It began with the heating-oil men. Two of them: one not much older than Lottie, the other middle-aged. ‘Did you see the state of the place?’ I heard the young one say. ‘Christ, how does anyone live like that?’
The older man was pulling the oil hose back towards the truck. ‘Nutters,’ he said. ‘And my old girl thinks I’m bad. Can’t wait to tell her about this lot.’
I was standing at the dining-room window, listening to every word they said. They couldn’t see me with all the boxes stacked against the glass. The boxes were empty; I’d been keeping them for the local kindergarten. I could hear the men outside, breathing in the cold air, the hose dragging on the ground.
‘You’ll need to get a signature,’ I heard the older man say. ‘Go to the back door,’ he said. ‘The older one is half normal. Here, take my pen. You’ll be drawing the fucking pension before they can find one in that mess.’
The younger man, whose front teeth were bucked, was still chuckling when he appeared at the door. I signed without saying a word. Lottie was calling out, ‘Thank you, thank you, oil man,’ from the hallway.
‘You’ll be nice and snug now,’ he said to me, kindly enough, before closing the folder. But I heard them laughing as they went back down the path. The sound of the truck roaring away left a mark on my heart.
The buck-toothed boy was right: we were nice and snug that winter. Just me and Lottie, curled like hedgehogs in our chairs. We had everything we needed in that back kitchen. We boiled the eggs that Mr Novak left for us in a padded bag by the side gate. We had our beans, and I found some lime cordial that Lottie would have drunk neat if I hadn’t stopped her. I’d given up buying the newspaper by then, but I had a tiny radio that I listened to when the gales were blowing. Rockall. Hebrides. Becoming cyclonic. Bailey. Fair Isle. Cyclonic at times. The thought of those turbulent places, the unstoppable, chaotic forces sweeping across them, was oddly soothing. It was the hardest winter for seventy years, the radio told me: motorways were closed, there were pile-ups, people stranded in freezing cars. Watching Lottie beside me, sleeping peacefully in her chair, made me feel lucky, for a while.
Sometimes, dreadful mistakes only become clear when everything is lost. This old house has two floors, three if you count the attic, although I haven’t been able to get up there for years. When it got so cold that even Lottie was starting to feel the chill, I turned the heating up to maximum without a thought. Much later, I realised every radiator in the house was going at full tilt, warming rooms we’d not been in for years. We stripped off our layers while the snow continued to tap against the windows. It felt like we had warmth enough for the entire terrace, the town, the whole world. Even the attic must have had some sort of heating because I’ve never seen so many birds in our back garden, swooping down onto the icy branches of trees, then back up to the warm slate of our roof. Dozens of them. Hundreds.
It’s surprising how quickly a house goes cold. And the quiet that comes when the throb of the machinery ceases. The birds left first. A large flock curved above Mr Novak’s house, then disappeared. Lottie didn’t complain, even though she pulled out an old school cardigan of mine and wrapped it around her neck like a scarf. I told her there was no oil left. ‘Get the man,’ she said. The young fellow had grinned at her with his great, square teeth and she had not forgotten. But I kept hearing their laughter on the side path, kept seeing their faces at the back door. How their eyes had widened in surprise. The shocked glance they’d exchanged before turning to their work.
The empty house beside Mr Novak’s place was once a teacher’s house. He was no relation to us although we shared the same family name.
‘Looks like this is going to be the Greene end of the terrace,’ the postman, who was universally known as Call-Me-Johnny, sang out as I passed one day. He’d been ringing the front doorbell of Number 29 but getting no answer. ‘Another Greene just moved in here, by the looks of it,’ he said to me. ‘Unless of course you’ve got a’ – he read the label – ‘Simon Greene tucked up in your place, Jennifer?’
‘I’m afraid that’s me.’ A middle-aged man in a pale blue shirt appeared at the door, looking slightly flustered. ‘Sorry, I was in the back garden,’ he said.
‘There’s Greene everywhere!’ Call-Me-Johnny said, quite delighted with his silly quips. He pointed to me. ‘This lady’s Greene, too. Lives two doors up.’
I was eager to get away but the man took the parcel and stepped down to the front gate to introduce himself.
‘Delighted to meet you,’ he said, as we exchanged names and shook hands. He had a pair of reading glasses tucked into his shirt pocket. He nodded at the parcel he’d pinned under one arm. ‘Another book,’ he said, ruefully. ‘Don’t seem to be able to resist.’ He had dark brown hair, quite short, except for a long sweep of fringe with a few strands of silvery grey. ‘I’ll have to cut back on my addiction now that I’ve bought this place.’ He had a nice voice.
‘Oh blimey, not another book lover!’ Call-Me-Johnny was still standing beside us. ‘You’ll be the death of me, you lot,’ he said, staggering on the footpath in mock horror, before chuckling to himself and walking away, patting his heavy satchel like the head of a large dog.
We laughed then, the two of us, new neighbours and soon-to-be friends. Just a few years after that, books would be ordered online and exhausted couriers in lurid trucks would ply this road. Call-Me-Johnny, finding nothing funny in his new work contract, would take voluntary redundancy and retire to Blackpool. But the first time I met Simon is set fast in my mind. The two of us smiling, watching the postman make his way down the terrace, Simon’s hand on the gatepost, the wrapped book under his arm. And the way we said, ‘Yes, an amazing coincidence … common enough name, for sure, but still.’ And how we talked about books, free-falling into that vast canopy of stories. ‘Oh yes, I’ve read it,’ and, ‘I was a little disappointed with her last novel but I couldn’t put her new one down,’ and, ‘Absolutely, an incredible story; I was crying by the end of it. It was brilliant. Just brilliant.’
If I could choose my final thought on this earth, it would be that scene, for the innocent happiness it brought me. The two of us, together, smiling. When I think of it, I am a shining, iridescent creature, caught with him forever in smooth amber. Extinguished, yet perfect.
Someone was at the front door, knocking. I wasn’t afraid. It was not unusual for charity collectors or other strangers to let themselves into the front garden. I ignored it, as I always do. That door hasn’t been opened for years.
Strange how people who want something always knock the same way: three assertive knocks, silence, two more knocks, silence. After a long pause, I’d hear the gate creak, then nothing. When I think back on it, the knocks I heard that day were different: more tentative, uncertain. But then the silence came, and I relaxed again.
A few minutes later, I heard footsteps. Someone was walking down the path at the side of the house. Even then, I was unconcerned. I was in my chair in the back kitchen. I won’t make a sound, I thought. No one can see me from here.
Then I remembered the robin. It was an unseasonably warm day. Early autumn. A large robin had perched on the old washing machine outside. I had watched it for a long time. It didn’t move, just tilted its plain, bronze head to and fro, its red chest flaring in the light.
I had left the back door open. The footsteps rounded the corner of the house.
‘Jennifer? Hello. Jennifer? Are you there?’
The voice was unmistakable. It was Simon. I felt panic shoot through my body. If he moved any closer to the door, he would see me.
He was wearing the same blue shirt he’d had on when we first met. He smiled when he spotted me. I treasure that. He had a parcel in his hand, clearly a book.
‘Jennifer!’ he said in a pleased, slightly relieved voice. And then he said, ‘Oh!’ loud and fast, stepping back from the doorway as if the threshold were an unexpected cliff.
His free hand slapped against his throat but it was too late to trap the sound of his shock.
For one precious moment, he had seen only me. Then he saw everything else. And it was just like the oil men, the way his eyes took in all the things. Without moving, without so much as turning my head, I saw what he saw. He was breathing like a man who had run a long way.
‘I’m so sorry,’ he said, quietly. He held up the parcel. ‘The postman. Got it wrong. Wrong Greene, I mean.’ He took another step backwards. ‘It’s a book. I … I didn’t mean to intrude.’
I stood up. We faced each other on either side of the doorway. Simon was forcing his gaze away from the room and back to my face.
‘I thought I’d leave this by the back door but then … I saw … it was open,’ he said, his face blazing.
I felt a surge of absolute fury. I wanted to step across that threshold and pummel him, rip that book apart and grind it under my shoe. He had wrecked everything by coming here. I’d played a careful game. Small deceptions that meant we met in the street, in a cafe or at the library. I’d had coffee in his house. I told him an ancient aunt of mine lived here, that visitors disturbed her. And it had been wonderful. All those stories, those books. We’d built great walls of book talk around us. There was no romance. I wondered a few times whether he might be gay. I didn’t care. I was glad to have a friend.
I heard myself say, ‘I don’t think you should come here again, Simon.’
He pressed his lips together. ‘No,’ he said. He cast about briefly for some flat surface to put down the book. There was none. Seeing that, he held it out to me. I took the terrible weight of it in my hand. ‘I’m so very sorry,’ he said, before walking away.
I was still standing in the doorway when he reappeared. He stopped a few steps from the back door. I could see the robin on a pile of wood near him. It seemed as if years had passed.
‘Jennifer,’ he said. ‘I could help you.’
It was then I felt it. The terror. I felt those walls of rubbish behind me, above me. All at once they seemed to move, flex, like powerful muscles. Like a house come to life with things. In the maze of boxes, it knew where I was, squeezed into this corner of the kitchen, the door in front of me my last escape. All I had to do was step forward, reach out, cross that threshold. Simon would take my hand. He was a good man. He would help me. But the house, this house I had reshaped into something terrible, was contracting against me. Even the floor seemed to wrap around my feet like a sinuous vine.
Simon moved closer. ‘I’m worried about you,’ he said. ‘Being here. And your aunt. It’s not safe.’
Despite his best efforts, I saw his eyes flit around the room.
‘Jennifer, how would you both get out,’ he said. ‘What if something happened? If there was … a fire?’
A fire. And I felt my pulse race. A beautiful, cleansing fire to vanquish this monstrous place. It’s astonishing how many boxes of matches are in this house.
‘There is no aunt,’ I said, amazed to hear my own robot voice.
Simon stared, took a deep breath. ‘I see,’ he whispered.
‘I don’t need any help, thank you, Simon,’ I told him.
I felt a throb of life in the floor beneath me.
He was going to say more, I could see that, but after a moment he lowered his gaze. ‘Very well,’ he said. ‘Jennifer, I’m so sorry I came here. I meant no harm.’
It was a strange, courtly end. I would not have been surprised if he’d bowed.
There is no going back. No returning to the Christmas tree, or the navy sofa on the big square rug. No Lottie spinning and jumping, catching snow on her tongue. ‘So hot,’ she’d said to me, in those last hours we spent together, the fever boiling within her. I didn’t realise how sick she was until I heard the high, thin wheeze of her chest, filled to the brim.
When the ambulance men came, they noticed only Lottie. They did not care about things. They didn’t look at me. Together, we stared at Lottie, lying limp in her chair. They lifted her up and carried her to the gurney at the door. Pneumonia, they said. Only Lottie looked back, her eyes half closed, willing me to make it better. So hot. No air. The wail of the siren in the street. And then she was gone.
There’s no one left, now. I have built a new house here, with seams of paper and cloth, with walls as thick and heavy as a citadel. There’ve been times when these packed corridors, these rooms of things, have given me a kind of comfort, like the books around my bed when I was young.
‘You’ll disappear under those books, my girl,’ my mother once said as I lay on the bed, reading.
‘She’s lost in all those silly stories,’ I heard her tell my father.
After Lottie died, I became afraid of everything. The books could no longer console me. They loomed at me with their closed mouths, their pressed lips. I put boxes around them, covered them with newspapers. I did not think of Simon. In the local paper, there was a small photo of his house. For sale. A beautifully kept garden, it said. Tranquil. I thought about that word for a long time.
I’m curled here now, beside the boxes, the tins and jars, the magazines, all our old schoolwork. I have everything I need. I tuck Lottie’s clothes around me, each garment scented with a ghostly trace of her.
The house feels glad again, released. It hums with the joy of things ending.
Speak the Words
I remember you in lipstick colours. Those cheap, brittle tubes heaped in a basket at the back of the chemist, down where they take in the prescriptions. The way your tired eyes might have fallen on them, your fingers scrabbling through the neon bursts of colour. Shocking pink, fiery tangerine, a heartbreaking red. I make the shape of you in the little mirror on the counter.
Once, at the bus stop, you turned to me as if about to say something, pressed your mouth into a thin line, and looked away. I heard the chink of bottles in your bag. Sometimes, I saw you at the library, backed into a corner, the flat of your head bobbing behind one of the old computers. And that last time, when we passed in the high street, before your house burned, before the smoke unfurled and waved like a flag above the edge of town.
I will take this one. The red. I will remember the pale circle of your face, the vivid slash of colour. The way your lips seemed to hover just ahead of you, as if they might shout down the road, speak the words you could not say.
The Mohair Coat
It could not go to strangers, this leaving coat. How could they know about the terrible newness of things? The way her parents had gripped the sleeves, a great rush of parting shaking them all. How they’d turned from her, then, without another word, bowing into the wind and the slick, grey road. And when the ship pulled away at last, streamers crosshatching the dock, how she’d watched them mount the old wharf steps, knowing by the set of their shoulders that they would not look back. As the ship rose beneath her feet, how she’d turned up her collar, watched the ocean unfold like a plan.
It could not be left for strangers, this returning coat. My mother’s winter uniform for journeys back to her homeland. How she waved down to us, her hip pressed against the ship’s rail, the sun burning her head, the coat looped over her arm like success. The seas waited and, later, the skies. Above the clouds, she tucked in the sleeves, made a pillow, watched the horizon for unforgotten places. She brought stories in her pockets.
It could not be handed to strangers, this quarantined coat, hovering like a ghost in a reek of naphthalene. Once, before the end, my mother took it out, laid it down on the bed like sorrow. The heat prickled the wool. I tried to imagine a place where the weight of this would feel right.
‘Do you remember your mohair coat, Mum?’ I said, and she ran her fingers across the lapel. I watched her shoulders rise and fall. She did not answer.
It could not stay with me, this haunting coat. I have travelled back to her country, carrying it in my arms. Better in a place where hard winds undo th
e mystery of double cuffs.
In the village, her ancient sister waits. I look forward to meeting you, she’d written in crafted loops. I will give her the coat. It has been worn four times in sixty years. We will not dare to speak of the unbearable brightness of its wool.
But in a post office two hours south, I can no longer bear the weight of empty clothes. I take the coat, cross the arms, lay it out on heavy card. In the overheated room, I watch the clock. Soon, a van cortège will come and carry it home along the roads of her youth.
As I seal the box, an impish scent of her – a stowaway in the hand-sewn lining – threads past me and is gone.
In that stifling room, wary eyes watch a stranger clasping a heavy coat, sobbing into its depths like an abandoned child.
Legacy
When it came at last, it was one hard push in the centre of his back. For an instant, he doubled over in a deep, elaborate bow. Fitting, somehow. There was no sound, save a single, thin exhalation, which may have belonged to one of us. His navy trench coat swaddled him as he drove down. A long pennant of maroon scarf, flying like the banner of a minor royal, waved in the air behind him. No arms flailed. Nothing unseemly. The water received him with a muted splash, pulled him down and away with the sea’s sure hand. There was a moment, only one, when we told ourselves it was like a burial.
Nostrils. That’s the first thing I recall. Mr Gregory had a plain English face: grey-blue eyes, fair skin, mousey brown hair worn surprisingly long. But his nostrils marked him. Great cavernous openings, permanently flared. You could see so far inside his nose it felt alarming. The interior was tinted in a wash of pale scarlet; a rare kind of hue, like the orchids Mum grew years ago, when she was happy.
Mr Gregory lived on our street. I often saw him ducking under his cottage doorway, or walking on the hill behind – striding, really, for he had a long-legged step that in a less serious man would have looked comical.
This Taste for Silence Page 5