Tessa Hadley - Accidents in the Home

When finally Naomi was asleep, Toby sat cross-legged on his bed in Tamsin’s room and rolled up. Primly Tamsin, cross-legged on her own bed, frowned at him, tearing papers and sprinkling tobacco.

— I need to relax, he said.

— I disapprove.

— I keep having these dreams.

— What dreams?

— Well, not exactly dreams. That is, I’m not asleep, exactly. Sometimes it just happens when I’m walking upstairs.

— For God’s sake, Toby, what need have you for chemical stimulants if you’re already out of your mind? What kind of dreams?

— I’m carrying that girl: the one who died in the accident.

— Carrying her?

— Just carrying her. I can feel the weight of her in my arms. Her head’s sort of lolling down one side. She’s all wrapped up in something; I can’t see her face.

— And where are you carrying her to?

— I’m just carrying her. And then I’m up at the top of the stairs and it fades out, only there’s a sort of flickering light and I’m all pouring with sweat.

— You complete idiot.

— I suppose it’s because I probably did cause her death.

— What are you talking about?

— Two separate possibilities. I was sitting behind her. I was thrown forward when we hit the post. I probably broke her neck then. And then I moved her from the car, not thinking. You shouldn’t move spinal injuries. Perhaps if I hadn’t moved her, she’d have had a chance.

— Have you talked about this to anybody?

— Just to you.

— No, I mean these medical things. Do you know for certain how she broke her neck, for instance? Or whether she should have been moved?

— It wasn’t really like that. Everything was so mixed up. Nobody seemed interested in how it had happened. I think maybe one of the other girls thought it, about me being thrown forward; she said something about it, maybe, in Dutch, to the others. That’s all.

— But it wasn’t your fault, anyway: even if it was true. And you don’t understand Dutch.

— No, of course not.

— So you shouldn’t have those dreams.

— No.

Tamsin sat thinking while Toby lit up and smoked.

— I know a way, she said. We have to put our pajamas on. And clean your teeth. I can’t stand the smell of smoke.

When he came back from the bathroom she was sitting on her sheet with the duvet draped over her head like a tent. Come in here, she said. It’s like the games we used to have.

— You’re ridiculous, he said. I’m six foot two.

— Come on. Trust me. Put the light out, I’ve got my bike light.

Toby didn’t really have pajamas. He put on some old sweatpants; then he climbed in under the duvet with Tamsin, bending his back and stooping his head so he didn’t wreck the tent. The bike light lit her up improbably: she held it under her chin so that her face was a leering mask, then buried it in the duvet so they were in the dark. She put her arms round his neck and her mouth close to his ear; her flesh was as he remembered it; it was cool and firm and smelled of something like fruit.

— I’ve got a secret too, she whispered. Do you know I can’t do sex? Since Lu and the baby died. I’ve tried but I can’t. I just sort of seize up; my muscles clamp together. It’s got a medical name, I looked it up.

— No. No, he said. I didn’t know that.

— Nobody knows. I just thought I’d tell you. That boy who calls; that’s why I have to put him off. He just thinks I don’t like him anymore.

— You could get help.

— Can you imagine? Some hairy doctor. The idea makes me sick.

— Shouldn’t you talk to your mum, or Clare?

— Marian and Clare? What do they know? Look at the mess they’ve made of everything. Everything anyone in this family’s ever done is shit; it disgusts me, it all makes me sick. The past makes me sick.

— So what are you going to do?

— I invented this magic.

— How do you mean, magic?

— Don’t be scared.

She picked up the bike light and reached a battered leather wallet from under her pillow.

— Lu’s wallet, she said.

From the pouch she took out something wrapped in tissue: a small blade, the kind that comes with a craft kit. She slipped her pajama top down from her shoulders.

— Hold the light. Here. She showed him where to shine it. On her arm just below the round ball of her shoulder was a row of five precise cuts, each about four centimeters long, one under the other. The top cut was a healed pale line; the ones below looked successively newer; the last one was puffy with an ugly red scab.

— It’s a sacrifice. Like the Aztecs.

— But what’s it supposed to do?

— It makes you strong. It stops bad things happening.

— Does it work?

She shrugged exasperatedly. Toby, it’s just a game.

— I really don’t think it’s a very good idea.

— If you tell, I’ll kill you. I don’t do it very often. You have to use it with care, or it works against you. I’m doing this one specially for you. Keep the light steady.

She pressed the blade into position to make a new cut underneath the last one; then, with only a sharp suck of breath, she pulled it smartly across, slitting the skin. Beads of blood brimmed out of the cut and ran down her arm; she blotted them up with a handful of tissues she had ready, then pressed the tissues against the cut and held them there, hissing slightly through her teeth.

— Now give me the light. It’s your turn.

She gave him a new clean blade out of her wallet, then put the bike light under her face again and grimaced, making a leering mask.

— Do you dare?

Toby took the blade. Something in the hot shifting space with its careering shadows and its intense focus on the ritual act made his heart pound; he felt again, as he hadn’t felt since they were children, the old exhilarating liberating power of play. He put the blade against the top of his bare arm, and when she had the light steady he held his breath and cut.

CLARE ASKED BRAM if she could have the car to take the children away for the weekend. She had a chance to borrow a cottage in the country that belonged to a friend of her mother’s. She and Bram had been there together with the children a couple of times.

Bram had arranged to take the car in for a service that Saturday.

Clare said surely it wouldn’t matter, it could wait another week. Couldn’t he rearrange it?

Of course he could.

Then on Friday night on their way down to the cottage the timing belt went, and one half of the engine stopped still while the other half kept going and the second half mashed into the first half and wrecked her pistons. This was how the man at the garage explained it to her later. All she knew at the time was that there was suddenly no power; she pressed the accelerator to the floor but got nothing. The car slowed and stopped. There was no crunch or bang, although from the garage man’s description of what had happened one might have expected it. They sat for a few moments in the sound of the rain. When she tried to restart the engine, though, there was an awful decisive clanging. She tried a few more times, but she knew from this sound that the engine was injured, probably mortally: probably dead under its tin lid. She didn’t even entertain the idea of taking a look at it.

There was no way she was to blame for this. Bram really hadn’t put up any objections to her borrowing the car. He hadn’t suggested for one moment that it was rash and irresponsible of her to postpone the service, or that she was taking any risk in putting off an essential check.

* * *

EVERYTHING had been going so well. She had wondered what it would be like to go away all on her own with the children for a whole weekend. Family experiences were so distorted at the moment; she alternated between passionate desperate love for the children and then a sort of astonishment that after all when she spent time with them it was absorbed in the old ordinary tedious things: eating, cleaning up, squabbles.