He had watched her sup on her bottle, had tipped her over his shoulder and rubbed her soothingly, coaxing her to laugh, which she seldom had done. Sometimes, however, she had managed a little soldier's smile back at her brother.
'I was a father at six,' his story to Sandy had begun, 'and to this little horror at that!' His thumb had jerked towards the faintly smiling girl. She had been curled on a blanket like a small kitten, Sandy recalled, and had sucked the edge of the blanket as though she were still teething. She had smiled that first time, but had said little. He had forced his eyes to remain trained on Robbie's face, not wishing him to perceive his own interest in the girl. Only when she had spoken had he turned to her, drawing in huge gulps of her as if she were water to his thirst.
He had fallen in love on that first day, and had known it, for he had thought about her all the next week at school and had walked often past the mansion hoping for a glimpse of her. On the following Friday, as had been agreed on that first day, after that surprise meeting (he had expected to find nothing but ghosts and memories in the old hospital), he had returned to the room. Robbie, drinking from a beer can and smoking a cigarette, had noted Sandy's acute embarrassment at even being in the same room as her. He had leaned across to the boy and given him a stinging slap on the thigh, saying, 'Ah, Sandy, Sandy, so you've caught the fever, eh? Too bad, son, too bad. It happens to the strongest men when they look at Rian, when they see that shining innocence, that knowing look, that mystery.' He had risen to his feet. His eyes were on his sister as she sat on her blanket. He had staggered a little, dragging his feet around the room while the candle sent grotesque shadows dancing on the walls. The too, man. Me too. She caught me before anyone else, before she could walk even, and only the thought of my . . .' he struggled with language, the mystery of words he needed but did not know, and frowned,' . . . my task, or something - only that knowledge, and the drink of course, keep me from . . . keep me sane.' He had leaned over his sister, studying her face as if he were a painter, his words hanging in the smoky air. Sandy had thought it time he was going. His cheeks were burning. He was full of questions and emotions. Robbie had slid silently down the wall and rested his chin on his chest. She had risen, had seen him silently to the window, had allowed him out on to his ledge before reaching forward to kiss him on the cheek.
Still her face had remained a mask. She might have been kissing the minister. He slipped down the pipe uneasily. His heart had been trembling. It would tremble for a long time as the kiss grew in his fertile mind.
That had been a full month ago. Now Robbie looked on Sandy as part of the scenario, albeit a moving, trustless part; the kind of thing a gypsy could appreciate.
'What's it like being a gypsy?' had been Sandy's first question to Rian. She had shrugged her shoulders. Robbie had answered for her.
'If gypsies are outcasts from their own tribe, then they're shadows in the dark, which is to say useless.'
Sandy knew that there was a loneliness in Robbie, and he could feel his visits bolstering the young man's sense of purpose. They were friends of a sort now. Rian was not Sandy's friend, nor could she be. A larger intent lay behind their thin but strengthening bond. It was something Robbie might one day find himself unable to stop. Sandy knew that his relationship with Rian would work inversely to his relationship with Robbie, and these were knotted strings with which his nimble fingers but clumsy brain played.
Something was unfolding, and Sandy shut from his mind the notion that its culmination would be pain or despair or frustration. He simply refused to consider those possibilities.
But he knew. And Robbie knew also, so that there was an inevitable tension in his visits: psychological jousting, with Rian looking on as impassively as a fair princess. There would be no favourites in the game. Not yet.
Tonight Robbie was speaking about some of the day's incidents. Rian had been begging in Craigore, a nearby town. They had some cheese and bread if Sandy was hungry, and a little milk besides. 'Time was,' Robbie was saying, 'you could have gone down to the river and used the water straight from it for a pot of tea, but not now. Pollution. A gypsy used to fend well for himself before all this . . . this . . .plastic shit.' Sandy studied the beer can in Robbie's hand as he waved it around. He felt that Robbie's drinking was frowned upon by Rian. It might prove a useful weapon in the fight. He had not accepted a drink from Robbie yet, though he was keen to, for it was something that had to be done at his age. He had resisted in order to impress Rian, and she looked across at him whenever he denied himself as though she were unusually full of curiosity about him. 'Suit yourself,' Robbie would say, and would then finish the contents of the tin quickly and noisily, smacking his lips in challenging satisfaction afterwards. Tonight Sandy felt like saying: 'Always enough money for drink, though, eh Robbie?'
That would have scored points, but it seemed unnecessarily cruel. Sandy said nothing; only listened and hoped that his princess would speak. Robbie talked about the snooker hall in Craigore. *You can sometimes make a few bob on a game, but not often and never much money. They're tight-fisted in that town all right. Mean shower. Rotten snooker players too. Almost embarrassing.' He looked at Rian, then at Sandy, and crushed the thin beer can with one hand, rubbing at his nose with the other.
'An itchy nose,' said Sandy. 'My mum says that means you're going to come into money.' Having said it, he felt stupid. It seemed banal. Robbie's eyes lit up, however, and he shook his head vigorously.
'Your mum's wrong. An itchy palm means money. An itchy nose doesn't mean anything. No, wait a minute. That's not right. It does mean something but I just can't think what.'
He furrowed his brow, put a hand across his eyes like a mind-reader. 'My Aunt Kitty used to tell me about all that stuff when I was a kid, but I've forgotten most of it.
Superstitious crap. No,' he shook his head and waved his hands in the air, 'I've forgotten it. She could help, though.
My Aunt Kitty at the caravan.'
'Caravan?' said Sandy.
'Caravan,' said Robbie. 'Where the hell did you think we came from? We didn't just appear out of thin air, man.
Didn't I tell you? Didn't Rian? We belong to the tinkers' site at the foot of Craigie Hill.'
'Then why did you move here?' Robbie hesitated at Sandy's question. He looked over to his sister, then at Sandy. Sandy nodded, though he felt that he had only half the picture. 'Oh,' he said.
*Yes,' Robbie continued, 'we should visit my Aunt Kitty some day.' He again looked to Rian, who suddenly came alive.
'She's my aunt too! She's not just your aunt!' She stared at her brother in a rage while he scratched his beard, then she blushed and dropped her eyes. Robbie chuckled.
'Oh?' he said. Well, maybe that's something to ask her, after what happened. Maybe all three of us should go up there just now and see what Aunt Kitty says to it. I seem to remember her saying something like "She's no relation of mine." Isn't that right then, Rian?' The girl was already on her feet. She moved swiftly, and in her movement Sandy was attracted to the shape of her body. She slammed the door as best she could behind her. Robbie hooted loudly, smiled at Sandy, then turned his eyes to the floor and thought to himself.
'I suppose I should be going,' said Sandy.
'But you've only just got here!' complained Robbie, who seemed genuinely upset.
'Yes, but my mum will have my tea ready. I'm hellish late for that.' Sandy had a sudden inspiration. 'And I want to ask her about the itchy nose. Then we can go and see your auntie. Okay?' For a second Sandy thought that it might have been a mistake to mention this, but Robbie nodded.
'Yes,' he said. 'You do that. Will you come back tomorrow?'
'Maybe, Robbie.' Sandy was already on his feet.
'Fine then.'
There was no sign of Rian in the corridor. 'Cheerio, Sandy,' said Robbie. As the door closed on him, he was hunting in his pockets for a cigarette.
'Cheerio, Robbie.'
He sat on the window ledge for a long time. Ria
n did not appear. Robbie was whistling in the far room. Sandy did not want Robbie to come out and find him still sitting there. It would be too much of an admission of interest in Rian. He sat for a full count of sixty. The golfers had abandoned the course. It was too dark now to play, though there was still a faint red glow in the sky. He reached out for the drainpipe and shimmied down, jumping the last five feet and feeling the drop through space thrill in his stomach. He landed with a grunt on the lawn. Some jotters had fallen from his satchel. He crouched and replaced them. When he stood up, she said something behind him.
'Don't believe him, Sandy. Don't believe anything he says.
There's a streak of badness in him.' Her voice was quiet and sugary. He turned to her and she stepped towards him. It was the easiest thing to just snake his arms around her waist. She touched his arms with her fingers. Her chest was against his ribcage. She was skinny, thought Sandy. All skin and bone really. 'Promise that you won't let him turn you against me. Promise me, Sandy.' There were tears in her eyes. She put her head to his shoulder. He felt an erection swelling and pulled his hips back a little so that she would not feel it. He had been embarrassed more than once at school dances when a girl had noticed his erection during a slow dance and told her friends, who would then giggle at him for the rest of the night. He wanted there to be no mistakes with Rian.
'Don't get me wrong, Sandy,' she was saying. 'I don't want to give you the wrong impression. Robbie is my brother and I wouldn't hurt him for the world, but he's bitter at having had to look after me all this time. He feels he's losing out on life, and yet he won't leave me alone because he feels it's his job to look after me. There's a jumble of things in his head, but he will try to turn you against me. I know he will. He's tried it before.' Sandy wanted to ask her a question then, but she gave him no opportunity. 'He'll do anything. He'll tell any lies he wants to. Don't believe them.' As he held her waist, her hair tickled the backs of his wrists. Her hair was longer than he had imagined. It reached down to her waist and beyond. He looked down at her cowering head, resting so easily upon him.
'I promise,' he said, 'if you'll kiss me.' It was easily said, as if he were dreaming. He felt like running away or making a joke of it, but something made him hold his ground. She looked at him and he could feel her eyes as they overwhelmed him. Everything he was, everything he had
decided he would be in life, it all went out of the window in one easy fall. She kissed him. It was a slow, steady kiss, breathy. She seemed at ease, which unnerved Sandy slightly. He opened his eyes for a peek and saw that hers were open and rigidly upon him, studying him coldly. He closed his again quickly. It was as if his mother had found him to be feigning sleep. Her lips tasted of soap. He shrugged off the comparison and tried to enjoy himself. He should have been enjoying himself. It should have been heaven. Later it would seem as though it had been, but the moment itself was too curious and strained to be anything other than strange. He accepted its strangeness. He accepted everything. She breathed in his ear.
'Oh, Sandy,' she said. Then she pulled away from him, looking into his eyes as if uncertain of something. Eventually she forced herself to smile, and Sandy felt that she was depending on him for something profound, something beyond his immediate grasp. He felt a tiny weight of responsibility being shifted on to his shoulders. Did Robbie feel it too, inversely?
He watched her as she turned from him and began climbing the drainpipe. She was a small, brittle-boned monkey. He admired her long arms, the way her feet dug into what purchase the wall would afford. Her hair swung in rhythm with her body. Her skirt was flailing too, and suddenly, as he had not dared to hope, he was looking up inside it. She was calling something to him, but it was lost, like a distant voice calling across a swelling tide. Up inside it. The pants soiled but feminine. The tuft of hair crawling from beneath the cotton. A flush went through his whole body. He tried to control it. Useless; he had come. Oh God, he had never done that before, not standing up, not in his denims. His legs were as weak as if he had been swimming.
He watched the boards appear in the window, covering that doorway. The house was closed again, dark, apparently lifeless. He trotted gingerly across the lawn and climbed his wall. The wet smell was all around him. He would have to take the quiet way home, and he hoped that he would meet no one. That kiss. Her saliva was still in his mouth. It was turning cold now. He had to get home, had to rush upstairs, ignoring his mother's call from the living room, and change into clean clothes. Perhaps he could have a bath. No, this was not his regular bath night. The water would not be warm, and his mother would suspect something. He would have to wash his trousers in the bath tomorrow morning while his mother cooked the breakfast. And his pants. Her pants. That kiss. It went home with him, becoming more than it had been at the time with every step as the imagination took over. For once he hoped that Mr Wallace would be there. That would keep his mother occupied while he ran upstairs. Rian. He would watch Robbie. He would listen closely to any accusation, and would challenge any lie.
Rian was his girlfriend after all. He had to protect her. She was depending on him.
4
Dear Mary,
Sorry I've been so long in replying. The job is as hectic as ever. That's the only excuse I can offer, and I don't suppose it's a very good one at that, but I hope you will forgive me as ever! I'm glad to hear that you are winning the Adolescent War with young Sandy. Give him my best wishes, will you? He must be real man-sized by now.
Could you maybe send me a photo of the two of you? I keep meaning to find a recent photograph of myself to send on, but you know what it's like. I think I've changed a bit since the last photo I sent you. That was Christmas 1980 if my memory serves me right. Or was it '79? The brain cells have given up the battle! Only the body soldiers bravely on. There are few new victories. I sit behind my desk all day signing my name to scraps of paper.
Sometimes I am allowed out of my chair to walk around one of the sites. You would think I have an important job, huh? Sometimes I even fool myself that I do have an important job. Truth is, I'm no more than a glorified clerk.
I wish I was out on the sites again, running things out there rather than in this little box. (Yes, I'm writing to you from my place of work. This is the company's stationery.) Old Emerson himself was in to see me last week. That's the first time I've seen him since they promoted me, which apparently means that I'm doing fine, or at least making no visible botches. Emerson nodded his head a few times and grunted and then asked if I was getting married yet.
He's been asking me that for four goddamn years! One day I'll maybe surprise him, but I think not. I'm a born bachelor, I guess, so it's no use you hounding me to get hitched either!
This schoolteacher guy sounds okay. You have my blessing, sis, whatever you decide. I suppose you feel you have to think of Sandy just now, but he'll soon be flying the roost himself. You're only thirty-one, Mary. In your last letter you sounded like some fifty-year-old. Get out there and grab some guy! Enjoy yourself while you're young. Look at me, I'm all of thirty-three, still single, still having an okay time with my decreasing band of merry bachelor men. There are lots of nice men around, Mary, so there's no excuse for you. If I could I'd swim the Atlantic and marry you myself .. . but of course I don't have the time! (Just joking, sis!)
Have you asked Sandy about his coming over to Canada for a holiday this year? I still think it would be a good idea - and no, I'm not trying to steal him! But maybe he could strike it lucky here like his Uncle Tom did. (Okay, so I'm no Howard Hughes.) Anyway, it would do him good to have a break after his exams. He needs time to think over his future, don't you think? And it would also give The Teacher and you some well-earned time by yourselves.
Please think it over. For this year only! Super special offer. Much reduced prices. Hell, we're giving the stuff away. Canada doesn't have an incredible amount going for it as a holiday centre, but there are parts of it I'd still like to see myself, parts I'm sure Sandy would enjoy. Way up nor
th. Remember I went lumberjacking up that way when I first arrived here? What an experience that was. I only lasted four days! And I promise to keep Sandy out of mischief if he comes. You have a bachelor's word on that!
(Worth a grand total of not much.)
How's the money working out? Don't take any nonsense from that bloody bank manager, and please remember that you have my money in the account as a standby. I would be really grateful if you would feel that you can freely use it. I told you. It has been arranged with the bank for ages. I'll never touch that money, I don't need it, and I'm sure Mum and Dad would have wanted you to take it. I know they would. Please.
Well, Mary, I'm being allowed out of doors for a breath of fresh construction-site air in five minutes, so I better finish this. It was real nice to get your letter, Mary.
Thanks. And keep them coming. Also, tell Sandy that if he doesn't write to me soon I will do something drastic to him while he sleeps! And all my love to him as well as to your good, good self. Closing for now.
All my love, Tom.