Sunstroke and Other Stories Read online

  Kieran is telling the others about his grandfather who worked as a salesman for a company selling private telephone systems, mostly to the collieries; he did business in the West Country coalfield that’s not far from the cottage, worked out and half forgotten now. The telephones they used down the mines were made of cast iron, he tells them; they weighed a hundredweight each. Kieran is shorter than the other two; he has a big distinctive head, with deep-hooded eyes whose glance mostly idles downward, and several days’ growth of strong black beard. His body is indefinite, shapeless because it’s wrapped as always in dark loose clothes, more layers than are necessary in this weather.

  —He worked in North Wales, too, Kieran says,—putting in systems for the slate mines. Do you know that when the slate miners were dying of silicosis, average life expectancy thirty-five to forty, the local doctors wrote a paper blaming it on the stewed tea they drank?

  Kieran always knows things; he trusts facts more than opinions. He talks with his usual concentration and exactitude, but something arouses in Sam the solicitude for his welfare that has been an element of their friendship from the beginning. Kieran’s face is puffy and a nerve is jumping beside his right eye; he hunches over the rolling papers in a tension of fatigue that makes Sam worry that the job in cardiology at Barts is disillusioning, and that Kieran is beginning to brood over this second career, which was supposed to save his life from academic futility. He isn’t telling his stories any more, about medical dilemmas or patients presenting extraordinary symptoms. In these stories, his work in medicine seemed to open up a whole world of meaning.

  Rachel telephones the cottage to tell Sam that she and Janie are going to buy tea for the kids in town. He’s relieved that she doesn’t seem to mind Kieran’s turning up. After another cup of tea and a share of the toke, Sam goes into the kitchen, opens the door of the fridge, and stands frowning perplexedly at what’s inside, then begins with an air of bemusement, as if he’s never done it before, to make the tomato sauce he’s actually been able to cook for at least fifteen years. He rattles around in the kitchen drawers hunting for wooden spoons and the garlic press. Kieran in the garden opens a bottle of wine he brought. Vince turns out to know something about wine. Kieran doesn’t; he just drinks it. He’s the same with food: he only eats to fuel his system.

  Vince was uncomfortable at first, alone with these two men who are a few years older than him and whose displays of cleverness he finds both irritating and intimidating. He reads, but he hasn’t read any of the books they’ve read. (He knows that they studied literature, but as far as he can see they mostly talk about philosophy.) This morning, when Janie went out with Rachel and all the kids and Sam was writing upstairs, Vince wondered what point there was in his being here (wasn’t the whole idea of the holiday that he was supposed to spend more time with the kids?), and he even contemplated driving back to London and coming down to pick them up at the weekend. He was just wasting days that he could be putting in at the studio. After a few smokes, though, his sociable nature has reasserted itself and he is enjoying everything. He’s looking forward to the kids coming back; he really does want to spend more time with them.

  When Sam goes into the kitchen to cook, Vince finds himself telling Kieran in great detail about the logistics of the lighting set-up he’s arranging for a show at the Albany. He is gratified by Kieran’s questioning. He tells him about the concern in the industry over the decline in the quality of sound recording in television and documentary work, now that digital technology means that no one bothers to employ the old sound guys any more. The BECTU newsletter is full of laments for past standards. Kieran makes a much better listener than Sam, Vince thinks. Sam always wants to take over the conversation. Vince has tried to read Sam’s novel but can’t get past the second chapter. None of the characters ever have a thought that doesn’t lead into dense thickets of historical and cultural association. There is no room left over for anything actually to happen.

  When Janie and Rachel come through the gate into the garden, Kieran stands up at once from where the men (stoned, by the looks of it) are sprawled on garden chairs. There are plates on the table and a saucepan lying nearby on the grass. Both women see quite clearly that the moment they come into view, their arms full of children and shopping, Kieran is looking for Rachel, and that on his face when he sees her there is a moment’s naked flash of feeling: of relief, perhaps, or desperation. He hurries forward to help them. In reaction to this glimpse of emotion, Rachel becomes queenly and remote, retreating into her role as homemaker, unpacking the shopping into the kitchen cupboards and the fridge, running hot water for the dirty pasta plates.

  Soon after their arrival home, Sukey begins to droop. This isn’t usual: she is a cheerful little girl with stout strong arms and legs and a mop of straw-textured fair hair. Now she whines and clings to Rachel and says that her head hurts. Her face is flushed and hot, and as soon as Rachel gets her settled on the sofa with her doggie and her blanket she throws up over everything.

  —Too much sun. My fault, Rachel says, on her hands and knees with a cloth and a bucket of disinfectant and water. Sukey lies languidly across Sam’s lap, wrapped in a sheet and hanging on to a plastic bowl. —I should have insisted she wore her hat. I should have made them stay in the shade more.

  —We needn’t go to the pub, Sam says.—If you think we oughtn’t.

  There has been a plan for all the adults to go to the pub, which is ten minutes’ walk down the road into the village, leaving Joshua and Tom in charge, with mobiles in case of emergency.

  —The rest of you go, Rachel says.—I’m sure there’s nothing to worry about. But I’m feeling quite tired. I fancy an early night. And I probably should just keep an eye on her.

  Kieran drops on his haunches till he’s at Sukey’s level, he speaks to her gravely, sweetly; she yields herself, allows him to feel her forehead, pull back her eyelids and look into her pupils, take her pulse. His fingers, with their bitten yellow nails and curling black hairs, are dark and coarsely male against her pearl-pink skin. Rachel’s eyes are fixed on Kieran’s face, calmly enough.

  He says to Sukey, —Mummy knows exactly what the matter is. I would trust her. Mummies usually know best. I don’t think there’s anything to worry about here.

  And he smiles into Rachel’s expectant open gaze.

  Kieran doesn’t smile very often. When he does, his face becomes quite jolly and ordinary. It’s like a reprieve, as if a daunting problem had unexpectedly turned out to be easy.

  —Why don’t you see how she is in half an hour? he says. —If she goes off to sleep peacefully enough I don’t see any reason why you shouldn’t leave her. It would probably be good for you to get a break.

  —Maybe, Rachel murmurs gratefully.

  Sam thinks that if Kieran can get this out of being a doctor – this exchange of authority and submissive trust – then perhaps everything will be all right for him after all.

  Upstairs, fifteen minutes later, Janie and Rachel are giving Dom and Melia a bath.

  —Rach, why don’t you go to the pub? I really don’t mind staying in. Anyway, I’m worried in case Lulu doesn’t sleep through. I can call you if Sukey’s sick again.

  —No, honestly. I’d rather not.

  —I just thought, you know, if Kieran’s only here for tonight.

  Rachel hides her involuntary smile in Dom’s frog-flannel. —There is something, isn’t there? she whispers.

  —God, yes, Janie whispers back. —The way he looked at you when we came in.

  —I know.

  —Then go to the pub.

  —No. I don’t think so. I’m not ready. I’m not ready for it yet.

  Sukey doesn’t throw up again; her temperature comes down. Rachel reads to her and then sits beside her bed until she is soundly asleep. All the other children are asleep, too, by this time, except Joshua and Tom, who are watching a DVD in the front room. Rachel goes downstairs and out into the garden. The light is draining imperceptibly out of the
sky; the velvety plum colour of the copper beech is drinking up darkness. Yellow light from inside the house glitters on the stone flags of the patio. Through the French windows, the TV flickers behind the silhouetted heads of the boys intently watching.

  Vince comes back from the pub for his fags. He stops to smoke one in the garden. She has one, too, although she doesn’t usually, and they experience a rush of mutual friendliness. Vince thinks Rachel’s a sweet woman, not his type but warm and nurturing. Rachel feels sorry for Vince – she thinks Janie gives him a hard time. He tells her that he’s really enjoying himself (he’s forgotten how he felt in the morning). He says that this place means a lot to him, that he and Janie really ought to try to move out of London. It isn’t fair bringing kids up there; they need wide open spaces and contact with nature. Rachel listens to him indulgently, knowing that nothing will come of it, and that Vince would fade away with boredom in the country.

  When he’s gone, a clamour of rooks passes overhead. It’s darker now. Moths come visiting Rachel’s chive flowers and nicotiana in a pale blur of movement. A bat stirs the air with a beat of its leathery wings. There’s a moment’s impulse when she thinks she’ll tell the boys that she’s going to the pub after all, and that they have to listen for the babies. But she doesn’t move, she stays planted there in the still air darting with invisible movement, washed in streams of incense from the balsam poplar.

  On the way home from the pub, Janie and Kieran fall behind the others because she stops to listen when he says that he can hear an owl hunting. She is genuinely delighted when she hears it too. These two haven’t spoken together much during the evening. Sam and Kieran were arguing about Iraq (it’s typical of Kieran that he won’t condemn the war, when everybody else does). She and Vince were having one of their talks, about how he’s got to start being home more, to make space for her to get on with her art work. (Vince didn’t point out tonight, not in so many words, that his work brings in money and hers doesn’t.) Janie has never quite trusted Kieran; she’s always thought that he was one of Sam’s Cambridge types, too absorbed in himself, preoccupied with the game of jockeying for intellectual position. She wonders what he’s up to with Rachel.

  The stretch of road outside the pub is lit, but when they turn off to climb the hill to the cottage they are plunged into a darkness deep and complete and astonishing to these city folk, who are used to the perpetual urban orange seepage of light. They didn’t think to bring a torch. Walking into that darkness, solid and prohibitive, feels as counter-intuitive as walking into a wall.

  Janie falters. —I’ve no idea where I’m going, she says.

  —Hold on to me, Kieran says, reaching out. —Though I’ve absolutely no idea, either.

  —I suppose at least if we fall into anything we’ll go together.

  They can’t see each other; she feels his hand come searching, and she clasps his upper arm, when she finds it, with both her hands. She remembers what he’s wearing – a green shirt patterned with yellow motifs in some kind of slippery material – as if it were suddenly significant, although she’s been looking at it without interest (if anything, with distaste) all evening. The slippery fabric slides under her fingers. His hand blunders against her bare arm under the cardigan she has slung across her shoulders.

  They can hear the others’ voices some way ahead. —OK, Janie? Vince calls.

  —Fine!

  —Fucking dark! Kieran shouts. —Fucking countryside!

  —Navigate by the fucking stars! Sam shouts back.

  Kieran and Janie have both drunk enough to be unsteady, hanging on to each other in the middle of the road without any visual clues to help them. They stagger and he grabs her and pulls her against him and then begins to kiss her face with a beery smoky garlicky mouth (the garlic was in the pasta, which she and Rachel didn’t eat). He lands kisses randomly at first, on her ear, on the side of her nose. After a moment’s surprise, she kisses him back, putting her hand up into his hair and finding his mouth with hers. It’s a long time since she’s properly kissed anyone but Vince; she’s pleased that she seems to manage it suavely and skilfully. Then her head swims and they lose their balance and almost fall. He sets his feet apart on the road so he can support her; he puts an arm around behind her shoulders.

  —Who are you? he says softly, so close she can taste his breath on her.—It’s so dark it could be anyone.

  She can smell the salty sourness of his hair, too, as if he didn’t bother with shampoo.—I’ve no idea, she says. —Who are you? What just happened?

  —Don’t stop. Don’t stop, please. His voice is urgent, pleading. He means it.

  Janie thinks that this is what he meant, when he looked at Rachel in the afternoon: he was just desperate to lose himself like this. She will do just as well, for his need, as Rachel; and yet that’s not insulting but exhilarating. She feels the same way: he will do for her, just as well. She doesn’t stop. She starts again.

  His mouth is hot and liquid. His lips feel swollen and thin-skinned; his beard growth is long enough to be sleek and not stubble-rough against her mouth and her wet cheek. She thinks of the many parties at Sam and Rachel’s where she has stayed dumb while Kieran has spoken out eloquently on some subject; and now that same tongue of his is shyly tentative against hers, and hers is bolder. It’s marvellously simplifying that there’s no time for this to become anything more than a kiss. They have only this moment before they have to follow the others and go back inside the light.

  Vince calls again. His voice sounds a long way off.

  —We’re listening to the owl, Kieran shouts back.

  It makes a space between them. They draw slightly apart.

  —Look what you’ve done, Janie says.

  She couldn’t have said this to his face, in the light.

  —What have I done?

  She finds his hand, presses it against her breasts, where they have leaked soaked circles of milk on to her dress. —I’m still feeding. I’m very full. Ready for the baby when I get home. You made it come.

  —I didn’t know that happened, he says, not embarrassed, in a voice of calm scientific interest.

  When he says that, Janie intuits a warning; faintly, like a note sounding far off in the hills. She has an instant’s intimation of how she could, in a different life from the one she has had so far, come to need this terribly and not be able to get it: this calm impersonal interest of his, turned on her.

  But for the time being it is Kieran who is desperate.

  Rachel thinks that she’s going to lie awake, absorbed in the momentousness of her life today. She’s thinking that she’s not going to go through with this thing with Kieran, not now, not this time. But that doesn’t spoil the euphoria that comes from knowing that he wants her, knowing that he has pursued her down here. It makes her feel as if there were a glorious abundant tide of secret possibility flowing around the world, enough for everyone. She feels that she will be able now to dip into this tide and take her share any time she chooses to.

  Sam is lying flat, snoring with his mouth open, because he’s been drinking and smoking. She shoves him hard to tell him to turn over, and then when she cuddles up against his broad hot back she falls asleep almost at once.

  Janie has brought Lulu into bed to feed her; Vince is reading a computer magazine. Her treachery in relation to him doesn’t seem important yet. (Vaguely, she thinks he owes her this.) If she imagines Rachel finding out what she’s just done with Kieran, after everything they talked about all afternoon, she feels a sickish kind of unease. She doesn’t for one moment, though, believe that she ought to have deflected Kieran’s kiss, which opened this thrilling new space in the night. A real adventure with a man mustn’t be wasted. Everything is running away so fast; your deepest responsibility is to snatch at all the living you can.

  And, anyway, she only kissed him.

  Kieran asked if he could call her and she said she didn’t know yet, but as the baby sucks she feels herself hollowed out from her old lif
e, empty and hungry, filled up with an excited wanting as painful and bloating as wind.

  Rachel has made up the sofa bed with sheets and a duvet for Kieran. She kept worriedly sniffing it and saying that if it smelled of vomit then he could have their bed and she and Sam would be quite happy down here. He hadn’t been able to smell anything then but now he can. He lies awake wondering how families manage in this awful perpetual twilight of false sleep: the landing lights left on, the rustlings and the snatches of childish sleep talk, the bare feet padding downstairs, the murmured parental admonishments, the baby’s loud cry at some point, Sam’s snoring, the toilet light left on after a child’s visit so that the fan keeps whirring until he goes upstairs himself to switch it off. He hears one of them climb into bed with Sam and Rachel. He hears the bed creak and protest as the adults move over.

  He remembers glancing into Sam and Rachel’s bedroom on his way to the toilet this afternoon when he arrived. The king-size bed, its grubby Habitat striped sheets and heaped-up duvet littered with clothes and toys and Rachel’s hairbrush and face cream, looked to him then like the outward embodiment of something he wanted, something he had missed out on. In the thin hours before dawn, the truth seems bleaker. He isn’t a good sleeper at the best of times. The duvet is too hot and then when he pushes it off he is too cold. He finds himself longing for the perfect silence of his own room, which he thought was what he wanted to escape from, coming down here.

  MOTHER’S SON

  SOMEONE TOLD CHRISTINE that Alan was going to get married again: the new girl apparently was half his age. Christine didn’t think she cared. She hardly ever spoke to Alan these days; there was no need for them to consult together over arrangements for their son, now that Thomas was grown up and made his own arrangements. In fact, after the person told her the news, at a dinner party, Christine forgot it almost at once in the noisy laughter and conversation, and only remembered it again the following afternoon, when she was sitting at home, writing.