The House

by Hilda Lawrence

  “Someone found him on the road and brought him home,” I told Anna. “Someone who knew about our trouble and didn’t want to disturb us. That was kind.”

  Anna backed away. “There’s not a mark on him,” she • whispered. “He saved himself. The devil!”

  Every night for a month I have locked my door and talked to myself until morning; I’ve told myself a story as wakeful children do. But my story is real.

  Night has come again, and I am telling myself the story of the day I have just lived through. This time it has grown beyond me; in twenty-four hours it has changed its mood and shape; it is more than mine; it is too much for me alone. But I have Mike now.

  This morning I was wakened by a pounding on my door. I knew it wasn’t Tench—he never comes to my room. And not Anna or Mother. Anna’s fingers nibble at doors, and Mother is almost soundless in everything she does. I watched the knob turn uselessly and waited until I heard a voice. I always wait before opening doors until I hear a voice.

  It was only Mrs. Tench. “Are you all right, Miss Isobel?” she called. “Do you know it’s after ten?”

  I knew she wouldn’t leave until I let her in, but I remembered to hide the muddy slippers I had worn in the garden. “I’m sorry, Mrs. Tench. I overslept.”

  “Maybe you needed it,” she answered. She had brought me fruit and coffee; it was the first time she had ever done that. She closed my windows and smoothed my bed. Her eyes flicked about the room. “You didn’t need all that air, Miss Isobel. Night air’s unhealthy. Did the dog sleep in here with you? I was just wondering.”

  “He’s never in here, Mrs. Tench.”

  “Maybe you fed him, then? I’m only asking.”

  “I never do. What’s wrong, Mrs. Tench? Is he sick?”

  “Sick? Not a bit of it. He was outside your door when I came upstairs, that’s all. Looking like he wanted you to let him in, or feed him, or some such thing. Anna says he—“ I saw the break in her speech before I heard it; it showed first in her eyes. It said she hadn’t meant to speak of Anna and was angry with herself. She went on rapidly. “I’ve got something nice to tell you. Mr.

  Mike telephoned, he wants you to go for a drive, and your mother has no objection. I asked her. Eleven o’clock, he says. There’s a sharp wind, so you’ll need a heavy coat. A nice drive, you ought to enjoy that; it’s like the old days coming back. It’ll put some honest color in your face, so you can stop pinching your cheeks before you come into a room.”

  “What were you going to say about Anna, Mrs. Tench?”

  “Anna? Oh, that. That’s nothing. You know Anna. She carried on because the dog refused his breakfast. She’s foolish about animals. One of these days I’m going to smack her. Now you drink what I brought, and I’ll help you get dressed.”

  That was something else she had never done. I must have looked surprised, for she said, “I always favored humans. Animals can do for themselves.”

  She drew my bath and fussed about the room, using her handkerchief to rub non-existent dust from furniture and staring out windows that could show her nothing she hadn’t always seen. Ordinarily, Mrs. Tench is calm, she is like Mother; but this morning she was noisy in a small, unordered way. I have never known her very well, although she has always lived here. Sometimes, when I was a child, I used to think I saw her face bending over me at night; but when she spoke to me in the morning, the face was not the same, and I told myself I had been dreaming. This morning, when she handed me my clothes and stooped and rose and helped me, I thought I saw that old, bending face again, and I wanted to touch it.

  I said, “Mrs. Tench, ‘did you ever take care of me before?”

  “Did I—what are you talking about? Before what?”

  “Before today. A long time ago. Did you ever bend over my bed at night?”

  “Pure imagination. You always had too much.”

  “Mrs. Tench—“ I didn’t know how to say what I wanted to say—“Mrs. Tench, are you taking care of me now?”

  “I do what I can, if that’s what you mean, and there’s no need to look at me like that. Taking care! Nobody takes care of anybody when they’re grown up; grown-up people take care of themselves. Now, if you’re ready to go down, I might as well go along with you. Wait a minute.” She made scolding sounds. “Your hair’s a living sight! You made a fine mess of your hair when you pulled that sweater on.”

  Mrs. Tench’s hands smoothed my hair for me. That almost furtive touch was like a twice-told tale when the first telling has been forgotten. It was as old as the bending face, as dim and warm, and it stirred the sleeping years in the bottom of my heart. I waited for the words that should have followed or preceded the smoothing hands. I couldn’t remember the words, but I knew they had been foolish and kind. If she could help me to remember anything, anything—

  “What are you mooning about?” she asked.

  “I’m trying to remember something. You used to say something, I can’t remember—yes I can! Mrs. Tench, what does ‘skin the rabbit’ mean?”

  “You’re addled.” She picked up the breakfast tray and set it down again, almost angrily. “Well, all right. It’s nothing but nonsense, a land of game you play with children when you help them with their clothes. It means this, and this is how it goes. Skin the rabbit!” She jerked the sweater over my head, wrong side out. “That’s what you say, and that’s what you do. Black! I never cared for mourning, not even for myself.” She unfastened my skirt, black like the sweater, and hung both in my closet When she returned, she had a yellow wool dress I had bought in September. “You’ll look all right in this,” she said. “I can’t wait for you. I’ve already lost too much time as it is.”

  She was gone before I could answer, but I could follow her in my mind. Down the broad stairs, her dumpy little figure held erect, the breakfast tray firm in her hands. Mrs. Tench never fumbles.

  I saw no one when I went down. My mother, I thought, is behind one of the windows, watching the driveway as she always does, and I will wave to the windows when I leave, even though I cannot see her. She will think I am opposing her wishes about mourning, but I am only trying to please Mrs. Tench. When you are taking your life apart, looking for something, people like Mrs. Tench are useful. Even a phrase is useful. Tomorrow, even a phrase may help.

  I waited on the veranda steps for Mike. The stone was cold and damp. The drive-way was a dark-green tunnel ending in a pale-blue arch. The sky beyond the open gates; the road. No one traveled on the road while I waited; the blue arch was empty until Mike came. His car is red, and he loves it; even the leather seats are red. When he turned into the drive, I ran to meet him, not forgetting the windows behind me. Before I reached the car, I heard the soft, familiar pad of following feet. I had been waiting for that, too.

  “Hi,” Mike said. “Send your pal back to wherever he hangs out, and get in.”

  “I want him to come. Please, Mike.”

  “What about my leather? Look at those ugly feet. Oh, all right, all right, but don’t expect me to sit next to him.”

  We drove into the road, with Tray beside me. That was my first victory. We went toward the village slowly and in silence. The woods lining the road cast shadows before us, thin shadows because the sun was thin. Tray was a stone dog, erect and motionless, his eyes closed.

  “Why have you stayed away, Mike?” I asked carefully. “Why haven’t you called me before?”

  “I’ve been giving you a chance to get straightened out,” he said, “You’ve been fighting a cockeyed battle in your mind, and it seemed like a good idea to let you win it alone. Thats the only kind of victory that sticks. And by the way, whats behind this hedge-prowling when you ought to be in bed?”

  “Who saw me?”

  “Lucy. Last night. And Joe says it’s a regular thing. That’s crazy, baby.”

  That was the way I wanted him to talk. That was the kind of talk I needed. “I live in a crazy sort of house,” I said. “Even my father said it would make a good madhouse.”
/>
  “Your father—“ The car jumped forward.

  “Watch your driving, Mike. We don’t want another accident.”

  “I don’t have them,” he said. “Tell me where you want to go. We’ll go anywhere you say. We can even take that yellow dress to town for lunch.”

  “The dress was Mrs. Tench’s idea,” I said.

  “Taking orders from Mrs. Tench now? I should live to see the day when you take orders from yourself. Where do you want to go?”

  “Can we go to the squatters’ settlement?” I thought his answer would never come.

  “Why?”

  “Because my father had friends there. I’d like to see the kind of friends he preferred to my mother and me. I want to know what my father was like.”

  The car slowed to a crawl. “I can tell you. He was okay. I can tell you what he found at those shacks. Broken old men, disappointed old men. People he could help. He wasn’t a check writer, he was a doer. If he saw a mess, he straightened it out himself. If he didn’t like a thing, he fixed it, his own way. He was a medieval kind of guy, like the old Patrons. I sound like somebody who just read a book. Where to, baby?”

  “The shacks, Mike.”

  “Issy, thats no good. The shacks haven’t anything to do with your fathers death. That was his own idea. He’s not the first man in the world who decided he had the right of exit. Got that one out of a book, too. Anyway, it was what he wanted, right or wrong, and you cant do anything about it.”

  I said, “I want to talk to someone who knew him. If you’ll let me do that, Mike, I won’t trouble you again. After today, I’ll be satisfied.”

  “Satisfied, for heaven’s sake. What does that mean?” “It means I’ll let him rest.”

  “Rest!”

  “He didn’t say goodbye to me. I think about that too much. He raised his hand when he drove by; he knew he wasn’t coming back, but all he did was raise his hand. I think about it; I see it, an unfinished gesture. Everything about him is unfinished, even though he’s dead and buried.”

  “Issy—”

  “He must have counted his last days; he knew which one would be the last, and he chose to spend it with strangers. I want to see those strangers. If I can follow him through the last day, up to the end, then I won’t think about him any more. I can get rid of him.” After a pause, Mike said, “ Hid’ is a cockeyed word.” “It’s a haunting word.” I felt him turn to look at me, and I closed my eyes for safety. Like Tray. I sat like Tray. I was Tray. We were replicas of the old stone dog in the cemetery. I put my hand on Tray’s head and let it rest there. It was the first time in my life I had ever touched him and he didn’t flinch. I wondered if he could read my mind.

  I heard Mike laugh, too easily. “That’s a sweet friendship between you and the dog, all of a sudden. Where’d I get the idea you hated him?”

  I laughed easily, too, and opened my eyes. “Hush. He reads and understands English. The cousins say so.”

  We turned from the main road into a narrow lane.

  “Where are we going, Mike?”

  “Where do you think, crackpot? The shacks.”

  The lane went up, then down, between small, barren hills. I heard the wind follow. At the end we came to an open field, ringed with leafless trees. There was no grass, only sand and rubble; the color had faded from the sky. The trees were supplicating dwarfs, raising bare and knotted arms to heaven. The world might look like that a thousand years after it was gone and forgotten. A band of swallows came from nowhere, swooped and cried, turned, and fled.

  “What is this place?” I asked.

  “The one you wanted. Or almost. We get out here and walk a bit.”

  “Walk where?”

  “See that line of rocks? That’s the edge of a small ravine. The shacks are down there. How about me going on down there alone?”

  “No. What time is it?”

  “Eleven-thirty.”

  “Only that?”

  We walked to the rocks.

  “Look,” Mike said. But I had already seen—Tray was leading the way. As we drew near, we saw a break between the rocks and a flight of rough-hewn steps leading down. Tray waited at the top of the steps, watching us. I knew I was right to come.

  “Have you been here before, Mike?”

  “No. Never had a reason before.”

  There were perhaps a dozen shades scattered along the ravine. Some of them were falling into ruin, some boarded up like houses whose tenants have gone away. Only one showed signs of habitation; its sagging door was propped open, and a wisp of smoke curled from a make-shift chimney. There was no filth, no litter; there was no sound but the wind, our footsteps on the stone, and Tray’s padding feet.

  An old man came to the door of the open shack. He stood in the shadow of his doorway, an old, old man, bent like the dwarf trees. The hand he raised to halt us was brown and thin like the twigs.

  “Are we trespassing, sir?” Mike asked.

  There was no answer. The brown hand reached for the door, to close it.

  I spoke quickly. “Please let me talk to you. I’m looking for someone who knew my father. His name was Ford. Did you know him?”

  “No, I did not.”

  “Do you know the dog?”

  “I have seen the dog before. What do you want?”

  “My father is dead. I know he used to come here; he had a friend or friends here. I only want to talk to someone who knew him.”

  “There is no one here now. Since a month or more they are all gone.” He spoke in a soft, tired voice, with a trace of accent.

  “Who were they?”

  “Only men like myself.”

  Mike talked then, persuasively jingling the coins in his pocket. “Well be grateful for anything you can tell us. If you’ve ever lost anyone, you know how the young lady feels. There’s no trouble behind this; its all on the up and up.”

  I said, “Please.”

  We were inspected from the shadows. We were measured, labeled, and accepted. He said he knew nothing, had seen little, that we were welcome to that little. “I have nothing to sell,” he said. He said an “outsider” had come to the shacks one night in early spring. That was the first visit, but later he had come often, sometimes twice a week. He had never seen the man’s face, but he had seen the dog and heard the car as it entered the field above.

  “Which shack?” Mike asked.

  “The last one, at the far end. That is where the two men lived.”

  The two men had lived there for several months. He didn’t know their names. They kept to themselves and spoke little. Sometimes at night when he went out to gather firewood, he walked to the far end of the ravine. If the dog was there, he knew he would hear three voices in the last shack. Sometimes the lamp burned late. They had hot food in there; he could smell it. Sometimes there was wine; he saw the empty bottles in the morning. Sometimes there were laughing and singing. The dog guarded the door and paced the ravine. Sometimes the dog barked; sometimes he prowled among the rocks. Sometimes he bayed the moon.

  “Now they are all gone,” he said. “All.”

  Mike said, “Thank you. Did you see them go? I mean the two who lived there?”

  No, he hadn’t seen them go. They must have gone at night, when he was asleep. Perhaps to the south, where it was warm. One of them was sick; he sat in the sun when the days were fine, shivering.

  When we asked if we could visit the shack, he nodded. It was clean, he said. He had gone there himself, to forage, when the others went away. It was clean and ready for the next men who needed it, whoever they might be. “When the snow comes,” he said, “the men come. One, two, or three. Sometimes more. No names, no questions. Then in the spring they try the world again.”

  He wouldn’t take money.

  Tray followed us to the last shack, but he refused to enter it. It was unlocked. The single room was damp and cold. It held two chairs, a table, a stove, and a bed. A fire was laid in the stove, ready for the snow and the next men. Twigs and s
craps of paper, bits of coal and dried moss. Nothing spoke of Father.

  I thought of his bedroom with its shining grate and deep, soft chairs. I saw our dining room, the round table covered with lace, the silver that was too heavy for my hands when I was a child, the covered dishes holding rich food, presented by Tench. Tench, in his fine black coat I saw the trays that went to Fathers room and were returned untouched.

  I tried to see him as he must have looked when he sat at that stained table with a bottle before him, talking to people whose names I didn’t know. Laughing. Singing. Out of his mind?

  “Well, have you got the picture?” Mike asked.

  “I have a picture,” I said.

  “I know I don’t have to warn you, but keep this little jaunt under your hat. What your mother doesn’t know won’t hurt her.” His arm went around my shoulder. “It’s old stuff, Issy, as old as life. Look it in the eye and forget it. He was sick—think of it that way. He was disappointed in himself; that’s a disease from which nobody’s immune. I don’t know how he got that way or why, but that’s the answer. The poor devils who lived here had nothing; that’s why he liked them—he could give them things. Nobody could give him anything, he had it all, he was born with it. He—I don’t know—he had it all and he was fed up. When the others went away, he simply decided to go, too—his way. That’s not so crazy as it sounds. He knew you and your mother would be all right. He figured you didn’t need him. Don’t blame him; you don’t know how your own mind will behave when you’re his age.”

  I knew how my mind was behaving then. “He never gave me a chance to know him. He sent me away when I was six; he kept me away until I was grown. Then he brought me back, to a house that was strange and parents I hardly knew. Why?”

  “I don’t know. Stop thinking about it.”

  “He wanted me to think about it; he knew what he was doing. He brought me back and pretended he had plans for me. He gave me the house and made me promise to live in it. He knew what he was going to do. He knew he was going to kill himself and haunt me the rest of my days. He wanted me to think, and wonder, and reason it out, and find no answer. No reason, no answer, that’s what he wanted. He wanted me to be Marsh Ford’s daughter, walking alone as he drove alone. Marsh Ford’s daughter, his counterpart, for all the world to see and recognize and wonder about. But I’m the one who’s doing the wondering. Mike, did he hurt me because he hated me?”