The Glass House

by Eve Chase

Teddy and I start swimming with the current, fast without trying. We’re soon quite far from Big Rita. The stream-bed shelves and we plunge deeper into colder water. Teddy starts doggy paddling. I can hear Big Rita shouting something, but not the words, what with the water fuming into my ears and nose. I can taste silt at the back of my throat.

  I’m still giggling when Teddy ducks. And I’m thinking, Wow, my brother really can hold his breath, when there’s a huge splash, an explosion of water, and Big Rita is in the stream, all legs and arms and floating wheel of skirt.

  She lifts Teddy, gasping, to the bank, and asks him over and over if he’s okay. Teddy nods and coughs. Scrambling out of the stream, up the muddy bank, Big Rita squats next to him, dripping wet, her thick bra strap showing underneath her blouse. ‘Crikey. You gave me a scare.’ She looks far more shaken than Teddy. ‘Don’t do that again.’

  Feeling bad that I didn’t notice Teddy was in trouble I glance back at Baby Forest. Something looks different. At first I can’t work out what. Then I realize she’s on the other side of the blanket, no longer scratching at the wicker basket, but the opposite, far edge, on her front, her toes digging into the grass. ‘The baby’s moved.’

  Big Rita turns slowly and blinks, like she might be imagining it. Then she walks over, suddenly nervy.

  I offer Teddy a piggyback and go to join Big Rita, my steps weaving under Teddy’s weight. ‘She’s crawling already. I knew she was super-clever.’

  Big Rita frowns and mutters something about the baby being too young to crawl. She glances around us, squinting into the trees. But it’s impossible to see anything because the bright sun makes the under-storey pitch black. ‘I suppose she might have sort of flopped over and …’ She shakes her head, and stares at the basket, then the blanket’s frayed edge, as if they’re part of a puzzle she can’t solve. ‘I shouldn’t have left her. Not even for a second.’ Then Big Rita does something she never does, not in front of us anyway: she kisses the baby’s head. ‘Let’s go.’

  We walk on in silence. My back starts to ache from Teddy, who forgets to cling, half asleep, his chin resting on my shoulder. I’m glad to see the log stack through the trees, like an ancient monument. The garden wall. I peer up at Mother’s bedroom window, impatient to tell her about our afternoon. Her curtains are still shut. The glass looks misted. She must be very tired.

  We walk around to the front of the house, chatting about what Mother might want to eat for supper. One: Marge’s haddock and egg pie. Iceberg lettuce. Two: a ham hock salad. Big Rita says we all need a good scrub in the bath before we go anywhere near the kitchen. And everything feels right and good and sunny again – until we turn the corner by the front gate. We all stop – time stops too – and stare, barely able to believe it.

  A silver sports car is parked at a wild angle in the drive, swung in at great speed, to leave scarring skid marks in the gravel – and our golden afternoon.

  28

  Rita

  ‘You should never shoot a gun into the trees without knowing where the bullet will end up,’ Rita says, repeating Robbie’s words. She’s still reeling from the sight of Don’s car, glinting malevolently in the drive yesterday, its dents a reminder of the thrill-seeker who drives as he lives. Who probably shoots like that too.

  ‘Is that right, John Wayne?’ Don cocks the gun and fires again, the crack ricocheting into the woods, echoing in her eardrums. A distant tree showers its leaves. He turns to grin at her wolfishly, revealing the intimate pink tissue of his gums.

  ‘The bullet may just keep going. To shoot safely you have to know the bullet’s path.’ She can’t help relishing her recall of Robbie’s knowledge. ‘And you don’t.’

  ‘I see.’ He raises one eyebrow, in a way that manages to be both belittling and carnal.

  Rita looks away and bends down to Teddy, who is enjoying the noise and threat of violence immensely. ‘Indoors,’ she whispers. ‘Now.’

  Teddy’s smile collapses. ‘But Don promised to show me how to shoot.’

  ‘I’m not saying it again, Teddy.’

  ‘But –’

  Don winks at him. ‘Another time, little man.’

  Rita watches Teddy as he stomps back to Foxcote, protesting about the lack of fairness, making a show of kicking up twigs to impress Don. He leaves the garden gate swinging. Bang. She needs to oil it or something, whatever you do with gates. Bang. And she suddenly remembers how she got up this morning and discovered it wide open, even though she always makes sure the house is as secure as it can be – given those holes in the wall – before she turns in. She also noticed the flowerbeds were crushed under the drawing-room window, and a trail of flattened ox-eye daisies leading back to the paved path. She supposes it could have been a curious deer. She’d rather it was a deer. But her mind keeps twitching to Fingers, the albino Green Man. And then, with a shudder that travels down her spine, the sight of the baby yesterday, not where Rita had left her on the picnic blanket. As if someone had picked her up while she was watching Hera and Teddy. But surely the baby had manoeuvred herself somehow. Rita must put it from the muddle of her tired mind.

  ‘I wish you’d talk to me like that, Rita,’ Don says, dispersing her swarming thoughts. His absurdly blue eyes spark under heavy, indolent lids, and he smiles at her in a way that suggests he’s mistaken her for a different sort of woman, someone more attractive.

  He’s also stripped off his white shirt, entirely gratuitously – it’s not hot today – and a thick V of curly dark hair arrows down his tanned torso, as if deliberately signposting the bulbous bulk of his groin, its topography alarmingly obvious in his tight flared jeans. She tries hard not to look, but she’s got a feeling he’s aware of her effort, and it thrills him. ‘Do you slap buttocks as well?’

  Her face heats. She shields her smarting cheek with her hand and glances back at the house, anxious that Jeannie, who is upstairs with the baby, might peer out of her window, and think she’s trying to linger alone with Don. Or, God forbid, flirting with him. (She can’t flirt, like she can’t dance, but Jeannie may not know this.) Still, she won’t leave until Don puts the gun away. ‘Please. Can we stop the shooting now? Teddy might dart back here at any moment, and Hera’s always slinking off outside on her own.’

  He laughs. ‘Amazed that girl can slink anywhere.’

  She glares at him. ‘It’s not safe.’ She can’t keep the anger from her voice. How dare he talk about Hera like that? And she hates this blood lust. Just as well that, for all his bravado and swagger, he doesn’t seem able even to shoot a squirrel.

  ‘You can be safe when you’re dead, Miss Rita.’ He aims into the trees and shoots again. More leaves fall. (Nothing dies.) ‘Anyway, Teddy needs to be able to handle a gun.’

  Rita could have shot Teddy herself when, at breakfast, he’d delightedly informed Don, ‘We’ve got a gun in the biscuit tin. And shotguns in the cellar.’ Don’s eyes lit up. He gave Teddy a soldier’s salute, holding on to a slice of toast. ‘You and me, Teddy. Hunters, eh?’ And Teddy pretty much exploded with joy.

  With a vulpine smile, Don disables the gun over his knee. ‘Happy now?’

  She’s not. Yesterday, she calmed herself – and a near hysterical Hera – by saying that Jeannie wouldn’t do anything to jeopardize the situation with the baby and would send him rapidly packing.

  Today that seems rather less likely. She’s had to keep the television on most of the morning to block out the noises erupting from Jeannie’s bedroom. Jeannie actually squealed, like a stepped-upon cat. (When Rita and Fred had made love, she’d been far too self-conscious to make any noise. Let alone squeal. Frankly, there was no reason to squeal.) At breakfast, like a bad dream, there was Don with his booming laugh, leaning back in the kitchen chair, his arms behind his head, revealing dense tufts of hair, like hedgehogs, under his arms. Worse, when Rita leaned over to put his cup of coffee beside him she smelt … sex. Definitely sex. She can’t stop thinking about it.

  She catches the same sweet-sour musk no
w and, with a flush of shame, remembers how, last night, while damning the immoral transgression taking place a few steps down the landing, her body became hot. ‘Lunch,’ she says curtly, and starts walking back to the house.

  Don follows. He stamps and crunches through the undergrowth, noisily, in contrast to Robbie, who makes barely a sound. ‘Shooting always makes me ravenous. What’s cooking, Miss Rita?’

  ‘I don’t know yet.’ Fish fingers probably. Hedgerow crumble. It’s been much harder to get to the shops since the baby arrived.

  ‘You don’t know?’ he gasps, with mock outrage. ‘Isn’t that the point of you? Lists and menus.’ He pauses. ‘Plotting.’

  Heat rushes through her again: Jeannie’s warned him. Don’s arrival will create another glaring omission in the notebook. She wishes the pages would write themselves, like an invisible hand on a ouija board, then flutter across the world and slide, anonymously, under Walter’s hotel-room door in Africa.

  As she walks through the garden gate, he touches her bare arm, a gesture that says, Wait. The tips of his fingers are surprisingly soft, like a small girl’s, as if he’s never chopped a log or scrubbed a floor in his life. She can smell the ripeness of the last of the summer’s roses going over. The tang of salt in his sweat. His skin. She can see the lines where the tropical sun has etched brackets around his mouth, the lips so full they expose their paler moist insides – she wonders where those lips have roamed, then sharply checks herself – and the pencil dots of morning stubble on his chiselled jaw. ‘The baby. I mean … Christ.’ His face grows serious and his lidded eyes kind, blue as swimming pools, momentarily distracting her from who he is, what he’s doing. ‘Not the best idea, given the circumstances, is it?’

  ‘Jeannie won’t let me call the authorities. She won’t listen to …’ She can’t say the word ‘sense’.

  ‘Well, I’m here now,’ he says, with a worrying note of permanence. His mood changes. The concern drains from his face, and it sets with something else, a ruthlessness that makes Rita instinctively step away. ‘That woman will damn well listen to me.’

  *

  ‘The baby’s not your problem, Jeannie,’ says Don, making a show of pouring the tea into the chipped white china.

  Walter’s probably never lifted a teapot in his life, Rita thinks, let alone poured Jeannie a cup, and she wonders if this is why Don’s doing it, trying to inveigle himself deeper into Jeannie’s affections.

  ‘She’s not a problem, Don. She’s a gift.’ Jeannie smiles down at the baby sleeping in the wicker vegetable trug on the kitchen floor. ‘Aren’t you, poppet?’

  Don leans back in his chair. ‘My God, you are one crazy lady,’ he says, with such a vexing mixture of contempt and affection it makes Rita study her hands – and spot their bare feet fiercely caressing beneath the table, like mating otters.

  Afterwards, when they’ve gone upstairs for ‘a nap’ – the sort that makes the plaster ceiling powder down – and Rita’s elbow deep in washing-up, Hera rushes in, sparking like a plug. ‘Who does he think he is?’

  Teddy, sitting at the table, licking clean the crumble bowl, says, ‘Don’s a big-game hunter. He’s killed seven lions. He’s going to teach me how to shoot rabbits.’

  ‘He’s just an idiot,’ splutters Hera. ‘The rabbits will laugh at him.’

  ‘Teddy, give me that dish. Thank you. And don’t talk nonsense. Now, go and play in the garden for a bit. There’s a good boy.’ She glides the dish under the suds, wishing she owned some rubber gloves. Her hands feel ten years older than the rest of her.

  Hera presses against the draining board. ‘Make him leave,’ she begs. As Rita suspected, the new sweet Hera was as delicate as a robin’s egg. And she’s cracked. ‘Please, Big Rita.’

  She scrubs harder. She thinks of all the times in London she’s wanted to tell Jeannie to be careful. Confide that Don brushed against her body as he walked past, and once, to her mortification, called her ‘Legs’. But she never dared. She felt somehow complicit, guilty, even though she couldn’t work out what she’d done to encourage him. And it’d be reckless for any nanny to complain about such trivial things. Everyone knew it went on all the time, and pretty young nannies were wise to wedge chairs against their bedroom door handles before going to bed. You just had to keep your wits about you and your head down. Now, she wishes she’d spoken up. ‘I’ll try.’

  *

  It’s tricky to catch Jeannie on her own. As the sticky afternoon drifts on, Jeannie and Don remain inseparable. A crackling electricity surrounds them. The way Jeannie looks at Don, so hungrily, it’s almost male.

  In London they could never be this free. Nor would they dare. Not in front of the children. But here in the forest, inhibition appears to have been peeled off, like a silky dress. It’s fascinating, shocking, and she can’t rip her eyes away. They don’t notice her looking. She’s never felt more like a bit of furniture, a large kitchen dresser perhaps, gliding around on soundless castors.

  She discreetly tugs back a curtain, and peers out of the drawing-room window. Yes, there they are, outside on the daisy-studded lawn, sprawled on a blanket, the baby wedged between them. Two glasses. A wine bottle. Empty. They look like a young family – that’s the worst thing. She feels a jab of sympathy for Walter, followed by alarm. If he knew, she can’t bear to think what would happen. And if Marge sees them like this, she’ll know for certain what’s going on under Walter’s sagging roof.

  She watches Teddy rush towards them and tug Don, laughing and protesting, away by the hand, talking about shooting in the woods. Jeannie waves them off.

  Anxiety taps its way down Rita’s spine. She hopes they don’t go too far. Or pick any mushrooms. Or fall into a disused mine. She’ll take the dried washing upstairs, keep her hands and mind busy until Teddy returns safely. Half an hour later, she hears Jeannie’s light footsteps on the stairs.

  Here’s her chance. She knocks gently on Jeannie’s bedroom door. ‘It’s me, Rita.’

  ‘Come in!’ Jeannie calls out cheerily.

  ‘I just – Oh. Sorry.’ Jeannie’s dressing, wrestling with a bra strap and stepping into an oyster-satin dress. ‘I’ll come back later.’

  ‘Don’t be silly. We’re both women.’

  She’s probably got more in common with the wheelbarrow in the garden than with Jeannie in that liquid halterneck dress, more lovely than Rita’s seen her in months. ‘Thought I’d scrub up properly for once.’ Jeannie turns, and lifts teased, oiled curls off her neck. ‘Would you do me up?’

  Rita fumbles with the tiny pearl button. She can’t help brushing Jeannie’s skin, smooth and unblemished, with her own roughened fingers. ‘I was wondering how long Don might be staying.’

  Jeannie spins round and holds her gaze a little longer than is comfortable. ‘A few days. Then he’s off to Arabia. Since you ask.’ The sisterly warmth of a moment ago has gone. ‘I’ll do the fastening.’

  How will they survive a few more days? Also, next week is the last of August. Walter’s due back in the country. And the plan is to call the authorities. Or is Jeannie not considering that Walter might actually turn up here? She seems to be refusing to think about everything else.

  Time’s slipping between their fingers. The seasons are changing. Angry wasps have replaced the corps of white butterflies. The late-August air is blood-warm, the sky a tired, bilious blue. And at the dawn feed of the day, she’s started to smell autumn seeping through the cracks in the windows, sweet and acidic, like the brown bruised flesh of fallen apples. Rita aches for the sea.

  ‘You’re not to mention Don’s visit to Walter.’ Jeannie tries to sound nonchalant. ‘Let’s not make a fuss.’

  Rita stares down at the unravelling edge of the old Persian rug, feeling as though she’s fraying too. ‘What should I tell Marge?’ she asks quietly, not looking up.

  ‘Just say a family friend is staying.’

  As if she’ll believe that. Marge is a bloodhound. She glances at Jeannie’s unmade bed, the tw
isted sheets, and imagines Marge lifting them to her nose and sniffing.

  ‘Best to instruct her not to mention anything to Walter too,’ says Jeannie, quickly.

  ‘She’s unlikely to listen to me.’ Marge believes she’s a rank, no, a whole species, above Rita.

  ‘Well, Walter can’t easily be contacted for the next few days. What with the mine business. Isn’t that what he said to you on the phone?’

  Rita nods. For some reason, she’s not sure if she believes Walter. He’s as likely to phone – or even roll up, with no warning, straight from the plane – to surprise them, catch them out.

  ‘Anyway, Marge can’t exactly mention Don to Walter and forget about the small matter of the baby, can she?’ Jeannie perches on the edge of the bed and snaps a paste-jewelled cuff bracelet on to her slender wrist. ‘It’s all or nothing.’

  The same goes for her note-taking. The whole summer is off-the-record now, a gaping hole where truth no longer lives. Only the story Jeannie’s shaped: this fantasy family in the dreamlike Arcadian woods.

  ‘Marge cares about the baby, Rita. She’s bigger-hearted than I gave her credit for.’

  Rita’s not sure about this either. She suspects Marge gets a thrill from being in on a secret. And the power it wields. A silence pools.

  ‘Look, Rita, I know you don’t approve of Don.’

  She can’t bring herself to deny it, even though it’s not her job to approve or otherwise.

  Jeannie turns to the mirror, and lifts her chin, examining herself. ‘And I wish Hera didn’t hate him. It’s all very awkward, given how fond Don is of her.’ She adjusts the cuff on her wrist, then glances at Rita sharply, as if rebuking judgement that Rita hasn’t yet expressed. ‘Nothing’s black or white. Not how it seems when you’re young.’

  Rita gives the smallest of nods. She’d never be unfaithful to her husband. She knows this in the same way she knows that she’ll never be short, or not love ferns.

  As if reading this, Jeannie’s eyes start to swim with tears, endangering her mascara, the cat-like sweeps of kohl. ‘I don’t love my children any less, you know. In fact, the opposite. I feel like a proper mother again, not some – some dreary black cloud.’ She catches a tear deftly on the edge of her finger. ‘Given everything that’s happened, aren’t I allowed a few crumbs of joy? Answer me that, Rita.’