Chapter Three
Four
o’clock, any moment now. Laurie stared at the clock on the
study-room wall, willing its second hand to make that last climb,
until his eyes stung. Sanderson, absorbed in a text on abstract
mathematics with the same chuckling thoroughness another man might
have brought to a juicy porn magazine, seemed unaware of the time.
Laurie blinked; he’d misjudged the clock, and had another minute to
go. He restrained a gigantic, whole-body twitch, wondering why his
mistake had rendered the last minute scarcely bearable. He drew a
deep, silent breath, set himself to count the dust motes floating
in a wedge of sunlight between his desk and the tutor’s. It was
last light, bloodred and tarnished, hardly visible against the
room’s overhead neon. Another breath, unconsciously registering the
scent of beeswax from the endlessly polished old
floorboards…
The
clock issued its first gentle chime. Sanderson didn’t appear to
notice until Laurie’s irrepressible restive movement knocked his
geometry set to the floor in a rattle of plastic and metal. “Oh,
four o’clock already?” Sanderson said, a note of regret in his
voice that couldn’t possibly have been authentic from anyone but
him. “Well, off you go, Laurence, old fellow. I’ll stay here and
finish this chapter, if you don’t mind.”
“God, no.” Laurie gathered up the fallen instruments, stabbing
himself in the palm with the compass point without a flinch,
dumping them randomly back into their box. “Knock yourself out,
Sandy. I’ll see you tomorrow.”
Admittedly, as bitterly as he resented them, the exercises
Sanderson set for him were his only chance of redeeming today’s
stupidity and rescuing him from tomorrow’s. But first, freedom. His
mind restored to him for a few hours before he had to sit down and
tackle the exercises. A few hours in which he could retire to his
top-floor room and think about Sasha. Today he wouldn’t even have
his sister on his hands, and much as he welcomed her faithful
presence in the study room, he was glad. Clara had a bruising
social schedule in the weeks running up to Christmas, as one after
the other of her friends threw parties of increasing and
competitive magnificence. Laurie, jogging quietly down thickly
carpeted stairs to make himself a sandwich, reflected with
amusement that she’d be exhausted after this one. The nine-year-old
Lady Sophie of Ravenscliffe had no doubt pulled out all the stops,
and Sir William, unashamed to schmooze those greater than himself,
even at a little girls’ tea party, had volunteered, with rare
paternal condescension, to escort her. He would be hip-deep in port
with Lord Ravenscliffe for hours. Laurie’s mother was out too, so
for once Laurie had the house to himself barring staff, who
bothered him as seldom as he tried to bother them.
God, he
could lie down on his bed and think of Sasha. The prospect of this
was such a relief that Laurie’s breath caught in his throat, and he
paused on the landing, clamping both hands tight to the carved
banister while the rush of excitement passed through him. His own
need astonished him. What were the chances of them ever meeting
again? Sasha had said it. They did not live in the same world, and
Laurie’s efforts to travel between the two had put Sasha in danger,
made his already marginal existence more perilous and difficult
still. Sasha himself had bidden him not to try again.
But even if Laurie had been forbidden to seek him out, his
mind could create for him a thousand scenarios where no such
restrictions applied. He could run into Sasha by chance in Regent’s
Park and walk with him silently into a grove of trees whose
branches closed around them in tender concealment. He could march
into the shantytown under the bridge with a pistol, hold Len at
gunpoint, and demand that Sasha be released from this life of
degradation—even though he knew Len had nothing to do with it. He
could command Sasha leave behind the scuttling shamefaced
businessmen who came slumming it down here for their treats, and
come with Laurie to a place unspecified but safe and beautiful,
where Sasha would stand before him, smiling, dark eyes glowing, and
silently undress. Once, to Laurie’s utter shame, in the
fantasy he was the
businessman, propped against the pillar, lost in bliss while Sasha
sucked him off. Laurie didn’t even know what that would feel
like—from another boy or from a girl. His entire sexual experience
in his nineteen years of life amounted to a tumble with a
debutante, randy and willing, if too drunk to know who he was next
time she saw him. But his imagination was good. Oh, a couple of
hours to himself and he could find his way almost anywhere and
conjure Sasha there to join him.
A ripple
of laughter rose up from the ground floor. Laurie jumped as if
caught in the act he’d been planning. Clara and Sir William must
have come home early. Stifling a sigh, he continued on his route
downstairs. He might as well let his presence be known. She’d seek
him out anyway, and, if he couldn’t have his mind-created grove,
his armed rescue mission and seamy encounter beneath the bridge,
her droll, jaded account of the party would be good for him, better
probably than his own company. Eight going on thirty-eight, his
Clara.
The door
to the living room was open. Landing silently in stockinged feet
from his customary vault of the banisters, Laurie froze. His father
was sitting in one of the big armchairs, Clara on his lap. Laurie
racked his brains for the last time the old man had touched her. He
tended not to. His rages—and, young as she was, Clara was not
immune to them—seldom culminated in violence. As for carrying,
hugging, and all the benign contact of parenthood, the girl had her
mother for that, as well as Laurie and a small team of domestic
staff.
She
looked happy enough now, if a bit startled. Sir William was gently
jouncing her, and whatever he was saying to her was making her
laugh. He was bright red in the face, perspiring slightly.
Something in the position of his hand on her skinny little back
made Laurie go as cold as death. He broke paralysis and continued
across the hallway, far enough to open the door to the library. It
gave its characteristic squeak. Clara spun around and jumped off
the old man’s knee, her face lighting up. “Laurie!”
He put
out a hand to her. No, she wasn’t going on thirty-eight. She had
her few sweet adult ways, but she was as clear as daylight, barely
out of babyhood, bright and untouched. Laurie calmly drew her to
his side. He said to his father, “Good evening, sir,” and remained
there in the doorway to the library, motionless, staring at him.
Sir William got to his feet. For a moment he seemed to struggle for
his usual bluster, and Laurie wished he would. Wished he would
demand what his son was doing, hanging about like a mooncalf in the
hallway. Wished he would look like anything other than a man caught
with bloody red hands. “She’s got to do some of her Christmas
holiday homework,” Laurie said. He added, conscious of his ghost of
a smile, “So do I. We’ll see you later.”
Laurie
took her into the study and sat with her while she worked through
her exercises. They were just English grammar, and even Laurie
could help her with those, though he conscientiously tried to show
her only her own route to the answers, not the answers themselves.
She was completely undisturbed, chattering away to him about the
party between her efforts to distinguish a noun from a past
participle. Laurie listened as best he could, both hands knotted on
the desk. In his mind, two scenes were playing themselves out. In
the first, a boy who looked just like him but whose soul was
untainted came trotting down the stairs of the big old house and
saw his father playing with his little sister, smiled at them both,
and passed on. In the second, a different version of the boy,
marred but unswervingly brave, took Clara and went straight to the
police, to social services, because no matter how many
commissioners’ boards Sir William Fitzroy headed up, no matter if
he had half the Met in his pocket, there was justice in the world,
unassailable justice and protection.
But Laurie was neither of these, and his world was what it
was. When Clara had finished her homework, he suggested to her a
sandwich supper with Mrs. Gibson, and Clara, never one to pass up
an escape from the usual dreary family dinner, beamed at him in
acquiescence. He took her down to the kitchen, and once she was
settled chattering to Charlie at the old pine table where he too
had hidden out from so much grim formality over the years, he drew
the old housekeeper aside. “Gibson, I don’t want Clara left alone.”
He shivered. That wouldn’t bloody do it. The child wasn’t
alone with her father.
“Do you know when Lady Fitzroy’s due home?”
Gibson
wiped her hands on her apron and surveyed the young man she had
striven to look after since he was old enough to walk. “Not until
morning, I believe, sir. She’s staying with her sister over in
Kensington. Why, Master Laurie, you look like a snake’s bitten you.
What on earth’s the matter?”
“Nothing. That is…I think he might be drinking again. My
father.”
“Oh.” Gibson looked down. There had been a bad few years when
Sir William had added alcohol to his natural deficiencies of
character—but had reined himself in rather than lose his foothold
among his peers on his various boards and commissions. “Oh, dear.
Are you sure?”
Laurie
swallowed. He wasn’t sure of anything. “No. But…I can’t take any
chances. I tell you what. Is Hannah at home for Christmas?” Hannah,
the youngest daughter of local family friends, had been Clara’s
preferred babysitter since early childhood and still welcomed the
chance to earn a few easy, enjoyable quid with her little charge
when Laurie wasn’t around.
“Yes, sir, as far as I know.”