The House in Norham Gardens

by Penelope Lively

  ‘That’s better, I suppose.’

  ‘I’m a book about electrical engineering, but written in blank verse.’

  ‘Actually,’ said Clare, ‘she feels you’re probably cleverer than she is, and you’re a man, so that puts you in one kind of order, but then you’re black, and foreign, so that puts you in another, which gets her all muddled.’

  ‘You are a very odd girl – did you know that?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You don’t need to look as though you’d done something wrong. Personally I think people are better if they are odd. Your aunts are odd too. You’re rather like them, in fact.’

  ‘Am I?’ said Clare, delighted. ‘Honestly?’

  ‘Of course. You have the same way of going to the middle of things. Not bothering about pretences.’

  ‘My aunts are thought eccentric. That’s what our relations say. Polite word for odd.’

  ‘That is because most people are more comfortable with pretences.’

  There was a silence, filled with the clock and the pipes and a car revving in the next-door drive.

  ‘I’m not,’ said Clare.

  ‘You’re very fond of your aunts, aren’t you?’

  ‘You can’t pretend things are something different, like Maureen’s magazines.’

  ‘How long have you lived with them?’

  ‘Everything bright and shining and easy if you use the right shampoo.’

  ‘Here,’ said John, ‘I thought we were having a conversation. Me saying something and then you answering and then my turn again. That kind of thing.’

  ‘Like tennis?’

  ‘Exactly.’

  ‘Sorry. I got stuck for a moment.’

  ‘I have to go anyway,’ said John. ‘Work to do. See you later, maybe.’

  ‘Right you are. It’s your serve, next time.’

  The production of Macbeth at school was nearing fruition. Since it was clearly too cumbersome to present the play at full length Mrs Cramp and those responsible had reduced it to a series of the most vital scenes. Clare had no leading part but appeared at various points as a soldier, attendant, or guest at the banquet.

  ‘Actually,’ she said to Liz, ‘I’m not just any old guest. I’m Lady Macbeth’s mother.’

  ‘But it doesn’t say anything about Lady Macbeth’s mother.’

  ‘Never mind. It doesn’t say she wasn’t there, either, and you can act better if you know who you are. You can’t be very convincing if you don’t even know what your name is, can you?’

  The dress rehearsal took place before a rapt audience of the ladies from the kitchens, the caretaker and his wife, and anyone else with nothing better to do. Clare, standing in front of the cloakroom mirror, could hear the distant sounds of murder from the stage.

  ‘That’s Liz done for,’ said someone. ‘Poor old Banquo.’

  ‘Mmn.’ Clare stared at her face. She rubbed the make-up stick all over her, greasepaint or whatever it was called, and it glowed like a bad case of sunburn. How old would Lady Macbeth’s mother have been? Quite old, anyway. She took a stick of black stuff and etched black lines on her forehead, and two black crescents at the side of her mouth. Then she found a finer, grey stick, and drew in smaller lines round her eyes. Grey powder for the hair. She sprinkled it liberally and contemplated the result. A strange, distorted Clare looked back at her. Me in fifty years’ time? No, some mad clown, more like.

  ‘How do I look?’

  ‘A bit weird.’

  ‘Old?’

  ‘Not really. You can still see the proper you underneath. P’haps it’ll be better from further off.’

  Liz, murdered, came back into the cloakroom and shed her costume, peeling off jerkin, hose and doublet like the shell of a chrysalis, to expose a real Liz in vest and pants beneath.

  ‘Is it going all right?’

  ‘Ghastly … Honestly, Susan dropped the knife and was hunting all over the floor for it and everyone keeps forgetting their lines. What have you done to your face? I say, what’s happened to the tube of blood?’

  ‘Don’t you like my face? You can see different layers of me now.’

  ‘What? Oh, there’s the blood – you were standing on it all the time. Here, help me get into the cheesecloth.’

  Aunt Susan, regretfully, decided that she had better not come to the play. Aunt Anne was not so well, again, and should not perhaps be left on her own. Both aunts were apologetic and disappointed, on their own behalf and because they felt Clare should have family support. ‘It’s all right,’ said Clare. ‘John wants to come.’

  She considered inviting Maureen as well, and then decided against it. It was not so much that they did not get on as that John’s presence somehow induced in Maureen a state of tension that gradually spread to anyone within range. Indeed, even inanimate objects seemed to be affected. In the airing cupboard, their possessions confronted one another uneasily, John’s socks hanging in a row on the hot-pipe, bright reds and greens and purples blossoming in the dark like some irrepressible tropical growth, while on the other side Maureen’s white bra and pale blue pants and limp tights were marshalled beyond the boiler, discreetly gleaming and holding their own in an atmosphere of discord. Clare had arranged the clothes horse as a partition in case violence broke out.

  Consequently, it was John alone who represented Norham Gardens at the first night of Macbeth. Clare, peering through the central gap of the stage curtains, could see him in the middle of a row of parents, looking detached but by no means discomfited. He observed everything with interest. He, too, it had been revealed in the kitchen that morning, had acted in Shakespeare.

  ‘When?’ said Clare, pouring tonic into a tablespoon.

  ‘At my first school, in the bush. I was a soldier in Julius Caesar. My only line was “Hail Caesar”, and then we all cheered. Those of us who could not speak much English cheered in our own language. It was very effective. The production took place in the market square and everyone in the village came.’

  ‘Did they know about Romans, and all that?’

  ‘No,’ said John, ‘but our English master had a firm belief in culture. Your culture. Anyway, everybody enjoyed it. What is that stuff you are taking?’

  ‘Tonic. It strengthens you.’

  ‘My mother used to give me strengthening medicine when I was young. She bought it in the market at Kampala from an Indian grocer. It said on the bottle that if you took it regularly you would be able to strangle a lion with your bare hands.’

  ‘Did you ever try?’

  ‘I came to England instead,’ said John, and laughed.

  The audience steamed a little in the warmth of the school building. It must have started snowing again: moisture glistened on people’s hair and shoulders. Clare, cycling up from Norham Gardens in the darkness, had seen the glow of light from the city reflected in a heavy, orange-looking sky that seemed oppressively close, lurking somehow just above the tops of houses and trees. There was a feeling of suspense, as though, offstage, something waited.

  And Clare, offstage in the gym, waited through the incantations of the witches for her first scene. People milled around her. Mrs Cramp rushed to and fro, inspiring an atmosphere of crisis. Someone had lost part of her costume. The curtains kept threatening to stick. Macduff had a nosebleed. Clare, costumed for the banquet scene, sat on a pile of mats while people came and went – ordinary, familiar faces and shapes oddly translated into the shadow of something else. Not the substance, because in no way were these really Shakespeare characters, or even actors, but the shadow of such a thing faintly cast upon faces seen every day, talking, eating, singing, yawning. Faces distorted by make-up, but perfectly recognizable beneath, familiar voices inexpertly proclaiming thoughts and beliefs that could hardly be more inappropriate to a lot of people aged about fourteen leading uneventful lives in the South Midlands. In rehearsal, it had usually seemed funny. Now, for some reason that Clare could not isolate, it no longer was. It was vaguely sinister, as though the pretence mig
ht really distort people in some way, unhinge things, as it were, so that you would no longer be sure what was, and what was not.

  ‘Clare! Come on!’

  Filing on to the stage, with the audience only dimly visible as motionless shapes in the darkened hall, intensified the feeling. Which was real, us or them? Us, up here, all got up in greasepaint and funny clothes, or them, down there, in winter coats and macs and umbrellas hung on the backs of the school chairs? The stage lights isolated the actors, shouldered the audience aside into darkness, made them the unreal observers.

  The guests, seated at the table, murmured among themselves. Clare’s neighbour, mouthing nonsense, was not Jennie Sanders, who lived in Eynsham and was good at Art, but a stranger, with lined and painted face. Other faces swam in the glare of the lights, haloed and somehow duplicated by an effect of spotlighting. Voices boomed. Banquo’s ghost arrived, sat at the table, and was studiously ignored by the other guests. ‘Rhubarb, rhubarb,’ said the stranger who was Jennie Sanders.

  Clare said conversationally, ‘Good heavens! there is Banquo’s ghost.’ The neutral murmurs around turned to murmurs of reproof. Someone whispered, ‘Shut up, you idiot, we’re not supposed to be able to see her – him.’ Above them, Macbeth and Lady Macbeth argued out the same point.

  ‘It would be much more interesting if we did,’ said Clare. ‘Then there’d really be something to talk about.’ Beyond her, in the wings, she could see Mrs Cramp making curious gestures, soothing the air with her hands like a conductor restraining an overactive orchestra. She mouthed something: ‘Don’t talk so loud,’ it looked like. Jennie Sanders, under her paint, was registering alarm. ‘Or perhaps they did,’ said Clare thoughtfully. ‘Perhaps that’s the whole point. They all saw it, Lady Macbeth specially, but they pretended not to so Macbeth would get in a proper old state.’ Around her, the guests were gabbling feverishly. Macbeth raved at the ghost and the ghost got up and left the stage while the guests politely looked the other way. It loitered in the wings, stripping off cheesecloth and becoming Liz again. A disastrous dinner party drew to a close. The guests filed off the stage.

  Behind the scenes, Clare was accused by some of frivolity and others of treachery. She hardly heard them: their painted faces, saying things, floated around her. Mrs Cramp appeared and said, ‘You were a very convincing guest, I must say, Clare. A bit over-convincing, maybe, but never mind,’ and then, ‘Are you feeling all right?’

  Clare said, ‘Can I go home? Would it matter if I didn’t come on in the last scene?’

  ‘Of course you can go, if you’re not feeling well.’

  ‘I’m all right.’

  It was snowing hard. She could hardly see where she went, standing up on the pedals of the bike and pushing forward into the whirling darkness. When she got to Norham Gardens she threw the bike down on the gravel anyhow and left it, wheels still spinning, running up the steps and into the house. She went straight upstairs to the attic, bumping into Maureen who was coming out of the bathroom with a towel wound turban-wise round her head. The kwoi, or tamburan, or shield was where it should be, propped up staring out of the window, and the window was shut, and outside the window it was snowing and through the snow there was a noise, men shouting, far away, and it seemed odd no one else could hear it, only her. She picked up the shield and went downstairs again, past Maureen, who seemed to be saying something, and into the kitchen. She opened the back door and put the shield outside, and then she closed the door, and locked it, and switched out the kitchen lights, and went upstairs to bed.

  In bed, hours later, or maybe minutes, she heard footsteps on the stairs, down, and up, and down again. Maureen and John talking. Then someone knocking at the door.

  ‘Come in.’

  Maureen had a tray in her hand, with a jug that steamed, and a cup and saucer.

  ‘I’ve done you a hot drink. Ovaltine.’

  ‘Thanks very much.’

  ‘A lady rang from the school. One of the teachers. She was a bit worried. She said she thought you weren’t feeling well. And John missed you somehow. He came home on his own.’

  ‘I’m afraid I forgot about him,’ said Clare. ‘Please could you tell him I’m sorry.’

  Maureen sat down on the end of the bed. ‘Yes. He was worried too. He’s a nice boy, I’ll say that.’ She looked at Clare. ‘Do you think you’re running a temperature?’

  ‘No. It isn’t anything like that.’

  ‘Nerves,’ said Maureen. ‘You get nerves, at your age. My mum says I used to carry on like nobody’s business. I don’t remember, personally.’

  Clare drank. She said, ‘I’m a nuisance, aren’t I?’

  ‘You can get that idea out of your head for a start,’ said Maureen. She fussed round the room for a moment, straightening the curtains, tucking in an end of blanket.

  ‘Think you’ll be all right now?’

  ‘Yes. Thank you, Maureen.’

  ‘The teacher said she thought you ought to stop in tomorrow. Not bother with school. Have a bit of a rest.’

  ‘Oh, did she?’

  She must have slept very late, because when she woke both Maureen and John had left the house and there was a bright, hard light through the curtains. It would have been too late for school anyway. Presently there were sounds of the aunts getting up, and then the front door banging as Mrs Hedges arrived. After a few minutes she came upstairs, with a piece of paper in her hand.

  ‘Your Maureen left me a note. Thoughtful, that was. You’ve not been well, she says.’

  ‘It wasn’t anything. I just felt a bit odd at the school play and decided not to stay to the end.’

  Mrs Hedges drew the curtains. Then she studied Clare. Lying in bed, just woken up, unbrushed and unwashed, it is not possible to create an impression of great health or vigour. ‘You look off colour,’ said Mrs Hedges. ‘I’ve seen this coming. A good check-up, that’s what you need. I’m ringing the doctor. You can pop along to the surgery this morning.’

  ‘No,’ said Clare feebly.

  ‘Yes,’ said Mrs Hedges.

  ‘What is it of me that needs checking?’

  ‘Blood pressure and that, I should think.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Clare. ‘I see.’

  ‘You get yourself dressed, and I’ll do you some breakfast. And put something warm on, it’s freezing out. By the way, one thing I can’t understand – that wood thing from the attic, I found it outside the back door.’

  ‘I put it there,’ said Clare.

  ‘Threw it away?’

  ‘Not exactly.’

  ‘Well, I’ve put it back upstairs. You can’t go throwing out things without asking the old ladies. You never know with things, in this house – it might be valuable.’

  The doctor, behind his desk, studied a brown card, that, Clare could see, said she had been born on September 11th 1959, had been vaccinated and injected against this and that, had sprained an ankle, had a boil on her leg, two styes, measles and chicken pox.

  ‘What’s the problem?’ he said. ‘There’s a message that you’ve been a bit off colour.’

  Clare thought. Finally she said, ‘I don’t sleep very well at night.’

  ‘Ah,’ said the doctor. ‘Headaches?’

  ‘No headaches.’

  ‘Bowels all right?’

  ‘Fine.’

  ‘Waterworks?’

  ‘Fine too.’

  ‘Everything all right at school?’

  ‘Everything’s all right at school.’

  ‘No problems, then?’

  ‘Not really.’

  ‘But you’ve been feeling off colour.’

  Your doctor is a busy man. Do not waste your doctor’s time.

  ‘Sometimes I think I hear things,’ said Clare. ‘When other people don’t.’

  The doctor came out from behind his desk. Something cold and shiny was produced through which he peered into Clare’s ears, first one, then the other. Clare held back her head, helpfully. ‘No infection there,’ said the docto
r.

  He put the steel thing away. ‘Anything else?’

  ‘Sometimes things look funny. Striped, when they’re not.’

  A torch was whipped from the doctor’s pocket. ‘Head back, please. Ever had an eye test?’

  ‘Last year.’

  The torch shone dazzling in the corner of Clare’s eye. Beyond it she could see the doctor’s face in intimate close-up, every line enlarged, blown-up, one eye squinting at her, gazing down into her eye. And what was he seeing? Her soul, perhaps. A little, soft, wriggling thing deep in the middle of her.

  ‘All in order there,’ said the doctor, putting the torch away.

  ‘Oh,’ said Clare. ‘Good.’

  The doctor returned to his desk. He read the brown card through again, while Clare observed that he wore a tie with small cars on it. Old cars with no tops. So the doctor was interested in vintage cars. Now I know more about him than he knows about me. Fifteen love to me.

  ‘Hmm,’ said the doctor. ‘Yes. Well now – er, Clare – I can’t find anything much wrong with you. I think this not sleeping thing will pass off, you know. I expect you’ve been getting a bit bothered about exams or something, eh? I don’t like giving sleeping pills to people of your age. Have a hot drink before you go to bed, and try to relax, see. Read a book – you know, something light, that kind of thing. Unwind.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Clare. ‘I see. Thank you very much.’

  ‘Splendid,’ said the doctor. He tapped the bell on his desk. They smiled over each other’s shoulders.

  ‘Goodbye,’ said Clare.

  ‘Goodbye,’ said the doctor.

  ‘Well?’ said Mrs Hedges.

  ‘I’m all in order. Splendid, I am.’

  Mrs Hedges whipped a pile of dust into the dustpan and stood up. ‘He gave you a proper going-over, did he?’ she said suspiciously.

  ‘Ears, eyes, everything. Mrs Hedges …’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Don’t tell the aunts I went to the doctor.’

  ‘You don’t want them getting bothered?’

  ‘Mmn.’

  ‘You’re a good girl,’ said Mrs Hedges, ‘one way and another. Feeling all right in yourself now, are you?’