The Winter House Read online

  I used to want very badly to please him. I remember he would go fishing on a Sunday sometimes – the kind of fishing I don’t understand, when you throw the fish back in once you’ve caught them instead of frying them in butter over a campfire… the way we did that time, do you remember? But I used to accompany him anyway, and occasionally he would let me hold the segmented black rod, his pride and joy, which stood in the scullery with the box of lures beside it, and try to throw the line out over the water with that flick of the wrist he had taught me, in those days before I’d seen him hit Mum and raise his fist to Grace and weep with maudlin, drunken self-pity at the kitchen table. Now, I make myself think back to him by the scummy stretch of river, when his face was thinner and his eyes were clearer and his laugh didn’t sound snarled and vicious. I remind myself that he wasn’t a bad man, really. He knew we despised him. The rot of failed dreams got into his soul.

  After David died, when Dad beat me, I would close my eyes and will myself to imagine I was walking down your garden, past the clucking hens, in through the back door to the warmth of your kitchen. Sometimes you can separate yourself from what’s happening to your body. Herbs, coffee, oranges, toast, soap suds, paint and glue. Two women sitting at the table, not talking but together somehow. Maybe you were decorating a pot. Maybe you were playing your accordion or doing your homework with that frown of concentration on your face that you always have when you’re writing. I would try to hear the scratch of your pen nib on thick paper as the belt came down. You would look up as I came in and you would smile at me. The buckle ripped bits of skin; the pain spurted upwards, into my teeth and skull, down my fingers, every bit of me bright with it, but I wasn’t going to cry out. He was never going to make me cry again. I would sit at your old table and put my hands on the knots of wood and feel the sun spill warmth through the open window onto my bare arms and everything was going to be all right. There was another world out there.

  A week or so later, on a Sunday, I finally returned to see you. I didn’t call in advance: I was scared you would say no or put me off until later. I walked all the way, about seven miles, but it was good because, although it had rained in the night, it was a fine, clean morning, blue and green and gold. I set off early, before my parents were awake and while it was still cool, and took my time. Even now, as I lie here on what will be my deathbed, I remember how I took my shoes off when I got out of town, and walked in time to certain songs. Held my breath between pairs of trees. Walked backwards for a bit. Jumped puddles. Made out shapes in the small clouds on the horizon. You know how often the best time is just before something happens, when anything is possible? I felt I was doing something momentous, although I knew that for you and Emma it would simply be a visit from a boy they barely knew and had very probably not thought about since they last saw him.

  It was only when I got to your house that I let myself feel at all nervous. What was I going to say when you opened the door? I made myself think of opening sentences. ‘Hi, Marnie, I was just passing…’ Silly, how could I be just passing when the lane dribbled out at the end of your drive? It never occurred to me that you wouldn’t be there, but so it proved. I walked up the track, past the beech tree and the silver birches, the hens in their run, the rose bushes and the peonies that were beginning to wilt. I noticed how well cared for everything looked. There was a vegetable plot – later, I helped dig it over and plant things – which was laid out in sprouting rows, with a coiled yellow hose beside it. A wooden bench looking out over the sea, which on that day was turquoise.

  I knocked and there was no reply, and no sound inside the house. I pushed open the letterbox and peered inside at the wooden floorboards; knocked again. I went to the work shed where Emma had shown me how to throw a pot and knocked on its door as well, though I already knew that no one was there. So I sat on the bench to wait. I hadn’t even brought a book with me, or a pad of paper. I rolled myself a cigarette and smoked it, then buried the butt in the soil. I did a headstand and made myself stay in it for two minutes, while the blood pounded in my head and I started to feel weird. Then I thought I might as well do something constructive, so I went to the vegetable plot and started to weed it. There weren’t many weeds to pull out actually; just a few dull green shoots at one end, and a few darker ones dotted around. I wished there were more – I wanted you to come back and see that I’d transformed the plot. When I was done, I turned on the hose at a tap on the outside wall of the house and watered it carefully and then, because I was so hot by now, and wretched with disappointment that you weren’t there, I held the hose over me and let the water stream off my head and down my body until I was wet through.

  That was when you and Emma returned, walking along the drive with a man between you, laughing. You shaded your eyes against the sun when you saw me to make out who I was. For a moment I thought you wouldn’t even recognize me. You were wearing frayed denim shorts, a red T-shirt and sandals, and your hair was tied loosely back; as you came closer I could see you had new freckles across the bridge of your nose and your bare arms were tanned. Emma wore a green skirt and a battered straw hat. She was carrying a lidded basket. I didn’t take much notice of the man, except to see that he wasn’t young, and he held a rug under one arm.

  ‘Ralph?’

  I put the hose down and the water gurgled into the grass beside me. I shook my head and sprayed little drops around my face. ‘I was just passing. No, of course I wasn’t. Hello. You said you didn’t mind. So I came. I, um –’

  ‘Why have you pulled up all of Mum’s –’

  ‘Hello, Ralph,’ interrupted Emma, moving forward and giving me a swift kiss on the cheek. She didn’t seem to mind that I was soaking wet. ‘How nice to see you.’

  ‘Weren’t those weeds?’

  ‘Never mind that now.’ She moved away to turn off the tap. ‘Come and have some coffee with us. Or would ginger beer be more to your liking?’

  ‘If it’s not too much trouble.’

  ‘Of course not. Do you want me to find you some dry clothes?’

  ‘No. I’ll dry off soon enough.’

  ‘Why don’t you and Marnie sit out here and I’ll go and fetch the drinks? By the way, this is Eric. He’s from Scotland but he’s staying with us for a few days while he visits his mother.’ She smiled at Eric and added, clearly for his benefit not mine: ‘He used to be a B-and-B guest, but he’s our friend now. Eric, this is Ralph.’

  ‘Hello, Ralph.’ Eric grasped my hand. He must have been about fifty then. He had beautiful silver hair and weathered skin with lines radiating out from his eyes as if he had spent a lifetime smiling, though on that morning he seemed grave and treated me with a respect that was new to me and made me immediately like him. His handshake was firm enough to make me gasp. ‘I’m pleased to meet you.’

  You gave me a sideways glance and then, taking the rug from Eric, shook it out and sat down on it with long, slender legs folded under you.

  ‘We had a picnic breakfast by the sea,’ said Emma. ‘If we’d known you were coming…’

  I sat down next to you. My clothes stuck to me and I could feel your eyes on me.

  ‘Shall I go?’ I whispered, as Eric and Emma disappeared into the house. ‘Was I wrong to come?’

  You know the thing about you, Marnie? You’re kind. You’ve always been kind. You gave me a proper smile at last and wriggled your feet out of their sandals.

  ‘There’s loads of breakfast left. Do you want something to eat?’

  ‘Eat?’

  ‘You know. When you put food in your mouth and chew it for a bit and then swallow it.’

  ‘What is there?’

  ‘Scones. Strawberries.’

  ‘That’d be nice.’

  ‘Here. Help yourself.’ She pulled the basket across and opened the lid for me. ‘You’re wet through.’

  ‘What did I pull up?’

  ‘Lettuce. Broad beans, I think.’

  ‘I wanted to help.’

  ‘Oh, well.’

>   ‘Sorry.’

  ‘Are things all right at home?’

  I muttered something, not wanting to let the darkness of home seep into this summer brightness.

  We sat in silence for a while. I pulled the hulls out of the lush strawberries and ate them one by one, slowly. Emma brought out two glasses of ginger beer and a towel. She told me I had to stay for lunch.

  ‘You’re lucky to have a mother like yours,’ I said, when she’d gone.

  ‘I know.’ You crossed your legs and tucked both your feet under your thighs. Your thick dark hair shone in the sunlight; there were tiny beads of sweat on your upper lip. I stared at you, a throb of happiness in my fingertips and in my skull. You seemed so self-possessed and perfect, sitting in a lotus position, your palms turned upwards on your knees, the soles of your bare feet grubby.

  ‘Do you think that if you started from that tree stump there you could get all the way to the sea without touching the ground?’

  ‘You mean climb along trees and walls and things?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I don’t know,’ you said dubiously, wrinkling your nose. ‘Probably not.’ Then you pulled your hair more tightly into its ponytail and put your sandals back on your feet. ‘Let’s try.’

  It didn’t feel as though we were sixteen years old, more like seven. We climbed into small knotty trees, leapt from boulder to log, teetered along the crumbling remains of dry-stone walls, scraped our knees and hands, got grit in our eyes, felt the salty wind and the sun burn our cheeks and shoulders, reached the beach by cheating and taking our shoes off to use as stepping-stones across a patch of bare ground. Then we swam in our clothes, shrieking at the cold and giggling and pushing each other under the water, before lying back and gazing up at the slab of clear blue sky above us. You were better at swimming than me, like a dolphin. I watched you and for a moment I forgot about David, about Dad in his cups or Mum with a face that shrivelled when she looked at me.

  I stayed to lunch. I dipped a neat brush into a pot of aquamarine paint and laid the colour over my wonky bowl. I sat in the garden and played chess with Eric, and lost, and played again; neither of us spoke, and I could hear you and Emma indoors, though I couldn’t make out the words. You brought out cup cakes, each topped with cream and a strawberry, and tea in a pot with a crooked spout that Emma had made long ago and you had decorated with tiny patterns. I still smell the fragrant steam as you poured. Such a perfect summer evening, soft and warm, with lengthening shadows on the lawn and mysterious pools of shade collecting under trees and shrubs. Salt was gritty on my skin; my hair felt thick and sticky. There were swallows in the eaves of your house, butterflies in the buddleia, dragonflies over the small pond near the steps, broody clucks of hens. I felt swilled through with joy. Rinsed clean.

  I didn’t want to go home. I thought of asking if I could stay in the small bare room you’d put me in last time – I hadn’t yet discovered that it was your brother’s old room; it took you months to tell me – but I didn’t, because I knew Emma would insist that I rang my parents first. Eric drove me home after you’d made me cheese on toast. He insisted I borrow his book of chess moves to study and that made me happy, because it meant I had an excuse to come back soon.

  I returned three days later, after school, and stayed until after dark. I came again very early on the following Saturday; Eric had left by then, and his place had been taken by a grumpy couple. I helped Emma cook breakfast for them: they could barely restrain themselves from bickering with each other over the eggs, sunny-side up. Emma didn’t help either. She was clipped and glacially polite, her face stony with dislike; the toast was burnt and the coffee tepid and she banged plates down in front of them. It was a side of her I’d not seen before, quite scary. Later, you and I pegged sheets and pillowcases onto the washing-line. The laundry billowed in the fresh breeze, revealing and then concealing you. So I hold you in my memory: in your denim shorts again, green paint on your knee, with a raggedy, round-necked grey jersey and a funny little cap pulled down over your forehead. Thick brows, pale clear skin, strong arms lifted above your head, candid eyes; now I see you and now I don’t.

  And I kept going back, sometimes on consecutive days, and bit by bit it seemed perfectly normal that I should turn up and just join in with whatever you were doing and perhaps that was what I loved most – you were my alternative family, the one I could have had in a parallel universe. Shelling peas. Learning French verbs or chemistry formulae. Collecting eggs from the hens. Washing dishes. Cooking lemon cakes or flapjacks. Reading books – you never lost the habit of reading the difficult passages out loud to yourself in a whisper; even when you were silent your lips would move. Painting – you were doing Art O level and your final exam was coming up: you tried to teach me perspective and line. I still have the portrait you did of me in charcoal. It’s in a frame above my bed in my room in Amsterdam. The me I want to be because you caught a look in my eyes – and I was looking at you.

  It was a long summer, because we did our O levels in June and then were finished with school for ten long weeks. Do you remember the day you took me out in the sailing boat Emma had stashed under a tarpaulin near the shingle beach? It occurs to me now – and I wonder that it never did then – that it was the boat Paolo and Seth had died in. I don’t know why she never got rid of it and I don’t know how she let you go out in it. She was always determined not to infect you with her fear – though she insisted we wear enormous padded yellow life-jackets and if there was much wind she refused to let us go out.

  The boat was a wooden tub with a gashed snub nose, a stubby mast and an ancient, ill-fitting main that we had to tie into place with bits of garden twine. Water gushed in through the bottom as soon as we heaved it into the sea. There wasn’t really room for both of us, and my job seemed to be to sit on whichever side was tipping into the sea while loose ropes lashed at me, the sail flapped like a wounded gull and grey waves surged over the boat’s rim – wrong nautical term, I’m sure; I never got the hang of the vocabulary. You sat at the tiller in your yellow life-jacket, entirely calm, but I yelled and giggled and cursed, and toppled into the bottom of the boat where I would bang my shin on the centreboard or slither like a beached fish while the boat bucked and thwacked its way through the choppy waters. And so again I hold you close in my memory: your thick dark hair whipped back in the wind, your grey eyes scanning the waves, a tiny secret smile on your face.

  Marnie Still: all the memories of you that I’ve kept and guarded for this day. Painting your room – I was hasty and slapdash; you were meticulous. Picking mushrooms in the wood near your house, then cooking them with Emma, who taught me the Latin names that sounded to me like incantations. Teaching you, or trying to teach you, how to use full stops and commas in your writing – the only time I’ve known you almost hysterical, like a bat that’s lost its sonar. It was the first time I’d seen you close to tears – it was just before we received our exam results, I suppose, though I didn’t make the connection at the time. Then, just after we’d received them, when I did well and you didn’t, getting drunk together in your room with the bottle of vodka I’d swiped from my dad: you were very subdued so the alcohol just made you floppy and sad. I so badly wanted to comfort you but didn’t know how. Smoking cigarettes on the beach together, though you never really took to it. Riding our bikes along the country lanes with a picnic in the panniers: Emma lent me an ancient one that must have once belonged to Paolo, though she never said and I never asked; once I had that, it was easier to get to yours after school and cycle back late at night, the light screwed onto the handlebars throwing a dim, unsteady beam in front of me. Playing chess with Eric when he returned in the autumn to see his mother again and – having spent hours in my bedroom learning moves on my plastic travel set with several pawns missing – winning this time. Digging your garden over until my hands were blistered. Chopping wood, like you and Oliver have just been doing but I’ll never do again. Learning how to light fires in the hearth, how to co
ok – you and Emma said very sternly that every man should be able to cook at least as well as women, it was his moral duty, so I mastered risotto and white sauce and omelettes and sponge cakes, and graduated to curries and casseroles and, my greatest triumph, lemon meringue pie. You taught me how to knit, for Christ’s sake! But I never learnt how to make a room feel like a home, the way you and Emma could – just a few deft touches and a space was transformed. You’re doing that here now. I’m dying in a home.

  It was as if I had split myself into two people: there was the raw, surly Ralph, who truanted from school to avoid the bullies, who lived in the dark and disordered house in town, who locked his bedroom door at night for fear his father would crash in with his meaty fists and his ruined face and stand over him, breath reeking and curses spewing from his mouth. And there was the Ralph who slipped out of that nightmarish world and turned up at your house, terrified of his new happiness, terrified he might lose it and be back where he had started, except the darkness would be even darker now that he had known the light. Because of my fear, I tried to make myself indispensable and endlessly entertaining. I’d store up facts I’d learnt and stories I’d heard, remember jokes. When I skipped school I’d go and sit in the library and read all the newspapers. I imagine I must have been exhausting to have around sometimes, pouring out anecdotes and opinions.