Part Six Chapter III

IIIAndrew had refused a lift back to Hilltop House, so it was save Tessa and Fats in the automobile together, and Fats give tongue to, I dont want to go home.All right, Tessa replied, and she drove, while talking to Colin on the telephone. Ive got him Andy lay all overpower him. Well be back in a silicon chip Yes Yes, I will Tears were spattering down Fats face his body was betraying him it was exactly deal the meter when hot urine had spilt down his leg into his sock, when Simon footing had made him piss himself. The hot saltiness leaked over his chin and onto his chest, pattering like drops of rain.He kept imagining the funeral. A tiny little coffin.He had non cherished to do it with the boy so near.Would the weight of the beat(p) child ever lift from him?So you ran away, give tongue to Tessa coldly, over his tear.She had prayed that she would find him a have a go at it, save her strongest emotion was disgust. His tears did not soften her. She was used to mens te ars. break open of her was ashamed that he had not, after all, thrown himself into the river.Krystal told the constabulary that you and she were in the bushes. You just left him to his own devices, did you? Fats was speechless. He could not believe her cruelty. Did she not understand the destruction roaring inside him, the horror, the sense of contagion?Well, I hope you have got her pregnant, said Tessa. Itll give her something to live for.Every time they glum a corner, he thought that she was taking him home. He had feared Cubby most, merely now there was nothing to choose surrounded by his parents. He wanted to get out of the car, but she had locked all the doors.Without warning, she swerved and braked. Fats, clutching the sides of his seat, saw that they were in a pull-off on the Yarvil bypass. Frightened that she would order him out of the car, he turned his swollen face to her.Your birth mother, she said, spirit at him as she had never done before, without poignancy or kindness, was fourteen years old. We had the impression, from what we were told, that she was middle class, rather a bright girl. She absolutely refused to say who your capture was. Nobody knew whether she was trying to protect an under-age boyfriend or something worse. We were told all of this, in case you had any rational or physical difficulties. In case, she said clearly, like a teacher trying to emphasize a point sure to come up in a test, you had been the result of incest.He cowered away from her. He would have preferred to be shot.I was terrible to adopt you, she said. Desperate. besides Dad was very ill. He said to me, I cant do it. Im scared Ill wrong a baby. I need to get go before we do this, and I cant do that and oversee with a new baby as well.But I was so determined to have you, said Tessa, that I pressured him into lying, and telling the social workers that he was fine, and guise to be happy and normal. We brought you home, and you were tiny and premature, and on the twenty percent night we had you, Dad slipped out of bed and went to the garage, upchuck a hosepipe on the exhaust of the car and tried to kill himself, because he was convinced hed cover you. And he almost died.So you can unholy me, said Tessa, for your and Dads bad start, and maybe you can shoot me for everything thats come since. But Ill tell you this, Stuart. Your fathers spent his life sentence facing up to things he never did. I dont expect you to understand his kind of courage. But, her voice bust at last, and he heard the mother he knew, he loves you, Stuart.She added the lie because she could not help herself. Tonight, for the starting signal time, Tessa was convinced that it was a lie, and also that everything she had done in her life, telling herself that it was for the best, had been no more than blind selfishness, generating mental confusion and mess all around. But who could bear to sleep together which stars were already dead, she thought, blinkin g up at the night sky could anybody stand to know that they all were?She turned the key in the ignition, crashed the gears and they pulled out again onto the bypass.I dont want to go to the Fields, said Fats in terror.Were not going to the Fields, she said. Im taking you home.