When Gina was at her unhappiest during that fortnight, she wanted to blame her mother. Her mother had been so keen on her taking up Mamie’s invitation: ostensibly because she worried that Gina was studying too hard, but really because of a hope, which had never been put into words but which Gina was perfectly well aware of, that Gina might get on with Mamie’s boys. ‘Get on with’: it wouldn’t have been, not for her mother, any more focused than that; a vague idea of friendly comradeship, the boys coming through daily unbuttoned summertime contact to appreciate Gina’s ‘character’, as her mother optimistically conceived of it. Boys, her mother obviously thought, would be good for Gina; they might help to make her happy. But her mother wasn’t solely responsible. When the holiday was suggested, Gina had had to be coaxed, but she hadn’t refused. She must have held out hopes too: less innocent hopes, grotesquely and characteristically misplaced.
There came another day of rain. At the end of a long afternoon of Monopoly and a fry-up supper Mamie was desperate, shut up with her charm and a crowd of disconsolate young ones in the after-aroma of sausages and chips. When she proposed a surprise visit to friends who had a place twenty miles along the coast, she hardly bothered to press Gina to join them, or Josh, either, who was building card houses on the table and said he didn’t want to go. She and Becky and Tom set off with bottles of wine and bunches of dripping flowers from the garden; the sound of escape was in their voices calling back instructions and cautions, Tom shaking the car keys out of his mother’s laughing reach, saying she couldn’t manage his old car, which needed double declutching.
Gina was going home the next day. Mamie would run her into town to catch the train. Probably that was the explanation for the comfortable flatness she felt now: it didn’t even occur to her to mind either way that Josh had stayed. She knew with a lack of fuss that it had nothing to do with her: he had stayed because he didn’t feel sociable and because he was idly fixated on a difficulty he was having with the card houses. The sound of the car driving off sank down and dissolved into the rustle of the rain, behind which, if she pushed her hair back behind her ears to listen, she could hear the waves of the sea, undoing and repairing the gravel on the beach. When Gina had finished putting away the dishes she sat down opposite Josh, watching him prop cards together with concentrating fingers; she was careful not to knock the table or even to breathe too hard. They talked, speculating seriously about why it was that he couldn’t make a tower with a six-point base; he had built one right up to its peak from a three and a four and a five base, but he had been trying and failing for hours to do a six. Josh had a loose, full lower lip which made his grin shy and qualified. There was silky fair beard growth on his chin and upper lip. He was gentler than his brothers, and had a slight lisp.
There was a second pack of cards on the table, rejected for building towers because the corners were too soft: Gina picked it up and fiddled with it on her lap without Josh noticing. The six-base tower came down in a shout of frustration, and Josh washed his hands groaning in the mess of cards.
— D’you want me to show you a card trick? Gina asked.
— OK, he said. — Anything. Just don’t let me begin another one of these.
— Actually, I’m not going to do it, she said, — you are. Put those cards out of the way. We’ll use this older pack. It feels more sympathetic.
He was amiable, obliging, clearing the table, his eyes on her now to see what she could do.
— I’m going to give you power, she said. — I’m going to make you able to feel what the cards are, without looking at them. You’re going to sort them into red and black. It’s not even something I can do myself. Look.
She pretended to guess, frowning and hesitating, dealing the top few cards face down into two piles. — I don’t know. Black, red; black, black, black; red, red. Something like that. Only I don’t have this magic. I’ll turn them over. See? All wrong. But you’re going to have this power. I’m going to give it to you. Give me your hands.
He put his two long brown hands out palm down on the table; she covered them with her own and closed her eyes, squeezing slightly against his bony knuckles, feeling under the ball of her thumb a hangnail loose against the cuticle of his. Really, something seemed to transfer between them.
— There, she said briskly. — Now you’ve got the power. Now you’re going to sort out these cards into black and red, face down, without looking. Black in this pile, red in this. Take your time. Try to truly feel it. Concentrate.
Obediently he began to deal the cards into two piles, doing it with hesitating wincing puzzlement, like someone led blindfold and expecting obstacles, laughing doubtingly and checking with her. — I have no idea what I’m doing here.
— No, you have. You really have. Trust it.
He gained confidence, shrugged, went faster: black, red, black, black, red, black, red, red, red. Halfway through she asked him to change round: red cards on the right, now, and black cards on the left pile. — Readjust: don’t lose it. It’s really just to keep you concentrating.
Then when he’d put down his last card and looked at her expectantly, she swept up the two piles and turned one over in front of his eyes. — So you see, if it’s worked, this one should run from red to black. Look, there you are!
She spread the second pile, reversing it so that it seemed to run the other way. — And this one here, from black to red.
— Oh, no. No! That’s just too weird. That’s really weird, man. How did you do that? Jesus! He laughed in delighted bafflement, looking from the cards up to her face and back again.
She was laughing too, hugging her secret. — Do you want me to do it again, see if you can guess? Only hang on a sec, I need the loo.
He never guessed, he didn’t notice that she took the second pack of cards with her to the bathroom to make them ready. (‘Shall we use these newer ones, see if it works with them?’) Gina couldn’t quite believe that he couldn’t see what she was doing. She had worked it out for herself, the first time that the trick was done on her.
— It’s just spooky, he said in awe, shaking his head. — It doesn’t make sense. There’s just no way I should be getting these right. You must be making me deal them right, somehow.
— No, it’s you, it’s you, she insisted. — I can’t do it. It’s only you.
He wouldn’t let her tell him how it was done, although she was longing to explain. He was right: it was better to hold off the climactic revelation with its aftermath of grey; the power of the mystery he couldn’t break was a warm pleasure, satisfying and sensual between them. They ran their eyes over each other’s faces in intimate connection, smiling; he brimmed with puzzlement and she was replete with knowledge. Then the moment slipped away; they gave up the trick after the third time, and played Mastermind and battleships, and exchanged talk in low, lax friendly voices. The others returned, crashing down through the garden, tipsily exalted. When Gina climbed between the sheets in her pyjamas, she found a warm pleasure persisting, a soft surprising parcel under her lungs; she examined it, and thought that it was probably happiness, a small preparatory portion of the great ecstasies she supposed life must have in store for her.