The House at Tyneford (52 page)

The water howled and shrieked in the pipes, as loud as a steam train. Fuck the black line. Fuck water rationing. I was going to fill this bath right to the top. Lose myself in scalding water; drink champagne like I was back in Vienna. Anna’s voice drifted up the stairs. I must have put on her gramophone record but I didn’t remember. I could pretend it was Anna herself singing downstairs. Anna. Anna. I crouched on the bath mat and listened as her song curled upward, her voice filling the air like the scent of warm chocolate. In my hand I clutched Margot’s letter.

The water reached the top of the bath, slopping against the sides. The electric lights flickered. I grasped the champagne bottle and opened the foil, easing out the cork with my fingers—it shot up like an antiaircraft bullet and ricocheted off the mirror, leaving a mark in the condensation on the glass. I took a swig and closed my eyes.
Anna . . . Typhoid. Juliana. To remember both parents
. Margot knew that Julian was dead. Even if he still breathed, he was dead. He would not live without Anna. He loved us, Margot and me, but he loved Anna best. If my father was not already dead, I knew that somewhere he waited to die. I closed off the taps and the room was quiet save for the groan and gurgle of the pipes.

What had I done on New Year’s Day as my mother lay dying? I couldn’t even remember. That day had passed unmarked, unremembered. I leaned back against the bath and thought of my last night in Vienna—Anna, Margot and me gathered in the bathroom before the party, drinking champagne, rose-scented bath salts lacing the steam. Anna lying in the bath, laughing and singing, while Margot lounged in her silk chemise smoking a cigarette and, unseen by the others, Julian in the doorway, crying.

I took a gulp of cool champagne, the bubbles tickling my throat, and turned back to the letter.

Margot knew we would never speak to our father again. We could no sooner imagine Julian without Anna than we could daylight without the sun. Julian would disappear. I took another gulp of champagne and addressed my sister.

“All right, Margot. I’ll take it out. But don’t you see—as long as the novel stays in the viola, unread, the story isn’t finished. And it can’t be finished. It can’t.”

I glanced toward the old viola case propped against the windowsill. I knew I had to open it. I had brought it into the bathroom knowing I must, and yet I stayed leaning against the bath. Taking a long drink of champagne, I crawled over to the case and pulled it onto my lap. I wished I could remember the words to a prayer; it should probably be the Kaddish but anything would do. The strains of Anna singing one of Violetta’s arias from
La Traviata
seeped through the floorboards as though she sang her own lament. I unfastened the case, drawing out the viola. The letters I’d written to Anna and never sent cluttered the lining and in my fury I hurled them across the room. They fluttered to earth like scribbled doves, landing on the floor and in the sink and in the bath, where they floated, the ink running in black rivers, dripping into the water.

I took a deep breath and willed my thundering heart to slow. I’d found a knife and I eased the edge of the blade beneath the face of the viola. The glue sealing it to the sides was too strong and I could not find a hold. I swore and shoved the knife inside an f-hole, jamming my fist down on the handle. With a crack the face splintered and broke. The bridge snapped and the strings dangled loose like dislocated fingers. For a moment I stared at the smashed viola in horror, and then I snatched at the first page, drawing the paper to the f-hole, trying to pry it from the viola without tearing it on the splintered wood. With a surgeon’s concentration, I pulled it out. I sat for a second with the thin sheet on my lap, and then I started to read.

Blank.

The page was blank. I turned it over and held it up to the light. Nothing. I sighed—he must have put a blank page on top to protect the manuscript. I slipped my fingers back inside the viola and grasped another page and tugged it up through the f-hole. Heart pounding in my ears, I studied the page. Blank.

No longer caring whether I ripped the pages, I yanked out a clump of paper. I held them up, scrutinising each one for a stray word, the faintest trace of brown ink. Blank. Blank. I cast them aside, letting the sheets drift around the bathroom, mingling with my letters to Anna. The room filled with paper, but the only words were mine.

I tore out more and more pages, knocking aside the tuning struts inside the viola with another crack. Every single sheet was empty. Was it the salt air? Had Julian made some mistake and inserted a void copy into the viola? Had I left it too long and allowed the ink to fade? No. I closed my eyes. Julian was already dead. His words had disappeared with him. I imagined at the moment of his death the pages inside the viola turning white, the words unwritten.

But Margot? She would never understand. She would believe it my fault. I had stolen the last conversation with our father.

I did not close the blackouts. I sat in the bath and drank and drank and stared at the silent moon. A crescent moon. A stage moon. A moon I had seen in the Opera House, as Anna sang Cherubino or Violetta or Lucia and I cried hot, proud tears and clapped until my palms stung red. The bathwater scorched my skin. It hurt and I smiled in relief, needing the pain. Through the wine-fuelled dullness, I heard rapping on the bathroom door, Mrs. Ellsworth’s voice.

“Miss Land? Miss.”

I shut my eyes and sank under the water, letting it wash over my face and hair. If only it was cold—then it could empty my mind like that last swim on the beach. I could be as blank as Julian’s pages.

The water was no longer hot, only warm. I stared at the peeling flock-print wallpaper and a smear of toothpaste beside the sink. Condensation dripped down the windowpane.

The tepid water grew cool. Then cold.

“Miss Land. I’d be most obliged if you would open the door,” said Mr. Wrexham.

“Alice, dear,” called Mrs. Ellsworth. “Please let me in.”

I did not move, just drained the champagne bottle and sank under the water once more.

I shivered in the cold bath, knees tucked up beneath my chin. If only I could cry. It would be better if I could cry. Hammering on the bathroom door. Mr. Rivers’ voice calling to me.

“Alice. Alice, unlock this door, or I shall come in myself.”

I did not move. The sound of a key clicking into a lock. The door opened and then closed again.

“Alice,” he said. “Alice? What is it, little one? What has happened?”

I sat in the bathtub and stared up at him. All around the bathroom lay sheets of carbon-copy paper. They littered the floor and clung to the damp windows and drifted in the bathwater along with my sodden letters. In the corner of the room lay the broken viola. Everywhere pages spilled out onto the ground, yellow as old bone. I pointed to Margot’s letter, propped upon the soap dish. “They’re dead. They’re both dead.”

He knelt beside the bath and I saw his eyes were wet with tears.

“Don’t cry,” I said. “You’re not allowed to cry. I can’t, so neither can you.”

He swallowed. “All right. I shan’t.”

He slid his hand into the water and recoiled. “It’s cold. Get out before you catch a chill.”

I sat quite still, somehow unable to move. He watched me for a second and then crouched over the tub, sliding his arms beneath mine, lifting me out and setting me down on the floor. I stood before him naked, making no attempt to cover myself. I shivered and my skin prickled, nipples blown to beads. Beneath my feet I felt crumpled pages. I looked at him without flinching and his breath quickened. He stooped to pick up a towel and offered it to me. When I did not take it, he began to dry me, rubbing the fabric across my skin.

“I’m so sorry,” he said.

I backed away.

“Don’t. Don’t you see, Daniel? Everyone is dead. No one is left who loves me. Not like Anna loved me. Not like—”

Kit’s unspoken name lingered in the air between us. I looked at him and it was a challenge. I dared him to look at me. I dared him to say it and save us both. He stood and walked across to me.

“Not everyone who loves you is dead.”

I lay on his bed where he had carried me, my hair still damp from the bath. The room smelled of him. A red wine decanter, half full, rested on the dressing table and beside it a photograph of Kit as a laughing boy. Daniel’s jacket was slung over the back of a chair and the wind shrilled from the empty grate. He lay fully clothed beside me, close but not yet touching. He leaned over me muttering, “I’m much, much too old for you.”