The First Day Read online

  They ate lamb stew and drank wine. Edie was sometimes there, sometimes not. Occasionally Sam would be left with Anna’s mother, and Anna would stay over, drinking Scotch in front of the open fire, climbing late into the small bed in the spare room.

  Everything is changing, Curran told her one night, out of nowhere, as though continuing a conversation he had been having in his head. I’m leaving the university. Do you know they are starting a new course at the art college next year? Gaming. It’s actually War Gaming. The idea is to design simulations which come closer and closer to real-world conflict situations. Do you know who is paying for the course? The British Army. Apparently the Americans have been at it for years. There are forty-five undergraduate courses being offered next year, he told her. Do you know how many are not being part-funded by a commercial sponsor? Two, he said. And they’re both mine. They tried to sell Nineteenth Century to Shell. Oil Painting. They were going to call it, no word of a lie, Oil Painting.

  Anna recalled the conversation less for Curran’s revelation than for her own. When he had finished talking about his job, about the uncertainty of his future, she told him about Orr, about their affair, about Sarah’s death, about living now between fragile expectations, love’s inevitable unravelling. She had not intended to pour herself out like this. But Curran’s candour, his lack of poise, drew an intimacy that surprised even herself, and she spoke—for the first time, she realised—with frankness and honesty about the past years, and found in it a relief she had not expected. When she finally went to bed, she lay staring at the ceiling, her head spinning from a combination of the whisky and the feeling of having been seen, a kind of recognition she had rarely before experienced. It was not like Orr, she considered, deliberately; with Orr she felt like she was dissolving, like the edge of her body was blurring into the world, the lines between everything obscured and redundant. With Curran she felt almost the opposite, a mutual acuity, as though she were solidifying, finding and testing the limits of herself and finding that they worked, that they held her together, and the person that moved around inside them was acceptable, knowable.

  She awoke the next morning to sunlight streaming through the small window above her bed, throwing a stark brightness on the dresser at the far end of the little room, where there was a number of small moulded figures, animals and people, who appeared ablaze. She lay there watching the light move incrementally along the surface, sliver by sliver, until it dripped off them one by one, moved on to find new objects to alight on, and after twenty minutes they were all in shadow. She chased the image into a poem; the sense of being one of those figures, briefly in the sunlight, glowing, but utterly helpless to move where the light moved. I can still almost feel the light sliding off, the spot on the skin where, just a second before, what had been heat was now darkness.

  These visits—this visit, even, perhaps—changed Anna. She found with Curran a way to be vulnerable. Her autonomy, her self-sufficiency was contained, softened. Curran, in his mannered love of the creative process, and the warmth and width of his humour, drew Anna out of herself, and she began sending him snippets of poems, phrases and stanzas as yet unmoored. He helped anchor them, helped her tease out a direction, a line around which she could unravel an idea. If the line was strong enough—a metaphor he had built into his own process as a painter—one could throw different images, different weights and measures around it and the poem would gain an energy, a momentum. It would, he said, spin. If there was no line it would just careen off, lurch from verse to verse, all energy and no control. It may have life, but it would totter and sway like a drunk.

  In the next few months she worked and worked at the poems, which were eventually published as her second collection. Curran made suggestions, criticisms, threw praise where he felt praise was warranted, and pushed her to reconsider images, to dig further into an earthiness, a materiality of words. Anna grew in confidence, and began to push back against some of his suggestions, and this conviction, the rightness with which she both embraced his judgement and resisted it, gave the poems a personality that they had, she realised, been missing. She found a way to not fear the emotion the poem could create, to commit herself to feeling, despite the proximity to sentimentality that she was desperate to avoid. By the time she was finished with them, these new poems had a boldness that her work had not had before. By then, of course, she had other things on her mind.

  By the end of the year Philip was a regular visitor. In the first few weeks after she gave him a key, he continued to visit weekly, would spend an hour or so in the garden, cleaning and tidying. Winter was already beginning to wreak its steady destruction; he merely had to pick up after it. He would then come inside, eat dinner, play with Sam—now almost three years old, throwing words around with gleeful curiosity—and talk to Anna. His friendship with Sam, the genuine affection they had for one another, continued to erode Anna’s fear, and a closeness soon developed between them which mirrored that growing between her and Curran. In one sense at least Curran cleared the way for Philip; his influence, the openness he had created in her towards her own vulnerability, allowed her a similar openness to Philip.

  They began to share their lives. Anna confided in the boy, began to talk to him about her poetry, about her friendship with Curran, about his painting. About the joy of discovering, at thirty years old, that one could still find something new, alive, meaningful. She did not talk about Orr; a line seemed drawn around him as a subject, a barrier erected. But it had faded sufficiently within a few months so as to barely cross her mind, and where once she had been constantly aware of what she was avoiding, by early in the new year they had so much else to talk about, so many other connections, personal to each other, that Orr was largely unconsidered. This freedom cannot have been the same for Philip. He returned home every day to his father, and whilst a truce of sorts had been established between them, his anger and sense of betrayal had not diminished. He was sixteen years old, somewhere between a boy and a man. He sounded like a teenager, the twisted, playful phraseology, the voice still finding its timbre; but something else, a ferocity that he could never push down quite far enough, betrayed him as an adult.

  Sam turned three in January. Anna held a party for the family, inviting Orr and his sons, and her mother. Just a year before, Anna could not have imagined this gathering taking place. Orr drove the boys across town on the first Saturday of the new year, a few days after Sam’s birthday. It was too cold to play outside, but she had covered a table in food, sweets and crisps, and they ate and joked, and Sam blew out the candles on the cake. Afterwards the boys helped him set up the train set his father had bought him, Philip coaxing laughter from the child by pretending to put the pieces in the wrong order. Anna and Orr and her mother stayed in the kitchen. Anna put on another pot of tea. She watched Orr standing in the doorway, glancing around repeatedly at the scene in the living room.

  Why do you keep looking? Anna asked him.

  He shook his head. He looked at her mother, as though weighing up whether he could speak.

  Spit it out, Anna said. She was surprised at her defensiveness, her need to stand in Philip’s corner; it had sneaked up unannounced. Orr stared at her. Anna remembered the way he used to stare at her, and found it astonishing how much was still left. For a moment she wished her mother were someplace else.

  Just be careful, Orr said, his voice barely audible.

  Is that a warning? Anna asked him.

  He glanced around again, and Anna looked past him to see Philip watching them, his face unreadable.

  And then Philip smiled at her, and looked back at Sam, made a joke, and Orr turned to Anna, and said flatly, Yes. Yes it is.

  Something shifted after this, Anna believed. Not in her, but in Orr. She could not work out exactly what it was. She thought that he felt backed into a corner, ganged up on; that he had sensed a danger and come out fighting. Cause and effect are so complicatedly positioned; one so easily becomes the other. Anna afterwards never quite forgav
e herself for this. In reading Orr this way, she reacted all the more strongly against him, moving further and further into Philip’s camp, distancing herself from Orr, trying to force him to retreat.

  What Orr was supposed to have done, of course, was relayed to her largely by Philip himself. His visits became weighed down with accusations, a grammar of violation. He knew Anna by now. Despite her never talking directly about Orr, about their relationship, Philip had an extraordinary skill of carefully unpicking a person’s weakness, of paying attention as much to what they didn’t say as to what they did. He had an ear for the repressed, the skilfully avoided. And he had that rare absence of compassion, a preparedness to use whatever he could get his hands on for his own ends. And so the subtle, pointed comments, the references to Orr’s holiness, his authority, his failure to consider sufficiently the pain of others. He was careful never to accuse Orr of anything in which Anna herself might be implicated. Accuse, in fact, is too strong a word. Anna said later, looking back with regret, that when he left there was never a clear picture in her head of what Orr was alleged to have done, but rather an atmosphere, a kind of barbed, muted anger which had been created and in which she found herself a participant.

  Orr drifted further and further, the friendship between him and Anna—for a while so easy again—now slowly, clumsily unwound. They still saw each other twice a week, but rather than an interaction Sam was simply passed between them, like a baton. Sometimes she didn’t get out of the car when she dropped him off. Anna said later she didn’t notice the extent to which the gap between them was widening. There was no deliberation, no decision. It happened under the surface and rose upward; the crack appeared, the chasm, only at the end. Anna’s friendship with Curran, growing in scope and affection, tempered, disguised even, the extent of the other breakages.

  It was March when everything turned. Or April, I suppose. In March the seeds were sown. Around the middle of the month, on a Thursday night, Philip appeared at the door. It was shortly after ten o’clock. Anna peered through the window first, surprised at being disturbed so late. She gasped to see Philip’s face, bloody and badly bruised, with a gash on his left cheek, still open. He was holding it shut with his T-shirt. His shirt was unbuttoned, his chest also showing wounds, pale patches of violence. Anna brought him inside, her heart racing. Philip himself seemed unperturbed, almost unnaturally calm.

  What happened? she asked him.

  I told you they would wait for the right time, he replied.

  But this, she said. For God’s sake.

  He sat at the kitchen table as she attended to the immediate wounds. You have to go to the hospital, she said.

  He shook his head. No.

  You have to, Philip, she said. Look at you.

  You can fix me, he said.

  Jesus, no I can’t. He nodded, closed his eyes.

  It doesn’t hurt, he said.

  Whether it was the shock, or the necessity of the moment, Anna found herself moving mechanically, cleaning the wound on his cheek, applying iodine, gently wiping off the blood on the more minor scratches. His chest was a collection of changing colours, blues and reds. The image came to her of Curran’s paintings.

  Does your father know? she asked him.

  He shook his head.

  Your cheek will scar, she said, after she had finished.

  His eyes were still closed. He had barely flinched, even as the stinging fluid burned the bacteria from his cuts. He was indifferent, a teenage Buddhist. Only pain, no suffering.

  Whatever, he said.

  She made up a bed for him on the sofa. When she left him he thanked her. She lay awake in her bed, picturing his chest, his broken skin. Whatever. She could not separate him, she found to her surprise, from his father. She closed her eyes but the images repeated over and over, first the boy, then the man, Orr’s lips on her body and her hands on the boy’s, and she shuddered awake, sweating.

  In the morning she rose early. He was still asleep, on his back, the way his father slept. His breathing was quiet, calm. The plasters on his cheek had stained red, but seemed to have worked to hold the cut closed. She made tea and sat in the kitchen, staring out the window. It was spring, trees returning to bud. Birds sang. The traffic rose slowly, the rumble of the city imperceptibly growing. Philip appeared in the doorway. They looked at each other. She shook her head, and—unable to do anything else—smiled. He sat across from her and she poured him tea.

  Now what? she said.

  Now what what? He smiled, then winced, raising his hand to his damaged face.

  No smiling for you, she said.

  She reached across towards him, towards his face. He moved back, instinctively. I’m not going to hurt you, she said. He stared at her, then let her touch him. She appraised the plasters. It’s working. But I still think you should go to the hospital.

  He shook his head. I’m not going to the hospital.

  She got up, began to tidy the kitchen. I have to go to work. She heard a door open upstairs. Sam’s up.

  Can I stay here today? Philip asked.

  Don’t you have school? she replied. He looked at her. Yes, okay, you can stay, she said.

  You can leave Sam if you like, he nodded, as Sam appeared in the doorway.

  Anna recalled the moment with clarity, looking at the two boys, the sunlight in strips blinding Sam as he stared at them both, raising his arm to cover his face. She returned to this particular moment over and over again, as though there were something in it she should have seen, some augur, a sign of what was to come. But there wasn’t, or if there was, she didn’t see it. It was just three people in a kitchen, in the aftermath of an unknown act of violence, looking at each other, the sunlight making them squint, grimace, and rendering each of them, in its harshness, difficult to apprehend.

  She didn’t leave Sam with Philip that day, but brought him to her mother’s, as usual; still, the offer had been made, and in it she felt an opportunity to ease some of the pressure on her mother, who had continued to be quietly, passively supportive, taking the boy as often as was needed. The following week she asked Philip if he would look after Sam on Friday night. He had visited her most evenings already. His face was healing, though slowly, and she felt he was enjoying her role as his nurse. She had been invited to an opening with Curran. Philip agreed without hesitation. Sam was thrilled, and talked incessantly of what they would do, the games they would play, the fun they would have.

  When she returned home, around eleven, Philip was playing on his phone. He glanced up as she walked in, barely removing his attention from the screen.

  He’s asleep, he said.

  Anna went upstairs, looked in on him, sleeping soundly. She changed out of her evening dress, put on a sweatshirt. She went back downstairs and found Philip in the kitchen, making tea.

  Decaf, right? he said.

  Thanks, she said, and sat down.

  How was it? he asked.

  She smiled and took the mug he held out. It was good. How was your night?

  Philip smiled. It was good too. He sat down opposite her.

  Are you not having a cup?

  He shook his head.

  You can stay here tonight, she said. He looked at her. If you want. On the couch. I’ll get you blankets.

  He nodded. She was a little drunk. She reached across the table, touched his cheek. She moved her thumb over the tiny crust of blood along the wound, where the line held.

  It doesn’t hurt, no, he said.

  How did you know I was going to ask that? she smiled.

  You always want to know that, he said.

  She was briefly silent, and then said, You remind me of your father.

  She was not sure, retrospectively, whether she was trying to provoke a reaction, or whether her slight intoxication had simply freed her to say something she had been so actively hiding before. She agonised over it at length, wondered at that part of her that must have wanted to punish him. She knew that he would not have liked the comparison
. He flinched as she said it, but managed not to draw himself away. Indeed, she thought, she almost felt him move closer, though again she could not be sure whether this was a physical movement or a shift taking place inside her, the alcohol mixed with the giddy thrill of having said the wrong thing and got away with it. The moment lasted, she thought, two, three seconds and then she realised, as though suddenly, where she was, and she pulled her hand back, too fast perhaps, her head spinning.

  She did not remember getting Philip the blankets for the sofa, nor going to bed herself. She dreamed that she awoke in the middle of the night and he was standing in her doorway, framed by light from behind, his body lithe, animal.

  And so here we are.

  Orr called Anna early the following week. They fought on the phone, about Philip again, Orr again warning her that she was walking a dangerous path. There was too much of the Bible in his language for her to listen. She heard only a petty rival, a jealous god. She accused him then, words stored up and sharpened, and hung up the phone alive with the tingle of self-righteousness. She walked around the rest of the day replaying the conversation, augmenting her arguments with further observations, nodding inwardly, her convictions strengthened. She wondered she had not done it sooner. There was a slight tremble in her hands. Her blood seemed to run faster. Too much blood, too little space.

  Two weeks later Anna again left Sam with Philip. This time she was at a concert, a festival of Spanish music organised by the music department of the university, at which she’d been asked to read some poems from her time in Barcelona. Her second collection was due to be published a couple of months later. She left hurriedly, dishevelled. Philip himself seemed distracted, watching her without speaking. His face was largely healed, save the one large scar on his cheek, which remained, greedily drawing attention from his other features. You know where everything is, she said, leaving, without waiting for his response.