The Red House (30 page)

Dominic got a signal a couple of hundred yards up the road. He turned and leant against a fence and looked back down toward the house, golden windows swimming in the gathering dark. He could feel his heart beating. As always, the desire to carry on walking, to put this all behind him, over the hills and far away. He had to do it now, the longer it went on the more he would hurt her. Seven rings, eight. The hope that she wouldn’t answer.

Dom
.

Amy
.

I’d almost given up on you
.

We’re in a valley. The reception is nonexistent
. Sinister, the pleasure one got from lying well.
How’s Andrew?

He’s doing OK
.

He felt cheated.
You said he had to go into hospital
.

He should be out tomorrow
.

I thought he had pneumonia
.

So did the doctors
.

Had she been lying, too? It would make him feel better.
Listen
.

What?

Do it.
I’ve realized something. Over the last few days
.

Dom?

You and me
.

What are you saying?

I’m saying …

I love you, Dom
. Crying now.

But she didn’t love him, did she, she needed him, that was all, needed someone. This was not his job.

Don’t do this to me, Dom
.

The way she said his name, like a child tugging at his sleeve, she suffocated him. How was it possible to explain that? A sudden anger at the way she used her weakness to manipulate him.

Dom?

I’ve made a mess of everything
. It was meant to be a performance but he had unexpectedly stumbled on the truth.
I have to stop running away
. A balloon swelling and rising inside him.
From work, from responsibility, from Angela, from Daisy, from Alex, from Benjy, from my job
. Why had he not done this before?

I don’t know what I would do without you
. Is this real? Or is she crying wolf?
You’re leaving me
.

He let this hang. He felt shitty and noble at the same time, but people did this every day, hurting people for the greater good. Collateral damage.

And you’re doing it over the fucking phone
.

The anger in her voice gave him more purchase.
You want me to lie now and say it to your face when we next meet?

I want you not to treat me like dirt
.

The Japanese paper lantern, her little breasts, the way her hip bones stuck out when she lay on her back. Suddenly he wanted her. What if he cashed in his advantage and reestablished the relationship on more advantageous terms?

I’m not letting you do this to me, Dom
.

The phone went dead and the great silence flooded in. The colored screen hovered in the dark, then dimmed. She had outplayed him. He was angry that she managed to have the last word and frightened that it might not be the last. He had never thought before about what she might do to herself, or to him, or to his family. He put the phone back in his pocket and turned to look up the hill. A monumental wave of absolute dark that looked as if it was about to crash down upon him.

It seemed like a good time to mend fences after the marijuana thing and the Richard thing and the kiss thing so she offered to help Mum wash up after supper and while they were doing the glasses, she said,
I have some excellent gossip
.

I’m not sure I want to hear this
.

Daisy’s gay
.

OK …
said Louisa carefully. This was what scared her. How good Melissa was at keeping you on the back foot. The hoarder and user of secrets.

She tried to kiss me
.

Melissa was too good a liar to risk inventing something as wild as this.

When we were out for a walk
. She took the tea towel off the rail of the Aga and folded it neatly into a square one-eighth of its original size.
I said it wasn’t really my thing
.

It was a peace offering, something freshly killed brought back to the cave. Louisa didn’t want to be part of this, but it was too intriguing to drop.
I thought she was a Christian
.

I think she might be having a bit of trouble in that department
.

Then Louisa put two and two together. The girls were friendly, then they weren’t friendly.
Were you horrid to her about it?

I’m just worried about her, that’s all
. Regaining her balance after being wrong-footed.

That wasn’t what I asked you
.

Like I said, I told her I wasn’t into that kind of stuff
.

Nor was that
.

Why do you have to blame everything on me? Why is it always me who’s done something wrong?
She span and swept out of the kitchen.

Louisa would find a way of talking to Daisy tomorrow, apologize for whatever her daughter had done this time.

So, tell me about the photos
. Angela leant across the table and refilled Richard’s glass, the cabernet shiraz finally doing what the Nurofen had failed to do.

They’re Polaroids. Is that the word? The ones you had to shake
.

Describe them to me
. It sounded crazy. But this was her father.

OK. So …
Richard rubbed the corners of his mouth and looked over her head as if the pictures were hung, poster-size, on the far wall.
One must have been taken on holiday. He’s standing in front of a pillbox in the dunes. Normandy in 1968, I suspect, or possibly the Scilly Isles a couple of years later
.

She is taken aback yet again by the clarity of her brother’s memory.
But him, what does he look like?

He’s wearing one of those check shirts, thin brown stripes on a cream background
. He’s enjoying this. You have thirty seconds to remember all the objects on the tray.
His sleeves are rolled up, he’s smoking, he’s smoking in all three photos, actually. God knows how long he would have survived if the testicular cancer hadn’t got him
.

His casualness grates, but she knows that they are navigating through strong currents and she must keep the tiller straight.

Number two. He’s leaning on the bonnet of the car, green Hillman Avenger, that long radiator grille with the square headlights at each end. Looks like he’s just polished it. I think there’s a shammy leather on the roof. He’s wearing a short-sleeved white shirt
.

Tell me about him. Not his clothes but him
.

There is something disturbing about her intensity.
Do you really not remember?

Just tell me
.

Thick black hair, sideburns, big man, big biceps
. He doesn’t like this. It conjures his father a little too vividly. Rusted metal and sheer bulk and sea spray. Blood in his hair. He wonders whether it was not the gull, he wonders whether it was his father who hit him, whether he has misremembered.
Why do you want to know so badly?

He’s my father
. Wasn’t it obvious?
If it was me who had the photographs and if you’d never seen them, wouldn’t you be curious?

No. I really don’t think I would
.

Why not?

Because he was not a very nice man
.

She shakes her head. Not disagreement but disbelief.

Do you really not remember?

She is trying to work out a solution which will allow them to disagree diplomatically.
We all look back and see things differently
. She says this quietly, amused almost, as if it is he who needs to be calmed down.

That’s true
. He sits back and takes a sip of wine. He wants to let it go, send her the photographs, have done with it, but this is more than simply seeing things differently.
Do you not remember him hitting us?

Everyone hit their kids back then
. Though she is unsure precisely what Richard means by
hitting
.

I remember you being sick in the car. We were driving to Hunstanton one summer. You kept asking to pull over but he wouldn’t, as per usual. So you were sick and then he swerved into this gateway and took you out and put you over his knee and slapped your legs. He was so angry, he just kept on hitting you
. The memory upsets him more than he expects.

Why are you doing this? Why are you trying to mess this up for me?

Because you are ill. The thought suddenly clear and sharp. He veers away.
I think you were scared of him, too. And I think you’ve forgotten
.

Dad was not a monster
.

I’m not saying he was a monster
.

Then what the hell are you saying?

I’m saying he got angry. I’m saying he didn’t care much about other people. I’m saying he didn’t know how to deal with children. And he scared me and I don’t particularly like looking at the photographs because it makes me remember what that felt like
.

Is this what Mum told you? Is this her version?

I don’t remember Mum saying a single thing about him after he died. The grieving process, 1970
. He wonders if he should reach out and hold Angela’s hand but he is not very good at judging these things.

You and Mum
, she said.
You visited Dad in hospital, the day before he died. I wasn’t allowed to go. I hated you for that. I had this recurring dream in which you’d both killed him
. She tries to make it sound like a joke but she can’t, because she still has the dream sometimes.

You didn’t want to go
.

What?

Why on earth would you not be allowed to go?

Because that’s what Mum was like, because she enjoyed manipulating people, because she never wanted other people to be happy
.

After he died, after she started drinking, when she realized she was pouring her life away, then she was difficult, then she enjoyed manipulating people
. He paused and readjusted his focus.
I think it was the only power she had left
.

Why wouldn’t I go to the hospital? He was my father
.

He shrugs. He still can’t quite grasp why this is so important to her.
I guess the extraordinary thing is that I wanted to go myself
. He is looking for a way of saying this which isn’t accusatory.
Why would anyone want to see their father dying. Me …? I don’t know. Maybe there was a doctor waiting to get out even then
. He wonders, on some deep level, if he did indeed want his father to die, whether he went to make sure it was happening, to say good riddance, to be certain he wasn’t coming back.

Stop. Wait. This is too much
.

Sorry
. He holds up his hands.

She wants him to be wrong, but he’s not inventing, is he. He has no ax to grind, and she has no story of her own to pit against his. She stands clumsily.
I need to be on my own for a while
.

Going upstairs her legs feel weak. Is Dominic still out on his walk? The room is empty. She sits on the edge of the bed. The blankness again.
What year is this?
That woman on the train, red string, liver-spotted hands.
I can’t quite …
Dad slapping her in the lay-by, a picture half forming on the wet gray surface of the shaken photo. If she has the past wrong, does she have the present wrong, too? Her father is vanishing again. The empty doorway. Stems and slime. Another figure materializing in the dark rectangle. Thickening in waves. A high buzzing sound. Karen. She has betrayed her, forgotten her, let her slip away. Rainbow-colored windbreak, flicking the hair out of her eyes.
She’s laughing and it is not a kind laugh. Her birthday. It’s tomorrow. In all the excitement over the photographs Angela had forgotten. She is going to be punished for this.