Chapter 8 #3
‘You’re a con artist!’ Alice shouted. ‘And I don’t care about college, or your cousin fixing me up with a place!’ She was almost laughing, her body shaking with anger. ‘Stay out of my life, you – you pervert!’
His face was a mixture of bafflement and petulance, as if he didn’t understand what the problem was. ‘I can’t stay out of your life. Your mother –’
‘Leave my mother out of this!’
‘I can’t, though – Allie –’
‘You treat her like a servant. You act like a lord. And you’re – you’re nothing ! You’re a washed-up second-rate writer who has to steal from other people.’
‘Shut your mouth. Shut up.’ His nostrils flared and his hand suddenly clamped around her windpipe, so she couldn’t breathe.
‘I don’t like young girls who make an exhibition of themselves.
Your stupid mad father was cracked in the head, you understand?
He died owing me the ten thousand bucks he’d begged me to lend him.
And he damn well ruined those orchards. He let everything go to hell.
Oh, you didn’t know that, did you, pretty Alice?
’ He moved closer. ‘I’m never gonna get that money back so why shouldn’t I take what’s mine another way?
Your dear, obedient mom will do anything for me.
I said anything; it’s quite remarkable, my dear.
I need a maid again, someone to care for Teddy.
I can’t do it by myself. And, since you’re the one Bob was building the business for – apples, dammit, the fellow must have been crazy, whoever made a fortune from apples ?
So tell me: he owes me, so why shouldn’t I take you?
Why shouldn’t I take you too, before you’re out of my hair?
’ He stared at her blank face. ‘Your dad’s the one who caused all this, sweetheart.
The guy who jumped in front of a train on a whim ’cause he couldn’t count properly.
It’s a kiss, Allie. You have to learn how to kiss; it’s neither here nor there.
’ He pressed his mouth to hers again, then released her, and his tongue slid back and forth in and out of his lips. ‘You’re so sweet – hey !’
With a final push Alice shoved him out of the way, so hard he staggered and fell against the wall. She ran across the road and down the winding lane that led to the gatehouse and Valhalla.
Her heart was thudding, blood pounding in her ears. At the entrance to the Valhalla Estate, she looked in at the gatehouse, seeing her own home as if she was a visitor. She kept on running. She had to try to see Teddy one last time. To tell her she was so, so sorry.
The Victrola was playing some old jazz song. ‘Teddy!’ she called out. ‘ Teddy! ’
As she got closer, she could hear the telephone ringing.
Teddy hated telephones: they made her anxious, and she would cry and shuffle about upstairs, whimpering.
Alice knew she had to stop the noise of it.
She flung open the front door and paused for a minute in the narrow wood-panelled hallway, catching her breath.
The ringing grew louder, and louder, but underneath it she could hear a sound of sobbing, of someone crying out.
‘Teddy!’ Alice called up to the second floor. ‘It’s fine, Teddy, I’m here!’
She went into the den, lined with books and photographs, warm and still in the afternoon sun. A fly, caught in a spider’s web, buzzed in the gaps between the ringing telephone. Alice bent over the telephone, panting, pausing for breath, then lifted the receiver.
‘Hello?’
There was a distant, roaring crackling sound, and a whooshing rush, as if she were travelling through time. And, then, a quiet, male voice. ‘Oh, hello,’ it said. ‘Can you hear me?’
Alice’s mouth was so dry she could hardly speak. She swallowed, and sat down on the window seat that ran around the room, where she’d sat and read books as a little girl while her father conducted his business with Mr Kynaston. ‘Who is this, please?’
‘Hello? Is that – is that Teddy Kynaston?’
Alice laughed, wildly. ‘Teddy’s not here.’ And then – suddenly – waves of static, the line so bad she could barely hear them.
‘I’m sorry to hear that,’ said the voice quietly. ‘It’s quite important I speak to her. I’m – from – land –’
‘I can’t hear you. England, did you say?’
‘Yes! I’m afraid the line’s terrible. I am sorry, but do you mind my asking if you know where she is?’
Alice paused, struggling for breath. ‘Why would you want to know that?’
‘I have a friend who wants to find out. Very much.’
The Victrola had stopped playing. Alice was certain Teddy, upstairs, could hear her. She said, ‘It’s hard to explain but she’s here all the time.’
‘Forgive me.’ He sounded beaten down. ‘Something’s getting lost in translation, or maybe it’s the line. Is she there?’
‘Oh, she’s here,’ said Alice.
‘Who’s with her?’
‘She lives with her brother,’ said Alice. ‘Listen, what do you want with her?’
‘I can’t say. Not over the telephone. I think it could change everything but – I say – her brother? Is he – cruel to her?’
She hesitated. ‘Teddy’s worth ten of him.’ A noise outside made her jump. ‘Oh biscuits. I’m sorry but I have to –’
‘Oh! Don’t,’ said the voice. ‘Are you all right?’
It was almost a relief to say, ‘I’m not all right, no.’
‘No, you don’t sound it, even taking into account your accent.’
‘I don’t have an accent,’ she said, and she laughed, properly laughed despite everything. ‘You do. Who are you? Why are you trying to get hold of Teddy?’
‘A friend from England said I should find her. And that I’d learn the truth if I did. And help her too.’ The voice gave a short sigh.
‘Who’s the friend? How does she know Teddy?’
‘It’s rather a long story, I’m afraid.’
‘I haven’t got time for a long story. Or a short story,’ she said. ‘I have to go. Listen, don’t come looking for Teddy. You won’t find anything here. Good luck –’
‘What’s your name?’ said the voice, clearer now, and urgent. ‘Please, just tell me your name.’
‘My name’s Alice. Alice Jansen,’ she said.
‘Where are you going, Alice Jansen?’ he asked, and there was something in his voice that meant she wanted to tell him everything, wanted to offload it on to him, lean against him. She wondered what he looked like, where he was, why there was so much sadness in his voice.
‘I’m going to St Mark’s Place,’ she said with a certainty she did not feel. ‘In the city.’ As she said it, she remembered Tag’s ruined face, his missing ear, his tired, kind eyes. She could hear his voice. ‘No. 5, St Mark’s Place. The East Village … It’s safe there.’
‘In New York City?’ he said. Alice gave an involuntary laugh of delight: his voice was Stewart Granger and David Niven, rolled into one.
‘I really like your accent, sorry,’ she said, by way of explanation, to hide how attractive she thought he sounded, because it was crazy to find someone’s voice attractive, wasn’t it? Then, embarrassed, she added, ‘Yes, that’s right. New York City.’
‘And do you know anyone, in St Mark’s Place?’ the stranger said.
‘I have a friend from home living there. He’s run away too. I have to get away from –’ She trailed off. Her throat was dry. ‘I don’t know.’
His faint voice was deep, with a humorous note of despair, that was what it was like. ‘The mess the older generation made? Something rather like that?’
‘Yes, that’s exactly it,’ she said, and she found she was smiling into the phone. ‘I have to get away from them. I need to be someplace other than here and the world’s on fire, and it’s all happening in New York. I want to figure out what to do next, you know?’
‘I do know.’
‘Listen, what’s your name? How old are you?’
‘I’m Tom,’ he said. ‘I’m Tom Raven, and I’m twenty-one and I feel like the world’s on fire. I had my head in the sand before. Alice – it’s weird, I feel as though I know you.’
His voice sounded so close then, and not as though he was on the other side of an ocean. Alice looked round the den, through the open door to Wilder’s study.
‘You won’t believe me, but I was thinking the same about you,’ she said, and she twisted the phone line around her fingers, pressing the receiver as close to her ear as she could, the better to hear his voice.
‘Hey, I’m not at home, I’m in someone else’s house, and I might have to hang up.
Tell me something about yourself in the meantime. ’
‘I grew up in a two-room cottage in the Scottish hills. I love Calypso music, all music, really, and I love drawing, and I have a tiny wooden house my father carved for me that’s my dearest possession in the world.’
‘Okay,’ she said, blinking, because she wanted him to understand she had been listening, that he was heard.
‘Let’s see if I have this straight. Scotland.
Calypso, that’s groovy. Wooden house. So I lost my dad two and a half years ago.
And I have a collection too. Of treasures.
Animals, and figurines, and keepsakes. But I keep breaking them by accident. ’
‘There are no accidents.’
‘Sometimes there are,’ she said. ‘Sometimes.’ She bit her lip, looking around the Kynaston den, at the photographs on the shelves, the fake images of a happy all-American family. ‘Tell me something else. Have you been in love?’
‘Yes,’ he said. His voice was quieter than ever. ‘How about you?’
‘Yes,’ she said, but at the same time she wondered if she was. She opened her mouth to ask him what had happened, and then she saw them out the den window. Her mother and Wilder Kynaston, coming down the drive together, hand in hand.
They stopped by the door. Wilder had his hand on her mother’s back. He moved it down to her rear and squeezed it, and with the other hand took her fingers and kissed them, then her neck, and her face.
Alice could not tear her eyes away from them. Bile rose in her throat and she wondered if she might be sick, vomit up the rich heavy meal that sat like fat and stones in her stomach.
She heard the stranger on the other end of the line clear his throat. ‘Alice,’ he said. ‘Alice?’
‘Yes?’