Barbara Vine - The Chimney Sweeper's Boy

“And he’s still alive?”

“He was sixty this year. Born in 1937 and nineteen months old when his father, the chimney sweep, died. All Liam could tell me about him was that he was a schoolteacher in Plymouth.”

“In Plymouth. But then he and Dad … Look, Dad, all of us, we lived in the same county; Plymouth’s only about seventy miles away. And Dad worked in Plymouth at one time.”

“Maybe. So what? I don’t know any more than I’ve told you. I haven’t gotten around to looking Stephen up in a phone book. I could go to Dublin if you want, but it’ll cost you, and I don’t think I’ll get any more from Liam. Stephen is the next step.”

“How about Margaret and Mary?”

“Liam didn’t even know their names, only that there were two sisters and one of them had done something peculiar or different or whatever. He knew James and Desmond were dead and he thought John was, too. Oh, and he said the mother, his half sister—”

“My grandmother.”

“Your grandmother, right. He said he thought she’d married again.”

“Where in London was it the student nurse came to when she visited James?”

“Liam can’t remember. The girl herself—well, she’s fifty-five now—she married a Canadian and went to live in Nova Scotia.”

Sarah sat in silence for a moment. She was thinking of her father’s visits to Plymouth, notably a time when she was a child that he had been there to give a talk and sign copies of a newly published novel in a bookshop. If Stephen had gone there, would he have recognized his brother? Plymouth was a big city with a large population. How many people would have attended her father’s talk? A hundred, if he was lucky.

All this put a strain on her, seemed to take hold of her emotions and wring them out. “I’m going to open another bottle of wine.”

“Not for me,” he said, and then, astounding her, he added, “You drink too much.”

“I beg your pardon? That’s rich, coming from you.”

“I know I drank your gin, but it’s only when I’m with you I actually ever get a drink. But you don’t just drink when you’re with me, do you? Well, obviously you don’t. You drink like this all the time, and you shouldn’t—it’s bad for you. You’re beautiful and you’ll spoil your beauty.”

The only part of that she really heard—the earlier sentences passed over her—was the last. So that was how he saw her? She was surprised. But she didn’t open the wine. “I was forgetting—you have to get the last train.”

“I’ve missed it,” he said. “It went at eleven. Can you—I mean, could I kip down here?”

He had shocked her as much as if he had started taking his clothes off. Her instinct was to say a violent no. No, no, of course you can’t. Go to a hotel; I’ll pay. She got up and took the glasses to the kitchen, stood thinking, but thinking of nothing much except how she hated the idea. Then she walked back into the room and said, “Yes, yes, of course you can.” She made herself smile and even managed to pat his shoulder. “Of course you can stay—what else?”

If only she had two bathrooms. Suppose he used her toothbrush? But no one would do that. She said good night and to please turn off the lights, rushed into the bathroom, then rushed out again and into her bedroom, clutching her toothbrush.

It was better when her door was shut and much better when he put the lights out. She could pretend she was alone as usual. She got into bed. It was quite silent in the flat, with no sound but the occasional distant hum of traffic. The proof of Less Is More was on the bedside cabinet and she began to read her father’s last book.

Perhaps more than anything else could have done, the plot of this novel distracted her mind from the unwanted guest in the next room. Gerald Candless plunged directly into this narrative of a man who abruptly leaves his family without explanation for his departure, takes on a new identity and profession, and makes for himself a new life. In a series of flashbacks, he had his protagonist recall that former happy existence, the closely united family, the loving parents.

Overcome by his memories, Philip knows he must at least once return to the family home and experience its atmosphere, absorb what he is sure it still has but what he has lost. All these years, he has retained a key. He watches from the opposite side of the street, in a surge of emotion and pain sees his mother go out, and, once she is out of sight, lets himself into the house.

Sarah had reached this point when she fell asleep. It was more a dozing off, and she jerked herself awake again, turned the page, read another paragraph and then another. But she knew that if you are tired, it matters very little how interested you may be in something or how intensely you want to go on with it, sleep will get you. She had learned that in her student days. In a way, she was relieved, for if she could feel like this, the presence of Jason Thague in the flat couldn’t be seriously incommoding her, and that was her last thought when, having dropped the proof on the floor and turned off the lamp, she fell asleep.

At first, she thought it was a dream that woke her. Something heavy and alive lying beside her, an arm around her waist, a mouth against her cheek. She came back to consciousness, felt real skin, a real hand.… She sat up, screamed, “Get off me!”

She shoved him with all her strength, though strength wasn’t needed, he was so thin and light. She jumped up, kicked him, stood on the mattress kicking him, leaped off, pulling the quilt around her, cocooning herself in it.

“Get out of here, you fucking rapist,” she yelled at him. “Get out of my flat. Get out.”

One of them put the light on. It must have been Jason. He sat on the bed, blinking.

“Get out. Now.”

“I wouldn’t rape you, Sarah,” he said. “I wouldn’t know how to rape anyone.”

“Just go,” she said. “Please just get dressed and go.”

“I thought you liked me. You said you loved me. On the phone you said it, but I knew it was a joke. I’m not a fool. But I did think you liked me, and when you said I could stay, I thought you might—well, maybe not do much the first time, but something.…” To her horror, he began to cry. He put his head in his hands and sobbed.

“Oh God,” she said. “Oh God.”

“I’m so lonely, Sarah. And I’m hungry. When I played the Game and got it right I thought I’d proved myself to you. I’m so bloody lonely and I’m starving to death.”

“You don’t expect me to feed you, do you? Just get out. Get out now. ”

22

“Those who marry to escape something,” Oliver remarked, “usually find themselves in something worse.”

—HAND TO MOUTH

DRIVING HER UP TO OXFORD, GERALD TOLD SARAH the story about Cardinal Newman, whose father’s decision as to the university he should attend depended on which way the coachman chanced to bring the carriage around that fateful morning. If the horses had faced eastward, it would have been Cambridge, but, in fact, they faced westward, so it was to Oxford that Newman went.

Such last-minute decisions had for a long time not been feasible, Gerald said, though there had, of course, never been any doubt that his daughters would have the pick of any seats of learning available. Ursula, sitting in the front for form’s sake while Sarah and Hope were in the back, thought it unfortunate for a girl of seventeen and a girl of nearly sixteen to be exposed constantly to this kind of flattery, but it would be useless to say so. It was probably too late, anyway, and the damage, if damage there was, was done.