Chapter 14

The next day I felt warm and sleepy, like a child. I ate four slices of bread at breakfast and drank two whole bowls of coffee, with cream and sugar. Bobbi called me a little pig, though she said she meant this ‘in a cute way’. And I brushed Nick’s leg under the table and watched him trying not to laugh. I was filled with an exuberant, practically spiteful sense of joy.

Three whole days passed this way in Étables. At mealtimes out in the garden, Nick and Bobbi and I sat together at one end of the table and interrupted one another a lot. Nick and I both found Bobbi screamingly funny and we always laughed at everything she said. Once Nick cried at breakfast when Bobbi did an impersonation of a friend of theirs called David. We had only met David briefly, at literary things in Dublin, but Bobbi had his voice down perfectly. Nick also helped us to improve our language skills by speaking to us in French and repeatedly pronouncing the ‘r’

noise on request. Bobbi told him I could already speak French and that I was faking it to get his lessons. We could see it made him blush, and she flashed her eyes at me across the room.

On the beach in the afternoons, Melissa sat under a parasol reading the newspaper while we lay in the sun and drank from water bottles and reapplied sun lotion on each other’s shoulders.

Nick liked to go swimming and then come back out of the water glistening wet and looking like an advertisement for cologne.

Derek said he found it emasculating. I turned a page in my Robert Fisk book and pretended not to listen. Derek said: Melissa, does he spend a lot of time preening? Melissa didn’t look up from her newspaper. She said, no, he’s just naturally gorgeous, I’m afraid.

That’s what you get when you marry for looks. Nick laughed. I turned another page in the book although I hadn’t read the previous one.

For two nights in a row, I went to bed on my own until I heard the house go quiet, and then I went up to Nick’s room. I didn’t feel too tired to stay up late, though during the day I often fell asleep at the beach or in the garden. We couldn’t have been getting more than four or five hours’ sleep, but he didn’t complain of feeling tired, or hurry me out of his room even when it was very late. After the first night, he stopped drinking wine with dinner. I don’t think he had anything to drink again at all. Derek pointed this out frequently, and I noticed Melissa offering him wine even after he said he didn’t want any.

Once when we were coming up from the sea together after swimming, I asked him: you don’t think they know, do you? We were waist deep in the water still. He shielded his eyes with the flat of his hand and looked at me. The others were back on the shore, with the towels, we could see them. In the sunlight my own arms looked lilac-white and dimpled with goosebumps.

No, he said. I don’t think so.

They might hear things at night.

I think we’re pretty quiet.

It seems insanely risky what we’re doing, I said.

Yeah, of course it is. Did that just occur to you now?

I dipped my hands in the water and it stung of salt. I lifted a handful and let it fall back onto the surface from my palm.

Why are you doing it then? I said.

He dropped his hand from his eyes and started to shake his head. He was all white like marble. There was something so austere about the way he looked.

Are you flirting with me? he said.

Come on. Tell me you crave me.

He slapped a handful of water at my bare skin. It splashed my face and felt so cold it almost hurt. I looked up at the spotless blue lid of sky.

Fuck off, he said.

I liked him, but he didn’t need to know that.

*

After dinner on the fourth night we all went for a walk into the village together. Over the harbour the sky was a pale coral colour, and the ocean looked dark like lead. Rows of yachts nodded in the dockyard and good-looking people in bare feet carried bottles of wine along the decking. Melissa had her camera on a shoulder strap and occasionally took photographs. I was wearing a navy linen dress, with buttons.

Outside the ice-cream shop my phone started to ring. It was my father calling. I turned away from the others instinctively as I picked up, as if I were shielding myself. His voice was muffled, and there seemed to be some noise in the background. I started biting on my thumbnail while he spoke, feeling the grain of it with my teeth.

Is everything okay? I said.

Oh, very nice. Am I not allowed to give my only daughter a ring now and then?

His voice wandered up and down the tonal scale when he spoke. His drunkenness made me feel unclean. I wanted to shower or eat a fresh piece of fruit. I wandered a little away from the others then, but I didn’t want to leave them behind completely.

Instead I lingered near a lamp-post while everyone else discussed whether to get ice cream or not.

No, obviously you can, I said.

So how are things? How is work?

You know I’m in France, right?

What’s that? he said.

I’m in France.

I was self-conscious about repeating such a simple sentence, even though I didn’t think anyone else was listening.

Oh, you’re in France, are you? he said. That’s right, sorry.

How’s it going out there?

It’s been very nice, thanks.

Great stuff. Listen, your mother is going to give you the allowance next month, okay? For college.

Okay, fine, I said. That’s fine.

Bobbi signalled to me that they were going inside the ice-cream shop and I smiled what I felt was probably a maniclooking smile

and waved them away.

You’re not stuck for money, are you? said my father.

What? No.

The old saving, you know? It’s a great habit to get into.

Yeah, I said.

Through the windows of the shop I could see a long display of ice-cream flavours beneath the glass, and Evelyn’s silhouette at the counter, gesticulating.

How much do you have saved now? he said.

I don’t know. Not a lot.

A great habit, Frances. Hm? That’s it. Saving.

The phone call ended shortly after that. When the others came out of the shop, Bobbi was holding two ice-cream cones, one of which she gave to me. I felt a terrible gratitude that she had bought me an ice cream. I took the cone and thanked her, and she scanned my face and said, are you okay? Who was that on the phone? I blinked and said, just Dad. No news. She grinned and said, oh, okay. Well, you’re welcome for the ice cream. I’ll have it if you don’t want it. In the corner of my eye I could see Melissa lift her camera and I turned away irritably, as if Melissa had wronged me by lifting her camera, or by doing something else a longer time ago. I knew it was a petulant gesture, but I’m not sure Melissa noticed.

*

We smoked a lot that night, and Nick was still kind of high when I got to his room, after everyone else had gone to sleep. He was fully dressed, sitting on the side of his bed and reading something on his MacBook, but he was squinting like he couldn’t see the text that well, or it was just confusing. He looked good like that. He was maybe a little sunburnt. I guess I was probably high too. I sat on the floor at his feet and let my head rest against his calf.

Why are you on the floor? he said.

I like it down here.

Oh hey, who was that on the phone earlier?

I closed my eyes and leaned my head harder against him until he said, stop that.

It was my dad on the phone, I said.

He didn’t know you were here?

I got up on the bed then and sat behind Nick, with my arms around his waist. I could see what he was reading, it was a long article about the Camp David Accords. I laughed and said, is this what you do when you get high, read essays about the Middle East?

It’s interesting, he said. So hey, your dad didn’t know you were over here, or what?

I told him, he’s just not a very good listener.

I rubbed my nose slightly and then put my forehead on Nick’s back, against the white cloth of his T-shirt. He smelled clean, like soap, and also faintly of seawater.

He has some issues with alcohol, I said.

Your dad does? You never told me about that.

He closed his MacBook and looked around at me.

I’ve never told anyone about it, I said.

Nick sat back against the headboard then and said: what kind of issues?

He just seems to be drunk when he calls me a lot of the time, I said. We’ve never talked about it in depth or anything. We’re not close.

I got into Nick’s lap then, so we were facing one another, and he ran his hand over my hair automatically like he thought I was somebody else. He never touched me like that usually. But he was looking at me, so I guess he must have known who I was.

Does your mother know about it? Nick said. I mean, I know they’re not together.

I shrugged and said he had always been the same way. I’m a pretty horrible daughter, I said. I never really talk to my dad. But he gives me an allowance when I’m in college, that’s bad, isn’t it?

Is it? he said. You mean you think you’re enabling him, because you take the allowance but you don’t hassle him about the drinking.

I looked at Nick and he looked back up at me, with a slightly glassy, earnest expression. I realised he really was being earnest, and he really did mean to touch my hair like that, affectionately.

Yeah, I said. I guess so.

But what are you supposed to do instead? he said. The whole financial dependency thing is so fucked up. Everything definitely improved for me when I stopped having to borrow money from my parents.

You like your parents, though. You get along with them.

He laughed and said, oh God, no I don’t. Are you kidding? Bear in mind these are the people who made me go on TV when I was ten wearing a fucking blazer and talking about Plato.

Did they make you do that? I said. I assumed it was your idea.

Oh no. I was very troubled at the time. Ask my psychiatrist.

Do you really see a psychiatrist, or is that part of the joke?

He made a noise like hmm, and he touched my hand sort of curiously. He was definitely still high.

No, I have these depressive episodes, he said. I’m on medication and everything.

Really?

Yeah, I was pretty sick for a while last year. And, uh. I had a bad week or two over in Edinburgh, with the pneumonia and all that. This is probably a very uninteresting thing to tell you about.

But I’m feeling okay now anyway.

It’s not uninteresting, I said.

I knew Bobbi would know what to say in this situation, because she had a lot of opinions about mental health in public discourse.

Out loud I said: Bobbi thinks depression is a humane response to the conditions of late capitalism. That made him smile. I asked him if he wanted to talk about being sick and he said no, not desperately. He had his fingers in my hair, at the back of my neck, and his touch made me want to be quiet.

For a little while we kissed and didn’t talk at all, except occasionally I would say something like: I want it so much. He was breathing hard then and saying things like hm, and oh, good, like he always did. He put his hand under my dress and stroked the inside of my thigh. I held his wrist on a sudden impulse and he

looked at me. Is this what you want? I said. He looked confused, like I was posing a riddle which I might answer for him if he couldn’t. Well, yeah, he said. Is it … what you want? I could feel my mouth tightening, the grinding machinery of my own jaw.

You know, sometimes you don’t seem that enthusiastic, I said.

He laughed, which wasn’t really the sympathetic response I expected. He looked down, his face was a little flushed. Do I not?

he said.

I felt hurt then, and said: I mean, I talk a lot about how much I want you and how much fun I’m having and it’s never really reciprocal. I feel like I don’t fulfil you a lot of the time.

He lifted his hand and started rubbing the back of his neck. Oh, he said. Okay. Well, I’m sorry.

I am trying, you know. If there are things I’m doing wrong I want you to tell me.

In a slightly pained voice he said: you’re not doing anything wrong. It’s me, you know, I’m just awkward.

That was all he said. I didn’t really know what to add, and anyway it seemed clear that no matter how unsubtly I fished for his reassurance he wasn’t going to provide it. We went on kissing and I tried not to think about it. He asked if I wanted to get on my hands and knees this time and I said sure. We undressed without watching each other. I put my face in the mattress and felt him touch my hair. He put his arm around my body and said: come here for a second. I knelt upright, I could feel his chest against my back, and when I turned my head his mouth touched the rim of my ear. Frances, I want you so badly, he said. I closed my eyes. The words seemed to go past my mind, like they went straight into my body and stayed there. When I spoke, my voice sounded low and sultry. Will you die if you can’t have me? I said. And he said: yes.

When he was inside me, I felt as though I had forgotten how to breathe. He had his hands around my waist. I kept asking him to do it harder, although it hurt a little when he did. He said things like, are you sure that doesn’t hurt? I told him I wanted it to hurt, but I don’t know whether I really did. And all Nick said was, okay.

After a while it felt so good that I couldn’t see clearly any more, and I wasn’t sure if I could pronounce whole sentences. I kept

saying, please, please, though I didn’t know what I was asking him for. He held a finger to my lips as if to tell me to be quiet and I took it into my mouth, until he touched the back of my throat. I heard him say oh, no, don’t. But it was already too late, he came. He was sweating, and he kept saying: fuck, I’m so sorry. Fuck. I was shivering badly. I felt that I had no understanding of what was happening between us.

By then it had started getting light outside and I had to leave.

Nick sat up watching me put my dress back on. I didn’t know what to say to him. We looked at one another with agonised expressions and then looked away. Downstairs in my room I couldn’t sleep. I sat on my bed, holding my knees against my chest and watching the light move through the chink in the shutters. Eventually I opened up the window and looked out at the sea. It was dawn, and the sky was silvery blue and exquisite. In the room above I could hear Nick walking around. If I closed my eyes I felt that I was very close to him, close enough to hear him breathing. I sat at the window that way until I heard doors opening upstairs, and the dog barking, and the coffee machine switched on for breakfast.