The Red House (29 page)

Richard?
She touched his shoulder.

He came round.
I’m just tired
. She was examining him but he couldn’t read her expression. Her words of last night.
Your plays. Your films
. He was selfish, wasn’t he. All those years with Jennifer, two single people sharing a house.
You’re right. I do expect you to fit in with my life
.

I shouldn’t have said those things
.

But they’re true
. Up there on the hill, he had forgotten about her, hadn’t he. He thought he might die and he didn’t remember that he had a wife.
I worry that you might have married the wrong person
.

Hey. Come on
. She rubbed his shoulder.

Trade descriptions act and all that. I wouldn’t want you to think … It’s not a binding contract
.

You’re exhausted
. She put her arm around him.
Let’s talk about this later, when you’re warm again
.

How extraordinary that it should happen so quickly. Like flipping a coin. Inexplicable that she had not known before. Had it been standing behind her all along like a pantomime villain, visible to everyone apart from her? What strangers we were to ourselves, changed in the twinkling of an eye. Jack, too, of course, she understood now, that sense of betrayal, stone circles at midsummer, all those signs that meant nothing till the sun poured into the burial chamber. Katy Perry,
Maurice
, that article in the
Guardian
magazine,
Mulholland Drive
. She wanted to be held by someone who had been here before. Lesbian. The word like some creature lifted from a rock pool, all pincers and liquids and strangeness. Melissa of all people. What a fool she’d been. The church. There wasn’t really an argument, was there. Meg, Anushka, Lesley, Tim. Fait accompli.
And the walls came tumbling down
. So who was she now? She sank down so that she was squashed into the nook beside the wardrobe. The safety of a tight space. She hadn’t done this since she was six, hiding from the monsters. She lifted Harry from the carpet and hugged him tight, rocking gently back and forth. Seedy passageways and sad hotels. Dog shit through the letterbox.

Bizarre in a good way
. No mariachi trumpets, no thunderbolt. But he just shrugged and accepted it. Mr. Normal. What more did she want?
When you get the chance to be saved, you have to take it
. Silvered Bible flashing on the beach. How quickly she had found her faith. The twinkling of an eye. And now the footmen were turning back into mice and she was sitting in her sooty rags by the fire.

Dominic stopped halfway up the stairs. He imagined Alex in hospital, imagined Benjy in hospital. Like a lump of meat he couldn’t swallow, finding it hard to breathe. His own fear of anything medical, just that blood-pressure cuff at the doctor’s, the tear of the Velcro and that squeezy black bulb. Maybe she
was
moist and wretched, but when was the last time he had felt real joy? She’d wanted to move to New Zealand, but he could feel the same pull, clean air, blank slate. And how far had he got?
Life is not a rehearsal
. The irksome truth of barroom platitudes. He had to call her.

Richard was falling asleep against her shoulder, twitching gently like a dog dreaming. What was it about this house? Throwing everyone off-kilter, her and Richard, Angela in the kitchen at night, Daisy and Melissa being enemies then friends then enemies again, her own stupid confession. That chill, maybe it was our own ghosts. Maybe that was why she hated old houses, because we all had past lives that rose up. As if you could wipe out history with downlighting and scatter cushions.
You might have married the wrong person
. Perhaps he could see what she had spent so long trying not to see, that she was still the girl with the secondhand shoes, hanging over that woozy drop at the Hanwell flat, scooters and discos and Penny flashing her knickers so they could steal packs of John Player Special from the corner shop. Working in a petrol station now, that weird chance encounter last time back. The fire was going out, but if she moved she might wake him and she was scared that this might be the last time she was able to hold him like this.

They were having an improvised buffet lunch at the dining table when they heard footsteps on the stairs. Daisy paused in the doorway looking uneasy. It took Alex several seconds to remember because he’d helped dress a naked Richard five minutes ago which had kind of taken up most of his short-term memory. He glanced across at Melissa.
Fucking
dyke
. He decided to make this as obvious as he could.
Daisy …
He lifted his arm so that she walked over and stepped under it and let him squeeze her shoulders. He looked directly at Melissa and saw it in her eyes, she knew that he knew, Mum too, a beaten look about her. And it was glorious and funny, seeing his parents and Melissa on the same team for once, at the other end of the pitch, several goals down. He turned to Daisy.
What can I serve you from this fine spread?

But Daisy said,
What on earth is that?

Tolliver
, said Benjy, because the owl was sitting under its big dusty bell jar in the center of the table.

Cupboard under the stairs
, said Dominic, trying to pull the family back together.
Belongs to the owners
.

The owners
, said Daisy. She’d never thought about them, looking around as if she might be able to see them.

Alex did her a plate of cheese and oatcakes and assorted dips and they sat side by side eating, their radiant togetherness gradually driving everyone else out of the room apart from Benjy. Mum and Dad touching Daisy on the shoulder as they exited, as if they were leaving a wake and she were the bereaved wife. Then they were gone and Benjy was building a model bridge out of hummus and carrots so Alex said, quietly,
Are you going to get a girlfriend, then?

Alex. God. It’s not like buying a toaster
.

My bad
.

Girlfriend. The lurch of the world. She remembered a freezing January morning. Coming out of the Wheelan Centre. Smoky breath and mauve sky and the streetlights going off. She and Lauren had held hands for ten, fifteen seconds, no more, then someone was walking toward them along the pavement and they’d let go. Like cuddling up when you were half asleep and pretending it never happened. Lauren.
For now we see only as a reflection in a mirror; then we shall see face-to-face
. It wasn’t simple, was it, or quick. The coin flipped, and flipped, and flipped.

Time speeding up now, Lauren answering a door in a street Daisy doesn’t recognize. Husband, two kids, the telly on in the background,
face tired and lined but beautiful.
We were at school together …? Are you sure …?
Turning and running down the street in tears. And now she was crying for real and Alex rubbed her back and said,
Come on, girl
. Benjy looked up.
Is Daisy OK?
And Alex was genuinely unsure if she was happy. It was all getting a bit beyond him. So Benjy got off his bench and came round and sat on the opposite side of Daisy and wrapped his arms around her and said,
Daisy sandwich
, because that’s what they used to do to him when he was sad. They squeeze and let go.

Shit
, said Daisy, wiping her eyes with an abandoned tea towel.
Shitting shit
.

They play cards, they eat toast, they watch
Monsters, Inc
. and Richard says,
This is actually rather good
, like the queen getting a mobile phone for Christmas, and everyone laughs because he has suddenly become more teasable. The checkered rug, perhaps, the fogginess in his voice, the way Louisa is nursing his foot. Though it is extraordinary, isn’t it, thinks Angela. She can remember the thrill of getting a color television, she can remember when the
Thunderbirds
puppets were at the cutting edge of animation despite the fact that you could see the wires used to raise their eyebrows, whereas now …?
You can’t tell the real dinosaurs from the animated ones
, as someone said somewhere.

Melissa tries to ring civilization but they’ve swung out of the signal’s orbit once again, so that when Angela challenges her to a game of Scrabble she is so spectacularly bored that she agrees and two of them play as if it is a fight to the death. Orts. Beguine. P
alanx for 95. Benjy and Alex concoct a fantasy in which the ginger-haired man and the girl with
Charlie’s Angels
hair are merely outer coverings for jellylike aliens who feed on elderly people. Richard listens to
Idomeneo
(Colin Davis, Francisco Araiza, Barbara Hendricks …). Daisy looks at the pages of
Dracula
but the words just swim. Alex reads Andy McNab and Louisa reads Stephen Fry and Dominic goes away to start making
supper and the rain stops and the world looks as if it has been serviced and mended and given back.

The owner of this Orange mobile number is unavailable …

Jack. Hey. It’s Daisy. Remember?
She looked around at the moraine of boy crap.
I’m halfway up a small mountain on the Welsh border. We’re on holiday. Listen …
She looked out of the window. Benjy was on the lawn getting sopping wet, doing ninja moves with a stick, except it wasn’t a ninja weapon, was it, it was an umbrella and he was Gene Kelly.
I’m really sorry. I think I understand now. If that rings any kind of bell then give me a call, yeh? It would be really good to hear from you
.

Gingerly, Angela thinks about Karen, about the birthday, just grazing the subject, like touching an electric fence with the back of your hand to stop your fingers gripping the live wire. Nothing. It’s the photographs of Dad, as if there’s been an absence all along and she’s been trying to fill it with the wrong person. A weight begins to lift. A little anxious, still, that Richard might not be able to find the pictures, that they might get lost in the post, that Dad might be turning away or obscured somehow, that he might not be looking at her.

Big pie, two enameled baking tins,
Idomeneo
in the background.
Odo da lunge armonioso suono … In the distance I hear the sweet sound summoning me aboard …
Tomato sauce with onions and garlic, because they’d been planning to swing via whatever supermarket they could find in Abergavenny before the Richard debacle, so Dominic has offered to make what he has christened rather grandly Olchon Valley Pie which will include pretty much anything he can find in the fridge and cupboards, parsnips, carrots, spinach, butter beans, pasta shells, pine nuts, chopped apricots, the last two of which will turn out to be an unexpected hit. All topped off with mashed potato and that
weird cheese with the lost wrapper, which no one can identify. And on the side, to prevent Richard getting anemia, slices of Saucisson Sec Supérieur à l’ancienne. Oyster Bay Sauvignon Blanc, McGuigan Hallmark Cabernet Shiraz, Hooky Gold, Bath Ales Barnstormer, apple juice, mango juice, strawberry-and-banana smoothie. Fizzy water. Pistachios.

Are you going to say grace?
asked Richard, which created an unexpected silence. He scanned the room. Melissa was grinning.
Have I put my foot in it somehow?

Not at all
, said Daisy. She lowered her head.
For what we are about to receive, may the Lord make us truly thankful. Amen
.

They sat down and Dominic pushed the big slotted spoon into the pie and Benjy said,
I want lots of cheesy topping
.

Louisa leant in close to Angela and whispered,
What was all that about?
, and Angela said,
Oh, it’s nothing
.

But Daisy could feel the coin flipping again, because it wasn’t a fait accompli. You couldn’t give your faith away like that. It wasn’t a coat or a bicycle, it was a language in which you’d learnt to speak and think.
God be in my head and in my understanding
. Prayer, faith, redemption, consolation, how did you hold the world together without these things?

Richard shifted carefully in his chair, trying to find the least uncomfortable position, the Nurofen not quite taking the edge off. He looked across the table at Louisa. He had been humbled. Was that too dramatic a word? He had always seen his self-sufficiency as an admirable quality, a way of not imposing upon other people, but he could see now that it was an insult to those close to you. He had never been interested enough in Louisa’s opinions, her thoughts, her tastes, her life. A stab of shame.
If this becomes a habit you will find yourself in great difficulty later in life
.

Daisy glanced sideways at Melissa, trying not to catch her eye. Had she misunderstood completely? Was this simply one more stage
in her spiritual journey, a test she had failed and must retake? She tried to unpick her thoughts and feelings but there were too many. That smashed plate, so hard to see the broken pattern. The afternoon with Jack, Melissa pulling down her knickers to show her the bluebird tattoo.
She is pretty fit, though
. Lauren’s hand in the cold dawn light, images so vivid she was scared to bring them before her mind’s eye for fear that they would spill out and be visible to everyone.
The Lord is the stronghold of my life
.