Benjamin Black - A Death in Summer

But she did not think Teddy was the other way inclined, either.

He was hirsute and muscular, like his father, but about two-thirds the size, a hairy little fellow with a low forehead and a square chin. He had meltingly soft brown eyes, again like his father, and a bandy gait that was oddly endearing. His temper was terrible and he was quick to take offense, which made him impossible, sometimes. He despised himself, Dannie supposed, but that hardly made him unique.

He was wicked, she knew, wicked, and probably dangerous. She indulged herself in him, as she might in some awful, secret sin. He made her feel gleeful-that was the only word-and at the same time ashamed. Even the shame, though, was enjoyable. Just to be with Teddy was already to have gone too far. He was like a child, willful and cruel, and in his company she allowed herself to be childish, too. Teddy was dirty, and she could be dirty with him.

She knew she should not have told him about the afternoon on Howth Head with David Sinclair and Phoebe Griffin. But she also knew that Teddy was fascinated by the things other people did, the simple things that make up a life, for those who are capable of living. He was like a creature from another planet, charmed and baffled by the doings of these earthlings among whom he was forced to carry on his precarious existence.

They were on an outing of their own, she and Teddy, when she described the visit to Howth to him in hilarious detail. She knew she was betraying David Sinclair by talking like this but she could not stop herself-it was a guilty pleasure, like wetting the bed when she was little.

Teddy had a Morgan that his parents had given him for a present on his twenty-first. It was a gorgeous little car, green like a scarab beetle, with cream-colored leather upholstery and spoked wheels. In it they would spend happy afternoons cruising the outskirts of the city with the top down, Dannie with a wind-blown silk scarf at her neck and Teddy wearing a cravat and Italian sunglasses. They favored the more characterless suburbs for these expotitions, as they called them-she was Pooh Bear and he was Eeyore-where the lower classes lived, dreary new housing estates of pebble-dashed three-ups, two-downs that were all alike, or prewar council estates struggling to become gentrified, in which the Morgan must have appeared as outlandish and expensive as a spaceship. They would point out to each other the more pathetic efforts the householders had made to add a bit of class to their properties, the fancy nameplates screwed to wrought-iron gates, with names like Dunroamin, or Lisieux, or St. Jude’s; the venetian blinds proudly displayed in every single window, no matter how tiny or narrow; the preposterous built-on porches, with leaded panes of stained glass and miniature plaster statues of the Sacred Heart or the Blessed Virgin or the Little Flower presiding in niches over the front door. And then there were the garden ornaments, the fake fountains, the plastic Bambis, the jolly, red-cheeked gnomes peeping out among the beds of hydrangeas and snapdragons and phlox. Oh, how they laughed at all this, a hand pressed over their mouths and their eyes bulging. And how soiled this made Dannie feel, how gloriously soiled.

They played amusing games. They would stop outside a house where a pensioner was mowing the lawn, and simply sit and stare at him until he took fright and fled indoors, where they would see him, a reddened old nose and one wild eye, lurking behind the lace curtains like some burrowing creature scared into its hole. Or they would fix on a housewife coming home from the shops loaded down with bags of groceries, and drive along in first gear at a walking pace a couple of yards behind her. Children they tended to leave in peace-it was not so long since they had been children themselves, and they remembered what it was like-but now and then they would pull up at a curb and Dannie would ask the way of a fat boy in bulging short pants, or a washed-out girl in pigtails, speaking to them not in English but in French, and pretending to be puzzled and offended that they did not understand her. When they tired of these games they would drive back into the city and stop for afternoon tea at the Shelbourne or the Hibernian, and Teddy would amuse himself by submerging halfpennies in the sugar bowls and the little pots of jam, or squashing out cigarette butts under the little vases of flowers that adorned the tables.

Today Teddy was agog to hear every detail of the afternoon in Howth. He knew David Sinclair slightly, and professed to think him altogether too slippery and sly, “like all the Jews,” as he said darkly; Phoebe he had not met, but he clapped his hands and crowed in delight at Dannie’s malicious description of her, the little pale pinched face and the mouse claws, the bobbed black hair, the sort of dirndl thing she had worn with the elasticated bodice and convent girl’s lace collar.

“But weren’t they on a date?” Teddy asked. “Why did Sinclair bring you along?”

Dannie paused. She did not like the dismissive way he said it. Why would David not ask her to come with him and Phoebe, even if it was a date? “It wasn’t like that,” she said sulkily. “It wasn’t a date date.”

They were driving slowly down a long road of featureless houses somewhere in Finglas, she thought it was, or Cabra, maybe, on the lookout for likely victims to follow and stare at.

“Do you think they’re-you know-doing it?” Teddy asked.

“She doesn’t seem the type. Besides, I think something happened to her, in America.”

“What sort of something?” Teddy asked. He was wearing a blue yachting blazer with brass buttons and a crest on the pocket, and fawn slacks. She had noticed that he had begun to use perfume, though she supposed he would say it was shaving lotion.

“I think she might have been…” She hesitated. This was too much, too much; she should stop now and say not another word on the subject.

“Might have been what?” Teddy demanded.

“Well”-she could not stop-“ravished, I think.”

Teddy’s brown eyes widened to the size of pennies. “Ravished?” he said, in a hoarse whisper. “Do tell.”

“Can’t,” she said. “Don’t know. It was just a remark she made, about being caught in a car with somebody when she was over there. It was years ago. As soon as she saw I was interested she changed the subject.”

Teddy pouted disappointedly. “Did you ask the Rabbi Sinclair?”

“Did I ask him what?”

“If they’re doing it or not!”

“Of course I didn’t. I suppose you would have.”

“I certainly would.”

There was nothing Teddy would not ask about, nothing he would not ferret into, no matter how private or painful. He had got her to describe to him that Sunday morning at Brooklands, the blood, and the horror. He had envied her; she had seen it in his eyes, the almost yearning expression in them.

“Oh, look,” he said now, urgently, “look at the fat lady hanging up her bloomers on the clothesline-let’s pull over and have a good gander at her.” He drew the car to the curb and stopped. The woman had not noticed them yet. She had a clutch of clothes-pegs in her mouth. “A laundry line on the front lawn,” Teddy murmured. “That’s a new one.”

Dannie was glad that he was diverted. She was feeling more and more guilty for talking as she had. She liked Phoebe; Phoebe was funny, in a clever, understated way, a way that Dannie could never be. And Phoebe was fond of David Sinclair, that was obvious, and perhaps he was fond of her, though it was always hard to tell, with David. She wanted him to be happy. She wondered if she might be a little in love with him herself. But in that case would she not be jealous of Phoebe? She knew she did not understand these things, love, and passion, and wanting someone. That had all been stopped in her, long ago, tied off, the way a doctor would tie off her tubes so as to keep her from having babies. In fact, that was a thing she was going to have done as soon as she could find somewhere to go; it would have to be in London, she supposed. She would ask Francoise; it was the kind of thing Francoise would know about.