Chapter Seven #2
“Hannah,” he said, surprised by the calm of his own voice.
“Come here. Take Clara.”
“You stay where you are, you little bitch.”
The old man at last. Hannah, who in her whole life had never
been called anything less affectionate than darling, burst into tears and fled
for the door. Laurie put out one hand and caught her by the wrist
as gently as he could. “No,” he said softly. “No, stay for a
second. I’m very sorry, Hannah. Please just take Clara down to Mrs.
Gibson; then you go straight home. Okay?”
Sir William lurched to his feet. He topped six and a half feet
when he stood erect, and the drink Laurie could smell on him
swelled him out too. No, he’d never laid a hand on his son. He’d
never had to. Something in Laurie still believed he would not.
Hannah, shaking and sobbing, was nevertheless holding out her arms
for the little girl, and Laurie handed her over blindly, keeping
his eyes fixed on the old man. He wasn’t sure what their locked
gaze indicated, but he tried to make his part of it
you’ll have to go through me.
“You don’t order the staff in this house, boy. You don’t tell
my daughter what to do.”
That low
growl. Laurie had heard it all his life and obeyed. It still had
power to command him now, and a sudden flare of rage at his own
weakness stiffened his spine. Aware that he had stepped in front of
Clara and Hannah to shield them, he waited till the dining room
door opened and closed. “If you treated her like a daughter,” he
said coldly, “I might still respect that.” He paused. His throat
had gone dry and his palms correspondingly damp, but it still
wasn’t fear. “You’d better let Sandy go too, unless you want him to
hear the details.”
The old
man went gray beneath the mottled purple that had risen in his
cheeks. Laurie held his gaze mercilessly, daring him to try to
bluff it out. To try to misunderstand. But after a moment he swung
around on poor Sanderson, who flinched so hard he nearly went back
over out of his chair. “You,” he grunted. “Don’t expect a bloody
reference. Get out.”
I’ll give you a reference, Laurie
wanted to tell him. Not your fault if you
thought your gypsy pupil was a prince. But
Sanderson was a fish-pale flash, squeezing past the heavy dining
furniture and making for the door. All Laurie could do was open it
for him to aid his escape.
Peripherally he saw his mother was on her feet too, one
diamond-glittered hand pressed to the surface of the table as if
she could barely support herself. Pity and anger went through
him.
“No, Ma,” he said reluctantly. “You have to hear this. Sit
down.”
“Damn right she has to hear it.” Sir William was getting over
his fright. Laurie could read it in the restored redness of his
face. Laurie had been lucky, he supposed, to get him off balance
even for a second—but the room was clear now, the only people left
in it the ones who should be there. “She needs to hear how her son
dragged a grubby gyppo tinker into her house and passed him off as
some kind of diplomat’s son to get Sanderson to teach
him.”
Laurie
didn’t think his mother was too interested. His rare clashes with
Sir William had always terrified her, and she was herself so quiet,
so restrained, that Laurie had usually restrained himself for her
sake, bent his head into the storm of the old man’s rage so that at
least only one person was shouting. She had not sat back down.
Abruptly compassion won out in Laurie. If he tried to pin her down
here, who would it be for? Clara, whose protection had been out of
those frail, glittering hands for years—or for himself, because he
burned to shove into her face all the realities she had been
avoiding? He could not keep her here, looking so fragile and
sick.
“Ma,” he whispered and, when she did not budge from her frozen
half stance, shook his head and went to her. “Come on,” he said,
taking her arm. “Go and find Clara and Gibson. That’s all I wanted
to say to you anyway. Make sure Gibson’s with her. Don’t let her be
left alone. Not with him.” He wondered if he would be able to get
her to the door with any dignity; she was leaning on him as if she
would fall, and the old man, who had twitched at his last words,
was beginning a nightmare-slow lumber toward them. But after a few
faltering steps, she broke from him, pushed away with a whimper,
and staggered out faster than Sanderson had done.
Laurie
turned to face his father. He knew that a time came, for some young
men, when they understood their fear of a brutal parent was
hollow—just a habit, a memory, a lingering trace of childhood—when
they understood they were stronger and one good punch would do the
trick, send the shadow monster crumbling to dust.
Reed
slender, much shorter, he knew this epiphany could not be his.
Nevertheless he stood still. He said very clearly, watching Sir
William devour the space between them, “Yes, I let the gyppo tinker
in, sir. Not only that, but I’m fucking him. I love
him.”
And
still the first blow came as a surprise. Perhaps some remnant of
trust had stayed with Laurie after all. He was down on his knees,
staring at the elegant claw foot of one of the table’s central
legs. He was not certain how he’d got there—had briefly seen his
father move, and then the air had left his lungs. One side of his
rib cage was dully exploding. He coughed and retched and heard the
breath come back into him in a kind of sucking groan he could not
control. He had a moment in which to reflect that maybe this was
the price he paid for never having received a mild slap or a cuff
from the old man. That, having finally broken his restraints, his
father was going to jump the preliminaries and kill him.
And yet
still he wasn’t afraid. He had to get up; that was all. His father
said, close and hot against his ear, “You perverted little
bastard.” But it hardly mattered to Laurie. The old man was
dragging him onto his feet, an assistance he couldn’t have
expected. He tried to twist around. The vast grip upon his
shoulders tightened. Sasha, Laurie thought, the word in his mind
like a cry, and he wondered if Sasha knew how completely he loved
him. Sasha. It stayed with him as his father shook him like a rat,
as his brow connected with the solid back of one of the precious
old chairs, then the table’s edge. He took it with him, deep into
the dark.
* *
*
Curzon
Street. About eight at night, Laurie guessed, from the patterns of
the crowd milling past him. Most of them dressed for the evening,
on their way to restaurants or the opera. In this well-heeled
backwater, there were a lot of lovely winter clothes, long swishing
coats, and sumptuous collars. Laurie, shivering, reached to turn up
his own, and found it wasn’t there.
He was
standing at the bus stop in his shirtsleeves. Drawing a deep
breath—or trying to; there was a knot of pain in his side that
tightened when he inhaled—he tried to fill in the gap in his mind
between hitting the dining room floor and being here. He could,
when he made the effort, though it was like looking through water.
He’d opened his eyes, detachedly surprised that he had lived to do
so. The dining room had been empty. He had lain, staring into the
cathedral forest of chair and table legs, until his eyes had stung
from want of blinking. The door had been open. Through it came
voices—raised and agitated, too distant for identification. All but
one, anyway. Female, strident. Laurie, who had never heard Mrs.
Gibson shout before in his whole life, had listened in fascination
while she dealt out this appalling rating to whoever had deserved
it. Then the voices had died and other sounds began to rise.
Slamming doors, restless footsteps.
Footsteps getting closer. Laurie had struggled to his feet.
He had done this in stages, he remembered—hands and knees, then a
grip on the edge of the table, then one last shove upright so
painful he had almost passed out again and had only stayed upright
by slipping into the skin of a man in a play with one mission—to
get out of this prison house or die, and that was how he had lost
track of reality, entered the amnesiac fog.
It had
worked, though. Laurie sometimes wondered if there was anything he
couldn’t do if he could just persuade himself he was playing the
role of someone capable of doing it for him. The absurdity of this
made him briefly shake with laughter, tugging at his ribs, turning
heads to look at him. He supposed he was conspicuous enough anyway.
The hero of this most recent drama hadn’t had the sense to stop for
a jacket, money, or Tube fare card. He felt in his pockets for
change, and there was a handful, but nowhere near enough to take
him out across the city.
He
couldn’t go back. Leaning against the bus shelter’s smeared acrylic
wall, Laurie reflected that this was how it had been for Sasha, how
it still was for all the thousands of others caught up in the
night. No warmth, no cash, and no means of getting either. He
subsided onto the little plastic ledge that served as a seat but
didn’t allow you to get too comfortable and drop off there, a
nicety of design he had never noticed till now. Christ, his head
hurt. He could taste salt. When he raised his hand to dab at his
mouth, it came away bloody. He stared at it dully.
Headlights strafed the shelter. At first Laurie paid no heed.
The street was busy, buses and taxis crossing and recrossing one
another in the road ahead. A door clicked with a familiar sound,
and he got his head up. He blinked. His father’s driver, out of
uniform, hair rumpled, was standing on the pavement beside the
Daimler. “Oh, thank God,” Charlie said. “I’ve been driving around
the streets. Come here, son. Come on with me.”
So his
situation bore no resemblance to that of the homeless thousands,
Laurie corrected himself as Charlie helped him move, ashamed of
having exaggerated his own little earthquake to that extent. He sat
in a warm car. Someone—not family; Laurie was beginning to
understand how very little family had to do with it—had given
enough of a damn to come out and find him. Charlie was digging in
his pockets. He produced a large white handkerchief and switched
the map light on so that the Daimler lit up with a golden glow.
“Here,” he said. “Let’s have a look at you.”
No, not
family. Laurie remembered now a thousand times when this man or
Mrs. Gibson or one of the other household staff out in Suffolk had
come running after him, to pick him up when he fell over, ripped
his eight-year-old knees to shreds once again on the gravel, or
lost control of the half-broken horse his father had thought was
such a good joke to give him. Charlie, frowning so hard in the map
light Laurie thought his face would crack, was reaching for him
now, beginning to dab gingerly at his mouth.
“It’s okay, Charlie,” he said, managing a smile, taking the
handkerchief from him. “I’ll do that. I…I hate to ask this, but can
you lend me a few quid? I’ve come out without any money,
and…there’s somewhere I want to go.”
Charlie
stared at him. “You’re asking your own bloody chauffeur for bus
fare? There’s only one place you’re going, young man—”
“Oh, Charlie. Not home.”
“No. No, son. Mrs. Gibson and me, and the others, there’s none
of us can bear to stay there anymore. Gibson’s already given
notice, and…well, I’m taking you to the hospital, that’s all, and
we’ll see what happens from there.” Frowning even more grimly than
before, Charlie leaned to start the engine. “I never thought I’d
live to see the day.”
Gibson. Laurie stared at himself in
the visor mirror. The right side of his face was alien to him, the
wrong shape. When he touched it, a strange, sick pain went through
him. Oh, God. Charlie, tell her not to
leave. But he could hardly beg anyone else
to stay in the hell he himself was running from, could he? The
Daimler was purring, beginning its stately departure. “Charlie.
Have I ever…given you an order?”
Charlie
glanced at him. To Laurie’s dismay, there were tears on his face.
“No, sir,” he said. “You’ve always been a good lad. Kind and
polite.”
“I want to give one now. Never mind the hospital. Will you
drive me out to East Hill?” That was as close as Laurie was
prepared to let anyone come, even this good man, to his
destination. He could get the bus from there. “I’ve got friends
there. They’ll look after me, I promise.” He wasn’t much at giving
orders, he reflected, slumping back into the passenger seat,
letting his skull fall back against the headrest. He just wanted to
be away and, for a short while, to sleep. The need was
overwhelming. “Charlie, please.”
“All right.” Peripherally Laurie was aware of Charlie gazing
fiercely ahead through the windscreen, drumming his fingers on the
wheel. “East Hill, though, son? I never knew you have a friend
outside the Tube zone one.”
Laurie
smiled—or tried to. The effort sent a dull ache up into his eye
socket. He thought about his friends inside the zone and tried to
imagine seeking help from any of them tonight. Bleeding on their
marble Knightsbridge floors. “More fool me, then,” he muttered.
“Been keeping mixed company, Charlie.” He felt his eyes close and,
a moment later, a smooth, deep shift underneath him as Charlie put
the Daimler into gear.