“Ha. That’s funny, I thought he would have told you.”
She caught his eye, and he could tell she knew he was being disingenuous. He didn’t care, though.
“I mean, it was nothing, really, just schoolboy stuff. I wouldn’t have mentioned it if I didn’t think you already knew…”
He paused, savoring the look of alarm on Chloe’s face. Something actively malignant seemed to have awoken inside him.
“What are you trying to tell me, Matthew?”
“Nothing at all. I’ll stop right now if you don’t want to hear it.”
“What did Charlie do?” she said quietly.
“Oh, you know, he’d been through a rough time. His mother had just died. He’d started a year late at this very English school, not knowing anyone, except me, of course, but obviously feeling he deserved a place somewhat higher up the social hierarchy. You know how Charlie is. He did rise pretty quickly, but there was a little cabal at the top of our year that he couldn’t crack; kids friendly with the year above, which was where girls started-below that it was still all boys-which in turn meant parties and clubs and all that stuff. There was one kid, some sort of delinquent aristo with access to high-grade drugs, who kept the group supplied till he was busted smoking a joint in St. James’s Park and the headmaster expelled him. Charlie stepped into the breach.”
“Dealing?”
“Yes. Right away, before he even knew where he could procure anything, he let it be known to this group that he was open for business. This all happened in the period right after my father’s disappearance, by the way. Our household had been turned upside down. My mother could barely put a sandwich together for our meals. My sister, who was supposed to be going to university, went off to live with some Anglican nuns instead. I was just in a sort of zombie state most of the time, too confused to know what I was feeling. Helping Charlie find a supplier seemed a perfectly natural thing to do. I took him to the Kensington Market, which was this place full of goths and punks and old gray-haired hippies. We were offered grass right away and for a while Charlie just bought the stuff there and resold it at school for a small profit. But then he realized he could do better buying it wholesale. Also people were asking for other things-speed, acid, coke… Anyway, we persuaded the guy we were buying from to introduce us to his dealer-”
“We? You were partners in this?”
“No, not really. I was more like his assistant, his gofer. Or maybe ‘apprentice’ would be the word, given the illustrious career I went on to later. We’d fetch the stuff from our new friend Rudy out in Hounslow together and bag it up in my bedroom, and sometimes I’d be the one who actually handed it over to the kids buying it. But it was his operation. All the money was his-incoming as well as outgoing. Anyway, there was this girl in the year above who bought a tab of acid from Charlie. Henrietta Vine. She dropped it at a birthday party in Manchester Square and ran out into Oxford Street on her way home while she was hallucinating. She thought the buses and taxis were weightless as balloons.”
He paused again, aware of the tension in Chloe’s body in her chair opposite him.
“What happened to her?”
“She was hit by a taxi. She had both legs broken and most of her ribs cracked. The school moved quickly to find out where she’d got hold of the stuff. It didn’t take long for our names to come up.”
“Yours and Charlie’s?”
“Yes.”
“But… Charlie wasn’t thrown out?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“Why do you think?”
She looked uncomprehendingly at him a moment, until it dawned on her.
“He got you to take the blame?”
Matthew shrugged.
“Well, as Charlie said when we were told to report to the headmaster’s office, ‘After all, Matt, things are already screwed for you, so you might as well.’ ”
She was staring at him, her eyes very wide, and he stared back, feeling the words go in hard and deep.
“And… you agreed?”
“It seemed reasonable to me.”
“Reasonable?”
“I mean, I’d have been kicked out anyway, so why not at least try to save Charlie’s skin? There was no point both of us going down if we didn’t have to, was there?”
“Why you, though? Why not him?”
“Oh, because he was right. Things were already screwed for me.”
His voice had started thickening, he realized. Telling her the story was having an unexpected effect on him. It was as if he were hearing it himself for the first time, and only now grasping the full extent of its implications.
He looked away; unsure, suddenly, if he was speaking out of a wish to avenge himself on Charlie or just, somehow, to account for himself to Chloe. Maybe the two motives had become inseparable.
“That’s what the whole incident made clear-really for the first time,” he said, managing a dry smile. “I hadn’t actually seen my father’s disappearance as quite the unmitigated disaster it was until Charlie pointed it out, if you can believe it. But he was right. So, yes, I agreed to take the blame.”
He cleared his throat.
“But, you know… it’s all water under the bridge as far as I’m concerned. Extremely ancient water under an extremely far-off bridge.”
Chloe looked acutely distressed.
“Oh, Matthew,” she said. It wasn’t much, but it seemed to him he’d never heard anything quite so sympathetically anguished in his life; not on his behalf. He’d never wanted pity-hers or anyone else’s-and he hoped that wasn’t what she was feeling now. But whatever emotion was filling her eyes with that look of infinite tenderness, it seemed to be doing him good.
In the silence that followed, he became aware of a familiar ticking sound behind him, in the entranceway to the kitchen. He turned around. Charlie was standing there. Judging from his posture, fully immobile and utterly silent except for the ticking of his Patek Philippe, he’d been there for some time. Chloe must have seen him appear and decided to let him listen. He looked right through Matthew. Chloe spoke:
“You never told me any of that, Charlie.”
A scoffing sound came from Charlie.
“You should have told me,” Chloe said.
Abruptly, Charlie stepped forward into the room, grabbing his rain jacket.
“I’m going into town to get something decent to eat,” he said. “I’ll see you later.”
He strode out through the front door, slamming it behind him.
“Charlie!” Chloe shouted. A moment later she ran out after him. Matthew could hear her calling Charlie’s name in the rain, then the slam of a car door and Chloe yelling, her voice louder than he’d ever heard it: “Don’t you dare! Don’t you dare, Charlie!” followed by the pounding of a fist on the car roof: hard enough to dent the paneling, by the sound of it. Charlie must have got out of the car then: Matthew heard the car door close again, more quietly, and Charlie’s voice, very controlled, saying: “I don’t have to defend myself against that little shit,” followed by Chloe, her voice audibly constricted with rage, answering: “You’d better, Charlie, or you’ll regret it.” There was a long pause, then Charlie’s voice hissed: “Not here.” Matthew heard their brisk footsteps crunch on the gravel as they walked around the side of the house. A few minutes later they came in through the glass doors and went silently upstairs. For some time, as he cleared up the kitchen, Matthew heard voices through the ceiling. He’d never heard them fight before, and would have liked to hear what they said, but he couldn’t make it out. Still, the anger in Chloe’s muffled voice was unmistakable, and it seemed to him inconceivable that there weren’t going to be some painful repercussions for Charlie, down the line. Chloe might be capable of loving a man she was betraying, but he seriously doubted she’d be able to go on living with a man she despised. And how, he wondered, allowing himself for the first time a steely satisfaction in what his words had surely wrought, how could she not despise Charlie after this? He felt as though he’d discharged himself of some indissolubly corrosive substance. Now let it spread its ruin somewhere else.