The Winter House Read online

  ‘Hello, Ralph.’ The eyes opened, and locked with hers. She held her breath as she gazed at him, and the room seemed full of a dense, crowded silence. Then she crossed the room to squat beside his bed because she didn’t want to be looking down at him. ‘It’s me, Marnie. I’ve come to see you.’

  ‘You’ve grown your hair again.’ His voice was unexpectedly strong. ‘Good. I like it better that way.’

  ‘Men always want women to have long hair.’

  ‘Not true. It’s children who always like their mothers to have long hair. Do you have children?’

  ‘Not as such.’

  ‘That’s a very Marnie answer. Not as such.’

  ‘I’m sorry, Ralph.’

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘That you’re –’ She was going to say ‘ill’, but she saw the glint in his eye. ‘Sorry that you’re dying.’

  ‘Me too. I think.’ He started to cough and as his thin frame jerked on the pillow, Marnie watched him helplessly until he was still again. His face was waxy; there were hollows in his temples and blue shadows under his eyes.

  ‘Can I get you anything, Ralph? Porridge? Something hot to drink?’

  ‘Maybe. I don’t know.’

  ‘I’ll be back in a minute.’

  She almost ran into the main room, grateful that Oliver wasn’t there. She put a small pan of milk on the hob to heat, then went upstairs to her room, where she collected the striped mug, honey and nutmeg from her case. Downstairs again, she stirred a spoonful of honey into the milk and grated in some nutmeg. She poured it into the mug, took a cautious sip to make sure it wasn’t too hot, and carried it into Ralph’s room.

  ‘Here,’ she said, sitting on the bed. His eyes opened again. She slid an arm under his shoulders, feeling every bone and sinew beneath the thin T-shirt he was wearing, and pulled him to a sitting position. He lay against her as light as a bird. ‘Try to drink some of this.’

  She held the mug to his lips and he took a sip, then lifted his head and smiled at her properly for the first time.

  ‘Do you remember?’

  ‘Of course I remember.’

  After a few more sips, he lay back on his pillow and gave a small sigh. Marnie sat in silence for a few seconds. She didn’t know what to do next, and was about to stand up and tiptoe from the room when his hand gripped her wrist. ‘Marnie.’

  ‘I’m here.’

  ‘Don’t go.’

  ‘I won’t.’ She settled herself down on the bed.

  ‘Talk to me. Tell me.’

  Marnie, who had never been very good at talking about herself, looked out of the window for a few seconds, seeing how the bare trees bent in the wind. Then she took a determined breath. ‘It’s been such a time since we saw each other, Ralph. It’s hard to know where to begin or what to say. What’s that?’

  ‘I said,’ he wheezed, ‘you’re not at a fucking cocktail party.’

  ‘You haven’t changed.’

  ‘Dying is the ultimate licence to be rude. Go on.’

  ‘Right. I live in London now. On my own. Well, not on my own right at the moment because my stepdaughter, Eva, is with me. I suppose I should say ex-stepdaughter. Anyway, I have this flat in Soho and I work in a puppet museum. It’s an odd little place, dark, full of nooks and crannies, and there are puppets everywhere, of all shapes and sizes. I walk in there in the morning and it’s like being in a whole different world, a world peopled by these odd creatures who I feel I’ve come to know, though I’m not sure. They can surprise you. If I’m in the wrong mood they can seem quite baleful. Sinister, almost. Their eyes never close. Sometimes I dream about them. Disturbing dreams.’

  She stopped. Ralph was looking straight up at the ceiling. She couldn’t tell if he was listening to her. A small vein ticked on his temple. She tried again. ‘Until quite recently I was living in Italy. Near Florence. But I had to leave, because – oh, well, because I did. I suddenly thought one morning, That’s the wrong face on the pillow. I can’t go on waking up to the wrong face for the rest of my life. Better no face at all. That’s another story, though, and I don’t know if you’d want to hear it, anyway. I’m just sitting here, feeling strange and talking about anything, nothing, words falling like stones into the silence, and I don’t know what to say, Ralph. What do you want to know? How does one start? Perhaps I could read to you. I could read you a poem…’

  ‘Tell me about us.’ His voice was a croak.

  ‘About us?’

  ‘Our past. Memories.’ She had to lean forward to hear his urgent whisper, frantic as an abandoned child’s. ‘Tell me about myself. Tell me about us. I can’t bear the silence. Don’t let there be this silence all around me. Don’t.’

  ‘Ralph.’ She took his brittle hands in hers and leant over him, inhaling the smell of illness. ‘Ssh, sweetheart.’

  ‘Tell me.’

  The sun was up now, though not visible in the dark sky that promised more rain. Today would never get properly light, she thought. Dawn would continue until it became dusk, and night fell once more.

  ‘Listen then,’ she said.

  Chapter Four

  Marnie would never have met Ralph if she hadn’t met David first. And she wouldn’t have met David on any other evening but this one, when she was truculent and running late. She didn’t want to go to the party; she didn’t like the people who would be there and they didn’t like her. She didn’t belong. She was odd, they said. She didn’t seem to care what they thought of her. She wore quaint clothes, bought from Oxfam or borrowed from her mother’s unpredictable wardrobe, and carried her books in a shabby music case; she rode to school on an old sit-up-and-beg bike, lived in a house whose roof leaked, knew how to play the accordion, liked opera and sailing and old philosophers with shaggy white beards – knew how to knit, for God’s sake. And, at a time when it was only just beginning to be diagnosed, she was dyslexic, though this wasn’t what they said. They said thick, stupid, dim, brainless, a twat, a retard, two sandwiches short of a picnic.

  And then, of course, as if that wasn’t enough, there was her mother: older than most mothers, single, with a mane of dark, static hair and an uncompromising stare that could stop you dead in your tracks. She wore long skirts that trailed in the mud, jumpers she knitted herself, no makeup except, occasionally, smears of paint or clay on her cheeks that she had failed to rub off before leaving the house. They called her witch, weirdo, madwoman (though only behind her back, and even then furtively, as though she might suddenly appear out of nowhere). Of course, what had happened to her and Marnie was sad – but it was ages ago. They should have got over it by now. Life goes on, they said. And Marnie and Emma had learnt not to turn around and say, ‘Yes, but how does a life go on?’ Not in the same way, that was for sure, though from the outside it might look the same.

  On this particular evening, Marnie had promised her friend Lucy that she would accompany her to a party, because Lucy – diligent, bookish, sarcastic Lucy, who wore rimless glasses and had read all of Dickens’s novels at least twice – had decided that she needed to go out and needed Marnie to be there, as moral support and listening-post when she found herself stranded at the end of the room with no one to talk to, as she certainly would because that was what always happened to her at parties. Marnie struggled crossly into a pale grey dress that was too small for her and a slightly odd shape, now she came to examine it, but there was no time to change: Lucy would be waiting. She slid her feet into heavy ankle boots that didn’t match the dress, and didn’t bother with makeup. Neither did she brush her unruly hair.

  ‘That’s quite a short dress,’ her mother said, in a neutral tone, as Marnie climbed into the car.

  ‘I think I’ve grown out of it.’

  ‘Mmm. Be careful.’

  ‘What? Do you think someone’s going to take advantage of me just because I’m showing my legs?’

  ‘Your bottom.’

  ‘I’m not showing my bottom!’

  ‘OK.’

  ‘I’ll ke
ep my coat on, then.’

  ‘Marnie, I just said be careful.’

  ‘I know what you meant, though.’

  ‘I meant be careful.’

  ‘I don’t even want to go to this party anyway. I already feel trapped, stifled. I’ll just stand in a corner with my arms folded and sulk.’

  ‘That sounds like fun.’

  So when David saw her, he saw a girl who didn’t really exist – he saw the skimpy dress worn with clumpy leather boots as a quirky new fashion that showed her worldliness; he was struck by the pale face, half hidden by her heavy fall of hair and bare of makeup, which frowned rather than smiled or pouted; usually she was patient and polite, but tonight she was irritable.

  Marnie knew David by sight; almost everyone in the room did. He was the boy from the grammar school across the road from the girls’ high who used to go out with red-lipped, anorexic Lily. He was the boy who’d won the 1500-metre county championship and been in all the local newspapers and even on TV, talking about how he wouldn’t mind being in the next Olympics, but he thought he probably preferred football to running. He had bright, thick blond hair and a square jaw, white teeth, a habit of hitching his thumbs into his belt and standing with his legs apart, like a cowboy. And that evening he came into the room, a casual late arrival, like a gun-toting outlaw with his posse of admirers, his glance roaming across the people in the room.

  There was a shift in the atmosphere. Hardly realizing that they were doing so, girls moved closer to him, raised their voices so that he could hear them, turned their heads slightly so that he could see their profiles, became more animated. He noticed Marnie because she seemed barely to notice him, and when he walked over to her, a slow smile growing on his handsome face, she stared at him impassively.

  She had the beginnings of a headache; her glands were painful and her throat thickened ominously. She was coming down with a cold, and to make it worse, her period was due, giving her a low back ache, painful breasts and a skin that prickled with physical irritation. All she wanted to do was curl up in bed and listen to one of her talking-book tapes with a cup of camomile tea beside her and her cat lying on her feet. She had already telephoned her mother, asking her to collect her early.

  ‘Can I get you a drink?’

  ‘I’ve already got one.’ She raised it in front of her and took a sip.

  ‘OK, how about “Would you like to dance?” ’

  ‘No one else is dancing. And I’m not really in the mood.’

  ‘What mood are you in, then?’

  ‘The wrong one for a party.’

  ‘What’s your name?’

  ‘Marnie.’

  ‘I’m David.’

  ‘I know.’

  His smile strengthened. ‘You know?’

  ‘Yes. This is Lucy.’

  He barely glanced at Lucy. Behind him, Marnie could see her group of tormentors looking at them and, despite herself, gave a small grin at the confusion on their faces.

  ‘Why are you smiling like that?’

  ‘It’s nothing.’

  ‘Really, tell me.’ He leant closer.

  She smelt the beer on his breath, and his musky sweat. His features blurred. ‘I’ve changed my mind,’ she said. ‘I’d like to dance. Once. Then I’m going home.’

  ‘We’ll see about that.’

  ‘Don’t,’ she said sharply, set on edge by his knowing tone.

  ‘Don’t what?’

  ‘Don’t assume.’

  ‘Sorry.’ He sounded almost humble.

  They stood in the centre of the room where there wasn’t really any space to move and he put his arms around her. His hands were on her back; his solid body was too close to hers. His breath was warm against her cheek. She was hot and kicked off her heavy boots so that suddenly he was taller than her and had to bend his head to talk to her, his hair flopping forward. His words came fast and easy; he talked about nothing in particular with fluent self-confidence.

  ‘I’m going now,’ she said, when the music changed. ‘Goodbye, David.’

  ‘But you can’t go yet!’

  ‘I can.’

  ‘Did I tell you you’re beautiful?’

  ‘Yes. Thank you.’

  ‘Can I call you?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I want to see you again. Give me your phone number.’

  ‘Oh.’ Marnie frowned, pushing her feet back into her boots. ‘It’s in the book.’

  ‘Well, then, what’s your last name?’

  She hesitated, then shrugged. ‘Still.’

  ‘Marnie Still?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘What’s your father’s name?’

  ‘I don’t have a father.’

  ‘Sorry,’ he said, unabashed.

  ‘But there aren’t any other Stills.’

  So it was that Marnie – untrendy, unsporty, outspoken Marnie, who made her own dresses and let her mother cut her hair – found herself going out with David Tinsley, heart-throb of the sixth form, hero of the football field and running track. Looking back over the years that separated her from that time in her past, she could see clearly that she had never really desired him – or, at least, only did so second-hand, because other girls, girls Marnie disliked, were so smitten with him and startled by her new status. And she could see, too, that she was the wrong girl for him, but that was precisely why he persevered: she wasn’t impressed by him, she didn’t come to watch him play football, she didn’t spend hours in front of the mirror preparing for their dates, she didn’t laugh at jokes that weren’t funny, she didn’t pretend to agree with him, she wouldn’t cancel arrangements she had made with Lucy to accommodate him. She wasn’t grateful that he had chosen her.

  ‘When am I going to meet him?’ her mother asked.

  ‘You’ll hate him.’

  ‘Does that mean I can’t meet him?’

  ‘No. It’s OK. I’ll bring him back tomorrow. How about that?’

  It was March and their stalwart little house near the coast was coming into its own, after weeks of winter when the brown sea leaked into the dun skies and water dripped through the ceiling onto the bath’s rim. Now there were daffodils in the garden, the japonica by the front door was in flower, and there were sticky green buds just visible on the trees. The sea, which they could see from their windows and reach by a small track, was no longer sullen but a flickering blue-green, sending off diamonds of light when the sun came out. Every morning, Emma Still opened the windows to let the air in, and then Marnie could hear the swell of birdsong, liquid and full throttle. Sometimes she could see one of the birds in the bare branches of the trees, its tiny throat throbbing.

  She had been born in this house, and she knew her mother would never leave it, although it was old and felt increasingly worn out: its beams sagged; its side wall was cracked; the heating was inefficient; slates slid off the roof whenever there was a storm. Then, rather than call in a builder, Emma would climb up and replace them, her hair blowing in the wind like a tattered banner. Emma was good at things like that: it was she who laid carpets, put up shelves, made curtains late at night, her foot pedalling the sewing-machine, her mouth pursed full of pins. She often enlisted her daughter’s help; ever since she was small, Marnie had painted her own room, liking the sensation of laying wet, clean layers of paint over the stained surface.

  The house was too large for the two of them, and it was quiet. Both Marnie and her mother were restrained, swallowing their emotions. Marnie felt the house’s stillness as something almost tangible, its heaviness filling the rooms and pushing against the windows, and she sometimes imagined that the same kind of pressure existed inside herself and her mother, as if all the shouts and yells they hadn’t uttered were pressed down inside them, making them less light-footed and carefree than other people, more deliberate. She didn’t properly remember, but imagined, what it had been like when four of them were living here: not just Emma and Marnie, but Marnie’s father, Paolo, and her older brother, Seth.

  That
was long ago. Marnie had been only three when Paolo and seven-year-old Seth had gone off on a fishing expedition, protective father and proud son, and drowned in the freak storm that locals still remembered. For years after she had dreams of them in the churning water, screaming for help, or under the waves with limbs flailing, lungs exploding and seaweed already stranded around their distorted, dying faces. Now she often found that she could no longer remember properly what they had looked like, or could only do so by thinking of the photographs that stood in the downstairs room: Paolo and Emma, with the sea going out behind them; herself and Seth squashed together on a swing in the garden, Marnie grave and Seth impish; the four of them together, Marnie with her eyes squinting against the dazzle of the sun and her hand holding Emma’s blowing skirt. Paolo and Seth’s real faces had faded, and the memories she had were fragmentary and unsatisfactory. For instance – and she didn’t like to say this to her mother – when Seth came to her now, as he often did unbidden, he was invariably belligerent or derisory. There was the time when she’d trodden on his model aeroplane, made of balsawood and the glue still sticky, and he’d pushed her onto the floor and banged her head on it until fireworks fizzed inside her skull. Or the time he and his best friend Stephen had put cushions over her on the sofa and then sat on her to watch TV. She remembered – or thought she remembered – lying in stifling darkness, the boys’ sharp bodies shifting on top of her, and trying not to cry. She longed for a happy image to surface, but the more she searched for one, the more it wormed its way down to the bottom of her consciousness.