Chapter 14
I Am Not Yours
She did not announce it. She did not make a speech. It came on her the way a change of weather comes, in small signs, over a fortnight, until one afternoon she woke up and the whole sky was different.
It began with the plates.
It was a Thursday in the second week of February. She had come in from school at five, and found the kitchen empty, and a pile of washing-up in the sink. It was Peter's. He left it there, always, for the girl. He had a way of putting down his plate, after supper, on the edge of the table, with a small neat click, and then walking away, slowly, with his hands in his pockets, in the manner of a king leaving a banquet. She had done it for three and a half years. She had washed every plate, and every cup, and every fork, with her sleeves rolled, in the thin yellow light, while he sat in the next room and watched the news.
She stood and looked at the heap.
It was a very ordinary heap. There was a glass with the dregs of beer in it. There was a bowl with a drying crust of rice. There was a knife, and a spoon, and a plate with a smear of gravy on it, in the particular shape of a fish. She stood there with her bag still on her shoulder, and thought, with an odd distant clearness, I do not want to wash that.
It was not a decision. It was not even a rebellion. It was only a plain statement, like a sum. I do not want to.
She put down her bag.
She went to her room. She changed. She sat at her desk, with her books, and began, in a firm cool hand, on a Chemistry problem. She heard the front door, at six. She heard the slippers, in the passage, stop, and go on to the kitchen. She heard a long pause.
"Sarah."
She did not answer.
"Sarah."
"Yes?"
"The kitchen."
"I'm doing homework."
"The plates have not been done."
"No."
There was another silence. It was a longer one. She sat with her pencil halfway down a column of figures and listened to him not move. She could feel him, through the wall, as one feels a change in the pressure of the air. It was very odd. She was frightened. She was so frightened that her mouth was dry. But under the fear, extraordinarily, was something else, a small hard bright thing, like a coin held in a fist, that said, Let him wait.
"I see," said Peter, at last.
His voice was pleasant. The slippers went back down the passage.
She heard the tap run. She heard him wash them. It took twenty minutes. He did it noisily, with a great deal of clattering, as a man does who wants his effort known. And when he had finished, and gone back to the sitting room, and the sound of the television had come up, she sat for a long time with her pencil in her hand, and found that her fingers were trembling so badly that she could not write.
I did it, she thought.
It was only a plate.
It was only a plate, and I did it.
It was a small thing, and she did not stop.
That was what surprised her. She had expected, after the first, to feel that she had gone too far. She had expected to run to him, and apologise, and wash the whole heap, and every plate in the town. She did not. She found that it was like loosening a stone in a wall. Once it was out, there was a gap, and the next one came more easily.
She would not say thank you for the juice.
She would not come when he called. She said, from her room, In a minute, and was ten. She did not look up from her book when he spoke. She said, Yes, instead of Yes, Peter. She said, No, when she meant it. She said it in a level, courteous, expressionless tone, as one says it to a salesman, and she watched, from a long way off, with a kind of cold fascinated attention, the way his face changed.
It was not a large change. It was a narrowing. A very slight tightening of the skin at the corner of the eye. It was the face of a man who has pressed a key that has always sounded a note, and has heard silence.
He did not shout. That was not his way.
He became, instead, a great deal more attentive. He found, in the house, a hundred things that were wrong. A cup in the wrong place. A light left on. A book on the floor. A smear on a window. He observed them, one by one, in his mild patient voice, and stood waiting. When she did not move, he did not repeat it. He only smiled, and made a little note, with his eyes, as of an item to be totted up at a later date.
She felt it, accumulating, like a pressure behind a dam.
He is keeping a list.
He will present it.
"Be careful," said Mr. Kato, on the Friday.
She had told him. She sat in the small office, at the end of the day, with her hands round a mug of the dreadful tea. She had meant to say it lightly. But it had come out of her with a kind of hot fierce pride, and she heard the pride, and was embarrassed.
"I am being careful."
"You are being brave. It's a different thing." He frowned. "I am glad of it. I think it's right. But I want to be sure that you understand. A man who has been used to control, and finds it slipping, does not always become gentler. He sometimes becomes worse."
"He has not touched me."
"Since when?"
"Since the first week of January."
"That is six weeks."
"Yes."
"It's likely to be the visits. And the record." He turned his pen over in his fingers. "He is very frightened, I think. Underneath. He's a man who has built something, and he can see that it could be taken." He looked up. "That's a dangerous state for him to be in."
"I know."
"Do you?"
"I think so." She looked at the tea. "He keeps looking at me. All the time. At supper. In the passage. He doesn't say anything. He just looks. As if he is working out what it'll cost him."
"To do what?"
"I don't know."
"I do not like it."
"No." She set down the mug. "Nor do I."
She said it for the first time on the second Sunday in March, at lunch, in front of her mother.
It was a hot still day, with a high white sky. The windows were open. The room was full of the smell of roast beef, and the sound of a lawnmower, next door, and the long slow drone of the pastor's voice, which Peter had left on the radio, from the morning service. They sat at the table, the three of them, as they had every Sunday for three and a half years, in the same places, on the same chairs, with a white cloth between them and a vase of pink roses.
Peter was carving.
He did it with great deliberation, with a long knife, in the head chair, laying the slices on a dish. He was in his Sunday clothes, a pale blue shirt and a dark tie. He looked, as always, magnificent. He had a fresh haircut. He had shaved so closely that the skin on his jaw shone. The gold ring flashed on his little finger. He talked, easily, about the sermon, and the price of cement, and a fellow usher who had been found to be selling tickets for the church raffle at a profit.
"A very sad thing," he said. "In a house of God."
"Yes," said Grace.
"I told him. I said, Brother, it is not too late. Repent." He laid a slice on her plate. "He cried. I was moved. I said that I'd pray for him."
"That was good of you."
"It is only my duty." He smiled at her. He took up another slice. "Sarah. Your plate."
She held it out.
He put it on. He put two, and a spoonful of gravy, and potatoes. He did it with the unhurried, fatherly, benevolent air of a man feeding a child. And then he said, in a voice of the mildest possible reproof, "You are not eating enough. You are too thin. I have noticed. It is not good for a girl of your age." He set down the spoon. "I think you must have two slices more."
"I have enough."
"I think not."
"I've said I am full."
"You haven't started."
"I do not want any more, thank you."
There was a very small silence.
It was not noticeable. It was only a breath. It was the kind of silence in which a fork is put down, quietly, on a plate. But Grace, at the other end of the table, looked up, with a quick, anxious, birdlike motion, and Sarah saw the look, and held herself still.
"Sarah," said Peter, kindly. "Do not be difficult."
"I'm not."
"I have cooked this meal."
"My mother cooked it."
"I paid for it." He smiled. "I think it's the least that you could do."
She did not answer.
She sat with her fork in her hand and her eyes on the cloth. She felt her heart beat, slow and heavy, in the base of her throat. She felt the whole room turn toward her, the roses, the radio, the lawnmower, the long flat white light from the window, as a flower turns, as a crowd turns, and her mother's breath, from the other side of the table, held, and held.
Now.
It's now.
She put down her fork.
"I do not owe you my plate," said Sarah.
"I beg your pardon?"
"I said, I do not owe you." She lifted her head. "I'm not going to eat two more slices because you have paid for the beef. I will eat as much as I want. And I'll stop when I'm done."
"Sarah," said her mother.
"I'm not being rude. I'm only saying it."
"That is not the way to speak to..."
"To who?" She turned. She looked at her mother. She said it gently. "To the man who pays?"
Grace went white.
"I think that is what you are going to say," said Sarah. "I think that you are going to say, You must be grateful. You will say, You must respect him. You'll say that, because he's paying for the roof, I must... I must eat. And be quiet. And do what I am told." She drew breath. She was trembling. She could feel it in her wrists, in her knees, in the cloth of the skirt. But her voice, which she had been so afraid would break, was low, and steady, and clear. "And Mama. I want to say something. I have wanted to say it for three and a half years. I have not been able to. But I am going to say it now. While we're all here. I want it to be said, in front of everyone."
"Please," said Grace. "Not now."
"When?"
"Not at the table."
"Where else do we sit together?" She almost laughed. "We have not been in a room since the day you said, Think about how we'll survive. It's three and a half years. We've talked about the weather. And food. And the church." She spread her hands. "I have never once been allowed to say it. So I'll say it here."
"Sarah," said Peter.
His voice was very low. It had lost all its warmth. It did not rise. It dropped, and flattened, and became a thing as thin and cold and sharp as the knife in his hand. "That is enough."
"No."
"I said, that is enough."
"I'm eighteen," said Sarah. "You cannot tell me."
She turned back to her mother.
"I never agreed to it," she said.
She said it to her mother's face, steadily, with her eyes on hers. "I never agreed. I want you to hear that. I was fifteen. I was a child. I did not choose it. I said no, every time, in every way I knew, and he did not stop. I told you. In your bedroom. In the garden. In the kitchen. I told you three times. I told you in words that a baby could understand." Her voice cracked. She went on. "And you said, we depend on him."
"Sarah!" It was a cry.
"You said it. You know you did. You said that we could not afford to lose him. That I must not fight. That I must think about how we would survive." She was shaking so hard that the cutlery rattled. "And I did. I thought about it. I thought about it for three years. Every night. And I have decided something."
"What?"
"That paying the bills," said Sarah, "does not give him the right to me."
The room was absolutely still.
It was not the stillness of a silence. It was the stillness of a held breath, a thing stretched so tight that it hums. The radio had stopped. The lawnmower had stopped. Even the light, in the window, seemed to have paused, a thin white square, quivering on the cloth. And in the middle of it, at the head of the table, a man in a pale blue shirt sat motionless, with a long knife in his hand, and looked at her.
He did not move his face.
It was the strangest thing. She had expected rage. She had braced for it, as one braces for a blow. She had expected the mask to crack, the colour to rise, the voice to fill the room. She had even, in some wild corner of her mind, hoped for it. But he only sat there, with the ring on his finger and the light on his forehead, and looked at her, with an expression of such complete, courteous, attentive blankness that she thought for a moment he had not understood.
Then, very slowly, he laid the knife down.
He laid it on the dish, beside the beef. He did it with great care, as one puts down a pen. He took his napkin from his knee, and wiped his mouth, and folded it, and placed it on the cloth. He rose.
"Grace," he said. "I think you should take her out of the room."
"Peter..."
"I'm very calm. I would like you to know that. I am not angry. But I think, if she remains, there may be words that cannot be unsaid." He looked at his wife. His voice was gentle. "She is overwrought. It's the exams. She has not been sleeping. You have said so yourself."
"I have not said..."
"You have said that she is tired."
"Yes, but..."
"Then take her. Put her to bed. Give her a tablet." He turned. For the first time he looked at Sarah, directly, with his eyes level, and in them, far down, she saw it. It was not rage. It was something much older, and much colder, and much more calm. It was the look of a man at the edge of a field, who sees a fence has been broken, and is working out, very exactly, how he will mend it.
"We will discuss it," said Peter. "Later."
He walked out.
His slippers went away down the passage. She heard a door shut, quietly. She heard nothing else.
Her mother did not speak for a long time.
She sat at the table, with her hands in her lap, and the cloth in front of her, and the rapidly cooling meat. The roses shook slightly in their vase. Her face was the colour of old paper. She looked at the empty chair. She looked at the carving knife, on its dish. She looked, at last, at Sarah, and her mouth opened, and closed, and opened again.
"What have you done?" said Grace.
It was a whisper.
"What have I..."
"What have you done? In front of... He is... You do not know what you have... He will..." She gulped. She put her fist against her teeth. "I told you. I told you not to fight with him. I said it so plainly. I said, do not provoke him. And you have gone and... in front of... on a Sunday!"
"Mama."
"He will take it all away."
"Mama."
"He will put us out! Do you understand? He will put us both in the road! We will have nothing! I will have nothing, Sarah, I have given up my work, I have nothing of my own, I..." She was on her feet. She had swept her hand across the cloth, and a glass fell, and smashed, and neither of them looked at it. "I begged you. I begged you."
"You never begged me to be safe."
"I did!"
"You begged me to be quiet."
It went across the room like a slap.
Grace stopped. She stood rigid, with her hand outstretched, and her mouth open. And Sarah, who had risen too, and stood with her palms flat on the table, felt something in her chest give way.
"I'm sorry," she said.
"Sarah..."
"I'm so sorry. I don't want to... I do not want to hurt you." She was crying. It had come on, all at once, without warning, in a hot swift rush, and she could not stop it. "I never wanted to. I love you. You know I do. I love you so much, Mama. It's the worst thing about it." She wiped her face with the heel of her hand. "But I can't do it any more. I can't. I can't keep... I am not going to keep being the thing that holds up the house."
"You are my child."
"I know."
"I'm trying to protect you."
"From what?"
"From..." Her mother stopped. Her mouth worked. She stood there, in the white afternoon, in her Sunday dress, with her hands clasped to her breast, and a look on her face that Sarah would remember for a very long time. It was the look of a woman who has been walking in her sleep, across a floor, in the dark, and has felt, under her bare foot, for the first time, the edge.
"From the road," said Grace.
It was barely audible.
"What?"
"From the road. From the... I could not... I did not want you to stand in a road." She gave a thin sound that was almost a laugh. "I stood in a road, once. When I was twelve. With a bundle. And a man looked at my mother, and..." She stopped. She pressed the back of her hand against her mouth. She shook her head, hard, from side to side. "No. No. It does not matter. It's not the same. It is not the same thing."
"Mama."
"It is not."
"I know it is not." Sarah came round the table. She did it slowly, with her hands out, palm up, as one approaches a frightened horse. She stopped a yard away. "I know you're afraid. I know that you were poor. I can see that you are doing the only thing you know. I'm not asking you to... I'm not asking you to be anyone else." She swallowed. "I'm only asking you to hear me. Once. Properly. Not as a problem. Not as a thing to be managed. As your daughter."
"I hear you."
"Do you?"
"I..." The eyes were huge. They were swimming. They did not leave her face. "I hear you."
"Then say it."
"What?"
"Say that it's true."
The silence went on for a long time.
She would remember it, afterward, as the longest of her life, longer than the one in the hospital, longer than the one in the garden. It was a silence with a shape. It stood in the room like a person. It had a face. Her mother, in front of her, with her fists pressed to her mouth, stood still, and looked at her, and Sarah watched, as one watches a candle flame in a draught, the thing happen in her eyes.
It rose. It came right up to the surface. She saw it. She saw her mother's lips part. She saw the breath drawn. She saw the whole thin tired frightened face, for an instant, with perfect clearness, open, as a door opens, and the plain words stand there, behind it, a half-second from the air.
Say it, Mama.
Say it. Please. Just say it.
And a floorboard creaked, in the passage.
It was a small sound. It was a very small one. It was the sound of a heavy man shifting his weight, outside a door, in a pair of soft slippers, listening.
Her mother's face closed.
She saw it go. She saw the light go out of it, quickly, like a lamp turned down. She saw the shoulders drop, and the jaw tighten, and the old grey patient shutter come across, from the sides, like a blind. It was so familiar, so exactly the thing that she had seen, a hundred times, in the kitchen, in the garden, in the passage, that for a moment she almost admired it. It was done so well. It was done so smoothly. It was the work of a person who had had a great deal of practice.
"I think," said Grace, in a thin high bright voice, "that you've had a very trying week."
"Mama."
"You should lie down."
"Mama, please."
"You must not say such things. They aren't... they aren't kind. Peter has been so good to us." She had begun to gather the plates. Her hands were shaking so hard that the china chattered. "We will talk about it later. When you are calmer. We'll all be calm."
"Mama."
"I'll bring you some tea."
She went out.
She went, with the plates in her arms, down the passage, to the kitchen, upright, and Sarah stood in the empty dining room, among the cooling roast and the broken glass and the pink roses, and heard the tap run.
She nearly said it.
She was so close.
It was the worst thing, in some ways. She would have preferred, almost, that it had never been in reach. She stood there, with her hands at her sides, and the whole of her body ringing, like a struck bell, and thought, with a bitter exhausted wonder, She heard the floorboard.
It was not that she did not believe me.
It was that she heard him.
She will always hear him first.
She was at the front door, with her bag on her shoulder, ready to go to Mama Betty's, when he spoke.
He had been waiting. She had known that he would be. She had not seen him, but she had felt it, as one feels the presence of a weight in the dark. He was standing in the doorway of the sitting room, in his shirtsleeves, in the dim cool shadow, with his hands loosely at his sides. The curtains were drawn. The room behind him was green. He leaned on the frame, casually, like a man at the end of a long day.
"Where are you going?"
"Out."
"It is Sunday afternoon."
"I know."
"I would prefer that you stayed."
"I'm sure you would."
He did not smile. He did not do anything. He looked at her, with his head a little on one side, for a long moment, in the half-light, and when he spoke, it was in the old slow, kind, reasonable, almost tender voice.
"You are very brave today."
She said nothing.
"I admire it. I do. It's a fine quality. I've always said that you had a spirit." He paused. "It does not suit you, though. I think you'll find that out."
"Excuse me."
"I think you are going to regret it."
His voice had not changed at all. It was as pleasant, and mild, and unhurried as it had been at the table. He said it like a man remarking that rain was expected. But in the shadows of the passage, between the green curtains and the white gleam of the hall, she saw the muscle at his jaw move, once, and a faint light, very dull and flat, come into the dark eyes, and she knew with a cold clear sinking of the stomach that she was looking at something that she had never seen before.
It was not anger.
It was a kind of certainty.
"You have made a great many foolish mistakes," said Peter. "You've spoken to the wrong people. You've said the wrong things. You have forgotten who it is that feeds you. I have been patient. I have been very patient. I've let it go, again and again." He took a slow step forward. "But I am not a man without limits."
"I am going out."
"I know."
"Move."
"Certainly." He stepped aside. It was a very courteous movement, a little bow, a hand held out. "Go. Walk. Take the air. Think." As she passed him, in the narrow hall, so close that she could smell the aftershave and the beef and the faint sourness of the beer, he said, very softly, to the side of her face, in a tone that no one else in the world could have heard:
"But you will come back."
She did not stop.
"And your mother will be away on Friday."
She went through the door.
She did not run. She walked, down the path, between the roses, in the white glare of the sun, with her bag on her shoulder and her chin up, past the mango tree, to the gate. She unlatched it. She went out. She turned, and closed it behind her, with a soft click.
And only when she was in the road, alone, in the heat, with the dust whirling and a small boy bowling a hoop down the hill, did she put her hand over her mouth, and bend double, and begin to be sick into the ditch.