Authors: Sadie Jones

Tags: #Literature & Fiction, #British & Irish, #Historical, #Contemporary, #Genre Fiction, #Literary, #Mystery; Thriller & Suspense, #Thrillers & Suspense, #Suspense, #Romance, #Contemporary Fiction, #Literary Fiction, #Historical Romance

The Outcast (36 page)

BOOK: The Outcast

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He pictured Kit, all her life, from her childhood – all the bits he’d seen – and she was lovely and light and strong, and he wished he could hold that in his mind all the time. He didn’t want to forget her. He had forgotten his mother; at least he hadn’t been able to keep her image in his mind.

He walked over to the woods behind the Carmichael house to collect his case when it was dark, but he didn’t look at the house. At home, he packed and made sure he was ready to go. He looked around the small white bedroom at all the familiar things: the books on the shelves and the chest of drawers and the crack in the ceiling. It was not a living place.

He sat on the bed and let his head go down into his hands. His mind wasn’t raging any more, it wasn’t rushing and fighting to hurt itself, but he was sad, and he missed Kit, and he had failed, and just then his loneliness hurt him very much. He was

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surprised by how much it hurt; he had thought he was already broken.

The night was long. He didn’t sleep, but waited until the very early morning and then went downstairs to leave.

As he opened the front door, sudden light filled the hall. Gilbert came down the stairs towards the dining room. It was as if they had met by chance in his office or club; he paused and shook Lewis’s hand without looking at him particularly.

‘Good luck,’ he said, and then he picked up the paper from the hall table and went into the dining room.

Lewis left the house and walked towards the road. He heard the door behind him.

‘Lewis!’

Alice came running, barefoot in her nightdress, across the gravel towards him. Her hair was loose. She stopped in front of him and glanced over her shoulder, like a schoolgirl out of bounds, and breathless with not knowing how to say what she needed to.They looked at each other, and her face, with all its need and hope, went straight to him, as it always had. He felt something like love.

‘If you write,’ she said,‘write to the flat.We’ll be leaving this house.’

‘I won’t write.’ ‘No. Goodbye.’

She kissed his cheek, carefully, reaching up, and he put his free arm around her and held her for a moment.

‘All right?’ he said, worrying. She nodded yes. He thought she meant it. She went back into the house and he didn’t wait, or watch her, but carried on, away and out onto the road.

* * *

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Kit put on a light blue dress that she had been waiting to grow into and found it fitted. She washed her face and did her teeth in the bathroom and ran her damp hands over her hair and her neck for coolness, and then she went downstairs and had her breakfast in the kitchen. She called her kitten in, and fed her, and annoyed her by lifting her up with her paws dangling to kiss her. She put on her shoes by the kitchen door and went outside. She walked slowly over to the Aldridge house through the woods, and when she got there she cut down through the garden to the front door and knocked. It was Mary who answered the door, and not Alice, and when Alice came neither of them could look at the other. Kit looked at the ground and asked for Lewis and only looked up when Alice said he’d left.

‘Gone?’ she said,‘he’s gone?’

Lewis watched the other people getting onto the train. It wasn’t the main commuter train to London, but a local one and there weren’t many people. When the train had pulled out he was alone on the platform and he watched the signals changing and saw the stationmaster, after staring at him for a while, go back into the station. It was quiet.There was birdsong and the faint murmur on the line of his distant train. He went to the edge of the platform and trod out his cigarette and kicked it onto the stones by the track. He could hear the engine of the train now, the rhythm of it and the shunting and the metal sound as it came through the valley.Then he saw the steam, a long whitish-grey trail against the clean blue sky, and then he heard a girl’s voice and stared down the platform and saw her, the blue of her dress, coming out of the station where the stationmaster had gone. She called something and he couldn’t hear what it was. He couldn’t believe it was her, but it was her, and she was running

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towards him. He started towards her too and he could see her clearly now and she was still running, and she was wearing the blue dress that made her look like an imagining of Kit, and not real, until he heard her shout and saw her frown and knew it was her.

‘What?’ he said and she shouted again, but her voice was a girl’s voice and he couldn’t hear her.‘What?’

‘You are good!’ They both stopped – just for a second – ‘I had to tell you—’

They reached each other then and he got his arms around her and she was holding on to him.

‘You said you were no good, but you are.’

He held on to her and kissed her face and couldn’t believe she was there, but she was, and smelled so clean and beautiful . . .

‘I’m sorry,’ he said,‘I’m sorry.’ ‘No, no, it’s all right—’

‘I’ll be better for you, I promise.’ ‘No, I love you. I
said
–’

‘Oh, you’re beautiful.’

He kissed her and held on to her and they kissed for ages, a real kiss with longing to it and heat.

‘Come with me.’ ‘I can’t.’

‘I can’t leave you here.’

‘No, it’s all right, I’m going away, they’re sending me to Switzerland early. I’ll be gone and they don’t want me back.’

‘I’ll come there, I’ll come and get you.’

They were having to talk over the engine noise now, because the train was pulling in and it was vast and noisy and the whistle blew.

‘Wait! Look here—’ Lewis started through his pockets,

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looking for a pencil, and the train towered over them and he didn’t have a pencil and he pulled out the enlistment notice, pushing it into her hands.

‘I’ll be here, I don’t know where they’ll send me after—’ ‘Don’t worry.’

‘I’m not, don’t be sad.’

‘I’m not sad,’ she said, crying.

The train had stopped, the guard blew the whistle again. It was too hard, to have to get onto the train and to be leaving her.They held on to each other and then he got in with his case and shut the door and bent down from the window to kiss her some more, and they didn’t let go. Everything about her was right, the feel of her, her strength and her softness, and that she was a baby, but so grown-up. It was incredible to him that she knew him and, even knowing him, would hold on to him and kiss him like that, and he felt her hand on his cheek – the one that was all right – and her arm around his neck, and he kissed her some more and there was nothing in the world but that. They forgot about leaving each other, but the train had started, and she started to walk along with it, and it was funny for a moment, but then not. She started to run. He let go of her. They weren’t touching any more. She stopped and looked into him and he looked back, loving the sight of her.

‘Look, Lewis!’ she said and she held her arms out wide. ‘We’re saved!’

The train got faster and she was a distant figure very quickly, but he waited until he couldn’t see her blue dress any more before he stopped leaning out of the window and went back against the wall of the carriage.

There was stillness and quiet; even with the fast train and the noise of it, it was very peaceful. He felt hot. He undid his

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sleeves and rolled them up, for coolness, not minding about his arm showing.

Kit stood on the empty platform and watched the train disap- pear.When it was gone she stood a while longer. Her body and her mouth felt the way Lewis had held her and the way he had kissed her and how hard it was and how gentle. She felt a different girl, but the same. She felt cherished. She knew it would hurt later, that he had gone, but now she had nothing but joy.After a while she heard cars arriving and the footsteps of the commuters as they came up to the platform, and Kit didn’t want to see anybody else, and she walked away from them and down from the platform by the small steps and into the long grass. She would walk back across the fields, slowly.

Lewis stood against the wall of the train until the guard came through to take his ticket. He was a tall man, old, and he walked with a limp, as if he had braces on his legs, and he looked at Lewis oddly, and Lewis couldn’t work it out for a while; he was used to people who knew him looking at him like that, but this man was a stranger.Then he realised how he must look, as if he had been in a war, with his face all messed up and his arm cut to pieces and smiling like everything was just right, like every- thing in the world was laid out for him. He supposed the man didn’t know how you could be damaged like that and be so pleased with it.

He showed the guard his ticket and tried to be polite so that he wouldn’t frighten him and then he went and found a seat. He didn’t think about it, he went straight to a seat facing forwards, so that he could see where he was going.

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Acknowledgements
‌

I would like to thank Clara Farmer and everybody at Chatto and Windus for their commitment to this book.

Thanks also to Caroline Wood for her confidence and loyalty, and to Jodi Shields for her belief in
The Outcast
in all its forms.

Love and thanks to my husband, Tim Boyd, my family, and to Becky Harris.

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About the Author
‌

SA DI E J ON E S
was born and brought up in London, where she now lives with her husband and two children.

Visit
www.AuthorTracker.com for exclusive information on your favorite HarperCollins author.

Credits
‌

Jacket photograph © Hulton Archive / Getty Images

THE OUTCAST. Copyright © 2008 by Sadie Jones. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

Adobe Acrobat eBook Reader January 2008 ISBN 978-0-06-162752-1

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