Shadows & Tall Trees (25 page)

From the canopy of the fungal growth, growing from the thick stalk up against an adjacent cliff, she emerged, a rippling sheaf of molten maroon. Outside the closed door she looked along the windows, her tongue flickering out of her long-lipped smile. Karl heard her hiss, unless that had been the doors opening. “Make haste,” the driver ordered in his blow-torch voice.

Intense heat entered, and there was a powerful odour of sulphur—and apples to remind them all of home.

T
he Irvings had acquired “Summerside” unseen in an auction, paying a paltry sum for this run-down Victorian property. They found the house unbearable over the winter, but even when the spring came round, it was no better. If anything, it was growing colder. They tried changing the curtains and painting the walls. Mr. Irving favoured something bright, a happy shade of yellow. His wife wanted white or magnolia; the closer to white the better, she said. They settled in the middle, with a pale yellow, “wheat”. But when they looked at it on the walls, they wondered if it was bright enough.

They had an extension built, and in due course they locked the door between it and the old house, living only in the extension and just trying to ignore the other part. As winter approached again, though, they vacated the premises altogether, moving in with Mrs. Irving’s parents on the far side of the village.

They decided to let the extension. They had, after all, to recoup the money it had cost them to build it.

Mr. Irving, showing Anna Harris around the outside of the property, tried to explain about the old, locked-up part of the house. “No central heating,” he said.

“It’s standing empty?” said Anna.

No, said Mr. Irving, it wasn’t empty. All the furniture was still in there. It had been left just as it was. Anna thought of the war, of air raid sirens that meant people had to go quickly to a shelter without stopping for anything, and fire drills at school when you had to get out without even collecting your bag.

She put her face close to the kitchen window, cupped her hands around her eyes and peered through. Mr. Irving told her about wanting yellow and his wife wanting white and settling for “wheat” and then looking at it on the walls and wondering if it was bright enough, if it was bright enough to make the room happy.

“Happy?” said Anna. “You thought the room was unhappy?”

“You know what I mean. The house as a whole,” said Mr. Irving, gesturing towards its dismal façade—Anna thought he had said, “The house is a hole,” and she nodded, looking at the tatty window frames, the broken stone step—”is rather impressive, but it has been neglected. Let me show you the new extension.”

He took her to another door that let them into the extension, into the living area. Mr. Irving indicated the sofa that folded out into a bed, and the television. He showed her the kitchen, which was really a utility room with a sink, a microwave oven, a portable hob like the one Mitchell took camping, and a kettle. There was no bathroom but there was an outside toilet that was, said Mr. Irving, just fine.

“But isn’t there a proper
bathroom in the old part of the house?” said Anna. “Isn’t there a proper kitchen?”

“There
is
,” said Mr. Irving, “but that’s all locked up now.”

“Can they really not be used? Are you saying it’s condemned?”

“It’s not condemned,” said Mr. Irving, “but you wouldn’t want to use them. I’ll show you the outside toilet.”

Anna moved in. The lack of space was not a problem because she was not bringing very much with her. A coat cupboard doubled as a wardrobe. The windowsills were her bookshelves. Each morning, she folded away her bed, and ate her breakfast at the little coffee table in the living area. She washed in the utility room. It was like being young again, she thought, just starting out in the world with what little you have.

“I’m on my own now,” she told herself, taking a deep breath. “I’m making a new start.” She had left behind a life that was not good for her—an unhealthy relationship, an unpleasant job, a polluted town.
You’ll never leave Mitchell
, her sister had said. But look at her now; she had done it, she had left him.

Or if you do, you’ll go back.

It would soon be a new year and Anna was making plans. She would try again to read
Ulysses
. She would visit art galleries; she would take a beginner’s course in Art History so that she could understand the paintings she saw.

Had she been buying rather than renting, she might have taken a lodger, for the company. “But you wouldn’t want to live with a stranger, would you?” said her sister, on the phone from Spain. Anna would have liked to live with her sister, but her sister had emigrated, starting a new life with a man Anna did not like. He reminded her of their father. “Have you seen Mitchell?” asked her sister. “I bet you go back to him in the end.”

Lying awake in the fold-out bed, Anna listened to the radio. At one o’clock in the morning, the lady on the radio said, “Sleep tight,” and Anna switched off her lamp and went to sleep.

Standing at the sink the next morning, washing herself with a flannel, Anna thought:
What I want is a bath.
She wanted to slip into hot water, to feel her muscles unknot, to wash away the world. She went to the door that stood between her and the old house. She put her eye to the keyhole and looked through, seeing the pale yellow of a kitchen wall. She could hear something. Still crouching, she listened to the rhythmic knocking sound. With her mouth close to the door, she said, “Hello?” and as she spoke she saw a small boy run past her window. Standing up, drawing aside the net curtain, she looked out at the garden. She thought of it as a garden even though it was slabbed. She saw this boy, who was perhaps six years old, circling the house, hitting the walls of the old part with a stick. She moved towards the door but she couldn’t go out because she was still naked, holding a flannel in her hand. She picked up the phone and dialled Mr. Irving’s number. She was going to ask him about the boy but when he answered she said to him, “I want a bath.”

“I’m afraid,” said Mr. Irving, “I can’t let you use the bathroom; I can’t let you into the old house.”

Anna finished washing with her flannel at the sink.

She was in the utility room again at lunchtime when she saw that the boy had come back. She had been spreading oatcakes with low-fat cheese (she was trying not to eat bread, not to eat wheat, because it left her bloated, left her feeling bad inside). The boy was standing on the broken doorstep, hitting the old front door with his stick. Anna went outside and said to the boy, as she approached him, “What are you doing?”

“Waking the ghosts up,” he said, turning to look at her. “What are
you
doing?”

Anna wondered what he meant, and then she saw that he was looking at how she was walking; he was watching how she stepped carefully over each crack in the paving slabs.

“Oh,” said Anna, smiling. “Don’t you know about the monsters that live under the cracks? If you step on the cracks, they come out and get you.”

Now they were both standing outside the old part of the house, next to the door, which Anna reached out and touched. She put her hand on the handle and turned it, although she could not have said why; she knew that the door was locked and had been locked for months. The door did not open. Anna bent down, opened up the letterbox and looked through. She had a sense of old air getting out, touching her face like warm breath; there was a smell like vegetable soup.

When she stood up again, the boy had run off.

Every wash with her flannel at the sink in the utility room increased Anna’s craving for a bath. When she stood at the locked internal door, it was as if she could feel the bathroom’s humidity pressing against the wood, as if she could smell bath salts leaking through the keyhole and the cracks. She kept thinking about how it would feel to climb into a full, hot tub. She did not have the key to the door, though, and in the end she had to force it, causing some damage to the frame.

Carrying a towel, shampoo and soap, she stepped through into the old kitchen. She looked around, seeing a fine stove, a family-sized table.
Summerside
, she thought; a lovely name for a family home. She stood and listened to the quiet house. (
Summercide
, she thought, like matricide and patricide and suicide.) She moved further into the room. She saw the wheat-coloured walls and felt nauseous, bad inside. That pale shade of yellow was not enough. The stale air filled her nostrils, her mouth, her throat and lungs.

She walked towards the stairs.

If anyone knocked on the door of the extension in the weeks that followed, they went away again without an answer, until rent day came around again and Mr. Irving arrived looking for Anna. Letting himself into the living area, he found the internal door broken open. Not wanting to step into the old house on his own, he fetched his brothers.

He is going to let the extension again—he can’t afford not to—but he will impress upon his new tenant that the old house is out of bounds. He has not mentioned his previous tenant’s breaking and entering, her being found dead in the bath. He has mended the door frame.

As he hands Katie McKinsey the key, receiving in return a cheque—her deposit and a month’s rent in advance—he notices that the boy, that damned boy, is hanging around again. He was a nuisance when Mr. Irving and his wife lived here. They had to keep chasing him off the property. Mr. Irving would shoo him away but Katie McKinsey seems delighted by him. Mr. Irving knows that she is alone and has no children.

Katie keeps asking about using the kitchen. “I like to cook,” she says, standing outside the old house now, turning towards the kitchen window. “I like to bake cakes.”

“You can make cakes in the microwave in the utility room,” says Mr. Irving.

Katie is at the window, peering into the kitchen with her hands cupped around her eyes. “I bet you like cakes,” she says, turning to look at the boy, who is stamping about on the paving slabs. “What are you doing?” asks Katie. The boy looks at her but does not stop. What he is doing is stamping on the cracks. “You don’t want to wake up the bears!” says Katie.

“There aren’t any bears,” says the boy. “And I don’t think it’s monsters either, but there’s something down there.”

“Is that right?” says Katie, standing outside her new home with the key in her hand, and she laughs, but no one else does, and after a while she stops.