The Summer We All Ran Away (13 page)

Isaac laid the book and paper carefully down, then put an arm around her. Jack closed his eyes and leaned his forehead against the door jamb.

“Having someone love you,” Mathilda continued. “That's
a huge gift. The biggest gift anyone can give you. But that's the problem. It's so huge, it takes all your time and strength to carry it. He's given me this massive present, and I don't know if I can afford the baggage.”

Isaac patted her shoulder reassuringly.

Later that evening, as they sat in the kitchen drinking coffee and laughing, he realised with a chill he would never have guessed any of what she felt. Mathilda leaned happily against his shoulder and laughed at his jokes, dropping grapes into her mouth and then his. Isaac was the same as he always was, shy and charming and odd. Talking to Isaac, Jack thought, was like telling the bees; they listened, but never told, and afterwards they carried on about their own complex and absorbing business as if nothing had changed. The breeze blew the distant roar across the lawn and in through the open veranda doors. Jack glanced at his watch.

“Cat needs feeding,” he announced. Mathilda frowned. “Don't look like that. What do you want me to do?”

“It's not right to keep him locked up.”

“I didn't
put
him in a cage, you know,” said Jack. “He was already in one when I got him.”

“Why on earth did you buy him, anyway?”

“I won him in a poker game.”

“You
won
him?” Mathilda laughed. “Actually, that's even worse. You ought to atone by letting him out.”

“Ha ha ha. He'd starve.”

Isaac drew a sly little sketch of a sheep on his notepad. The sheep wore an expression of beatific stupidity. In the grass behind it, two rounded ears were just visible.

“Okay, then he'd eat the sheep and get shot. Is that any better?” Isaac and Mathilda were both looking at him with a conspiratorial naughtiness that made him feel old, humourless and excluded. “Or he'd rip Isaac's tent to shreds and eat him instead.” Isaac laughed silently. “Don't joke about this, mate. You do know he could do it, right?”

Isaac held up his hands in a gesture of surrender, and wandered out onto the lawn.

“Shit,” said Jack, feeling guilty. “Have I upset him?”

Mathilda reached across the table and took his hand. “He's fine, he just prefers it outside. You do know we're not serious, right?”

He tried not to focus on the word
we
. “And you do know I'm always far
too
serious, right? I'm famous for getting hung up on the little stuff. I'm completely missing the not-taking-things-too-seriously gene.”

“That's okay. It's quite endearing really.”

“How can it possibly be endearing? Even I can't stand me sometimes. Is that the phone?”

“I'll go.” She smiled at him, a dirty come-hither smile that made his hands tremble. “You need to go and feed the beast.”

The leg of pork was already collecting flies. He filled the water bucket, and snapped on the lid. Then he wrapped the meat in a plastic sheet and slung it awkwardly over his shoulder.

The panther was pacing hungrily by the gate, staring intently down the path. Jack raised a hand in greeting. The panther snarled.

“Miserable bugger,” said Jack. The panther had come to him without a name. The old man had simply called him ‘the cat', and until they reached the cramped concrete cage with the pile of shit in the corner, Jack had thought they were going to see an ordinary moggy. The panther glared and continued pacing.

“Clean-out day,” Jack told him, climbing the hill. He opened the chute and dropped in the meat. The panther padded inside. Jack lowered the inner gate. The panther roared.

“I know, pal. If it's any consolation, cleaning your shit's no fun for me either.” He'd often wondered if the closing of the inner door reminded the panther of its previous prison, the stinking cage at the end of the neglected garden, the amiable old drunkard poking a half-frozen chicken through the bars,
accidentally tipping over the dirty water bowl as he did so. Did animals other than man look back on the past and shudder? The panther shouldered the bars half-heartedly, then settled down to eat. Jack slithered back down the hill, took the key from around his neck and opened the cage door.

Sitting cautiously on the floor of the enclosure was the closest he could get. The panther smelled wild and gamey and its teeth crunched against the bones. Would it smell that strong in the wild? Surely any prey would scent it long before it made its leap.

The panther's tail was a thick black rope of silk. If he reached through the bars, he could hold its warm weight in his hand; but if the panther took exception to this, it could whip around and take Jack's hand off with one swipe of a huge front paw. Jack sat on his hands to stop himself being tempted and watched the glossy highlights on its flank as it gulped down its meat.

He had touched the panther only once, after the vet shot it with a tranquilliser dart so he could be transported to his new home. The panther had flinched and growled, then paced around the cage before finally succumbing to the ketamine. “Want to stroke him?” the vet had asked. “Once in a lifetime chance.” So Jack had gone into the cage, knelt beside the sleeping animal and run his hands all over its rough, unkempt coat, feeling the ribs beneath the pelt, the skull beneath the velvet muzzle.

“He's about twenty pounds underweight,” the vet observed. “He needs to put on muscle, though, not fat, don't overfeed him or he'll turn into a tub of lard. Stick to the feeding plan and it should happen naturally.” He slapped the animal on its thin flank. “He's had a shitty few years, poor wee lad. But he'll get over it.”

You and me both, mate
, Jack had thought, and felt the tears come to his eyes.

Threading his way between the trees, he was frozen in his
tracks by the sight of Isaac and Mathilda embracing on the lawn. Mathilda's head rested on Isaac's shoulder, and Isaac stroked her back. They looked good together; the right age, the right height, a good mix of colouring, Isaac so dark and Mathilda so fair. The sight was both erotic and painful.

Isaac looked up and saw Jack watching them. Without taking his arm from around Mathilda's waist, he beckoned Jack impatiently over. As soon as Jack arrived, Isaac disappeared.

Mathilda smiled, but there were tears on her eyelashes. He guessed what had happened before she spoke.

“Who got it?” he asked gently.

“No-one. A backer pulled out. The production's cancelled. They're going to do
Oh! Calcutta
instead.” She shrugged. “So it goes.”

“I'm sorry.”

“There'll be something else.”

“Of course there will.” He could feel her trembling in his arms, and he kissed her forehead.

“I'm being ridiculous,” she said. “Actors get turned down every day. At least it wasn't my performance.” She wiped her face. “It's because it was the only thing on the horizon. I should have had other things in the works. My own fault for being lazy. I'll go up to London tomorrow and see Irving.”

“Give yourself a few days first.”

“What for? This is what acting's like. Ninety per cent of the job is rejection. We're not all geniuses. Some of us have to hustle a bit.”

“Hey, I did my apprenticeship.”

“How old when you signed your first album?”

“Nineteen, but it barely sold - ”

“And how old when you got the NME review?”

“Which NME review?”

“Okay, people, I'm calling it. Jack Laker won't sell in the millions (mainly because he doesn't feel like writing crowd-pleasing pap) but he's going to be
the
musicians' musician for the next thirty years. You heard it here first. Now worship me
as the God of Prophecy that I am. And worship Jack Laker while you're at it
. That NME review.”

“You learned it by heart?”

“You've got a framed copy over the toilet, you poser.”

“Only so I don't take myself too seriously. Anyway, we're talking about you.”

“I've forgotten what we were saying.”

“I was telling you to take some time.”

“Acting doesn't work like that. There's no room in the theatre for delicate flowers.”

“I thought you were modelling for Isaac.”

“I am.”

“And the weather won't last. We should make the most of it.”

“You just want me to stay here so you can carry on fucking my brains out five times a day.”

“That's not true.” She looked at him disbelievingly. “Hey, it's really not. I'll settle for four. I'm a reasonable man.”

“I'm not sure I've got the energy for four. I'm getting nothing done as it is, neither of us are.”

“Then I'll settle for two,” he said. “Or one. Or none. I'll settle for just having you here. That's enough for me. Okay?”

“I'm not earning a thing.”

“I've got plenty for both of us.”

“You're a soft touch, Jack. I might be a gold-digger.”

“I don't care if you are. I love you anyway.”

“Then you're an idiot.”

“You're supposed to say,
I love you too.”

“That's the predictable answer.” She hesitated. “Till after the weekend then, okay? Then I really have to go up and see Irving. Let's go to bed.”

He chased her joyously up the stairs and down the corridor, catching up with her by the concealed doorway.

He woke again at nightfall. Truth, that unlikeable hag, sat heavily across his chest.

He wanted to pretend it was for her and for Isaac, these four days he'd wrung out of her. He wanted to pretend she needed time to get over losing the part which had meant so much to her. He wanted to pretend she needed his protection. But he knew in his heart she was as tough as old boots, far stronger than he was.

He wished he had a cigarette, but he'd forced himself to quit that drug too. So instead, he tore the cover of a spiral bound notebook into meticulous shreds, and forced himself to be honest.

He was relieved the production had fallen through. He would do whatever he could, whatever he could get away with, to keep her here with him. He couldn't bear to part with her. He wanted her here with him, now, tomorrow, always.

chapter nine (now)

He stood in the doorway and stared into the room like a criminal.

The house had the special silence that falls when only one person remains in it. Tom had, as he'd promised, taken the ferry to the mainland. Kate had gone with him. Priss was, as she put it, ‘not at home to visitors', a state which apparently required her to have exclusive use of the library with no interruptions. He had not seen Isaac since breakfast, but he had never seen Isaac venture upstairs.

He was alone, he reminded himself. The house was old, its joints creaked. He would hear anyone coming in plenty of time. All he had to do was cross the threshold.

He couldn't make his knees bend. He told his feet to shuffle forward, but they weren't listening.

Late last night, he'd lain beneath his billowy crimson bed canopy, wandering through the border-country that led to sleep, when he heard Kate and Tom talking on the landing.

“She's so ridiculously beautiful,” Kate said. “When she's asleep she looks about nine.”

“She'd kill you if she heard you said that,” Tom replied. “She told me beauty's a waste of time.”

“No, she didn't.”

“Yes, she did.”

“No, she didn't. She said,
Beauty's the biggest fuckin' con on this entire fuckin' planet apart from fuckin' falling in love
.”

“Actually, that's exactly what she said. How did you know?”

“She said it to me too. How does anyone get to be so cynical before they're twenty? Or is that just modern youth?”

“Davey's not cynical. He's as sweet as they come.”

Lying in the dark, Davey blushed.

“It's lovely having them both here, isn't it?” Kate said then. “Like having a family of your own, only not.”

“I suppose it must be.”

“Do you? Have a family, I mean?”

“No.”

“Not anyone? Not even nieces or nephews?”

“No. Do you?”

“Just me.”

“Did you ever want, you know, children?”

There was a pause while Kate considered this. Davey wished he could see her face.

“Maybe,” she said at last. “But somehow - and then, of course, I was too old.” He heard the door of her room open. “Goodnight, Tom.”

Priss had insisted from the start that Kate and Tom were strangers to each other, but until now he hadn't really believed it. How had she known?

And if she was right about that -

Go on
, he willed his feet.
Go into her room. Just do it
.

Once he was over the threshold, it became easier. There was a terrible secret pleasure in being in Kate's room when she wasn't. He had no idea how women lived behind the closed doors of their private spaces. His mother's room had been off-limits since he was five. Because he could, he opened a drawer, and discovered a mound of cloud-soft garments in soft neutral colours that conjured the mysterious word
twinset
. The drawer below contained more practical things; cotton t-shirts, heavy sweaters. Had she brought all these clothes with her, or were they borrowed? They certainly seemed to fit her, but then the clothes in ‘his' room fitted him too. He opened the smallest drawer at the top, glanced in, glimpsed a sensual nest of silk and lace and closed it hastily.

Uncorked, the flask of perfume whispered Kate's presence. The sensation made him feel guilty, and he replaced the top and moved on. On the bedside table, the only reading matter was the newspaper he remembered picking up from the floor of the tube. The sight made him swallow reflexively and look away. A pair of reading glasses rested on the top. He'd never seen her wear them, but of course almost everyone her age needed glasses for something, didn't they? Beneath the mirror by the window, Kate's cosmetics seemed oddly simple; a gold-cased lipstick, a bottle of cleansing milk, a box of loose powder with an ancient-looking powder puff. Maybe she kept the rest of them in the bathroom.

The avocado bath suite looked almost pretty against the clean white tiles. He could see why, many years ago before everyone knew better, it could have seemed like a good idea. The soap reposing in the dish was Imperial Leather, its black and red label still clean and new-looking. In the cabinet, a bottle of paracetamol sat disapprovingly on the shelf next to a box of brown hair dye.

The hair dye, like the glasses, seemed almost unbearably intimate, a reminder of the small vanities of humanity. He turned away, opened the drawer in the pine table in the corner. On top of the long box of disposable contact lenses (so that was how she managed during the day!) was a small plastic case. He opened the case and found himself staring at a strange plastic contraption, like a miniscule skullcap made from pliable beige plastic.

“Don't you dare touch that, you mucky bastard,” said Priss in his ear, and Davey nearly swallowed his tongue.

“Jesus!” he hissed furiously, as soon as he could speak again.

Priss took the case out of his hand and snapped it shut. “Trust me, when you realise what it is you'll thank me. What are you looking for? No, I can guess.” She laughed, far too loudly. “And I thought you didn't believe me! Didn't think you had it in you.”

“I don't want to believe you, I just thought while everyone was out I'd - ”

“Did you find anything?”

“No, not a thing. We must be wrong.”

“Absence of proof isn't proof of absence. Did you look in Tom's room?”

“Not - no. Look, I don't think we should be - ”

Priss was already out of the door.

“Well, at least it's clean,” she said dubiously, peering into Tom's room. “Come on, what are you waiting for?”

Looking through Tom's meagre belongings felt even more dreadful. Kate's possessions had a certain softness, a whisper of luxury and feminine grace, that lent the search a dreamlike, sensual quality. But there was nothing glamorous about Tom's four ancient sweatshirts, over-washed and immaculately clean, or the single pair of jeans with the bottoms carefully taken up and the crotch neatly patched, or the six pairs of thinning cotton underpants with only the ghost of the name Marks & Spencer still visible on the label. In the bathroom, a cheap plastic razor was lined neatly up beside a bar of soap.

“I feel awful,” said Priss at last. “What the fuck are we doing this for, Davey? Let's go outside.”

As he walked out through the veranda windows, Davey found he was haunted by the thought of Tom walking through another, more forbidding door. Could he have been let go? Surely someone would have been assigned to supervise him. But then, people disappeared from the system all the time.

“I tell you what,” said Priss. “I'm glad they've gone out for the day. I feel weird being around them.”

“Really?” said Davey crossly. “Why could that be, then? Do you think that might be because you've got it into your head that one of them's a m-m-m-m - ”

“Maverick. Manticore. Mermaid. Man-eating tiger. Market gardener. Manufacturer of lemon-scented - ”

“Stop it!”

“Hey, you've got your fuckin' irritating verbal tic, and I've
got mine. Come on.”

“Where are we going?”

“Birmingham.”

“Sorry?”

“Come on, soft lad. Use your fuckin' loaf. Where do you think we're going?”

Davey glanced at Isaac's tent, which he was inexplicably sleeping in despite the abundance of spare bedrooms.

“Not as thick as you look, are you? Might as well do the lot while we're at it.” She looked thoughtfully at the tent. “Maybe we'd be safer sleeping out here too.”

“You'd freeze.”

“I wouldn't.”

“Have you ever slept in a tent?”

“No. Have you ever slept in a house with no central heating and no meter money and no chimney so you can't even burn stuff to keep warm?”

Davey looked at her in horror. “Have you?”

“I might have,” said Priss, staring at the house and frowning. “Or I might just be messing with you, using the power of class prejudice and stereotypes about poor people. Your choice. Which is my room?”

“Sorry?”

“That row of windows. Which is mine? I know it's one of them 'cos I can see the garden from it.”

“How would I know?”

“It's a funny thing. I can never quite work out the layout of this place. There's always bits that don't quite match up.”

“Are there? I hadn't noticed.”

“That's 'cos you only ever see what you want to see. Christ, this tent is ancient, it doesn't even have a groundsheet. Have a look.”

Against his better judgement, Davey peered in. A bedroll rested on a stand made from four forked sticks wedged in the ground, with two branches balanced in the forks. A folding tray-table with a scratched reproduction of Van Gogh's
Sunflowers
held a stack of paper, and a giant Smartie tube filled with pens. The only extravagance was a downy quilt made of exquisite embroidered silk patches.

“I knew he'd been nicking my pens,” said Priss. “Right, I'm having that one back. And that one. And that one.”

“How do you n-n-n-know they're yours?”

Priss ignored him. She was flicking through the pile of sketches. “He's really good, isn't he?”

“I don't think you should be looking at them.”

“Well, I don't think you should wear those jeans with that t-shirt, but you don't hear me complaining.” She held out a sheet of paper. “Look at this one.”

Davey looked. It was a pen-and-ink drawing of him asleep on the sofa in the library.

“I d-d-didn't know he'd done that,” he said in surprise.

“He gets everywhere,” said Priss. She replaced the drawing in the pile. “D'you know where he's gone?”

“Why would I know where he's gone?”

“I don't actually think you know, daft lad, I'm just setting you up so I can tell you what I know. He's gone to post a letter.”

“So what?”

“So it's got no address and it's just a blank sheet of paper. I had a look at it while he was in the kitchen. What d'you think he's really doing?”

“Is this another question I'm not supposed to know the answer to?”

“You're more fun when you fight back. You should do it more often.” Priss put the sketches down and backed out of the tent. “Come on, we're going down to that weird cage thing.”

“Why can't we just sit still for five minutes?” Davey begged. “Why do we always have to be c-c-c-climbing trees and looking at c-c-c-c-c – argh! – at cages, and g-g-going into people's rooms and - ”

“If you stand still too long you put down roots. Come on.” “Let's talk about Isaac,” said Priss.

Davey was enjoying the feeling of the sunshine dappling his face as they sat up in the tree's branches once again. He closed his eyes and admired the pattern of the blood vessels on the backs of his eyelids. With his eyes closed like this, he couldn't see the slight swelling of the ground beneath the beech tree. If Isaac had been back here, he had left no flowers to mark his visit. Now he thought about it, surely Isaac's willingness to stay here at all must be proof that both Tom and Kate were innocent. Priss jabbed him hard in the leg with a finger that felt like a bony twig.

“Ow!”

“Then bloody listen. What's up with you now?” Davey was staring at Priss' fingers. “I'm just checking they're not made of c-c-c-c-cast iron.”

“Brilliant. You should be on the telly. Isaac. Discuss.”

“I think he's very nice.”

“So that's what wilful blindness looks like! Wish I'd got a camera.”

“What are you talking about?”

“You do this look,” said Priss. “You did it that day Kate told us to stay away from the Dark Side. You did it the other night when Tom was holding court on the ethics of murder. And you do it all the time when you're around Isaac.”

“I don't know what you're talking about.” He would not look at the ground beneath the beech tree. Whatever was there was private, secret, best left sleeping. He absolutely would not look -

“What are you staring at now? Oh, shit and corruption, what the fuchin' hell's
that?”

“What's what? Oh my God, is that - ”

Priss slapped a hand over Davey's mouth and shook her head warningly. They stared, bug-eyed and breathless, as the panther shouldered its way nonchalantly through the buddleias, and padded silently into the clearing.

Priss put her mouth cautiously against Davey's ear. “Do you
think it knows we're here?” she murmured.

“I don't know. It might be able to s-s-smell us.”

The panther was poking around in the undergrowth with a massive velvet paw. Its mouth was half-open. They could hear it sniffing and see its rose-pink tongue.

“How the fuch did it get here?”

“There's stories about big cats on Dartmoor, aren't there? Didn't people keep them as pets?”

The panther had scraped together a pile of twigs and bark fragments. It turned its back towards the pile, and sprayed it vigorously with urine. Priss wrinkled her nose in disgust as the smell reached them and put her sleeve over her face. Davey was afraid she would cough.

“It's not, like, tame, is it?” she whispered through the thin cotton. “I mean, even if it was a pet once, it could eat us?” Davey swallowed hard, and nodded. “What do we do?”

“Wait for it to go?”

“What if it's waiting in the woods?”

The panther padded past the half-closed gate and lay down. It began to lick and nibble at its right front paw, tugging at a fragment lodged between the claws.

“I wonder how high it can jump.” Davey whispered to Priss, then wished he hadn't.

“Well, not this high, soft lad.”

“You can't possibly know that, stop sounding so smug - ”

“Yeah, I can. Nobody builds a cage for a wild animal it can get out of by jumping. This is its
territory
, soft lad. It must have lived here before.”