Authors: Lucy Wood
She stayed by the door. Captain turned back and looked out at the snow, towards the trees and the river. There was a scratch on the back of his leg and a tuft of fur missing from his tail. His ears pricked up and alert, his back quivering. His fur blending in with the snow, moving his paws carefully. His ears twitched. He lifted his nose, sniffing things on the air that she would never even know about. She stood and watched him and she didn’t call.
But the cat didn’t move away. He turned again and looked at the house. He took a step closer. Snow matted onto his fur. Then he jumped lightly onto the tree stump, then along the row of plant pots and onto the front steps. He disappeared into the house.
Pepper left the door open. She went back into the kitchen and sat under the table. Captain moved around the edges of the cupboards, the melting snow slicking his fur. His paws trailed snow over the floor. Pepper opened her book and turned the page. Watching Captain out of the corner of her eye. He snaked around the kitchen, jumped up on the side and drank some water from the sink. Then jumped back down and rubbed against the oven.
‘You don’t have to stay in here,’ she told him. ‘I left the door open.’
He stopped rubbing and looked at her. Then he went out of the kitchen.
Pepper turned the pages of the book without looking at them. Her eyes felt hot and she blinked them over and over. After a while, she got up and went out into the hall. The snow had piled up around the door and it was very cold. She pulled the door closed and leaned against it. Her mother had been gone a long time. She picked up the phone and listened: there was no dialling tone. She checked the fire: it was OK. She checked the windows were shut: they were. The window in the study rattled. She glanced in. Captain was sitting on the chair in the corner. Padding his paws down on the cushion, as if he was plumping it up. There were tearing noises as his claws dug in.
She went in but didn’t look at him. She reached up to the shelves and spent a long time choosing a book. She took down a big colourful one. ‘
D i p p e r
,’ she spelled out carefully. ‘Dipper.’ Glanced over at Captain. He was sitting up and looking at her. ‘It’s just letters,’ she told him. ‘Nothing to be afraid of.’
He put his head to one side. She put the book down and stood in front of him, then stretched out her hand a little. Captain flinched and made a funny noise in the back of his throat. She took her hand away. At school, she didn’t like it when she had to hold hands with people in a line. They always had dry or clammy skin or sharp bits of nail. She always kept her hands behind her back.
‘I don’t mind,’ she told him. She sat on the floor next to the window and opened the book. Snow slid down the glass. The jackdaw’s loose feathers ruffled in the draught. She felt something by her leg. Captain had jumped down from the chair and was standing next to her, looking at a trailing thread on her jumper. She snapped it off and pulled it along the floor. ‘What is it?’ she said. ‘Get it Captain.’ He stiffened up and arched his back. His tail very rigid. Then he pounced on the thread. Pepper pulled it away. His claws almost grazing her hand. She pulled it along the floor again, standing up this time. ‘Come and get it,’ she said. Captain swiped and his claws caught her on the thumb. She jerked her arm backwards, hard and fast, and heard, rather than felt, her elbow smack into the window. There was silence. Then a hot jolting pain swept down her arm and the wind howled in and there was glass on the carpet around her feet. She turned and looked. The window had cracked right through. Snow whirled in. Dark grey sky. Then, suddenly, there was a face at the window – the old woman, standing outside and staring at the glass.
Pepper blinked, looked again and saw only snow, swirling and intense, like the time she had split open an old pillow and feathers had poured out; drifting down and settling over her bed and her pencils and her shoes.
That window had broken before. Yes, that was it: it had broken and he’d picked up a piece of glass and cut his thumb. Pearl remembered the bead of blood, the look of surprise on his face when it had rolled down over his wrist. She could remember the way his eyebrows had furrowed, the slight puckering on his bottom lip, but not his actual face, not the particulars of it. Frank. She said his name out loud, in the snow. What exactly was his skin like? What exactly were his eyes like? Nothing came back as vividly as the broken glass, the smear of blood, more brown than red, like glimpsing a deer rushing through trees.
That was when it all changed, although the day had started like any other. One of those mizzly winters, no snow, but the rawness of it exceptional. The house full of damp and smelling like a ditch and the fire puttering and not generating enough heat. Pearl scoured back over it, looking for signs. They had woken up early, as usual. Eyes bleary and the sheets chilled overnight. Those precious few moments before the day began, when they would lie side by side, hips touching, looking up at the ceiling; the stain from the burst pipe – which Frank said looked like an owl and Pearl said looked like an umbrella – and the stippled paint, bits cracking off in the night and garlanding the bed like confetti.
Their breath floated up in front of them. ‘Frank?’ Pearl said. ‘Did you have any dreams?’ It was what she always asked in the morning. Usually, Frank would say something about cities underwater, or bailing out a sinking boat with a tambourine. Always a sense of urgency, some kind of impending disaster. Although he also had a recurring dream about sitting peacefully on top of a stalled Ferris wheel, looking out over millions of tiny bright lights.
Frank stared up at the ceiling. A muscle in his eyelid fluttering – he was never completely still for one moment.
‘I dreamt about an island,’ Pearl told him. ‘It was getting smaller but there was a tree right in the middle. I started climbing. There was a phone up there and it was ringing and ringing.’
Frank shifted, kept his eyes fixed on the ceiling. ‘Well,’ he said finally, ‘why didn’t you answer it?’
And then the first noises from Ada, like an alarm clock, the clucks and the mewls and then the roaring, tiny fists red and clenched at the outrage of waking up. Frank stumbled out of bed and went to her, rocked her and soothed her and Pearl remembered now: how tall he was – how small Ada looked with Frank’s long arms wrapped around her. The slight stoop he had, as if he was constantly under a ceiling that was too low. And his thin hair: long and wispy around his ears, full of static, and the same dry colour as oats.
Frank’s side of the sheets turned cold. Pearl got up and sat on the edge of the bed. Starting the day exhausted, one day blurring into the next. Confusing when was night and when was morning. Four months of heating milk, swiping through dishes, collapsing in chairs – not asleep but not awake either. Baffled, stunned even, by the mess, the noise, the constant cycle of washing and meals and washing. Forgot who she was almost. Ten seconds in the shower: just enough time to scrub on soap and rinse. Forgot what her own body looked like. The milkman came to the door and she gave him letters to post.
But Frank sang to Ada while he dressed her, he cooked while Ada was sitting in the sink. He would put her in the hood of his coat and take her outside. Paint strange swirling pictures to put on her wall. Warm the milk up patiently to just the right temperature. And it was only from time to time that he fed her spoonfuls of beer when he thought Pearl wasn’t looking, or left her under the desk in his study because he’d forgotten she was there, or got a bemused look on his face and said, how do you do, as if she was a stranger.
Pearl came downstairs, smelled the usual morning smells: toast burning, sour milk, baby shampoo, coffee. Got Ada fed while Frank sorted out the fire – couldn’t help noticing that he took a long time about it, and when she went to look, he’d piled in enough logs to burn all day and probably overnight as well. When she went back into the kitchen, the washing machine had spewed black liquor all over the floor. She called to Frank but he was thumping around in his study. She put Ada in her basket, then looked at the instruction manual – tried to figure out the mechanisms and the diagrams but it was impossible. She hit the pipe with a spanner, mopped up the liquid and switched the machine off at the plug – the best she could do.
There was murmuring and banging coming from the study. Frank’s work not going well again. He came into the kitchen and held up a ring. ‘Look at this,’ he said. ‘I can’t get the stock to go in.’ Pearl took the ring from him and looked at it. He’d cut the metal unevenly and hadn’t heated it enough to make it malleable. He wasn’t patient, always struggling with the work, always restless, God knows why he’d got into it in the first place – he wasn’t good with anything fiddly or small. He liked daubing paint, chopping hunks of wood, smashing old fence for kindling. He went over to the radiator and gripped his cold hands on the top. Any minute now he would come over and hold them against her cheeks. She waited, then waited some more.
‘I’ll have a look at it,’ she told him finally. She carried Ada into the study and put the basket down on the floor. Put the ring in the holder and studied the stock.
Frank followed her in. He went over to the window and paced. ‘The river’s so loud,’ he said. ‘You can’t get away from it.’
‘What did you expect?’ Pearl said.
He stared up at the sky, where a vapour trail bloomed like spilled paint. His thumb moved along the window, smoothing the paint over and over, slowly rubbing the paint down to bare wood. He glanced down at Ada and back up at the vapour trail.
Ada slept on. Morning turned into afternoon. For lunch, Frank cut thick slices of bread and cheese. They ate in the kitchen, their chairs pulled up in front of the radiator. Wet clothes on the airer next to them. And had they spoken? Pearl racked her brains but couldn’t recall if they had spoken. All she remembered was the rich taste of the butter, the way that Frank ate his bread slowly, relishing every bite. How he’d speared chunks of cheese and apple with the sharp knife and put them straight in his mouth. Maybe he’d mentioned the jackdaws in the chimney, maybe she’d talked about the car’s creaking brakes. Both of them slipping into criticisms of the place when they had nothing else to say, working each other up, until Pearl felt like she was sinking under all the repairs that needed doing, the money they’d already spent, how much more wood they had to buy now that they had Ada. But maybe none of that had come up. Maybe they’d just sat there quietly, huddled against the radiator.
Drizzle bloomed in the air and drops of water hung off everything. It was so raw and cold that the house seemed to shrink into itself and tighten. At the bottom of the grass, the river was running fast and low. You could see stones through it, showing through like a spine.
She went back in and had another look at the ring while Frank fed Ada.
‘We’ve run out of milk,’ Frank said, coming in. ‘Normal milk I mean. I’m going to go and get some from the shop.’ He put Ada down next to Pearl. A sudden energy to the way he moved: he tucked Ada’s blanket elaborately, kept raking his hand through his hair, he came up and stood very close to Pearl and touched the tips of his fingers against her cheekbone. His fingers were very cold. His breath fast and shallow. He turned to look at her again from the door, then went out and got in the car. The engine started up then stopped. Started, coughed, then stopped again. Nothing for ten long minutes. Then Frank came back in. He hadn’t put a coat on. ‘I need to get milk,’ he said. His voice was tight. He tapped against the door with his fist.
‘You finish this,’ Pearl said. ‘I’ve softened the metal and opened it up wider. There’s not much left to do.’ She touched Ada’s soft arm. She was sleeping again. ‘I’ll go and get the milk.’
‘How will you?’ Frank asked.
Pearl looked out of the window. ‘I’ll have to walk,’ she told him. She pulled on her boots and the long brown coat that Frank had bought her. Far too expensive. And not her style at all. Too practical, too waterproof, but it was warm, something in the seams that kept the wind out. ‘I’m going now,’ she called.
Frank didn’t answer.
‘I’m going now.’ Determined he would know how annoying it was, having to walk all the way to the shop. She stood on the top step of the study. ‘If I twist my ankle again and it gets dark you’ll have to come out and look for me.’
And that’s when it happened. Frank stood up, took a pair of pliers from his toolbox and hurled them at the window. The glass cracked outwards, then seemed to hold for a moment before shattering and falling onto the carpet. The room was very quiet. They both stood there and waited for Ada to howl, but she didn’t wake up.
Drizzle rushed into the room. The sound of the river was even louder now, drumming away at the bottom of the field. Frank went over to the window and picked up a piece of the glass.
‘I’m going now,’ Pearl said.
It took her nearly three hours to walk to the shop and back. At first, her legs ached and her knees cracked. Her chest was tight and heavy. The raw air made it difficult to breathe. But, after a while, she started getting used to it. And felt better – the cold air felt good in her lungs, her legs got into a steady stride, her thoughts steadying. Her heart stopped racing and beat firmly and in time with each step.
When she opened the front door, the house was quiet. Ada was still asleep in the kitchen and Frank had tucked another blanket around her.
She called out to Frank but he didn’t answer. She knew immediately that he wasn’t there but she went round the house checking anyway. Up the stairs, into every room. She put the milk away in the fridge and saw that there were two bottles in there already. She went back outside and walked around the yard. The car was still there. There were no bags missing, no other clothes except his good pair of boots. His wallet had gone but the bank book was still there, the dwindling figure of their savings stamped at the front. The ring was on the desk, fixed now and polished up to a gold shine. And he had put a piece of board over the broken window. Not a rushed job either – he had cut and fitted it neatly so that it would hold. It seemed like a kind thing to do. And by the way he had done it, she knew that he wasn’t coming back.