The Burning Air (2 page)

3

FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 1, 2013

T
HEY HAD REACHED the point in the journey to Devon where the battle to make the children go to sleep was replaced by the game of trying to keep them awake until they reached their destination. It was half-term and their excitement had peaked too soon. Will opened all the windows. Here and there, the scent of bonfires was borne on the cold evening air. After gentle coaxing of the radio, Sophie managed to find a station that played dance music and turned it up loud to drown out the insistent minor key of Charlie’s whining.

The familiar road to Far Barn was this time paved with doubt and fear. Coming together this weekend to scatter Lydia’s ashes had seemed like a good idea at the time of arrangement. The nearer it drew, the clearer it was that time and history, place and purpose were individually weighted with their own significances, the sum of which would likely be intolerable. The family had always observed Bonfire Night as seriously as Christmas, visiting the Ottery St. Mary Carnival which was held on the first Sunday of every November. As well as a huge bonfire and a funfair there would be the rolling of the tar barrels: a health-and-safety-defying custom, its origins obscured by the smoke of centuries, where locals careered through the narrow Georgian streets carrying blazing barrels on their shoulders. Sophie closed her eyes and envisaged the town, the shop fronts that had barely changed since her own childhood, the same old friendly faces, the pubs. She could almost smell the woody scent of the fire and the gunpowder trace of the fireworks. The tradition had seemed comforting when she had arranged the weekend but now she wished she had arranged a villa somewhere abroad, somewhere light and neutral. Far Barn had of course the advantage of familiarity. It also had the disadvantage of familiarity. There would be plenty of shadows but nowhere to hide.

“You OK?” asked Will. In the passenger mirror, she checked the backseat. Toby was listening.

“I’m fine!”

Will’s hand brushed against hers as he changed gear. Instinctively she flinched, giving lie to her words. This weekend was to be the first real test of the fragile truce that existed in their marriage. Tonight and for the rest of the weekend she would have to sleep in the same bed as him. This made her edgy around him, in a grotesque parody of first-date nerves. Wrapping her arms around herself, she toyed with the idea of asking Felix, who was always the last up to bed, to give up his room and crash on the sofa, but that would mean explaining.

The road thinned to a one-track lane as they began the descent into the valley and dipped so steeply the children’s ears popped. As they came within a mile of the barn, the hedgerows themselves seemed to squeeze their oversized car along the road like a clot through a vein. Branches jabbed witchy fingers through the windows, making the boys scream with something between terror and laughter, and Edie echo their sounds. The signpost for Far Barn, white paint on a black wooden plaque, had faded into illegibility but new visitors were rare. Will made the right turn into the rutted track that connected their land to the rest of the world.

The barn was a black mass on a cloud-blind night, the only sign of light or life the reflection of their own headlights in the blank windows and against the gloss of the ebony slats. There was no sign of another car. It was normal for them all to make their journeys from Saxby to Devon separately, but unusual for the Woodses to be the first to arrive. Sophie mouthed to Will, “He’s supposed to be here. He should’ve got here this morning.”

“Maybe he got held up by something,” suggested Will.

By what? Since Rowan’s retirement in July from the school he had attended as a boy then taught at as a man, his life had revolved entirely around his remaining family. The duty and devotion he had shown to hundreds of pupils was now distilled, concentrated on his four grandsons—all of whom were pupils at the Cath, so the severance with the school had not been total—and Edie, whose birth often felt like the only reason they were all still standing. It was not an exaggeration to say that he lived for them, that their needs and routines shaped his own. It was unsettling for him not to be at the door, arms open, smile wide.

Toby and Leo undid their seat belts as Will slowed to a halt, and were out of the car and swinging on the handle of the huge front door.

“Don’t, it’s locked,” called Sophie, but Toby had opened it and was swallowed by the dark, Leo hot on his heels. Sophie extricated a dozing Edie from her seat, held her close, leaving Will to deal with Charlie, and followed the boys into the barn. Despite the darkness, it was warm inside, stifling even. The radiators threw out the burning-dust smell they always did when switched on for the first time in a season. One of the boys let out a ghost-train howl.

Sophie took three small steps, stroking the bare walls until her fingertips located the light switch. She blinked as her eyes grew accustomed not only to the light but to the proportions of the place, relishing as she always had the short minutes after arrival in which it still assumed a degree of novelty. The interior, from floor to high ceiling, was ribbed with beams and rafters, and the rich reds of the sofas, rugs, and tapestries gave one the impression of standing in the belly of a great beast. Sophie’s eye was drawn to a framed family snapshot, taken one summer when she was around seven and the others were babies: it was a thrown stone in the still pond of her grief, and she forced her gaze elsewhere.

She scanned the sitting room again, this time looking for shoes, coats, books, or mugs, anything to signal recent occupation.

Another stable door to the back of the sitting room gave onto the extension that housed the kitchen. It, too, was in darkness. At the right-hand side of the room was a steep staircase that led to the old hayloft, now subdivided into bed- and bathrooms. The sleeping quarters were as cramped as the living space was cavernous, the exposed struts and joists and high ceiling of the main interior preserved at the bedrooms’ expense. A corridor linked a series of interconnected bedrooms and bathrooms tucked awkwardly into eaves and booby-trapped with uneven floors, low ceilings, and tiny doorways. Sophie switched on the landing light: nothing. Where
was
he?

With great solemnity, Toby began to wind up the ancient grandfather clock that stood against the wall facing the fire, a ritual of arrival that he had made his own. Job done, Toby became a child again, joining his brothers as they vaulted sofas and slalomed around teetering standard lamps.

The barn, Sophie now remembered, was a new parent’s nightmare. They had been so sure that Charlie was their last, but now they would have to baby-proof the place all over again, probably before going to bed that night. Where did they keep all the socket covers and fire guards? I’ll ask Mum, she thought reflexively. A single acid tear stung the corner of one eye.

Edie sighed and gently Sophie placed her on the seat of the big easy chair, grateful for her daughter’s ability to remain asleep through multiple transitions from cot to bed to car seat to embrace.

A thud from above told her that Leo and Charlie had found their way upstairs. The sound had seemed to come from directly overhead, suggesting that they were in Rowan’s room, but this didn’t necessarily mean that was where they were. The barn had a way of throwing its voice, some rooms entirely soundproofed yet other spaces virtual whispering galleries where hushed conversations in other rooms were perfectly audible. This ventriloquy had once been part of its charm, but these days Sophie liked to know exactly where all of her children were, and—almost more important—liked everyone else to know that she knew.

The door to the mudroom was ajar but it was impossible to tell from where she stood whether it had been disturbed. Three generations of wellingtons and waxed jackets were stuffed into racks and hung on pegs, spilling onto the floor and piled high on the hulking washer-dryer (which was the only modern, expensive, energy-efficient technology in the house. The knackered old range cooker had its charms, as did the whistling kettle and even the rumbling fridge, but this machine needed to be able to wash and dry the kids’ clothes as fast as they could dirty them). When dressing for outdoors everyone tended to grab the nearest thing, so Sophie never knew whether she’d come up with her late grandfather’s ancient, mildewed Barbour or a modern Gore-Tex.

In the kitchen, the smell of burning dust was replaced by something stronger, as though a fire had recently been set, but Sophie put a hand to the stove and touched cold iron. The uncurtained kitchen window reflected back at them their own images, the double glazing making a ghost of Sophie’s own face so that everything appeared twice, including the purple pools of her eye sockets and brackets around her mouth. A small, white face pushed itself out of her rib cage like something from a horror film. It wasn’t until a few seconds after Sophie had screamed that she realized it was Toby, and that he was on the other side of the glass, in the garden. Toby screamed back.

Will took the key from the back door and let Toby in.

“I’ve found Grandpa.”

Outside, the source of the burning smell was clear: the dying embers of a bonfire glowed in the middle of the garden. The kitchen window cast a rhombus of light onto the ground. Rowan sat in one corner of it, slumped on a sun lounger with its cushion missing. He held a port glass, clotted with the dark red liquid. His glasses were askew.

“Dad, what are you hiding out here for? Where’s your car?”

“Round the back.” The words were tossed on a current of ether, Rowan’s voice thick and his teeth purple. He was profoundly, spectacularly drunk. Sophie was astonished. Of course she had seen him merry before, after dinner or at weddings, but she had never seen anything like this level of intoxication, this loss of control. He had known the children were coming: what had he been
thinking
? She felt an unwelcome stirring of contempt.

His words were slurred but his half sentences were clipped. “Your mother. Not what I thought. Made a mistake. I can’t do this without. Nothing’s right.”

“Oh,
Dad,
” said Sophie, knowing she was wasting her breath, that reason had been drowned. “Look, we all miss Mum, but we had to get together sooner or later, didn’t we?” Rowan stood up, ash falling from his clothes, and staggered forward. The glass slipped from his fingers and smashed on the flagstones. He trod the shards like they were sand.

“Want to see my grandchildren. Only decent thing left. The only point. The only
reason
.”

“Bloody hell, Dad, watch where you’re—”

“Toby!”
shouted Rowan. The silvering blond hair that was usually swept back from his temples fell into his eyes.

“Dad,
no.
”

“You can’t stop me,” he snarled, and for a second he was unrecognizable. “Toby? Come here, son. Leo? Charlie? Edie, darling? Where’s the baby? Where’s my girl?” He lurched sideways and crashed into the wall. Sophie had never seen anything like this; Rowan was the man she trusted and admired most in the world, was the sole custodian of her bruised values, and now she was unsure of his next move as she would have been with a drunk in the street, with a stranger.

Before she could call for Will, he was at her side.

“Swap places?” he asked her, and then said to Rowan, “What are you doing, setting fire to the garden? We can get it ready tomorrow, there’s no need for you to prep the ground now. Let’s get a pot of coffee on the go, shall we? Sophie’s going to put the kids to bed now. Better to see them in the morning.” Rowan sagged as though his strings had been cut and let out a small grunt of obedience. Sophie was stung that Will had succeeded where she had not, but was grudgingly grateful for his help.

She marshaled the boys up the stairs, a stirring Edie on her shoulder.

Toby brought up the rear with deliberate slowness, which meant he was about to ask for some arbitrary eldest-child privilege. “Can I stay up until Jake gets here,
please
?” he begged.

“No, darling. It could be midnight by the time they arrive. You’ve got all weekend to be with your cousin.”

Toby demurred but conceded and Sophie was gratified that in this domain at least her authority was still recognized. As usual, the boys were to occupy the sloping room above the garage extension, known as the bunker. It had always seemed so depressing to her, with its single slit of a skylight and severe sloping walls, and there was something mean and military about the thin metal bunk beds, but that was what the boys seemed to love about it. Thanks to some overzealous insulation by the local builders, it was the snuggest room in the house by far and was almost completely soundproofed, even with the door ajar. Once the door was closed, the soundproofing was so efficient that she had to use Edie’s baby monitor in case Charlie called for her in the night. The grandfather clock chimed the quarter-hour while she was up there, but the sound barely penetrated and she saw no signs on her sons’ faces that they had registered the shuffling and belching in the corridor outside as Will guided Rowan to his room.

She unclasped her bra, began to breastfeed Edie, and sat in silence as her children’s breathing slowed and regulated. As each child crossed the border into sleep, she felt a corresponding relaxation in her own body. Her boys were as distinct in sleep as they were awake. Leo’s was the motionless coma of the bodily exhausted. Toby slept fist to forehead with his brow furrowed, a philosopher dreaming. Charlie, as usual, was the last to drop off. Even then he was edgy, unstill. He was making little clutching gestures with his hands, as though milking a cow, and his mouth formed silent words.

Sophie closed the bunker door behind her, placed Edie in the middle of her own bed and zipped her into the sleeping bag that she wore at night instead of bedclothes. She was hot and a little damp where she’d been wedged into the crook of Sophie’s elbow; a single platinum curl kissed her flushed cheek good night.

The corridor led Sophie back past the bedroom her parents had always shared. A deep snore resonated from within. Will had removed Rowan’s shoes and socks and covered him with the eiderdown, but it had been flung off again. His sweater had ridden up to expose his soft hairy belly and the pillow was damp with pale lilac spittle. The sight of her strong, capable father helpless as an infant bewildered as well as repulsed her. She wondered if this binge really was as unusual as it seemed. Had he started drinking heavily, and had she been too wrapped up in what was happening at home to notice?