The Red House Page 6

  OK, maybe not moved in. He hadn’t meant to bring this up. It was like contaminated earth; if you didn’t dig there was no problem. But you spent most nights there. He didn’t want to settle scores. He simply wanted things to be neatly folded and put to sleep. For the best part of two years if I remember correctly.

  That’s simply not true. The couple at the nearby table had paused to listen.

  Perhaps if I’d been better at making friends I would have done the same thing. He laughed again but more warmly this time.

  That’s not the point. They had to stop this right now or God alone knew where it would go. She sat back and deep-breathed. Let’s call a truce.

  A truce? said Richard. Is this a war?

  Maybe now is the time for cake.

  Without taking his eyes off the book, Benjy said, Yes, please. Can I have the chocolate one, please, with the white icing?

  Motor lorries carry heavy goods long distances; motor vans deliver parcels at our doors. Motor charabancs transport tens of thousands of pleasure-seekers daily from place to place, and motor coaches make regular daily journeys between towns hundreds of miles apart. We no longer see the horse-drawn fire-engine, with smoke belching from its funnel, dashing down the street.

  Ariel Gel Nimbus 11. Ridiculous names they gave these things. Richard loved the smell, though, plasticky and factory-clean. He laced the left shoe up and leant round to take the right from its tissued box. He felt bruised by the conversation with Angela, less by her feelings than by his failure to predict them. It had never occurred to him that she would feel embittered. His mother had hated him for looking after her, then hated him for leaving. Five years living with an alcoholic woman and no one had thanked him. If there was such a thing as the moral high ground it was surely he who occupied it. From the corner of his eye he saw, through the shop’s front window, a rat’s nest of black downpipes emerging from the upper storey of the house opposite. He rotated his body a little further towards the rear of the shop.

  How much?

  £79.99.

  Reassuringly expensive.

  The assistant seemed oblivious to his irony. But you had to have the best. Save £20 now and you regretted it later. He stood up and examined himself in the mirror.

  How do they feel? The young man was ginger and plump and ill nourished with one of those increasingly popular asymmetrical fringes so that he was forced to lean his head to one side in order to see properly.

  Good. They feel good. He squatted and stood up again. He remembered the day he left for Bristol, his mother yelling at him as he walked down the street with his rucksack, curtains twitching, like a scene from a cheap melodrama. Ideally he should have gone outside and run up and down but he wasn’t sure he had the confidence to carry it off. He jogged on the spot for ten seconds. I’ll take them.

  Angela stayed in the car. She needed time away from Richard and she couldn’t imagine another two hundred feet improving the view. A young Indian woman was fighting an orange cagoule. A little further away a man and two teenage boys were tinkering with an amateur rocket, three, four foot high, red nose cone, fins. The man knelt briefly beside it then stepped backwards and … Jesus Christ. A fizz like Velcro and the thing just vanished upwards. The boys whooped and waited but it simply didn’t come down. They swivelled, scanning the distance. Carried off by the wind, no doubt, but something magical about it still, a story for later. She looked back up the hill. Her family were dots.

  Was he lying about Juliette? Or had he misremembered to alleviate his guilt? If only she could retort with hard facts, bang, bang, bang, but she had never really looked back, never thought these details might need preserving.

  God, she wanted something to eat. Toffee, sweets, biscuits. She opened the glove compartment and a strip of passport photos fell out. She picked them up and turned them over. Melissa smouldering, Melissa blowing a kiss, Melissa flicking her hair. They were oddly touching. She thought of all those pictures of Karen. Two years old, playing with wooden blocks on a sheepskin rug. Nine years old, in front of a rainbow-coloured windbreak. Fourteen years old, in a green duffel coat at some steam fair, the word OGDENS in Victorian funhouse lettering on a green boiler behind her head. And for a few giddy seconds they were real, in a leather album on the shelf above the telly. Then the wind shook the car and she was in the world again.

  Alex looked back and saw Daisy and Benjy throwing lumps of sheep shit at one another. Only the dry ones, shouted Daisy. At school he got the piss ripped for being her brother, Eddie Chan singing ‘Like a Virgin’ forty thousand times. Nastier stuff, too, especially after the anti-drug assembly, like she wanted people to hate her. He could shut most things out but not this. Was she fucked up or just being a smug twat? Should he protect her or leave her to get what she deserved? It was a puzzle and it bugged the hell out of him that he couldn’t solve it.

  That went in my hair, you little …

  He wondered if she might flip back sometime. Not that they’d be friends or anything. But still.

  Louisa moved out of range. A teenage girl playing a little boy’s game. It didn’t quite compute. Maybe if she’d had boys, if she’d had the brood she’d once dreamt of. Though sometimes, when Melissa was really tired and Richard was out, she curled up on the sofa and laid her head on Louisa’s leg and sucked her thumb, which was what one wanted ultimately, wasn’t it, that connection.

  Goal. Benjy pulled his shirt over his head and ran around in circles.

  Daisy shook a wet lump off her jeans. You are so going to die.

  Richard felt a hand tighten round his heart. He had never done this. He would never do this.

  Daisy wrestled Benjy onto the grass. He yelled, That’s cheating, but it wasn’t a serious protest because he loved this. No one gave him piggy-back rides or picked him up any more. You could ask for hugs if you were feeling sad or you’d hurt yourself, but when it happened spontaneously it made you feel so warm inside.

  Is Angela all right? Louisa was looking down the hill to the higgledy-piggledly cars.

  He loved her for thinking about these things. The funeral hit her harder than I expected.

  You bought some running shoes.

  I saw Alex coming back this morning.

  Don’t break an ankle.

  Trust me, I’m a doctor.

  She laughed and he remembered when he’d first said those words to her and how she’d laughed that time too. He wanted suddenly to be on holiday alone, just the two of them, making love in the middle of the day, seeing her body in sunlight through the curtains.

  And Daisy and Benjy were lying on their backs. Look. You can see the sky moving. And Alex was further up the hill, shouting, Come on.

  Two crows abandoned something dead in the road as they drove past. A postbox in a wall. Ruinsford Farm. Three Oaks Farm. Upper House Farm. A crazy dog chased them for half a mile. Being in the back of the car made Alex twitchy, too far from the steering wheel, being taken somewhere by someone else. Next year he’d arrange his own holiday. Dolomites, maybe. Next year he’d start to arrange everything. Economics, History, Business Studies. Brighton, Leeds, Glasgow. Travel for a couple of years. Start his own business. Not ambitions, just facts about the world. You knew where you wanted to go, you worked out the route and set off. He didn’t understand why so many people made such a bloody hash of it. Then they were pulling in through the gate and Melissa was sitting reading on the low wall at the back of the house and he felt that little surge of panic, like at the beginning of a race, or when you were about to do some stupid vertical drop on the bike. But you couldn’t turn back.

  He got out of the car and walked over. She was wearing tight jeans and boots and a little black jacket over a lacy Victorian dress. She didn’t acknowledge his presence until he was really close and when she turned to him her face was blank. She hooked her hair behind her ear like her mum did.

  Here it comes, she thought. Because this was what she liked, this tension in the air, the way you could play someone.


  What’s the book?

  She flipped it over.

  Good? He sat and swung his legs like a little boy.

  Uh-huh. You had to say as little as possible and let the other person fill the gaps.

  So. He looked down at his swinging feet. Did he look casual and relaxed? It was hard to see yourself from the outside. How do you like it here?

  About one out of ten.

  So what’s the one?

  He wanted her to say it was him. Peace and quiet, time to think. She lifted the fizzy little glass of gin and tonic. No lemon. But needs must, right?

  I bet you don’t really like peace and quiet.

  He wasn’t bad at this.

  I love it here. You know, the space, the view from up there.

  Or from down here. She raised an eyebrow.

  They were silent for a while. Then he reached out and put a hand on her thigh. The warmth of her skin under her jeans. They looked at the hand, like a bird they didn’t want to scare away. He turned and kissed her. She tasted so good. She put her hand on his chest but he couldn’t stop because sometimes girls pretended they didn’t want to and it was so hard to turn back. His hand was on one of her breasts. But he smelt faintly of sweat and he was pushing his tongue into her mouth and she was surprised by how strong he was. She grabbed one of his fingers and bent it back. Just fucking stop, OK?

  He sat back. Sorry.

  Christ.

  I got carried away.

  I noticed.

  They sat beside one another, saying nothing. A helicopter buzzed over Black Hill like a housefly. The taste of her mouth. He still had an erection. Melissa got down off the wall. Anyway. Things to do. People to see. She walked off towards the door carrying her book and Alex had absolutely no idea what to think.

  There was a random collection of Victorian engravings in the house, purchased as a job lot from the dump-bin of a gallery-cum-junkshop in Gloucester. The North Gable of Whitby Abbey, a dog baiting a bear, Walter Devereux, Earl of Essex, the Brampton hunt at full pelt, a baroque faux-temple of indeterminate location, Mount Serbál from Wády Feirán …

  Louisa slotted her iPhone into the dock and pressed play. She squeezed the handles of the tin opener and the sharp little wheel popped through the metal lid. U2. ‘Where the Streets Have No Name’. She poured the beans into the colander and rinsed off the gluey purple juice. There was no food processor so she used the potato masher, banging it on the rim when the holes became clogged. It made her think of her mother in the kitchen, beef dripping and hand-mixers. What are you doing?

  I’m selecting a snack, said Benjy. He loved standing in the golden light and the cold air that poured out of the fridge with its treasure hoard of food.

  Well, if you could select quickly I would be really grateful.

  He selected and shut the fridge door. That thump and tinkle. Then he was gone. The pepper grinder was empty so she took the little plastic tub off the shelf, ridges round the lid like a fat white coin. She took it off and smelt the contents. Absolutely nothing. Like house dust.

  Benjy walked into the dining room, peeling back the little plastic cover then licking the yoghurty patch on his trousers where it had spilt. He put the pot to one side and then folded a sheet of A4 paper into eight so that it formed a little book. He took out the pen that wrote in eight colours. It would be called A Hundred Horrible Ways to Die and it would include torture and killing but not cancer. But Mum was standing beside him. Who said you could have that yoghurt, young man?

  Auntie Louisa did.

  Is that a lie?

  Only slightly.

  Now the suitors waited for evening to come by entertaining themselves with dances and happy songs … But Richard was falling asleep.

  To be honest, said Angela, it’s not just the Richard thing.

  Go on.

  It’s Karen’s birthday on Thursday. She levered a pistachio shell open.

  Wasn’t that in February?

  Not the day she died. The day she was meant to be born.

  What do you mean, the day she was meant to be born?

  5th May. It was my due date.

  You’ve never talked about this before.

  She’d cracked a nail. I think I might be going a little crazy.

  Sayid follows the twisted metal cable into the jungle. Marimba and harp, the sky a scattered blue jigsaw in the canopy, spiderweb glimmer at ankle height. He crouches and sees the single tripwire. High dissonant violins. He steps carefully over. The whip-slither of a rope snapping tight as a sharpened stake is fired into his thigh. He screams, his legs are yanked from under him and he’s hoisted like a pig for slaughter.

  Alex fast-forwards through the beach section because he needs dramatic tension to stop himself thinking about Melissa. Over the last year he has become something of a film buff. Two, maybe three full-length features every shift at Moving Pictures, just a weather eye on the screen during the busy times. Best of all he likes TV box sets. Lost, 24, Battlestar Galactica. The consistency mostly. You enjoyed episode 3? You’ll probably enjoy episode 4. Less hassle all round.

  Night-time. Sayid is lying on the ground. The blur of semi-consciousness. Someone approaches wearing military fatigues. Moonlight on a jagged knife. Sayid’s eye fills the screen, then flickers, then closes.

  I poured myself another glass of the Monbazillac. As I raised it to my lips something moved in the darkened hallway. Was it the white shoe? My heart hammered, the stimulus rushing through my sensory cortex and hypothalamus to the brainstem, flooding my body with adrenaline. I walked over and found that my coat had slipped off its hook. I breathed deeply trying to slow my racing pulse. Fight or flight, the loyal guard dog that has sat by our side for a million years, alerting us to every sign of danger. But how could one fight an imaginary threat? How could one flee the pictures in one’s head? As Hecht had written in his article for Nature, we had tamed the outside world but not the weapons we possessed for dealing with it …

  Melissa put the soggy paperback face down on the edge of the bath, the pages turning slowly into a great damp ruff. Avison would ask Michelle how they’d been bullying her. What was she going to say? She couldn’t show him the picture, could she. But if the police were involved they’d look at everything. Shit. She’d always managed to tread the line. You could smoke as long as you did A Midsummer Night’s Dream. You could skip the odd class as long as you got the grades. But if she got expelled Dad would go fucking ballistic. Goodbye allowance for starters. She didn’t even want to think what shitty school she’d end up going to.

  There was a print of a robin above the toilet and an air freshener in a crappy pink holster thing on the side of the cistern. Alex groping her. God, she hated this place.

  Benjy had a special dispensation to play his Nintendo at the table because he was bored of grown-up talk. Daisy tried to prise him away by asking him about school but he wanted to talk about his ongoing fantasy in which Mrs Wallis killed and ate children in her class which Daisy found tiresome and distasteful so she admitted defeat. She tried talking to Alex but he kept stealing glances at Melissa who was studiously ignoring him. She felt oddly protective and wanted to apologise for her brother’s behaviour though she was pretty sure it was Alex who’d come off worst. She stared at her willow-patterned plate. She must have seen the picture a thousand times but she’d never really looked at it, the ship, the temple garden, the figures on the bridge. What was happening?

  Mum and Dad were sitting at opposite corners of the table. Why didn’t they love each other? It was easier being here with Louisa and Richard and Melissa who acted as a kind of padding. At home the temperature was always a little cooler when the two of them were together. She’d been at Bella’s house one day when she was eleven. Bella’s father slipped an arm round her mum’s waist and kissed her for way too long. Daisy was horrified at first, then she realised and it made her sad.

  It’s good for Richard being here. Louisa poured herself another glass. Stop him worrying about things
.

  I can’t imagine Richard worrying, said Dominic. He could feel something stuck between his front teeth. Not like the rest of us worry.

  Oh, there’s this case at work, said Louisa. Some legal thing. Had she said too much?

  What kind of legal thing?

  We’re going to have the stage near the trees at the edge of the playing field, said Melissa. She closed her eyes in order to see the plan more clearly. The sun will be out at the beginning of the play, which is when we’re in the city, and it’ll set during the play, which is when everything moves to the wild forest. Cool, no?

  That sounds really interesting, said Angela. Melissa was just a child, wasn’t she? Queen of the castle and dirty rascals. So tell me about being vegetarian.

  I just think it’s ridiculous eating animals.

  No, said Angela. Give me a reasoned argument. Imagine you’re trying to convert me.

  Well … Melissa paused and gathered herself.

  It was so easy. Get them on their own and treat them like adults. Except you couldn’t do it with your own family, could you? You crossed your own doorstep and took off the cape and you were Clark Kent again.

  So, what happens if you’re not cleared? asked Dominic.

  I think that’s highly unlikely.

  But hypothetically. Dominic could see that he was making Richard uncomfortable but he was slightly drunk and the opportunities for enjoying this kind of advantage were few and far between.

  I suppose ultimately, if one had been grossly negligent, one could be struck off. Richard could think of no way of ending the conversation without giving the impression that he was avoiding the subject.

  I suppose most of these cases are settled out of court. Dominic mopped up the last of the sauce with a folded piece of bread.

  I would much rather be publicly exonerated. Sadly, it will be the word of an honest man against that of a liar and a hypocrite.

  Louisa reappeared with an apple tart in one hand and a tub of vanilla ice cream in the other. Richard got slowly to his feet. Let me fetch the bowls.

  Angela placed a stack of dirty plates in front of Benjy because she was determined that at least one of her sons would leave home with a few domestic skills. Put these in the dishwasher. Carefully and one at a time, OK?