Read Online Weekend by William McIlvanney - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: William McIlvanney
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about Dr Jekyll and Mrs Hyde? Marion had woken up this morning alone in a room beside a bed that hadn’t been slept in. Vikki hadn’t explained herself when she came to change before breakfast, rather bizarrely dressed. There had only been raised eyebrows and knowing smiles between them. But the knowledge wasn’t Marion’s. What had happened?
Just before midnight on Friday evening Vikki had sat in the room she was sharing with Marion. Marion was already asleep. She hadn’t taken any alcohol tonight, saying she wassaving herself for a Saturday night blow-out. That probably translated into gin and tonic twice.
Vikki had opened one of the four bottles of wine she had brought. She filled herself a glass. She sat down on the single bed in the Janet Reger underwear she had put on after Marion fell asleep. She told herself she was toasting the weekend ahead but the toast stuck in her throat. The wine might as well have turned back into grapes. She had already lost faith in her ability to make the weekend more than a passionate encounter with words, an affair with dead men called R.L.S. and J. M. Barrie. No first names here, please.
After arriving at the hotel she hadn’t changed out of the jeans and top she had travelled in. She didn’t have the nerve. Maybe it was just as well. Most of the students had dressed so casually that the clothes she had brought would have made her look like a fading actress who had lost her way to the première. Yet the young women students had still managed to be sexily attractive. Perhaps that was what being young did for you. Nubile bodies could look enticing in baggy combat trousers and a tank top. Youth was the ultimate cosmetic, one you couldn’t buy in any shop she knew of.
She glanced across at Marion, lying demurely immobile in her own single bed. She slept like a dead one and Vikki saw in her the corpse of her own future. Nights of rest untrammelled by the searching hands of men. She remembered the weight of Alan’s arm across her body, heavy in sleep, and suddenly missed it with agonising intensity, as if it were a limb of her own identity she had lost. It wasn’t him she missed, she knew. It was who she had been and could never be again. She was mourning herself.
She saw her clothes hanging in the open wardrobe. Their empty stillness accused her – the disembodied alternativeselves she might have been, if she’d had the courage. Maybe she should have had the nun’s dress lengthened and bought the wimple to go with it. A wimple for a wimp. She brought the dress determinedly into focus. It palpitated in her vision like a neon sign in Soho. It mocked her. You don’t dare come in, do you?
Why didn’t she? She remembered a boy in the woods near her home when she was fourteen. She was taking a shortcut through the trees to get to her house when she became aware of him, maybe thirty yards away. She could see him still. He had black hair that hung over his forehead almost to his eyebrows. His head was framed among leaves, turned fixedly towards her, watching. He was unlike any of the boys she saw in the classroom or the playground or on the street, swathed in attitudes that were too big for them, like adult clothes they were dressing up in. He seemed as startled as she was, raw with surprise. He was utterly who he was, an anonymous being caught in a shaft of sunlight, staring at a presence he had never seen before. He stood, as natural as an animal.
She stopped, transfixed by the intensity of his stare. He was transfixed by hers. A bird sang somewhere. Leaves tinkled in the breeze, like muted wind-chimes. She felt as if they couldn’t move. They were trapped in each other. Something had to happen to release them. It did. Suddenly he shouted across the green distance between them. At first, in her state of trance, it was sheer sound, as basic as the bellow of a beast. It troubled her. But as the noise resolved itself into words, she reverted to being a girl who had
Just before midnight on Friday evening Vikki had sat in the room she was sharing with Marion. Marion was already asleep. She hadn’t taken any alcohol tonight, saying she wassaving herself for a Saturday night blow-out. That probably translated into gin and tonic twice.
Vikki had opened one of the four bottles of wine she had brought. She filled herself a glass. She sat down on the single bed in the Janet Reger underwear she had put on after Marion fell asleep. She told herself she was toasting the weekend ahead but the toast stuck in her throat. The wine might as well have turned back into grapes. She had already lost faith in her ability to make the weekend more than a passionate encounter with words, an affair with dead men called R.L.S. and J. M. Barrie. No first names here, please.
After arriving at the hotel she hadn’t changed out of the jeans and top she had travelled in. She didn’t have the nerve. Maybe it was just as well. Most of the students had dressed so casually that the clothes she had brought would have made her look like a fading actress who had lost her way to the première. Yet the young women students had still managed to be sexily attractive. Perhaps that was what being young did for you. Nubile bodies could look enticing in baggy combat trousers and a tank top. Youth was the ultimate cosmetic, one you couldn’t buy in any shop she knew of.
She glanced across at Marion, lying demurely immobile in her own single bed. She slept like a dead one and Vikki saw in her the corpse of her own future. Nights of rest untrammelled by the searching hands of men. She remembered the weight of Alan’s arm across her body, heavy in sleep, and suddenly missed it with agonising intensity, as if it were a limb of her own identity she had lost. It wasn’t him she missed, she knew. It was who she had been and could never be again. She was mourning herself.
She saw her clothes hanging in the open wardrobe. Their empty stillness accused her – the disembodied alternativeselves she might have been, if she’d had the courage. Maybe she should have had the nun’s dress lengthened and bought the wimple to go with it. A wimple for a wimp. She brought the dress determinedly into focus. It palpitated in her vision like a neon sign in Soho. It mocked her. You don’t dare come in, do you?
Why didn’t she? She remembered a boy in the woods near her home when she was fourteen. She was taking a shortcut through the trees to get to her house when she became aware of him, maybe thirty yards away. She could see him still. He had black hair that hung over his forehead almost to his eyebrows. His head was framed among leaves, turned fixedly towards her, watching. He was unlike any of the boys she saw in the classroom or the playground or on the street, swathed in attitudes that were too big for them, like adult clothes they were dressing up in. He seemed as startled as she was, raw with surprise. He was utterly who he was, an anonymous being caught in a shaft of sunlight, staring at a presence he had never seen before. He stood, as natural as an animal.
She stopped, transfixed by the intensity of his stare. He was transfixed by hers. A bird sang somewhere. Leaves tinkled in the breeze, like muted wind-chimes. She felt as if they couldn’t move. They were trapped in each other. Something had to happen to release them. It did. Suddenly he shouted across the green distance between them. At first, in her state of trance, it was sheer sound, as basic as the bellow of a beast. It troubled her. But as the noise resolved itself into words, she reverted to being a girl who had
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