Where Have You Been? (25 page)

Susan makes no reply. She starts the car, pulls on her seatbelt, puts the car into reverse. Carly jabs at the radio dial, looking for a suitable station.

‘But it's no different here Sue,' she says quietly. ‘However it looks, however you all behave, people are just as awful, bad things happen.' She turns the stereo up loud, leans back, closes her eyes. ‘It's dangerous here, too, Susan.' Susan can only just hear her, ‘You just can't see it.'

Susan says nothing. What can she say? She has no right to admonish her sister; no right to judge her. Now, underlying their every exchange there is the knowledge that without the actions of her father, Susan's father, Carly's life would have been very different, would probably have resembled Susan's, in its neat and heedless middle-class progression. This life, that she takes so much for granted – husband, kids, career, home, car, trips to the coast, dinner out; what Anna laughingly refers to as their blessed double-garage life – has been denied Carly,
and another one of unspeakable deprivation and degradation has been given in its place. Whatever Carly is, whoever she is, Susan has no right to say anything.

Susan knows she can't be held responsible, is hardly accountable for the actions, the crimes, of her dead father, but nevertheless she carries the burden of his wrongdoing. There is no one else to carry it, after all.

‘There was a time,' she tells him, ‘there was a time a long time ago when I could have been one of you...'

‘One of you? You who? What do you mean?' His voice is thick with sleep, his questions half-hearted.

She ignores him, doesn't need an audience anyway, continues: ‘Sometimes I think I would enjoy it, you know, having a big house, a big car, a husband, children.' She runs long fingernails across his chest absent-mindedly. ‘A garden with flowers in it.' Traces around one nipple. ‘It'd be a nice life, wouldn't it?' Moves slowly, gently, slowly down his body.

‘Would it?' his voice is still thick, but he's no longer sleepy.

‘Oh I think so. Geraniums, petunias...' Her fingers pause just below his belly button. ‘Sex every second Saturday. No surprises.'

‘Every second Saturday? That wouldn't suit you.' He gropes for her hand in the dark, but it's not anywhere. Switches on the bedside lamp. She's gone.

They have four hours, four certain hours, four safe hours. Two hours twice a week.

And for almost the entirety of those two scant hours between nine and eleven on Tuesday and then on Wednesday
evenings (when the children are deeply asleep, unlikely to wake, and Susan still has another two hours of her shift to work), Ed is ashamed and terrified (Mitchell will wake, Susan will arrive home early), but still he cannot help himself. He obsesses about it all day. He frequently finds that he has been sitting daydreaming, fantasising; an hour, two hours will have disappeared. Caught out by Moira's abrupt entrance into his office, or Derek's impatient enquiries, interrupted by the insistent ring of the telephone. Imagines her fingers sliding and fluttering, every which way across his body; her tongue darting and flickering, insinuating itself in this tender part or that. He considers new ways to pleasure her – a solicitude he has long ceased to extend (did he ever, really, like this? he wonders) to Susan.

After the first few occasions it is only ever in Carly's bedroom (that this is actually his daughter's bed, his little Stella's bed, he tries hard not to think about). He does not take all his clothes off, and nor does she – and other than the odd, quickly suppressed moan, they conduct their lovemaking in silence, though Ed wants to shout, to weep with joy and terror. When he is with Carly he becomes someone he does not recognise. Their coupling is swift, animal, unconscious. With Susan he is often weirdly – though comfortably – aware of himself, of them both – of the absurdity of the sexual act – of the games they play over and over, all to the same inevitable end. But with Carly he has no such consciousness, he is lost, possessed, completely overtaken by desire. All Ed's planned and imagined caresses are forgotten, swept away in the heat and thrust of their animal rutting.

And afterwards, when he has scurried back to the marital bedroom, has washed every trace of his sister-in-law from his body, afterwards, as he lies feigning sleep, exhausted, his heart racing madly, waiting for Susan's return, he finds he has no real memory of the event itself. All he can recall is the
shame that comes almost simultaneously with his climax. A shame that endures long after any orgasmic pleasure has been forgotten.

Before they sleep the children ask Susan to read them
The Emperor's New Clothes.
It is an old book, a favourite, read and read and read again. It is a fun version of the fairytale, with gaudy pictures of the fat old king in the briefest underwear. The stupidity of the admiring court and the king's absurd pomposity always makes them giggle. Tonight, though, they are both subdued as she reads, and when she closes the book and goes to say goodnight, they are unresponsive, cheerless. Stella in particular surveys her mother solemnly. Her plastered arm is propped awkwardly on a pillow beside her, her face pale and drawn.

‘Mum,' she asks, ‘what does that story mean? What's the – the moral?'

Susan is amazed, as she frequently is, by her daughter's fledgling resemblance to Ed, by her inability, her obvious disinclination, even at this tender age, to just let things be, to enjoy what's on the surface. Susan smiles down at the serious little face, strokes the soft brown curls.

‘Mum?'

Susan thinks for a moment. She finds it difficult to reduce such a story, to assign it a single meaning, and dislikes having to do so – it's not the way she reads, and isn't really, she supposes, the way she approaches anything. ‘I guess,' she offers eventually, ‘the main point is that you should stick by your beliefs, when you know they're real and true, even when everyone else disagrees. Otherwise you'll be made a fool of like the emperor.'

Stella nods her head sagely. ‘I thought that's what it meant. That's what I told Mitch. Didn't I Mitch? Didn't I say it was like
The Emperor's New Clothes?
That whatever they said, we know what the truth was.'

‘What do you mean?' Susan's stomach lurches, her heart pounds. ‘Who are they? What are you talking about?' She has visions of pedophile rings, child pornography. ‘Stella? Mitchell. What are you talking about?'

Stella looks over at her older brother.

‘It's just that – well you know how I fell off the slippery-dip?'

‘Yes?' Susan's terror dissipates as quickly as it came. This is, then, just another of Stella's crises of conscience. There have been many of these. As a very small child Stella came to them once in the middle of the night, crying piteously, wracked with guilt over a favourite teddy bear thrown from a bedroom window. (‘It was a wicked thing to do, mummy. Wicked!')

Knowing what is likely to follow – an admission of some sort of mildly reckless behaviour – Susan takes a deep breath, has to work hard to maintain a suitably solemn expression. ‘What is it, darling?'

‘Well ... you know how we said that Aunty Carly was there, all the time, watching us? Well, she wasn't, ac-tu-ally. We were looking for her for ages before that, all over the park, we were bored and hungry and wanted to go home. She takes us to the park every single time you're at work, and we just get sick of it. We'd rather watch telly. Anyway we couldn't find her anywhere and then when I fell off the slippery-dip it was ages – it was hours, probably – before she got there. Some old man had to stay with me...'

There is a slight quaver of indignation in Stella's voice.

‘Oh, Stell, I'm sure she was there, she was probably just – behind a tree or something. Or maybe she was walking
around the park trying to find you and you kept on missing one another.'

‘That's just what her and that other lady said. That they were there all along, that they couldn't find us, that we were just being silly. Telling stories. But me and Mitch know that it isn't true, and we don't want to lie about it anymore. Anyway we can never find her, she always goes off with that other lady when she takes us to the park.'

It only takes Susan a moment to assimilate this information, to find the salient point, the question that needs answering.

‘What other lady, Stella?'

‘The one with the red car. We followed her one time and she got in a car with this lady and drove off.'

‘You mean Carly takes ... Carly took you to the park and just left you?'

‘Uh huh.'

‘Maybe she just saw an old friend, just the once ... and, perhaps they went for a drive around the block...?' The explanation sounds lame, even to Susan.

‘No, Mum.' Mitchell's voice is firm. ‘It's all the time.' Adds darkly: ‘But she doesn't know that we know.'

‘Once we saw her go off with a man.' Now their mother's response has been gauged, Stella is eager to tell all. ‘He had sunglasses on when it was raining...'

‘Yeah. And his car was hot. One of those black BMWs...'

‘Are you telling me the truth?' Now it is Susan's voice that quavers.

Stella glares at her mother. ‘Mum! But that's why we told you. We were lying before. Now, we wanted to tell you the truth.'

‘Mummy,' Stella calls anxiously, as Susan dims the light, ‘you do believe us, don't you?'

Believe?

‘Of course I do, darling.'

‘Good,' her daughter gives a little sigh, closes her eyes. ‘See you in the morning.'

Right now it's Susan who'd like to know the meaning of the story. The moral. But who's there to tell her?

She'd question Carly if she could, but Carly's away on one of her weekend jaunts (with the woman in the red car, the unsuitably sunglassed man in the black BMW – and why does that particular vehicle ring a bell?) She wonders about Carly's weekends away: every couple of weeks, her sister packs an overnight bag, phones for a taxi. A friend, she'll tell Susan. She's visiting a friend, or she's spending time with some old mate just passing through.
You can always ask them over here,
Susan makes the offer casually, doesn't want to appear pushy, inquisitive. Carly always thanks her, declines.
Not really someone you'd want to know, Susy. Not your type at all.
There are never any names or destinations and she never mentions whether the friend is male or female. Susan never asks. That would be intrusive, an unnecessary infringement of Carly's space, Carly's freedom.
You can get me on my mobile,
she calls blowing a kiss from the taxi,
if you need me for anything. But why would you?

Susan has never called, and she can't call now. Why would she?

Susan doesn't know quite what to make of the information Stella and Mitchell have given her. She has no idea what it means. It's clear that Carly wasn't around when Stella broke her arm, but not at all clear where she was. In a red car with a lady? Why? Who? She can't begin to make it out and isn't sure that she really wants to.

There's a tale to be unravelled here. Oh, not just the story that Mitchell and Stella have just revealed, but something
bigger, something deeper. Something fundamental to her, to Ed, to the way they live their lives. She knows that somewhere,
somewhere,
if she just knew where to look, she'd find, if not the answer, some sort of precedent – some way of understanding what's happening. The moral, if you like.

She vaguely remembers the tale of the prodigal son from childhood scripture classes, recalls that the story dealt with a good and loyal son; and another son who runs away, lives wantonly and destructively, but is welcomed by his father on his return home, much to the remaining son's disgust. She knows the story well enough, she thinks, but finds the reference in Ed's family Bible; Luke 15: 11-13, reads the verses curiously:

There was a man who had two sons. The younger of them said to his father, ‘Father give me the share of his property that will belong to me.' So he divided the property between them. A few days later the younger son gathered all he had and travelled to a distant country, and there he squandered his property in dissolute living.

When he had spent everything, a severe famine took place throughout that country, and he began to be in need. So he went and hired himself out to one of the citizens of that country, who sent him to his fields to feed the pigs. He would gladly have filled himself with the pods that the pigs were eating; and no one gave him anything. But when he came to himself he said, ‘How many of my father's hired hands have bread enough and to spare, but here I am dying of hunger! I will get up and go to my father, and I will say to him, “Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you; I am no longer worthy to be called your son, treat me like one of your hired hands.”' So he set off and went to his father.

But while he was still far off, his father saw him and was filled with compassion; he ran and put his arms around him and kissed him. Then the son said to him, ‘Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you; I am no longer worthy to be called your son.' But the father said to his slaves, ‘Quickly, bring out a robe – the best one – and put it on him; put a ring on his finger and sandals on his
feet. And get the fatted calf and kill it, and let us eat and celebrate; for this son of mine was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found.' And they began to celebrate.

Now his elder son was in the field; and when he came and approached the house, he heard music and dancing. He called one of the slaves and asked what was going on. He replied, ‘Your brother has come, and your father has killed the fatted calf because he has got him back safe and sound.' Then he became angry and refused to go in. His father came out and began to plead with him. But he answered his father, ‘Listen! For all these years I have been working like a slave for you, and I have never disobeyed your command; yet you have never given me even a young goat so that I might celebrate with my friends. But when this son of yours came back, who has devoured your property with prostitutes, you killed the fatted calf for him!'
Then the father said to him, ‘Son, you are always with me, and all that is mine is yours. But we had to celebrate and rejoice, because this brother of yours was dead and has come to life; he was lost and has been found.'