Beneath the Skin Read online

  ‘God, no. I promised Charlie. He’d go ape.’

  With her dark eyebrows slightly raised, David thinks Antonia looks sceptical, and as he gazes at her lovely face, he wonders if he could try to explain that old school rule of ‘not splitting on a friend’, whatever the consequences. It was an unspoken drill learned early at boarding school, one of loyalty, allegiance and honour. A rewarding lesson he was proud of, often taking the flak for his friends, as they would do for him.

  As Charlie has always done and surely always will?

  David waits for his heartbeat to slow, then leans towards his wife. Antonia has such a tight friendship with Sophie, he thinks she might understand. But she’s drifted away again, her face contemplative, even softer than usual. He wants to say, ‘A penny for your thoughts?’ or, more specifically, ‘Where did you go yesterday after you left Olivia’s house at three? I called, but you weren’t at home,’ but he’s too afraid to ask. He’s too afraid to say, even casually, ‘Naomi mentioned that Sami popped by last week. What did he want?’

  He moves the pasta around the bowl with his fork. Creamy spaghetti carbonara made with chunks of gammon. It’s just as he likes it but he doesn’t feel hungry. ‘Do you mind if I nip over to Charlie’s tonight? He wants me to talk to Rupert about school.’ It’s on the tip of his tongue to say he doesn’t know why. Who is he to offer advice when it comes to academia? Or children, for that matter? But he suspects that Antonia would be disappointed in him for showing weakness or failure. ‘Do you want to come? Keep me company in the car?’ he adds instead.

  Antonia shakes her head as she stands to collect the plates. ‘No, I’d better stay in to phone Sophie and catch up. She’s left half a dozen messages and I’ve ignored them all. Keep your ears peeled, I’m expecting a big telling off!’ She bends to kiss David’s cheek. ‘Good luck with Rupert though, love. A fifteen-year-old incommunicative boy. You’re a sweetie for saying yes. I wouldn’t know where to begin.’

  Lifting her mobile, Antonia sighs. She usually responds to Sophie’s messages straight away; she’s not entirely sure why she hasn’t this time.

  Sophie answers almost immediately. ‘Toni! Well, it’s about bloody time,’ she says heatedly. ‘Where have you been all week?’

  ‘Here and there,’ Antonia replies, surprising herself by not instantly telling Sophie about every intricate detail of her day with Olivia. ‘How about you? What’ve you been up to?’

  Tightening the belt of her dressing gown, Antonia props her bare feet on the edge of the coffee table, her mind wandering. She enjoyed her time with Olivia yesterday and she doesn’t want Sophie to belittle it somehow, to call Olivia ‘mumsy’ or ‘boring’, which is the last thing she actually is. Besides, she increasingly feels the need to keep some aspects of her life apart from Sophie and it’s slightly liberating to feel that she isn’t completely in her friend’s pocket. Not like at school when she was taunted regularly by other girls from her estate who were once her friends. ‘Sophie’s shadow, Sophie’s pathetic little shadow. Watch out or we might say boo!’

  ‘Well, as it happens, you’ve got a lot to answer for, Toni here and there,’ Sophie replies. ‘You were ignoring me, so I telephoned Mum.’

  Antonia pulls down her feet and sits up straight. ‘Really? Did you apologise?’

  ‘No. What have I got to apologise about?’

  Antonia wants to laugh. Sophie’s so thick-skinned, or at least pretends to be. But then so is Sophie’s mum, the one person who sees her daughter for what she is, a ‘selfish spoilt madam’, as Norma bluntly puts it, even in front of Sophie’s friends. Which is why the two of them haven’t been on speaking terms for several months. The final spat was in the presence of Antonia and another of Sophie’s friends one afternoon in the garden. It was toe-curling, both mother and daughter having clearly forgotten the visitors were there.

  ‘Why are you drinking wine when the rest of us are drinking coffee?’ Norma had demanded. ‘You’re drinking too much, Sophie. It’s bad for your health and no one likes a drunk. Sort yourself out before Sami sees you for what you are.’

  ‘And what’s that supposed to mean?’ Sophie retorted, her voice too loud and slightly slurred. ‘What am I then?’

  ‘A person who manipulates everyone who loves them,’ Norma replied firmly, as though it were a well-rehearsed comment.

  ‘What’s that got to do with the price of wine? Oh, I get it, you’re still peeved because Dad always loved me more than you. You’re pissed off with me because he left home as soon as I did. Well, that’s not my fault. Did it never occur to you that he couldn’t stand living with you any longer?’

  Even Norma couldn’t mask the hurt. ‘Don’t contact me unless you’re ready to apologise,’ was all she said as she left, leaving Antonia and the friend wide-eyed and wondering how they would skulk out of Sophie’s townhouse garden without catching the tail end of her wrath.

  ‘But I did say that I missed her, which is true,’ Sophie now continues down the line. ‘Then she said, “I suppose that’s the closest I’ll get to an apology.” The cheek of it! But at least we’re officially friends again. And I’ve missed you too, Toni. What time can you come over and give me some TLC? I have chocolate and mango. You know you love mango.’

  Antonia smiles on the other end of the phone. ‘A person who manipulates.’ Norma knows her daughter well. She’s tempted to see Sophie, but not tonight; she doesn’t want to bump into Sami.

  ‘Not tonight, Soph, I’m tired. But I’ll be over tomorrow, as I promised.’

  ‘You’d better be. Sami’s neglecting me, so you’ll have to be as sweet as ever.’

  Sweet, Antonia thinks as she ends the call. She carefully peels back the damp flannel and inspects the neat slash at the top of her arm. The beads of seeping blood have finally given up. Sweet? I’ve no idea who that person is, she thinks to herself.

  ‘How are things going, Rupe?’ David asks.

  Although only a few weeks have passed, Rupert looks considerably taller than the last time they met, but he’s still spider-thin. He’s slumped full length on the worn leather Chesterfield sofa in Charlie’s chilly lounge with his long legs dressed in torn jeans, not dissimilar to those David wore on ‘dress-down’ days at school. David supposes that Rupert is staring vacantly into space, the remote control having been confiscated by Charlie, but he can’t be sure because Rupert’s fringe is so long that he can’t see his eyes.

  ‘Come on, Rupe, don’t look so miserable. It’s your old Uncle Dave. I’m hardly going to give you an ear bashing, am I?’

  ‘Ear bashing? Is that a twentieth-century expression or something?’

  But Rupert is smiling. He hitches up his legs, pulls his fringe behind one ear and makes eye contact with David. ‘They’re just so irritating. Both of them. They don’t get anything.’

  David stiffens for a moment, bracing himself for the inevitable, ‘I wish they were dead.’

  The reply is clear in his mind, but he wonders whether he’s able to voice the words: ‘Appreciate what you’ve got, Rupert. My parents were dead when I was your age. Coming to see me on a leave-out at school. Only they never arrived.’

  It was a time of indescribable agony. Two days had passed before he was called into the housemaster’s study. Two days of unbearable pain. He’d read and re-read the letter from his mother, the aroma of her perfume still there in his imagination, if not in the paper. We’re in the UK next weekend, first port of call being you, darling boy! We’ll see you on Saturday. Can’t wait. Love always, Mummy xxx.

  He doesn’t know how his words to Rupert will come out, whether he’ll shout or cry. Or laugh, perhaps, as he did at school, with that protective bonhomie masking the grief. But Rupert is quiet, his fringe has fallen forward again and David is reprieved.

  ‘Hmm. Irritating parents. Well, that’s good news at least!’ he replies with a laugh, sitting down in the space Rupert has made. ‘I pronounce you a normal healthy fifteen-year-old lad.’

  ‘What�
�s all this about drugs then?’ he asks, suddenly aware that moments have passed and that Rupert is watching him.

  ‘Everyone does it. It’s only weed.’

  ‘Good point.’ He was in the minority at school by not smoking tobacco, cannabis or anything going. But that was only because it made him chesty and sport came first. ‘But that doesn’t mean you have to. Believe it or not, school work and exams do matter. Take it from me, Rupe, you do not want to have to re-sit those bastards!’

  ‘You said you weren’t going to give me an ear bashing.’

  ‘I lied,’ says David, giving Rupert a playful thump. ‘Just remember he’s a good bloke, your dad. A really good bloke. Come on, let’s put on the box and see if there’s some sport on Sky before your mum comes and inspects your transformation from devil to angel. Oh, and by the way you’d be doing me a favour if you acted the part too. You know, the odd civil word here, bit of revision there, maybe even an occasional thank you. Get the picture?’

  ‘Got it,’ Rupert replies looking towards the television screen. ‘I think the switch is on the side, Uncle Dave. Or you could ask Dad for the remote.’

  Antonia is still trying to get to grips with Sylvia Plath’s poems, but even when she doesn’t really comprehend the words, she gets the gist, she understands the struggle, the desire to be something else. She’s read ‘Resolve’ ten, twenty times, maybe more tonight. Shyly and out loud to the listening walls of the lounge, but to no one else.

  She’d started reading poetry after a conversation between Olivia and Helen at a dinner party a year or so ago. It was a debate about music and poetry. Olivia argued that music was poetry and Helen was dismissive, declaring poetry to be silly and pointless. Olivia disagreed, listing reasons why everyone should read it, specifying poems and poets who had influenced her life. Antonia had sat dumbly and listened, but it was the fervour in Olivia’s eyes, the passion of her argument which enthralled her. She had headed for the laptop to make an order as soon as they left, a feeling of anticipation in her chest until the slim collections arrived in the post.

  David’s late, chatting to Charlie over a bottle of whisky, she supposes. So she hasn’t gone to bed, but lies on the sofa, covered in a soft blanket, Sylvia whispering softly in her ear as she waits for David’s call to collect and drive him home. But she’s fallen asleep and so suddenly, so deeply, that the dream is real. Her father is there and so is she, like a vicious, dancing cat. Scratching, hissing, spitting and goading him to hit her again. ‘Come on, Dad. Don’t be afraid just because I’m a big girl now. Hit me, insult me, show me how brave you really are.’

  David slouches at the bar of the Royal Oak waiting for Misty to appear. She hasn’t replied to his texts but sometimes she’s busy. One of her kids might be visiting or Seamus might be at the table begging for home-cooked food. So he’s driven from Charlie’s home in Hale all the way to Withington. To do what, to say what, he doesn’t know.

  He feels untouched by the three double whiskies he drank in a wine bar in Hale, nor by the pint of bitter he’s just downed. Nothing has dimmed since his confession to Charlie. Not the look on his face, not his anger, his lack of understanding or forgiveness. Nor Rupert’s confusion as he darted into the study, looking fearful and so very young. ‘Dad, what’s going on? You can’t say that. It’s Uncle Dave. Why does he have to get out of the house? It’s my house too. And Mum’s.’

  ‘David. David? Are you listening?’ he eventually hears through the whirl of whetted images. ‘You need to go home. How much have you had? I’ll call you a taxi.’

  Misty’s there behind the bar, her tanned fingers spread wide on the bar top but her eyes not reaching his. Seamus’s bulk is a presence in the background.

  ‘I thought we could talk,’ David replies, his attempt at a whisper emerging too loudly.

  ‘Not tonight. Not any night soon.’ Misty glances over her shoulder. Seamus is pulling a pint, the frown seeming to puncture his usual plump friendly face. ‘People have been talking again, David. I’ll see you. Now off you go home.’

  ‘Fine to drive. Sober as a judge,’ he calls to Seamus with a wave as he stumbles from the pub. Then again as he catches his clown face in the car mirror. ‘I am as sober as a judge, Your Honour!’

  He puts his keys into the ignition and heads the Land Rover down the A road towards home, not bothering with the seat belt.

  Sober as a judge. It makes him laugh at first, the irony of the expression. Then eventually he cries. He weeps so much that he can’t see, but still he drives along the dark autumnal lanes towards his Cheshire home, wondering if it’s normal for a nearly forty-year-old man to miss his mother quite so much after so many years. Occasionally he can smell her perfume at the theatre or in the street, and it’s all he can do not to halt the passer-by, to clutch on to her and sink his face against her neck to inhale the aroma on living skin.

  Like a vampire, he muses. What a complete and utter fuckup I am.

  He briefly glimpses a tiny pair of hollow eyes in the headlights and feels a small thud against the car. Another dead bunny, he thinks, wiping his nose with a sleeve.

  He feels inordinately sad for all those dead rabbits. There was a badger too, once. Far larger than he expected, it had stared at him from the muddy roadside with dead, reproachful eyes. Is that how his mother looked, her beautiful face intact, but her body broken and crushed against the steering wheel? Then there was a small, red fox cub, many years ago, when he dated a schoolteacher. The head was mangled and trampled. He should have been brave, but he wanted to heave.

  He nearly shoots past the drive of White Gables; he always does.

  ‘Slow down immediately after the sign for Mottram, then it’s first right, just after the bend.’ That’s what he says to visitors, but forgets to do it himself.

  He chuckles – every bloody time, he ought to have learned by now. But he manages to skid into the driveway, the vehicle clipping the gatepost and then sliding and lurching before coming to a sudden hard stop against a raised garden wall.

  Lifting his head from the steering wheel, David opens the car door eventually. He knows time has passed but he’s unsure if he’s been unconscious or asleep. The moody sky is lit with glinting stars and there’s drizzle in the air. Part of the small wall has collapsed from the collision, the soil spilt, as though making a pathetic bid for freedom along with the roots of some flowering plants. He closes the car door with care but the sound of his feet seems unduly loud on the wet paving as he stumbles towards his front door. His nose feels matted and it throbs from the thrust against the steering wheel. He vaguely wonders if it’s broken, but it doesn’t really matter, he’s home.

  ‘Sober as a judge,’ he whispers, as he opens the front door of White Gables.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  Antonia’s awake, listening to the smack of the rain on the shutters. She wonders if she’s slept at all, but she supposes she must have done at some point, as the thin early morning light sighs through the wooden panels. David’s asleep next to her in the bed, breathing softly through his mouth. Remains of clotted blood are flecked around his nose and mouth and yet his face is relaxed and peaceful.

  She looks at his pillow, soiled and smeared with red and brown traces of blood, and she briefly replaces her feelings of guilt with questions about what on earth happened to David last night. But her quest for answers doesn’t last long. The overwhelming guilt is far stronger, more insistent. She wants to wake David, to explain her own behaviour. But where would she begin?

  Slipping out of bed, she feels the warmth of the underfloor heating against the soles of her feet. The words which echoed through the night are still fresh in her mind. ‘I am so lucky. To have all this. To have David. Remember to tell him.’ She looks at her watch. It’s still only six-thirty. She’ll give him an extra hour in bed and then wake him up with his breakfast, ready on a tray. Then she’ll say, ‘I love you, David. I appreciate you so much, I really do.’

  The sound of the telephone breaks her though
ts and she snatches it up, not wanting it to wake her sleeping, damaged husband.

  ‘Auntie Antonia? It’s Rupert.’

  ‘Oh, hello Rupert, how are you?’ Her mind rushes. Why is Rupert calling at this time? Questions unanswered. A feeling of slight panic. What has David done? ‘It’s OK to call me Antonia, Rupert, Auntie makes me sound old.’ She’s talking too much, procrastinating.

  ‘Well, the thing is, Mum’s asked me to telephone.’ His voice sounds strangled. ‘Dad was taken into hospital last night. Macclesfield hospital. She went with him. An ambulance came, paramedics and everything. They think he’s had a diabetic coma or something. I mean, fuck, I didn’t even know he was a diabetic.’

  Not David, thank God. ‘Oh Rupert, I didn’t know either. Poor you. Do you want to come here? Shall I come and fetch you?’

  Relief floods her mind. She needs to concentrate, be practical. ‘How is he, how’s your dad?’

  ‘Well, Mum called and I think he’s OK. But I don’t really know. She told me to stay here. Suppose I’d only get in the way.’

  His voice is thick with emotion. He wants to cry, Antonia knows. She understands this, the need to cry, to sob and to scream, but the need to hide it even greater.

  ‘Mum said Dad’s all wired up because his blood pressure is really high and he needs loads of different drugs.’

  Poor boy. Bloody insensitive parents. But who am I to judge? she thinks, glancing at the peaceful face of her husband.

  ‘David’s still in bed, Rupert, but I’ll wake him. He’ll want to go to the hospital straight away,’ she says. Her mind is sticky, rebelling against the sudden change of plan. She should drive. David reeks of booze, he’ll be over the limit. ‘So I’ll drop off David at the hospital and then come over to your house and keep you company for a bit. How’s that?’

  David feels Antonia’s hand on his shoulder, bringing him back from a dream. ‘David, love, wake up, Charlie’s in hospital,’ she says clearly.

  ‘I know,’ he replies from the pillow. ‘He’s dead, isn’t he?’