We sat together for a long time, a couple of hours at least, side by side on the couch, our arms and shoulders touching, our talk flowing as freely as the wine. The song of her voice was irresistible, a soft vibration of sound that made its way inside me and lit a fire, and I told her as much, which at once embarrassed her and made her happy. We didn’t really need the alcohol but it helped soften the edges, and made it easier to sidestep the subject of my detour to Cork. Alison didn’t push, knowing I’d open up to her when I was ready, but that I was a while yet from such a conversation and too raw to face up to what had happened down there. Instead, we spoke of other things, everything and nothing, the words themselves far less important than our interaction. Work, of course, new artists I’d seen or heard of, the sales she’d made in recent weeks, and about the world in general, the joys and headaches of living in Dublin and London, my recent business in New York, places we’d been in our respective lives and places we’d love, for a variety of reasons, to see or see again. For her, Cuba, Sicily, Egypt; for me, the Marquesas, French Polynesia, the runaway world of Gauguin and Brando and Robert Louis Stevenson. The words were just a balm, floating dreams, but a way of reconnecting. And then, draining what must have been her third or fourth glass, she leaned in, kissed me and said in a deep sigh how good it felt, us being together like this. How right. I drew her against me and left unmentioned the depth and breadth of my surprise at just how much I’d missed her during our time apart, how many times a day she entered my mind and how, when my phone rang at night, my heart upped its rhythm, knowing it would be her.
*
The following morning, I woke alone from a deep, consuming sleep. I’d slept past seven o’clock for the first time in months, maybe in years, and for a minute or so, before the world fell in on me again with all its shapes and edges, I lay very still in that big strange bed, confused and disoriented. The room’s décor was comfortably spare, the blanched colour choices emphasised by a burden of smudged light that filtered in through the tall rain-scudded casement window. Beyond the glass, the Dublin sky moiled. And then, like photographic paper slowly giving up its captured truth to the plunge of a chemical bath, memories of the night before began to break the surface, and with them, a yawning calm. Naked beneath the heavy duvet, I kept my breathing to sips, afraid that I might somehow dispel the idyll.
Beyond the open doorway a radio was playing, low music that I recognised but couldn’t quite identify, and from the kitchen the kiss and splatter of bacon in a pan. I listened for Alison, but her movements, if she was even there, were silent. I thought of calling out, hoping that I could perhaps lure her back to bed, but instead I pushed away the bedclothes, got up and slowly dressed while watching the traffic build in murmurs on the North Circular Road. Already, the day felt caged, the sky laden with the kind of dirty heft that tightened every expression, even smiles, a half-turn beyond comfort.
‘You’re up,’ she said, when I entered the kitchen.
I nodded, crossed the room to where she was standing with a wooden spatula, kissed her mouth and then took a seat at the table. She’d made a pot of tea, and I started to pour but stopped because it was still too weak, and instead leaned back in my chair to watch her. She had her hair up in a loose mess, exposing the glassy nape of her neck, and wore a bulky pale blue flannel dressing gown, a couple of sizes at least too big, fastened by a matching belt snugly double-knotted across the waist. I watched her break eggs into the pan and smiled to myself at the slightly childlike way she had the cuffs of her sleeves turned up, exposing so many inches of wrist, obviously in an effort to keep her hands free from obstruction. And then the thought broke in my mind that the gown, given its size, must have belonged to someone else, and I turned my head away so as not to have to see too much of her history. People have pasts, of course, the grain of which runs often to the bone, and sometimes it can be difficult to let all the way go. I didn’t blame her or hold the facts of her life against her, but this particular morning I simply wanted to spare myself such details.
‘Did you sleep well?’
‘I did. A lot better than I expected to. You?’
She turned her head and offered a quick profile grin in reply. I nodded again, to myself this time, and once more chanced pouring the tea.
‘The wine, I expect. That always puts me out cold.’
‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘I’m not sure I’d give so much credit to the wine.’
On the radio a peculiar, asexual voice seemed to be discussing rather than announcing the weather forecast, its continually questioning pitch caging it into a one-sided conversation. The accent wavered, an affected mid-Atlantic twang less than successfully cloaking the occasional but elongated jabs of throaty mountain Irish. But it didn’t matter; the important words on offer were wind and rain, variations thereof. I waited for music and tried not to feel too disappointed when it arrived, it being the sort of pop that they continually peddle as classic these days but which, by my reckoning, lands about twenty-five years too late for that status.
After a few minutes, Alison brought me a plate piled with three strips of bacon, two sausages, mushrooms, tomato and two softly fried over-easy eggs, exactly how I like them, and she sat down and began buttering enough toast for both of us. That amused me, though I didn’t let it show. I took a slice from her, tore a piece free and used it to break open one of my eggs. She sipped tea, and there was a lightness in her face, a happiness I think, that made me blush a little, though I am not usually the blushing kind.
‘Fried eggs need to be eaten hot,’ I said, the only thing I could think of to say.
We ate without much talk. I tend towards small breakfasts – a bowl of muesli, or porridge if I’m not in too much of a hurry – and fried breakfasts like this are a genuine treat, something I never make for myself and which I tend to eat only when I am away from home, staying in some hotel. But this morning I was ravenous, and the sausages, in particular, were like nothing I’d ever tasted before: a pork and apple variety, she told me, when I asked, a speciality of one of the butchers in town.
‘So tell me about Maggie,’ she said, after letting me finish. She poured us both a second mug of tea. ‘How bad is it?’
‘It’s not … I’m not sure that “bad” is exactly the right word. Because how would you define bad? And you know what she’s like, how she gets. The paintings, I don’t know. She gives them too much of herself.’
‘But you’re worried.’
‘Worried? No. Not really. I wouldn’t say worried.’
‘I would. You drove a couple of hundred miles out of your way yesterday. If everything was fine you’d have said something last night. But you didn’t. And I could feel how tense you were.’
‘That wasn’t all tension.’
‘Come on, Mike. Be serious.’
‘Well, all right, maybe I am a little worried. But there’s good reason, I think. It’s that place. Christ. How can anyone live out there? And she’s really let it go. And herself, too. I have a tendency sometimes to overreact, and I keep wondering if it’s maybe not as bad as I think. But it is. You should see it. And you know what’s gone on with her, that she’s had her problems.’
‘That’s putting it mildly. A problem is when the toilet gets backed up or when the neighbour starts blaring heavy metal at three in the morning. What she went through was streets beyond any of that.’
‘Right. Which is why it can’t be such a good idea for her to be so isolated. I’ve always thought that, right from the beginning, and I know it for certain now. But there’s no talking to her.’
Alison held her mug tented between the fingertips of both hands, and took the tea in a series of rapid sips. I saw that on her left wrist was the delicate gold chain that I’d bought for her in Edinburgh. It fell against her skin in easy fashion, in a way that seemed comfortable. She wore no other jewellery, no nail varnish either. Her hands were clean and pale, with a certain small-animal fragility.
‘Well,’ she said, over the b
rim of her mug. ‘Is she working, at least?’
‘She’s doing nothing else.’
‘Really? But that’s good, isn’t it?’
‘I don’t know. It should be, of course, but I’m really not sure. From what I’ve seen, the whole thing has gone beyond obsessional. I think she might be in the middle of some kind of breakdown. You should see her, Ali. She’s in ruins. It’s like she has no control over herself. Christ, it’s almost, I hate to say it because I know how it’ll sound, but it’s almost as if she’s possessed. The whole time I was there she seemed like someone hypnotised. Her hair is a mess, she’s lost so much weight that her bones are showing white through her skin, and I don’t think she’s washed herself in weeks. Nobody gets like that by choice. And the new stuff, the paintings. God.’
‘You’ve seen them?’
‘Not exactly, not to study. Glimpses, mostly. When I searched the house, I found a few leaning against a wall in the bedroom, but the room was murky and it was hard to take in the detail. Actually, the main thing on my mind, if you want to know the truth, was getting out of there. The place had such a bad feeling about it. The only painting I had a chance to properly consider was the latest, the one she’d been working at down on the beach. A work in progress. I don’t know, maybe it’s me who’s losing it. Artists have a process, don’t they? And there are no rules to say it can’t change over time. Maybe this is how she needs to work now. Her head must be wrecked from all she’s been through. It’s difficult to know what to think. But I can’t help feeling there’s something wrong. Something outside herself. I know, I realise how it sounds. Talking like this, I sound mad even to myself. But most of what she paints, she destroys. That’s if she’s to be believed. And that’s not normal. She’s always had a tendency towards such behaviour, but in the past it’s been about the chase for perfection, about trying to make the work fit the vision. And she could always be made to listen, and to see sense. But this is different. What she’s working on now, even from the little I’ve seen, isn’t like anything else she’s ever done. Not her style at all. I know her work better than anyone in the world, just about, I could pick out one of her pieces from a pile of a thousand expert forgeries. It has to do with the weight of her hand on the canvas, and the way she pulls the brush. Maybe in watching her develop and evolve over so many years I caught something of the feel of the work. So I’ve always been able to understand her changes in direction, even when some of the turns taken were fairly wild. But if you put this new stuff in front of me I’d never be able to ascribe it to her. That’s how much she’s changed. Certain elements can be recognised if you look closely, but they’re largely suggested.’
‘And you’re sure you’re not exaggerating?’
‘Do you think I am?’ I shrugged. ‘Maybe. I’m not sure of anything any more. At least not where Maggie is concerned. How can I be? But what I do know is that the cottage has been let fall apart. She had the place so nice, too. Remember? But you’d hardly recognise it now. It’s filthy, the mice are back, nesting in the thatch, the walls are decked with sheets of paper smeared in paint and charcoal, and there’s a stench like you wouldn’t believe. The smell of dead things. I don’t generally put a lot of stock in what passes for normal, but I just can’t accept that anybody should be living like that, and I certainly don’t buy that anyone would live that way by choice. Tell me if it sounds like I’m overreacting because I’ll be more than glad to rein myself in, but that’s how I feel.’
Alison rose from the table and set to boiling water for more tea. She said nothing, just stood there, gazing out of the window at, I suppose, the road and footpath below, the lapels of her dressing gown bunched in one tight fist just beneath her throat. I waited, trying not to watch, but her movements between the kettle and the sink kept grabbing at me. A song came on the radio, something vapid, a girl’s voice slurring words only just saved from being empty as space by an annoying but catchy melody playing out over the same generic drum and bass slam that seems all you need now to make an impact in the charts. Well, that and a willingness to show off nine and a half tenths of your ass and then act outraged when someone brands you a slut or a prostitute.
‘I called Liz a month or so back,’ she said. ‘You remember Liz.’
‘The poet? Yeah, of course.’
‘She and I have kept in touch. We got on really well that weekend and often call one another up, just to chat. Did I tell you I’ve started carrying her books in my gallery? A small display of signed copies beside the reception desk. No commission or anything, it’s just to help her out, and to bring something a bit different to the place. They’re selling, too, especially to the tourists. Anyway, she lives in Bantry, as you know.’
‘I remember her talking about the mythology of the place.’
The kettle came to the boil and switched itself off. Alison scalded the pot, dropped in three teabags and added the water.
‘She told me that she’d stopped in a few times to see Maggie. Not as often as she should have, she said, but who can blame her for that? Life gets in the way. It happens to the best of us. But over the course of a summer, three or four visits isn’t bad. Her first call was just a couple of weeks after we’d all been there. They spent a nice hour or so eating a lunch of some cold meats and deli salads that she’d brought with her, and chatting and laughing about the likelihood or otherwise of either one of them snagging a local farmer. One of the heavyset, ruddy-faced types that you’d see in the post office or supermarket in Allihies, she said, men who cut their own hair and chew incessantly on a bit of cheek, and who move through the aisles and along the road as if they can still feel the saddle beneath them. Light-hearted conversation, perfect for a summer’s afternoon. But when she made it out that way again, maybe three weeks later, something had changed. Small differences, she said. Cups and plates piled abandoned in the sink, the clean edge taken off the living room. Maggie herself seemed fine, if a little distracted. Her eyes kept slipping into stares and her voice had fallen to a murmur. As if the air had gotten in. She mentioned that she’d been spending a lot of time outside, that she’d started sketching again and was thinking about breaking out the brushes. Liz recognised the sensation of vagueness, because she herself got that way sometimes when a poem really took hold of her. But with Maggie it seemed magnified, and she wondered if perhaps there might have been something else involved. A smoke, pills, something that dulled the facts just enough.’
I thought about it as I poured the fresh tea. Drugs. On one level it made sense, and yet it didn’t quite cover all the bases. In some ways, the idea probably raised more questions than it answered.
‘A mental problem might be a better fit,’ I said. ‘Bipolar, maybe, or schizophrenia. They say that the least thing can set people off. Her hospital stint could have provided the trigger. Or the solitude she’d found. After London, so much quiet had to be a massive shock to the system.’
The colour seemed to seep from Alison’s face. She put down her mug and stared at me.
‘Ali? What’s the matter?’
‘Liz mentioned something else, too,’ she said, in a voice almost too small to hear. I had to lean in to catch the words. ‘They were standing in the doorway, and just as she was turning to leave she heard something. A noise from the bedroom, as if there was somebody else in the house, the lumbering sound of something heavy being dragged or dragging itself across the floor. She was startled, but Maggie’s demeanour didn’t shift. “It’s just the Master,” she said, her voice as calm as the afternoon, and with a smile of goodbye she stepped back inside and shut the door.’
‘Jesus. Why didn’t you tell me this before?’
‘I don’t know. I suppose I didn’t want to make anything of it. That night with the Ouija board really frightened me. It was such a stupid idea. You’ll probably think I’m acting like a child but for the better part of a week after, the only way I could get to sleep was by leaving the light on in the en-suite. I had to prop the door open. But even with the l
ight, I suffered the most horrific nightmares. Unrepeatable stuff. A couple of nights, I actually borrowed a friend’s dog, a hyperactive little Bichon Frise named Tufty, and had him sleep in the room with me just so I wouldn’t have to be on my own.
‘Something came through to us that night, Mike. Nothing will convince me otherwise. And it was as if it had in some way attached itself to me. I was being foolish, of course, but I couldn’t free myself of the notion. What matters is that it felt real. God, I get chills just thinking about it. And I don’t even want to imagine what it must be like for Maggie, having to sleep in that cottage without the security of companionship. Say what you want about Dublin, or London, or any city. Any town, even. If you scream, somebody will surely hear. They mightn’t exactly come running, but they’ll hear. I’d die and turn to dust if I had to be Maggie for a night, if I had to spend a night alone in that house.’
‘A night? Based on what I saw yesterday, the condition of the place and the feeling of it, even an hour would be too long. Even in broad daylight.’
‘It got so bad that, finally, I spoke on the phone with Liz about it. I just couldn’t get away from the memories. And you know how it is when you can’t sleep. What it does to you. New details would come to the surface every time I closed my eyes or had a spare minute to think. I implored of her to admit that it was all just a prank, that she’d been manipulating the glass the whole time and had put Maggie up to playing along. I even cried. That’s how deeply I was affected by it all. But she swore to me that she’d done nothing. And I believed her. I didn’t want to, but the heart decides these things. You can list all the evidence you want but there’s no way you can make yourself believe something, just like you can’t make yourself not believe. I know what I saw, and what I felt. I wish it were different, but that’s it. And Liz felt much the same.
The Dead House Page 10
