“That makes it even more likely, then,” Patsy says.
“Does it?”
“Definitely. For all sorts of reasons.”
The two of them sit for a moment in silence. The newspaper is spread over the breakfast things, peaking over the jam jar and the syrup bottle, creased and grease-spotted with marmalade and oil. There is a single strawberry left in the bottom of the thin plastic punnet, flat edged like the snout of a cold chisel and frosted white with unripeness.
“I just want to get to the truth behind it. That’s all. The kernel of truth behind everything,” the saxophone teacher says suddenly, into nothing.
“Dad’s trying to connect,” Isolde says, with the special weariness that she reserves for parental efforts to connect. “It’s part of his rebuilding thing. He wants to know more about us. Both of us.”
“Is that good?” the saxophone teacher says.
“Last night he comes in while I’m watching TV and goes, Hey, Isolde. Do you have a boyfriend?” Isolde snickers unkindly. “I only laughed because he said Hey. So jolly and casual, like he’d practiced it in the mirror or something. I said, Yes, and he clapped his hands and said, Well great, let’s have the man around for dinner.”
“You said Yes?” the saxophone teacher says. She has stiffened and is looking at Isolde with her head cocked and one hand hanging limp from the wrist, like a caricature of a startled pet.
“Yeah,” Isolde says suspiciously, tucking her hair behind her ear. “It’s only been a few weeks, but yeah.”
The saxophone teacher makes a little twitching motion with her hand, gesturing Isolde onward. Isolde rolls her tongue out over her bottom lip and regards the saxophone teacher a moment longer before continuing.
“Everything’s about eating together now,” she says. “Eating together as a family solves everything. We do it like a ritual—nobody’s allowed to touch their food until everyone’s sat down, and then we all thank Mum and pass the sauce and whatever. Dad says eating together is the answer. If we had eaten together from the beginning, then Victoria would never have bumped accidentally-on-purpose into Mr. Saladin in the hall and let her breasts rub against his chest for the briefest half-second before stepping back and saying, Oh sorry, I’m such a klutz. If we’d eaten together from the beginning then Mr. Saladin would never have bitten his lip and ducked his head whenever Victoria looked at him—that shy-schoolboy flirt effect that he’d been using since the eighties but it still worked a charm. If we’d eaten together, Victoria would never have sucked on his fingertips and pushed her tongue down into the V between his first two fingers and made him gasp. None of it would have happened.”
“I didn’t know you had a boyfriend,” the sax teacher says.
“And none of us ever have anything to talk about at the table,” Isolde says. “Not even Dad. He just ends up spieling about his work and everyone switches off and tries to eat as fast as possible.”
“How did you meet him?” the sax teacher says.
“By accident,” Isolde says. “Just around.”
“He should come to the recital next month,” the saxophone teacher says, still peering at Isolde with a new hard look on her face. “Come and watch you play.”
“Yeah,” Isolde says, bending the word like a sucked harmonica note so she manages to sound indifferent and aloof.
“Is he in your year at school?” the sax teacher says.
“Oh no,” Isolde says smugly, “he’s left school. He’s an actor. At the Drama Institute,” and she waves an airy hand out the curtained window to the buildings on the far side of the courtyard.
The lights change suddenly and the saxophone teacher can see it, playing out like someone else’s home video in front of her, furry and striped with grainy black.
“He’s an actor,” Isolde’s father is saying.
“That’s what I said,” Isolde says.
“He’s at the Drama Institute.”
“That’s what I said.”
“How old is he?”
“Only first-year, Dad,” Isolde says, trying to look charming.
“I certainly hope he doesn’t expect you to have sex with him.”
“Dad.”
“Because you’re only fifteen,” Isolde’s father says, speaking loudly and clearly as if Isolde is partly deaf. “If you were to sleep with him, that would be a crime.”
“Dad!”
“I’m going to ask you now,” Isolde’s father says, his eyes wide, “I’m going to ask you now, and I want you to give me a straight answer. Have you slept with him?”
“Dad, stop it, it’s gross.” Isolde is inspired by a rare shaft of genius, and says, “It’s like you want to even everything out, play it fair, do by me as you’ve done by Victoria. Crime for crime. Stop it.”
“Why are you sidestepping my question?”
“Why are you talking to me like that? Can’t I talk to Mum?”
“You’ve slept with him.”
“Great. You’ve decided. Now you’ll never believe me whatever I say anyway.”
“You’re only fifteen.”
“Can I talk to Mum?”
“Isolde,” says Isolde’s father sadly, “I never had sisters. Throw me a bone.”
The lights return to normal, restoring a yellowish afternoon light to the studio, and the saxophone teacher blinks as if awakening.
“The Institute,” she says. “That’s supposed to be very hard to get into, isn’t it? He must be rather good.”
TWELVE
Was he supposed to undress her first, or wait to be undressed? He didn’t like the idea of undressing her first—it seemed greedy, and the thought of remaining clothed while stripping her naked unnerved him—he imagined someone walking in, and what they would think. Would it happen piece by piece, like a polite duel—her shirt then his, her bra then his singlet, all the way down? Or were they supposed to undress themselves separately, and then come together after they had both been transformed? Stanley’s heart was thumping as he led her to the bed and they sat down on its edge, kicking off their shoes in tandem and shuffling sideways to embrace each other and lie down.
He had imagined this moment many times previously, but Stanley realized now that he had imagined the scene mostly in closeup, arching and rearing and heavy breathing and skin. What was supposed to happen now? He tried to negotiate swinging himself on top of the girl without kneeing her in the groin. He was wooden, like someone obeying a director’s instruction or responding to a cue. He floundered, shifting his weight to one side and back again, and he had a sudden, unflattering vision of himself from above, kneeling with one arm thrashing behind his back to find the slipping duvet and pull it back over his shoulders against the draught. He felt a surge of anger at his own ineptitude, and almost viciously he slipped a hand inside her shirt, just to prove he was up to the task. He felt her ribs rise up sharply at his touch.
Stanley was wishing that he was much older than he was. He wished that he was a man, and not a boy, a man who was easy with himself and could strip a girl and laugh and know that what he was doing was right. He wished that he was a man who could place his finger on this girl’s lips and say, Now I am going to make you come. He wished that he was a man who could use the word “cunt,” who could speak it aloud and easily, in a way that would make a girl admire and worship him. He wished that he was a man at home with his body, a man who could say, You are beautiful, and know that the words would have meaning because he spoke as a man and not a boy.
Stanley slithered his hand down her belly, down past the little scooped slit of the girl’s navel, hatted by a fold of skin that shrank to a tight little nib as she raised her arms up above her head. She reached to pull his head down to hers and craned up to kiss his mouth. His hand was scrabbling at the button of her fly. He was ashamed at himself for moving so quickly but impelled all the same by a helpless wish for self-annihilation, a desire for the scene to somehow go on without him so he could withdraw. The denim was stretched tight and flat over the bones of her pelvis, and he had to bend the buttonhole cruelly sideways to wrench the button through. It gave. He drew down the zipper and with his fingers felt the thin cotton of her briefs, buoyed up by the tufted whorl of her pubic hair. He felt surprise. Had he imagined her hairless, like a doll?