The House Martin

by William Parker

  It was after I’d done up the leather straps of the case and was standing there holding the handle again, thinking about how on earth I was going to get the great weight of it back up the ladder, that it happened. I took a step and something flicked off my shoe and shot out of the open front door. At first I thought it was a black ball — something like a cricket ball but just a tiny bit smaller. I watched as it rolled down the steps into the garden and stopped in one of the clumps of little white flowers that grow along the edge of the path.

  It must have come out of the case with all the other stuff and landed on one of the black tiles so that I couldn’t really see it. I’d missed it altogether. I put the case down and went out of the front door to get it back, and as I was going down the steps, I suddenly knew exactly what it was. I remembered it perfectly. I remembered the silence and the feeling of excitement whenever Pa unlocked the little drawer in his dressing room in Beirut and took it out to put it on Mummy’s dressing table while she was getting ready. Whenever the little black box came out, it meant that they were going somewhere completely special, and if there was any talking at all, it would be whispers, as though the thing in the box was having a long sleep and must only be woken up incredibly gently. It was always Pa that opened it and took the brooch out. Then there’d be another silence before more whispers about exactly where it was going to be pinned on the dress, and it was always Pa who did that too. And I think that at the same time we’d be remembering the man who’d run down the steps from his big house in the mountains to give it to Mummy just as we were about to drive away.

  I don’t think I’d seen it since we’d come back to England. I’d thought about it a lot, but I was just so sure that it must have gone ages ago at the time when Mummy was at her worst and lots of things were steadily disappearing; all the rings and bracelets made of gold, and the real pearls that she got when her great-aunt died, and then even the silver box that they all used to be kept in. But the brooch from Beirut was my favourite thing because I was there when she was given it. I’d never said anything about not seeing it, of course. It was just one of those lovely things from our old life that I thought was nothing but a memory now.

  Walking down the steps, I told myself that it was very probably only the box that was there. I picked it out of the flower bed and tried to prize it open before I saw that the tiny clutch in the shape of an ‘S’ on the side was still closed. But even when I’d undone it, the box didn’t really want to open—as though it was struggling to keep its secrets—so I sat down on the bottom step and very slowly tried again. It was a bit like opening an oyster shell. I had to put both my thumbs into the little gap that I managed to make and wiggle them around. Then suddenly, the box gave up the fight and twanged all the way open, as though it had changed its mind and was now going to show off instead.

  Inside, peeping out of a little grey cushion just like a tiny cloud, was the brooch in the shape of a tree, just exactly as I remembered it from the past, with its trunk all encrusted with minuscule white diamonds, and above it, the pale green branches of emeralds shimmering in the last bit of the evening sunshine coming through the old apple tree.

  I couldn’t stare at it for too long because time was rushing by, and I knew I had ever such a hard battle coming up to put the case back in the attic before Lena came back. So I closed the box, went back into the hall and undid the straps of the case to pack it away, being clever enough to think that since it had rolled out and not been buried by the other things, it must have been near the bottom, so that’s where it had to go now.

  I’d finished putting it in its place and was just about to close the lid of the case when I decided I wanted to have just one last look, in case I never saw it again. I felt under the clothes, took the box out, and forced it open again. The letters had been folded up really tight and pushed into the top part of the box and now, with another jolt of the lid opening, they fell out onto the floor.

  Q

  I think Pa was right never to talk about Mummy after she’d left us. From the moment we got into the car at Finsbury Park, I just automatically understood why he’d never said before. That had always been Pa’s rule, and then it became my rule as well. I didn’t want to talk about it either. Not ever, not to anyone. Mummy had gone and wasn’t coming back, and I had to get used to it. I truthfully don’t know why she didn’t want to see me, but I think when you like drinking, probably your whole mind is affected, and all the things you used to like, even your own children, suddenly don’t matter to you very much. She was ill, in fact. I’ve read some things about alcoholics now—there was a long article about it in the Sunday Times Magazine during the summer that Pa left out by accident. It said that until the person wants to stop drinking there’s nothing you can do about it, and they’ll always let you down—stuff like that which makes quite a lot of sense, in fact.

  But just because I didn’t talk about it all didn’t mean I wasn’t thinking about her, and I was still hoping she’d come home—and actually, she did for a bit. I can’t remember how I know that, but she was at home for a little while during the summer term after that horrible Christmas. I didn’t see her because I was at school, of course. But she didn’t stay long before she went back to Trotsky John again. She never once wrote to me, or anything. By the time I went home for the summer holidays, she’d gone forever.

  It’s a blur, all that time right until I left Courtlands to come here to Whitchurch. I get things mixed up and in the wrong order, especially to do with being at home, and trying to remember things like all the au pairs who came to stay. There are only one or two things that stick in my mind to do with Mummy.

  I remember a letter on the doormat once when I came down to breakfast after Pa had left for work, and the au pair was hoovering in the sitting room. It was addressed to Mummy. I think it was from her old school friend Sheila who lived in Ipswich, and I decided to send it on to the house in Finsbury Park. I looked up the road in Pa’s A-Z in his study to get the postal district, though I wasn’t at all sure of the house number and prayed that I’d got it right. I just hoped that if it got to her, and she saw my writing she might decide to write back to me. After I’d put it in the postbox at the end of our road and was walking back home, I started wishing that I’d written a little note on the back for her, just something to say I was missing her like, ‘It would be lovely to see you,’ ‘Please write to me’ or ‘I send you my love, Mummy.’ It didn’t matter anyway, because a little while later it came back and was lying on the mat again one morning. Pa wasn’t even at home that day, but all the same, I was really worried about it being there at all, so I picked it up and shoved it into my pocket in a panic. When I went upstairs to my room and took it out for a look, I could see my words had been scratched out and there was new black, angry sort of writing in capital letters. ‘Pamela Teasdale has not lived here for many months. Address unknown. Suggest return to sender. John O’Brien.’ John O’Brien—that must have been Trotsky John’s real name.

  I kept the letter in my room that night, but it felt strange, as though I was breaking the agreement I had with Pa. When he had gone to work the next day, I took it up to the top of the garden with a box of matches and burned it in the long grass and then stamped the ashes into the ground.

  Some time later, two policemen came to the front door very early on a Saturday morning. It must have been in the Easter half term break because I can remember looking at the daffodils on the lawn behind them from where I was at the top of the banisters. They were talking in hush-hush voices that I couldn’t hear all that well although I was doing my best to, even though it might be something awful they were saying.

  ‘We’re here on behalf of Medway police, Sir,’ I heard. ‘…warrant for the arrest of Pamela Teasdale… charged with shoplifting… non-appearance at court…’ I think they were talking like that, sort of low and respectfully, because they were surprised to be looking for a criminal in such a nice area. It must have
felt all wrong.

  ‘My wife has not lived here for some time, officer. I have no contact with her whatsoever—and so I’m afraid I’m quite unable to help you…’ That’s what Pa said back to them, nearly as quietly as they’d been talking. I think he didn’t want me to hear.

  I crept back to my room on tiptoe and closed the door as slowly and silently as possible. Then I climbed back into bed and pulled the blankets over my head and told myself I’d not heard anything at all.

  I’ve always dreaded anything to do with the police, ever since the business in the park at Saxham. They are a bad omen, like ravens, or black cats, or smashed mirrors. I suppose a bad omen’s just about exactly what they were at the end, the very last time they came back. Again I wasn’t there, which Pa must have been very relieved about, because he would certainly have wanted me to know as little about it as possible. I don’t know for sure if it was the police who came to tell him, but I bet it was. Naturally, we’ve never talked about it.

  I did find out some of the details of what had happened, though. Quite soon after, I was having supper with the Hamiltons next door because Pa had a business trip and very often they invite me, even now, and I go along although I’d really rather not. Right in the middle of when we were eating, Pa phoned from somewhere abroad to check on me; Mrs. Hamilton answered and then told me to have a word with him in the study. Right on top of all Dr. Hamilton’s untidiness on his desk, I saw a piece of paper with Mummy’s name on it. I tried not to look, but couldn’t really stop myself. I certainly didn’t pick it up, but I’ve got very good eyesight and was able to read a whole chunk of it while Pa was talking. He kept saying ‘Ben? Ben? Are you there?’ because I could hardly take in anything he was saying. It was the weirdest thing—to be talking to him and reading about Mummy all at the same time. He’d absolutely have hated to know that I’d found anything out. I really don’t know why the Hamiltons had that stuff in their house. Perhaps anyone is allowed to see a report like that, the same as you can read anyone’s will if you ask to. When I went back to the dinner table my knife and fork were shaking in my hand so that I couldn’t eat anymore, but the Hamiltons didn’t seem to notice. It was only a few weeks after the funeral, and of course no one had told me any of the details. I wasn’t meant to know any of it.

  It was my last term at Courtlands when it happened, which is over three years ago now, but like I’m always saying, it’s somehow a bit of a blur, those Courtland days.

  In my head, it’s sometimes the policemen who came to the house about the shoplifting, and sometimes it’s the policemen from the park in Saxham, knocking on the door early in the morning. Then Pa is standing there with his arms down by his sides, and they’re talking to him in those same quiet voices while they tell him the dreadful news.

  Perhaps he told them again that it was nothing to do with him. Perhaps afterwards he went into his study and read his Daily Telegraph with a cup of coffee. Perhaps a few days later he went into the attic and undid the case and picked up Mummy’s things and put them against his cheek just like I did a few weeks ago.

  Q

  It’s that same bit of the M2 motorway I always see when I think of Mr. England in his Mini, driving to Deal for the very last time. The bit that goes down to the big bridge that crosses the Medway where all the little boats lie on their sides in the mud when the tide is out. That’s where I see him looking straight ahead with no expression on his face and his hands gripping the steering wheel. And that’s where I see the doctor in his car who had to go to the coroner’s court about Mummy.

  It was very early in the morning, and he was on his way to see a lady who had phoned to say that she thought her old Mum had pneumonia. While he was driving along in the rain and semi-darkness, he saw what he thought was ‘just a clump of old clothes’ on the other side of the road. ‘I don’t really know what drew my eye to it,’ he said, ‘because it looked really quite insignificant. I can’t begin to tell you why, but I felt compelled to take a closer look.’

  The doctor turned his car round, although that meant going quite far out of his way, and went back. Just when he was drawing up close and slowing his car down, he saw it wasn’t a bundle of clothes; for a moment he thought it might possibly be a shop window dummy, with the legs and arms at funny angles and a mass of red hair stretched out across a raincoat that was draped along the metal barrier on the side of the road. But once he’d got out and was walking back to have a proper look, he realised what he was actually looking at.

  Q

  Not long ago, when Pa and I were driving to London to go to the cinema, we were waiting at a red light by a closed-up charity shop—I think in Clapham Junction—and against the padlocked shutters a torn bag with old rags falling out had been dumped. A pigeon was pecking at something inside, then a dog came along, and when the bird flew off, he cocked his leg against the bundle. It made me think of all the people who might be so poor they’d have to buy the rotten clothes, not knowing that they came from a heap of worthless old rubbish that had soaked up the dirty drizzle, dog’s pee, and pigeon shit. ‘Just a clump of old clothes…’

  Q

  I didn’t put the letters back inside the box. I kept them out. I wanted to read them slowly, over and over again to work it all out.

  I was thinking I might put them back later, then something in my mind told me that Pa would never know I had them, and, in fact, he probably didn’t know they existed at all. Mummy had put the letters inside the box herself, and he’d never noticed. I hadn’t noticed myself, after all, when I first I opened it in the garden. They’re written on air-mail paper, as thin and light as tracing paper, just tiny wisps of words on four pages folded over and over again till they’re just the size of a few stamps.

  When it became time to put them back, just before I was leaving for school, I didn’t want to do it. I hadn’t finished looking at them, even though I’d copied all the words out and can read them whenever I like. I just so wanted to have the actual letters for a bit. Besides, Pa was back from his trip and too much around for me to do anything about it. I just couldn’t think of the business of bringing the case down again. It was such an unbelievable struggle to put it back up there, and I’d been so careful to make sure it was in exactly the same place as I’d found it. Before I pushed the ladder back up, I’d gone into the garden shed with a dustpan and brush and a cloth to gather up as much dust as possible to take back up into the attic to shake over my fingerprints on the case. I sneezed for absolute ages, and when Lena did come back from the pictures she thought I must have got flu or something.

  So I put the four pages into the back of my stamp album and brought them back to school with me.

  But I’m in a complete panic about it now. I just think that Pa does know about them. Perhaps he put them in the box himself? What on earth will he be thinking if he goes up there for old memories sake and they’re not in there? Everything will be just as it was except for no letters anymore, as though they’ve been spirited away. It was none of my business to take them. Please, please let it be that I’ve got the chance to go home this half term and put them back. Please let that happen.

  Q

  RAMZAI ABU’ILAM

  62, Rue Guynemer, Paris 6eme

  11 January,1968

  My dearest Pamela,

  How wonderful it was to hear from you after all this time, and how would it be possible for me to have forgotten the pleasure I found in your company? Of course I remember you! Indeed, I ask your forgiveness for this late reply—I would have wanted that your letter be answered by return of post, but as you see I am in my apartment in Paris for a few days with my eldest daughter who is enrolling in a Parisian school, and your letter reaches me via my staff in Beirut.

  It is of course quite impossible that I should want to receive back from you the brooch that I gave to you on our very first meeting; it was signifying nothing more than a joy at having made your acquaintan
ce and for you to remember the sweetness of that day. It was quite—as I think you say in English—‘a spur in the moment’ decision to present it to you, and sincerely I tell you that you owe me nothing for this gift. I would obviously wish that you might keep it forever to remind you not only of that first meeting, but also our dinners together under the stars on the Beirut Corniche and by the beach at Juniyah. They were wonderful times, don’t you think?

  How is your son Benjamin that my daughters have fallen in love with on your visit to our house? And your husband is in good health too, I hope?

  Pamela, it is quite possible for me to meet you as I am sometimes in London for my business, and it would be a delightful pleasure to dine with you again. I return to Lebanon next week and then have plans to be in London at the end of next month for a few days.

  It is truly wonderful to hear again from you. Do not hesitate to contact me and to let me know if it might be possible to meet when I come to London—the address of my Secretariat in Tabaris Square, Achafria, is the same but recently I have moved to the 9th floor.

  I send to you my very fondest greetings, dear Pamela,

  Ramzai

  RAMZAI ABU’ILAM

  9th floor, Tabaris Square, Achafria, Beirut

  15 September, 1968

  My dear Pamela,

  I am so very relieved to have word from you again after such a long time of silence that has so greatly perplexed me, but of course, I am also very concerned at the news that you have suffered such a terrible illness since our wonderful meetings last March. I do now understand why it has not been possible for you to answer my letters, and perhaps you have not been able to receive them? However, I am so pleased that the doctors at the sanatorium have now judged that you are well enough to have returned home, and I pray that your recovery is continuing.