In My House

by Alex Hourston

‘Official processes for example,’ I replied, hearing my own ridiculousness.

  ‘No. You don’t. Here in your comfortable life –’ Slow and rhythmed.

  She held her hand before her, circling it on her wrist, and took a long lazy look at me. She moved off again. She wiped the edges of the telly with exaggerated care. When she crouched to the satellite box, I could see her tattoo and the top of her pants.

  ‘Anja. If you mean. I can’t begin to know what it was like for you in Italy. Of course I can’t,’ I said.

  She strolled across to the skirting.

  ‘It was not how you think,’ she said.

  ‘Of course. Not for one moment. I couldn’t imagine –’

  She stood up, knees clicking. Rolled an ankle with a hand on the opposite hip for balance.

  ‘No. I mean. Goran was my boyfriend.’

  I thought of the man at the airport. A young man still, fit and strong. Powerful. Exciting perhaps.

  ‘Maybe I was stupid. But there you go.’

  A twitch of shrug. A convincing toughness.

  She began to sway gently, shifting from foot to foot, pretending a lack of interest in me.

  ‘I was with him for a year, though he was away a lot. He said he was a salesman.’

  She huffed a short breath out of her nose.

  ‘And did he come from your town?’ I asked politely, as if enquiring about the usual courtship story.

  ‘No, he just arrived. He said there was a cousin in the next village.’

  She faced me plainly then, and with a question. She had expected shock, perhaps even hoped for it, but I just saw my daughter in her. Rose’s teenage efforts at worldliness; her casual acknowledgement of some scandal, or expression of adult opinion, and the watch and wait to see how I would react. I had consistently failed to register outrage; not so as to disappoint her, I simply never felt it. Human frailty rarely surprises me.

  ‘I don’t suppose you’re the first, Anja; nor will you be the last,’ I said, a sudden tiredness upon me.

  But she did not want to be absolved, or made typical.

  ‘I left with him because I wanted to, you know,’ she continued.

  ‘Yes, I see that,’ I said.

  ‘He came with me to the house when I told my parents.’

  She lifted a cushion from the seat of the sofa and propped it against her thigh. She gave it three hard slaps. Clouds of dust burst around her hand.

  I pictured the scene, her pride at her lover, her disdain for home and the old life she was throwing off. Her certainty and her excitement. The way her parents recoiled.

  ‘My mother cried and my father said “Just go”, but I didn’t care.’

  I wondered how these months had been for them.

  ‘You poor thing,’ I said. ‘It must have been awful.’

  ‘Some of the other girls, they will never be OK. But I am. I am free,’ she said and her look was narrow and proud.

  ‘You are.’

  But my agreement seemed to deflate her. She dropped onto the seat and rubbed the creases from her forehead.

  ‘But would you let your daughter leave? With a man that you did not trust?’ she said, at last.

  Always the mother who shouldered the blame.

  ‘What choice did she have, Anja? Be honest. Would you have listened either way?’

  It came out sharp and she looked up at me, surprised.

  ‘But she did not try. She would not stand up to my father. She was too worried about shame.’

  Her voice was shrill and I watched tears gather at the waterline of her lower lid. So I sat and threw an arm around her but the set of her shoulders was unyielding.

  ‘I’ll make you a cup of tea. And run you a bath, if you like,’ I said, in the end.

  ‘Thanks, Mags,’ she replied. ‘I can do my own.’

  She set off towards the stairs and paused for a moment at the bottom.

  ‘Mags?’ she called, though she knew I was still there. ‘One thing. I’ve been meaning to ask. Could I keep some stuff here? A few bits? Just so they can be safe? A lot of people come and go where I am staying.’

  ‘Of course you can. Bring them next time. No problem at all,’ I said, happy to be able to help.

  ‘Thanks,’ she said.

  She carried on up and did not falter as the phone rang and Chris’s voice came at us from the hall. Her step remained sure.

  Thing is, we understood each other, Anja and I. And that is rare.

  30

  Low light, white sky, nature in November shades I’d never wear. A beautiful day for walking. The dog pulled and I’d forgotten my gloves, but I didn’t mind. I caught step with my friends, slipped back into the old grooves. I waited for them at the usual place.

  We had a good walk, a long one. Buster tried hard with the other dogs, but Sammy is a loner and the Jack Russell sisters have no space for anyone else, particularly such a large and enthusiastic male. He cantered towards them and they waited till he got close and twisted away unkindly, separating easily as if they’d planned it. I watched him lurch on the spot, like an old rocking-horse, unsure of his next move. The two dogs circled back and he realised they were teasing him. He cast me a look, and set off on his own. He didn’t seem to mind.

  Maureen shouted for Sammy who paced the railings by the swings, her head following the children’s dip and soar. I noticed the absence of strain in Mo’s voice and knew that this was Lauren’s work, filling her mother’s time, needing her again, and was happy for my friend.

  Paul has said nothing, so I guess Peter must have kept his word. We walked some more and the feeling between us was gentle. They didn’t mention Anja and so nor did I. Yet she was never far from my mind. It was almost like being in love.

  It was funny to be touched again. I shrank from it at first, her gummy grip. She was mucky, like a child, with bitten-down nails and bloodied cuticles. Yet her skin was white and smooth and filled. She laid her palm on me softly and left it there. I blushed hot at first, but later, remained calm. She slipped an arm through mine as we walked.

  Her smell was fleshy up close, but not unpleasant. She did not the hide the fact that she was human, alive. There was no shame in her. My own aroma is good sense and hygiene, a layering of gels, sprays and liqui-tabs; my pheromones indiscernible beneath them.

  I came to enjoy the proximity of another, and found that it was contagious. Paul jumped, first time I knocked against him with a shoulder, my initial, rather clumsy advance – he thought I had slipped – but soon he rubbed my back and touched a hand. Maureen hadn’t noticed, I was sure, and yet she responded nonetheless. Her behaviours changed; she warmed and mellowed. Funny how we read each other’s signals, just like the dogs.

  I left them for the butcher’s to get a chicken and couple of decent steaks. Someone opened the door just as I arrived and I breathed one deep rusty lungful and stepped aside to let a woman out with her buggy.

  I found I stood before a new shop, or a shop I had never noticed before. Its window was a landscape of sweets, floss clouds, marshmallow hills and huge lollipops for trees. It sold things for babies; a shrunken jacket was laid against the scene, looking puffed out and inhabited; a silver spoon stuck out from the egg-yolk sun and a string of elf tooth boxes formed the tail of a kite. Rippling from a flagpole, in front of which a teddy flew a plane, was the most beautiful lemon blanket.

  I went in and spoke to the lady, who took me to the plinth where they all lay stacked, in the obvious shades and my yellow, a raspberry and a teal.

  Up close, the cashmere was fine and downy. She spoke of its versatility, its refusal to moult or pill and finally its price, one hundred and twenty-five pounds, and we both stroked as she talked, a softness under my hand that seemed impossible in nature. I imagined Anja’s baby underneath it, tucked in tight and sleeping, face turned and perfect. And next, I’d bought one, and the box was almost as good again: square, shallow, an untreated cardboard secured with a thick velvet ribbon of aquamarine. I raced back throu
gh the park, my heart pounding, the meat forgotten.

  She wasn’t expected until later, and I was unsure of how to fill the time. The box I placed on the sofa, in the kitchen, and finally back in its bag. A bath, I decided; that is what Anja would do.

  It was a long time since I had lain immersed in water. How altering, and what a marvel, weightlessness. Every now and again I moved my feet from the end of the bath, laid my head back and achieved a moment of perfect balance, suspended like a spaceman.

  I added more hot until my chest felt shrunk, and pushed away all thought of guilt and wastefulness.

  My hands before me were no longer my own, their usual patterning, a geometric repeat like the veins of a leaf, had vanished.

  I lifted a leg out of the water, and observed it, for the first time in years. The calf muscle hung low off the shinbone, wobbly in its bag of skin. I straightened it, my back held, and ran my hand up and down its length. Hairless now, a few soft bristles aside. My skin contracted beneath my touch, which felt more alien, even, than Anja’s.

  Tears came next; no sorrow, or emotion, nor a sound. Just an emptying. I closed my eyes, loose-lidded, and moved lower in the bath and let the tears slide through their crack and down my face, until they merged with the water.

  When Rose was small I would lie in a similar bath, about a mile away, doing just the same. It relieved something, like letting a vein can, for some. I would slip into the warm and the tears would flow, like milk, and when I sat up later, the bath blood cool, water sheeting off me, I felt eased.

  It was a strain, those early years, though no one would have known it. I made myself seem free and unencumbered. Other mothers were intrigued, they told me later, at the point that they believed us friends. My absence made me interesting. I was without need, like the boy they couldn’t get or keep at college. And I built relationships with these people, of a sort. It is easy to take care of those you don’t really care for. I found the words; I helped. But I was wipe clean, and nothing of their problems stuck. This was how I knew it wasn’t real. They drifted away over time.

  Things changed when there was Maureen, Peter and Paul. What was it, five years back? If not total honesty between us, there was, is, a lack of pretence. An underrated quality in friendship, in my view.

  And then came Anja, and what was it that we two shared? Could I say I was myself with her, that exalted state, whatever it may be? I am not sure. But who would want that anyway? With Anja, I could be someone else; I could start anew. And what is better than that?

  I hauled myself out, dried, dressed and waited.

  When she got to me at last, I felt shy and sensitive; the seams of my shirt abrasive on my skin. She brought the outside in with her, on her coat, in her hair – old food and perfume, half-dried wool and something musky. It was all I could do not to take a step away.

  ‘Oh, Anja,’ I said. ‘By the way. I picked you something up.’

  I handed her the bag.

  ‘Thanks, Mags!’ she said, and reached inside. She took the gift, and let the bag slide to the floor.

  The packaging held no interest for her; she didn’t see that the box had been hand-folded, nor the message that I had chosen, inked on to one corner in the shop with a wooden backed stamp. The woman had run its curved surface back and forth across a moist black pad and pressed it onto the cardboard with the care of a child. ‘From Me To You With Love xox,’ it read, in a cursive that looked neat and aged.

  Instead, Anja tugged at the ribbon then chucked it onto a chair. She ripped the box in her efforts to get inside, and revealed a first glimpse of the blanket; one buttery tuft. She grasped this corner, pulled, and the packaging fell away. The blanket dropped before her in a long liquidy ripple. She took a second edge and held it up, a rectangle now, as wide as her arm span and halfway down to the carpet.

  I saw that she was confused as to its point. To me, too, the gift seemed all at once insane; ridiculous and profligate. I wished that I could tear it from her hands; hide the thing. She looked at me over the drop of cashmere, and back down.

  ‘It’s –’ I started.

  ‘A scarf’! I know! Thanks!’ she said, and flung it behind her head. She pulled an end and wrapped the length another time round her neck, loosening it roughly at her throat.

  ‘It’s awesome! So soft!’ she said, and buried her nose deep into the wool.

  There were two inky prints already visible and I saw the weave gape where she had tugged.

  ‘This’ll keep me so warm. Let’s go for a walk and try it!’

  I put the box by the back door and ripped off the sticker that showed a baby heart next to a bigger one. The colour didn’t suit, the yellow drained the life from her.

  I found my coat and went back out.

  There is a place I walk when I don’t want to be with others. Gloomy, full of dogshit, but it does the job. I took her there. Daylight was failing and the grass was studded with rubbish, frozen where it fell, but we strode, and the grip of my disappointment let up. I thought, how indoors we are, Anja and I; and watched the other walkers look twice and try to work us out.

  Anja’s mood was airy. She fingered the blanket at her neck, kicked leaves with her useless canvas shoes.

  ‘Have you ever been in love, Maggie?’ she asked, after a bit, swinging her arms, her mittens flapping beyond them.

  ‘Oh, I don’t know. Not to any satisfactory conclusion,’ I said.

  ‘But you know what they say though. It’s never too late. Right?’ said Anja.

  She was given to cheering cliché.

  ‘Indeed they do.’

  ‘Peter and Paul are good, though. Don’t you think?’

  ‘They are,’ I said, although the truth was that I found it hard to watch; the care they took, the mutual respect. My instinct was to jeer. Could this be real? I had come to believe that men were not like us. Their happiness was a shock to me, an insult almost. Like hearing the world is flat, after all.

  We walked some more and I felt her mood next to me tilt.

  ‘Anja. Whatever it was that you had with Goran –’ I began, but didn’t know how to finish.

  She waited.

  ‘Well. I’m sure you’re aware. That it was not love.’

  ‘But I did love him,’ she said simply.

  ‘Yes. You may have done. But what he did –.’

  She interrupted: ‘He could be kind sometimes.’

  Buster came and bowed to me to show me that he wanted to play. Then he saw our faces and moved along.

  ‘At first we went to Tirana. It’s the capital, you know?’

  I said yes, though I didn’t.

  ‘There were parties,’ she said. ‘I thought it was his thing. To share.’

  The path was muddy and trenched. I held her hand to steady her as she stepped up and walked its flimsy lip to avoid the worst. My own boots sucked and bubbled.

  ‘And then he told me it was business,’ she said.

  The ground became firmer, and I let her go.

  I saw him travelling with panache, orbited by girls, raising a finger for more drinks.

  A small dog cantered over and the fussing of him absolved me of the need to reply. I think she read my silence as rebuke.

  ‘Maggie, I was alone in a new place,’ she said, her voice pitching upwards.

  ‘Of course. I’m not. I’m just listening.’

  Her phone beeped but she silenced it, low in her pocket.

  ‘You really don’t need.’ I tried, but she wouldn’t let me finish.

  ‘I know, and maybe you don’t want to hear, but there is more,’ she said.

  ‘OK,’ I replied, long and inflected, and it made me think of my daughter again, her confessions; that she had hidden sweets, been mean, told a lie.

  ‘I did not work for long. It was not his idea for me. He said I could stop if I helped.’

  Her meaning was clear but it seemed that she wished me to ask.

  ‘Help with what, Anja?’ I said.

  ‘Getting mo
re girls.’

  What did I feel? Sadness, mainly.

  ‘You are the only person I have told this to,’ she said.

  ‘Well. Thank you. For trusting me. That must have been a terrible decision.’

  She shrugged.

  ‘Less terrible than working.’

  ‘Yes. I suppose so.’

  A fine frozen rain began, like the flimsiest of snow. It chilled me, where it touched my skin, but failed to translate into wet. There was traffic, a drill not far, no human sound.

  ‘He said there would be someone else, if I didn’t,’ she said, with the beginnings of a whine.

  ‘And I’m sure he was right.’

  Then: ‘Mags. Do you think the other girls will tell?’

  ‘The police? Who knows? But you are not to blame. We do what we have to, Anja. In the situations we find ourselves in. You didn’t choose it. Most of us are. Never tested, I suppose.’

  ‘It was not for long, Maggie. And there was only one girl and we left her when we came here. Maybe she went back home?’ she said.

  ‘Let’s hope so. I hope so too.’

  ‘So now you know,’ she said.

  ‘Indeed. Anja, you survived. That’s the main thing. And now you’re here.’

  ‘Yes, I am. Thanks to you.’

  ‘Oh, not really,’ I said, but she was at me. She took me in her fierce embrace and her breath was rushed in my ear, her chest heaving, her face still wet.

  ‘You would fight for me, Maggie. I know you would.’

  I felt her belief inside me, in my heart.

  ‘I would Anja. I will.’

  She held me there for a long time and I closed my eyes against the stares of passers-by.

  ‘Let’s get back,’ I said.

  We walked fast, our arms linked tight. It felt colder as we pushed out into the wind, and warmer again as our bodies heated. I wanted to get home as if something more waited for us there, beyond the yellow of a fire, a full glass and companionship. She matched my speed and began to pull me on, younger and strong. The dog jogged close with a wide wet grin. Anja hummed beside me and then the bravest of a group of boys called ‘Lezzies!’ at us, from a safe distance, and we roared, we really did, in a way I could barely remember, my mouth stretched huge and stupid, the noise catching in the top of my throat. We heaved and rocked and in the end I got a stitch. When it had passed, I felt a little bereavement.