I did warn him against it. I saw him at the inquest, and I told him I wouldnt care to live there. I tried to convey to him that horrible things had happened in that house. He wouldnt take a hint. I couldnt do more than hint. I really didnt know. I couldnt expose my imaginings. I would have sounded superstitious, unbalanced, and he already thought I was that. By that time, everything was over between us.
After all, its just a house. Just an empty shell, when the people are taken away.
I expect Ill find out how Colins getting on. This is a small town. Theyre all around, Im sure; old colleagues, old clients, old lovers. Of course there was always a risk, with Jim moving about for the sake of his career. If youre in banking and you want to get to be a manager quite young you have to be prepared to move about. Id rather have stayed in Manchester.
But I couldnt produce any good reasons why we shouldnt come back. Not reasons that convinced Jim. He doesnt take much notice of my opinions. Thats understandable. Im always crying, you see, bursting into tears, and falling over, and losing things. I was in banking too when we got married I thought it would be restful and uncomplicated but now I just sit about at home.
Im not fit for anything, Jim says. He wonders whats the matter with me. I spend my days thinking.
So I thought I could write a book, you see, about the Axon case and all that, and when it was done I could send it to the Sunday papers, and then everyone would know how social workers operate and why things go so badly wrong. How you get cases you cant handle, and how clients conspire against you, and circumstances seem to conspire too. How it messes up your personal life. How you live with yourself afterwards; when disaster has occurred.
That will do for a preface, she thought. I can call it Confessions of a Social Worker, I suppose. She had long ago overflowed the shopping list and been forced to write on the piece of packing paper that had come around the teapot. The spout had got broken, but it didnt matter; there wasnt much call for tea. Ill buy a proper notebook later, she thought, on my way to the off-licence.
It was 12.30 pm when Sylvia came home from the CAB. In the hall she paused and called out, Hello, Lizzie, all right are you? A clattering from the kitchen told her that her daily woman was hard at work. What a comfort to have the basics taken care of, she thought. She told herself that she hated housework, though in fact for most of her married life it had been her pride, pleasure and retreat.
Going up the stairs, dragging her feet in their striped trainers, she acknowledged that she felt tired. The wrangle at the breakfast table was always a strain, and now her head was buzzing with Social Security regulations and unanswered questions about the legal aid scheme. The house was quiet. She went into her bedroom, kicked off her shoes and lay down on the bed. Her eyes closed; she dozed for five minutes, wrapped in the midday heat. Suddenly a shrill ringing brought her upright, shocked out of sleep. Damn that cooker timer, she thought, its gone off by itself again. Why doesnt Lizzie stop it? Heart still racing, she padded over to the door. Opened it; the ringing stopped. She sighed. Better turn out those drawers, I suppose. Skip lunch. Dont need it, this weather.
She knew that if she began with the bottom drawer, she would find her photograph albums; and then she could sit on the bed and browse. It was something shed not done in ages. Shed never had much time to herself. Lizzies advent had been a blessing even if she was a bit odd. You didnt engage a cleaner for her looks or fashion sense, or for her conversation; you just needed someone honest and with a bit of initiative. Lizzie always reminded her of how shed come up in the world. She reminded her a little of someone shed known before her marriage; one of the girls on the Pork Shoulder line.
She leaned back against the pillows. Wedding pictures, baby pictures; Suzanne grinning in her pram in the postage-stamp garden of their very first house. Suzanne had left home now, was studying geography at Manchester University. Then Alistair, scowling from under a woollen hat in the same pram. It was very like his present scowl, except that now he had more teeth. Here was Karen, two years old, digging in the garden of their house on the estate. Here she was again, a little older, mouth drooping, swinging on the rickety gate. Everything about that house had been rickety, leaky or shoddy; it was a triumph of jerry-building. No wonder theyd been keen to move to Buckingham Avenue, despite its neglected and depressing condition.
The move had been a stroke of luck for them. With Claire on the way, theyd needed a bigger place; but how to afford it? Normally shed never have considered the Lauderdale Road area all those big detached houses, too gloomy and too expensive. Colin had grown up on Lauderdale Road, and his sister Florence, who had never got married, still occupied the family house; his father was dead, and Florence had put their mother in a home. Florence had called her up one day and said, The Axon house is on the market, just round the corner, the one with the garden backing onto ours. You ought to enquire about it.
What? shed said. That place where those two peculiar women lived? Its falling down.
Its going cheap, Florence had said. Suit yourselves. But you could do it up.
Sylvia suspected Florences motives, of course. She was possessive; she wanted her brother next door, on call for mending her fuses and unblocking her sink. But still out of curiosity, Sylvia phoned the estate agent.
It is in need of sympathetic renovation, the man confirmed, but its basically very sound. Of course, its very well situated. Within easy reach of shops and schools
T know where it is. Why is it so cheap?
Hed dropped his voice, become confidential. Cant say too much, bit of a sad case old ladys died, and her daughter, shes not quite right, know what I mean? Gone into hospital.
You mean theyve put her away?
The old mother died suddenly, there was an inquest. It was in the paper, in the Reporter.
She didnt say, my husband was there when she died. That was irrelevant. But theyd wondered what had happened to the Axon girl. Not that theyd known the Axons, really; they were the kind of neighbours you didnt set eyes on from one year to the next. What hospital has she gone to?
As to that, I couldnt say. You see what it was, madam, they were recluses. They didnt like other people in the house. So they didnt keep up with repairs. Well, two ladies, you dont expect it. But its a lovely property.
All right. When can we have the key?
Theyd been to see it together. Florence met them at the gate. Well? She was anxious that Colins decision should not be coloured by the unpleasant episode that had taken place in the house a few weeks earlier. Hed called on Florence late one afternoon, fortunately as it turned out; plodding out through the twilit garden to inspect, at her request, a dubious bit of guttering, hed noticed something very strange going on at the Axon house. At an upstairs window, a young woman was gesturing, calling for help; very odd, but Colin hadnt hesitated. Florence had watched amazed as he crashed through the shrubbery and pounded on the Axons back door, ready to break it down. Once inside hed raced up the stairs to let the girl out; Mrs Axon had pursued him, only to meet with an accident. It came out later that shed had a heart attack, as well as a fall. Colin had given artificial respiration; with no result. And the young woman? She was a social worker, making her calls; the old lady had tricked her into the spare bedroom and turned the key. God knows what else had been going on at number 2. Would Colin want it?
Well, hed said cautiously, its cheap. It needs work. But if the last occupants had left shadows, he thought he could dispel them. We could cut some of these trees down, he said. Let some light in.
Yes, Sylvia had said. Then Florence could see in our garden, couldnt she? She was not enthusiastic about that. But the trees would have to go, and all the junk that the Axons had left behind them; and that little glasshouse that the agent had called a conservatory, with its cracked and grimy panes and its mound of cardboard and newspapers all festering and damp. What a clean-up job! But think of the possibilities
So they had put down a holding deposit, and Colin had called the solicitor. Contracts were exchanged within weeks. Their married life had been full of upheavals; this was the only thing that had gone smoothly.
Sylvia turned back to her albums.
How the photographs improved, from shiny dog-eared scraps, faded brown with age, to the borderless silk prints of recent date. Here she stood before the front door of Buckingham Avenue, her arm through her husbands. Florence, she thought, must have taken the picture. Behind them, the house looked like the set of a Hammer Films production; that ugly stained glass in the front door, those great clumps of evergreens shading the paths. The woodwork was rotting, the downspouts were in a deplorable condition; and the two figures who stood before it were hardly in a better one. Colin must have been fourteen stone there, she thought. Look at his belly hanging over his belt. Look at the silly expression on his face.
Her own image offered little comfort. Her tight skirt surely unfashionably short? emphasised her large hips and stocky legs; she was still out of shape after her recent pregnancy. Here she was, holding the new baby Claire, peeping at the camera with a simper above the infants shawled bulk. Her hair had been bleached out to a strawlike mess. Had she not known that backcombing and lacquer would ruin it? Worse, had she not known that no one else had used them for years?
No doubt at the factory, she thought, we were behind the times. We didnt know any better. She accorded an indulgent smile to her teenaged self, making up for a Friday night out, scrubbing her fair skin until the aura of animal fat, sodium polyphosphates and assembly-line sweat was completely wiped away and she moved in a mist of Yardleys cologne and heart-skipping expectation towards the weekly dance; off she went, a great big beautiful baby doll. Then, on the seven oclock train, she had met Colin.
It was an awful photograph, why had she ever kept it? Quickly she detached it from the page and put it down on the bedside cabinet. There was a blank space now in the album, a testament to her vanity. There she was again, arms folded outside number 2. The garden had been dug over, and the house behind her had all its woodwork painted a gleaming white. It had been a gruelling yearlong slog, up and down ladders with buckets of paste, backbreaking work; but it was a big house, and there was land at the side to accommodate the extension they had eventually built, giving them a fourth bedroom and a much bigger kitchen. That was the whole point about Buckingham Avenue, it offered such scope for improvement. How much easier it would have been if their removal had not coincided with the crisis in Colins life. There had been a girlfriend, of course; he supposed she didnt know. His behaviour was odd and abstracted, even by his own standards. He had drunk too much, whenever he could get his hands on some alcohol; they could not afford, in those days, to keep a stock in the house. Their petrol bills had soared; where did he go? Finally, of course, hed been breathalysed and banned from driving. His little affair had come to nothing. That was obvious, wasnt it? He was still here, she was still here; here they were.
Sylvia looked at her watch. Ten past one. She let the albums slip onto the bed, yawned, stretched, and peeled off her tracksuit, dropping it into the laundry basket. She went into the bathroom, washed, and cleaned her teeth vigorously. Back in the bedroom, she averted her face to avoid the sight of herself half-naked in the dressing table mirror. Her thighs were going, her tummy had gone; after four pregnancies, what could you expect? If she had known then what she knew now She pulled on her baggy cotton trousers, and took out of the drawer a tee shirt which said in big black letters NURSERY SCHOOLS ARE OUR RIGHT. Running a hand through her hair, she mooched off downstairs.
Lizzie Blank, the daily (a German name, Sylvia supposed), was standing at the sink wringing dirty water from a cloth. All right, Lizzie? Sylvia said.
All right, Mrs S?
Sylvia crossed to the fridge. She opened it, picked out a lettuce leaf, and stood nibbling it while she surveyed her domestic. She supposed that a survey of Lizzie Blank would be a comfort to any normal woman who was afraid of losing her looks. Weird was the only word for her.
Lizzie Blank was a woman of no age that could easily be determined. Her dumpling body, entirely without a waistline, was supported on peg-shaped legs. Her hair, platinum blond and matted, had a height and stiffness that Sylvias in its heyday had never approached; two little squiggles, shaped like meat hooks, stood stiffly out by each ear. Her large face rather blank in truth was so caked with make-up that it was impossible to decide what it might look like naked, and her eyelids, outlined in thick black pencil, were painted a vivid teal blue. How many pairs of false eyelashes she wore, Sylvia could not take it upon herself to say. Her magenta lips bore no relation to her real mouth, but were overpainted greasily onto the skin, so that the merest twitch of her cheek muscles brought about a smile or a pout. The lips worked unceasingly; the eyes remained quite dead.
How was your trip? Sylvia asked.
Okay. One of us thought there would be donkeys. We had them before, when we went on a day trip.
I think you only get them at the seaside.
I dont see why. Not as if they swim.
Sylvia was taken aback. Tell me, Lizzie, she said, do you wear a wig?
Lizzie only smiled. Sylvia realised that her question was perhaps an intrusion. After all, she thought, if it is a wig, its bound to slip about on her head from time to time. I could find out by observation alone.
Sylvia swung open the fridge door again, took out half a cucumber, and cut an inch off it. She raised it to her lips. By the way, you didnt try to clean Alistairs room, did you? I meant to tell you. I expect hes got the door locked.
The spare room? Lizzie looked at her; it might have been astonishment, but her face was so far from the human norm that it was always difficult to be sure what her expressions meant.
Well, its not really the spare room. Alistairs always had it, since we came.
I call it the spare room.
I daresay it was, before we moved here. Anyway, what Im saying is dont bother with it. His father will make him clean it up, when the school holidays start.
Some rooms have no talent for cleaning. Some rooms will never be clean. Her tone was perhaps unnecessarily doom-laden, but Sylvia supposed she was devoted to her art. It was a good sign really.
I was wondering, would you take on another lady?
Lizzie was washing down the sink with bleach. She shook her head, without pausing in her work.
Only, our vicars wife is looking for somebody to do a few hours for her.
Did you say you could recommend me? Lizzie turned her full flat face towards her employer; her rouged cheeks glowed, ripely pink, in a waste of chalk-white powder.