The Winter House Read online

  ‘Sorry,’ she said feebly, with a final hilarious hiccup. ‘I always laugh when I’m shocked.’

  ‘We’re done, you little bitch,’ said David. His mother’s lips tightened in sour approval and she wrapped an arm round his shoulders, transferring some baked beans to her pink jumper. ‘I don’t know how I put up with you as long as I did.’

  Then he picked up a napkin, wiped most of the mess off his face and strode from the room. They heard the car door slam, the engine roar into life and David wrenching it out of the drive in an angry splutter of mud and gravel.

  ‘Well,’ said Marnie. She felt light-headed.

  ‘I think you’d better go, don’t you?’

  ‘Probably.’ A giggle rose in her throat but she swallowed it.

  Mr Tinsley re-entered the room, a belt in his hand. On his face, which was redder than ever, there was a look of righteous satisfaction. Marnie stared at him until he looked away. She felt sick at the sight of him.

  ‘She’s just going,’ said Mrs Tinsley.

  ‘Goodbye, Grace,’ said Marnie, walking round the table to plant a kiss on the top of her head. ‘Tell Ralph he was perfectly justified. David shouldn’t have snooped like that. And you shouldn’t have beaten him,’ she told his father. ‘You’re a nasty bully.’

  ‘Just get out of here before I use this on you, too.’

  ‘Oh. And tell David I’m really, really happy we’re through.’

  Cycling slowly home through the thickening light, Marnie felt peaceful. Her hair blew behind her and her limbs felt strong and unencumbered; she could feel the muscles in her calves working. She was glad it was over and that the conflicting desires and dislikes were in the past. She no longer had to push away his urgent hands, fend off unwanted invitations from girls at school, or visit his angry, unhappy house. She saw the sea in front of her, silver and grey in the soft twilight, and her heart lifted.

  Her mother was in her work shed so Marnie made them both a cup of tea and went to visit her there. She was wrapped in a white apron and painting a large, shallow bowl she had made a week or so before; her sleeves were rolled up and there were smears of paint and clay on her arms. The tip of her tongue was on her lip, a sign of concentration.

  ‘Here,’ said Marnie. ‘Cup of tea for you.’

  ‘You’re back already?’

  ‘Yes. Can I help you?’

  ‘Do you want to decorate a mug? It’s a bit blemished so you can just do whatever you want with it.’

  ‘Sure.’

  It had been ages since Marnie had worked out there, among the unglazed pots, the smell of clay, paint and glue. She hesitated in front of the paints, then chose a terracotta red and dipped her brush into it. This was always the best bit, before you actually began.

  ‘I don’t think I’ll be seeing David again,’ she said, after several minutes, ‘so I’ll have plenty of time to help you in the house and revise for my exams.’

  Her mother didn’t reply at once. She bent forward over her bowl, her brow creased, considering. ‘You’re all right?’ she said eventually.

  ‘I’m really fine.’

  ‘Good.’

  ‘He wasn’t very nice.’

  ‘Hmm.’ Emma laid an invisible stroke of paint along the rim and stood back. Marnie saw that there were flecks of grey in her hair. ‘Shall we go on a picnic tomorrow, if the weather holds? Once I’ve got the B-and-B-ers out of my hair, we can row out to the little island. You can ask Lucy if she’d like to come.’

  ‘I’ll make the sandwiches.’

  ‘That’s settled, then. You need to make the paint a bit thinner, I think.’

  ‘Sometimes I don’t want to grow up. I want just to stay here with you, in our house by the sea, painting mugs and having picnics. It’s an odd feeling – like being homesick for something I’ve still got.’ She looked up at her mother, whose face was stern and sad and whose eyes seemed to go right through her. ‘What did I say?’

  ‘Nothing. Nothing at all.’

  ‘You’re thinking of them, aren’t you?’

  ‘Not really.’

  ‘There’s a certain look you have. It’s like you’ve gone away.’

  Emma sighed, laying down her brush and pushing her hair away from her face. ‘Marnie, you don’t have to feel threatened.’

  ‘I don’t!’

  ‘Yes. You do. It’s natural.’

  ‘I wish –’ Marnie stopped.

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘I wish you were happy. I want to make you happy.’

  ‘You do make me happy.’

  ‘No, I don’t. I’m not enough.’

  ‘You’re everything.’

  ‘Everything’s not enough.’

  Emma laid her dry, roughened hand flat against Marnie’s cheek. There was a fine dust in her hair. ‘Everything is everything. Don’t ask for more.’

  It wasn’t until the next morning, after Marnie and Emma had made breakfast for the Lake family from Leicester, and cleared away the congealed remains, after they’d stripped the beds and put the first of the sheets into their ageing, noisy washing-machine and Marnie was making ham and mustard sandwiches, humming to herself, that she heard.

  Emma came into the kitchen and took the knife from her hand. She made her sit down at the table, and then she told her that David had crashed his car the night before, skidding out of control round a corner and smashing into a wall. He had died immediately.

  For some time Marnie didn’t say anything. She sat quite still, aware of her mother’s eyes fixed on her, and looked at her hands, which were gathered uselessly on her lap. She heard herself swallow and then the old clock, ten minutes fast, tick loudly. She saw David’s glaring face, spattered with orange baked beans and yellow-white potato, and she heard her gleeful laughter ring out. Before her mother could move, she had picked up the bread knife and sliced it down her own arm, watching the red line well with drops of blood.

  In the night, there was screaming. I had never heard anyone scream so loud. I thought it was in my room, inside my own skull. It sounded like an animal being slaughtered, but it went on and on without let-up, and then it suddenly stopped. For a while there was silence, which was almost worse than the screaming – thick and menacing, like an animal about to pounce. A panther with a mouthful of blood. Blue lights on my ceiling. Cars in the drive. Voices shouting. Someone running. I lay quite still. I didn’t want to move because I thought my body would break apart if I did. I was falling down an endless hole inside myself. Do you know how it feels to be so scared that all the clichés come true – your heart’s in your mouth, your stomach turns to liquid, you’re on a slippery slope, the ground opens up under your feet, the world stands still?

  At last I went into the corridor. My back still stung from the belt. There was nobody in my parents’ room or David’s, but Grace was in her bed, awake and with the covers pulled up to her chin. I sat by her and held her hand. I can still feel her fingers, warm and squashy and passive, in mine. I already knew. I talked to Grace about all sorts of things, fragments of whispered nonsense in the darkness. She wasn’t listening, she didn’t hear; I thought as long as I talked, nothing could really happen. But, of course, it already had.

  I mustn’t think of that now, the cold, cold night before dawn.

  When I first kissed a girl who wasn’t you – that’s another story – I closed my eyes and pretended I was kissing you once more. I was coming home at last. I was loved by the only person I wanted to be loved by. Her taste was your taste. The way she had her fingers in my hair: that was you. It was you pressing up against me like that. Then the music stopped; the kissing stopped. I opened my eyes and it wasn’t you, it was this stranger – wrong shape and wrong size and wrong smile and wrong way of saying my name.

  That wasn’t the only time either. With Lucy, I was often with you. You were always the third in our affair, if affair is the right word for the strange, intense and doomed romance that had more to do with things that could never be said than with simple desir
e or pleasure. I think she knew that. Did you know? Of course you did. You always knew. And the last time I slept with a woman – and by ‘slept’ I mean just that, side by side through the night – I dreamt of you, and when I woke up, I lay in the darkness, hearing the steady breathing of the person next to me and feeling her warmth just a few centimetres away, and willing myself to continue the dream I didn’t want to leave. I already knew of my cancer by then; I’d known for several weeks but told no one, not even Oliver. (And we’ll come to Oliver later, won’t we? I can feel him just over the horizon of your story. His shadow’s already there.) I went through each day with this secret growing silently inside me, taking me over bit by bit. It felt odd that the whole world looked different to me and yet apparently nobody could tell. We’re all alone, aren’t we, Marnie? Even in the middle of sex we’re alone but trying feverishly to lose ourselves in the other in order to pretend that we’re not.

  Anyway, on that strange night with a woman I had known for many years, I tried to dream that you were with me at last, and that when I turned on my side I would be able to see your face looking at me, grey eyes to lose myself in, and you would hold out your arms and I would slide into them and be safe at last. And I did turn over and, for just one self-deluding moment, it was your face, oh, God, your darling face, that I was looking at, your arms that were around me, holding me so tight under the sheets. Do you know what it feels like to be homesick for the whole of your life?

  But who was I seeing when I was seeing you? It was so many years since we’d met; you were a memory, a ghost. Was it the you of our childhood, or the person you’d become, whom I no longer knew though often imagined? I don’t know and it didn’t matter. Dreams have their own logic. It was simply you. And then not you. The sickening knowledge that you still weren’t there.

  You’re here now. I’ve missed you so badly. God, Marnie, I’ve missed you so very much.

  Chapter Seven

  Marnie borrowed Oliver’s car to drive to the shops. She took with her both his and Ralph’s mobile phones so she could check for messages once she was out of the dead zone. They lay on the seat beside her, mysterious packages that she had permission to open. The blustery wind blew the rain sideways; it streaked across the windscreen so she viewed the scene in front of her through a watery curtain, the moors blurred and sodden, the branches of the trees whipped back, the heavy sky bearing down on the barely visible hills.

  The town that Oliver had directed her to was small and unprepossessing; the houses had a surly air, with grey slate roofs and mean windows. It lay huddled against the side of a hill, and at first glance looked closed down for winter. The windows were unlit, the doors firmly shut, the streets deserted. But Marnie saw that smoke rose from a few chimneys, quickly swallowed in the wet grey air, and when she drove up the main road, the bakery, the butcher’s and the general grocery store were open for business. She parked and turned off the engine. Almost at once the streams of rain made it impossible to see anything out of the window, and she sat for a moment in her private fug, listening to it clatter on the roof and splash onto the tarmac. Then she turned on both phones and waited for a signal to appear.

  She started with Oliver’s, jotting down the messages in her notebook. Jenny (it sounded like a girl’s voice, perhaps his daughter): ‘Where are you and when are you coming back?’ Sylvia: ‘How’s Ralph?’ Roger: something to do with a case he was waiting to hear about, get in touch ASAP. Tony: please ring. Jenny again. Mal: ‘How about that meal?’ Lorrie: Christmas arrangements need to be finalized – was Lorrie his wife, his ex-wife? No name but a soft and intimate voice, and Marnie felt displeasure jolt through her: ‘Call me, sweetheart.’ Professor Goodman: something about a meeting he had cancelled. No name again, saying caressingly: ‘Oliver, Oliver honey, I need to speak to you. Please!’ For a moment, Marnie considered not passing on the message from Oliver’s other, real, world where women called him ‘sweetheart’ and made arrangements to meet up.

  Then Ralph’s. She listened to a world of strangers leaving messages, Dutch accents, English ones, a southern American drawl. Telling Ralph they were thinking of him. Asking Ralph if they could come and visit. ‘I love you, hon,’ said a woman on the brink of tears. Someone was praying for him. Someone else said not to forget how important diet was; it was never too late. A few clearly didn’t know that he’d left and were trying to make arrangements to come round that afternoon, the next day, whenever he felt strong enough to see them. Margriet had baked his favourite cake. Mark had made him a CD of birdsong. At last Marnie turned the phone off and stared at the paper covered with names, messages, numbers, realizing more strongly than ever how far she and Ralph had moved from each other and how unlikely it was that she should be with him as he lay dying.

  She sighed, buttoned her coat and got out of the car. Stinging needles of rain hit her. Before she made it across the road to the bakery, she was wet through, and her hands were so cold she could scarcely open her purse to find change.

  Back at the house, Oliver had put more wood on the fire and already drawn the curtains against the encroaching darkness; the wind rattled the window-panes and hissed through the keyhole, but inside it was warm and full of soft light from the fire and the oil lamp. Ralph was half sitting, half lying on the sofa covered with the rug, and he and Oliver were playing chess. Though his hand, when he reached out to move a pawn, was like a bird’s claw, he looked quite different from that morning, as if in the couple of hours she had been gone he’d filled out: there was colour in his cheeks and his eyes glittered with a morphine-gaiety that Marnie was learning to recognize. His hair lay in clean, soft curls around his thin face. When he saw Marnie, he smiled at her, the sweet smile of his boyhood. And Oliver lifted his head and gave a small, rueful smile too. Both of them were looking at her with tenderness; for a moment, she felt as if she had never been away.

  She sat at the table chopping vegetables as they played. Nobody talked. Occasionally Ralph chuckled when he thought he had gained an advantage. The chess pieces tapped softly on the wood, muted by their felt bottoms; Marnie’s knife clipped against the chopping-board. The fire crackled, and garlic sizzled briefly in oil. The kettle gave a breathy whistle as the water boiled.

  Marnie added the vegetables to the pan, pulled out a mixing-bowl. There were no scales in the small kitchen, but she estimated the weight of the sugar and flour, then beat them together with a wooden spoon. Behind her, Ralph coughed, a terrible hack that made her wince, and she heard Oliver’s quiet, soothing voice. She took the eggs from their container, holding their porcelain coldness in her cupped hands and remembering how as a girl she would collect them each morning from the chicken run. Sometimes they would still be warm from laying. She cracked the first sharply against the edge of the table and let it plop into the jug she had put ready for them. She doubted Ralph would be able to eat any cake, but it felt good to be preparing it for him while outside the night closed in and the weather pressed up against the windows. The clean tang of lemon zest, the fine cloud of flour as she sifted it into the mixing-bowl, the smell of baking that would fill the room, bringing back their childhood, holding the future at bay. Unexpected happiness flowed through her, so strong it made her throat ache and her eyes water.

  ‘He’s asleep,’ said Oliver at last, rising from his chair.

  ‘Who won?’

  ‘Nobody yet. We can finish it later. But he always wins so I imagine he will this time. That smells good.’

  She took off the apron she’d wrapped round her waist and untied her hair, shaking it loose, then moved across the room to where Oliver stood. Together they looked down at Ralph, who was lying in a crumpled heap on the sofa, one arm hanging down, the fist uncurling; there was a small smile on his lips.

  ‘He seems so much better,’ said Marnie, putting his arm carefully on the sofa, pulling the blanket over him, shifting his feet back a bit. He stirred and murmured.

  ‘Sometimes he is.’

  Marnie turned towards him �
�� or perhaps it was Oliver who turned first and put his arms round her, holding her fiercely against his solid warmth, resting his chin on the top of her head and breathing into her hair. She laid her cheek against his chest and felt the strong beat of his heart. She imagined Ralph’s heart, fluttering and scrabbling like a dying bird, and leant closer in to their embrace. Oliver’s shirt smelt of smoke.

  ‘I always thought I’d see you again.’ he said, into her hair. His voice was almost a groan.

  Then they drew apart.

  The doctor, when he came that evening, had the broad shoulders of a rugby player and sandy receding hair. His face was pouchy and pink, and covered with smudgy freckles that made him look as if he were dissolving. But his eyes behind his glasses were sharp. When Marnie walked with him to his car, asking him as soon as the front door was shut if Ralph’s sudden improvement didn’t allow room for hope, he paused.

  ‘Ms Still –’

  ‘Marnie.’

  ‘Marnie. Cancer’s not predictable, and stranger things have happened.’

  ‘But?’

  ‘But – here, sit in my car awhile. We can’t stand about chatting in this storm.’ They climbed into it and he turned on the engine to give some warmth, then an internal light. He looked at her with a tired, kindly expression. ‘What do you know about your friend’s condition?’

  ‘I know it’s pancreatic cancer – and I know that’s not good.’

  ‘It’s a nasty bugger, shaped like a slipper. Difficult to detect because the pancreas is behind the stomach and deep in the abdomen. Difficult to treat. According to his doctor in Holland, it had spread to several adjacent structures before it was discovered.’

  ‘Adjacent structures?’

  ‘That is to say,’ he coughed, ‘colon, liver, lung. To name some.’

  ‘I see.’

  ‘Ralph has had radiotherapy. Surgery was not appropriate in his case, and chemotherapy would not have been effective. Now all that can be done is to relieve the symptoms.’