The Outcast by Sadie Jones Page A

and dark by then, so they waited in the hotel there.Alice had tea and then found herself ordering a cocktail, and then, quite soon after, another. She took out the olives and put them in the ashtray, which was full.
    ‘Lewis! Stop it! Don’t you know it’s rude to stare?’ ‘I wasn’t.’
    ‘Yes, you were!You were staring at me.’ ‘I was looking at the things.The olives.’
    ‘What on earth for? Haven’t you seen an olive before?’ ‘Of course I have.’
    ‘Tell me one thing, will you?Will you just tell me one thing? Tell me how it is you can look at horses and boats and have a perfectly fine time when you feel like it? How’s that?’
    He had no idea what she was talking about, what horses? ‘And how is it, you just save all of this,’ she emphasised the
    word, gesturing at him,‘all of This for Me? How is that, Lewis?’ He wanted to think about something else.
    ‘Come on!’ her eyes were fixed on him. ‘Why don’t you make an effort? Everybody else bloody does.’
    Lewis looked at the green olives in the ashtray. They were shiny and wet, but resting in the cigarette ash and covered with it on one side.
    She asked for the bill and spilled some money from her purse in paying, and then they went down to the platform and walked along the train looking for Gilbert.
    ‘Come on. Keep up for God’s sake! I’ve had enough.’
    Gilbert was surprised and pleased to see them and it was a huge relief, just as she’d imagined. Lewis saw her put her pretty face on when she saw him. They got in, but there was

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    nowhere to sit and they had to find an empty compartment in third class.
    ‘Lewis, you’re looking very messy. Where are your gloves and why is your sock in that terrible state?’
    ‘I got it in water.’
    Alice hadn’t thought to bring him gloves and she hadn’t noticed his cold hands. She felt the tears starting again and decided to let them.
    ‘What on earth?’
    After that there was no stopping the way it went. By the time they got to Waterford it was difficult to get off the train with everybody they knew and pretend things were all right. Lewis had gone inside himself, it was impossible to do anything with him, and Gilbert had to remind Alice to pull herself together and her being drunk and crying was Lewis’s fault.
    The embarrassment and the publicness made Gilbert help- lessly angry and at home he shut Lewis in his room. Alice had a bath and made herself pretty for him again and after supper everything was in its proper place; Lewis was impossible, Alice had done her best and Gilbert forgave them both. He forgave Alice in bed, but Lewis never knew about the forgiveness part. He had supper in his room, slept in his clothes and at breakfast nobody mentioned the day before.
    Alice watched Lewis, and she came to think of him as broken. She tried not to, and she never told anyone, least of all Gilbert, who so needed to think he’d grow out of it, but she felt that he was broken and that there was nothing to be done about it. She hoped he would mend, but she lost sight of the idea that she could help. He was like a damaged bird. And they always die, she thought.

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    C hapter E ight ‌

    It was windy up on the terrace and the pages of the musicians’ sheet music fluttered and blew up, and the striped awnings over the balconies of the rooms snapped and quivered. The hotel looked like an ocean liner and even more so when the sky was moving above it and it seemed to head out to sea. Bright sunshine glanced off the brass instruments so that it hurt to look at them, and the couples crossing the terrace had to hold their skirts down or pin their hair back with their hands.
    Down on the beach, near the rocks, it wasn’t so windy and the July sun had baked the sand to scorching. Lewis was playing a game. He stepped off a rock and stood on the sand with his bare feet and waited. At first there was nothing and then it would hurt and he would wait some more.The hurting didn’t feel like anything