How the Light Gets In (16 page)

I think that the Hardings can see what is happening to my face and neck. I’m not blushing, I’m burning alive. My hair is singed. I cannot breathe. I am frozen with the shock of the impact of this thing I have seen. I can feel the pain between my legs and I can feel the table under my shoulder blades.

The scene seems to last forever. None of us moves a hair. The man and the woman are being watched from above, the man pummelling the woman.

The silence in the room can be felt, like pain. In the movie, another man comes into the kitchen. He is a friend of the first man and he begins to unzip his trousers.

‘Stop it,’ I say without intending to make any sound. ‘Stop the video.’

Margaret has the remote control and she stops the movie. The room is silent, but only for a second. Margaret turns the TV back on and a gridiron game blares into the room.

Henry, with no sweat on his brow, no quiver in his voice, no blush, not even an invisible embarrassment that might show itself in the way that he swallows, says, ‘I guess that was a pretty boring film.’

James is next. ‘I hate when they put stupid sex scenes in films.’

Bridget is worst of all. ‘As if anybody would have sex on the kitchen table!’

Not one of them is troubled. Not one of them disturbed. Not one of them ashamed or sick or bothered. My emotion is more than they can bear. They have shut down and they are in this together.

‘I’m going to my room,’ I say, pain and sadness shooting through me. ‘I hate football.’

On Monday morning the results of the auditions are posted up at school. I see Tom in class but instead of sneaking glances at each other across the room and talking in code, using the hand signals we’ve developed, he bows his head and sulks.

‘Why didn’t you tell me?’ he asks when we are leaving class. ‘Why didn’t you tell me you were going to audition?’

‘I was too embarrassed,’ I say.

‘Crap,’ he says.

We walk to our lockers together without speaking. Tom slams his locker shut and everything inside it falls. ‘I was going to audition too, you know, but I thought you’d hate that kind of shit.’

‘The Hardings really wanted me to audition,’ I say. ‘James put my name down. They were worried about me not being involved in anything at school.’

‘Crap.’

‘Ask them, then,’ I say. ‘Ask Margaret and Henry. They talked me into it and I just went along for the ride. I didn’t think I’d even get a part.’

‘Sure.’

‘Sorry,’ I say, thinking about living in his mansion house, ‘I should have told you. I’m really sorry.’

‘Yeah right,’ he says.

‘Maybe you should come to the first rehearsal and see if you can still get a part. Then we can be in it together.’

‘No fucking way,’ he says. ‘I wouldn’t be caught dead going to those stupid rehearsals every night for months.’

‘Not every night,’ I say.

Tom storms off with his bag dangling, straps trailing on the floor. I wish I could empty myself out like a trouser pocket. I feel filthy and nervous, standing here in the corridor, alone, surrounded by the noise and gay activity of happy students. I leave the building, my skin prickling with sweat, wondering what it is that happens between normal people, wondering what it is they laugh about.

I don’t trust or even like Tom right now, but he’s the only person I can even talk to without feeling surreal. I have run out of gin and I have run out of money and I have the first all-cast rehearsal tomorrow night. I wish that I hadn’t let him go.

When I get home, Margaret is sitting at the dining-room table cutting an apple into small pieces. I see to my horror that she has the score of
Annie Get Your Gun
in front of her.

‘I’ve been looking forward to you coming home,’ she says, ‘Look what Henry got at lunchtime.’

I look over her shoulder. ‘Oh, that’s terrific,’ I say.

She holds my arm, ‘My back’s a lot better. I could play for you.’

‘Oh,’ I say. ‘Maybe later. I had a really hard day at school. I need to go for a bike ride or something to clear my head.’

‘Hell’s bells!’ she says. ‘What’s wrong with you?’ She is holding my arm and I wonder if she can feel me shaking.

‘Are you sick?’ she asks. ‘Your eyes are all glassy. Did something happen?’

‘Not really. It’s just that I ran into a friend who went for the part and didn’t get it and as you can imagine she was upset and I wonder if she’ll ever talk to me again.’

‘I see,’ says Margaret, letting go of my arm, ‘You wonder if she’s jealous of the interloper.’

‘Exactly,’ I say. ‘I thought she’d never stop crying.’

‘Is that Judy?’

‘Yes,’ I lie. ‘It’s Judy.’

I ride my bike to a nearby phone booth and ring Tom.

‘Hello,’ I say. A woman answers the phone. Tom’s mum, I suppose.

‘Is Tom there?’

‘Is that you, lovely Lou?’

I nearly laugh. ‘Yes,’ I say.

‘We’re looking forward to meeting you,’ says the cheerful, posh voice. ‘I’m Tom’s mom.’

‘Hi,’ I say.

‘I’ll get him for you.’

Tom and I meet in the park and sit on a bench and we kiss. I like him most when he doesn’t speak and when I look at his eyes a flare goes up in my soul. I tell him I need a loan.

‘Why don’t you ask your host-parents for some money?’ he asks.

‘They won’t give me any.’

‘What do you need it for?’

‘I need it for alcohol,’ I say. ‘I can’t sing unless I’m a bit tipsy.’

He doesn’t seem surprised, in fact, he seems pleased.

‘Dutch courage,’ he says.

‘Something like that.’

‘It’s more than that, isn’t it? It runs a lot deeper than that, doesn’t it?’

‘Maybe it is, maybe it isn’t. I’d just like money to buy some gin.’

He puts his hand in his tight jeans’ pocket.

‘Shit,’ he says.

‘What?’

‘I’ve only got five. I thought I had more.’

‘Fuck,’ I say. I don’t believe him. ‘I can only get a small bottle with that.’

He smiles. ‘I’ve got a better idea.’

‘What?’

‘Ever taken speed? It’s even better. Especially if your problem runs a little deeper.’

I don’t care what I take but I wish he’d shut up about this running a bit deeper business, especially since it’s obvious he’s talking about his own problem, not mine.

‘Give me some,’ I say.

Tom has some in his pocket inside a plastic coin bag.

We sit inside a piece of playground equipment; a bright green ball that you sit inside while somebody outside spins you around. It smells of vomit. Tom shows me how to snort the speed but most of it seems to get stuck in my nose and a horrible acidic taste, like powdered headache tablets, crawls down the back of my throat. It’s a dark and distasteful few minutes.

‘That’s revolting,’ I say, climbing out of the round green ball. ‘We should have got a few cans of beer to wash it down.’

‘Then let’s get some,’ he says.

We go to the nearest store. I don’t feel the effects of the speed until we are inside. Under the bright lights and with the music loud around me, the effect seems to kick in suddenly. When the shop attendant is giving me the change I start talking and can’t stop. I’m practically dancing on the spot.

We go outside and I’m still talking.

‘Good isn’t it?’ asks Tom.

‘I think so,’ I say and I keep talking and talking about nothing, and yet it feels as though I’ve worked everything out.

Tom and I walk down the main street. I see Bridget in a
parked car with her boyfriend, the rufous one. She is brushing her hair and looks as though she’s been crying. There’s a six-pack of Coors on the dashboard.

‘Let’s go and say hi to Bridget,’ I say.

Tom takes my hand. ‘You’d better not. She’ll know you’re out of it.’

‘But I should get a lift home,’ I say.

‘Don’t,’ he says, grabbing my arm. ‘You’re too out of it.’

But I’m more awake than I’ve ever been and I can’t stop moving. I head towards the parked car. It takes off just as I get close enough to see Bridget reapplying her pink lipstick. Rufus speeds off without indicating.

Tom and I keep walking and near the Town Hall there’s a boy busker, playing the flute. There’s a toy shop next to him and in the window – which the boy can’t see – a mechanical toy unicorn is bobbing its head from side to side in perfect time with the boy’s tune.

‘Look,’ I say, ‘the toy’s head is moving in time with the tune that boy is playing.’

‘Huh?’ says Tom.

‘What a wonderful thing.’

‘I guess,’ he says. ‘It’s a pretty good coincidence.’

I sit on the kerb outside the toy shop. Tom sits down with me. I’ve got to tell him that it’s much more than a coincidence. And so, I spend the next hour telling him that the unicorn’s head swaying in time to the boy’s tune sums up the whole of life. More than that, it tells us the very point of life itself.

It’s after ten o’clock and Tom and I are lying on his bed. His parents are out. I’m thirsty but not hungry. I want to talk about the big things. I have all the answers.

I feel as though I could do anything, anything but sing,
that is. I might be full of amphetamine but I know that my mouth is loose and my words are fast and muffled. I know that the outside doesn’t sound like the inside feels. What the world hears when I speak is probably something like a talking sock.

We lie on his bed until after midnight.

‘I’d better go home,’ I say.

‘Sure,’ he says sulkily. ‘You better go home.’

We keep talking.

I know that either Margaret or Henry will be waiting up for me and I know they’ll be angry, but I don’t care. I am full of things I want to say to them. I have an enormous amount of insight and wisdom and confidence and I know it won’t last. I am looking forward to talking to somebody other than Tom. I realise that I love Margaret and Henry and I can’t wait to see them again.

Tom drives me home in his flash red car.

Henry is sitting in the kitchen with the radio on. He stands up when I walk through the door.

‘Where the hell have you been?’

He searches my face so he can decide whether to keep his anger or shift to concern and sympathy. After all, something terrible might have happened to me.

All I want to do is get myself another cigarette, light it up, make a coffee and chat with him until the sun comes up.

My mouth starts to move of its own accord, as though it were stuffed full of mechanical, self-chewing gum.

I sit down. ‘Do you think there’s something different about the air between midnight and sunrise?’ I ask.

Henry doesn’t answer.

‘I think the air is quite different and that’s why people are different,’ I say.

‘Even you are different right now,’ I say. ‘Don’t you think
that when the alarm goes off at five a.m. that there’s something different about the air? Don’t you think the air is airporty?’

Even though the face looking at me is hostile, I can’t stop talking.

‘At five a.m. the air is a packed suitcase or the phone about to ring for the first time in ten years,’ I say. ‘The air is full of calm emergencies.’

Henry is furious. He’s also busy trying to work out what’s wrong with me. I want to keep talking but I also wish this wasn’t happening and that I could go and chain smoke with somebody really interesting. Somewhere where there is alcohol and music.

I think of home and of pubs with beer-sodden carpets and my sisters lying wasted and half dressed on the lounge-room floor; salt poured over red wine spilt from cheap casks onto the carpet. I change my mind and wish I were straight. I wish I were a completely different kind of person, straight and clean and tall and tidy, like Bridget, who drinks light beer with her friends but never gets drunk or foolish.

Henry’s face is right up close to mine. ‘It’s two-thirty in the morning. Margaret’s been driving around the neighbourhood all night. She’s only just now got into bed!’

‘Is she in bed now? Is the mini-bus in bed? Is the mini-van in bed?’

I love the sound of the words mini and van.

‘Have I ever told you what I call the mini-van? It’s called shitty shitty prang prang, or sometimes it’s called …’

Henry smells my face. ‘You’ve been smoking!’

‘Not really.’

‘Lou, look at me!’

I look at his nose.

‘Have you been taking drugs?’

‘Drugs?’ I say. ‘No. I haven’t taken drugs. I’m just sleepy. I should go to sleep.’

‘Lou-ise!’ shouts Henry, nearly making me laugh. I hate the sound of that name. Loo-ease. Ill at ease. Loose eze.

‘I only tried one cigarette but it was despicable.’

Henry grabs me by the elbows so that he doesn’t get his hands dirty. ‘How could you do this? Do you have any idea how worried we’ve been?’

I let myself go limp and his fingers lose their anger. He folds his arms across his chest. I realise for the first time that Henry isn’t that old, he’s probably only about forty or something, which isn’t exactly old. He has a handsome face and if he wasn’t an almost-albino I’d probably find it hard not to be attracted to him.

‘After all the nights Margaret and I have sat up in bed arguing about you … this is what you do? And me wasting my breath defending you!’

‘I better just go to bed,’ I say. ‘I better get out of your radio … I mean, out of your way.’

Henry has no choice but to let me sleep it off; whatever it is. He knows there’s no point having it out with me while I’m under the influence.

He opens the door. ‘Get to bed. Margaret and I will talk to you first thing in the morning.’

‘Thank you,’ I say.

I go to my room and smoke what’s left of my cigarettes. When I try to sleep, I can’t. All I can do is sit up and rock myself back and forth and rub my legs and arms, which ache as though they swam home and want to swim some more.

There’s a knock on my door at nine o’clock. I’m under the blankets, fully clothed. I have fallen asleep just a few moments earlier.

‘Come in,’ I say, but Margaret and Henry are already inside.

Margaret looks awful. Her hair is lank and greasy and she looks much older.