by Tessa Hadley
— I’m sorry for him, she said to Gary. — And the money’s useful.
Gary worked for his brother, who laid patios and garden paths, but there wasn’t much business; people were cutting back in the recession. Marina didn’t tell him, either, that the old man put extra money in the envelope he gave her every week, crushing it clumsily into her pocket or into the bib of her apron while she was rolling out plain scones on the kitchen table. Every week, once she’d washed and dried her hands and counted the money, she took out the extra and gave it firmly back to him, so that there could be no mistake. She knew where to draw the line.
— Please take it, he said, pushing it at her. — There’s plenty more where that came from. Make me happy by taking it. What do I want with it now, at my age, in this condition? I want to give it to your family.
— These are just dreams, she said. — They’re nonsense. You don’t know us.
— You’re good people, I know you are. I watch you. I want to help your husband out, let him start up a little business of his own. I want to set up a trust fund, so that your boy can go to a decent school.
— To give something like that to someone, you have to be a relative. Or you have to have known them all your life, through thick and thin. This story you’ve dreamed up about us isn’t real. You haven’t even met my husband.
— It’s you who doesn’t know about the real world, he said impatiently. — Money changes things, if you’ve got it. You can change anything.
— I don’t want change, then.
— I don’t believe you.
Sometimes after church he persuaded her to have a drop of brandy with him in the drawing room while he waited for Wendy. It was sweet, and not harsh as she’d expected; she rarely drank alcohol, so it went straight to her head. Liam would be playing in the garden. Because of the brandy, when she saw him from the window she seemed to be looking down on him from a great distance, at his bare knees and bent head as he crouched, stroking the neighbours’ tabby. She could hear the coaxing, chirruping noises he was making. The drawing room ran right through the house – it had sash windows at front and back. She loved the way the light sprang across from one wall to the other, as if in a conversation.
The old man told her that all his life he’d thought only about his career and not enough about his family; he’d forgotten the religion he’d believed in when he was a boy. He said that after his wife died he’d gone off the rails – he’d been with all kinds of women, he’d paid for prostitutes. Would God forgive him? Marina stopped him. She said that it wasn’t right for her to know those things if his own daughter didn’t.
— Could I tell her? he barked, in an outbreak of rough contempt.
All the time Marina kept him safely at arm’s length, putting him off gently, smiling, laughing. But he told her nonetheless that she was a beautiful and graceful young woman. (Those weren’t words that Gary ever would have used.) She was ashamed of feeling secretly gratified. She said that he had to stop talking such rubbish. He told her about his travels all over Africa. He’d been to Singapore and Cairo and Australia and California. Marina knew that she was unsophisticated, that her life must seem tame and timid to him. Sometimes it seemed timid to her; she chafed against its limits. The old man held something back, some knowledge or intimation, which made her life seem shallow by comparison – even if he was cantankerous and shaky on his legs, with his cavernous stale mouth and brown teeth.
THEN HE WANTED to give her the house. The story went round the village as a half-secret. Ten bedrooms, Queen Anne, Grade II-listed; it needed work, but had to be worth a million at least, even in the current market. Properties at the top of the ladder hadn’t lost much. The women in the shop looked at Wendy to see how she was taking it: she’d brought her father all the way over here to be with her, and now he was giving away her inheritance to the cleaning lady. (Though there was probably plenty more, apart from the house. He’d been putting money into a British bank account for years.)
Marina knew what everyone was thinking. Of course she couldn’t take the house. What would they do, in any case – her and Gary and Liam – with all those rooms? The maintenance of those old places cost a fortune in itself; it would fall down around their ears. It was the old man’s fantasy – she never seriously considered it. He begged her to accept, and she refused. Then he told Wendy that he was leaving it to Marina anyway. There was a big confrontation; Wendy accused the pair of them of scheming behind her back. Marina, in tears, gave in her notice.
That evening, Wendy telephoned to apologise. — I shouldn’t have lost my temper, she said. — We’re both distraught at having upset you. I’d be so grateful if you’d give us another try. It would be difficult for us to find anyone else. My father’s not an easy man, and he’s grown very fond of you.
— But you’ll always think I’m after his money, Marina said.
Wendy recoiled at her bluntness, she could hear. (She had blenched once when Marina brought an armful of dirty sheets into the kitchen after the old man had had an accident in his bed.)— I’m sure it was all his idea, she offered with chilly neutrality. — I know what my father’s like, once he fixes on something.
— I’ll go back if he stops trying to give me stuff.
— He says he’s sorry. It won’t happen again.
So Marina resumed making her way each morning, after she’d dropped Liam off at school, under the soughing, agitated trees in the churchyard and across the park – head down as usual, her long scissoring stride like a wading bird’s – to spend all day alone with the old man. Wendy offered her a rise, and she accepted it; Gary had always said that she ought to be paid better for the work she did, more like a full-time carer than a cleaner. (And, after all that, the extra was only deducted from her working tax credit.)
For a while, after their row, the old man treated Marina as if she were made of glass, putting on a meek, modestly enquiring voice that wasn’t really his, asking for a gin and tonic before his lunch but ‘only if she had time’. This was nonsense and they both knew it, were relieved when he fell back into his usual peremptory intimacy. At least he’d stopped giving her presents. Yet, in some magical way, Marina did now succumb to the idea that the old house was hers – not forever but for the moment. She was getting to know it now that she had gone into every corner of it, scouring out the gritty dust and cobwebs and curled-up balls of dead woodlice, bleaching and disinfecting. She had even grown not to mind the faded furniture and the empty rooms, the staring rectangles on the wallpaper, where the previous owners had taken down their paintings. She cut flowers in the garden and arranged them in vases that she found in a cupboard under the stairs.
She put out a linen napkin in a silver ring for the old man’s lunch.
— Won’t you sit with me? he asked her humbly.
The food that Wendy brought him was too rich, cooked in olive oil or with cream sauces; he couldn’t always keep it down. Marina made plain food, and she cut the meat into little pieces for him, easy to chew and swallow. He got angry with his broken body, how it betrayed him. She rested her hand consolingly on his shoulder while he ate. She knew that she was a good nurse; her hands were good. She had looked after her own father in his last illness.
FOR THE OLD man’s ninetieth birthday party, Wendy built a barbecue out of bricks, in a little paved area by one corner of the wall at the end of the garden. She told Marina that when she was a child she and her brother had spent every summer on their farm in the Western Cape, cooking most of their food outdoors on a braai or in a metal potjie, which sat over the fire. The old man was pleased with the idea of a party; it gave him something to look forward to. On the telephone, he ordered crates of his favourite Groot Constantia wine.
His birthday was at the end of September and the sky was cloudless. Guests – mostly friends of Wendy’s – came strolling across the grass from where they had parked beside the church. The vicar came, with the next-door neighbours, and Anthony and another of Wendy’s sons, who broug
ht his wife. Anthony and his brother took charge of grilling the meat, entering into the role with a lot of teasing banter, deferring to their grandfather’s expertise. They were good-looking young men, casually but expensively dressed, aware of conferring the favour of their youth on the elderly party. Marina had spoken to Anthony once or twice when he came to the house with Wendy; she’d never met the other one before. The old man had insisted that she bring Gary and Liam, though Gary was reluctant, sure he’d have nothing to say to these kinds of people. She had persuaded him to come for just an hour. At least he had Liam to look after; his responsibility for his son gave him something to do in a crowd and made him more confident.
The guests gathered closer together, as the light went, around the barbecue’s radiant heat. Gary enjoyed himself after all. The old man made a fuss of him, filling up his glass; he wasn’t used to drinking wine and it helped him talk more easily, mostly about the local fishing. As if she were in a conspiracy with the old man, Marina noticed how cleverly he charmed her husband – while Liam, the only child at the party, ran in the dusk around the winding garden paths, lost in his own world. When Marina went into the kitchen to wash up, Wendy followed her, protesting theatrically that she could take it all home to put in her dishwasher. Wendy had been drinking, too; in company her manner was jokey, almost flirtatious. She must have been pleased at having her handsome sons on display. She thanked Marina emotionally for everything she’d done for the old man, said she thought her dad was having a great day. Drying up the plates and cutlery and putting them away, Marina was relieved that the tension between her and Wendy seemed to be resolved; she covered the leftover food with cling film, restored order in the quiet kitchen. Gary took Liam home to put him to bed; she said she’d follow them soon. Voices floated subduedly through the open window. She knew the pattern of her movements in that kitchen by heart – her hand found its way in the shadows to each cupboard door or drawer. Tightening the taps, she wrung out the dishcloth and hung it across the drainer.
She would have liked to slip away invisibly, but the old man called her over as she stepped out of the back door. (They never used the grand front door, which opened onto the street.) She was surprised that he could even see her through his dark glasses, from the far end of the garden; he had seemed sunk in sleep, hunched silent in his chair with a shawl over his shoulders as the others talked. Only his family were left around the barbecue. Wendy’s daughter-in-law, Jasmine, was yawning and shivering in her skimpy dress. Half standing up, the old man fumbled for Marina’s hand and kissed it.
— Where have you been hiding away from me?
Everyone laughed. His words were slurring. She thought he’d had enough of the party and was probably ready for bed. — Have you met Marina, Jasmine? She’s my treasure.
Wendy chimed in. — We are very lucky to have Marina.
The old man wanted belatedly to make a speech. — I’ve been so fortunate to be surrounded with love in my old age, in a strange country where I didn’t look for it. Marina doesn’t know her own goodness. People like her and her family, they hold it all together for the rest of us, in their spirit. Some of us have had lives with every advantage, but we don’t deserve to kiss the hem of her garment.
Marina was embarrassed, and jarred by some false, sentimental note in his performance, which seemed aimed challengingly at his family. She pulled her hand away quickly. Anthony offered her a lift; he said he wanted an excuse to try out his brother’s Audi, but she insisted that she preferred to walk – it would take her only ten minutes. It was a relief to be out on the street alone. The high heels she’d worn for the party clicked and scraped too assertively on the pavement, so she bent and eased them off, then walked barefoot, carrying her shoes with the straps looped over her finger. She should have brought her trainers to change into. There was no one around, but a car came up behind her as she turned into the road off the high street which led to the little estate of ex-council houses where she lived. There was no pavement here, so she stood back for the car to pass. Instead, it drew up alongside her, sleek and low-slung, engine thrumming fluently. Anthony leaned across to push open the passenger door, his white shirt gleaming in the light from the instrument panel.
— Get in, he said. — I’m driving it back to Mum’s. I’ll drop you off.
— Really, I like the walk, Marina protested. — Clears my head.
But he wouldn’t take no for an answer. When she moved on, he followed at her speed, nosing the car along in stops and starts, revving the engine persuasively. She felt its hot breath on her bare legs. Anthony opened the door again. — Come on. Hop in.
Exasperated, conscious that people must be listening behind all the windows in the street, she got in. Despite the fine night, Anthony had the air conditioning on, and in the sealed, cold atmosphere the smell of the leather upholstery was strong. — Nice motor, isn’t it? he said. He dropped his glance briefly from the road, noticing her feet. — You funny thing. You’ve taken your shoes off.
— Can’t walk quick in my heels.
He was amused. — But don’t you mind getting your feet dirty?
— Take the left here at the fork. Then it’s the first right.
— I know where you live. But we’re going the long way round. I want to have a little talk with you.
Marina was furious with herself for having accepted the lift against her better judgement. — Don’t be silly, Anthony. I’m tired and I want to get home.
She rattled the handle of the car door, but Anthony seemed to have locked it by pressing something on his side; he put his foot down on the accelerator. They left the last houses of the village behind and were quickly onto the country road, where the car’s headlights tunnelled into the darkness under the trees. Marina wasn’t frightened – she was too full of outrage, folding her arms tightly around her bag and pressing it to her chest. How dare he carry her off as if she didn’t count? They were probably more or less the same age, she and this boy, but she felt herself immeasurably older than he was. She had a child of her own, whereas he still lived like a child in his mother’s house; Wendy complained that he left his dirty clothes on the floor for her to pick up. Yet somehow Anthony undermined her with self-doubt – his fresh, plump face unmarked by trouble and his voice so blandly assured.
— Please take me back, she said as calmly as she could, and Anthony assured her that he’d turn around as soon as he had the chance. About a quarter of a mile up the road, he steered the Audi into a lay-by where tourists sometimes parked their cars to walk the forest trails. Marina struggled again with the door.
— Let me out here, she insisted. — I want to walk home.
He reached across her to unlock the door. Shrinking back inside her seat belt, she was smothered for a moment in the warm cotton smell of his shirt, perfumed with cologne and barbecue smoke. He laughed at her. — Don’t worry. I haven’t got any designs on your virtue. I’ll drive you home in a moment, or you can walk in your bare feet if you prefer it. Like I said, I just want to talk to you about something. I want to warn you about my grandfather, that’s all. For your own good. He’s got a big crush on you, he wants to give you presents – and why shouldn’t he? But I thought you ought to know a bit more about him before you make up your mind whether to accept them.
He pushed the car door wide open and they listened to the muted, tickling noises the engine made as it cooled. — I don’t even want his presents, Marina said. — Your mother knows that. I don’t even take them.
— Well, just in case.
And he told her what the old man had been involved in, in the seventies and eighties, working in special operations for the South African Defence Force. — The details are pretty murky, Anthony said. — A lot of accusations were flying around.
Somehow the old man had got away with an amnesty – perhaps because he was already in his late sixties by then, retired to his farm. — I don’t condemn him. I don’t think you can condemn anything, unless you were there. Mum said there was
no point in telling you – it’s all old history now. He’s just a sad old man. But I thought that you might like to know, that’s all.
SHE MEANT TO look it up on the Internet when she got home (Anthony had said that some of the stories were there if you searched for his grandfather’s name), but she didn’t. She lay in bed beside Gary, who was sound asleep, and eventually she fell asleep herself. By the time she woke, Gary was moving around in the kitchen downstairs, putting the kettle on for tea and preparing Liam’s breakfast. Through the floor, she could hear Liam’s questions and Gary’s low-voiced responses – not so much answers as reassurances of his steady presence.
Marina felt burdened, as if she’d woken from a clinging, unpleasant dream. Once, when she was a girl, walking with Gary in the woods, they’d come across something inexplicable and horrible – the rotting head of some creature caught in the cleft branch of a tree, a chain of vertebrae dangling below it. Because the vertebrae looked like a long neck, she’d thought at first that it must be a goose or a swan that had got trapped somehow; then she saw teeth, and tufts of gristly fur stuck to the skull. Gary had poked at it with a stick. It was a mammal, perhaps a big stoat; Gary could only think that it must have been dropped from the sky by a bird of prey, the flesh falling away from the backbone as it decayed. Marina had looked at the thing coolly, but then as she walked on its reality had taken up residence inside her. There was no violent shock, only a settled change, and the realisation – a surprise – that you couldn’t undo the knowledge of the thing with the same calm ease with which you had taken it in. And for a while afterwards everything she looked at had seemed unclean, had revealed a leering, repulsive side she’d never seen before. She thought with distaste now of the old man’s soiled linen soaking in a bucket.
