The Winter House

by Unknown

  Later, she tried to describe to Lucy how she felt when she saw Ralph. ‘He was like a stray puppy or something,’ she said. ‘Kicked around and beaten and scared, but putting his trust in you all the same. It was all I could do to stop myself picking him up.’ He was wearing old trousers with paint on them and a thin T-shirt, plimsolls with no laces, no socks. His brutally cut hair stood up in spikes. A yellow, blue and black bruise flowered under his right eye, which was bloodshot.

  ‘Ralph!’ she said. ‘What on earth –’ Something in his expression stopped her dead. ‘Won’t you come in?’ she said politely, and stepped back.

  For a moment, Ralph simply continued standing there. His face was quite blank. He stared at her without moving.

  ‘Ralph,’ said Marnie. She put a hand on his arm, but it was like touching a steel girder.

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Ralph at last, then stopped.

  ‘Don’t just stay out there. You’ll freeze. Ralph?’

  ‘It’s just –’ he said.

  ‘Let me,’ said a voice behind her. Emma was still wearing her reading glasses and had a pencil tucked behind her ear. ‘You come with me,’ she said to Ralph. Her voice was matter-of-fact, solid enough to lean against with no fear of falling, but in her eyes Marnie saw a melting tenderness that made her look away quickly, as if her mother was suddenly naked in front of her. She didn’t like it and, for an instant, she wanted to push Ralph out into the cold and slam the door on him.

  ‘This is Ralph,’ she said to Emma. ‘He’s David’s brother. I told you about him…’

  But Emma wasn’t listening. She put her arm round Ralph’s stiff, thin shoulders and drew him into the house, leaving Marnie to close the door behind them.

  ‘Get a jersey,’ she said to Marnie, sitting him down at the table. He lifted a hand and cupped the battered right side of his face, ashamed.

  When Marnie returned, Emma had put the picnic rug over his lap and pulled off his shoes. She pulled the jersey over his head and he sat there unresisting. ‘When did you last eat?’ she asked. Ralph looked at her blankly. ‘Right, I’m going to make you a hot drink for a start.’

  She turned away to the stove and Marnie hovered awkwardly. ‘I’m very sorry about David,’ she said at last. It sounded so formal.

  He hunched further into himself and said nothing.

  ‘Here,’ said Emma. ‘Hot milk with honey and nutmeg. Drink it.’

  Ralph lifted the mug and took a small sip, then put it down on the table with a clip. Marnie thought that if she reached out and touched him, he might shatter into hundreds of sharp fragments.

  ‘He’d better stay the night,’ Emma said to Marnie. ‘Do you want to go and make the bed up?’

  ‘All right,’ said Marnie, obediently, fighting down the urge to weep so that she, too, not only Ralph, would feel Emma’s gaze turned on her with such concentration. ‘On the sofa?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘But the B-and-B guests are –’

  ‘He can sleep in the attic room.’

  ‘But –’

  ‘It’s fine, Marnie. Take the sheets I washed this morning from the boiler room. You could put a hot-water bottle in as well.’

  ‘OK.’

  Marnie climbed the stairs with the warm sheets, her legs heavy under her. When she pushed open the attic room’s door, the air smelt woody and unused. She didn’t immediately turn on the light, but felt her way into the small room and stood there, her eyes straining in the darkness. A small patch of night glimmered through the skylight; she could just make out the shape of the bed and the chest on the other wall. Hugging the linen, she buried her face in the crisp cleanliness. She was finding it hard to breathe normally. It was as if she had a heavy weight on her lungs. It had been a long time since she had come into this room; sometimes she almost forgot it existed. She couldn’t remember when she had last pushed the door open and put her head round to peer in at the empty spaces. Perhaps Emma came up here sometimes, just to sit. She didn’t know. There were things they didn’t talk about; too many closed doors.

  At last she turned on the light and busied herself, shaking the first sheet flat, and letting it settle over the low bed, pulling it tight and tucking it under the mattress with the hospital corners Emma always insisted on for the B-and-B guests. Then the second sheet, the blue blanket doubled up for warmth, the pillow inserted into its case. She plumped it and turned down the covers to make it look welcoming. She did everything quickly, efficiently, holding the strangeness at bay. The room had been cleared out long ago, nothing personal left there, but there were still barely visible lighter squares on the walls where posters had once been stuck. Footballers? Dinosaurs? Marnie didn’t know. She couldn’t remember. She had never tried to remember and didn’t want to begin now.

  She collected the hot-water bottle from the bathroom and started down the stairs to the kitchen to fill it. But then she halted. She could hear her mother’s voice, low and steady, the way she often talked to Marnie, and she had the sudden sensation of being an intruder in her own house.

  Emma was sitting beside Ralph at the kitchen table, holding a cold compress against his cheek.

  ‘I’ve done it,’ said Marnie.

  ‘Thanks.’ Emma met her eyes. She gave her a small, approving nod and a smile. ‘Are you tired?’

  ‘I’m not sure.’

  ‘It’s late and you’ve got school tomorrow. Perhaps you should go to bed.’

  ‘Maybe I will,’ said Marnie. All of a sudden her head felt thick with weariness. ‘I’ll just fill the bottle.’

  ‘I’ll wake you at the usual time.’

  ‘Good night. Good night, Ralph.’

  He looked at her then, his eyes burning in his puffy, discoloured face. On an impulse she went to him and bent down to kiss his forehead, but he lifted his face and she found herself kissing his lips, very quickly and lightly. They were hot and dry, like a feverish child’s. ‘It wasn’t our fault,’ she said. ‘We are not to blame.’

  She lay in bed and listened to the sounds downstairs, trying to make out words. There was the chink of china. Footsteps. She thought she heard the front door open and shut, but perhaps she was imagining it. And, anyway, it merged with her dream in which someone was standing at the foot of her bed, calling her name. It was Seth, of course, who often visited her in her sleep although sometimes in strange disguises; this time he was telling her he’d come home and why didn’t she get up and make him welcome, but for all her efforts she couldn’t move her limbs or open her gluey eyes. Wasn’t she pleased he had come back after all these years, he asked, and did she want him to go away again?

  But no, not Seth after all, for how could it be? It was her mother, telling her it was morning, time to get out of bed, another beautiful day outside, look – the gush of light flooding her room as Emma drew back the curtains – and the cockerel outside crowed and crowed again, the mighty show-off in his harem.

  The smell of bacon, coffee, toast. Marnie pushed herself upright and rubbed her eyes. Her dream was still a vapour trail in her head.

  ‘Is Ralph –’

  ‘He’s cooking breakfast,’ said Emma, ‘and entertaining our guests.’

  ‘Is he OK?’

  ‘He seems entirely fine,’ replied Emma, drily. ‘You can judge for yourself. Come on, or you’ll be late.’

  Ralph, enveloped in Emma’s white apron, was wielding a slatted steel spatula, which he lifted high in the smoky air as Marnie entered. ‘Don’t talk yet!’ he said. ‘One moment.’

  He slid the spatula under the blistering egg and deposited it on the plate beside him, its yolk oozing out over the charred rashers of bacon that had shrivelled to a quarter of their normal size. Marnie couldn’t work out how he had managed to use so many pans or make quite such a mess. When she walked on the tiles, they were sticky underfoot.

  ‘There we are, Mr Lomas,’ Ralph said, putting the greasy plate in front of the old man with a flourish. ‘Egg sunny-side up, kind of – it’s a bit broke
n I’m afraid – bacon, sausage, grilled tomato, mushrooms and fried bread. The egg, like your wife’s, is fresh from the hens that run free in the garden. You can hear the cockerel if you listen.’

  ‘Thank you,’ Mr Lomas said faintly, tapping the hard strips of bacon with his fork.

  ‘While you’re eating that, I’ll do your toast.’ He picked up the bread knife and ran his thumb down its serrated edge. ‘Brown or white? And there’s home-made marmalade, home-made raspberry jam or local Suffolk honey.’

  ‘I’m not sure we’ll be able to manage the toast, dear,’ said Mrs Lomas, beaming fondly at him. ‘Thank you all the same.’ She turned towards Marnie. ‘Your young brother has been looking after us extremely well,’ she said.

  ‘Well, actually…’ began Marnie, then stopped. What was the point? ‘I’m glad,’ she said. ‘I’ll wash up. Just tell me if there’s anything else you need.’

  ‘We’ll be on our way soon.’

  ‘This place is great,’ hissed Ralph, joining her at the sink where she was stacking pans. ‘I woke this morning and I couldn’t believe it. It feels like I’ve stepped into a whole new world. You can see the sea. I can’t imagine what it would be like to see it at the beginning of every day. Or do you get used to it? Tell me you don’t. It must change each time you look at it, different colours and moods. Look at the haze on it now. It’ll burn away later.

  ‘Once I took Grace to the seaside, just her and me. I pushed her all the way – about eight miles it was and on that busy road most of the way so cars whizzed by. I could feel the heat of their exhaust on my skin. I was so tired I thought I’d have to give up. My muscles were burning and I felt dirty and sick. I took her to the shingle beach, you know the one, and of course I couldn’t push the wheelchair over the shingle to get to the sea and it goes up a kind of hill there, so we couldn’t even see it from where we were and it wasn’t nice weather any more. I was nearly crying, I was so tired and hot and cold at the same time. Maybe I was crying. I used to cry pretty easily when I was younger. I couldn’t control it at all. David used to jeer at me. Well, he wasn’t the only one, of course, people at school jeered as well, but David was worse because he was my brother and he was meant to stick up for me and he didn’t. I think he was embarrassed by me – he didn’t want a cry-baby brother. Probably when I was born he thought he could have a clone of himself to play football and cut worms in half and do press-ups with. Instead he got this runt who wrote poetry and cried at sad films. Funny that, when I haven’t shed a tear over David. I want to. I really badly want to cry. I sit in my room and concentrate on crying, but the more I try the more impossible it gets. They think I don’t care. They look at me and I can see the violent disgust in their faces. But, really, it’s because I’m frozen up inside and maybe I’ll always be like that. For ever and ever.’

  ‘Ralph,’ said Marnie gently. She put one hand on his shoulder and felt him shudder at her touch. Behind her the Lomases stood up from the table, scraping their chairs across the floor.

  ‘Sorry. Sorry. Where was I? Yes, the beach. I thought about carrying her, but Grace is really heavy, you know – and she’s this dead weight too, which makes it even worse. Then this really nice woman – she looked a bit like your mum actually. What if it was your mum? – helped me. We lifted the chair and carried it right to the edge of the water and Grace sat there and chortled. It was really nice to see her. You think she’s always happy, I bet, a big, happy, mindless lump – that’s how most people see her anyway – but usually when she smiles and stuff, that’s not anything like happiness. I think it’s more like anxiety, actually. I think she’s like this clumsy, eager bundle of fear and she’s always waiting for something terrible to happen to her but hoping for something nice. Like a dog. I love dogs. When I leave home I’ll have a dog. A mongrel. I’ll get it from the rescue centre and make it feel safe again. Dogs are unconditional – you know that whatever else happens they’ll be there for you. OK, but this day Grace was really happy. I took off her shoes and socks and splashed water on her feet, which are always purple – bad circulation, Mum says – and kind of turn inwards, pigeon toes. You’ve probably never noticed – well, of course, why would you? I heard an ice-cream van on the road and I left her sitting on the beach and ran and got her a double cone with a Flake stuck in and when I got back the tide had come up and the water was round her ankles. I gave her the ice cream and she took out the Flake and pressed the cone against her mouth so the blob of ice cream just spread out across her whole face and she made a lovely sound – a kind of gurgle of contentment, which made me feel contented too. As if I was doing something good. The water came up even more. The nice woman was gone by then and I had this thought that we’d just have to go on sitting there while the tide rose and rose. I imagined Grace’s head stuck up through the waves and she’d still be smiling and her face covered with ice cream and chocolate and salt – though, of course, it wouldn’t have been like that. I’ll dry the dishes if you want. Then it was – What do you call it, when the tide kind of stops still?’

  ‘Slack water.’ Marnie wanted him to stop talking in that terrible eager fashion, his thin body practically pulsing with energy. She wanted to hug him to stillness.

  ‘Slack water. Yes. It was slack water, and after that the sea went down really quickly. I could feel it sucking under the shingle. Then it was gone. Just wet pebbles and the sky was grey and it was over.’ He stopped and the life seemed to go out of him. ‘Oh, well,’ he said, under his breath.

  ‘Shall we have some breakfast now?’ Marnie asked, when she was sure he’d run out of words. ‘I have to go in ten minutes but I could make some toast.’ She grinned. ‘With home-made marmalade, home-made raspberry jam or even local Suffolk honey.’

  He smiled back. His face, she thought, was as mobile as a kaleidoscope. Its expression continually broke and re-formed. Now he looked young and soft, and she was seized by an emotion that later became very familiar when she was with Ralph: the desire to rescue him.

  ‘Toast and jam, please.’

  ‘Do your parents know you’re here?’

  He shrugged.

  ‘Ralph?’

  ‘Your mother phoned them last night. I didn’t want her to but she insisted,’ he said shortly. ‘She said she’d drop me back there this morning.’

  ‘Were they all right about you being here?’

  He shrugged once more.

  ‘Your eye, Ralph, how did that happen?’

  ‘I don’t want to talk about it.’

  ‘But –’

  ‘I don’t want to talk about it,’ he repeated fiercely. He thrummed his fingers on the work surface while she sliced bread and put it under the grill. ‘She showed me how to throw a pot before I went to sleep.’

  ‘Mum?’ So the sound of the front door opening and shutting had been the pair of them sneaking out to Emma’s work shed and kiln at dead of night.

  ‘She said I could come back and paint it.’

  ‘That’s good.’

  ‘Is it? You don’t mind?’

  ‘Why would I mind?’

  ‘I can think of dozens of reasons. Hundreds.’

  ‘I don’t mind,’ Marnie said, though she wasn’t sure that she was speaking the entire truth. Ralph continued to look at her questioningly, so she went further: ‘I’d like it.’

  ‘You’d like it,’ he repeated, his face lighting up. ‘Really?’

  ‘Your toast’s ready. Yes.’

  ‘So, you see,’ said Marnie, wrapping the blanket more closely round her and shivering, ‘I thought of you as – Ralph? Ralph?’

  There was no reply, but she could hear his whispery breaths. The fire was no longer burning; she poked at the ash and the embers flickered briefly. She swilled back the last of the whisky and looked at her watch. It was four in the morning: it was hard to imagine that anyone else in the world would be awake like her, keeping vigil.

  She went to the door, pulled on her boots, picked up the torch and opened it, recoiling as she fe
lt the lash of cold wind on her skin. It whined and snarled in the trees and skimmed over the ground, sending up stinging bits of grit. Drops of rain dashed themselves into her face. She reached the woodshed, turned on the torch and shone it inside. She found some pieces of kindling, then lifted as many seasoned logs into the cradle of her arms as she could before scurrying back into the house. The single dim lamp in the main room lit her way.

  She crouched by the fire, fingers already numb, and blew life back into the embers before feeding the new bluish flames with the thinnest pieces of kindling.

  Beside her, Ralph’s breath rose and fell.

  So began the happiest time in my life.

  I didn’t come back at once. I made myself wait at least a week, holding the image of your house by the sea in my mind, like a painting: you in your school uniform and your hair in ridiculous plaits; your mother with her lined face and watching eyes. I would crouch in my room, under the swallow you had painted for me, and listen to the sounds of the house. My father bellowing. My mother querulous, then weeping, wailing. The flat slap of a hand against a cheek; I could almost make out the ‘plack’ of each separate finger as it landed and my own face would sting with shame that I didn’t go to help. Then as often as not, someone would be retching, vomiting, groaning into the early hours of the morning. A cough. Grace doing her head-banging on the pillow in the next-door room, bang, bang, bang, until I thought she must hurt herself, but I knew that was how she shut out the anger and despair. And behind all the ugly noises, of course, lay the relentless silence. David’s room, which my mother dusted every day, making sure not to disturb the trophies and the medals on his shelves, nothing altered from the day he had died, was the black hole at the heart of the disordered house. No music came from there, no laughter. No door slamming and no young, bold voice calling out orders.

  It’s only now, all these years later when it’s too late, I can see that my father was a disappointed and unhappy man. I can remember him when I was much younger, not even at school, and he was different. He was in the army then, and wasn’t drinking – or not so you’d notice it in the lurch of his steps and the red glare of his eyes. I think he was very like David, and when he was David’s age – the age David was when he died, I mean – he was probably the golden boy of his school, too: good at sport and good with girls, a broad-shouldered, blue-eyed charmer. Then he got a job, he got a wife, he got the taste for booze, he got debts, he got kids – and only David turned out the way he wanted. I was a runt with my nose in a book and Grace was ‘a dribbling retard’. His words. I don’t know which of us disgusted him most, but it was easier to focus on me. Even he could see that turning on Grace would make him an unforgivable bully. He wasn’t anyone’s hero any more, except mine for a while before I saw him beat my mother and clip Grace round the ear.