The Liar’s Chair

by Rebecca Whitney

  I wait to hear Will go back into the kitchen before I come out, then I walk through the lounge to the small porch. As I twist the latch, the front door bursts open with a gust of wind from outside and the latch bangs into my shoulder. From behind me comes the click and fizz of a can being opened. I close the door quietly behind me and cross the road to my car.

  Having greeted the day, my hangover is worse than I’d expected and the keys shake in my hand. I slide into the incubated heat of the vehicle, the sun on the windscreen warmer without the wind. The temperature tops up my blood. Here in my private enclave it’s safe, the only place that’s mine and mine alone. The engine starts and I drive away.

  In the rear-view mirror I see a reflection of Will standing at his window holding a can of Special Brew. He doesn’t drink. He is statue-still and looks small, like a little boy, and even though I don’t want to stay, I want to go home even less, and I wish I didn’t always have to start a fight to make it easier to leave.

  7

  DIRTY FOOTPRINTS

  I pull up in our drive and expect to see David in his favourite position inside the house: sitting on the long red sofa and looking out from the floor-to-ceiling window of our main lounge. He likes to sit with one foot hooked over his opposing knee, arms stretched along the back of the settee as he surveys his manor. From this position he has the added benefit of announcing his presence to whomever approaches. But today the sofa is empty, his car gone. No scrambled barks reach through the front door, so he’s taken his babies. The empty building holds its breath. David’s angry texts lassoed me home, and now I’m here my punishment is his absence, leaving me guessing and worrying. Two wrongs do make a right in this house but I don’t mind; it’s better this way, gives me time to tidy myself up, to regroup before the showdown and to polish my excuse. First there’ll be David’s loving concern, the caresses and whispers that deliver the hidden threats. Then the silence – a tricky monosyllabic detour of hours or days depending on our resolve – and finally the point at which I fold and explain my behaviour. When this comes, when I finally repent – which I always do – he’ll let me know he doesn’t care anyway. Games. We’ve become very good at them. We have little else.

  I head for the kitchen, fill a glass of water and stand with my back to the sink in the immaculate room. Cabinets run in long undisturbed lines, and the worktops exude a show-home sheen of sanitized happiness, a fantasy that David’s worked hard to mimic, so much so that he actually believes it’s true; we have arrived therefore we are happy. The few things on display in the kitchen – the cappuccino maker that’s been taken apart for cleaning, plus the maple knife block – are there for a reason: they speak of success and privilege, attributes that David has spent his life attempting to acquire.

  David’s broadsheet is spread across the marble kitchen table. Next to the newspaper is a cup of mint tea, half finished, still warm – half-an-hour warm. He prefers coffee, but allows it only as his good-boy treat. The phantom of David’s action is held in the mug and newspaper – the Financial Times – the pages spewed apart where he’s flicked them over, standing as he does with one hand splayed on the table for support, his other hand hauling the sheets across and wafting air in his face. If I dusted the table for prints, there would be one complete palm next to the paper, fat and solid, pressed on to the table, his presence vast and close even in his absence.

  I open the fridge, look inside, close the door. Everything is packaged, bottled or sealed. Nothing leaks or breathes. When was the last time I’d cooked? Probably that fateful dinner, three weeks ago. After the cleaner surmounted that chaos, the house has stayed clean. She comes twice weekly, but there’s no need really; nothing is used or gets dirty. I work late and can’t be bothered with food, snacking on whatever’s available: bits of cheese, supermarket soup, stuff that doesn’t need putting together. Even opening a tin is an effort too far, and I buy ready meals with only a film of plastic to puncture before the microwave. With my back to the sink I stand as I do now, spooning the food straight from the hot plastic tray into my mouth. A few mouthfuls before I’m nauseous. David dines out mostly – supper at the club, power bars at the gym – so long as when it matters, when clients come round, there’s something of value on the table; a meal that looks expensive and has been cooked by a wife who cares. Though we’ll be using caterers from now on.

  Next to our kitchen is the large open-plan dining room set inside a glass annex. Doors concertina the length of a whole wall, so that we have an uninterrupted view of the garden. ‘Where your home and nature combine, bringing the outside in,’ the house particulars said. We’ve opened the doors only once, to air the paint when we redecorated. This room has tall ceilings and the table is overlooked by the guest-bedroom mezzanine and en suite. Marble tiles, heated from underneath like an emperor’s palace, spread throughout the whole ground floor so that each room flows into the next. A space big enough to house a small car showroom, furnished only with a telephone table, chaise longue and modern grandfather clock, is the central entrance, and on the opposite side to this is another reception room with standard Eames chair and Noguchi coffee table, making the house perfectly balanced. ‘A modern take on the double-fronter,’ the estate agent said as if reading off an autocue. ‘A symmetry of windows and doors and a lawn that rolls out on all sides around the building making a grand family home, a perfect vision of domestic happiness.’

  At the viewing, the agent opened built-in cupboards, smiling into the pristine spaces with his porcelain teeth. ‘Top-end developers,’ he said, ‘they only touch the million-plus.’ Upstairs he fiddled with the remote control for the lighting and in-house sound system. ‘The children’s den has its own separate entrance,’ he said, ‘good for when they’re teenagers.’

  ‘Better get on with it then,’ David whispered, standing behind me with his arms hugging tight round my waist as the agent demonstrated the lighting system. I thought he was teasing me, but after nearly twenty years together I know better now; neither one of us wanted children, he just liked to make me feel bad.

  David fielded another call, and I moved past the agent into an adjacent room. Up here on the first floor at least the rooms had walls, lower ceilings and the potential for comfort and privacy. Another large window looked down on to tiered decking and an expanse of fluorescent, newly laid turf. Long fingers of virgin grass reached towards the sky. ‘That’ll need scalping,’ David said. At the far end of the garden was a line of trees: an oak, horse chestnuts, a floppy willow, all mature, their foliage broken up by a glimpse of our neighbours’ roof at least a hundred metres away. Aside from that, we could have been in the middle of nowhere.

  ‘There’s Sommerton College, which is close,’ the agent said, standing in the doorway and smoothing his shiny pink tie inside his jacket, ‘but most of the buyers at your end of the market – mostly Russian money these days – choose Charlton School. We have all the phone numbers at the office, may even have a prospectus or two – it’s one of our most frequently asked questions. How many children do you have?’

  A blush crept up my neck as I walked into the en suite, leaving David to answer. I tested the shower, turning it by accident to full blast, and my fringe and sleeves caught the edge of the spray. David came in as I was shaking off the drips. He stood watching me, rocking back and forth on his feet, then turned and left the room, shutting the door hard behind him. The conversation muffled through the walls. ‘I’m interested but it’s been over-valued,’ David said. ‘We can talk when it’s come down by fifty K. Does Michael still run your office? I play tennis with his brother.’ The house was alien to me from the beginning, the choice to buy it never mine, but the comfort of being able to afford it filled part of the hole left by a childhood of going without. For me the building has no soul, but then it’s people that turn the house into a home.

  We’ve been in the place for five years now. Everything is treated with the utmost care and still looks new, as if we don’t have the money to replace it,
only there’s more than enough cash to do what we want. Like ghosts, we waft through the rooms, leaving no dent or stain. David’s pathological fear of damage is one of the well-managed traces of his sour and frugal beginnings: the two-up two-down terrace and his comprehensive education, the tins of marrow-fat peas, and parents who settled for whatever came their way. He’s closer to recreating the mood of his childhood than he knows with our structured emotional void, but money is the cushion and the mask. Having purchased the outer basting of class – the uniform of his desired pack, a colour-by-numbers chic – he only loosely covers the truth; up close, he reeks of bad breeding.

  From the boot room next to the kitchen I hear a scuffle. My skin bristles as I imagine David standing on the other side of the door, spying on me all this time through the glass panel. I turn slowly expecting to see his face, but there’s nothing. Then there’s a whine. I walk towards the door and open it to see one of the dogs tied up close to the wall on the dog hook. She’s been fitted with a tight muzzle and her head pulls on the lead that’s been looped too short for her to lie down. A full bowl of food has been left next to the back door, too far for her to reach – though even if she could, the muzzle would stop her eating. A meaty smell loiters in the air. The dog whimpers but the muzzle stops her barking. Only last week she was David’s favourite. He’s switched allegiance again. I wonder what she did to deserve this; probably gnawed a precious shoe or book of David’s, even though it’s his fault if he left the door open and she got into the house. As I reach in to loosen the lead she jumps at me, pawing and scratching my arm, making it bleed.

  ‘Stupid bitch,’ I say, and stand back against the wall. Her eyes drill into me. She stills and I move more slowly this time, unclasping her lead so she can move around. She shakes her head then hangs it low with a rumbling growl. I remove her muzzle and she runs to the food, eating in manic gulps and finishing in seconds, then she trots to her bed in the corner and lays her head on her paws, looking at me with suspicious eyes.

  I shower and put last night’s outfit straight into the washing machine. Before I close the machine, the smell of Will’s house lifts from my clothes – Bessie, tobacco, bacon – and I sit with the ache it gives me for more than a beat, breathing in the memory. I can’t name the sensation, it’s not pleasure or pain, perhaps both, but it’s strong enough for me to hold the air in my lungs for as long as I can.

  Back in my bedroom, I walk into the adjacent dressing room where David and I have our own built-in wardrobes. The door to my closet is open and the floor is scuffed with footprints. The cleaner’s day was yesterday and I know I left my cupboard tidy. As I open the doors I see that most of my clothes have been removed. A skirt, a pair of jeans, a jacket and a couple of work blouses remain. My eyes lift to the shelves above the clothes rail to see that all the shoe boxes have gone, apart from one with a pair of boots inside. I check my drawers. There’s one T-shirt, two pairs of knickers and tights, plus one pair of socks. All the scarves, belts and accessories have been taken, and only the red biscuit tin from Mum’s house remains in the bottom drawer. I open the lid. Inside is ash. I sink to the floor in my dressing gown and double up with the pain in my back and stomach.

  All my special things.

  8

  INK STAINS

  When I wake it’s gone lunchtime, and even though I’m still groggy from the extra dose of sedatives I took earlier, I remember I have a meeting this afternoon with the estate agent at my mother’s old house; the place I grew up and the home where she lived until her death a year ago. We put the house on the market immediately after she died – we knew she was going, and I was more than ready to move on – but the place hasn’t sold. The agent suggested some weeks ago that we meet at the property to discuss tactics, and I reluctantly agreed; going back there means hooking into events from which I’ve disconnected and had hoped to leave that way. This day has already proved too much, and it would be far easier to cancel the meeting, but I’ve put off the appointment several times before now. Besides, I have a need to be shot of this weighty piece of history.

  Before I leave home, I take the tin of ash and stand in front of David’s toy collection – the most expensive ones – and throw. Dust plumes out and settles on the glass shelves of toy robots and Matchbox cars. The minute particles will be working their way into each tiny hinge and screw, and the fur on David’s Steiff teddy bear turns from golden to grey. David won’t trust the cleaner with this mess, and it will take him hours to rectify, if it’s even possible to return his precious things to their prime. These toys that have for years been fiercely guarded against sticky toddlers, locked away from their natural purpose and passed on from collector to collector, now ruined in seconds. Outside, I dump the tin into the wheelie bin, and in the garage I root around until I find the box of my father’s discarded clothes; these rags are the last items of his that I own, and I don’t want to chance David finding them. The gardening trousers and big overcoat reek of damp, and mildew has bloomed on the old shirt. I put the clothes in the boot of my car, removing the spare tyre first and storing the items under the moulded cover, then place the tyre in the box where the clothes have been.

  My mother’s house is half an hour from mine, in another village outside of Brighton, and as I drive the tears come; my inability to leave David means I deserve to stay even more, but part of me has split away from the mainframe and is knocking the rest into chaos.

  For the remainder of the journey I don’t notice the distance or the time until my surprise as I autopilot into the driveway of the 1930s semi. The car door opens directly on to high grass in the front garden where weeds and flowers have made a temporary meadow. Next door, the pristine face of the neighbour’s house averts its gaze from its ugly twin, with a tall line of conifers growing along the dividing path. If that house had a nose, it would point in the air. As a child, before the trees had been planted, I used to see our neighbour on his hands and knees on the lawn, pulling up daisies by their roots; he wanted no moss, no clovers, only grass. At the time he looked so old with his bald head, heavy-framed glasses and paunch popping through the buttons of his shirt, but he was probably younger than I am now. It was as if he’d reached a point in his life where he’d decided he was a grown-up – he was done, cooked – and he’d taken on the mantle of age. At least my mother refused to fit the expected conventions, even if it was to the detriment of all those around her. Curls of paint fur the windows of Mum’s house, pebble-dash has fallen off in chunks and the roof sags, but it was ever thus. No wonder no one spoke to us. No wonder no one wants to buy the place.

  I open the front door. A layer of post snags on the floor as I walk into the hallway with its familiar smell of damp wood. The odour is stronger than usual, the air holed up inside the gloom of walls. All the internal doors are shut so I open them one by one – first the lounge, then the dining room, next the kitchen at the back – and each space in turn startles me with the reality of absence. This is the first time I’ve been here since the house was cleared, and everything’s been taken apart from the light bulbs. Only the thin carpet retains the impressions of Mum’s old furniture; years of heavy wood weighing down the fabric. Butting up to the wall in the lounge is a rectangular dent made by the pine dresser. The piece used to lean forward slightly, its shelves designed for a plate collection, but Mum stacked it with papers and boxes of knick-knacks that she never got round to displaying. Four round dimples show the past position of the velour chesterfield – my parents’ first grand purchase for the house. The sofa was too big for the room, and after Dad left, the fabric was damaged and the sofa began to smell of old food. Dust collected in the dimpled buttonholes so Mum covered it with a throw. She couldn’t afford to reupholster. We were always broke.

  The thought of what I have already lost today, and the silent threat that came with the elimination of all that was personal to me, makes it hard to focus. Simon the agent is due in half an hour, time enough I hope for me to put a lid on what Mum’s house ho
lds, although there are few significant events I recall. I don’t know to who or what I’m saying goodbye. In Mum’s kitchen I slide open cabinets, remembering how I used to stand on a chair to reach inside, but the image of me as a child is more like a photo, a memory of a memory. The little girl I used to be has become just another character I played, but somehow I’ve forgotten the lines of the script. At the back of one of the cupboards is a lone packet of jelly, sell-by date 1979, with a picture on the outer cardboard of a woman and a small boy, smiling and making the jelly together. The colour has seeped from the packaging and if it wasn’t for the sell-by date I’d think that the carton was from another lifetime. The seventies seem like only yesterday, but already my past has become vintage.

  Stains and scrapes on the walls and floors mostly belong to Mum, but they trace my childhood like a map of experience. There’s a dark-brown circle on the lounge carpet from a bottle of red wine. In the dining room, the bottom half of the wallpaper has been torn off, and the remaining edge is a layer-cake of paint and paper plastered on by previous occupants. Mum once tried to steam off the slices of wallpaper, and I watched with excitement as she attempted to obliterate the past, my small hands ripping at the walls until my nails were filled with gluey paper. ‘Come on, Cinders,’ she said. ‘Put some welly into it.’ We laughed as a long sheet I was pulling broke free from the wall and I fell backwards on to the floor. As with most of Mum’s passions, the redecorating began with great energy but was never finished. Even as a child I knew this wasn’t how people should live but I got used to it. Now these imperfections remind me of what’s for ever gone and can never be made good.