Authors: Lucy Wood
At the top of the valley she stopped and looked down. The trees white and feathery in the snow, the shape of the river through them. She knew where the house was exactly, even though she couldn’t see it. Just a faint twist of smoke from the chimney.
She came down the lane towards the house, which was just as low and slumped and askew. But the windows glowing yellow. She took off her sodden boots and rolled up her wet trousers, called to Pepper and heard her answer in an odd voice. There was no one in the kitchen. She called up the stairs. Heard the familiar noises of her mother moving around in the study. But when she looked in, it was Pepper. She was standing next to the window and there was a freezing draught coming in. A cracked hole in one corner and broken glass on the floor.
‘I was going to fix it,’ Pepper said.
Ada went over to feel Pepper’s elbow, which was lumpy and scratched. The lights flickered. The pipes groaned and shuddered as usual and she could smell chimney smoke getting pushed back into the house by the wind. ‘It’s OK,’ she told Pepper. Snow blew in through the broken window and landed on the carpet.
Snow piled up against the door, and the wind, coming from the north, froze it into yellow hunks. The ice wore away at the paint, which crackled and split. Some flaked off, some clung on with the lichen, which was crispy and stubborn, spreading over the door by a fraction of a millimetre.
The windows shivered in their panes. Snow spattered. The frosty draught worked its way through putty, eroding it crumb by crumb.
The steel roof twanged in the cold like an instrument.
And in the chimney, smoke struggled out into the snow. Brewing into icy smog. Stunned by the cold, it hung droopily, strung across the trees in hammocks.
The walls breathed in snow. The cement weakened – loosening bricks, loosening plaster. The house buckled by a fraction of a millimetre.
Sloppy snow fell into the fire and made it sizzle.
Pipes clanked and froze. The taps were turned and turned but no water came out. The taps screeched. Ice in the pipes expanded and a crack appeared – the beginnings of a split in the metal.
Footsteps creaked like pipes. When a face stared out of the window, it looked like a blur of snow behind the old glass.
The footsteps were like stones turning in the river, the hushed voices like branches rubbing together. At night, the house moved restlessly, like the river moving underneath the ice and the falling snow.
Lights flickered. The sun didn’t rise above the valley. Everything was muted and dim, like a lid had been put over.
A hand pressed against the window.
The snow prised off tiles and the last of the leaves. Heaping itself against the roof and the walls, heaping itself against trees, which retreated into themselves, biding their time, living off stored reserves of sugar.
Ice grew on the coldest parts of the house: on the windows and the edges of the gutter. It grew thicker on the slowest parts of the river: the pebbly shallows and the sluggish pools. The ice changed water into glass, changed glass into brittle feathers.
And across the valley, snow pressed itself into nooks and runnels. Ice finding its way into fissures, wearing at them, chipping away like an excavator. Snow-battered, wind-battered, battered by cold. But barely a fleck in the valley’s long memory. Like a shiver that gives goosebumps one moment and is gone the next.
The river cut through clay and granite, digging itself deeper by a fraction of a millimetre.
The clogged pipes groaned and settled. The footsteps slowed and settled. Curtains stayed drawn. A lamp flickered on and off. Smoke struggled out of the chimney. The house leaned against the snow. Paint crackled and clung, holding on for at least one more winter.
Pearl felt each snowflake as it swept in and settled on the house. But she couldn’t settle; no, she could never settle. It was just a stop-gap – that’s what they kept saying. One year, two years, maybe three at most. After all, the house was cheap, they could do it up, sell it on for a profit, then go wherever they wanted. Frank could start up his jewellery business, finally make use of the tools and books his father had left him. Work from home – no one telling him when his day should begin and when it should end. He had meetings with the jewellers in town, put out adverts, pinned a poster up at the shop. Pleased when the work started to trickle in.
But Pearl had nothing to do. It was an unfamiliar feeling. No work, no one she knew in the area, nowhere to go to pass the time. She tried to paint the window frames but she didn’t know you had to strip the old paint off first, sand the whole lot down, prime it and then paint. She just slopped new paint on over the old stuff, made the whole thing look bumpy; the old paint showing through grey underneath like the beginnings of a bruise. She tried to get into cooking – always said that if she had the time she ought to try and get to grips with it. But it was too much fuss. She scorched onions and singed butter. Couldn’t whip up eggs into peaks; they ended up looking more like the floppy scum that floated on the river. Much easier to eat things out of tins, that’s what they were there for, nothing wrong with a good tin of spaghetti followed by a tin of mandarins for dessert.
And she looked for work. Endlessly. Of course she knew it would be hard – a rural area, the nearest town an hour’s drive away. She was prepared to drive, but hadn’t quite realised the extent of the roads’ narrowness and bloody danger. But she got out the phone book and rang around. Eventually got asked in for an interview at a small office in town. She’d only been out in the car a few times before – it was cheap and she didn’t trust the brakes. It was a horrible mustard colour and even worse than the green one she bought after. But she couldn’t just sit inside all day doing nothing. So she got in the car and drove out, took a corner too fast, met a car coming the other way, swerved, and found herself nose down in a ditch. Got out shaking. A gouge down the passenger door from a sharp branch in the hedge.
The man driving the other car got out slowly and came over. He was wearing a denim jacket and a red hat with a picture of a football on it. He put his hand on the bonnet and patted it. ‘I’ve had a crash with this car before.’
‘It’s second-hand,’ Pearl said. ‘We only just bought it.’
The man tapped the bonnet again. ‘Quite a few years ago now. Almost the same place.’ Still he patted the bonnet. ‘I wonder when the third time will be.’
Pearl stepped round the car and looked at the ditch. ‘I need to get into town,’ she said.
‘Dunno how you’ll get someone to tow you out,’ the man said.
‘I need to get into town,’ Pearl said again.
‘You won’t get anyone out today,’ the man said. He patted the car once more. Then he walked back to his car and got in. He sat there for a full minute without moving. Then he got back out, went round to his boot and found some rope. ‘I suppose I should help,’ he said. He tied the rope to both cars and dragged hers out, his wheels spinning on the wet road, flicking mud all over her clothes. It was late by the time they had finished and no time to get into town. She drove back to the house slowly, phoned the office and was told that they had already found someone else that afternoon.
She read all the books in the house. Things that the previous owners had left behind: musty yellow crime books, a book about someone who went to live on top of a mountain and didn’t see anyone else for forty years, a boring old book about birds, some crusty tome full of advice about hairstyles and keeping the house clean. She read the jewellery books too. Spent afternoons turning through the thin pages. Diagrams and pictures and figures. Most of the words she didn’t understand: filigree, mantel, switch lock. Like it was written in another language. She would read and watch Frank getting on with his work – polishing links and chains, soldering. Once pointed out that she thought he had put the mechanism in the wrong way round. She managed to get a stopped clock ticking again. The satisfying whirr of the cogs as they turned smoothly at the back.
She got the local paper delivered and circled the job adverts. Read the thing from cover to cover: the letters people wrote in about roads and meetings, complaints about errors that had been printed. Recipes, photos of babies, wood and cars for sale. Became almost addicted to the weekly article about the reverend’s eighteenth-century diaries – what he was doing this time two hundred years before. Visiting the elderly; burying parishioners that had died of typhoid; interviewing for a new schoolmistress when the other one ran away and didn’t come back.
There were adverts for cleaners, vets, carers, warehouse packers, dental assistants. For caravan park attendants and seasonal pluckers. She applied for everything. Lost count of the number of letters sent back.
I’m sorry but you do not fit our requirements. I’m sorry but the post has already been filled. I’m sorry but you do not show sufficient experience.
She crumpled them up and threw them away, hiding them under the other rubbish so that Frank wouldn’t see them and feel sorry for her.
‘Maybe we should go out,’ Pearl said. ‘Go up to the pub, or the cafe, or something. Try and get to know people.’ She paced around the house. Looked out at the fields and the trees, the glimpse of river. What had she expected, exactly? Where she had imagined stillness and quiet there was restlessness: rushing water, swaying trees. Where she had imagined meadow there was mud. ‘Have a drink, get talking to people,’ she said.
Frank came over and stroked her hair, twisting it around between his fingers. His nails were bitten down to the skin. He twisted her hair slowly. What he did when he wasn’t listening, but it felt nice, his fingers working through, kneading her scalp. So that she could almost feel it now, the memory of it ingrained somewhere deep, like the way the river kneaded the bedrock.
In the end she went up to the cafe by herself. The door had those long wooden beads over it and she pushed through them, got tangled, then found a table in the corner. Sat down. Got back up. Sat at a table in the middle, by the door. She was the only customer there. A young man came out and she ordered lunch and a cup of tea. He came back with the tea and put it down carefully, as if he had been practising. Pearl sipped and waited. The door opened and a man came in, but he was just delivering something in boxes. He got the boxes signed over and left.
Pearl’s lunch came and she pulled the crusts off the bread.
A woman came in, smiled at Pearl, went to the counter and ordered something. Pearl waited for her to turn round and come over to find a table, but she stayed at the counter, talking to the waiter about his father – was he OK now? Could he still drive? What about the concert on Saturday (what concert? Pearl didn’t know anything about a concert) – would he still be able to make that?
Pearl pulled at the bread. Her tea went cold in the cup.
The waiter hovered. In the end came over. ‘Shall I take that for you?’ he said.
When she got back to the house, Frank met her at the door holding a stuffed jackdaw. ‘I found this in a skip,’ he said.
‘Where?’ she asked.
He waved his arm. ‘Look at it. Look at the condition of the beak.’
It was an ugly, weird thing. A bulbous beak and squinting eyes. The feathers still soft and glinting blue.
‘Where did you get it?’
‘I’m going to put it by the door,’ he said. ‘Like a lookout.’
His hair was sticking out from the wind, his eyes roving as he clutched the bird. She smoothed his hair down. She touched his racing chest. She loved him very much.
There was an advert in the paper for work at the local shop. Four mornings a week, to put the bread and pies in the oven, to serve on the till, stock shelves, answer the phone for milk orders. She wrote and rewrote her application, crossing things out, then writing it up again until it was good enough for bloody Harrods. Signed her name carefully at the bottom, handed it in and waited. Nothing for three days, then the phone rang and she was asked in for an interview. The owners, a husband and wife in their sixties, were standing behind the counter when she went in. She could see herself now: palms sweating, shaking. For a part-time job. Putting bread in the oven and taking it out again when it was done.
The owners, what were their names? Sheila and someone or other. They had owned the shop for years but needed extra help now. Sheila having to go into town for her appointments and therefore not always able to serve behind the till. Pearl nodded. ‘You can’t be in two places at once,’ she said. She put her hand in her pocket and held her button. They looked at her and didn’t smile. One of those couples that had grown to look almost identical: ruddy, collapsing cheeks, smiles that turned their mouths downwards, eyes that roamed. And their voices affronted, as if they had some important task to do that was constantly being interrupted.
They ran over what she would have to do: the early hours, could she handle early hours? The oven would get boiling, did she understand the risks? Could she deal with difficult customers? Could she work out the right change if the till broke?