‘I don’t want to tell you,’ he said as they walked on. ‘I’m sorry you noticed.’
‘I couldn’t help noticing.’
‘Call it quits now, will we?’ There was the slightest of gestures towards the remains of the cake, sticky in Cecilia’s hand. Abrahamson’s tone was softer than ever, his distant smile an echo from his private world. It was said that he played chess games in his head.
‘I’d like to know, Abrahamson.’
His thin shoulders just perceptibly shifted up and down. He appeared to be stating that Cecilia was foolish to insist, and to be stating as well that if she continued to insist he did not intend to waste time and energy in argument. They had passed through the gates of the school and were standing on the street, waiting for a number 11 bus.
‘It’s odd,’ he said, ‘if you want to know. Your father and all that.’
‘Odd?’
The bus drew up. They mounted to the upper deck. When they sat down Abrahamson stared out of the window. It was as if he had already said everything that was necessary, as if Cecilia should effortlessly be able to deduce the rest. She had to nudge him with her elbow, and then – politely and very swiftly – he glanced at her, silently apologizing for her inability to understand the obvious. A pity, his small face declared, a shame to have to carry this burden of stupidity.
‘When people get divorced,’ he said, carefully spacing the words, ‘there’s always a reason. You’ll observe that in films. Or if you read in the paper about the divorce of, say, William Powell and Carole Lombard. They don’t actually bother with divorce if they only dislike one another.’
The conductor came to take their fares. Again the conversation appeared to have reached its termination.
‘But what on earth’s that got to do with what we’re talking about, Abrahamson?’
‘Wouldn’t there have been a reason why your parents got divorced? Wouldn’t the reason be the man your mother married?’
She nodded vehemently, feeling hot and silly. Abrahamson said:
‘They’d have had a love affair while your father was still around. In the end there would have been the divorce.’
‘I know all that’, Abrahamson.’
‘Well, then.’
Impatiently, she began to protest again but broke off in the middle of a sentence and instead sat there frowning. She sensed that the last two words her companion had uttered contained some further declaration, but was unable to grasp it.
‘Excuse me,’ Abrahamson said, politely, before he went.
‘Aren’t you hungry?’ her mother asked, looking across the lace-trimmed white cloth on the dining-room table. ‘You haven’t been gorging yourself, have you?’
Cecilia shook her head, and the hair she didn’t like swung about. Her half-brothers giggled, a habit they had recently developed. They were years younger than Cecilia, yet the briskness in her mother’s voice placed her in a category with them, and she suddenly wondered if her mother could somehow guess what had come into her mind and was telling her not to be silly. Her mother was wearing a green dress and her fingernails had been freshly tinted. Her black bobbed hair gleamed healthily in watery afternoon sunshine, her dimples came and went.
‘How was the Latin?’
‘All right.’
‘Did you get the passive right?’
‘More or less.’
‘Why’re you so grumpy, Cecilia?’
‘I’m not.’
‘Well, I think I’d disagree with that.’
Cecilia’s cheeks had begun to burn, which caused her half-brothers to giggle again. She knew they were kicking one another beneath the table and to avoid their scrutiny she stared through the french windows, out into the garden. She’d slept in a pram beneath the apple tree and once had crawled about among the flowerbeds: she could just remember that, she could remember her father laughing as he picked her up.
Cecilia finished her cup of tea and rose, leaving half a piece of coffee-cake on her plate. Her mother called after her when she reached the door.
‘I’m going to do my homework,’ Cecilia said.
‘But you haven’t eaten your cake.’
‘I don’t want it.’
‘That’s rude, you know.’
She didn’t say anything. She opened the door and closed it softly behind her. Locked in the bathroom, she examined in the looking-glass the features Abrahamson had spoken of. She made herself smile. She squinted, trying to see her profile. She didn’t want to think about any of it, yet she couldn’t help herself. She hated being here, with the door locked at five o’clock in the, evening, yet she couldn’t help that either. She stared at herself for minutes on end, performing further contortions, glancing and grimacing, catching herself unawares. But she couldn’t see anywhere a look of her stepfather.
‘Well, you wouldn’t,’ Abrahamson explained. ‘It’s difficult to analyse your own face.’
