The House at the Edge of the World (17 page)

‘And how do you remember
it?’

‘Not happy. At least … I remember you
as not being happy. And I don’t remember being able to tell if Dad was happy or
not.’

‘Well, darling. You’ve just
described your father!’ The cup in Mum’s hand circled gently; a slice of
lemon bobbed at the surface of her tea. ‘What brought all this on?’

‘Oh, nothing, really. Have you seen
much of Corwin?’

‘Yes. A fair bit, actually. He’s
been bonding with Bob.’

‘He has?’

‘Yes.’ She scrutinized me – with
a mother’s forensic gaze. ‘What do you think that’s all
about?’

‘Oh, you know Corwin. He’s big
on appeasement. He can’t bear not to get on with anyone. Please don’t tell
me they’ve been playing golf.’

‘No, darling. That would be overdoing
it. They’ve just been on a couple of walks together. Pint at the pub. That sort of
thing.’

‘Oh. Well, that’s nice, I
suppose.’

‘“Nice”?’

No word was safe with my mother. I stayed
silent.

‘Are you and Corwin up to
something?’

‘I’ve hardly
seen Corwin!’

‘So – yes?’

‘No.’

Mum drank up her tea. ‘How do you find
Corwin?’

‘Different,’ I said. Sorrow
tugged at my throat. ‘Brooding.’

‘Yes,’ said Mum, reaching into
the bottom of her cup and taking out the lemon slice between finger and thumb,
‘there’s a touch of Heathcliff about him, these days. Well, it’s
hardly surprising. God knows where he’s been!’ She ripped at the crescent of
tea-stained lemon with her teeth, and dropped the rind into the bottom of her cup.

‘What are you going to wear?’ I
asked.

‘Oh, I don’t know. It’s so
difficult. At this stage in life, you’re caught between mother-of-the-bride and
mutton-dressed-as-lamb. I’m thinking a very pale silver silk and a quiet bouquet –
and at my age a piece of Interesting Jewellery is compulsory. It will probably rain, of
course. Am I allowed to choose a dress for you?’

‘You haven’t already?’

‘Well, I have. Will you wear
it?’

‘Yes, Mum. Of course. Will I like
it?’

‘Possibly. And will you bring
Ed?’

‘Possibly.’

‘You should, darling. After all, you
are nearly thirty-five.’

At Thornton, I raged through the house
looking for Corwin, but he was out. Matthew was off somewhere, meandering through his
visions. Sandra, who was turning the compost, said, ‘Crow said to tell you
he’s gone climbing. Be back teatime.’

‘Did he say “tea” or
“supper”?’

‘He said,’ she stabbed her fork
into the pile of steaming decay, ‘“
tea
”.’

‘Sorry.’

‘That’s OK,’ said Sandra,
indifferently. ‘You can’t help yourself.’

Back in the house, I
watched Sandra from the landing. She felt me staring at her and turned to look up at
where I stood in the window. Slowly, I raised my hand. Sandra turned back to her forking
and I remained at the window, hand raised, like an imprint of myself left upon the
house. Indulging in the sensation of insubstantiality, of transparency, I wandered
aimlessly, imagining my real self underground, richly mouldering. I searched the rooms
for other ghosts, but met only mute objects. I ended up lying on Corwin’s
mattress. There was a pile of periwinkle-blue books stacked in the corner of the room. I
fell asleep and then woke – I could not tell how much later – to the sound of a heavy,
limping footfall below and the slamming of the fridge door. I went downstairs and found
Corwin in the kitchen with his bare left foot resting on a chair and an ice pack around
his ankle. Covering his skin and his clothes was a fine layer of silt, as though he had
been uprooted from the damp soil. He smiled to see me. ‘How are you?’ he
asked.

‘What’s going on?’

‘Nothing. I just slipped and twisted
my ankle. I seem to have lost all my upper-body strength. But, God, it was great to be
out there! I’d forgotten how good it feels. There’s nothing like a good
climb for returning a sense of proportion to your existence.’

‘So you always say.’

‘Yes, but it’s true.
There’s the rock face. It has taken millennia to shape, and there’s you,
clinging to it, for a fraction of time so infinitesimal that the earth never even knows
you were there. But still you cling. And you feel time pass.’

‘You’re talking a lot
again.’

‘Be nice and run me a bath?’

The ankle was already badly swollen. I
repressed the urge to kick the chair from under it.

‘With bubbles,’ added Corwin.
‘I think we’ve got some bubbles? And a cold beer. We definitely have
beer.’

‘Have you ever slept with
Sandra?’

‘Where did that
question come from?’

‘Oh, I don’t know. I just
remembered to ask.’

‘I’m not her type,’ said
Corwin, laughing. ‘We all fancied her like mad in Juniors, though. She was the
only one with breasts. Why did you think I did?’

‘You seem rather
conspiratorial.’

‘You’re just making that
up.’ Corwin leaned forward to adjust the bag of ice around his ankle. ‘I
always liked Sandra. We used to trade marbles.’

‘I don’t remember
that.’

‘Yes, you do. She used to come over
with her dad.’

‘No. I don’t.’

‘You must do. Her granddad used to
bring the crabs over and we played marbles with Sandra while he gossiped with
Matthew.’

‘I remember the Crab Man,’ I
conceded.

‘Well, then.’

I remembered the cuffed crabs, scrambling
over each other in the bucket, and the man himself, red still glinting in his grey
beard, yellow oilskins, but not the marbles and not Sandra.

‘You had a huge scrap with her over
your favourite blue fiver. I had to split you up!’

‘No,’ I said.
‘Gone.’

Corwin put his hands around his lower leg
and lifted his foot gently off the chair, then gripped the kitchen table to haul himself
to standing. He hopped over to me and put his arms around me and pulled me close,
grazing my cheek with grit from his face and murmuring sadly, ‘You’ve
forgotten all the best bits!’ When he let me go I could taste sea salt on the
corner of my mouth.

‘Help me up the stairs,’ he
said. ‘Oh, and don’t forget the beer.’

Corwin accepted a glass of wine when he
came down. He said, ‘I’ve got a present for you. There, on the
mantelpiece.’

Five bleached bird skulls were laid neatly
in a row. ‘I was out walking last week, up by the pig farm. Someone had shot a
bunch
of crows and smeared them on the fence and the road. It was a
mess! Anyway, I brought back the heads and boiled them off for you.’

‘They’re beautiful,’ I
said. ‘Thanks.’ I picked them up one by one and balanced them on the flat of
my palm. They were so delicate. They looked as though they would disintegrate with a
gentle calcium crunch if I closed my hand on them.

Corwin asked me to give him a haircut.
‘Really short,’ he said. I laid out newspaper and he sat on a chair in front
of the fire and I began to comb through his hair. He smelt incongruously of lavender.
Snippets fell onto the newspaper at his bare feet. The swelling had spread into the top
of his left foot. A curl landed on the surface of his wine, and floated there, black on
red. He picked it out. ‘Not short enough!’

‘You look even more like a hostage
when you cut it too short!’

‘Or a monk,’ said Corwin.
‘A hermit! That’s the effect I want to go for. Give me a hermit
haircut.’

‘I thought hermits let their hair grow
long.’

‘Who knows?’ said Corwin.
‘Just make it ascetic. And don’t drink any more until it’s finished.
You’ll have my ears off.’

I tilted his head to one side and began to
snip around the curve of bone behind his ear. ‘What are you up to,
Corwin?’

‘Thinking,’ he said.
‘I’m thinking. How did you find Mum, by the way?’

‘She asked me how I found
you.’

‘What did you say?’

‘She said you’d been cosying up
to Bob.’

‘You’ll never forgive them, will
you?’

‘No. But I do give in.’ I
manipulated his head between my palms. He was pure trust within my hands. ‘How do
you find Bob?’

‘Interesting.’

‘Interesting?’

‘Very.’

‘Isn’t it time you went back to
work?’

‘I’m giving
myself a sabbatical.’

I handed him the mirror. He checked his
reflection. ‘That’s better!’ I had my hands on his bare shoulders.
‘Can’t you drop this?’ He met my eyes in the mirror, reached back to
take my left hand. ‘No. I’m sorry.’ He kissed my palm. ‘I need
you to do something for me.’

‘What?’

‘We need to track down the
others.’

‘The others?’

‘The others who were at the beach the
night Dad died. Mickey, Willow and Oliver.’

‘Why?’

‘Because they were there. Because
we
weren’t
paying attention
– perhaps they were. I’ve
already found Mickey – he’s here at The Sands. We’re meeting him tomorrow.
You can work on Willow and Oliver.’

‘I don’t want to! Absolutely no
fucking way!’

‘Why not? It’ll be
fun!’

‘It’s not fun – it’s weird
and morbid.’

He still had my hand. He gripped it tighter
and locked eyes with me in the mirror. ‘This is non-negotiable,’ he
said.

‘I’ve missed a bit behind your
ear,’ I said. He let go of my hand and I picked up the scissors and tilted his
head to the side and, very carefully with the tip of the scissors, I snipped at the skin
behind his right earlobe. He jumped, but he didn’t make a sound. He had known I
would do that. A shining bead of blood formed.

‘So,’ he laughed, wiping it
away, ‘you’re pissed off! That’s fine. But it doesn’t change
anything.’

On the mantelpiece was a grey stone that I
had found at Thornton Mouth. It was about the size of my two fists. At its centre was a
perforation – it went almost all the way through, but not quite, because within this
stone was another, a tiny foreign flint, black and ruthless, which had bored its way
with the help of the sea and the centuries into its host. Nothing could dislodge it.

‘I don’t
understand what you’re trying to achieve.’

Corwin looked regretful, then. He
hadn’t explained himself properly. Standing up, he put his T-shirt back on. He had
filled out a bit, but still his belly was concave. His hip bones jutted above the
waistband of his jeans. He was showing the first signs of the Venton sag. He said,
‘You remember, when Dad fell, you always said there was something wrong with us
and I always dismissed it?’

Outside it was spring – cold evening sun, a
frenzy of birds.

‘I think perhaps you were right and I
was wrong. We were in such a hurry to leave.’

I said, ‘Ed asked me what Dad was
like, and I couldn’t tell him. I can’t remember him.’

‘You see!’ said Corwin, smiling
encouragingly – as if I had asked him for help. ‘We have erased him,
somehow.’

Our father in faint outline – the leavings
of lead in the paper’s grain. I said, ‘He’s dead, Corwin. Why does it
matter so much now all of a sudden?’

‘Mum calls us her “cuckoo
children”. Don’t you think that’s terrible?’

When Mum really hated us, she called us her
‘beautiful cuckoo children’. We had squeezed her out of her own nest.

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I
do.’

Corwin had arranged to meet Mickey on the
seafront. The stretch of beach in front of the café was now the dog walkers’ beach
and a little pile of plastic-wrapped dog shit had accumulated on the ground next to the
Wall’s ice-cream board.

‘I haven’t been here in
years!’ said Corwin, happily, queuing up with his brown plastic tray. A man with
naval tattoos shot a hiss of water onto the stewed tea-bags in a huge metal teapot.

‘Sugar,’ I said. ‘I need
sugar.’ And then, looking around, ‘No. Me neither.’ There was a reason
that Corwin had chosen this place, but I didn’t know what it was, and was not
going to ask. The café hadn’t changed – even the people looked exactly the same as
they had seventeen years ago: grey-haired, anoraked and dog-loving. The floor swarmed
with damp, panting fur. Corwin was ordering sausages, chips and baked beans, in an
ecstasy of nostalgia. We slid into the moulded red plastic benches, and looked out on
the desultory brown tide.

‘So,’ said Corwin. ‘Tell
me what you’re thinking.’

‘I’m thinking I’m being
choreographed,’ I said. ‘And I don’t like it.’

Corwin smiled, sliced into his sausage and
used a piece of it to scoop up some beans. ‘I’ve had dreams about
this,’ he said. ‘I’m not joking. Whole dreams about sausages, chips
and baked beans.’

I didn’t recognize Mickey at first. He
came in with his hands in the pockets of his denim jacket, his head and face hidden by a
beanie and a beard. He looked suspicious and defensive. I stood up to administer a
social kiss, but came up short against our lost familiarity. It was as if there had been
a mutual betrayal. Our
cheeks bumped awkwardly. Corwin stood up and
shook his hand. Mickey said, ‘Shit, Crow! You are thin! And what’s with the
hair? You look like a fucking suicide bomber or something!’

Corwin laughed. ‘Dysentery,’ he
said. ‘My intestines are a war zone.’

I had to assume this was true. I said,
‘He made me cut his hair like that!’

Mickey sat down, keeping on his hat and
jacket. ‘How long are you home for?’

‘Indefinitely,’ said Corwin.

‘Just the weekend,’ I said,
although I hadn’t been asked. ‘Would you like me to get you a cup of tea or
a coffee or something?’

‘We’re not staying here, are
we?’

‘Why not? I love this place. Old
times’ sake and all of that,’ said Corwin.

‘Whatever,’ said Mickey.
‘But I could do with a beer.’

‘When did you move back?’ I
asked.

Mickey looked offended; it sounded
retrograde. ‘You still in London?’