Another World

  ‘What sort of ill?’

  ‘Depression.’

  Gareth hesitates, unaware of his ground. ‘You don’t go into hospital with that.’

  ‘That’s all you know.’

  ‘She’s mad.’

  ‘She isn’t.’

  ‘She’s in the bin.’

  ‘Hospital,’ Miranda repeats steadily.

  ‘Your dad says you’re going the same way.’

  ‘Liar.’

  ‘He did, I heard him. He says, “I’m sometimes afraid she’ll go the same way, she’s such a moody child. It’s not natural to be so so… interverted.” ’

  ‘I don’t believe you.’

  Gareth shrugs. ‘Suit yourself.’

  Nick had said interverted, though not about Miranda. On one of their first trips to the Child Guidance Clinic Gareth was left alone in the playroom, while Mum and Nick and Miss Rowe went off to talk, but he wasn’t having any of that. As soon as the door closed behind them he went out on to the patio, looked round to make sure he wasn’t being observed, then dropped to his knees and crawled along until he was under Miss Rowe’s window.

  Do you think he’s being bullied? Mum asked, and then Nick lost his temper and said all sorts of things. Piss-arse bastard. Shit. Gareth chipped away at the plaster underneath the windowsill, and noticed a chrysalis hanging there, as brown and dry as a dead leaf, though when he squashed it with his thumb yellowy-white stuff spurted out.

  ‘They were in bed, talking,’ he says.

  They’re walking across the lawn, their feet leaving silver trails in the long grass. Behind the rose bed a path starts, bordered on either side by rhododendrons. Pale green shoots of new growth thrusting through this year’s dead flowers, already brown, covered with myriads of tiny insects. Miranda walks with her bare arms bunched together in front of her, not liking the sticky feel of the dead blooms on her skin.

  Almost hidden by the rhododendrons is a small circular brick structure, capped by rusty iron. Gareth jumps on to it, looking down at her with narrowed eyes. ‘Do you know what this is?’

  Miranda shrugs.

  ‘It’s a well. A girl drowned herself in it, that’s why it’s covered up.’ He waits for a reply. ‘She used to sleep in your room.’

  ‘Grow up, Gareth.’

  ‘She went mad and drowned herself and nobody knew where she was till the water turned green and –’

  ‘Nerd.’

  ‘She walks along the corridor in the middle of the night all dripping wet and groaning and the flesh is dropping off her bones and –’

  ‘Anorak.’

  Bored with her now, he starts drifting towards the house, calling across his shoulder, ‘’S true.’

  It isn’t true, he’s just saying it to frighten her. Everybody thinks old houses are haunted, but they’re not, it’s just rubbish. She sits down, only to jump as Gareth leaps on to the well behind her.

  ‘She’s still down there, you know.’

  Miranda feels him squat behind her, his breath coming in quick excited bursts on the nape of her neck.

  ‘They never got her out.’

  When she says nothing, he straightens up, slowly, uncoiling his spine one vertebra at a time, and stands for a moment, his scuffed-toed trainers jutting out over the edge of the well, before he jumps down and walks back to the house, beating the bushes on either side with his clenched fists.

  She doesn’t move.

  Ding dong bell

  Pussy’s in the well

  It isn’t true.

  Sometimes I’m afraid she’ll go the same way.

  Probably Dad did say it. Gareth couldn’t make that up; he can’t even get ‘introverted’ right. She looks up at the house, working out which window’s hers, whether she’ll be able to see the well from her room, and closes her mind to the coming night.

  THREE

  Stars stream past as he soars up and away from the battle, raking the enemy ship with gunfire as he skims along its vast side. A cargo ship, slow-moving, easy prey, but then a hatch opens and dozens of one-man fighters stream out like seeds from a dandelion clock. Six lock on to him, no time to turn, he takes a blow on the shields, dives to the left, the sky tilting round him, and sees, dead ahead, five more –

  He stares at the red fireball of his own death.

  Think.

  Rumble, rumble, clatter, broom-broom… Jasper zooming up and down the corridor in his car. Can’t bloody think. ‘Mum,’ he yells, standing accusingly in the doorway. ‘Does he have to make that noise? I can’t concentrate.’

  ‘Weather like this, you should be outside.’

  ‘Why can’t he go outside?’

  ‘Because he’s too little to go on his own and I’m changing the sheets.’

  ‘SHURRUP!’ Gareth roars at Jasper, who begins to whimper, sitting inside his red car at the other end of the corridor. ‘Just shut it, will you?’

  Before Fran can speak Gareth goes back into his room and slams the door. On the floor, put out for her to clear away, are two plates covered in congealed tomato sauce. My God, he must think she’s running a doss house. She tries to open the door to give him a piece of her mind, but he’s locked it. ‘Gareth?’ She bangs with her clenched fist. No answer – only the flit-flit of laser guns. Jasper’s settled to a steady grizzle by the time she reaches him. ‘Come on, let’s leave him,’ she says, stroking his hair. ‘You’ve got a grumpy brother.’ We’ve never had enough time, she thinks. Right from the beginning there’s always been Gareth, as jealous of Jasper as a toddler, but without the charm that makes a toddler’s jealousy acceptable.

  Getting herself, the plates, the car and Jasper through two safety gates, one at the top and one at the bottom of the stairs, takes a long time – time she spends becoming very angry. It’s all very well for Nick, admittedly he’s got his grandfather ill, and he has to go over and see to things, she accepts that, but meanwhile she’s expected to wash, iron, change sheets, cook, shop, clean – all on four hours’ sleep a night. Oh, and supply conversation and entertainment – the little darlings’ minds have to be stimulated. They mustn’t be bored. Well – ouch, she thinks, snagging her varicose veins on the second safety gate – she’s fucking fed up with it. If they want something to do there’s a whole house full of things to do, things that desperately need doing, and they can start by decorating the living room.

  She goes into the living room, to remind herself of how awful it is. God, the wallpaper’s terrible. She and Nick planned to do the decorating together, after the kids were in bed, scraping away at paper when they’re already tired at the end of a hard day’s work. Well, no way, José. Tonight, as soon as Nick gets back from the hospital, there’s going to be a decorating party. She’ll get pizzas in, make it look like a treat, but in the end she’s determined that just for once they’re all going to behave like a proper family. It’ll be fun, she tells herself, looking at the wall.

  Nick opens the living-room door, sees buckets, cloths, scrapers and a stepladder. My God, she means it. A choppy sea of paint-daubed dust sheets covers the floor. Jasper’s marooned behind the gauze mesh of his playpen, one cheek scarlet. Nick rests his own cheek against it as he carries him down to the kitchen. ‘That rotten old tussie-peg bothering you? You’re in the wars, aren’t you, son?’

  Like your dad. Last thing he needs after being stuck in a board meeting with a load of vacillating academics is to spend the evening decorating. Couple of stiff gins and something mindless on the box. Make sure of the gins anyway. One-handed, he opens the freezer and gropes about for the ice tray. ‘I can’t seem to find any ice.’

  Fran’s voice from along the corridor. ‘Try harder, darling.’

  There isn’t any, beloved. Back across the floor, picking his way between red, yellow, blue and orange men wielding the tools of their various trades – full employment in the plastic world anyway – he opens the fridge door. No lemons. Ah well. Dragging Jasper’s toy box into the middle of the floor, he begins sweeping up workmen with du
stpan and brush and throwing them into the box. Jasper screams with rage and takes them out again. ‘Don’t do that, Jasper,’ Nick says, uncoiling his son’s sticky fingers from an orange plumber.

  Jasper screams again, louder, bringing Fran down the stairs, open-armed and indignant. ‘Do you have to do that, Nick? There must be a better way.’

  Nick swigs his ice-less, lemon-less gin. Fran heaves one huge breast out of her sweatshirt and plugs the howling child on to it. There’s something disturbing about his broad sticky hand kneading Fran’s breast. High time he was weaned, it isn’t good for her. The drained face, the straggly hair, the huge belly, the skinny, sharp-boned cat-with-too-many-litters look, it reminds Nick of some awful Victorian pamphlet advocating the virtues of self-restraint. Not that he’s exactly tempted to abandon it. The truth is he’s repelled by her, but the truth frightens him and he sheers away from it. Jasper stares at him accusingly round the curve of his mother’s breast. ‘Sorry,’ Nick says, sitting down and immediately leaping up again. ‘What on earth is that?’

  ‘He was sick,’ says Fran distantly. ‘I’ve been meaning to clear it up.’

  Miranda comes into the kitchen in time to see Nick drop his trousers. ‘Can I help?’ she asks, looking from Fran’s breasts to Dad’s Thing and rapidly down at the floor.

  ‘Throw it out,’ Fran says.

  Miranda stares at her.

  ‘The cushion. I’m not washing it.’

  Miranda picks up the cushion fastidiously between thumb and forefinger, and takes it outside.

  Silence. Nick says, ‘I better phone in the order if we’re having pizzas.’

  ‘All right.’

  She sounds indifferent, her attention focused entirely on Jasper. Look at me, Nick wants to say. Instead he goes to the bottom of the stairs and calls Gareth, who for once appears without having to be threatened or cajoled. Perhaps he’s hungry. Or perhaps he senses there’s something going on.

  Nick rings in the order. He has to repeat the address.

  ‘That’s not the Summerfield estate, is it?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Only we don’t deliver there.’

  ‘How long will you be?’

  ‘Half an hour.’

  ‘Half an hour,’ Nick repeats, replacing the receiver.

  ‘Believe that, you’ll believe anything,’ says Gareth. They’ll get lost.’

  ‘No, they won’t. But I think we might as well get started, don’t you?’

  Nick and Fran look at each other.

  ‘Right. I’ll see you in there,’ she says.

  In the living room, Nick and Miranda pick up their scrapers in silence. Barbara’s moods had brought them closer together. Fran’s can’t be mentioned.

  After a while Nick asks, ‘Where’s Gareth?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  He goes to the door. ‘Where’s Gareth?’

  Fran hands Jasper over. ‘I’m on my way.’

  Shouts from upstairs, then Gareth appears, looking shocked. ‘Mum switched my computer off.’

  ‘Don’t worry,’ says Nick. ‘It’s not a life-support machine.’

  Gareth looks at the buckets. ‘Do we have to?’

  ‘Yes,’ says Fran.

  ‘Why can’t we decorate our own rooms?’

  ‘Because we’re a family,’ Nick says. ‘And this is our room.’

  Jasper, arms on the rails of his playpen, nappy sagging between his knees, swigging orange juice from his bottle, looks like a bucolic and disreputable Farmer Giles. Peal after peal of laughter greets the children’s efforts to splash wallpaper remover on to the walls without getting it in their eyes, and when Gareth trips over a bucket and falls headlong Jasper chuckles round the teat till he nearly chokes.

  ‘Oh, very bloody funny,’ Gareth says.

  The wallpaper darkens under their cloths. At first Nick tries to talk, but then, when there’s no response, turns on the radio.

  ‘Christ,’ Gareth says.

  ‘Choose what you want, then.’

  Gareth fiddles with the knobs, producing a blare of sound that makes conversation impossible. They scrape away, the paper coming off inch by painful inch. Half an hour passes, then a further ten minutes.

  ‘Told you they’d get lost,’ Gareth says.

  Jasper’s getting tired. He pulls at his ears, dribbles and wails until eventually Fran picks him up and sniffs his crotch. ‘I think he needs changing.’

  ‘Can we change him for one that doesn’t scream?’ Gareth asks.

  The nappy’s full and pungent. Fran presses her hand hard into the small of her back, as she kneels down.

  ‘You sit down,’ Nick says. ‘I’ll do it.’

  Fran won’t use disposable nappies, because of the rain forests or blue algae or something. Normally Nick’s a dab hand with squares of cotton and Velcro, but tonight he’s tired, and suddenly Jasper seems to have six heels and shit on every single one of them. Not solid either – a paste that spreads relentlessly from bottom to feet to hands to oh my God his mouth.

  Very distinctly, as if giving lessons in elocution, Fran says, ‘Nick, you are without doubt the most completely useless man it has ever been my misfortune to meet.’

  Nick throws down the nappy, and walks off.

  ‘Would you pass the baby wipes, Miranda?’ Fran asks.

  Miranda hands her the box, and in the process gets a closer look at Jasper. ‘Ugh. Oh dear.’ She swallows hard. ‘Would you mind if I sat down?’

  ‘What’s wrong with you?’ Fran asks.

  ‘ “I think I’m going to faint,”’ warbles Gareth.

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘Is it your period?’

  ‘No,’ says Miranda, with an agonized glance at Gareth. ‘I’m just tired. I didn’t sleep very well.’

  ‘She’s afraid of ghosts,’ says Gareth.

  ‘I’m not’

  ‘There aren’t any ghosts,’ says Nick sharply.

  ‘There aren’t any pizzas either.’

  Nick draws a deep breath. ‘I’ll ring.’

  In the hall he stands for a moment, gazing up into the darkness at the top of the stairs. He didn’t like that remark of Gareth’s about Miranda being afraid of ghosts. Gareth’s capable of playing some very cruel games, but there’s nothing he can do about that at the moment. Pizzas, he thinks, and reaches for the phone.

  A brief, acrimonious conversation, then he bangs the phone down and goes back into the living room. ‘Another ten minutes.’

  ‘Ssh,’ says Fran, who’s trying to get Jasper off to sleep.

  Miranda’s picked up her scraper again.

  ‘Sure you’re all right?’ Nick asks.

  ‘Fine.’

  They must have been working in total silence for five minutes when Gareth says, ‘I’ve found a foot.’

  ‘What?’ Nick asks.

  ‘A foot. Drawing of.’

  ‘Can’t be.’ Nick bends down, and scrapes away another inch of paper. ‘Do you know, I think he’s right?’

  ‘Thank you.’

  ‘I wonder if there’s any more?’

  Miranda forgets about feeling ill. Everybody forgets about the pizzas. They angle the lamps more closely and start scraping again, revealing a whole shoe, the draping of cloth across a flexed knee, a hand clasping the arm of a chair.

  Once he’s got an idea of the scale, Nick splashes stripper on to the wall where he thinks the head must be, becoming more excited as he works, for what’s emerging is no stick drawing, no crude approximation of a man, but a strongly individual face. The eyes keenly alert, he seems to lean out of the wall. A glitter of intelligence, almost too keen, rapacious even. Instinctively, Nick looks to the mouth for confirmation, but the walrus moustache, drooping over the upper lip, makes its expression difficult to read. Ruthless, perhaps? At any rate, the impression is one of power.

  ‘Fanshawe,’ Nick says. ‘Has to be.’

  ‘The clothes are right,’ says Fran, coming to stand beside him. ‘I mean, he looks Victoria
n.’

  Just behind Fanshawe’s shoulder is a button belonging to somebody else’s jacket. A toddler’s dimpled fist rests on his left knee.

  ‘It’s a family portrait,’ Nick says slowly.

  The doorbell chimes. Fran goes to answer it and comes back carrying a stack of white cartons. ‘Pizzas.’

  They break off and eat, gazing all the time at the wall. Miranda’s whiter than ever, but when Nick asks if she wants to lie down she simply shakes her head. Fran’s got two distinct spots of colour in her cheeks. Nick can hardly force the food down, though he makes himself eat two slices before he gives up. Gareth goes back to the wall, leaving his pizza uneaten. A second later Miranda follows him.

  ‘I’ll start over there,’ Fran says. ‘I think we should spread out.’

  Wiping sweat from his upper lip, Nick says, ‘Let’s have a window open, shall we? Gareth?’

  They’ve kept the windows closed, in spite of the heat, because there are no curtains. Gareth sees his own white face reflected in the window, surrounded by clouds of pale moths with fat furry bodies fumbling at the glass, trying to get in. As soon as he opens it they flicker past him, and begin dancing round the lamps. One finds its way on to the hot bulb and dies in a sizzle of scorched wings.

  Gradually, the portrait’s revealed. A red-haired woman emerges from under Fran’s scraper, with the sour expression of someone who’s driven a hard bargain and is not contented with the result. Behind her stands a girl with thin ringlets dangling round a frail-looking neck. Huge eyes – her father’s eyes – the underlids so prominent it’s like one of those trick drawings where the face still looks normal upside-down. This effect isn’t, as it would be on most young faces, pathetic, but faintly sinister.

  Behind Fanshawe stands a boy, slightly taller than the girl. Dark eyes, a strained expression that Nick recognizes, yet can’t identify. One hand rests on his father’s shoulder, though only because he’s been told to put it there. His fingertips cringe from the enforced contact. The boy painted this: there’s no way of proving it, but Nick knows. That expression is the inward-directed gaze of the self-portraitist. And my God, what a talent. The faces leap out of the wall.