Read Online Whatever You Love by Louise Doughty - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Louise Doughty
Ads: Link
wouldn’t stand a chance. Your skull would split as easily as an eggshell.
I let out a cry of fear, real fear, out into the freezing wind and air, and shrieked his name – I was dangling, completely off-balance, as helpless as a puppet, with only his weight behind me as counterbalance. I couldn’t believe how reckless he was being. Beneath us, the waves leapt and broke apart over the concrete blocks, grey beneath but slimy with algae. The sea smelt acrid. Gulls shrieked and dived above us.
‘Scared?’ he yelled into my ear. ‘Are you scared? You should be, LD!’
‘David! David!’ I hollered. ‘Oh my God, we’ll go over!’ He didn’t know the cliffs as well as I did. He was misjudging the overhang. For the first time since I had known him, it came to me that there was a touch of real lunacy in him – a lack of caution that could not be explained by impetuosity, a small link or wire missing in his brain in the place where most people tempered their impulses with the knowledge of the effect those impulses had on others.
Then, just at the point when I was departing from him in my head, baulking at my own collusion with his behaviour, he straightened and pulled back from the edge. ‘We are, we are…’ he said. He wasn’t yelling any more. He still had his arms wrapped tight around me from behind. His face was buried in my hair. When he spoke, his voice was broken. I heard his words through my hair. ‘We’re going over. I’ve decided. Okay, okay?’
He pulled me back, away from the cliff edge, and turned me to him, then held me out at arm’s length. I was shuddering from the cold, from fear, from disbelief. There was a moment when we stared at each other – him still holding me away from him. I gazed back, a question in my look. He gave the smallest of nods. I burst into tears.
He drew his head back, laughed at me, suddenly the old David again. He pushed me away from him, then grabbed me again and gave me a small shake. ‘It’s not supposed to make you cry, LD, it’s supposed to make you happy!’
If the overhang had given way that moment and dropped us both into the sea, I think my last thought would have been that it was worth it.
*
My mother got her wish. She lived to see me settled. She was wheelchair-bound by then and unable to speak. She sat at the top table, next to me. One of the nurses from the home came with her to look after her, a young black guy called Ken who mashed her salmon with a fork and chatted to her in a strong Glaswegian accent while he spooned it down her. He was a patronising boy but sweet enough. He had God, big time, and took my mother very seriously.
After the speeches, one of David’s uncles stepped forward with a clarinet and played a passable version of ‘Stranger on the Shore’. David took my hand and pulled me on to the dance floor, a square of parquet tiling around which the tables were arranged, in a room at the back of the Milton Hotel; white tablecloths, heavy chintz curtains, the doorways and light-fittings festooned with broad ribbons tied in bows. Like most rooms in most hotels, it was overheated. The air was heavy with the scent of Aunt Lorraine’s musky perfume, mixed with a hint of the cigars David’s father and a friend had been smoking outside on the patio just before the speeches began. All day, I had been waiting to feel disappointed, waiting for a sense of anti-climax, but instead, all I felt as David pulled me towards him was an enormous and satisfied feeling of exhaustion. I allowed myself to be pulled in, folding into him and laying my head on his shoulder. He wrapped his hand around mine and held it against his chest, then bent and kissed my head. ‘I love you, Laura,’ he whispered: no sarcasm, no wit – a statement of fact, private and simple. The aunts and uncles slowly joined the dance around us and the wheezing clarinettist wheezed tunefully on. I closed my eyes, and let David lead me in a slow shuffle. Ken the nurse was pushing
I let out a cry of fear, real fear, out into the freezing wind and air, and shrieked his name – I was dangling, completely off-balance, as helpless as a puppet, with only his weight behind me as counterbalance. I couldn’t believe how reckless he was being. Beneath us, the waves leapt and broke apart over the concrete blocks, grey beneath but slimy with algae. The sea smelt acrid. Gulls shrieked and dived above us.
‘Scared?’ he yelled into my ear. ‘Are you scared? You should be, LD!’
‘David! David!’ I hollered. ‘Oh my God, we’ll go over!’ He didn’t know the cliffs as well as I did. He was misjudging the overhang. For the first time since I had known him, it came to me that there was a touch of real lunacy in him – a lack of caution that could not be explained by impetuosity, a small link or wire missing in his brain in the place where most people tempered their impulses with the knowledge of the effect those impulses had on others.
Then, just at the point when I was departing from him in my head, baulking at my own collusion with his behaviour, he straightened and pulled back from the edge. ‘We are, we are…’ he said. He wasn’t yelling any more. He still had his arms wrapped tight around me from behind. His face was buried in my hair. When he spoke, his voice was broken. I heard his words through my hair. ‘We’re going over. I’ve decided. Okay, okay?’
He pulled me back, away from the cliff edge, and turned me to him, then held me out at arm’s length. I was shuddering from the cold, from fear, from disbelief. There was a moment when we stared at each other – him still holding me away from him. I gazed back, a question in my look. He gave the smallest of nods. I burst into tears.
He drew his head back, laughed at me, suddenly the old David again. He pushed me away from him, then grabbed me again and gave me a small shake. ‘It’s not supposed to make you cry, LD, it’s supposed to make you happy!’
If the overhang had given way that moment and dropped us both into the sea, I think my last thought would have been that it was worth it.
*
My mother got her wish. She lived to see me settled. She was wheelchair-bound by then and unable to speak. She sat at the top table, next to me. One of the nurses from the home came with her to look after her, a young black guy called Ken who mashed her salmon with a fork and chatted to her in a strong Glaswegian accent while he spooned it down her. He was a patronising boy but sweet enough. He had God, big time, and took my mother very seriously.
After the speeches, one of David’s uncles stepped forward with a clarinet and played a passable version of ‘Stranger on the Shore’. David took my hand and pulled me on to the dance floor, a square of parquet tiling around which the tables were arranged, in a room at the back of the Milton Hotel; white tablecloths, heavy chintz curtains, the doorways and light-fittings festooned with broad ribbons tied in bows. Like most rooms in most hotels, it was overheated. The air was heavy with the scent of Aunt Lorraine’s musky perfume, mixed with a hint of the cigars David’s father and a friend had been smoking outside on the patio just before the speeches began. All day, I had been waiting to feel disappointed, waiting for a sense of anti-climax, but instead, all I felt as David pulled me towards him was an enormous and satisfied feeling of exhaustion. I allowed myself to be pulled in, folding into him and laying my head on his shoulder. He wrapped his hand around mine and held it against his chest, then bent and kissed my head. ‘I love you, Laura,’ he whispered: no sarcasm, no wit – a statement of fact, private and simple. The aunts and uncles slowly joined the dance around us and the wheezing clarinettist wheezed tunefully on. I closed my eyes, and let David lead me in a slow shuffle. Ken the nurse was pushing
Similar Books
