Ed’s flat was in the basement of a terraced house; a weak winter light came in through the bay window. Two entire walls of his living room were covered with a wallpaper of tiny squares, pictures of cameras against brick wall or concrete or glass. The effect was surprisingly soft; it looked like cloth.
‘Don’t you find it oppressive?’ I asked.
‘I found it more oppressive not knowing where they were.’
‘What happens on New Year’s Eve?’
‘I haven’t decided yet.’
‘My grandfather has a map on his wall,’ I said, running my fingers over a row of the photos. ‘This reminds me of it. He walked as far as he could go and still get back in one day and then he used a pair of compasses and marked a circle around himself. He says that there’s nothing outside his circle that can’t be found within it. He paints at it all the time – every time he finds something worth recording it goes into the map.’
‘Sounds cool,’ said Ed. ‘But it’s not the same thing.’
I scanned the wall of cameras, all pointing at him. I liked the futility of his project – he tilted at windmills. ‘You’re both in the middle,’ I said, without rancour, shrugging my shoulders. Clearly he was one of those annoying people who correct you all the time, but I was raised on pedantry. I elaborated, ‘You are each the point to which you return.’ I myself didn’t seem to have a middle, I reflected, suddenly seeing myself with a doughnut-hole where my abdomen ought to be.
He said, ‘Would you like a coffee?’
‘Yes, please.’
Without his coat he seemed less obsessive. He hadn’t commented on the fact that I was still in my pyjamas; perhaps he hadn’t noticed. When it grew dark Ed made a law-abiding fire of smokeless-fuel briquettes in the grate and lit some candles. The walls of photos transformed into velvet drapes. It was the start of something: brushing fingers, sighs in and sighs out, all of that. I found that I didn’t object.
On New Year’s Eve, Ed and I drank cava with an Indian take-out and liberated ourselves from the cameras by removing the photos and burning them in a midnight ceremony. Afterwards the room was bigger, blanker. Tiny bits of BluTack were left studding the wall. It felt a little lonely.
‘What’s next?’ I asked.
‘I’m going to give up alcohol for twelve months.’
‘No! Really?’
‘It’s something I’ve always wanted to do.’
‘It is?’ I couldn’t help feeling that the timing was poor. He was the first person in my life to eclipse Corwin – a moon passing in front of the sun. I wasn’t sure that sobriety created the right conditions for an experiment in attachment.
I now think of that time as my aspidistra year, when I was determined to give myself up to a future of traditional domesticity. We would go to Ed’s parents for Sunday lunches along with his brother, sister, in-laws and their offspring. They were gracious and drew me into their conversations while I helped to peel potatoes. Over lunch the parents told amusing stories about when Ed and his siblings were young, and Ed and his siblings told amusing stories about their parents’ eccentricities.
One Sunday, to enter into the spirit, I told the story of my parents’ engagement. ‘Your grandmother,’ Mum would say, ‘couldn’t wait to marry your father off.’ And my father would smile at her while she talked. ‘And she knew that he’d rather die than go into a shop and buy an engagement ring.’ We understood her perfectly – it was inconceivable that our father should discuss anything as personal as a marriage proposal with a stranger, a shop assistant. ‘So as soon as she caught whiff of a girlfriend she foisted this hideous ring on him!’ Our great-grandmother’s emerald ring would glitter on Mum’s waving hand.
They had taken tea in what was then the rose garden. And Mum had sipped from a porcelain cup in a haze of rose scent and thought: Yes. This would be a nice way to live. And after tea my father took her to the cabin to watch the sun go down. He knew, he said, that the sunset would be more articulate than he, and he offered it to her as a betrothal gift. Being June, it was a gentle, peachy, undemanding sunset, very flattering to my mother’s complexion.
And Mum had cried a lot and her mascara had run. That was our favourite part of the story: our weeping mother. Her generous sobbing seemed exotic to us, free-spirited. But the story wore out. We learned to feel embarrassed about our mother’s incontinent tears. And my father came to realize, after he had dug them up, that it had been the roses that had moved her, not the inexorability of the sinking sun.
As we drove back to London, Ed was quiet. Eventually he said, ‘I don’t know how you managed to turn that story about your parents into a bad story.’
I said, ‘I don’t know either.’
‘You’re pretty hard on your mother!’
‘Well, you’ve never met her.’
‘Well, I’d like to.’
This was a sore point. I wanted to keep Ed separate.
‘You never talk about your father. What was he like?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘What do you mean, you don’t know?’ Ed was upset – I had drawn a shadow down on the afternoon.
‘I was eighteen when he died,’ I said. ‘Did you know what your father was like when you were eighteen?’
‘Yes,’ he insisted. ‘I think I did. Go on. Give it a go.’
I wanted to say that I didn’t really know how to describe my father without Corwin there to help me, but I had noticed that Ed didn’t like Corwin. He was the only person I knew who didn’t like Corwin, and I assumed that that was simply because he had never met him.
‘Well,’ I said, ‘he was quiet, but not antisocial – he liked gatherings. He loved the pub. He loved the wall of smoke as he walked in and he loved the nicotine-stained ceilings and the smell of beer-soaked nylon carpet. And he loved being able to sit for hours on his own in a corner if he wanted to and be left alone with his one slow pint. Or he could sit in a group and say nothing and just smile and stand his round, or play his fiddle.’
I stopped, suddenly realizing that I was describing my last sight of him. ‘He was very thrifty,’ I said, trying to redirect my memory. ‘Everything was done sparingly: speech, movement, everything. He liked to fix things. He made things grow. You didn’t really notice him until he spoke – when he spoke it meant that he expected something of you, and you’d be anxious that you wouldn’t be able to meet his expectation. I don’t know how to describe it. And then he wanted to share his enthusiasms, and Corwin and I didn’t really care to know the things that he knew. He was always trying to drag us off to observe a badger’s set or to take an interest in growing aubergines or something.
‘He was out of his time, I think,’ I said. ‘He studied architecture, but everyone was building high-rises. He wanted to design houses with turf roofs that disappeared into the landscape. He always talked about “simplifying”. Nowadays, he’d be right with the zeitgeist. As it was, he was stuck in an architect’s office making technical drawings for shopping centres. He found it soul-destroying.’
I ground to a halt. ‘It’s pointless trying to describe him,’ I said irritably. ‘It won’t make sense if you haven’t met Matthew.’
Ed allowed my irritation to subside, and said, ‘He sounds like someone I would have liked.’
I thought about that. ‘Yes,’ I said, surprised. ‘I think you and he would have got on well.’ I looked at his profile. He was a safe driver: eyes on the road, hands at ten to two on the steering wheel, and now he had my father’s phantom approval. ‘Yes,’ I said again, in connection with nothing in particular. Something about the conversation called for the affirmative. Yes, I thought. I can learn this. I can grow into this. I can put out little shoots and they will thrive on his generosity, on his competence, and that will be enough. That will be plenty.
12.
But it was London winter, and, try as I might, I could make nothing grow.
I was still in my flat – Linton must not have been offered the right price for his buildin
g, after all. All colour was leached from the city apart from in the street below, where the Bangladeshi wedding-shop windows shone bright light onto sequined red saris and gold-embroidered turbans. I bought myself armfuls of flower garlands and hung them about my bed, swathes of vermilion and gold and cinnamon to brighten my mornings.
It was a Sunday and I was sitting at my window reading. I intuited the pigeon before it hit the window. Some presentiment caused me to look up as it resolved itself out of the February grey and smashed through the glass sideways, wings askew. It must have tried to turn at the last moment. The window shattered at the centre sending cracks out to the corners of the frame and the pigeon hurtled over my shoulder in a shower of glass fragments. My hand flew up protectively and a shard sliced across the skin. I grasped it in pain and already the blood welled up between the fingers of my right hand. The pigeon, panicked, flung itself from wall to wall shedding feathers and shooting out great streams of green-grey shit all over the room, then landed in a heap in the middle of the carpet, shook itself out and hopped about a bit. It didn’t seem to have come to any harm.
I recognized it immediately as a bird of ill omen. My coffee had spilled all over the table. I looked at the pigeon, harbinger of what, I didn’t yet know. The feathers around its neck rippled iridescent pinks and purples and blues. I have always liked the idea of birds: the beauty of flight, the great mystery of their navigation systems. But pigeons can’t escape their verminous associations. It fixed me with a rodent eye.
Shaking, I poured myself a glass of wine and sat dazed at the kitchen table watching the blood seep through the twenty layers of kitchen paper that I had wrapped around my hand, until I heard Ed’s key turn in the door.
I had given Ed a set of keys as a New Year gift – an act that now seemed to me inexplicably sentimental and which I was regretting. He had taken it all very literally, and now used the keys without warning. It would not occur to him to ring the doorbell before invading my privacy. He had also suggested that we share his New Year resolution for 2005 and both learn Mandarin, with a view to taking a three-month sabbatical in China, an idea I didn’t like at all. I heard him go into the living room and mutter, ‘Jesus!’ Then there was some scuffling and he appeared in the kitchen doorway clutching the pigeon in both hands. He looked at the mess of bloodied tissue on my hand, and muttered, ‘Jesus!’ again. Then he said, ‘How about opening the window?’ I fumbled with the window lock, clumsily slid up the sash with my left hand, and Ed released the pigeon into the iron sky with a dramatic flourish, as if it were the dove of peace. Then he carefully scrubbed his hands with soap and hot water before addressing himself to my wound.
‘What the hell happened?’
There was no point in stating the obvious. I was the only person of Ed’s acquaintance who would lure a pigeon through a pane of plate glass. I was talking – it was happening quite without volition: ‘You know, I read something recently about flight. They found some fossil in China or somewhere that was the missing link between dinosaurs and birds. There have been decades of disagreement, you see, between scientists who think that flight developed by creatures leaping from tree to tree and those who think that it developed from running around and jumping up to catch insects or something.’
Ed found a bandage in a kitchen drawer and began to clean the cut. ‘Anyway,’ I continued, ‘it turns out that the running and jumping faction were right – there they are, these dinosaurs, running around through the bubbling Jurassic forest, jumping away, and, hey presto, they take off! Imagine the surprise.’
‘Wen,’ said Ed, ‘please shut up.’
I hated to be called Wen. It made me sound like an abbreviated Wendy. I said, ‘Poor tree-top leapers. All those decades of research. All for nothing.’ Ed looked up sharply. He suspected that this was a snipe against his career as an academic.
I looked at my neatly bandaged hand and wanted to do something for him. Something tangible – a kiss, perhaps. Some unbuttoning. But then the phone rang.
It was Mum.
‘Mum!’ I said. ‘To what do I owe this rare and unexpected pleasure?’
Mum sighed. ‘You really can’t help yourself, can you?’
My hand had begun to throb. ‘No,’ I said, contrite. ‘I’m sorry. It just slips out.’
‘Have you spoken to your grandfather recently?’
‘Yes. A couple of days ago. Why?’
‘Has he said anything?’
‘Christ, Mum. Stop being so cryptic. About what?’
‘Well, we dropped in at Thornton over the weekend.’
‘Ah! The cosiness of that word “we”.’
‘Oh, just drop it for five minutes. Matthew’s clearly not well. He’s lost a lot of weight. So I went and had a chat with Mark Luscombe and he told me that obviously he couldn’t tell me anything but he did say that we ought to start preparing ourselves.’
‘But …’ I said. I knew the futility of this ‘but’ and stopped speaking. Then I said, ‘Mark’s discussing Matthew’s health with you?’
‘No. He’s not. But he’s very fond of your grandfather and he knows that Matthew won’t ask for help.’
‘He has no right to discuss it with you. If Matthew doesn’t want us to know, then he should respect that.’
‘Whatever, darling!’ said Mum. We both knew that Matthew was my problem, not hers. ‘Anyway, how are you?’
‘I was fine,’ I said. ‘A pigeon just flew through my window pane.’
‘The strangest things do seem to happen to you,’ said Mum, clearly, like Ed, thinking that it was somehow my fault. ‘How’s Ed?’
‘He’s fine.’
She sighed. ‘Poor Ed.’ Corwin had told me that Mum called Ed ‘Morwenna’s Last Chance’. There was a pause in which she contemplated my lack of accountability. ‘Well. Let me know how Matthew is. Have you heard from Corwin recently?’
‘Not for a while. Have you?’
‘Oh, you know what a dutiful son he is. He emails every week and tells me absolutely sweet FA!’
‘Oh, well!’
‘Indeed. Well, bye, darling. Come and see us – me – soon.’
Ed had found a piece of hardboard that I didn’t even know I had – perhaps he had brought it to my flat without me noticing because he thought it might come in useful one day. He was screwing it to the window frame using the cordless screwdriver that he had given me for Christmas. Buzz. Buzz. Buzz. I wished he would go. I dialled Thornton. Matthew took a long time to pick up.
He said, ‘Ah! Morwenna.’
I said, ‘I’m thinking of coming down soon.’
‘Oh, good! Remind me when you get here that I have something to show you.’
‘What is it?’
‘You’ll see.’
I said, ‘How are you? Is everything all right down there?’
‘Everything’s fine.’
‘OK, Matthew. Bye. See you soon.’
I wiped coffee and bird shit off the cover of my laptop and logged on to my email. In the subject line I wrote: ‘Matthew dying. Time to come home.’ I was just about to press ‘Send’ when the phone rang again. I let it ring. Ed said, ‘Aren’t you going to get that?’
‘No,’ I said. The feeling of portent had suddenly returned. ‘Don’t answer it,’ I said, too vehemently. ‘It’s Corwin.’ But this was an error. A frown formed on Ed’s forehead – now he had to check. It bothered him that I always knew when it was Corwin. He put down the drill and answered. ‘Corwin! Yes. She is.’ Ed handed me the phone. Corwin’s voice oscillated on the crackly satellite waves. I always felt, during these calls, as though I were at a Victorian séance, communicating through layers of ectoplasm. Corwin said, ‘Can you go down to Thornton and meet me there?’
‘Did Mum tell you about Matthew?’
‘No. What?’
‘He’s not well.’
‘What’s wrong with him?’
‘I don’t know. He won’t talk about it.’
‘Oh. Well, I’m on my way home
anyway. I need to see you. You go on down.’
‘OK,’ I said. ‘Travel safely.’
When I put the phone down, Ed was looking at me. He distrusted the brevity of my conversations with Corwin.
I said, ‘Can I borrow your car?’
‘Why?’
‘Corwin’s coming home. I need to go to Thornton.’
‘When?’
‘Now.’
‘What? Just like that?
‘Something’s up with Corwin.’
‘What?’
‘I don’t know. I just know.’
‘You two freak me out!’ he said. ‘How long will you be gone for?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘I think I’m going to need it this week.’
That simply wasn’t true. He never needed it during the week. He walked or cycled everywhere. In fact, he pretty much only drove his car when he needed to take it to the garage to repair a wing mirror that had been smashed while it was parked on the road. But I couldn’t be bothered to argue.
When he finished with the window he produced a bowl of hot, soapy water. He told me to leave the carpet – he said that with carpets you have to let things dry otherwise you end up scrubbing the dirt further into the pile. While he was wiping down the bookshelves I packed some clothes. Ed had left his jacket over the back of a chair in the kitchen. His car key was in one of the pockets. I took him a cup of tea, gave him an I-don’t-deserve-you kiss, and sneaked out.
After Bristol the Sunday traffic began to thin out. A mean, mizzling rain had kept everyone at home, nursing their seasonal affective disorder. I stopped once for coffee and petrol and left a message on the bindery voicemail to say that I wouldn’t be at work for a couple of days. It was a family emergency, I said. I bought an enormous packet of crisps and ate from my lap as I drove.
Corwin was about to make something go wrong. I could sense it. One phone call from him from some godforsaken part of the planet and I had lied to Ana, who was a fair boss and might not be able to tell. And I had stolen Ed’s car. And it was raining.
The House at the Edge of the World Page 9