Donna Tartt - The Secret History

'Oh, God,' said Francis, closing his eyes. 'Does it hurt?'

'No,' she said briskly, but I knew it did; I could feel her trembling and her face had gone white.

Suddenly Henry was there, too, leaning over her. 'Put your arm around my neck,' he said; deftly he whisked her up, as lightly as if she were made of straw, one arm under her head and the other beneath her knees. 'Francis, run get the first-aid kit out of your car. We'll meet you halfway.'

'All right,' said Francis, glad to be told what to do, and started splashing for the bank.

'Henry, put me down. I'm bleeding all over you.'

He didn't pay any attention to her. 'Here, Richard,' he said, 'get that sock and tie it around her ankle.'

It was the first time I had even thought of a tourniquet; some kind of doctor I would have made. 'Too tight?' I asked her.

'That's fine. Henry, I wish you'd put me down. I'm too heavy for you.'

He smiled at her. There was a slight chip in one of his front teeth I'd never noticed before; it gave his smile a very engaging quality. 'You're light as a feather,' he said.

Sometimes, when there's been an accident and reality is too sudden and strange to comprehend, the surreal will take over.

Action slows to a dreamlike glide, frame by frame; the motion of a hand, a sentence spoken, fills an eternity. Little things – a cricket on a stem, the veined branches on a leaf- are magnified, brought from the background in achingly clear focus. And that was what happened then, walking over the meadow to the house.

It was like a painting too vivid to be real – every pebble, every blade of grass sharply defined, the sky so blue it hurt me to look at it. Camilla was limp in Henry's arms, her head thrown back like a dead girl's, and the curve of her throat beautiful and lifeless.

The hem of her dress fluttered abstractly in the breeze. Henry's trousers were spattered with drops the size of quarters, too red to be blood, as if he'd had a paintbrush slung at him. In the overwhelming stillness, between our echoless footsteps, the pulse sang thin and fast in my ears.

Charles skidded down the hill, barefoot, still in his bathrobe, Francis at his heels. Henry knelt and set her on the grass, and she raised herself on her elbows.

'Camilla, are you dead?' said Charles, breathless, as he dropped to the ground to look at the wound.

'Somebody,' said Francis, unrolling a length of bandage, 'is going to have to take that glass out of her foot.'

'Want me to try?' said Charles, looking up at her.

'Be careful.'

Charles, her heel in his hand, caught the glass between thumb and forefinger and pulled gently. Camilla caught her breath in a quick, wincing gasp.

Charles drew back like he'd been scalded. He made as if to touch her foot again, but he couldn't quite bring himself to do it. His fingertips were wet with blood.

'Well, go on,' said Camilla, her voice fairly steady.

'I can't do it. I'm afraid I'll hurt you.'

'It hurts anyway.'

'I can't,' Charles said miserably, looking up at her.

'Get out of the way,' said Henry impatiently, and he knelt quickly and took her foot in his hand.

Charles turned away; he was almost as white as she was, and I wondered if that old story was true, that one twin felt pain when the other was injured.

Camilla flinched, her eyes wide; Henry held up the curved piece of glass in one bloody hand. 'Consummatum est,' he said.

Francis set to work with the iodine and the bandages.

'My God,' I said, picking up the red-stained shard and holding it to the light.

'Good girl,' said Francis, winding the bandages around the arch of her foot. Like most hypochondriacs, he had an oddly soothing bedside manner. 'Look at you. You didn't even cry.'

'It didn't hurt that much.'

'The hell it didn't,' Francis said. 'You were really brave.'

Henry stood up. 'She was brave,' he said.

Late that afternoon, Charles and I were sitting on the porch. It had turned suddenly cold; the sky was brilliantly sunny but the wind was up. Mr Hatch had come inside to start a fire, and I smelled a faint tang of wood smoke. Francis was inside, too, starting dinner; he was singing, and his high, clear voice, slightly out of key, floated out the kitchen window.

Camilla's cut hadn't been a serious one. Francis drove her to the emergency room – Bunny went, too, because he was annoyed at having slept through the excitement – and in an hour she was back, with six stitches in her foot, a bandage, and a bottle of Tylenol with codeine. Now Bunny and Henry were out playing croquet and she was with them, hopping around on her good foot and the toe of the other with a skipping gait that, from the porch, looked oddly jaunty.

Charles and I were drinking whiskey and soda. He had been trying to teach me to play piquet ('because it's what Rawdon Crawley plays in Vanity Fair') but I was a slow learner and the cards lay abandoned.

Charles took a sip of his drink. He hadn't bothered to dress all day. 'I wish we didn't have to go back to Hampden tomorrow,' he said.

'I wish we never had to go back,' I said. 'I wish we lived here.'

'Well, maybe we can.'

'What?'

'I don't mean now. But maybe we could. After school.'

'How's that?'

He shrugged. 'Well, Francis's aunt won't sell the house because she wants to keep it in the family. Francis could get it no from her for next to nothing when he turns twenty-one. And even if he couldn't, Henry has more money than he knows what to do with. They could go in together and buy it. Easy,' I was startled by this pragmatic answer.

'I mean, all Henry wants to do when he finishes school, if he finishes, is to find some place where he can write his books and study the Twelve Great Cultures.'

'What do you mean, if he finishes?'

'I mean, he may not want to. He may get bored. He's talked about leaving before. There's no reason he's got to be here, and he's surely never going to have a job.'

'You think not?' I said, curious; I had always pictured Henry teaching Greek, in some forlorn but excellent college out in the Midwest.

Charles snorted. 'Certainly not. Why should he? He doesn't need the money, and he'd make a terrible teacher. And Francis has never worked in his life. I guess he could live with his mother, except he can't stand that husband of hers. He'd like it better here. Julian wouldn't be far away, either.'

I took a sip of my drink and looked out at the faraway figures on the lawn. Bunny, hair falling into his eyes, was preparing to make a shot, flexing the mallet and shifting back and forth on his feet like a professional golfer.

'Does Julian have any family?' I said.

'No,' said Charles, his mouth full of ice. 'He has some nephews but he hates them. Look at this, would you,' he said suddenly, half rising from his chair.

I looked. Across the lawn, Bunny had finally made his shot; the ball went wide of the sixth and seventh arches but, incredibly, hit the turning stake.

'Watch,' I said. 'I bet he'll try for another shot.'

'He won't get it, though,' said Charles, sitting down again, his eyes still on the lawn. 'Look at Henry. He's putting his foot down,' in Henry was pointing at the neglected arches and, even at that distance, I could tell he was quoting from the rule book; faintly, we could hear Bunny's startled cries of protest.

'My hangover's about gone,' Charles said presently.

'Mine, too,' I said. The light on the lawn was golden, casting long velvety shadows, and the cloudy, radiant sky was straight out of Constable; though I didn't want to admit it, I was about half-drunk.

We were quiet for a while, watching. From the lawn I could hear the faint pock of mallet against croquet ball; from the window, above the clatter of pots and the slamming of cabinets, Francis was singing, as though it was the happiest song in the world:' "We are little black sheep who have gone astray… Baa baa baa…