A Terrible Kindness(59)
All this William picked up from the torturous meal they’ve just eaten. He was the only one who’d come off badly if he contested everything. So William nodded and smiled and laughed at Ray’s jokes, who, transformed by his haircut, has well-tended nails and clothes less rumpled and grubby. William felt himself grow smaller with every joke Ray uttered and every burst of laughter from Gloria’s mouth. It was not in him to compete, so he sat there growing quieter and smaller and meaner.
‘You don’t seem very pleased to see me,’ Ray says, once they’re in what used to be William’s room, alone for the first time.
‘What did you expect?’ he stage whispers, not wanting the Finches to hear. ‘Why didn’t you ask me first?’
‘I didn’t think you’d mind. I thought we were friends.’
‘What if I don’t want to share a room – with a friend or anyone? You should have asked me, Ray!’
‘And you’d have said no.’ He drops the pretence. ‘And I couldn’t stand being in that place any more. And, though it’s obviously not mutual, I like you, William.’
Ray snores. William lies on his side, feeling dark and coiled up inside. Ray is underhand and opportunistic. But once examined, his own feelings aren’t pleasant either. It is true he doesn’t want to share a room, but he hasn’t said all the other things that are true; that he finds Ray crude, his ignorance embarrassing, that he is threatened by him and jealous of the laughter he so easily drew from Gloria.
That night he dreams he’s back in Cambridge. He and Martin are waiting in the bathroom for Matron to give them the dips.
‘Martin, you’ve got boobs!’ William says, and Martin laughs, cupping his puppy flesh in his hands and pouting his lips. When he wakes, William is left with the light feeling their friendship gave him. What he wouldn’t give to have Martin lying in the other bed now.
39
The thick, yellow quality of the light tells him it’s later than it should be. Ray’s bed is empty, unmade as usual. William sits up, snatching his travel clock from the lace doily on his bedside table. Ten o’clock. Saturday. He puts it back and flops down again. Even though there’s no college today, he’d normally be out of the house by now.
When he had the room to himself, he’d do a couple of hours’ study first thing, then wander down Bethnal Green Road, looking but not buying from the market stalls, get a paper and sit in the small cafe on the corner and have a go at the crossword. But with Ray in residence, he doesn’t like to study in his room. He feels awkward about how much time he’s happy to spend with his tatty old Scudamore, how calming and reassuring he finds it to understand more and more about the internal workings of the human body. He’d never tell Ray how privileged he feels to walk around knowing what there is under people’s skin, a whole miraculous universe of efficiency and movement. As if he’s been entrusted with the secret of everyone’s insides. It pleases him, as he looks at someone in the street, that he’d know which is their external and which their internal carotid artery, that he could name every single bone in their skull. Yesterday, Arthur asked him if he’d ever considered medicine. He was pleased at the implication, but was sure he’d found his vocation. He’d like to share the thrill of this knowledge with someone, but he won’t with Ray. He feels himself closing down.
He’s polite with him as they sit squashed at their little table, which wobbles and creaks as they lean on it to write. William often finishes the half-hour tutoring with a headache. He has to flex his jaw and breathe in and out afterwards. Sometimes, he catches wafts of Gloria’s perfume on Ray’s clothes, and it’s all he can do not to tip him off his chair.
With William’s help, Ray’s written work has improved, and his physical presentation no longer causes offence. His dark hair is parted and combed, his nails clean and filed. But still he shows little aptitude for the work, which William finds infuriating. Sometimes, when it’s just the two of them carrying out a procedure, he simply intervenes, taking the instruments from Ray’s clumsy hands and doing it himself. Ray rarely complains, but yesterday, when William snatched the aneurysm hook off him, he muttered, ‘I know I’m useless, but why should you be so angry about it?’
William did not reply as he easily separated the neck tissue to find the vein that had eluded Ray.
The truth is, William thinks he’ll never stop resenting Ray for lying his way into the Finches’ home. He feels personally robbed, with the theft continuing day by day. He no longer ends the evening with a cup of cocoa and a chat with Gloria. She asks him, but she asks Ray too. As if he doesn’t spend enough time with Ray as it is.
During the week, William’s escape is Scudamore, but he quickly realised he needed something else for the weekend; to get him out of the house, out of himself. A poster for a Millais exhibition at the Tate Gallery got him there for the first time. One visit was all it took.
Big, beautiful and free; the Tate, the National Portrait Gallery and the V&A invite him in, to sit, to wonder, for as long as he wants. Paintings quickly become old friends to revisit, and no matter how long he spends strolling through the galleries, there is always something new to win his heart.
By ten o’clock on a Saturday, he’d usually be on a bus and on his way. But this morning, stepping onto the landing, the air feels still and cold, as if he’s the only one in. He washes, dresses, then runs lightly down the stairs, feeling the relief of solitude. He pulls some bread from the waxed paper bag, lights the grill and lays the slice under the popping flame, turning it just at the right time. There’s a new jar of the lime marmalade Mrs Finch sometimes buys because she knows he likes it.