The Universe of Things

by Gwyneth Jones

  Suzy laughed. “Gone —” she said.

  Or maybe, “gran”?

  I stared at her, horrified to see no fear or repulsion in her face.

  “You mustn’t talk to that lady. She’s not my friend, or yours!”

  My knees gave way under me. I crouched on Suzy’s pretty green rug, shuddering. “Oh, baby, darling… I didn’t mean that! I know there was no lady. Mummy’s being silly, being very silly.”

  Children are fickle creatures. Suzy didn’t cry at my strange behavior, or come to me. She lay down on the floor instead and stayed there, gazing dreamily at the bricks and humming a vague little tune.

  I sat in the family room that night with Don. He’d insisted we take an evening off, to spend time together. It wasn’t being a success. He slumped in front of the tv; I couldn’t even rest. My hands were itchy for occupation.

  “I feel so tired,” I wailed. “I look in the mirror and I’m horrified. And the worst is, I keep thinking I’ll be all right when things get back to normal. But they never will, Don! Do you realize what this house has done? It has dragged us across the great divide. We’re not young anymore. What I think of as normal is being young. We were still young, still alive even through having Suzy, but now it’s gone forever…”

  He looked at me like a dog that’s being beaten.

  “You always dramatize things, Rose. You’ll be fine when this bloody fixing up and beautifying is finished.”

  I was fighting an impulse that really scared me. I was still frightened by what I’d imagined I’d heard Suzy say that afternoon. I was frightened that Don felt the presence of the ghost too. He would say: “the basement’s awfully dark, isn’t it?” (which it was not); or “the den always seems to feel chilly.” Which it did not. I got up and opened the door to the stairs. It was there.

  “Don, come here.”

  He came. “Do you see anything?”

  He peered up the stairwell, still uncarpeted: walls still the color of scorched, stripped wood. I saw him wince and shudder. For a moment he terrified me. “Shit. I suppose you mean that we should be painting. Rose, are you aware that this house is driving you crazy? No wonder you’re exhausted. You’re driving us both into the ground; does it really matter if the basement stairs don’t get painted for another month or two?”

  He stomped back to the tv, growling that I had ruined the evening. So we sat among the ruins, and when we went to bed I walked through the thing on the stairs as if it wasn’t there; and so did he.

  There’s No Use Crying Over Spilt Milk

  Suzy wasn’t sleeping well. I made no connection with my haunting, I thought it was her back teeth starting to come through. We took turns to monitor the baby listener, and I didn’t mind when it was my night. I liked having Suzy’s quiet breath and gentle stirrings, right by my pillow. I was half dreaming, storymaking, thinking of my cartoon characters, when I realized there was something wrong about Suzy’s breathing. So wrong that I was out of bed, and down the stairs instantly, stark naked, without pausing to grab a dressing gown. A white three-quarter moon was shining full in through the landing window, on the first floor, where Suzy’s room was the big sunny one at the front of the house. I saw it distinctly, in the moonlight, walking away from me slowly, breathing in heavy, effortful sighs. It had left the door of Suzy’s room a little ajar, the way we always do.

  Suzy was still asleep. In the blue glow of her mermaid nightlight, hugging my naked body in my arms, I watched her quiet breath. I could smell faint hospital smells: talcum powder, feces and disinfectant. There was an indentation in Suzy’s pillow, I put my own hand down beside it: those were not the marks of my fingers. An old woman with thickened, knotted finger joints had leaned down over the child. From the corner of the room a pile of helpless eyes watched me: Suzy’s toys. She did not wake; she did not cry. I felt cold, so cold. I went back to our room, and woke Don only to have some company.

  “I think I’ll keep her at home for a while,” I told him. “I’ll take some time off work: it won’t do me any harm.”

  He had been deeply asleep; he assumed I’d been dealing with another tearful session. He looked a little frightened. We’d always been so clear that I mustn’t fall into the part-time, second-job trap. I must pursue my career.

  “All right, if that’s what you want. If you really think it’s necessary.”

  I stayed at home, I shut my office, I worked like a demon at finishing the restoration. I was trying to placate an evil old goddess, whom I had offended by my life choices, and into whose temple I had then rashly strayed. Now she had my child hostage, and I must pay. So many hours of mindless drudgery, for Suzy’s life and freedom.

  But soon it wasn’t just me. Everybody noticed the change in Suzy. She had been such a bold, bouncy little person. It is not easy to tell the gender of a clothed child at that age, if the parents don’t provide obvious signals. Stupid people were always calling my Suzy a real little boy! When I corrected them she’d become a real little tomboy, the smile of approval diminished. Now no more. Suzy was quiet and good. She didn’t climb on stepladders; she didn’t climb out of her cot. Suzy became a proper little girl, her movements gentle, her play sedate. In the night, almost every night now, I heard that horrible breathing. And almost every night Suzy woke, sobbing: her eyes dilated in terror, her little heart thumping wildly as we held her and rocked her and walked her back to calm.

  Suzy was alone with me every day. She saw the struggle I managed to hide from everyone else. I tried to protect her from my daytime nightmares; I tried to explain to her that there was really nothing wrong with the basement stairs, it was only Mummy being silly. But soon she wanted to be carried if she had to go up or downstairs at all. I was the only one who knew what was wrong, and I dared not tell. I felt sympathy with those hysterical females in horror-movies. The woman who goes after the monster in her negligée and her feather mules, alone, because she just can’t bring herself to shake her husband and tell him: wake up! There’s a… A what? I could not tell. A bogey from my mind, leaning over Suzy’s cot at night and whispering terrible secrets, the petal-cheeked secrets all women have to learn, can’t start too soon.

  It was a Saturday afternoon, a sunny day in September. I was at work at my desk and Don was in charge of Suzy. As I had taught myself to think of nothing while I stripped and sanded and scrubbed the old woman’s body, I was teaching myself to live with the constant tingling nausea of fear in my belly. Life in a dentist’s waiting room, life in the last moments before the bad news becomes certain. What I was waiting for came: the breathing started.

  Such a disgusting noise: like an old man masturbating in a filthy public toilet. I could see his gap-toothed, foul-smelling mouth fall open, a little saliva dribbling out as he panted and gasped. I went out on the stairs and the sound followed me.

  I crouched, clinging to the banisters, looking into the hall below. Everything that I’d imagined, we had realized. Pearly sea colors lapped me around, foam-white, aquamarine, pale emerald. Sea-treasures decorated the walls: gathered far away and arranged on the shore of our new-found-land. Down below, the checkered tiles gleamed. But the horrible noise went on. I was thinking: I must tell someone. I’m going crazy, and I’m harming Suzy. And then the grandmother figure was there. In its styleless, timeless lilac dress and white cardigan it plodded along the hall. Outside Don’s den it disappeared.

  Something moved inside Don’s room, a small natural sound. I realized that he was in there. I ran down the stairs, pushed open his door.

  “Don — !”

  He’d made himself very cozy in there. The new desk that I’d bought for him stood in the window: two generous armchairs faced each other before the fireplace. The computer workstation lurked apologetically, half hidden by a Japanese lacquer screen. Suzy wasn’t with him: that was normal now. She was so quiet and good you could leave her playing by herself for half an hour or more. Don was sitting by the fine Adam-style fireplace that I had restored, his hands idle in his lap, no
book or newspaper in sight.

  He looked up, guiltily. I felt a flash of bitter jealousy, because of that look of guilt surprised. Maybe to him the spirit of this house was the motherly type that men love: who hurries to do them little services, gives them the kind of constant attention they can’t have from a liberated modern woman. Maybe she was often in here with him, massaging his ego with little psychic touches…

  “Don?”

  I touched the back of his chair and at once drew my hand away. She was here. That hideous, masturbatory gasping was in here, it filled the air. And I forgot what I had been going to say, because I looked into Don’s eyes and saw that he knew. He knew all about the thing that was in this room with us. I should have been relieved (I didn’t want to be mad), but instead I was plunged into deeper despair. There was nothing quaint or exciting about this experience; it was simply hideous. If we talked about it I’d have to say — we’ve got to get out of this place. And we couldn’t afford to leave.

  He must have realized all that ahead of me. He must have seen that we just had to put up with it. There are certain things, certain realities young people think they can refuse, but adults know they cannot; and since there was nothing to be done I too must learn not to see the ghost. I must learn to be like Don: never mention the pollution that had crept into our precious life. It was hard to think straight. Whatever I touched in here felt like flaccid warm skin. The dead weight of a body that could no longer support itself lay in my empty arms, and such pity for my lover filled me.

  “Don, I’ve been thinking. I don’t really need an office, and we could use another guest room. Why don’t I move down here and we can work together, the way things used to be…”

  He stared at me, deeply outraged, as if I were babbling trivialities at a death bed. I began to shake and sweat. What was I saying? What did money matter, when my child was hostage? Of course we had to get out!

  “Don, I’m sorry. I hardly know what I’m saying. I’ve got to talk to you about Suzy —”

  “Yes,” he said. “Yes… I know.”

  We went to the door of her room and stood looking in, in the bright sunlight. Suzy was sitting on the floor, playing with a sorting toy she had conquered weeks ago. As we watched, she gave up the unequal struggle and clambered to her feet. She took a few steps, and sat down again as carefully as an old lady. The room was neat: no strew of bricks, no tossed carnage of soft toys. Suzy sighed — an adult sound of human weariness — and watched the sunlight on the wall. She seemed quite content.

  Don took her for the tests, taking time off work. He understood why I didn’t want to go along. As soon as they were out of the house I fetched the dustsheets. I cleared every surface and shrouded the furniture in our “family room.” It was important to me that I should work with method, not like a crazy woman. I pulled the phone plug and put on my working clothes.

  I found destruction amazingly easy at first; such a relief. The fireplace with the cast iron lilies was all in one piece. I drilled out the new mortar from around the iron, until I could pull it free. The yellow wall of the chimney breast became spattered plaster and dirt, like gouts of blood. I was looking for something that was buried, so I ignored the gaping wound of the chimney’s throat and hacked at the stone hearth slab. A crowbar lifted it. I did not pause to be amazed at my own strength. Hysterical, they call it, what a mother’s body will do when her child is in danger. Women have lifted cars —

  I climbed down into the pit and began to dig. I turned on the brick piers and brought them down. I knew this ghost would not be laid by exhumation, but I went on. It was buried somewhere, everywhere in the bricks and mortar, the body of an evil old woman: the rotted bones of soft complacent age, the decay that was poisoning us. I hacked away, just as the builders had hacked away at the white lesions of rot. The smell of damp and decay came welling out like blood.

  I’d known all along this place was still rotten under our paint and polish: the rot still creeping, the old grey lungs still sodden with moisture. I would expose everything this time. I would drain the abscess, scour and burn… It was engrossing work. I was still hard at it, plastered red to the elbows with sweat and brick dust, when I heard Don’s key turn.

  I woke up. I saw the devastation that surrounded me: the filthy chaos that I’d made in the heart of our home. I had a moment of blind panic: He’ll have me locked up! Don came down the basement stairs with Suzy in his arms. He stood staring at what I had done, neither shocked nor surprised, his face a mirror of my own helpless desperation.

  What Can’t Be Cured Must Be Endured

  Time has passed, oh aeons of time; and to think I once imagined six months was a lot to lose. It is late evening. I’m sitting in the family room, reading and watching television. The fuel-effect gas fire flickers in our chrome and steel fire pit: providing a space-age coziness that somehow works very well with the period furnishings. Don is in his den. Spending time apart from each other, when we can, has become a blessed relief. I do some script doctoring: well enough that they pay me. I don’t know what Don gets up to. We could go out more often, one at a time. We can get help; it wouldn’t be impossible. But neither of us wants to be away from our little old lady for long.

  What’s it like to live in a haunted house? It’s frightening, disturbing, irritating; and finally you just put up with it. Sometimes I wake in the night and hear that terrible sound, which has become familiar and accustomed. I go next door, if it is my turn, into the faint sour sickroom smell that nothing can quite expunge and tend the young-old body that grows a little more helpless every day. I am possessed by an alien consciousness. A lost Rose shouts and struggles, and has violent, ruthless visions of escape for herself and her child. But it doesn’t last. We will escape, Don and I, soon enough.

  Of course it will be too late (as Rose always feared). I don’t suppose we’ll ever move, for one thing. There’s too much that we love, too many memories buried here. And I don’t honestly think I could face the rat race again, even if it would have me. “It isn’t our fault!” That was Don’s first cry when he brought her home, on the day we will remember forever as the most important in our lives. He meant that Suzy’s illness is not hereditary.

  Even now, no one really knows why children like Suzy suffer and die. Statistics point accusingly to a pesticide that was in general use when I was pregnant (it’s banned in this country now). But nothing’s proven. And perhaps Don and I, although at first we demanded answers like a pair of remorseless furies, are happier in ignorance. Too little, too late: my fantasy that I would try to save the world for Suzy’s sake seems so absurd now.

  It’s better not to think too much. Better to stay at home and let the world look after itself. This house. I should have known that remodeling was not enough. We should have razed the whole structure to the ground, burned the foundations to bedrock… Sometimes I torment myself by thinking like that. I struggle with the conviction that I was warned, that there was a chance and I didn’t take it, I wasn’t brave enough. More often I don’t. I accept that there was never any alternative, and that’s what the ghost came to tell me.

  There’s no more need for a warning now, but I think as long as we live in this house the figure on the stairs will always be there, looking back at me over its shoulder. I will find myself a little closer, and a little closer, as the years go by, until at last I can recognize the face. I find it very hard to switch out of my busy mode nowadays. When I force myself to relax I end up like this, neither watching the tv nor reading my book. In a moment I’ll have to fetch myself something to do. It scarcely matters what.

  March 1989

  The Early Crossing

  The sand was the fine-grained estuary kind: “sand” by courtesy, really mud. It recalled childhood places, cold holiday outings. It sucked and puddled slightly under my shoes. The wide horizon ahead of me was glistening brown like the sand. There was a long wrack of clouds, and above it a band of paler sky, fading to dark again into the zenith. I could see the fold
s and texture of the clouds, and light lay glistening in long skeins across the saturated tidal sands. There were no birds. I felt chilled and half asleep from getting up so early. I walked fast, my habitual pace when alone, with my head down. I realized that someone was walking behind me. He came up beside me and made some remark about how early it was. I didn’t look at him directly, but I saw a thin, leathery-faced little man, like a jockey. He bent and touched my leg, on the calf. Then I knew I was in trouble.

  I pretended nothing had happened and walked faster. We had reached the other side of the estuary and passed into a narrow place, still a track not a road. He jumped me there. But I fought him off. I got up and ran away. I reached the first house: it was still twilight. I told the people there that I’d come over because I was worried about my son. He’d gone to his karate class and I hadn’t seen him since.

  They were very kind. I didn’t tell them I’d been attacked, but I felt how I was begging for kindness, reassurance; and I could see they’d noticed something strange. The woman showed me into an untidy room; there were signs of arts and crafts and hobbies lying about, and it was unheated, a kind of studio. I heard the woman talking, on the phone I thought. She sounded frightened. I was so worried about Gabriel. I looked in a mirror on the wall. I was wearing familiar clothes, but I saw a strange coppery glimmer over the front of my emerald green jumper. I stared at it, trying to understand, and then I realized what was wrong with the woman out in the hall. She had seen a ghost — she had seen me. In a moment she’d look into this room, and I’d be gone. I was a ghost. I was dead. I would never see Gabriel again.

  The story rushed in on me: I had been murdered, probably, by that leathery little man. There were no estuary sands, that was my ghost’s image of a cold and lonely return across the borderline. I think I was sitting down. The woman was still talking. I felt such loss, such desolation, such an understanding of death.

  June 1997