by Roma Tearne
After the business of the will and the house, after the years of animosity, my brother Jack and I were finally on speaking terms. During the years of our disagreement he had pestered me constantly to sell the house. Ostensibly the reason he had given was that I should not live in such isolation in this house.
‘For God’s sake, Ria, sell the bloody place,’ he was always saying. ‘What does a woman in your position want with a mausoleum like that?’
What he meant was, what did a woman of forty-three, an unloved spinster like me, want with a house that by rights should belong to a family like his. Eel House had not been left to him but to me. There had, however, been a clause in the will. If it were sold, he would have half the money from its sale. My brother Jack was a strange, restless man, frequently angry, sometimes a bully. We did not know what to make of each other, so that, ignoring the sub-texts of our disagreements I had inadvertently ignored his warnings about safety. Only yesterday he had told me I needed new locks on the doors and windows.
‘I suppose you’re waiting for me to sort it out,’ he had said.
Bitterness from childhood flashed between us. I was weary of it. I had offered him every access to the house. I told him that he could use it at any time and that I would share everything with him. It was not as if he were poor; he had been left our London home by our mother. All I had was Eel House and the small amount of dwindling savings from my days as a university lecturer. Nonetheless, Jack wanted me to sell up and split the money. But for once I stood up to him. Our mother was no longer there to take his side. Miranda had always, to her credit, stayed neutral, so I told him firmly I would never sell the house. It was the beginning of a feud that was to last for years, until Ant left and Miranda, feeling sorry for me, rang up.
The truth was I hadn’t cared; either about his never-ending resentment, or my own safety. These days I was past caring about anything much, except perhaps for the fact that I had not completed a poem in nearly two years. Everything had dried up inside me.
Now, belatedly, fear stirred within me and I hesitated; tomorrow morning might be too late. Of course, I didn’t think this. When you are frightened all your mind has time for is the fear itself, and by now I admit I was frightened. It took some effort for me to open the door and head for the landing. I held an open penknife in my hand. It was laughable. Everything creaked. All those boards that were usually silent moved with me as I crept downstairs. Several times I froze, straining my ears. The moon was still behind the clouds; there was no light on the marshes. I was convinced someone was in the kitchen. What I needed was to get as far as the hall in order to find the telephone. The phones being portable, none were ever where they should be. Too late to be thinking about this, now.
Slowly I inched my way along the hall, barefoot, skimpily dressed, clutching that ridiculous penknife. What if he was a rapist? Don’t be stupid, Ria, I told myself, you’re too old to interest a rapist! I tried not to think about the incident that had occurred a few days ago in Aldeburgh when a woman had been held at knife-point. The woman had been a circus hand, but still, the police had urged people in the area to lock their doors. I reached the telephone just as the church clock struck the quarter. The only number I could ring at this hour was the police, but I was reluctant to do so. This was a small community; word would get out. People knew my brother Jack. He was bound to hear of it. He would tell me triumphantly, finally, I was losing my nerve! I would play into his hands at last, and the insidious process of ousting me from the house and putting it up for sale would begin. I hesitated. I swear the only reason I didn’t punch in the number was the thought of Jack’s smug face and in that moment, while I stood uncertainly, without warning, the outside light flickered on. I flattened myself against the wall and held my breath. There was the unmistakable sound of gravel and then, footsteps, fading away. I don’t know how long I stood there, rooted to the spot, but eventually the light switched off again. The moon reappeared showing its damaged side, barely above dream level. I blinked and found the switch in the hall.
Nothing, there was nothing. An unmistakable sense of disappointment flooded over me. The penknife was still in my hand. I closed it, turned the key in the back door, (yes, it was unlatched) and pulled down the blinds. Then, getting myself a drink of water from the jug in the fridge, I went upstairs and fell into an exhausted sleep, not realising I was still clutching the telephone.
The following day was Friday and I awoke late. Sarah the cleaner had let herself in and was just finishing downstairs.
‘You’re tired,’ she said when she saw me emerge. ‘Late night?’
‘Yes.’
I went over to make some tea. My weekly organic box was on the work surface. There were the last of the broad beans, field mushrooms and asparagus. There was no fruit. I had asked for cherries, some raspberries, but there was nothing. Not even apples. Sarah was vacuuming the stairs. I could hear her banging the nozzle against the banisters with more vigour than seemed necessary. I knew she had stolen the fruit. Every time she came she stole something, however small. It was a token of…I’m not sure what. Some suppressed rage. I knew she didn’t like me. Once I had confronted her with some CDs I’d found in her bag and she had pretended to be dumbfounded.
‘I’ve no idea how they got there,’ she had said.
As if it was my fault. I know she stole money, too, but I had no way of proving it. Since it wasn’t possible to get another cleaner to come this far out of town, I continued to keep her on, but I didn’t leave anything of value lying around. I was on the point of looking in her bag for the missing fruit when she walked back into the kitchen and glared at me. Sighing, I picked up the paper and went into the dining room. Jack, Miranda and their children would have left London by now. I could hear Sarah going back upstairs to put clean sheets on all the beds. Then she would wash the kitchen floor and then, thank goodness, she would leave. It was almost ten. I sipped my tea and suddenly, without any warning, I remembered the swimmer. My God! How could I have forgotten him?
Solitude creates a peculiar inner life. Unbroken silence, frightening to begin with, soon becomes a way of life. At mealtimes there is only the clatter of one set of crockery, the crunch of your own teeth on food, the sound of yourself swallowing. When Ant was no longer there to bounce my thoughts off those things that had been suppressed for years began to turn endlessly in my head. There was no one to shout, Stop, stop, you’re going crazy. If you are unloved, as I was, husbandless, childless, you develop a way of thinking and being that is haphazard. Life pares down, sex becomes something other people engage in, like dancing. However much you longed for it, all you had was yourself. This was how I was at forty-three. Years before, when Jack first brought Miranda home (Ant had not yet made his brief appearance in my life) I could tell he thought of me as a born spinster.
‘My sister is frigid,’ I imagined him saying, making her giggle.
Hard to think of her giggling now, but in the early days, I used to be able to tell simply by the way Miranda looked at me, she was thinking, Oh yes, frigid. Definitely! I was not frigid. Someone had to suggest sex before they could call you frigid. There was no one to do that then or now.
In some sense life closed down for me after the shock of my father’s death. Until then, I’ve been told I was a chatty, friendly child. Happy, too, I believe. Now and then glimpses of that girlhood flit across my dreams; sunlight on an otherwise shadowed life, insubstantial like light, vanishing as I wake. The woman I am today is still possessed by that invisible child.
Last night’s appearance of the swimmer had the quality of those dreams. I remembered a mosaic I had once seen in the archaeological museum in Naples. That too had been of a swimmer. Thin arms, rising slightly, slim hips, head poised as he bent to retrieve his clothes. What nonsense the night throws up, I thought. In the daylight it was unimaginable that I had been frightened. Stirring myself, I decided to tidy the garden before Jack arrived.
‘I’m off then,’ Sarah said, coming in,
making me jump.
She stared at me, her face resentful as she waited for her pay.
What the hell was she angry about? I’m the one whose fruit had been stolen. I hesitated.
‘Sarah,’ I said, handing over her money, ‘I’m afraid…I’m sorry, but I’m not going to need any cleaning for a while. The house is going to be full for a month. It’s a bit pointless trying to tidy up.’
She had a bullish look. She wasn’t going to make it easy for me.
‘I’ll tell you what, I’ll contact you after the summer, shall I?’
‘Are you giving me the sack?’ she asked.
‘No, no, Sarah…’
God! The woman made my flesh creep.
‘I’m just suggesting we have a bit of a break.’
‘You’ll lose me,’ she said threateningly.
‘Yes, I see that.’
‘I’m not going to wait around. There are others who’ll want me.’
I looked at her helplessly.
‘I’ll take a chance,’ I said.
I should have sacked her months ago.
‘Please yourself then,’ she said.
And she left, taking my fruit and who knows what else with her.
It was eleven by now. Jack would be here by four. The house smelt of the eucalyptus polish that Sarah insisted on using. Sunlight poured in through the kitchen window. Relieved to be rid of her, I went upstairs.
In the shower I thought once more of the swimmer. Warm water flowed over me. I felt a spurt of energy, the first in months, and the stirring of a possible poem. The emptiness I carried around within me receded slightly. I felt moulded in wetness and light. When I was younger, during that awkward adolescent stage, Uncle Clifford used to say I had the look of Kate in the novel The Go-Between. What he meant was, I think, I looked a bit like the actress who played the part of Kate in the film version. I can’t remember her name but she had blue eyes (as I do), and fair, wavy hair, like mine. Why am I saying this? What difference can it possibly make, except perhaps to present the picture of what I once was, what I might have been, had the circumstances been right? Tall and willowy, Ant had said, in our moments of passion. With a sensuous mouth. For some reason I thought of this now.
It is important that I describe the fabric of that day and the days that followed. After I dressed, I went outside into the garden and picked some white Japanese anemones. The sky was cloudless. That summer, the heat had built up in layers, slowly, beautifully, like daily washes of transparent colour, hinting at how it would be remembered in years to come. The greengages were luminescent in the light, heavy with juice, golden like the sun. I walked towards the place where my swimmer had stood, beside the willow, just where the bank sloped into the water. Dragonflies skimmed the surface of the water, iridescent beetles looking like prehistoric creatures moved along the riverbank. I stared. I’m not sure what I had expected. There was no trace of any presence. The air buzzed with invisible activity. Some of the long grass looked slightly flattened, although that was probably my imagination. I walked back towards the house thinking, I ought to cut it today.
By lunchtime the garden was beginning to look better. I had cut the lawn closest to the house. Perhaps Jack’s children could be persuaded to help me with the furthest bits where neglect had cultivated weeds. The fish I ordered from the local fishmonger arrived and I made some soup. Then I took my lunch out on to the terrace where the sun lay trapped in its own bubble of heat. From here I could see the inlet glistening and snaking towards the river. And in the distance, if I squinted, I could make out the barbed-wire fence and the tomb-like structure that was all that was left of the military base of Orford Ness. The best view of it was from my first-floor study window, where I would often gaze mesmerised at its melancholy, desert-like bleakness. The sun retreated momentarily behind the Scotch pines, sending sharp pinpoints of lights on to the trellis of roses. I sat finishing off the wine from last night and once again I felt the beginnings of a poem bubble up. I must relax, I decided, closing my eyes. I must not get too anxious, or think of the disruption of the impending visit. Perhaps, I thought hopefully, they would go to the sea every day, leaving me free to work for a few hours. Although the sea was within striking distance, hardly two miles away, there was no view of it from the house. It might just as well not have existed. Eel House had no connection with it. Out of sight, out of mind. Even our gardens had a lushness not usually associated with the coast.
The afternoon moved slowly on. Guiltily, I wanted their car to break down, or the children to fall ill. I resisted an urge to drive out towards the fens and not return, to walk with the wind in my face and the reeds rustling beside the water’s edge. But the soup was almost ready and I had a loaf of bread in the oven. At three I glanced at my watch; they would be here in three-quarters of an hour. Going back out into the garden I cut handfuls of flowers; roses and some tendrils of honeysuckle. Then I filled a vase and went into the sitting room. It was a room I rarely used, except when I had visitors. Because of this the door was nearly always closed and as I approached from the kitchen with my huge jug of flowers, I registered, though with no special significance, that it was now ajar. I placed the jug on the top of the small Bechstein piano I had inherited. As I did so, a piece of sheet music drifted to the floor. I picked it up, stuffing it back into the seat of the piano stool. Then I plumped up the cushions and hurried out, for a car had driven up towards the front door. Jack, Miranda and the children had arrived early.
‘When are you going to have this kitchen refitted?’ were my brother’s first words as he walked in. ‘I can’t understand how you can live like this.’
I took a deep breath.
‘Very easily,’ I said. ‘It’s a nice kitchen. It’s got character!’
Jack snorted. He placed two boxes full of groceries on the table.
‘We didn’t think you’d have anything civilised in your larder, so we’ve brought a contribution,’ he said.
I raised an eyebrow and Miranda frowned.
‘Jack!’ she mumbled.
I thought she might kick him. The children came rushing in, full of some talk of a grass snake. They looked around the kitchen as though I was invisible.
‘I’m starving,’ Zach said.
‘Hello, you two!’
I was determined to keep all irony out of my voice.
‘For goodness’ sake,’ Miranda said, ‘at least give Aunty Ria a kiss.’
She was already sounding harassed; probably she and Jack had been quarrelling on the way here.
‘We should have stopped off for something to eat,’ Jack said. ‘I told you she’d have nothing.’
‘Welcome to Eel House,’ I said.
Two weeks seemed like a long time.
Later we had supper on the terrace overlooking the water. There had been some talk of driving into Snape or even Aldeburgh, but in the end I cooked a mushroom risotto followed by sea bass and fennel. Needless to say, they ate the lot. Afterwards, Jack pushed his plate away and looked speculatively at me. My heart sank as he helped himself to more wine.
‘Well? Have you had any more thoughts on the house?’
I groaned inwardly. I had thought the subject had been dropped.
‘Look, Jack,’ I said, ‘we’ve been round this so many times. I don’t care if this is a good time to sell, I don’t care if the kitchen is antiquated, I don’t care about the money. Please, let’s not start it all up again. I’m simply not going to sell.’
There was a small silence.
‘So you want me to service your boiler,’ my brother said.
‘No, I don’t. That isn’t what I said!’
He looked at me. Perfectly calm, indolent, ready for another argument, loving it. Yes, I thought, here we go. It was what he used to do when we were growing up and he’d return from boarding school wanting something that belonged to me. Later, he used to get money out of me in this way, slowly, draining away my savings, wearing me down, weakening my resolve. Well, he wasn’
t going to do that any more. Love might never have existed between us for all the show there was of it now. We were children from the same womb, fathered by the same man, but separated by a shared past.
‘It will probably blow up and kill you,’ he said.
I stared into the distance of the darkening garden, my face tightening. His nastiness always took me by surprise.
‘Sell the house, Ria,’ he said again, softly.
In the twilight I could see his teeth as he spoke. They were small and even, and very white. The children were watching us, fascinated.
‘Who would like some raspberry tart and cream?’ I asked.