Authors: Lucy Wood
Pearl said she could do all that.
‘It’s difficult work,’ Sheila said. ‘The oven gets boiling.’ She drummed her hands on the counter. Her nails were painted blue. Her eyes flicked over Pearl’s face, down to her too-smart shoes and back up.
Pearl took a breath. ‘I could do a good job here,’ she said. ‘I need something close by, I’m reliable. Get to know people here better.’
They nodded, their faces like slammed doors. ‘Have you worked an oven like this before?’ the husband asked. He showed her into the back room, where the big oven sat in the middle like a shrine. He showed her how to turn it on, how to adjust the timer.
‘I haven’t used one like this before,’ she said. ‘But it seems easy to pick up.’
‘It’s harder than it looks,’ he said.
The wife was opening and closing the till. ‘And this needs an experienced eye,’ she said. ‘The buttons are temperamental.’
Again, Pearl said she could pick it up. She had worked with tills before, more complicated ones.
‘More complicated?’ they said dully.
They didn’t phone. Days passed, and then a week. Frank went up to the shop to buy bread and came back raging. Told her that the job had gone to a woman who lived next to the school. She had botched up Frank’s change. He threw the bread down and clenched his fist, said he would never shop there again as long as he lived. Pearl calmed him down, telling him that it was OK, and that they had to shop there unless they wanted to drive an hour every time they wanted milk. Soothing him, as if it was him that had been passed up for the job.
In her first month at the shop the woman burned her hand on the oven; in her fourth, she stole thirty pounds from the till and the charity box and then left. They didn’t re-advertise the job.
Pearl stopped circling adverts. She didn’t go back to the cafe. Sent Frank up to the shop whenever they needed anything. She stayed in and read the local paper. Two hundred years ago, the reverend was collecting for a fete and visiting parishioners during a spate of measles. He’d had to ride into town to buy material to repair the church roof.
She tried to talk to Frank about their plans. It was a nice place, of course she could see it was a nice place, but how long were they planning on staying? Especially if she couldn’t find work. Maybe six more months, Frank said. A year at most. He should probably try and make something from this jewellery work, pay for some of the more expensive repairs on the house. And in the meantime, something was bound to come up for her. Pearl nodded. Noticed that the chain Frank was mending had been attached the wrong way round, but she didn’t say anything.
One afternoon there was a knock at the door. Frank was out on one of his walks through the woods and across the moor – each walk seemed to be taking longer and longer. Pearl went to answer it. There was a woman standing there. ‘Yes?’ Pearl said. Hoping that she wasn’t selling something or collecting for some project or other. It was almost impossible to say no. So far she’d given money to repair a church window and to buy a set of swings, even though there wasn’t a park as far as she could tell. And she’d bought an iron and too many dusters to count.
‘Pearl – is that right?’ the woman said. She looked about forty, the same age as Pearl. A helmet of tight dark curls framing her face, holding her hands out in front of her as if she was protecting herself from something. She carried on. ‘I heard about you, from Sheila at the shop.’ Some kind of smile twitched in the corner of her mouth. ‘Apparently she was very concerned you didn’t know how to work an oven.’
Pearl felt herself stiffen and flush. ‘I know how to work an oven,’ she said.
The woman’s smile faltered for a second. ‘Anyway,’ she said quickly, ‘I’ve got a bit of work. At my business. It’s not much, two days a week. Answering the phone. Paperwork. You’d probably find it boring but I thought I’d offer in case.’
Pearl stayed in the doorway. Could still recall the feel of the doormat’s bristles against her bare feet. Why hadn’t she said anything? She willed herself now, looking back, to say something. Take up the offer, ask about the business. Anything. But she didn’t. She stayed in the doorway, still flushed and stiff, moving her toes over the bristles. Eventually said, like a fool, ‘Of course I know how to work an oven.’
The woman nodded and smiled, then walked back to her car and, just at that moment, a blackbird started singing on the roof – it was the first time Pearl had properly listened to how clear and lovely its song was, how it sent out a cacophony of notes and knitted them back together.
Something was drumming. It woke Ada up and she lay there, listening. At first, she couldn’t place the sound – something beating against the windows and the roof. It didn’t sound like snow, but snow was all she could think of. Four days in the house with snow piled up all around. It filled her thoughts: snow heaped against the door, snow pressing against the windows, snow sliding down the panes. The dim, snowy light. At first, she and Pepper had watched it out of the windows, talked about it endlessly. How deep it was getting, whether the flakes were bigger. Then, slowly, they stopped talking about it. They let the snow build up and they didn’t try to sweep it away. They stayed in their pyjamas; they ate out of saucepans and stopped washing up. They stoked the fire and slept next to it all afternoon.
When Pepper went to bed, Ada would stay up and walk around the house. Listening to the quiet noises: tools jangling against the desk in the study, her mother’s hushed voice in the kitchen, boots creaking slowly up the stairs. The sounds comforting and familiar, hour seeping into hour, until Ada couldn’t imagine anything but this: the hushed house, the snow. The other world – the one of trees and grass and roads and work – had disappeared.
The drumming grew louder. She got out of bed and opened the curtains. There was rain running in torrents down the dark window. She put on a jumper and went downstairs. It was very early. The rain thumped against the house. She clicked on the light. Nothing. The fridge was silent. She tried the light again, but the kitchen stayed dark. She was standing in something very cold and wet, which soaked into her socks. Could hardly see anything. She crouched down and touched the floor, felt slushy snow and hunks of ice. She followed it over to the corner of the kitchen.
‘There you are,’ her mother said. She was sitting in the armchair, hands gripping the sides. Her voice sounded further away and melting snow was dripping off her and pooling on the floor.
Ada knelt down next to her. ‘The rain woke me up,’ she said.
‘Milder air sweeping in and colliding with laden clouds,’ her mother said. ‘I think there’s going to be a lot of rain.’ She seemed to sway slightly on the chair.
‘It’ll stop soon,’ Ada said. A cold feeling starting to work up from her feet. She tucked her legs under her and shivered. An hour passed, then another. The kitchen started to get lighter. The light grey and smeary through the rain. Which beat and hammered without cease. As it got lighter, she could see that the chair her mother was sitting in was drenched. Icy water was pouring off Pearl’s clothes, her hair was flat and tangled, the edges of her trousers and sleeves suddenly threadbare and crumbling.
And outside, the rain took bites out of the snow. The smooth white world was grey and moth-eaten, melting into slushy puddles like icy soup. The rain uncovering what the snow had hidden: there was the holly bush, revealed suddenly like a skeleton. There was the moor, blearily shrugging off its thick blanket. A torrent of rain poured in a sheet off the roof and over the front steps. The snow on the windows dissolved and ran down like soapy water. Clumps of grey and yellow slouched at the foot of the walls and the sides of the road. A messy thaw. Underneath, everything bedraggled and shivering.
Something knocked against the house. Snow falling down off the roof. Her mother seemed to slump forward and then she got up and staggered across the kitchen. Melting snow sloshing over the tops of her boots. Ada got up quickly and followed her. Her mother made her way slowly down the hall towards her study. As she was going down the steps, another heap of snow slid off the roof and she fell against the door, caught herself just as Ada rushed forward, and disappeared down into the room.
Then Pepper was calling from upstairs. ‘What’s that noise?’ she said. ‘What’s happening?’ She sounded half asleep and frightened. Ada went up. ‘I can hear something loud,’ Pepper said.
‘It’s raining,’ Ada told her. She pulled back the curtains so Pepper could see.
Pepper got up and pressed her face against the window. ‘The river is very loud,’ she said.
Downstairs, amongst the sounds of the rain, Ada could hear thumps and bangs coming from the study. She told Pepper to get dressed and brush her teeth. But to be careful, none of the lights were working. Then she ran downstairs and looked in the study. The cardboard she’d taped over the broken window was hanging off and soaked with rain. There was no one in the room. But there were boxes piled on the desk that hadn’t been there before. Ada lifted the flaps. The cardboard was wet. There were cameras and books and photos packed neatly inside. She looked around the room. No clutter on the floor or under the desk. The desk was empty. The small bookcase by the door was empty. The lowest shelves on the walls were empty.
There was a noise behind her and Pepper came in. ‘You’ve packed the cameras away,’ she said. She looked warily in the box. Ran her fingers lightly over a camera and rubbed at a dirty mark on the lens. ‘Why did you pack them?’
Ada looked once more around the half-empty room. ‘They’re yours now,’ she said.
Pepper looked at her out of the corner of her eye. ‘Mine?’ she said.
Ada nodded.
‘To keep?’ Pepper closed the box up as if looking at them was too much to bear. Then she crossed the room and came back with a pen. She frowned and started writing. A tense jitter in the muscle on her top lip
.
She gripped her writing hand with her left hand to support it. Moved the pen very slowly. The letters came out big and wobbly, but clear.
‘You wrote your name,’ Ada said.
The rain was so loud it was like someone knocking on the door and then Ada realised it was someone knocking. She rushed over, hoping it would be Tristan – there’d been no way of contacting him since the snow and a week seemed like a long time. Suddenly it seemed like a really long time. She touched the backs of her hands against her cheeks. No idea what she would say to him, but she flung the door open, imagining his wet hair and the way he would lean against the door frame.
Slushy snow pooled on the front step. It was Ray, hunched under the splitting porch, his coat drenched and the hood pulled low over his eyes. ‘Your phone’s down,’ he said.
Muddy snow spattered off the roof. ‘Everything’s completely gone,’ Ada told him. Had to speak loudly over the torrent.
‘I thought I’d just come over,’ Ray shouted.
‘OK,’ Ada said. Realised she was blocking the door. But still she stalled. ‘I can’t believe how quickly this came on,’ she said. Gesturing to the rain.
‘Yes,’ Ray shouted. He hunched down in his coat as more water spilled onto him from the porch. ‘I haven’t been able to get out till now.’
Rain soaked through Ada’s socks. ‘I guess you want to come in then,’ she said finally.
‘That would be good,’ Ray said. Ducked another fat splash.
They went into the kitchen. Ada took his coat and put it in the sink, where blue water streamed out of it and down the plughole. His pale jumper was covered in blue dye. His trousers were stuck to his legs and wet snow clung to his shoes. He raked at his hair. ‘Listen,’ he said. ‘I told you I’d been thinking about the house, didn’t I?’
Ada picked up his coat and wrung it out, so that more water and dye oozed. ‘You shouldn’t put this back on when it’s like this,’ she said.
Ray looked at it. ‘The first time that gets properly wet and this happens. I paid quite a bit of money for it as well.’ He plucked at his jumper. ‘Look at this,’ he said. ‘What am I meant to do with this?’
‘You’ll have to soak it,’ Ada told him. ‘Rub a bar of soap on it, soap gets out anything. Just a plain bar of soap.’
‘Just plain soap?’ Ray said. ‘I can do that.’ He wandered around the kitchen, pulled out a chair, sat down then got back up again. ‘It’s cold in here,’ he said.
Ada lit the gas with a match and put a pan of water on to boil. ‘Everything’s gone out,’ she said again. The gas and the rain roared.
‘It’s some place,’ Ray said. ‘Power going out all the time, the river getting high like that.’ He went over to the window and looked out. ‘No electricity a lot of the time, no phone, the heating powered by the fire. It’s no way to live, is it? Driving everywhere, the roads terrible as they are and nobody within a mile. Cost of petrol. This cold valley. I don’t blame you at all for wanting to get out. Been thinking of moving into town myself. I know the benefits: can walk everywhere, pick up food when you like. You fancy a pear and you can just go and get a pear.’ He stopped and looked at her.
‘A pear?’ Ada said. She watched the water in the pan as it started to boil, silver bubbles erupting at the bottom and rising. Reminded her of the intricate beads her mother had once fixed onto a bracelet.
‘Yeah, a pear,’ he said. ‘Or an orange, whatever you like. But as I was saying before, I’m interested in the place. You’ve got a good location – I think people will like that. Had to have a think about it for a while, but I’ve come to my conclusions. I think I can take it off your hands.’ He rubbed his throat with his thumb.