That was hours ago, hours, hours, hours. I am still waiting, in my room, and my door is open. I can hear footsteps in the lower hall and accurately name them. Mother is the light, quick tread, Mrs. Tench is the slow, heavy one, Anna is the shambling run. I know Anna’s hands are red and wet and her face is blotched. Tench is not in the house, or, if he is, he is not moving about Tray—
I haven’t seen Tray since we met in the kitchen passage.
When Mike and Joe come, they will have paper parcels under their topcoats. Even Mrs. Barnaby will not know the contents. Parcels packed tight with strips of toweling and sheeting, long white strips. “Tell yourself it’s a game we’re playing, Issy,” Mike said. “Tell yourself until you’re black in the face, and make yourself believe it. It’s a game.”
I can see and hear them all as if they are already here. The cousins, catering to Mrs. Barnaby, storing up every word she says, for future quoting. “As my friend Mrs. Barnaby said the other night—yes, the Mrs. Barnaby—there’s really only one! She lives in that rambling old white house that adjoins Maude Ford’s, a delightful woman, so unpretentious, the fine old families always are. And her jewels are fit for a queen!”
Poor Carrie, Jane, and Bess, with too many gestures and too much animation, always afraid they will be overlooked and unappreciated, never quite sure they are properly valued, wondering, in their secret hearts, if they are as fine and clever as they tell themselves they are. I know what Carrie will say to the others when they drive up to the door. “Bess, Jane, let’s be airy!” They will come into the house laughing and tossing their heads.
Old Mrs. Barnaby will be crisp, composed, and watchful. Mike will have told her only enough; she will ask no questions, but she will help. If Mother objects to the music box, Mrs. Barnaby will smooth our way. I can guess what she will say. “What’s that? They want to play the old music box before dinner? I’d encourage them if I were you.. Such an innocent pleasure—“ Yes, Mrs. Barnaby will help us, and with luck we will have almost an hour. Almost an hour in which to duplicate the first part of the story about the monster I told Mike.
Mike watched under my window all night He doesn’t know I saw him. So I know he is afraid, too, in spite of his talk of games and defective wiring. I remember what he said to me after I told him the story. He said, “I don’t feel my age, I feel six, and and I want a woman’s hand to hold. Give me yours.”
I told him the story another child had told me in a sunny convent garden. I told it in the dark, in my own garden, and I thought the wind stopped to listen and the dead leaves moved. The story that came back to me in my father’s room and prepared me for the light I saw in the house when no one was home.
Once there was an old house in Scotland, a miniature castle, occupied by family servants while the owners lived in London. One summer the owners returned after an absence of many years; they were young people, they had not visited the place since childhood. This time they brought guests.
One of the guests was a girl recovering from an illness. She told the owner of the castle that she could not sleep at night, that someone walked all night in the room next to hers. There was no bedroom next to hers, nothing but a winding passage and the apple room. They laughed at her, all of them; they said the apples rolled about at night.
Then one day when everyone had gone to the shooting, she went from window to window in the apple room and passage and hung a towel from each one. When she looked up at the windows from the ground below, there was one window without a towel. Next to hers.
The house party broke up that night. An old servant revealed the secret of the hidden room. Years before, the family had bred a monster. He was old, old, old. He wouldn’t the. He lived there, walled up.
When I finished telling Mike the story, we looked up at the house and trees. After a time Mike said, “Whoever told that story to a kid ought to be boiled in oil. Anyway, that light still could have been the reflection of a car on the road.”
‘There was no car, and you know it.”
“All right, all right. But do you have to be macabre? It’s the wiring, the wirings off. Don’t say anything to your mother, but have Tench call an electrician.”
T was alone in the house from three until nine. I was alone.”
“Sure you were. Hammer that in. You didn’t hear anything, did you?”
T heard the house hold its breath.”
“Don’t talk like that! Listen, you and your mother have been alone every night for weeks, so why get excited now? And Tray would have taken the place if—”
“You’re frightened, Mike. Don’t be ashamed of fear.” That was when he said he felt like six and wanted a woman’s hand to hold. “But I’m not frightened,” he added. “I’m trying to keep my balance. You’re entertaining me too well. First that business at the shacks and now this. All your doing. Now I’ve got to apologize to Joe, too.”
“When did Joe see the light?”
“Last Thursday night. That’s what I’ve been trying to remember, and now I’ve got it. He didn’t come home from school in the afternoon and didn’t phone, showed up at nine o’clock, and Lucy bawled him out. She sent him to bed without dinner. The next morning he told us about the light. I thought he was making what he calls conversation, handing Lucy a line. She loves to be scared to death, and he knows it. She’d threatened to cut his allowance the night before, and I thought he was taking her mind off money. She cut it anyway.”
“What did Joe say?”
“He built that light like Edison. He had Lucy on the ropes, but not for long. He gets a buck a week now. It used to be two.”
“What did Joe say?”
“All right. He said he was looking out his window and saw a light in your house. High up, like the one we saw. But Joe told it good—he said it was a branched candlestick.”
“His room is in the attic, on our side. He could see. Did it move like the other?”
“All right, all right. He said it did. That could have been an illusion, the trees moving. The wind is high tonight”
Yes, the wind was high.
“My mother walks at night” I said, “but she carries a single candle. And she wasn’t home last Thursday, no one was home. I’ve been afraid for a long time, Mike, and I haven’t known why. At first I thought it was my father’s trouble, but now—”
He called me fantastic, medieval, loony; but he told me I could spend the night at their house. He said he could fix it. He said he could fix everything. I told him I had to go home because my mother was there, alone. I emphasized the word alone, but I didn’t believe it He laughed and said I was a ghoul. I didn’t believe his laugh, either.
“Listen, baby,” he said, “I’m a little too old for the Arabian Nights, but I don’t mind playing a game with you. That’s what we’ll do, play a game. Get that into your head, a game. We’ll dramatize your fairy tale, towels and all. Props, realism. Tomorrow night when the great hall rings with festive laughter. But how’ll we work it, how’ll we get away from the others? What excuse can we give?”
We decided to tell them we wanted to hear the music box. It is still in the old playroom, and the playroom is at the end of the second-floor hall, far from the library. A visit to the playroom had a reasonable sound. Three young people in a playroom.
“Leave everything to me,” Mike said.
He took me home, and we stood in the hall and sent our voices up the stairs.
I sat by my window and waited for today, reliving the day that had passed. Mrs. Tench bringing my breakfast, the drive to the shacks, my sudden decision about the cousins’ dinner, the lie about Mrs. Barnaby’s invitation, my mother’s smiling consent. Our own party, still in the future; Anna’s behavior at lunch—Anna had never talked or looked like that before. The letter I had written my father, the picture of the house that had no people in it, the children I’d forgotten, the story. The light.
A day of big and little things, all of them new, all happening for the first time. All building to an end. Wha
t end?
Now I am waiting...
Mother has come to my door twice, reminding me of the time. “Come down at once when you hear the car, Isobel. This is an occasion for the cousins, and we must fill it to the brim for the poor lambs. A white frock? Quite bridal, dear. Am I going to lose my little girl too soon?”
The second time she came, she said, “Tench has telephoned from the village .that they are just leaving. You may be sure Carrie inspired the call. Do you think she expects a red carpet?”
It is five-thirty now. Dark. But not too dark for Mike and Joe and me. They will bring three flashlights, wrapped in the parcels with the long white strips. When I hear the car, I will go down and stand beside Mother in the hall.
Where will the cousins put their wraps? Not upstairs, not in any of the rooms upstairs! The cousins, running up and down the halls, washing their hands in different bathrooms, looking for safety pins. Jane, turning off lights because light costs money; Bess, opening doors because they are closed; Carrie, looking out windows because she always does. “Maude, what’s the meaning of these dangling rags? What will the Barnabys think!”
But if they insist, if Mother insists, there is nothing I can do.
This may be the last time I will sit in my room and talk to myself.
That is the car now, coming up the drive. That is Mother calling to me, to Anna, hurrying to the door. The sharp click-click is the sound of her little spool-shaped heels.
The keys to every room in the house, every closet, are on a panel at the end of my hall. Labeled and numbered.
Am I ready? Yes. When the time is right, Mike will talk about the music box. He will flatter Mother and the cousins, and Mrs. Barnaby will help him. Joe and I will say very little. Mike doesn’t trust us. “Leave everything to me. I’ll fix it.”
It is midnight. Everything is over. This is the last time I shall look back.
A few minute? ago Mike said, “If you want to lie down before we leave, you have plenty of time. I’ve got some people to talk to. I’ll come for you when I’ve finished. Keep your door closed, baby, but always remember that I’m outside somewhere and that I’m coming back to get you.”
But I heard the slow footsteps through the closed door...
Mother was waiting for me at the foot of the stairs when I went down to meet the cousins. It is all too easy to remember, the sounds, the smells, the wind that whistled through the hall when Anna opened the front door; the promise of broiled lobster that drifted through the service door because Anna forgot to close it, the pine needles that Tench had scattered on the library fire, the spray of freesia tucked in Mother’s belt, the violet toilet water Cousin Carrie was shaking into her bodice as she entered.
“Carrie,” Mother scolded, “there’s a time and place for everything. And here’s Isobel. Come forward, dear. Anna, I think the south room for the wraps. If you’ll follow Anna, darlings.”
“I’ll take care of it, Anna,” I said.
I laughed and kissed the cousins one by one. “The south room is a barn, you’ll freeze. I know a much better place.”
“But we have our scarves,” Bess said. “Our Liberty scarves, from Liberty’s in London. On our heads now, but we plan to wear them on the shoulder in a careless, flowing drape. Where is that dear Mrs. Barnaby?”
“She’s on her way, she’ll be here any minute. I’m sure she’ll use the circular room, so wouldn’t you like that, too?” I led the way. “See the nice fire, as warm as toast and no stairs to climb.”
“Thoughtful of you, darling,” Mother said. “This is Isobel’s day of emancipation,” she told the cousins. “Have you noticed her frock? Darlings, how sweet you look. You’ll put poor Lucy Barnaby in the shade!”
The cousins had added chiffon flounces to their long black gowns and experimented with rouge.
“Maude, the chiffon came from that parasol you threw away when you married. Three wide ruffles, you remember. I knew they’d come in handy. Lined with pink silk. It cast a lovely glow. The lining will be a combing jacket for somebody’s Christmas—we never waste a thing. Are there towels in that lavatory and everything needful? You know Bess.”
I want to remember everything that was said and done, everything. I want to remember who said this, said that. I want to know if coming events did cast their shadows before; I want to know if I was warned.
They told me I looked pale. Was my dress a new one? No? Well, white was not my color, but perhaps a little rouge—White was half-mourning; some people called it whole; the Chinese? Nevertheless, a little rouge.
The rouge was kept in a purse that Jane had sewed into the lining of her muff. It was a round white box with a faded floral label, marked “For the Nails.” I can see the little box as it passed from hand to hand and the cousins’ cheeks progressed from pink to scarlet Even when the night was over, the cheeks were still scarlet Scarlet Scarlet on deadly white..• • The cousins laughed and tossed their heads and swung their beads proudly.
“Venetian,” Bess reminded me. “Venetian from Venice. Your poor fathers gift, years ago. We told him what we wanted.”
They dabbed at my face with a little wad of rouged cotton; they led Mother to the lavatory mirror and touched her cheeks lightly. She didn’t protest “There, now,” Jane said, “well have you wearing white next. Isn’t everything lovely? I’m sure we’ve never had a better time, even though we haven’t begun. I hope were not unfashionably early.” She turned off the light while they were all still in the room. “Nobody needs it.”
The violet toilet water was used once more, then hidden under the wraps. The flounces were shaken out and smoothed, the scarves were coaxed into the flowing, careless drape and disciplined with pins.
“We have a little surprise for you, Maude,” Carrie said. “Tench will bring it in, naturally; a parcel is out of place with formal clothes. A box of games, dear Maude, the nice old games we used to play. They’re quite the thing again; they’re very smart. I hear it everywhere, you’d be surprised.”
“There’s bridge, Carrie, if you want it.”
“Don’t you like Lotto? It’s really Bingo, you know.”
I told myself the cousins were sound and good, that I had never understood them before because I’d never really known them. When Mrs. Barnaby came, they would arch their brows and greet her with peals of high-pitched laughter. Even before she came, they were ready. When they walked from the circular room to the library, they tossed their heads to an unseen audience. “Airy, let’s be airy.” They were mine, I told myself, my own people, mine. They were ridiculous, they hadn’t learned or grown as Mother had; but behind the posing and the postures, I thought I recognized and felt their soundness. I walked with Cousin Carrie’s hand in mine, and I’m glad now that I did.
The Barnabys came a few minutes later. I took Mrs. Barnaby’s wrap while Mike and Joe went calmly to the hall closet with their topcoats.
Mike whistled when he saw Mother and the cousins, and Joe cried, “Wolf, wolf!” Mike complained: “I wish somebody’d tell my grandmother how to dress. She thinks a dinner invitation is an exhumation order for the old gray lace.”
Mother and the cousins laughed, the cousins tossed their heads and smoothed their scarves, and Mrs. Barnaby’s strong old face was wreathed with smiles. But Mrs. Barnaby’s eyes told me she had been coached. She was looking for something behind the other faces, behind the furniture, the portieres, the curtains at the windows. I didn’t know what she had been told, but she had clearly been convinced. “I’ll tell her to back us up in anything we do,” Mike had said. “I’ll tell her were floating a private enterprise, that it’s harmless and decent and the proceeds, if any, will go to a nonsectarian charity. And that’s no lie. If I can wipe that look off your face, I’m going to lift somebody’s mortgage.”
They were still laughing when Tench came in with the sherry. Mike and Joe, the cousins and Mother; I laughed, too. Tench with his tray of sherry, Anna with a tray of biscuits; they laughed. The room was full of foolis
h noise, and only Mrs, Barnaby’s quiet eyes questioned its source.
I remember too little of the early conversation, because I was waiting to hear one sentence, spoken in Mike’s voice. The other voices meant nothing, the other sentences became gibberish. Bingo. Lotto. Do you remember Flinch?
I took the biscuits from Anna and handed them around. I know I talked. I watched Mike and Joe refilling the cousins’ glasses and flirting with Mother. I thought my watchfulness was unobtrusive, but Mike’s eyes met mine with a warning look. After that I sat beside Mother, and the only thing I watched was the clock. We still had time. I tried to look as a girl should look when she is rouged and dressed for a party in her own house. Her first party in her own house. Her own house.
Mike and Joe enslaved the cousins. Mother watched and listened, nodding her head and smiling faintly. If she wondered at their antics, she gave no sign of it. Under the dusting of rouge she was white and tired. Mrs. Barnaby was tense in her chair, and I knew she was waiting, as I was, for one sentence. I thought we would never come to it; then, suddenly, the words that had been gibberish began to make sense. They were talking about games.
Games. The beginning of a perfect progression. Games. Toys. Playroom. A music box. Mike worked slowly, using the material the cousins gave him. Joe helped. Mike moved a mountain from our path, and Joe carried away the small stones.
“I don’t like the gambling ones, either,” Carrie said. “Our dear mother had a relative by marriage who was a clergyman, very devout. When he came to visit, he burned every card in the house. Playing cards, you understand, not Flinch. I haven’t been able to enjoy playing cards since, not even a little game of Hearts for fun. Do you think he invoked a curse? I always lose.”
“Lose.” Bess turned to Joe. “What tragedies that little word implies! Do you mind if I make a personal comment? I can’t help but notice your hair. You mustn’t take offense, I naturally notice things. Stop using water; you’ll rot the roots. You’ll thank me for that one of these days. My sister referred to Flinch. A pleasant game, but do you remember Pit? Very lively. Janie dear, remember Pit?”
The House Page 7