The Winter House Read online

  He stopped and drew a hand over his face. Marnie watched him, but didn’t speak. He looked weary; his kind face was furrowed. Whenever she had thought of Oliver, she had imagined him peaceful, successful, contented: beautiful wife, clever and affectionate children, a life well lived.

  ‘I don’t often talk about these things,’ he said eventually. ‘But here, with Ralph dying and you beside me again after so many years, so changed and yet so the same, I feel a different person somehow. No, that’s wrong – I feel myself in a way I haven’t for many years, though it’s so sad that it’s taken something like this to bring me back to myself. There are things that I suddenly want to say.’

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘I don’t know. Feelings.’

  ‘Feelings,’ said Marnie. How did anyone penetrate the mystery of feelings? They made up a tangled world that lay beneath the surface. She had loved her mother, that was certain; she loved Lucy; she was unconditional about Eva and Luisa; she felt towards Ralph such complicated tenderness that it made her heart burn. But had she once loved Oliver, or had that heady feeling been just a youthful infatuation, romantic and unreal? Had she loved, say, Gilbert, who had taken her out of her old life and shown her a new one? Or Fabio, with whom she had lived for so many years and had once thought she would live for ever? And if she had – and, yes, she thought she had – she remembered the uprush of passion and delight; she remembered the blissful feeling of newness and then the solemnity of intimacy with those different men – why had it ended? Where did love go? Did it burn away like morning fog, or was it still there lodged inside her? All those hopes and all those broken promises.

  ‘Yes,’ said Oliver now. ‘Like – well, like you. I didn’t forget you. I always believed we would see each other again. You were very dear to me.’ He grimaced on the quaint word but Marnie found it touching. To be dear to someone is not nothing.

  Some things she still could not say to Ralph, even now so many years later, when it shouldn’t matter any more. After she had kissed him in the churchyard, she had left him and cycled away, hot with desire, guilt and confusion. She had not gone straight home but instead made her way to Oliver’s house. She had only been there once before, but she remembered how to get there – or, rather, her feet pedalled her there even while she was trying to work out the directions. She still remembered it: the soft breeze on her cheeks, the bars of shadow falling over the lanes, the dappled green light in the trees. Sweat on her bare arms and her heart expanding with delight and dread.

  Oliver lived on the edge of town, in a square pink house that gave the impression of a certain kind of middle-class comfort – slightly shabby, thrifty, faded and ramshackle, and cluttered with possessions picked up over the years. Clumsy children’s pictures in cracked frames, a decorated wooden chest in the hall that surely must hold memorabilia, mottled mirrors, fringed shawls sliding off scarred coffee-tables, a grandfather clock that no longer told the time, a cracked, slightly stained leather sofa, family photos everywhere. It was the kind of house she yearned for, wrapped in the weight of its own history rather than haunted by it.

  She swung off her bike and, before she had time to think about what she was doing, rang the bell. Oliver’s mother opened the door. She had a glass of red wine in one hand and was wearing a striped blue apron. Her feet were bare.

  ‘Marnie? How nice to see you.’ Her expression suddenly changed. ‘But is everything all right? Your mother?’

  ‘She’s fine. Really. And you’ve been very kind. More than kind. Especially since we were practically strangers.’

  ‘Nonsense. I only washed a few sheets. We wanted to help. And don’t call yourself a stranger – you’re Oliver’s friend, and mine now, I hope.’

  She laid a hand on Marnie’s shoulder. Marnie felt tears filling her eyes; one rolled down her cheek. She blinked furiously. She didn’t want to weep, to let the strange feeling that filled her dissipate.

  ‘Thank you,’ she managed gruffly. ‘Is Oliver around?’

  ‘He’s in his room. It’s Maths tomorrow.’

  ‘I won’t disturb him for long.’

  On her way up the stairs she passed one of Oliver’s sisters, already home from university. She was wearing a sleeveless green dress that swung round her knees and her blonde hair was piled artfully on top of her head. She looked cool and glamorous; a subtle perfume wafted off her. Marnie imagined how she must appear to her: young and anxious, dressed in shabby clothes, hair crudely cut, no makeup, smelling of sweat and grass, not flowers.

  ‘Hi!’ The young woman flashed a bright smile at her. ‘You here for Ollie?’

  ‘Yes. I’m Marnie.’

  ‘Go and persuade him to take his head out of his book for a bit.’

  Marnie knocked at his bedroom door.

  ‘Come in.’

  What was she doing here? The urgency she had felt had died away, leaving in its place a sense of her own awkward foolishness. Oliver was sitting at his desk, his head resting on one hand, hair flopping softly over his face. How could she ever think that someone like him would want her?

  ‘Marnie!’ He jumped up, startled, scattering papers to the floor. His face flushed.

  ‘Sorry. I shouldn’t have interrupted you.’ She knelt down to gather the papers, scrawled with incomprehensible formulae that looked to her like hieroglyphics.

  ‘Leave them,’ he said. ‘They’re only doodles, really. But is everything all right?’

  She stood up. ‘Yes.’

  ‘Your mum?’

  ‘It’s fine. I just –’ She took a deep breath, feeling the blood rush to her cheeks. ‘I just wanted to see you.’

  ‘Shall I get us a drink or something?’

  ‘It’s all right. I shouldn’t have come, really. I know you’ve got your maths exam tomorrow.’

  ‘No – I’m glad you did.’

  ‘I’ll leave in a minute.’

  ‘You don’t have to.’

  ‘Nice room,’ she said, because there was nothing else she could think of. From the window, she could see their overgrown garden, lush and verdant, a tangle of yellow roses at the end.

  ‘I guess.’

  ‘Have you always lived here?’ She knew he hadn’t, of course – he had come from Cumbria when he was six.

  ‘This is weird. Are you making small-talk with me?’

  ‘Yes. I suppose so.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because – because I’m nervous.’

  ‘Nervous?’

  ‘Yes. I –’ She was going to say that she had come here to kiss him but the absurd words of intention stuck in her mouth; she swallowed them back. The gap between them seemed enormous, though two paces would bridge it. And Ollie looked so stupidly friendly and courteous. How could she think of kissing him? He was untouchable.

  ‘Why are you nervous, Marnie?’

  ‘I can’t say.’ Now he had stepped forward so that he was just a few inches from her and looking into her face. She could no longer breathe properly. He was so much taller than Ralph; his shoulders were broader, his face calmer and his hair softer – when she made herself reach up to touch it.

  ‘Tell me.’

  ‘I don’t know the words.’

  She heard him give a small sigh, as if he was very tired – or as if he had understood something difficult. She didn’t know. Then his mouth was on hers and his hands were on the small of her back, her arms were holding him close at last, and closer still, but it could never be enough. She closed her eyes for a moment, so she could be nobody, then opened them again, so that it was her, Marnie Still, in the arms of Oliver Fenton at long last. She could see his eyes, his dark lashes, or were they hers?, the pale blur of his skin; feel the press of his fingers. She slid her arms under his shirt. So this was what it was meant to be like. Until now, she hadn’t known.

  ‘Ollie.’ A bright voice floated up the stairs; there were the sounds of rapid footsteps coming up. ‘It’s me, Lou. Can I come in?’

  ‘Shit,’ he muttered, a
nd abruptly let Marnie go, stepping back and wiping the back of his hand across his mouth as the door was flung open. Marnie, dazed and blinking, saw a young woman with blonde hair standing in the doorway. She was long-legged and skinny and was wearing tight grey jeans and a black vest-top. There were bangles on her wrist and a small tattoo on her bare shoulder.

  ‘I’m a bit early,’ she said, dumping a leather shoulder bag on the floor. ‘Is that OK?’ Then she put her hand on his shoulder and kissed him full on the lips. It was as if Marnie was invisible. She shrank back against the wall and wrapped a lock of her hair round her fingers.

  ‘Sure,’ said Ollie. Then: ‘Sorry – this is Marnie. Marnie, Lou.’

  ‘Hi,’ said Lou, in a casually friendly voice, plonking herself down on Oliver’s bed and kicking off her shoes.

  ‘We’re going to do a spot of last-minute revision,’ mumbled Oliver, not meeting Marnie’s eyes.

  ‘I was just leaving anyway,’ she said, her voice a strange low growl. ‘Good luck tomorrow.’

  ‘Thanks. I’ll see you out.’

  ‘Don’t bother.’

  ‘It’s not a bother.’

  He walked with her down the stairs. ‘Marnie,’ he said at the front door, ‘I never planned –’

  ‘I did – but it doesn’t matter now, does it?’ She allowed herself to look him full in the face. She knew her own was flaming with shame and anger.

  ‘It does. Listen, I really like you. I always have.’ He picked up her hand and held it against his mouth. ‘The thing is, Ralph –’

  But she snatched her hand away furiously. Oh, she didn’t want to think about Ralph in the churchyard; she didn’t want to think about kissing Ralph, falling back on the grass in his arms and seeing how love lit up his thin face. ‘What’s Ralph got to do with anything? That’s just your pathetic excuse. Don’t be such a hypocrite.’

  ‘That’s not fair.’

  ‘Who’s Lou, then?’

  ‘She’s a friend.’

  ‘I don’t believe you.’

  ‘OK. OK. She likes me and I like her and I thought because of the way things were with you and –’

  ‘Shut up. I don’t want to hear. You don’t understand anything, do you? I’m just a stupid, stupid fool.’

  ‘Marnie, please.’

  ‘You shouldn’t have kissed me.’

  ‘I’ve been wanting to kiss you from the moment I met you.’

  ‘Well, you’ve had your chance. It’s not going to happen again.’

  ‘Dear to you?’ she said now to Oliver, shaking away the memory that was two decades old but still made her feel ashamed.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Well, it was a long time ago,’ she said. ‘We were very young.’

  ‘It doesn’t feel so long ago.’

  ‘Time’s strange like that, isn’t it? I used to think we changed and left the past behind us, but I don’t really believe that any longer. It’s more as if we carry all the parts of our lives inside us. I’m the ten-year-old me and the seventeen-year-old me, the twenty- and thirty-year-old me all at once. You know, when I was in the wood earlier, I could remember so vividly what it was like to be a small child in wellies crunching over the frosty ground at home that for a moment it was as if I was that girl. There was no distance between the memory and the event, if you see what I mean. I just was ten.’

  ‘Yes.’ The word was almost a sigh.

  And now, for a moment, she was seventeen and wanting so badly to take his face between her hands and kiss his eighteen-year-old mouth and pull his youthful, slim body against hers that she was breathless with the old desire.

  ‘There’s been so large a gap,’ she managed, her voice slightly uneven. She had the dangerous sense of being suddenly unstoppered: she could say anything now and forbidden words would pour out of her. ‘But I’m glad you’ve thought about me, because I’ve thought of you, too. Of course I have. You and Ralph, and Lucy too, and those days we spent together. Sometimes the memory has been so vivid it’s been almost impossible to believe that that time is safely in the past, that I can’t reach back and be there again – be that person again. Young, with everything ahead and everything possible. But also there have been times – weeks, months – when I haven’t thought of you at all. You disappeared from me or, at least, became a speck on the horizon. It’s an odd feeling – to know you and not to know you, to feel close to you and yet far away as well. In fact, it feels a bit like a dream, unreal at any rate, to be here with you, watching Ralph die.’ She gave a small, choking laugh. ‘Sorry, I feel a bit drunk. Drunk on air, drunk on emotion. Shall we have the whisky a bit earlier tonight?’

  ‘Why not? We’re not in any real time zone here – it’s like at an airport.’

  Waiting, thought Marnie, and gave an involuntary shudder. Waiting for a flight and he’ll be on it and we won’t. We’ll head back to normal life without him.

  ‘Do you know what I most remember about you, back then?’ Oliver was asking.

  ‘What?’

  ‘You were always kind.’

  ‘Was I?’

  ‘Through and through. Kind and reliable.’

  ‘Does that make me sound a bit boring?’

  ‘No! We all felt looked after by you – like I feel looked after by you now, here. You were the one we turned to, the one we wanted to do well for. You know, every so often over these past years, out of the blue, I’ve found myself thinking, Marnie would be proud of me now. Does that sound odd?’

  ‘It sounds nice. It makes me want to cry a bit.’

  ‘Lucy used to say you were an enzyme.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘An enzyme – apparently it has a settling, stabilizing property. I don’t know, I didn’t do chemistry. She meant that when you were with us, we felt we were better people, or behaved better at any rate.’

  ‘Well, I don’t know about that. Fabio – the man I lived with for many years – he used to say I was often invisible. It sounds to me that you’re saying almost the same thing.’

  ‘No. You were never invisible to me.’

  Ralph shifted and whimpered and they turned; his face was twisted in a rictus of pain and his body stiffened under the covers. Marnie squatted beside him and put a hand on his forehead. ‘Ralph? Sorry. We’re here. Don’t worry. Everything’s fine. Ralph?’

  But his eyes were closed; he snored, tiny wheezes escaping his half-open mouth.

  ‘I don’t know if he hears or not,’ Marnie said. ‘I talk to him, I tell him things, and I don’t know if he can hear me. What’s going on inside his head?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Oliver replied. ‘But he can’t hear us at the moment. He’s dreaming. I wonder what he dreams of.’

  ‘He doesn’t look unhappy.’

  ‘No,’ said Oliver. ‘And that’s one thing about Ralph – you can always tell when he’s unhappy. Everything shows on his face.’

  ‘There were times I could hardly bear that,’ said Marnie.

  ‘I know. Remember?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘It sounds terrible, but every so often, I find myself writing his obituary in my mind. Trying to sum him up, or something. But he always escapes me. There are these great gaps that I can’t fill. There was a time when he was everyone’s golden boy, with his book, his TV appearances. You should see the fan mail he got sent. He showed me once: boxes of letters from women who thought they understood him. And then he dropped out big-time. You know all that, though. He more or less disappeared from view. If you Google him, he just seems to stop in the nineties. There was a time when I didn’t know where he was and I still haven’t found out what he did during that period. He would never tell me. Maybe it was too terrible to speak about – or maybe he just liked keeping parts of himself secret. I don’t know. I feel so sad when I think about it. I wish I could go back to that time and find him and rescue him.’

  Marnie took one of Oliver’s hands between both of hers and drew it to her. She felt the moment open between them, one of those tim
es when anything can be said and when each word is freighted with meaning and has to be used softly, with great care. ‘I know that feeling,’ she said.

  ‘I should have helped more,’ he said. ‘He was my closest friend and there were times that I just let him go. Just thought, sometimes, I wonder where dear, hopeless Ralph is now?’

  ‘And you have no idea?’

  ‘Well, I know that for a bit he lived in a squat. During the late nineties, he worked with homeless people – probably because he always felt at heart that he was a homeless person himself. I’ve never known anyone as desperate to find a home and as panicky about being tied down. Maybe that’s why a certain type of woman always fell for him – you must have noticed. They wanted to rescue him and mother him. My wife is quite a judge-mental woman in many ways, but she used to go completely soft over him – he could get away with anything.’

  ‘Like Emma.’

  ‘Yeah, I guess. Or Dot. Anyway, for a bit he taught chess in secondary moderns in the north, Sunderland – that was at the time Sunderland was officially the poorest place in England. I visited him there once and he was living in this condemned tower block, on the twelfth floor or something, but he had an allotment and he appeared quite happy, if one can ever use a word like that to describe Ralph. I don’t know what happened or why he moved, but he did. Everything always felt precarious with him. I never felt he was safe.

  ‘There was a time, several years ago, that he seemed almost settled. He was working for an arts organization and living with a woman called Carrie, who is a GP in Leeds and has three children. They must be teenagers now, or older. She adored him, in a Lucy kind of way – shone when he was with her and seemed always amazed at her good fortune. And he was wonderful with those kids – it was a revelation to me. I suppose a bit of him is still a kid. He didn’t patronize them or talk down to them, but was very respectful and yet at the same time insanely playful. He was always going on jaunts with them, or playing football, or making weird inventions. I remember once when I was there he painted the climbing frame and swings in the garden with them. They wore shorts and had bare feet and took all the old half-used tins of paint, of every colour, and went mad. They ended up daubed in strange colours, giggling and clowning around, and he was the most hysterically excited of them all. I looked at him and thought, You’re going to explode one of these days. Nobody can be like this… I thought it might last with Carrie, if only because of her children. But it didn’t work out. He always wanted to be settled but at the same time he was restless, hungry for something else. He was endlessly destroying the things he cared about. It’s my belief that he never felt he deserved to be happy. There was a trip switch in him: when he reached a certain level of contentment or peace, he flipped.