Girl From the South (v5) Read online

  ‘That’s never water too—’

  ‘No way,’ William said. ‘Mega vodka and tonic.’

  He sat down and picked his glass up, raising it towards her.

  ‘Things OK?’

  ‘Not really,’ Tilly said.

  ‘I hope,’ William said, taking a swallow, ‘that you miss me.’

  ‘I do,’ Tilly said.

  ‘So Gillon—’

  ‘She’s great,’ Tilly said. ‘She’s fine. She’s no trouble. A lot of the time you wouldn’t know she was there.’

  ‘Unlike me.’

  ‘Very unlike you.’

  William said, ‘So are we back to Henry?’

  Tilly nodded. She picked up her glass and drank some water.

  ‘Why,’ William said, ‘don’t you just ask him?’

  She looked up.

  ‘To – to marry me?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I can’t,’ Tilly said.

  ‘Why? In case he says no?’

  ‘Yes. And – and something else.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘If,’ Tilly said, ‘if he said “Yes”, or even “Oh all right”, then I’d feel it would be up to me to make a go of it. I’d feel it was my responsibility, that I’d got to help him along the path that I’d chosen. I want – oh I want this to be something we do together because we both long for it—’ She stopped, and then she said, ‘I’m so terrified of being without him.’

  ‘Why?’ William said. He pushed the lemon slice in his drink under the surface. ‘Habit?’

  She shook her head.

  ‘No. Not that. Because of what I might become, without him.’

  ‘Utter balls,’ William said.

  ‘You can’t know,’ Tilly said. ‘You’ve never been in a long relationship.’

  ‘Excuse me,’ William said, ‘but I have feelings too, you know. I’m not just a shag machine.’

  ‘Sorry.’

  He leaned forward a little.

  ‘Tilly?’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘This isn’t very easy to say, but I don’t think Henry is going to propose to you.’

  Tilly looked down at her lap.

  ‘He loves you,’ William said, ‘he admires you, he’s proud of you, all that stuff, but—’

  ‘Is it me?’ Tilly said. ‘Or is it marriage?’

  ‘I’d go for marriage.’

  ‘But—’

  ‘Maybe it’s his parents,’ William said.

  ‘But I’m not put off marriage because my parents couldn’t work it out!’

  ‘You’re a different person.’

  ‘William,’ Tilly said, ‘he won’t get on with anything. He won’t stir himself to finish anything, reach out for anything, decide anything—’ She broke off and put her hands over her face.

  ‘Are you going to cry?’

  ‘No,’ Tilly said. She took her hands away. ‘I’m way past crying.’

  ‘Look,’ William said, ‘you’re not going to change anything, not Henry, not where you’ve got to, nothing.’ He looked at her and then he said, in a completely different tone, ‘You’re gorgeous, Tilly.’

  She gave a tiny shiver.

  ‘I don’t feel very gorgeous—’

  ‘Well, you are,’ William said in his normal voice. ‘Too gorgeous to sit around waiting for something to happen that won’t.’

  She gave him a quick glance.

  ‘Drastic action?’

  ‘Yup.’

  ‘How drastic?’

  ‘Leave,’ William said.

  ‘But I love him, William. I love him. I want to be with him.’

  ‘And be miserable?’

  ‘No. Not miserable. Not this miserable.’

  ‘There you go,’ William said.

  Tilly stared at the table top.

  ‘D’you mean leave London, find a new job, everything?’

  He shrugged.

  ‘Maybe.’

  She wrapped her arms around herself as if she were cold.

  ‘Scary—’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Do I tell him?’

  ‘Up to you,’ William said. ‘I wouldn’t, probably, until I knew where I was going.’

  ‘You’re braver than me—’

  ‘Nope,’ he said, ‘I’m just the one who doesn’t have to do it, so I’m free to theorize.’

  Tilly unwrapped her arms.

  ‘Thank you.’

  ‘No need. You’ll probably ignore me anyway.’

  ‘I won’t.’

  He reached out and took her nearest hand. Then he turned it over and for a moment rubbed his thumb gently back and forth along the inside of her wrist.

  ‘Any time,’ William said, and gave her hand back.

  Living in Parson’s Green had given Gillon courage. Knowing that a pleasant room awaited her, that Tilly at least was openly glad of her company, sent her off into the city – to work, to movies, to the theatre, to galleries-with a confidence she had not felt before. Knowing that she lived in an English apartment with English people gave her the obscure sense that in some minute way she had begun to belong, had ceased to be, like the Hopkirk children, an outsider with her face pressed against the smeary glass, peering in. She began to feel, too, a small pride in getting used to the random English way of doing things, of describing things, to English food, to the lack of uniformity in appearance or thought or life goals. Some nights, on the journey back from Camden on the Underground, she wondered if other people – if they observed her at all – thought that she might be English, so carelessly familiar had she become with the tunnels and escalators and staircases of the journey, so deeply absorbed could she seem to be in an English novel, an English newspaper. What had appeared to her, only two months before, as alien to the point of hostility now had an almost exotic appeal, even on the Northern Line. One night, changing trains at Embankment station and becoming involved in some good-humoured banter over dropped coins while buying a tube of mints, Gillon realized that she was enjoying herself, that there were moments, even stretches of hours together, when she could truthfully tell herself that she was happy. Happier, anyway, than she’d been for a long, long time.

  ‘It might be,’ she told Tilly with some diffidence, ‘because I don’t feel I’m letting anyone down.’

  Tilly was halving an avocado for them to share.

  ‘Come again?’

  ‘At home,’ Gillon said, leaning her hands on the kitchen table, ‘they worry about me because I’m not married, I don’t have a career, I don’t have a baby. Here, there’s no one to see or care what I do or don’t have.’

  Tilly flicked the stone out of the pear with her knife. It rolled solidly away across the table.

  ‘I rather like the idea of being worried over. My mother – and my father, I suppose – want things for me, but they always seem to be the things they want for themselves anyway. I’m not sure they’re so anxious that I won’t get what I want.’

  ‘It’s not so different,’ Gillon said. ‘Families just want you to be tidy. They don’t want you breaking up a pattern, making a mess. Maybe I’m just having a break from that obligation.’

  ‘But you’ll still go home for the baby—’

  ‘I thought I wouldn’t. But I will. I don’t – I don’t want to seem too obvious—’

  ‘No.’

  ‘And I want to know I’m strong enough to do it.’

  Tilly began to pour oil and vinegar into a small cup.

  ‘Strong enough—’

  ‘Yes.’

  Tilly looked across at her.

  ‘It all takes so much courage, doesn’t it, so much effort, so much striving. What about the women who just get to be looked after, the ones who seem to get decided for, cherished, protected—’

  Gillon bent her head.

  ‘I guess there’s a price to pay for that too.’

  If Tilly was alone in the flat, Gillon spent time with her. If Henry was there too, she took care to absent herself. He was friendly to her,
but wary as if he was not sure how to treat her since she was, after all, this hybrid of rent-payer, stranger and part-friend. She was aware that Tilly had issued instructions to him about the state of the bathroom and she had tried to indicate that she would be deeply embarrassed if they altered their pattern of living in any way whatsoever to accommodate her presence. But she was aware of something else in Henry far beyond his awkwardness in her company, which was some huge unhappy energy barely contained within him, some deep misery endlessly pacing its cage. This consciousness made her instinctively give him a wide berth in case, inadvertently, she exacerbated or exposed his condition, but it also caused her to respect him in a way that much surprised her, especially after their initial meeting. The word ‘passion’ came into Gillon’s mind sometimes when she glanced-she never looked – at Henry, and she felt a small awe at the depth of the feeling that must be gripping him, and the courage it must take not to be engulfed by it. If they were in the flat together, even if Tilly were there too, Gillon trod round Henry as lightly and circumspectly as one might tiptoe round a sleeping bear.

  When she found him at home in the middle of a weekday afternoon, she was much disconcerted. She had her period, heavily, and by the early afternoon was so worn down by stomach cramps and headaches that she had been forced to interrupt Madeleine at her microscope and ask to be allowed to go.

  ‘Of course,’ Madeleine said, not looking up. ‘Of course, go.’

  She sat on the tube, feeling invalidish and grubby, holding her bag across her belly like something that Grandmama used to describe as one of the winter bedtime comforts of her East Battery childhood, a hot brick wrapped in flannel in the foot of the bed. She walked from Parson’s Green station slightly stooped over the discomfort, thinking about the bed that lay waiting for her, the blue chequered pillow, the way the afternoon light would filter through the drawn curtains making her feel comfortably distanced from the hum of the still-working world outside.

  But Henry was in the sitting room. Gillon had thought, because Tilly had told her, that he was going down to a famous bird sanctuary in the West Country to look at wild geese. But he was, instead, asleep on the sofa, one arm flung above his head, the other loosely lying across a dishevelled heap of sheets of newspaper piled on his chest.

  Gillon looked at him for a long minute, longer than she intended. Then she took a noiseless step backwards. Henry opened his eyes.

  Gillon whispered, ‘I didn’t mean to wake you—’

  He gazed at her, not taking her in.

  ‘What time is it?’

  She looked at her wrist.

  ‘Gone three.’

  He swung himself upright, scattering newspaper. He put his head in his hands.

  ‘God—’

  ‘I had a headache,’ Gillon said. ‘So I came back early. I’m going to bed.’

  He turned to look at her.

  ‘Would you like some tea?’

  ‘No, thanks.’

  ‘Water?’

  ‘It’s OK,’ Gillon said. ‘I can get it myself.’

  Henry stood up. He gave himself a shake and began to push folds of his shirt back into the waistband of his jeans.

  ‘Can I get you some paracetamol?’

  ‘I have some, thank you,’ Gillon said. She paused and then she added, ‘I only came back because I thought you’d be out today.’

  ‘Cancelled,’ Henry said. ‘I was just trying to sleep off some frustration.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Gillon said. She lowered her bag to the floor. ‘I’ll just get some water—’

  ‘I’ll get it,’ Henry said. He went behind the sofa towards the kitchen. ‘It was a place called Slimbridge. Very famous in the UK. I was looking forward to it.’

  Gillon waited in the doorway. She heard the sound of the fridge door opening and then that of liquid pouring into a glass. Henry appeared holding a tumbler.

  ‘Here.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  ‘I’m sorry about the headache.’

  She inclined her head a little.

  ‘I’m sorry about Slimbridge.’

  He gave a little shrug.

  ‘I love those places.’

  ‘Wetlands?’

  ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘I love that kind of water, that sense of space and distance.’

  Gillon took a mouthful of water. She leaned against the doorframe.

  ‘We have wonderful wetlands. At home.’

  Henry looked vaguely out of the window.

  ‘Do you?’

  ‘Something called the Ace Basin. Just a little ways down the coast from Charleston, maybe an hour. It’s kind of special because it’s a mixture of salt and fresh water. Swampy.’

  Henry turned his head back.

  ‘The Ace Basin—’

  ‘Ibis,’ Gillon said. ‘Egrets, anhingas—’

  ‘Do you know about birds?’

  ‘My father does,’ Gillon said. ‘My father has a little place on Edisto Island. He went there for whole summers when he was a boy. There wasn’t even a bridge; they had to be ferried over. The only thing my grandmother didn’t take to Edisto for the summer was her piano.’

  ‘Anhingas,’ Henry said. ‘I’ve never seen an anhinga.’

  Gillon looked straight at him.

  ‘There’s sweet grass,’ she said. ‘The Gullah women make beautiful baskets out of sweet grass. And sea oats. I love sea oats. You should see sea oats blowing in silhouette against a sunset.’

  Henry sat down on the nearest arm of the sofa.

  ‘It sounds wonderful.’

  ‘It is,’ Gillon said. ‘We kids always knew about it because my father was so keen. Thing is, the wetlands are the Carolina lowcountry’s true environment. My father says they are a pristine estuarine ecosystem.’ She stopped. She said, ‘I don’t want to lecture you.’

  ‘Lecture me,’ Henry said. He was leaning slightly towards her.

  She gave a little gesture with her water glass.

  ‘There’s swamps and creeks,’ she said. ‘There’s alligators and bald eagles and white-tails and loggerhead turtles. A lot of the old rice fields have just reverted to wetlands, gone feral, and the wildlife just love it.’ And then she said, quite without meaning to, ‘Daddy’d take you out with him. Any day.’

  Henry swallowed.

  ‘He would?’

  Gillon nodded. Confusion was blurring her headache.

  ‘Sure.’

  ‘D’you mean that?’

  ‘Sure,’ she said again.

  ‘If I went to Charleston,’ Henry said, ‘you mean your father might be prepared to introduce me to – well, to people and places?’

  Gillon felt herself recovering slightly.

  She said, ‘You and Tilly have been real good to me. He’d be glad to help.’

  ‘Goodness,’ Henry said. He stood up. He smiled at her. ‘This is amazing.’

  ‘Maybe it’s just an idea—’

  ‘Or,’ he said, ‘the idea?’

  ‘The idea?’

  ‘The one I need,’ he said. ‘The one to get things going, break up the jam.’

  ‘Oh OK,’ she said, pleased and disconcerted.

  He smiled again.

  ‘Thank you,’ he said, ‘thank you,’ and then he said, ‘You should get that headache to bed,’ and touched her very briefly on the shoulder. She turned away and went down the hallway to her room. When she was inside, she leaned against the closed door and put her hand on her shoulder where his had fleetingly been, and pressed down hard.

  Beside her, Henry lay very still, but Tilly knew he wasn’t sleeping. Usually after sex he slept at once, rolled against her, his upper arm heavy and imprisoning across her. But tonight he had rolled away from her and was lying still, very lightly still in the manner of one who is still thinking, still alert. Tilly turned her head in the dim summer night light and saw his outline beside her, head, ear, hunched shoulder, familiar and far away all at once.

  Tilly gave a tiny sigh. It had been a good evening, a hap
py evening, one of the best evenings they’d had for months. Henry seemed better, more buoyant. He’d cooked for them both, pasta with clams and mushrooms, and put a candle on the table and offered her wine which had been hard to refuse.

  ‘Come on, Tilly.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘You want it—’

  ‘Of course I do!’

  ‘Well, then—’

  ‘Not for a month,’ Tilly said. ‘Not a drop for a month.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Gillon.’

  ‘Gillon?’

  ‘She shamed me, rather. She hardly drinks at all. I thought – well, I thought I’d try not to, for a bit—’

  ‘Impressive,’ he said and put the bottle on the kitchen counter.

  ‘Aren’t you going to?’

  ‘Nope,’ he said. He smiled at her. ‘Anything you can do—’

  She’d smiled back. She’d smiled and thought of all the things she wanted to say, burned to say, but shrank from in case the mood was broken, in case this evening heralded something better, something easier, a period in which, instead of waiting and longing for Henry to make a move, he actually took the initiative and moved of his own accord. She looked at him now and then, intently but not for too long, to see if she could detect in his face, his expression, something that might give her true hope, true confidence, to see if she could detect any evidence of his having resolved anything, come to any decision. It was so hard, she thought, spearing a piece of mushroom, to tread the line between concern and nagging, to balance your own hankering need to know where you stood with the absolute requirement to respect someone else’s need not to be badgered. All this reverence for other people’s spaces, all this deference to other people’s arbitrariness and laziness, all this obligation not to invade or trespass or even assume – what does it do to those of us who do play by the rules, who do submit to other people’s perceived right, except leave us gasping and bewildered on the sidelines, powerless to exert any of our own rights in return?

  Henry had talked easily during supper. It was hard for Tilly to concentrate on account of wondering all the time what, if anything, would happen next. What did happen followed a pattern that she used to be able to fling herself into wholeheartedly in those blessed past days when she wasn’t always looking for more than Henry seemed to be – he would clear the dishes while she had a shower and then he would join her in the shower and carry her, sometimes still dripping, back to their bedroom, back to the bed they had bought together, six years ago now, in a January sale at Heal’s and believed such a purchase to be a momentous omen for the future. For their future.