The Outcast (10 page)

The first time she went to Victoria to meet the school train was in April, for the Easter holidays. She saw the boys all dressed alike and she was terrified she wouldn’t recognise him and would be shown up, the stepmother. She joined the other women at the barrier and searched the crowd. Far from all looking alike as she’d feared, a lot of the boys were odd or funny in some way: buck teeth, clumsy, or not grown into themselves. Lewis wasn’t like that, he looked all right in his clothes, and in his body, and careless of them both. He got off the train a little behind three or four others who were pushing and joking with each other as they looked around for trunks and parents; they were obviously the set to know and she was reassured that he was included and felt proud of him.

She didn’t know the form for greeting one’s child off the train so she looked around at the other mothers, who all seemed at least forty and absolutely frightening with very set hair and determined expressions.The woman next to her was trying to make her son stop running towards her and go back to the others, but he kept running up and laughing. He had wet lips and knock knees and Alice didn’t like the look of him at all. She wanted to say, ‘Look, that one’s mine, the tall, good-looking one over there!’ but, tiresomely, it looked as if

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the thing to do was not look too pleased to see your offspring, so Alice just raised a careless hand to wave at Lewis, hoping he’d see her and just come over. It was extra- ordinary to her that he might; he barely knew her, but then, he had no choice.

Lewis wasn’t looking down the platform to the barrier like the other boys and he didn’t see her wave. He collected his trunk in the scrum by the luggage compartment and waited. She started towards him and managed to get a porter on the way. What should she say? What did the other mothers say? Hello, darling? Hello, Lewis? Hello! She reached him. She was right next to him, he still hadn’t seen her.

‘Hello, Lewis.’

He looked at her vaguely. ‘Hello.’

There was no surprise to it, no warmth, nothing at all. He stood by while she organised the porter with the trunk and they got to the platform for their train back to Waterford.

She faced the front and he sat opposite, looking out at the track going away from him. Getting off the train with the others he’d had vitality and she’d warmed to the sight of him, but now he looked more as she remembered; resigned.

‘It’ll be lovely to be home,’ she said brightly and he nodded. At home, he went to his room and after a while she decided she was being feeble and went up. She knocked on his door. She didn’t know if you were meant to do that with children, but it seemed polite. She imagined saying something about jigsaws, and went in. He was sitting on the windowsill with his knees up and looking out of the window.The windowsill wasn’t big and he had his arms wrapped around his knees to be on it, squashed in, like it was something he had used to do and was growing

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out of. She wanted to go and put her arms around him and thought of Gilbert.

The first time she had seen Gilbert had been at a party given by some people in London. He had been standing in the middle of the room, talking to a woman who had her back towards Alice. He had been listening and smiling and Alice thought he was the saddest man she’d ever seen. She’d had this same feeling, of just wanting to go over to him and put her arms around him. She’d found out who he was and had herself intro- duced to him and they’d talked oddly and immediately about loss and death and Elizabeth.They had left the party and gone out for supper, and got quite drunk together, and he’d cried at the table, putting his hand between him and the rest of the room, surprised at himself. She adored his grief, was honoured to witness it. It was as if they’d known each other for ages.There was no initial suspicion or curiosity, no finding topics and inter- ests in common; from the beginning it was her need to love him and his pain drawing her.

This child, though – he had sadness too – but he didn’t seem to want or need her. His sadness came at her across the room and she recognised it, and stopped, and didn’t know what to do with it.

‘What are you up to?’ she said. ‘Nothing.’

Alice was overwhelmed by acute social embarrassment. ‘Daddy will be home soon,’ she said and went out, closing

the door.

She went to her room and sat on the coral-cushioned stool at the dressing table. The stool was new, because she had felt strange sitting where Elizabeth had sat, and the mirror was new too because she hadn’t wanted to look in a drowned woman’s

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glass. She had made do with putting her make-up in the drawers of Elizabeth’s dressing table, though. She put on some lipstick. Gilbert would be home soon. She smiled at herself in the mirror. She wasn’t going to be put off. She was going to make Lewis better. She would think of something. She needed to make the drinks for Gilbert, there wouldn’t be time for her to have her taster before he arrived if she didn’t hurry. She went downstairs.

‘So, Lewis, what shall we get up to today?’

‘I don’t know.’ He fiddled with his spoon, longing to get down.

‘It’s a bit cold for playing outside. I know! As a special treat we could go up to London and visit a museum.We could catch the train, there’s one at about half-past nine, I think, and we’ll be in Victoria by half-past ten.Would you like that?’

‘All right.’

‘Come on, Lewis, what had you planned to do today? Had you thought about it at all?’

He looked down and shook his head.

‘Well, why don’t we go to a museum then? It’ll be fun.’

Alice was relieved to have something to do and to be going up to town. They spent the morning at the Natural History Museum, had sandwiches for lunch and then went for a walk in Kensington Gardens. Alice felt more herself in London and having things to look at made it much easier to be with Lewis. It was a bitter cold spring day and there weren’t many people in the park.They walked to the Round Pond. He ran on ahead of her to the water and Alice tucked her face into her fur collar against the wind.

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There was a sailing boat on the pond that Lewis was running towards. It was impressive: about two feet long and varnished, with a light blue sail.The boy sailing it was Lewis’s age and Alice observed the way Lewis played out the social rituals of child- hood; he stood and watched with his hands in his pockets, then he got a bit nearer and watched some more. Then he started glancing towards the boy who owned the sailing boat, who had noticed him by then and was playing with it more showily and demonstrating his pride in it.Alice found a bench and sat down as the boys moved around each other and eventually made contact, with words coming last.

‘D’you want to try?’ ‘All right.’

It was a good day for sailing boats and the ripples ran evenly in one direction so that when they let the boat go on one side of the pond, it sailed pretty briskly to the other side, without ever getting stuck in the middle.The other boy’s mother was on another bench watching and there was no-one else but them. Observing their own rituals, the two women looked across at each other and smiled a few times before meeting on the bench between the two.

‘Jolly cold.’ ‘Awful.’ ‘Nice boat.’

‘It’s his pride and joy. How old is your boy?’ ‘He’s eleven.’

‘He’s tall for his age, isn’t he? Paul’s twelve, we’re hoping he’ll shoot up.’

Alice felt an absolute fraud. She kept wanting to say,‘I’m not his mother’, and felt sure the other woman would start asking her searching questions about measles or something that she

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wouldn’t be able to answer. She always felt this way, as if she were pretending Lewis was hers and trying to fool people.

Lewis glanced over and smiled at Alice, he smiled at her quite naturally because he was enjoying himself, and she smiled back and felt suddenly very happy. He went back to tying on the sail or whatever it was he was doing and Alice, in her joy, said, ‘Don’t they look happy?’

The other woman looked surprised.

‘Well, it’s the holidays. Nanny’s gone to visit her ill mother and we haven’t found a replacement. I’m absolutely desperate, frankly, but my three seem to be getting along fine.’

Alice laughed.‘We don’t have a nanny.’

She suddenly thought it looked as if she couldn’t afford one, or that she was the sort of hopeless young woman with messy hair who spent all the time in the park with her son, so she said in a rush,‘Lewis never had one before and he’s away at school

. . . I mean, I’m not his mother, I’m his stepmother. His mother never had a nanny, she was—’ She didn’t want to say ‘eccentric’ about Elizabeth, but it did strike her as odd.

‘Is she dead?’

‘Yes, she died last year.’

‘She died? How ghastly. How did she die?’

Alice felt the curiosity and glee, but she didn’t mind. It was a relief to tell her.

‘She drowned.’ ‘No?’

‘Yes, in the river near their – our – house.’ With a meaning look,‘And when did you . . .?’ ‘I met his father last November.’

‘And she died . . .?’ ‘In the summer.’

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‘Well, men can’t manage alone, can they? What’s his name, your boy?’

‘Lewis.’

Alice was beginning to regret saying anything. She’d wanted to tell her and now she was wondering how to get out of it. She didn’t want to stop Lewis playing and take him home.

‘And his father? Does he mention the wife much?’ ‘No. He used to.We don’t talk all that much about it.’

‘I should think not. Well. One’s used to fathers dying of course, but a mother!’

‘Yes.’

‘And whereabouts do you live?’ ‘Surrey.Waterford.’

‘I know it.We used to know some people near there.’ ‘Really?’ Alice was relieved, this was safer territory.

‘The country can be so hard to get along in. Even Surrey. Do you find you’re fitting in all right?’

‘Yes, everyone’s very nice.’ Alice began to dislike her.

There was a shout and Lewis came running over. He had put the whole of one leg into the water and the drenched wool sock was hanging down. His shoe was spilling out water and he was laughing. He stopped in front of her, like a puppy about to bark, and stuck his wet shoe and leg out towards her.

‘Look!’

‘It doesn’t matter,’ said Alice and laughed and felt very fond of him; she liked him for laughing and for thinking she would think it was funny too.

‘Lewis, isn’t it? I’m Marjorie Dunford-Wood.’

Lewis was out of breath, smiling – ‘How d’you do—’ ‘I was so sorry to hear about your mother.’

It was like watching an accident and not being able to stop it.

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Alice could see Lewis was making an enormous effort to do something.

‘Thanks, that’s all right,’ he said.

‘Were you having fun with the boat?’ said Alice, in a rush,‘I think we should probably be off, don’t you?’

The other woman mouthed an exaggerated apology to Alice that Lewis couldn’t fail to see.Alice didn’t return her look, but got up and took Lewis’s hand.

‘Goodbye,’ she said and turned away.

The boy with the boat stood up from the water and waved and grinned.

‘Bye!’ he shouted then, thinking he hadn’t been heard,‘Bye then!’

They walked back towards Kensington Gore and all the way across the park Alice tried to make up for it, but he didn’t speak to her.The cold was vicious and worse for being in the spring. Lewis’s shoe was squelching water and it should have been a funny sound and the sort of thing children liked laughing at, and Alice wanted to make him laugh about it, but couldn’t think of anything to say.They walked on through the empty park with her heels and the wet shoe the only sounds.

‘You can see your breath,’ she said. They walked on.

‘We’ll be there soon.’

She wanted to cry and she nearly did just to make him feel sorry for her, but she thought maybe that wasn’t a fair thing to do to a child. In the taxi to Victoria she watched him look out of the window at a troop of Horse Guards go by and he looked like a normal child, leaning on his arms with his face against the glass and looking at the shiny swords and plumes. Just like any

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other child. She felt terribly lonely and rather desperate, and decided to wait for Gilbert at Victoria.

It was nearly five o’clock and dark by then, so they waited in the hotel there.Alice had tea and then found herself ordering a cocktail, and then, quite soon after, another. She took out the olives and put them in the ashtray, which was full.

‘Lewis! Stop it! Don’t you know it’s rude to stare?’ ‘I wasn’t.’

‘Yes, you were!You were staring at me.’ ‘I was looking at the things.The olives.’

‘What on earth for? Haven’t you seen an olive before?’ ‘Of course I have.’

‘Tell me one thing, will you?Will you just tell me one thing? Tell me how it is you can look at horses and boats and have a perfectly fine time when you feel like it? How’s that?’

He had no idea what she was talking about, what horses? ‘And how is it, you just save all of this,’ she emphasised the

word, gesturing at him,‘all of This for Me? How is that, Lewis?’ He wanted to think about something else.

‘Come on!’ her eyes were fixed on him. ‘Why don’t you make an effort? Everybody else bloody does.’

Lewis looked at the green olives in the ashtray. They were shiny and wet, but resting in the cigarette ash and covered with it on one side.

She asked for the bill and spilled some money from her purse in paying, and then they went down to the platform and walked along the train looking for Gilbert.

‘Come on. Keep up for God’s sake! I’ve had enough.’

Gilbert was surprised and pleased to see them and it was a huge relief, just as she’d imagined. Lewis saw her put her pretty face on when she saw him. They got in, but there was

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nowhere to sit and they had to find an empty compartment in third class.

‘Lewis, you’re looking very messy. Where are your gloves and why is your sock in that terrible state?’

‘I got it in water.’

Alice hadn’t thought to bring him gloves and she hadn’t noticed his cold hands. She felt the tears starting again and decided to let them.

‘What on earth?’