The Glass House

by Eve Chase

  ‘There was a gust through the open window. The dry bark just went u-up,’ I stammer, then stare down at the floor and wait for her to yell.

  But Big Rita doesn’t yell. She stands there for years, then walks slowly towards me and hugs me so her chin is resting on my head. She smells of the baby. Good things. I smell of smoke. And I suddenly know I always will.

  ‘I’m sorry.’ I start to cry, and keep apologizing but this does not remove the soot from the glass or the burning taste on my tongue, or make me a nice girl. She’ll leave us now.

  ‘Hera.’ She pulls back, holds me by the shoulders, her fingers sinking into my disgusting fleshiness. ‘You think Dot and Ethel will expire at a whiff of smoke? They’re tougher than that. A bit of vinegar on a cloth will clean the glass too. Hey, look at me.’ I raise my gaze slowly, daring to believe it might be okay. ‘Why, Hera? Why did you light those sticks?’ she asks, like this question matters more than anything else. More than the fire itself, even.

  But I don’t know how to explain that the urge began last night, when I heard Mother and Don shouting, and it grew this morning, after I saw the bruise on Mother’s face. And then the urge was bigger than me.

  ‘You could have started a proper fire. Burned down the house.’ Rita pauses. Something in her eyes is scared. ‘Is that what you wanted?’

  ‘No.’ I study the empty glass rolling on the rug. The beads of spilled water on the wool. And I wish I could thread them together into a necklace and give it to Big Rita, make everything right again. And I hear her say, ‘Are you sure?’

  And the way she asks it makes me not sure at all so I don’t answer.

  ‘And London?’ Her voice goes strange and raspy. ‘Did you light that fire, Hera?’ Her big sandy-brown eyes run over my face.

  I consider lying. But it’s Big Rita so I whisper, ‘I thought it was out.’

  She takes a sharp breath. Outside the open window, birds start clacking in the trees, and it sounds like slow clapping, getting faster. After a while she says, ‘You’ve told me something big. Something that makes me worried.’

  ‘I won’t do it again.’ I’m not sure she believes me either.

  ‘Tell me what happened. That night in London.’

  I press my lips together. My mouth is full of too many feelings. They all have different flavours. None of them nice. ‘Will you tell my mother?’

  A frown quarrels between her eyebrows. ‘I should.’

  ‘Don’t, Big Rita. Please.’

  ‘Just tell me what happened.’

  It suddenly feels easier to be truthful. Like, if I tell, the worry of it might leap from me to Big Rita, like a nit. ‘Everyone was asleep and … and I sneaked downstairs to get something to eat.’

  She almost smiles. ‘Right.’

  ‘Those pink wafer biscuits. I wouldn’t have bothered for anything else. I wanted to eat them on my own in the dark.’

  She nods, like she knows this already. ‘How did you light the fire?’

  The question is like a jab of a needle. My body flinches. ‘I only singed the edge of the curtain on the light bulb, just to see what would happen. I squashed the scorchy bit between my fingers.’

  She cocks her head to one side and looks at me in the same concentrated way she does newspaper crosswords. ‘But it must have hurt?’

  ‘It stopped me feeling anything. That’s why I …’ I stop. Unable to say it. ‘Then I went to bed.’

  She waits patiently for the next bit. I can hear the woodpecker now. His machiney pecking, like he’s at a typewriter, taking down evidence.

  ‘I thought I’d pulled the curtain clear of the lamp and turned the lamp off,’ I explain truthfully. ‘But I can’t have because later I smelt smoke. So I ran into your room and woke you up.’

  When I shook Big Rita’s shoulders she went from sleepy to awake in a second. I’ve never seen anyone move so fast. She launched into Teddy’s room and slung him over her shoulder, then grabbed my hand and we ran to the floor below to wake Mother, who was all woozy from the pills. Big Rita pretty much had to carry her down the stairs too. I’m not sure anyone would have survived without her. Other people get medals for this sort of thing. Rita got sent to Foxcote.

  ‘What did you not want to feel?’ She won’t let it go.

  The question skims too close. I don’t want to risk feeling it again by answering so I press my lips together, and taste the pink wafer biscuits I ate earlier.

  Big Rita loops her arms around her legs. ‘When I was six I saw my parents die in a car crash.’

  ‘That’s really sad.’ I’m relieved not to talk about me.

  ‘But I couldn’t remember it for years, even though I was there.’ Her face grows sad and a million years old. ‘It was only today, in fact, I just remembered fully what happened.’ She disguises her voice breaking with a cough. An expression I don’t recognize ripples across her face, like a reflection on water. ‘You’re the only person I’ve told, Hera. And, you know, I feel much better for telling you.’

  I rub her arm, glad she feels a bit happier. I wonder if I would too, if I told her what I think I saw when I looked out of my bedroom window at the midwife running down our front steps, the baby in her arms.

  ‘I think if we keep the dark things shut up inside,’ she goes on, ‘they grow big. Like weeds. They smother all the flowers and block the sunlight.’ She takes my hand, and holds it tight, squeezing all secrets out, like the last bit of toothpaste from a tube. ‘So what did you want to forget, Hera?’

  ‘My baby sister. Mother and Don’s baby.’

  Big Rita’s eyes pop open like umbrellas.

  ‘And when I looked out of the window, the night she was born, and the midwife took her away –’ My breath goes all raggedy. ‘She didn’t have a proper face, Big Rita. Her mouth and nose were … like one big hole. And … and there’s something else. The baby …’ The words scratch inside my head, trying to get out. ‘… she wasn’t dead, Big Rita. Her little hand was moving. When the midwife carried away my baby sister, she was still alive.’

  33

  Sylvie

  So this is it. Annie and I are on the motorway, hurtling towards a house that no longer exists, and a place in my heart I’ve spent a lifetime trying to eviscerate. Oh, yes, and the sounds of a forest that we’ll record and play to Mum in the hope of jolting her back to life. This is the original reason for going, I remind myself, although it feels like other forces are pulling me towards the forest now, a whirlpool suck. The provincial suburbs soon peter out, and the landscape – inside my head, out of the window – starts to change: rushing rivers; pea-green valleys; excitement; trepidation, and at the edges, molar-powdering anxiety. It feels like the past is rushing towards me at seventy miles an hour.

  The bottles of craft ales drunk on an empty stomach yesterday evening are probably not helping.

  After Helen’s unexpected visit, and an hour of manic Google-Earthing, my head felt tight, stretched, as if it was straining to grasp the tangled mass of recent events. Seeking clarity, I went for a walk along the canal towpath. Jake was on his boat deck, spanner in hand, fiddling with the engine. Admittedly, I’d noted this from the balcony already, and punctuated my exhausted-looking face with red lipstick. There was something endearing about his absorption in the task and in the way the complexities of the engine seemed to have beaten him. He didn’t even look up as I passed. Just asked me how it was going from under his hat, as if he could thermally detect my presence. Rather than answering, ‘Good, thanks, you?’ – the only polite answer in London – and walking on, I committed the faux pas of answering the question, as if it was 1950s rural Ireland. My life – Mum’s accident, Annie’s pregnancy, Helen the psycho mother – tumbled out in huge messy over-share. He’d put down the spanner and said, ‘No wonder you turned down a coffee. You need alcohol.’

  ‘You’ve no idea how much.’

  He offered me his hand, and held mine firmly as I walked down the gangplank, locked to his mismatched Bowie eyes, fe
eling a surge of excitement I hadn’t felt for years.

  After that time wheeled away, like unexpected, perfect evenings do. I learned about boat crankshafts and pistons and rotary motions. How he’s a techie and hot-desks in an office in King’s Cross with an onsite churro machine. Six months single – she wanted kids, he didn’t – he plans to travel the world on his motorbike, ‘Before I’m forty,’ he said, as if this was a bucket-list deadline. He’s thirty-one. ‘You’re a baby!’ I hooted.

  ‘And you’re about to be a grandmother,’ he replied, with a lazy smile, and for some reason this was the funniest, most unlikely thing I’d ever heard, and I laughed so hard the beer came fizzing up through my nostrils in an appalling way, not caring one bit. When I left he kissed me on both cheeks, disappointingly chastely. He smelt of oil and sweat. He smiled right into my eyes and said, ‘Sylvie-from-the-balcony, your life is completely mental,’ which is man code for, run away, run away, the woman’s a wacko. But the way he said it didn’t make me feel like that. I simply felt understood. And the evening was like a mega-dose of effervescent vitamin C. Unfortunately, the effects are rapidly wearing off.

  Caroline’s words repeat in my head. ‘In what way is this not a bad idea, Sylvie?’ she said, when I called her last night.

  I didn’t even try to describe my strange new craving to see the forest or that I’d been dreaming of it every night, a twisting path through the trees, leading me endlessly forward – even this felt like a sisterly betrayal of sorts – but I said it mattered to Annie, that the pregnancy had sharpened her curiosity, lent it a new urgency, and a sense of entitlement to my history, or ‘her-story’, as Annie corrected. But, of course, the most important thing was recording forest sounds for Mum. As the nurse suggested.

  ‘But you could stand in Hyde Park and record it! You can download birdsong!’ Caroline protested.

  ‘Not the same, Caro.’ The conversation tautened between our respective continents.

  Eventually Caroline said, ‘I’m worried about you, Sylvie. You seem … not yourself.’ She paused. ‘What if it stirs something up? You don’t know how you’ll react. I mean if it were me … if I ever –’ She stopped short of mentioning her own provenance. But her breath caught on it. ‘The whole thing makes me a tad anxious, that’s all, sis,’ she added, more warmly, stepping back, and refocusing on me, like always.

  I was relieved I’d trusted my instincts and not mentioned the folder. With all the worry about Mum in hospital, and everything else Caroline’s got on her plate, it didn’t seem right to throw her a curveball like that. Not when she’s so far away. ‘It’s just a place, Caroline,’ I insisted. But as I drive towards it, I know that isn’t true.

  ‘Oh, no!’ exclaims Annie, interrupting my thoughts. Sitting beside me in the passenger seat, she’s been absorbed in a pregnancy calendar app on her phone for the last half an hour. ‘I might start getting stretch marks from next month. No way. I’d rather die.’

  I laugh and change gears. ‘I doubt it. You’re so young you’ll ping back to shape like a pair of Falke tights.’

  ‘You didn’t,’ she says breezily. She’s in a good place today, excited about this trip. She didn’t believe me at first when I suggested it.

  ‘You weighed in at nine and a half pounds, thank you very much.’

  Annie crosses her legs. ‘Eek. Not hereditary, I hope.’

  I say nothing. I don’t know my birth weight. Or my true birthday.

  She shoots an apologetic glance at me, realizing the significance too. After that we sit, not talking, like you do when there’s too much to say, and a high likelihood of a conversation veering off in the wrong direction, like the car.

  *

  ‘Turn left at these crossroads!’ Annie shrieks, two hours later. ‘Google Maps says follow the signpost for the village of Hawkswell. No, no, left, Mum!’

  I turn on to a narrow country road and wonder if my mother made the same journey, decades ago, if she ever drove down this particular road. I like to think she did, that these are ghost routes I’m retreading.

  Annie points out of the windscreen and waggles her finger excitedly, as if she’s spotted a herd of elephants. ‘Forest!’

  At the first sight of it, that looming swampy green, all the blood rushes from my head. I try to concentrate on the road. But it’s getting closer and closer, filling the expanse of the windscreen, making my heart knock so hard in my chest it feels like it’s going to smash its way out. I’m struck by the irony of being in a place with so many trees, when I was born with no known family tree of my own.

  ‘Mum, what you doing?’

  I pull up at the side of the road, feeling an unstable slipping sensation, a foot on black ice.

  ‘Mum, are you having a whitey?’

  I shake my head. It’s more like being hit by an asteroid. Or having a stroke. Christ. Am I old enough to have a stroke? When I peer at the trees ahead, I feel a dull tugging, dragging-down sensation, as if the forest has its very own dream logic, and centrifugal pull. ‘Long drive. I need some air.’

  I wind down the window. The woody scent of bark and leaves. But also the tang of decay.

  ‘You’re scaring me. No offence.’

  ‘It’s a proper forest, right? Sorry. I think I was expecting something more like Hampstead Heath. I’ve been in London too long. A toffee, please.’ The sugar hit works. ‘Cured. Let’s go.’

  ‘You sure? We don’t have to do this, Mum. I mean, I’d love to see the forest, but not if … Well, I guess it must be kind of weird.’

  ‘Annie, do I look like a woman who is intimidated by some old trees?’

  ‘Er, yeah.’ And we both laugh. Only mine fades quickly. I suddenly remember how fearless I’d once been, as a young girl, before I realized being discovered meant being abandoned. I think of the apple tree in my parents’ garden, how I’d climb it, small hands gripping, bare feet swinging upwards, knowing every twist of twig, every eye and dimple on the bark, the joyous weightlessness of sitting in the upper branches, like a bird in its nest. What happened to that girl?

  In the rear-view mirror, the exit’s no longer visible. Low, twisted branches scrape against the windows. I feel a tremor of panic, then awe.

  The forest is monumental. Dwarfing. Disorienting. At the side of the road, the gouging scars of old mines. Tourist signs to caves. Puzzlewood. A knock-kneed heap of old railway tracks.

  This is not a nurturing fairy glade, or the twinkly arboretum Mum would describe to me as a child. Oh, no. This is a darker, wilder place. Indifferent to my survival. And I can’t help but wonder if it’s forged neural pathways into my kernel infant brain, like the veins in a leaf. As we drive, I imagine them flickering into life. I sort of like this idea. It also scares the crap out of me.

  I can’t imagine this place has changed much since the seventies, only the world around it. Time no longer feels linear. But on a loop. I think about the body in the woods in the newspaper cuttings and wonder if forest noises are the best idea, after all. On the other hand, perhaps they’re perfect, just the sort of visceral shock Mum needs. Even if, right now, the shock is all mine.

  We pull up in a car park. Startled birds explode from the trees. ‘You wanted to see your roots?’ I say, getting out of the car and pointing to the thick toes of a nearby tree, hiding my nerves behind a joke.

  Annie laughs. Her hair is dogwood red against the green. We walk, looking for ‘the right spot’ to record for Mum. I’m astonished by it all. The enormous haggy yew. A yellow fungus protruding from a trunk, like a giant’s ear. Mud churned by the wild boars’ trotters. The earth is the colour of a rich bronzer and it stains my white trainers. I imagine the archaeological dig beneath my feet: poachers’ bullet cartridges, a steak knife with a criminal history, the skeleton of a baby who wasn’t as lucky as me. This forest could hide anything.

  ‘Here,’ I say, because I don’t want to go any further. ‘Then we’ll go and find a cup of tea and some cake.’

  ‘Shush. Don’t make a sou
nd. One. Two.’ Annie holds up her phone. She’s pinning so much hope on this that I don’t want to say anything negative. Long shot. ‘Recording.’

  At first, nothing. It takes a minute or so for our ears to tune in. Annie listens rapturously, like those YouTube hits of deaf people hearing for the first time. The drilling of a woodpecker. A twig breaking. The paper-bag rustle of leaves. I try to imagine the noises penetrating the oceanic deep of my mother’s brain, lighting up her synapses, like a shimmer of cognitive fluorescence. It suddenly feels unlikely, and my mood dips.

  As we walk back to the car, Annie turns to face me. Her eyes are shining. ‘Aren’t you glad your biological mother had you? Even given what she did?’

  I know this question is loaded, Annie’s way of justifying her own decision. But I can only be honest. ‘Well, yes. Otherwise there’d be no you, and I’d not even get to be a jostling atom in the universe, which would be pretty rubbish.’

  ‘I’m glad too,’ she says, and I squeeze her hand.

  *

  Casey’s Café is the only tearoom in Hawkswell, a village name I recognize from the newspaper cuttings. A small, slightly dingy establishment, with a sun-faded stripy awning, it looks out at a village hall and a cobbled square. The small round tables are empty, apart from one old woman sitting beside the dimpled glass of the window, warming her hands on a metal teapot. She’s weathered and grey and oddly still, like she might have died in the chair a few hours ago and no one’s noticed. We sit at the table next to hers, avoiding the gloomier rear of the café. Annie giggles at the menu. ‘Oh, my God, what’s lardy cake?’

  ‘Sugar and lard, basically. No smashed avocado on toast here, Annie. Scones. Look. Can’t go wrong with scones. Let’s order them.’