The Beautiful Indifference Read online

  When we got to the corrugated shed the door was closed up and trestle-jammed again.

  Give us a hand shifting this.

  Dirty little spot you’ve got in mind, he said. You’re a surprise, girlie.

  I was shaking as we moved the timber, and breathing hard. He must have thought I’d become a lunatic, some lusty version of the girl he’d seen knocking about his house so many times. When I pulled the metal latch off its snick he put his hand on my back and gripped my vest into a ball of cloth, untucking it from my jeans. He stepped in close behind me and held my hips. I pulled open the door. The sun had moved over and it was dark inside, all spooled with shadow. The smell was throaty and rank, like something from a tannery, or a dog pound before the cages are hosed.

  There, I said, as soft as I could. Can you see it?

  Oh, in a minute you know I will.

  He pulled me back harder against him, one arm belted across my stomach, one hand at the zip of my jeans. There was a pause. In my ear I heard a grating sound, like a piece of machinery slipping its driving gear. Aaron let go. He stepped round in front of me. Then he turned and drove me backwards out of the building, his palm splayed on my breastbone, pressing my nipple in painfully. I tripped on the concrete slab behind and went down.

  Fuck off. Right now.

  I looked up and he was standing above, pointing, his face in a twist, looking kiltered as if to hit me.

  Fuck off home, Kathleen. It’s not your business, this. It’s not your concern.

  Get. The fuck. Away, he said. Go on! Now! The muscle in his arm jumped.

  I stood and stumbled off, thinking myself so horribly soft-minded, and only then did I feel my eyes begin to speckle and sting. I waited for him inside our cottage, with my cheek on the cold larder wall. I waited. But he didn’t come. When I looked out of the upstairs window the carpet van had gone.

  The next week I heard nothing at all from Manda. When I phoned the house Vivian said she was out and she said it in a tone that made me not inclined to ask anything else. Manda never phoned back. I stayed indoors. When I walked it was in the opposite direction to the farm.

  The summer went on, and then it ended. By then I was sure they all must have taken against me for what had happened, for my babyish behaviour, and that was my worst fear. I thought about those times Manda had fought someone; the wet sound of knuckles against cartilage; the rows of double stitches required above her victim’s eyebrows after she was done.

  I took the first few days of the new term off sick, though I had no fever and my dad suspected it. Then I worried this would make it worse. I imagined Sharon Kitchen and Stacey Clark huddled round Manda before registration like rooks on their desks, cawing in her ear that I was always a too-clever bitch, or they’d heard I’d called her a slag, and she should pull me down a peg or two. I knew all some girls needed as an excuse to start hating you was your absence, your lack of defence.

  On my first day back she came to find me in the cloakroom. She stood next to me, the old group hovering by the door. I kept my eyes down. I heard her say my name. Then I felt her fingers digging in under my ribs to make me squirm.

  No you don’t, she said as I twitched away. Where’ve you been, you silly cow? Off shagging some mucky farmer?

  When I looked at her she had a big smirk going. I knew she was pleased to see me.

  Right. Come on, she said, putting her arm round my shoulders. Think we better have a quiet word – it’s been pande-bloody-monium. Get lost, the rest of you. Ah, shit it, there’s the bell! Meet you at twelve.

  That lunchtime, in the bandstand in the park, Manda told me what had happened. Aaron had rung up their brothers from the Pheasant, and they’d come, because they always did come when it was put to them they had a duty. They’d searched the vicinity for the ratchety farmer – Lenny Miller was his name. She said the lads knew the fellow marginally anyway from the cockfights in the pits near Greystoke, and he was a sly git, so it was no trouble to them. They’d strung him up in the shed by his feet and cut the bastard with a riding crop right through to the putty in his spine. He was in Newcastle Infirmary, she said, not expected to walk again.

  I searched her face for some sign of disturbance, and saw nothing favourable. Her eyes were that glisky blue, all bad charm and cheek.

  I thought you already knew, she said. Thought you were just being canny and swinging wide. We’ve had the police up at the house about a million times. But it’s just his word.

  Manda took my arm as she always did. We walked through the park gates down into town, past the sandstone terraces and castle tower. She talked about the parties I’d missed that summer, the fairs and driving trials, and asked if I’d had any lads properly yet.

  No, I said. I didn’t get round to it.

  Well, what you bloody waiting for? Or do you want Aaron to do the deed? Urgh.

  As we walked I thought about the man, lying lame in a hospital bed.

  What about the horse? I asked.

  Manda shrugged. Her attention was on the building site across the road. A brickie in a red checked shirt whistled from the scaffolding. She blew him a kiss.

  I knew if it’d been any other animal inside that barn, the Slessors would not have intervened. They wouldn’t have done it for the kicked-about hounds. And they didn’t do it for me. There was nothing sentimental to the family, nor could they be hired like mercenaries. It was simply the family’s creed. It was luck, if such a thing could be so called. To slow-butcher a horse was an offence too great to let pass. Their spurs were buckled on and used accordingly.

  Mam says you’ve to come for your tea next week, Manda said to me as we headed back up to school. The hornies will have gone by then and she’ll take you riding. She’s got a new pony for you. And you’ll never guess what she’s called it. Sweet Kathleen.

  The Beautiful Indifference

  Her lover had missed the train from London and would be arriving late. This was not uncommon after a night shift at the hospital. In the hotel room she studied herself in the mirror. The mirror was oval and full-length, in a hinged frame, which could be tilted up or down. She had bought a new dress. The blue was good on her, lighting her face and complementing her eyes. It was fitted through the bodice and waist but slipped to the floor easily when unzipped. He would like it. She finished making up her face, applying a layer of lip gloss, tidying the red spill at the corner of her mouth. Lipstick never lasted long when they were together; he would always kiss her just after she had applied it, as if he liked the smearing, viscous sensation. Sometimes she felt sure it was discomposing her that he enjoyed. She had lost a little weight since their last meeting. This was not deliberate. She’d been travelling a lot and had missed a few meals. The contours of her thighs and shoulders were pleasing. The previous night, after the reading, she had taken codeine and had slept well.

  The room was hot but the window had jammed after opening only a few inches. Was this really designed to stop suicides, she wondered. Surely no one chose to jump from the second floor of a hotel. Better to use the bed, the bathtub. A soft pillowy ending or a wet red one. Outside, voices were loud in the street. The races had finished and people, made giddy by the early summer heat and grandstand cocktails, were shunting food containers into bins, shouting to each other about which venue to go to next. There was the sound of glass smashing, followed by juvenile laughter. Nearby a car alarm began howling. The tight northern gentility the city claimed for itself was coming unlaced.

  She stepped away from the mirror and looked into the street. Light plumed over the buildings, a diffuse lilac glow like that which she had seen above the immense stonework of Paris on her first visit, coming up out of the Métro into its exquisite sordid heart. Perhaps they should go to Paris, soon. Or Florence. A last tourist carriage rattled on its way to the Minster, drawn by a white shire, the horse with its great, feathered hooves strutting on the cobbles. The driver leaned out from his position on the cab, talking into his mobile phone, shaking his head. A group
of South Americans took photographs from the leather galley behind him.

  The plan had been to meet and have a late lunch and then walk along the citadel walls. Now he would be coming here, to the hotel, and they would go out to dinner somewhere. It meant less time together, by a few hours. He would be catching the evening train back to London the following day. But perhaps it was better this way. Better to meet in the privacy of their room, so that they could be together for an hour, and empty themselves. A couple of times in the past the anticipation had led to problems; awkward exchanges, inappropriate behaviour. It had taken a few months to realise this initial discord did not mean incompatibility. She still found it remarkable: the spurs of desire, and the way desire interfered with all else. They were perfectly capable of having conversations, about politics, their occupations, anything. But they were not capable of corralling the animal necessity of ruining each other first.

  She had recently mentioned this to a friend, not as a boast, more an observation, citing an encounter in a restaurant toilet, being discovered, and asked to leave.

  Isn’t it a bit ridiculous, the friend had replied, tending to her young child, spooning paste from its chin. You aren’t a teenager. And actually, neither is he. Stop spitting out! What’s wrong with you? You liked this yesterday!

  Do you think it’s unhealthy?

  I didn’t say that. Relationships are all defined differently, aren’t they? If that’s your thing. Anyway. Isn’t it what you want, at the moment? Being with him means you can defer all the rest.

  This had startled her. The tone. The implication that she was failing to make a sacrifice. Or that she had made a conscious choice.

  What do you mean?

  With exasperation the friend had turned away from the recalcitrant child, clattering the pot of orange paste and the plastic spoon down on the counter.

  Oh, you know. Keep avoiding the hard stuff. Like this. The trouble is you probably don’t have long left. Do you? And you act like it’s not an issue. But everyone can see it is an issue.

  She had noticed a change in the way her female friends responded to the relationship lately. At first they’d been enthusiastic, congratulatory, as if she were doing something avant-garde. She looked wonderful, they told her. She looked radiant. She should just enjoy it. But as the relationship had taken hold, becoming less casual, notes of disapproval had entered the discussion. Was it jealousy? Conservatism? She did not know. Perhaps she did seem ridiculous to them, now that it no longer constituted a fling, a desirability-affirming enterprise. Perhaps she was not entitled to the sex after all. Or the radiance. Men, on the other hand, had been unnerved from the beginning, as if she was not keeping to the natural order of things, as if she was performing an inversion. Or they had commented how lucky her lover was, recalling fondly an affair they themselves had had with an older woman during their youth. How they’d been taught a thing or two. After talking to them she was left with the dual feeling of being both transgressor and specialist. Only her father had been unreservedly for the relationship.

  Darling, he had said to her, you should just let yourself feel something. If he makes you happy, be happy.

  She stepped back from the window and looked at herself in the mirror again. The neckline of the dress was quite high. It gave the impression of thickening her collarbones. In the wardrobe hung another dress, belted and with an Edwardian-style bathing stripe, which he had seen before and liked very much. It was more fun, less chic. She reached behind and unfastened the one she was wearing. It drifted over her hips to the floor. She gathered it up and held it at waist height, paralysed for a moment by indecision, by aesthetics. Then she stepped back into it.

  She sat on the bed. The book she was reading, or rather the book she had been carrying around for two weeks but not managing to read, was on the side table. She opened it and tried to get through a paragraph or two, but the words floated, the conceptual environment failed. She knew the author reasonably well; they had once shared the same publisher. Usually this motivated her to finish a novel – if only for the sake of etiquette. Often she discarded books. Whenever she made this confession people were astonished. It had come up again at her event last night. A woman on the front row had been appalled during the closing session.

  How do we get our children to read more? All they do is play violent video games!

  Why should they read? I don’t. Given the choice I’d much rather do something else. Including blow things up.

  You’re joking? You can’t really be serious?

  Can’t I? Why not?

  Silence. Murmurs in the crowd. She was not adopting the correct role of advocate.

  In truth, she disliked books. She felt a peculiar disquiet when opening the pages. She had felt it since childhood. She did not know why. Something in the act itself, the immersion, the seclusion, was disturbing. Reading was an affirmation of being alone, of being separate, trapped. Books were like oubliettes. Her preference was for company, the tactile world, atoms.

  She shut the book. The cover was photographic, part of a female figure, a headless torso and limbs, though the novel itself was about the Second World War. The image was stock, meaningless. Give me a man, she thought. Give me the long cleft in his back. She had a popular science magazine in her bag too, which she had begun to buy in the last few months. But she had already finished the most appealing article about new-generation prosthetics. Soldiers coming home maimed were going to benefit hugely from new bioengineering techniques, according to the piece. The devices were becoming lighter, more flexible, intuitive of the brain’s synaptic messages. It was as close to restoration as possible.

  It was five thirty. The last she’d heard he had made it to King’s Cross but he’d not texted since then to say which train he would be on. They arrived from London at twenty past the hour. The hotel was a ten-minute walk from the station; he had the address and the room number. Either he would be here soon, within a few minutes, or he would be another hour. She’d been primed the whole afternoon and now she felt fraught. She was unsure about the blue dress with its high neckline. She was unsure how it would affect the sex. Her mind felt white, empty of intellectual conversation. She could recall none of the finer points of the article in the magazine, though the subject, the idea of psychology and kinetics, had seemed fascinating. The noise outside was intensifying. Heels striking the pavement. Gales of singing. The thump of music from a pub.

  She stood from the bed and looked at herself in the mirror. Her skin was luminous and secretive. She stared. After a minute or so her appearance became unstructured, a collection of shapes and colours. There had been no plan, not for any of this. Perhaps she had planned nothing in her life. And yet here she was, in this room, in this form. Speculatively, side by side in a crowd, she and her lover could be the same age. They had enough in common, and there was enough difference to make the relationship interesting. In practice there was no problem. But perhaps there was a flaw to the whole thing she hadn’t seen, or was refusing to see, or which had not yet manifested. Children? Her friends now assumed what her position was.

  She put her fingertips to her groin and felt along the ligaments and the gristle at the top of her thighs. The nodes were like unopened buds. She reached behind and unzipped the dress and it slid over her hips to the floor. She felt again, without the fabric barrier. Her body was full of unknowable cartilage, knuckled and furled material. Sometimes, when they lay together, his hands would unconsciously map her contours, pressing the organs and tissues. Or he would find her pulse in alternative places – the vees between her finger bones, the main arteries. He did not seem to realise he was doing this.

  She was refastening the dress when the door lock clucked and released and he came into the room.

  Hi.

  Oh, hi.

  He dropped his battered shoulder bag on the floor and came to her and kissed her.

  Sorry I’m late.

  Don’t worry. I’ve had a good afternoon.

  This is
a nice hotel.

  He greeted her again, softly, then stepped back. He removed his jacket and dropped it onto the bed. He did not look tired from the night shift. He never did. His hair had been cut very short – there were lines along his scalp where the direction of growth altered. The last time she had seen him it had been long and curling around his ears, on the verge of being unkempt, but very attractive. The smell of his wet hair was one of her strongest memories now. Like the feeling of deep humiliation for injuring the junior-school pet rabbit. Like the unhealing gash on her mother’s cheek where hospital orderlies had caught her with a metal instrument while wheeling her to the morgue. Bracken burning on the moors.

  Excuse me a moment.

  He went into the bathroom and there was a trickle of water. In the time she had known him his politeness had never waned. Neither had her enjoyment of it. She glanced at her reflection. The eyes looked dark, shuttered by mascara. The smudged red mouth looked incapable of speech. Something inexact had hold of her. She tried to recall exactly how the nerves at the end of the amputated arm sent signals into the receptors of the bionic limb. How the brain was fluent in the language of electricity.

  The shock of the real, she said.

  The tap turned off and he came out of the bathroom drying his hands on a towel. He tossed the towel onto the bed, next to his jacket.

  Sorry, I didn’t hear you. What did you say?

  I said, it’s strange, each time I see you again. You look different. Altered. You’re not like I remember. I have to get used to you.

  He smiled. There had always been such invitation between them, always permission. He knew it. And her friends were disquieted.

  You too.