The House on Fortune Street

by Margot Livesey

  “So either you’re neurotic or coldly calculating? That’s not fair. But it does seem the ideal job for you. Even when you were little, you were so good with people.”

  Dara allowed herself a moment to enjoy the sweetness of the pastry. Then she gave a theatrical sigh. “I’m not sure how good I am these days. Counseling is meant to work irrespective of the practitioner, but recently I’ve begun to wonder.”

  Anyone else would have asked what she meant; her father simply nodded. “When I first came to London,” he said, “I saw a therapist. Most of the time I didn’t have a clue what he was thinking.”

  He continued to talk about the process—the one-sided conversation, the strict time limit—while Dara grappled with this amazing revelation. Her father, her stuffy, reserved father, had been to a therapist. Did this mean he actually regretted abandoning his family? As if he sensed that she might be about to ask untoward questions, he changed the topic. Fergus was coming down from Aberdeen at the end of the month and hoped to have dinner with them. “And guess what,” he said. “Pauline has enrolled them in a ballroom dancing class.”

  “Brilliant,” said Dara, and allowed herself to be distracted by one of the few subjects on which she and her father consistently saw eye to eye: her brother. They both found him, and his marriage, utterly mysterious. He doesn’t know the nature of subtext, her father had said once, and she had agreed. Fergus was always fine.

  AT THE CENTER HER DESCRIPTION OF THE EXHIBITION CAUSED A heated debate. Why should a hundred and fifty years make exploitation into art, said Reina. But what if Dodgson was just an adult who paid an unusual amount of attention to children at a time when they were largely ignored, asked Frank. Think of the lovely stories he invented for them. That’s no excuse, said Joyce. He sexualized the children for his own pleasure. Even if all he did was take photographs, it’s still wrong. To her surprise Dara, now that other people were voicing her reservations, sided with Frank and her father. The photographs were beautiful. Something can’t be beautiful when people have been hurt to make it, said Reina. People like Dodgson ought to be carefully supervised. This last reminded Dara of Edward’s story of the conductor with the tracking device in his toe; she repeated it.

  “Poor guy,” said Frank. “That sounds a bit gruesome. I don’t approve of molesting children, but I do have some sympathy for people with inappropriate desires. Until recently I’d have been regarded as one of them.”

  While they were talking, Halley had come into the kitchen. “That is the big question, isn’t it?” She reached for the kettle. “What to do with inappropriate desires?”

  “These days,” said Joyce, “there are quite a lot of alternatives: drugs, aversion therapy, electronic monitoring, self-control.”

  “Good, old-fashioned self-control,” said Halley quietly.

  Joyce set down her cup—they all heard it hit the counter—and left the room.

  “I think that’s my phone,” said Frank, cupping a hand to his ear, and followed, with Reina at his heels.

  Still holding the steaming kettle, Halley stared after them. “Well”—she turned to Dara, smiling brightly—“I wanted to ask if you could switch with Reina tomorrow and run the four o’clock group.”

  “Let me check my diary,” said Dara, eager for an excuse to get away.

  AS THE LIGHTS IN THE CINEMA DIMMED EDWARD PUT HIS UMbrella on the floor and reached for her hand. Dara had been with men who held her hand as if it were a dull but useful book, and she had been with those whose touch was so careless as to seem irrelevant. But she had never been with anyone who held her hand like Edward, tenderly, firmly, as if they were having a secret conversation. She barely registered the opening scenes of the film. Now she understood why her relationships with other men had broken down. Although she had pretended to be, wanted to be, she hadn’t really been in love with them. Her deepest self had always been hanging back, reluctant to fully engage, and that in turn had engendered reluctance. Her feelings did make a difference. But with Edward…Quickly she summoned precautionary disasters: the flautist, with whom he’d gone to Thailand, reappeared, the center went bankrupt, her bicycle was stolen.

  The film, when at last she focused on the screen, was about a musical prodigy, a pianist of dazzling virtuosity who swept all before him only to give up playing at the height of his career. At his farewell concert women threw flowers and hotel room keys on the stage and the conductor had tears in his eyes but the pianist was adamant. The final scene showed him five years later, living in a secluded cottage in Cornwall. As he poured tea, his hand trembled with Parkinson’s. Then the camera took in the rest of the room; a small child was playing in front of the fire and a woman held a plump-cheeked baby.

  “So he got the things that mattered,” said Edward. While he leaned forward, studying the credits, Dara tried to hide her elation. He did like children; how wonderful; it had seemed too soon to ask.

  Outside they discovered that the rain, falling when they arrived, had stopped. Edward suggested they walk in the direction of Blackfriars Bridge and look for a restaurant. As they passed the National Theater, he began to reminisce about his first music teacher: the angelic Miss Luke. “She was the one who persuaded my parents to let me have lessons. Of course they regret it now. Playing a wooden box with strings is an absurd job for a man. They’re still hoping I’ll move back to Wales and work for my father’s company.”

  “Why can’t your brother do that?” said Dara. “He already lives there.”

  “Because he has zero interest in the building trade, and, more importantly, he’s their golden boy. If he wants to work in a bookshop and make sculptures out of bric-a-brac, that’s fine.”

  For a moment, Dara thought, he sounded ten years old. Wasn’t it strange, she remarked, that he and his brother had both become artists, given the lack of either nature or nurture. Edward said that actually his paternal grandparents had been very musical. Maybe the artistic genes had skipped a generation. She was saying that made sense, when he stopped, mid-stride.

  “You’re doing your counseling stuff, aren’t you?” He gazed down at her. “All these understanding questions. I should be on a sofa, paying you fifty pounds an hour.”

  “We don’t use sofas but I suppose I am. It’s an occupational hazard. You should tell me to get lost.”

  “Or retaliate.”

  “Or make up wild stories. Some of my clients do that.”

  As they started walking again, past the brimming restaurants and empty offices, the sound of a trumpet, playing nearby, grew louder.

  “How do you know?” he said. “About the wild stories?”

  “Usually people slip up.” She stepped around a puddle. “Or they volunteer that the situation is a bit different than they’d led me to believe.”

  “Aren’t you upset, though,” said Edward, “when you discover people have been stringing you along? Getting your sympathy under false pretenses?”

  His voice rose and, for a few seconds, as they passed the trumpeter, she imagined herself saying yes, she found it deeply upsetting. She and her tutor on the counseling course had talked at length about Dara’s difficulty in accepting mendacities, large and small. She remembered the outburst she had had about two friends: one, after years of saying she’d never get married, was engaged; the other, who’d claimed she didn’t want children, was pregnant. Why do people say these things if they aren’t true, she had demanded. Dara, her tutor had said gently, your friends weren’t swearing an oath; they were describing how they felt at the time. Which of course Dara already knew.

  But she was not yet ready to reveal this childish part of herself to Edward. Instead, as the music receded, she quoted one of Halley’s maxims. “If someone tells you a lie, they’re not telling you the truth, but they are telling you something. It just takes longer to figure out what.”

  “Look at St. Paul’s,” said Edward, pointing to the glowing dome of the cathedral that had, all along, been in view.

  DARA WAS STILL THINKING
ABOUT THIS CONVERSATION TWO DAYS later when she met with Ms. Banks, the borough liaison officer. Reluctant to commit herself to e-mail, or the phone, she had made an appointment. Now, in a small office full of straggly plants, she explained her concern that Joyce might have implicated her in complaints about Halley. And then, because Ms. Banks was listening attentively, she added that she couldn’t help wondering whether Joyce’s own complaints were occasioned by Halley’s applying for a job at City Hall.

  “Are you suggesting,” said Ms. Banks, “that Joyce has strong feelings about Halley?”

  “I suppose I am,” said Dara, taken aback by her acumen.

  “I hate situations like this.” Ms. Banks shook her head so that her earrings flew. “One person’s word against another’s. Of course you must be used to it.”

  Useless to say that as a counselor she seldom heard both sides of the story. “Is there anything to be done? Hally is an amazing organizer. She’d be great at City Hall.”

  “Actually”—Ms. Banks stood up—“she withdrew her application last week.”

  “She withdrew?” said Dara. “What do you mean withdrew?” But even as she spoke there was a knock at the door and Ms. Banks was apologetically ushering her out.

  Back in the busy street Dara stood staring at the traffic, trying to gather her scattered thoughts. Amid the cars and buses two hearses were rolling slowly by, each carrying a coffin surrounded by flowers. Watching them, she briefly forgot the startling news and remembered an afternoon in Edinburgh, when she and her grandmother, on their way to the shops, had passed a funeral. Her grandmother had said it was bad luck, they must try to find three black cats to cancel it out. Within a few minutes, amazingly, they had seen the cats and both become delighted, much happier, Dara thought, than if they had never met the funeral in the first place. As the second hearse disappeared she stepped into an empty doorway to phone the one person with whom she could discuss Ms. Banks’s revelation.

  “Halley’s withdrawn from the job,” repeated Abigail. “Does that mean she did whatever Joyce claims?”

  “I’ve no idea. I just want things to be back to normal.” For a moment she felt like crying. Work was meant to be the place where everything was calm and orderly. Meanwhile on the phone Abigail was saying she had done what she could.

  THE FOLLOWING WEEK EDWARD AGAIN CAME TO DINNER AT THE house. He brought cheese and wine and Dara made a fish stew which everyone praised. Looking around at the candlelit guests, she thought she had finally arrived in her life. Here she was with her lover, her friends, sitting around her table. She offered more stew, lobbed a new topic into the conversation. At eleven o’clock, though, when they were still debating public funding for opera, she began to long for the evening to be over. She stood up, reaching for the cheese plate; immediately Edward pushed back his chair. Within fifteen minutes the table was cleared, she had carried the candles upstairs, and they were safely in bed. Fifteen minutes after that—their bodies with practice had grown more fluent—he slid away.

  “Where are you going?” she said drowsily. “You don’t have to go.”

  “I do if I don’t want to queue for the bathroom in the morning and struggle with the rush hour. For me, that’s the antithesis of romance.”

  For me, Dara wanted to say, the antithesis is our making love and your calling a mini cab ten minutes later. Instead she reached for her underwear. “I’ll come with you. I’m not due at work until eleven.”

  Edward had not shaved that day, and as he stood over her, turning the sleeves of his white shirt right side out, his face, lit from below by the candles and framed by his long dark hair, looked almost savage.

  “Darling,” he said, “I’d love to have your company, but my friend Max is sleeping on the sofa, the heating is kaput, and I have to be at a rehearsal at nine sharp.” He slipped on the shirt, quickly buttoned it, and bent to kiss her. As his mouth touched hers, the room went dark and the smell of candle snuff filled the air.

  The next morning she telephoned Abigail to ask if she still needed a new tenant.

  AT THE CENTER DARA DISCOVERED THAT SHE WAS SCHEDULED TO meet with a Mr. and Mrs. Lyall that afternoon. A clients’ parents, she assumed, and thought no more about it until she came into the waiting room and a woman, dressed in an elegant navy blue suit, rose to greet her. Dara introduced herself and led the way to a meeting room.

  “Thank you for talking to me,” said Mrs. Lyall. “You probably don’t realize who I am.”

  Close up, her shining hair was more white than blond and her blue eyes were fanned with lines. She was older than Dara had thought, but no less beautiful. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I have so many clients.”

  “I’m Claire’s mother, Claire Frazer.”

  At once Dara could see the younger face still visible in the older. So this was the woman who had turned a blind eye while her husband did unspeakable things with their fourteen-year-old daughter.

  “Claire told her sisters she’d talked to you,” Mrs. Lyall went on, “and how helpful you’d been. I know that means she told you that Bill molested her, and that we deny it. I was hoping”—she gazed at Dara—

  “that you’d let me tell you our side of the story.”

  “I’d be happy to listen but I can’t reveal what Claire told me, or pass anything on to her.”

  “I understand. Thank you, thank you so much.”

  Mrs. Lyall’s voice wavered, then steadied as she began her story. Of course, she said, they weren’t a perfect family, but she could honestly say that, until this happened, they had enjoyed each other’s company. Their last normal contact with Claire had been the previous Easter when she and her sisters had come to lunch in Suffolk and they had gone for a walk by the sea. Claire had looked tired and confessed to sleeping badly. She blamed it on work.

  “The following week I phoned to ask if she was sleeping better and recommend lavender. I didn’t hear back. The next thing we knew she begged off her sister’s birthday party and then, a few weeks later, she announced that she and Ben were coming to see us. From the moment she stepped out of the car it was obvious she was very upset. We sat in the garden and she talked in this childish voice. She said she’d remembered something important. She described how one night, the summer her sisters were away, she couldn’t get to sleep. Suddenly the door of her room opened and Bill was there in his pajamas. He sat down on the edge of the bed.”

  Mrs. Lyall folded her arms tightly. “I can’t tell you the horrible story she’d concocted. She claimed he’d visited her several times, maybe half a dozen, and stopped when her sisters came home. Then she said she wasn’t planning to prosecute. All we had to do was admit what had happened and apologize and that would be the end of the matter. Bill was superb. He said, very quietly and firmly, that he was sorry she’d had these awful thoughts but he had never done anything like that.

  “Claire jumped up; so did Ben. She said her therapist had warned her this might happen. They got into their car and drove away. A few days later a letter came from Ben saying there would be no more communication until we confessed. Since then our letters are returned, our phone calls are ignored. We can’t bear not to have news of her so we persuaded her sisters not to argue with her. Now Bill has heart problems, and last week we learned that he needs a bypass. He’s terrified he’ll die without speaking to her. He’s almost ready to admit to anything to hear her voice again.”

  Mrs. Lyall fell silent. Dara gazed at her, confounded. In theory, as she’d told Edward, she knew that her clients might be lying, but in practice she had believed Claire’s story unhesitatingly. Now it was impossible not to believe her mother’s. Where was the common ground of truth? And where, she suddenly wondered, was the husband? She asked and Mrs. Lyall explained that they’d thought it would be better if she talked to Dara first. “He tires easily but he should be in the waiting room. I’ll fetch him.”

  She left the room and presently returned with a small, gaunt man swaying between two canes: the demon father.


  “I won’t sit down,” he said when Dara offered him a chair. “I might not get up. Thank you for listening to Valerie. It means a lot to us just to be heard, though I’m afraid it’s useless to say we’re not trying to pressure you.”

  “I’m sorry,” said Dara. “This must be terrible for you but I don’t know how I can help. Claire would be furious if she knew I’d met with you.”

  “What we were hoping,” said Bill, “is that you might talk to her therapist, ask her to meet with us. Perhaps as a colleague she’d listen to you. And perhaps Claire would listen to her. We can’t help thinking that she’d never have reached this point without that woman urging her on.” His body swayed as he spoke but his voice never lost the quiet firmness his wife had described.

  “Do you have any idea,” Dara said cautiously, “what might have started Claire’s panic attacks? You’re saying you were a close family and none of this ever happened, but there must have been some incident that made Claire accuse you.”

  “We’ve asked that question over and over,” said Valerie. “So have her sisters. The only thing we’ve come up with is that last autumn she told Paula, her younger sister, that she had a crush on her boss. She made it sound like a joke, but for a couple of months she talked about him all the time. Even we noticed that she was always singing Nick’s praises. Then, quite suddenly, she stopped. Paula’s theory is that something happened between them, something that Claire is ashamed of and blames herself for, and so she came up with this story where she’s utterly blameless.”

  Dara nodded. “I don’t remember her talking about Nick but she did say—” She silenced herself just in time.