The Red House Read online

  Angela was two hundred miles and thirty-five years away, trying to conjure the hallway of the house where she’d grown up, the newel post they called The Pineapple, the china tramp that lay on the carpet smashed one morning as if a ghost had brushed past in the night, the Oscar Peterson Trio on the gramophone. Dominic climbed into bed and the bounce of the mattress woke her briefly. She listened to the silence and thought of Benjy and felt the old fear. Was he still breathing? A cracked wooden beam ran across the ceiling, splinted with a rusty iron spar. She was slipping away a little now. Sherbet Dabs and Slade singing ‘Cum on Feel the Noize’. Briefly she saw Karen sitting in the darkness somewhere further up the hill, looking down on the sleeping house, like a rabbit or an owl. Then she let go.

  Daisy opened the book and put the Monet postcard to one side.

  I sat down beside her, and presently she moved uneasily. At the same moment there came a sort of dull flapping or buffeting at the window. I went over to it softly, and peeped out by the corner of the blind. There was a full moonlight, and I could see that the noise was made by a great bat, which wheeled around, doubtless attracted by the light, although so dim, and every now and again struck the window with its wings.

  Fingernail moon. The Bay of Rainbows. The Sea of Tranquillity. Richard had never really got the space thing. It worried him, the possibility that his imagination wasn’t strong enough to get past the earth’s atmosphere. Neil Armstrong’s heart rate staying under seventy during take-off. All brave men are slightly stupid. He and Mohan had sat opposite one another at the table by the window. He can see it as clear as day. Mohan was eating a container of M&S salad with a white plastic fork. It could be an abscess. Of course he should have put it in the report, that was precisely why he had tracked Mohan down, to make sure. Now the girl was in a wheelchair and Mohan was pretending the conversation never happened. Everyone knew the man was a shit, sleeping with two nurses and his poor bloody wife without a clue, which counted for nothing in a court of law, of course, just gossip and hearsay. The way the lawyer stared at him during that meeting. He half expected his eyelids to slide in from the side. Bloody hell, it was freezing out here.

  With a little grunt, Alex came messily into the cone of toilet tissue in his right hand then leant back against the door, breathing heavily. That sudden disinterest, pictures of Melissa naked blowing away like mist. He wiped the splash from the wooden floor with the toe of his sock. He was thinking about canoeing on Llyn Gwynant. Then he was thinking about how quiet the house was and whether anyone had heard him. Richard’s shaving brush glared from the window sill. He imagined it containing a little camera. Richard sitting at the dining table replaying the grainy footage, saying, Angela, I think you should see this. He dropped the tissue into the toilet bowl, pulled the flush and smelt his fingers. Seasidey. Nice.

  You run your hand along the bumpy, magnolia wall. Paint over paint over plaster over stone, smooth, like the flank of a horse. Something alive in the fabric of the house. Earlier today, in Café Ritazza at Southport, Richard had put his hands behind his head and stretched out as if he owned the place. Polo shirt, TAG Heuer watch. A young mum was staring from a nearby table, pink tracksuit, scraped back hair. He looked through her like she was furniture. But Melissa does have to learn some manners, and maybe you haven’t been strict enough. You remember yourself at fourteen. The Hanwell flat. You and Penny standing on the outside of the balcony rail, seven floors up, one Sunday afternoon, leaning over that woozy drop, hearts pounding and the scary tickle in the back of your knees. Dogs in the park, the traffic on the ring road, a scale model of the world. You whoop as loud as you can and your voice bounces off the block opposite. There’s a little crowd gathering now. Someone shouts, Jump. You look around and it occurs to you that this isn’t real, this is only a memory, that you could let go and topple into that great windy nothing and it wouldn’t matter. What frightens you is that for a couple of seconds you can’t remember where the present is and how to get back there.

  The click of the Mercedes cooling. A barn owl on top of a telegraph pole, eyeballs so big they rub against one another as they revolve. Bats slice the air above the garden. Limestone freakishly white under the moon. The sheep lie beside an old bath, still gathered against the wolves which haven’t hunted them for two hundred years. The deep quiet under the human hum. Bootes, Hercules, Draco. Eight thousand man-made objects orbiting the earth. Dead satellites and space junk. The asteroid belt. Puck, Miranda, Oberon. To every moon a fairy story. The Mars Rover squatting near the Husband Hills. The Huygens probe beside a methane lake on Titan. The Kuiper belt. Comets and Centaurs. The Scattered Disc. The Oort Cloud. The Local Bubble. Barnard’s Star. The utter cold warmed only by starlight.

  Richard made his way down the dark stairs. He couldn’t use the bathroom on the landing because of the tangled pipes under the sink. Tubing, plumbing, large-bore wiring. Phobia never quite described it. A discrete period of intense fear or discomfort in which at least 4 of the following 13 symptoms develop abruptly … The four in his case being a choking sensation, feelings of unreality, abdominal distress and a fear of going insane. He couldn’t use Car Park E at work because it meant walking past the ducts at the back of the heating block. Last year he’d been standing on the Circle Line platform at Edgware Road en route to a conference in Reading. The brickwork on the far side of the tracks invisible behind a great rolling wave of sooty cables. He came round with a gash on his head looking up at a ring of people who seemed to have gathered to watch a fight in the playground.

  He unbuttoned his pyjama fly and aimed just left of the water to minimise the noise. He should get his prostate checked. The floor was cobbled and cold and the walls smelt of damp but the sink down here was enclosed in a wooden cabinet and the ribbed white shower flex was single and therefore benign. He flushed the toilet and washed his hands. Bed.

  Saturday

  DAISY MADE HERSELF a mug of sugary tea then went outside in her coat and scarf to watch the dawn come up. A great see-saw of light balanced on the fulcrum of Black Hill, the sun rising on one end, the other end sweeping down the flank of Offa’s Dyke and switching the colours on as it went. The beauty kept slipping through her fingers. The world was so far away and the mind kept saying, Me, me, me. Petty worries rose and nagged, Benjy so distant, Mum angry with her all the time, the horrible graffiti in the changing rooms at school. But the valley … wasn’t this amazing? Look, you had to say to yourself, Look.

  The truth was that she hadn’t been able to sleep. She’d tried reading Dracula but what seemed ridiculous in the daylight seemed like documentary before dawn. She felt so lost. You changed at sixteen everyone said, and changing was hard. But this wasn’t normal, it came out of the blue, the unshakeable conviction that while she looked like a human being and acted like a human being there was nothing inside, just slime and circuitry.

  Eighteen months ago she found herself talking to Wendy Rogan, the science TA from Year 12. She can’t remember why. Providence, perhaps. Wendy suggested a coffee after school over which she listened in a way that no one else had, not friends, not Mum, not Dad. The following weekend she was having supper in Wendy’s flat when Wendy suggested putting a video on. Daisy thought for several horrified seconds that it was going to be something pornographic, so when it turned out to be a promotional video for the Alpha Course she was initially relieved. A footballer scoring a goal, a model sashaying down the catwalk, a mountaineer climbing a cliff-face, each of them turning to the camera and saying, Is there more to life than this? All camera sparkle and soft rock. She felt ambushed and soiled.

  A week later she remembered why the mountaineer seemed familiar. He was Bear Grylls, the guy Alex loved, who climbed Everest and ate maggots and drank his own urine on television. She Googled him and found herself watching, with a sickly mix of fascination and disgust, a video on YouTube in which he was stuck on a tropical island. When you get the chance to be saved, you have to take it. He swung on vines and swam across a bay and bui
lt a fire on the beach and signalled to a helicopter using the silver cross on the front of his Bible. It was laughable. But she was crying.

  The valley almost full of light now, dew drying, everything washed in our absence. Melissa hated her. There was a kind of reassurance in that. Nothing to lose. No chance of feeling pleased with herself.

  Be patient, David had said. The spirit will come. And there was a warmth in that room that she felt nowhere else, being lifted by those soaring voices, but the spirit hadn’t come, only that constant sniping voice. I’m more intelligent than these people. Which was what it meant to be tested, of course, the pressure always at your weakest point. Faith was a belief in the impossible. Of course it looked ridiculous from the outside. Jesus loves you, bitch. Scratched into the metal of her locker door so it couldn’t be washed off.

  Suddenly there was a fox. Real orange, not the dirty brown of urban foxes, trotting through the gate, cocksure and proprietorial, like the ghost of a previous owner. Two different times were flowing through the garden. The fox stopped. Had it seen her? Had it smelt her? She didn’t breathe. The gap closed between herself and the world. She was the grass, she was the sunlight, she was the fox. Then she wondered if it was some kind of sign and the spell broke and the fox trotted off round the far side of the house and she was shivering.

  Dominic stands under the shower, eyes closed, water pouring onto the crown of his head. Hot water. How amazing to be alive this late in human history. Miners in their tins baths, a kettle on the coals, Queen Elizabeth the First taking three baths a year. But showers were never quite hot enough or strong enough on holiday, were they? That crappy plastic box. Down the corridor Benjy unlocks the mini-kit on the second Captain Brickbeard level and gets the wizard, while Melissa rises through that turbulent region of half-sleep, part of her still at primary school, everything in slo-mo, a tiger padding slowly between the desks. Beams creak and pipes rattle as the house comes to life. A scurry in the roofspace, the same dog far off. Alex pees noisily. The whirr of an electric toothbrush. A cockerel. Daisy pours a small portion of Marks & Spencer’s Deliciously Nutty Crunch into a bowl.

  Alex squatted on the flagstones by the front door to lace his trainers then stretched his hamstrings on the ivy-covered sill. The faintest smell of manure on the bright damp air. He set his watch then jogged along the track to the main road, stones crunching and slipping under his trainers. He loved wild places. He felt at ease among lakes and mountains in a way he never did at home or school. Every other weekend he and Jamie would pile into Jamie’s brother’s Transit, bikes on the back, canoes on top, and Josh would drive them to the South Downs, Pembrokeshire, Snowdonia. Put up the tent in darkness and wake in that igloo glow. He climbed the stile and began the long haul to Red Darren, his mind shrinking with the effort and the altitude, this precious trick he had learnt, doubts and worries falling away at four, five, six miles, the fretting self reduced to almost nothing, only the body working like an engine. Dominic and Daisy asked him about it sometimes and assumed his inability to explain was evidence of an inability to feel, but on Llyn Gwynant, on Nine Barrow Down, he experienced a kind of swelling contentment for which they yearned but never quite attained, and the fact that Alex couldn’t explain it, the fact that it was beyond words, was part of the secret.

  Because you’ll burn yourself. Angela handed him two eggs. Crack these into the bowl.

  What would happen if you and Dad died at the same time?

  What would you like to happen? She scraped mushrooms into the pan.

  I’d like to go and live with Pavel.

  I’d have to check that with Pavel’s mum.

  But what will happen to my toys?

  She handed him a fork. You’d take them with you. She thought how small Pavel’s house was. Now add some milk and whisk it.

  What about the television?

  Hasn’t Pavel already got a television?

  But what about our television? He was on the verge of tears.

  You can have the television.

  I’ve changed my mind. I want to go and live with Daisy. Something broke inside him and he was choking back the sobs.

  She turned the ring down and wrapped him in her arms.

  Benjamin was crying and Richard didn’t want to intrude so he poured a mug of coffee from the cafetière and walked outside where he found Alex doing press-ups on the lawn, proper press-ups, knees and back rigid, locking his elbows, touching the grass with his nose, a great eagle of sweat on his back. Deltoids, teres major, rotator cuff. He still thought of himself as a sportsman, cross-country at school, 400 metres at college, but in the last year he’d done nothing more than play a few games of squash with Gerhardt and cycle to work for a fortnight after the car was stolen. Alex stood up. Wondering if I should have a go myself.

  Alex put a foot on the bench to unlace his trainer. It’s a big hill.

  Daisy had very nearly done it with her friend Jack. She was never quite sure whether they were going out or not. He had three earrings and a pet snake and some invisible barrier that only Daisy was allowed to cross. They’d drunk two large glasses of some poisonous green liqueur his dad had bought in Italy. He put a hand under the hem of her knickers and she was suddenly aware of how angular he was, all bones and corners, and she was going to let him do it because she couldn’t think of an alternative, because this was the door everyone had to pass through. But with this thought came a scrabbling panic. She didn’t want to go through that door, she didn’t want to be like everyone else and she was having real trouble breathing. She pushed him away, and he seemed relieved mostly, but the near miss had scared them both, so they finished the bottle and the embarrassment was obscured by the memory of a hangover so bad that its retelling became a party piece. For six months they were best friends, then Daisy joined the church and he called her a fucking traitor and vanished from her life.

  Alex wasn’t trying to put Richard down. It was a stab at friendliness he failed to pitch quite right. He had always rather admired his uncle and felt that Mum’s complaints were unjustified. Or perhaps admiration was the wrong word, more a kind of genetic bond. He recognised nothing of himself in Mum and Dad, her distractedness, the lack of care she took of herself, his father sitting around the house feeling sorry for himself, doing the cleaning and the shopping and Benjy’s school pick-ups like it was the most natural thing in the world. When friends visited he felt embarrassed by the air of defeat which hung around him and part of the attraction of mountains and lakes was their distance from both of them. But the way Richard carried himself, his air of efficiency and self-possession …

  Why did you do that last night? asked Angela.

  Do what?

  You know exactly what I’m talking about. Saying grace. Making everyone feel uncomfortable.

  I think we all should be more grateful for the things we have.

  I think we should also be more considerate of other people’s feelings.

  Oh, like you’re considerate of my feelings?

  Don’t answer me back.

  So, what? Just be quiet and do what you say?

  You were showing off, and you were patronising people. I don’t care what you believe in private …

  That’s rubbish. You hate what I believe in private.

  I don’t care what you believe in private but I don’t think you should force it down other people’s throats.

  You’re just jealous because I’m happy.

  I’m not jealous, Daisy. And you’re not happy.

  Well, maybe you’re not the expert when it comes to what I’m actually feeling.

  We’ll buy some second-hand books, said Richard. Get some lunch. Stop for a walk on the way back.

  That sounds like the most excellent fun, said Melissa.

  Then it’s your lucky day. He remained poker-faced. We can only fit seven in the car.

  Good.

  Will you be all right on your own? asked Louisa.

  Melissa flopped her head to one side and rolled
her eyes.

  Can we walk up Lord Hereford’s Knob? asked Benjy.

  He’ll stop finding it funny eventually.

  I’ll duck out, too, said Dominic. If that’s OK.

  Angela briefly wondered if he had arranged some kind of liaison with Melissa and came close to making a joke about it before realising how tasteless and bizarre it would have been.

  Melissa was coming up the stairs when Alex emerged from the bathroom, a sky-blue towel around his waist. Post-exercise fatigue. He made her think of a tiger, that slinky muscular shamble. There was a V of blond hairs on the small of his back. She wanted to touch him. The feeling scared her, the way it rose up with no warning, the body’s hunger. Because she loved the game, the tension in the air, but she found the act itself vaguely disgusting, André’s eyes rolling back like he was having a seizure, the greasy condom on the carpet like a piece of mouse intestine. Alex turned and looked at her. She smiled. Hello, sailor. Then turned away.

  Dominic sat beside Angela on the bench. There was a scattering of crumbs on the lawn, a couple of sparrows picking at them, and another bird he didn’t recognise. This’ll be good for us, I think. Being here.

  It’s a lovely place.

  That’s not what I meant.

  I know.

  He remembered a time when they really talked, sitting by the river, lying in that tiny bedroom naked after making love, faded psycheledic wallpaper and the Billie Holiday poster. Both eager to know more about this other life of which they’d become a part. But now? They weren’t even friends any more, just co-parents. He wanted to tell her about Amy, to relieve the pressure in his chest, because he was scared, because he had begun to notice the frayed curtains and the smell of cigarettes in Amy’s house and the need in her voice. He had assumed at first that the whole thing was no more than a distraction from lives lived elsewhere, but this wasn’t a distraction for her, was it? This was her life, this dimly lit bedroom in the middle of the afternoon, and the secret door was in truth the entrance to a darker dirtier world from which he wouldn’t be able to return without paying a considerable price. But was it really so bad to have looked for affection elsewhere? They had both been unfaithful in their way. To have and to hold, to love and to cherish. When had they last done these things? He wouldn’t tell Angela, would he? He would live with it until the discomfort faded and lying became normal.