The Snakes

by Sadie Jones

  ‘Why would I tell you? Ooh, my dad’s got a jet. So what?’

  ‘So what? It’s a jet,’ said Dan.

  ‘Was. He sold it. And?’

  ‘I didn’t know he had that kind of cash.’

  ‘Well, he did,’ she said. ‘Lots of people have jets.’

  He was still working on the same lace. It wasn’t knotted. ‘No, babe,’ he said, ‘not exactly.’

  ‘I mean lots of rich people,’ said Bea. ‘What’s the difference?’

  He shrugged. ‘Nothing.’ He stood up. He took off both shoes. He went into the bathroom. ‘I just didn’t realise he had that kind of money.’

  He shut the door. She got off the bed and went to the door and opened it. He was bending over the basin.

  ‘Is there a difference, to us?’ she said. ‘Between well off, and rich, and super-rich?’

  He turned. ‘No.’

  She searched his face. ‘I don’t take his money. You know that. Is it different, now he had a private jet?’

  She said it so contemptuously there was only one way to answer.

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘What’s up with you?’

  ‘Why? Nothing.’

  ‘You hate them.’

  ‘I don’t hate them,’ said Bea. ‘I’m not twelve.’

  ‘They were terrible parents.’

  ‘I’m over it.’

  ‘I mean, your dad is way worse than she is.’

  ‘He’s not worse. He’s just greedy. He’s ravenous. Nothing is ever enough for him.’

  ‘And her?’

  ‘What do you want me to say?’ She almost shouted it.

  ‘Nothing,’ he said. ‘You want nothing to do with them. I don’t either. We’re cool.’

  She could feel him studying her. She felt plain and clumsy. Her heart was cold and hard.

  ‘Bea.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I’m on your side.’

  ‘Don’t be silly.’

  ‘I said, I’m on your side.’

  ‘I heard.’

  ‘Babe, I just didn’t know the guy had a jet.’

  She managed a laugh. ‘OK.’

  In bed, as sleep crept over him, she was wakeful. He was lying behind her. She felt him fall asleep, like he was leaving her alone. His body was there, but he was not.

  The hotel was different with her parents in it. She tried to sleep and not listen to the night-time, or think of them there.

  At two o’clock she went down to the kitchen for a glass of water; knowing what was up in the roof the kitchen tap seemed safest. She waited as the tap ran cold, filled the glass, and drank, then felt her way back up on tiptoe. Alex’s room was at the top of the stairs, to the right, across a landing. There was a glow under the door. Hearing his voice, she stopped. His tone was urgent. She heard a woman’s voice gently coaxing. Stock still, Bea waited, straining her ears, staring at the strip of light beneath his door.

  ‘No, go on,’ her brother said.

  Bea gripped the banister. The woman’s voice sounded unnatural. It wasn’t in the room.

  ‘Alex …’ it said, through the speaker of a computer, ‘… just turning up … have to say anything.’

  Somebody else said something, a man this time, Bea couldn’t hear the words.

  ‘A day at a time,’ said the woman.

  ‘Yup,’ said Alex.

  She heard the miniature slam of the laptop closing, and his chair creaking as he stood up. She ran to her room, shut the door and got back into bed.

  ‘Dan?’

  He didn’t answer.

  She sat against the headboard, looking out through the window at the small, bright moon which seemed to travel as the clouds crossed it. Both her parents were there, just there, right there, in bed, across the hall. How could she not think of it?

  The first time she had been seven years old, and it had been winter. Even now, in adulthood, she found something frightening in the short dark days.

  That day had been wet, and her fingers red with cold as she dropped her satchel by the coats. Her nanny, Kathryn, was parking the car, and Bea had forgotten to wipe her feet because the Christmas tree had arrived. It stood, unobserved by anyone but her, towering blackly in the hall, fresh from the forest. She remembered staring up at it, and the thrill, then looking down and seeing her shoes were covered with mushy leaves from outside, and that she had made wet prints on the polished marble. She kicked them off and crossed the hallway in her socks.

  The kitchen stairs had a glass balustrade. As she went down, she could see the wet grey garden through the windows, and the sofa, and the two of them on the sofa, lying back. She had known immediately. Or maybe she had altered the memory to fit what she knew later. But she remembered clearly that seeing them, she felt fear, and a sense of wrongness so strong it felt alive. She remembered exactly how it was both nothing and everything, the way a nightmare is. Just a normal room, an empty field; terror, long before the axe comes, or the chase. Liv had been on the sofa, and Alex, in his school uniform, was lying back against her breast, and she was holding one of his hands and sucking his fingers. His plate and cup were beside them on the table. She must have been sucking crumbs off him. Then she saw Bea. Bea remembered they had both looked shocked, but she didn’t remember what happened immediately afterwards. Kathryn must have come in. There wasn’t a scene and it hadn’t been dramatic. There was nothing else to remember, except Alex, coming up the stairs past her, to go to his room, and that as he went by she felt his distress like a sickness passing from his body to hers. She had tried to forget it, but she never could.

  Her mother had carved him, over time, until he was misshapen. But someone should have helped him. Someone should. It should have been Bea. She thought of him, going to his room after that supper that night, and finding his help online. She had to hope for him. She tried to. But fear was bigger. She didn’t know what chance there was that he could save himself.

  She imagined waking Dan and telling him. She would probably cry. He would be shocked and disgusted and comfort her. Maybe that would make it worth it. She might feel innocent. Feel innocent and let herself be helped. But she reminded herself it wasn’t her damage. It was not she who had been abused – not in that way. It wasn’t hers to indulge and suffer over. Liv’s motherly crimes against her were vicious, but they were of the common kind. Cruelty was never nice, but it was in the past, and finished, and she’d got over it. She almost had. She was fine. She didn’t need looking after. She thought of all the people in the world who did. Almost anyone she could think of needed looking after more than she did. She didn’t deserve it.

  8

  They had breakfast all together in the dining room; Alex running to and from the kitchen, fetching his special scorched croissants and pots of jam. Liv had only green tea. Griff asked for fruit but then didn’t like it when it came. He had a small pot of plain yogurt, digging at it as though there were something at the bottom he wanted. In the afternoon the sky lowered over the trees and it began to rain. Griff summoned Bea to speak to him.

  ‘Will you be all right?’ said Dan.

  ‘Of course.’

  Her father was waiting for her in the bigger of the two sitting rooms, at the far end of the hotel. Alex was at the reception desk. She didn’t know where her mother was. She went through the smaller room and past the bare tables in the dining room, and opened the door. Griff was scanning the few pieces of shabby furniture and threadbare rugs as she came in.

  ‘This place is a shithole,’ he said. ‘I’d have thought Alex would want to make something of it.’

  ‘I think he does. This is the worst room. Why are we in here?’

  ‘It’s the biggest.’

  She sat at one end of the sofa, with her limbs tucked in, as if she were on a fairground ride in danger of injury. He went to the door.

  ‘Alex!’

  In a few moments, Alex appeared.

  ‘A Campari, when you’ve got a moment, yes?’

  ‘Sure. Bea?’
r />   ‘No, thanks, I’m good.’

  ‘I’ll put a girdle round the Earth in forty minutes,’ said Alex.

  ‘Sooner than that, I hope,’ said Griff and shut the door.

  He jangled his keys in the loose linen of his pocket. Bea switched on the lamp next to her as the rain pattered down outside.

  ‘Where’s Liv?’ she asked.

  ‘Why?’

  She shrugged.

  ‘How much did that awful car outside cost you?’ said Griff.

  ‘Our car?’ said Bea. ‘Why?’

  ‘It’s an opener.’

  ‘To what?’

  ‘Indulge me,’ said Griff. ‘How much?’

  ‘It was under a thousand.’

  He stopped prowling the room to stand above her. ‘Let me get you a new one.’

  She met his eye. ‘It’s kind of you, but no, thank you.’

  ‘What are you going to do when it breaks down?’

  ‘It might not,’ she said. ‘It’s an adventure.’

  ‘Be a better adventure in a new car.’

  ‘I don’t think so.’

  ‘You don’t, maybe,’ he said, ‘what about Dan?’

  Bea tried to make him hear her. ‘Neither of us wants a new car. Thank you,’ she said, steadily.

  She started to get up, but Griff sat at the other end of the sofa, facing her. She hadn’t been alone in a room with him, she realised, since the day she’d left home. He’d summoned her to talk about money that day, too. Almost all his conversations were about money.

  ‘You’re very sure of yourself, aren’t you?’ he said. He looked pleased with himself, as if he was about to bring her down.

  She jumped as Alex opened the door.

  ‘Your drink, sir. Madam, I took the liberty.’ He put the Campari in front of Griff and a glass of water for Bea. He winked at her and went, and closed the door behind him.

  ‘So. Dan. An artist, is he?’ said her father, eyeing her.

  ‘He’d like to be.’

  ‘You’d like him to be.’

  She let it go.

  ‘Quite interesting you’ve found a husband who’s the total opposite of me, isn’t it?’

  ‘It might be interesting for you,’ said Bea. ‘You weren’t at the front of my mind.’

  ‘Never heard of Freud?’ said Griff, and laughed.

  ‘I can’t say I’ve heard of his “marrying someone different to your father” complex,’ said Bea. ‘What did you want to talk to me about?’

  He leaned towards her. His eyes were pale blue like a baby’s eyes, vital in the ageing skin, piercing among the sunspots and the lines.

  ‘Look, darling, I know people. I know them well enough to gamble on them. I’ve built a career around it. Fifty years. Within a few minutes of talking to someone, I know what they want. Knowing what they want, I know how to deal with them.’

  ‘I’m sure that’s true,’ said Bea. She looked away from his face. She drank some water. The outside of the glass was wet. She put it down.

  ‘He won’t forgive you, you know,’ said Griff. ‘Dan. You’re holding him back.’

  ‘No, I’m not.’

  ‘Forcing him to play by your rules.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Look, assuming he does want to be an artist,’ said Griff, ‘which, frankly, I doubt, are you seriously kidding yourself that he doesn’t think about your money?’

  She began to feel sick. Her father pushed the air from the room.

  ‘Not everything is about money,’ she said, and felt ridiculous. She seemed to see her words change in the air, from butterflies to caterpillars, and herself reduced, shrink from woman to girl, transformed by his presence.

  ‘I would humbly disagree with you there,’ said Griff.

  ‘Dan and I are fine. We’re more than fine. We’re happy.’

  ‘Look, love,’ said her father, ‘you do your little counselling job, and I’m sure it must be bloody hard work, I’m not denying that, but you do it for a pittance. And that doesn’t bother you. But your bloke out there, he came from shit – worse shit than mine, apparently, which was no picnic.’

  ‘No, he didn’t.’

  ‘You think your childhood was tough?’ said Griff.

  The question threw her. ‘No, of course not.’

  ‘Yes, you do,’ said Griff. ‘You were a late-mistake baby –’

  ‘I know that –’

  ‘Called you “Oops”.’ He laughed.

  ‘Yes, I know.’

  ‘Hello, Oops. Night-night, Oops. And you and your mother don’t get on. You’re not her type, basically. And I wasn’t around much – so poor you, right?’

  ‘No.’ Bea struggled to keep hold of the conversation.

  ‘But that husband of yours –’

  ‘What about him?’

  ‘Well, for a start, he’s mixed race – are we still allowed to say that? Whatever. It’s not a bonus, anyway. I gather his – what do they call them? His baby-father? – from what I gather, his dad did a runner, as per cliché. Care homes. God knows. But then, he manages to turn it around, doesn’t he? Squeezes enough cash out of the government to get himself educated, gets a job that might actually earn him a decent living, and – blimey! – lands himself a Hampstead Princess. Albeit one dressed like a suburban nanny.’

  Bea stared at her wedding ring. When would Griff ever have even seen a suburban nanny, unless he’d screwed one.

  ‘But now,’ her father went on, leaning closer, ‘now, because of you, his progress has been magically fucking halted, hasn’t it?’

  ‘It’s not because of me,’ she said.

  ‘Look, you’ve got a tiny fucking flat rented out for pocket change, you’ve got your husband wandering around France like a gap-year arsehole, talking about being an artist, and the two of you are basically on the road to nowhere, and why? Because of your pride. What are you trying to prove? Use some of your money, set him up in business. If that’s too much to ask, at least, if you’re going to take time out, be civilised and take a proper holiday!’

  He was close enough for her to see the sun damage, the folds in the skin of his neck.

  ‘You don’t know anything about Dan,’ said Bea. ‘You had one conversation with him, two years ago. You don’t remember anything about him, because you don’t want to remember, because it doesn’t fit your stereotype. He put himself through art school, before we met, and his father is white, actually, his mother is black, and he’s never been in care – I don’t even know where you got that from. And, also, I’m sorry, but there’s a difference between a counsellor and a psychotherapist – starting with four years’ training.’

  She got to her feet.

  ‘Sit down,’ he said.

  ‘No. Can I just say, I’m not trying to hurt you, Griff, not taking your money. My choices are not about you. I need to make my own way. And be normal. I would have thought you would respect that.’ Griff was smiling up at her, entertained. ‘And Dan and me are fine. We’re more than fine. We’re very, very lucky.’

  He checked his watch. ‘For a clever girl, you’re very stupid.’

  ‘I’m not,’ she said. ‘I’m not stupid.’

  ‘What makes you so special?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘Sit down.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Darling.’ He smiled, like they were both in on a joke. ‘Sit down.’

  She sat. She didn’t know why. She just found herself doing it.

  ‘Just relax,’ he said. ‘Have some water. Come on.’

  She picked up her glass and had a sip of water, wondering if she was obeying him, or if it was just because her mouth was dry. He seemed to want to connect with her.

  ‘Look at your assets,’ he said.

  ‘What assets?’

  ‘Exactly.’

  ‘Excuse me?’

  ‘Not being rude,’ said Griff, ‘I’d say this to anyone, but you’re not the most beautiful girl in the world. Come on, you know that.’

  She was
both surprised and unsurprised. She had forgotten what it was like to be with her family. Most people weren’t cruel like this. Or maybe they just weren’t so truthful.

  ‘That’s unkind,’ she said.

  ‘You’re meant to flatter your kids,’ he said, ‘tell girls they’re beautiful. Whatever. I don’t care. You were never going to stop traffic. Not like your mum. Fighting them off, she was – still is, for all I know.’

  Her legs began to tremble. ‘This is not an appropriate conversation,’ she said.

  Griff laughed. ‘Life’s not appropriate, love. It’s not fair. It’s shit. I’m trying to help you out here.’

  She steadied her breath. She thought about leaving.

  ‘Money, sex, hunger – these are the drivers,’ he said. He held his fingers in front of her face, checking off his list. ‘You? You’re very smart, apparently, and you’ve got money. But your husband? He’s hungry. Plus, not to put too fine a point on it, he’s a very good-looking lad. So what’s keeping him?’

  Bea’s face was burning. It shouldn’t be her shame, it was his. She willed herself to be calm, as calm and professional as she was at work. She heard all kinds of things there, and never looked shocked. She had been physically attacked once. She’d handled it. She met his eye again.

  ‘You’re being very hurtful,’ she said. ‘I don’t think you realise how hurtful you’re being.’

  He stared at her for a long moment.

  ‘You’re right,’ he said.

  He sat back and threw up his hands. ‘I didn’t mean to get into all this. I just want to help you.’

  ‘I know,’ said Bea. ‘I see that.’

  He gazed at his unwanted drink. He looked defeated.

  ‘I can’t believe I’m begging you to take my money,’ he said. ‘Grovelling – to help you. Bloody hell. Fatherhood.’

  ‘I didn’t ask you to,’ said Bea. ‘I have never asked you for anything. And I never will. If you could –’ her mind went blank. Her voice sounded weak. She swallowed. ‘– be polite. That would be better.’

  She left the room. The moment she was away from him, outside the door, tears came painfully into her eyes. They didn’t last long.

  She didn’t tell Dan. She recovered alone. When she saw Griff, later in the day, she met him like a lion tamer and did not show fear.