“But I haven’t seen it.”
“Marion, it had foreign currency in it,” he said sternly. “A lot of money. You must have seen it. Who else has been in the house that could have taken it?”
Her mind began to churn. Had she seen it? Perhaps she’d put a letter in the rubbish by mistake? Could she be so stupid as to do something like that and not remember?
“I’ll come and help you look for it, John.”
She spent an hour rushing from room to room, searching in a mixed-up backwards and forwards manner that meant she kept looking in one place repeatedly while missing other spots altogether. All the time John followed her around, like a police inspector waiting for her to confess.
“Have you checked all your pockets, John?”
“Marion,” he roared, “that envelope is not in my bloody pockets. I left it on the damn dresser, and you must have moved it.”
“But I’m sure I didn’t, John, I’m almost completely sure,” she said, going through the bathroom cabinet, taking out each bottle of expired antidandruff shampoo and athlete’s foot remedy one by one, then replacing it. There were so many places it could be, she felt as though this searching would never end and she would carry on like this for the rest of her life. When she tried to go into John’s bedroom, he stopped her.
“I don’t want you nosing around in my private things,” he told her.
“But you might have left it in there.”
“I know damn well I haven’t.”
On their third visit to the kitchen she remembered she had not checked in the cabinet above the sink. When she opened it, the pile of junk mail fell out and scattered across the floor. Marion got down on her knees and began searching through all the flyers and envelopes while John loomed over her.
“For God’s sake, woman,” he said, shaking his head so hard his jowls waggled. “Look at all this bloody mess. No wonder everything goes missing in this sodding house.”
Then he began to tremble and struggle for his breath. He put his hands on the kitchen table to steady himself.
“Are you all right?” asked Marion.
“It’s you,” he panted, “you’ve worked me up into this state, you silly woman, don’t you see that? Now get me some water.”
John seated himself at the table while Marion hurried to the tap.
“Why don’t you rest down here and I will carry on looking?” she said, handing him a glass.
He nodded and drank greedily, spilling some water down his chin and onto his shirt.
Without John following her around, she was able to go into his room.
The room was decorated with faded brown and yellow wallpaper. A greasy-looking satin quilt covered the high double bed. Along one wall was a bookcase with hundreds of volumes about science and things she didn’t understand. From the ceiling hung the model planes, all facing in the same direction like a flock of dark birds frozen in time. An album containing a collection of cigarette cards with the faces of cricket players on them that John collected as a boy lay open on the dresser next to his bottles of cologne and brilliantine.
Between the two windows was John’s desk and modern computer. There was something about this great block of a thing, with its enormous dark screen like a giant robot head, that made her feel it might come alive and attack. Pinned on the wall next to the computer was a map of the world and around it several pictures of smiling young women. Who were these women and what was John’s connection with them?
Marion went over to the desk and, being careful not to disturb the computer as it hummed and whirred in its sleep, opened the top drawer. Inside were several pieces of cheap women’s jewelery. She picked up a tangled chain. A few long blond hairs had been trapped in the fastener, and its silver butterfly pendant was spotted with something dark red. Thinking it might be dried blood, she shuddered and let it drop back into the drawer.
John shouted from downstairs:
“Marion, what are you doing up there?”
Quickly she closed the drawer, then picked up a pair of trousers that he had left draped over the bedstead.
Turning one of the pockets, she found two fifty-pence pieces and some mints stuck to a wrinkled cotton hankie.
When she reached into the other pocket, she pulled out an envelope. It wasn’t sealed, and a dark wad of oily notes slid out. She glimpsed a name, Violetta Dada, and part of an address, a long row of numbers and a street name, PROSPECT GEORGY something or other.
When Marion returned to the kitchen, John snatched the envelope from her and began counting the money. She wanted to tell him what a fool he had been, that it had been in exactly the place he said it wouldn’t be, that she had been right all along, but she knew this would send him into an even worse rage.
“You were right, John, it was on the dresser all along. Hidden under a place mat. I can’t believe we missed it.”
“What did I tell you, Marion? You keep this place like a pigsty. A bloody pigsty.”
When he said “pigsty” the second time, a little fleck of spit flew from his mouth and landed on her cheek. Outraged and humiliated, Marion wiped it away with the back of her hand.
• • •
FOR DINNER THAT evening they had tinned macaroni and cheese. Marion had left it in the pan without stirring for a few minutes too long while trying to reach a fork that had fallen between the fridge and the cupboard. She failed in retrieving the fork and wondered how long it might stay there. Perhaps until after she and John were dead and the house had been sold?
Scraping the macaroni out of the pan, she saw little brown and black lumps of singed pasta amongst the yellowish mush. I don’t care, she said to herself. I hope he gets a bad stomach. Her nerves were still jangling from all the drama earlier that day. John should have apologized for shouting like that and accusing her of losing the stupid envelope. He hadn’t even thanked her for finding the damn thing. He snapped at her so often these days, and his temper seemed worse than ever. And she was furious with herself for not standing up to him. Marion took a mouthful of macaroni and chewed, the black bits gave it a nasty bitter taste. John poured a glass of cordial for her.
“Nice macaroni, Marion.”
He obviously felt guilty and was trying to get on her good side. She wanted to ask who was this Violetta and why was he sending her money, but part of her was scared of knowing. After dinner, Marion went into the living room and sat down on the sofa as far away from John’s end as possible. Placing her own cushion, the red velvet one, behind her back, she threw his cushion, the large blue one, onto the floor as a small gesture of protest.
To watch television, John and Marion sat in the same places they had watched Magpie and Tiswas from as children; Marion on the right side of the sofa nearest to the bay window at the front of the house, John on the left closest to the door. When Dad had been alive, he had sat in the big brown leather armchair to the left of the fireplace and Mother had sat opposite him in the smaller velvet-covered chair. Those chairs were always empty, and it never occurred to John or Marion to sit in them.
John came into the living room with a tray of tea and biscuits and set them down on the table. He picked up his cushion from the floor, then sat down and turned on the TV. They watched a documentary together about a little girl who lived in a very poor village in India. The girl had a horribly deformed face, and all the people in the village feared her, calling her the demon girl. She couldn’t even leave her hut because other children would throw stones. Then an aid worker found out about the girl and contacted his brother, a surgeon, who lived in England.
The surgeon agreed to perform reconstructive surgery for free, and the documentary makers paid for the girl along with her father to fly to England for the operation. After the operation was completed and the bandages had been removed, the surgeon showed the girl her face in a mirror. Though she wasn’t pretty, she did look at least relatively normal. When her face was healed, the girl said to the surgeon, “You have killed the demon and brought me to life.”
When Marion noticed there were tears in her brother’s eyes, she melted and immediately forgave him for shouting earlier. He was not such a bad man, really; he had a good heart deep down.
After the documentary, they watched the news. There was a story about one of those hot sandy places where people are always shooting and blowing one another up. They showed a small child who had had one of his legs blown off by a bomb. Marion felt overwhelmed by a sense of pity as the boy stared into the camera with terrified brown eyes. Then she reminded herself that these things happened all the time, people suffered, that was the way of the world, and one had to accept it or go mad from thinking about it.
Then there was a piece about treatment for cancer patients. Marion didn’t like stories about illness; it reminded her of Aunt Agnes dying alone in the hospice. It also made her scared that she would get ill herself and one day die in one of those terrible places. But she watched anyway because John thought the news was important.
When the news was over, John switched off the TV and she began clearing the tea things. As she was about to take the tray through to the kitchen John stopped her.
“Sit down, Marion,” he said. “I want to talk to you about something.” Then he got a serious look on his face. “We will have to make another trip in a couple of weeks. To pick someone up. I’m expecting another visitor.”
For once she stood up to him. Marion said no, she couldn’t take it, not again, her nerves would just fall apart. She wouldn’t go with him to meet another girl. But John was so much better at arguing than she was. He had a clever way of putting things that always made it seem like he was right, whereas trouble addled Marion’s tongue and her words came out jumbled like the ravings of a madwoman.
He had a special feeling about this. From the messages she wrote, he sensed that she could be the right one, the girl who would love him when she got to know him. A girl he might marry, perhaps start a family with. Would his own sister deny him that? He needed to love and to be loved. He insisted that the girl would get suspicious if he turned up to collect her alone. She was more likely to feel safe in the presence of a mature woman. Apart from everything else, he had sent this girl a lot of money, for a passport and for the cost of her journey. All that would be wasted if they didn’t go to pick her up.
But what about the others, wondered Marion, hadn’t he felt the same way about them? And what would happen to them now? They were people, he couldn’t just hoard them away like those broken toasters and radios he never got round to fixing. Instead of answering her, John slipped into one of his dark moods. Each time he came into a room, she felt the temperature drop. Sometimes she caught him staring at her, and Marion would imagine a tiny version of herself trapped in the great dome of his balding head, crazily fleeing from flames and monsters. Bit by bit his moodiness sapped her resistance, each slam of a door or stamp on the stairs making her weaker.
• • •
ONE MORNING WHILE she was cleaning the bathroom, she heard a loud crash. The weight of dread she carried at all times got heavier as she made her way downstairs. On the living room floor, in front of the fireplace, were several pieces of broken china. She looked up to the mantelpiece and saw that the glazed white lion with bulging black eyes that had sat in the same spot all of Marion’s life was gone. Mother said it had been made in the Orient nearly a thousand years ago. When she was a child, Marion would stare at the lion for hours, then close her eyes; when she opened them again, she would be certain that its large head had turned slightly or one of its paws had moved.
John had broken it because he knew she loved it. As she gazed at the sharp white shards lying in the hearth she wondered what would be next. The milkmaid figurines with their pink cheeks and tiny rosebud mouths? The crystal jug with silver medallion that bore the arms of George III? It would be impossible to hide them all away from him. Picking up a dagger-shaped piece of china in her hand, she squeezed until a drop of blood oozed from her palm. How could anyone do this? How could he be so cruel?
The next day she found a headless shepherdess lying at the bottom of the stairs, a pale hand still clutching her crook, a baby lamb looking up forlornly at where its mistress’s sweet face used to be. The day after that it was a Japanese vase adorned with the story of two lovers and then the silver teapot with tiger paws dented beyond repair. Each time she found another precious object destroyed she felt like something inside her own body had been smashed.
Mother’s voice echoed in her head:
This is your fault, Marion. This wouldn’t happen if you just agreed to do what John wanted. You shouldn’t upset him. You know what he is like when he gets upset.
But I can’t, Marion insisted. I can’t do it, and I’m upset!
Mother’s only answer was to purse her lips and roll her eyes upwards.
• • •
ONE MORNING JOHN came up behind her while she was making tea in the kitchen and picked up the Paddington Bear mug she had used since she was twelve years old.
“All you have to do is sit in the damn car, Marion,” he said. “Even you can manage that, can’t you?”
She accepted that there was no point in trying to stand up to him; he was too strong-minded for her. And he knew that she couldn’t live with being hated. If she did as he said, just sat there and said nothing, waited until it was over, that wouldn’t be so bad, would it? She would do this to make him happy. Anything for a quiet and peaceful life. As soon as she had made the decision to help him, the weight became a little lighter.
“All right,” she declared. “I’ll do it.”
John placed the bear mug down on the work top.
The relief lasted until the night before they were due to pick up the new visitor. Marion lay awake all night, imagining stories on the news about a middle-aged brother and sister luring young foreign women to England then imprisoning them in a cellar. She heard Mother’s voice in her head:
No one cares about these girls. They’ve got nothing. That is why they come to this country. John can help the poor unfortunate things. He can give them an education and protect them from the evil men who want to use them.
But what about their families? she wondered. Someone must miss them and wonder what happens to them?
Their families don’t want them, no one does, replied Mother. Think how lucky you are, Marion, to have been born in England to a good family who took care of you. To have a decent home and financial security.
• • •
WHEN JOHN TAPPED on her door at 6:30 a.m., Marion forced herself out of bed and into the chilly bathroom, where silverfish were still slithering around the sink. Her limbs felt cold and strange, as if they didn’t belong to her at all but were attached instead to some stiffening corpse that she was forced to clean and dress. After managing to get herself down to the kitchen, she made a cup of tea and some toast, then sat there unable to eat or drink a mouthful.
John’s appetite was untroubled by nerves. He stuffed eggs, sausage, and bacon into his mouth with one hand while holding the newspaper in the other. He was wearing the black suit and tie that he had worn for Mother’s funeral. Marion, nervously picking at fuzz-berries that decorated the sleeves of her coat, wondered if she should have put on something smarter.
John had spent the previous afternoon carefully wiping the ghost-gray paintwork of Mother’s Mercedes with a soft yellow chamois in preparation for the journey.
It took several hard turns of the ignition for them to get it going. Marion had her fingers crossed inside her coat pockets in hope the car would refuse to start at all and they wouldn’t be able to make the trip; but after several minutes of mysterious grinding and screeching it lurched forwards down the gravel driveway and onto Grange Road. The car radio was tuned to a station called Casual Classics. “One of our listeners’ favorites now,” said the presenter in a syrupy voice. “This is the Queen of the Night aria from The Magic Flute, to set your day off to a great start.” John whistled along to the music as he drove.
/> @violetunderground
August 2nd
Hi Adrian thanks for adding me!
Here some things about me:
I am a girl called Violetta of course!
It is my dream to be famous designer and to make red carpet dress for very famous actress. Perhaps Scarlett Johansson she is my favorite actress of all. My favourite designer are Versace, Burberry and of course Chanel. I am always drawing pictures of clothes I would like to design, I am very good artist you can see my pictures on tumblr page.
For the present I am working in big hotel. My best friend is Irina, we are both chambermaids. We have to make beds all day long and it is very hard work. Some people are kind and leave tips, but others even very rich people leave nothing then block toilet with their nasty rich people poops.
The girls on reception are bitches. They think they are better than us chambermaids. The worst is Ariana, she has a long nose and cross eyes. One day I came to work through the front entrance because I was late and she reported me to Maria and I lose an hour’s pay. Maria the head housekeeper is a super witch. We have to put these little tiny bottles of shampoo and shower gel in rooms each day. Hundreds and hundreds of them. Before we are allowed to go home Maria searches our bags to make sure we don’t steal any.
Last month Irina found a human pinkie finger in the waste bin of Pendragon Suite. Maria told her to flush it down the toilet because the hotel people do not want police making trouble. We think maybe some gangster cut off the finger because the guy owed him money.
Lots of love
V
/<3
xxxx
August 10th
I am so tired tonight I can hardly write anything to you. And I must sleep on the floor of Irina’s room because mama no longer wants me at home. One time Irina’s brother came into bathroom while I was in shower and took piss right in front of me. I couldn’t even say anything and just stood there wanting to scream. Tomorrow a hundred more beds to change and toilets to scrub. A thousand little tiny bottles of shampoo. How many more bottles of shampoo until I am rescued?
The Visitors Page 15