The Outcast (8 page)

Tamsin and Ed stopped playing and looked at him.The other children stopped too.

‘Hello, Lewis!’ saidTamsin, and Kit thought she sounded just like their mother.‘Do you want to play?’

‘No, s’all right,’ said Lewis, standing still.

Everyone stood about and seemed to have forgotten what- ever it was they were doing. Lewis leaned against the tree and watched and later, to be polite, played against Ed, who beat him and then kept apologising for it.

When Gilbert came down to collect him, his black suit showed up hard in the September light and the children stared as Lewis went to him. His mother dying was embarrassing and disgusting to them.They should have liked to turn their backs on him.They all said goodbye politely and carried on playing.

Kit watched him go away across the grass next to his father. He didn’t seem like Lewis to her any more. She laid her cheek against the bark of the apple tree and tried to picture his mother. She couldn’t. She wondered if Lewis could.

Gilbert took Lewis to school in the car the next day and spoke to his headmaster before leaving him. Lewis stood outside in the corridor and waited. He could hear the other boys arriving in the dorms downstairs. Gilbert and his headmaster came out and Gilbert put his hand on Lewis’s head, quite gently, before he left him.

* * *

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Gilbert drove straight up to the flat. He left the curtains closed in the drawing room and sat down in a chair with his hands on his knees. It was three o’clock in the afternoon.

‘Lizzie died ten days ago,’ he said.

He could hear the traffic, muffled by the windows and the thick curtains. Daylight blurred around the edges of the curtains.

‘Lizzie died,’ he said. ‘Lizzie died ten days ago. My wife is dead. My wife died recently.’

The next day he went into the office and his work went well.

When he got home that night he went about the flat and found all Elizabeth’s things. She had evening dresses hanging in the cupboard that were just for London and he pulled them off the hangers and put them in a heap on the floor in the drawing room. He added to the pile her scent, shoes, books and some things of Lewis’s; jumpers and a board game and some souvenirs of trips to museums that he had kept in a biscuit tin. He went carefully about and made sure there was nothing left.The pile of things on the floor didn’t remind him of her at all. They looked like second-hand things, just a mess, a pile of nothing, but the things that had belonged to Lewis were clut- tering up the place, so he took them out and threw them away separately in the kitchen. He went down to the porter and asked him to please organise the removal of the pile while he was at work the next day. He tipped him five pounds, ashamed of his extravagance, and was irritated that the man would prob- ably make money out of Lizzie’s belongings, which were good- quality. He went upstairs again and made himself a drink and sat down with the bottle next to him, looking at the pile on the floor. At the bottom was a photograph frame with a picture of

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him and Lewis in it that she had kept by her side of the bed. He could only see the corner of it sticking out, but he knew the picture very well, it had been taken the first Christmas after the war, Gilbert standing in the garden holding Lewis’s hand. They were both smiling, and crooked, because she had been laughing at them and held the camera crooked and Lewis’s coat was buttoned up wrong. Gilbert sat in his chair and looked at the corner of the picture frame. He almost took it out and held it in his hands, but he didn’t, he just stayed in his chair, looking.

When he returned from work the following evening the porter had taken the things away and the floor was empty.

He stayed in the flat that night, and every night after that, and didn’t think of going back to Waterford. After a week or two he began to be invited out. He accepted every invitation. There were cocktails and dinners and Gilbert was very much in demand. He was hardly alone at all. He went from one occasion to another and felt that he had entered a new world.

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One Thursday afternoon, towards the middle of December, Jane telephoned Gilbert in the office to remind him that Lewis would be breaking up for Christmas the next day. He didn’t need reminding; the boys had to write home every Sunday night and Lewis had said he was looking forward to the holidays in his last letter. Gilbert left the office early on Friday and went to Victoria to meet the school train.

He hadn’t met the train before and he felt ridiculous waiting by the barrier with all the women, so he went into the station café and had a cup of tea. He waited until the mothers and their sons had all gone and Lewis was the last child on the platform, and then he left the café to collect him.

Lewis was standing by his trunk with a porter and a man Gilbert thought might have been one of his teachers, and when he saw his father coming towards him he ran into his arms and clung on to him with small strong hands. Gilbert felt the tension of his body and the heat of it through his coat, holding him. He took Lewis’s hands firmly, and took them off him and pushed him away.

‘None of that,’ he said, not looking at him,‘time to go.’

It took an hour and a half to make the journey to Waterford in the car and Lewis fell asleep, with his cheek leaning on the

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passenger door. Gilbert steered the car through the blue-cold evening.

They stopped in front of the house and Gilbert turned the engine off. He took Lewis’s hand.

‘Come on, little chap, wake up,’ he said, and Lewis woke up. He looked at his father, mistily, and then at the house above them and Gilbert saw him gradually come back into himself. He saw the moment between the not knowing and the knowing, as he woke, and he recognised it, because it was how he felt on waking too. He wanted to obliterate it. He wanted to take his son’s head in his hands and crush the feeling from it. He wanted to hold him hard and kiss him and make Lizzie come back to them through loving him badly enough. He wanted to hide his

face and never think of it again.

‘We’re home,’ he said.‘Out you get, Jane will have supper for us.’

Through the Christmas holidays Gilbert took the train to the office as he had used to and spent most nights at home so that things would seem more normal. He never mentioned Elizabeth, and Lewis, responding by instinct, never mentioned her either. The silence around her memory became brittle and dangerous and neither dared break it. It had been both a good thing and a very lonely one that at school, too, almost no one ever mentioned his mother.Working and doing normal things was all right, and he developed a technique for going to sleep, which worked even if his nightmare woke him up. He would imagine he was in her wardrobe, in her bedroom where he’d often played. It was very easy when he was tired to put himself there, on top of the shoes, with the smell of lavender and wood, and the material of her clothes very soft in his mind.Then the water

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that filled his head sometimes would drain away, and he’d be asleep very quickly. The first night home from school, alone upstairs and getting ready for bed, he went to the door of his parents’ room, not to go in, but to look, but the wardrobe wasn’t there, just the empty wall where it had been.

After his mother’s death Lewis instinctively cast around for other attachments. It was a blind instinct, like the way an animal, if the parent is taken away, will hook onto anything for survival, so Lewis attached himself to Jane and his father. He spent the Christmas holidays following Jane around, trying to help in the kitchen or just sitting and watching her, then, at half- past six, he would wait at the end of the drive for his father. Gilbert would come around the big bend and see Lewis hovering at the gate. He’d stop the car and say, ‘Jump in’, and Lewis would drive the short distance to the house with him. Gilbert began to dread seeing him there and it got so that as he pulled away from the station, he would begin to feel anxiety at the thought of the small figure waiting for him. If it was a wet day, or cold, like today, he’d hope Lewis wouldn’t wait, but there he was, kicking the gravel and then looking up with his intense gaze.

Gilbert stopped the car, but he didn’t lean over and open the door, he gestured impatiently for Lewis to walk. Lewis peered at him through the glass, muddled and waiting for the door to open. Gilbert wound down the window.

‘For God’s sake, you haven’t even got a coat! Go up to the house.’

As he opened the front door, Lewis reached him, running to catch up. Gilbert wouldn’t look at him.

‘Go on in then.’

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Lewis went into the hall, waited to see which room his father would go into and then followed him. Gilbert hadn’t wanted to be angry with him today, he wanted to be kind. He had bought his Christmas presents in London and they were hidden in the boot of the car.

Lewis hovered about in the doorway and watched Gilbert make himself a whisky and water.

‘Lewis, would you sit down?There’s something I want to talk to you about.’

Lewis sat opposite his father, like on school report day, and waited.

‘Lewis, I’ve some very good news for you.You’re to have a new mother – you know, a stepmother. I met a lovely young lady some weeks ago, who I think you’ll like very much, and in the spring we plan to be married.’

Lewis’s grey eyes looked at him without blinking.

‘She’s called Alice.Alice Fanshawe. I thought you could meet her on your birthday, we’ll have a special lunch in town, would that be nice? Lewis?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘I don’t want you to be difficult about it.You’ll see it’s the right thing. Now run along, there’s a good boy.’

Gilbert finished his drink and went up to change for dinner at Dicky and Claire’s. The door to Lewis’s room was closed. Gilbert still dressed in the spare room, as he had when Elizabeth was there, and he had trained himself not to notice the silence from the bedroom, no smell of scent, no brush being placed on the glass-topped dressing table.

He was combing his hair when he heard a crash – and the sound of glass breaking – and then the reverberation of something heavy

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going over, which made the floor shake. He dropped his comb and ran out onto the landing. Jane was at the bottom of the stairs, looking up.

He opened Lewis’s door and a cold wind blew through the room. The window was broken, with the frame smashed. The room felt empty and he ran to the window.

There was glass on the icy ground below and a drawer upside down with the clothes spilled out of it. Then Lewis started to cry, and Gilbert turned and saw him huddled behind the door.

He had to walk on broken glass to get to him. Lewis’s mouth was open and ugly as if he couldn’t close it and he was staring at his father as he cried. Gilbert went right to him and grabbed his arms, and Lewis began to fight, kicking out at him, kicking his legs and trying to hit his head against him. He was surpris- ingly strong. His face was wet with tears.

‘Stop that!’ shouted Gilbert.‘Stop crying. Be quiet. Be quiet.

Quiet!’

Gilbert forced Lewis’s arms down and used his weight to pin him into the corner, and then he stopped crying and tried to cover his head with his arms, but Gilbert grabbed his wrists and forced them away from his face.

Gilbert was panting. He looked around the room – the chest of drawers was on its side, with the rest of the drawers torn out of it; it was the mirror from the top of it that had smashed and covered the carpet with glass.

‘Jane!’ he shouted, and Lewis began to shake in his hands, but he didn’t make any more noise.‘Jane!’

They both waited, out of breath, with Gilbert holding Lewis against the wall and Lewis rigid and shaking as if he couldn’t control himself.

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Gilbert heard Jane come upstairs and then she stood in the doorway.

‘God—’ she said,‘Lewis—’

‘Get him out of here. I’ll clean this up.’

‘No.You get him out. Let’s stick to our proper jobs, shall we?’

Gilbert was shocked she spoke to him like that and then realised how extreme the situation was, and how undignified, and at the same time he realised that she didn’t like him. He pulled Lewis to his feet and dragged him out of the room and across the landing, with Jane watching and Lewis pulling away, silently using all his strength to resist. Gilbert kicked the door shut behind them, hating her seeing it.

He stood in his bedroom gripping his son’s wrists hard.There was silence and Gilbert thought Lewis must realise it was point- less to fight. He seemed small suddenly.

He began to worry about Lewis’s wrists being hurt and his arms, and he relaxed his grip. Lewis was still quiet, so Gilbert took him to the bed and made him sit.

He stood over him, not sure if he dared to sit next to him, and then he did, and there was silence. Lewis’s face was blank. He seemed to have disappeared.

‘Are you feeling better?’ Gilbert asked, and he made his voice gentle, so as to reach him, but Lewis didn’t move.‘A lot of fathers would thrash you for a thing like this. You are my little boy and I want you to make me proud of you, not ashamed. Are you a bad person, to do a bad thing like this? Is that what you want to be? I want you to listen to me very, very carefully.’

He saw Lewis’s eyes flicker and then he turned his head and met his father’s gaze.

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‘You’d better not make your mother’s death an excuse.That would be a terrible thing to do, and like hurting her again.’

Gilbert waited. His son didn’t speak, but kept his eyes on his face.Then Gilbert got up and went to the door. He opened it, wide, and stood back.

‘Now why don’t you help Jane clean up that mess you’ve made? I’m out to dinner tonight. I’ll see you in the morning. There’ll be no more of this.’

Lewis got up and went past him. ‘Look at me, Lewis.’

Lewis stopped and looked up. ‘Do you have something to say?’

He waited and saw Lewis frown with trying to think what it was he ought to say.

‘I’m sorry, sir.Thank you.’ ‘Go now, please.’

He closed the door behind him.