Authors: Lucy Wood
Eventually her mother said: ‘Old snaggle-tooth.’ She touched Pepper’s mouth with her finger, so that it almost stopped hurting. ‘Does it hurt?’ she asked.
‘No,’ Pepper said. She pretended to bite her mother’s finger and then did bite it a little bit, by accident.
The dark closed in on them. The river made noises like a person muttering. Everything was dark: the sky, the trees, the river, her mother’s jacket, creased from the journey, which seemed like it had happened so long ago. But it had only been that morning when Pepper had turned back from the bus window and seen for the last time the red door of their rented flat, the spiky plant with no leaves, the bath at the front full of weeds and rust. And in the window of the flat downstairs, the two white birds. But she had tried not to look at them and concentrated instead on imagining a sharp pole sticking out of the window that sliced the top off everything they went past: trees, telegraph wires, warehouses, slice, slice.
But those two white birds, in a cage with swirls on it. Their soft faces. Sometimes she’d gone right up to the window to watch them flying around the room, or sleeping with their heads tucked into their wings. She would tap on the glass until they stared at her.
She crouched down again and dug at the ground, wet grass sticking to her legs. The wind went
hoooroo roooo
and a few drops of rain hit the water. She would never see those birds again. Her mother always said that they’d stay, but they never did. It was just like the fat brown dog in the place before, and the cat with three legs outside the place before that. Once there had been a prickly moth on a bathroom window. She’d stroked it every day until its wings dried out and crumbled off.
The rain came down harder and Pepper jabbed at the ground. She often thought about those other houses, how it would all be going on without her. Soon, that woman downstairs would be going to bed. There would be shuffling, running water, opening and closing doors. The sound of the curtains being drawn carefully. The television would click off and the woman would speak to the birds. ‘Sleep tight,
mes chéries
,’ she would say, which meant: goodnight, my cherries.
Rain like feet stamping.
A few fat drops slipped down Ada’s back as they ran to the house. It soaked her coat, her hair. Puddles gleamed at her feet. She had forgotten this: the sudden squalls, hail to sun, gales to downpours, drizzle to fog. She turned and made sure Pepper was behind her. She was lagging – gloom had descended on her as suddenly as the weather. One minute she had been standing quietly by the river, the next, she was stomping up and down the bank muttering about birds and teeth. Somehow managed to injure herself already and obviously starving again; her stomach sounded like someone was blowing up and twisting a balloon.
She took Pepper’s hand and ran over the grass. There was the house, low and stooping. It had always looked like a listing boat, propped up and lopsided with its barns and outhouses tacked on. Brick and wood and corrugated metal. A porch added haphazardly. The chimney perched at a wild angle, about to crumble off any moment. Rust bloomed like moss, moss in the gaps on the roof where tiles should be. Cracked windows, the roof buckling like an old tent. Ivy garlanding everything.
The grass turned to gravel. She slowed down so that Pepper wouldn’t fall over again. Wet leaves pasted everywhere. The porch roof bowed in the middle. Their bags were piled up by the door – four holdalls, two small cases, everything they owned now that she’d sold the motley collection of cheap furniture and crockery they’d accumulated over the years. It had seemed like a lot when she was struggling with it onto the bus, but now it looked like nothing. She brushed rain out of Pepper’s hair and held on to the empty box. At least that part was over with. She could hear the river: a deeper drumming than the rain. Sweeping on tirelessly, as a searchlight might. The trees sent shadows rocking over the walls.
‘Those trees will be bare soon,’ she said. By December the sun wouldn’t come up over the valley. The leaves would gather up in drifts. Only a few left clinging on, stubborn as old bunting.
Pepper rocked on her heels. ‘Are we going to go inside now?’ she asked.
Ada looked down at her. A tiny thing, all eyes and elbows, dancing round like she needed to pee. Which she probably did. ‘Hold this,’ she said, giving Pepper the wooden box. ‘I need to find the keys.’ She crouched down and opened her bag. Gloves, tissues, paperwork. Pegs, for some reason, and then the whole washing line: loops of yellow plastic that she kept pulling out like a magic trick – except no keys conjured up at the end. The wind blew in cold sideways rain. How cold would the house be? She shuddered to think of it, remembering ice inside the windows, separated oil. By January there would be ice in the milk, but they wouldn’t still be here in January.
Pepper ran her fingers over the box. ‘What does this say?’ she asked.
‘I packed them in here,’ Ada said. She dug her hand down to the bottom of the bag and felt for them again. There was nothing but crumbs – always crumbs, following her around like a plague. ‘Christ, where are they?’ She unzipped another bag. All their clothes stuffed in. Shoes on top of shampoo, a handful of cutlery.
‘Are we going inside now?’ Pepper said. She wound the washing line around her belly.
‘We’ve got to find the keys first,’ Ada said. ‘Can you look in that bag?’
Pepper opened the other bag and looked inside. ‘My snail shells,’ she said. ‘They’re all everywhere.’
‘Can you see the keys?’ Ada asked.
‘Hell’s bells,’ Pepper said. ‘They’ve gone everywhere.’ The wind kept on gusting. Ada got out Pepper’s hat and pulled it down so it covered her ears. She tried the front door but it was locked. Rattled it and pushed with her shoulder. If you just open now, she thought, I will be a better person. I will never swear in front of Pepper. I will clear out this house patiently. She took a deep breath. Tried the handle again. ‘Bollocks,’ she said. She looked up at the window, wondered what it would take to break it. The wind shook the trees like brooms.
‘We’re stuck out here forever,’ Pepper said. She wound the washing line tighter. ‘Maybe they’re in that car. That man’s car.’ Then she went back to winding herself up tighter and tighter, pretending that she had stopped breathing.
The bus had dropped them off in a gravelly lay-by – the closest place it stopped – and they had been picked up by Luke, who had insisted on taking them to the house. ‘Am I late?’ he said. He turned the car heater up to a loud whirr. ‘A tree’s come down across the road further back. Had to take the long way round.’ He looked over his shoulder at Pepper. ‘You probably thought I wasn’t coming.’
Ada shifted in her seat. She was sitting on an old blanket, scratchy wool with bits of yellow grass sticking out. A green and blue check pattern – the kind everyone around here kept in their cars for emergencies.
Pepper stared at Luke and didn’t say anything. Her hand came up and picked at her lips. She had never been good around people, never made friends, even as a baby had yelped whenever she was picked up. A furious little face the midwife had said. Grey wrinkly skin, pedalling the air like she was trying to escape.
‘There’s something of Pearl in her,’ Luke said. The rain was a weak patter. He pulled the car away and the wheels spun on the wet road. The heater filled the car with singed dust.
‘Who?’ Pepper said. ‘Who’s in me?’ She kicked the back seat until Ada made her stop.
‘I appreciate it,’ Ada said. ‘The lift.’ But it would only be this once; she hated having to rely on anyone, especially her mother’s old friend. Her only friend. The one who’d found her and sat with her while he waited for the ambulance to come. His pale blue eyes were fixed on the road. Waxy hair pushed behind his ears. His suit jacket sleeves had been mended with small stitches and his hands were ridged with turquoise veins. A gold ring on his thumb, the inky edge of a tattoo creeping up the top of his neck. He had a dented nose from when a cow had kicked him in the face. He’d just got straight back up again, pushed his nose into place and said something about how come the grass didn’t smell any more? After that, he couldn’t smell or taste anything – not bread, not garlic, not anything.
‘You’ll be wanting to use Pearl’s car,’ he said.
A cold feeling gripped her. ‘We won’t be here long,’ she said.
‘Can’t get far without one around here of course. I checked it over a while ago, when I knew you were coming.’ He spoke gently, slowed round a sharp bend, where the road narrowed so only one car could get past. A branch scraped against the door.
Ada nodded slowly. But she hadn’t driven a car in years. And the roads around here were the worst to drive on, what with the wet and the bends and tractors hurtling along in the middle of the road. And the ice and the hail. Dips. Potholes as big as bathtubs.
‘It’s still got some life in it,’ Luke said. ‘The brakes are stiff buggers, since no one’s been using them. But I threw some brake fluid in.’
‘She wasn’t using it?’
Luke glanced at her. ‘Pearl hadn’t driven in a long time,’ he said. He shook his head, started to say something else and then stopped. After a moment he said, ‘You’ll find some tiles off. If you need a hand I can always.’
She thanked him, but said she would be doing it herself. ‘We won’t be here long,’ she said again. There wouldn’t be much to do. Her mother had always kept up with repairs, battling the damp, the cracks, the wind-thieved tiles. An expert in anything practical, although couldn’t cook to save her life. Would use a griddle pan as a hammer.
In the back, Pepper shifted and stretched. Her eyes closed and her cheeks flushed from the heater. Wispy hair all mussed up. One hand in a fist, murmuring: ‘I won’t do it. Three more potatoes but none for you.’
Down the hill and into the valley. It was an isolated place: trees thickening into woods, the sun barely reaching in. Gales funnelling through. The moor rose up in the distance, humped and stark as something marooned. There were farms spread out for miles: sloping fields, derelict stores, barns. Cows bunching together and shifting their weight slowly from leg to leg. Steaming out of their noses like kettles. There was no centre to speak of – most of the houses were scattered by themselves, a few huddles of newer bungalows, a shop, the church and the school two miles in the other direction. A pub down an overgrown lane, a whitewashed café by the main road that long-distance drivers stopped at, filled up with petrol from the pump outside, hunched over strong coffee, and then left without looking back. And the river. The river winding through it all.
Luke hummed the same strange tunes he’d always hummed. ‘It might take more time than you think,’ he said. ‘Sort out the whole place.’ He leaned forward over the wheel. Same squinting eyes, same chapped skin, but he looked old. She had never thought of her mother getting older in all the years since she had last seen her. She pushed the thought away, then shivered and Luke turned the heater up. ‘Must have been eight years since you were last here Ada,’ he said.
Ada nodded. Although it had been thirteen. Apart from coming down briefly a few weeks ago, but all that was hazy – hearing about her mother, rushing down for the funeral. She hadn’t been to the house. Endless meetings with solicitors about what to do with it. Taxes. Bills. Needed sorting out, doing up. Selling. Costs of labour. Her current landlord talking about raising the rent. In between jobs again. Nobody else she could call on – how was there no one else she could call on? And now she saw herself as if from above, on her way back to the place. Her mother’s place. Nowhere else to go.
‘I remember you riding that scooter around the lanes,’ Luke said. ‘Like it was yesterday. Beeping the horn, wearing those long skirts.’
‘That wasn’t me,’ Ada told him.
‘I waved to you each time,’ he said. ‘When you went past.’
‘That wasn’t me,’ she said. But her voice was suddenly childish, doubtful.
‘There’s the Trewins’ house,’ Luke said. ‘Reckoned they won the lottery a month ago but lost the ticket. They haven’t got over it yet.’
Ada looked at where Luke was pointing, imagined what he would say about her to people – that she was the same, different? She hardly knew herself. ‘I would never wear long skirts,’ she said.
They passed a house with no lights on, the gate swinging in the wind. Their headlights passed through thin curtains, showing up, for a second, the shape of a body in the room behind them. Her hands clenched and she leaned back in the seat.
‘It’s just down there,’ Luke said, pointing as if she might have forgotten.
The wind heaved everything to one side and then the other. Could she have left the keys in Luke’s car? No signal to make any phone calls out here. She thought for a second of the landline and felt relieved, then remembered the landline was in the house and they couldn’t get into the house. Dappy mare – something her mother would have said. She ran her hand across her cheek and leaned against the door. It was dark. No neighbours, only a tiny light from a house in the distance.
‘What’s that noise?’ Pepper said. She leaned out of the porch to listen. The washing line now slumped and forgotten on the steps.
‘The wind,’ Ada said.
‘The other thing. Is it the river?’
Ada looked in the bag and found a torch. ‘I need to go back and look for the keys,’ she said.