In My House

by Alex Hourston

  ‘Not that I’m suggesting you’re old, Mags.’

  It was the first thing he had thought of, he said, when Maureen came over and told him. She’d known the programme from her kids but Paul was vague, so they googled it on the laptop in the kitchen and downloaded an episode. It turned out Billy Connolly sung the theme tune. This was all as we stood there, fussing each other’s dogs and rearranging our layers. I went to pick up after Buster.

  We tended not to meet at each other’s homes and I was surprised at the idea of Maureen there. I wondered when it had been organised, or if she popped in often. She was a gossip. There was that pinch of irritation that felt like dislike.

  I tried to picture the scene. I recalled Peter’s and Paul’s kitchen as white, with a lot of things out on display that in my home live in cupboards. It should have been a mess, but wasn’t, being far too careful and perfectly expressive of them. A space that said something, about how they lived but also what they believed in, though I couldn’t find the words for it myself. Then I thought of Maureen’s great arse spilling off one of their arty stools, and her ratty cardigan and the South London shriek at the start of her laugh and that made me laugh too, and as I walked back over, they both asked, ‘What?’ and I said, ‘Nothing.’

  We moved off, the dogs looping around us. They wanted to know everything but it was over in a second.

  ‘Hold on, back up,’ said Paul. ‘You’re standing in the queue and next minute this girl is mouthing something at you in a mirror. How do you know it’s for you? Or that she’s not bonkers?’

  No answer to that.

  ‘So what is everyone else doing at this point, when you’re getting dragged out of the toilet by a stranger? All the people in line?’ he said.

  I tried to go back, but I couldn’t see their faces, only hers.

  ‘Maybe it was them that got the police,’ said Maureen, ‘those other women.’

  ‘I don’t know. I really don’t.’

  ‘What did he say to you, the man, when he caught up with you?’

  But the answer was nothing, of course, and when they asked me what I had said to him, I replied that it was all too fast.

  ‘Where did she think you were gonna get to anyway? Surely he had her passport? You were in an airport, for god’s sake. You can’t just walk out of these places,’ Paul said.

  ‘Well, it may seem stupid to you, but it worked, didn’t it? She got away.’

  This was a new tone for them, a new Maggie, or rather a version of Maggie that had never been deployed against them.

  ‘You’re right, love. You’re right of course.’

  I saw Maureen in that moment as a mother, the mother she must have been to her daughters and her favourite, the boy, before they all left. Conciliatory. Happy to skip over the tricky bits.

  Silence for a while, as we walked back to the park. We took the Woodland Walk and there was privacy there, away from the gaze of the main fields. The trees remained lush and close-coupled; oak, plane and ash in late-summer greens. The promise of nature too – animals advertised on boards along the path. Squirrels and toads that Buster spotted – I felt his tremors at my end of the lead – but I otherwise missed. There were no joggers for now and our route was shaded. It became easier to talk.

  ‘There was something in the way she looked at me. She was desperate. You know it when you see it. That’s all. Anyone would have done the same.’

  ‘I’m not so sure. You can’t know if you’re going to read a situation. Not until it happens,’ said Paul. ‘Let alone act.’

  Maureen nudged my arm with hers and I knew that she was thinking that a woman would, any woman who has lived a bit, though no doubt Paul has had his trials.

  I felt agitated and tearful. Maureen saw and said, ‘You did good, Mags. One less bastard out and about. I’ll drink to that.’

  ‘Me too,’ said Paul.

  We were at his turn-off now. He held my shoulders tight when he kissed me goodbye. Maureen stood there, raking her hair as she does, that glamorous hair, the only glamorous bit of her, thick salt and pepper that travelled up and off her forehead in one long curvy sweep like an old-fashioned movie star by way of Elsie Tanner.

  So it was just the two of us, and she started on about Peter and Paul and the computer in the kitchen. They watch all their programmes that way and carry it around with them, all through the house, in the bathroom, up to bed. Hardly the same.

  ‘Whatever next?’ she said.

  My house soon.

  ‘Will you be out tomorrow?’ Maureen asked.

  ‘We’ll see. Probably.’

  ‘OK. See you. Nighty night.’

  ‘Nunight, Mo.’

  I was still in the hall when the phone rang, but it was not a number that I recognised.

  I do not pick these up.

  I heard my own voice, flat and gloomy, and a pause that stretched out after. I waited for someone to speak, but they did not and the dead tone sounded, though my answer machine showed up a message. Loan consolidation or accidents that earn you cash. And yet.

  And yet I swear I heard a breath. My hand at my heart; a frightened old woman.

  I went through, had a whisky. Took a look at what was on the TV.

  6

  I was at the paper shop when he opened. I’d been up for hours – funny dreams, then couldn’t get back off. The day was bright enough to make you wince.

  I heard him first, working through three or four locks and then the churn of the security grille. He was revealed to me in increments, bottom up. Soft, thin-soled shoes, grey trousers of an office style but overwashed and loose. A sandy shirt that you could see the dark of his body hair through and then it was too late to step back, and there was his face, elegant, serious and, above all, surprised at the proximity of mine.

  We looked at each other and I felt an apology rise, and that the can of Stella that had been resting against the metal curtain and now leaked its last half-inch into his shop was somehow my fault. A van pulled up and he went to it. I walked inside and browsed the old-fashioned greetings cards at the far end of the shop.

  It was the newspapers, and I watched as he hauled the bundles inside and slit the cable ties with a small sharp knife. The papers exhaled, and he took them to their shelves in slabs. When he moved away, I approached. The titles lay side by side, pressed and sweet-smelling, and I chose one of each. The man said nothing at the till, except did I need a bag?

  I was shaking when I got home and sped through them clumsily, newsprint on my fingertips, still in my coat.

  When I was finished, I knelt, a stiff tongue of denim cutting into the back of my knees, and stroked the dog, massaging the root of both ears till his eyes closed and his legs slid out from under him. I began to feel the crouch in all sorts of joints but didn’t want to disappoint, so sat down, right there, and thought this is the first time in all my years I’ve sat on my own kitchen floor, and that the place could do with a sweep.

  The dog stretched out and dropped his head onto my lap. Instantly he began to snore and I admired his opportunism and the detail of his design. The seams of his eyelids and the way they met perfectly, sealing him shut. The backward slant of tufty eyelash; a dense ridge of tiny hairs. And the odd crazy whisker that sprouted from his head, feeling its way out into the world. I flicked one and he twitched but he knew it was just me. And with my other hand I stroked him long and hard and felt the thick grease of his fur rise and coat my hand. He soothed me; he always did.

  No mention of me today. Back in my hole, down low, hood raised, out of sight. I, Maggie, once held so high. Keeper of my mother’s dreams, my aunties’ too, Aunty Bet at least; it always worried Frannie.

  Pushed out in front, a flesh-and-blood ‘We’ll see’ to anyone who’d ever said the Bensons weren’t up to much. Pretty from the cradle. A neat combed girl. A precocious reader, lovely singing voice, a hand-span waist. Gift of the gab as well. But it was none of that. It was something less material. A twinkle and a shine that you just coul
dn’t learn and you certainly couldn’t buy. A thing that got people saying, ‘She’ll go far’, ‘That’s the one to watch’, and ‘The smart money’s on Maggie’. A gift my mother thought was hers to polish and prime and walk up and down the promenade every Friday afternoon, her eyes snapping at anyone who would meet them, spitting, ‘Ha.’

  And I had felt her finger in my back but liked my place a few steps ahead, and my eyes snapped too and said, ‘I’ll show you. Just you wait.’

  And each little advancement, each word of praise, each proof of preference, a look from the right type of man (scratch that, any man), further assured me of my spot.

  And when it came to the big things, the visible things – when I got my job in town and married my pilot – each victory took me back to that walk and the weather on one cheek and the pinch in my shoe and the faces that approved as I passed, all looking forward to what would come next.

  The habit was still there, of course, when things began to go wrong. I pictured myself setting out, but the faces were shut against me and the wind a shock that shoved me from my path; my mother gone altogether.

  A couple more years saw all that forgotten. One day I stopped watching and simply got on.

  It had been that way for a long time now. And my hands, resting on the pelt of my dog, were dry, the veins plump blue cords, the nails clipper-trimmed. My weight, a constant; probably less than during my heyday, which I would put at around twenty-eight. Late perhaps, and when I was as unhappy as I’d ever be. One last blast, looks-wise, approaching forty but no one around to notice it.

  It would take half a day or so to make myself beautiful again, or at least bear relation to the woman I once was. My skin remains good; almost poreless. My eyes are still blue; the flesh around them yet to cave, as happens to so many women of my age. My hair merely in need of some attention. Yet I choose not to. The way I look is at once my essence and my best disguise. I resemble my mother, which was no one’s plan, but perhaps my destiny all along.

  Some of this reached the dog. He opened an eye, showing me the whites, but I shushed him and his teeth clinked like pennies as his chin met my leg once more.

  And all of that is surface. What of character? The books I read are filled with people of character. Character and conviction. Explicable lives that follow a trajectory. Beset by challenge and hardship, of course – we all need drama. But still, they move forward. There is progress across time. A solid line.

  Out here in the world, though, you find a different sort. Less fixed, more expedient. Less powerful. People who adapt. And I find that I exist among the latter. My younger self would despise me. You would have to plot my life on a Venn diagram, in distinct sets, with just the tiniest intersection. What you’d label that part – my essence, if you like; the person I truly am – I haven’t the faintest idea.

  7

  I’d just made a coffee – the Argentinian blend – on the stove-top pot, next to a pan of milk. Stepped outside to drink it, was listening to next door’s nanny smoke, and the planes and builders’ radios, when the front door went. I hadn’t ordered anything. Behind it stood a young girl, dressed as a policewoman.

  ‘Mrs Benson?’ she said.

  ‘Yes,’ said I.

  ‘PC Keira Martin. Victim Liaison Officer.’ One outstretched hand, the other holding eye-level ID. ‘I’m here about the incident you were involved in at Gatwick earlier this week.’

  She smiled into the pause; it was probably there in the training.

  ‘Yes. Yes. Hello. Do you want to come in? Nobody mentioned this. You.’

  ‘Oh right. Someone should of given you a victim-care card, Mrs Benson. Do you remember receiving one? Blue writing on it?’

  She reached into a solid-looking bag resting on her hip and retrieved an example.

  ‘One of these, Mrs Benson?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Well, please accept my apologies for that. They should of. I’ll make a note. Anyway it’s purely routine, madam. Just to see how you’re doing. May I come in?’

  I opened the door wider and she took a couple of long steps in.

  She hadn’t noticed the rack of keys hammered into the wall and I saw the moment that she stood back and they jabbed her in the soft place at the top of her neck but there was no time to prevent it. She didn’t make a fuss. A fairly comprehensive wince but no noise. I imagine she’d known worse in the houses of people she’d dropped in on unexpectedly.

  I squeezed past her into the hall, and she followed me through.

  My sitting room speaks of old woman, or worse, old woman and over-loved dog. Not the furniture, so much, which is bland and blank. More something in its arrangement.

  The room is split in half by a long low set of open shelves; empty, save for a couple of vases and a terrible china horse, which I tell myself was a choice so as not to impede the passage of light, but is more likely due to a lack of interest in filling them.

  The front part is the more comfortable, with the sofa in it – far too soft – and occupied currently by the dog, large, tail thumping at the sight of someone new.

  In the back of the room, more formal, lives a ring of stiff chairs, each with its own little side table, gathered round an ottoman – an awful item embroidered in thick gold stitch that I bought on impulse in Kilburn. A replica of my mother’s rooms, it struck me then. My mother and every other house-proud female of their age and class. A parlour, would you call it? A receiving room? God knows; I never sit there.

  I indicated the sofa, which the woman fell back into. It is lower than most people expect.

  I offered her tea, which I made in a cup in a hurry, wondering what she was looking at next door. She took it with both hands and said ‘Ooh lovely’ and ‘So how are you feeling?’ with her best serious face.

  A resolute blonde in a stiff-looking uniform.

  ‘Fine, thanks. Yes. How are you?’

  Stupid, of course, but she ignored it.

  I listened – I did my best – but it was hard to take seriously a grown woman wearing six kirby grips in her hair – the closest shade she could find, no doubt, to her own, but still plainly visible; prominent, even. Three each side, just above the ear, spaced so closely that the hair between was smoothed into greasy furrows. Noticing all this, I rallied.

  ‘Well, I’m glad to hear it,’ she said, ‘and I wanted to let you know your crime number. I’ve written it down for you here, on this card, and there’s a telephone number on there too, if you need to get in touch. This is me. My direct line.’

  She opened her hand in front of me, the card already inside. She had written in bubbly biro characters. She seemed able and cheerful.

  ‘Rest assured we will keep you fully up to speed with the investigation. If I don’t hear from you, your next point of contact will be someone from the Witness Care Unit, who should get in touch in the next couple of weeks. And there’s Victim Support if.’

  ‘So I’m a victim? Or is it a witness?’ I asked.

  This didn’t faze her. A welcome deviation, even. She moved her bag from lap to sofa and crossed her teeny legs. She looked about fifteen.

  ‘Good question, Mrs Benson. We were talking about that actually before I came over. You fall between two stools really. So you’re sort of getting a combination of the victim and the witness follow-up.’

  She sat back, delighted.

  ‘We’re just making sure we’ve covered all bases. So if there is anything you want to ask me? Or talk to me about? Any feelings that you’d like to discuss? It is quite usual to experience emotions such as anger, anxiety or even guilt.’

  ‘No. Really. As I’ve said. I’m absolutely fine. And put me down as a witness, please. Really. I wasn’t involved.’

  ‘I understand, Mrs Benson, but my notes say that you experienced a verbal assault and these kind of incidents can be extremely traumatic for the individual. Perhaps even after a number of weeks you might experience a reaction.’

  I stood at that and realised that if I walked
towards the door she would follow. It worked; she pushed herself up from my sofa and acknowledged the dog hair trapped in the rough fabric of her trousers with a couple of loud slaps. Saw that she was doing it, and stopped.

  ‘There’s one other thing, Mrs Benson, that I wanted to talk to you about before I go. And this is your choice, there is no pressure at all for you to agree, but I have a request from Anja Maric, the girl.’

  She stopped to gauge the impact of her words. I nodded, and she went on.

  ‘Anja has asked if she can get in touch. She says she would like to say thank you. She could contact you, or you could take her details and call her yourself, if you’d prefer. You are in control of this situation, Mrs Benson, I do want to emphasise that. We would never pass on your number without consent. Or the meeting could be mediated. We have experts. Out of home, of course, that would certainly be our suggestion. If that.’

  ‘No. No. That’s fine. Tell her yes. I’ll meet her. That’s fine.’

  ‘Well, I’m glad you said that because we often find that if we can bring together two parties who have shared some sort of.’

  ‘It’s fine. Tell her yes.’

  8

  Anja and I met in a cafe three days later. A neutral space, as recommended. I hadn’t known where to suggest; spent an hour after the policewoman left, out with the dog, moving street by street beyond what I knew, till I found a suitable place.

  When the morning came, and I was dressing carefully, looking out some old beads and a decent coat, I pulled myself up. I got there early, which made me think of the woman in the park, then sat there with one shoulder high and my own locked hands.

  It seemed a bad choice, or perhaps that was my state of mind. Snatches of sound – children’s yelps and barks, food hitting hot fat and blurts of ringtone that made me jump each time. Then she was there, a girl at the door on the dot of half past ten and I knew it was her without recognising a thing. Her hair was a fresh-looking red, pulled high off her face. Her jeans were tight and she wore a short bunched jacket with a rucksack slung over a shoulder. I thought how strong she looked, broad-shouldered and big-legged. A practical girl, an open child. I watched her look around and find me first time. I pushed my chair back as she approached, clumsy in outdoor things, and stood facing her, unsure.