by Lucy Wood
‘I know,’ Tristan said.
‘And Pepper. You know I’ve got Pepper. I just wanted to get the whole thing done as quickly as possible and get out.’
‘I know,’ Tristan said.
There was a lay-by in the road and she pulled in and stopped the car. Her hands still gripping the wheel. ‘You know? You know?’ Something unravelled and snapped in front of her like a flag. Tristan just going along for the ride.
Tristan turned round sharply. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I know, Ada. And you knew as well. But there’s nothing I can do about it whether I want to or not. Do you know that?’
‘Do I know that?’ she said. ‘Of course I know that. I know the hell out of that.’ She always got lost in arguments; what did she know? She knew nothing. She got out of the car. Her breath billowed out. Her cheeks stinging. Snow crunched. She climbed up the bank towards a low fence, a field beyond covered in snow. The field was smooth. No marks, no tracks. Her boots sank, leaving deep prints. She walked a wide circle. Heard Tristan get out of the car and climb up the bank. Felt him watching her. She looked up. God, that stupid hat made him look young. He’d found a curved stick and he held it in front of his mouth. First curved downwards, then gradually making the ends point up. Behind it, his own mouth in a lopsided grin. And this was her problem, this was definitely her problem: when it came down to it, she would do anything for a really good grin, all chapped and bemused and leaning teeth.
Tristan walked into the field, put his hands in his pockets and started pressing his own deep footprints into the snow.
From above, the field was stamped with wide arcs, like links in a chain, each one getting smaller and closer as they slowly circled each other in the snow.
Chapter 29
The buckles on Pepper’s shoes rattled. She sat on the stairs and pressed her feet against the rails. Waiting for her mother to get off the phone. ‘Could you say that again?’ her mother kept saying. She shook the phone and looked at it. ‘All I can hear is crackling.’ She shook the phone again, listened, then put it down.
‘What is it?’ Pepper said.
‘I think the school’s been closed,’ her mother said. She picked the phone up once more and listened. ‘It’s not working,’ she said. She went over to the window and looked out. It had been snowing heavily all night. In the distance, the moor was submerged. The clouds were so low and bulky it looked like they were going to land on the ground. There were drifts of snow all around the house and the wind was getting stronger, flinging snow against the windows.
Pepper pressed her feet hard against the stairs. They were meant to be doing pictures with chalk. And she wanted to show Petey her knee – she had a bruise that was changing from purple to yellow. ‘How long for?’ she asked. Trying to keep her voice casual.
‘All this week,’ her mother said. ‘The snow’s forecast to get worse.’ She stared out of the window.
‘But maybe the week after,’ Pepper said. She ran her finger over the shiny wood. There was a black knot in the step she liked to sit on, which looked like a spider in a web. She touched the fat middle. The day stretched out ahead of her. She followed the spider’s web with her finger, round and round and then round again.
The snow made the house seem dim and green. Her buckles rattled. She got up and went down the hall, looking again at the pictures along the wall – she had looked at them so many times she knew them off by heart. The kingfisher on the branch over the river; the paper turning yellow in the right-hand corner. The picture of the wren in the bank – the shadow of the person taking the photo spilled out on the grass in front. The one where the water was so flat that there was a whole tree reflected upside down in it. And there were fingerprints on the wall around the pictures. Different-sized ones that Pepper liked to put her own fingers against. In the other houses they’d lived in, the walls had usually been scrubbed so hard that there was no sign that anyone had ever lived there before.
There was a lot of noise coming from the kitchen. Her mother was looking in all the cupboards and filling a bag with packets and tins and pieces of bread. Pepper watched from the doorway. ‘What are you doing?’ she asked.
‘I’ve got to go and check on Luke,’ her mother said.
‘Why?’ Pepper asked.
Her mother gestured outside. ‘He’s in the house by himself.’ She put another tin in the bag. She went to the door and put on her coat and scarf and gloves and a hat. Then she took her coat off and put on the long brown one that was hanging by the door. ‘Stay inside, OK?’ she said. ‘And don’t touch the fire. I won’t be long.’ She pushed the door. It only opened a few inches, so she shoved it hard with her shoulder. It scraped past a heap of snow, then closed softly.
Pepper stayed in the hall listening for the car, but it didn’t start. She went upstairs and just glimpsed her mother trudging up the road through deep snow. She watched until she couldn’t see her any more. Now Luke was in his house by himself, and she was in her house by herself.
The house was very quiet. She went and stood by the fire. It was very low. There were a lot of logs stacked up at the side. She put the oven glove on and opened the stove door carefully. Then she placed two medium-sized logs on the embers. Let enough air whoosh in so that they caught and then closed it again. There. A burning smell. The glove was smouldering. She stared at it. Smoke curled out. She pressed it against the slates for a long time with her eyes closed. When she opened them it had stopped smoking.
An hour passed, and then another. She wasn’t scared of the house’s noises any more: the creaks, the groans, the soft chunterings. It was like the house was talking to itself. When it was windy, the upstairs windows shook, and when the water was low in the tank the radiators banged. Once, when the wind was very strong, it shook bits of old horsehair out of the beams because part of the house used to be a stable. There was a beam in the kitchen with a stain that looked like a bat, and a crack in the wall by the phone that was so deep that, if she picked at it, she could slide most of her hand in. Her coats and boots were lined up by the door. She knew the best place to watch the road, the best places to hide, the best place to stand if she wanted to listen in to conversations. She avoided, without even noticing, the rusty nail sticking out of the third step, and the sharp tile by the door in the kitchen.
She went into the study, picked up the camera and a bird book and took them under the kitchen table. Got back up and found a tin of cherries in the cupboard. She opened them and crawled back under the table, ate them one by one, dripping dark syrup over the floor. She hummed to herself. Turned the pages slowly. There was a picture of a heron in the book. She studied it for a long time. Snow fell outside the window. She turned the page slowly. A grey shape moved past the window. The glass rattled. She stopped humming. She held the page very still. The window rattled again. She closed the book and crawled out, then looked outside. Saw nothing but deep snow. She opened the window. Snow whirled and landed in the sink. There was a paw print in the snow on the windowsill. She closed the window and went to the hall, then pushed the front door open as hard as she could. The world was deep and white. She stepped out into it. Almost fell down the buried steps. ‘Captain,’ she called. She blinked snow out of her eyes. She took another step out. Could hardly see through the snow, but there was the cat, turning to look at her. There was snow all over his ears and his face. His tail looked like a white brush.
She stayed by the door. Captain turned back and looked out at the snow, towards the trees and the river. There was a scratch on the back of his leg and a tuft of fur missing from his tail. His ears pricked up and alert, his back quivering. His fur blending in with the snow, moving his paws carefully. His ears twitched. He lifted his nose, sniffing things on the air that she would never even know about. She stood and watched him and she didn’t call.
But the cat didn’t move away. He turned again and looked at the house. He took a step closer. Snow matted onto his fur. Then he jumped lightly onto the tree stump, then along the row of plan
t pots and onto the front steps. He disappeared into the house.
Pepper left the door open. She went back into the kitchen and sat under the table. Captain moved around the edges of the cupboards, the melting snow slicking his fur. His paws trailed snow over the floor. Pepper opened her book and turned the page. Watching Captain out of the corner of her eye. He snaked around the kitchen, jumped up on the side and drank some water from the sink. Then jumped back down and rubbed against the oven.
‘You don’t have to stay in here,’ she told him. ‘I left the door open.’
He stopped rubbing and looked at her. Then he went out of the kitchen.
Pepper turned the pages of the book without looking at them. Her eyes felt hot and she blinked them over and over. After a while, she got up and went out into the hall. The snow had piled up around the door and it was very cold. She pulled the door closed and leaned against it. Her mother had been gone a long time. She picked up the phone and listened: there was no dialling tone. She checked the fire: it was OK. She checked the windows were shut: they were. The window in the study rattled. She glanced in. Captain was sitting on the chair in the corner. Padding his paws down on the cushion, as if he was plumping it up. There were tearing noises as his claws dug in.
She went in but didn’t look at him. She reached up to the shelves and spent a long time choosing a book. She took down a big colourful one. ‘D i p p e r,’ she spelled out carefully. ‘Dipper.’ Glanced over at Captain. He was sitting up and looking at her. ‘It’s just letters,’ she told him. ‘Nothing to be afraid of.’
He put his head to one side. She put the book down and stood in front of him, then stretched out her hand a little. Captain flinched and made a funny noise in the back of his throat. She took her hand away. At school, she didn’t like it when she had to hold hands with people in a line. They always had dry or clammy skin or sharp bits of nail. She always kept her hands behind her back.
‘I don’t mind,’ she told him. She sat on the floor next to the window and opened the book. Snow slid down the glass. The jackdaw’s loose feathers ruffled in the draught. She felt something by her leg. Captain had jumped down from the chair and was standing next to her, looking at a trailing thread on her jumper. She snapped it off and pulled it along the floor. ‘What is it?’ she said. ‘Get it Captain.’ He stiffened up and arched his back. His tail very rigid. Then he pounced on the thread. Pepper pulled it away. His claws almost grazing her hand. She pulled it along the floor again, standing up this time. ‘Come and get it,’ she said. Captain swiped and his claws caught her on the thumb. She jerked her arm backwards, hard and fast, and heard, rather than felt, her elbow smack into the window. There was silence. Then a hot jolting pain swept down her arm and the wind howled in and there was glass on the carpet around her feet. She turned and looked. The window had cracked right through. Snow whirled in. Dark grey sky. Then, suddenly, there was a face at the window – the old woman, standing outside and staring at the glass.
Pepper blinked, looked again and saw only snow, swirling and intense, like the time she had split open an old pillow and feathers had poured out; drifting down and settling over her bed and her pencils and her shoes.
Chapter 30
That window had broken before. Yes, that was it: it had broken and he’d picked up a piece of glass and cut his thumb. Pearl remembered the bead of blood, the look of surprise on his face when it had rolled down over his wrist. She could remember the way his eyebrows had furrowed, the slight puckering on his bottom lip, but not his actual face, not the particulars of it. Frank. She said his name out loud, in the snow. What exactly was his skin like? What exactly were his eyes like? Nothing came back as vividly as the broken glass, the smear of blood, more brown than red, like glimpsing a deer rushing through trees.
That was when it all changed, although the day had started like any other. One of those mizzly winters, no snow, but the rawness of it exceptional. The house full of damp and smelling like a ditch and the fire puttering and not generating enough heat. Pearl scoured back over it, looking for signs. They had woken up early, as usual. Eyes bleary and the sheets chilled overnight. Those precious few moments before the day began, when they would lie side by side, hips touching, looking up at the ceiling; the stain from the burst pipe – which Frank said looked like an owl and Pearl said looked like an umbrella – and the stippled paint, bits cracking off in the night and garlanding the bed like confetti.
Their breath floated up in front of them. ‘Frank?’ Pearl said. ‘Did you have any dreams?’ It was what she always asked in the morning. Usually, Frank would say something about cities underwater, or bailing out a sinking boat with a tambourine. Always a sense of urgency, some kind of impending disaster. Although he also had a recurring dream about sitting peacefully on top of a stalled Ferris wheel, looking out over millions of tiny bright lights.
Frank stared up at the ceiling. A muscle in his eyelid fluttering – he was never completely still for one moment.
‘I dreamt about an island,’ Pearl told him. ‘It was getting smaller but there was a tree right in the middle. I started climbing. There was a phone up there and it was ringing and ringing.’
Frank shifted, kept his eyes fixed on the ceiling. ‘Well,’ he said finally, ‘why didn’t you answer it?’
And then the first noises from Ada, like an alarm clock, the clucks and the mewls and then the roaring, tiny fists red and clenched at the outrage of waking up. Frank stumbled out of bed and went to her, rocked her and soothed her and Pearl remembered now: how tall he was – how small Ada looked with Frank’s long arms wrapped around her. The slight stoop he had, as if he was constantly under a ceiling that was too low. And his thin hair: long and wispy around his ears, full of static, and the same dry colour as oats.
Frank’s side of the sheets turned cold. Pearl got up and sat on the edge of the bed. Starting the day exhausted, one day blurring into the next. Confusing when was night and when was morning. Four months of heating milk, swiping through dishes, collapsing in chairs – not asleep but not awake either. Baffled, stunned even, by the mess, the noise, the constant cycle of washing and meals and washing. Forgot who she was almost. Ten seconds in the shower: just enough time to scrub on soap and rinse. Forgot what her own body looked like. The milkman came to the door and she gave him letters to post.
But Frank sang to Ada while he dressed her, he cooked while Ada was sitting in the sink. He would put her in the hood of his coat and take her outside. Paint strange swirling pictures to put on her wall. Warm the milk up patiently to just the right temperature. And it was only from time to time that he fed her spoonfuls of beer when he thought Pearl wasn’t looking, or left her under the desk in his study because he’d forgotten she was there, or got a bemused look on his face and said, how do you do, as if she was a stranger.
Pearl came downstairs, smelled the usual morning smells: toast burning, sour milk, baby shampoo, coffee. Got Ada fed while Frank sorted out the fire – couldn’t help noticing that he took a long time about it, and when she went to look, he’d piled in enough logs to burn all day and probably overnight as well. When she went back into the kitchen, the washing machine had spewed black liquor all over the floor. She called to Frank but he was thumping around in his study. She put Ada in her basket, then looked at the instruction manual – tried to figure out the mechanisms and the diagrams but it was impossible. She hit the pipe with a spanner, mopped up the liquid and switched the machine off at the plug – the best she could do.
There was murmuring and banging coming from the study. Frank’s work not going well again. He came into the kitchen and held up a ring. ‘Look at this,’ he said. ‘I can’t get the stock to go in.’ Pearl took the ring from him and looked at it. He’d cut the metal unevenly and hadn’t heated it enough to make it malleable. He wasn’t patient, always struggling with the work, always restless, God knows why he’d got into it in the first place – he wasn’t good with anything fiddly or small. He liked daubing paint, chopping hunk
s of wood, smashing old fence for kindling. He went over to the radiator and gripped his cold hands on the top. Any minute now he would come over and hold them against her cheeks. She waited, then waited some more.
‘I’ll have a look at it,’ she told him finally. She carried Ada into the study and put the basket down on the floor. Put the ring in the holder and studied the stock.
Frank followed her in. He went over to the window and paced. ‘The river’s so loud,’ he said. ‘You can’t get away from it.’
‘What did you expect?’ Pearl said.
He stared up at the sky, where a vapour trail bloomed like spilled paint. His thumb moved along the window, smoothing the paint over and over, slowly rubbing the paint down to bare wood. He glanced down at Ada and back up at the vapour trail.
Ada slept on. Morning turned into afternoon. For lunch, Frank cut thick slices of bread and cheese. They ate in the kitchen, their chairs pulled up in front of the radiator. Wet clothes on the airer next to them. And had they spoken? Pearl racked her brains but couldn’t recall if they had spoken. All she remembered was the rich taste of the butter, the way that Frank ate his bread slowly, relishing every bite. How he’d speared chunks of cheese and apple with the sharp knife and put them straight in his mouth. Maybe he’d mentioned the jackdaws in the chimney, maybe she’d talked about the car’s creaking brakes. Both of them slipping into criticisms of the place when they had nothing else to say, working each other up, until Pearl felt like she was sinking under all the repairs that needed doing, the money they’d already spent, how much more wood they had to buy now that they had Ada. But maybe none of that had come up. Maybe they’d just sat there quietly, huddled against the radiator.
Drizzle bloomed in the air and drops of water hung off everything. It was so raw and cold that the house seemed to shrink into itself and tighten. At the bottom of the grass, the river was running fast and low. You could see stones through it, showing through like a spine.