The house was a Victorian farmhouse. The farmer lost both his legs in an accident, and had gassed himself in the tumbledown barn with the exhaust fumes of his car. His widow had sold off the farm and moved away; they’d only heard the story after they’d bought the house and she wondered if she would have tried to dissuade Richard had she known. Since she had heard the history, she always felt the house had a slightly melancholic feeling to it. It was the inside she liked most: the large, elegant rooms, some which they had made even larger, large enough to entertain in style, but not so large the place wouldn’t feel like a home.
She swung the steering wheel to avoid a crater in the crumbling driveway. ‘That’s a job you can have, Tiger,’ she said, more brightly than she felt. ‘You can fill in the holes.’
‘No.’
‘Why not, Nicky?’ said Helen.
‘Umm. Coz there might be fish in them.’
The gravel of the circular drive rattled against the underside of the Range Rover, thick wall-to-wall gravel that the wheels sank into up to their hubs. She pulled on the handbrake and switched off the engine. Silence. Peace. She felt a gust of wind rock the car. Nicky tugged excitedly at his door handle. ‘Birthday tomorrow! Yeah!’
‘You’re looking forward to it, aren’t you?’ said Helen.
‘Yeah!’
‘“Yes”, darling, “yes”, not “yeah”. Okay?’
He hesitated, then grinned impudently at his mother. ‘Yeah!’ he said. ‘Yeah! Yeah!’ He jumped down and ran across the drive.
Sam looked at Helen, shaking her head and smiling. Helen blushed. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I’m trying to get him out of it. He’s very strong willed.’
‘Like his father,’ Sam said, opening her door and stepping down. The wind tugged her hair, pulling her backwards, and a piece of grit blew into her right eye making it smart. She blinked hard, dabbing it with her handkerchief, then opened the tailgate.
She paused for a moment and stared at the view. Straight down over the fields down to the banks of the River Ouse, the open fields beyond, and the South Downs in the distance beyond that. To the right, the spires and walls of Lewes, the chalk bluffs and the ruined castle perched on the hill. Even on a bleak, blustery January morning, with the flattened trees with their roots in the air, it was stunning. Exhilarating. She wished she could put her wellies on and walk off into it right now, as she turned and hefted the first box of groceries towards the house, glancing up at the scaffolding again and the blue sheeting that flapped and cracked like a backing sail.
She opened the door and the smell of fresh paint engulfed her. She sniffed it, and it felt good. Helen followed her in, holding a bulging brown bag.
‘God it’s cold!’ Sam carried the box through and dumped it on the kitchen table. She stared proudly at her brand new navy Aga, and switched it on, listening to the tick of its oil pump, then the whoof of its flame. She opened the cupboard and switched on the central heating. There was a clunk, a rattle, a tick, another whoof, and the slatted door began to vibrate.
She went back outside, crossing with Helen who was bringing in a case of Cokes. Nicky was following her, struggling under the weight of a carrier bag. She smiled.
‘Can you manage, Tiger?’
He nodded a grim determined nod, and she took another box and followed him in, her feet scrunching on the gravel, watching him tenderly as he put his carrier down, then picked it up again. Such a tiny chap, but he hadn’t seemed so tiny when he was born.
Caesarian. The idiot gynaecologist hadn’t realised her cervix was too small for him.
No, Jesusgoddamn no! Oh my Christ!
A great job you did, Mr brilliant gynaecologist. Mr Framm. Mr smooth-talking great bedside manners Framm. Brilliant bit of surgery on me. What did you use? A shovel?
No more children? Won’t be able to? Great. Triff. Thanks very much.
You could sue him someone had said, but what was the point? It wouldn’t bring her another child.
Sue. Everyone sues everyone. Join the lepers with their begging bowls outside the Halls of Justice. Sue. Sue. Sue. You leave people alone these days; you don’t dare touch; don’t dare lift them bleeding to death out of the wrecks of cars in case they sue you for doing it wrong.
Nicky put the carrier down on the kitchen floor. ‘I’m going to check my base now, make sure that’s all right. I’ve got work to do in it.’
The barn was where he had his secret base; at least he wasn’t scared of barns, she thought, watching him scamper off. He’d have asked Richard to come and check it out with him, but not her. She was all right for the odd game, the odd bit of amusement when he was bored, for putting him to bed and telling him stories, but it was Richard that he really liked to be with. Richard, who took him fishing, played with his cars, taught him to swim and use a computer and sail a boat. Some things you couldn’t change no matter what you did. It was
good that they loved each other so much. Except sometimes she felt left out. Sometimes she felt as lonely as when she had been a child unwanted by her aunt and uncle.
She went back outside, heaved another box of groceries out of the tailgate and carried it through the fresh blustery air. It could all be so good here. Was all just beginning to feel so good. And then. Richard. Oh you stupid sod!
She lugged her suitcase inside and tramped up the filthy dust sheet that covered the staircase. ‘I thought they were going to finish painting the stairs. They are blighters, these builders.’
There was so much to be done. So much potential. So much you could do – if you had the enthusiasm. ENTHUSIASM. It had been there when they’d bought the place. Yes-yes-yes. The estate agent had given them the key and let them go back for the second viewing alone and they’d made love on the bare dusty floor.
Yes, please. Can we really afford this?
Sure we can, Bugs.
Yes, please.
Last June.
She walked past the dust sheets stretching away down the dark corridor, the ladders, the tins of paint, the rolls of lining paper, into the bedroom and put the case down on the floor. Mirrors. On all the walls. On the doors of the massive mahogany wardrobe they’d acquired with the house. There was one on order to go up on the ceiling. What did he like looking at so much? His own hairy bum?
She walked over and gazed out of the window at the thickening cloud and the swirling leaves. She watched the wind blowing, in the grass, in the trees, in the ripples on the distant river.
Slider.
The black hood stared out at her through the glass partition.
The orange and white boarding card.
Seat 35A.
She heard a click behind her, a gentle click like a door closing, and she felt a sudden fear clam around her like a cold mist. She stared on out through the window, at nothing but a blur. Someone or something had come into the room and was standing right behind her. So close, she could almost feel breathing down her neck.
She shook her head, trembling, and gripped the radiator beneath the sill tightly, so tightly she could feel the ribbing cutting into her hands. She wanted to turn, now, turn and face whoever it was. But she could not.
‘Yes?’ she said, instead.
There was silence.
‘What do you want?’ she articulated clearly, loudly.
Still there was silence.
She spun round, filled for an instant with a mad boldness. But there was nothing. Nothing except her reflection.
She sat down shakily on the white candlewick bedspread and took the page from Friday’s
Daily Mail
out of her handbag. She looked at the large photograph of the tailplane in the snow, and the smaller inset photograph of a Boeing 727, with the tiny caption underneath: ‘Similar to the one that crashed.’
She turned the page, staring at the photographs of the pilot and co-pilot, one smiling, one stem. Neither the names nor the faces registered anything with her. She looked down the column until she found what she wanted: the emergency phone numbers.
She picked up the telephone and dialled. The number rang for a long time before it was answered.
‘Is that Chartair?’ she said, feeling foolish.
‘Yes it is,’ said a woman’s voice.
‘I wonder if you could give me some information about the . . . crash?’
‘Is it about a relative, madam?’
‘Er – not—’ Sam felt flushed, afraid what the woman might think. That she was a crank with a ghoulish interest. ‘I think perhaps I had a relative on the plane,’ she said, knowing that her lie did not sound convincing.
‘Could you let me have the person’s name?’ said the woman, her voice becoming impatient.
‘I have the seat number. 35A.’
‘35A? Your relative was travelling in 35A?’
Sam wanted to hang up. The tone of the woman’s voice was flattening her. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I think so.’
‘Wouldn’t have been on this plane. There were only thirty-two rows.’
‘I’m sorry,’ said Sam. ‘So sorry – I must have . . .’
‘Do you have a name?’
‘Name?’
‘Of your relative.’
‘I’m sorry,’ Sam said. ‘I’ve made a mistake. I don’t think they . . . he . . . were . . . was on that plane at all.’ She hung up feeling hot, flustered, watching her reflection in the mirror putting the phone back on the bedside table.
35A.
She tossed the numbers around in her head, added them together, subtracted them, said them over to herself, trying to find some clue. She pulled the book she had bought out of her handbag and shook it out of its crumpled paper bag.
What Your Dreams Really Say
.
She stared at the eyeball and the fish on the cover, then glanced at the biography of the author inside.
‘Dr Colin Hare Ph.D., D.Sc. A Fellow of the British Psychological Society. Winner of the University of London Carpenter Medal for “great innovative work”. Considered Britain’s leading authority on dreams, he lectures extensively throughout the world.’
She flicked through a few pages, then turned to the index. Hood. Hood. ‘
Hood
, see Mask.’
‘To dream of yourself or others wearing a hood or a mask can be a warning of deception by someone you trust.
‘It may alternatively indicate an aspect of your personality.’
That was all. She looked up ‘Numbers’ and turned to the page.
‘Three: The male genitals. Father, mother, child. The Trinity.
‘Five: The flesh. The body. Life.
‘Any letters of the alphabet indicate pleasant news on the way.’
‘Mumbo jumbo,’ she muttered. Some people could do
The Times
crossword in four minutes. Not her; never. Riddles. Puzzles. She’d never been any good at them. Thicko Sam.
She heard the rattle of water inside the radiator, and felt a sharp cold draught down the back of her neck. She was frightened again, felt goosepimples on her shoulders, her arms, on her thighs. The door of the room swung open a fraction with a click, half closed then opened again, click, click.
There was a louder click from her right and the mirrored door of the wardrobe swung slowly open. Her heart crashed around inside her chest as she stared, paralysed for a moment, into its dark interior. The metal coat hangers clanged together, gently, chiming.
There was a splitting crack of wood above her, then
another, as if someone was walking over the joists. The whole room seemed to be coming alive around her.
She went out onto the landing, hurried along it and halfway down the stairs, then stopped, and stared back up, trying to compose herself. She could still hear the coat hangers chiming as if they were being played like musical triangles.
‘Seventeen, eighteen, nineteen.’ She looked quizzically at Helen.
‘Yes. I make it nineteen.’
The long trestle table in the dining room was covered with a bright tablecloth, nineteen paper plates, pink and yellow napkins, red and blue striped paper cups. The walls were festooned with balloons and ribbons, and there was a large banner along one saying ‘Happy Birthday Nicky.’
‘Looks wonderful, doesn’t it?’ Helen’s voice tingled with excitement, and Sam smiled, pleased for her. Pleased that she could be so thrilled at something so simple, and hoping the feeling would rub onto Nicky. Nice, old-fashioned, simple.
‘Great,’ she said absently, watching Helen rub her hands together gleefully, like a child. She was a child, really. Nineteen. Her funny spiky hair, and her thick North Country accent, and her superstitions. Seeing omens in everything. Don’t look at a new moon through glass. Turn money over in your pocket. Say ‘grey hares’ on the last night of the month and ‘white rabbits’ in the morning. She frowned uncertainly, hoping Helen wasn’t going to riddle Nicky with fears and guilt and make him cranky.
Like people who dreamed of air disasters.
She felt a breeze on her face, and heard the wind again rattling the windows. The house seemed to let in draughts as a leaky boat took in water. She walked through the hallway, and stared at the bare floorboards of the staircase, wondering if it had looked better with the dust sheets on, and smelled the wood smoke from the newly lit fire that was roaring and spitting in the drawing room.
With the fire lit and Richard back the house seemed OK, fine; it had been the wind that had scared her, the wind and the central heating starting up; the house had been empty for five years, it was all damp, it was bound to creak and crack and make strange sounds when the heating came on and the wood dried out. Richard had explained to her before. It all made sense; sure. It was fine. It had been her imagination in the bedroom, the wind and her imagination and the drying out house.
She opened the kitchen door and saw him sitting at the table, his shotgun spread out in bits. Nicky, standing beside him, his face streaked in gun oil, was polishing the stock. Richard rammed the cleaning rod down through one barrel, then the other.
‘Honestly, Richard! Not on the table!’
He closed one eye, and squinted at her through each barrel in turn. ‘Going to have to have these re-ground. Pitting. Can’t understand it.’ He poured some oil onto a rag, then began to wipe the barrels.
‘Didn’t you hear me? I don’t want that on the table. We have to eat on that.’