The Red House Read online

  Hey. Lauren turns and holds her eye. Crazy hazy Daisy.

  Alex is alone in the kitchen standing over the kettle, waiting for it to boil, when Richard comes in and walks over. Richard is never easy to read but Alex knows instantly from his expression what he wants to talk about and how he feels about it. He halts and pauses briefly, like a conductor, baton suspended before the downstroke. Stop flirting with my wife.

  I’m not flirting.

  Don’t lie to me. Richard had expected Alex to crumble. He is surprised by his own anger.

  I didn’t mean … He had been concentrating on Louisa. I think you’re really sexy. It never occurred to him that Richard might have been listening.

  I don’t give a damn what you meant or didn’t mean. This in a forced whisper so that no one hears it in the dining room. Richard is frightening himself but there is a relief too which is blissful. You’re flirting with my wife and you’re doing it in front of everyone and you’re making me look like an idiot.

  Richard’s hand is raised and for a second or two neither of them is sure whether this will become physical. Then Richard lowers his hand, takes a step backwards and breathes deeply several times. He looks like someone watching a horror film and perhaps this is precisely what he is seeing in his mind’s eye. He turns and leaves the room.

  Alex is shaking. The memory of Callum’s leg being broken rears up. Show some fucking respect. The fear that Richard is going to come back into the kitchen carrying that length of scaffolding. Richard the doctor, his uncle, the admirable man. Fixed landscape turning into ebb and flow. Fear turning to anger. He marches out of the kitchen. If he bumps into Richard he really will punch him in the face and fuck the consequences, but only Mum and Dad are sitting in the dining room and Dad says, Alex …? and the ordinariness of this is enough to restore a kind of sanity. Yeh. Sorry. I’m fine. He goes out of the front door, closes it behind him and punches the stone wall hard so that all the knuckles on his right hand bleed.

  When Angela got upstairs Daisy was already asleep, still clothed, white socks with grubby brown soles, holding a teddy bear Angela hadn’t seen for a long time. The Art of Daily Prayer and Neutrogena hand cream on the bedside table. Let’s get you into bed or you’ll wake up freezing in the middle of the night. She eased the duvet from beneath Daisy’s hips then turned her onto her back so she could unbutton her dirty jeans and slide them off, like she was five again. Flu, chickenpox. Daisy half woke and said something Angela couldn’t quite make out. Almost done. She flipped the duvet back over Daisy and straightened it. There. Daisy turned to face the wall. Angela sat on the chair opposite. She was ill, that was all. Dominic was being over-dramatic, playing the old game, concocting a story that threw a little charmed circle around the two of them. That bear. Harry? Henry? She had to sew a leg back on after it was torn off in a fight, by Alex, presumably.

  Was she warming to Louisa? Or did she just like taking sides? Was that little confession about Karen simply the price she had to pay to show her loyalty? It was a fault of hers, she knew, comfort in conflict, black and white, us and them, knowing where one stood, none of that muddy moral ambiguity. The relief at work when Helen finally slapped that boy in her class after years of just being a crap teacher.

  Laughter downstairs and the chime of crockery. A brief Christmas feeling then a memory of sitting in her bedroom listening to Mum shouting in the lounge. Except it was Dad shouting, wasn’t it, his voice suddenly so clear after all these years. Why didn’t he come upstairs and say hello? Why was he so angry? She wanted to run downstairs and have him turn and see her and break into that big smile and sweep her off her feet.

  Then she was back in the present again, Daisy’s hands moving as if she were fending someone off in a dream. Angela got to her feet and stood beside the bed. She touched the side of Daisy’s head and waited till she was calm again, then retucked the duvet and left the room, closing the door quietly behind her.

  He was sitting on the edge of the bed. She was standing leaning against the chest of drawers with her arms folded. This is not about you, Richard. She closed her eyes to regather her thoughts. I don’t know who I am, sometimes. I’m not sure I’ve ever known. I’ve tried so hard to please other people, my parents, Craig, Melissa, you. I listen to your music, I go to your plays, I watch your films. And it’s not your fault. I chose to be the person who fits in with your life.

  Are you saying you don’t want to be married to me?

  I’m saying … What was she saying? She was saying, Let me think. She was saying, Give me space. Just for once she wasn’t rushing to reassure him. Perhaps he was right, perhaps she didn’t want to be married to him. She wanted to turn this extraordinary idea over in her hand, like a shell she’d found on the beach, run her fingers over it, knowing that she might very well simply put it down again. I’m saying I need to get some sleep. I’m saying we both need to get some sleep.

  Wednesday

  DAISY PUT THE milk back into the fridge, closed the door quietly and picked up the mug. When she turned to leave the kitchen, however, Melissa was standing in the doorway. Coffee slopped out of the mug onto the stone floor. Please. I just …

  Melissa refused to move, she pushed her hands deep into the pockets of her hoody and rocked forward onto the balls of her feet as if this had to be squeezed out. I’m sorry about yesterday.

  The apology was so unexpected that Daisy didn’t know how to reply.

  I just blurted, OK? I didn’t think.

  It doesn’t matter. Really. I just need to go back to my room.

  Wait. Melissa was angry. This had cost her and she wanted that cost acknowledged. It’s fine being gay. I’m not prejudiced.

  I’m not gay. Daisy realised too late how loud her voice was. She paused, listening carefully, terrified that someone else might be in the dining room. Her hands were shaking. She put the mug down. Please. I don’t want to talk about this.

  Yeh, well maybe you should.

  A sudden stab of utter loneliness. Melissa was the only one who knew, there was no one else she could tell. Daisy reached out towards her. I need you to be my friend. She wanted to be held but she couldn’t say the words.

  Cool it, lady, said Melissa.

  Daisy saw herself standing in the kitchen, arms outstretched like a cartoon zombie. She’d made an idiot of herself for a second time. She threw herself through the doorway, pushing Melissa aside. She heard Melissa say, You are so spectacularly fucked up, then she was in the hallway and running up the stairs.

  Abergavenny. Originally Gorbannia. Alex turned the page. A Brythonic word meaning ‘river of the blacksmiths’.

  Brythonic?

  Of, or appertaining to the Britons.

  What happened to your hand?

  Alex glanced casually at his knuckles. Mucking about with that roller in the shed. He’d practised the explanation in advance. Lucky my fingers are still attached.

  Dominic had taken over the guidebook. It sits between two mountains, Sugar Loaf and Blorenge.

  Blorenge?

  Richard appeared in the doorway. Alex hid his damaged hand under the table. Richard walked past and patted his shoulder and Alex thought, Fuck you.

  Baron de Hamelin, said Dominic. Tree of Jesse. Blah-blah. Goat’s hair periwigs. Rudolf Hess.

  Are you making this up?

  Scout’s honour.

  Benjy came in with his bowl of Deliciously Nutty Crunch and sat next to Dominic, squishing in close because he still felt bruised by his fears of last night which had not been banished entirely by the daylight.

  Hey, kiddo.

  Incidentally, has anyone seen Daisy this morning?

  Nope.

  Melissa?

  What?

  Have you seen Daisy this morning?

  She came down to get some coffee. She seemed in kind of a weird mood.

  I’ll pop up and see how she is.

  Hey. The town hosted the British National Cycling Championships. 2007 and 2009.

  Paris of
the West.

  Now, don’t be bitchy.

  I’ll be back in an hour, said Richard, chugging a glass of water. I’ll grab a quick shower and we can all be off.

  Enjoy.

  Don’t get lost, said Alex.

  He was determined not to return home having spent so much money without running properly, plus he needed to be alone for a while. It wasn’t just Louisa. If he’d hit Alex … Would there have been a better way of alienating every single person in the house? He needed to step back and get some distance.

  Squatting on the slate path that led from the front door to the iron gate he yanked the tongues of the trainers and double-knotted the laces. The air was damp but somehow clearer and more transparent this morning. The deep greens of the foliage. You didn’t get this in a city, the way the light changed constantly. He walked over to the wall and put each foot up in turn, leaning forward to stretch his hamstrings. The house looked like an extension of the landscape, the stone quarried from Welsh hills, the rafters from a forest you might very well be able to see from the top of the dyke, the moss, the rust, the burst blisters of weathered paint a record of its passage through time and weather, like the scars and barnacles on a tanker’s hull.

  He would jog up the road, walk the steepest part of the hill and start running again when he was past the Red Darren car park, conserve his energy this time instead of wasting it in a private show of failed machismo. He checked his watch. 9:17. Looking around he was both disappointed and relieved that no one was watching as he set off.

  * * *

  Dominic walked past the door of the living room and saw Melissa sitting on the sofa. He went in and stood beside her. She was drawing the little side table. Whenever you saw Melissa drawing a picture you were meant to say how good it was and she was meant to brush the compliment off. She refused to acknowledge his presence. What happened to Daisy yesterday?

  I have no idea what you’re talking about.

  Of course you have.

  I thought she was ill. She was relishing the confrontation.

  You’re lying.

  That’s a pretty serious accusation. I hope you’ve got evidence to back it up.

  Who is more likely to be telling the truth, you or Daisy? In his own way he was enjoying this, too.

  She laughed. That is quite funny. In the circumstances.

  Don’t bugger about. Something happened yesterday and it hurt Daisy a great deal and Daisy means more to me than anyone in the world.

  Melissa put her pen down and turned to look up at him. You don’t want to know, trust me.

  Trust you?

  Seriously, you do not want to know.

  Try me.

  She leant back and exhaled. She’s a lesbian. She said the word as three distinct syllables.

  What?

  She tried to get her tongue down my throat. Which is not my bag, I’m afraid.

  He felt punched. It was true, wasn’t it?

  I think she’s having trouble coming to terms with it. A little show of theatrically fake concern.

  You … He had to leave before he lost control of himself. You shut your nasty little mouth.

  He walked into the dining room. Everyone was gathered at the table. Alex raised a hand to beckon him. He turned and walked upstairs, two at a time. He went into the bathroom, locked the door and sat on the toilet. An old memory of hiding in the bathroom when he was a child, the comfort of the only lockable room in the house, the bar fire high up, two orange rods in their little silver cage, the green rubber suckers that bit the corners of wet flannels. It seemed so obvious, thinking about it. He should go and talk to Daisy. Would she be horrified or comforted that he knew? Perhaps it was better to say nothing, because underneath the confusion he felt a distaste he would never have expected, the unnaturalness of it, the same distaste he felt about the church, strangers coming to claim his daughter and take her away.

  The crumpled tissues, the fly crawling on the sill. Daisy had never thought of killing herself, even before she came to know it as a mortal sin. Now she could understand the seductive promise of oblivion. But what if one woke up in hell? A bowl of cold gluey risotto on the carpet by the bed. She’d left her coffee downstairs, hadn’t she? Why had no one come up to see her? She couldn’t be gay because being gay was a sin. She knew it seemed unkind but who was she to decide? The decrees of the Lord are firm, and all of them are righteous. You didn’t discover God’s love then argue about the small print. You submitted, you had to say, I am ignorant, I understand so little, I am only human. Surely she would have noticed before now, it wasn’t like an allergy to bee stings, something of which you were unaware until it put your life in danger. She should call her friends at church. She could go up to Alex and Benjy’s room and get a signal. Meg, Anushka. Lesley, maybe. They would understand in a way that no one here would understand. So why couldn’t she bring herself to do it?

  She missed Lauren. She missed Jack. She needed someone who would simply be interested, someone who would say, Tell me more, not, This is what you have to do. But Lauren was somewhere in Gloucester and she lost the number when her old mobile was stolen. Just thinking about this caused a pain that made her grip the edge of the table till it passed. Jack. She took the mobile from her bag. Flat B, 47 Cumberland Street. She could ring directory enquiries. It was like a thin column of sunlight in the dark of the cell.

  She knocked on Alex and Benjy’s door. No answer. So she went in and stood on the magic chair in the far corner of the room. Do you want the number texted directly to your phone? Her hands were shaking, as if the seconds mattered. Eight, seven, seven, zero …

  The owner of this Orange mobile number is unavailable. If you’d like to leave a message …

  She saw Jack getting up from the table in The Blue Sea. You fucking traitor. Everyone staring, squid rings and tomato ketchup, the bottle of spilt vinegar leaking. The hurt in his face, and something she couldn’t quite see, a figure on the edge of her field of vision that slid away every time she turned her head. She couldn’t do it, she clicked her phone off and sat down on the chair. It looked as if someone had burgled the room, one drawer had been removed and upended, Benjy’s dirty jeans lay on the carpet inside out, wearing a pair of red underpants, a crushed yoghurt drink carton, felt-tip drawings of carnage.

  He had judged it rather well, fifty paces running, fifty paces walking, alternating the whole way up. Thirty minutes, not bad going. He said he’d be out for an hour but he was loath to turn around now that he was able to stretch his legs. Twenty minutes more or less would make no difference and he’d be a good deal faster on the way back. His legs were going to hurt like hell tomorrow but he felt better than he’d done all week. A tracery of gritty paths along the spine of the hill, blusters of wind. They’d walked up here only two days ago but how different it felt now, a sense of having earned this altitude, the way one lost any sense of scale when one was no longer able to see a human object.

  Shit and damn. His left foot was suddenly gone from under him and he was tumbling sideways, breaking his fall with his open left hand on a hard little stone. Damn and shit. He rolled over onto his back and waited for a powder of stars to finish passing across his retina. He looked at his hand, a ragged pebbly graze across the centre of his palm, already starting to bleed. It reminded him of school, skidding bikes and falling off climbing frames. He sat up slowly. He had twisted his ankle, hard to tell how badly yet. He waited for a minute then rotated himself onto all fours and stood up carefully using only his right leg. He put a little weight on his left foot and flinched: not good. He tried to walk and realised he could accomplish only a kind of lurching hop. An hour and a half back? two hours? He would not be popular.

  The drop in pressure. Bruised purple sky, wind like a train, the landscape suddenly alive, trees bent and struggling, swathes of alternating colour racing through the long grass, the sky being hauled over the valley like a blanket. An empty white fertiliser sack dances along the side of the hill. Windows hammer in the
ir sashes, the boiler vent clatters and slaps. A tile is levered from the roof, cartwheels over the garden wall and sticks into the earth like a little shark fin. The bins chatter and snap in the woodshed, fighting the bungees that hold them down.

  Then it comes, like a great grey curtain being dragged down from the hills, the fields smudged and darkened. A noise like wet gravel smashed against the glass. The guttering fills and bubbles and water gushes from the feet of downpipes. Drops fantail on the bench top and the stone steps and the polished roof of the Mercedes. Water pools and runs in the ruts of the drive, drips down the chimney and pings and fizzes on the hot metal of the stove; it squeezes through the old putty that holds the leaded windows fast to puddle on sills. The rain near-horizontal now, a living graph of the wind’s force. All external points of reference gone, no horizon, no fixed lines. The house is airborne, riding the storm, borne on something that is neither wholly air, nor wholly water, Kansas vanished long ago, borders crossed and broken, the ground a thousand fathoms below.

  Benjy stands at the dining-room window, spellbound by the sheer thereness of it, the world outside his head for once louder and more insistent than the world inside. Drops scuttle down the gridded panes, marbling the world, everything green and silver, the clatter against the glass now softer, now louder, as the great bead curtain of falling liquid swings back and forth.

  Noah’s Ark. And God said I will destroy the world because human beings are sinful. The animals went in two by two, marmosets and black widow spiders, Japhet and Daphet and Baphet. And everyone else was killed, like in the tsunami, cars and walls and trees pouring down the street, people ripped apart in a great wet grinding machine. And when the dove flew over the land there would have been bodies everywhere all bloated and black like in New Orleans. A sudden shadow and the smack of something thrown against the glass only inches from his face. He turns and runs, crying, Mum … Mum … Mum …