The House on Fortune Street (14 page)

rian England his behavior did not pass without remark. He was always aware that what he most loved could be taken away. His book Pillow Problems was designed to ward off impious thoughts before sleep. No wonder he wanted to fall down a rabbit hole into a world where the natural laws were suspended and a ten-year-old girl could be ten for-ever. In his late forties, he stopped taking photographs, claiming to be too busy. His will requested that all his nude photographs be returned to the sitters or destroyed. Four survive.

week or two after the memorable bath, Fiona came home from the drama club and reported how grateful Iris was for my taking an interest in Ingrid. “She says it’s so good for Ingrid to have a

positive father figure.”

I had finally got the girls off to bed half an hour earlier and was sitting in the living room, reading the newspaper. Now somehow the paper was on the floor and I was sitting tensely upright. “A father figure?”

“Also known,” said Fiona, sinking onto the sofa, “as a man who isn’t a complete wanker. You know how Iris talks.”

Iris’s commitment to counseling and self-help books was a joke between us, though recently I’d noticed that Fiona had begun to refer to Dara’s self-esteem, Fergus’s Oedipal phase. I realized from her raised eyebrows that I’d overreacted. “How was drama?” I said as I picked up the newspaper. “I didn’t mean to sound so startled. I still have trouble thinking of myself as a father, let alone a father figure. My parents were always so certain about everything. Whereas I feel like I’m just bum-bling along.”

“So do I.” Fiona smiled. “Hopefully it makes us better parents that we let our children see that we’re not perfect.”

“More fun,” I suggested.

“Definitely more fun.” She described that night’s rehearsal of The Wind in the Willows. The boy who played Toad had fallen into the washtub and provoked much hilarity. Dara had taken a turn at being Rattie. “I thought she wouldn’t like being the center of attention but she loved it. She’s blossomed these last few months.”

“And Ingrid?”

“She was the front of the motorcar that nearly runs over Toad and one of the weasels. The director was asking for someone to photograph the dress rehearsal. I volunteered you.”

“If we can find someone to watch Fergus,” I said.

arol agreed to babysit during the dress rehearsal, and

I took my camera and tripod down to the church hall. I had not done this kind of photography before and I enjoyed the challenge of trying to anticipate the movements of a group, catching the children at felicitous moments. Ingrid was an excellent weasel and Dara was an eager water rat. The following night I happily joined in the standing ovation. Everyone came back to our house, and the girls, still wearing their makeup, pranced around, giggling.

Only a week later they quarreled. Ingrid had copied one of Dara’s drawings, and the unwitting teacher had praised it more than she praised Dara’s. But what really vexed Dara was that Ingrid had lied. “She told Miss Hunt it was all her own work,” she said, blinking in the way she did when she was upset; my mother had used to do the same thing. For four interminable days we didn’t see Ingrid. By the third day my lungs ached as if I had inhaled one of the chemicals I was testing at the laboratory; I could barely lift a book. I told Fiona that I thought I was coming down with something, and on Friday she insisted that I stay at home. One of us had to be back by noon anyway

because school finished at lunchtime. Fergus was going to play with his friend Paul.

After everyone had left and the house was quiet, I lay in bed trying to think what I would do if the two girls continued to be estranged. I did not want much from Ingrid—just more chances to watch her, more conversations about how electricity gets into houses or why cuckoos use the nests of other birds—but if she and Dara weren’t friends, how was I to spend five minutes in her company? The prospect of living so close and seeing her so seldom was unbearable. Could I tutor her in maths? Or teach her to swim? Everything I could think of seemed like a red flag signaling my acute need, the opposite of Dodgson’s cool white stone. I turned off the light and closed my eyes.

I woke to the sound of voices, not one but two, high-pitched, girlish voices. I was still listening intently when there came a soft knock at my door.

“Daddy?”

“Come in.” I pulled myself into a sitting position and turned on the light. Dara stood beside my bed in her school uniform, her hair pulled back into absurd bunches. “How are you feeling?” she said. “Can I take your

temperature? Would you like a cup of tea?”

“I’d like some orange juice,” I said. “Who were you talking to downstairs?”

“Ingrid. If you’re feeling better, Daddy, would you mind coming downstairs so we can make grilled cheese sandwiches?”

I was already half out of bed. “I’ll be down in five minutes,” I said. In the bathroom I checked to make sure that I didn’t look too unkempt. There was no time to shave but I splashed water on my face, combed my hair, and brushed my teeth. Back in the bedroom I flung open the curtains and put on clean clothes.

Downstairs Dara was searching the fridge. Beside her stood a familiar figure. “Are you feeling better, Cameron?” said Ingrid.

“Much,” I said. “I just needed a lie-in. How are you?”

“Fine. We got to use the trampoline in gym. I almost did a somer-sault. So did Dara.”

“Do you want a grilled cheese sandwich?” said Dara.

I’m sure our lunch was quite ordinary, but in my memory it stands out as a meal fit for kings: the tomato perfectly sliced, the cheese stretching right to the edge of the bread and lightly freckled, the glasses of orange squash perfectly mixed. The two girls regaled me with the details of their morning. Could Ingrid’s hair have grown in four days? She told us that her sister, Carol, had a new boyfriend who walked like a cowboy; she and Dara both tried to imitate this and collapsed in laughter.“Mum doesn’t like him,” Ingrid added, “because he’s so much older.”

“How much?” I asked.

“Three years,” said Ingrid, and the girls collapsed again.

After lunch the three of us went to the garden center and bought bedding plants. Dara chose pansies and petunias and lobelias; Ingrid preferred impatiens and geraniums and marigolds. We spent the afternoon planting them, first at our house, then at Ingrid’s. We were kneeling in their front garden when Iris came home.

“What a great job you’ve done,” she said. “This is lovely.” “Hi, Mum,” said Ingrid. “Do we have a watering can?” “I’ll fetch it. Would you like some tea?”

It was when she brought the mugs of tea out to the garden that Iris suggested we go camping together at half-term.

few weeks later Davy paid one of his periodic visits. His

mother had broken her ankle at Christmas and he and his sister were trying, yet again, to persuade their parents to sell the farm and move to a sensible bungalow in town. Fiona, whose parents lived out-

side a small village in Lancashire, was having similar conversations. Over supper she and Davy discussed their difficulties.

“They’re in total denial,” Davy said. “When I ask what will happen the next time one of them falls, they say they’ll cross that bridge when they come to it.”

“My parents are the same,” said Fiona. “There’s very nice sheltered housing in the next town, but it has a huge waiting list and they won’t even put their names down.”

“At least you have parents to worry about,” I said. “You have your mother,” said Davy. “How is she?”

“If you saw her, you’d know that I don’t have her. She hasn’t just lost her memory; she’s turned into a different person. She makes spiteful remarks about the nurses and sometimes—I can’t tell you how weird this is—she tells dirty jokes.”

“My theory,” said Fiona, “is that’s she’s always been this way. Now she’s lost her inner censor and it’s all out in the open.”

As she spoke, the tendons in her neck grew taut. I got up to clear the table. Even after several years I found Fiona’s hardheartedness about my mother upsetting. Davy, with his usual tact, began to talk about her teaching: had she enjoyed her most recent placement? Presently she went off to bed, leaving the two of us alone with our nightcaps. I asked after Robert.

Davy had been living with Robert for nearly five years, but last spring he had started an affair with a French boy. Everything had gone swimmingly until Robert, coming home early from a business trip, had caught them in flagrante. During the explosive row that followed Davy had promised to give up Jean-Paul. Now he confessed that he was seeing him again. “I didn’t mean to. He came into the shop, we went for coffee and . . .” He spread his hands, smiling, inviting me to imagine the details.

“So what are you going to do?”

His smile vanished. “I have no idea. Every day I swear I’m going to give him up, and then I think I’ll just see him one more time. It’s mad-ness.”

“Maybe you want Robert to catch you again?”

“No. I want to grow old with Robert but unfortunately that doesn’t seem to stop me from wanting Jean-Paul.” His Adam’s apple bobbed.“I wish I understood why I keep doing this. Maybe it’s because our childhoods were so repressed.”

“So can you keep it secret? Can you balance the two in a way that makes you happy rather than insane?” I leaned forward, waiting for Davy’s answer.

“If Robert hadn’t caught us, perhaps. But he’s on his guard. Any slip-ups and—” He drew his hand across his throat. “You sound as if you know what I’m talking about.”

I invoked a shadowy woman at work. “The children keep me on the straight and narrow,” I said. Beguiled by the intimacy of the hour, I was thinking that our situations were not really so different when Davy remarked that what he’d like was to be able to be open with Robert. That he could even voice the fantasy reminded me, abruptly, of how alone I was. I stretched and yawned and said it was time for bed. Following my example, Davy rose to his feet.

In the hall he paused beside my photographs. “Who’s this?”

He was pointing to one of my favorites: Ingrid and Dara had been roller-skating in the street and I had caught Ingrid gliding along, arms outstretched. “Ingrid,” I said. “She lives three doors down. I like this one too,” I added, drawing his attention to a photograph of Ingrid alone. She was sitting on the lawn making a daisy chain. “You can’t see in this photograph but she has the most beautiful—” I was about to say “shoulders” when Davy’s curious glance stopped me. “She and Dara,” I went on, “remind me of us when we were young. The way they can spend hours together, doing homework and messing around.”

“That’s nice for Dara. I worry sometimes that she’s like me, more sensitive than she looks. For some reason people tend to think you only have feelings if you’re thin. Everyone assumes a certain level of stoicism for the well-built.”

In bed that night, lying beside the sleeping Fiona, I wished I had one of Dodgson’s pillow problems to distract me. For a few seconds I had almost confided, and for another few seconds Davy had almost guessed at, my inner life, perhaps not its exact nature but that I had something to hide. I wondered if I should follow Iris’s example and find a therapist, but I could not imagine voicing my feelings to a professional any more than to my mother. Unspoken they were lovely, pure; spoken who knew what form they might take.

he plan was for us all to go camping during the school

half-term in late May. Iris knew a place on the Fife coast, a little over an hour away and right by the sea. Fiona arranged to borrow a couple of tents from friends and we started to amass the necessary equipment. The children were excited and we invited Fergus’s friend Paul to join us. I wasn’t keen on having an extra child to take care of, but Fiona suggested that we offer to pay Carol to babysit. She had just lost her part-time job, and the bandy-legged boyfriend, after one outing to the cinema, had disappeared.

The campsite turned out to be a grassy field bounded on three sides by hawthorn hedges and on the fourth, beside the shore, a line of rushes. To the west was a small wood; the battlements of a castle were visible above the trees. The farmer charged a pound a night per tent for which he provided a toilet, a shower, an outside tap, and a dustbin. Rough camping, Iris called it. When we arrived at lunchtime the only other occupant of the site was a small blue tent pitched in the shelter of

the hedge. With much hilarity we set up our encampment right behind the rushes: a tent for Dara and Ingrid, one for Iris and Carol, and the largest one, big enough to stand up in, for Fergus, Paul, Fiona, and me. As we made the sleeping arrangements, it dawned on me that I was the sole adult male in this company of women.

After lunch we went down to the beach: a broad swath of sand between two headlands. Occasional outcroppings of rock provided shelter and interesting pools. Between the brackish line of seaweed that marked high tide and the slowly receding water we set up a game of rounders. I volunteered to bowl. Lionel had taught me years ago, and, after a shaky start, my skills returned. Dara hit the ball almost into the water and scored a rounder. Fergus and Paul both missed and ran anyway. When it was Carol’s turn she bent over, holding the bat quite professionally, but swung clumsily. The ball hit her thigh.

“Cameron,” she cried, “that’s much too hard.” She pretended to limp to first base.

“Poor Carol,” said Dara.

While we were playing the sun came out. Ingrid and Dara insisted on putting on their bathing suits and splashing around in the small waves. Fiona, Iris, and Carol lay on a blanket, reading their books. The boys and I made a sandcastle. I had been to the beach only once or twice as a child and I was soon absorbed in digging the moat, sculpting the turrets. We decorated the ramparts with shells and seaweed and a few gull feathers. The boys were fetching water to fill the moat when Carol came over. I had always thought her rather plain compared to Ingrid, but as she knelt beside me, with her flushed cheeks and bright eyes, I saw how pretty she could be.

“I used to build castles with my dad,” she said. “I like the shells.” “That was Fergus’s idea. We should have brought some smaller buck-

ets to make another row of towers.” I gestured at the turrets. “Are the girls still swimming?”