The Horned Man (11 page)

‘You can't force people to like you, Geraldine dear. It's against the laws of physics.'

He turned the page of his newspaper and shook it straight with a single practiced snap.

My mother stood up and wandered about the room, fussing with her ornaments and flowers. She wasn't done with this topic, I could tell. Her restless, aggrieved spirit never settled easily, once aroused.

I sensed also that she hadn't yet come to her point, her
real
point; that to get to it she had to conjure a more vexed and petulant atmosphere than currently prevailed.

‘I don't see how you ever get what you want in life if you aren't prepared to push a little. You have to push! I've had to push people all
my
life.'

‘And you wonder why people find you pushy.'

‘Do they?' my mother asked, her violet-blue eyes suddenly wide and vulnerable.

I could see that my stepfather regretted his riposte.

‘No dear, I'm just saying they
would
–'

‘Is that why the Bestridges don't –'

‘Don't let's start, Geraldine –'

‘I suppose you think I pushed
you
. Is that what you think?'

‘Geraldine –'

‘All those afternoon drinkies at the Portingham Cellars –
was that me pushing you? Those romantic tête-à-teêtes down in the storage room at Findley Street, did I push you down there? Did I? Pushy Geraldine shoving poor weak Mr Robert Julius Lloyd down the basement stairs in the middle of the morning when she couldn't wait another second for a bit of what you fancy, is that how you remember it darling?'

My stepfather sighed, folding away his newspaper. He disliked confrontations, and would agree to almost any demand in order to avoid them. His own dissatisfactions he worked out silently and in private, in stratagems that didn't emerge until their fruit was already fully ripened. For all I know, as he sat there gazing mildly at my mother, he was already plotting how to start siphoning off funds to set up the flat (or ‘love nest' as the newspapers later called it) for his new mistress, a private casino waitress by the name of Brandy Colquhoun, whose existence burst on us a year or so later.

‘What is it you want, my love?'

‘Want? I don't
want
anything. I'd
like
to think I had a husband who took some interest in the well-being of my child –'

‘Geraldine, I'm simply saying I don't think the Bestridges –'

‘Oh who cares about the Bestridges? Do you think I care tuppence about those snobs?'

‘Well what is it you want me to do?'

‘What's the point of even discussing what I want you to do since you refuse to do anything I suggest anyway?'

‘What have I ever refused?'

My mother looked away from him; adjusted a dried rose.

In a quiet voice, she said:

‘The Royal Aldersbury, for one thing.'

There.

‘Ah, now Geraldine …'

‘What? Just because your daughter's a member does that mean it's too good for Lawrence? I find that a little bit insulting, if you must know.'

The Royal Aldersbury was a sports club for well-to-do county families. Robert's daughter Emily was a member and, from what I could gather, spent all her free time there, in a gilded haze of tennis tournaments, dinghy regattas, and country dances.

It was near the Lloyd house, twelve miles from us, on the banks of a wide stretch of the Medway. Robert met his daughter and two young sons there for tea every Sunday, an event from which he would return in a state of dejection that my mother had come to feel offended by, so that they had had to institute a counter-ritual of dining out at an expensive restaurant – the White Castle or the Gay Hussar – every Sunday night when they arrived back in London.

Several times she had raised the subject of Robert getting me into the Royal Aldersbury, ostensibly so that I would have something to do when I came to the cottage, though the more Robert had resisted the idea, the more firmly it had acquired the higher significance of a measure of his current regard for her. Robert was too much of the English school of obtuseness to say right out that he was afraid it might upset his daughter to have to mix with the son of the woman he'd left his family for, but that was evidently what he felt, and my mother found this mortifying. She had taken the position that once she and Robert had married, the entire situation regarding both families had become irrevocably normalised and stable, almost to the point of retroactively annulling the fact of his previous marriage. She often tried to get Robert to bring his children to our home, and even hinted that it was about time he took us over to visit his former wife. Perhaps she had visions of joining
Selena Lloyd and her set for ladies' luncheons in Tunbridge Wells.

Even so, she was probably as surprised as I was when Robert suddenly stood up and telephoned the Royal Aldersbury, asking to speak to the Club Secretary.

A few minutes later I was a probationary member.

‘Satisfied?' he asked my mother, sitting back down to his newspaper. He was affecting nonchalance, but he must have been aware of the magnitude of what he had done; its fundamental destructiveness. I suspect he was the type of man who even took a certain fastidious pleasure in setting off small avalanches of this nature: proving to himself and the world just how much of a source of disorder he was.

My mother was pleased: deeply, physically pleased. She flushed, and her eyes shone. She brought the bottle of white port over to Robert and filled his glass. They were guarded about showing physical affection in front of me, but they had evolved numerous small acts of attention that by now were as obvious an indication of the flow of feeling between them as the deepest of French kisses would have been.

The next morning my stepfather took me to the Royal Aldersbury. It was a fine spring day: the May was flowering in the hedges and the apple orchards were in bloom. We drove in silence: by tacit agreement we never spoke to each other when my mother wasn't around.

The main building of the club was a grand, gabled, chimneyed pile covered in Virginia creeper. Around it were tennis courts, squash courts, croquet lawns, a badminton lawn with stout-legged ladies leaping around in pleated skirts, and at the back, gliding blackly in its flower-filled banks, the river.

Robert took me uptairs to meet the Treasurer and Secretary. He was politely aloof with these functionaries, who
appeared to regard him as a mighty personage. An enigmatic smile played across his features as they made conversation with him, supplying their own answers when none was forthcoming from him. Though I had no idea what he was thinking, I felt that he was privately amusing himself at everyone else's expense. I didn't mind.

A woman came to the door and signaled to the Treasurer. He tiptoed over to her, murmuring an apology. They stood in the next room talking in hushed voices, then the Treasurer tiptoed back. He cleared his throat:

‘It would appear that Mrs Lloyd is taking tea in the main lobby with Miss Lloyd. Would you – would you like us to take you out through the side door Mr Lloyd … ah … discreet …'

‘No. I was hoping she'd be here. I want to introduce Lawrence.'

The Treasurer and Secretary looked nervously at him. Though they probably didn't expect anything so vulgar as a ‘scene' to occur, they were the kind of creatures to whom a situation with even the potential for a scene, even where that potential is sure to remain firmly suppressed, is a source of anxiety.

After I had filled out my forms and signed the membership book – an ancient volume with a column in it for your title as well as your name and address – I followed Robert back down to the main lobby, which was now alive with the particular muted but purposeful buzz of the upper classes going about their leisure.

Mrs Lloyd and her daughter were seated in an alcove half-screened by potted palms. As we approached them, I saw at once that the daughter was beautiful, and moreover beautiful in a way that so intimately corresponded to my ideal
conception of female beauty at the time, that it was hard to resist the feeling that she had been created and placed there expressly for my personal delectation. My interest in the place, till then not nearly as strong as my mother's, abruptly sharpened.

Mrs Lloyd, a smaller, sallower, skinnier woman than I had imagined, gave a brief start as she saw us, but quickly recovered her composure. Emily looked gravely at her father, her bee-stung little mouth firmly closed.

‘I want you to meet Lawrence,' Robert said. The same aloof, secretive smile played on his face. Perhaps it was just his way of showing embarrassment, though its effect was to suggest he wasn't actually present in the situation at all, other than in the most banally literal way.

‘Geraldine's son,' he added.

Mother and daughter looked at me blank-faced.

‘Pleased to meet you,' I said, immediately noticing a look flash between all three Lloyds.

‘Emily, I was hoping you might show Lawrence around. Introduce him to your friends. He doesn't know anyone here. Would you do that?'

The girl seemed stunned, almost benumbed, by the situation. But she said ‘yes' with an obedient simplicity as though it would never have crossed her mind to oppose her father's will.

‘Good. Well then. I'll see you on Sunday dear. Lawrence, I'll pick you up at six.'

To his ex-wife he merely nodded, receiving the faintest of nods in return.

Emily was true to her word. After her mother left, which she did as soon as was civilly possible, she gave me a tour of the building and grounds, introducing me to various teenage
acquaintances on the way. She made no attempt to converse with me, and was largely unresponsive to my remarks. Even so, I felt that I was making a favorable impression on her. I was intensely smitten by her. The thick, reddish-brown spill of her ringlets, her agate eyes, her sharply chiseled nose and pointed, elfin chin, were altogether too close to my image of that longed-for but hitherto entirely elusive entity, a
girlfriend
, for me to be capable of separating her from my fantasy. Her prolonged presence by my side as we strolled through the club began to acquire a meaning of its own in my imagination; something more than just duty and circumstance could account for. In some ineffable way we were ‘together' – a fact that seemed further cemented every time she introduced me to someone new. Her voice was soft and clear, with a faint, nascent edge of imperiousness. She wore a perfume that rapidly insinuated itself into the deepest cortical centers of my brain: even today, when I catch it in a store or lobby, I am instantly back in her sweetly enchanting aura.

By the time we finished our tour, I was feeling distinctly proprietorial about her. Doubtless she expected me to wander off by myself now, but the thought didn't even cross my mind, and she was too well brought up to say anything.

Some friends of hers came up, and as I persisted in lingering by her, she introduced me to them. These, it turned out, were her particular set, and over the next three days I got to know them well. The mere fact of Emily's introducing me appeared to be enough to gain their acceptance. No doubt she found a way of quietly explaining who I was, but she must not have conveyed any particular antipathy on that score, because they included me in all their activities as if it were the most natural thing in the world.

Like her, they were extremely polite and superbly confident.
The boys were constantly standing up and offering their seats to older women. The girls – Fiona, Rosamond, Sophia, Lucy – were miracles of deportment and elocution, their adolescent bodies always under perfect control. Their facial expressions had the sophistication of seasoned matrons – little nuances of irony,
moues
of mock petulance, casting a wonderful allure over the most neutral of remarks. But nothing off-color or spiteful was ever intimated. They seemed almost conscious of a responsibility to set an example of gracious conduct, whether they were lobbing an easy ball to a weaker player over the tennis net, or complimenting the dinner ladies on the rhubarb pie in the dining room.

Among the boys was one I immediately identified as a rival. His name was Justin Brady. He was good-looking – tall, with a supple athletic build, wavy black hair and a cheerful, animated face. There was some kind of understanding between him and Emily. At first I thought he might actually be her boyfriend, but they never held hands or kissed, as some of the others did, so I ruled that out. But when we first played doubles he seemed to take it for granted that he would partner Emily, and later, when she mentioned that she wouldn't mind going out on the river for a sail, he seemed to assume this meant she wanted him to go with her.

In both instances I managed to ward him off by sheer force of will. I simply stuck by her at her end of the court, creating a standoff, until, with a pleasant grin, Justin retreated to the other end. And when it was decided that we should all go sailing, I preempted him by asking Emily outright if she would come in my dinghy. She did hesitate a moment, looking at Justin, but he merely gave his pleasant warm smile again, and told her to go ahead.

Out on the river a mild breeze, scented with the flowers
that grew on the banks, puffed out our sails and sent us rippling across the water. Emily said nothing, barely looked at me, but I felt that I was in paradise. To the extent that I even noticed her unresponsiveness, I put it down to shyness and her generally subdued manner. This was almost enough; almost all I wanted of love at that moment, to be gliding silently across the river with this bewitching girl. My own sails were filled! There had been talk of the upcoming Easter Dance, some preliminary discussion of partners and costumes. It seemed to me an inevitability that Emily would come as my partner, that we would dance all evening, and seal our budding romance with a long, tender kiss out on a balcony.

By the second day I had half-intoxicated myself with the imagined taste of her kisses, the sensation of plying my hands through her wondrous mass of ringlets. I spent the day waiting for opportunities to gaze into her eyes. On the rare occasions when she looked back at me, it was with a curious, dazed expression, as though we were meeting in a dream.