The Ladies of the House

by Molly McGrann

  the

  LADIES

  of the

  HOUSE

  Molly McGrann

  PICADOR

  For Mouse

  Contents

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  13

  14

  It was a minor item in the newspaper, her last English newspaper, or the last one she would read on English soil. Just the kind of headline to draw her eye: Three Found Dead in North London, and then their names. Police were alerted after a woman collapsed outside a home in Primrose Hill and was declared dead at the scene, despite all efforts to revive her. Two more bodies were found inside the house. Neighbours said there were no suspicious circumstances to report, except that they were all dead, all at once. Given the recent high temperatures around the country – such a dry, hot July, the barley blackened, the corn stunted, hens not laying right – early discovery of their bodies was a relief, for the smell of lingering death was not sweet, not a fairy-tale ending. ‘Unfortunately there was nothing to be done,’ said a police spokesman. Other heat-related fatalities had been reported and the hospitals were said to be overflowing.

  Marie Gillies had forgotten to breathe. When she did breathe, the feeling of doing so was unfamiliar, as if she had to think to do it. Briefly, she feared she might always have to think about breathing. How would she cope? And when she went to sleep at night, what would happen then?

  They were dead.

  Heathrow swarmed around her. She thought she would burst with the news but there was no one to tell in the busy terminal, no way to explain that three people she knew – well, she did not know them, had never met them, but she had spoken to them on the phone. Quite a lot on the phone. Now they were dead. They were gone.

  It must have been the heat, nothing to do with her. Marie stood up. Her hands wanted to be busy. She would have done a bit of tidying, given the chance, or folded linens into identical squares. Cleared out a cupboard, put the ornaments in order, swept the floor. Made a cup of tea. The best she could do was go and wash; her hands were sticky with newsprint. She hated that dusty feeling blunting her fingertips. But where, in the vast hall, was the toilet? There, in the distance – she had to squint to see – was a sign: the usual symbols with an arrow. A big walk for someone in her fifties, clinically obese, whose new shoes were giving her a blister.

  ‘It was the blooming heat that killed them,’ Marie murmured, stuffing the newspaper into her handbag. She set off across the terminal, panting all the way. No doubt they had turned up the fire, too, daft and old as they were. Cups of tea going cold upon their knees, biscuits melting into the dregs, mouths agape, fetid breath whistling out. She knew the smell of old people, the cellar scent that slept in the folds of their clothes and behind their ears. ‘It was the heat,’ Marie said once more – aloud, to be sure.

  She was not accustomed to travelling. She had been dazzled at first by the hard white light of the airport and stopped in the middle of everything, taking it in. So many encumbered passengers bumping into one another, stopping and starting, no clear path through the crowd, the terminal blocked by bags and trolleys and families trying to stay together – Marie clung to her boarding card. She had never been anywhere. Her passport was safely zipped away in a nylon sac that hung around her neck, under her blouse, slapping her belly as she stopped and started with the rest of them. Her handbag was brand new, stinking of freshly tanned hide, and she had another bag to carry as well, packed with her toothbrush and a change of clothes and some baby wipes, in case they lost her suitcase. Now she really needed the toilet, and she wanted to get her jumper off – boiling, she was, but how would she manage that with her bags to tend to and a boarding card ready to produce at all times? It was too much for Marie. There was hysteria in Britain over unattended luggage, but really, she must drop something. Here came the voice over the tannoy, the polite but firm voice that said, ‘Please do not leave baggage unattended at any time.’ The voice of Nanny herding children inside and upstairs to the nursery where it was warm and safe, where there was hot chocolate if everyone behaved.

  She didn’t kill those people. But she felt guilty enough. She needed to get away from the crowd. She dragged her things into the Ladies and pulled off her jumper, quietly cursing when her handbag got wet sitting by the sink while she scrubbed her hands with lashings of liquid soap – pumping, pumping, her panicking heart, her blouse soaked through where she splashed and sweated. She dared not look at her reflection: the eyes that say I can. I did. The murderer in the glass.

  1

  On Thursday, two weeks after posting his letter to Joseph Gribble and having no reply, Mr Wye took the train into London, briefcase in hand, to knock personally at the door. It was an extraordinary measure, to go so far – one and a half hours on the train – particularly for a man of his age. Five years retired but still in his office every weekday, Mr Wye had made that particular journey for many years. He took pleasure in waking early, plenty of time for toast with marmalade and a cup of tea, then off to the station where he parked his little car. Once on board, he took another cup of tea from a vendor passing through and read The Times from cover to cover. Then, with time to spare before his arrival at Paddington, he quietly observed his travelling companions.

  There were the usual businessmen keeping busy with mobile phones and laptop computers (in Mr Wye’s glory days, he carried not one but two leather briefcases, in which he transported his paperwork). Behind him sat two young women, overdressed, eyes like piss-holes in the snow. They chewed gum. ‘Then she calls and says to him, “I want to see you.” Right? She’s in town. She looks like the back end of a bus now. Remember her at school? Queen bee! She thought she was queen bee. She ain’t queen bee no more. He says to me that he don’t want her, but I know he’s texting.’

  ‘Oh, he never.’

  ‘He is!’ There was a pause. ‘I want a nose job.’

  ‘What’s wrong with your nose?’

  ‘It’s too big. My dad says it looks like a potato. And see this bump on my chin? That’s a wart starting. I want it gone.’

  ‘I want my boobs done. There’s a guy, a registered doctor, who does it for eight hundred.’

  ‘I’m prettier than her, right?’

  ‘He ain’t worth it.’

  Watching them from across the aisle was a boy of about seventeen, already a hard man, red-faced with unspent steam, the kind with a passion for fighting, with a life in which everything tested his power. A boil simmered on his neck. The boy spread his legs and thudded his trainers to some driving internal rhythm – techno beats – but they ignored him strenuously.

  The table a bit further along was filled with students – they became drama students as the journey went on, reciting aloud to one another, their voices increasingly strident. Someone said, ‘What a lot of show-offs.’ Now they had an audience. The speeches continued the rest of the way to London. Mr Wye sighed. It was too tedious.

  The train arrived on time, much to his satisfaction. Stepping from the carriage, he blundered for a moment: Paddington was not the same. A shopping mall lay before him, a vulgar emporium, lit up like Christmas. He stood and stared until the crowd carried him along, charged from every side as if he weren’t there. Where was his briefcase? Still in hand. And his wallet? The angry boy on the train – he’d got it. The boy had picked it off him.

  No, here it was, in his jacket pocket.

  He patted himself, repeated the mantra: spectacles, testicles, wallet and watch. After a visit to the Gents, where he paid thirty pence and called i
t daylight robbery under his breath, he joined the taxi rank. He was in and out of taxis all day, going from house to house. He kept receipts. He was, after all, visiting on behalf of the family. The houses he saw were, for the most part, in a state of dereliction. Their inhabitants were old women – he had a list of their names. In two houses there were vagrants, delinquents, ragged young people, clearly out of work, claiming they were artists and suchlike. He ordered them to vacate the premises at once. He had the law behind him, he said. For the most part, he was treated with respect. The women remembered him and he ticked off their names one by one. The dead ones, or presumed dead, with squatters living in their houses, using their things – picking up where they left off – he crossed out.

  The house in the Crescent, once as familiar to him as his own home, was his last stop of the day. As with the other houses on his list, it was a right mess. Sagging, shedding stucco, begrimed, bashed on all sides, bald of paint; great curls of it had dropped off since he’d last been, which was years ago – how many years? Five or six, at least. All around, other houses had been gutted, flayed, done up in white throughout, white as bone, with the corpse flesh stripped away: a house as fresh as an egg, the bog replaced with a tidy garden shed in which to keep the tools, the paint. So too would this house soon have that fate.

  Mr Wye rang the bell. A few minutes passed. He rang again, longer, harder. He had seen two women sitting in the window. He knocked. It was his knock they answered.

  *

  Rita was drinking a cup of tea. They had their chairs pulled up to the front window of the drawing room, she and Annetta, watching the street through the grey mist of net curtains. Not saying much, for, as Rita often thought, what was there to say to a person who had lost her mind? Joseph was out. Days had passed since Annetta’s most recent escape and he had been especially vigilant, cooped up in the house, hardly daring to sleep at night. Shadows under his eyes. Rita had sent him off to ride the buses for a while. That’s what he liked. The fresh air would do him good.

  ‘Well. Look who it is,’ Rita said.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Here he is again, the bastard. I can’t believe my eyes.’

  ‘Who’s that?’ Annetta said. ‘I’ve never seen that man before in my life.’

  ‘Sure you have. It’s him.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘What’s-his-name. Wye. That one.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Mr Wye. You know. Gillies’ man.’

  And Annetta replied, with a certain lucidity, ‘Is it, now? I thought he was dead. Why did I think that?’

  ‘I wish he was,’ Rita grumbled. ‘Nothing but trouble. Probably looking for another freebie, if I know the man. And I know the man.’

  He had a knock that made them jump: rat-a-tat-tat. ‘Ought we to answer it?’ Annetta said.

  ‘I reckon he’s seen us sitting here.’ Neither one moved.

  ‘If we stay perfectly still, maybe he’ll go away,’ Annetta whispered.

  He knocked again. Rita stood. ‘You stay here.’ But Annetta kept close, holding onto her skirt.

  ‘What do you want?’ Rita said from behind the door.

  ‘I’d like to come in, please.’

  Rita hesitated.

  ‘Shall I call for assistance? I see a policeman across the way in the park,’ Mr Wye said.

  Rita opened the door. He hadn’t changed – aged, as they all were, still with a thick head of hair, gone silver now, and wearing his usual black suit and tie. Rita could smell him from across the threshold. He was the kind that kept scrupulously clean, she remembered, bathing after every exertion, and he smelled of soap and talcum powder and hair lotion. His underwear had been rough and white with bleach, pressed for him by his wife, not that she was to mention his wife – that would be profane. His wife, she gathered, was a saint, as devout as they came here on earth.

  ‘You again,’ Rita said.

  ‘I sent a letter to Joseph Gribble, to which I’ve had no reply. Am I right to assume he still lives at this address?’

  ‘It’s none of your business.’

  Mr Wye cleared his throat. ‘It is my business.’

  Annetta, who had been standing behind Rita the whole time, suddenly bent double and howled, pointing at Mr Wye. ‘You know,’ she said through tears. ‘You know. You know what you did.’

  He flushed, despite himself. ‘I’m afraid I don’t know.’

  ‘You’re a devil,’ Annetta cried, dropping to her knees. She tore at her clothes and ground her teeth.

  ‘Go on,’ Rita said, nudging her with one foot. ‘Off you go.’ Annetta crawled back into the drawing room – they heard her after she disappeared, the metallic scrape of her anguish, as if it bit her on the inside.

  ‘We’re still here, as you can see,’ Rita said to Mr Wye, and she shut the door with a bang.

  2

  Mr Wye was gone, but the taint of him remained. His smell – it had got into the house. Unsettling, to see that man again. It drew her nerves tight; she was trembling. Oh, she wouldn’t let it show, but the feeling was there all the same: the fear of him, from long ago. Annetta’s head lay in Rita’s lap. Rita did her best to soothe her but after a while she was fed up and put Annetta to bed, locking the door, the key in her pocket.

  She stood there for a minute and heard Annetta get up and rattle the knob, calling for freedom. Rita could stand it. Better in than out, she always said – or was it the other way round?

  Further along the corridor was where Joseph slept, but she never bothered going in, knowing the room to be a solid mess of old newspapers, bus schedules and sweet wrappers, everywhere growing mould, the cups of tea and old sandwiches and whatnot, and his clothes all over the floor in nasty piles that he kicked about, finding them in his way. If that’s how he chose to live – well. The bathroom was the same: pure filth, although it had been a temple once, walled in marble, with his-and-hers sinks and a shower that sprayed from all sides and spewed steam. Nothing worked now, except the toilet. Joseph could never be bothered to flush it himself. Rita turned away – then went back, holding her nose, and flushed.

  Down a flight of stairs, for Joseph and Annetta were on the second floor, where Rita paused outside the door to the room that had once been hers. No one had slept there since she left the house, although the furniture and all the pictures and fittings remained – golden everything, still resplendent, the whole room draped in damask that was tied up here and there in fat ropes of silk braid. A glittering, faceted tent, when candles were lit, utterly dramatic. The bed was made; it had been made for twenty years. She never wanted to sleep in that bed again.

  Sal’s room was next, untouched since her death, fit for a queen, grander even than Rita’s parlour, in desperate crimson. More encrusted, wreathed, swagged and gilded – and for all its luxurious trappings, serene. A sense of Sal, the woman she had been. Joseph liked to look at his mother’s things, the many fine gifts she had been given in her lifetime, the valuable trinkets, carved intricacies, enamel, needlework, jewels in boxes, couture dresses in plastic. When Rita caught him mooning there, wiping away the tears, she shooed him out of the room: it didn’t do to dwell, she told him.

  Rita went downstairs and curled up on the old chesterfield to wait for Joseph’s return. She smelled the dust; it puffed as she turned this way, then that. She sat up straight – she stood, jumped to her feet as if she had rubber bands in her knees. Rita was bothered. She went to the window, looking for Joseph, anxious for him to come back so she could be on her way to her flat in Camden. Mr Wye had spooked her.

  He had been a regular visitor once upon a time. When Sal was still alive and he came round, he would always stay for a cup of tea, sneaking looks at Sal when he thought she wasn’t looking. He was gone on her – always had been. Her shoulders drooped with relief when he left, although she never spoke a word against him. If Sal despised Mr Wye as Rita and Annetta did, she never said. The way he looked at Sal, besotted with unsatisfied love – well. It turned Rita’s s
tomach. Sal was only sweet to him to keep her house, Mr Wye being Arthur Gillies’ main henchman and most trusted employee, his eyes and ears; a nasty bird, the ace of spades, a buzzard bringing death.

  After a long time of watching at the window, Rita had to sit or her legs would give. She stretched out on the chesterfield again and, despite herself, let her eyes close. She slept at once and her dreams were strange. She dreamed of home – it was a recurring dream. She saw another version of her life inside the shabby rooms of the house in which she had been born and where, perhaps, her family still lived. She saw the life she would have known among the people who always said they knew her best; the person she would have become under their watch. Rita on the night shift at the chemical factory, listening to the machines hiss and slam. Rita in a kitchen that smelled of cat piss, handing out greasy cups. Walls marbled with grime, children unwashed, hopping with bugs. Rita down the pub, drunk as they come, led by a gang of young men to an abandoned house. Rita from Widnes, not London. That Rita.

  She was trouble from the start, so people said, and once puberty hit, her boldness came out in a blaze. Too good-looking, that was always her problem, and a man-eater to boot. The whole town talked, and how! She would wake to a noisy dawn chorus, the bickering begun, in sweet voices, over a worm. When she left the house, rooks hooked for her eyes and the bits of gold she wore in her ears. Fat geese lined up like a row of justices at the front gate. Wherever she walked, pigeons shat, squirts of chalk that spattered her shoes, and gulls from the Mersey dived at her head, unpicking her careful curls. Her mother, a threadbare chicken, caught her out in the kitchen while she ate her bread and dripping. ‘It will kill him,’ she whispered, meaning Rita’s father. She battered Rita, slapped her, the tales she’d heard chopped up and stuck back together all wrong. No one cared what Rita heard said about her, whether it was true or not. It was generally felt that she deserved to hear those cruel remarks: a girl so beautiful they wanted to tear her apart. She stalked Widnes in a yellow dress and high heels, lipsticked ear to ear, and the birds followed her everywhere.