Holes for Faces (23 page)

“Maybe grandma and auntie will give you a throw if you’re good,” Valerie said.

“Not just now,” Jacqueline said at once.

Cynthia raised her eyebrows high enough to turn her eyes blank as she twisted the second key. The door lumbered inwards a few inches and then baulked. She was trying to nudge the obstruction aside with the door when Brian made for the gap. “Don’t,” Jacqueline blurted, catching him by the shoulder.

“Good heavens, Jackie, what’s the matter now?”

“We don’t want the children in there until we know what state it’s in, do we?”

“Just see if you can squeeze past and shift whatever’s there, Brian.”

Jacqueline felt unworthy of consideration. She could only watch the boy wriggle around the edge of the door and vanish into the gloom. She heard fumbling and rustling, but of course this didn’t mean some desiccated presence was at large in the vestibule. Why didn’t Brian speak? She was about to prompt him until he called “It’s just some old letters and papers.”

When he reappeared with several free newspapers that looked as dusty as their news, Cynthia eased the door past him. A handful of brown envelopes contained electricity bills that grew redder as they came up to date, which made Jacqueline wonder “Won’t the lights work?”

“I expect so if we really need them.” Cynthia advanced into the wide hall beyond the vestibule and poked at the nearest switch. Grit ground inside the mechanism, but the bulbs in the hall chandelier stayed as dull as the mass of crystal teardrops. “Never mind,” Cynthia said, having tested every switch in the column on the wall without result. “As I say, we won’t need them.”

The grimy skylight above the stairwell illuminated the hall enough to show that the dark wallpaper was even hairier than Jacqueline remembered. It had always made her think of the fur of a great spider, and now it was blotchy with damp. The children were already running up the left-hand staircase and across the first-floor landing, under which the chandelier dangled like a spider on a thread. “Don’t go out of sight,” Cynthia told them, “until we see what’s what.”

“Chase me.” Brian ran down the other stairs, one of which rattled like a lid beneath the heavy carpet. “Chase,” he cried and dashed across the hall to race upstairs again.

“Don’t keep running up and down unless you want to make me ill,” Jacqueline’s grandmother would have said. The incessant rumble of footsteps might have presaged a storm on the way to turning the hall even gloomier, so that Jacqueline strode as steadily as she could towards the nearest room. She had to pass one of the hall mirrors, which appeared to show a dark blotch hovering in wait for the children. The shapeless sagging darkness at the top of the grimy oval was a stain, and she needn’t have waited to see the children run downstairs out of its reach. “Do you want the mirror?” Cynthia said. “I expect it would clean up.”

“I don’t know what I want from this house,” Jacqueline said.

She mustn’t say she would prefer the children not to be in it. She couldn’t even suggest sending them outside in case the garden concealed dangers—broken glass, rusty metal, holes in the ground. The children were staying with Cynthia while her son and his partner holidayed in Morocco, but couldn’t she have chosen a better time to go through the house before it was put up for sale? She frowned at Jacqueline and then followed her into the dining-room.

Although the heavy curtains were tied back from the large windows, the room wasn’t much brighter than the hall. It was steeped in the shadows of the poplars, and the tall panes were spotted with earth. A spider’s nest of a chandelier loomed above the long table set for an elaborate dinner for six. That had been Cynthia’s idea when they’d moved their parents to the rest home; she’d meant to convince any thieves that the house was still occupied, but to Jacqueline it felt like preserving a past that she’d hoped to outgrow. She remembered being made to sit up stiffly at the table, to hold her utensils just so, to cover her lap nicely with her napkin, not to speak or to make the slightest noise with any of her food. Too much of this upbringing had lodged inside her, but was that why she felt uneasy with the children in the house? “Are you taking anything out of here?” Cynthia said.

“There’s nothing here for me, Cynthia. You have whatever you want and don’t worry about me.”

Cynthia gazed at her as they headed for the breakfast room. The chandelier stirred as the children ran above it once again, but Jacqueline told herself that was nothing like her nightmares—at least, not very like. She was unnerved to hear Cynthia exclaim “There it is.”

The breakfast room was borrowing light from the large back garden, but not much, since the overgrown expanse lay in the shadow of the house. The weighty table had spread its wings and was attended by six straight-backed ponderous chairs, but Cynthia was holding out her hands to the high chair in the darkest corner of the room. “Do you remember sitting in that?” she apparently hoped. “I think I do.”

“I wouldn’t,” Jacqueline said.

She hadn’t needed it to make her feel restricted at the table, where breakfast with her grandparents had been as formal as dinner. “Nothing here either,” she declared and limped into the hall.

The mirror on the far side was discoloured too. She glimpsed the children’s blurred shapes streaming up into a pendulous darkness and heard the agitated jangle of the chandelier as she made for the lounge. The leather suite looked immovable with age, and only the television went some way towards bringing the room up to date, though the screen was as blank as an uninscribed stone. She remembered having to sit silent for hours while her parents and grandparents listened to the radio for news about the war—her grandmother hadn’t liked children out of her sight in the house. The dresser was still full of china she’d been forbidden to venture near, which was grey with dust and the dimness. Cynthia had been allowed to crawl around the room—indulged for being younger or because their grandmother liked babies in the house. “I’ll leave you to it,” she said as Cynthia followed her in.

She was hoping to find more light in the kitchen, but it didn’t show her much that she wanted to see. While the refrigerator was relatively modern, not to mention tall enough for somebody to stand in, it felt out of place. The black iron range still occupied most of one wall, and the old stained marble sink projected from another. Massive cabinets and heavy chests of drawers helped box in the hulking table scored by knives. It used to remind her of an operating table, even though she hadn’t known she would grow up to be a nurse. She was distracted by the children as they ran into the kitchen. “Can we have a drink?” Karen said for all of them.

“May we?” Valerie amended.

“Please.” Once she’d been echoed Jacqueline said “I’ll find you some glasses. Let the tap run.”

When she opened a cupboard she thought for a moment that the stack of plates was covered by a greyish doily. Several objects as long as a baby’s fingers but thinner even than their bones flinched out of sight, and she saw the plates were draped with a mass of cobwebs. She slammed the door as Karen used both hands to twist the cold tap. It uttered a dry gurgle rather too reminiscent of sounds she used to hear while working in the geriatric ward, and she wondered if the supply had been turned off. Then a gout of dark liquid spattered the sink, and a gush of rusty water darkened the marble. As Karen struggled to shut it off Valerie enquired “Did you have to drink that, auntie?”

“I had to put up with a lot you wouldn’t be expected to.”

“We won’t, then. Aren’t there any other drinks?”

“And things to eat,” Brian said at once.

“I’m sure there’s nothing.” When the children gazed at her with various degrees of patience Jacqueline opened the refrigerator, trying not to think that the compartments could harbour bodies smaller than Brian’s. All she found were a bottle of mouldering milk and half a loaf as hard as a rusk. “I’m afraid you’ll have to do without,” she said.

How often had her grandmother said that? Supposedly she’d been just as parsimonious before the war. Jacqueline didn’t want to sound like her, but when Brian took hold of the handle of a drawer that was level with his head she couldn’t help blurting “Stay away from there.”

At least she didn’t add “We’ve lost enough children.” As the boy stepped back Cynthia hurried into the kitchen. “What are you doing now?”

“We don’t want them playing with knives, do we?” Jacqueline said.

“I know you’re too sensible, Brian.”

Was that aimed just at him? As Cynthia opened the cupboards the children resumed chasing up the stairs. Presumably the creature Jacqueline had glimpsed was staying out of sight, and so were any more like it. When Cynthia made for the hall Jacqueline said “I’ll be up in a minute.”

Although she didn’t linger in the kitchen, she couldn’t leave her memories behind. How many children had her grandmother lost that she’d been so afraid of losing any more? By pestering her mother Jacqueline had learned they’d been stillborn, which had reminded her how often her grandmother told her to keep still. More than once today Jacqueline had refrained from saying that to the twins and to Brian in particular. Their clamour seemed to fill the hall and resonate all the way up the house, so that she could have thought the reverberations were shaking the mirrors, disturbing the suspended mass of darkness like a web in which a spider had come to life. “Can we go up to the top now?” Brian said.

“Please don’t,” Jacqueline called.

It took Cynthia’s stare to establish that the boy hadn’t been asking Jacqueline. “Why can’t we?” Karen protested, and Valerie contributed “We only want to see.”

“I’m sure you can,” Cynthia said. “Just wait till we’re all up there.”

Before tramping into the nearest bedroom she gave her sister one more look, and Jacqueline felt as blameworthy as their grandmother used to make her feel. Why couldn’t she watch over the children from the hall? She tilted her head back on her shaky neck to gaze up the stairwell. Sometimes her grandfather would raise his eyes ceilingwards as his wife found yet another reason to rebuke Jacqueline, only for the woman to say “If you look like that you’ll see where you’re going.” Presumably she’d meant heaven, and perhaps she was there now, if there was such a place. Jacqueline imagined her sailing upwards like a husk on a wind; she’d already seemed withered all those years ago, and not just physically either. Was that why Jacqueline had thought the stillbirths must be shrivelled too? They would have ended up like that, but she needn’t think about it now, if ever. She glanced towards the children and saw movement above them.

She must have seen the shadows of the treetops—thin shapes that appeared to start out of the corners under the roof before darting back into the gloom. As she tried to grasp how those shadows could reach so far beyond the confines of the skylight, Cynthia peered out of the nearest bedroom. “Jackie, aren’t you coming to look?”

Jacqueline couldn’t think for all the noise. “If you three will give us some peace for a while,” she said louder than she liked. “And stay with us. We don’t want you going anywhere that isn’t safe.”

“You heard your aunt,” Cynthia said, sounding unnecessarily like a resentful child.

As Brian trudged after the twins to follow Cynthia into her grandmother’s bedroom Jacqueline remembered never being let in there. Later her parents had made it their room—had tried, at any rate. While they’d doubled the size of the bed, the rest of the furniture was still her grandmother’s, and she could have fancied that all the swarthy wood was helping the room glower at the intrusion. She couldn’t imagine her parents sharing a bed there, let alone performing any activity in it, but she didn’t want to think about such things at all. “Not for me,” she said and made for the next room.

Not much had changed since it had been her grandfather’s, which meant it still seemed to belong to his wife. It felt like her disapproval rendered solid by not just the narrow single bed but the rest of the dark furniture that duplicated hers, having been her choice. She’d disapproved of almost anything related to Jacqueline, not least her husband playing with their granddaughter. Jacqueline avoided glancing up at any restlessness under the roof while she crossed the landing to the other front bedroom. As she gazed at the two single beds that remained since the cot had been disposed of, the children ran to cluster around her in the doorway. “This was your room, wasn’t it?” Valerie said.

“Yours and our grandma’s,” Karen amended.

“No,” Jacqueline said, “it was hers and our mother’s and father’s.”

In fact she hadn’t been sent to the top floor until Cynthia was born. Their grandfather had told her she was going to stay with the angels, though his wife frowned at the idea. Jacqueline would have found it more appealing if she hadn’t already been led to believe that all the stillbirths were living with the angels. She hardly knew why she was continuing to explore the house. Though the cast-iron bath had been replaced by a fibreglass tub as blue as the toilet and sink, she still remembered flinching from the chilly metal. After Cynthia’s birth their grandmother had taken over bathing Jacqueline, scrubbing her with such relentless harshness that it had felt like a penance. When it was over at last, her grandfather would do his best to raise her spirits. “Now you’re clean enough for the angels,” he would say and throw her up in the air.

“If you’re good the angels will catch you”—but of course he did, which had always made her wonder what would happen to her if she wasn’t good enough. She’d seemed to glimpse that thought in her grandmother’s eyes, or had it been a wish? What would have caught her if she’d failed to live up to requirements? As she tried to forget the conclusion she’d reached Brian said “Where did they put you, then?”