Another Life Altogether: A Novel - By Elaine Beale Page 0,171

back from the cliff, among the other caravans there. Though the storm had kept them awake all night, they’d been safe.

When Malcolm went outside that morning, he’d seen me walking along the cliff, unsteady on my feet. He’d called to me and, when I didn’t seem to hear, had followed me. He was there, on the cliff, looking down on me as I stood on the beach. When he saw me stagger into the water, he ran down the path and went after me, into the waves.

“You were very lucky, Jesse,” my father concluded. “All the seawater that you drank made you vomit up a lot of those pills. It took quite a while for them to get an ambulance all the way out to Reatton. Even if you hadn’t drowned, you could easily have ended up dead. Of course, it’s Malcolm you’ve got to thank for everything. You wouldn’t think it to look at him, but he’s a brave little bugger, that lad.”

TWO DAYS LATER, my father brought Malcolm to see me. I was feeling much better by then, and when they arrived I was sitting, propped against fluffed-up pillows, absently leafing through the Woman’s Weekly Mabel had left behind. My first instinct was to dive beneath my covers or to tell Grandma, still knitting at my bedside, that I didn’t want any visitors. Instead, I sat frozen in embarrassment as he loped across the shiny tiled floor.

“Here’s the little hero,” my father announced as he reached my bedside. His chest was thrown out and he was smiling so broadly that his dimples looked like two little handles in his cheeks. Next to him, Malcolm was silent.

“Hiya,” I said, pressing myself against the pillows, shuffling down in my bed.

“Hiya,” Malcolm said. “How are you feeling?”

“I’m all right.” I shrugged and let my eyes fall to the Woman’s Weekly in my lap.

“Is that all you’ve got to say to this young man, Jesse?” my father said. “I know you’re still a bit out of sorts, love, but, come on, now. I mean, he did save your life.”

“Thank you,” I mumbled, unable to lift my gaze. I was, in fact, unbearably grateful, but I was also swathed in shame—not only at all the ways in which I’d stood by and let Malcolm be mistreated, even calling him a poof myself, but also at the fact that he’d found me drunk, drugged, and delusional and had to pull me out of the sea. While he’d been strong and able to withstand everything, I had been pathetically weak.

“Oh, come on, Jesse,” my father said. “You can do better than that. This lad here”—he patted Malcolm’s shoulder—“well, he could have drowned trying to help you. But he didn’t think about himself for a second. You need to tell him—”

“It’s all right, Mr. Bennett,” Malcolm interrupted. “When I helped Jesse, I was really only returning a favor.”

I looked up.

“What do you mean?” my father asked.

“There was a group of bullies at school,” Malcolm said. “They were going to beat me up. It was Jesse that stood up to them. She helped me escape. She fought them off.”

“She did?”

Malcolm nodded and looked at me, smiling. “Yeah, see, when I went in that water after her, really, I was only repaying a friend.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

AFTER A STAY OF SEVERAL DAYS IN THE HOSPITAL, I’D RETURNED home to a place that was completely different. Though there were still holes in the walls from my mother’s fit with the sledgehammer and some of the furniture had been clumsily nailed back together, all other evidence of her tempestuous presence was gone. In the mornings I slept late, until after my father had left for work. When I came downstairs, Grandma was cooking breakfast while her fiancé, Bill—an almost bald and jowly seventy-year-old who looked about as un-gigolo-like as I could imagine—filled out the crossword in the previous evening’s Hull Daily Mail. Our days were spent in a quiet routine punctuated by washing dishes, cleaning, and cooking. In the afternoons, we’d drink tea and listen to the play on Radio 4. If there was a cricket match, Bill would turn on the television to watch it, Grandma would pull out her knitting, and I’d get out a book. In the evenings, when my father came home, he and Bill would repair the various holes and cracks in the walls. Upstairs, I’d lie on my bed reading until I fell asleep. A couple of times a week, Malcolm and Dizzy would come over