The Ladies of the House

by Molly McGrann

  The postcard was on its way. Everything that would come to be had begun. She did not expect Flavia to die of the shock, but there was always the risk with old people.

  *

  All night Flavia prayed. Marie was up and down to the toilet – when they met in the hall, she reassured her mother that she felt fine.

  ‘There’s nothing wrong with me.’

  ‘But are you sleeping?’

  Marie shrugged. ‘The same.’ She burped. ‘Excuse me.’

  ‘That feels better. Does it? Is it a bubble in there? Some wind?’

  ‘No, I’m fine.’

  ‘A tumour, do you think?’

  ‘Don’t be silly. I don’t have a tumour. Go to sleep, Ma,’ Marie said, bestowing another kiss upon Flavia.

  But Flavia didn’t sleep. She listened to Marie moving around her room for hours, opening and closing drawers, but in such a way as to be trying not to be heard. Just before dawn, her daughter must finally have slept, for the house went quiet. Flavia got up and made Marie a cooked breakfast – everything, the works. Sausage, bacon and black pudding. Grilled tomatoes and fried mushrooms, fried bread, toast, baked beans in a mug. While Marie ate the lot, she prepared her lunch: pasta salad, fruit salad, bread and cheese and a slice of coconut cake, carefully wrapped in foil.

  Marie paused at the front door, then suddenly turned back to kiss Flavia – a third kiss, unexpected. Flavia didn’t know what to say.

  ‘You’ll be late,’ she said.

  ‘Bye, Ma.’

  ‘Have a good day.’

  ‘Yes, Ma.’

  She watched Marie go until she disappeared from view. Perhaps she looked a bit sturdier than usual. She had purpose to her step. She seemed more confident of late, Flavia had noticed, and her suntan suited her.

  Flavia immediately retrieved her cleaning things and went upstairs to Marie’s room. It was Wednesday – not her usual day to do the bedrooms.

  She felt it the minute she walked through the door: the feeling of things being disturbed. Marie’s room had been recently ransacked and put back together again. But not by Flavia.

  And—

  Things had been hidden, of that she was sure.

  Then she found, in Marie’s top dresser drawer, a large brown envelope stuffed full. Flavia tore it open and its contents spilled on the floor. She didn’t care about the mess, for once. She knelt, as if at prayer. It took a long time to go through all the material, which included pamphlets and brochures and train timetables, much of which she couldn’t read, being written in English, but the station names were familiar. Marie was off on a big trip to Italy, leaving that day. She would be away for three weeks.

  At first Flavia still tried to clean, but she was clumsy, for she was weeping, and she soon gave up and went downstairs to sit. Flavia faced a weary, desperate time until Marie’s return, like a desert to cross. Even prayer was just another chore to struggle with, although she prayed regardless. There was no peace, no joy, for now her prayers would not be answered: that Marie be returned to her safe another day.

  She sat and waited, only half believing that her daughter was not coming back. She prayed, how she prayed! She did not wash up the breakfast dishes and had no appetite for lunch. The minutes dragged; she watched the clock, always surprised by how slow it was. Flavia didn’t think she could stand it, time at that pace – not for three weeks.

  When 5.30 came and went and there was still no sign of Marie, Flavia knew for certain that she would not be home that evening. She remained sitting, praying, weeping, until it was dark; then she went and turned on the front porch light and returned to the couch.

  Deus meus, ex toto corde paenitet me omnium meorum peccatorum.

  She remembered when Arthur died: when she stopped waiting for him to come home.

  14

  The kitchen light, when he switched it on, blew with a bright pop, giving him a shock. Joseph stepped into the dark. He knew just where to go, which cupboard to grope. No biscuit tin, not any more, but there were packets. He would tell Rita about the light bulb; she was the one who took care of things like that.

  He’d sneaked downstairs just to get away from them. Sometimes Rita used up all the air. It made him need his inhaler, and he’d had quite enough of that for one day, thank you. Joseph wasn’t right yet, after his profound attack earlier that afternoon, but he was better than he’d been then. For a minute there he’d thought he was a goner.

  It was cool in the kitchen. Cool and smooth, the lino floor – he felt like getting down to put his cheek to it, so hot upstairs and him smothered under a rug all afternoon, for Rita wouldn’t let them open the windows and doors lest Annetta hop out and disappear. Rita had everything locked up tight – she had wobbled around the house making sure, leaning on walls to steady herself, bumping into the furniture. It was a long time since Joseph had seen her drunk. He remembered when she used to disappear on benders, gone for days on end. Mama was always furious. But Rita got the trade in and got everyone drinking more than they should, which made money, and although Mama complained bitterly about the situation, she never let Rita go. They were sisters, Mama said, to the end. They fought like cats and dogs, too, but that was to be expected in a house full of women sharing clothes and men.

  Joseph, in the dark, carefully, meditatively stacked biscuits, lining up their edges. He felt the weight of the pile in his hand and wondered if it would be enough. Then, one by one, he put the biscuits whole into his mouth, gossamer butter galettes that tasted like soap. He wondered why Rita bought them, but from time to time she did, fragile French biscuits that broke the minute they were out of the package. Mama had a thing against French biscuits. She said, ‘I hate their thinness. They stick in my throat. Makes me feel as though I can’t breathe.’

  He doubled them up, two at a time instead of one. He crunched them into suspension, sucking air through his nose in greedy snorts, his mouth packed full, nothing else, no other thoughts. So good.

  Upstairs, the phone rang. He froze. He listened to it ring. He did not want to answer, knowing the caller was likely neither to speak nor to hang up until he did. Always the same caller, Joseph was sure; sometimes he heard them sigh or sniff, but otherwise they were silent, and this silence was a burden to Joseph, a punishment. Whoever it was, they were vicious; he sensed their rage. The caller had something against him. If only he knew what.

  Rita was by the front window, where she always liked to stand. She stood as if she had a drink in one hand. She heard the phone ringing in the front hall and went to answer. ‘Hello?’ No one replied. ‘Hello?’ she repeated. Nothing. ‘Bloody prank callers. They ought to be arrested,’ she said loudly into the receiver and slammed it down. When she went back into the drawing room, Annetta had fallen asleep in her chair. Her chin bumped her breastbone as she snored. She could sleep through anything.

  Light dribbled across the floor like spilt milk. It was evening, but bright, and still so hot outside.

  Annetta dreamed of a banquet that lasted all night, long past the sound of the barrow boys calling out what was fresh, what was ripe. A woman’s head thrust under her dress, handfuls of hair, then hip to hip, Annetta’s breasts with a closed bud on each tip. Lips trembling, holding each other tight.

  The pleasure lovers gave; their true and real devotion, unmatched in her since: that complete possession, as when they lay together after and felt the pulse coming in unison, blood coursing in the most secret places of the body.

  She saw Nell stretched out in the tin bath, a froth of bubbles ringing her throat like a pearl necklace. All these years she had been missing Nell. She had never wanted her to go. The loss of Nell, the best love she had known, came to her as new and overwhelming as if happening for the first time. It was a good cry, crying for Nell.

  Rita shook her awake. ‘What’s wrong? What’s your problem?’

  Annetta couldn’t say. She tried to get up. Were those her old legs down there? She brushed the cobwebs from them but the pattern of veins remain
ed; the skin was decrepit, bristled. She smoothed her nightdress. Wet.

  Rita staggered back to the window. She had to keep an eye out. She gripped the sill with one hand, an imaginary drink still in the other. Her lavender wedding suit was dirty down the back and her stockings had run. That fascinator of hers, the curls sprayed hard around it – fixed to her head, feathers twittering with every pronouncement. ‘Mr Wye is over there. I swear I saw him in the Rose and Crown on Tuesday.’ It could be no other, dressed as he was: a Puritan. ‘He’s got a camera. He’s taking pictures of the house. He’s up to no good, I tell you.’

  Annetta crossed herself. A man appeared at the door to the room. He was holding a packet of biscuits. Looked like Arthur Gillies, only he’d never been so fat. Mr Gillies was short, solid, bull-shouldered, standing very erect. The man came into the room. Annetta had always been terrified of him. Him and Mr Wye, they’d both been rough and cold, sneaking up on her from behind. They caught her and threw her onto the bed and she knew to give in. She always went limp, easy to handle, silent. Blindfolded, or a pillowslip over her head. Darkness – where she used to go and rest while they did with her what they wanted. All of them, the many men. She looked at Mr Gillies. It was him, all right. She thought she’d die of fright if he took another step. He did. She was gone again.

  Joseph saw that Annetta was asleep, head dropped back against the wall. Catching flies, Rita called it, when Annetta dozed like that, right where she sat, in the middle of everything. Sometimes he had to check and make sure she hadn’t died, looking so dead, just a sack of skin sagged in her chair. Sometimes he had to really shake her awake.

  ‘Turn up the fire, Joseph. It’s cold,’ Rita said. He turned it past the ‘high’ mark, higher than was safe. ‘Turn it up, I said. I can feel a draught.’

  Joseph turned the knob – it came off in his hand, surprising him so much that he almost dropped it. He looked at Rita. She hadn’t noticed, still at the window. He put the knob into his pocket, right where his inhaler should be. He sat down with the packet of biscuits and surreptitiously began to tweak the cellophane, not wanting Rita to chide him for his greed. He slipped in a biscuit and let it dissolve on his tongue, quietly. He gargled, swallowed, palmed a few more and sat back, drawing the rug to his nose and letting it tent from there, eyes just visible above the fringe.

  Rita shivered. ‘Someone’s walking over my grave. There’s a real chill in here.’ She glanced at Annetta. ‘Oh, for goodness’ sake. Asleep again! It’s because she doesn’t sleep at night like the rest of us.’

  Annetta was deep inside. She could see better where she was now. Before, it had seemed a wilderness, endless darkness. The sense of a lake in the sky – not seen but there, just heard. Gentle voices, like water. She was on the shore, wading through soft sand. The smell of wood smoke. She saw a cottage she had never seen before, a snug-looking cabin lit from within, its twinkling windows paned in gold. Annetta got closer; her feet knew the path, for she did not stumble in the pitch-dark. She found the door and opened it and said, through parched lips, ‘There’s that old red dress of mine, hanging just where I left it.’ She saw the bed where it should be, not broken in pieces, its eiderdown the very same that she remembered, and a chintz armchair in one corner. She saw a fire where she could warm herself eternally, Nell stretched out before it, burnished by the flames. Nell’s ears pricked and she turned eager eyes on Annetta.

  ‘Nell,’ Annetta called as she passed away.

  ‘There she goes. Talking in her sleep,’ Rita said. ‘I can’t make out half of what she says any more. Just mumbles.’ She tapped the front-window glass. ‘Mr Wye is over there. You won’t remember him, or maybe you will. He was always about, wasn’t he? Your mother couldn’t have been nicer. She knew who buttered her bread. Mr Wye and your father were thick as thieves.’

  Joseph stopped chewing. Mr Wye? Here? Had he heard her right? Joseph threw off the rug and lumbered to his feet, padding over to see. He peered out at a white-haired old gentleman who stood by the entrance to the park across the way, whose gaze was fixed squarely upon them.

  ‘I reckon he’s been there all day. I’m going to have a word,’ Rita declared, putting down her imaginary drink to shake a fist at him. ‘We have every right to live in this house, I don’t care what he says.’ With that, she flew out of the room and her fascinator was like a bird caught up behind her.

  Joseph backed away from Mr Wye’s fierce stare. Rita would sort it out, he had no doubt – she always did. He sat down, fussed with the biscuits, popping in several, maybe four biscuits: a decent pile. He chewed, not enough, for suddenly he felt himself to be choking. The biscuits were going down too slow. Tea didn’t help – most of it came splashing back out of his mouth when he took a big gulp, having hit a wall. He coughed. Nothing. Not budging. Another little cough – smaller because he had less to cough. Less, now, for coughing so much. He closed his eyes to conserve energy. Keep his eyeballs in when he coughed, slightly, once more, and collapsed against the chesterfield: capsized again.

  He reached into his pocket for his inhaler and pulled out instead the knob from the fire. It rolled from his hand, never to be found. He heard Rita in the front hall, banging around, trying to get the door open. What an almighty row. She swore like a sailor when she was drunk. She’d never hear him.

  His lungs shrank, a hellish thing, without the wind blowing in. First one eye glazed, then the other, and his nose dried up in between. The tip of his tongue dabbed at a name: Mama. Mama.

  Rita opened the front door, ready for war. But Mr Wye was gone.

  He had disappeared, as if into thin air. As if he wasn’t really there in the first place. His shadow left no trace, and yet – Rita cocked her head, feeling the change.

  The tree branches were still. No taxis ran. The park across the way was empty and silent. Even the gulls and pigeons: not a sound, for once. ‘Look at the state of me,’ she said to no one in particular, sitting down heavily on the step as the door closed behind her and its lock clicked. ‘My good lavender wedding suit, a perfect fright.’ She felt for her fascinator – still there, pinned tight. ‘I feel as if I’ve walked a hundred miles.’ She made an effort to raise one hand; it floated, white as a flag. Time passed. How much time?

  She would rest for a minute then go for help. She had a real thirst on her. Felt like gravel in her mouth. Rita tried to call out, but her tongue refused. Now, that was odd.

  It was all behind her, pushing forth. The ants stirred in the dust. She said her true love’s name. To want and want and not have: the end of her. The phone rang inside the house – it rang forever more, as far as she knew: ringing, tolling her lot, bleating like a lamb lost, wanting and not having in the cold, in the dark. ‘Open the door,’ she gasped, as her bones separated and away she dropped.

  ‘McGrann’s atmospheric prose draws us back into the dark origins of the building and the sinister figure connecting them’

  Harper’s Bazaar

  ‘Clever prose, gripping narrative and brilliant central characters . . . Captivating yet disturbing, witty yet desperately sad, the novel left me contemplative . . . brilliantly engaging’

  Stylist

  ‘Beginning with a tragedy, the narrative exposes the grim reality of prostitution without sentiment. A clever, unusual story suffused with gentle irony’

  Sunday Mirror

  ‘An amazing eye for detail and an empathetic sense of the emotional atmosphere of the times . . . This is a rewarding novel with an impressive cast of strong female characters . . . although this is very strong on period detail the themes explored (love, independence, isolation and ageing) are timeless. Funny, bold and touching’

  We Love This Book

  ‘In pin-sharp prose, McGrann flits between past and present, deftly revealing the mysterious connections between the women and the rather grand dilapidated house that united them’

  Sunday Express

  ‘Enticing . . . engaging . . . it has a definite melancholy’

&n
bsp; Sunday Times Ireland

  ‘Irresistibly sensational . . . a darkly playful tale about beauty, ageing and morality, brought to life by a writing style brimming with witty detail . . . This is a book to consume in a single sitting, a packet of biscuits close to hand’

  Country Life

  ‘The ladies are likely to linger in your thoughts long after you have put the book down’

  Oxford Mail

  THE LADIES OF THE HOUSE

  Molly McGrann is a literary critic, poet and novelist. A former editor at The Paris Review, she is the author of two acclaimed novels, 360 Flip and Exurbia. Originally from the USA, she now lives in Oxfordshire with her family.

  Also by Molly McGrann

  360 Flip

  Exurbia

  First published 2015 by Picador

  First published in paperback 2016 by Picador

  This electronic edition published 2016 by Picador

  an imprint of Pan Macmillan

  20 New Wharf Road, London N1 9RR

  Associated companies throughout the world

  www.panmacmillan.com

  ISBN 978-1-4472-7478-0

  Copyright © Molly McGrann 2015

  Cover Images © Hulton Archive / Getty Images

  The right of Molly McGrann to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  Pan Macmillan does not have any control over, or any responsibility for, any author or third-party websites referred to in or on this book.

  You may not copy, store, distribute, transmit, reproduce or otherwise make available this publication (or any part of it) in any form, or by any means (electronic, digital, optical, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of the publisher. Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.