Beneath the Skin(36)
Like a vampire, he muses. What a complete and utter fuckup I am.
He briefly glimpses a tiny pair of hollow eyes in the headlights and feels a small thud against the car. Another dead bunny, he thinks, wiping his nose with a sleeve.
He feels inordinately sad for all those dead rabbits. There was a badger too, once. Far larger than he expected, it had stared at him from the muddy roadside with dead, reproachful eyes. Is that how his mother looked, her beautiful face intact, but her body broken and crushed against the steering wheel? Then there was a small, red fox cub, many years ago, when he dated a schoolteacher. The head was mangled and trampled. He should have been brave, but he wanted to heave.
He nearly shoots past the drive of White Gables; he always does.
‘Slow down immediately after the sign for Mottram, then it’s first right, just after the bend.’ That’s what he says to visitors, but forgets to do it himself.
He chuckles – every bloody time, he ought to have learned by now. But he manages to skid into the driveway, the vehicle clipping the gatepost and then sliding and lurching before coming to a sudden hard stop against a raised garden wall.
Lifting his head from the steering wheel, David opens the car door eventually. He knows time has passed but he’s unsure if he’s been unconscious or asleep. The moody sky is lit with glinting stars and there’s drizzle in the air. Part of the small wall has collapsed from the collision, the soil spilt, as though making a pathetic bid for freedom along with the roots of some flowering plants. He closes the car door with care but the sound of his feet seems unduly loud on the wet paving as he stumbles towards his front door. His nose feels matted and it throbs from the thrust against the steering wheel. He vaguely wonders if it’s broken, but it doesn’t really matter, he’s home.
‘Sober as a judge,’ he whispers, as he opens the front door of White Gables.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Antonia’s awake, listening to the smack of the rain on the shutters. She wonders if she’s slept at all, but she supposes she must have done at some point, as the thin early morning light sighs through the wooden panels. David’s asleep next to her in the bed, breathing softly through his mouth. Remains of clotted blood are flecked around his nose and mouth and yet his face is relaxed and peaceful.
She looks at his pillow, soiled and smeared with red and brown traces of blood, and she briefly replaces her feelings of guilt with questions about what on earth happened to David last night. But her quest for answers doesn’t last long. The overwhelming guilt is far stronger, more insistent. She wants to wake David, to explain her own behaviour. But where would she begin?
Slipping out of bed, she feels the warmth of the underfloor heating against the soles of her feet. The words which echoed through the night are still fresh in her mind. ‘I am so lucky. To have all this. To have David. Remember to tell him.’ She looks at her watch. It’s still only six-thirty. She’ll give him an extra hour in bed and then wake him up with his breakfast, ready on a tray. Then she’ll say, ‘I love you, David. I appreciate you so much, I really do.’
The sound of the telephone breaks her thoughts and she snatches it up, not wanting it to wake her sleeping, damaged husband.
‘Auntie Antonia? It’s Rupert.’
‘Oh, hello Rupert, how are you?’ Her mind rushes. Why is Rupert calling at this time? Questions unanswered. A feeling of slight panic. What has David done? ‘It’s OK to call me Antonia, Rupert, Auntie makes me sound old.’ She’s talking too much, procrastinating.
‘Well, the thing is, Mum’s asked me to telephone.’ His voice sounds strangled. ‘Dad was taken into hospital last night. Macclesfield hospital. She went with him. An ambulance came, paramedics and everything. They think he’s had a diabetic coma or something. I mean, fuck, I didn’t even know he was a diabetic.’
Not David, thank God. ‘Oh Rupert, I didn’t know either. Poor you. Do you want to come here? Shall I come and fetch you?’
Relief floods her mind. She needs to concentrate, be practical. ‘How is he, how’s your dad?’
‘Well, Mum called and I think he’s OK. But I don’t really know. She told me to stay here. Suppose I’d only get in the way.’
His voice is thick with emotion. He wants to cry, Antonia knows. She understands this, the need to cry, to sob and to scream, but the need to hide it even greater.
‘Mum said Dad’s all wired up because his blood pressure is really high and he needs loads of different drugs.’
Poor boy. Bloody insensitive parents. But who am I to judge? she thinks, glancing at the peaceful face of her husband.
‘David’s still in bed, Rupert, but I’ll wake him. He’ll want to go to the hospital straight away,’ she says. Her mind is sticky, rebelling against the sudden change of plan. She should drive. David reeks of booze, he’ll be over the limit. ‘So I’ll drop off David at the hospital and then come over to your house and keep you company for a bit. How’s that?’
David feels Antonia’s hand on his shoulder, bringing him back from a dream. ‘David, love, wake up, Charlie’s in hospital,’ she says clearly.
‘I know,’ he replies from the pillow. ‘He’s dead, isn’t he?’
He rolls away from her waking hand and bunches up his body like a huge fist. Reality has hit him immediately on waking, his mind prodding viciously with a stream of recrimination. Fool, fool, fool. Debts, huge debts. Insurance, indemnity, money – client money, ethics and rules. And theft, oh God, theft. Charlie’s fury, his disappointment. ‘A failure, David. Again. Get out of my sight.’