The Outcast (11 page)

After that there was no stopping the way it went. By the time they got to Waterford it was difficult to get off the train with everybody they knew and pretend things were all right. Lewis had gone inside himself, it was impossible to do anything with him, and Gilbert had to remind Alice to pull herself together and her being drunk and crying was Lewis’s fault.

The embarrassment and the publicness made Gilbert help- lessly angry and at home he shut Lewis in his room. Alice had a bath and made herself pretty for him again and after supper everything was in its proper place; Lewis was impossible, Alice had done her best and Gilbert forgave them both. He forgave Alice in bed, but Lewis never knew about the forgiveness part. He had supper in his room, slept in his clothes and at breakfast nobody mentioned the day before.

Alice watched Lewis, and she came to think of him as broken. She tried not to, and she never told anyone, least of all Gilbert, who so needed to think he’d grow out of it, but she felt that he was broken and that there was nothing to be done about it. She hoped he would mend, but she lost sight of the idea that she could help. He was like a damaged bird. And they always die, she thought.

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E
ight
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It was windy up on the terrace and the pages of the musicians’ sheet music fluttered and blew up, and the striped awnings over the balconies of the rooms snapped and quivered. The hotel looked like an ocean liner and even more so when the sky was moving above it and it seemed to head out to sea. Bright sunshine glanced off the brass instruments so that it hurt to look at them, and the couples crossing the terrace had to hold their skirts down or pin their hair back with their hands.

Down on the beach, near the rocks, it wasn’t so windy and the July sun had baked the sand to scorching. Lewis was playing a game. He stepped off a rock and stood on the sand with his bare feet and waited. At first there was nothing and then it would hurt and he would wait some more.The hurting didn’t feel like anything at first, it was far away, but the more it hurt, the more he felt connected to it, and then it would become unbearable and he’d have to move and, standing back up on the rock, he could feel it better, hard and rough and pressing into his burned feet; and then he would feel released, as if he was back in the world again.

To begin with, his feet would only hurt at the time he was doing it and just after, but then it got so that the pain would go on, and he’d feel the burning later, even hours later; and it

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reminded him of how he’d felt himself present and connected with the place, and not just numb and in his head, like he was most of the time.

When he hadn’t spoken for a long time he felt very far away from people. His French was not very good, but apart from Alice and his father, most of the people he spoke to were French and if he wanted anything, or to talk to anybody at all, he had to speak it. He’d make a sentence and practise it in his mind in preparation, but then not be able to forget it. ‘Un verre d’eau, s’il vous plaît’, the words went round and round his head and even though he knew they were simple, he worried about saying them or that the waiter might say something back to him that he didn’t understand. He was frightened he’d get it wrong, or stutter, although that had never happened. He didn’t know why he had such a clear and frightening image of stuttering, but he often had the fear he wouldn’t get his words out, or he’d stumble over them and get caught helplessly between the beginning of a word and the end, like time stopping and being trapped, while every- body else’s time just went on as usual.

‘Come on, Lewis, French please, speak up.’ ‘Un verre d’eau, s’il vous plaît.’

‘Good. And we’ll have a bottle of the Sancerre. Chilled, all right? Really cold.’

Alice looked at him from under the wide brim of her very white hat, which she held on with one hand, and Lewis felt the soles of his feet burning inside his sandals and prickling in fascinating discomfort.

‘Have you made any nice friends, Lewis? There are lots of English people here – and I saw the Trehernes!’

‘In this hotel?’ asked Gilbert, and they started talking about

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theTrehernes and if they were related to some otherTrehernes, and Lewis was left in his mind again.

Usually once he’d said the stupid sentence about the glass of water or whatever it was, it went out of his mind again, but today it stayed there going round and round, so that it irritated him and he wanted to shake his head to get it out, and had to stop himself. Un verre d’eau, un verre d’eau . . .

‘Don’t scrape the knife against the table, there’s a good boy, try not to fidget.’

He tried. He tried to sit still and the lunch went on for ever and Alice and his father behaved like children whispering together and giggling. Gilbert had never been like this with Elizabeth; they had been close, they had looked at each other like that, and touched and everything, but it was different. Elizabeth and Gilbert had fought. It had been lovely to watch. Lewis had seen the fighting was a ritual between them, a playful struggle re-establishing their fascination with one another.Alice and Gilbert were boring and horrible to watch; everything about them seemed to be concerned with flattery and approval, and was pretty disgusting when all it involved was hand holding and looks and no gentle fighting at all. Lewis craved their company so as not to be alone all the time, and then craved being alone just to be away from them.

He watched the English children playing, and had no idea how to go about joining in. Joining in wasn’t something he’d ever learned, it had just happened and now it had just stopped happening. The others in the swimming pool played diving games and bombing games and their shouts and splashing weren’t anything he wanted. He was sitting near Alice, who was on a lounger by the water looking at a magazine. She had a hat and sunglasses and a tall drink and she was utterly absorbed in

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looking at the pictures of clothes. Lewis thought the hotel could have crumbled into the sea around her and she would be unmoved. His father was just sleeping. In the middle of the day. Not having even been to work. Lewis got up and went over to the edge of the water. He looked down into it and watched the ripples and sparkles bounce off. He looked up at the enormous dark blue sea that shrank away and expanded in one swelling wave that came to meet him and went away in rhythm.

The concrete was warm under his feet, but the sounds of people were getting far away again. He wondered if he was visible or invisible. He put one hand down to the edge and slipped into the water and felt it close over his head. It tasted of salt and not like a river at all. He wondered how long he could stay under without any breath. He let all the air go out of him and went slowly down until he got to the bottom. It was much quieter underwater. It felt much more like him. He lay down on the bottom and spread his arms out.

It didn’t take long at all, with no air, to need to come up, and the first breath was something that had to be done, not some- thing he decided to do, and that felt good. He played that for an hour. Having no air and being deep underwater made you feel very alive when you came up, but apart from that it was just something to do.

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PART TWO
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C
hapter
O
ne
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July 1952

The sun was shining down onto Tamsin’s hair as she walked, not all the time, but when it could find its way through the leaves and, when it did, it made her glow. All of her skin seemed to be golden, as if being blonde had burnished her all over.The colours of her went together now. She had a primrose coloured dress, and her waist was very narrow and the skirt of the dress went wider to the knee and stopped just on it, so that her calves were perfect below the skirt. Her arms were bare and her neck seemed particularly bare coming out of the dress and Lewis hadn’t known why that was; everybody else had bare arms and neck, but they didn’t seem so bare. Her cheek, looking at the side of her and just from behind, as he had, was curved and then he could see her mouth, smiling. It was her hair, though, the paleness of it, the way it was so soft and held back with a white ribbon – or hairband, or hairband covered in ribbon, held back with something – that shone, and then went into a heavy curl at the bottom of her neck and it seemed like he could feel it.

Everyone else was just walking along. Nobody else seemed to notice at all, except bloody Ed Rawlins, who had always got to be the same age as her, and would always be. Tamsin and he were walking together and being sixteen together, and just

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lending their presence, with the understanding that they didn’t really have to be there.

Last holidays she hadn’t been sixteen and she hadn’t been blonde. Her birthday was in May and Claire had finally taken her up to town to get her hair done, and Tamsin looked at herself in the mirror of Henri’s onWalton Street and knew that she was about to emerge. She felt as if she was returning to something she had always been inside. Being a blonde child, and then losing blondeness, made her feel cheated. She knew she was really blonde, and she would one day show that she was again, but it had been awful having to wait with brown hair and not have people know. She was blonde until she was six and when it darkened down she never did accept that it had, and every summer when the sun made it lighter she would think: there, that’s my blonde hair trying to come out again. So sitting in Henri’s, with Henri himself taking off the bleaching lotion and putting in her rollers and checking the tone and the texture, and all the assistants and her mother and even other customers looking at her in what could only be described as wonder – well – it was nothing less than a restoration to a throne. She was herself again. Now Ed was plainly in love with her and she thought Lewis Aldridge was too, except he was so quiet. Fred and Robert Johnson were walking next to Lewis and she thought they were too immature to be in love with her, but she wouldn’t have been surprised. Lewis seemed older than them, he was as tall as Ed and didn’t have all the things wrong that fourteen-year-old boys often did, but if he wasn’t awkward physically, he certainly was in every other way. He was so quiet and odd, and no-one really had anything to say to him any more.

Lewis walked with his head down and wished the twins

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would shut up. Fred and Robert always seemed not quite whole people; maybe it was being twins, there wasn’t enough of them to go round, as if they’d had to share materials. They were still little boys and were having conversations with no disagreements in them about
The Beano
or insects, and Lewis wasn’t interested.

Away through the trees, and on her own, was Kit. Joanna Napper was away and there just wasn’t anyone else of ten for her to be with. She was with a child called Annie, who was staying with the Johnson twins and being ignored by them, and who was very young indeed. She’d been following Kit around all summer and Kit had to endure being ‘you little ones’ until she thought she’d slay herself. Annie was trailing behind now and Kit was being nice because she knew what it was like, but was hating being nice, and she had her big frown on and was getting hot and miserable.

It had rained for the first two weeks of the holidays and Kit had read nearly all of
Of Human Bondage
while Tamsin arranged her hair and talked about frocks with her mother.They had been up and down to London buying things and even going for cock- tails, and the thought of that was death to Kit and she wouldn’t have gone even if she’d been old enough.

Lewis had no expectations of the summer. He and Alice avoided each other pretty much in the daytime and then it was just a matter of either rowing or not rowing with Gilbert and her through the evening. Some evenings were better than others; alcohol and the mood between the two of them were the main variables. He could have called round to Ed orTom or the twins, but he’d got out of the habit of that years ago and now didn’t think it would be an easy thing to do.

The family went to church on Sundays and Lewis endured

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that all right, being used to chapel every day at school. Standing out in the pouring rain, he had seen the Carmichaels getting out of their car at the gate. Tamsin and Claire each had an umbrella and Tamsin was wearing a silk scarf over her hair. He hadn’t seen her all holidays, she’d been up in town with her mother the first couple of weeks and now, when she ran under the porch of the church, laughing and pulling off her scarf, dressed like a woman – and what’s more, looking like one – he’d just stared at her. The only woman he’d seen since he’d wanted to see one was matron and, however hard you tried, she just didn’t count. Tamsin ran towards him and he’d had to move out into the rain again to make room for her. As she pulled off her scarf she saw him and said, ‘Oh, hello, Lewis’ over her shoulder.

He’d spent the whole service looking over at her and pretending not to.

She knew he was looking, she knew everyone was looking, and knowing it made her happy and not at all embarrassed.The rain beat so loudly on the roof you could hardly hear the vicar, even if you were listening, and it was cold enough that steam was coming off the wet coats.After the service the families had gone home to their respective Sunday lunches.

Lewis had thought aboutTamsin sometimes and when, a few days later, he had seen her and Ed and the others walk past his gate on their way up to the woods he’d followed and joined them. He wasn’t soft over her, he just wanted to see her and check if she really looked that good. She did.The twins were the same and so was Kit, except taller and with teeth. She’d been happy to see him at least, but the others, when he’d called to them, had turned around and looked at him as if they’d all never met. Still, here they all were, walking in the woods and towards

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the river and Lewis was wondering which way they’d go and hoping they’d change direction soon. Being with them was all right, and looking at Tamsin was good, but the woods were oppressive and he wanted to get out of them.