The Lie (16 page)

Felicia is lying on her stomach, across the bed. The room is full of stuff: piles of books, photographs, Frederick’s school trunk with his initials on it in red, a heap of clothes in the middle of a sheet on the floor, as if someone was sorting them. Cricket pads lie on the windowsill. Chairs, desk and wardrobe are stacked against the wall. There is hardly room to move around the bed.

Felicia’s face comes out of the pillow, swollen with weeping. Red patches have come up on her skin. She pushes back her hair, looking bewildered, as if she doesn’t know where she is.

‘Felicia, it’s only me.’

She rolls over, clutching the pillow to herself.

‘Why did you come up here?’ she asks angrily, as if I’m a stranger.

‘I didn’t mean to frighten you.’

‘You didn’t frighten me.’ She sits up, swings her legs over the side of the bed, and punches the pillow back into place. ‘I didn’t expect anyone to come up here, that’s all.’

This is a junkyard, not a bedroom. I can’t believe that Frederick ever slept here. They pitched his stuff in anyhow, and left it.

If the Dennises were poor, this would never happen. A room wasted, not taken care of, possessions strewn anywhere. There’s no feeling in it. There are his schoolbooks on the floor under the window, textbooks and exercise books thrown down in a heap. I pick up an exercise book. It smells of damp, and the pages are stuck together. There’s another smell too, that makes my skin prickle. It’s not coming from the exercise book. I take a deep breath, to steady myself, and peel the pages apart.
The whole of Gaul is divided into three parts
 . . . On it goes down the page, in Frederick’s awful handwriting. For once, there are no drawings in the margins. I stoop, and replace the exercise book on the slipshod pile.

‘What were you doing in here, Felicia?’

‘I keep thinking I ought to sort it out.’

‘It’s best left, I should think.’

‘I can’t. These are Frederick’s things.’

Frederick’s things, thrown down as if they are nothing. A pullover with empty sleeves. A cricket bat no one will handle again. They pitched the lot in here, and shut the door on it. But Felicia opened the door. She couldn’t keep away.

‘Look,’ she says, pointing, ‘there are his things that they sent home.’

I see it then. The squat bundle of his kit, by the end of the bed. That’s what the smell was. Everything that’s been near that mud smells of death.

‘Haven’t you opened it?’

She shakes her head. ‘I can’t.’

‘They’re not the clothes he was wearing when he was killed,’ I say, and at once I realise I’ve said too much. But she doesn’t seem to notice.

‘They sent Harry’s kit back too,’ she says, ‘but that was all right. I went through it to see if there was anything I could keep for Jeannie. I thought there might be a postcard, or a souvenir he’d picked up. But there wasn’t.’

I watch Felicia’s hands, turning over and over. Her chapped knuckles, her thin wrists coming out of her too-short sleeves. There’s that smell again, that you never know before the first time you go up the line. Raw mud, old gas, cordite, shit, rotting flesh. I don’t suppose these windows are ever opened. It’s airless and the room is too small. I glance behind me. The door is still open.

‘You shouldn’t come in here,’ I say to her. She doesn’t answer, just looks at me with unreadable eyes. I reach out and take her wrist. ‘Let’s go downstairs.’

She takes a deep, noisy breath and a smile quavers over her face. Gently, she withdraws her hand. ‘I wish he’d stayed in his old bedroom,’ she says. ‘But you wouldn’t recognise it now. It’s got wallpaper with lambs and daffodils all over it.’

It’s cold in here. Even the books are cold. Felicia ought to come away. The cold is getting into me. I step back from the books, stumble over the edge of the trunk, and catch my balance by grabbing the bedpost. The iron is icy.

‘Felicia,’ I mutter. My lips are thick and clumsy now. ‘Let’s get out of here.’

I step back through the open door, and into the corridor. I am trembling and although I am freezing cold, sweat is starting out all over my body.

‘Felicia.’

I’ve got to get her out, but I can barely speak. I hear the bedsprings and then her footsteps on the drugget. I sink to my knees and cover my head with my arms and rock myself to stop the trembling. I think that I cry out.

I daren’t look up. I rock and rock, easing myself, with my eyes screwed tight shut so I see nothing. There’s a bad taste in my mouth. I hear footsteps going away and then coming back. Something cold and wet touches me. I open my eyes a chink and see an old enamel mug full of water.

‘Drink this,’ says Felicia.

My hands shake so much as I bring the lip of the mug to my mouth that lumps of water jolt over my clothes. Some goes into my mouth. I look only at the mug. There’s a chip in the enamel.

‘Can you stand up?’

I shake my head. She’s kneeling in front of me. I look a little way beyond the mug. I see her wrists, and the dark blue wool. We stay like that for a long time, while my heart steadies.

‘Don’t go in that room,’ I say.

‘Hush. It’s all right, Daniel. It’s only a room.’

‘Don’t go in there again.’

I am able to look up at her now. The red patches on her temples are fading. She can be ugly and she’s ugly now, pale and draggled, the bones of her skull showing through her skin.

‘I’m sorry.’

‘Can you get up now?’ she asks me.

Can you get up now? Can you move your arms? Your legs?

The stretcher party came for me, but not for Frederick. There was no sign of him anywhere. Only blown, sticky mud over everything. A shudder takes hold of me again, as if I’m a child being shaken by a grown man. ‘Felicia,’ I say, very quietly so no one will hear, ‘is there anything behind me?’

‘Only the door.’

‘Is there anything on my hands?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Touch my hand. There, like that. Now wipe your hand across. Is there anything? Can you see anything?’ I can still smell it. Raw earth, raw iron, meat, explosive. It rains around me but it is invisible. Felicia’s hand is clean. ‘That’s good,’ I tell her. ‘Look again.’

‘There’s nothing there.’

‘Felicia. Hold me.’

I’m shaking now. If she holds me now, I’ll be still. She takes hold of my shoulders, patting me clumsily.

‘Hold me.’

She doesn’t know how. ‘You’re trembling,’ she says.

I don’t answer. I’m trying to keep my teeth from chattering. I’m ashamed. I was never this bad, not in France. It washes over me like the hundredth wave and I cling to the rock. When I come to, our eyes are inches apart. She is still crying, but silently now. A tear slides down to her mouth, and she licks it away.

‘I didn’t mean to frighten you,’ I say.

‘I know.’

‘I would never hurt you, Felicia.’

‘I know.’

‘I want to get the furnace going for you, so that you and Jeannie are warm.’

‘Not now. You must come downstairs with me, by the fire, and get warm. We’ll eat the pie, and then I have to go and fetch Jeannie.’

‘All right. Don’t cry any more, Felicia.’

‘I can’t cry when Jeannie’s here. It frightens her. And then I think that if Frederick could see me, he’d think I’d forgotten him – and then
I
get frightened. I might forget his face. I can’t see Harry’s any more. I told you that, didn’t I?’

‘Yes.’

‘Well then.’ She takes my hand, just for a second. Her clasp is warm and quick, and then gone. ‘That’s why I come here.’

We go down through the empty house. I can’t help thinking of that woman, the French teacher, going into someone’s stuffy front room, week after week. I’ve never seen a Ouija board, and I don’t want to.

Here’s the chair on the landing, where Felicia used to sit, fidgeting, while my mother knelt to fasten her little black boots that buttoned at the sides. Downstairs there was the smell of cooking, the clip of hooves in the yard, the clang of pans from the kitchen. Sunlight lay on the flagstones where the front door was wide open. We heard the drone of Mr Dennis’s voice behind his study door. That was before the day he came out, and beat Frederick.

Most of what I remember at Albert House comes from before that day. Maybe I make those times better than they were, by going over and over them in my mind. But I don’t think so. A memory like mine is more a curse than a blessing. It cuts into the past, as sharp as a knife, and serves it up glistening. The chair creaks as Felicia fidgets. Frederick hides his new catapult behind his back, so my mother won’t see it. He slides a glance at me. We’ll be free in a minute, cantering on the gravel before we plunge across the lawn and into the wilderness of camellias and tree ferns and gunnera. My mother is always afraid that one of us will take out the other’s eye. How my fingers itch to test the tension of the catapult’s elastic.

11

Men removed masks at times when they thought that the gas had disappeared. As a result of this continued removal and adjustment of the mask, the men must have breathed a certain amount of gas.

GRAVY SPILLS OUT
of the squab pie as Felicia cuts it in half. She gives me the larger piece. I hold my knife and fork as she does, but I can’t copy the slowness with which she eats.

‘It’s a long time since I tasted proper squab pie,’ I tell her. ‘They put pigeon in it upcountry, did you know that? I had it once in London. I couldn’t eat it. London pigeons, they’re like vermin. You wouldn’t want to put the flesh in your mouth.’

The thick, fat taste of the mutton is cut with apple. They’ll be from the old tree on the back wall. Pig’s Nose. That’s good keeping fruit.

‘You may as well finish it, Dan.’

‘You and the little one will want it tomorrow.’

But she heaps pie on to my plate. When I’ve finished, she rises and goes to the larder, comes back with an earthenware jug covered with a muslin cloth.

‘I asked Dolly to fetch me a jug of beer. I don’t know what she must have thought.’

I know exactly what she must have thought. There she is, my blessed Felicia, with her thin wrists and an expression that gets wiped off the faces of most kids before they’re ten years old. She’s innocent, that’s what she is. Never mind the death of Harry Fearne, the birth of Jeannie. Frederick’s death.

I push my chair back and take a deep drink of the beer. This is how it must be, if you’re married. Felicia moving around the table, clearing plates, wiping the wood. But if we were married, she’d have made the pie herself. She’s playing at something she doesn’t know how to do. Same with the baby. Maybe that’s why Jeannie cries to go down to Dolly Quick’s, because there’s a sureness in the old woman that Felicia lacks.

She carries the plates out into the scullery, for Dolly Quick to wash tomorrow I dare say. She leaves the door of the scullery open. It must be damp in there, because a smell creeps out. At first it only touches my nostrils, like a coil of smoke, but then it thickens. I cough, and put my hand up to my mouth. It’s all around me now, thick as fog. Gas gets into the earth and stays there. Nothing could flourish in that soil, except rats. There’s chloride of lime, or creosol, and the ooze from the latrines. We stink worst of all when we unwrap our puttees. No wonder the rats are close enough to lick our hair-grease. They eye us up like chums. You’ll do, they say. You’re worth coming back for.

Did you know that a rat gets finicky if he’s overfed? He’ll eat the eyes and liver out of a dead man and leave the rest. He’ll pop out of the hole he’s made in a dead man’s cheek. As dainty as a cat and about the size of one, but he comes through that hole like water.

She’s still in the scullery. I can hear the plates. Drink your beer, Daniel. Drink your beer, old son, and have a coffin-nail.

‘Do you mind if I smoke, Felicia?’

‘Of course not. I like it.’

She likes it because it reminds her of Frederick. I taught Frederick to smoke. He was green as grass the first time. Pallid and sweating before he chucked up his breakfast over the sand. But he kept on going, and soon he wanted a Woodbine as much as I did. You get used to things, that’s the curse of it.

I draw in the smoke from my cigarette, and look at Felicia. She smiles. That’s her innocence.

‘I’ll finish this, and then I’ll take a look at that furnace. Unless you want to fetch Jeannie first?’

She glances at her wristwatch. ‘It’s still raining,’ she says. ‘Maybe it’s better if she stays. Dolly will like to have her . . .’ She hesitates, rocked this way and that by different thoughts. I wish she would go and get the child, and yet I want her to myself. ‘It’s too late, really,’ she says. ‘She’ll have told Jeannie she’s staying the night. I’ll come down to the cellar with you.’

The way you get to the furnace is through the cellar. Felicia takes candles, tapers and a lantern, and goes ahead. Albert House has fine dry cellars. Mr Dennis, being an engineer as well as a gentleman, gave a lot of thought to the construction of his house. The architect’s drawings used to be displayed in a case in his study, with his own handwritten remarks on them.

There are eight steps down, then a turn, and four more steps.

‘Wait until I light the lamp,’ Felicia calls to me. Seconds later a gas lamp on the wall hisses into light, and I see the good order in which everything’s kept. The coal cellar and the coke cellar sit side by side, and a wood store beyond. Tools are ranged on shelves and hooks.

‘My father’s wine cellar is through there,’ says Felicia. ‘I don’t think we ever went into it, did we?’

I did, with Frederick. He wouldn’t allow us to taste the wine: we had to take a whole bottle, he said, otherwise they would find out. We drank it on the clifftops, but I didn’t like it, and Frederick only pretended to. We poured the rest of the bottle away, dark red until it sank into the earth.

‘They took the wine with them. All of it. Even the claret that was laid down for Frederick’s twenty-first birthday.’ Her face and voice are expressionless.

‘But they left you the coal.’

She smiles faintly. ‘The house is mine, did you know that?’