The House at Midnight (29 page)
Danny's face was a mask of barely suppressed fury. He said something about leaving Elizabeth on her own and was gone. Michael laughed and squeezed Richard's arm. 'Thank you.'
Richard smiled at him. 'Well, you can't go round being intimidated by Hoxton poppets like that.' He took Michael's empty glass and replaced it with a full one from a passing tray. I hoped that Danny wouldn't feel the need to retaliate.
The gong was struck for dinner. The big round noise of it filled the garden, its reverberations bouncing off the wall of the house, which loomed over us, above the side of the terrace. There was a surge into the marquee and a bottleneck formed while the guests looked at the board to find their places. I hung back, finishing my drink. The silence of a Stoneborough night had been thoroughly routed. The conversation of a hundred and fifty people melted into one sound like the rumble of industrial machinery, the occasional voice or laugh making itself heard above it. The air was thick with perfume and smoke.
Diana's design for the decoration of the marquee was inspired. That afternoon we had dressed the tables and the shoulder-height candle-stands with the greenery that we had cut in the wood. There were candles everywhere, making the entire interior a play of light and flickering shadow. Thick church candles were clustered along the tables at the sides and each of the dining tables themselves had a clutch of them, too, offering their own flattering but untrustworthy light. We had woven ivy around them and snaked it out towards the place settings over the heavy white damask tablecloths. Tall dishes spilled grapes from Patrick's vines, opulent and purple, the tendrils curling around the leaves we had cut with them. The arrangements of ivy and laurel looked so natural it was like the wood had seeded itself here of its own accord during the afternoon and was now growing with some crazy fervour, as if it wanted to claim the place back for the wild.
Diana and I had been into town again to look for other items to suggest the theme and had found wooden pan pipes in Oxfam. These were scattered here and there on the tables and woven in among the greenery. She had also borrowed a papier-mache goat mask from a friend who worked in costume at the theatre and it now peered out from the tallest arrangement, at eye-level with the guests filing in to find their places, its mad stare oddly suggestive. The candlelight glanced off the cutlery and the glasses and the jewellery of the women as they moved around to find their places, weaving an enchantment that was now more than the sum of its parts, the living breathing soul of the party.
Greg and I were at the same table at dinner but he was on the other side of the round, too far away to speak to. On my right was a man whom I'd met several times before although I couldn't remember where. It was too rude to ask. He droned on about his job and I was grateful: it saved me having to talk. Whenever I took a sip of my wine, he topped up the glass. A layer of insulation laid itself between me and the world, leaving me inside with the drumbeat it seemed only I could hear. I shut out the crowd and focused on the sound of it and it soothed me. If I gave myself over to it, even temporarily, it had a strange kind of beauty, an intricate and lovely logic. The sounds of so many people having dinner laughter, cutlery against plates, the chinking of wine glasses receded. I could lose myself in alcohol tonight, I thought, drown everything in glass after glass of red wine. I wanted to be oblivious and to an extent I was, to the food, the conversation. The only external thing of which I was really aware was the positioning of the members of our group. Even though my own seat faced away from the body of the room, I could feel where the others were as sharply as if a map of them had been branded into my back.
Greg came to talk to me after the pudding dishes had been cleared, crouching down next to my chair. 'You OK?' he asked. 'You're drinking a lot. You need to stay
compos
mentis,
in case anything does kick off. Come and get some fresh air.' I pushed my chair back and we wove our way out between the tables. The waitresses were offering coffee and cigars, and people had relaxed and were leaning back in their seats or swapping places to talk to other friends. The sound of their voices, punctuated with raucous laughter, was now approaching a roar.
Even though the entrance to the marquee was open, it was noticeably colder outside. I felt the goose pimples rise on my arms and rubbed at them. The wind, gaining strength all the time, lifted my hair and blew it around my face. It was gusting around the marquee, causing the sides to billow and shake like slack sails. We went up the steps to the terrace and sat down among the huge sheepskins and terracotta oil lamps that Diana had planned as a chill-out area for later. The air seemed purer away from the marquee and I was grateful for it. Greg pulled me towards him and brought me inside his jacket. We were silent for a minute or two.
'I've been thinking,' he said. 'What are your thoughts on moving in together?'
'Really?'
The light from the lamp played over his face, casting one side into darkness and illuminating the other, showing me one serious eye. 'I don't want only to see you at weekends and now and then in the week. I want to be with you properly, Jo. Share your life and have you around to share mine.'
'That sounds very adult,' I said, laughing a little.
'We are adults,' he said.
I knew that, of course, and yet in another way I think I hadn't really known it until then. I saw suddenly that I had been stuck in my previous stage of development, like a butterfly too long in its chrysalis form. I hadn't made any effort to move on while it was still possible to drift along without real commitments, in stasis. And this past year had been part of that, an excuse to drift a little longer and to imagine that we were a group apart from ordinary life, at least while we were at the house. I was ready to leave the group behind now. I was hungry for normal life. Normal adult life. 'We don't have to if you don't want to,' he said.
I smiled. 'I do want to. Very much.'
He kissed me gently. 'I love you.'
From the tent there was the sound of a fork ringing against a glass and the growl of conversation slowly began to subside. I didn't want to go back inside. It felt like a retrograde step now, when there was suddenly a huge new vista spread out in front of us. I wanted to stay where I was inside Greg's jacket, the noise from the party like the music played over the credits at the end of a film, a reminder of what has happened but also the end of it. Reluctantly, though, we got up and went slowly down the steps. The edges were now demarcated with candles but it was a long way down for anyone who lost his footing in the dark. Greg went first, holding his hand out behind him so I could follow. I remembered the night Lucas had fallen.
Rather than create a disturbance by pushing back to our table, we stood at the back of the marquee to hear Lucas speak. He was already on his feet, holding his glass. Someone at a table near us wolf-whistled. It was a strange feeling to look at him, the focus of the room. Being the host endowed him with a sort of celebrity status. Here, again, was the Lucas that I had loved: a little diffident, generous, intelligent, handsome in an understated way. But that fond nostalgia was cut through with a red streak of nameless fear, like a ribbon of blood in water.
He took a sip of wine and began. 'First, thank you all for coming tonight.'
'The pleasure's mine,' said someone loudly, causing a laugh.
Lucas smiled. 'It means a lot to me to see everyone here, enjoying this house. As I'm sure most of you know, last year I lost both my mother and an uncle to whom I was very close. That's my excuse for dropping off the face of the earth for so long. My uncle - Patrick - left me this place and whenever I look around here I am reminded of him. He was hugely important to me when I was growing up and I miss him every day. I know that he would be happy if he could see Stoneborough tonight.' He took another sip of wine. 'The main thing this past year has made me realise is how important your friends are. You know who you are.' He raised his glass. 'Thank you - I'll never forget it.'
My eyes flicked over to Danny's table. I wanted to read his expression, to see his face as he congratulated himself on being one of Lucas's true friends. He wasn't there. I scanned the room quickly but couldn't find him. As I turned back, however, I caught Lucas's eye and he smiled.
He cleared his throat, as if preparing to deliver bad news. 'You may also know that tomorrow is my thirtieth birthday.' There was an ironic cheer. 'In ordinary circumstances this would have been a dire prospect but, at the risk of being sick making, I'm going to say that circumstances haven't been ordinary since I met Diana again. Diana was a childhood friend of mine, and if I haven't already introduced you to her tonight, I will. She's the most beautiful, talented and sexy woman I know.' He looked at me again and this time it felt like a challenge. He was staring quite openly; it must have been obvious to other people. What the hell was he trying to do? To break the contact, I looked instead at Diana. She was sitting next to him, driving the tine of a fork through the linen of her napkin, eyes down and acutely embarrassed at being the object of so much attention. 'I'd like to be with her for the rest of my life,' Lucas went on. Diana stopped puncturing the cloth and reached up to put her hand on his arm, making him bend down to catch the words that she murmured. 'Apparently I've got to shut up now - I'm being embarrassing.' He laughed. 'Anyway, a toast. To my mother and to Patrick and to Diana.'
After the speech, we went to find Martha. We found her talking to Michael and Richard, with whom she seemed to have formed an instant rapport as she sometimes did with people. She was laughing as we joined them. 'Richard's trying to set me up with a friend of his,' she explained.
'Have you met him? Is he nice?'
'Yes, at the party where they met.' She waved a hand at Michael. 'I'm trying to tell Richard I'm not interested in a relationship at the moment.'
'And I'm trying to tell her that's rubbish,' he said. 'And John's gorgeous.'
When the jazz started, we all danced. The music was excellent. All three members of the band looked retirement age and the navy blazers they were hotly stuffed into wouldn't have been out of place at an old servicemen's reunion but the music they played was jaunty and golden. The notes ran out and pushed themselves forward, eager to beguile and seduce, then took a step back, played it cool. The dance floor was soon packed. It was now very hot inside the marquee and after the first number Greg took off his jacket and slung it over the back of a nearby chair. I took my inhaler from the pocket and had two surreptitious puffs. The tension, the heat and the density of the smoke were all affecting my lungs. The formal face of the evening was now beginning to slip. People were considerably less composed than they had been three hours previously. The rivers of champagne, wine and cocktails were doing their work. I was surrounded by big leering eyes, hungry to consume every sensation the evening had to offer, the drink, the food, the music, the female flesh exposed by all the expensive dresses. The image, a sort of hideous carnival of desire, made me sick and claustrophobic. The girl dancing next to me gave up trying to salvage her chignon and let her hair fall over her shoulders with abandonment, making me think again of those bacchant women on their mountainside, shaking off the restraints of their normal lives. The hands of the man she was with ran all over her, not caring who saw.
I lasted two more songs then had to stop because of my breathlessness. I threaded my way out towards the exit and emerged gratefully into the fresh air. I stood quietly, drawing lungfuls of it and savouring the feel of the cold wind on my face and bare arms.
'Jo.' Suddenly Diana appeared in front of me. She had the look of a ship's figurehead, shoulders left bare by her dress, the wind blowing her hair back from her face as if she were breasting the waves. 'Have you seen Lucas?'
Perhaps it was my conscience that made the pulse quicken in my temples, perhaps it was some sixth sense of intensification, a subconscious realisation that the evening was narrowmg.
'Are you looking for me, Diana?' Lucas emerged from the marquee. Greg and Elizabeth were just behind him.
'Danny asked me to find you. He says your present is ready.' She tried to keep her shawl under control as the wind threatened to whip it away.
Lucas looked annoyed. 'Couldn't it have waited until tomorrow?' He raised his voice to make himself heard and the words billowed around us.
'He says you'll want to see it.'
'What?' He leaned in to hear her.
'I said, he says you'll want to see it.'
'I don't know what he's got you,' said Elizabeth. 'He wouldn't even tell me.'
'Come on, then. Quickly.'
For reasons that neither Greg nor I could explain later, we followed them inside. When the front door shut behind us, it was like entering a different world again, the party disappearing as if it were only a dream, the sombre silence of the hall becoming reality. The place was in darkness except for the light from the two lamps on the low chest. The ceiling was hidden but I had the sense that the people up there were craning down to see what was going on. I could almost hear the creak of the couch as Patrick leaned forward. He was waiting.
Behind us the drawing-room door opened and Danny appeared. He was flushed. 'Lucas,' he said. 'Are you ready?'
I turned to look at Lucas but he was staring in the direction of the drawing room. His face was ashen. I turned again. Nothing could have prepared me for what I saw. Standing behind Danny was a man.
'Justin,' said Elizabeth.
'Lucas,' said Diana. 'Your father.'
The man who stood behind Danny was like a shade from the underworld, incorporeal as a sheet of smoke. I might have been able to put my hand straight through him. He looked as lost as if he had abnegated his free will and been blown in by the wind. He was sun-bleached, like a photograph of himself left on a windowsill for a whole summer and faded to a uniform overexposed yellow, only the outlines of his original image still visible. This man was Justin, I could see that, but it was not the Justin that I had seen on the cine films. That golden quality was long gone, hardly even a memory any more. His hair, thin and lifeless, was a dull yellow, no hint of gold or bronze in it. His skin was the same: there was no warmth in its grey tone. It was as if his body knew that it had to grow something to contain the organs within and had come up with this approximation of skin, a pallid sickly covering.
Only one part of his body had colour and that was his eyes, wide open, full of fear and wonderment and unconcealed hunger. They were a startling colour, a burnt-out paraffin blue surely not achievable organically except through some prolonged health crisis. And then I knew I had seen them before. I had seen them in the pub the second evening we had ever spent at Stoneborough, the night Lucas had cooked and we had kissed on the terrace. He had been waiting all the time.
'Lucas?' Danny's voice broke into the silence.
I followed his stare. Lucas was trapped in a bubble of shock so profound that he could not move. It was as if he were suspended in time, waiting for someone to move the clock on to the next second and let him come to life again. His eyes were on his father, unblinking, perhaps not seeing at all. His mouth was slightly open but he didn't seem to be breathing.
Suddenly he dropped to his knees and rolled his body forward, his arms folded over his head. There was an animal sound of the nearest thing to pure grief I ever want to hear. His whole body was in that cry, as if every cell was screaming out in primal pain. The noise of it filled the hall and echoed in the ceiling above us, returning again and again in waves.
'What have you done, Danny?' Diana's voice reached me now in the inner space in my head where the echo of Lucas's cry and the house's accelerating drumbeat met in an eerie throbbing music. She had turned to him, fierce as a lioness. J ustin shrank back, as if behind a shield.
Danny was staring at Lucas, who was now beginning to shake as though with hypothermia. He looked up at Diana and I saw that in his eyes there was a sort of disbelieving shock. 'I didn't know,' he said. 'I didn't know that ...'
'Take justin in there,' she said, her voice cold. 'Go and sit down.'
Elizabeth was seized by indecision. She looked at Danny and then at Lucas, then back at Danny. 'And you, Mum,' said Diana, more gently. 'Go and sit down.'
We knelt on either side of Lucas. Diana put her arm across his back and started to murmur to him, words I could hardly hear but a rhythm that was soothing, almost a croon. She rocked with him, her body absorbing the violent shaking of his. At last he broke and began to cry with heaving sobs. Diana looked at me over his back. Her eyes were full of the same fear I knew mine would show her. That huge echoing cavern of a room served only to highlight how vulnerable he was and how powerless we were to help him.
After a couple of minutes he became calmer and Greg lifted him to his feet, supporting him with an arm under his. It was clear that his legs had no rigidity. Greg took out a packet of cigarettes, lit one and put it between Lucas's trembling fingers.
'It's him,' Lucas said on a juddering out-breath. 'It's really him.'
Greg walked him into the drawing room. Justin was sitting on one of the chesterfields, right on the edge, as if he knew he shouldn't be there and was ready to spring up as soon as anyone caught him. His face had caught some colour: there was a feverish flush in his cheeks below those ravenous blue eyes. I found I couldn't look at him directly; the sense of need he emanated was too intense. Danny was standing in front of the unlit hearth and he turned quickly as he saw us. The fingers of his left hand were working away at the cuff link on his other sleeve, turning the silver disc round and round. Elizabeth still didn't know where to look; her eyes flicked between him and Justin as though she was charged with keeping them both under close guard.
Diana sat Lucas down on the other chesterfield and took his hand. Greg and I stayed back. I wasn't sure whether we were part of his support or an intrusion but I was rooted there.
'You ... What are you doing here?'
His father's mouth opened but the words didn't come. 'Lucas,' he said finally, his voice as cracked as if he hadn't spoken in all the time he'd been away.
'We thought you were dead.'
Justin hid his face in his hands. I saw how thin his shoulders were and how fine the covering of hair across his pale scalp.
'How could you do it to us? To Mum, for God's sake?'
'You don't understand,' came a voice through the hands at last.
'How could I? How could anyone understand what you did?'
Seconds passed and then Justin raised his head and blotted his eyes on his sleeve. He cleared his throat richly and shakily reached for his cigarettes. After several failed attempts, his lighter yielded a flame and he gulped at the cigarette, as if using the inhalations to suppress the sobbing still in his throat. With the palm of his free hand, he smoothed his hair across the top of his head over and over again, as a mother might do to a small child in distress. 'I never wanted to leave,' he said. 'You have to believe me.'
'Why? Why do I have to believe anything you say? You've been gone for twenty years. Twenty years.'
'It was the most painful thing I ever did.'
'Please, just don't.' Lucas put up his hands, as if protecting himself from the words. 'Don't tell me that.'
'Just let me ...'
'If it was so painful to you, why did you do it? Why?'
'Because I had to.'
Lucas snorted. 'Because you ran that man over? You're a coward. You should have stayed and faced it. Were you afraid of prison? Was that it?' His voice was full of scorn. 'You deserved it. You should have gone to prison just for the pain you caused Mum. You let her believe you were dead. How could you do that to her?'
'I did it because I loved her.'
Lucas gave a cry of anguish and started up from his seat. Diana pulled him back down.
'Lucas, listen,' she said.
'Then make him tell me why, for fuck's sake. Make him tell me why he left a man to die in the ditch like road-kill. Tell me why I've grown up knowing I'm the son of a man who could do that.' His skin had a morgue pallor; I thought he might throw up.
'Please ...' said Justin.
'Lucas,' said Diana again. 'Let him speak.'
'You don't understand, Lucas,' cried Justin in frustration. 'It wasn't me.'
'For God's sake!'
'It wasn't just me that day. Patrick was there, too.'
There was silence in the room. In that moment, the ground beneath us seemed to shift, moving the house on its foundations and rendering the whole edifice unsound. My skin went cold, as if the fingers of the wind had reached inside and touched my bare arms and the back of my neck.
'You're lying,' said Lucas at last, his voice quiet as a prayer.
'No.' Justin lowered his eyes.
'Tell me. Tell me how.'
'Some of what you know is true. I was drinking at the house and I took the car out. I was going too fast, probably on the wrong side of the road, I'm not sure.'
Lucas said nothing. His eyes were trained on Justin's face.
'I can still hear the sound of him hitting the windscreen. It happened so quickly but the noise ... it was so loud. Like a thump but soft and ... wet. And then he went over the roof.
Oh God.'
He looked as though he was going to break down but he swallowed hard and steadied himself. Lucas waited while he lit another cigarette, saying nothing.
'I managed to stop the car and I went back to look for him. At first I couldn't see him. It was summertime - you know that - and there was so much stuff everywhere, long grass and cow parsley and just ... green. Then I realised he'd gone into the ditch. Lucas, he wasn't moving. His trousers were torn and there was bone sticking out through the material on one leg. It was all jagged and bloody - like meat. I was sick in the grass. He wasn't moving. There was blood coming from his eye.'
None of us said anything. I looked at Lucas. His face wore the expression of someone who knew that his world was about to change for ever.
'I was desperate. I drove back to the house to find Patrick. I relied on him, even then. We all did. He knew how to handle things. He was walking down the drive and when I told him what had happened, he made me get out of the driving seat and he got in and took us back there. He parked down in the field, where we wouldn't be seen from the road. I couldn't stop crying. He slapped me, I think. He went to look, then he got back in the car.'
'Then what happened?'
'He said I had killed him. He was dead.'
Justin looked at Lucas imploringly and I was struck by how ugly he was, how unappealing his desperate need made him and how the bones of his face, visible under the skin, seemed a reminder of his mortality, hard to look at. 'He said it was time for a few home truths. I was a parasite. He said that I was destroying Claire and you with my drinking; I was dragging you down, draining the life out of you both. Now I had killed someone. He said if I was caught I'd go to prison and he didn't give a damn if I burned in hell but it would finish Claire and he couldn't let that happen.'
He took another drag on his cigarette but it was smoked down to the filter and it burnt him. He ground it out in the ashtray with a trembling hand. His fingers were yellow with nicotine.
'He said the only way I could make things better was to go. lf I did, he would help me. When the police came, which they would, he would tell them he hadn't seen me. I had to disappear without a trace. He said I had to lie low for a few days and then call him at the gallery. He would arrange money for me in an account under a different name. I wasn't to touch my own bank account or ever try to contact any of you again. Everyone would assume I was dead and eventually stop looking for me.' There were tears in his eyes now, washing that intense blue even brighter. 'After all, as he said, everyone knew I was a fuck-up. No one would struggle to believe I'd killed myself or drunk myself into oblivion.'
Lucas's head was bowed and I could see the pressure of Diana's grip on his hand. 'And if you didn't go along with it?' he said.
'How could I stay? He was right - I was pulling your mother apart. She was struggling so hard and I was destroying everything. As fast as she earned money, I was spending it. I went on benders, didn't come home. I was ill a lot of the time. It was terrible for a child to be around that. I had to go, to give you both a chance. Lucas, imagine if your mother had had to watch me go to prison. I couldn't have let her tie her life to me.'
Lucas still didn't look up. The tremor in his shoulders was visible even from where I was standing.
'But there was another reason. Patrick told me that if I ever contacted you or your mother again, he would lead the police straight to me, wherever I was hiding.'
I didn't have to look at Justin to know he was telling the truth. None of us could doubt it. It was in his voice, a sincerity as clear as harp notes.
'It all happened so quickly. One minute I was here and the next I was on a train, being taken away from you both, and I was never going to see you again.' He was weeping openly now and making no effort to hide it. 'He drove the car out of the field and left it at the side of the road. He took my wallet and he left it inside, with the keys. No one could know he'd seen me. I had to hide in the field round the corner while he went back to the house to get his car and then he took me to the station.'
'No one came,' said Diana. 'While the car was there. While you were hiding.'
'It was Sunday afternoon and it was just a stretch of lane. And it was twenty years ago. Even now, when there are cars everywhere, there's not much through traffic in Stoneborough.' His shoulders dropped in despair. 'Do you know how much I wish someone had come? If I'd known then what I know now.'
'He wasn't dead, was he?' said Diana. Her voice was sympathetic.
He turned his eyes to her. 'No. He wasn't.'
'Other walkers came along with a dog and it found him. He was still alive and they called an ambulance,' said Diana. 'He didn't die until later that night, in hospital. They think he would have survived if he'd been brought in straightaway.' 'Yes. Yes. But it was hours later by the time he was found. He'd lost too much blood. I never knew.'
'But Patrick knew,' said Lucas. 'He wasn't drunk. He knew to feel for a pulse. He lied to you and then left that man to die.'
'Yes.'
Lucas put his hands over his face and then ran them up, knotting his fingers into his hair.
'For twenty years, I believed a lie. I'd been so drunk and frightened that I hadn't been able to tell for myself. I trusted Patrick. I believed what he told me. I never would have left that man there if I knew there was a chance he'd survive.' Lucas began to weep again, the same racking sobs that had shaken his body in the hall. Danny went to him and put a hand on his shoulder and I watched as Lucas reached up and took it, gripping on to him as if he were a raft. Danny's own face was blank with shock.