The Winter House Read online

  She rubbed her hair dry and lay down on the bed, under the covers. The wind had died away and the sky outside was now a hard, flat blue; the trees and ground glinted with frost. She felt used up and all she wanted to do was close her eyes and shut out the world. But she found she couldn’t sleep. Her mind was still racing. She could hear Oliver’s voice as he said something to Ralph, though she couldn’t make out any words. Then, from outside, there was a sudden frantic cawing, as if a bird was in distress somewhere in the woods. The rest of the day stretched in front of her, with nothing in it but Ralph dying. She needed to fill it with small and comforting tasks: the sheets that had to be washed, the cake she planned to bake because, although no one would eat it, and the last one was still hardly touched in the tin, the smell would fill the downstairs room, the tomato soup she would try to coax down his throat, the ice cream he wrinkled his nose at – or perhaps she should make him some custard, he had loved Emma’s, the phone calls she would make on the hill behind the house, theoretically to ensure her flat was all right in her absence, but really to hear Eva’s familiar, jaunty voice, the sudden cackle of laughter.

  She would get through to the evening, and then – like an old married couple – she and Oliver would drink whisky as a black-and-white movie flickered in front of them and Ralph lay beside them, like their ill child, his head propped on a pillow, his eyes opening and closing. They would bend over him to make sure he was still breathing, adjust his covers to make themselves feel useful. Did the day stretch in front of Ralph too, so that he longed for it all to be over, the pain and the fear, or was he clinging to each second as it went?

  The drawing on the wall was a seascape in charcoal. As she looked at it, it blurred, so it almost seemed that the waves were moving and that she could taste the salt on her lips. When she told Ralph the story of their past, she realized how partial her recollection was, and how bright clusters of memories glowed in the darkness. Marnie’s childhood had been strangely cut off from the outside world, she a quaint, unworldly figure in drab second-hand clothes. All the events that were shaking up the country had seemed to be taking place beyond the world in which she lived, however much she tried to involve herself. She wanted to be part of the history that was happening. Lucy took her on marches; together they made banners and badges; she read books about politics; she signed petitions about women’s right to choose. Once, she and Lucy had gone to Greenham Common and linked hands round the fencing, shouting slogans, though Marnie remained self-conscious, awkward among the fervent crowd. Ralph gave her numerous compilation tapes that he had made of new music, insisting that she listen – and she did. She went to concerts with friends, sat in the mud at a festival or two, smoked a joint occasionally, though it never had much effect except to make her feel dizzy.

  People talk of the soundtrack of their lives. Hers was the sound of the sea, the waves sucking up the shingle, the wind riffling the grey water, the wild call of birds. Her most vivid recollections through her early years and her teens were not of wild parties or sexual encounters, but of the house: the compact kitchen where Emma would stand at the hob, with plaster in her hair and paint on her muscled arms; the fire burning in the grate and Emma beside it, sewing or reading; Ralph and Lucy up in her room, rain falling outside and the sea a roiling brown mass in the distance; collecting eggs still warm from the hens; sitting on the lawn with a sketchbook and the sun on the nape of her neck. Friends came into her world; she didn’t willingly go into theirs. She had hung back, watching, waiting. Watching for what and waiting for what?

  ‘You were a funny little thing,’ Emma said, her long-dead voice as clear as if she was in the same room. ‘Quiet, apparently self-possessed. Very protective of me, even when I wanted to protect you. Protective of everything, really. Remember the graveyard of animals you had – every bumble bee and fallen bird and mouse? And then there was Ralph. You felt responsible for him, however much I tried to tell you not to be. You thought you could rescue him, didn’t you? Or was it Seth you were rescuing, over and over again?

  ‘Too many ghosts,’ continued Emma’s voice, the voice of her own thoughts. ‘Even I’m your ghost now. You can’t let me go; you can’t let any of us go. You carry us with you. But Ralph isn’t a ghost yet, Marnie. So what do you think you’re doing, lying upstairs mourning him already? There will come a time for that, but it isn’t now.’

  Marnie sat up. She almost believed she would see her mother at the end of the bed, arms folded, looking at her with those shrewd grey eyes. Standing, she saw herself in the small mirror, and for a moment she thought it was Emma. Same dark hair, sprinkled with grey; same eyes with tiny wrinkles raying out; same inscrutable expression, a mouth that looked as if it would smile at any moment. She put on clean underwear, then her long skirt and the baggy grey jersey she had worn so many times it was nearly bald at the elbows. She towelled her damp hair, and twisted it on top of her head, thrust her feet into her slippers and went purposefully down the stairs.

  Although it was not even three o’clock, the light was thickening and the sky fading to a steely grey. Marnie passed Oliver, sitting with his hand on Ralph’s and a book open but unread on his lap, and went to the door. She recoiled from the biting cold, which hit her as she opened it and stepped across the threshold. It scoured her cheeks and made her eyes water, though in the chill the tears were viscous. Her breath smoked in front of her and she could feel the hairs in her nostrils begin to freeze and her hair to become crisp. The temperature must have dropped several degrees in the last few hours. The moon was already up, low on the horizon. It was a yellow crescent, but the entire sphere was also unusually clear, with its craters and seas. The serene, inhuman beauty of the sight made Marnie’s spine tingle, whether with terror or joy she could not tell. She stood watching it until her toes were throbbing in her slippers and she couldn’t stand the cold any longer, then stepped back into the house.

  ‘It’s ridiculously cold outside,’ she said to Oliver, noticing how tired and wretched he looked. ‘It must be – oh, I don’t know, minus ten or something.’

  ‘It gets very cold here. I’ve been up in the winter before. We spent a couple of New Years here. It went down to minus fifteen, I think. I remember being struck by how hostile the environment felt, so icy and dark.’

  ‘It’s a bit like that now.’

  ‘What is?’

  Ralph’s voice surprised her. ‘I didn’t know you were awake.’

  ‘Sometimes I don’t know if I’m awake or not either. I can’t tell if I’m dreaming.’ He sounded quite chirpy, though his words slurred and his skin was an ominous chalky colour. There was an odour about him that caught in Marnie’s nostrils; soap wouldn’t remove it. He was rotting before he had died. ‘You, for instance. I think you’re in my dreams. I slide away from you into sleep and then you’re there as well. Who can say where one state ends and the other begins. Not me. It must be the morphine. Morphine’s a wonderful thing, you know. I wish I’d discovered it before. You should try some.’ And he actually started fumbling around in his covers for the silver flask of liquid morphine he regularly swigged from.

  ‘It’s OK. I’ll stick to the whisky.’

  ‘Things feel quite far away, but in a good way. Pain ebbs, like a tide going out. Things don’t matter so much.’

  ‘That’s good.’

  ‘Dying, for instance. It’s not so scary.’

  ‘That’s good too.’ Marnie had to fight the urge to tell him that of course he wasn’t dying; that he was going to be all right.

  ‘Except there are these pictures sometimes.’

  ‘How do you mean?’

  ‘Horrible.’

  ‘What pictures?’

  ‘I don’t know. Things sliding together. Falling. Melting. Slime. Nothing stays the same. Makes me feel sick. Oozing inside.’

  ‘Do you feel sick now?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘There’s a beautiful moon outside – that’s what I was saying to Oliver.’

 
‘Can I see it?’

  ‘From your bed, you mean?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘But, Ralph –’

  ‘I want to see the moon.’

  Oliver lifted his head. ‘We can’t move him,’ he said quietly.

  ‘I want to see the moon.’

  ‘Why not? What can we do to him?’

  ‘Look at him.’

  ‘I’m here, you know,’ said Ralph. His voice was sinking to a whisper now. ‘And I’ve nothing to lose. Like you said, look at me.’

  ‘Stop it.’

  ‘Ollie – look.’ He tried to raise himself but couldn’t. His temples had caved in and his eyes were too big for his face. For a moment, Marnie barely recognized him.

  ‘Why not wait and ask Colette?’

  Oliver turned to Marnie. She put a hand on his arm reassuringly. ‘What for, Oliver? If Ralph wants to see the moon, then of course he must see it. Wait.’ She practically ran into the small room where Ralph had been when she first arrived – was it only two days ago? It felt like weeks, months. She took two blankets out of the chest of drawers and hurried back.

  ‘Right. We’re going to wrap him up warmly and carry him outside. Put a jacket on and then let’s get going.’

  Oliver rose to his feet. ‘If you’re sure.’

  ‘Stay awake for a bit, Ralph,’ said Marnie. It seemed to her a matter of urgency that Ralph’s wish should be granted.

  Oliver, bundled up in a thick jacket, knelt down beside him and gently drew the covers off him. Marnie tried to keep her expression neutral as she saw how bones jutted through flesh, which hung in bruised, yellowing folds. He was a heart, lungs, liver and kidneys in a cage of brittle ribs, held together by rags and tatters of skin.

  ‘Take his other side and lift when I say.’

  Marnie crouched beside Ralph, breathing in his body odours and the reek of his breath, and slid an arm under his shoulders. ‘Say if I’m hurting.’ She felt the sharp knobs of his spine. His head bobbled on the strings and wires of his neck.

  They stood carefully with Ralph heaped between them, as light as a child. Marnie thought he might come to pieces in their hands, an arm slithering from its socket, the ribs detaching themselves. With one hand, she groped behind her for the blankets; then she and Oliver arranged them over him.

  ‘Right, the moon,’ she said.

  Ralph didn’t reply but his eyes were wide. She and Oliver edged forward, the blankets dragging on the floor. When she pushed the door open, the wind sprang at them like a wild animal, snarling viciously. She heard Ralph give a single whimper. She and Oliver shuffled around awkwardly to fit through the door without bumping their cargo. It seemed impossible that they wouldn’t drop him.

  ‘It’s probably easier if I carry him,’ said Oliver.

  Marnie nodded, biting her lip. She didn’t want to relinquish him. Oliver scooped him gently into his arms and Ralph lay there, his body hardly disturbing the drape of the blanket, his oversized shaggy head resting against Oliver’s chest. Oliver pressed his lips to his forehead and kissed him. ‘It’s your fault, mate,’ he said. He was grinning widely, though a tear was running down each cheek, trailing into his thick stubble. ‘You wanted the moon and now you’re going to get it if it kills you.’

  ‘You can see it best from here.’ Marnie led them up the shallow slope. Low clouds were gathering, but from there the moon was quite clear. Low in the sky, and casting its yellow reflection on the loch, it looked enormous and very close – as if you could reach out and touch it.

  ‘A cold rock,’ said Oliver.

  ‘Can you see it, Ralph? Isn’t it extraordinary? Eerie.’ A small sound escaped him but she couldn’t make out the words. ‘Let’s get you back inside, shall we? It’s getting cold. Or do you want to wait a bit? Ralph?’

  ‘Bit.’

  ‘A bit longer?’

  ‘It’s a bitter night,’ said Oliver, ‘but as long as you want. You’re not exactly heavy nowadays. You always were a bit of a shrimp, though, weren’t you?’

  Ralph didn’t answer. He lay like a baby in his friend’s arms. The three of them waited in the silence, the wind wailing in the massed trees, and stared at the moon without speaking. Then Oliver turned and made his way slowly back into the house. It was only the afternoon still, but the darkness was closing in and the cold gripped like a vice.

  ‘Right,’ said Marnie, as soon as the door was closed and Ralph laid back on the bed. ‘It feels beautifully warm in here, but heap all those blankets over him anyway, Oliver – he looks turned to ice – and put more wood on the fire. I’m going to see if he can get some soup down him.’

  Ralph couldn’t swallow any, though he managed a few painful sips of herbal tea before he let his eyes close. Marnie stood for a while, looking at him in the glow of the firelight. His breathing became soft and even; she could almost feel him sinking, layer after layer, into a deep, far-off land. She hoped his dreams would be good there.

  Only when she was sure he was unreachable did she turn to light all the tea-lights she had put out earlier. Soon tiny yellow flames were flickering and winking on every surface, casting strange pools on the mantel and sills. Marnie’s makeshift Christmas tree was illuminated by their glow, the tin foil glinting.

  ‘It looks like a magic grotto,’ said Oliver.

  ‘A bit over the top?’

  ‘A lot over the top. In a good way.’

  They sat down at the table with mugs of tea.

  ‘Do you like Christmas?’

  ‘Kind of. I used to love it as a kid, and then I used to love it when I had small children. Made a big thing of it – tree and stockings and turkey and board games. But when we divorced, we shared out the day in that bureaucratically fair and correct way – you know: you have the kids until two p.m. precisely, and then off they go to their second celebration. We all hated it. When Mona suggested we alternate, it was a relief.’

  ‘Whose turn is it this year?’

  ‘Hers. Probably just as well, in the circumstances.’

  ‘What are they called, your children?’

  ‘Lottie, Will and Leo.’

  ‘Good names,’ she said, to cover her sudden self-consciousness. What she really wanted to know was what his marriage had been like, why it had ended, had he been sad, was he with someone else now, had he thought of her, over the years…

  ‘She told me to go,’ he said, without her having to ask. ‘You know what I was thinking about, earlier? I don’t know why, but I was remembering the times when the children were still quite little and they would make us breakfast in bed. It would always be on a Sunday morning, sometimes at an ungodly hour when no one wants to be awake. We’d hear them creeping downstairs together, giggling and bickering, trying not to wake us although they always did. Then we’d lie there and listen to them in the kitchen, clattering things around, arguing with each other about who would make the toast or who would carry the tray. Quite often they’d smash things. We couldn’t go and help them – we weren’t supposed to know what they were doing. Then at last they’d come up the stairs, glasses and plates rattling on the tray, hissed commands from Lottie, and they’d push at the door and find us lying with our eyes squeezed shut, and we’d wake with such surprise! Look, how wonderful! Thick, half-done toast with leathery crusts, smeared with Marmite and margarine, undissolved granules of coffee floating on the surface of the tepid water, a flower pulled up by its roots in a glass. They’d sit on the floor and make sure we ate it. Mona always hated those breakfasts, but she’d heroically swallow it all under their beady stare. Then they’d disappear to watch cartoons on the TV or something – there’d be mess everywhere and it would still be only six o’clock.

  ‘What I’m saying is that I didn’t realize how happy I was, on a cold winter morning, bleary with tiredness, crumbs in my bed, swallowing cold coffee. Three little kids in four years, and both of us had full-time jobs, careers to follow, ladders to climb. I thought I was doing fine by them but, looking back, perhaps I wasn’t.
I used to make sure I came home before they were asleep, but that’s easy – they would already be tucked up in bed and all that was left for me to do was the pleasurable bit, the bit that makes you think you’re being a good father when really you’re not. You go and read a story to them, give them a goodnight kiss, pull the covers up a bit, turn out the lights. I could say I didn’t have a choice but that would be a cop-out. You usually have more of a choice than you let yourself know. I could tell you about the number of meetings I cut short, meetings I didn’t go to, important dinners I didn’t attend in order to be a good enough father. I should have done better somehow. Been more vigilant. It’s a sad fact that you don’t know what you’ve got until you lose it. When the marriage ended and I was alone and free – well, freedom was what I didn’t want. But I didn’t know that until it happened.’

  ‘I think –’ began Marnie.

  ‘You know what I realized, during those first months, when suddenly I was living in silence, cleanliness and order? What is precious are the tiny things, the things that irritate you so much when you have them – being woken in the night when one of them has a bad dream, changing a nappy, wiping snot off a nose, reading them the same bloody book for the fiftieth time, running along bent double beside them while they learn to ride a bike, cutting their nails, picking them up when they fall over, knowing all the mundane facts of their days. I even found myself missing hearing them squabble and scream. How could I not have known it before? How could I have been so stupid, so ignorant and so blind?’