She hears some noise from upstairs. She puts the mug down and walks up, thinking something Adrienne put away has toppled. The girl insists on piling things in the most precarious fashion, always.
By the time she is at the landing she knows something isn’t right. The air is wrong, too thick, hard to breathe. That song from the Alan Tew fucking Orchestra plays in her head, loud. Helicopters. Spanners. She considers calling Harry, but she knows it is stupid. She opens the door to Adrienne’s room.
There are six children, all girls, about Adrienne’s age, all in filthy nightgowns, each clinging to a different part of the wall. They do not notice Tara. They have long, tangled dark hair, dirty. Their arms strain to keep hold of the wall. Their heads are bent forward and their jaws move, the motions of eating. They are eating the wallpaper. The one closest to Tara licks a few dozen times before biting into the wall, chewing rapidly. The nightgowns may have been white at some point, but now they are grey-black with faeces and fermented urine and the filth of neglect. Each of them is bony, skeletal. They are utterly silent and all Tara can hear is that dreadful synthetic keyboard refrain.
She gasps, then they notice her. One steps off the skirting, still chewing. The scar shows where her teeth have dug into the plaster.
“Who...” Tara’s phone goes off and she looks down. Betty. When she looks up again, the girls are gone. The room is back to normal with Adrienne’s floral wallpaper and no sign of peeling.
The phone is insistent, so she answers.
“Bitch, you will not believe –” says Betty.
“Yes,” says Tara.
“What do you mean?”
“I’ll call you back.”
Tara inspects the room. Nothing amiss. Where did that hallucination come from? Children? Starving, Charles Dickens children?
She cannot get the image out of her mind, and even when it is time to pick up the children, her children, she moves like a zombie, going through the motions and not even hearing Adrienne’s chatter.
“Mummy, there’s no tea,” says Cory.
“What?”
“There’s nothing to eat.”
“Sure there is,” says Tara. “It’s just invisible. We have invisible food.”
She mimes eating, they mime scoffing the food down, they laugh. Tara laughs with them, trying to ignore the weight that is back in her belly.
HARRY COMES BACK so exhausted that he barely grunts. He drags himself to bed and talks in his sleep for the first hour. Nothing that makes sense to Tara, random phrases, the brain discharging the psychic waste from the day.
Tara gets up, goes to Adrienne’s room, pushes open the door, watches her sleeping children, then goes back to bed.
HARRY NEGOTIATES HIS way back to his seat. He lifts Tara’s hand and kisses the back of it.
“What was it?” asks Tara.
“Cory and Adrienne were fighting. Babysitter didn’t know what to do. She wondered if she should give them time out.” He picks at his food. “Is this what I ordered?”
“Did you?”
“Did I what?”
“Give them time out?”
“No.” He takes a tentative bite. “This is definitely not what I ordered.”
“Why not?”
“Tara, I don’t want our children disciplined by the hired help.”
The band starts playing and for a time they are both lost in the beauty of classic jazz, a throwback to the roaring twenties. It is something she has in common with Harry. They never disagree on jazz.
Tara texts the childminder: Twenty minutes time out, no TV for the rest of the night. Spelling drills and reading only.
BETTY GROOMS ADRIENNE’S hair while Tara takes a picture.
Adrienne has half a strawberry milkshake and half a mint ice cream. As a result Tara has the other half of the mint and Betty the rest of the shake. Adrienne will not eat ice cream any other way. She starts by licking the mint, then follows up with a strong pull from the strawberry. Her face takes on a contemplative look as she savours the taste. Then she starts again.
“Have I told you how much I love my goddaughter?” asks Betty. She kisses Adrienne who squirms and looks around to see if this unseemly display has been witnessed. The birth of cool, Tara thinks. A hint of the teenage diva to come.
“Mum, am I a lesbian?” asks Adrienne.
Betty sputters. Tara giggles.
“I don’t know, darling. Are you?” Tara moves closer. “Why?”
“Helen Stephens called me a lesbian.”
“Again, why?”
“I’m best friends with Ellie Ward now. She said me and Ellie are lesbians.”
Betty laughs. “Do you like girls?”
“Betty!” says Tara.
“What? She might. Do you, Ade?”
UP, UP, TIME to get up. Tara heads to the children’s room with her eyes almost closed. Too many glasses of white the night before. Her tongue feels furry. She goes to Cory’s room first, but it is empty, bed pristine. She turns around and opens the opposite door.
Step one, pry the little monkeys apart.
“Wake up, wake up, wake up!” says Tara. Aren’t they getting too old for this sleeping entwined in each other’s arms?
Cory wakes and leaves the room immediately, heading unerringly for the loo as he does. Ade is always more challenging. Tara shakes her gently.
“Come on, Ade. Time to get ready.”
The girl yawns, stretches with clenched fists and eyes squeezed shut. Tara tickles her exposed armpit.
“Mad... mad, mo naam umm,” says Adrienne.
“Wake up, darling, you’re spewing gibberish,” says Tara.
More yawning. “La, la... off naam.”
“Ade? Adrienne? You’re not making sense.”
Adrienne sits up. “Mad? Maddy?”
She looks stricken and Tara grabs her shoulders. “Adrienne, stop this right now.”
“Noft, mad. Noft!” says Adrienne.
Tara yells. “I have had about enough of this Adrienne. Stop playing up.”
“Owww! Pad! Pad, sesame! Pad!” Adrienne screams too.
“What’s going on?” says Harry, in the door. Adrienne runs into his arms.
“Mad dol mo!” says Adrienne. She is crying now.
Harry raises his eyebrows at Tara, who shrugs.
“Pad, ye, ye,” says Adrienne, showing the marks where Tara held her.
“I didn’t know what to do,” says Tara.
Cory shows up behind Harry.
“Cory, legleg! Legleg!’
“Oh, what the fuck...” says Harry. “I’ll get the car keys.”
ADRIENNE SLEEPS IN the hospital bed. The opinion of the child psychiatrist on call is that it’s a psychological reaction to something, but they have admitted her to a paediatrics ward for observation. She is in a side room, for which Tara is grateful.
“Idioglossia,” the psychiatry registrar says. “Children make up languages all the time. It’s not uncommon.”
“Do they lose the ability to speak English at the same time?” asks Tara.
“Well, no, that’s not the case, but Adrienne hasn’t lost the knowledge of English. She understands, and obeys instructions delivered in English. She’s just not communicating in it.”
“Why?”
“That’s what we need to find out.”
Tara feels that what he means is that’s what you need to find out. Looking at her like she is an abusive parent. Harry takes Cory to school, leaving Tara to her thoughts, staring at her sleeping daughter.
She thinks there is something wrong with the house. She remembers Cory’s humming that stupid Hanged Man tune, the weird vision of starving children she had... now this. She has an impulse not to return there ever, though she knows this is irrational. It’s a house. It’s a new house, virtually rebuilt with planning permission and an architect’s opinion and a hefty chunk of the family savings.
This is some psychological thing, a mass hysteria affecting all of them. Moving is a trauma
tic event at the best of times. Tara knows she resents the building in a primal way. Her parents hadn’t needed to renovate, but then they had the means. She would never say this aloud, but she knew that snobbishness was there tamped down under some respectable left-leaning notions.
This will settle down once they feel they own the house. It’s all in their minds and maybe some left over solvent from new paint or whatever.
It’s the house, something whispers inside her.
TARA COMES TO. She has dozed off. She opens her handbag, brings out a paperback and a mirror. She looks at herself, makes a face, moves her hair around a bit and drops the mirror back. Hopeless. Adrienne is in a deep sleep.
She picks up the paperback to read. Fifteen-Minute Nursing is a book of nursing scenarios designed for a busy person to refresh her knowledge and is just what Tara needs.
She opens to the bookmarked page and finds, in felt tip red pen, Cory has written all over the text. Page after page.
They don’t live here anymore. Why are they still here? Why are they my problem? They aren’t. They aren’t my problem. I am a respectable man. I can’t have creatures that spew blood from between their legs in my house. Anybody knows that’s unnatural.
I have to shut them up. Shut both their holes.
If I don’t shut them up, they will kill me. They will kill me by whispering profanities in that heathen language of theirs. They will whisper secrets, filthy secrets, arousing secrets from hot, moist places in their fevered brains. I feel them even now infecting my whole being, my whole self. They infect the chair I sit in, the food I eat and the very air in this place.
But how? I must think of something. They are fleet of foot and ephemeral of substance.
Either I kill or I die, and I will not die at their hands. Watch me and see. See how I die. See if it’s at their hands. It is not.
The last words are written diagonally against the emergency treatment of hypovolaemic shock. Tara is breathing heavily.
She drops the useless book.
5.
ADRIENNE WAKES UP just as her mother leaves the room. She is thirsty and her eyes ache because she has been crying. She does not call out to her mother, but stays still for a minute. She sits up in bed and rubs her eyes. When she opens them again the children are there. She inhales, catches her breath, and covers her mouth with her hand. They don’t like it when she cries out. They stand in various parts of the room, staring at Adrienne.
“See, Adrienne,” says the one closest to the bed. Hello, Adrienne.
“See,” says Adrienne.
“Ne, naam umm?” Are you hungry?
“La, mo naam heess,” says Adrienne. No, thirsty.
The children all laugh. Adrienne sees their dirty nightgowns hitch up with each inhalation. They laugh without smiling. How do they do that?
“Ne, haha mo?” asks Adrienne. What’s funny?
They stop laughing abruptly. “Lanti haha. To lanti mu heess. To lanti mu umm. To sesame vo.” Nothing is funny. You will not drink. You will not eat. You will help us.
Adrienne swallows. “Ne, sesame gini?” What help?
Now all the children smile. Their skin stretches across bone, and they look more like posed dead people, like the exhibition Adrienne saw once with partially dissected bodies. She shivers.
The leader of the children comes closer and leans into Adrienne’s ear. She smells so bad that Adrienne starts to choke, but she holds it in.
“Ye kom...” Listen.
BY THE TIME her mother returns Adrienne is sitting up in bed, apprehensive, but trying to look calm. Mummy’s face is wet around the edges of her hair, and Adrienne feels sure she splashed water on her face.
“Look who’s awake,” says mummy. “Hi, Ade. Feeling better?” Trying to sound casual, but there was worry in the voice.
“Yes, mum,” says Adrienne.
She rushes to the bed and hugs Adrienne, almost as tight as before.
“Oh, baby. I’m... I’m so glad you’re better.”
Her hair is in Adrienne’s eyes, but she doesn’t spoil the moment. Mummy will need it for what’s coming next, she thinks.
There is a knock at the door and a uniformed man comes in. He has an apron and a hat. He is cheerful, sweet as diet cola.
“Hi, there! How are we?” His teeth are very white. He reminds Adrienne of the wolf in Little Red Riding Hood. She nods, like prey, and her mother breaks the hug and dries her eyes.
“Lunch time. Butternut squash or jacket potato?” he says.
Behind him, skeletal, starving children grin.
“Jacket potato,” says Adrienne. Here we go.
“COUGH,” SAYS THE paediatrician.
Adrienne coughs.
“Good. No hernias.”
“Well?” says her mother.
“I don’t know why she’s vomiting. I don’t see anything organic.”
“I knew you were going to say that. She can’t keep anything down. I don’t want to be one of those parents who cause a bother. I’m a nurse myself. But surely something is wrong.”
The doctor draws mummy away and they whisper. Adrienne makes out the word “functional”, but that’s it.
Everything has come up. Jacket potato. Orange juice. Water. After that Adrienne gags and brings up bile. Then she dry-heaves.
She has never been this hungry, and she thinks she looks like the children now. They stand against the walls and smile. They approve. They give the hospital room a rank atmosphere but Adrienne can’t complain.
She heaves again.
6.
HARRY HAS JUST arrived home when Tara calls.
“How was Cory?” she asks.
“Quiet. You know him. Never says a damn thing. What about Adrienne?”
“Back to the Queen’s English.”
“Thank God.”
“But now she’s vomiting.”
“What?”
“Nothing physically wrong with her, they say. Still some psychological reaction. I’m tired.”
“You want me to spell you?”
Silence.
“Tara?”
“I’m sorry.” Her voice sounds heavy, deeper. “I’m just... I think that house is wrong, Harry.”
“You’re just –”
“I’m serious. Harry, this house is a fucking monster, okay? It’s a townhouse. It’s not supposed to be what you tried to turn it into. Maybe the feng shui is all fucked. Who knows?”
“Tara, you sound like Betty.”
“I know. I’m sorry. I’m so tired. I have to go back into the room.”
“I’ll spell you.”
“No, you have to... aren’t you working?”
“I’ll do some stuff from home.”
“All right.”
“Anything I can bring for you? Food?”
“No, I’m... wait, Harry. There is something you can do. I need you to check the books. Cory’s been writing on more books than we know. I... check all the books in the house, will you? I have to go. Bye. Okay. Bye. I love you.”
And she is gone.
Harry sighs, grabs an apple from the kitchen and heads up. At least all the books are in the same place.
WELL, THAT LITTLE monkey has been busy.
There are seventeen books with Cory’s writing in them. There is no pattern to the defaced books. It ranges from The Story of Philosophy by Garvey and Stangroom through Landmarks by Macfarlane, a copy of the Ramayana, 1001 Nights, Effective Suturing for Nurses (bloodstained), The Judas Gospel, The Complete Sherlock Holmes, some P.G Wodehouse, and Black Beauty. The amount of Cory’s text varies from a single word in Synners to several pages in A Brief History of Islam in Monrovia. There is no pattern to the writing instrument. Harry sees crayon, pencil and different colours of pen used. One message is smeared in what Harry thinks might be soup residue.
He collates the messages into one document on his laptop. He thinks he has the order right. When he transcribes the last one he notices the uneaten apple and takes a bite.
>
He calls Tara, but it goes to voicemail.
“Tara, it... there’s a lot. Read together it almost makes sense.”
I never wanted children. I was quite content to live out my days in the house my great aunt left for me. I have even less use for women, blathering idiots that they are. Where there are women, children soon follow, like flies following shit. I’ve had people insinuate things about me regarding unnatural attractions. I have no interest in the bung hole, male or female. I find such things disgusting. Needless to say I was glad to receive the notification of the reading of the will. I was ecstatic to inherit the house. There are advantages to being the last living relative...
I saw a Sikh man today. As I walked past he tried to make eye-contact, but I looked away. I did not think there were any immigrants on this street. I did listen to Enoch Powell’s Rivers of Blood speech with some sympathy, but not much. He seems a bit over the top, but many think as he does. As long as black people stay away from me, I have no problem with them...
Noises upstairs. Probably rats. It’s a wonder the old bat didn’t die of bubonic plague. I’ll get the exterminator to come round...
I found some of my aunt’s old letters in the attic. I destroyed them, along with other papers. I kept a few marked as spells. You never know. The other documents were mostly fostering papers. She made a tidy income taking in strays from the council...
The neighbours are Tories, but not rabid. We get along quite well. I can spend my time on research and watching detective serials...
There are children squatting in this house! I see them sneaking around my peripheral vision. They tamper with food and play havoc with the volume control on the telly. I hear them laughing and sometimes crying. How are they here in my house? It’s just that there are five storeys in this place, not counting the basement. I can’t be in all places at once. I told the police and they laughed at me. They eventually sent an officer down, but they found nobody in the house, nor signs of habitation...
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