A Passionate Man (28 page)

Blaise put his hands on a pitch-pine bar and swung his head and shoulders through the dangling shoebags at Liza.

‘I'm sick of all this. I've had enough. I'm going mad, raving mad.'

‘But we've seen each other every day, I've even—'

‘Kisses,' Blaise said derisively. ‘Rotten little kisses. Cock-teasing kisses.'

Liza stood up, still holding a gumboot.

‘I'm exhausted,' Blaise said. ‘You exhaust me. It's all games, isn't it? Little girly games.'

Liza began to tremble slightly. The blue shadows thrown down by the light made Blaise's face skull-like in its intensity.

‘No.'

‘Look,' Blaise said. ‘I'm sick of being played with. It's a particularly horrible sort of tease, what you're doing. Last full day, you say to me all smug and prissy: No more treats. Had that. Back to hubby now.'

‘Shut up,' Liza said.

Blaise took his hands off the beam and vanished from sight.

‘Go home,' his voice said. ‘Just go home to hubby and the kiddiwinks and bloody well leave me be.'

Liza put down the gumboot and went round to the adjoining aisle. Blaise glared at her.

Liza said, ‘You started all this. Remember? Never leaving me alone, letters and phone calls and badger, badger, badger. Now you can't get what you want—'

‘What do I want?'

There was a small highly charged silence. Later, looking back, Liza recognized that silence as the last moment of her fantasy, the final seconds of the extravagant illusion with which she had fed herself for so many months.

She said, proudly, fatally, ‘You want me to go to bed with you.'

And Blaise, suddenly exchanging petulance for vengeance, said, ‘Not any more.'

She looked at him. He looked back, his chin slightly raised.

‘What?'

‘You blew that,' Blaise said fretfully. ‘Weeks ago. Stringing me along. Games, games, all the time—'

‘But just now, you said—'

‘Oh, that's habit. I got in a muddle. I got so confused and exhausted I couldn't remember where I'd got to. And anyway, you seemed to expect it.' His voice grew accusing. ‘You've been expecting it all term, haven't you? Talk about the boot being on the other foot! Well, you're too late.'

Liza felt for the top of the lockers and sat down on them. Shoebags bumped round her, redolent of rubber and old sock.

‘Just now,' she said, ‘just now, you said being so near and yet so far was driving you mad—'

‘I didn't mean it,' Blaise said. ‘I didn't mean that. I mean having you darting me pregnant glances, lying in wait for me—'

Liza put her hands over her ears.

‘But you kissed me! You said—'

‘Of course I kissed you. You kissed me. I could hardly spit you out, could I?'

Liza looked up at him. His face was black against the bluish light.

‘You're loathsome,' she said. Her voice shook hopelessly. ‘And you're mad.'

Blaise said, ‘Anyway, there's a girl in Dublin—'

‘Coward.'

‘I met her at Christmas. She's my age.'

‘Go away!' Liza screamed. ‘Go on, get out, go away—'

The door at the far end of the cloakroom opened and let in an oblong of yellow light.

June Hampole called, ‘Who's there? Who's shouting?'

They emerged sheepishly into the brighter light.

‘Oh, Liza,' June Hampole said. ‘Oh dear.' She looked at them both. ‘How sordid.'

‘Not any more,' Blaise said angrily. ‘Nothing any more. Nothing.' He tried to push past June into the lit passage beyond. She put up an arm and stopped him.

‘I think we'd better talk,' June said. ‘Don't you?' She looked at Liza and sighed. ‘Please come to my study, both of you.' She turned and began to walk back towards the school hall, Blaise following. He did not even glance at Liza. There was nothing for her to do but bring up the rear.

‘I couldn't go home,' Liza said. Her face was blotched with crying. ‘I simply couldn't face it.'

‘No,' Clare said. ‘No. Of course not.'

‘I've made such a fool of myself—'

‘No,' Clare said kindly. ‘You allowed someone else to make a fool of you.'

‘No!' Liza shouted.

There were empty coffee mugs on Clare's kitchen table and a pink sea of used paper handkerchiefs.

‘I'll never get over it.'

‘Of course you will.'

‘I can't believe I could have let it get that far. I can't believe I was so stupid. How can I face anyone after this?'

‘No-one knows,' Clare said. ‘Do they?'

‘I wish I hadn't come,' Liza cried, seizing another handkerchief. ‘I wish I hadn't told you!'

Clare, magnanimous in rare moral superiority, merely said, ‘I shan't tell anyone, and I'm sure June Hampole won't.'

‘I shouldn't have come out! I simply didn't think, I was so churned up. I should have stayed inside, shouldn't I?'

‘Blaise would have split on you.'

Liza looked at her sister.

‘Can you believe how he's behaved?'

Clare thought, as she always thought, of Robin.

‘Oh yes. Easily.'

‘Months and months of besieging me, a year or more, never letting up! And he came round here! Didn't he? He came round and declared undying love, didn't he, Clare, didn't he—'

Clare got up and took the kettle over to the sink to fill it.

‘I don't want any more coffee. Haven't you got any brandy?'

‘I've got sherry,' Clare said repressively.

‘Sherry, then. Clare—'

‘Yes?' Clare said, putting down the kettle and opening a cupboard where her still-intact sets of wedding present glasses stood in shining rows.

‘Please, Clare. Don't tell Archie. He mustn't know. Not ever. Please, please, don't tell Archie.'

Clare put two small glasses engraved with partridges on the table.

‘Of course I won't.' She put a bottle of sherry beside the glasses. ‘He may just know already, mind you.'

‘Did you tell him? Have you? What did you say, what—'

‘I haven't said anything,' Clare said. ‘To anyone.'

She filled the partridge glasses and pushed one towards Liza.

Liza said angrily, ‘You fancy Archie, don't you?'

Clare said nothing.

‘Sorry,' Liza said.

‘As a matter of fact,' Clare said, ‘I'm going out to dinner tomorrow night.' She paused. ‘To Chewton Glen.'

Liza gazed at her.

‘A solicitor in Old Jewry,' Clare said. ‘I've known him by sight for ages.'

Liza swallowed her sherry.

‘I ought to go.' She looked into her empty glass. ‘Clare. I'm so sorry. I don't think I've ever behaved worse in my life.'

Clare touched her arm.

‘It isn't all your fault.'

‘It is,' Liza said, getting up and peering under the table for her bag. ‘It is. And, even if it wasn't, I couldn't have handled it worse.'

She straightened up, clutching her bag.

‘I hope you have a lovely dinner. With your solicitor.'

Clare thought of him.

‘Well, the food'll be all right, anyway.'

Liza leaned forward and kissed her cheek.

‘Bye. And thank you—'

‘Drive carefully,' Clare said. ‘And ring me. If you want anything.'

Thomas stood in the call box. It was a new one, made entirely of toughened glass, and he was afraid that each passing car might contain a master from Pinemount on his way to the Goat and Compasses for his evening drink. They all went there, every night, and got pie-eyed. Bristow said their breaths afterwards were like methylated spirits and that his parents would take him away if they knew that the whole staff got pie-eyed every single night at the Goat and Compasses.

The call box was, of course, out of bounds. You could make calls home from school, if you got a signed chit from your div. master and Matron timed you, standing by the telephone in the sick-room passage, listening to absolutely every word. If every member of the staff craved drink at the Goat and Compasses obsessively, so Matron craved information. She didn't like a single thing to happen she didn't know about. Rackenshaw timed her to see how long she could last before asking where the pretty photo of his mother was, and she had managed two days. Rackenshaw told her he'd put it in the dustbin, but it was under his mattress all the time. Rackenshaw took it out at night and looked at it under the bedclothes with his torch which he kept hidden in his sponge bag.

Thomas didn't want Matron to know anything any more. She had been horribly kind to him when his grandfather died and Bristow had said that was mostly because his grandfather had been famous. Thomas didn't want anybody to be kind. He didn't want anybody to know that he was scared of going to sleep, because of the dreams. He had devised all kinds of minor tortures for himself to stay awake, the most successful of which was quite simple and merely involved sitting up in bed in the dark dormitory, cold and alone and determined. He nearly always fell asleep in the end, but could now goad himself awake again before sleep tipped him over the last edge down into the black pit where the mad dreams waited for him, dreams where everything was grotesquely large or small, and imbued with panic.

Thomas had three ten-pence pieces. He had quite a lot more money, saved from the holidays, hidden in little amounts in various places in his locker and his tuck box and his desk in the div. room. They were given twenty pence each Sunday for church collection – it went on the bill, Bristow said – and Thomas had, luckily, been given his as two ten-pence pieces the last three Sundays, so he had put one in the church collection, and saved the other. He put one in the telephone now, and dialled Beeches House. It was cold in the telephone box and the plastic receiver was even colder against his ear.

‘Hello,' Liza said. She didn't sound normal.

‘Mummy—'

‘Thomas! Thomas, darling, where are you—'

‘At school,' Thomas said.

‘Darling. Are you all right?'

‘Sort of.'

‘It's visiting Sunday, on Sunday. Not long—'

‘Your voice sounds funny.'

‘Does it?' Liza said. ‘I expect I've got a cold. From school.'

‘Are you crying?'

‘Of course not,' Liza said, closing her red eyes.

‘Where's Daddy? Can I speak to Daddy?'

‘He's in London,' Liza said. ‘He's helping Marina sort things out. Grandpa's things.'

‘Has he gone for long?'

‘No. No, I'm sure he hasn't.'

‘Mummy,' Thomas said, dissolving. ‘Mummy.'

‘It's two days until Sunday. Only two. Don't cry, darling, please don't—'

In the dark call box, Thomas cried silently, opening his mouth as wide as he could to prevent sobs getting out. He pressed another coin into the machine.

‘Darling?' Liza called anxiously. ‘Thomas?'

‘I sneezed,' Thomas said thickly. ‘Why are you crying?'

‘I'm not. I'm not, I promise you. I'm fine. Listen, Imogen's got a new game. She plugged all the little holes in the telephone with sunflower seeds. Isn't she awful?'

Thomas giggled weakly, obediently.

‘And Mikey and that dreadful Sam he so dotes on scribbled all over each other's faces with magic marker and Sally scrubbed him and scrubbed him but he still looks all scribbly. I hope he'll be clean by Sunday. Thomas?'

‘Yes,' Thomas said, pressing his tired wet face to the glass wall.

‘Better now? A bit better?'

‘Yes,' Thomas said dully.

‘Listen, you think about your awful brother and sister. You tell Bristow. And only tonight and one more night, and we'll be down to see you. That's all.'

‘Bye,' Thomas said.

He put the receiver back in its cradle and pushed open the door. It was raining softly, the kind of quiet insistent rain Thomas associated with Scotland. He would get back to school wet. Matron would notice. Grizzling drearily to himself, Thomas set off along the verge at a trot, back towards Pinemount.

They stood together in the corridor of the flat. Archie leant his shoulders against the front door, his arms folded as if he were preventing Marina from getting out. She stood close to him. She wore her spectacles.

‘I mean it,' Marina said.

He looked down at her. He was quite unable to look anywhere else.

‘The last time,' she said. ‘I should not have allowed it again.'

‘Ah,' he said. His voice was lazy with satisfaction. ‘So you wish I had not come. You wish we had not made love.'

‘I can't wish that,' Marina said.

‘Tell me.'

‘Stop it,' she said. ‘Don't seduce me. Don't bully.'

He unfolded his arms and reached out for her. She stepped neatly back, out of his range.

‘Archie. I mean what I said. You—'

‘I'm listening.'

‘I adore sex with you.'

‘Again.'

‘But you are not mine to have. Sex with you isn't for me.' She looked up at him. ‘I'm not a marriage wrecker. Maybe I'm not even for marriage, maybe I'm too realistic. I'm certainly too realistic to destroy a family.'

‘So what becomes of me?'

‘You're a grown man. You decide. And go catch your train. You should have left hours ago, you'll miss it—'