The House on Fortune Street

by Margot Livesey

  As they cooked, they had the kind of conversation they had had so often at university, and seldom since. For the first time Dara realized how painful it had been for her friend to endure Sean’s indecision. “We’d have these amazing days together,” Abigail said, slicing garlic to almost transparent thinness, “days when I felt that here was the person I knew best in the world. Then he’d go back to Judy and I wouldn’t hear from him for a week.”

  “You never thought of giving up on him?”

  “Hundreds of times.” She slid the garlic into a frying pan. “Remember when I went to Paris? Beforehand I’d told him it was over. I don’t think I’ve felt so wretched since my grandparents died. I kept walking to get away from the pain. I walked from Notre Dame to Sacre Coeur, from the Arc de Triomphe to the Place des Vosges. When I got back, he’d filled the answering machine, there were so many letters I could barely get through the door. And suddenly there he was.”

  “I had no idea,” said Dara. “From the outside you always seemed so sure you were destined to be together.”

  “One of us had to be.” She gave the frying pan a shake. “I know this sounds arrogant but I used to think there were special cases, and that I was one of them. I’m attractive and I have an interesting life. Sean changed that. Over and over he said one thing and did another. People may make extravagant claims when they first start fucking, but once the novelty wears off, they pretty much revert to type.”

  “But you do still love him,” said Dara, “don’t you?” She was startled by the bitterness in Abigail’s voice, and by how much she sounded like her old, pre-Sean self.

  “Yes, but not in an ‘I will go to the ends of the earth, die without you’ way. I was right when I thought that was all an illusion, a nice, big middle-class illusion. For a year I woke up most mornings with a quote from Keats running through my head: ‘Life must be undergone.’ According to Sean”—she stepped back from the stove—“he believed that suffering is what gives us souls.”

  “I believe suffering makes us stupid,” said Dara.

  When they were seated at the table, with plates of roast chicken, potatoes, and spinach, she asked if Abigail remembered the woman she had told her about last autumn, the one who had been molested by her father. She described her encounter with the Lyalls. “It was so confusing. I completely believed each of them.”

  “So somebody’s a good actor,” said Abigail. “Or completely deluded. I take it that now you’re siding with the parents?”

  “Yes, but I worry I’m being unduly swayed by the father’s frailty.”

  “Who wouldn’t be swayed by the sight of him wobbling on his walking sticks? It doesn’t necessarily mean that he didn’t do everything he’s accused of. And more.”

  “That’s what gives me a headache. I suddenly understood the value of lie detector tests. I wanted so badly to know who was speaking the truth.”

  “Although if Claire really believes her story she’d pass the test with flying colors. Some people can’t tell the truth, even if they want to.”

  When Frank had made almost the same comment, Dara had nodded sagely. Now Abigail’s words seemed to hover over the table. She felt a stab of pain in her forehead. The metaphorical headache was suddenly piercingly literal. Was she having a stroke? A seizure? She felt a curtain of darkness slowly falling between her and everything else. If she moved, she knew, even the table, even her plate, would vanish. She pressed her hands to her forehead, trying to push the pain back through the bone, back into some hidden crevice of her brain from which it had emerged and where it belonged.

  “What is it? Is something wrong?”

  Abigail was on her feet, squeezing Dara’s shoulders, but Dara couldn’t speak, or move. Abigail’s hands disappeared. There came sounds: a drawer opening, the fridge door. “I’m going to hold ice to the back of your neck,” Abigail said. “If you’re having a migraine, that will help. And I’ve put the kettle on for coffee.”

  The ice shocked, then burned, but at least she felt something besides the pain. Abigail moved away; the smell of coffee filled the air.

  Dara lifted her head a few millimeters; she ventured a few more. The curtain was rising, the pain slipping away, leaving in its place a memory of pain that was almost as frightening. Abigail was sitting beside her, gazing at her anxiously. “Are you all right? What happened?”

  “I don’t know.” Even this simple sentence was an effort. “I felt as if my head was going to break open.”

  “Your lips turned white. If you hadn’t started talking, I was going to phone for an ambulance.”

  “Thank goodness you didn’t. I’d have felt like an idiot.”

  “Promise you’ll go and see your doctor tomorrow. I’ll come with you, if you like.”

  Dara protested that she had no other symptoms, but Abigail was determined; the first sign of her father’s fatal illness had been headaches. Finally Dara promised she would go. Abigail tucked her into bed, loaded the dishwasher, fetched a hot water bottle from upstairs, and exhorted her to phone immediately if the pain returned.

  Alone in bed Dara lay staring at the ceiling, both exhausted and preternaturally alert. Sometimes she asked her clients to imagine themselves in a significant landscape. Now she saw herself walking in a wood at dusk. Leaves and twigs crackled underfoot. In the distance she could make out the lights of the house she was trying to reach, glowing and welcoming. But as she wound her way toward them through the trees, she began to realize she was not alone. Someone was following her, stalking her. If she wasn’t careful, she would catch sight of this dark figure. It took all her energy, all her vigilance, not to turn around.

  THE DOCTOR, A YOUNG INDIAN WOMAN CLOSE TO DARA’S AGE, listened to her account of the previous evening, checked her blood pressure and advised rest and exercise. Perhaps you’ve been under stress recently, she suggested. A multivitamin with iron is a good idea. Dara nodded, and confessed to sleeping badly. “Which of course can make you dizzy,” said the doctor. She scribbled a prescription. “This should do the trick,” she said. “Good luck.”

  While Dara waited, she had been telling herself stories about brain tumors and strokes, not so much to ward off these dark possibilities but to keep at bay the more immediate threat that the doctor might ask awkward questions: Do you have a partner? Are you in a monogamous relationship? Now, once again, her strategy was vindicated. She filled the prescription and treated herself to a taxi home. Back at the flat, she retrieved Jane Eyre from the bookshelf and returned to bed. Remembering Sean’s comments, she started with the brief biography of Brontë. She knew the main facts about the grim parsonage and the mother’s death, but she had forgotten that the dreadful school, Lowood, was based on the one Charlotte and her sisters had attended. Later, in Belgium, Charlotte had developed an attachment to a married man. In writing Jane Eyre she had combined this passion with several accounts of madwomen kept in attics, and one in particular about a man revealed on the eve of his marriage to already have such a wife. Brontë herself, the biography concluded, had married when she was nearly forty, and died a few months later.

  Quickly Dara turned to chapter one. Almost as soon as she read the opening sentence— There was no possibility of taking a walk that day —these disagreeable facts melted away. She became absorbed in the struggle of Jane’s childhood, first with her aunt, then at school. At last, after a typhus epidemic, the latter improved. The eighteen-year-old Jane advertised for a job as a governess and received a single reply, from a Mrs. Fairfax of Thornfield Hall. Dara got out of bed and went to the desk in the living room. In the top drawer was the sheet of paper on which Edward had written his address: Edward Davies, 79 Thornfield Road, London SE 11. So that was why the name had seemed familiar. She was still staring at his neat printing, unnerved by the coincidence, when the phone rang and there was Edward. At the news that she was in bed, he at once said he would come round. “Can I bring you anything?”

  “Orange juice would be great.” She hung up and went to hide
the carton she had bought that morning.

  By the time he arrived, she was sitting up in bed working on reports for the center. She had stopped reading soon after Rochester’s arrival; she had no interest in the vicissitudes that Brontë seemed to need to inflict on her lovers. Still, at the sight of Edward, his hair spilling over his collar, his shoulders broad in his heavy coat, her first thought was that he could have stepped out of Thornfield Hall; his carriage would be waiting outside, ready to bear them away to some extravagant ball. While she told him about her headache and how Abigail had made her see the doctor, he took off his coat and sat on the edge of the bed.

  “Maybe you should stop bicycling until it gets warmer,” he said, gazing at her earnestly. Then he told her that two new pupils had signed up and a third was coming for a trial lesson. “I probably need six or seven more, given that people quit and cancel for all kinds of reasons.”

  “That’s wonderful. Have you a chance to talk to Cordelia?”

  “Not yet, but I did talk to our friend Gordon. He said I should wait until I’m ready to move out to tell her about us.”

  Dara clasped her knees, trying to conceal her happiness. At last she was no longer a secret. “What else did he say?” she asked greedily.

  “He’s happy for me.” Edward bent to take off his shoes. “Very. He’s known for ages that things were difficult. And he thinks it’s good you’re not a musician.” Before she could question him further, he stepped out of his trousers and climbed into bed.

  FOR SEVERAL WEEKS DARA WAITED FOR THE HEADACHE TO RETURN. Once or twice she felt the smallest twinge, enough to make her pause in whatever she was doing, but it vanished as quickly as it came, and by the time she met her father in late February her wariness was gone. He had suggested they go to a photography exhibit and she had invited him to lunch beforehand. It was the first time he had been to the flat since he helped her move in, and he was the ideal guest, praising all the improvements she’d made, commenting on the possibilities of the garden, where snowdrops and crocuses were already blooming beneath the plum tree.

  When they were seated at the table, each with a bowl of carrot soup, she told him about Edward. “Do you remember,” she said, hearing her voice, despite her best intentions, grow awkwardly stiff, “that I’ve been seeing a violinist?”

  “Of course.” He smiled; with his new short hair, the smile spread right up to his forehead. “We’re looking forward to meeting him. Louise was saying this morning that she hasn’t seen you in ages. The Christmas party was so crowded it doesn’t count.”

  Dara refrained from saying that she had spent over an hour helping Louise clean up after the guests left. She was determined to tell her father everything, not to be guilty of Edward’s evasions. “I want you to meet him,” she said, “and he’s eager to meet you, but life is a little tricky at the moment. He’s still sharing a flat with his ex-girlfriend, and their daughter.”

  Her father took a mouthful of soup. “Delicious. How old is their daughter?”

  Searching for signs of disapproval, Dara found none. If only her mother were this sanguine. “Rachel,” she said. “She’s two and a half. We haven’t met yet but I’m eager to get to know her.”

  “Patrizia, Louise’s younger granddaughter, was two when I met her and we’ve become very good friends. Well, the four of us must get together soon.”

  “Would you like to see the picture I did of him?” She led the way to the bathroom.

  “This is fabulous,” her father said. “Your mother would be proud of you. I love the swans and the cows.” He remarked other details of the landscape, the willow trees, the sky, the canal, before leaning closer to the running figure and saying how handsome Edward was.

  “And do you know who that is?” said Dara, pointing to the figure on the stile.

  “It’s you, isn’t it?” said her father. “I remember those red shoes.”

  THE EXHIBITION WAS TITLED “LOVERS IN BLACK AND WHITE,” AND the gallery consisted of one large room and two smaller ones. The photographs showed amorous adults of all ages. In the large room her father pointed out the work of his friend Harvey: an elderly man and woman sitting on a bench at the seaside, eating fish and chips. Next to them was a portrait of a much younger couple on a motorcycle, the man glowering, the woman, with her arms around him, smiling.

  Dara moved from picture to picture, happily absorbed. A few months ago the exhibition would have struck her as yet more evidence of her father’s persistent failure to understand her, but now romantic love was a subject about which she had many proprietary opinions.

  The photograph was in one of the side rooms. Halley was standing behind Joyce with her arms around her. They each appeared to be naked from the waist up, though Halley was largely hidden by Joyce and Joyce’s breasts were hidden by Halley’s embrace. Halley was looking at the camera, wide-eyed, joyful, the light gleaming off her dark skin. Joyce was gazing down at her own pale hands resting on Halley’s arms.

  Did Dara gasp or utter some sound? All she could think, for those first few seconds, was that the two women looked as if they belonged together. Then, as she stepped over to read the placard, came the second shock. The photograph was dated not back in the mists of time, as Frank had claimed, but last year.

  She was still standing there when her father came over. “Beautiful,” he said. “I like how the photographer has lit the black woman and included some of their possessions, like a sixteenth-century painter.” He pointed to the left of the photograph, where, on a table, lay a fencing foil, a bicycle helmet, a book, and an egg whisk.

  “They work at the center. Remember I told you there was this furor because our director, Halley, might be leaving? That’s her, and Joyce is our Bangladeshi expert.”

  “Her plainness is part of what makes the picture so affecting. I must keep an eye out for this photographer.”

  He took out a notebook, wrote something down, and was moving toward the next photograph, when Dara heard herself saying, “I didn’t know they were having an affair.”

  Her father stopped. “But most of the women you work with are lesbians,” he said, “aren’t they?”

  He was standing twenty feet away, looking at her across the empty space with that expression which suggested simultaneously surprise, helplessness, and detachment, and which he had worn that last morning when he said good-bye to her and Fergus at the school gates and during every major quarrel they had had since then. Yes, his raised eyebrows and barely parted lips signaled, this was upsetting, but what could he do about it? At the sight, Dara’s anger leaped the always-narrow divide between the present aggravation and the enraging past.

  “Who cares,” she exclaimed, “who the fuck cares, whether people like men or women or poodles? I don’t. What hurts is that they lied to us; they pretended to have one kind of relationship, to be friends, and, all the time, they had another.”

  Her father’s still raised eyebrows drove her on.

  “Do you remember Kevin?” she said. “My boyfriend at university. Once he asked me what was the happiest day of my life. I told him about an afternoon at Granny and Grandpa’s. I was maybe five or six and we were having tea in the garden. Granny was bustling around, laying the table. Grandpa was showing me the upside-down flowerpots he used to lure the earwigs away from his dahlias. You’d been cutting the lawn and your feet were covered with bits of grass. You and Mum were trying to get Fergus to walk and he kept sitting down, which made you laugh.

  “A few years later it was all gone: Grandpa dead, Granny confused, you and Mum mortal enemies, Fergus and me too different to be friends.”

  While she was speaking two women and a man had come in and stopped before a photograph of a Jamaican couple. The women were deep in discussion but the man glanced over at Dara and her father.

  Her father didn’t seem to notice their audience. “Maybe,” he said, “they couldn’t help it, Joyce and Halley. Maybe, in spite of themselves, they fell in love, and they couldn’t speak about it without
changing everything. Secrecy isn’t always a lie. People talk nowadays as if there are no taboos, as if everyone should act on their feelings, but what if you have the wrong feelings, what are you meant to do then?”

  As he spoke his voice rose until Dara saw the two women look up, but her father’s eyes never left her; he was waiting for her answer. And her head was full of answers, too many to speak aloud. If the photograph was true then Joyce and Halley’s behavior at the center was a lie. If her father loved her and Fergus and their mother, then his leaving was a lie. Or if his leaving was true, then the first ten years of Dara’s life had been a lie.

  She blinked, shutting him out, letting him in again. But it’s not all lies, she reminded herself. Feelings change; change can be for the good. If I hadn’t stopped imagining I was in love with Kevin, and Edward hadn’t realized his mistake with Cordelia, he and I couldn’t be together. Not everyone can be like Jane Eyre and meet the love of their life at eighteen.

  The man and the two women moved on to the next photograph. Dara took a step toward her father, then another. As her feet carried her across the wooden floor, she remembered that first drive with Edward through the moonlit fields while the exquisite music played; if she had turned around, she would have seen Rachel’s car seat. She stopped a yard away and fixed her gaze not on her father’s face—no need to see that earnest expression—but on the second button of his blue shirt.

  “I don’t know,” she said, “who gets to say what’s right and what’s wrong but I do know that I used to be furious with you and that now I can enjoy an afternoon in your company. Some feelings change, and some”—she turned to wave at the couples on the wall—“don’t.”

  But just as she was about to say that that was how she felt about Edward, her gaze snagged on Halley’s joyful smile, Joyce’s downcast gaze, and at the same moment, her father reached out to touch her upraised arm.

  “Never mind,” he said softly. “Never mind.”