They would find her a hothouse peach, or a pear—“Such luck, we found it quite by accident”—and serve it on a Dresden plate. “That old plate, it takes you back, doesn’t it, Maude? Dear Marsh—do you remember, Maude? We gave him a tea cake on that very plate the first afternoon he called!” Do you remember, do you remember? The Thursday routine.
The car arrived at three, and I turned in my chair to watch. Tench and Anna on the front seat; Mrs. Tench in the back, already making herself properly small in one corner. Anna sat with bowed head and clasped hands. I speculated about Anna.
When Mother came down the stairs, I didn’t hear her. When she called my name, I jumped. She stood in the doorway, wearing a long seal cape and smiling. “That’s nice,” she said. “There’s nothing more becoming to a woman’s hands than needlework. My love to Mike, and don’t stay too late.”
I followed her to the front door. Mrs. Tench became smaller in her allotted corner, Tench touched his cap, Anna sat upright and stared ahead. They drove away.
I closed the door and leaned against it. The house was empty. For the first time in a month, I was alone in the house. I was surrounded by open doors, I was facing a stairway that led to other doors, both open and closed. I was free to trace my life from room to room, to read the record of my years in the pictures on the old playroom wall, in the white nursery furniture that was stored in one of the closed rooms. I told myself I would look for what I had lost, or never had. But I didn’t know where to begin.
I remembered the Christmas morning before I went away to school. I was six. I didn’t know I was going away. Father led me to the playroom door. It had been closed for two days, but I knew my tree and presents were inside, waiting. I could hear a music box. I told him I had heard it once before, when he had gone into the room with a package under his arm and closed the door behind him. When I said that, he looked at me for a long time without speaking. His eyes were grave; I thought I had offended him. I remember what he said, stooping to look into my face: “Always open doors when you hear music.”
Remember, remember.
The house was empty. I could go up or down. I could sleep or read or sew. I could go down to the cottage by the stable and look at Mrs. Tench’s flowers. I could go to Mother’s room and handle the jars and bottles on her dressing table, open her wardrobe, touch the soft, light dresses she never wore now. I could go to Father’s room and change the water in the bowl of red carnations. I could look through his desk and remember to leave it as I found it, the right things in the right pigeonholes, the ivory paper knife on the left-hand corner of the blotter, the writing case in the center, the top letter on top.
I went up the stairs.
Mother had left her door open. I told myself to remember that when I was ready to leave. She had dressed hurriedly; I could follow her progress from bath to wardrobe, to chest and table. Black-bordered handkerchiefs had been unfolded and discarded; hats, slippers, and veils. The dress she had worn at lunch was lying on a chair, one sleeve torn from the shoulder. I touched nothing. She values privacy; no one is allowed to touch her things; she is always present when Anna cleans. Anna.
When I frightened Anna at lunch, I knew what I was doing. I wanted to frighten her. I wanted her to talk, I led her carefully; she said what I wanted her to say. I’d been waiting for someone to say that.
There was a heap of torn paper in the bottom of Mothers wastebasket, letters and envelopes from lunchtime reduced to shreds. I stirred them, turning up figures and words. Bills, and a draft of her shopping list; food for the party dinner. Lobster, wine, an item I couldn’t read; my name, torn across, old Mrs. Barnaby’s name followed by a question mark. Five thousand dollars with a line drawn through it A heavy line. The words and figures told me why she had dressed in a hurry. Calculating and planning, she had forgotten the time.
I thought: Five thousand dollars for a new fur coat? I can give her that.
I went to the wardrobe and stroked the garnet and turquoise dresses on their scented hangers. They were separated from the dead, dull black by a transparent curtain. When she reached for the black, she could see the pretty colors waiting.
I went to Father’s room.
I sat in the chair beside his bed and counted the days I had known him. I began with the year I was six. Always open doors when you hear music. Now I am nearly twenty-one. I counted. In all that time I had known him for less than a year. I had been with him and talked to him less than a year.
He gave me this house and said he had plans for me, but he sent me from the room and locked the door. He said I was much on his mind, but he spent his last hours with strangers.
I went to his desk. I forgot to watch the clock that kept time for no one.
He left very little behind him when he went away. A few photographs of boys at school, grown boys with oddly wistful faces, posed against stone steps and ivied walls. They wore lettered jerseys and small caps and held their tennis rackets stiffly. He could have been one of them. A handful of yellowing letters from people I had never heard of, asking him to look them up when be went to Boston or New York. A small bundle of notes from Mother, written on violet paper. A letter from me. I could remember writing it. That was my first summer at the convent, when I was still six.
I wrote it secretly, without help, late at night by candlelight, and another child crouched at the foot of my cot and watched me with round, hopeful eyes. The other child was an orphan, a charity pupil; we were not supposed to know that, but I knew. She and I were the only children who stayed at the convent that summer, and I was boasting. I was not an orphan, I lived in a big house, almost as big as the convent. I spent my holidays at school because I wanted to. I could go home to my big house and never come back to the convent if I wanted to.
I boasted about my mother, who was beautiful, and my father, who gave me presents at Christmas. The music box, singing behind a closed door on Christmas morning. She refused to believe me. She believed in the house and my father and mother, but she said Christmas was an orange.
That was when I wrote my letter, triumphantly, while the soft summer night filled our little room with fragrance and the candle flickered. “My dear father, Please send me a Christmas for Katy. Your loving daughter Isobel.”
He had kept it Well, I had kept his answer too. It was in my own desk, locked away. “My dear daughter, I cannot send you a Christmas for Katy; they are not in season. But when the proper times comes, I will not fail you. Father.”
Old letters, not new ones. Mothers notes, written before they were married and progressing from “My dear Mr. Ford” to “My darling Marsh.”
“My dear Mr. Ford, Your roses have made my room a garden...
“My dear Mr. Ford, The cousins ask me to thank you for the opera tickets. A rare treat for them and one that will give boundless pleasure. And the carriage! They had worried, a tiny bit, about the long trip to town and back, but I told them you would think of that, too. You see, I am beginning to know you!...”
“Darling Marsh, When I said I liked candied violets, I mean a very little box! What will I do with five whole pounds? Eat them, every one, and think of you!...”
“Darling, darling, I cannot let you give me those sapphires. Not yet They are much too grand for my present position, and I will be talked about. But, oh, how I want them. Darling, if I wear them under my pillow until the engagement is announced, do you suppose-Please don’t tell the cousins!...”
“My darling Marsh, You misunderstood me. I was reticent because I have been taught that a woman does not discuss such things before marriage. If I gave a wrong impression, dear Marsh, it was because I spoke from convention, not from my heart I want children. Why do you think I love that great enormous house? Do you understand?”
In the last envelope there was an old photograph of the great enormous house. Some of the pines were not fully grown, the turrets were dear against the sky, the creeper had not reached the narrow windows. The shrubbery along the drive was low and clipped; su
n lay in patches on smooth, trim grass. Crass, not moss and leaves. But even then it prophesied. There were no figures on the veranda, no signs of life or work or play. No chairs to lounge in, no garden hat beneath a tree, no open book face down, no sprawling doll, waiting.
I do not believe in ghosts.
Even now, this minute, in my own room, in the dark, I would say those words out loud if I dared. But this afternoon, in Fathers room, little Katy came back to me for a second time and brought another child with her. I stood before Fathers desk, looking at the photograph, and Katy walked across my mind, hand in hand with another child. Their heads were close together, and they were whispering. I knew they were telling stories; I knew they were coming to find me as they found me long ago.
They were not ghosts, only children I used to know, come to talk to me again. They were a summer afternoon in a convent garden, restored and resurrected by Katy’s Christmas letter. Their little footsteps echoed in the room; their whispers rustled.
They were telling a story about a house. I looked at my house in the photograph and remembered. A shadow moved across the room. It was only a branch that bent to the window. I told myself the story was childish nonsense. I told myself it was a nursery legend. I put it out of my mind.
I opened the window and watched the November wind rush in and lift the valance on the bed. The red carnations swung like pendulums, the door slammed. I hardly heard it. I circled the room and talked. “This is goodbye,” I said clearly. “If you hear me, this is goodbye. Tomorrow were opening the house to other people, and you’ll have to go. I’m warning you. I’m going to live without you from now on. Ill give your things away, all of them; I wont come here again until you have gone for good. I’m sorry.”
I went to the wardrobe and turned the handles with both hands. The double doors swung open.
The smell of her Turkish cigarette was heavy and fresh. I could have been facing her, talking to her. Not talking to him, to her. I saw his limp clothes hanging from the rods and two empty hangers in a gaping space. I thought I saw the heavy blue smoke curl to meet me. That was imagination; there was nothing to be afraid of, nothing.
She had gone there, as she often did, to brood and wonder. I have seen her at night with a candle in her hand, moving along the halls. This time she had gone in daylight, drawn by conscience. She’d told him we were cutting ourselves free. So we both had told him.
When I turned to leave, I saw the candle wax on the wardrobe floor. Not one drop, but an accumulation, one on top of another, old and new. I stooped. The old drops were white and dusty, and the new were yellow and clean.
I have never seen a yellow candle in this house; but there is nothing to be afraid of, nothing. Not yet.
I closed the window, bruising my hands, and left the room. In Mother’s bathroom I looked for a lotion to rub on my hands, but she never labels anything and I don’t like unlabeled bottles.
There was nothing to be afraid of, nothing. I told myself I was acting and thinking like a child, caught in the net of a child’s story. Legend, folklore, nursery dramatics. A Scotch nanny, whiling away a rainy afternoon, making up a story as she went along, not knowing it would travel as it did, across the ocean to a convent garden. I put the story out of my mind again.
The day was growing dark. I ran downstairs and out of the house. I called Tray, but he didn’t come. The sky was fading at the end of the driveway. I went to the old stable, looking for Tray. He wasn’t there. It was warm and dusky in the stable. Anna’s cat came to meet me, arching her back like a witch’s cat. She had a pan of milk, half full. Anna never forgets.
Anna must have thrown away the chain and bowl.
Mrs. Tench has a flower garden in the summer. Tench dug rows and beds and cut away the trees. Even in November, at dusk, the cottage stands in light. It looks as if it stands in another country. I walked along the flower beds; the rosebushes were wrapped in straw. Close to the cottage, under the casement windows, a few chrysanthemums were blooming. Pink. Hardy pink. Mrs. Tench cuts them for her sitting room. I walked closer to the cottage. Mrs. Tench says I am always welcome there. She says I am welcome to the flowers when there are any.
There were too few. I thought it would be like robbing her. I walked under the windows, counting the blooms. Mrs. Tench never locks the windows, she says there is nothing in her house to tempt a thief. She thinks Tray is a good watchdog.
I called Tray again. Today was the first day since—the first day I have had to call him. Today, this afternoon, there were no pattering feet behind me.
I unlatched one of the sitting-room windows. Mrs. Tench is a good housekeeper. In the dusk I could see the white antimacassars on the big plush chairs. Mrs. Tench likes big furniture, dark and solid. Her table lamp is hung with prisms and has a hand-painted shade. She painted the shade herself, when she was a young girl.
I moved on, around the cottage, counting the chrysanthemums. There were still too few. On the western side I came to Anna’s room. On that side the sky was streaked with green and orange, but her room was dark because the windows were filmed with dust. Last nights rain had beat against the windows and set the dust.
Anna, I thought, is not a good housekeeper. I rubbed the dust away with my handkerchief, making a small, clean circle. I made another and another, and soon the pane was clear. After that, I opened the window and dusted the inside.
Anna’s birds were quiet; too quiet. I hoped they were asleep. But if she had forgotten to feed them, if they were lying on the bottom of the cage, surrounded by empty little cups—
I leaned over the sill. The cage was on a table less than a yard away, and the birds were asleep on their perches. I could almost reach them. The little cups were full. I should have known they would be. Anna never forgets a thing like that
The black pool on the floor by the door was only Anna’s sweater. Anna had dressed in a hurry, too. It was the old sweater, the one she wears over her head when she runs between the cottage and the house.
If Anna could read my mind this minute, she would cover her head with the sweater and scream. She is superstitious; she believes in the supernatural. If a picture falls, or a cup breaks, Anna remembers that she dreamed it would. After a thing has happened, she shakes her head and says she saw it coming. This afternoon, in Father’s room, when little Katy returned with the other child and I remembered the old story, I foresaw nothing. But if I were Anna instead of myself, if my mind worked like Anna’s—
Am I like Anna?
It was only an old sweater on the floor. And the birds were sleeping in their cage.
I was lying when I told myself I was worried about the birds. I was acting a lie when I cleaned the window and opened it. The trip to the stable and the cottage was a lie. I went because I wanted to see Anna’s pictures.
Her walls are covered with holy pictures, madonnas and saints. She talks to them and says they give her comfort I leaned on the sill and tried to see the patient faces through the dusk.
The sky was dark when I left the cottage. There were lights in the Barnabys’ living room, one window was raised. Not much, not more than an inch or two, but it was enough. I know the pattern of their lives: tea at four-thirty, talk until dinner. Talk. I moved along the hedge to the place where I had made a little window for myself long ago. Long? A month ago.
Every evening they talked before dinner, old Mrs. Barnaby, young Joe, and Mike. “What did you do today? What will you do tomorrow?” I saw the birchwood fire, the ragged sheets of music, on the open piano, the uncleared tea table, the light that flashed from Mrs. Barnabys diamonds.
“Unwholesome,” Mrs. Barnaby said. “But what do you think you can do about it?”
“Plenty.” That was Mike. “And I’m doing it from now on. What do you know about psychiatry, Lucy?”
“Nothing, thank the Lord. I’ve had a fine, rowdy life.”
“It shows, too.” Young Joe.
“You had one allowance cut last week, my boy. Don’t let your tongue make yo
u a pauper. As I say, I’ve had a fine life and all the money a decent woman needs. I brought up my own children, and I’m bringing up theirs. I try to see the bright side; when I can’t see it, I look for it. I look and look and look and look.”
“What does she want, Mike?” Joe asked.
Mike didn’t answer.
“I’m boiling mad,” Mrs. Barnaby said.
“About Isobel?” Mike asked.
“Raining cats and dogs last night Why wasn’t she in bed? What are those people thinking about? What have they ever thought about? Hiding under hedges like an animal!”
Mike said, “So you’re boiling. Well, come to the point Isobel or ‘those people’?”
“I don’t know. I can’t make up my mind. That infuriates me. Joe, you’ve been wetting your hair again. Where did you get the water? Out of the jug? Well, stop it. Do you want to be bald?”
“Did old man Ford really hang around those shacks?” Joe asked.
“Everybody knows that,” said Mike. “It started last spring when Issy came back from school. After he died, I talked to his lawyer about it He thinks Ford was looking for companionship.”
“Marsh Ford was born to companionship,” Mrs. Barnaby said. “In the old days he had hundreds of friends, he belonged to all the clubs. Every woman in town made eyes at him. He wore the first cape I ever saw. No, Marsh Ford simply went out of his mind. In a nice way, of course.”
“He must have been out of his mind, in a nice way, of course, when he sent a kid like Issy to a boarding school at six and kept her there. I never did get that.”
“Some marriages are like love affairs,” Mrs. Barnaby said slowly. “People don’t want anyone else, not even a little child. Isobel was a nice little thing, too. Affectionate and happy. Now I don’t know what she is.”
“She’s what they made her.” Mike. “Look at the facts. They’re her own flesh and blood, and they practically threw her out when she was a baby. They brought her home when she was grown, ostensibly to sweeten their declining years, and ignored her. No friends, no life, except us. And too little of us. Mama played cards alone, drank port alone, and entertained her buzzard relatives. Papa took to his bed in the daytime and drank God knows what in Shantytown at night. Accompanied by man’s best friend, his dog—and I’ll take a werewolf. Daughter begins to wonder if she’s a leper, and why not? Then, to make it stick, to round it out, the old man pats her on the head, tells her the house is hers, waves goodbye, and bumps himself off. She says he haunts her, she says he won’t go away. How do you cure that?”
The House Page 5