The House at the Edge of the World

by Rochester, Julia

‘Possibly. And will you bring Ed?’

  ‘Possibly.’

  ‘You should, darling. After all, you are nearly thirty-five.’

  At Thornton, I raged through the house looking for Corwin, but he was out. Matthew was off somewhere, meandering through his visions. Sandra, who was turning the compost, said, ‘Crow said to tell you he’s gone climbing. Be back teatime.’

  ‘Did he say “tea” or “supper”?’

  ‘He said,’ she stabbed her fork into the pile of steaming decay, ‘“tea”.’

  ‘Sorry.’

  ‘That’s OK,’ said Sandra, indifferently. ‘You can’t help yourself.’

  Back in the house, I watched Sandra from the landing. She felt me staring at her and turned to look up at where I stood in the window. Slowly, I raised my hand. Sandra turned back to her forking and I remained at the window, hand raised, like an imprint of myself left upon the house. Indulging in the sensation of insubstantiality, of transparency, I wandered aimlessly, imagining my real self underground, richly mouldering. I searched the rooms for other ghosts, but met only mute objects. I ended up lying on Corwin’s mattress. There was a pile of periwinkle-blue books stacked in the corner of the room. I fell asleep and then woke – I could not tell how much later – to the sound of a heavy, limping footfall below and the slamming of the fridge door. I went downstairs and found Corwin in the kitchen with his bare left foot resting on a chair and an ice pack around his ankle. Covering his skin and his clothes was a fine layer of silt, as though he had been uprooted from the damp soil. He smiled to see me. ‘How are you?’ he asked.

  ‘What’s going on?’

  ‘Nothing. I just slipped and twisted my ankle. I seem to have lost all my upper-body strength. But, God, it was great to be out there! I’d forgotten how good it feels. There’s nothing like a good climb for returning a sense of proportion to your existence.’

  ‘So you always say.’

  ‘Yes, but it’s true. There’s the rock face. It has taken millennia to shape, and there’s you, clinging to it, for a fraction of time so infinitesimal that the earth never even knows you were there. But still you cling. And you feel time pass.’

  ‘You’re talking a lot again.’

  ‘Be nice and run me a bath?’

  The ankle was already badly swollen. I repressed the urge to kick the chair from under it.

  ‘With bubbles,’ added Corwin. ‘I think we’ve got some bubbles? And a cold beer. We definitely have beer.’

  ‘Have you ever slept with Sandra?’

  ‘Where did that question come from?’

  ‘Oh, I don’t know. I just remembered to ask.’

  ‘I’m not her type,’ said Corwin, laughing. ‘We all fancied her like mad in Juniors, though. She was the only one with breasts. Why did you think I did?’

  ‘You seem rather conspiratorial.’

  ‘You’re just making that up.’ Corwin leaned forward to adjust the bag of ice around his ankle. ‘I always liked Sandra. We used to trade marbles.’

  ‘I don’t remember that.’

  ‘Yes, you do. She used to come over with her dad.’

  ‘No. I don’t.’

  ‘You must do. Her granddad used to bring the crabs over and we played marbles with Sandra while he gossiped with Matthew.’

  ‘I remember the Crab Man,’ I conceded.

  ‘Well, then.’

  I remembered the cuffed crabs, scrambling over each other in the bucket, and the man himself, red still glinting in his grey beard, yellow oilskins, but not the marbles and not Sandra.

  ‘You had a huge scrap with her over your favourite blue fiver. I had to split you up!’

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘Gone.’

  Corwin put his hands around his lower leg and lifted his foot gently off the chair, then gripped the kitchen table to haul himself to standing. He hopped over to me and put his arms around me and pulled me close, grazing my cheek with grit from his face and murmuring sadly, ‘You’ve forgotten all the best bits!’ When he let me go I could taste sea salt on the corner of my mouth.

  ‘Help me up the stairs,’ he said. ‘Oh, and don’t forget the beer.’

  Corwin accepted a glass of wine when he came down. He said, ‘I’ve got a present for you. There, on the mantelpiece.’

  Five bleached bird skulls were laid neatly in a row. ‘I was out walking last week, up by the pig farm. Someone had shot a bunch of crows and smeared them on the fence and the road. It was a mess! Anyway, I brought back the heads and boiled them off for you.’

  ‘They’re beautiful,’ I said. ‘Thanks.’ I picked them up one by one and balanced them on the flat of my palm. They were so delicate. They looked as though they would disintegrate with a gentle calcium crunch if I closed my hand on them.

  Corwin asked me to give him a haircut. ‘Really short,’ he said. I laid out newspaper and he sat on a chair in front of the fire and I began to comb through his hair. He smelt incongruously of lavender. Snippets fell onto the newspaper at his bare feet. The swelling had spread into the top of his left foot. A curl landed on the surface of his wine, and floated there, black on red. He picked it out. ‘Not short enough!’

  ‘You look even more like a hostage when you cut it too short!’

  ‘Or a monk,’ said Corwin. ‘A hermit! That’s the effect I want to go for. Give me a hermit haircut.’

  ‘I thought hermits let their hair grow long.’

  ‘Who knows?’ said Corwin. ‘Just make it ascetic. And don’t drink any more until it’s finished. You’ll have my ears off.’

  I tilted his head to one side and began to snip around the curve of bone behind his ear. ‘What are you up to, Corwin?’

  ‘Thinking,’ he said. ‘I’m thinking. How did you find Mum, by the way?’

  ‘She asked me how I found you.’

  ‘What did you say?’

  ‘She said you’d been cosying up to Bob.’

  ‘You’ll never forgive them, will you?’

  ‘No. But I do give in.’ I manipulated his head between my palms. He was pure trust within my hands. ‘How do you find Bob?’

  ‘Interesting.’

  ‘Interesting?’

  ‘Very.’

  ‘Isn’t it time you went back to work?’

  ‘I’m giving myself a sabbatical.’

  I handed him the mirror. He checked his reflection. ‘That’s better!’ I had my hands on his bare shoulders. ‘Can’t you drop this?’ He met my eyes in the mirror, reached back to take my left hand. ‘No. I’m sorry.’ He kissed my palm. ‘I need you to do something for me.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘We need to track down the others.’

  ‘The others?’

  ‘The others who were at the beach the night Dad died. Mickey, Willow and Oliver.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because they were there. Because we weren’t paying attention – perhaps they were. I’ve already found Mickey – he’s here at The Sands. We’re meeting him tomorrow. You can work on Willow and Oliver.’

  ‘I don’t want to! Absolutely no fucking way!’

  ‘Why not? It’ll be fun!’

  ‘It’s not fun – it’s weird and morbid.’

  He still had my hand. He gripped it tighter and locked eyes with me in the mirror. ‘This is non-negotiable,’ he said.

  ‘I’ve missed a bit behind your ear,’ I said. He let go of my hand and I picked up the scissors and tilted his head to the side and, very carefully with the tip of the scissors, I snipped at the skin behind his right earlobe. He jumped, but he didn’t make a sound. He had known I would do that. A shining bead of blood formed.

  ‘So,’ he laughed, wiping it away, ‘you’re pissed off! That’s fine. But it doesn’t change anything.’

  On the mantelpiece was a grey stone that I had found at Thornton Mouth. It was about the size of my two fists. At its centre was a perforation – it went almost all the way through, but not quite, because within this stone was another, a tiny foreign flint, black an
d ruthless, which had bored its way with the help of the sea and the centuries into its host. Nothing could dislodge it.

  ‘I don’t understand what you’re trying to achieve.’

  Corwin looked regretful, then. He hadn’t explained himself properly. Standing up, he put his T-shirt back on. He had filled out a bit, but still his belly was concave. His hip bones jutted above the waistband of his jeans. He was showing the first signs of the Venton sag. He said, ‘You remember, when Dad fell, you always said there was something wrong with us and I always dismissed it?’

  Outside it was spring – cold evening sun, a frenzy of birds.

  ‘I think perhaps you were right and I was wrong. We were in such a hurry to leave.’

  I said, ‘Ed asked me what Dad was like, and I couldn’t tell him. I can’t remember him.’

  ‘You see!’ said Corwin, smiling encouragingly – as if I had asked him for help. ‘We have erased him, somehow.’

  Our father in faint outline – the leavings of lead in the paper’s grain. I said, ‘He’s dead, Corwin. Why does it matter so much now all of a sudden?’

  ‘Mum calls us her “cuckoo children”. Don’t you think that’s terrible?’

  When Mum really hated us, she called us her ‘beautiful cuckoo children’. We had squeezed her out of her own nest.

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I do.’

  17.

  Corwin had arranged to meet Mickey on the seafront. The stretch of beach in front of the café was now the dog walkers’ beach and a little pile of plastic-wrapped dog shit had accumulated on the ground next to the Wall’s ice-cream board.

  ‘I haven’t been here in years!’ said Corwin, happily, queuing up with his brown plastic tray. A man with naval tattoos shot a hiss of water onto the stewed tea-bags in a huge metal teapot.

  ‘Sugar,’ I said. ‘I need sugar.’ And then, looking around, ‘No. Me neither.’ There was a reason that Corwin had chosen this place, but I didn’t know what it was, and was not going to ask. The café hadn’t changed – even the people looked exactly the same as they had seventeen years ago: grey-haired, anoraked and dog-loving. The floor swarmed with damp, panting fur. Corwin was ordering sausages, chips and baked beans, in an ecstasy of nostalgia. We slid into the moulded red plastic benches, and looked out on the desultory brown tide.

  ‘So,’ said Corwin. ‘Tell me what you’re thinking.’

  ‘I’m thinking I’m being choreographed,’ I said. ‘And I don’t like it.’

  Corwin smiled, sliced into his sausage and used a piece of it to scoop up some beans. ‘I’ve had dreams about this,’ he said. ‘I’m not joking. Whole dreams about sausages, chips and baked beans.’

  I didn’t recognize Mickey at first. He came in with his hands in the pockets of his denim jacket, his head and face hidden by a beanie and a beard. He looked suspicious and defensive. I stood up to administer a social kiss, but came up short against our lost familiarity. It was as if there had been a mutual betrayal. Our cheeks bumped awkwardly. Corwin stood up and shook his hand. Mickey said, ‘Shit, Crow! You are thin! And what’s with the hair? You look like a fucking suicide bomber or something!’

  Corwin laughed. ‘Dysentery,’ he said. ‘My intestines are a war zone.’

  I had to assume this was true. I said, ‘He made me cut his hair like that!’

  Mickey sat down, keeping on his hat and jacket. ‘How long are you home for?’

  ‘Indefinitely,’ said Corwin.

  ‘Just the weekend,’ I said, although I hadn’t been asked. ‘Would you like me to get you a cup of tea or a coffee or something?’

  ‘We’re not staying here, are we?’

  ‘Why not? I love this place. Old times’ sake and all of that,’ said Corwin.

  ‘Whatever,’ said Mickey. ‘But I could do with a beer.’

  ‘When did you move back?’ I asked.

  Mickey looked offended; it sounded retrograde. ‘You still in London?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Just home for Crow?’

  ‘Not exactly.’ I drained my tea. I realized that every conversation I had ever had with Mickey had been triangular, held either through Corwin or through Willow. Our only direct communication had been one anomalous secret kiss, some time in the fifth year, lying in the trysting cave at Thornton Mouth at low tide, with the dank smell of seaweed and the sandhoppers tickling our ankles where our feet had disturbed the sand.

  Corwin said, ‘It’s good to see you. I’ve been away too long! Come on, then. I’ll buy you that beer.’

  ‘I should let you two catch up,’ I said.

  ‘Not at all,’ said Corwin, firmly.

  I walked behind them and measured time against their altered bodies, their lost lithe boyhood: Corwin was limping and brittle; Mickey had inflated, but at the same time gave the impression of having lost a little air. I expected Corwin to turn off into town, but he kept on along the seafront, in the direction of the harbour.

  ‘Where are you taking us?’ I called, suspicious, from my ten feet behind.

  ‘The Lighter.’

  I thought: I know what you’re doing, you bastard. But his little reconstruction experiment was spoiled: the red nylon carpet was long gone – exposed floorboards, mismatched tables and chairs, and a chalked-up menu extolling the local produce declared the Lighter a gastropub. Serves you right, I thought. My father would not have recognized this as a pub; this smokeless echoing room with piped, whingeing music. I imagined his crab-stripped bones twitching with disgust on the sea bed.

  ‘Well,’ said Corwin, ‘this is a change!’

  ‘Yeah,’ said Mickey, leaning up at the bar. ‘The old place turned into a real dive. They put the landlord away for running coke in from the continent.’

  ‘It all happens around here, doesn’t it?’ I said. ‘Lost your supplier, then, did you?’

  ‘No. I don’t do that shit!’

  ‘Only joking,’ I said unconvincingly. ‘What’s everyone having?’

  Corwin was laughing. ‘What’s so funny?’ I snapped.

  ‘You, my lovely Morwenna,’ he said. ‘And your beautiful tactlessness. I’ll have a pint of the organic bitter.’

  ‘You two are still at it, then?’ said Mickey.

  ‘What?’ I asked.

  ‘All that secret sarcastic twin stuff.’

  ‘What’s your pint, Mickey?’

  ‘I’ll have what Crow’s having.’

  ‘Three pints of the organic, please,’ I said to the barmaid, who looked vaguely familiar. I wondered if we had been at school together.

  So we sat, sipping politically correct bitter, and inexplicably disliking one another – apart from Corwin, of course, who found everyone lovable, each in their individual way. Corwin waited until Mickey was three pints down and four cigarettes smoked outside in the cold before he moved to his purpose. In the meantime we discovered that Mickey had dropped out of college, fathered two children, neither of whom lived with him, had a stint as a shipbuilder working out of Plymouth and returned to The Sands to set up an outdoor-pursuits shop franchise. He offered us a discount.

  ‘It’s so good to see you, Mickey,’ said Corwin, bringing the fourth round from the bar. ‘I’ve been away so long. I’ve lost touch with all my old friends.’

  ‘Yeah,’ said Mickey. Alcohol had always made him sentimental. ‘How long’s it been since we had a drink together? At least ten years, I reckon.’

  ‘At least,’ said Corwin.

  ‘Fourteen,’ I said.

  They both looked at me. ‘If you say so,’ said Mickey, who had temporarily stopped disliking me.

  ‘I remember these things,’ I said.

  ‘So,’ said Corwin, ‘are you in touch with anyone? Where did Willow end up?’

  ‘London,’ he said curtly. ‘We don’t keep in touch.’

  ‘And Oliver?’

  ‘No idea. Completely disappeared! Never really saw him after the sixth form – he used to come and visit his mother, but she died a couple of years back,
and last thing I heard, he and his father hadn’t spoken to each other since he came out, so I’m guessing he doesn’t visit any more.’

  ‘I miss Oliver,’ said Corwin. ‘Do you remember the night we made that enormous fire?’

  ‘And he wanted us all to become vegetarians,’ laughed Mickey.

  ‘I did become a vegetarian!’

  ‘You’re joking!’

  ‘No, I did – I am.’

  Mickey looked incredulous, and then recollected: ‘You were just eating sausages at the caff!’

  ‘I lapse, occasionally,’ admitted Corwin.

  ‘Seems like a lifetime ago,’ said Mickey.

  ‘It was – for us, at least. Our whole adult lifetime. I always think of that night as the end of childhood.’

  Mickey remembered. ‘Sorry, mate. I’d forgotten that that was the same night.’

  My dark-eyed brother Corwin! Well, well, I thought, there is malice in you after all. You could not be so manipulative without it. I was still only halfway through the third pint. I couldn’t keep up with them. They were beginning to slump – drunks always seem to melt towards each other.

  Suddenly furious, I said, ‘Corwin has got it into his head that Dad committed suicide.’

  Corwin, I noticed, didn’t move – he was irritated. This was a failure of subtlety. Mickey roused himself. On his face were, as I might have expected, embarrassment but also, as I didn’t expect, surprise – at me. ‘Well, we did wonder,’ he said.

  ‘You did? Well, I didn’t. Why? Why did you wonder?’

  He began to retreat. ‘Just what people said, you know, about how your dad was the last person anyone would expect to …’

  ‘… to fall off a cliff. It’s OK, you can say it,’ said Corwin, generously.

  ‘He was drunk!’ I protested.

  ‘Yes. I know. But your dad, let’s face it, he was a bit of a dark horse, wasn’t he? Kept his own counsel and all that.’

  My bladder was burning. I left them at the table and went out into the backyard. The cold air and the rain on my face woke me, and I realized that I was not going to go back in. Instead I walked, as I had last done the night of my father’s death, all along the seafront, up the steps and onto the coast path, along the ridge to Brock Tor, where I didn’t pause, down into Thornton Mouth, and from there up past the mill, over the leat, through the churchyard and home. The bright yellow gorse released waves of the scent of freshly baked vanilla biscuits, but the sky and sea were pewter grey.