The Winter House Read online

  Oliver was assembling sandwiches. He had cut several thick slices of white bread and was now spreading mayonnaise over each one, before adding chicken and slices of avocado.

  ‘Why don’t you pour us both a drink?’ he said, without turning round.

  ‘What do you want?’

  ‘There’s a choice of whisky or wine. I’ve been hitting the whisky in the last few days. There’s a bottle of white wine in the fridge, if you’d prefer. Glasses in that corner cupboard.’

  ‘Whisky’s good. How long have you been here?’

  ‘We came up a few days ago – and then it all went haywire.’

  ‘Came up? Together, you mean?’

  ‘Ralph doesn’t live here, you know. He lives in Holland at the moment. It’s just the place he comes when he can.’ He gave that steady, penetrating glance again. ‘It reminds him of a time he was happy.’

  ‘I see,’ was all Marnie could manage. Then she said, ‘I didn’t know. I don’t know anything. All I know is what you said on the phone and that wasn’t much.’

  ‘Pour us that drink and we’ll sit by the fire.’

  ‘I haven’t seen him for years and years, Oliver.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘Of course you do. Is that too much whisky?’

  ‘No. I think we both need it. There’s ice in the freezer compartment of the fridge. Here you are, one very messy sandwich.’

  ‘Thanks.’

  They sat by the fire, Marnie in the deep armchair and Oliver on the sofa. She sniffed her whisky, the smell of muddy disinfectant, and took a good gulp. It burnt its way down her throat and she waited for her eyes to stop stinging before she bit into the thick sandwich: doughy white bread, rubbery strands of chicken, soft avocado. ‘Lovely,’ she said. For a moment, in the safety of the chair and the warmth of the fire, with Oliver’s lived-in, well-remembered face looking at her with kindness, she wanted to weep. She wrenched herself back to Ralph and the present. ‘Right, tell me.’ Oliver took a breath. ‘First off, why’s he dying?’

  ‘Pancreatic cancer. But it’s everywhere now.’

  ‘And there’s no –’

  ‘No.’

  ‘He’s so young. How long?’

  ‘How long has he had it or how long has he got?’

  ‘Has he got.’

  ‘Not long. Weeks. Days. Maybe, even hours. The thing about cancer of the pancreas, I’ve learnt, is that it’s difficult to detect – it can feel like indigestion at first – and it’s hard to treat. He didn’t know he had it until it had advanced to the liver and spleen. He’s had radiotherapy, but it wasn’t very effective.’

  ‘Do you mean he’s come here to die?’ Marnie gripped her whisky glass and leant forward. The heat from the fire warmed one side of her body, but the other was cold.

  ‘I don’t think he knew that when he insisted on this trip, but it looks that way, yes.’ Oliver lifted his face and met her eyes. ‘Are you sorry you’re here?’

  ‘No. I don’t know. It feels so – so unreal. But, Oliver – I don’t know how to ask this. Sorry if it comes out wrong. Am I supposed to be here until –’ she stopped, took a sip of her drink ‘– until it’s over?’

  ‘You’re not supposed to do anything.’

  ‘All right, but is that what Ralph wants?’

  ‘Ralph didn’t even know you were coming.’

  ‘What? He doesn’t know?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘But that’s – I mean, I thought he’d asked for me. Maybe he doesn’t even want me here!’

  ‘He wants you.’

  ‘You don’t know that. You just assume. Perhaps it’ll upset him.’

  ‘Marnie. In one way or another, Ralph has been upset all his life. He doesn’t want to die without seeing you again. He misses you.’

  Questions crowded her brain: is he scared? Is he angry? Sad? Is he ready? Has he had a happy life? Does he feel that darkness is descending and there’s nothing he can do to keep it at bay? Will I know him, or is he transformed utterly into a yellowing, alien creature, skin hanging off him in tatters and those great eyes staring at me in love, in reproach, in torment?

  ‘Is he in a lot of pain?’ she simply asked.

  ‘He’s got a flask of liquid morphine that he swigs at regularly, though if he has too much it gives him terrible dreams, not to mention agonizing constipation. And when we arrived and he took a turn for the worse, I got in touch with the hospice nearby and they send a Macmillan nurse round twice a day to make sure he’s getting what he needs. She’s very good.’

  ‘I met her at the door.’

  ‘Colette. We got him a hospital bed as well, so he can half sit or lie flat to sleep.’

  ‘Are you going to stay all the time?’

  ‘Yes. I’ve told them at work. I won’t leave now.’

  ‘You must be exhausted.’

  Oliver pushed a charred log that had rolled away from the fire, releasing a splutter of bright flame. ‘I’m OK,’ he said. Then he added, ‘He’s my friend and this is his hour of need. He’d do it for me without hesitation. It’s my – I don’t want to sound pompous, but it’s my privilege to do it for him.’

  ‘Has he got no family?’

  ‘No. Only the family he doesn’t want, who don’t want him. But you know what he’s like – he’s got good friends.’ Oliver nodded at the unopened mail lying on the table. ‘He’s already had more letters in a few days than I receive in a year.’

  ‘He isn’t married, then?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘No children?’

  ‘No children.’

  ‘It makes it feel as if he’s already dead, doesn’t it? Talking about him like this. He’s lying in there, just a few yards away, or at least you say he is, but I keep imagining that maybe no one’s there at all, just a closed door. Or maybe it isn’t him. And we’re sitting here and talking about him as if he can no longer say anything for himself. As if he’s got no words left, and he’s empty, a vessel with no self inside.’ She was seized by a sudden fear. ‘That’s not the case, is it?’

  ‘It’s still Ralph in there. But I agree, you should go and say hello.’

  ‘I didn’t mean that exactly. Anyway, isn’t he sleeping?’

  ‘He sleeps lightly, just on the surface. Night and day, he wakes and he sleeps, wakes and sleeps, and sometimes I can’t tell the difference.’ He swilled the remains of his whisky round the bottom of the glass, staring at the amber liquid. ‘Sometimes I go in there and think he’s dead. I have to put my ear to his mouth to hear the breathing. It reminds me of when my children were babies, just born. Such a fierce, light grip on life.’

  Marnie stood up. She was seized by a sudden desire to lay a hand on his coarse hair, or to bend down and kiss the back of his neck. But, of course, she couldn’t do that. She didn’t know what note to strike with Oliver. They were virtual strangers although they had once known each other well, and now they had come together to wait at Ralph’s deathbed. ‘I’m glad I can go through it with you,’ she said finally, and rather formally to cover her own awkwardness. ‘We’ll do it together. I’ll just step in and see him.’

  But she hesitated.

  ‘You don’t need to be scared,’ said Oliver. ‘It’s just Ralph in there, your friend Ralph.’

  It was almost exactly what Dot had said to her.

  ‘I feel I don’t know why I’m here.’

  ‘I can’t tell you that. To make him smile, to hold his hand, to clear up his shit, to wipe his brow, to tell him you love him. Maybe you’re here to help him die.’

  ‘I would have done better to have helped him live.’

  She paused outside Ralph’s door, listening. A liquid cough spluttered into the silence and for a moment she was back in her mother’s house, listening outside her bedroom door as she lay dying. As quietly as possible she pushed the door open a few inches and stepped into the room. It wasn’t entirely dark. An oil lamp stood on the wide window-sill in the puddle of its own yellowish light, and around it the
re were silent shapes: a tall cupboard, a squat table, a low iron bed.

  She inched forward, her foot nudging against a large plastic bowl on the floor. At first she thought it was all a horrible joke or a dream and the bed was empty, for Ralph’s body barely disturbed the duvet that lay over it. But then she heard him breathing: a rustling, unsteady whisper of air. And, anyway, there was a smell in the room, a human stench of decay overlaid with some piny air-freshener. For a few seconds the breathing stopped and Marnie stood arrested, a few feet from where he lay. Although she couldn’t see it, she could hear the steady tick of a clock, and wondered how he could bear to have it by him, marking off the remaining time. She could make out his head on the plump pillow, a shock of dark hair in the half-light, a white patch of face. One hand was curled by his cheek. Then he breathed again, a sharp rasp before settling back into the light rattle of before.

  She took the last few steps and sat very gently on his bed. He gave a tiny grunt. She remained there without moving or speaking, gazing down at him: even in the dim glow of lamplight she could see how thin his face was: his nose was beaky, his neck pitifully scrawny, his cheeks caved in; it seemed that his sharp bones should tear through his papery skin. He was stripped and sculpted, barely human any more.

  Finally, she took the hand on the pillow and held it between both of hers, feeling how like a woman’s ivory-and-paper fan it was, lying loosely hinged in her grasp. ‘Ralph,’ she said softly. ‘It’s me. Marnie.’

  The eyes didn’t open. The breath rustled and scraped. The figure in the bed made a sound that at first she took for choking, but then thought perhaps he’d said something. ‘What?’ she whispered, leaning forward so that she felt his breath, hot and sour, on her face. ‘Ralph?’

  But the figure on the bed was silent.

  I said: I might have known you’d find me. Marnie Still. Coming into my room like a cat. Like a shadow slipping through the door to sit beside me. You always made so little noise. But I always knew when you were there. A room feels different when you are in it. The hot drumming in my head dies down. The air softens around you, the ground is firmer, things feel as if they’re in their proper place again. You make me feel safe. Don’t stop holding my hand: if you hold my hand, nothing can snatch me away. Your fingers are warm and strong and dear. I remember them. I remember your smell. Forests. Deep and clean. Runnelled bark, scent of sap and pine and earth; leaves that rot into the ground. Hundreds of years. Water spilling over rock, soaking into peat. Dappled light through green leaves. Moss like soft sponge underfoot; our feet sink down. If I could open my eyes, I would see your face. Grey eyes; clear, attentive. But even blind, I can feel you looking at me, and behind my closed eyes, I can see you. I know what you look like, underneath the years that have passed since we met. You’ll always look the same, the serious, shining girl I loved. I love.

  What do you see? Do you see a living corpse rattling his bones, eyes sinking deeper into their sockets, or do you see me? I’m still here, though I’m like a dry brown leaf hanging from a branch – one gust of wind and I could be lifted off to fly into the black space that doesn’t end, goes on and on in every direction for ever and ever. Light years of nothing. Nights are the worst, and in the winter, nights are long. The small hours. No sound, except the tick of the clock, the whisper of the wind, the frail scrape of my own breath. Then I can feel the great darkness opening like a grave before me and the cold, cold stars. So lonely. But now you hold my hand and the darkness settles around me like a blanket. The clock sounds less foreboding, more like the pumping of a heart than the metronymic beat of time running out.

  There, you’re leaning towards me. I can feel the touch of your hair against my skin and your breath is warm on my cheek and now your lips are on my forehead. Just a touch and you withdraw. Your hand loosens its hold on mine. Don’t go. Don’t leave. I’m still here. Marnie.

  Chapter Three

  The wind woke Marnie. For a moment, she couldn’t remember where she was; only that she wasn’t at home in a city that was never dark like this, so dark that when you held your hand in front of your face you couldn’t see it and when you shut your eyes the quality of darkness didn’t alter. She fumbled for her mobile phone to find out the time and saw that it was only four in the morning. This far north, the sun wouldn’t rise for hours yet. But she knew that she wouldn’t go back to sleep now, and neither did she feel tired, although last night after seeing Ralph she had been stunned by weariness. She sat up in bed, groping with her hand for the bedside lamp, then blinking in the sudden light. The room came into focus. Her memory of yesterday sharpened and the shapes of her dream dissolved. From downstairs, she thought she heard a noise – but when she held her breath and listened there was nothing, only the rising moan of the wind.

  It was very cold in the bedroom, so she dressed in her warmest clothes and slid her feet into slippers. Then she crept downstairs. The plates and dishes were still piled in the sink where she’d left them yesterday, and the fire had long ago gone out, leaving a dull pile of ash in the grate, stirring slightly with the draught that came from the hall.

  She set about making the room comfortable; Oliver had said this was where Ralph spent most of his time and she wanted him to be in a welcoming place. The water was tepid, so she boiled a kettle for the sink and methodically finished the washing-up. Then she wiped every surface. She found a broom in the tall cupboard in the hallway and swept the floor. There was something absurdly satisfying about collecting crumbs and debris into a small pile, then disposing of it. Later, she thought, she would wash the floor as well. She collected up the ash from the grate, though it was still warm, and laid another fire. ‘Start with knotted balls of newspaper,’ she heard her mother say. ‘Then lay kindling wood over the top, like a kind of wigwam. After that, the larger logs. You never need fire-lighters, just patience.’ There were matches on the floor and she put a flame against the edges of the wadded paper and watched as it licked the kindling.

  When she was sure the fire wouldn’t go out, she turned her attention to the piles of books and magazines, which she simply made into neater piles and pushed back against the walls. The gardening tools she put into a plastic bag in the hall. The laundry from the basket she stuffed into the tiny tub washing-machine, which rocked slightly as it ran. Her mother used to say that the sound of domestic appliances at work – washing-machines, dishwashers, vacuum-cleaners, coffee-grinders – was profoundly soothing, the sound of life functioning properly.

  She ground some coffee beans, putting a hand towel over the grinder to muffle its noise, and made a pot of strong coffee. Then she looked in the small fridge. There wasn’t much – the scant remains of the chicken, a few rashers of bacon, three eggs, a half-pack of butter, some milk and a tub of hummus. In a bin beside the fridge there were a few vegetables. Marnie took an onion and a couple of carrots and put them into a pan with the chicken carcass. She would make soup, she thought. Soup was good for invalids and, besides, there was something about the smell of a stock on the stove: it made one feel cared-for, made one feel that there was order in the world. And all the time – as she scrubbed, tidied and cooked in a parody of an anxious housewife – her heart bumped heavily in her chest and she kept glancing towards the closed door.

  When she opened the curtains she saw a pale, smudged band on the horizon. Day was creeping towards her at last. She put a pan of porridge, half water and half milk, on the hob and stood there, stirring it unnecessarily just to have something to do with her hands.

  That was how Oliver found her when he emerged from Ralph’s room and stopped in the doorway. ‘I didn’t know you were up,’ he said.

  ‘I didn’t know you were.’

  ‘I wasn’t. I slept on a camp bed in Ralph’s room. I didn’t want to leave him.’

  ‘Is that where you always sleep?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘No wonder you look so tired.’

  ‘Do I?’

  ‘I’ll make some fresh coffee, shall I? And
there’s porridge.’

  Oliver took a few paces into the room. ‘It looks nice. How do you do it?’

  ‘I just cleared up a few things.’

  ‘No, you were always like that. I’d forgotten.’

  ‘A talent for tidiness,’ she said, aiming for lightness but her voice had a crack in it. ‘Is Ralph awake?’

  ‘He’s stirring.’

  ‘Does he know I’m here?’

  ‘Not yet.’

  ‘Should I wait for you to tell him before I go in?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘You need to tell me what we do here.’

  ‘Do?’

  ‘I mean, do we get him washed and dressed or can he do that himself? Can he get to the bathroom, or does he use a bedpan? That kind of thing.’

  ‘We’ve only been here five days. But the nurse usually gives him a bed bath. And he hasn’t been able to get to the bathroom for the last day or so. I think it’s best if I deal with that side of things, though. He might feel it humiliating.’

  ‘Fine. But you have to tell me what you need from me, all right?’

  ‘All right.’

  ‘If I’m here, I want to be fully here. If I stay, it’s because it helps – helps Ralph and helps you. I’m not squeamish. I don’t mind shit and vomit.’

  ‘OK.’

  ‘If Ralph doesn’t want me here, I’m on the next plane home.’

  ‘Sure.’

  ‘Do you want porridge?’

  ‘Please. I’ve been living off bread and cheese and Dot’s chicken. And whisky. I haven’t managed to get to the shops in the last few days – I went once, at the beginning, to the little stores a few miles away for milk and things. But let me get washed first.’

  ‘Do you think Ralph would want some as well?’

  ‘Marnie.’ He looked at her, and his quizzical half-smile sent a sharp stab of memory through her. There was a small crease between his eyes. ‘I think you should ask him yourself.’

  ‘Oh. Yes, you’re right. Now, you mean?’

  ‘If you’re ready.’

  The lamp had been extinguished and the curtains opened. Ralph lay in the soft grey of dawn, propped up on his pillow. His arms were outside the duvet, palms upwards; on the fragile, breakable wrists Marnie could see blue veins. She imagined Colette, the nurse, putting her thumb there to feel the thready pulse. His eyes were closed and she thought, Is this what he will look like when he has died? But she could see that he was alive because he swallowed, his Adam’s apple bobbing in his scrawny throat. She took a step forward, seeing outside the window the dull grey sky and heavy brown earth and, in the distance, the waters of the loch.