The Visitors

by Catherine Burns

  “You never seem to go out anywhere or see anyone.”

  “I go out all the time,” Marion protested. “I go to the shops and I walk along the promenade. And I see John, of course, and you now and then.”

  “But that’s hardly enough, is it?” She took a sip of coffee, and the thin red smile left her mouth and stuck to the edge of her cup. “Can I ask you a question?” Then without waiting for an answer she added, “Have you even been in love?”

  “Well, of course—everyone has been in love—haven’t they?” Marion replied vaguely.

  “Oh, come on, don’t be such a tease, tell me all about him—or her, of course.”

  “It was a boy—I mean a young man. He worked in my father’s warehouse years ago.”

  “What was he like?”

  “He was very tall with red hair, and his name was Neil.”

  “Did you get engaged?”

  “Oh goodness no, nothing that serious. I used to talk to him while he was on his break. He liked reading paperbacks. You know the ones, Penguin Classics. The other workmen made fun of him; they called him the Ginger Professor. You see, he was only doing the job to save money for university. And he always brought a packet of cheese and onion crisps to eat with his lunch. Sometimes he gave me one.”

  Judith pressed her fingertips against her lips to stop the giggles escaping. Marion felt as if she had shown Judith a treasure that she had carried around with her for years, only to be told it was a piece of trash.

  “Did he taste like cheese and onion crisps when you kissed him?”

  Marion’s raincoat crackled as she shook her head. “No, I don’t know—we didn’t kiss—nothing like that happened.”

  “You didn’t even kiss him? I’m sorry for laughing. That really is a sweet story.”

  Marion felt sometimes that Judith was playing a cruel game; pinching her hard, then gently patting the bruise better.

  “But don’t you ever regret not getting married, having children?” Judith asked.

  “Well, no, not really. I’ve never thought about it much.”

  “But you must have. Most women are desperate to have a baby at some point in their lives.” She held both fists to her flat stomach, as if to show the exact spot where the baby-hunger came from. “Though perhaps if one has a career or pursues some artistic goal, I suppose that might provide a similar sense of fulfillment.”

  Wondering if she was expected to apologize for having none of these things, Marion lowered her head, and the drawstring of the raincoat pulled tight around her neck.

  “Though in some ways you are probably better off,” Judith added quickly. “Kids give you no end of worry. You know Lydia is switching courses again? This time to film studies, which probably means I’m paying out thousands for her to end up serving tequila shots in TGI Fridays. That’s a restaurant, by the way.”

  “Yes, I’ve heard of it.”

  “And she’s so careless. She lost her mobile and all her credit cards in some bar last month. I had to phone all round the banks to cancel the cards and lend her money for a new phone. Of course her father doesn’t do a thing, though he has Krish to worry about—and she is practically a child herself.”

  Judith’s ex-husband, a high-flying management consultant, had left her for a twenty-five-year-old silk printer called Krishna. “And to think I had been getting all these hideous bloody scarves as presents for birthdays and Christmas, and I had no idea why!” Judith had wailed when she found out.

  “I’ve made it quite clear to Lydia she isn’t moving back here after graduation. I have my own life now.”

  Marion felt a throb of disappointment. Lydia coming back to live on Grange Road had been something she was looking forward to. Suddenly Judith’s phone sang a tinny little tune.

  “Oh, this is Greg, you don’t mind if I take it, do you?”

  Judith’s boyfriend worked as her assistant in the gallery. From the next room Judith could be heard saying, “No, I really don’t know where the damn scissors are. I suppose you will just have to open them with your teeth.”

  Marion pictured Greg, tall, bearded, and nearly twenty years younger than Judith, frantically gnawing at cardboard boxes tied with string.

  She began picking at the cold, vinegary food, thinking that it would probably give her terrible indigestion for the rest of the day. She took a barbed salad leaf from her plate and nibbled it warily; if she had gone out into the street and eaten some leaves straight from a privet hedge, they might have tasted more appetizing. Then she attempted spearing an olive with her fork, but it rolled across the table and plopped onto the floor.

  “Sorry about that,” said Judith, coming back into the room. She saw the olive and frowned. After picking it up as carefully as if it were a tiny, unexploded bomb, she placed it in the shiny stainless steel bin, washed her hands, then sat down.

  “And what about John, what has he been up to?” asked Judith briskly.

  “He keeps himself busy.”

  “Is he still poking around in that cellar of yours? You know, you really ought to have it renovated. I’m thinking of having a mini-gym and a sauna in mine. How many rooms do you have down there, three, four? You could have them made into a little flat.”

  Mention of the cellar made Marion feel as though little spiders were crawling across her skin.

  “I don’t think John would like that,” she mumbled. “He has his workshop down there, you know, for his hobby.”

  “What hobby is that, then?”

  “Didn’t you know? He makes model aeroplanes.”

  “Model aeroplanes?” Judith’s fine nostrils flared contemptuously.

  “They are really quite, I don’t know”—Marion hesitated, trying to find the right word for what essentially were plastic toys a grown man spent hours gluing together and painting and which then hung from his bedroom ceiling—“impressive.”

  “Well, get him to make them somewhere else. Just think of the extra money a lodger would bring. You could go on holiday somewhere fabulous. That reminds me: I must show you the picture of the villa.”

  Marion made agreeable noises while Judith showed pictures of a resort that she and Greg had visited recently on their holiday to Turkey. Not having her glasses on, all she saw was a blur of swimming-pool blue and scorching sunshine as Judith’s phone was waved before her eyes.

  The phone rang again. This time the noise was shriller and less frivolous than before.

  “That’s Greg again, texting about some earthenware cats we’re having delivered. They really are quite charming, all one-off pieces. The woman who makes them served five years in prison for prostitution and drug dealing—that’s where she learned her craft.”

  She paused, perhaps to assess if Marion was shocked.

  “Anyway, it’s a fascinating story. You should come in and have a look, Marion, might be your sort of thing.”

  Then Judith began picking up things from the table, even though Marion’s tiny cup of espresso was still half full.

  “I hate to rush you off. We really should do this more often—oh, before I forget . . .” Judith’s mouth, now the dull maroon of overcooked meat, tightened. “. . . there was one small thing I needed to ask you. You know that large sycamore at the end of your garden? Well, several of its branches are overhanging my wall, and I think it might be diseased. You really ought to get it cut down. If you like, I could give you the name of a man.”

  A weight pressed against Marion’s heart. She had played around the sycamore tree as a child, believing fairies lived inside the trunk and the spinning seeds were their discarded wings. At the same time she was afraid of saying no. Judith could get so angry when she didn’t get what she wanted. Her words came out in a stuttering confusion.

  “I don’t really—the sycamore—diseased—but—but are you sure? Perhaps—”

  Judith’s sharp tone sliced through Marion’s mumbling.

  “Yes, Marion, it clearly needs to be cut down. That ugly old thing is rotten through and throu
gh. Also it blocks all the light from my gazebo.”

  Marion pulled the raincoat hood back over her head as if it had suddenly started pouring with rain inside Judith’s hallway.

  “I suppose you’re right, but I don’t know. I’ll have to ask John about it.”

  “Make sure you do as soon as possible and get it dealt with before something awful happens.”

  When she reached the refuge of her own hallway, Marion pulled the raincoat off, and then threw it down on top of a pile of old scientific magazines. She went straight into the kitchen and looked out the window. To her, the tree was a kindly old man spreading out his arms in welcome. It was impossible to believe it could be dangerous, yet why would Judith make such a fuss otherwise?

  Marion filled the kettle to make a cup of sweet tea that would wash away the bitter taste left by lunch. John was right, the only reason Judith had asked her over was because she wanted the tree cut down. And all that talk about falling in love. Didn’t she realize that of course Marion wanted affection and romance just as much as anyone else? While other people went around having things happen to them—getting married, having children, getting divorced, then married again to someone else—it seemed she was fated to just drift through life without being touched or touching anything else.

  She realized this was probably down to her looks. Her face wasn’t hideous, but it seemed unable to hold anyone’s attention longer than, say, a brick or tree stump. Plain women got husbands, but they tended to be the pushy kind. If she had been more forthright, she might have got herself a man, but she hated to impose on anyone. That was how she had been brought up; not to force her needs or opinions on anyone else. Wait for them to come to you, Mother always said, only no one did. She already knew that her life had been a disappointment by most people’s standards. For Judith to point this out seemed unnecessarily mean.

  Marion knelt down on her hands and knees and then took a battered tin from the cupboard. On the lid was a picture of a ruined castle surrounded by lush green foliage. She put her fingernails under the edge of the lid, and the tin opened with a satisfying metallic pop. Inside was a shiny brown Dundee cake covered with almonds. Picking up the cake with her bare hands, she began to break off big, crumbly lumps and then ram them into her mouth.

  That lunch of nasty green things wouldn’t have satisfied a flea, thought Marion, reveling in the feeling of solid, sweet cake filling her mouth and stomach.

  As she was sitting on the floor chewing mouthfuls of cake, she imagined something bad happening to Judith; perhaps she would be wrongly accused of a crime and forced to go to Marion for help.

  “You were the only one I could turn to, Marion,” Judith would say penitently. “Even Greg has turned his back on me.”

  “I will do all I can to help you,” Marion would say with a noble expression on her face.

  And then Judith would go down on her knees and weep with gratitude. When Judith was finally proven innocent, they would stand outside the courtroom to be interviewed by TV cameras.

  Judith would say, “I’d like to thank my good friend Marion Zetland for standing by me in this time of difficulty. And I just want to say I’m sorry for being such a bitch to her in the past.” Then she would take hold of Marion’s hand and raise it into the air.

  After eating over a quarter of the cake, Marion began to feel disgusted with herself. She knew she at least ought to cut it into slices and eat from a plate while sitting at the table, but she had no more control than if someone else were shoving food into her mouth, so she kept on eating more and more until it was all gone.

  Feeling sour and overstuffed, Marion dragged herself upstairs to the top floor of the house. The walls of the attic bedroom, where she had slept since she was a child, were covered with faded roses, and little gray bunnies raced in and out of the folds of the curtains that hung at the windows. Against one wall stood a glass-fronted cabinet containing her collection of animal figurines; next to that was a small bookshelf that housed her favorite books: Beatrix Potter: The Complete Tales, The Secret Garden, Ballet Shoes, C. S. Lewis, and the Harry Potter books that John had bought for her a few years ago.

  A dusty landscape of assorted items covered the dressing table by the window. There was a bottle of lavender water that smelled like vinegar and rust, but Marion could never have thrown it out because the picture on the label of a peasant girl picking flowers outside a thatched cottage filled her with sweet, achy nostalgia for summers in the country that existed only in her imagination. This and the other perfume bottles had rested on the same spot for so many years, they had burnt circles in the varnish. Behind a box of sun-faded tissues, a bottle of Mum deodorant, and several small containers of things like nasal spray and decongestant was a music box. If you opened the lid, a tiny, crook-backed ballerina with ragged skirts would jerkily turn to “Lara’s Theme” from Doctor Zhivago. The jewelry inside consisted of mostly costume pieces along with yellowish pearls given to her by her mother when she was eighteen.

  Marion sat down on the bed. Looking at the half-open, cherrywood wardrobe that had several old fleeces and a pair of gray pajama bottoms spilling out of it, she felt once more the sting of Judith’s comments about her clothes. She only wore things made from soft, stretchy material that did not cut into the plump folds of her body. She was, in fact, rather fond of the dark brown slacks that Judith had been snooty about, though it was true the hem on the left leg had come undone, so it trailed on the floor and got a bit dirty sometimes.

  She never thought what clothes might make her more attractive or fashionable; in fact, she never considered how she might appear to other people at all because, in general, people did not look at her. Of course, John might, but in the way that people who have known someone for a very long time look at them; that is, without really seeing at all, their minds having built an impression of one’s appearance over many years of familiarity that is nearly impossible to alter.

  On the single bed, all piled on top of one another, were Marion’s friends. She lay down so the soft toys were crammed beneath her body and then hugged them to her breast, pushing her face into their musty fur, feeling the cold hard glass of little eyes pressed against her cheek. There was Ben Blue, a lively little chap, with his cream fur and blue dungarees. Though she loved him, she still felt the hot burn of shame when remembering the time he had fallen out of her satchel in French Conversation and all the other girls had laughed at her for bringing a toy to school at fourteen. Big Woof was a long-legged, doglike creature whose remaining black glass eye was filled with sorrow. She had found him in the Age Concern shop for fifty pence and always sensed there was some tragedy in his past; perhaps the child who once owned him had died. Freddy Fatpaws, a tough guy who picked fights with the others if she didn’t watch him closely, had been found sticking out of Mr. Weinberg’s rubbish bin. Marion had had to sew back together the places where his fur was ripped from being chewed by Mr. Weinberg’s dog.

  Marion tried not to have favorites, but if she could only save one from a fire, she would no doubt pick Bettina, a large, silky gray rabbit. She was very proud of her beautiful sky-blue velvet bow and preferred to keep to herself rather than mix with the other toys. Bettina had been given to Marion by her aunt Agnes for Christmas when she was eleven.

  That was the year Agnes had come to eat Christmas dinner with the family. Aunt Agnes, who wore fashionable trouser suits and had her blond hair cut in a short fluffy style, was Mother’s younger sister. When she was a child, Marion loved her in that swoony, yearning way little girls reserve for fairy princesses and angels.

  Normally they went to the Northport Grand for Christmas dinner, but this year Mother wanted to stay at home because they no longer allowed smoking in the banquet suite, and she “just couldn’t face the thought of sitting amongst all those people in paper hats chewing at once like a herd of cows.” Marion and Aunt Agnes helped Mother to cook the meal, since Mrs. Morrison had Christmas off.

  While they worked, the three of them
joked around, singing along to Christmas songs on the radio, wearing baubles as earrings, and draping tinsel around their necks; even Mother smiled and laughed, though normally she just rubbed her forehead like she had a headache at any kind of horseplay. Mother and Aunt Agnes showed Marion how to jitterbug, a dance they used to do when they were girls, and the three of them practiced in the middle of the kitchen, grasping one another by the hand and spinning around until John came in, with the expression of someone serving a summons, and said Dad wanted to know if they were likely to be eating before New Year’s Eve or not.

  When Agnes set the turkey down on the table with a triumphant “taaa-daa,” Dad glowered as if it were a roasted rat. During the meal he kept moaning about everything: the carrots were overcooked; the meat was dry; the gravy was full of lumps.

  Then Aunt Agnes, who was known for speaking her mind, suddenly shouted out, “Go and get fish and chips from the end of the pier, Philip, if you don’t like it.” Marion still remembered that feeling of cold horror when Dad had got up from the table with his fist clenched as though he was about to hit Agnes. Instead, he had thrown a full jug of gravy on the floor, where it smashed, leaving a pool of brown sludge with shards of white porcelain sticking out like monster’s teeth. When Agnes left, Marion had been so devastated that she went out and deliberately ate several of the berries in the garden from the bad bush and ended up having her stomach pumped a second time.

  Marion took hold of Bettina and hugged the rabbit tightly to her chest, but soft toys were not enough to comfort her, and she felt bad inside as if the poison berries were again rotting her tummy. Then Neil came into the room and sat on the bed beside her. She felt the weight of his hand as he began to stroke her back, and the bad feeling faded.

  “Everything will be all right,” said Neil, because that was what she wanted him to say.

  SCHOOL

  When they were small, John and Marion both attended Saint Winifred’s Primary School. John was two years ahead of his sister, and though he was far from popular with the other children, no one ever dared to bully him. Even as a boy, he was tall and square with mousy hair that stuck flat to the dome of his large head and then formed a thin fringe over those puddle-gray eyes. Marion was proud of the fact that her brother was by far the cleverest child in the school and that everyone, including the teachers, seemed a little afraid of him.