As they sat across the table from each other, making stilted conversation, the truth, sharp as a thorn, pressed into Marion’s heart: the little girl who loved her was gone and this bored young woman was a stranger. Her hopes of remaining part of Lydia’s life as she got older, sharing in the excitement of her wedding, becoming an “auntie” to her children, even visiting at Easter and Christmas, were silly fantasies, just like those about Neil. Of course if Marion had been a blood relative, things might have been different, but without the ties of family, Lydia would drift into the future without her.
Marion heard the front door open, and her chest tightened with anxiety. John normally stayed all afternoon at the pub on Fridays playing chess.
“John, love,” asked Marion, “did you have a nice game with your friends?”
“Those drunken cheats are no friends of mine. None of them appreciates the finer nuances of the game.” He pinched his thumb and forefinger together to emphasize this point. “It’s as much as they can do to make a move without knocking the bloody board over. And that little slut of a waitress shortchanges you every time you buy a damn round. It’s the last time you’ll see me near that fucking dump,” he growled.
What was he thinking to use language like that in front of Lydia? From the smell of him and the color of his cheeks, Marion thought he might have had more than a few whiskeys himself.
“That’s a shame—it does you good to get out of the house now and then.”
“Oh yes, and I’m sure you’re very glad to get me ‘out of the house,’ aren’t you, Marion?” He scowled.
“I didn’t mean that, John. I just thought it was nice for you to have some intellectual stimulation and male company.”
“But I’ve got all the company and stimulation I need right here, haven’t I, love?”
The look he gave her was full of suggestion, and she feared that Lydia might read into it.
Picking up a handful of crisps, John pushed them into his mouth; as he crunched on them his lips were glistening like wet paint. He was standing right behind Lydia’s chair, the zip of his trousers close to her head. He placed a thick hand on Lydia’s small round shoulder.
“Don’t tell me this is the little brat from next door. Who’d have thought she’d grow up into such a lovely young lady! So, how is the big wide world of university?”
“It’s okay,” said Lydia, pulling her hair across her face.
“I bet you have to chase the lads off with a sharp stick?”
Lydia lowered her eyes and forced a smile.
“I don’t know—not really.”
“No boyfriends, then? Or do you like girls better?” John winked. “Is that the modern thing?”
A heat rose from Marion’s chest to her face.
“I should be going now,” said Lydia.
“Don’t let me break up your little tea party,” said John.
“No, I have to work on an essay. It’s due in tomorrow.”
“Yes, you go, love, don’t let us keep you,” said Marion, suddenly desperate for Lydia to be gone.
Marion got up, and Lydia kissed her on the cheek. They went towards the door, but John was blocking the way. “What’s the matter, don’t I get a kiss?” He leered at Lydia.
Then he grabbed the girl by the waist and pulled her towards him. Marion saw him plant a wet salty kiss on Lydia’s mouth. There was a flash of hair fanning into a russet tail and then the front door slammed as Lydia left.
John stumbled his way into the living room, and Marion began throwing all the unwanted sweets and crisps into a big plastic bin liner where they formed a crunchy rainbow of trash. How excited she had been buying those things in the hope that Lydia would enjoy them; it had all been a horrible waste and the poor girl would probably never come back again after what had happened.
She threw the rubbish bag on the floor and, steaming with rage, followed John into the next room, where he was sitting reading the newspaper as calmly as if nothing had happened.
“How dare you touch her like that!” she cried, ripping the newspaper from his hands. “You are nothing but a filthy pervert!”
“You’ll mind your mouth, girl, if you know what’s good for you!”
John rose to his feet and stood a full head taller than his sister.
“You should be ashamed of yourself, John Zetland. I always believed you were a decent man, but I was wrong.”
“What right do you have to talk to me like that, you ignorant bitch?”
Marion had never stood up to anyone like this before, and her heart felt as though it might burst out from her chest.
“I have every right, and I want you to know I hate you!”
“Hate your own brother, do you? You watch out, or I’ll really give you something to hate me for.”
His fingertips sank deep into her flesh as he grabbed her upper arms. He held her for what seemed an age, his face nothing but wild eyes amidst a mass of purple blotches. Then he shook her before pushing her away so violently her neck bones jarred as she fell backwards onto the sofa. Shock left her too stunned to speak or cry as John stormed from the room. Then the sound of the cellar door slamming shut echoed through the house.
• • •
WHEN SHE WOKE the next morning, at first she couldn’t remember why her eyes were sore and swollen. Then the picture of John kissing Lydia with his slick red mouth returned. A nasty, grubby feeling clung to Marion like wet mud. She remembered feeling the same way when John had brushed against her in the wax museum and when Mr. Bevan had touched her breast, only this was a thousand times worse. How could her brother behave in such a disgusting manner, kissing a pure young woman on the mouth like that?
He was nothing but a dirty old man. Memories of the way he used to look at Lydia when she was a young girl surfaced, and Marion cringed with horror. “Why didn’t I realize it before? I was blind to his gross, perverted nature. I didn’t want to see him for what he really was! That poor girl, I should never have let him near her.”
She rubbed the back of her aching neck and then rolled up the sleeves of her nightgown. The puffy white flesh of her upper arms was covered in bruises the color of thunderclouds from where he had grabbed her. A noise on the stairs made her shiver with fear. Immediately she went to her bedroom door and turned the key in the lock. Was he strong enough to break it down? she wondered. Feeling the pressure of her bladder, she realized she would have to leave her room at some point.
The look of loathing and anger in his eyes before he flung her away like an old rag doll still smoldered deep inside her. How could she share a house with someone like that? If only she could run away, leave him to that cellar—after all, that was the only thing he cared about. Marion went over to the window that looked out into the rear of the house. The sycamore tree stood at the end of the garden. When she was a little girl, Lydia used to play around it. She had a toy tea set and would pile the little plates with “salad” made from daisies and grass, then leave it for the fairies to eat. Now several branches had fallen from the tree, and all its leaves were dead. Judith had been right. It was quite rotten and probably dangerous.
Forgiving John for this behavior was unthinkable, but what choice did she have? To walk out the door? Where would she go? Was there some kind of shelter for women like her? Marion imagined herself in some huge, drab dormitory, a kind of Victorian orphanage for distressed middle-aged women, where she would lie huddled on a narrow camp bed next to rows of other lost souls like herself.
• • •
THE DAYS FOLLOWING the kiss, Marion felt as though she had been infected by some shivery sickness that disturbed her sleep and took away her appetite. Each time she heard his footsteps on the stairs, she would tremble with fear, imagining John storming into her bedroom to attack her once again. Most of the time she hid herself in the attic, but it was impossible to escape his presence completely. Creaking coming from his bedroom on the floor below woke her around six in the morning, then great racking phlegm-rich coughs were f
ollowed by the groan of the bathroom pipes as he washed. His breakfast was heralded by the softer, womanish moaning of the kitchen pipes and the noise of the radio made thin and whiny by its journey through the floors of the house. Then the house fell quiet until noon, when there would be more noise from the kitchen while he prepared lunch. After six in the evening, her brother emerged from the cellar for a short while to get his dinner, and then at midnight he went to bed. By learning this routine, she managed to dodge him, only nipping downstairs to retrieve scraps of food when she was sure he wouldn’t be there.
It was around midnight, a week after Lydia’s visit, when Marion realized she hadn’t heard any noise from the house since the previous evening when her brother had gone down to the cellar. She waited an hour before creeping downstairs to the landing below and saw that John’s bedroom door was wide open, the bed empty and still made up.
What could be going on? Was he going to stay down there forever?
Instead of going back to bed, Marion went farther down the landing and into her mother’s room. On the bedside table was a little bottle of pills. She picked it up, but the small white label was too faded to read. Marion opened the drawer and found a pack of tarot cards.
The box was decorated with a picture of the sun with a lovely face that stared serenely out at her. Perhaps the cards could help her decide what to do. She seemed to remember that you had to first ask a question out loud, so she shook the frayed pack from its box and began to shuffle them in her clumsy hands.
“Please help me,” she said. “I can’t believe it has come to this, but I am afraid of John. I love him, but I feel like I don’t know who he is sometimes. Worrying about things all the time is making me tired and ill. I just want to curl up in bed and pull the covers over my head forever. Please, tell me what to do.”
Marion picked out a card. It was a picture of a knight holding a sword, but she had no idea what it meant. She picked another, the hanged man. Did this mean she should hang herself? The idea of dying did not frighten her, but the thought of pain did. She had heard somewhere that death by hanging took a very long time, as one slowly choked to death. If she killed herself, then she wouldn’t have to be scared and worried all the time, would she? And also it would serve John right for behaving the way he did. Imagining how he might react to finding her body gave her an odd feeling of satisfaction.
She picked up the bottle of pills from the bedside table and unscrewed the lid. There were only three inside. That wouldn’t be nearly enough to do it; she had to look for more. She began searching through the drawers of the bedside table but found only indigestion remedies and some old eye drops.
Then she glanced towards the door of the en suite bathroom. The pills would probably be in there, but she hadn’t gone into that room since the day Mother was found dead, with her gray hair floating in the cold water, a burnt-down cigarette butt still trapped between the fingers of her outstretched hand. The thought of going in now gave Marion chills.
You have to do it, she told herself. Just go and look inside the medicine cabinet. Don’t be such a mouse—it will only take a minute.
Marion crept forwards and then slid through the doorway. In the corner of her eye she caught sight of something dark in the middle of the bathtub. A huge spider? Dust? She did not dare look at it directly. She approached the cabinet and saw a rust stain snaking towards the plug hole of the small washbasin below. Her reflection appeared in the mottled glass mirror, and for a terrifying instant she mistook it for Mother’s dead, bloated face. Snapping open the doors of the cabinet, she found no pills, only discolored eau de toilette and bottles of cough linctus. Her bravery unrewarded, Marion left the en suite, closing the door firmly behind her.
Mother must have hidden her store of pills somewhere else. She got down on her knees and began pulling out boxes from underneath the huge bed. Most of them contained material, thick velvet, lace, and heavy-glazed cloth that made her nostalgic for the warehouse. There was a box containing odds and ends, little broken ornaments, used batteries, a china parrot with its beak missing.
In her search she came across a whole family of egg-shaped Weebles, a toy supermarket cash register, and a tiny pink kitchen with fake tins of food, little cardboard packets, and plastic vegetables that went in the cupboards. Looking at these old toys filled her with sweet sadness; they had provided small islands of joy in an otherwise unhappy childhood. Would she ever feel so good about anything again? When she was dead, a stranger would come into the house and take all these things and throw them on a rubbish dump. She had once hoped that Lydia might take them for her children, but of course, no one would want them now. Even that nasty old woman in the charity shop would think they were scruffy, germ-ridden things, “not fit for a modern child.”
She found suitcases full of photograph albums. Inside one of those albums, alongside the many stuffy portraits of her parents at formal functions, there was a black-and-white snap of her and John, dough-faced toddlers perched on top of donkeys, both of them dressed in military-style coats looking serious and determined, like tiny generals about to lead a cavalry charge. Then she found a picture of herself and dear Aunt Agnes standing on Northport Pier. Marion remembered her aunt asking a perfect stranger to take the picture. She had just gone right up to him and given him the camera. Mother would never have done something like that. A warmth surrounded her heart. Yes, I was happy then, she told herself, I can remember. I loved Agnes, and we had many wonderful times together.
Outside there was a rumble of thunder. Mother used to say it was God moving the furniture. Rain began sloshing against the windows, not in individual drops but as if it were pouring from a burst pipe. Lit by flashes of lightning, the trees that lined Grange Road looked like giant green beasts swinging their furry bodies from side to side.
Perhaps she would rest for a while until she could think of another place to look for the pills. It occurred to her they might have expired anyway after such a long time and she would have to think up another method of doing away with herself. Without bothering to replace all the boxes she had dragged out, she went back to her own room and got into bed, then lay for hours listening to the storm. She pulled all her animals close, but they just felt like bits of fake fur stuffed with rags and offered no comfort. Then, through the wind and rain, she heard something that sent a wave of shock through her whole body. Could it be the sound of a baby crying?
It was so faint, it was hard to tell if she was imagining it or not. Her mother’s baby brother had died in this house, was it his ghost? She got out of bed and opened the door to listen. Yes, she could distinctly hear crying coming from downstairs. A baby crying.
Standing in her nightgown, clammy with sweat and the pulse in her neck throbbing, Marion strained to listen.
Her mind began to race. Could it really be possible? A baby born in this old house? It seemed impossible to believe. Was that what John had been doing all that time? Helping the mother to give birth? A new life couldn’t survive down in that cold, damp cellar for long. It needed warmth and fresh air. The child would have to be brought up into the house.
She pictured herself holding the baby, smelling its warm soft head. Tiny fingers glowing with pink light. The baby smiling at her, learning to recognize her face. A brand-new person who would know her as Auntie Marion. Someone to play with and tell stories to.
They would put the child in the spare room next to hers. That room had a nice big window overlooking the garden and got lots of sun in the morning. It would have to be decorated, of course. She would be able to read the child all of her Beatrix Potter stories and let her play with all her toys. She felt sure it would be a girl, and she would call her Agnes after her aunt.
Marion would give herself entirely to Little Agnes. She would be the center of her world. She would cook good food for her, proper healthy food, not junk. She would buy her pretty little dresses. Perhaps they wouldn’t send Agnes to school; instead, John could teach her at home. He was an excellent teacher,
after all, and then they wouldn’t have to worry about her being bullied by other children.
They would play games together in the garden and go for picnics on the beach. It would be like when Lydia was small, only Agnes would never leave her. How happy they would be together. This was what she had been waiting for her whole life, something that would belong entirely to her.
Throughout the night she would creep downstairs and listen at the cellar door, but she didn’t hear the baby cry again. She began to worry that Agnes might need a doctor, and that would require an explanation as to where the child came from. Perhaps they could say they had found it left on the doorstep, but then the baby would be taken away by social services and that would be heartbreaking.
If she pretended that she had given birth to it, would anyone know? Would they examine her medically? Didn’t women sometimes have children in their fifties? She knew for certain that she would never let anyone take the child away. She would protect it with her own life if she had to. Of course she would have to forgive John for that awful business with Lydia. He would need her to help him with the baby.
A baby, just saying the word in her head made her feel light with happiness. A new life meant hope for the future, a reason for her to go on living, someone to love and care for—someone who would love her in return. It would be hard work, but she was sure she could do it. Marion went back up the stairs and lay down on her bed; she had been awake all night, so she should get some rest. Later there would be so much to do. While the storm raged outside, Marion, lulled by warm, comforting thoughts, drifted off to sleep.
• • •
THIS TIME IT wasn’t a child’s cries that disturbed Marion’s slumber, but a loud crash that sent hoofed animals stampeding through the forest of her dreams. After a brief struggle to free herself from sleep’s clutches, she got out of bed and rushed to the window. The uprooted sycamore tree was stretched across the grass, its upper part having smashed a section of the wall that separated their garden from Judith’s. John was lying on the ground next to it.
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