The House of Whispers

by Anna Kent

  I closed the front door and turned to face the hall, listening to the sound of its stillness. The house seemed to shift within itself, tightening its walls around me, constricting like a corset, readjusting itself to the diminished energy it now enclosed. The air pressure felt heavier; a weight pushing down on my bones. I couldn’t picture Grace here. Grace in the house. Tonight. My insides were jelly.

  ‘It’s just us now,’ I said to break the silence and, on cue, Alfie appeared on the stairs, his tail a twitching question mark, his claws clicking. He curled around my ankles and I bent to give him a stroke. ‘I’m at the hospice today, but Grace’s coming tonight,’ I told him. ‘You’ll like her. She’s more fun than I am.’

  Alfie continued twisting around my ankles, pushing against me as I tickled his head. He was very much my cat, although it had been Rohan who’d picked him out. I wondered if Alfie still remembered the day he’d arrived home in a grey plastic pet carrier, which Rohan had plonked on the hall floor right where the two of us now stood.

  ‘Abi! Come and see what I’ve got!’ Rohan had called. It had been about a year after we’d married.

  ‘What on earth?’ I’d asked, emerging from the kitchen and realizing with a thud in my solar plexus that my husband had brought home an animal.

  ‘You need to love something besides me,’ Rohan had said with a sheepish smile on his face. ‘It’s too much pressure.’

  From inside the carrier came a mew. A series of mews.

  ‘Aren’t you going to open it?’ Rohan said.

  ‘Are you serious?’

  ‘He’s from the rescue centre,’ Rohan said. ‘Though how anyone could abandon him I’ve no idea. He’s about a year old, they think. Vaccinated and neutered. Go on, take a look.’

  I’d knelt down in front of the carrier, unfastened the door and come face to face with a small silver tabby cat with clear green eyes. He stepped forward and, without hesitation, rubbed his cheek on my hand, then on my knee, then all over me. Warming to the idea of a cat, I stroked his back – his fur soft and surprisingly thin; underneath the fur, his body had been smaller than it seemed. The cat’s back arched up to meet my hand, his spine pushing against my palm. His movements around my legs left a swathe of silver cat hair on the black of my jogging pants. I wore paler colours now.

  Rohan’s smile had cracked his face. ‘I think he likes you,’ he’d said. ‘What do you think? Is there room in your heart for both of us?’ He’d given me a boyish smile. ‘But seriously, if you don’t want him, I’ll…’

  I’d scooped up the cat and cuddled his little body against me. His purrs had vibrated against my chest.

  ‘He’s lovely,’ I’d said.

  ‘Phew.’ Rohan had mock-wiped his brow.

  ‘What’s his name?’

  ‘At the shelter they called him Catty McCatface, but I’m sure he’ll go with whatever you want.’

  ‘Alphonsus,’ I said. ‘Alfie.’

  ‘Good. It’s good for you to have something to look after while I’m out all day,’ Rohan had said with a nod. ‘It’s good practice for when the baby comes.’

  Now, Alfie and I looked at each other.

  ‘Are you going to help me check Grace’s room?’ I asked him. ‘We’ve got to make sure everything’s ready for her.’

  I straightened up and looked at the hallway, imagining how Grace would see it when she stepped through the front door this evening. What would she think of ‘the old heap’, as Rohan liked to call the house? Given what we’d started with, I was proud of what we’d achieved before we’d run out of both cash and energy.

  ‘It’s enough for now, babe,’ Rohan had said, his arms encircling me as we waltzed a lap of the new kitchen, the new digital radio turned up loud. ‘Let’s just rest for a bit,’ and, fed up of dust and builders and the constant downward drag of the credit-card bill, I’d agreed – but now I wondered: was it enough? Our house still stood out on Albert Road among all the nicely maintained homes; it never quite managed to shake off the air of decrepitness I’d felt when I’d first seen it, despite how much we did.

  ‘Come on, Alfie,’ I said, hurrying up the stairs to try and disperse the feeling I had that I was disturbing something. The hairs on the back of my neck prickled as if I were being watched. I paused on the landing, then turned quickly. Alfie was behind me, his back arched and his eyes huge and unblinking. The tip of his tail swished left and right.

  ‘Oh, you feel it, too?’ I said just to break the silence, but what was it? The air? The house? The fact that Rohan had gone, his departure taking something unidentifiable with him; or the house compensating now it was just the two of us? I felt as if I were cleaving through something invisible; thick and heavy, like water. A draught pushed down the stairs, wrapping itself around me like cobwebs.

  ‘Cold, isn’t it?’ I said, rubbing my arms. I must have left a window open upstairs. The heat of the summer was now no more than a distant memory. ‘You’re all right,’ I told Alfie. ‘You’ve got fur.’

  I pushed open the spare-room door slightly too forcefully causing it to bang into the wall and Alfie jumped like a coiled spring. Inside, the room smirked back at me too innocently: a naughty child behaving for its teacher. I stared at the rocking chair, half expecting to see it move as if it had just been vacated, but it remained resolutely still. Alfie crouched pounce-ready at the door, his ears flat and tail swishing like a carpet sweeper. I filled my lungs and exhaled slowly. The air, even colder in here than on the landing, still bore an echo of the rose-fragranced Shake n’ Vac I’d used on the carpet.

  God, I had to get a grip. It was just a room, and I was pleased with what I’d done. After poring over design magazines, frying my brain with too many options, I’d decided to keep the original bedstead, wardrobe and desk – the ones that had been here when we’d bought the house. There was nothing wrong with them, and they fitted the room perfectly.

  The new bedding was a lavender that I knew Grace would like, and the rocking chair was dove-grey. I’d wiped down the wallpaper and the furniture, had the faded curtains dry-cleaned and, with the window thrown open so fresh air could lick every surface of the room, I’d vacuumed every crevice vigorously, sucking up dead spiders and flies and the super-sized ladybirds of that scorching summer, now crispy in death, along with a decade or more of dust, trying not to think about the people whose skin flakes were disappearing into the vacuum cleaner. With rubber gloves up to my elbows and a hankie tied over my nose and mouth, I’d cleaned out the fireplace and replaced the ashes with a bunch of dried flowers in a jug. In the wardrobe, I’d hung one of my winter coats in case Grace didn’t own one after her years in Australia. But was that too much? Did I look too keen?

  ‘What do you think, Alfie?’ I asked, but he was no longer there. I pulled the coat out of the wardrobe and threw it onto the bed. Wasn’t one of the problems before that I was too keen? Too accommodating?

  But looking at the room now, I had another idea. I dashed up to the attic and knelt in front of the old boxes the previous owners had left. Rohan had said they contained toys. Maybe there was something I could put on the bed for Grace. She’d always liked stuffed toys, her bed at uni always adorned with a teddy or two. I blew at the dust and started pulling things out of the box. Random toys: a skipping rope, a bag of cars, some Lego, and then, at the bottom, a small, wooden cot painted lavender and white and, lying inside it under a stiff, flowery duvet, a faded brown teddy bear with threadbare patches on its chest and paws. I pulled it out and gave it a sniff. A bit musty but nothing an airing wouldn’t solve.

  ‘Would you like to come downstairs?’ I asked the bear, waggling him as I talked, causing the bells in his ears to jangle.

  ‘Thought you’d never ask,’ I said in a gruff, bear voice.

  I shoved the toys back in the box and, downstairs, I placed Bear on the pillow of the bed and stepped back. Nice. Homely. Welcoming.

  I sat down on the bed and looked at the room from Grace’s perspective. It wasn’t big, but
it was fresh, clean and cosy, and it was free. When I thought back to our student digs, I was sure this would be fine. We’d been happy in those days, hadn’t we? To begin with, at least.

  Nineteen

  It was largely thanks to Grace that I ended up with a boyfriend. I was never man-mad; never one of those students who used her time at university to work her way through the male cohort. Neither was I like Grace, hellbent on finding my one-and-only. While I was studying, the other students didn’t interest me with their silly psychodramas, amateur drinking and snapchat, so I went about my business quietly getting on with my work, staying resolutely single throughout my degree and it was only after I graduated that Tom appeared in my life. He was older than me; an artist who taught at a nearby school; a free spirit with longish, curly dark hair, and a goatee and moustache – which was a look I never thought I’d go for – and an appealing gravitas that came from having experienced, I got the impression, the underbelly of life.

  I was juggling two jobs at the time. I’d managed to get a part-time internship at a nearby gallery and was looking for a ‘proper’ job when I’d mentioned to Grace that the art supply shop I used was looking for staff. She’d pushed me to apply for that too, saying, with a bit of a look, that it would do me good ‘on every level’. I didn’t love the job, but it just about paid the rent, offered a good discount on art supplies and kept me ‘out of trouble’, as Grace put it.

  At the shop, there was a bell on the door, and I often glanced over when it tinkled. The clientele was a mixed bunch: grimy students from the university and the odd artist, but chiefly urban mums buying supplies for their kids – sketchbooks, paints, brushes, watercolour pencils, canvases.

  Anyway, that day, the bell tinkled, I looked up and there he was: Tom. Not that I knew his name at the time, but what I did know was that right there, shaking rain out of his hair like a dog, was the person I was meant to be with for the rest of my life. It may be a cliché but time slowed and I grasped onto a shelf to stop myself from crumpling to the floor. Love at first sight? Who believes in it? But, as this man entered the shop, there was a pull, like gravity, running from me to him and I felt, rather than saw, the two of us together forever: laughing, loving, parenting, growing old. And while this movie of our life together carouselled through my mind – while fireworks went off in my soul – this person, this man – Tom – just carried on acting as if nothing had happened. He was new to the area, he told my colleague. He needed supplies. He was overjoyed there was an art shop so close to home. We’d better get used to his ugly face, he joked, because we’d be seeing a lot of it.

  I tried to keep my feelings to myself to begin with, watching covertly as he shopped, letting the other staff attend to him while I waited for the avalanche of feelings I had to die but, when, after weeks, they didn’t – when I found myself lying awake at night fantasising about my life with Tom and I couldn’t contain it any longer – I confided in Grace.

  ‘You dark horse!’ she said. ‘How long has this been going on? All this time and you haven’t even said hello?’

  ‘What shall I do?’ I fretted at the tassels of the cushion I was hugging on my lap. ‘How do I let him know I’m interested? He doesn’t even know I exist.’

  ‘Have you talked to him?’ she asked, and I shook my head. ‘Well, that’s the first step. Say hello! God, Abs. It’s not that difficult. He’s a human being, not an alien, and in the shop you have the perfect excuse. When he next comes in, I want you to be the one who serves him. Okay?’

  And so she coached me through it: what to say, how to be, and, eventually, how to ask him out. On her advice, I suggested, in a voice tight with nerves, a coffee to discuss an exhibition at Tate Modern.

  ‘Sure,’ he shrugged, peering at me with those nut-brown eyes as if for the first time. And Grace was right, of course: that coffee segued into a visit to Tate Modern, and then to a lunch, drinks, more drinks, and dinner. Before long, we were ‘dating’ as Grace so quaintly put it, but Tom didn’t like to call it that. He was a Buddhist and didn’t like to be tied down.

  ‘Upadhi dukkhassa mūlanti,’ he’d say, holding his hands up, if I tried to push him into any type of commitment. ‘Attachment is the root of suffering. Let’s just exist in the moment. In the end, only three things matter: how much you loved, how gently you lived, and how gracefully you let go of things not meant for you,’ and so I learned not to ask too many questions about what he did when we were apart, and we co-existed alongside each other very well.

  I didn’t deserve Tom, of course, but I cared about him. A lot.

  Twenty

  I dashed into the hospice a hair past eight that morning, the painting of Bruce tucked in my bag. I was pleased with it – as pet portraits went, it was one of my best.

  It was my job at the hospice to make sure the patients had enough water, to clear away any old cups, and make hot drinks for anyone that wanted them. That early in the morning, there were just a couple of visitors – it didn’t usually get busier till later, once the school day finished. It was only then, from about four-thirty, that you’d start to see the procession of worn mums and dads bringing their kids, scruffy from school, to see ailing grandparents for what could well be the last time.

  ‘Morning!’ I said to Moira, the head nurse who was, for once, actually standing still behind the desk. She was a powerhouse in the hospice, the engine of the place, with a heart so big I often wondered how it fit inside the whip-thin body that encased it. She was also a mother to four kids under six; we were all familiar with their impish smiles because she had their photo in a frame on the desk.

  ‘Can I leave this here for Mrs Keyson to pick up?’ I said. ‘It’s a painting I did of Mr K’s dog. You know: Bruce.’ We all knew about Mr K’s Bruce.

  ‘Aww, that’s so kind of you Abi,’ Moira said, tilting her head and smiling. ‘He’ll love that.’ She paused. ‘But you can give it to her yourself. She’s in there now.’ She nodded towards Mr K’s room.

  ‘Oh? She’s not usually in on a Tuesday?’

  She shook her head again. ‘He’s not good.’ Pause. ‘We gave her a call.’

  ‘Oh,’ I said, my insides falling inside me. I held onto the counter for a moment. ‘Let me just pop it in there, then I’ll do the waters if that’s okay?’

  ‘Of course.’

  Mr K’s room was the last on the right. I listened for a moment, then knocked softly and popped my head around the door. Mrs K sat beside the bed and she looked up, a weary smile breaking over her face as she saw me. Perhaps because her husband was in such a bad way, I’d imagined Mrs K to be diaphanous and brittle with age but she could have passed for twenty years younger than the late septuagenarian I knew she was – even today, with her face hollow with worry.

  ‘Abigail. Hello,’ she said.

  ‘Hey. How is he?’

  She shook her head. ‘Not so good. I don’t know…’ She closed her eyes briefly then we both looked at Mr K. He was half propped up in bed, his eyes closed. His paper-white face was almost indistinguishable from his white hair, his collarbones protruded above the neckline of his T-shirt, and his arms – already bamboo sticks – were thinner than they’d been the previous week. The shape of his body under the blankets resembled that of a young child.

  ‘How long have you been here?’ I asked.

  ‘Most of the night.’

  ‘Do you want a break? I can sit with him for a bit?’

  She shook her head. ‘No. I need to be here.’

  ‘Okay. Well, I’m here all day if you need me.’

  Mrs Keyson nodded. ‘Thank you.’

  I fished in my bag. ‘I finished the painting. Do you want to give it to him?’ I said, passing it to Mrs K.

  ‘Oh, thank you. It’s perfect,’ she said, her hand over her mouth as she took in the picture. ‘He’ll love it. You’ve really “got” him. That’s beautiful. Thank you.’ She turned to her husband. ‘Lennie, Abigail’s here. She’s done a painting of Brucie for you. So he can be her
e with you all the time, too. Look – she’s done such a good job. It’s just like him, isn’t it? Lennie, dear, can you hear me?’

  I wasn’t sure if Mr K was resting, asleep, or even unconscious. His breathing was so slow it gave me the panicky feeling of wanting to draw air into my own lungs but, as we watched, his eyes opened and he grunted.

  ‘Aww, there you are, love,’ said Mrs K. ‘Look, Abigail’s here and she’s done a painting of Brucie for you,’ she said again.

  I gave Mr K a little wave and watched as his eyes roamed over the picture that Mrs K was holding out for him. Then he closed his eyes with an exhale of breath, as if it was all too much effort. His lips, I’m sure, curved upwards.

  ‘It’s wonderful, isn’t it?’ said Mrs K. ‘I knew you’d like it. Now, where shall I put it? Somewhere where you can see it.’

  ‘Mrs K,’ I said softly, ‘I’m going to go and do the drinks. I’ll be back in a bit to see how you’re doing. Can I get you anything? A coffee?’

  ‘Oh that would be lovely, dear, thank you, but no rush. Do the others first.’

  ‘Okay.’

  I slipped out of the room, closing the door quietly behind me. A nurse caught my eye and raised her eyebrows in question.

  ‘Not yet,’ I said.

  I wasn’t in the room when Mr Keyson died later that afternoon, but I saw a nurse go in and I was waiting outside when she came back out. She shook her head, just two shakes, left and right, and tears sprung to my eyes, my throat tight. Even though it was expected, I couldn’t help but think it was too soon.

  ‘It was peaceful,’ said the nurse. ‘She was there. Do you want to go in? I think she’d like that.’

  ‘Sure.’

  I dabbed at my eyes, took a deep breath, then slipped quietly into the room. Mrs K was sitting with her head bowed next to her husband, and I saw at once that the essence of him had gone, his body just a shell on the bed. I looked upwards as I always do at these times, imagining his soul flying happy and free. Mrs K glanced up as I entered. Her eyes were red-rimmed.