How the Light Gets In (14 page)

Margaret and Henry say they are reading more books. Margaret says she hasn’t read a big book in years and might even try reading
War and Peace
. She and Henry go straight to their dens after dinner and James and Bridget go to their rooms to study.

At weekends, the Hardings are rarely in the house. When I go to the lounge-room, they are never there. I don’t go with them to their concerts and charity fundraisers and picnics, not because I think they don’t want me to, but because I prefer being alone in the house and want to give them some time to get on just the way they were before I came along.

It’s lunchtime on Monday and Tom turns up. It’s too cold now to sit outside, so I’m in a study room, reading a book.

‘Hello,’ I say.

‘Sorry I haven’t been around,’ he says. ‘My mum had to have some blood tests and I was feeling a bit blue.’

‘That’s okay,’ I say, thinking he is the worst liar in the world. ‘I guess sometimes a person just needs to be alone so they don’t have to explain how they feel.’

‘That’s right,’ he says, sitting down and putting his arm over my shoulder. ‘You’re really incredibly perceptive.’

I saw Tom two days ago with a girl, arm in arm, coming out of a Journalism class. She was his female equivalent, extremely good looking and tall, with a loud, sure voice.

‘Thanks,’ I say, and find myself wondering what I look like.

‘Hey, wanna come to my place? I’ve just picked up my new guitar. I can sing you some of my songs.’

‘Okay,’ I say.

Tom shows me through the downstairs rooms of his mansion then takes his guitar out of its case. We sit cross-legged on the couch in the vast lounge room, and talk. The guitar leans against the wall, and I suspect that he doesn’t know how to play.

‘Are you hungry?’ he asks.

‘No, I’m too happy.’

‘How come?’

I tell him how much I like to be in other people’s houses. I tell him about the time my sisters and I broke into houses.

‘Christ, how old were you?’

‘About thirteen,’ I say.

‘Wow!’ he says again, trying to hide his disapproval, trying to sound impressed.

‘Anyway,’ I tell him, ‘one of the houses we broke into had a tennis court and swimming pool. It was during the summer holidays. I played the outgoing message on the answering machine while my sisters were upstairs looting the jewellery and the message said the exact date that the occupants were due back. Two weeks more. I told my sisters I wanted to stay in the house by myself for a few nights and to tell my mum and dad I was staying with a friend. They couldn’t care less so they let me.

‘I stayed for three nights, slept on all the beds, watched movies on the wall-mounted TV screen, read some books and ran up and down the spiral staircase with the stereo blaring through speakers that stuck out in the corners of all the rooms.

‘But the best part was raiding the big double-door fridge, eating their food and using their microwave. One day I got a tub of chocolate ice-cream out of the freezer and ate all of it while lying on an inflatable bed in the swimming pool.’

None of this is true, but I have daydreamed the story so often and so vividly that its details are as known to me as if it happened, not once, but many times. My sisters, on the other hand, have robbed houses; I tell them I despise them for it, but sometimes wish that I could be part of it just to see inside the houses.

Tom stretches his arm out over the back of the couch.

‘I feel a bit like that when my parents leave me alone in fancy hotels,’ he says. ‘Especially in Europe.’

Especially in Europe!

My heart folds up and puts itself away like a deckchair in winter. How dare he be that rich? How dare anybody be born so stinking rich.

I look at the top of his head: his shiny, clean curly hair. I look at his pure wool jumper and his clean blue jeans.

‘I’d better get going back to class,’ I say.

He has me by the hand and is staring hard, his eyes in tensely focussed, a dart player eyeing the dartboard. I let him hold my hand because I’m not so good at hurting a boy’s feelings when he wants to be affectionate. I’m usually too busy being surprised that he wants to touch me at all.

‘Hey,’ he says, ‘it’s not my fault my parents have money.’

I look at the home-entertainment unit, which takes up almost one half of a vast white wall, and say nothing. My hands are sweating a kind of depressed and sticky syrup. Tom lets go, puts his head down and rubs his forehead.

‘Hey, man,’ he says. ‘There’s no point walking around the rest of your life with a chip on your shoulder just because you’re not rich.’

If he weren’t so good looking I’d have hit him by now.

I look at the guitar, and wish people didn’t have to speak at all. I wish that it were dark as pitch, and we, with only a candle to guide us, could have played the guitar and sung some songs.

I look at him, will him to say something better so that I can give myself an excuse for liking him.

‘Sorry,’ he says. ‘Wanna hug?’

‘I’d rather you played the guitar,’ I say. ‘That was the original plan, wasn’t it?’

‘Yeah,’ he says, smiling his beautiful smile. ‘I should keep my trap shut more often.’

‘Maybe,’ I say. ‘Maybe not.’ And then, just because he has an exquisite face and I want to be the boss, I kiss him. Then I put my hand on the back of his head and pull his hair.

‘Ow!’ he says, and for no real reason, this makes me feel better.

I laugh.

‘You are the best kisser ever,’ he says.

And because I feel better, I say, ‘I could do that all day. All week. All year.’

We stare and stare, locking eyes to see what kind of feelings this conjures, and, surprisingly, it does conjure intensely good feelings.

‘Guitar,’ I say.

‘Cool,’ he says.

Tom stands and lifts me off the couch. There is something about being lifted that makes me sad and happy at the same time.

We go upstairs and Tom brings his guitar with him. He stops on the landing.

‘There’s a spare room just in here.’

‘Show me,’ I say.

The room is perfect. Huge windows open onto a balcony. A four-poster bed with blue curtains, tied at the corners. An ensuite and a walk-in wardrobe.

‘This isn’t a spare room.’ I say. ‘Spare rooms are dingy box rooms without a window.’

‘It’s for my dad’s parents when they stay,’ he says. ‘Come on, I’ll show you my parents’ room.’

He holds my hand hard and tugs me along.

His parents’ room is twice as big as the one we’ve been in, but too opulent. There’s a bathroom attached to the bedroom
with a spa so big that midgets could hold their Olympics in it. The taps are brass and the floor and bath are marble and the walls are mostly mirrored. It’s a bit pornographic.

‘God,’ I say. ‘What’s your room like?’

Tom smiles, grabs my arms and pulls me towards him. We laugh, our eyes averted, nervous and unsteady on our feet. After a brief collision, we kiss.

Tom tastes of gum and tea and his lips feel soft and inflated like teething rings. We stop kissing for a moment and look at each other’s faces. I wish that we were lying down; that it were night and that the curtains were closed.

Tom begins to walk backwards, pulling me with him.

It’s darker in the hall and I want us to stay here. I don’t want him to be in his own room; a boyhood world so utterly owned by him, smelling of him and everything he has done. I wish we were in a neutral, jointly discovered place.

I guide him towards the banister so that he leans there. He tries to make himself shorter so that I can reach his lips more easily, and in this position his neck seems to have grown long, his back so bent it is as though his excitement has broken him.

‘Hi,’ I say, to tell the silence who we are.

‘Hi,’ he says back, and we are even.

I am smiling because he is smiling.

We kiss for a long time. I push down on his shoulders until eventually we reach the floor. I hold myself up on my elbows and we kiss, then I let myself go onto him and I am lying between his thighs, and rocking, when he stops.

‘Oh shit,’ he says and I think I know what has happened.

‘It’s okay,’ I say as I watch him unzip and reveal, momentarily, the slack-skinned, bruise-coloured thing.

‘It’s okay,’ I say again as he runs to the nearest of five bathrooms.

A few minutes later Tom comes out of the bathroom carrying
a towel and he stares at me. His face is not as pleasant as it was before, but not unpleasant either. He looks worn out, as though recovering from an illness, and a little resentful.

He pulls me up to my feet, even though I want to stay where I am, and kisses me on the mouth for a long time. I feel drowsy and want to be unconscious.

‘I want to go to sleep,’ I say.

We walk lopsidedly towards the spare room with the four-poster bed, and when we get inside he pulls back the covers. I am too drugged to have a complete thought in my head. He will think that I have disappeared, and, in a way, I have.

‘I’ll tuck you in,’ he says. ‘Do you want some tea or something?’

His voice is nervous, shaky, smaller.

‘Do you want me to go?’

‘No,’ he says. ‘Stay here. I’ll tuck you in.’

‘Thanks,’ I say.

In the doorway he stops and comes back, holds my foot and says, ‘I lost my virginity a few months ago with a girl I’ve known all my life.’

He puts his hand limply and reassuringly on my thigh as though he hasn’t the energy to lie.

‘Then I had sex again about a week later with her cousin when we all got drunk at a party and then one more time with my old friend after that.’

Sure, I think, drifting off to sleep.

Tom wakes me with a cup of coffee. He sits on the end of the bed with his guitar, finally out of its box.

‘How you doin’?’ he asks.

‘Good,’ I say. ‘What time is it?’

‘Five o’clock.’

‘Should I leave?’

‘No. My parents won’t be home till late, and even if they came home earlier, it wouldn’t matter. They’re completely relaxed.’

‘Lucky you,’ I say.

‘Do you wanna hear some songs?’

His accent suddenly sounds a lot less Scottish and a lot more American.

‘Sure,’ I say.

Tom isn’t quite the musical fraud I thought he was.

He plays classical and folk guitar, and sings well. He has a voice of his own, not a copy of somebody else’s, just like his face. He plays some songs I know well, songs I know inside out, songs that pour out of me whenever I’m alone in the flat in Sydney and I’ve had a few drinks.

But I cannot join in. I barely manage to hum, and even then my throat feels like it’s been rammed with a length of stiff rope.

‘Do you have any requests?’

‘Not really.’

There are some songs I’d love to hear; that I’d love to sing with him. My mind reels with instant fantasies of Tom and me singing duets in bars; dressed as sleek as otters, looking alike, passing knowing glances as though we share the secret language of the gifted and urbane.

‘You must know this one,’ he says. ‘Everybody knows
this
one.’

He starts.

‘You know it?’

‘Yes.’

‘Can you sing? I bet you can.’

‘Yeah,’ I say, ‘but only when I’m in the right mood.’

‘Come on, I’d love to sing with you. I’ve been wanting to sing with you since we first met.’

I sing, quietly at first and then, when he stops looking at me, a little louder.

But it’s no good. We both know it’s no good. I can hardly believe the transformation; mouth dried up and breathing desperate and shallow. I sound dreadful.

Tom is embarrassed for me and when the song’s finished he leans the guitar against the bed and looks at it is though to say it is to blame for my terrible singing.

‘That was fun,’ he says flatly.

‘That was shocking,’ I say. ‘I can’t sing when I’ve just woken up.’

‘That’s okay,’ he says, still feeling sorry for me for being a bad singer; the kind of pity only a good singer can feel. Probably also wishing I had complimented him some more.

‘Don’t stop,’ I say, getting up out of the bed. ‘Keep playing. Please. I need a quick shower to wake myself up and then a few glasses of water, then we’ll sing some more.’

He starts to get up.

‘Hey, now
there’s
something I’ve always wanted to do.’

I kiss him on the nose. ‘Maybe next time. I feel like showering by myself.’

There’s a bar fridge in the ensuite in Tom’s parents’ room. I take four miniature bottles of gin and two of whisky – the kind you get on planes. I get under the shower. It’s surprisingly easy to drink alcohol quickly with water running all over your body.

The water is probably too hot and when I get out, the doll’s-house-size plastic bottles emptied, I need to crouch on the pink fluffy bath mat for a minute to regain my balance.

I brush my teeth and open the door, and just as I’d hoped, Tom is still playing. Not only that, but he’s playing a song I know well. I sit on the bed and start to sing.

‘Hey,’ he says, his mouth, especially the left side, reaching up
towards his happy, watery eyes, ‘You sound great. You sound really great.’

He plays a dozen or more songs and I sing all of them. Sometimes I harmonise, even though I’ve never done it before.

‘Wow!’ he says.

‘Thanks,’ I say. ‘Sorry about before. Like I said, I can never sing when I’ve just woken up. It’s just one of those things.’

The guitar is on the floor and we are huddled together in the middle of the queen-size bed.

‘Do you think we could pull the curtains around the bed?’ I ask.

‘Yeah,’ he says, ‘I was just about to think of that.’

Tom pulls the curtains around the bed and we are cast in a smoky blue light as though sitting in a chunk of trapped sky. The world seems utterly irrelevant, as though whatever we do next won’t have happened at all.

I pull my top up over my head, slowly, so that for a good while I can’t see out, my face covered, and the sense of Tom’s eyes on my breasts ripples through me.

By the time I pull my top down and look at Tom my nipples are cold and hard.

‘Jesus Christ, you’re sexy,’ he says.

This moment cannot be capsized.

‘Let’s see how long we can just stay like this,’ I say. ‘Let’s see how long we can last.’

After dinner with the Hardings, I decide not to go straight to my room. I’m still softened by the alcohol and feel like talking to them; it’s been a while since we had any kind of conversation.

I visit Margaret in her study. I put my head in the door, ‘I’m going to bed early,’ I say. ‘But I just thought I should check in case there were any chores you’d like me to do.’