This Is How It Ends (8 page)

Suddenly he was aware of the world outside his window, a world of infinite possibility. He imagined all the people sitting in great opera houses around the world, decked out in all their finery, listening to this same beautiful music. He imagined people in large-windowed apartments looking out over glittering cities, they would be listening to this music too, it would be a part of the fabric of their lives. And he realized that he would leave this place soon and he would go out into the world and he would be a part of it all. Maybe it occurred to him then that he would never come back.

“The Chorus of the Hebrew Slaves” it was, that first piece of music. He recognized it when he heard it again years later. And every time he has heard it since, it’s as if he’s back in that cold bedroom in that cold house, the richness of the world revealing itself to him for the first time.

It should have been the start of a great journey. It should have been the beginning of a lifelong love affair with music. He should have made it his business to go to La Scala, to Covent Garden. He should have gone to Verona. He could have been a regular at Wexford. By now he would have explored all the great recordings, he would have been qualified to say who was the greatest Norma, who was his favorite Madame Butterfly.

Instead of which he’s still back where he started, with the
Great Opera Choruses
collection. Well, so be it, he would listen to the slaves’ chorus again and to hell with being an opera buff. The slaves’ chorus never failed to lift his spirits.

He swept the disc over to the edge of the cabinet with his sleeve, then picked it up with the tips of his fingers. Slowly, he bent from the knees until he was down on his hunkers, his back creaking as he went. Then he dropped the disc into the open tray. It fell perfectly into place and he grunted with satisfaction. With his middle finger, he nudged the button to close the tray, then he hit play.

He got to his feet with the feeling of a job well done. The first strains of music filled the room and he was flooded with hope again.

Only a matter of weeks before his casts would be off. Then he would be fit to fight the case, and there was no reason on this earth why he couldn’t win. He would be vindicated, he would see out his career on a high note. He might even do some teaching again. You can’t beat experience, at the end of the day it’s experience that matters.

He could still go to La Scala, if he wanted to, there was nothing stopping him. He would take Addie with him. He would treat her, they could make a weekend of it. He felt buoyant. There was life in him yet, he could see that now.

There was life in him yet.

D
ELLA ANSWERED THE DOOR
in evening dress. A full-length black satin gown with short scalloped sleeves and a deep scoop neckline. She had no makeup on and her feet were bare.

Addie’s heart sank when she saw her.

“Are you getting ready to go out?”

“God, no,” said Della, turning and walking back through the hall. “I’m just cleaning out the hot press.” She started up the stairs, the train of her dress slithering after her.

Addie traipsed up in her wake. Lola was too polite to follow. She stood watching them from the hall, her tail wagging slowly. Then she flopped down onto the tiles, her chin resting on her front paws, her eyes fixed on the stairs.

The landing was scattered with storage boxes and canvas bags.

“Sit there and talk to me while I’m doing this,” said Della. “I’ve started so I have to finish.”

Addie selected a clear space against the wall. She sat down on the carpet, her knees pulled up to her chest, her back resting against the scalding radiator.

Della was climbing up onto a shelf inside the press. She yanked the hem of her dress out of the way with one hand as she climbed.

“I’m looking for the ski gear,” she shouted. “Can’t remember where I would have put it, but it must be up here somewhere.”

A child’s slipper came flying out and landed on the ground beside Addie.

“The things you find!”

There were terrible noises coming from one of the upstairs bedrooms. The sound of a large number of little girls making a horrible mess. Screeching sounds and thumping and a general kerfuffle. Every so often somebody would wail.

“How many of them have you got up there?”

“Oh, God knows,” came the muffled voice from inside the hot press. “Well,” she said, “did he call?”

“No,” said Addie softly.

“Well, that doesn’t mean he won’t,” said Della. She swung round to face out. She was hanging from the top shelf, her feet perched precariously on the bottom shelf, her head bent sideways to avoid the lampshade.

“He’s not going to call,” said Addie despondently. “I can feel it in my bones.”

But Della didn’t answer. Now she was groping along the top shelf, her body hanging out into the void.

“I might as well face facts,” said Addie, her voice slightly louder this time. “He’s not going to call.”

Della was holding on to the shelf with one hand now, using the other to tug at a huge plastic storage bag.

“Here, Ad, help me take this down. Wait, it’s coming, watch out!”

Addie hugged her knees in closer to her chest, flattening her back up against the radiator as the bag came crashing down. Della hopped down after it. Now she was standing triumphantly inside the hot press, her hands on her hips, her face all flushed. She bent down to unzip the bag.

An overpowering smell of fermented urine wafted out.

“Oh, please no,” Della was saying, her face in her hands. “This can’t be happening to me.”

Addie was holding her nose, so her voice came out all distorted. “How long have they been in there? Don’t tell me. Not since last January?”

“Muck savages,” Della was muttering. “They’re nothing but muck savages.”

She started pulling the suits out one by one, holding them up to her nose and sniffing at them suspiciously.

“I can’t figure out which one is the guilty party.”

At that moment, the door of the upstairs bedroom burst open and they came thundering out like a herd of elephants. Six of them, seven, Addie counted as they swept by, hopping over her feet as they negotiated the return. They were dressed in fairy outfits mainly, lots of cheap polyester and netting in ghastly shades of pink.

Lisa was the last to appear, mincing her way along the upper landing. Addie noticed that she had both legs squeezed into one leg of a pink velour tracksuit.

“Hey, Lisa old girl,” said Addie, “I think you’ve got your knickers in a twist there. Do you want a hand?”

The child stood at the top of the little flight of stairs, looking at Addie with disdain. Her eyes were almost white, they were so pale. Simon’s eyes.

“I’m a mermaid,” she said.

“Well, obviously you’re a mermaid!” said Addie. “I was just checking. Do you need any help getting down the stairs, love?”

Lisa just ignored her. She sat down on the top step and pushed herself off, bumping down the six steps and struggling to her feet again on the return. She shuffled around to the top of the main flight, sat herself down, and pushed off again. Bump, bump, bump, twelve times until she got to the bottom. By the time she’d reached the foot of the stairs, the others were already on their way up again.

“Say hi to your auntie Addie,” Della roared.

“Hi, Auntie Addie,” they all said as they trundled past.

“Who’s that one?” Addie asked, pointing at a child she’d never seen before. “I’m not your aunt,” she shouted after her.

“I give up,” Della was saying, staring helplessly at the pile of ski suits. “It seems to have kind of permeated them all.”

“Delightful,” said Addie.

“I’ll have to wash the whole lot.” She piled them all up in her arms and sidestepped over Addie’s feet. “Come on, we’ll have a cup of tea.”

So Addie traipsed downstairs after her, feeling utterly at sea.

“I think Dad might be depressed,” she said as she followed Della into the kitchen.

“What makes you think that?”

“Oh, I don’t know, he’s gone very quiet. He seems preoccupied.”

“Of course he’s preoccupied, Addie! He should be preoccupied. He’s being sued, for God’s sake. It’s very serious for him. It will all be in the papers. It will affect his reputation. It could be the end of him.”

“You sound as if you already know he’s going to lose.”

Della was down on her hunkers, stuffing the ski suits into the washing machine. She paused for a minute.

“Simon says they have a strong case.”

“Dad told me they don’t have a leg to stand on!”

“Well, of course he would say that! He never admits he’s wrong, you know that.”

Addie filled the kettle and turned it on. She knew Della was right, of course she was right. And yet there was that gulf between them, the same gulf that always appeared whenever they got to talking about their father. Addie didn’t like to say anything bad about him. Della seemed to relish it. For Addie, the truth was always less important than the love.

The kids came coursing through the kitchen again, a rowdy crocodile of them. Elsa was out front. “
Runaway Bride
,” she was screaming as she ran out into the back garden.

“Della. I can’t face the thought of being on my own anymore.”

Della was moving around the room. It wasn’t clear if she was listening. Did Della ever sit down anymore?

Addie kept on talking.

“I thought I was cool with it, I really did. I thought I was cool with the idea of being single, what with the dog and the swimming and everything. But now I realize I’m not.”

She had tears in her eyes. She started blinking them away. “I don’t want to be on my own.”

Della had her back to her. She was standing at the kitchen counter making the tea. But it turned out she was listening after all.

“Being married isn’t that great either, you know,” she was saying. “I envy you your life, I really do. Do you know what I feel like sometimes? I feel like an office worker. I’m like someone in a dead-end civil service job. I’m just pushing paper around on my desk, nobody even notices what I do.”

Addie was already opening her mouth to reply, but Della hadn’t finished.

“Nobody seems to care as long as I don’t complain.”

This is something Della does, she’s constantly coming up with new similes to describe her life. Sometimes she’s a factory worker, she’s a worker in a chicken factory, she’s working on the assembly line, day in, day out. Other times she’s a tennis player, she’s a tennis player with nobody on the other side of the court, she’s hitting balls all day long that nobody returns.

Addie has heard it all a million times before. But she also has to consider the fact that Della and Simon slow-dance together in the kitchen late at night when the kids have gone to bed. She knows they have sex on the kitchen table after their dinner guests have gone home. So it’s hard for her to have too much sympathy.

Anyway, thought Addie, weren’t we talking about me?

She looked out the window into the back garden.

“Della,” she said, in a disjointed voice, “Elsa’s wearing your wedding dress.”

“Oh, don’t worry about that, I let them have it. It’s not like I’m ever going to use it again.” She came over to the table and turned a chair sideways so she could kneel down on it.

“But she has it out in the garden, Dell, she’s getting it all muddy! Lola’s eating the veil!”

“Who cares?”

Della dumped a heaped spoon of sugar into her mug of tea. “That’s my new catchphrase. I find it applies to almost every situation I find myself in. You should try it. Who cares?”

And she looked so pretty kneeling there at the kitchen table in her mad evening dress, the mug of tea held between her two tiny hands. Addie couldn’t help but smile.

“You should dress like that all the time. It suits you.”

“I think I might. Who cares!”

“That’s it, who cares.”

So there they were again, two sisters against the world.

THEY’RE ALIKE,
the two of them. You’d know they were sisters. The same round face, the same wide-open gray eyes. The same neat little nose. Even their hair would be the same shade, somewhere between brown and blond, if they didn’t color it.

Nowadays Addie’s hair hovers around a dark honey color. Number 78 is the number on the box she buys in the supermarket, whenever she can be bothered. Della’s hair is lighter, she goes to an expensive hairdresser every four weeks to have it highlighted, her one concession to respectability.

If Addie ever became famous and they made a doll of her, it would look like Della. The head just a little bit larger in proportion to the body. The boobs smaller and neater. The cheekbones a little higher, the eyes a little wider. She’s the image of Addie, only better-looking. There’s something more perfect about Della, as if the mold got slightly out of shape when it came to making Addie.

They weren’t at all alike as children. People used to remark on how different they were. People used to say that Addie looked like her dad while Della took after her mum. “You got one of each.” Addie remembers someone saying that, but she can’t remember who.

They weren’t close when they were growing up. They grew up side by side of course, they spent every day in each other’s company, but they weren’t close.

Each of them alone in her bedroom for hours on end. Those hours must have attached themselves to each other, they must have turned into weeks and months and years. But Addie remembers them as just one moment.

She’s crouched down on the floor over a huge piece of white card, mapping out lines with a pencil and a wooden ruler. Her back is aching, her knees and the fronts of her calves a raw red from the rough pile of the carpet. She’s listening to Radio Nova, she can almost hear the song they’re playing, it’s hovering at the edge of her memory. If you hear a certain three songs played in a row you have to ring them, but she can’t remember what it is you win.

She’s mapping out make-believe houses on these huge sheets of paper. Elaborate mansions with interior courtyards surrounded by wooden balconies. Bedrooms with spiral staircases that lead to secret gardens. Rooftops with full orchards planted on them and hammocks slung from tree to tree, so you can sleep under the stars.

That’s where Addie spent her childhood, in those beautiful, fantastical houses of her own imagining. It was only her shadow that was lunking around that big cold house on the Strand Road. In Addie’s head, she was floating through a series of interconnecting rooms, each one painted a paler blue than the last, floor-to-ceiling French doors opening out on a deep dark lake, her white dress billowing in the breeze. She was sitting perched on the edge of a shallow pool in a tiled courtyard crowded with tropical plants, her toes dipped in the still, green water, her back resting against a cool stone pillar.

In her memory, Addie is aware of Della’s presence in the room next door. She knows that Della is stretched out on her bed, reading. Every so often you can hear the whispery sound of the pages turning.

“Jesus, child, your eyes will go square.” That’s what their childminder used to say, as she reached in to turn on the light switch. She would have tried calling up to them from way down in the basement kitchen, but neither of them would have replied. So she would have traipsed up one flight of stairs, calling as she went. Hauling herself up another flight when she got no answer, until at last she found herself on the upstairs landing, panting and exasperated.

“You girls need to get out into the air,” she would say. “Get some color into those cheeks.” And they would look up at her with ghostly eyes, as if to prove her point. They were easy children, though, she had to admit that. They were easy children to mind. They never gave her any trouble. Poor motherless mites, she would say, he has them well brought up.

Looking back now, Addie realizes they were eccentric children. They were allowed to be eccentric. There was nobody to put a stop to it.

For a while there they seemed to grow out of it. When they were teenagers, they hung around with other girls and talked a lot on the phone. Right through their twenties, they seemed to be going along just fine. By the time she’d turned thirty, Imelda was married to a doctor and she was pregnant with her first child. Addie was qualified as an architect and she had her own apartment. On the face of it, they had come good.

“They’ve turned out grand, those girls, you have to hand it to him.”

Only recently has it begun to dawn on Addie that those middle years might have been a blip, a brief flirtation with conventionality. What song is that from?
Conventionality belongs to yesterday.
These days Della is every bit as eccentric as she ever was as a child, maybe even more so.

“I’m trying to stand out from the other doctors’ wives,” she’ll say in defense of her outfits. “It’s a sea of Burberry and designer jeans out there. The poor kids have a hard time picking out their own mother.”