The Kiss (16 page)

‘That’s it there,’ said Clarinda, indicating a dark greenish-coloured door in need of painting. ‘We’re on the top.’

Letting his eyes travel up Cormac saw that it was easy to pick out the Bains’ dwelling. The windows glowed with a pinkish-orange light; one might almost have thought that the flat was on fire. Presumably Mrs Bain was still up and about and awaiting the return of her daughter.

‘Right then,’ he said, ‘on you go. And don’t do this again or you’ll make me hate you.’

‘Don’t say that!’

‘I’m tired, Clarinda. Very tired.’

‘See you tomorrow,’ she said.

He waited while she crossed the road and opened the door. Before vanishing inside she paused to look back at him. She waved but he did not respond.

As he was about to turn and go he glanced up
again and saw a face appear at one of the flaming windows. He wondered if Mrs Bain knew where her daughter had gone and what she had been doing. What exactly did she know? Was she encouraging Clarinda?

He went home.

Davy is in bed asleep and Cormac is restless. He makes a cup of coffee; he drinks a half glass of wine left at the bottom of a bottle and makes a wry face at its sourness; he goes out to stand on the top step with his arms folded across his chest, allowing the night wind to ruffle his hair. He can’t stop thinking about Sophie and wondering what she is up to. The bruise that she has underneath her eye – is her boyfriend violent? Then there’s that mouldy smell that she often gives off when she comes in. He decides to phone Rachel and have a chat with her about it; at least that will be his excuse for he does have another agenda running at the same time. And he misses having her to talk to; she was always able to get things into perspective more easily than he and had a way of defusing a situation. He dials her number and waits. The ringing sound goes on and on; he lets it ring longer than he normally would. He imagines the machine sitting on the hall table beside a vase of flowers – she likes to have fresh cut flowers in the house as well
as pot plants, all of which in her care flourish and bloom like the lilies in the field, whereas he tends to forget about his and they end up looking sad and dejected – and he imagines the living room empty of people but warm and inviting with cushions plumped and surfaces dust-free. She is obviously out, as must be Sophie, and they have forgotten to put on the answering machine. He is about to put down the receiver when Rachel answers. He has not been expecting it after the delay and is taken by surprise. She sounds a little breathless, as if she has just run up the outside stair and flung open the door to grab the receiver.

‘Yes?’ Normally she would say, ‘Rachel Aherne here’ in a composed voice.

‘Hi,’ he says. ‘It’s me.’

‘Oh hello, Cormac.’ She sounds guarded. Or is he imagining it?

‘Were you out?’

‘No, no. Just upstairs.’ So she was
upstairs
? That makes him pause.

Does it take that long to come down such a short flight of stairs? Unless she was having a shower. But she did not say that she was, which would have been the natural thing to say. Is she with someone? Is there a man standing behind her, touching her? Now his imagination has something else to work on. Rachel
is waiting for him to tell her the reason for his call.

‘I was just wondering about Sophie. If you’d managed to find out anything more about what she’s up to?’

‘No, I haven’t.’ She sounds uninterested. Is the man caressing her, urging her to turn back into his arms?

‘Is she in?’

‘No, she went to Tilda’s. She should be back soon.’

‘Oh, Tilda’s.’ He can think of nothing else to detain her. ‘See you Sunday then, as usual.’

‘As usual,’ she says, and the call is over.

He is even more restless now. He goes upstairs and pushes open the door of Davy’s room. The boy is lying on his back sound asleep with one arm curled round his head. When he sleeps he has seldom been known to wake. Cormac tiptoes back downstairs and puts on a jacket, then he quietly lets himself out of the flat.

He covers the short stretch of road that separates the two streets in seconds. On the corner of Rachel’s street he comes to a halt. Cautiously he peers round the corner. Nothing seems to be happening. Cars are parked, curtains are drawn, not even a dog is barking. The street is too narrow to loiter in, unless one is prepared to crouch behind a car. As he watches he sees a movement halfway down. Someone is coming down an outside staircase. He thinks it might be Rachel’s. He retreats back round the corner and keeps in close
to the wall. There are no houses on the opposite side of the road, only the Glenogle swimming baths, and the steep steps called Gabriel’s Road that lead up to the lane behind Saxe Coburg Place. There is no one to observe him acting suspiciously, unless the winged angel Gabriel himself is hovering above. He listens, hears an engine revving up, and after a few seconds a car nudges its rear end out into the main road with its back light indicating that it intends to turn right. Cormac pulls in his stomach and flattens himself as close to the wall as possible. The car looks familiar. Very familiar. Can it be? It is continuing to back out, is reversing now round the corner, towards him; and he can see the dark bulky outline of the driver, half turned in his seat to look out of the back window. For a moment the car and its driver rest there and he wonders if he has been seen, and identified; then they start to move, to gather speed, and they are off, sweeping away in the opposite direction. Cormac steps into the middle of the pavement and watches until the car’s rear lights have dwindled into the gloom. He could swear that the car belongs to Archie Gibson, his former headmaster.

‘What came over you last night?’ Rachel asked, the morning after he had frogmarched Clarinda back to her street.

‘How do you mean?’

‘Going out for a walk at that hour? Without even your coat on.’

That might have been another chance to tell her about Clarinda, had the children not been there, but they were, sitting hunched over the table yawning and complaining that they weren’t hungry and didn’t see why they should be
made
to eat when they weren’t. There was no chance of taking Rachel aside, either, for they would all have to get going in ten minutes, and his story was not one that could be told in a hurry. He said he’d felt restless.

‘That’s not new, is it? But you didn’t even have your coat on.’

‘I went on the spur of the moment.’

Rachel did not look convinced. She turned her attention to Davy, who was fiddling with his cereal but not eating. They heard the letter box flap snap shut announcing the arrival of the post, which gave Sophie the chance to leave the table to go and fetch it.

‘Three for you, Mum. One for Dad. Peachy paper. Wow! Who’s writing to you on that? Not Granny, though. And it smells of’ – she sniffed – ‘patchouli.’

‘It’s probably some pupil or other,’ said Cormac hurriedly, taking the envelope and shoving it half under his plate.

‘Aren’t you going to open it?’

‘I haven’t time.’ He rose, abandoning the last of his coffee and putting the envelope in his pocket. Rachel was looking furious.

He went up to the bathroom and locked the door. It reminded him of the first time a girl had sent him a Valentine. He’d been fourteen and he’d gone into the bathroom to read it without his mother’s eyes watching him. When he’d come out she’d said, ‘I’ve no time for the kind of girl that runs after a boy. She must have no pride.’ Cormac had said nothing. He’d sent the girl a Valentine himself.

‘Darling Cormac,’ Clarinda had written, ‘since I can’t see you every minute of every day and every night the only way I can talk to you is by writing to you. I can’t forget those wonderful times we had together in Paris, especially the night that you kissed me. I shall never forget
The Kiss.
’ ‘The Kiss’ was firmly underlined.

He took the peachy-pink letter and its matching envelope and shredded them into tiny pieces and dropped them like confetti into the toilet. Then he flushed them away. He had no chance to speak to Clarinda on her own in school that day and he had taken his bicycle to work so that he was able to make a quick getaway afterwards.

The following morning, there was another letter. This one had been delivered by hand, before the post came. He saw the pink rectangle lying on the brown doormat when he came downstairs. He had come down early, deliberately. With a quick glance up the stairs he bent down and picked up the envelope. He was somewhat surprised that Clarinda would opt for pink notepaper. A liking inherited from her mother, perhaps? Opening the door he peered cautiously round it, afraid that she might be standing on the step. But she was not. She must have slipped up the path, and slipped away again. Did her mother know that she’d left home so early in the morning? What did she know? It was time he went and talked to the woman. Clarinda was not standing under the tree across the road, either. He went as far as the gate and glanced up and down the street. There appeared to be no sign of her at all.

‘Not a bad morning,’ called over John, his next-door neighbour, who was coming down his path, freshly shaved and spruced up, the toes of his shoes glinting as he stepped smartly out. He always went to work early, walking all the way up town. He had told Cormac he liked to get into the office before anyone else to have time to settle himself in peace. Cormac found the idea attractive but somehow or other never seemed to
manage it himself. Mornings in their household tended to be hassled.

‘Not bad,’ agreed Cormac automatically, suddenly becoming aware that he was out in his pyjamas and slippers and that he was clutching a pink envelope in his hand and his neighbour was eyeing it and him curiously. ‘Have a good day,’ he muttered and went back inside. He was tempted to chuck the blasted envelope and its contents down the toilet without opening it but found he could not resist reading what she had written. She had penned a long description about her room so that, she said, he would be able to envisage it.

‘I am going to do a painting of my room. I’ve started to make some sketches which I’d love to show you. I plan to make the composition simple: just a small table with a vase of brilliant dahlias (my mother is always buying flowers) and a chair by the window. I know it might seem that I am just copying Gwen John but my interpretation will be different. You would say so yourself, wouldn’t you? But I do think Gwen was right not to overcrowd her paintings.’ He groaned and started shredding.

Someone was rattling the door handle. ‘Dad, are you going to be in there all day!’ demanded Sophie.

When Cormac did come to tell Rachel about
Clarinda, after he’d been suspended, she said he should have kept the letters, as evidence that the girl was pursuing him.

You say the girl wrote letters to you, Mr Aherne. Why did you not keep them? Did you think they might incriminate you?

He is convinced that the car he has just seen coming out of Rachel’s street was Archie Gibson’s, and that the man driving was the headmaster himself. He must have been to call on Rachel. What other reason would he have for being in that particular street? Perhaps it had merely been a friendly call.
Just passing, thought I’d drop in, see how you were doing for old times’ sake
. No, he cannot convince himself of that.

This isn’t going to be easy for me, Cormac
. Thus spake his former friend and head teacher on that fateful day when he was suspended. The words ring in Cormac’s ears as he retraces his steps back to his own street; they have attained a new significance. ‘This isn’t easy for me now, Archie,’ he mutters. He remembers the day after their return from Paris, sitting in the pub with Archie, telling him about Clarinda, how enthusiastic she was about art, and Gwen John, trying to build up to finally telling him—Telling him what? Everything? Would he have told him about the kiss?

‘Funny business, isn’t it,’ he had begun, ‘what attracts one person to another? It’s not totally physical, is it?’

Archie looked startled, and guilty. Yes, guilty. But Cormac only realises that after he has seen the headmaster’s car leaving Rachel’s street. What had Archie said in response? He can’t remember. Perhaps nothing. And he himself, wrapped up in his own thoughts, might not have noticed.

‘Dad!’
He hears Davy’s voice as he unlocks the door. ‘Where have you
been
? I was calling for you. I thought you’d gone.’

Cormac gathers his son into his arms. ‘It’s all right, Davy, I’m here. You know I’d never go away. I just went down into the street for a breath of air. I didn’t think you’d wake.’

‘I had a horrible dream. I was coming home from school and I couldn’t find the house …’

‘There, now, it was only a dream. You know you won’t ever have to look for the house when you’re coming home from school. I’ll always be there to meet you.’ Every day at three o’clock he is committed to standing at the school gate. He resolves to be sharper in future. Sometimes Davy is there before him, frowning, peering anxiously up the street.

He gives Davy a drink of hot milk and puts him back to bed; he waits beside him until he falls asleep again.

Rachel and Archie Gibson
.

He goes to the phone and presses redial. Rachel answers in her more gathered-together voice.

‘Oh, hello, Cormac. Sophie’s home, you’ll be glad to know. She came in five minutes ago. Do you want to speak to her?’

‘No, I was wondering if you could give me Archie’s number.’

‘Archie?’ Her voice has shifted a register, and sounds splintered. He is listening with intent, ready to catch every nuance.

‘Yes, Archie Gibson’s. I no longer have it on me, I think it was probably in the family book you took with you.’

‘He’s moved, actually. He and Sheila split up, you know. She stayed in the house.’

‘Perhaps you could give me their old number and I’ll get Archie’s new one from her.’

‘Were you wanting it for any reason in particular?’ She is trying to sound casual.

Cormac says he just thought it would be nice to meet up for a drink. Old times’ sake and all that. He and Archie go back quite a way, after all. They shared a flat when they were students.
What else have they shared?