‘You slept.’
Alison shifted her head onto my shoulder. She gazed up at me, without smiling. The hem of the duvet had slipped to the small of her back, and in that fragile first light her eyes had the dark, dull sheen of pewter. She looked serious and suddenly young, a girl of nineteen or twenty, innocent still of the world and afraid of everything it offered.
‘I think so,’ I said, and, without planning to, brought my mouth to hers. For the time of a slow kiss everything stopped and there was only us, pinned together, unexpectedly happy. We remained like that, disturbing the contented silence as little as possible and even then limiting our talk to long sighs and whispers, the words soft as dust and almost as shapeless, until eventually we were roused by the first sounds of movement from the bedroom next door. I got up and settled again in the armchair, and a few minutes later Maggie announced herself with a small tapping on the room door.
‘Everyone awake? Tell me if I’m disturbing anything?’
‘Come on in,’ I said. ‘We’re decent enough.’
She pushed through into the room and considered us. ‘Pity,’ she mumbled, then went to the window and looked out. The sky had already softened, and a light dew had set the long stringy grass of the back fields to shining. Only the ocean looked fully dark.
I got up from the armchair and slipped on my jeans. ‘I’ll make coffee,’ I said, and went through to the kitchen and lifted the pot onto the range. When I came back into the doorway, Maggie had perched herself on the edge of the sofa and was leaning over Alison, murmuring something that made both of them smile. They lifted their eyes, and Maggie considered me once more, this time with mocking amusement, scrutinising the stretch between my face and bare feet and slowly back again. I waited, not reacting, my demeanour holding to a game of calm, and when the coffee began to percolate I returned to the kitchen, lined up three mugs and poured, and only then allowed myself an easy breath.
Breakfast was scrambled eggs, slices of locally produced black pudding, slightly warmed soda bread and more coffee. I cooked, happy that the familiar routine could put me at ease. Liz sat quietly at the table. When I set a plate before her, she raked the tines of her fork through the eggs, ploughing straight and then cross patterns in the yellow pulp, and whispered to none of us in particular that her head felt as if someone had been swinging at her with an axe. I couldn’t help but smile. She took a bite of soda bread, chewed and swallowed, then gave up and settled back with her coffee. ‘Christ,’ she went on. ‘What was I thinking? And when I did finally get to sleep, the nightmares hardly let up the whole night. That’s it, I’m done with whiskey, for good and ever. Last night was absolutely the last time.’
I was surprised at my own appetite. The eggs revived me, and the coffee lit a fire. Everything was so fresh – the eggs, the milk, the bread – and perhaps because of the morning air’s clean snap, or because of what Alison had awakened in me, every taste felt heightened. I would have liked a final walk on the beach, but it was already somehow nine o’clock, and there was just no time. My flight wasn’t until three, but I needed to be checked in and so had to allow the guts of two and a half hours for the drive back. Three, if I were to hit traffic, which was unlikely, especially for a Sunday, but still possible. So I settled instead for standing at the back door, breathing the flavours and taking in the shades. You could already feel the heat, a promise of what the day would hold, and the air hardly moved, except when physically disturbed. A part of me, a small part, began to wish that I’d allowed myself a longer visit.
‘Thanks for coming,’ Maggie said, joining me in the doorway and then easing me a step outside. She slipped an arm around my waist and brought herself snug against me. ‘I hope you had a nice time.’
I kissed the top of her head. ‘Knock it off,’ I said.
‘What?’
‘You know what. You always know. The insinuations. For once in your life, stop interfering.’
‘It’s a perfectly innocent thing to say.’
‘You’re a long stone’s throw from innocent.’
‘I’m offended.’
‘Well, the truth often offends.’
‘I suppose. Anyway, I just wanted to let you know that I’m happy for you. I really am. Alison’s a sweetheart. And it’s done you the world of good. Both of you.’
‘Go ahead,’ I said. ‘Mock. But nothing happened.’
She laughed. ‘Relax, Mike. It’s no big deal. Everyone is allowed a bit of happiness once in a while. Are you blushing?’
I stared at the ocean so that I wouldn’t have to look at her. She’d always been able to read me like a news headline. Out in the distance, the water was deepening its colour, compressing more intently with every tidal pull from the shade of stone to that of unlit sapphire, and I could feel the insinuation of its crashing deep inside myself. A churning, as if I’d come to some brink and was about to be pulled in, as if I needed that. Dandelions and tufts of flowering ragwort speckled the field before us, bright as sovereigns and small suns among the scant scrub, and I knew that I was seeing the very things that artists saw, but yet again in too evolved a way, the detail but not the greater effect, and not the significance of all that lay beneath.
‘Will you be all right here? Alone, I mean?’
‘Are you offering your protection?’
‘Come on.’
She hugged me tight. ‘Thanks for worrying about me, Mike. And for asking. But I’ll be fine. As soon as I saw this place something moved in me. This is where I belong. It’s as if I can think more clearly here, or maybe that I don’t need to think at all. I’ll be able to paint again now. I know I will. And that’s what really matters, at least for me. Without the desire for that, I’m nothing. I’m a shell. There’s no meaning to my life.’ For a second, a smile broke the surface, and she sighed with deep and obvious contentment. ‘I’d never thought about that before, you know? It took coming here to make me understand.’
‘Well, you have my number if you need help. I mean it. I can be here in half a day.’
‘I know. Thanks.’
We didn’t discuss what had occurred the night before. It was in my mind to mention it, to ask where all that stuff had come from, and where she’d gone to while the words were flowing. But I held back. I told myself later that my silence on the subject was because whatever had lurked beneath the surface now seemed so diluted by the brilliance of a lovely new morning. But the truth was that a sting of fear still lingered with me, and it made me feel embarrassed and even, to a certain degree, ashamed. We all shared in that fear, and Alison, who’d been terrified nearly to hysteria, still carried the trauma of it in her expression. But I’d been the man in that room. I know that’s an absurd train of thought, but to pretend otherwise would be less than honest. More was expected of me, if only from myself. Something had happened, the things Maggie had said were clearly not of her own making, but I couldn’t bring myself to call her on it. We all think that we’ll walk through walls for the people who matter most to us, that we’ll willingly push ourselves against the muzzle of a gun for them. But we can’t know. Not until the moment arrives. I loved Maggie like a sister, but when it came to doing the right thing I lacked the strength, and the courage. Instead, she and I stood in the doorway, in silence, arms around one another, watching the ocean.
Suddenly, I didn’t want to go. The Ouija board was a mistake, but the rest of the weekend had been as close to perfect as any I’d known. The place, the company, the sense of escape, were all pleasures that I’d absorbed without conscious thought. But now that the time had come to give them up, I could feel the emptiness they’d leave behind. And it hurt more than I’d have believed possible. Work had dominated so much of my adult life, and it seemed ridiculous that I should feel such nostalgia for something I’d only briefly tasted. Yet the feelings couldn’t be denied.
Just before leaving, I managed to manoeuvre a few minutes alone with Alison, but there was little we could think of to say, little I could promise beyond
assuring her that I’d call as soon as I made it home. Now that we’d reached the moment of parting, we were both uncomfortable, and the embrace and kiss we shared was awkward and less than it might and probably should have been.
And then I went, and my memory of climbing the slope to where I’d parked the hired car has retained a startling clarity. I had on a clean shirt that was already beginning to dampen at the armpits and cling to the skin of my back, and for reasons I cannot quite explain I refused to let myself turn until reaching the road. I knew that Maggie was down there, waiting to wave me goodbye, and also that Alison had come outside to join her. The dirt of the path hinted at a mineral smell suggestively close to sulphur and had the dry, dead blackness of cinders except where mica poked through, causing it to glitter, and all the way to the top the strains of music accompanied me, seeping from the cottage through its open back door, piano and a voice that had lost its shape over distance but which I could recognise, largely because of the melody it carried, as something early Springsteen. When I did finally turn, the world off into the far distance had become majestic, a delusion familiar of any wild thing in its placid state. Maggie waved, and I raised a hand in my own so-long gesture. Because of a sense that I might glimpse something more than I was quite ready to see, I tried not to focus on any one detail other than the women, all three of them now, Liz having also wandered out to complete the huddle. Standing together, they looked lovely, full of youthfulness and life, but somehow vulnerable too, small against the world. They waved, and I could feel their smiles, and I waved back and counted seconds, then got into my car, let down the window, fired the engine and drove, tapping at the speed limit all the way, glad beyond words of the daylight.
Part II
Over the next several weeks, I let myself be consumed with work. A void of sorts had opened up within me, an emptiness that I knew no real way of filling, and so I compensated with long hours, wedging myself behind my desk and working the phones often late into the night, chasing deals both domestic and foreign, lining up exhibitions, closing sales. It was my coping mechanism, always has been. I left little room for life beyond the facts of business, apart from a few snatched days early in July, when Alison and I were able to enjoy a sweet if fleeting weekend rendezvous in a plush Edinburgh hotel after I’d been dragged northwards to promote a show for one of my artists.
Because I had slipped so far out of practice, and grown so used to the defensive wall I’d unknowingly built, it stunned me that we could be so natural with one another. But once the door closed behind us and we found ourselves alone together, the silences felt every bit as relaxed as the conversation. I’ve read that such easy stillness can count as one of the measures of love, though neither of us was anywhere near ready yet for a word as big as that. She stood at the foot of the bed, as comfortable as if she were alone in the room, emptying her small travel case in neat order and laying out the contents piece by piece. A change of clothes – skirt, blouse, sweater – a sleeveless white cotton nightgown, certain necessary toiletries, a slim pocket Berlitz guidebook to the city and a novel called The Enigma of Arrival marked roughly at a midway point with the green and white stub of an Aer Lingus boarding pass. I watched her from the grey-blue suede armchair, a wing-back that seemed built with precisely my shape in mind. An occasional breeze bothered the partially opened window’s net curtains into small stirrings, and for those few minutes there was need for nothing else. I remember thinking that I’d never in my whole life been so happy. This was a realm of pleasure I’d believed preserved for others, for actors and rock stars and people who can live on the edge and act as though they actually belong there, untouched or undisturbed by the relentless combination jabs of guilt and duty. Not for the likes of me. Yet here I was, and I felt relaxed, in a way I’d rarely if ever known.
She finished unpacking, taking her time, then let her hair down and without so much as a hint of embarrassment began to undress. When she glanced at me, just the once, a tiny smile softened everything, and I understood that we had gone beyond the need for games. And later, in the yellowed dark of a city midnight, exhausted beyond sleep, we held to one another and talked in broken whispers. She and Maggie had spoken only once since the house-warming, she said. A call maybe ten days after, which had caught her one late afternoon at the gallery. Nothing too intense, just calling to say hello, and to chat a little. There were no problems that she could detect, apart from a kind of distance in Maggie’s voice, but that could likely have been attributed to the line, or to her own imagination. I understood. Maggie often got that way when painting. Like she’d taken to living in a mire of fog. But other than that? Nothing particularly odd? No reason to worry? Because I’d had a couple of calls from her myself, her voice airily spinning from my answering machine after I’d gotten in late.
The first time, just checking in, nothing much to report except a snag with the plumbing, something minor but which was forcing her to bathe in an old tin basin that had come with the house. She’d held onto it after the clear-out, with the vague notion of maybe setting it up out front and filling it with flowers, and she’d had to spend the better part of half a day scrubbing with a wire brush just to get it back into some kind of usable condition. Still, it was more than worth the trouble, and there was something quite invigorating about dragging it into the living room and heating water in pots on the range. Sometimes she’d lie there in that water for an hour or more, she said, facing the window, watching the sun tumble into view on its way westward. And other than that, everything was fine. She’d been thinking also about maybe starting a garden, putting in some vegetables, a winter crop, even though it was probably a bit late in the season. Cabbage, turnips, carrots, a few drills of potatoes. The stuff of life, I thought, listening to her voice then and thinking about it afterwards. Reflections of contentment.
The second call came a couple of weeks later. Again, caught by the machine, it was something akin to a onesided conversation, she asking questions that were left with no choice but to hang, and answering queries that I had no way of putting. Was everything all right with me? Had I done the right thing yet and let Alison make an honest if not quite decent man of me? Yes, she was painting again, I’d be glad to know. Well, sketching, and chancing some experimental and extremely loose watercolour work. Nothing serious, really just trying to get a good feel for the sky and the fall of the land. But she hoped, all going well, to have something saleable for me by the year’s end. She wanted to paint the stone circle that she’d found in one of the fields above the cottage, and also the hills in twilight and the ocean in storm. In her mind, she said, she’d already begun. She could feel the lines of the work, the impact of the colours. She felt inspired. And the cottage? Yes, the cottage was fine, perfect, the joy of her life. On wet days the air turned white, and when the wind blew hard it made the sound of voices. So she had no shortage of company.
Alison’s hair lay in sloey ropes across the pillow. She smiled, half asleep, while I inched my mouth along her collarbone and neck to her punctured but naked earlobe, and she opened her eyes wide and laughed when my hand slipped over her stomach and ribs and found the modest swell of her left breast. After that, and for the rest of the weekend, we talked only of other things, both of us unconsciously aware, I think, that any more on the subject of Maggie would have been too much and would quite possibly have ruined what we had going. For the next couple of days we strolled the city, absorbing the history, the culture, the sights, all the good things that the place had to offer. There were moments, real as flesh and bone, not only during the hours we spent in bed but also sitting together in some restaurant snug, feeding one another bites of lamb or braised beef, or just walking, holding hands, along the Royal Mile or around Greyfriars, when I found myself wanting this as a permanence in my life. A part of me knew that, because it was just a weekend, and because there was no hardship in such short-term surrender, I was not yet seeing the entire picture, but in the weeks after we’d both returned to our regular routi
nes, the shining light of our Edinburgh experience did not abate. And it made me realise, or accept, that I’d been alone in every sense for far too long.
The phone became our tether. I’d call her most nights, unless either one of us had reason to be tied up, or else she’d call me. We’d chat then, clean through into the small hours, sharing the details of our day and considering, casually at first but, as the weeks passed, with increasing enthusiasm, just how good our time together had been, how great, actually, and how much we each longed for the chance to enjoy more of the same. The world felt empty now that we were apart. Briefly, we discussed the possibility of another weekend, some place close but nice, somewhere like Paris, and then I suggested that maybe she could just come to London and let me show her what a big city was really all about. She laughed and asked if I was talking about size, and I said of course I was, that size was everything when it came to cities and that we had it all here in London, the sights, the sounds, the history, even the shopping. All aspects of life, the glorious and the gruesome. And that’s how it happens, I think, how relationships begin to define themselves as more than mere passing fancies. I started to see things from a new angle, and though at that point I still lacked the courage to put my thoughts into actual words, I’d already begun to consider how a future might play out for us, and just what it would take, just how much I was prepared to sacrifice, to make this something permanent.
The Dead House Page 7
