Barbara Vine - The Chimney Sweeper's Boy

“Sarah, are you sure that’s wise when you’re going to drive to Barnstaple?”

“I can take care of myself,” said Sarah. “Don’t you worry about me.”

Tyger wasn’t there. Rosie had a new man, Neil, or perhaps he was just a new companion for the evening. From the moment she got there, from before she got there, Sarah was afraid Adam wouldn’t come. That Rosie had said he would made no difference. Not coming after all might only be the next step in the game of tease and rudeness, disappointment and renewed expectation, the ultimate playing of hard to get.

She kept to whiskey. Her mouth left a blue imprint on the glass. After half an hour, she went to the ladies’ room and, looking at herself in the mirror, thought she looked like someone who has been too long in a cold swimming pool, white-faced, lilac-lipped. When she got back to the table, she told herself, he would be there. She delayed, pushing her fingers through her alreadytangled hair, applying more blue lipstick. But when she got back to the table, he would be there. He wasn’t. Vicky had begun talking about where they should go on to. Barnstaple was such a hopeless place. Why didn’t they all move to London? If they were in London, where lucky Sarah lived and lucky Adam lived, there would be a hundred places to go to; there would be infinite choice. Someone suggested a wine bar that stayed open till midnight. Someone else came up with five fresh drinks on a tray. Alexander said, “Why not eat here?” and everyone started consulting the menu. Sarah couldn’t face food.

Their plates came, the usual pub possibilities, a plowman’s, fish and chips, chicken and chips, all crowded onto the too-small table with sauce bottles and a basket of chopped-up French bread. Sarah picked at the bread, poured herself more wine, then more. She began thinking of what to do if he didn’t come. It was nearly ten. She hadn’t spoken for an hour, apart from saying yes and no. If he didn’t come, it would just be a repetition of last week. But she couldn’t face the lonely drive back, the dark house, her mother there and not her father.

Perhaps there was something Adam expected her to do. Go to the cottage, ring the doorbell, be insulted by him, turned away, then meet five minutes later outside in the dark. Or perhaps he was driving her to do the dreadful thing, the humiliating thing, go home and try again the next week and the next, be driven to phone him in London. But how long could she do that? And wouldn’t such compliance with his wishes defeat the object, since it was antagonism and hostility that he desired as much as she?

She looked up and saw him come in by the side door. In a single moment, a second, her fear and doubt were gone. Heat flooded her, rushed up to her head, so that the beating blood sounded in her ears like the waves of the sea. One rational thought did come, that it was strange, inexplicable, how the sight of someone, not his voice or his touch or his presence but just the distant sight of him, could bring such arousal. She was almost afraid of her own body, so nearly out of control, behaving as it should not now but only later, in his arms, under his hands. For the first time that she could remember, she was aware of gasping involuntarily. Alexander looked at her, raised his eyebrows.

She kept herself sane enough to be thankful they must think her reaction one of trepidation at Adam’s arrival. He came up and stood at the already-full table, said a general “Hi.” He didn’t look at her; she knew he wouldn’t. Rosie moved to the left, Vicky to the right; he pulled up a chair between them and sat down.

“This is Neil,” Rosie said.

“Hi, Neil.”

“We were talking about where to go on to.”

“You always are,” he said.

“Right. Have you got any ideas?”

“There isn’t anywhere.”

“There’s the club. There’s that new wine bar.”

“It won’t affect me, anyway,” he said. “I can’t stop. I only came in for a quick drink.”

He turned upon her a cold, indifferent glance. She returned it. She was so sick with desire that she wondered if her legs would carry her. When he had drunk that drink, he would go and she would have to follow him. The licensee would call time. Suppose she couldn’t get up, couldn’t walk? His cold eyes met hers again. He wanted her to begin. She was to start the exchange that would grow more and more acrimonious, insulting, unbearably exciting.

She said, surprised that she had a voice, “Have you got a date, Adam?”

“What?”

She repeated it, “I asked you if you’d got a date.” He shook his head. It was a movement that implied the impossibility of understanding her, the total mystery of her thought processes. The others had become tense. To her astonishment, she felt Rosie reach for her hand under the table and squeeze it. Adam did the entirely unexpected. He felt in one of the pockets of his voluminous greatcoat and pulled out a book, a paperback, which he threw onto the table. A glass fell over and red wine trickled between the plates, dripped onto the floor. Vicky started mopping it up with a handful of paper napkins.

The book was one of her father’s, Phantom Listeners.

It was dog-eared, the cover with its design of huddled ghosts alarmed by the dawn, curled at the corners and bruised. The wine had splashed its spine, leaving blood-colored drops on the black moth. Sarah put her hand up to her mouth, as if warding off a blow.

“I picked it up off a stall in the flea market,” he said, “for thirty pee. If any of you want to read it, you’re welcome. If you can get through it. I couldn’t.” He slowly turned his head and let his eyes travel from her face, where a blush was mounting, down her body. “You, of course, will already have had that dubious experience.”

She was stunned, had nothing to say, felt the tightening pressure of Rosie’s unwanted, unneeded hand.

“The renowned novelist was something of a pompous old git, wouldn’t you say? Something of a pretentious nerd? I suppose there’s a kind of distinction in writing nineteen books, each one more boring than the last.”

Alexander said, “Adam.”

Simultaneously, Vicky said, “Look, this is embarrassing. Didn’t you know Gerald Candless was Sarah’s dad?”

“There wouldn’t be much point in saying it if he wasn’t, would there? She doesn’t look much like him, though. He had a face like a lizard with whiskers. It’s a wise child that knows its own father, isn’t it?”

“Of course he was my father, you bastard,” Sarah said.

“Charming. Thank you. I hardly suppose it’s anything you’re proud of. I’d keep quiet about it if I were you.”

“Adam! Stop it.” Rosie was on her feet. “We can’t do this anymore. We can’t have you here with us like this. It’s awful; it’s unbelievable.…”

“What, because I tell a woman what she knows already, that the darling of the literary establishment was a clapped-out hack who wrote shit? Who called it art and had the cunning to get others to do the same?”

Sarah wrenched her hand free from Rosie’s. She got up, pulled her father’s sheepskin around her, and, hardly knowing why, picked up the paperback from the table. Holding it in her two hands, she made for the side door to the car park. Vicky’s voice called out, “Sarah, wait …” She didn’t turn her head.

Pain spread across her shoulders and up into her head, settling on the top of her skull like a too-tight hat. It had been hot in there and she was shivering. The night was damp and dark, a black mist hanging above the cars, leaving water on their surfaces in clustered glittering pustules. She unlocked the car and sat in the driver’s seat. Her breath misted up the glass, enclosing her in opaque walls.