‘I hope so.’
They held each other’s gaze and slowly their faces moved closer. Their lips dusted each other’s lightly, tentatively, then parted. They stared, searchingly, into each other’s eyes, then kissed again. She was surprised how soft and tender his lips were, how gently his mouth moved. His fingers pressed harder, held her more firmly, tracing the contours of her back, and she felt safe now, her fears melting, replaced by an intense yearning. She kissed him ferociously, pushing her fingers through his soft hair, breathing in the light fragrance of his skin, feeling the strength of his body.
Their mouths separated again and they eyed each other once more. Oliver cupped her face in his hands and kissed each of her eyelids lightly, then looked into her eyes, with hope and with fondness. ‘Let’s go to bed,’ he said.
A sharp click woke Frannie with a start from a confusing dream. It sounded like a machine being switched off, or a drawer being shut. She sat up, confused, taking a moment to remember where she was. Then she breathed out and sank back against the pillow, held herself still, trying not to wake Oliver, who was sleeping deeply beside her. The stump of a candle burned unsteadily beyond him. Outside, the hoot of an owl probed the darkness.
She was wide awake, as if something was not right. The owl hooted again, a soft, lonely call, like an unanswered signal through space. The candle fluttered and shadows collided against the walls. Her eyes roamed the room, the dark canopy of the four-poster above them, the thick rugs on the floor, the walls ornately painted with cherubs and Rubenesque women.
Beneath the thin sheet Oliver’s arm lay across her stomach. He stirred and his chin, hard with stubble, pressed against her shoulder. Then she smiled at remembered pleasures of the past few hours and her fear subsided. She felt drained, like a spent husk, and yet at the same time deliciously complete, as if the whole principle of equilibrium lay within her. They had made love almost the whole night through, catching brief snatches of exhausted sleep, then waking and starting again. The way they were starting now, the way she could feel Oliver nuzzling her cheek, slowly playing his fingers down her body.
She kissed him back, their lips tacky, their skin
damp with perspiration. He kissed her neck, then her chest, then each of her shoulders. He ran a finger lightly around the base of her neck and kissed that too, then he stared silently, approvingly at her face, and she was wanting him as if it were only the beginning of the night. She drew him to her, caressing him with her hands, kissing him lightly, then deeply, then lightly again; her body taut, resonating with increasing desire at each returned caress, each reciprocated kiss until she had to fight from crying out and clutch him tightly to her, cradling his head in her arms, whimpering with pleasure so intense it was barely distinguishable from pain, repeating his name over and over as if the world would cease to revolve if she stopped.
Afterwards they lay still, gulping air, her nostrils filled with the smells of sex, the salty taste of his skin on her lips. His face lay on the pillow beside her, nestled into her chest, and she stroked his hair, separating the strands, tidying them.
At the back of his parting was a tiny bald patch of white scalp. It made him seem vulnerable. As if she were looking at his skull. She shivered, but continued to stare in fascination. She knew that human beings shed skin constantly, a complete layer each week, shed enough particles of dead white skin to fill a soup bowl every day. She wondered, suddenly, how much skin it took to make a book.
Then she kissed his head, afraid of her thoughts, and buried her face for a moment in his hair.
He turned his face towards her, and looked serious for a moment, searching her eyes with a worried frown.
‘What is it?’ she said.
At first he said nothing. But then his hand squeezed her shoulder. ‘How many languages do you speak?’
A little surprised, she answered him, ‘English. A little French. Italian. And I understand Latin,’ she added. ‘Why?’
‘You don’t speak any Arabic? Or archaic languages – other than Latin?’
She smiled. ‘No. Do you want something translated?’
He said nothing.
‘I was quite surprised to hear Edward speaking Latin,’ she said.
Oliver seemed to stiffen. ‘He spoke in Latin to you?’
She was chilly, suddenly, under just the sheet and snuggled against him for warmth. ‘His knowledge of plants is incredible. He seems to know the Latin names of all of them.’
‘Plants?’ he said quietly.
She lifted some hair from his forehead and pressed it back. ‘Bright boy from a bright daddy.’
Oliver was silent again.
They slept.
The room was washed with light when she awoke to the sound of the clock chiming. Her eyes felt raw, the lids rubbing like sandpaper as she blinked. Oliver was sitting on the side of the bed in a paisley dressing-gown, smiling at her. His skin, white with tiredness, accentuated the darkness of his stubble, and with his hair dishevelled, hanging unevenly over his forehead, it gave him a rather savage appearance that she found appealing. His breath smelled minty as if he had just brushed his teeth. ‘Morning,’ he said.
‘What’s the time?’
‘Six,’ he said quietly. ‘I don’t want you to go, but Edward often comes in – and I –’
She nodded.
He squeezed her hand and looked thoughtfully at her for a moment. ‘Have a lie-in in your room – get up when you feel like it and I’ll make you some breakfast. Sleep in as long as you want – let’s just have a lazy day.’
She heaved herself up and slid her feet out of bed, shaking her hair away from her face. Oliver peeled his dressing-gown off and draped it over her shoulders. ‘Wear this.’
She pushed her hands in and they disappeared into the sleeves, then as she stood up she almost tripped over the bottom of it. She bundled up her clothes and shoes and carried them over to the door. Oliver came out into the corridor and they stood like clandestine lovers. He put his arms around her and she said farewell with her eyes. ‘See you a bit later,’ he whispered and kissed her lightly on the forehead.
She padded barefoot down the corridor, past the door of Edward’s room, which was very slightly ajar, and she slowed, tiptoeing along to her own door which she opened, then shut behind her as quietly as she could.
She breathed in the bland smells of her own room, climbed in between the fresh, cold sheets, and fell asleep.
Frannie had read the story on the front page of her father’s newspaper when she was nine. A family on their yacht struck a mine that had been laid by the Germans during the Second World War. It had broken free from its anchorage and could have been drifting in the Channel for days. It was the first mine that had been encountered for a decade, a coastguard said. The whole family was killed.
She counted the chimes of seven o’clock, and wondered why she had suddenly thought of that story now. It had affected her deeply as a child and for years afterwards she had been scared of going anywhere by boat.
She heard seven-fifteen strike, then seven-thirty. She was wide awake, cocooned in a warm glow, too excited to sleep. Listening to the rising cacophony of the birds, she let the brightening light play on her closed eyelids. Finally, she slipped out of bed, pulled on her clothes and went quietly downstairs.
In the hall, she was surprised to hear the sound of a television. It was coming from the snug next to the kitchen, and she stuck her head around the door. Edward was lying on the floor in a Garfield dressing-gown, engrossed in a cartoon.
‘Hello,’ Frannie said. ‘You’re up early.’
He stayed glued to the television for some moments without acknowledging her. A large matchbox lay on the carpet beside him. The action reached its climax. Frannie watched the television with mild amusement. A cartoon dog skidded across a polished floor and
through an open window. It hung upside down high above a Manhattan street, saved by a man’s foot standing on its tail. A circle of darkness enclosed the image and shrank to a small dot. The credits rolled.
Then Edward turned his head. His face was pale and his eyes were red with tears.
Frannie was startled. ‘What’s the matter?’ she said, kneeling down beside him.
‘I’ve had the bad thing again,’ he said.
‘What do you mean?’ she said with deepening disquiet.
He was silent for a moment. ‘This is my last weekend before I go back to school.’
She smiled, relaxing, thinking she understood now, and feeling for him. ‘We’ll try and make the most of today, shall we?’
‘Do you like insects, Frannie?’ he said glumly.
‘No. Why?’
He pressed the mute button on the sound, then picked up the matchbox. ‘This is my new friend.’
She stared at the box warily as he slid open the lid. For a moment she could see nothing in it. He tilted it sideways, and tapped it. ‘Come on, Mr Bean. I call him Mr Bean because I think he looks like Rowan Atkinson.’ She saw twitching antennae. A small, dark brown beetle crawled into view. She felt a twinge of revulsion.
‘Did you know Jonathan Mountjoy, Edward?’ She lifted her eyes to his face, but all his attention was focused on the beetle.
‘Turn round, Mr Bean,’ he said and gave the matchbox a light shake. But the beetle plodded on to the end and then began trying to climb out. A new cartoon was beginning. He turned back to the screen. ‘I have to see this. Would you like to watch it with me?’
‘I’m just going out for a walk – I’ll watch some with you when I come back.’
He grabbed the control and turned up the volume, his concentration already absorbed again by the television, and did not seem to hear her reply. The matchbox lay ignored beside him. Like her question.
Frannie had often heard of gifted children who behaved as if they were a little out of sync with everyone else. She wondered if this might be the case with Edward. She resolved to discuss it with Oliver.
She latched the front door, closed it behind her and headed for the lakeside. The morning was beautiful and she stopped to admire it from the graceful stone bridge that crossed the lake at its narrowest point.
As she rested her hands on the stone parapet, she noticed for the first time that they seemed to have aged; although the fingers were still slender the skin had dried and coarsened, probably from all the digs she had been on, she realized. She smelled Oliver rising from her unwashed skin and wished he was here with her now.
For all her recent happiness, a shadow moved through her mind. An undefined doubt chafing. Her feeling that there was something not right had returned. A rusting mine, broken from its anchorage, drifting unseen beneath the surface. Waiting to make contact.
She crossed herself, the habit of childhood.
The feeling deepened as she walked back up towards the house. She took a different path from yesterday and found herself lost for some minutes in the woods. Then she came to a track alongside an unfamiliar cornfield with a pylon in the centre, and worked out that she had gone too far over to the east.
She corrected herself and after a quarter of an hour the scenery looked more familiar again. She recognized the collapsed stone folly she had passed with Edward and some massive beech trees ahead.
As she entered their heavy shade she saw something strange in front of her. At first she wondered if it was a broken strip of foliage hanging down, but as she got nearer she realized it was an animal. It looked like a fox caught in a snare, she thought, her stomach churning. It was hanging by its neck, motionless, from a branch of a tree.
Then she clamped her hand over her mouth, cupping a scream, and stopped in her tracks, horror-struck. She could hear her own panting, and was aware of a dull ache in her stomach.
One dark brown eye watched her, shining like a marble in the ray of sunlight that played on it.
Frannie backed away, stumbled on a rut. The eye followed her every movement but recorded nothing. Unblinking. The open mouth revealed the gums that yesterday had been wet with saliva, but which were now as dry as old rubber tubing. Captain Kirk’s limbs were splayed out as if he were asleep on the kitchen floor, instead of hanging from a noose of thin, bare wire.
Threads of fear pulled tight inside her, but she braced herself and walked slowly up to the dog, needing to make sure, just in case she could still do something for it. Just one brief touch was all she needed. Beneath the silky coat, the skin felt like porcelain.
She ran for the house, went straight upstairs and along to Oliver’s room. His door was open and the room was empty. Across the landing she heard the sound of a bath draining and pounded on the door.
Oliver opened it, with a towel around his waist, and
gave her a warm smile which froze as he registered her expression.
‘I don’t know if Edward’s seen it,’ she said as he threw on some clothes. ‘He was crying when I went down, but I’m not sure if that was because of going back to school.’
‘Gypsies,’ Oliver said grimly, as if he were not really listening, tugging the laces of his plimsoles. ‘We had problems with gypsies a couple of weeks ago, camping on our land opposite. Captain Kirk bit one of them.’
They left the house quietly, hoping Edward would not hear them, carrying a bin liner and pliers. They cut the spaniel down. Frannie suggested Oliver should call the police but he seemed reluctant. Instead, he laid the dog in the bin liner in the back of the Range Rover and drove off to his gamekeeper, to have him bury it.
Frannie went back upstairs and ran herself a hot bath. She lay soaking in it for a long while, tired and distressed, trying to piece her thoughts together. Trying to dismiss, but unable to, the incident between Edward and Captain Kirk yesterday afternoon and the possibility that it was not the gypsies who had killed the dog.
Then she remembered the affection with which Edward had curled up on the kitchen floor with his arm around Captain Kirk last night, and she gave up trying to find an answer.
An hour later, the smell of fresh coffee and fried eggs greeted her as she came into the kitchen, and gave her an oddly reassuring feeling of normality. It reminded her, she realized, of one of the most familiar smells of her parents’ café.