The House of Ashes

by Stuart Neville

  “If Francie knew I’d done that, he’d . . .”

  The words faltered as he spoke, and he looked at the floor once more. She realised then the man wasn’t afraid of her, but of her father-in-law.

  “He’d do what?” she asked.

  He searched for an answer. “I don’t know,” he said. “He wouldn’t be happy, anyway.”

  “I won’t tell him,” Sara said, truthfully.

  “Thanks,” he said, and turned to leave, then changed his mind. “You know, I’d take that tea if it’s still going.”

  A smile broke on Sara’s face, a real one, and for a moment it felt alien to her. She wondered when she’d last felt one on her lips. Too long.

  “Sure,” she said and went to the kettle. She filled it at the sink, returned it to its base, and flicked it on.

  “How are you settling in?” the electrician asked.

  It occurred to Sara that she didn’t know his name, so she asked him.

  “Tony,” he said, ducking his head as if embarrassed. “Tony Rossi.”

  “Italian?” she asked, her surprise genuine.

  “Aye,” he said. “Tony, as in Antonio, but no one calls me that except my mother when she’s annoyed at me.”

  “Are there many Italians in Ireland? I’m Sara, by the way.”

  “I know who you are,” he said, taking a seat at the island. “Aye, there’s a few of us. A lot came over in the eighteen hundreds, working on the churches and the big houses, stucco work, stained glass, that sort of thing. My grandparents on my father’s side came over after the Second World War, rebuilding after the Belfast Blitz. My people were all tradesmen. But, here, you don’t need the history of the Rossi clan.”

  She set a mug of steaming tea in front of him, offered him milk and sugar. He took both. She noted the small scars on his hands as he spooned sugar into the tea, the definition of his forearms.

  “I’m sorry,” she said, “I’d give you something to eat, but we don’t have much in.”

  “Never worry, this’ll do me all right,” he said. He dipped his head, thumbing the lip of the mug. “I heard you earlier, asking Damien for the car. If you need anything in the village, I could give you a lift in. I’d have to finish my work first or Francie will kick my arse up and down the driveway, but this afternoon, I could run you in. If you want.”

  For no reason she could grasp, Sara felt heat on her throat and face. Without thinking, she put a hand to her cheek, as if to cool it. She caught herself and dropped her hand to slap against the granite top of the island, almost knocking over the mug of tea she’d made for herself.

  “Maybe,” she said.

  A question had been lingering on her tongue since she’d found him in the kitchen. She summoned the nerve to ask it.

  “Earlier, you said you just wanted to get out of this house. Why?”

  His face darkened. He shook his head. “I don’t know. I was in bad form after Francie had a go at me, that’s all.”

  Sara remembered her time as a social worker, sessions with youngsters, coaxing their most fiercely guarded secrets from them. They always left crumbs to follow, whether they intended to or not.

  “That’s all?” she echoed.

  He shifted his balance on the stool, kept his gaze on the mug in front of him. “I mean, it’s your house, so I can’t say anything against it.”

  “Yes, you can,” she said.

  Tony glanced up at her and away, scratched at the back of his neck.

  “Say it.”

  He took a breath, then his shoulders slumped.

  “It’s just . . . there’s a bad vibe about the place.” He looked at her now. “I can’t tell you what it is, exactly, just a bad feeling. Not all of it, not all the time. But it’s there. The basement more than anywhere else. I did the wiring down there, and it was . . .”

  His gaze dropped once more.

  “It was what?” she asked.

  “I didn’t see anything down there, nothing like that. But it would get cold sometimes, all of a sudden, for no reason. I’d feel like there was someone looking over my shoulder, and I’d look up from my work and turn to see, and there’d be nothing there. And there was this thing my mate told me.”

  “What did he tell you?”

  He scratched at the back of his head then spread his hands out in the air, as if giving something up. “My mate John Joe. He’s a plasterer. He told me he was upstairs, not in your bedroom, one of the others, working late. It had gotten dark. He told me he looked through the door and he saw a wee boy playing on the landing up there. Just a wee lad running and jumping about. John Joe went out onto the landing and there was no one there. Mind you, John Joe likes a wee puff on the weed, so I don’t know. It was probably his imagination.”

  He gave a breathy laugh, dismissing his own words. “It was my imagination too, I know, but with everything that happened here, it puts things in your head.”

  “What happened here?” she asked.

  Tony stared at her now, as if he couldn’t understand the question.

  After a moment, he said, “What, you mean you don’t know?”

  “I heard there was a killing,” Sara said, “but that’s all. I don’t know what happened.”

  “Neither do I. Not really. It was a long time ago. Sixty years, maybe more, I’m not sure. Before the Troubles started up, anyway. The whole lot of them was killed, except the woman who had this house, she was the only survivor. That’s as much as I know about it. I tell you who might know more, though.”

  “Who?”

  “Mr. Buchanan, he has the grocer’s shop on the way into Morganstown. I think he used to bring food out here for her. Might be worth asking him about it.” Tony pushed his stool back and stood. “Anyway, thanks for the tea. I should get back to my work. But, when I’m done, do you want me to run you into the village?”

  “Yes, please,” Sara said. “I’d like that.”

  6: Mary

  Everything stayed the same for a long time. Could have been a lock of weeks or months, or maybe years, I don’t know. I mind I got some new clothes. One of the Daddies would go away for a day or two and come back with new clothes for us all. Well, I say new, but I suppose some of them was worn before. But I was always glad of them, whether they fit me or not. Dresses and knickers and socks and shoes. We all had a paper bag each full of things, and we tried them on downstairs.

  I mind Daddy Tam standing on the stairs, watching us while we changed, with his hands in his pockets. He did that sometimes. Just stand and watch you with his hands in his pockets, moving about inside them. Sometimes he’d start breathing hard. I didn’t know then what he was at, but I know now. Dirty auld hoor. Anyway, Mummy Joy moved me so I was behind her, so he couldn’t see me when I got changed into the new clothes.

  When we’d tried everything on, and we knew what fit and what didn’t, Daddy Tam spake up. He pointed over at the wall where the extra bed was leaned up agin it. Get that made up, says he. We’ll maybe have someone joining yous in a day or two.

  Mummy Joy and Mummy Noreen looked at each other. Daddy Tam turned and went back up the stairs, said he’d be back in a while to lock up for the night, and we’d better have that bed sorted.

  Mummy Joy pulled the bed away from the wall. It was one of those wee ones with the metal frame, like a soldier would sleep on, with a wee thin mattress. Like we all had. I unfolded the sheets and blankets and the Mummies spread them out on the bed, tucked the ends in. It was like a, what you call it, a ritual, yes, like a ritual. I’d never been in a church, but I thought that was what it must be like. People doing these rituals together, all quiet.

  When they were done, the Mummies sat down on their own beds, and they whispered. Not so quiet I couldn’t hear them, but quiet enough they wouldn’t be heard upstairs.

  Who do you think it’ll be?

  What
age will she be?

  God, I hope she’s not too young.

  I was fourteen when I came here. What age were you?

  Fifteen.

  How long have we been here?

  Fifteen winters.

  Thirteen winters.

  I don’t mind what age I was then, I suppose ten or eleven or so, but that was the first time the thought entered my head that the Mummies weren’t much more than wee girls themselves. I’d no notion of it then, but when I think of them now, I suppose they were only in their twenties.

  Mummy Noreen, she started to cry awful hard, like I never seen her cry before. Wrapping her arms around her middle, hugging herself. Then Mummy Joy starts crying too.

  We’ll never get out of here, Mummy Joy says.

  Yes, we will, Mummy Noreen says, yes, we bloody will.

  I should be married now, Mummy Joy says, I should have a family of my own. I wanted to be a schoolteacher. My big sister, she had a job in a bank. She used to go to the dances. I used to watch her get ready, doing her hair and putting on her make-up. I used to pretend it was me getting ready to go to the town hall, going to meet my friends, and the boys would be asking me to dance with them. I should’ve done that. I never got to go to a dance. That’s not fair, is it?

  No, it’s not, Mummy Noreen says.

  She crossed over to Mummy Joy’s bed and put her arm around her, helt her tight.

  It’s not bloody fair, says she, and them bastards up there thieved that from us. But we’ll get it back, I swear to God we will.

  What’s all this?

  I mind I near jumped out of my skin at the sound of his voice. The Mummies let each other go and Mummy Noreen went back to her own bed.

  Daddy Tam came down the stairs, them creaking under his weight. Says he, What’s going on here?

  Everybody kept whisht, so he roars, Answer me when I ask you a question!

  Mummy Noreen spake up. Says she, Joy was upset and I was comforting her, that’s all.

  What’s she gurning about? says he.

  And, here, doesn’t Mummy Noreen look him in the eye and says, What do you bloody think?

  I didn’t see it happen. As soon as she said that, I looked down at the floor, and so did Mummy Joy. I heard his boots on the stairs and across the floor, and I could feel the weight of him through the mattress I was sitting on, and I could feel the anger of him, I could hear it. And Mummy Noreen says, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean it, I’m sorry.

  I heard his hand agin her head. I felt it.

  She landed in a heap on the floor, by my feet, her eyes all far away, and she was trying to say something. Then he kicked her hard in the back, and she twisted and turned, trying to reach there with her hands, and he kicked her again, and he caught her fingers, and she screamed awful hard.

  I couldn’t see terrible clear for I was crying now and I daren’t have moved to wipe my eyes. I just wanted him to stop, but I daren’t have said anything, for I’d have got it too. I do know he reached down and grabbed her by the hair, and he dragged her away across the floor, and she was screaming, and she reached for Mummy Joy, but Mummy Joy could do nothing for her.

  I thought he was going to kill her, honest to God. I think he might have done if Daddy Ivan hadn’t appeared at the top of the stairs.

  Let her alone, says he.

  Did you hear what she said to me? asks Daddy Tam.

  I don’t care what she said to you, just you let her go.

  And Daddy Tam did as he was bid. That’s one thing always struck me. As afeart of Daddy Tam as I was, as afeart of him as we all were, he was more afeart of Daddy Ivan. He was the one said what was what. Nobody argued with him. Never ever.

  They left us alone then, put out the lamp at the top of the stairs. Mummy Joy and me, we helped Mummy Noreen up onto her bed. The fingers of her left hand were all swole up and purple, I think maybe some of them were broke. Mummy Joy tore up some material from her old dress and made bandages out of them. She reached under my mattress and took out one of the wee dollies I’d made for myself out of sticks and twine. I didn’t whinge when she pulled it apart and wrapped Mummy Noreen’s fingers to one of the sticks, to holt them steady. I mind the veins on Mummy Noreen’s forehead when she helt the screams in.

  When all that was done we put the last lamp out and went to bed. I didn’t sleep much that night. I was too het up. There was the shock of what happened, aye, but it was more than that. There was someone new coming. I was ashamed of the way I felt, after what had happened, but I couldn’t help it. Sure, I was only a wee girl. How else would I feel about someone new coming along?

  I was excited.

  7: Sara

  As the van rattled around her, and the hedgerows whipped past, Sara wondered when she’d last sat alone in a vehicle with a man other than her husband. She searched her memory and could not recall a single occasion since their wedding. Not even a taxi. They had been married a little over two years, been a couple twice as long before that. Damien had overwhelmed her with his charm, his love, the intensity of that first year of their relationship seeming now like a strange dream. She had never known anything like it, nor anyone like him. They moved in together when she graduated university and started work for Bath Community Health and Care Services as a child protection officer. And for another year, she was happy. They both were.

  Their first real argument came after a dinner party they had attended, a reunion of Damien’s university friends. They seemed to regard Damien as somehow exotic, not just because of his accent, but because they knew his father had been imprisoned. Oliver, the host, the son of a Labour MP, found him particularly fascinating, enraptured by tales of the armed struggle back in Ireland. They had been seated around the table, boy-girl-boy-girl, separated from their respective partners. Damien sat diagonally across from Sara. By the end of the evening, she couldn’t remember the name of the man who had been seated next to her, only that he had been drunk and she’d had to remove his hand from her thigh at least three times.

  She had noticed Damien was quiet on the taxi ride back to their flat, and that he barely spoke as they readied for bed. Asking him what was wrong had been her mistake.

  “You really don’t know?” he had said, sitting on the edge of their bed, watching her slip into her pyjamas.

  “No,” she had replied, truthfully, feeling the haze of alcohol lift as her senses sharpened to the danger. She pulled a cleansing wipe from the packet on the dressing table, sat on the opposite side of the bed, and began removing her make-up.

  “You and Craig were all over each other,” he said, his back to her.

  “Ah, Craig, that’s it, I couldn’t remember his name. Wasn’t he in your—”

  “You let him feel you up all evening.”

  “What? I didn’t let him do anything. He was a bit handsy, but I—”

  “A bit handsy? You might as well have fucked him on the table.”

  The cold blades of his words cut at her. “That’s not fair,” she said. “It was nothing like that. He was drunk, and his hands were wandering, but I kept them off.”

  “What do you expect, tarted up like that?” he asked, turning to leer at her.

  Sara looked down at the wipe in her hand, the make-up smeared on it. “You can’t blame me for his behaviour.”

  “He’s a man and he’ll behave like a man. You lead him on like that, what do you think he’s going to do?”

  “Is that what you really think of me?” she asked, taking hold of her anger.

  “What am I supposed to think of you? Letting him touch you like that, embarrassing me in front of my friends.”

  “I’m an embarrassment,” Sara echoed. “Okay.”

  She got up from the bed and went to the wardrobe, grabbing a backpack from the floor, pulling clothes from the hangers.

  “What are you doing?” Damien asked, his an
gry tone now tainted with fear.

  “I’m going to Amanda’s place,” she said. “I’ll sleep on her couch.”

  He rose from the bed, crossed the room to her, arms outstretched.

  “No, no, I didn’t mean it like that.”

  “I know what you meant,” Sara said, stuffing clothes into the backpack.

  His hands gripped her upper arms, and she shrugged them off.

  “Don’t,” she said.

  He forced his body between hers and the wardrobe, his arms around her, pulling her in close. She tried to struggle, but he was too strong, too heavy to push away.

  “I’m sorry,” he said, his lips pressed against her ear, his voice dropping low and whispery, thickening with sadness and regret. “I didn’t mean it. I swear to God, I didn’t. It’s just I love you so much. Seeing another man touching you, it’s . . . I couldn’t bear to lose you. I’m nothing without you.”

  He rocked her from side to side, taking her balance, taking her anger.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “Forgive me. Please.”

  And he whispered into her ear how much he loved her, needed her, couldn’t be without her. She believed him, and she stayed.

  The following morning, a bouquet arrived for her at the office, and everyone asked what the occasion was before she could read the note. Forgive me, the note had said. When her workmates pressed her, she had said, Nothing, just some flowers, feeling the sting of defeat, the humiliation of surrender.

  So that became the way of things. An innocent act turned sinful, his anger pouring on her until she went to leave, then apologies and love and flowers and promises. It might have been a male workmate of hers who texted too often, or a friend of his who leaned in too close to her at a party. Another explosion of anger and accusations, another attempt to leave, another gush of love and apology. Each time his explosion was more fierce than the last, her threat to leave more half-hearted, the apology and love more shrill. And each time, another friend lost, the circle of people she knew by name diminishing little by little, their orbits drifting from hers almost without her noticing.