The Kiss (20 page)

He’ll have moved on, say the police, who are fairly certain he’s nowhere around in the city. They have circulated his description to other forces and talked to one or two people who knew him and they say he has gone south. Cormac hopes he’s gone to hell. He has always been amazed how people from his homeland who have had close relatives blown to bits by terrorist bombs have managed to say they have forgiven the perpetrators of the crimes. He wonders if his mother with her strong Christian values would be able to forgive Kite if she were to see the raw wound he inflicted on her granddaughter’s beautiful face. He decides not to test her. When they go at Easter they will have to think up a story for the wound that will distress her less.

They have other worries. Rachel talks to Sophie who admits that she did have sex with Kite. (
How could she, with that young thug?
Cormac is beginning to think he understands less now than he did at twenty.) She
swears though that they always used protection. This is something that Rachel herself dinned into her but she takes blood samples from her, anyway. And drugs? Sophie says that she did only ever smoke pot though others in the squat were into harder stuff.

‘It could be worse,’ says Rachel.

‘We are reduced to thinking so,’ says Cormac. ‘We have been wretched parents.’

Rachel will not agree. ‘We did our best,’ she says. ‘You have always liked to take the sins of the world on your back. Please don’t take this one on!’ She blames this tendency on his Catholic upbringing, he knows, but that is too facile.

Davy goes to stay with Rachel, Sophie comes to live with him. The scar, when the dressing comes off, looks livid. She will never be able to forget the sadistic young man who left his mark on her; every time she looks in the mirror, brushes back her hair, smoothes cream into her skin, she will see it and remember him and the flash of the thin, cruel blade. This is the cruellest thing of all: to be condemned to remembering him. As the scar firms and its edges knit together Cormac sees that the slash was not random; it has the shape of a kite, so even in the heat of the moment – or was he dead cool? – his action was deliberate and executed according to design.

Sophie wakens in the small hours with nightmares
and he sits on the edge of the bed and holds her hand until she quietens. He has bad dreams himself during this time in which he is running frenziedly up endless flights of steps, and high above him, always out of reach, going higher as he goes higher, keeping the same distance between them, floats a kite, a black kite. As he surfaces he hears it laughing. He has to leave his bed and go to the window and push it up and stand there for a few minutes breathing in deeply, inhaling lungfuls of the damp night air coming off the river. He smells rotting vegetation. And, in his ear still, he hears the mocking laughter.

Gradually, as the days go by, and then the weeks, the dark dreams lessen for them both. The blood test has proved negative. Sophie stays at home in the evenings unless it is to go to the cinema or theatre with him. But soon she will go out again with her friends, she must. She is nervous about going into the centre of the town though one evening he persuades her to come with him. He will take her to the little French bistro in Fishmongers Close off the High Street that they have been to before. She clings tightly to his arm as they walk up the hill to Princes Street and then take the path beside the galleries that leads to the Playfair Steps.

‘Look,’ he says, halting her a few yards from the steps, ‘there is no one there.’

There never is in the evening, after dark, especially in midwinter, with cold skies overhead and the freezing ground beneath. But she is able to walk this way, and although she shivers a little, her step on the stairs is firm. In the restaurant she drinks a couple of glasses of wine and becomes a little tiddly and he is happy to see her laughing again. The young put things behind them more quickly, he thinks. He hopes.

When he opens up the shop in the morning he sees the plain white envelope lying just inside the door. It has been delivered by hand and he knows that hand. He lets his shopping fall at his feet and picks up the envelope. Carefully he slits it open. He takes out a card of a painting by William Gillies of his garden in the village of Temple under a winter moon. Cormac was always keen that his pupils should know Scottish artists every bit as much as they did international ones.

‘I have been accepted by the Slade,’ she has written. ‘I thought you would like to know. I hope you will be pleased. Thank you for helping me to get there. Clarinda.’

He feels a flush of pleasure. After he has locked up in the afternoon he goes out and buys a card, a vibrant still life by Caddell, one of the Scottish Colourists.

‘I am delighted by your news. It is well deserved. Congratulations! With very best wishes, Cormac.’ He
wishes that he could send her a bouquet of flowers but that might be misinterpreted by Mrs Bain, who has caused sufficient trouble in his life.

His nightmare ended unexpectedly, on a wet and windy afternoon. The weather in the streets was so debilitating that he came home early from his peregrinations round the town. He was wondering what to do with himself when the phone rang and his lawyer said, ‘Good news, Cormac old man! The case against you has been dropped. Congratulations.’

He had to ask the lawyer to repeat what he had just said.

‘The claimant has dropped the charge.’

‘Clarinda has?’ He felt stupid.

‘Pity she didn’t do it before it went this far. Almost to the wire. Put you and your family through hell.’

‘What happened exactly?’

‘Apparently she walked into the police station one day and told the duty officer that none of it was true. She’d been lying. She could be charged with wasting police time – not to mention everyone else’s – but I shouldn’t think they’ll bother. These young girls! Anyway, Cormac, you’re off the hook.’

Off the hook. He felt as if he’d had one in the back of his neck all these months and that he’d been
dangling, like a carcass in mid-air, feet grazing the ground.

‘Thank God,’ said Rachel, when she came in and heard the news. She collapsed into a chair. ‘What a relief that is! We can return to normal life again. You’ll be able to go back to work.’

Archie rang the following morning. ‘I’m so pleased for you, Cormac. We all are. As for Miss Bain! I don’t know how she’s going to show her nose in here again.’

‘Oh, well,’ was all that Cormac could think to respond.

‘Your job’s still open, needless to say.’

‘It’s too late, Archie,’ he said. Too much had happened. He’d been to hell and back and much as he had enjoyed his teaching he knew he could no longer walk through that door. And another school, given a choice of applicants for a job, might decide to play safe and go for the other person. After all, there usually has to be some kind of fire to give off even a faint puff of smoke.

‘But what will you do?’ asked Archie.

‘Make sandwiches,’ he said as a joke.

He drops the card he has just written to Clarinda in a letter box and continues along Henderson Row to Stockbridge. He could cut down Saxe Coburg to the Colonies but he does not. Part way along Hamilton
Place he goes into an alleyway where there is a small colony of studios that are rented out to artists of various kinds for reasonable rents.

When he arrives home he prepares their meal and opens a bottle of wine. He feels he has something to celebrate. He pours himself a glass while he waits and drinks it standing at the window watching the street. He then pours another and turns down the rings on the cooker.

The phone rings. It’s Sophie. ‘Dad, I’m going to be a bit late. OK? I’m going to eat at Tilda’s. See you later,’ she says.

‘See you later,’ he repeats when the phone has gone dead. He sighs.

He finishes the wine of course and eats some of the food, leaving the rest to congeal in the pots. She comes in just before eleven, not too late. Her cheeks are flushed and her hair and clothes look clean. He is thankful for that at least. One has to be thankful for small mercies, he reflects wryly. It was one of his mother’s most frequent sayings.

‘Sorry about that,’ says Sophie, casting a look at the abandoned pots. ‘I should have phoned you earlier.’

‘That’s all right,’ he says.

She makes hot chocolate and he accepts a mug though he is not fond of the drink.

‘How was your day?’ she asks.

‘I’ve put my name down for a studio.’

‘Are you going to start sculpting again, Dad? That’s brilliant!’

‘I’m thinking of it,’ he says cautiously.

She smiles. ‘What are you going to start with?’

‘Not sure.’

‘You always said you’d do the aunts one day.’

‘The O’Malley sisters.’ He smiles now. He can see them ranged in front of him, their eyes fixed on him, expectantly. ‘You know,’ he says, ‘I might just do that.’

If you enjoyed
The Kiss
, read on to find out
about more books by Joan Lingard …

To discover more great fiction and to
place an order visit our website at
www.allisonandbusby.com
or call us on
020 7580 1080

It is 1920 and the beautiful village of Yegen, in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada, awakens to a new year and two events that are to change the pueblo for ever: the birth of Encarnita, a beautiful dark-eyed girl; and the arrival of the British writer Gerald Brenan and his string of artistic and literary visitors, including Virginia Woolf, Lytton Strachey and Dora Carrington.

Growing up in Yegen, and taught English by Brenan, the beautiful Encarnita longs for the world outside the small pueblo – the stories Brenan and his friends tell her spark her imagination. And so begins her long journey, from the Sierra to Edinburgh, where eighty years after her birth, she will have one last story to tell.

Willa is a polite and respectable young woman, trying to cope with the tedium of her life whilst her husband is away on a year-long cruise with the Navy. Living with a controlling mother-in-law only serves to fuel her sense of claustrophobia. Her only escape is to submerge herself in books, and at her local library she meets Richard, a charming and intelligent young writer who shares her passion for reading.

As their relationship blossoms, it begins to change Willa’s life. Despite her initial reluctance, she allows herself to enjoy the taste of a different existence, yet all the while struggling with the knowledge that Tommy’s steady progress will eventually bring him back home …

J
OAN
L
INGARD
is the acclaimed author of over forty books for both children and adults. She was born in Edinburgh and brought up in Belfast, the inspiration for many of her novels, including the compelling
Across the Barricades
. She was awarded the MBE in 1998 for Services to Children’s Literature.
The Kiss
is the result of a long-standing personal fascination with the painter Gwen John.