The Outcast (21 page)

‘Alice. It’s a question of what’s appropriate. If you want every man in the room—’

‘Not every man! Just—’ ‘Enough!’

‘Why can’t you—’

‘For God’s sake! Just change.This endless attention!’

She turned, quickly, and she was crying. She caught him looking and he shut the door. He didn’t want to know this. He didn’t want to see her like that and he didn’t want to know anything about her and his father.They hadn’t used to argue, it had been all politeness before. He leaned against the door and heard her go to her room and the door closing. He waited and he heard them leaving soon after.

Apart from going down to the kitchen to eat something, he stayed in his room for the rest of the evening; he was more comfortable there.

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Kit lay on her back on the sofa and watched her family upside down and thought about Sartre, and his play
No Exit
, and wondered if her family was her hell and she was being punished for something terrible she couldn’t remember doing when she had been alive.

‘Kit!Will you take your feet off the sofa? How many times do you have to be told?’

‘OK.’

‘And please don’t use that expression. We are not Ameri- cans.’

Dicky was at the fireplace.

‘It crossed my mind to tell him that I wouldn’t trust that boy to feed my dog. I’ve every right to turn him down flat.’

‘You certainly have. I think it’s the most extraordinary pre- sumption, after everything you’ve done, and in very poor taste.’ Claire was working on her tapestry.The fading light falling on her from the window made her look faded too. She always seemed to Kit less substantial than other people, like something that had been washed too many times and lost its colour. The only time Claire seemed really to be there was when she was

angry; her coldness had some life to it.

‘We’ve all had to bear the cost of that boy’s crime already,’

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Dicky said. Kit tried not to stare at him and tried to keep her loathing to herself. Tamsin was opposite Kit, with a magazine and a sherry and dipping in and out of the conversation when she felt she could influence it.

‘They let him out after two years!’ said Dicky. ‘It’s an outrage.’

‘He must have behaved himself,’ said Claire.

‘I wish he’d stayed where he bloody well was!’

Didn’t they have anything else to talk about? Wasn’t there somebody with cancer or an illegitimate baby? It reminded her of how it had been just before Lewis was put away, every school holidays – Lewis Aldridge, and nothing clever, nothing kind, just judgement and gossip.

‘You’d incarcerate him indefinitely, I suppose. He didn’t commit murder!’ She said it furiously; she hadn’t meant to speak, and Tamsin glanced up from her magazine.

‘Shut up, Kit, nobody’s impressed,’ she said.

‘Actually,’ said Claire,‘one doesn’t really want a person like that anywhere, does one?’

What a vision, what an extraordinary vision; all the people one doesn’t want anywhere, where would they go? Kit imag- ined vast rows of buildings housing all the people one didn’t want anywhere, and wanted to go there immediately.There was a silence. Tamsin flicked through her pages and, after a while, looked up.

‘Daddy,’ she said, idly,‘couldn’t you put him to something in the quarry office, or somewhere? Something it doesn’t matter about.Then Mr Aldridge will be pleased and you needn’t worry too much.’

‘I expect I’ll do something like that, it’s just a bloody bore, that’s all.’

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Tamsin sipped her sherry.

‘I’ll telephone now, shall I? I expect you could see him in the morning.’

She got up and wandered out of the room, and Dicky didn’t stop her. Kit watched her go, and heard her pick up the tele- phone. If she were older, if she were blonde, or appealing, perhaps she could get him a job and ring him up and not be just an unwanted shadow. She heardTamsin laughing her social laugh and then she came back into the room, smiling to herself, and Kit felt her mean heart and was ashamed of it.

‘I spoke to Mr Aldridge. He was awfully pleased.Thank you, Daddy.To forgive is divine, you know,’ she said.

‘My good girl,’ said Dicky, and kissed her, while Claire sewed and didn’t look up and Kit continued to sit.‘Good girl,’ he said, stroking her cheek.

Tamsin had waited at the bottom of the drive for him and beeped the horn, and Lewis grabbed the toast from his plate and his jacket and ran out to her.The morning was cool and the top was up on the Austin.

‘Now don’t sulk and try not to be peculiar.’

He did up his tie and smiled, that’s what he mustn’t be: pecu- liar. She was so very friendly it was impossible not to be drawn in, and it was easier to be in the car with her too, because she had a cardigan over her dress and there were no bare arms to distract him. Her legs were completely covered, in a full skirt, and the coolness of the morning, and the fact that it was morning, made the whole thing less self-conscious than it might have been. Her charm was the same, though, and the conspir- atorial, smiling glances.

The quarry office was twenty minutes out of the village,

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jerry-built and perched on the edge of the abyss of the quarry. It looked as if a strong wind would blow it in. Probably what Dicky was hoping for, Lewis thought. Tamsin drove in a wide arc to the door and stopped.

‘Don’t be frightened, you know Daddy’s not that bad. I’ll wait.’

As Lewis got out, Tamsin put the radio on, it was Fats Domino singing ‘Blueberry Hill’ and it sounded pretty good, and he would much rather stay outside with Tamsin in the sun than go into the office and talk to her father. He went up the metal steps to the door and knocked and entered.

There was a man of indeterminable age sitting at a desk. He had glasses and a side parting, slicked down. He looked up.

‘Lewis Aldridge?’ It was an accusation. Lewis nodded. ‘Mr Phillips. D’you do?’ He half-rose in his seat and gestured at another door with his pencil,‘Mr Carmichael is waiting for you.’ He said it with such deference Lewis thought he was going to touch his forelock. He knocked on the other door, watched by Phillips, who sat down again and cleared his throat, never taking

his eyes off Lewis. ‘Come!’

Lewis opened the door.

‘Lewis. Phillips!’ barked Dicky.‘In here please!’

Phillips leaped out of his seat, like something out of Dickens, and shot past Lewis into the room. Dicky stood by the window in customary hands-behind-the-back pose. It had been a long time since Lewis had seen anyone like Dicky, or maybe there wasn’t anyone else like Dicky. His blazer and his ruddiness and the squeak of his shoes as he approached were laughable.

‘Gilbert all right? Alice?’

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‘Very well.Thank you, sir.’

‘Now, your father’s spoken to me and I’ve asked Mr Phillips here to find you something. Phillips?’

‘In filing,’ said Phillips, and Lewis nodded; filing sounded fine, he could do that. Dicky nodded to Phillips, and Phillips approached Lewis and went quite close to him.

‘I don’t want any funny business from you,’ he said.

It was almost funny, the way he said it, but actually not, because of his closeness and the way Dicky was looking at them from across the room. Dicky’s presence in the room was oppressive and Lewis remembered how much he had always hated him and then tried very hard to forget.

‘No, sir,’ he said.

‘You’ll be on trial,’ Phillips went on, and Lewis could smell his breath and his hair oil. ‘On Mr Carmichael’s say-so. I’ll expect you on Monday morning, nine o’clock, and I’ll show you the ropes then. All right?’

‘Thank you,’ said Lewis.

There was another exchange of glances and Phillips left the office, and shut the door. Dicky walked over to Lewis.

‘I don’t usually employ young men straight out of prison, you know.’ He paused. ‘I want to make it perfectly clear that I’m doing this for your father because he’s worked for me for so long. I wonder if you know what this means to him?’

Dicky took a step closer to him.

‘In actual fact, I neither like nor trust you, but should you lose this job, it would be to his detriment. Your – father – wouldn’t – like – it, do you understand?’

‘Yes, sir.’ Lewis concentrated on the windows of the room. The windows were sealed all around, they didn’t have catches to open them.

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‘Let’s not imagine this job is any more than it is. This is my company, and I need to protect it. I’ll be paying you almost nothing to do a worthless job.What do you think about that?’ Dicky had every right to talk to him that way; he wasn’t going to be angry, he would make himself quiet. He had spent two years making himself quiet with people who wanted him to lose

his temper.

‘I’ve less than no interest in you personally, Lewis – you’re a troublemaker. I’ve never had any time for these excuses about your mother and so forth, for God’s sake, we’ve all had prob- lems.There was a collective sigh of relief when you finally got put away and I don’t imagine—’

They wanted him to lose his temper so that they could beat him or lock him up, or prove that he was nothing – as if that needed proving – but he wasn’t going to be angry, he was going to be quiet. Dicky had stopped talking, and Lewis hadn’t noticed that he’d stopped.There was silence in the room.

‘Go on then. Get on with you.’

Dicky laughed and shoved his arm and Lewis saw that he was close up and staring at him, but he couldn’t remember what he had been saying.

There was a blank in his head, like a missed step. He guessed the interview was over. Dicky seemed to be waiting for some- thing. Something other than having his tongue ripped out of his mouth.

Lewis concentrated very hard. ‘Thank you, sir,’ he said.

Outside the office, Lewis got back in the car with Tamsin. His hands were shaking.

‘You were ages!’ she said, and started the engine and the car

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bumped down the track and out onto tarmac.‘Well? How’d it go?’

‘What?’

‘Did you get the job?’ ‘Oh.Yes.’

‘WEEE!’ she cried, and laughed, and waved her hand out the window,‘well done you!’

She laughed again, and he closed his eyes. He was frightened he couldn’t remember what Dicky had been saying to him, or how long he’d been in there. He needed not to be like that. He wasn’t going to be like that again. He hadn’t been in prison, and he was home now.

She was stopping the car. She pulled over to the side of the road and turned off the engine. He looked at her.

‘What?’

He saw her take a breath and, breathing, flex her body very slightly against the seat, as if adoring being Tamsin.

The road was empty and sun poured down on the car, which was dark inside where they were. He waited. He had felt para- lysed – and now he was filled with the small darkness of the car and Tamsin, looking at him.

‘Would you take the top down?’ she said.

He got out, and did, and tried not to stare at her while he did it.

He got back into the car. She didn’t start the engine. She took off her cardigan. She took it off very consciously, demonstrating the removal of it, and that she was luxuriating in the air.

‘Gosh,’ she said. ‘Hot?’ ‘Awfully.’

She looked like a girl who wanted to be kissed. No – he

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wanted to kiss her; it wasn’t her wanting to be kissed. Why would Tamsin Carmichael want to kiss him? He tried not to think about it, but she seemed to present herself to him, and she still hadn’t started the engine.

She tucked her hair behind her ear, slowly, and he couldn’t stop himself staring now; at the hollow between her collarbones and her dress, which was light cotton and covering the shape of her, but letting you know it was there underneath. He kept himself still, and looked at her, and thought about kissing her and tried not to look as if he was thinking about it.

‘Do you remember how we all used to play together as chil- dren?’

She said it quietly, as if she was about to tell him a secret. He nodded, watching her closely. She leaned a little towards him. ‘I remember your mother so well,’ she said, looking into his eyes. ‘She was a wonderful woman. A beautiful woman – and when I heard she’d died like that, I cried.’ Her eyes were wide, looking into him.‘Do you remember how patient she was with all of us? All our noisy games?You were ten when she drowned

– I’m sorry, my maths! So I must have been twelve . . .’

She didn’t seem to notice what she was doing to him, or perhaps she did, and enjoyed it. He said quietly,‘We don’t talk about her.’

‘Well, of course!’ she said, blithely. ‘Your father met Alice that same year! I shouldn’t think she could stand the sound of her name! How horrid for you, though.’

He’d had enough.‘Yes, look—’ She put her hand on his shoulder.

She was wearing her short, white gloves and she rested her hand there and it wasn’t like her flirting before – he must have been wrong about her flirting, he didn’t know now – this was

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horribly kind. Still, her fingers were light on his shoulder and he felt her all through him.

‘Would you all like to come up to the house for lunch and tennis on Sunday?’

Lewis tried to regain some hold. ‘Yes.Thanks.’

‘Good,’ she said, and started the engine.

She seemed very pleased, and didn’t speak again except to say goodbye when she let him out of the car.

Lewis went into the hall.The house was silent. He loosened his tie and sat on the bottom step. The kitchen door opened and Mary put her head out and, seeing him there, narrowed her eyes slightly and then shut the door again.

He’d had an interview with the governor at Brixton the week before they let him out. There had been posters on the walls advertising jobs with various skills Lewis didn’t possess, and the governor had asked him questions about his schooling and his plans. There had been bemusement that a ‘posh boy’ was in Brixton in the first place.Well, the governor would be pleased. He was going to a tennis party at the weekend and had a job starting on Monday. It looked as if he was being rehabilitated. Lewis smiled down at the floor, bringing his hand up to half cover his face like he didn’t want to be caught doing it. It seemed a risky thing to be doing, smiling, and he wasn’t sure he should commit himself. Then he lay back on the stairs and thought of Tamsin Carmichael, and smiled some more, and got up and went out into the sunny garden.