White Goods (49 page)

He had sent
Isla out for takeaway, and within the space of forty minutes
removed over six years of himself without trace.

The only clue
to his existence, or, at least, the existence of someone else in
the house, was a bottle of gin left on the kitchen table. It
accompanied a photograph of Isla with Carlos, Seth’s deceased
father. It was this, rather than Seth’s vanishing, that kept Isla
prisoner, making her drift through the rooms, searching for him.
Searching for reason and explanation.

On the ninth
day, when Isla finally left the house, she took the photograph and
the unopened bottle with her.

Isla bought 3
Archer’s Avenue in the early 90’s. ’90 or ‘91, Isla could never
quite remember. It had been somewhat blurred for her in those days.
The mortgage documentation would have confirmed that to her, but
Seth dealt with all that. A three-storied townhouse, it had three
bedrooms and a large attic room at its apex, a bathroom, a separate
toilet, an expansive lounge, ample dining room, a small study and a
spacious kitchen. The French doors of the kitchen led into a
spacious garden, at the far end of which was a dilapidated
summerhouse, its once crisp white frame discoloured with rust spots
and binding weeds. Beneath the house there was a disused cellar;
its entrance boarded-up and wallpapered over. Isla had thought the
house a little too big, yet Seth had avidly encouraged the
purchase: it was perfect for her, a fine investment. With a promise
from Seth that he would move in and help maintain its upkeep, Isla
conceded and the sale was agreed.

Like any
building of some age, the turn of the century dwelling had its
history. Much of it remained unheard, hidden within the walls,
witnessed by the inhabitants and their belongings alone. Yet, its
most recent past had been well known to Isla and Seth. A boy had
killed himself in the attic room: slit his wrists, bleeding till
his body was light, his mattress heavy. He left a twin and two
angry, divided parents.

Seth was all
too aware of the owners’ wretched eagerness to be rid of the place,
and used it as a bargaining stick to bring down the already
reasonable asking price. What was the loss of another thousand or
two compared to the loss they had already endured?

His callous
tactics worked and the house price fell again, leaving Isla cold
with shame.

‘
It’s
business,’ Seth insisted. ‘They’d do the same to us, given the
opportunity. Don’t think they wouldn’t.’ Yet, Seth wasn’t left
without some remorse: he rarely entered the attic, certainly never
considered it a room and this Isla turned to her own
advantage.

As she walked
the streets of West Lindel on the ninth day of Seth’s absence, a
soft rain broke through the misty late April sky, falling at a
slant, reaching down to patter its millions of tiny feet upon the
pavement below. After five minutes, the sun woke, reflecting onto
the wet, and Isla found herself stepping over a mosaic of broken
mirrors, splashing aside translucent shards of bad luck with her
heels. Slipping a hand inside her bag, she searched out the
unopened gin, and the feel of its hard, cold surface against her
palm gave her reassurance.

In a cupboard
built into the sloped attic ceiling, she kept three similar
bottles. Seth’s superstitious avoidance of the room guaranteed her
privacy and, at first, this served as a hiding place, one she would
come to and secretly drink. Yet, eventually, after the drinking
stopped, it became a shrine to her strength: the three bottles
remained, yet were unopened, the dust on their screw tops as
settled as her peace of mind.

‘
Peace of
mind,’ Isla reflected, taking her hand from the bottle, leaving it
in her bag, wondering how long it would remain there.

West Lindel
was one quarter of a large town: mainly a residential area, at its
heart was a sprawling park, broken-up by gatherings of trees and
ornamental lakes, hemmed in partly by a crumbling Roman wall and
partly by wrought-iron fencing. It was usually scattered with
leadless dogs, park benches occupied by chatterboxes and vagrants.
Coming from the direction of Archer’s Avenue, just beyond the
common, the four points of the town met and Isla found herself at
this spot after thirty minutes of walking. This was the part that
people referred to when they were
going
into town
. It was the shopping area, the
High Street, although it was comprised of several roadways, all
linking to each other. As a child,
town
had seemed miles away to Isla,
a foreign place they went to in the car, or by hiking for hours
through wild terrain until they reached it. It was the end of the
world: the place where the North, East, South and West areas of
Lindel met; a central knot on the landscape. Now, the magic had
depleted, as had the enchanting parade of tiny, keeper-owned shops
that had overawed the inquisitive, imaginative five year-old girl.
Nearly all were gone: leases had expired, and the big chain-stores
of the present had come along and whipped away the tiny, broken
links of the past.

Necessity
reigning over nostalgia, Isla crossed the threshold of one of these
big company stores; her trip-out might as well be practical. After
all, they were short of a few things.
They
. Isla picked up a basket, let
her body do the moving, hoping her mind would follow suit and
concentrate on the immediate task. By the time she had reached the
checkout, her calm was restored. Her basket was full of items for
one, her head clear on several matters: he wasn’t coming back, not
this time, it was just her now. Like her father, and then her
mother ten years ago, Seth had gone for good. Left to herself, Isla
could do nothing but cope.

‘
That’s
eighteen pounds seventeen,’ the cashier was telling her minutes
later, a genuine smile upon her face.

‘
Thank you,’
Isla replied, handing over her payment card, finding the will to
smile herself. She was going to be alright. The alternative was
unthinkable.

Later, when
she returned home without her shopping, Isla took herself up to the
bathroom and splashed water onto her face.

‘
Jesus,’ she
uttered, as the frozen drops stung her skin. ‘So cold.’

When she had
left 3 Archer’s Avenue an hour earlier, the atmosphere was mild
both indoors and out. Yet, now the house was an icebox, despite the
late afternoon sunshine. Isla rubbed her arms, disbursing
goose-pimples, perplexed by the sudden low temperature, wondering
why on Earth it was so cold. After drying her face, she left the
bathroom, opened the landing cupboard and adjusted the central
heating timer, setting the dial on
winter
to purge the house of its
abrupt chill.

‘
That should
do it,’ she hoped, descending to the hallway, passing the
answer-phone, which flashed ‘30’ at her in red digits. Thirty
messages. ‘I wonder,’ Isla questioned aloud, pressing play, waiting
in vain for a certain someone’s voice.

Isla had been
sober when she had endorsed the change of ownership on all her
assets. Seth even had witnesses to say so. Her finances had gotten
way out of hand, sudden shopping sprees triumphed over lost bills,
copious amounts wasted on drinks for herself and anyone she could
convince to join her. One morning, she had arrived home in a taxi
she had no money to pay for. The fare came to well over a hundred
pounds, and Isla had no idea where she had come from, or where she
had been. She referred to it jokingly as her
lost night.

It was Seth
who suggested controlling her finances for a while. Before she lost
it all. Isla had agreed, signing the dotted lines to which he
pointed. The house, her shares, her bonds, her personal account,
all she had inherited, it was all in his control. And Isla hadn’t
protested once. Why would she? She was a pathetic drunk; left to
her it would all be gone. Besides, Seth could be trusted: he was
family.

Several weeks
back, Seth had brought home more papers for Isla to
sign.

‘Time we got
things back to normal,’ he had said, cheerily, folding the
documents up quickly, once she’d bled her ink on them.

It hadn’t
occurred to Isla that he was up to anything. That in handing back a
piece of her independence he was in effect preparing for his
own.

And yet, that
wasn’t all. She hadn’t bothered to check her accounts, or find out
if she was up to date with the bills. She’d assumed Seth would help
her out when the time came.

At the
supermarket, her credit card had been rejected. When they wouldn’t
accept a cheque with the same card, she had to leave without
payment. The supervisor, noticing the gin as Isla rummaged through
her bag, had smiled kindly and offered to look after her wares,
whilst she went out for cash. Isla had seen the look, but refrained
from giving an explanation: the woman would never have
understood.

Leaving the
shop, she felt the past about her, the whispers and dirty stares
that used to follow her coming back to haunt. Making her mind up
not to return to the store, Isla checked her savings account at the
building society instead; her balance was just over two hundred
pounds, when it should have been several thousand.

Isla was
worried. Very worried.

‘Seth is
family,’ she kept telling herself, taking a shorter route back home
than the one she had followed away from it. ‘He wouldn’t do this.
He’s family.’

As she had
splashed the icy water across her face in the bathroom, it struck
Isla that her relation to Seth might be the very core of it all.
She thought of the photograph that had accompanied the bottle of
gin: herself and Carlos, two months before his death.

‘Is that it
Seth?’ she cried into the arctic, empty echo of the house. ‘Is that
what this is all about? Shit, shit, shit it’s cold!’

There were no
messages from Seth on the answer-phone. Yet, Isla had known that
before she had embarked upon playing them all. Nearly all of them
were from Margot. Apart from one. The caller was Emma Hourigan: she
and her husband Stephen wanted Seth, and Isla,
of course
, to join them for dinner.
‘Meeting at Harvey’s for eight, then onto a restaurant. Call if you
fancy it.’ They were old friends of Seth’s, from school
days.

Pressing the
delete button, clearing the tape of all 30 messages, Isla wondered
if the offer would still stand.

As if sensing
her presence next to the machine, the telephone abruptly rang,
making Isla start, and without pausing or thinking, she lifted the
white receiver and spoke: ‘Hello?’

‘I’ve got you
at last. I’ve been trying for days. Didn’t you get
any
of my messages? Must
get that thing fixed.’

Margot.

The
conversation was much like the messages she had left: she and
Bernard had been ever so worried, needed to hear her voice, know
she was alright.

‘…I’ve been
so anxious, Isla. Nearly ten days, and not a word…’

Isla wondered
to whom she was referring: herself or Seth? Had she been
concentrating as Margot gibbered on, she might have known. Yet, the
cold, the intense, unrelenting cold of the house had all her
attention.

‘Fuck,’ Isla
uttered, as a sharp draught bit at her ankles.

‘… Isla? Was
that you? Are you sure you’re alright? You be careful, now. We
don’t want you unwell, like before…’

Unwell? Was
Margot referring to the days when she was constantly arseholed,
when the other drinkers in the local bars had called her the
Drinks-Machine, such was her generosity and capacity? Did she have
a particular incident in mind, Isla wondered? The time she’d wet
herself at that public function, for instance, unaware till she’d
stood up to dance, or that lost night, when she’d arrived home in a
taxi, penniless and disorientated, her memory wherever.

‘…You still
there my love?’

‘Yes,’ Isla
answered, offering a monosyllabic reply, always ample for
Margot.

‘Well, you
take care. Forget about Seth, and what he’s done. You want to pick
yourself up, have some fun, in spite of it all. Pour yourself…’
Margot faltered, lost for words for the first time during their
exchange. ‘You just… do what you need to and take care.’

There
followed another awkward pause, one that Isla was supposed to fill
with a joke, letting Margot off her hook. Yet, Isla kept her
pegged-up, and Margot excused herself, giving her love in her final
line.

At odd
moments, Margot’s advice came back to haunt her: pick yourself up,
have some fun.

‘Pour
yourself a drink.’

She recalled
the invitation to dinner with the Hourigans.

‘Maybe.’

There was
hardly any food in; the potatoes and salmon she had intended for
that evening remained at the supermarket’s customer service desk,
getting warm around someone’s feet. She hadn’t been able to face
going back and paying with cash. And she really didn’t fancy a
takeaway, not for one.

The invite was
more Seth’s than hers, but so what? Isla felt she had little to
lose, and the restaurant was bound to accept a cheque without a
card. Perhaps she really
should
go, get out from under Seth’s absence, and the
cold.