The Life of Houses (13 page)

He was not kind, Kit thought. That was the saving thing. There was in his manner something mocking, antagonistic: he placed no obligation, required no gratitude. It was a relief to dislike him a little. The feeling was small-scale, and her own.

As she followed him around the point, the wind swung full face. Impossible to look ahead into it…She was walking between him and the water's edge, bumping elbows whenever one of the waves came high up the sand; though the wind, so much present, made the touch impersonal: only that they were pitted alike against the weather. Her plastic bag filled with wind, loudly shuddering. With one hand holding her hair back, Kit looked sideways out at tilting, bright water. The wind was tearing white crests from the waves. Closer in, a gull held at a point, wingtips quivering.

The beach was almost deserted. Only far off, where it lifted into the heat, tiny figures flickered in and out of mirage: two people, perhaps, or a person with a dog. Scott was pointing to where a bluestone wall marked the boundary of the sand. On its far side, there started a different world: a crescent of irrigated grass, picnic tables, a climbing frame: a Sunday family world set out as if under glass.

Already, he was heading towards it. At the edge of the park a single pine tree, its top grown away from the wind, was the shape of a stopped wave. He swung over the wall and entered the tree's bluegreen shade. From within that dimness, he looked back at her. She was at once conscious of glare, wind whipping strands of hair across her eyes. But as soon as she climbed over the wall into the tree's shade he looked past her, out to sea.

The shade, now that she was in it, was less like darkness than like
smouldering light. Everywhere thin shafts seemed to give off smoke in the dusty air. There was no grass; the dirt was soft with dry brown needles. The tree's branches barely moved in the wind.

‘Do you climb?' At this, for no reason she could see, he let out another of his disconcertingly high laughs.

She studied the trunk. Its bark, inches thick, made handholds where it cracked. There was a bole, knee-high.

‘The lair…Your mother refused to call it a tree house. Never a cubby.'

‘She came here?'

Kit had suddenly seen what was almost impossible to believe: that the past had existed really.
Here
, she thought: her mother had stood here. She touched the bark.
Here
, in this dust-hazed shade. At last, a picture of the child her mother had once been rose whole in Kit's mind. Pinch-faced, strands of hair hanging over her shoulders, the girl stared down at Kit from the shifting light of the pine tree. Where had that face come from? When I get back, Kit thought, I'll look at those photographs in the hall again.

Scott had turned his back. He reached his right hand up to the first branch, propped his foot on the tree's bole. Mooring his left hand to the trunk, he put his weight onto his foot but he slipped. The side of his face, his little paunch, skidded down the trunk. She laughed, and stopped as suddenly. Without looking at her, looking down at his palms, he swore quietly. With a slow deliberateness that was almost frightening, he took of his shoes and set them side-by-side. He took of his sunglasses, too, and rested them across his shoes. His bare, bluish-white short toes looked
startlingly nude, like some inner body protruding through his tan.

He was trying again. His foot gripped the bole. That moment, it seemed that he might fail again, splayed there belly and cheek against the trunk, while his left foot scrabbled sideways and would not hold. His intensity embarrassed her: it was so naked. His toe caught on a sharp edge. Grunting, he heaved up and got his chest over the edge of the branch, feet kicking behind him.

There was a wide hollow where he sat. Branches, four or five of them, spread out from it. He had his back against a branch, his legs stretched out in front of him; he was looking up at the high branches. She pulled off her sneakers and set them by his shoes. It was almost awkward, how easily she climbed up toe-holes in the bark. Without looking at her, he drew his knees sideways to make room. All the same, pulling herself up, she bumped against the outside of his thigh and felt, pressed into her arm and shoulder, the heat and dampness of his skin.

The hollow was soft with brown disintegrating pine needles. When she had been on the ground, looking up at him, tree and ground had made the same world. Now, looking down from the tree, the distance seemed much greater. Here the air had a dry smell, faintly resinous. Far off, the sky showed in patches. Resting her back against a branch, she looked up through the tree's infrastructure. Out there at the canopy's ragged edges, the needles looked green. Otherwise, they were grey-brown, cobwebby. Only those outermost branches moved in the wind. The light that angled down through the tree's shade moved with them, revealing reddish colours in the bark.

‘We used to smoke up here.' He had his eyes closed. His forehead, and the little curls of hair on his chest, glistened with sweat. He opened his eyes for a moment. ‘Do you smoke? Of course you don't. Disgusting habit.' He tilted his head back against the trunk. ‘The smell of these leaves always makes me want a cigarette.'

‘Were you caught?'

‘No. Maybe they knew, though. We must have reeked of it.'

‘Mum never smokes now.'

‘She was hopeless at it. She used to hide her cough.' He sat up. ‘God! How uncomfortable. We used to spend hours up here.'

‘I like it.' Feeling his eyes on her, Kit looked away into the high branches.

He said: ‘You know, that time I saw you trailing along after Treen you looked so prim. I'm probably the first person you've ever met whose father was a tradesman.' He grinned down at her. ‘I am though, aren't I? No, I really am: I'm the son of an electrician. He wanted me to take over the business and instead I went to art school. Can you imagine? I'm pushy, that's what you're not used to.'

He rested his back on the trunk. He started speaking without looking at her, looking up through the cobwebby dark branches backlit with green. ‘I saw it that day Treen brought you in, you not knowing what to do with your hands. Your mother was the same. In fact, for two people who couldn't have been more different, your mother and I were strangely alike. The trouble with us was we didn't know how to be natural. We were always watching other people, trying to figure out how they got along so well.' He laughed.
‘She figured it out, though, didn't she. Shacking up with the tutor. No, you'd have to say your mother figured it out.'

Kit said nothing. She sat motionless in the swaying green, conscious of a sharp piece of bark sticking into the back of her thigh, surprised at the same time that she could be conscious of it while she felt so stopped—past all response. She looked along the branch, where at the tip five pine needles splayed, and thought: I'll remember this. His voice, in the green tree, had the authority of a dream: there was, so long as it lasted, no world outside.

‘It's ten to twelve.' He put on a high voice: ‘Mustn't keep Miranda waiting.' Twisting onto his belly, he pushed himself off the branch.

On the ground, he put on his sunglasses, flicked the dust off his bare feet and stepped into his shoes before looking up at her. ‘How green you look.' With the flat palm of his hand, he pushed her foot back and let it swing forward and bump into his hand.

‘Come on.' He held his arms up to her. Leaning forward, she had just time to think, ‘The branch is too high.' Scraping the backs of her thighs, she thudded into his chest. When he had recovered his footing, he pushed her back from him with his arms still on her shoulders.

‘Yes, but I did think you'd jump.'

‘Sorry.'

He looked full at Kit. ‘You do look wild.' He picked a knotted strand of hair off her shoulder and held it out. She looked sideways along its length. ‘Your hair's like seaweed. I'll paint you as a creature of the deep.'

Was he serious? He had started fussing with his shirt, brushing
scraps of bark off his sleeve. Kit remembered how carelessly the model had tossed the magazine down. He yawned. ‘You'd better run, though. Straight across the park. That's Main Street there. The tea shop's half-way up. Here,' he called, ‘you're forgetting your shaver.'

Chapter Twelve

‘
T
hat is a vulgar woman.' Patrick set his teacup in its saucer with a click. They were sitting at the wrought-iron table on the side verandah. Sunlight, falling in patterns through the iron lace, was touching the legs of the table now.

‘Dad…' Treen frowned at her crossword: a page of the newspaper folded to the size of a novel. She had been working in the garden all morning. Leaving her boots at the kitchen door, she had brought their sandwiches out to the table in socked feet. Now, consciously relaxing, she lay in her low cane armchair and wriggled her toes. Her shins, beneath knee-length khaki shorts, were tracked with veins that opened on one shin into a bruise the colour of her navy socks, except more lustrous.

‘She says exclusive when she means expensive.'

‘Kit is friendly with the daughter.'

He turned to Kit. ‘What's the girl like?'

‘Miranda? Really pretty.'

He shook his head, dissatisfied. ‘No bone structure.'

‘She's very well presented,' said Treen.

Patrick leant across the table to Kit. ‘Men can tell the difference.'

Treen sighed audibly. She shaded her eyes, gazed out at the garden. ‘It's beach weather, really.' Between the verandah's shade and the dusty
shade under the tea-tree, a bare patch of grass vibrated with heat.

Kit said: ‘I might go back this afternoon.'

‘There's a bit of a rip,' said Treen. ‘You shouldn't go on your own really.'

‘I won't swim. Only up to my knees.'

Patrick sat steeled up, sternly ignoring them. The garden, stopped and uncalm, was the stage setting of his mood. He said: ‘She came right into the house.'

Kit said: ‘I shouldn't have given her the stuff.'

‘No. A different woman would have stopped at the door. Simply have stopped at the door,' he repeated with a flourish of his hands.

‘Dad, more tea?' Treen stacked the plates.

He lifted one hand to brush off her question. ‘Right into Audrey's room.'

‘I'll make a fresh pot.'

The screen door shut behind her with a hollow-sounding bang. The sound was still reverberating: he pitched his voice under it; he leant across the table. Still not looking at Kit, looking instead at her hand where it curled on the table, he said: ‘The Wood boy died. That Carol woman told Audrey. A car crash. Audrey was very upset. She knows the father.'

He straightened up. With his thumb and forefinger, he pinched the corners of his mouth. ‘Why they let them drive at that age,' he said petulantly. His cheeks looked grey under his tan. All along his jawline, the little vertical wrinkles showed. ‘Treen didn't want to upset us.' He put his shoulders back, looked unseeingly out at the heat. ‘I shall go to the funeral.' His shoulders showed beneath
the linen shirt: a bone-thinness which made Kit think of material rasping on dry skin. ‘Audrey isn't up to it.'

He raised his water glass and took a cautious sip, working the water in his mouth. Turning stiffly from the waist to face Kit, he inclined his head: a gesture so courtly, so fastidious, she wondered whether he had just bowed. ‘I'd appreciate it if you could stay with your grandmother tomorrow.'

She inclined her head; she found she had adopted his deliberate and impassive manner. Treen came out with the teapot—this time putting her foot out to keep the door from banging shut. They were two shadows there at the table beside Treen's stubborn outsized flesh. Without taking his eyes from the garden Patrick said: ‘Kit tells me that she is willing to look after her grandmother.'

‘Dad, the medicine.'

‘Kevin tells me it will be perfectly safe to give Audrey a pill in the morning and then at night.'

‘When did you see him?'

‘I telephoned this morning.' He turned back to Kit. ‘We'll prepare a tray for you to take in to your grandmother for lunch.'

Kit spoke to Treen: ‘I'll be alright.'

‘On your own?'

‘Her grandmother will be here,' Patrick said.

‘But what will you do all day?'

‘Filing.'

‘It will be nice for Kit to have some time with her grandmother. Audrey lies down after lunch, of course, when there's the house to explore.'

‘Well…' Treen hovered over them.

Patrick passed his hand back and forth irritably over the top of his cup, refusing tea. Treen poured out her own tea and settled back in her chair. She took up the crossword. Kit saw that Treen had washed her hands of them both—had claimed for herself the heat-struck, fatalistic peace of the garden.

‘The house will be yours one day,' Patrick said. ‘I should show you one or two things.' He rolled his napkin and fed it into his napkin ring. Kit, who had not thought to take her own napkin from its ring, rubbed her fingers on a corner of the cloth. She glanced across at her aunt. Treen, who had found her spectacles when she went into the house, now held the crossword up to her face. She was counting letters; she fumbled for the biro she had dropped down the side of her chair.

Patrick put both hands on the table and levered himself up. He moved with a precision that made Kit think of elbows and knees. Probably his joints hurt always. Walking ahead of him, Kit found herself placing her feet with unnatural care.

The damp-smelling sudden dimness of the hall made them both rock back on their heels. For Kit the whole house now was built out from that place by the door. To pass it was to think of night: hours rigidly waiting with her eyes clenched shut because if she did not see the ghost she could tell herself, when day came, that it had not been there.

Her grandfather stepped with a sleepwalker's familiarity between the drawing room's small tables. Crochet antimacassars on the armchairs; tasselled Persian rugs the size of doormats: the room had a layered indoorness: it absorbed sound. Even the gold-framed
landscapes opened no vistas out: the picture glass was thick with dust. Kit looked longingly at the windows. Between heavy curtains there was the veranda's trim of iron lace. A frame outside a frame, it shrank the garden to a picture.