The Red House (36 page)

We went for a walk up Black Hill
.

I didn’t mean that
. Louisa dried her hands on the tea towel and looked at her.
It’s like there was a big knot inside you. And someone’s untied it
.

God, she stumbled through life failing to understand everyone. Louisa. Melissa. Jack. Lauren. Herself most of all.
How did you know?

You’re a good daughter
, said Louisa.
I don’t think they’re proud enough
. She halved the tea towel and hung it over the rail on the Aga.
Now. What do you think? Shall we pull out the stops for the last night?

Good idea
, said Daisy, because that was it, wasn’t it. Nothing more to be said, nothing more that needed to be said.

There are no flowers so Daisy makes a collection of holly and grasses and a budding branch she can’t identify and arranges them in the hand-painted Spanish jug which she places in the center of the table. Paper serviettes folded and rolled, a bishop’s hat in every place. Two candles in wine bottles, flames multiplied in the wobbly glass of the leaded panes. Marks & Spencer Chablis, the salmon cut and shut so deftly on a fresh sheet of silver foil that no one notices, flecks of grass-green in the white of the sauce, asparagus, beans and carrots.

Why does it make your wee smell funny?
asks Benjy.

Methanethiol
, said Richard,
and some sulfides whose names temporarily escape me
.

Fresh bread, half the loaf sliced so the slices curled away like in an advert. The little bone-handled butter knife stuck into the pale yellow slab.
Whisper Not
, Dominic’s choice. Keith Jarrett, Gary Peacock, Jack DeJohnette.

They’re both solicitors
, said Alex.
It probably counts as animal cruelty. The dogs are shut inside ten hours a day. I take them to the park and they go ballistic
.

Angela is drinking too much in the hope that it will calm her, though she can see, too, that it is loosening her grip on the real world.

Once more, Benjy is picturing the center of the table as a city on an alien planet, the condiments, the wine bottles, the hand-painted Spanish jug transformed to towers and gunports. The two candles become refinery flares, an empty wicker mat the landing stage for which he aims as he weaves through the heavy laser flak in the scout vehicle.

How often is Angela like this?
asks Richard, quietly, because he had learnt over twenty-five years of being a doctor that normal was a very broad church and pathological too easy a diagnosis.

Just forming the word
never
in his mind makes Dominic realize how serious this is. His silence speaks for him.

I suspect she needs to see someone
.

You’re right
, says Dominic, though he had lost the right to advise her on all but the most trivial matters after losing his job. As if one paid actual money for such rights.
I’ll see what I can do
.

Louisa and Daisy are talking about swimming.
It was just a thing I was really good at
.

But …?

In the end it’s just going up and down a pool. I think it’s better doing something actually fun that you’re not so good at
.

Like?

How rarely she was asked the question.
Acting. I liked acting
.

Louisa rested her knife and fork at half past six.
And your friends in the church?

I’m not sure they’ll be friends anymore
. What would she do? Walk away, like she’d walked away from Lauren?

It might be good for them
. She sipped at her wine.
There’s a lot of troubled people out there
.

She was right, wasn’t she. Meg, Anushka. Who could tell? So many ways of being saved. So many cold dark places.

Richard turns to Melissa.
I remember you saying you’d got a dodgy Oberon
.

He is being kind, and this, she knows now, is the thing that scares her most of all. Kindness, her inability either to give it or receive it.
I haven’t really been thinking about the play
. It seemed the least of her problems.
We’ll work it out
. Down the other end of the table Mum and Daisy are gossiping, like she’s been usurped and they want her to know it. She needs distracting, but Richard is talking to Dominic again so she turns to Alex.
Your dad said you were going to Wales
. Because she can do it, too, she can be kind, she can be interested. It’s not hard.
Mountain biking, right?

He stares at her long and hard then laughs quietly. Utter disdain.
You’d hate it
.

And she thinks, Fuck
nice
, fuck
kind
. Dust and tumbleweed. Her father’s daughter, because no one treats me like that, no one.

Fourteen hours to go
, said Dominic.
We seem to have made it without anyone killing anyone else
.

Thank you
, said Angela.
For all this. For bringing us here
. As if she were a little girl remembering to be polite.

You’re welcome
.

A toast. To Richard
.

And Louisa
.

Cheers
.

Something provisional about the two hours between supper and bedtime. Everyone kicking their heels slightly before tomorrow’s departure. Daisy reads
Tintin
to Benjy.
Flight 714 to Sydney. Two hours and every trace of you and your friends wiped from the surface of the earth!

Angela fills half a suitcase. Dominic means to say something, about her seeing someone, about her getting help, but he can’t work out how to do it. He takes the cardigan from her hands and offers to finish the packing and this seems enough to absolve him of the greater duty for the time being at least.

Angela wanders downstairs and makes a cup of tea. Richard is putting the food they won’t need for breakfast into a cardboard box. Flour, olive oil, two bags of cashews. He asks if she is all right. She summons enough self-possession to head him off at the pass because she is tired and a little drunk and not sure she could explain even if she wanted. He gives her a hug which feels clumsy because it catches her by surprise and she is not able to return it deftly enough. He holds her for a long time and she wonders if he is going to say something, about Mum, about Dad, about the two of them being brother and sister, perhaps, but he finally breaks the silence by saying simply,
Look after yourself
.

Half-eleven. Alex comes out of his and Benjy’s room en route to the toilet. Something in the corner of his eye. Turning, he sees Melissa, standing at the end of the corridor watching him, leaning against the windowsill, hair down, bare legs, man’s shirt. He tries to turn away but leaves it just a moment too long. She pushes herself lazily upright
and walks down the landing, face blank. He can’t believe this is happening, all his previous opinions swept away by the fierceness of his wanting. She stands in front of him, arms hanging by her sides, steps a little closer, angles her head and lets herself be kissed. He puts one hand round the back of her neck and pushes his tongue into her mouth. Pine fabric conditioner. Freakishly pliable. He lifts her shirt. White cotton knickers, the roundness of her arse under his hand. He pulls her toward him so that she can feel his erection, wanting to know what permissions he is being granted. She neither presses back nor pulls away but takes hold of his T-shirt, turns and begins leading him toward the bedroom. There is something about this that he doesn’t understand, but there are many things he doesn’t understand about Melissa. Perhaps this is what she’s like when she gets horny. He knows little and cares less.

Angela puts her mug of tea on the side table and opens the creaky door of the stove to make herself a fire, balls of paper, kindling pyramid, small log. She lights the paper, shuts the door and spins open the little vent, sits back and waits for it to roar and bloom and settle, then spins the vent almost shut.

Fatigue and wakefulness warring with one another. If she can make it through tonight perhaps everything will be better in the morning, but if she goes to bed now she will lie staring at the ceiling. She feels ill at ease being down here as the house grows empty and quiet, but if she is upstairs she will worry that these rooms are neither wholly empty nor wholly quiet.

From the wood basket she extracts the remaining pages of
The Observer
. Melvyn Bragg on Gödel and Leibniz. Honey bees in terminal decline. The awful truth: to get ahead you need a private education. God, the amount you read in a lifetime and how shockingly little stayed with you. Getting back to school will be good for her. Those burdens that seem heavy till you put them down to lift your own. Karim’s impending statement. The creepy guy in the flat overlooking the Keystage 1 playground. The Inclusion Unit closing and the Dillon
twins coming back. Slipping away now. Rhubarb and Castrol. Behind everything there is always a house. You started the mower by pulling the plastic T on the end of the cord. She was never strong enough. The smell of greenhouse tomatoes, like nothing else. Almonds, bacon, nail varnish. Laughable, un-photographable. Sleep folds over her. Time passes. No real idea how much.

It is the cold that wakes her, the fire dying, the light off and only a dim glow from the landing upstairs seeping into the room. Karen is sitting in the armchair. A jolt of fear and relief. This will be over soon. But Karen is not Karen, not the Karen she had imagined. Bird bones and sunken cheeks, matted greasy hair. For a second Louisa wonders if she is dead, then her glassy eyes open and turn. Such economy of movement, so little energy to spare. The unwashed stink of her, beyond animal, homeless all these years. Gypsy camps and the breakers’ yards. A sore at the corner of her mouth, that tramp smell, urine and feces, raw papery skin. Five thousand nights in the open air. She looks eighty, not eighteen. She does not speak, perhaps she has never learnt to speak. Angela is terrified, she wants desperately to move but her arms and legs will not answer her commands. She is trapped inside her body. Instead it is Karen who is moving, bony hands on the arms of the chair, straining to lift such a small weight. This is not about apology or explanation or penance, this is punishment, and Angela will have no say in it just as Karen once had no say. On her feet, unsteady but determined. She fixes Angela with her eyes and does not look away. Angela can see now how truly frail she is, the way her clothes hang, greasy brown rags, all color gone. Things moving in her hair. Three steps and she is standing in front of Angela, the stink overpowering now, leaning down, her face changing shape as it closes in to kiss her. A ragged fin of gray flesh rising through the hair, eyes narrowing to gashes in the wet clay. Teeth and claws. Mouth on Angela’s mouth, forcing it open, dry cracked lips. The dirty wet meat of her tongue. Angela hears shrieking from high on the jagged rocks, the splintering of timber and the roar of water rushing in.

Bright light suddenly. Karen vanished and a girl kneeling in front of her.
Mum …?

Angela can’t remember how to speak.

The girl stands and says,
Oh shit
.

Daisy. It’s Daisy. This confusion. This is how her mother left the world. The nurses burning her hands.
When will Richard come to see me?

But he’s here now, her brother, the doctor. He leans on the arm of the chair.
Angela …?
He clicks his fingers directly in front of her face, examines her eyes in turn. There’s a woman in the room. Jennifer. No, the other one.

Richard takes her earlobe between his thumb and forefinger and squeezes it hard.
Ow
. She pulls her head away from his hand. She can move again.

Angela …?

It feels like a very long time since she last talked.
I fell asleep
.

How are you feeling now?

It required thought. Leafing through memories of the last few days.
What’s the time?

Half-two
.

I heard something
, said Daisy.
So I came down
.

Was it Karen she heard? She let the foolish question slide away.

We’ve been trying to wake you for some time
, says Richard.

Louisa standing in the corner, watching. Angela wants to hear her speak, the suspicion that she might not actually be there. She catches Louisa’s eye.
You scared us
, says Louisa. So she’s real.

Daisy touches her hand.
Seriously, how are you feeling?

Suddenly she sees the situation from their point of view. That she has done this to them.
I’m really sorry
.

There’s no need to apologize
, says Richard.

She gets to her feet, a little unsteady at first.
I think we all need some sleep
.