Upstairs I pace through the bedrooms, avoiding my old room. The air is colder up here, and I run my hands over the freezing walls. In every room the recollection of my childhood is slight, and fireflies of memory disappear as soon as I turn my mind to them. I passed through my past, I didn’t or couldn’t savour the time, and now my history is huge and vacant, like a film I never finished watching.
Back downstairs I bundle the post together and sit on the carpet in the bay window of the front room, leaning against the cold radiator. The nets are still up and as I sink to the floor the grey material ghosts out. For a moment I smell Mum, or Mum as she ended up; the boiled peas and rubbed nylon tights of old age. As a younger woman she joked that she couldn’t wait to clock up the years and have good reason to be a cantankerous old bag, and when it finally came to her, she played the part as well as any other she’d inhabited.
The letters are mostly circulars for double glazing, some holiday brochures and credit-card invitations. Mum only ever used cash, of which there was never enough. It wasn’t that she was scared of debt, in fact if she’d had a credit card she would have maxed it out within days, it’s more that she wasn’t able to function in the world of banks and mortgages. She pretended such things were beneath her, that money was part of some global conspiracy towards materialism, but really she was terrified that the real people would find her out and reveal the absence of capability she professed to hold in abundance. For all her blather about free spirits and open marriages, she was a woman of her time. Dad grumbled to me once, on one of the few occasions I spent the weekend with him after he left, about how he still had to pay the mortgage. After she died and I read the deeds, I saw that he’d never signed the house over to her, it had always been in my name, so he’d had as much of a hand in keeping her in her place as she did herself through her own inability to grow up.
I sift through the post: a birthday card to Mum from Australia from someone called Daniel. ‘Always in my heart,’ he writes. I have no idea who he is but that doesn’t surprise me. The rest is junk mail and several free local papers, one of which lies open on the carpet. We don’t get the local news at home as David has put a sign on our letter box to forbid delivery of anything not directly addressed to us, and since the accident he’s been even more guarded with what I see. The few times I’ve gone to watch TV, I’ve not been able to find the remote control. But really I’m a coward; I could go online and check the news but I choose not to. On the floor at Mum’s house, I flick through the pages of news and community trivia. It surprises me that all this living goes on without me. Trapped cats, fights in the High Street, a vandalized bus shelter. Names: Marjorie Staples, Brian Cahoon, Anita Brand. Is it they who are invisible or me? A large section of the paper is dedicated to the campaign against Alex’s development off Blackthorn Lane, and there are several pages of protest letters alongside photos of old women in anoraks holding banners. The centrefold shows a group of activists dressed in blends of khaki, as if they’ve all shared a giant washing machine on a hot wash. Hairstyles are matted, scarves and piercings feature large. They stand at the entrance to the woods and in the forefront is their leader, a man captioned as ‘Tyrone Aldridge’. He’s tall and muscular, and in one hand he holds a chain. His other arm crosses the shoulder of a pregnant woman with a small baby. The caption reads, ‘We shall not be moved.’
Folding the paper shut, I catch the front-page headline: MYSTERY BODY FOUND NEAR CONTROVERSIAL DEVELOPMENT. A picture of a road – the road I drove down, Blackthorn Lane – and an aerial map pinpoints the location of the body, some way from the development site but in the same woods. The article talks of ‘levels of decay consistent with a month’ and ‘police treating the death as suspicious’.
There are voices and then keys in the door. Simon enters, followed by a young couple flapping the house details in their hands. Two children lunge after them, leaving wet footprints on the carpet, and they scatter into the rooms. Simon’s eyes search the space and settle on me on the floor, my legs splayed out and surrounded by papers.
‘Good God, Rachel, are you OK?’ He moves to help me but I wave him away. ‘Sorry to barge in on you like this. What on earth are you doing down there?’
Pushing myself up, I stand with a small sway.
‘This is Sally and Clive,’ he says, ‘they had a viewing only yesterday, and they love the house.’ Simon extends his arm behind the two people standing on the other side of the lounge door. He prods them gently forward from the comfort of the doorway. ‘They rang on the off-chance of a second viewing today and, as I knew I was meeting you here . . . I hope you don’t mind. I tried calling but your mobile was switched off.’
‘No, it’s fine,’ I say, stroking down my rumpled clothes.
Sally bounds forward and stretches her arm out to me. I shake her hand.
‘So nice to meet you,’ she says. ‘I was just saying to Clive, it’s always good to meet the former owners. Get the vibes and all. Check out they’re not murderers or anything.’
The couple look at each other and laugh. Simon joins in with a bellow.
‘How long did you live here?’ Clive asks.
After a pause I realize he’s talking to me. ‘Oh, when I was a child.’ I shift my feet. ‘It was my mother’s house. I left years ago.’
‘I love the way you’ve kept all the original features,’ Sally says. ‘So many people ripped these houses to pieces. I mean, you have the old Bakelite door handles and everything. Your mum had a real eye for quality.’
‘Um, yes.’ I smile. Mum hated all this old stuff, but if you wait long enough everything comes back into fashion. Sally laughs a small laugh. We all stare at each other.
‘Do you mind if I start the tour, Rachel?’ Simon asks, then turns to the couple. ‘Or would you rather show yourselves round this time? Get a proper feel for the place.’
The children’s footsteps thump up the stairs and they go into one of the rooms and shout. It sounds like a fight. There’s crying.
‘Yes, that’s a great idea,’ Clive says and nudges his wife towards the stairs. ‘See you in a mo.’
They follow the children up and their voices filter through the threadbare carpet and floorboards above my head. More screams, shouting from the mum, then quiet.
‘Are you OK, Rachel?’ Simon says.
‘I’m fine. I wasn’t expecting anyone apart from you, that’s all.’
‘Yes, I’m sorry about that. Bit of a surprise for me too, but you have to strike while the iron’s hot. They’re the only people who’ve asked for a second viewing since the property went on the market, and I know you’re keen to sell. After all, if the Sandersons take the bait then we’re all done and dusted, and our change of tactics meeting is null and void.’
I hold my hands together in a tight grip to stop them from shaking and look out the window.
‘It’s always sad leaving the family home,’ he says. ‘Would you like to be alone for a bit?’
I turn to him. ‘Yes, thank you, that would be good.’
He follows the Sandersons upstairs and I pick up the paper again, reading the article in more depth. ‘Police not ruling out foul play . . . searching the UK Missing Persons register . . . appealing for witnesses . . . building work for new estate on hold.’ The whole newspaper is too big to fit in my bag but the front two pages will, so I fold them into a small square and zip them inside a pocket, the same place I keep the man’s watch.
Footsteps move slowly in and out of the rooms upstairs. Doors squeak. ‘I want this room,’ I hear one of the children say. ‘No, I want it,’ from the other. ‘She always gets what she wants, it’s not fair.’ Relaxed laughter from the parents, no more scolding, already at ease in the house, and I sense that they will buy. Simon bounds down the stairs and from his speed I can tell he’s taking two at a time. He launches himself through the lounge door, cheeks blazing with the possibility of a sale.
‘Rachel, if you wouldn’t mind . . .’ He takes a moment to catch his brea
th. ‘I know it’s something the surveyors will pick up on, but as you’re here, we could really speed this thing along.’
‘What is it?’
‘The Sandersons, they have a question about a wall. I wonder if you could help?’
I follow Simon up the stairs. With each step, his trousers lever up and reveal an inch of stripy sock at his ankle. There’s mud on the heels of his shoes and the dirt has bled into the hem of his trousers, but all he’ll see is the polished leather on the toes of his shoes and the neat line of his trousers as they drop across the laces.
Upstairs the viewers are huddled in my old bedroom and the children bounce on a bed frame that’s been left by the house clearers. Sally and Clive are tapping walls and listening to the dull knocks, opening a tall floor-to-ceiling cupboard in the far corner next to the window. Inside the cupboard is an immersion tank, and above this are slatted pine shelves. When I was a child, after I’d brought the washing in from the line, I’d fold the clothes on to these shelves. The system involved making three piles: one for me, one for Mum and one for towels and bedding. They would dry beautifully in the warm space. The lagging round the tank is trussed up with thin leather belts and buckles, like a series of Victorian waists. Fibrous fluff, probably asbestos, puffs out from slits in the material, and underneath is a rust-red tank through which has passed the water of so many of my baths.
‘We were wondering,’ says Sally, ‘if you knew when this was put in? The cupboard, I mean. Whether it was an addition to the house or if this wall’s meant to be here? You know, if it’s a supporting wall?’
The couple keep their eyes on me.
‘You see,’ says Clive, ‘we’d have to take this out and knock through. The room’s far too small, and if we opened it up we could make a proper bedroom for the kids.’
Underneath my clothes it’s as if a blow heater’s been turned on. I look past the couple’s shoulders to the window, wishing I could open it and fill the room with freezing air, but Sally and Clive already have their coats pulled tight round them. Outside, a tree close to the house sways in the wind. Once I’d tried to jump on to a branch from the window, but looking at it now, I never would have made it. Mum caught me before I made the leap and smacked me. Years later, when she recounted this story, she told me, ‘You were always trying to run before you could walk. You never had any sense.’ I’d wanted to shout, ‘I was a child. You were the adult. Where were the lessons?’
‘Clive’s a bit of a DIY nut,’ Sally says. ‘Likes nothing better than to strip a place bare and start again. Obviously if this is a supporting wall and we’ve got to put in steels it’s more expensive, and we may have to put in a lower offer.’
The cupboard is thin, like a larder, and it goes back a long way. The immersion tank sits at the end and in front is space for more shelves, but they’ve been taken out and stacked down the side, the brackets left on the walls. I kneel down and squeeze into the small space. A smell lifts up: dust mixed with something sharp, ammonia, but it’s faint. There are stains on the carpet, big plumes of dark colour, like ink. On the wall inside is a quote I wrote in pen – some hippy thing Mum’d said after being dumped by one of her boyfriends, about letting the one you love go free.
I straighten up and bang my head in the small space as I try to catch my breath.
‘And we wanted to know what this was for,’ Sally says, prodding a hinge and rusty padlock hanging on the inside of the door. ‘What d’you think your mum kept in there? A family of pixies?’ She laughs. ‘So strange to have a lock on the inside, don’t you think?’
I pull off my jacket to try and get some air as I lean against the wall. A slick of wet is left on my hand after I wipe my forehead. The Sandersons look at each other with concern, and Simon moves towards me.
‘Is everything all right, Rachel?’ he says. ‘Would you like to sit down?’
‘No, I’m fine, just getting over the flu, that’s all.’
‘Oh, I’m sorry,’ says Sally. ‘Look at us keeping you here when you’re not well.’
‘Yes, I have to go. Please excuse me.’ And I walk towards the door, my footsteps out of kilter.
‘Did you . . . I mean, if it’s possible before you go,’ Simon calls to my back, ‘have any thoughts about this wall?’
I turn to see the trio lit up for my answer, the sale more important than any health issues I might have, though they’d fall over backwards to disagree.
‘The cupboard was built when we had the heating put in,’ I say. ‘You can rip the whole thing out. Take it all down. Get rid of everything.’
I hurry back downstairs, not bothering to say goodbye, and close the front door behind me. The garden path is a chequerboard pattern and some of the tiles are broken where the frost has got in. In the centre the tiles dip a couple of millimetres, worn down by each person who walked the path: Mum, Dad, a smaller me, past owners, generations of postmen and milkmen chipping away a few atoms at a time. New tiles are expensive, so the Sandersons will probably skim over the top with concrete and fossilize the pattern. I think of the new family coming into this house, Sally and Clive, their two kids running to the door after school, and I hope for them that the walls give up the old so that the family can start anew.
9
1979
Our house is on a road where all the houses look the same. Upstairs above the main bedroom the pointy bit of roof has beams outside to make it look like a Tudor house, but it’s stupid because the houses here aren’t that old. Some people have painted the bits of wood different colours but it annoys me as they would look better if they were all the same. The government should make them all be the same.
It’s nearly spring and, even though the air is chilly, if I stand in the sun it’s like summer will come soon. I open our front gate and the metal scrapes a quarter circle, a 90-degree right angle on the path. My feet have got big so I have to tread across the lines on the path, but later I’ll do ten laps of the garden to make up for the bad luck.
Next to our house is the Masons’ house, and our middle walls are joined. If I’m ever in Mum’s room I can hear the Masons opening and shutting their cupboards, and it makes me embarrassed about what they hear us doing. Both our front paths run alongside each other, so that if Mr and Mrs Mason are walking to their door at the same time as us it’s hard to ignore them, especially as I used to be allowed to say ‘Hi’. They’ve stopped saying hello to us now anyway, so that makes it easier. Mr Mason has planted some Christmas trees in the middle of the two paths, but they’re not tall enough yet and I can still see over the top to his boiled-egg head. Our front lawn is surrounded by daffodil beds. Mr Mason only has grass. When he mows it, the lines look like a cricket pitch. The flowers in our garden have gone crispy and they bend forward and kiss the ground. Grass has grown over where the lawn and earth meet, but when Daddy lived here the line used to be straight, like a new fringe. I have a fringe too. I cut it myself. I want to look like Blondie.
After school I let myself in round at the back door. Normally Mum comes home after tea, probably from Uncle Peter’s, although she always says she’s been to her evening class. Today it’s a surprise and she’s home. The back door is wide open and I can hear her inside chatting. Mum likes to air the house, even when it’s cold, ‘to get rid of the food smells’ she says. I like cooking smells and wish we could have a home that smells like other people’s, even if it is boiled cabbage. In the back garden there are small piles of freshly pulled weeds, so I know Mum’ll be in a good mood – she likes to get busy when she’s happy. She does the gardening in bare feet so she can feel the earth’s vibrations, and she hitches her skirt into a knot at the side. I’m glad she didn’t get round to doing the front garden this time.
Stone steps lead up to the back door. I go quietly into the kitchen where the table is laid for supper and there’s the smell of a cake in the oven. In the next room, Mum is humming and beating the cushions. She walks into the kitchen and then runs to me, putting her arms round me and kiss
ing my face. I’m too big, and if anyone could see us I wouldn’t let her do it, but there’s no one else here so it’s OK.
‘Oh, my beautiful, fantastic princess,’ she says, stroking my hair, ‘let me get a proper look at you.’ She sits on a kitchen chair and pulls me onto her knee, then holds me by the shoulders with her arms stretched out. I lean back to make a distance between us, and she studies my face and smiles. Then she pulls me to her again and squeezes. I wobble on her small knee. ‘Oh, your bottom’s so bony,’ she says as she laughs. ‘When did you get so big?’ She jiggles my weight around to find a more comfortable position, and when she stops I rest my body into her a fraction.
‘I thought we’d have an early supper,’ she says, ‘and then maybe go for a walk.’ I put my head on her shoulder. ‘The lane is looking so beautiful today. I came down it on the bus this morning on my way back from the shops, and I thought, my little Rachel would love this. She’s always dreaming of far-off places but she doesn’t know what we have here on our doorstep. After that we could come home and play a board game or something.’ She holds me away from her again and cups my face in one of her hands, looking into my eyes. ‘If you like?’
The Monopoly box is sealed with Sellotape and stuffed on to a shelf of the dresser. Last time we’d played it was at Christmas, when Uncle Ralph had been Mum’s friend. Most of the pieces were missing so we’d made it up with thimbles and matchsticks instead of houses and hotels. It was fun. The new pieces were too big for the board and the game got muddled, and we laughed so much that I spilled Mum’s drink over everything. Ralph poured her another anyway so it didn’t matter, apart from the board. I’m not sure if it was dry before we put it away. It might be stuck and tear when we open it today.
Mum had a big party that New Year’s Eve, and it was the first time she met Uncle Peter. Ralph and Peter had a fight while Mum was giggling in the kitchen. She said Peter could be her Sugar Daddy as he’s older than her, about ten years I think, but all grown-up men look like turtles to me. I mixed the drinks for Mum’s friends. Peter asked for whisky on the rocks. They all thought it was funny when I had quite a few sips too. It made me cough but I liked the taste. Mum said she didn’t believe in any of that old codswallop telling you what you can and can’t do with your kids. ‘A hundred years ago she’d have been married with her own children at this age,’ she said. Mum’s friend Jeanie had to put me to bed after I fell over. I woke up the next day heavy from all the layers she’d put on the bed to keep me warm. She must have got the covers from the airing cupboard in my room as there were towels and all sorts on top.
The Liar’s Chair Page 8