Читать книгу Métis Beach - Claudine Bourbonnais - Страница 15

I waited for darkness to fall, my whole body shaking like a leaf. The night was warm, with no wind. Slivers of voices and music burst forth from the Tees’ mansion and reached me on the beach. Above, an almost-full moon — a quicksilver disk trimmed away, a small nothing preventing it from perfect roundness, a cotton sphere resting in a hand.

The cream of Métis Beach, at least what was left of them in the summer of 1962, had congregated at the Tees home for the annual garden party, a prestigious event whose secondary purpose was to finance the Protestant churches. Long tables covered in white tablecloths, uniformed servants in black and white, alcohol in indecent volume, a cold buffet — though refined in taste — and a string quartet. In the humid air, notes of Vivaldi, Bach — none of the music that you’d play if you wanted your guests to dance. Margaret Tees had required a certain amount of sombreness that summer as a sign of respect for Johnny Picoté Babcock and Veronica McKay, as well as the mourning families, and all of the parents of Métis Beach, really, who couldn’t help fearing the worst each time one of their children borrowed their car or drove on their own. It was known now that the kids weren’t as responsible as previously thought: we learned that Johnny Picoté drank at least four beers at the clubhouse that evening, beer Art and Geoff Tees brought by the crate — two? three? — and it had been easy for them, the Tees being the owners of one of the largest breweries in the country. But I’d seen none of that.

My mother and Françoise spent that morning making hundreds of cucumber sandwiches that Mrs. Tees ordered every year and my mother agreed to make, even if it meant she had to close her store on a Saturday. Margaret Tees paid well, and she thanked my mother profusely. Meanwhile, my mother took some pride in the fact that a great lady of the world who counted among her friends the wife of Lester B. Pearson trusted her so much.

They began working in our kitchen at seven in the morning, the pungent, nauseating smell of cucumber floating through the house, all the way to my bed. When I left my room, Françoise looked away from me. She just couldn’t look me in the eye since the incident in the garage. My mother, defending her as usual, felt it necessary to add, “You know what your father said, you stay here!” I thought I saw a satisfied smile on Françoise’s face, or maybe not, but I didn’t care, I had other plans, which I’d put into action when they left in their black dresses and white aprons, heading up to the Tees mansion, the cucumber sandwiches all carefully stacked in boxes on the Chevrolet’s backseat.

I stood on the beach in the moonlight, my heart beating with apprehension and excitement. I could feel my penis like a weight in my pants, raw, as if it had been rubbed with sand.

They could all go to hell! My mother, my father, Françoise, Robert Egan … I refused to see the danger as you refuse to accept blame you don’t deserve. I was seventeen, for God’s sake, I wasn’t a child anymore!

“Romain, is that you?”

In the darkness, Gail was waiting for me, huddled in an Adirondack chair taken from her parents’ garden, a sidelong smile on her lips. I had expected something else. That she might make an effort, and not just sit there in dirty shorts and an ample, half-buttoned rumpled cotton shirt, almost masculine really. “Gail, are you okay?” She didn’t answer.

Suddenly, she laughed like a glass sphere crashing to the floor when she saw Locki jump towards me, his tail whipping through the air, “What a truly stupid dog! If he was actually trained, and he listened to my father, he would have attacked you!” My heart tightened — certainly not the sort of joke I wanted to hear.

“Gail, are you sure there’s no one around?”

“Do you see anyone? They’re all over there, having fun. Perfectly insensitive to the tragedy of others.”

She spoke as if there were someone around her to be angry at. I was upset and disappointed that she was in this state — she was drunk, I could smell it on her breath, and her clothes were dirty — almost repulsive. This is how she wanted to welcome me? She had planned this moment, and I wasn’t sure I wanted any part of it at first; it was too risky, and she knew it, she wasn’t stupid. Yet she was insistent, imploring, and seductive, “It’s important to me, to you, to both of us. Something special will bind us together, forever. Do you understand?” And of course I believed her, or wanted to believe her, a girl like her who was interested in me, even if a part of me was saying, You’re being had, man, this girl isn’t well. But what’s the point of ruminations, if not to torpedo your heart? I much preferred concentrating on my pleasure.

Of course it was mixed in with a certain degree of anxiety; after all, I was a seventeen-year-old boy, assaulted with these sudden urges as strong as the need to piss in the morning, just at the idea of doing it for the first time. We knew we would be going all the way that night, a prospect both enticing and frightening, though I was beginning to believe she might be making fun of me, seeing her limply moving her head, her hair tangled and flush against her skull, and that savage light in her eyes, more incandescent than the night we’d seen Rebel Without a Cause.

Disappointment in my voice, I said, “You want me to go?”

She straightened. “Why?”

“You don’t look so well. Are you sure everything is okay?”

“Of course everything’s okay, what do you think? Everyone is having fun tonight. And so will we.”

The sarcastic edge to her voice cut me, but not enough for me to refuse the arm she offered so I might pull her to her feet. She bumped against a chair and held onto me heavily. Staggering, she brought me into the house, bathed in darkness. I hadn’t stepped foot in the place since the infamous dinner with Reverend Barnewall, and I couldn’t repress a thrill of vengeance thinking of Robert Egan: This time I’m here to sleep with your daughter.

“No, Locki! No!” The dog had followed us, barking, scratching us with his claws. We were playing, why not him as well? “I said no!” Incensed, Gail grabbed him by the collar, pulled him towards the great French doors, and tied him outside, on the veranda; we heard a few more barks before he lay down, his nose pointed towards the sea.

“Here, drink this.” The bottle of Southern Comfort she’d already gone to work on. I brought it to my mouth, a big mouthful, burning, I felt it going all the way down to my stomach. Gail dropped onto the couch; on the coffee table, a piece of art that looked like an egg fell to the ground and rolled away without breaking, and again her laugh put ice in my veins. I glanced nervously around the room, as if a trap was about to spring. What was that on the chair there, a glimmer of movement when I looked quickly, something left to dry … Robert Egan’s red swimsuit? Anxious, I said, “And what if your parents decide to come home early from the party?”

“Relax, Romain.”

She pushed away a lock of her blond-white hair that kept falling over her eyes, took my hands, and placed them on her breasts. “Kiss me.” I obeyed clumsily, my hands motionless on her breasts, as if I might break them, as if I feared I might detonate if I moved. A musk came off her, dried sweat and body odour. Around us, in the living room lit by the moon, the four great windows opened onto the sea made us as vulnerable as thieves in daytime.

“Gail...?”

She pushed me away brusquely. “You’re shaking? Why? There’s nothing to fear, I told you!” She swallowed another mouthful of Southern Comfort. She began speaking very quickly, eyes fixed on the floor, as if she’d been offered a reprieve, and had only a few hours left to pour everything out from within — her marriage, her parents.… “Do you know what I am for them? A commodity. Merchandise. That’s all I am.”

Carefully, not wanting to offend her, I risked saying, “Why are you agreeing to it?”

She stiffened, rage in her voice. She’d been promised as a way of closing a deal. She would marry Don Drysdale of Drysdale Insurance, the eldest son of the company’s owner. Her father owned shares in it, but they weren’t as valuable as the union of their two families. The marriage loomed on the horizon, and her parents were overjoyed. “And what about me? I think I’m going crazy, Romain.”

She grabbed the bottle, took another swig, a portion of which ran down the front of her neck. She looked entirely incredulous when I said, “No one can force you to marry a man you don’t love.”

It was followed by a bitter laugh. “Well, they certainly don’t care about that!”

“Do you love him?”

“I don’t know.”

“You don’t know?”

“No, I don’t know. Maybe so, maybe not. But it doesn’t matter.”

She loves him? Why lie to me?

“If you love him, why are you against the marriage?”

She looked at me as if I were an imbecile, “You don’t understand anything, Romain. Come on, this is our last chance.”

Baffled, I followed her to her room on the second floor, my legs like wet rags. She mentioned the marriage again, always with the same desperate rage — the Tees would be there, and other families from Métis Beach, not witnesses, no, but voyeurs, “You know, the same sort of people who look at a man being put to death from behind a pane of glass.” She muttered something about Marilyn Monroe, found dead two weeks before, “I think I’m meant to die young. Even younger than Marilyn.…” And with an air of defiance, she pulled the engagement ring off her finger, a ring mounted with a diamond — I noticed it for the first time just then. So it was serious with Don. I glanced up and saw my guilty reflection in the mirror over the dresser.

“Gail, no.…”

“No what?”

“Let’s go back down. It’s not a good idea.”

“For who? Your vicar? Come on.”

I glanced anxiously around the room — a young girl’s bed, with a pink and white comforter, matching wallpaper, Beatrix Potter authenticated watercolours that Mrs. Egan had so proudly ferreted out at an antique store in London. A room decorated for a child, it wasn’t right for what we were about to do, a sacrilege against childhood.

She shot me a knowing look, mixed with a desire for vengeance. But revenge for what, exactly? Does she love him or not, this Don Drysdale? As if reading my thoughts — and seemingly to humiliate me — she pulled a picture of him from one of the dresser’s drawers and pushed it towards me with a triumphant air. A flash of jealousy filled me as I saw this young man so sure of himself, athletic body and perfect teeth, as unbearable as a blinding light, and then, as if she wanted to be forgiven, she began kissing me passionately, her lips against mine, famished, pulling her shirt off, my God, those firm breasts, far fuller than I thought, their points like prune pits. “Hush!” She put her finger against my mouth. She was shaking, removing the rest of her clothes, her eyes filled with light, with the pleasure of seeing me watching her. I was excited, of course, though in the back of my mind I couldn’t help feeling I wasn’t taking full advantage of the moment. I was too nervous, too clumsy. I couldn’t help thinking of Don, handsome like the actors on the screen at the clubhouse. I was afraid to disappoint Gail. I knew I’d disappoint her.

“Come on!”

“No, Gail. I don’t think.…”

“Please, please! I know you’ve been dreaming it for a long time. Tomorrow it’ll be too late.”

“I … I don’t know.…”

She stumbled towards me, and I submitted to her with fearful docility. She undid my belt, took my clothes off. I felt blood rushing to the bottom of my stomach. A fog in my brain, I didn’t even know where I was anymore. She said, panting, “Help me.” I tripped trying to take off my pants and my underwear, my cock hard, aimed at her, her eyes avoiding it entirely. Timidly, I lay down next to her; the tension slowly cleared as our lips touched, her warm body next to mine, her salty, fresh skin, then her suddenly agitated hands finding their way towards my crotch, an electric shock that ran down to my toes, she guided me clumsily into her, moist heat, sublime, my head emptied, my conscience completely gone, and a groan shuddered through me, without warning.

Her disappointed eyes, and the shame that filled me.

She moved away brusquely, no doubt she was thinking of Don, with whom she’d done it, I was sure now. I wanted to die, to flee. I couldn’t hold a candle to him. What humiliation. How could I have believed that such a girl was actually interested in me? And what time was it? Late now? How much time had we spent in that room? I was seventeen, for God’s sake, and I had just done it for the first time, and that’s all there was? That disappointing?

“Romain, please! You’re going to ruin everything!”

I jumped out of bed in a panic. I wanted to stammer embarrassed apologies, something like, It would have been better if we hadn’t done it, it was better before. But you couldn’t say something like that. I tried to collect my clothes strewn across the floor, looking for my belt, my shoes, my shirt. I wished I could be far away from this place. I needed to think about what had happened, alone. Gail insisted in a plaintive voice that I come back to bed. I didn’t answer. She got up, furious, her hair half-covering her face. “What are you afraid of? It’s like that’s all there is in you, fear!” The remark should have upset me, but I barely heard it. I still needed to find my socks and one of my damn shoes, which Gail picked out from under the bed, and threw at me maliciously, like a bone to a dog. I must have looked ridiculous, down on all fours like an idiot, half dressed and half shod, blind to the miracle before me, Gail naked, her small round breasts, a shining spot between her legs, but it didn’t interest me anymore, my genitals had withered, a hermit crab back in its shell. We heard a noise on the ground floor.

“What’s that?”

“Nothing! Just the wind!”

“No, there’s someone there!”

Then a terrible cry in the night, a terrifying howl.

Panicking, Gail wrapped herself in a sheet and ran out of the room, a cold shower wouldn’t have had sobered her quicker. My heart beating, we ran down the stairs, into the living room, and reached the veranda in which a heavy, strange silence lay. “Locki?” Gail said in a nervous voice. “Locki, is that you?” She saw the blood on the veranda, viscous, steaming. She screamed, desperate shouts that were heard all the way to the Tees mansion. In a panic, I ran until I thought my heart would explode, first to the back garden, then down the cedar staircase that led to the beach, and due east, my ankles turning on the stones. That poor dog, stretched out, its throat slit, not completely dead yet. Light burst from the Riddington place, and then the Hayes’. In front of me, far away, under the nearly full moon, someone was running towards the village, a broad-shouldered silhouette, familiar.

I made my decision. I would denounce him to the police. Louis kept killing animals, the bastard. The next morning, there was a knock on the door. But it wasn’t Louis they were looking for. It was me.