Living In Perhaps (24 page)

'It's a triumvirate of things, of clues that should set alarm bells
ringing in people's heads. You know, people who know about
these things.'

'What things?' Hanny asked. 'A
triumvirate
is the name for the
three people who ruled Rome. Augustus, and Octavian, and
Thingy. Or was Augustus the same as Octavian anyway?'

'I was only using the word to mean what I wanted it to mean,'
I said. I felt we'd strayed off the point. And there was much
more I'd wanted to say.

Hanny sat back, lifting her fragile white face to the non-existent
sun, and closed her eyes. She wasn't listening to me; she often didn't
really listen. In some ways she reminded me of Barbara.
Getting someone to notice you is one of the hardest things, even
when they're your friend: getting them to
really
notice you.

Later that afternoon, when it was too late, I thought:
triad
.
Triad was the word I wanted. How could I have made such a
foolish slip?

I remember the day Sebastian came running in, his face all twisted
and dirty with tears. He grabbed Tillie from the kitchen and ran
with her. We all followed, terrified by the bloodless look of her
face, drained of all emotion until she could find out what it was
she really had to worry about. Mattie wasn't with him, it
was Mattie she was frightened for. We ran in a ragged line across
the field and through the scrub till we came to the big oak tree.
Mattie was there, sitting on the ground, scratching in the dirt with
a stick. Tillie fell on him with little cries.

But it wasn't Mattie. Sebastian touched Tillie on the shoulder
and she looked up.

In the tree, suspended from one of the old swinging ropes,
twisting in slow circles, was a white shape, a long sausage. I stared:
all I could see was a tent packed tightly into its carrying sack, just
like Brian's Scout troop took when they went off to camp.

Tillie jumped to her feet. 'Oh, poor Pickles!'

She ran over to him, slowed his body, stilled the gentle swinging
of the rope. She lifted his dead weight until the rope looped and
she could ease his head out.

'Poor, stupid,
stupid
Pickles.'

For some reason she sent Barbara running back home for a
sheet, and only when he could be decently covered did she carry
him home, with the rest of us trailing behind, mutes in the funeral
procession.

We buried him in the garden, at the far end, under the sickly
apple trees. Tom sweated to dig the hole in the hard-baked earth,
whacking it open with a pickaxe first. Then we laid Pickles inside,
still wrapped in the sheet, and put in his newest bone, and
scattered the tops of cornflowers into the grave, like sparkling blue
dog biscuits. Barbara said some prayer for the departure of the soul,
and Tillie and Sebastian kept wiping their eyes. Patrick had been
away in London for a day or two and was expected back that
evening, but they didn't wait for him. I got the feeling that it was all
a bit hurried. Barbara said it was only because it was so hot.

I got the feeling that it was all a bit hurried because Tillie did
not want anyone asking what had happened to Pickles. He got
himself stuck in a tree, he got himself caught in a rope. She said,
twice, that his paw was caught in the noose along with his neck,
that he must have struggled to free himself but it was too late. She
was so emphatic that she thought it was an accident. I'm sure
she was sure that it wasn't. She wanted to get the horrible evidence
out of the way as soon as possible and forget all about it.

I hadn't seen his paw in the rope. I had seen him hanging, like
a long sad sausage.

How did I know that it was Brian who burned down the
Hennessys' summer house? Well, I didn't at first. I was quite convinced
by the barbecue-and-spark theory. No need to look
further. No need to be suspicious at all.

Then, one evening a couple of days after the conflagration,
Barbara grabbed my arm, saying, 'There's something I've got to
watch on telly. Come
on
.'

We went upstairs to the back bedroom. Tillie was in the bathroom,
supervising the younger boys with their teeth-cleaning and
pyjamas, and Tom's door was firmly shut, loud music pulsating
beyond it. Patrick had gone to the pub.

We settled down on the bedspread with a bag of Maltesers.
Barbara was the sort of person who couldn't watch television
without giving a running commentary. 'D'you recognize him?
Not
him
.
That
one. See? He was in that cop show on ITV. Played
the sergeant. Oh, look at her hair, good God! What
does
she look
like?' She kept shifting on the bed, propping herself up and then
lying down again. Maltesers were rolling everywhere. I got up to
retrieve a couple from the floor, and popped them in my mouth.
At home I could have done that without getting a mouthful of
fluff as well. Not that I would ever have picked sweets off the
carpet at home. Our kitchen floor might have been so clean you
could eat your dinner off it, but that was not an idea we entertained.
Germs, and, anyway,
manners
.

It was a drizzly evening, which brought the dusk down early. I
glanced out of the window. There was someone down there in the
half-light, standing near to what was left of the summer house,
hands in pockets, surveying the burnt remains. Not Tom, too
chunky. I looked harder. Someone wearing Scout uniform. It was
Wednesday, Scouts night. I ducked down so that I couldn't be seen
and peered over the window sill.

'Caro! What the hell are you doing?' Barbara asked tetchily.

'Spying.'

'Spying on what?'

'Foxes,' I lied.

'Whatever for?' She didn't really want an answer. She was
rustling round on the bed, feeling under her back for a stray
Malteser.

Out in the rain, the dusk, a chunky Scout was kicking at the
long-dead embers with his toe, stirring the remains, admiring his
handiwork. He glanced up, not at me crouching by the lit upper
window, but at the hedge. In the half-dark I could have sworn that
he grinned. And I knew, with a cold curdling feeling in my
stomach, that Brian had a parallel life too, that Brian didn't always
keep to his own side of the hedge. That Brian knew things and
never mentioned them, for reasons of his own.

I sat back down on the edge of the bed. Barbara stretched out
her palm with a single Malteser balanced on it. 'Want the last
one?'

'No thanks.'

She clapped it to her own mouth, chewed and swallowed.
'Good.'

If I had to choose my favourite painter, who would I come up
with? Velázquez, or Rembrandt? Or someone else entirely? What
if all the others had to go, and I could save just one from
destruction, who would I choose? Hans Holbein, or Dürer, or
maybe Leonardo. Though that's being a bit too obvious.

Barbara was always saying that kind of thing: what would you
do if ...? Or: if you had to choose between ... ? With her, it was
to stave off the boredom. I'm not sure that she really wanted to
know anyone else's answer.

So, Rembrandt, or Velázquez.

If I had to choose my ten favourite paintings, that would be
easier. Nobody after 1870, I shouldn't think. Lots of portraits, a
domestic interior, a frozen winter landscape, a still life. Or
nature
morte
, as they also call it. Dead nature.

Of course, I have only seen them in books. And some of them
only from postcards. Isolde was always good at sending postcards.
You might expect it of her.

... or maybe Vermeer.

Once I asked Tillie that question, stupidly, as I sat at her kitchen
table and she pummelled bread dough. 'Who's your favourite
painter?' I asked, like silly girls at school sitting vacantly on desktops
at break-time in rainy weather, asking, 'Who's your favourite
pop star? Which one's your favourite out of the Monkees?'

'Who's your favourite painter? Rembrandt?' I thought I knew
the answer, of course.

'Oh no,' she said, wiping stray hair away from her forehead with
the back of her arm. 'Vermeer, I should think.' And she turned
aside, said in a low voice, half joking, 'I know just how his wife
felt.'

Then she heaved her bowl of dough over to the counter top
beside the stove, and continued, educationally, talking across her
shoulder. 'She had eight children, and when he died young, she
had to sell his paintings to pay off all the debts.'

I don't know what I said in reply. It wasn't the kind of discussion
I was expecting.

Tom took me to bed when I was fifteen and two months, which
was not really, as he explained it, breaking the law. I can't recall his
reasoning now. At the time it was convincing.

Tom's sexual technique was much the same as his kissing
technique, and he was very bony. His hipbones grated on mine,
just as his teeth had grated on mine. I wish I had enjoyed it more.
I suppose in time I did.

How it came about was this.

Apparently Tom Rose had told Tom that I was madly in love
with him, Tom Rose. He was very shrewd, and not at all likeable.
When Tom thought that I fancied Tom Rose, it was all too much
for him, and he had to do his bitterest best to muck it up for us.

What were they up to, those two? What the hell was going on?

If he had had any sense at all – Tom Hennessy,
my
Tom – if he
had any use of his five senses, he would have known that I loved
him.
I thought he must know already. I'd thought he'd known for
ages, and that was why he bossed me around and bullied me,
because he knew I'd put up with it just to be near him. That I'd do
anything he asked. Anything at all.

Tom Rose was a Machiavelli. What did
he
want out of it? I still
can't work that out. Perhaps he wanted to believe what he said –
that I fancied him – and hoped that by putting it into words it
would become reality. Or perhaps he just wanted Tom to believe
it, knowing how Tom would react. Stirring things up, just to see
the effect. On reflection, I think probably the latter. The former is
too much like how a girl might act, how a girl might wish things
to be.

Maybe he wanted the reciprocal arrangement that obtained
before, and knew he couldn't get it by himself. Maybe he was only
after
one thing
.

I can still hear the words: 'Now Tom ... Now me.' I can hear
that silky tone of voice, see the sun filtering dust in strips across
the room. I can hear the sound I made as I slid across the bare
floorboards to cross the space between the two of them.

So Tom set about wheedling and cajoling me, a most unusual
experience, and really not bad. It certainly made a change. He set
about seducing me. His long limbs were filling out, he had a man's
hands and a man's jaw now, and his settled deep voice was
thrilling. When I lay against his chest I could hear it vibrating
inside his ribcage.

He even consented to go out in public with me. Very occasionally
we would be seen in town together. 'Oh,
him
,' said the girls at
my school, looking at me with new eyes. They all knew, or knew
of, Tom. He was a sixth-former at the grammar school. It was
good for my reputation to be seen with someone as sought-after
as that. That's what Natasha Maynard said, and I believed her.

So when Tom said, 'This is it. Come on, you will have to come
to bed with me now,' what could I do?

It was evening and we were up in his room. I could hear Tillie
down below in the garden, playing some wild game that was
making Mattie scream. I could hear Patrick's opera music roaring
out from somewhere up above. I could hear the heavy footsteps of
someone – it could only be Sebastian – stumping up the stairs,
patently
in a mood
. And I knew from old experience that they
would leave us all alone, would not venture in. It would never
cross their minds that here a girl and boy of certain ages, of
certain dangerous ages, were alone together in an upstairs room,
with access to strong drink and suggestive music lyrics and a bed
that was wider than two foot six. I knew that in many a house in
our town, the circumstances would call for a parental pounding
on the door at least every five minutes, and in my own house a
hedge away, the circumstance would never have arisen at all.

So no one was going to come to my aid.

'I could get pregnant,' I said to Tom.

'Nah, you won't.' He sounded very sure. 'Virgins never do.'

'Oh, Tom, don't be so stupid!' I said, but he just waved a little
packet at me cheekily and added, 'Not with one of these.'

I'd seen the old dead-jellyfish things washed up on the seafront.
And once in the black mud of a lovers' lane that Barbara had
shown me. To me they seemed the antithesis of love, but they
were its living proof. Proof that people did such things. Proof that
people were wild to do such things, again and again, even in the
most uncomfortable and undesirable of places. And there were
girls in my school who were taking the Pill. They went to their
doctors complaining of irregular periods, and were prescribed the
Pill. There were side effects: perfect twenty-eight-day menstrual
cycles and, by the by, no babies. There were girls in my
class
, it was
rumoured, who were already on it. One girl, indeed, had grown
enormous breasts where previously she had hardly any, so we had
to give credence to the rumour. The oestrogen, apparently. It
chilled me to think of people my own age having that knowledge,
that very particular knowledge, of someone else's body parts. And
someone else of theirs.

'We can't,' I said.

'Why not?' he asked, and when I didn't answer, he just shrugged
lightly and put the packet down.

I heard Tillie in the hall, calling, and then Sebastian pounding
back down the stairs, joyful again.

And I did love Tom, love him very badly, and if I didn't cede to
his requests, God knows, there were girls in shelters on the prom
who very likely would.

So I lay down like the Rokeby Venus on his tartan blanket and
gave him what I hoped was a most inviting smile.

Of course, he fucked those girls he met on the prom. He'd
fucked them before and he'd do so again, and never mind the fact
that he had me there for the asking. Me, who loved every last
molecule of him, nice and nasty.

But he slept with me, as well, because I was so convenient, only
next door and in his house so much of the time.

And because it was one in the eye for old Tom Rose.