of loving her the way she deserved.
He picked up a tablet, then hesitated. The God factor. He didn’t believe in God until he contemplated dying and then it became not so much a belief as a fear. He was sinful. An abomination. If it all just… ended… the pain and the anxiety and the self-loathing, then that would be one thing. A long, silent sleep. Judgement was another thing entirely.
Zac looked up from the table, the tablet still in his hand, his attention caught by movement. He glanced out of the window. How strange the cloud formation was, like a giant dragon’s head belching fire. Slowly it drifted, changing shape so quickly, yet he was barely conscious of movement. The dragon became a more benign horse, and then the shape spread slowly outwards, the flanks of the horse spreading until the whole thing was… what? An angel. An angel with wings, that loomed towards him. He felt suddenly moved by the enormity of everything round him, the way it all fitted together, had some kind of unity. Except for him.
He closed his eyes. Was it possible to go on, simply to change shape like the clouds in the sky, adapt into something else? He couldn’t see how. It was unbearable even to think about the struggle involved in change. It was not seamless like the clouds. A wave of tiredness swept over him. How good it would be to sleep properly. His nights were restless and the mornings eaten up by pain and nausea and he felt washed out with the retching. Empty. It would be simpler if he just erased the problem. Better. It would truly be better for everyone. He moved his hand to his mouth and tried to concentrate simply on the swallowing action, not the effect of that action. Don’t think, he thought. Just do. Just do. Just do, do, do.
Shona half hoped that Marianne would be asleep when she went into the lounge with the tea trolley but the old woman was sitting alertly at the window, dark eyes gleaming as she looked out into the garden. She was so absorbed, Shona thought, frowning. She was not so much lost in thought as consumed by it. There was a difference. Marianne might get confused, but at moments like this, Shona thought the old woman was every bit as sharp as she was. Maybe that was why Marianne frightened her.
“Where is Zac?” Marianne said, without turning her head. Her gnarled hands twisted absently at the ends of a pale pink scarf that hung loosely round her neck.
“He’s off sick, Marianne.”
“You said that yesterday. And the day before. And the day before that.”
Was she right? Shona wondered. Had Zac been off for three days now? Tuesday… Wednesday, yes… three days.
“Would you like some tea?” Shona asked.
Marianne turned to her at last.
“What’s wrong with him?”
“I… he… he’s just not feeling himself.”
Marianne studied Shona’s face. She had not missed the lack of specific illness in Shona’s answer.
“When will he be back?”
“I’m not sure.”
Marianne’s intent gaze dropped and she turned back to the window dismissively.
“He might be off for a bit longer, but I’m sure he’ll be back when he’s properly well.”
Marianne did not answer, already absorbed again in her own private thoughts.
Shona began to busy herself with a cup and the teapot. She would pour one for Marianne and simply leave it by her side. She did not want to mention Zac again. The staff had been told not to discuss his situation with residents. It was too upsetting for them. Poor Zac. He was such a gentle boy. Unusual. A movement outside the door caught her eye.
“Angie!” she called.
The figure in the hall, stopped, turned reluctantly. A sullen faced girl of about nineteen appeared in the doorway. Her long dark hair was scraped back into a limp ponytail, glistening with sweat and grease at the temples.
“I’m just off for a quick fag,” she said sourly, waving a cigarette and defying Shona to interrupt.
“Mary in the blue room needs seeing to first.”
Angie’s eyes bore venomously into Shona as she slipped the cigarette back into the pocket of her pale blue overall. She turned away towards the lift and Shona heard her mutter something.
“Old fucker.”
Shona was not given to temper but she felt a surge of anger, even though she was not sure if it was her or Mary in the Blue Room that Angie meant. This was another reason she missed Zac. Most people were unsuited to this work, only took it because they had nothing else. Zac was different.
“Angie!”
Angie turned back, and looked at her coolly.
“Yeah?”
“What did you say?”
“I didn’t say anything.”
“Yes, you did.”
“I never heard anything.”
Shona turned in surprise. It was Marianne who had spoken. Shona lifted the cup of tea from the trolley and put it by Marianne’s side, banging it slightly as she put it down so that a trickle of tea spilled over the edge of the cup. When she turned back to deal with Angie, she saw a flash of pale blue uniform and the lift doors closing.
Her lips tightened and she pushed the trolley away, hearing Marianne’s voice trailing belligerently at her back.
“I never asked for this tea.”
As his brain returned to consciousness, Zac could hear muffled voices swimming towards him from somewhere in the distance
. The effect was not unlike being under water, he thought, but he had not the energy to open his eyes to investigate. A sniffle, a rustle of tissue, a sudden burst of sobbing as though a dam of tears had suddenly burst.
“Oh for God’s sake, Conchetta,” he heard his father say wearily. “Is that going to help?”
“He is my BOY!”
Even in the state he was in, Zac could recognise the mixture of resentment and hurt, the edge of desperate hysteria, that Conchetta so often displayed around his father. Poor thing, Zac thought vaguely, from wherever this place was that he was trapped. Why did his father treat her this way? Why did he care so little what she felt? Or seem to. Zac felt too exhausted and nauseous and overwhelmed to continue the thought.
He was alive.
The realisation made Zac keep his eyes tight closed, unwilling to face the scene at his bedside. A mixture of relief and despair surged through him and he didn’t know how to separate the two, or how to gauge which was the stronger emotion. He only knew that he had the same problems as before to confront but now they were worse. He had failed. He always failed.
“He is not a boy,” said his father. “He is a grown…” He stopped.
“Say it!” said Conchetta with such venom that Zac found himself half opening one eye, in the tentative way you might cautiously part the slats of a blind. Conchetta had jumped to her feet, her normal pallor warmed with two hectic flushes of anger in her cheeks. “SAY IT!” she screamed. “You cannot even say the word! Man. He is a MAN!”
“Sit down,” said his father flatly.
Zac closed his eye again. All that emotion in Conchetta and his father could not deal with it, let alone benefit from the power of it. How much she could have loved him!
“He is a man,” repeated Conchetta defiantly, unwilling to give in.
“What is it that’s wrong with him?” persisted his father. “Is he gay – or worse?”
Zac’s heart skipped a beat. He was feeling very sick now, wanted to retch, but told himself to keep perfectly still.
The Chrysalis Page 7
