House of Windows

by Alexia Casale

‘Is that Roger?’ Bill asked, squinting down the path.

  Nick nodded as if his head were badly connected to his neck. He hoped his face was blank rather than stricken, but his skin felt tight, his eyes dry with staring.

  ‘It is, isn’t it?’ Bill was saying, still squinting ahead into the sunlight. ‘Have you seen him at all these last two years? Since the funeral, I mean.’

  ‘We haven’t talked since the morning after Mum … after she got sick. Not that we talked then.’ The words came more easily than he’d expected, his voice calm and level. ‘I got up and he called Dad. Said I had to be gone by the time he got back from work. And that was it. We didn’t talk at the funeral.’

  A sound echoed across the graveyard. Roger was staring in their direction. His eyes fixed on Nick with something like rage, or fear, or grief. Suddenly, he crouched to slam his bouquet into the flower-holder at the base of the headstone with a movement like a sword thrust. Then he stalked off down the curve of the path that led around the far side of the church.

  Nick let out a sigh that felt equal parts relief and disappointment. For a moment, he looked away past the moss-grown wall to the village beyond. A woman in tweeds and wellies, surrounded by a pack of dogs, squelched past. She touched her hand to her gamekeeper’s hat when she saw them looking her way.

  ‘Where on earth has Mike got to?’ Bill asked, making a show of looking around for him.

  ‘If he doesn’t actually want to come to the grave that’s OK. Everyone deals with grief in their own way, right? I don’t need to make this hard on him.’

  Bill looked down at him, his expression torn. ‘Would you rather have a bit of time by yourself?’

  Nick shrugged. ‘I don’t mind. It’s good of you to come at all. You didn’t have to.’ He felt Bill watching him as he set off down the path again, cradling his own bouquet to his chest. Glancing back, he saw Michael, phone pressed to his ear, gesticulating wildly. The woman in the wellies stopped to glare at him. One of her dogs paused to pee on Michael’s car.

  When he carried on to the grave Bill matched him pace for pace, but then stopped a few steps away as Nick reached the plot and crouched beside the stone, hand hovering in the air over Roger’s flowers. Above them, a cherry tree was just coming into leaf. A sudden wind clattered the branches together, making Nick recoil and look up with a start of horror entirely inappropriate to the sight of the grey and blue patched sky, the fast-moving clouds. He swallowed, shook his head as if that would push away the echo of the sound of fins beating against shards of glass.

  ‘Penny for your thoughts?’ Bill asked, crouching next to him.

  Nick looked away to a cluster of daffodils polishing their budding trumpets against a nearby headstone. ‘I wonder whose grave that is,’ he whispered. The writing had all but been weathered away, what was left obscured by the shadows of the branches swaying across the pocked grey and yellow surface. ‘You can’t read the inscription any more, but someone still visits, leaves flowers. Do you think it’s just the church wardens or the person’s family, even after all this time? Someone who’s still grieving.’

  The leaves on the cherry tree were shiny and strange: a deep red-orange, like molten copper.

  Nick sighed. He put his bouquet carefully down on the grass, then tugged Roger’s from the grating.

  Bill drew in his breath.

  Nick dropped the flowers back into the holder, laid his own bouquet along the bottom of the stone, then climbed abruptly back to his feet.

  Bill stood too, reaching over to squeeze his shoulder. ‘Do you want … I mean, do you need …’ Bill stopped, took a deep breath. ‘I’ve noticed Mike doesn’t have any photos of your mum in the house. Do you … do you want me to find you one?’

  Nick flinched. ‘I’ve got a picture,’ he whispered. ‘In my room.’

  ‘Oh. Good. Just thought I should check: you know, in case.’

  Nick nodded without lifting his eyes from the gravestone, his throat working. ‘Do you think I should stay a bit longer?’

  ‘It’s up to you, Nick. What do you want?’

  Nick laughed, an oddly cheerful sound. ‘I want to stop dreaming about the fish dying.’ He turned away, let his feet lead him down the path away from the war memorial. ‘The fish tank broke. The night she got sick. I tried to gather them up but they were so quick. So desperate. There was this angel fish. It kept flapping about over my toes. I couldn’t seem to get hold of it. It kept arching about in the splinters of glass. It was the strangest noise. Like tinkling and clapping together. I scooped it up eventually and got it back in the water, but I guess there wasn’t enough left or I hurt it when I grabbed it, or maybe it had shredded itself on the glass, but when I put it back in the water it was dead already.’

  There were no words to describe the way it had floated to the surface, belly-up, already beyond hope.

  ‘By the time I caught the next one there was no water left to put it in. It felt so strange in my hands: like a butterfly trapped against a window. And then it wasn’t anything.’

  Bill waited for him to continue, but they walked on, a full circle around the church and then they were back at the war memorial.

  Michael saw them, held up a hand as he turned away to finish his call. He slipped his phone back into his pocket with a smile. ‘Right, shall we go find some lunch?’

  There were good bits to the day. The way the car sailed smoothly down the long straight road, field after field after field rushing by. The way the road curved to the left and suddenly the landscape was endless woods, all bracken and fern, yellow and brown with damp. The sudden flash of a lichened silver birch, the darkness of stunted firs. The way the world opened out into a horizon of sea and sky.

  They stopped and wandered a stretch of deserted pebble beach, pointing out shells and interesting bits of seaweed while the sky faded to palest yellow, the sun colourless above the hard grey water. Over the roar of the wind and the waves, the gulls screamed relentlessly.

  Now the storm outside the house, clawing around the chimneys, sounded little different.

  A yelp. Nick spun to see a figure looming in the kitchen doorway.

  The light flicked on, momentarily blinding him.

  ‘God, Nick,’ said Tim, sounding shaken. ‘Gave me a heart attack. Eyes glinting in the dark.’

  Nick blinked against the brightness as he watched Tim’s gaze move from the glass in his hand to the whisky bottle on the counter. When Tim looked up to his face again, he met his housemate’s eyes defiantly, lifting the glass and drinking deeply, jaw tightening as he forced back his reaction to the burn of the alcohol. ‘You going to tell my dad?’ he croaked as nastily as he could manage over the urge to cough.

  Tim crossed the kitchen to lean against the table. ‘How many glasses is that?’

  ‘My first. Thought I’d try it. It’s what everyone else seems to do when things go wrong. Not sure why, though, so you needn’t worry. I’ll be done after this.’

  Tim sighed. He pushed away from the table to fetch down a second glass, poured his own measure of whisky then put the bottle away.

  ‘Are you going to tell him?’ Nick repeated.

  ‘Not if this is just a one-off. I make no promises if it’s the start of a habit.’ Tim swilled the liquid about the bottom of his own glass. ‘You could try talking to me about it, you know. My sister bottled things up after our parents died. Didn’t do her any good.’

  Nick snorted, taking another deep swallow from his glass.

  ‘I might just understand,’ Tim said gently, taken aback when Nick’s head snapped up, a sneer twisting his face: an expression far too old for it.

  ‘You don’t know how I feel,’ he hissed.

  ‘Maybe I don’t,’ Tim found himself saying before he could stop himself. ‘I lost both my parents after all. And my sister moved halfway across the world.’

  Nick pushed himself away from the counter, gulping back the last of his drink with a sound midway between a cough and a bark of laughter. Slamming the
glass down on the counter, he glared at Tim with a depth of disdain that made Tim’s jaw clench with anger.

  ‘You don’t know how I feel,’ he whispered, voice sharp as broken glass. Then he was gone, flitting out of the kitchen and away up the stairs.

  Tim cursed under his breath, resisting the urge to punch a fist into the counter. Instead, he fetched out the bottle again. It took two further glasses to wash away the freshness of the sting of his anger at Nick. At himself.

  Chapter 21

  (Lent Term × Week 7 [≈ start of March])

  When Nick stepped out of the p’lodge to find the Men’s Third VIII standing across the path in Front Court, he turned back on himself and walked away, out of College again.

  It would probably have been fine, he muttered angrily at himself as he followed Trinity Lane left into Trinity Street. This is Cambridge University, not sixth form. But he didn’t feel equal to the possibility that there would prove to be little difference. They’ll have forgotten after the Lents. Better to wait until then. Not like I needed to be in College today. The library can wait. It would have been different if he could have visited Professor Gosswin, but without being able to seek refuge in her set there was no point pushing his luck.

  The sun had disappeared when he turned at Round Church into St John’s, the buildings rearing around him like a Tudor castle, cold and forbidding, ready to repel invaders. Even after eight months, he was still surprised by how different all the colleges were: how different courtyards within the same college were. The red-brick walls of First Court then Second Court pressed in on him as the clouds boiled angrily above the town. He half expected to find archers leaning out of the arrow slits or over the crenellations tipped in tawny stone, usually the colour of clotted cream, today grey and dull under the darkening sky.

  For once the Bridge of Sighs seemed forlorn, as if all the beauty of the stone tracery, the lancet windows opening over the Cam, had been drained away. He walked to the Backs and then along, through the gates into Clare and up the long path to the bridge.

  There was a precarious magic to Cambridge: a feeling that time didn’t work the same way there. That you could walk through a day stepping in and out of the past, the present, the future, all quite seamlessly, with no one batting an eyelid. The city floated below the fog of modern worries, all its rush and roar one step out of reach. Perhaps that was why the beauty of the willows weeping into the river, the gold of King’s chapel, the white of Clare, the wine-red of Trinity Hall, seemed suddenly painful, like something slipping through his fingers.

  The walk home seemed to stretch, long and cold, when all he wanted was to be there, now, curled up on his window seat with Professor Gosswin’s book under his hands. Instead, there were tourists standing in his path, and mothers with buggies ploughing a furrow through the crowds, and cars splashing up water from potholes.

  By the time he stumbled through the front door, tripping on the mail on the doormat, his throat felt raw with frustration and disappointment. He slammed about the kitchen, turning the act of tea-making into one of violence. When the kettle was grumbling on the counter, he slumped into a chair, hands in his hair, torn between laughter at his own ridiculousness and tears.

  Upstairs, he found himself staring at the postcard on his wall.

  Grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change

  Serenity seemed too much to hope for, but as always there was one thing he could do something about: one way to turn misery into success.

  He splashed his face with water, collected his supervision work, tucked Professor Gosswin’s book under the window-seat cushion and forced his mind on to his Analysis I problems.

  When the phone rang a while later, he answered without looking at the display, still finishing a line in his equation workings. ‘Hullo?’

  ‘Hi, Nick.’

  ‘Bill! Everything OK?’

  ‘Fine. I heard Professor Gosswin’s going into a nursing home. Just thought I’d check in.’

  Nick laid his pen down carefully, cleared his throat. ‘Different people recover at different rates,’ he said. ‘It doesn’t mean she’s stuck there forever. It’s not an exact science.’

  At the other end of the line Bill sighed.

  ‘I’m not expecting a miracle or anything but it’s too early to give up. It can be six months before a trajectory really becomes clear.’

  ‘Well, it’s good to keep positive so long as you don’t expect too much.’ They were both silent for a moment. ‘Look, Nick, I know your dad’s away this weekend so I was wondering if you might like to come down to mine for a day or two: have a change of scenery.’

  The face reflecting back from the window beamed.

  ‘Your dad and I had a talk over lunch the other day and we thought—’

  We thought … A stricken look replaced the smile. ‘It’s exam term. I have work to do.’ The words came out sharp and cold.

  For a moment there was silence on the other end of the line. When Bill’s voice came again, it was full of surprise and hurt. ‘A weekend off won’t do any harm, surely.’

  ‘You don’t have to do that,’ Nick said, voice rough with pain. ‘You’re not my father’s keeper, or mine. You don’t have to pick up the pieces: it’s not your problem.’ He’d hung up before he realised what he was doing, pushing the phone away so roughly it clattered off the far side of the table on to the floor.

  Tim looked up from his breakfast with a raised eyebrow when Nick let the phone ring and ring. ‘Are you still dodging Bill? It’s been three days. Can’t you give the man a break? I don’t know what he—’

  ‘Well, since it’s none of your bleeding business, that’s not a problem, is it?’ Nick snapped. The kitchen seemed suddenly dim and small, as if the feeling in his chest had squeezed the walls in. ‘I’ve got a lecture.’

  He pulled his coat on, setting a glare on his face as he opened the front door, but the day was unexpectedly bright and sunny, the world big and wide and full of other people with other problems.

  Parker’s Piece was his and the seagulls’, a white sea under a fierce sun. Nick paused in the middle, turning slowly around and around as he stared up at the cloudless sky, feeling tiny and isolated and peaceful.

  Frank wasn’t at the lecture and Susie hurried off the minute it was over, the rest melting away before he’d had a chance to ask if anyone fancied revising together over a cup of tea. The streets were hectic with tourists, frantic with hurrying irritated students, people on bicycles speeding the wrong way up pedestrianised streets. He headed towards College, planning to work in the library, but at the last moment swerved away and darted through the dreary forbidding entrance to Caius instead.

  Emerging into the light, he stepped on to a flagstone path lined with an avenue of peeling silver-barked plane trees. All around, the buildings soared up in blue-grey spires and gothic turrets, like a transplanted French chateau. Wisteria twined around windows and doorways, shimmering with the silver-white of unfurled buds. It always seemed preternaturally quiet here, like a secluded monastery rather than a college, as if he had stepped out of time and space. The trees embraced overhead, elegant and secretive, shading the path. It would be beautiful when they came fully into leaf. Nothing like the over-pruned trees, mutilated into order, that lined his father’s street in London.

  ‘Excuse me,’ said a sneering, nasal voice. ‘The College is closed to visitors.’

  Nick turned to find a bald porter in a stiff black suit glaring at him. ‘I’m a student,’ he said, drawing his library card out of his pocket.

  The porter took it with a scornful expression. His eyebrows rose. ‘Very well,’ he said, making a dismissive gesture. ‘You may continue.’

  Nick was tempted to pull a face, but the man stayed staring after him as he set off up the path. The inner court held wallflowers and pansies in happy reds and yellows and burnt orange, but he let the path lead him to the right, past the herbaceous border in front of the chapel, where forget-me-not and tulip
s cowered below a tottering ceanothus.

  Look at all that dead wood! With a disconcerting jolt, he almost thought his grandmother’s voice was real. Why aren’t the gardeners pruning properly? That’ll have to go right back.

  The sudden wish to be there again, in her garden, was like something wild and clawed in his chest, bringing tears to his eyes. For a moment, he nearly dived into the nearest staircase doorway to run up and up the winding steps until somewhere in the damp grey shadows he found a place where he could sit down, bury his face in his knees and let slow silent tears soak his jeans. He could practically hear his own ragged breathing already echoing down the stairwell, but instead he strode out of the gates.

  Along the Backs, the shadowed ground under the trees at the back of King’s was all bluebells and wild buttercups. He cut the corner along Queens’ Green to follow Silver Street, stopped to stare downriver. Under the Mathematical Bridge wood hyacinth nestled among a flood of daffodils.

  All his favourite places – all the beauty that usually made the worst days bearable – suddenly seemed flat and unlovely.

  Even though his work was on track, the lure of a First seemed dim lately. A minimum requirement, rather than a sufficient condition for happiness. Maybe it had been the less important part of his birthday ‘this time next year’ wish after all.

  He walked back towards College down KP, telling himself the story about the traffic cone a night climber had balanced first on one spire of King’s Chapel, then, as soon as they’d half-erected a scaffold to remove it, the opposite one. Then the tale about the Christmas an enterprising team of climbers covered all four corner spires with Santa hats. Anything to take his mind off the pain lodged in his throat, a promise of tears that refused to be swallowed down. Outside Trinity, he tried to smile at the wooden chair leg Henry VIII brandished above the Great Gate.

  Finally, sitting with his back against one of the yew trees in the Jesus grounds, damp seeping slowly into his jeans, he opened his notebook, fixed his eyes at the top of the page and read viciously, word after word after word.