Tessa Hadley - Accidents in the Home

The fat man hardly said hello to Clare. She imagined how archetypal a situation this probably was, the three men excitedly involved together over some project or other while a bored unidentified girl dozed on the sofa, put down by one or other of them on the way in to be picked up again later when they had finished. It seemed astonishing that she, who believed her life so important, should be that girl. An hour passed. Dutifully, every time the spliff went around one of them brought it back to the sofa to offer to her, and she smoked it because otherwise they might forget about her altogether. She noticed that the two other men treated David as just slightly their junior in status, leaving some of his remarks unanswered, their enthusiasms cooler and more measured than his. She judged that they were cleverer than he was.

The grass made her feel sick and she went to find Nick’s bathroom. It was all white-tiled with a line of crimson tiles at waist height and a crimson shower curtain. She threw up in the toilet and then had to borrow Nick’s bristle toothbrush and his specialist bicarbonate toothpaste to freshen her mouth, guiltily washing the brush over and over for him afterward in case she had tainted it. In the mirror over the sink she saw that she had a clown’s face now, white and staring with black pits of smudged eye makeup. Eros and farce were always very close together, and now the switch had been thrown: everything that had been blissful was now ridiculous. There would be some image in Eastern philosophy to express how these two worlds were packed together, folded inside one another: one world taut, alight, meaningful, so you stepped out and were borne up on the insubstantial rainbow; the other gray and deflated, where the deepest desire was for a safe dark hole in which to hide yourself.

On her way back to the room with the sofa — someone had put music on, trancy electronic music — Clare saw her coat and briefcase on a chair by the front door. She imagined going to her B and B after all, burying herself in anonymous clean sheets, drinking tea and nursing her hangover, watching television all alone. It seemed to her a desperate and dreadful eventuality, an absolute defeat for ever and ever; but it was also all she had it in her to desire, now her gods had abandoned her, and she suddenly longed for it. She was sick and shivery and her head pounded. She slipped on her coat, picked up her briefcase, and let herself quietly out the front door.

* * *

HELLY HAD INSISTED on stopping to buy alcohol: she put a paper-wrapped bottle in the car boot that Bram presumed was wine but turned out to be Armagnac. They didn’t drink enough of it to get drunk — he never did — but after he had put the tent up they poured out some into the plastic beaker he had in his kit and shared it. It was early evening.

— It lowers your body temperature, he said. It only makes you feel warm.

— I’m happy with feel warm, she said, although she seemed cold all the time. She kept wrapping herself up further and further in the big sweater she had on under Clare’s borrowed raincoat, pulling it up over her chin and down over her hands. He offered to take her to the pub for supper, but she shook her head.

— I like it here. Do what you would do if you were alone.

— Well, I’d probably go for a walk, look for some birds before the light goes. Then I’d come back, make tea, and eat some bread and cheese.

— Go for your walk. I’ll stay here.

— I think you’ll get very cold. You ought to come with me.

— OK. If you don’t mind.

— I don’t mind.

They went down the track through a wood where a flock of goldfinches was feeding on the rowan berries, then out on the sandy road that led past closed tea shops to where they could see the sea. The sky was overcast with thick clouds like gray wool, the sea was gray and whipped by the wind into little dirty waves; they walked on the beach, and Helly picked up stones, making a collection of white quartz. He saw redshank and dunlin; she was quite interested; she told him her brother used to be a birdwatcher. He was surprised how he really didn’t mind having her there. He had nursed the idea of his solitude, and when he finally gave in to her he had driven down full of furious resentment (and with a pounding headache). But probably he had been fooling himself. You dreamed of these precious spaces — the rowan trees, the dry-stone wall, the hillocky field — but when you arrived at them you still weren’t where you’d dreamed of; no matter how close you got they didn’t let you inside finally. Before they left the beach Helly threw all her pieces of quartz back into the sea one by one, with a good throw like a boy’s.

Back at the tent in the sheltered field he got the spirit stove going and they drank tea and ate bread and cheese and chocolate companionably. Helly put brandy in their tea. He noticed that his headache had gone, blown out of him beside the sea. Now the wind dropped. The light drained out of the field until it was just twiggy bushy silhouettes against a still luminous blue sky, noisy with the rustling of animals and the liquid whistles of birds settling for the night.

— So what would you do now? she asked. If you were alone? Time for worms and folk songs?

— Turn in, he said. Nothing much else to do, in the dark.

— I’m sorry for spoiling your weekend, she said. I was very selfish. Now I’m here I can imagine you here by yourself, and what you get out of it. It’s a lovely healing sort of place. I don’t get enough of this, the way I live.

— You haven’t spoiled it, he said. I was just thinking how glad I was you came. I’m not sure being by myself was really a very good idea.

— Oh, thank you, she said, sounding surprised and pleased. But I never think you like me.

— I feel such a fool, he said. About this business.

— I suppose that’s what we are. The fools, the rejected ones.

— It’s painful.

— Did you guess all about it?

— More or less. I didn’t know you knew.

— What will you do?

— I don’t know. What will you do?

— I don’t know either.

An owl hooted, and a few moments later they saw his shape glide over from a copse of trees in the next field.

— It’s nice in the dark, said Helly. It’s amazing. But I don’t know how you could manage here all on your own. I’d die.

— But then you die rather often. From the sound of it.

— You’re teasing me. But it’s the truth.

They couldn’t see each other’s faces any longer; Bram switched on the torch and crawled into the tent to sort out the sleeping bags.

— I’ll sleep in the car if you like, offered Helly quaveringly. The car was parked two dark fields away.

— But you might die.

— I might.

— And that would be awkward. So you might as well stay here. It makes no difference to me.

They took off their raincoats, kept on most of their clothes, climbed into their separate sleeping bags, and said good night lying decorously side by side. Bram turned his back on her and fell asleep easily, not troubled by Helly’s presence beside him, even soothed by it — he dreamed of something from childhood, a boat and a river and a long ago innocent excitement.

But in the night she was cold and woke up shivering and couldn’t fall asleep again. And although she tried not to wake him, awareness must have reached him — even in the deep chambers of his sleep — of her consciousness, active, close to him: and he surfaced. She was shuddering; her teeth were actually chattering together. He reached out an arm from his sleeping bag, touched the canvas of the tent above his face, found her huddled shape.

— Are you cold?

— Bram, I’m so cold, she said, muffled, from her clenched jaws. I can’t get warm, what’s the matter with me?