All of a sudden the Volvo tilted upward and the trailer hitched behind it, carrying all of their worldly possessions, clunked loudly. They had pulled into a driveway.
“Well, what do you think?” David asked.
She looked up to see a lovely enclosure of trees, wild cherry, fir, and willow with long golden catkins and slender, pointed green fronds swaying gracefully in the breeze. And in the center of the green cathedral of trees and surrounded by wildly untended hedges and what had once been a beautiful lawn, was one of the most picturesque cottages she had ever seen. It looked like something out of Snow White. Its whitewashed walls were flaking and dappled with rain marks, and its quaint, steep, thatched roof was here and there in need of repair, but it still seemed like something more out of a fairy tale than a place where one might actually live.
She bit her lip, withholding her final assessment until she had seen more. “It looks like it could use some work,” she snipped.
David was unabashed. “Wait until you see the inside.”
They got out of the car, Ben, Tuck, and Katy piling out like spilled marbles.
“Wow!” yelled Katy as she stood and gazed with amazement at the cottage. Both Tuck and Ben, being less receptive to such aesthetic considerations, took advantage of the moment to run off some extraneous energy and bounded off in opposite directions.
David opened the gate in the old stone fence that surrounded the house, which creaked loudly. “Got to take care of that,” he commented.
They went into the cottage. Melanie then realized that because of its simple design the cottage had seemed deceptively small from the outside. It was really quite vast. Before them was a cavernous entrance hall, lofty and heavily raftered with huge balks of age-blackened oak. To the left was a large living room with a huge, old-fashioned fireplace dominating most of one wall, and at the end of the entrance hall a beautifully balustraded staircase led upstairs. As she surveyed the place she took in more of its details, the high, thin windows of old stained glass, the oak paneling, the stags’ heads on the walls. She also noticed that everything, the heavy and lugubrious furniture and the long-disused torcheres, was covered with a thick layer of dust.
“Does it have indoor plumbing?” she asked.
“It’s old, but it works,” David replied. He flicked a switch and an ancient chandelier clicked on overhead. “It also has electricity.”
She looked at him truculently. “It better have.”
“Come on. I want to show you the rest of the place.” They proceeded through the remainder of the house, the huge kitchen and full pantry, the gun room and den, and the five large bedrooms upstairs and servant’s bedroom downstairs. And everywhere it was the same. The cottage had once been magnificent, a story-book dream. It was conceivable that it could be so again. But it was in a staggering state of neglect. Everywhere Melanie looked there were things to be done, wallpaper to be rehung, carpets to be washed, grass and weeds to be cut, door hinges to be tightened, and runner boards to be renailed. And every place one looked in the old and rambling edifice there was an almost endless amount of dusting and scrubbing to be attended to.
They ended up in the kitchen, gazing out the back door of the house at an overgrown vegetable garden and still more unkempt lawn.
“Well, what do you think?” David asked.
She didn’t know what to say. She knew he wanted her to be happy, but she also knew on whose shoulders the brunt of the housework would fall. Instead of taking the bull by the horns she chose to be evasive. “How much did you say the Marquis whatever his name was, was willing to rent the place for?”
“That doesn’t matter. A pittance.”
“Have you given him the money yet?”
“Not to him directly. I gave it to the vicar, Mr. Venables. He functions as the Marquis’s agent.” Melanie felt a sinking feeling. She thought to herself, so there’s no backing out then. It wasn’t that she didn’t like the house. A part of it tugged at her romantic soul. She was about to turn to her husband and force a smile when she noticed that the windows in the kitchen were composed of an almost uncountable number of little leaded glass squares, each one a grimy nightmare of a cleaning job.
Suddenly Tuck and Ben charged into the kitchen, a bit of yellow fluff from the catkins of the willows caught in Tuck’s brown hair. “Mom, I’m thirsty.”
“Then go get your cup out of the car and I’ll give you a drink.”
Tuck reappeared moments later with the requested cup. Melanie turned the tap on and was pleased at least to see that the water that came out of the ancient spigot was cold and crystal clear.
She gave the glass of water to her son and then turned once again toward David. “I almost forgot to ask, what about Brad? Is he going to be living here with us?” David looked at her with surprise. “Oh, I guess I forgot to tell you. He’s going to continue to live in his tent. I’m sure he’ll be coming here to take showers and stuff, but he said he wanted to keep an eye on the site at night and make sure no one disturbs anything. I tried to convince him he would be more comfortable here, but you know how strange he is. I think he just can’t bear the thought of living with other people.”
Melanie looked aghast. The thought of Brad spending his evenings alone in a tent out on the moors and with several dead bodies so close by, no less, was horrifying to her beyond words. “God,” she said, her flesh crawling as if someone had drawn a dead lizard across her breast. “How can he do it?”
David shrugged. “I don’t know. It even gives me a chill, but you know Brad. He’s quiet, but he’s got moxie.”
Tuck looked up at his father curiously, but David addressed Melanie again. “So, you still haven’t said anything. How do you like the place?”
Once again she surveyed the air around her, silently chiding herself for being so phony as to pretend that she had yet to make up her mind. Unable to put it off any longer she looked her husband squarely in the eyes.
“I could love it. It has great promise, but honestly I think it will kill me to try to get it into livable condition.”
David grinned from ear to ear. “That’s why we’re going to hire someone to do it.”
Melanie looked at her husband with disbelief. “What do you mean?”
“I didn’t tell you because I was saving it as a surprise. Because of the promising discoveries we’ve made already I got another grant. Along with the fact that the rent is so low here it means we can hire a full-time cleaning woman. And then once the house is in shape she can help with the cooking, do the shopping, take care of the kids. It’ll give you some freedom, some time for yourself.”
Melanie couldn’t believe it. One moment she had felt so depressed, so hemmed in. Now she was swept with such a sudden euphoria that tears welled up in her blue eyes. She rushed forward and embraced her husband. “You dog. You could have told me.”
David kissed her and then drew back and looked her in the eyes. “And ruin the surprise?”
She started to bill and coo girlishly as she squeezed him again. Tuck apparently found such exuberant displays of affection baffling and annoying, and he plunked his cup down loudly on the counter and once again tore back out of the kitchen with Ben, as always, right behind.
Suddenly able to view the entire proposition in a new light, for the moment Melanie put her unhappiness about being there aside and stood back and once again examined the kitchen. “Gosh, give these stone walls a good scrubbing and they’d be beautiful,” she purred. She walked over and started to tinker with the stove. Several seconds later, as it turned out, they both happened to lapse into silence at exactly the same time and one of those hushes that occasionally envelopes the world seemed to fall over the entire house. For a few moments everything was lost in the stillness, and then, distinctly, there was the sound of scurrying somewhere beneath the floorboards.
Melanie turned white as a sheet. “What was that?” David sighed patiently. “I’m sure it’s nothing. Probably just some small harmless animal of some sort.
You know, the house has been empty for a long time. There’s bound to be a few critters taking refuge in various nooks and crannies.”
This had not been the right thing to say. Melanie turned a sort of gray color. “What do you mean nooks and crannies? You mean there may be things in the tiouse?”
“Nah,” David said, trying desperately to assuage her fears. “I mean there are probably only things in places that can be reached from the outside.”
Melanie grew paler still. “What if it’s rats?”
“We’ll get rid of them.”
“How?”
“I’ll buy some poison the first time I go into town.” Yes, indeed, he would, Melanie asserted, but this was still a solution too remote to offer any comfort right now. And before David was allowed to do anything else, even unload the car, he found himself going from room to room banging on all of the floors, walls, and even the ceilings, with a broom.
It was about half an hour later, while David was unloading the trailer, that Ben first started to behave strangely. At first David didn’t really notice. In the back of his mind he was aware that Ben seemed to be barking a lot and was no longer bounding around as happily as he had been, but David did not initially register the behavior as unusual. It wasn’t until Tuck came up and interrupted his work that he began to pay attention.
“Daddy, something is wrong with Ben.”
“What do you mean?” David said, continuing to vork.
“He won’t stop barking. I think he’s afraid of something.”
Grunting, David lowered the box he was unloading and looked across the lawn. For the first time he observed that the black Labrador retriever was no longer running, but had come to a complete standstill and was barking mournfully in the direction of the moors. Occasionally he would pause in his baying and sniff the air carefully, and then, as if he caught a whiff of something that he felt was of danger to the family, he would break into his barking once again.
“Ben!” David called. “What is it?”
The dog paused in his barking and looked in David’s direction, and when he saw that he had captured David’s attention, whined piteously. For a moment it seemed that he was desperately trying to convey something to David but, on confronting failure, turned and took up his curious vigil once again.
“Daddy, why is he doing that?” Tuck asked anxiously.
“It’s nothing,” David calmed.
“But why won’t he stop barking?” Tuck continued.
David knelt down and put his arm around his son comfortingly. “Tuck, it’s okay. This place is new for Ben just like it’s new for you. He just needs to tell everyone that he’s here.”
Tuck seemed to accept the explanation, but was still gazing in Ben’s direction when Melanie appeared at the front door of the cottage.
“Tucker, come inside, I need you to help me unpack your stuff.”
“Okay, Mom,” Tuck yelled as he ran into the house. David smiled, pleased that Melanie’s request had taken Tuck’s mind off of Ben’s unusual behavior, as he once again hoisted the box onto his shoulder.
After dinner that evening, David noticed that Tuck was glued to the television, newly installed in the living room of the cottage. Katy, as usual, had her nose in a book and was curled up in an armchair some distance away. David directed his attention toward Tuck.
“Have you finished that book on dolphins yet?”
Tuck looked up disconsolately. “Nooo,” he groaned.
“Have you done any reading today?”
Again Tuck replied in the negative.
“Well don’t you think you should get a little reading in before you go to bed?”
“Oh, Dad, I’m watching television.”
“I know, but I thought you and I had an agreement, that every day you would get just a little reading in?”
At that moment David felt Melanie tugging at him gently from behind. He looked at her and she gestured for him to follow her into the entranceway. They made it a point never to discuss the children in front of the children.
She looked at her husband softly. “Don’t you think that today’s a special day with the moving and all? I mean, he’s only six years old. He’s been running around like a banshee all day and he’s exhausted. Couldn’t he have an occasional reprieve from the heavy reading schedule you demand of him?”
“Oh, honey, but he’s watching television.”
“You watch television.”
“Only the news, and an occasional educational show. Did you see what he’s watching? Benny Hill.”
She sighed. “I know, but every once in a while it’s not going to kill him.”
“But it’s mindless.”
“But every once in a while it’s good to be mindless, like when you’re exhausted, or battle-fatigued from having your entire world shifted beneath you. And sometimes just for the sheer joy of doing something mindless.”
He grimaced.
She looked at her husband imploringly. “Don’t you remember how it was being a kid?”
This caused him to regard her sharply. Of course he remembered. He remembered his father ripping up his books if he caught him reading. He remembered drunken brawls, the perpetual mist of alcohol around his father’s face. That was why he was so driven in his own thirst for knowledge, why he was so demanding of his children, so critical of their friends. David’s father had been a factory worker and a horror. He had wanted David to grow up fulfilling only his strict mold of what it meant to be a man. In short, to learn to fistfight, to eschew books, to become a factory worker, and ultimately to end his life as he himself had, accomplishing nothing, learning nothing, and dying, a spent and broken man amidst an ocean of beer cans and empty Jack Daniel’s bottles.
That was when Melanie put the final nail in her argument. “You don’t want to end up as demanding as your father was, only in the opposite direction, do you?”
He looked at her solemnly. No, indeed, he did not want to end up like that. “Very well,” he conceded. “I guess it won’t hurt him to watch Benny Hill every once in a while.”
He walked back into the living room. “Tuck, if you want to just watch television tonight, go ahead. You can read some more of the dolphin book tomorrow.”
“Thanks, Dad,” Tuck chirped obliviously, his eyes remaining glued to the glowing tube.
David spent the rest of the evening helping Melanie put the house into some semblance of order. When night finally came he found to his surprise that he was actually looking forward to the unconsciousness of sleep. Normally, he was so consumed in his studies, his own reading, and the constant racing of his thoughts, that he usually found it difficult to pull away from it all and go to bed. Tonight, however, he was quite looking forward to being lost in the arms of Morpheus.
He went upstairs, but before going into his bedroom he paused to look in on the children one last time. He knocked on Katy’s door first.
“Just a minute! Don’t come in!” she screamed immediately from beyond.
David smiled. She had become so excruciatingly modest and vulnerable since she had entered adolescence. There was a time not too many years back when she would have paraded around in front of him with just a pair of shorts on, but suddenly she had become acutely self-conscious about even the most innocent of things. This afternoon, while they were unpacking the trailer, a pair of her simple cotton panties had fallen out of a box in front of him and he thought she was going to die of embarrassment. Nonetheless, he knew that he had to do everything in his power to refrain from showing his amusement at such incidents. He knew that it was all a part of growing up.
“Ready yet?” he called.
“Okay,” she returned.
He opened the door. When he entered he found her sitting up in bed with her flannel nightie laced tightly around her neck and looking decidedly unhappy.
“Katy, what is it?” he asked as he sat down on the bed beside her. He felt a sinking feeling, assuming that her disconsolation could only be due to their recent mo
ve. For several long moments she said nothing, and he gently took her hand. “Katy, won’t you tell me?”
Finally, she looked at him, her eyes revealing that she was still struggling to find the words to express her misery, and then at last she spoke. “Oh, Dad, why did you have to name me Katharine?”
This was not at all what he had been expecting, and he had to think about it for a moment. “What’s wrong with the name Katharine?”
“It’s just that it’s such an old-fashioned name,” she said. She fidgeted nervously, and he realized there was still something she wasn’t telling him.
“Come on,” he prodded, “this is me you’re talking to. What’s caused you to suddenly become so unhappy about your name?”
Again she looked at him agitatedly, still reluctant to confide the truth, and then finally she came out with it. “I don’t like the name Katharine because it’s the same name Catherine the Great had and Rupert Riesdale in my fourth-hour history class told me that Catherine the Great died while she was having sex with a horse.” David just sat blinking silently for several moments. Again, this was not what he had expected. His initial reaction was to be appalled at what his thirteen-year-old daughter had just come out with, but he decided the best tack was to take it in stride and deal with it calmly.
“Well, I’ve heard that story also, but as far as I know it’s apocryphal.”
“What’s apocryphal.
“Greatly in doubt. Most sources I’ve read say she died when an artery ruptured in her brain, and she was alone in her bed at the time.”
Katy seemed only slightly appeased.
“And besides, we didn’t name you after Catherine the Great. We named you after Katharine Hepburn. Just before you were born your mom and I saw her in Pat and
Mike and we liked the movie so much we started thinking about the name. Does that make you feel any better?”
Apparently it did not, for Katy looked at him sulkily. “I was named after an actress?” she asked disparagingly.
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