The Pagan House Read online

  17

  Edgar liked the light, the sunshine, the smell of hard summer turf. It was his penultimate day as a twelve-yearold and Edgar was playing soccer. He liked running in this world and felt tireless here, indomitable. If it were not for the ball, bouncing between the better players, slung out low by the goalkeeper wearing an orange-yellow cap and wraparound sports shades, his contentment would be thoughtlessly complete. But sometimes the ball did come his way and he had at least to affect to run towards it, attempt one of his scissoring kicks that he might later claim was intended for Husky Marvin or Ray Newhouse or Cousin Paul to run on to. The other players knew how bad he was, but somehow the news kept failing to reach Coach Spiro, whose attention was always elsewhere when Edgar was executing the most shaming of his pratfalls and incompetencies. It had lodged in Coach Spiro’s mind that Edgar was a British virtuoso of the sport, and nothing, not his own demurrals, not the other players’ anguished, almost tearful protests, could prevent Edgar’s name—or, rather, the name he went by in the ordinary world—from being read out on the team sheet for the opening game of the season. Electa had been named only to the substitutes’ bench.

  ‘And the captain will be Paul. This represents no judgement on you, Marv.’

  How can it not be? How can Marvin not take it as such? The indignity of Edgar was forgotten. Paul had beaten out Marvin for the captain’s armband and this was news. Paul was in his white shorts on the changing-room bench, pulling off his socks, sweat dripping photogenically on his chest, unselfconsciously resting an arm on Todd’s shoulder for balance or just to demonstrate his ease and manliness to the world. Todd and Andy used to be Husky Marvin’s friends, partners, supporters, apostles. Now they were Paul’s. Husky Marvin busied himself with a liniment rub, furiously taking out on his calf muscles the rage he felt at Paul’s ascension.

  ‘Settle down now. We’ve got a treat for you.’

  The ‘treat’ was the arrival of Company Bob with a box of soccer-team uniforms. They were red and green and each had a number on the back and the Onyataka Ltd logo on the front of a dish and spoon hanging from a tree.

  ‘This humbles me,’ Company Bob said. ‘I know you’re going to wear these with pride. When you put on this shirt—and the shorts, of course, and socks—you’re representing a lot of things. Not just your team, although I know that Coach Spiro has done a fabulous job with you. No, you’re representing a lot more than that. You’re representing Creek and Vail and the company and the community, and you know what? You’re representing history too. This is how we show who we are!’

  He went on, being inspirational, Edgar supposed, but Edgar had stopped listening, because Edgar was making a vow: he had decided to ask Electa out to the cinema and he would do it the first chance he got and Electa would say yes and then he would kiss her. He has promised this to himself.

  ‘Thanks Bob,’ Coach said, clapping his hands. ‘We meet at ten thirty next Saturday. Training as usual on Wednesday. Stay sharp, men.’

  Electa was waiting outside. She might have been waiting for Edgar or she might have been waiting for Husky Marvin, but the two boys walked out together and neither wanted to test if he was the less preferred, and maybe that was how Electa wanted it, as they fell into step, she in the middle, the three walking so carefully together that none was in charge of their direction. Edgar practised nonchalant whistling. Husky Marvin kept clearing his throat as if in preparation for a speech. Husky Marvin was wearing a checked shirt over a black polo-neck jumper. He always seemed to reverse the order of his tops and Edgar would never find out why.

  ‘How’s your cat investigation? Made any breakthroughs?’

  This was what he had been waiting for. They walked down to the creek and he conquered her facetiousness in complicit whispers with his report of the discovery of the body of the victim.

  ‘Wow,’ she said.

  ‘That’s right.’

  They lay side by side in the sunshine in the long grass beside the creek and Edgar offered his theories about the perpetrators of the crime—the Indian Fighters did it, or Jerome; he tested the theory and found it wanting that Janice and Guthrie and Marilou Weathers belonged to a witch cult that sacrificed animals and might soon be moving on to bigger game. Midges circled above their heads, a slow swarm in the heat. Edgar’s and Electa’s shoulders were touching. Her face was inches away from his. Edgar stopped talking, held his breath to listen to Electa’s breathing; he tried to shut out the sounds of birdsong in the trees, the croaking of frogs by the creek, faraway voices outside the Community Center, the rumble of traffic on Route 5. He watched the rise and fall of Electa’s azure-blue shirt, the grain of the cotton on her sports bra beneath.

  If he kept his scope of vision narrow, he could pretend Husky Marvin wasn’t here, he could banish him from this world, where every chosen detail was lovely, the poignancy of the blades of grass that have escaped their feet and bodies, a rogue dandelion that receives a strand of Electa’s hair, Electa’s skin, dappled with hair and sun. A fly settled on Electa’s shirt, worked its legs against the thread of the embroidered crest, and lifted away again.

  ‘No flies on me,’ Electa said.

  In this charmed moment, Electa’s joke was as funny as anything he had ever heard. He laughed, and his delight provoked hers. When their laughter fell away, he wondered if he might kiss her now, if she should like that: her mouth was still open in a smile, and across her lips were tiny lines like the veins in tangerine segments that he longed to press his mouth against, but he could feel Husky Marvin watching them, and greater than the prospect of her anger or Marvin’s response if he should assault her was his fear of destroying this moment. He was saddened by its impermanence and he wanted above all to prolong it, keep the two of them like this, touching and delighted. Already her eyes were looking up now through the branches above them, as if for diversion. Her eyes were pale green, almost to grey.

  Edgar made the mistake of looking up too and his gaze largened to include Husky Marvin, who was sitting with his arms around his knees. He wasn’t watching them any more. His attention was on the softball diamond just up from the creek. The center fielder was standing, hands on hips. The pitcher was whirling her arm. The hitter stood, undersized and unready. On the edge of the field, a woman under a large sun-bonnet sat at an easel.

  ‘Let’s watch the game,’ Marvin said.

  Husky Marvin and Edgar sat either side of Electa on the bleachers. They pretended to be interested in the softball game. Husky Marvin was still nursing the wound of losing his captaincy.

  ‘I gotta go home,’ said Electa, showing no signs of moving.

  ‘Sucks,’ said Marvin. ‘How long you say he’s staying? He’s not going to be here for football season, is he?’

  Dimly Edgar worked out that soccer season and football season were two different time periods. He had no idea when football season was, but he was not above further worrying Husky Marvin. ‘I don’t know, he might be.’

  ‘Sucks,’ said Marvin.

  ‘Big-time,’ agreed Edgar, confidently.

  ‘You said it,’ said Marvin.

  ‘You like the sister, though,’ Electa said.

  ‘Do not,’ Marvin said.

  ‘Okay. I was just going to ask why. I don’t know who would.’

  Electa’s capable hands were on her lap. There had been one previous moment when her right hand glanced as if by intention across Edgar’s left. Edgar, elaborately, moved his whole body to the side, leading with his shoulder, a gentle bump, delighting in the strength that Electa’s tight body had, shoulder to shoulder, and he swivelled slightly, picking, as if interested, in what might lie underneath, worms, worlds, chasms, white flakes of paint from the bleacher seat, so their hips now touched and, discreetly, without looking, he brought his hands further up his thigh, as if to warm them on this breezy, summery evening that fell towards night, and now the side of his hand was touching the side of hers. And, he must be quick here, fear of what his rival might do gave Edgar
boldness, he reached, he took, he held her hand in his. Continuing to look away, as if inspecting the clouds for tomorrow’s weather, Edgar exulted. He had achieved something grand here. He held the hand tighter and the hand squeezed back. It was daring to be sitting here, out in the open, something being revealed and displayed.

  A finger flicked across his hand, an enticing movement that was not quite what Edgar would have expected from Electa, and was therefore all the more exciting. It encouraged him to make the most difficult movement, of slowly moving his head so these secret lovers might meet in vision as well as touch. He hoped taste would be the next sense to match, inextricable with smell—and so it would go until all six were involved, all six of hers and all six of his, combining, which makes thirty-six possible combinations or, no, it must be more than that: her taste, his taste, her touch, his smell, her smell, his touch. 6 x 5 x 4 x 3 x 2. Edgar’s head dizzied. Electa, however, stared straight ahead, at the softballers, at the windmill arm of the pitcher, the ball that whizzed through the flail of the batter’s swing to the catcher who tossed it back to the pitcher again. The boring thing about sports was their repetition, or maybe that was what people liked about them, doing the same thing over and over until everyone was machine. He would not have thought her interested in this kind of spectacle, or maybe, crafty Electa, she was seeking to distract Husky Marvin from the grand event that was going on here, the statement being made. And Marvin was indeed staring straight ahead, face a little ruddier than usual beneath the beard of his acne. Perhaps he was embarrassed. Probably he was furious at the quiet intimacy that Electa and Edgar were putting on show here today. Electa’s arm was still tight against Edgar’s. Edgar looked down, his gaze following the line of her blue Italian soccer shirt, the pale yellow of her wrist, the piano-playing fingers that gripped the bench. Which meant, Edgar realized, that it was her other hand he was holding. This delighted him at first, her audacity of reaching across with the arm that was next to Husky Marvin’s, that might even be touching it!, but then he became concerned at the effort it must be costing her, the muscular pull across her shoulder. She showed no discomfort but all the same. Edgar leaned back to enable her arm to perform a less unnatural twist. The hand he held, as if in gratitude, clutched his more tightly, fingers resumed their explorations.

  Edgar watched the softball players. He would be content to sit here for ever, enjoying the pleasant sounds of birds in the sunset, Husky Marvin’s throat performing its nervous manoeuvres. Floodlights flickered on. The softball players continued to do what they were supposed to do. His hand was gripped more tightly. An urgent message of some kind was being squeezed across. Over in the direction of Route 5 a fire gaily burned.

  Slowly lowering his head, a reluctant horror growing, Edgar looked down at his hand being held and caressed by Husky Marvin’s.

  Marvin had been making the same mistake as Edgar, that much was obvious from his face, staring straight ahead, reddened with the blood of arousal rather than embarrassment. Edgar had to end their entanglement before Marvin realized whose hand it was he had trapped, which he held so tightly, stroking with a virtuoso touch. Edgar pulled away. Marvin held him tighter. Edgar didn’t know if Electa was aware of the battle that was being fought and he didn’t want to know. It must be over. Edgar relaxed his hand, played dead for a moment, an awful moment, in which his maidenly hand lay vulnerable for Marvin’s next assault, and just as Marvin was deciding in which direction he should seize his advantage, Edgar’s hand had gone, nursed, protected, in his lap.

  Marvin finally was looking at Electa, who was still oblivious to the clutch and the struggle, or at least politely appeared to be so. Marvin smiled, deciding that this was all in complicity against Edgar. He does not know and never will. This was a moment that may be unwritten, despite the gaze—prurient, disdainful, comradely?—of the center fielder out on the diamond.

  As they left the sports field, there was one last chance. Husky Marvin was already away. They watched him, slouching shoulders, lightly running across lawns, vaulting over playhouses, dog kennels and bicycles. Electa adjusted her sports bag. The instep of her right foot scratched the back of her left calf, the rope strap of her bag sliced a line too tender to bear between her breasts.

  ‘Do you want to come to the cinema with me?’

  If he had said movie-house or theatre she’d have said no straight away, he could see that while she was considering the invitation—for once, with this obscure girl, everything she was thinking was apparent to him; and he gave her a further incentive by saying he had another discovery to report to her, and she did say yes: amused, scuffing her foot into the loose pebbles on the road, kicking up a grey cloud of dust, she said she would go to the cinema with him the following night.

  ‘I’ll get tickets,’ he said and he was about to say more, but some new instinct that he recognized as reliable instructed him to end the conversation now.

  Edgar on Vail Avenue exults. The air is pure, the dying sunshine is good, glaring off the silver roofs of cars, and Electa has consented to come to the cinema with him. He wishes he could drive, he would like to drive now, radio on, roof and windows down, steering one-handed with his elbow out. There is an almondy scent to the day, which he breathes in deep; he jumps, attempts to click his heels off to the side while in air, but he doesn’t quite make it, he nearly falls, foot scrabbling on impact with the loose stones of the road, he has to put out a hand to stop himself, grazing his palm. But no one sees, Electa is gone over Creek bridge, he is alone in his exultation; he may regather his self-possession, and whistle, and saunter.

  When he got back to the house, Paul was outside, lounging with a giggling harem of blonde Vail girls.

  ‘Hey Eddie,’ he said. ‘Your dad’s here.’

  TWO

  The Inheritors

  1

  Edgar watched his father driving. Edgar’s father’s hair was streaked brown and grey and attached itself in damp strands to his neck, which was sunburnt into little cross-hatched diamonds. Edgar had an early childhood memory of sitting in the back seat of an open-topped car like this one, perhaps it was this one, and counting the diamonds in his father’s neck, and watching his girlfriend (his stepmother, Edgar supposed he could have called her, except their relationship was never quite formal enough for that), and the way Edgar’s father’s girlfriend’s fingers would walk along the headrest like little men, commuters on a jaunty break from office routine, until they found a place to play in Edgar’s father’s hair, twisting and coiling and releasing thin brown strands.

  ‘How’s Jenna?’

  ‘Who?’ His father pursed his lips, flicked at something irritating in the corner of his eye beneath his sunglasses, then patted his empty shirt pocket.

  ‘Jenna. Your, you know, I don’t know, girlfriend.’

  If his father heard his struggles to say the word ‘girlfriend’, he didn’t remark on it. But then his father seldom remarked on anything Edgar did in the world.

  ‘Jenna? You remember Jenna?’

  ‘Sure I do,’ Edgar said, bravely attempting American usage. And it was true: he remembered Jenna very well. She had been very good at menu complicity with him, whispering that she bet he would love the steak and fries and how about a rocky-road sundae to follow? And Edgar, little pre-Edgar, liked to seem as if he was pondering, weighing up his choices, but there was a part of him that was disgusted by these gross American things, these hunks of cow, bleeding and browned; everything to eat in America had seemed brown to him, he had wondered why that might be, and in fact he had once dared to ask the question out loud, but neither adult had heard him.

  ‘What happened to her? Fu—Damned if I know what happened to Jenna. Got married again I heard. That was years ago. Kid now. Moved back to Ohio. Columbus?’

  Edgar had admired Jenna while being terrified of her. She had reminded him somehow of a horse, the same pride in her own movements, the warning gleam in her eyes that there might be trouble if she was approached in the wrong way
, the same satiny unselfconsciousness about her.

  ‘Do you have, you know, now, have?’

  ‘Have what?’ Edgar’s father asked.

  ‘You know, like a girlfriend?’

  ‘What’s all this interest in my romantic life? Your mother told you to find out?’

  There was no getting back from here. Once Edgar’s father’s suspicions of Monica’s stratagems had been aroused, they were locked into place. Edgar’s father rolled another stick of chewing-gum into his mouth and again it didn’t occur to him to offer one to Edgar, nor did Edgar presume to take one: it seemed too far to reach, to the cubby-hole below the radio, where his father kept his gum and quarters and spectacles case. Edgar’s father jabbed the radio from one classic rock station to another and tapped the place over his heart and drove and chewed gum and didn’t talk to his son for another forty and some miles.

  The part that Edgar had enjoyed best about seeing his father again, better even than the first hug, his cologne smell, the casual ‘Hey, how’s it going, buddy?’, was watching his father deal with Uncle Frank. Edgar’s father’s presence immediately quickened Frank’s already quick temper. Uncle Frank’s lips pouted. His face and voice became petulant. Edgar was glad he didn’t have any brothers and sisters if this was what happened, the permanent sibling war.

  Edgar’s father infuriated Uncle Frank by nature. He sat on the sofa—Edgar primly beside him, not quite touching, hoping for his father’s arm to fall expansively over his shoulders—while he gently rocked his whisky tumbler making the ice clink and roll.

  ‘Don’t know why I’m surprised it took you so long to get here. You’ve always left it to me to take responsibility,’ Uncle Frank said.

  ‘Johnny-on-the-spot,’ Edgar’s father said.

  ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

  Edgar’s father turned his attention to his brother’s wife. ‘You’re looking very gorgeous, Lucille. He treating you right?’