The Trouble with Alice Read online

  He took a cigarette from the pack, got out of the car and used the empty water bottles to prop the door open. He walked twenty feet away and crouched on his haunches in the pink and white dust.

  It was cool, now, and neither light nor dark: a mellow dusk. The landscape around him was softly defined; it seemed less harsh, and Kit felt comforted. The tops of the hills around him glowed orange, lit by the sinking sun, but quite soon both he and they would be suffused by indigo and then turn to a violet dark.

  He opened the Coke can and a geyser of Coca-Cola exploded all over him. He gulped at the remaining half-can. His hands and face were now sticky with sugar and he wiped them on his shirt and lit the cigarette, taking a deep inhalation and setting off a coughing fit. He had hardly smoked since Alice had moved in. This one was disgusting – it felt like a horrible punishment – but he puffed away at it with determination, thinking it appropriate. But, Oh no, his head started to swim and he rocked back on to his heels, Shit, and then landed on his backside on the ground, weak and limp. That wasn’t such a good idea, he thought. He felt limp; helpless; unable to hold himself upright. He lay flat on his back and reached out to feel with his fingertips the loose dirt, sand and small pink stones on the surface of packed earth.

  The ground tilted and he felt a wash of nausea. His feet seemed to have been swung above his head by an invisible hand. He dragged himself into a sitting position and stubbed out the cigarette, then pulled his knees up to his chest and hung his head between them. He wanted to giggle, then to weep. This is not good, he thought, ashamed. He heard a roaring in his ears, as if he were standing next to a waterfall, and the queasiness intensified until he gave a little moan and his mouth filled with drool. He gave up trying to recover himself and toppled over on his side to lie on the ground with his knees drawn up to his chest. His mouth was a little bit open, and to shut it seemed to require an effort quite beyond him. The roaring in his ears was overwhelming. A grey fizz like the seething grey mash on an untuned television screen began to wash into the perimeter of his vision until only a grey whirlpool remained, gradually shrinking, and then there was nothing but a pinpoint of daylight remaining in the centre of his vision, and then that too was engulfed by the wriggling grey worms, and Kit fainted dead away.

  2

  They had wanted a weekend away before Alice was too pregnant to enjoy herself. At eighteen weeks she had stopped being sick all the time, still looked ‘normal’, as Kit put it, and hadn’t become ‘weird’. (‘When are you going to start acting all weird?’ had been his question to her one morning.)

  ‘Lucky you,’ said Kit’s friend Rob to him gloomily. ‘Naomi was a fucking monster, from day one. And in fact, she’s never stopped. I kept waiting for the pre-pregnancy person to come back, and she never did.’

  ‘Somewhere hot,’ Alice had said, talking about the weekend away, ‘but not too long a flight. Somewhere I can swim, but not a pool. I hate swimming in pools.’

  ‘Do you?’ Kit said. He thought it over. ‘I suppose we’ve never had that sort of holiday.’

  ‘We’ve never had any sort of holiday. Except LA, for the show.’

  ‘That fucking place,’ began Kit.

  ‘OK, OK, don’t start.’

  This conversation was taking place in bed, in a nest of the weekend newspapers. Kit, turning the pages of the Travel section, had said, ‘Maybe we should go away for a few days. Don’t you think? While we can?’

  Alice had put on the sepulchral voice she used when Kit said something about how there would be nothing to look forward to after the baby: ‘Of course, because we’ll never go on holiday again once we have a baby.’

  ‘Oh we will,’ said Kit. ‘Just not together.’ He was only half joking.

  ‘Pig,’ said Alice. Now she was only half joking.

  After a pause she said, ‘But I thought you hated going abroad. Why did I think that?’

  ‘Well, I don’t like holidays,’ Kit replied, ‘but a weekend is different.’

  ‘I love going away,’ said Alice, picking crumbs off the front of her vest. ‘You choose somewhere. Surprise me.’

  But he couldn’t surprise her because she had so many criteria. In the end they narrowed it down to the Middle East (hot, near, and then Jordan (warm sea, no fighting). Kit fetched his laptop and they found a deal: a flight to Amman, a hotel in Petra, another (five-star luxury, they read) on the shore of the Dead Sea, and a flight back.

  ‘What is Petra?’ asked Alice, looking over his shoulder.

  Kit turned his head to see if she was joking, and saw that she wasn’t. He swallowed the thought that struck him (How can I be having a baby with someone so ignorant?) and said, ‘It’s an ancient city, carved out of the rock. Hang on, I’ll Google it. There’s a very famous building, it’s in a canyon and its façade is cut out of a cliff face. Here’s a picture… There you go.’

  ‘Oh my God, I know: it’s in Indiana Jones,’ she said. ‘I always wondered where that was.’ Kit must have looked blank, because she added, ‘The one with Sean Connery.’

  ‘I never saw it.’

  Alice looked at him in amazement. ‘You’ve never seen Indiana Jones?’

  ‘Not that one. I saw the first two.’

  ‘Wow,’ she said. Kit felt irritated, especially when she mocked him, saying, ‘It’s your age, pet.’

  There was one sour note before they left, sounded by Alice’s sister Emmy, who said, ‘Why do you have to go abroad? It’s so stupid and pointless. Go to a hotel in the Lake District for the weekend if you must go away. Don’t go to bloody Jordan. What if something happens? You’ll have some idiot poking at your girlie bits with a spoon.’

  Kit found Emmy one of the most testing things about his relationship with Alice. She was much older than Alice – more his age than hers, in fact – although it didn’t feel like that; it felt as if she was older than him too. She disapproved of him: she had known him a little bit in the old days, when he had been wild. What’s more, she had all but brought Alice up herself, so there were issues. She was protective to a fault and, Kit flattered himself, a little bit jealous.

  Emmy chose the night before they left to come out with her little speech. The three of them were having dinner at a Chinese canteen in Soho where the sisters had been coming for years. Now they took Kit as if it was a marvellous treat for him, to be included in their little ritual, but in fact he preferred something more expensive, with napkins that were not made of paper and a menu that came in English. Sometimes Emmy’s desire for authenticity seemed to make life more unpleasant than it need be.

  Alice was inclined to go along with Emmy – she had all her life – but she was irritated by these comments. Kit had noticed, with some satisfaction, that since the pregnancy Alice was more likely to disagree with her sister, to say no to her and to rebuff her admonishments. Now Alice frowned as she loaded her pancake with shredded duck. ‘People do go on aeroplanes,’ she said, ‘when they’re pregnant, all the time. Right up to thirty-five weeks.’

  ‘It’s not the plane, dummy, it’s the hospital the other end.’

  ‘God, Emmy, shut up, will you? You’re being boring. Make her stop, Kit.’

  ‘What does he know?’

  Kit, tired, looked up from his plate of what seemed to be fried duck fat covered with jam, and said, ‘Look, Emmy, give it a rest, would you? It’s four days, for God’s sake. We’ll be back on Tuesday. Can we talk about something else?’

  ‘OK, OK, sorry,’ said Emmy, waving hoi-sin-stained hands in defeat. ‘I expect I’m jealous. I’ve got to work on Saturday and Sunday.’

  ‘What is it?’ Alice asked.

  ‘A wedding. And lunch the next day.’

  ‘Oh, how sweet,’ said Alice, her head on one side.

  Now Kit and Emmy exchanged glances. They shared similar views on marriage, while Alice was ‘so soppy it’s ridiculous’, as Emmy said, and cried over weddings even when they happened in EastEnders.

  ‘They’re not sweet at all,’ said Emmy. ‘It’s second time round for both of them.’

  Alice would not be put off: ‘It is – if anything, it’s sweeter.’

  Emmy rolled her eyes, and Kit laughed and put his hand over Alice’s on the table. ‘You’re sweet,’ he said.

  In the taxi on the way home Alice turned from the window and said, ‘Are we mad to go away? It will be all right, won’t it?’ Kit felt her hand steal across the seat and into his. He squeezed it.

  ‘Of course it will. It’s nothing – Emmy’s cross because you’re having a holiday. She needs a boyfriend.’

  ‘Men are so irritating! You always come out with that, and it’s not true: she doesn’t. Emmy’s vile when she has a boyfriend. She’s only just got rid of the last one, anyway, as I’ve told you a million times. I wish you listened to a single word I said.’

  ‘I can’t be expected to remember everything,’ Kit countered with indignation.

  ‘No, but some things? About me? Surely?’

  ‘Don’t be peevish. You’re always like this after we see Emmy. You’re channelling her.’

  ‘Channelling?’ Alice laughed. ‘Where did you pick that up?’

  ‘I read your Grazia in the bath.’

  Alice giggled and leaned over to kiss him. ‘Channelling,’ she mocked him. Then she murmured into his ear, ‘I love it when you talk teen slang.’

  When they got home Alice wanted hot chocolate and so Kit went upstairs to bed and left her in the kitchen, surfing on the computer while the milk warmed up. He was almost asleep when she came into the bedroom.

  ‘According to the website,’ she whispered, ‘I might feel the Bean kick any time around now.’

  Kit rolled on to his back. ‘Why are you whispering?’

  ‘In case he’s asleep.’ She put her cup
down beside the bed. They were both quiet for a moment.

  ‘Well, let me know if you feel anything,’ Kit had whispered back, punching his pillow into shape with a fist.

  3

  She had not felt the baby kick, yet. Perhaps she never would, Kit thought, when he came round from his faint, and remembered what had happened.

  He saw when he looked at his watch that he had been out for no more than a few minutes. He felt cold, and nauseous. He was sick a little bit, on the ground. His hair, clothes and hands were sticky all over with Coca-Cola; where he had been lying on the ground dirt and grit were glued to the sugar so he looked as if he had been tarred and feathered.

  He knew with a leaden certainty that Karim was not coming back. He, Kit, was going to get up and save Alice himself. This thought galvanised him, and he rose to his feet, brushing his palms on his trousers and lifting his eyes to the horizon far above him, resolved to climb out of the valley and get help.

  If he could get to the road another car would pass and he could flag it down and ask for help. He should have done this before. Why had he not? And left Karim here with Alice? That would have been the right thing to do.

  He went back to the car and listened for Alice’s breathing, but he didn’t get in. He didn’t want her to wake up before he got back. He felt a strange kind of dull anger towards her for being unconscious. He turned away from the wrecked car and without looking up again at the steepness of the slope above him, began to climb.

  Using his hands for balance, he trod, as Karim had, in minute steps up the hillside. He slipped and slid down almost as much as he climbed up, but not quite; gradually he made the ascent. His sneakers had a little bit more grip than Karim’s loafers and the climb was not quite so hard. Each step required him to jam the edge of his shoe into the loose surface, to pin his fingertips into the ground. Then he could shift upwards, six inches at a time.

  To his dismay a tune drifted into his mind and began to circle in his brain, repeating itself over and over until he thought it would drive him demented: Ta-ta-ta-ta, ta-ran-ta-ra… It was from a musical, something he had sung as a child, something cheerful and inappropriate… Oh God, he would go mad (Ta-ta-ta-ta, ta-ran-ta-ra) if he had to endure this fresh torture. He almost wept again, at the injustice of it all. Sweat trickled into his eyes, his dry mouth clacked open and shut as he breathed and the tune buzzed round his head like a lazy wasp and would not be dislodged.

  Every few yards Kit checked his phone to see if it was receiving a signal, but there was nothing. He wasn’t surprised because steep hills surrounded him on every side, turning brown and purple as the light faded. The landscape looked like velvet, one hill blurring against another, until it was impossible to distinguish between them and it seemed as if he were climbing up the inside of a dark bowl, towards its lip, with the sky a bright piece of sheet metal above.

  What had taken the car a few seconds to descend took Kit an hour at least to climb. He fell several times, losing his grip, sliding downwards at speed and having to throw himself flat against the slope to stop his descent. It wasn’t long before his fingertips hurt from trying to get a purchase on the stony ground, his back ached from climbing in the all-fours position, his head thumped and his mouth tasted clotted and stinking, as if he’d been sick several days before and not yet cleaned his teeth.

  It was with a feeling of triumphant relief that he at last rolled on to the road and lay there panting on his back, pushing his sweaty hair out of his eyes and letting all his muscles relax for a moment. If only I could lie here for the rest of the night, he thought, looking up at the glittering sky.

  But it was cold, and now it was dark, and only the wind playing through the hills made any sound at all. Making a colossal effort of will, Kit stood up and pulled his telephone from his pocket, looking at the screen for the thousandth time. No bars.

  He was not surprised; he was resigned to the worst case scenario. It had been obvious since he had regained consciousness on the valley floor that there would be no easy path out of this situation. He had decided he would walk for help and walk he would, as far as he had to. He imagined returning to the Mercedes, taking Alice’s hand as she emerged from the car, holding it as they travelled in an ambulance to hospital. He imagined her opening her eyes and whispering, ‘Kit’.

  He knelt beside the road and with his sore fingertips dragged together a pile of stones so that he could recognise the spot when he came back with help, and then he set off back the way they had come in the car. His shirt clung to his back and then the sweat dried on him and he felt the chill of the night air. He kept to the inside of the road to avoid slipping off the edge and tumbling back into the valley. He trudged along for a mile, and then for five miles; for an hour, and then for two.

  4

  For some reason the Peace Hotel at Wadi Musa had thought that they were honeymooners. On their bed was a scattering of petals and a card: ‘Welcome, Mr and Mrs Miller’. Alice thought this was very funny, Kit less so.

  As newlyweds they were entitled to a complimentary massage, according to the card, and to an enormous fruit basket which was delivered as they unpacked. Kit was about to say, ‘Do you think anyone ever actually eats the fruit from one of those things?’, when Alice plucked an apricot from the top of the pile and bit into it. So instead Kit heard himself say, ‘Don’t you think you ought to wash that first?’

  ‘What? Oh, no, you don’t want to worry about that sort of thing,’ she replied airily. She wandered around the room, looking in all the drawers and cupboards. ‘This is a funny sort of hotel, isn’t it?’

  Kit was tired. He stopped unpacking and straightened up. ‘Funny how?’

  ‘It feels like it’s only just opened. All this furniture… it looks like it was just moved in here today.’

  With exaggerated patience, Kit looked around the room. ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ he said.

  Alice was quiet, and ate her apricot. Then she said, ‘I think we should have dinner and get an early night, don’t you?’

  Kit thought that real life lay outside the hotel’s revolving door and not in its buffet restaurant, where tourists shuffled in patient queues. But Karim, the driver who had met them at the airport, shook his head when they asked him to recommend somewhere to eat in the town. ‘No,’ he said, ‘this place is not good for you. The hotel is better. It is five star.’

  They dismissed him and set out on foot but his words seemed to hang above them wherever they went and to pollute the air. It seemed different now from the living place they had seen through the car windows. They had driven past bustling restaurants filled with families; now those restaurants had become empty rooms, lit a cold blue by strip lights and guarded by men clustered at pavement tables. As Kit and Alice walked past, hand in hand, they felt scrutinised.

  They could not decide where to settle and wandered around, up hills and down winding streets, until both were tired and irritable.

  ‘Fuck,’ said Alice, ‘I’ve got to eat.’

  ‘I’ve got to have a drink,’ replied Kit. He was bored of Alice being pregnant, her demands more deserving than his.

  After a pause Alice turned to him, ‘Oh God, shall we just go back to the hotel? I’m getting fed up.’

  ‘All right, if you want to. ‘But it seems a bit pathetic. I mean, they’re all tourists in there, eating pizza.’

  ‘We’re tourists, and I bet there’s other food too, there’s got to be. I bet you can get houmous and falafel and stuff.’

  ‘Well then, we should have gone there in the first place,’ said Kit.

  ‘Oh, Kit, don’t be so narky,’ cried Alice, letting go of his hand.

  ‘Stay here a second,’ said Kit, ‘I want to buy a pack of cigarettes.’ He left her there and crossed the road, ducking into a shop without turning round.

  It had dawned on him that they did not know how to behave with each other; the territory was unfamiliar. Although they had been away together once before, to Los Angeles, it had been Kit’s trip. He had had an exhibition and Alice had accompanied him. They had stayed with Kit’s American dealer, Josh, in Santa Monica, and been so well looked after that it was not much like going abroad – certainly not like the travelling that Alice had done before she met Kit. Josh flew them business class and he provided a car for Alice to use during the day when he and Kit were busy hanging the exhibition. Alice had been expected to loaf, shop, and to swim in the pool. In fact she had taken Josh’s dogs into the hills above Malibu to walk – or hike, as they called it there. In the evenings she, Josh and Kit would all go out for dinner to meet up with Josh’s friends, most of whom had known Kit for years.