Make Yourself at Home Read online

  ‘I hear the Nile is beautiful this time of year,’ said Bartholomew, catching Marianne’s eye so he could wink at her.

  The stick man, long and narrow, with watery grey eyes and thinning grey hair, pushed his wire-framed glasses with small round lenses up the bony ridge of his nose and studied the ceiling. He mouthed counting to ten, which, as someone who often had to resort to such measures, Marianne could relate to. ‘Freddy Montgomery,’ he said then, nodding briskly at her. ‘I’m a local businessman so let me know when you’re ready to start job-hunting and I may have some contacts for you.’

  ‘Ha,’ shouted Bartholomew, but Rita put her hand on the shoulder of his suit jacket and he fell silent.

  ‘That won’t be necessary,’ said Marianne. ‘I won’t be staying long.’

  ‘You can stay as long as you like, Marnie,’ said Rita.

  ‘Once I get myself sorted, I’ll be on my way’

  ‘Well,’ said Freddy, ‘all the same, let me know if you need—’

  ‘I won’t need anything,’ Marianne said. She picked up her cases and marched out of the room. She closed the door behind her, stood in the cavernous chill of the hallway. From inside the room, there was silence. They might be whispering. They were probably whispering. She didn’t care. About any of them. She couldn’t even remember their names. She had been tired when she arrived and now she was exhausted. The kind of exhaustion that feels damp and cold. As if Ancaire was already seeping under her skin.

  Chapter 3

  The bedroom hadn’t changed much. Two narrow single beds on opposite sides with matching candlewick bedspreads, the buttery yellow faded now to a porridge grey. Marianne moved automatically to her bed, taking care not to step over the line she had drawn down the middle of the room in indelible marker years before.

  Old habits are the hardest ones to kill.

  The bookshelf at the end of Marianne’s bed housed her collection of Encyclopaedia Britannica. She had asked for one from ‘Santa’ every Christmas, although she couldn’t remember a time when she actually believed. The racket Rita and William used to make, fumbling about the bottom of the beds with the stockings, while Marianne pretended to be asleep.

  The owl posters, at the foot and head of the other bed, were faded by years of daylight, curling at the corners, their eyes fixed on Marianne, as if they were waiting for an answer to a question that she had long forgotten asking.

  Even the curtains were the same. Blue and yellow Paddington Bear ones. The sticker on Paddington’s suitcase: ‘If lost, please return to Darkest Peru.’ For years, Marianne had thought that Darkest Peru was a person. Someone exotic.

  She set down her cases on either side of the door. She had taken no keepsakes from her house but one of the cases contained a small porcelain owl. She had wrapped it in tissue paper, pushed it inside a sock, then a slipper, which she had wrapped in a towel. And an Aran cardigan.

  She hoped that had been enough to protect it from Rita’s unorthodox driving style and the lack of any semblance of suspension in her ancient Jeep.

  Through the bedroom window, the garden. Although it wasn’t so much a garden as a vast field, the end of which dropped suddenly and treacherously to the sea, some fifty metres below. The rooster was now perched on top of a threadbare donkey with inexplicably perky ears. Chickens pecked in the dirt beneath the canopy of a homemade run beside a luxurious-looking coop. At the far end of the field was Patrick’s apartment, with his workshop below, the double doors flung open as usual, as if it wasn’t winter and he wasn’t teetering on the edge of a sodden, wind-swept cliff. In front of the workshop was his kitchen garden, infuriatingly neat and robust, around which a long-horned goat performed jerky little jumps that seemed involuntary, like a nervous tic.

  Beyond the garden, it was difficult to tell where the sea ended and the sky – leaden and low – began. When people found out where Marianne grew up, they always seemed delighted about the proximity of the sea, the prospect of living on a bluff, which must seem, they felt, like being marooned on your very own island.

  Marooned was an apt word, Marianne thought.

  No matter how precarious the purchase of the house to the edge of the bluff looked, it clung on. It was a bit like Rita, Marianne thought. Indestructible. It had been built by an American – a pork belly trader called Ron Stark – in the spring of 1930 for the love of his life, Julia. Ron had fancied himself the romantic type, and a brooding house flanked by nothing but raging water and hard rock and rich earth and huge sky might have seemed in keeping with this notion of himself.

  A year later, he had boarded up the house and fled back to Vermont. He did not put it up for sale, so certain was he that no one in their right minds would purchase such a monstrosity.

  He was wrong.

  That summer, the summer of 1931, Rita’s parents bought the house. They had made an accidental fortune by writing and illustrating a series of ‘How to …’ books. Their subjects were random – How to Sketch Toes and Other Peripherals, How to Comfortably Live Beyond Your Means, How to Sleep, Perchance To Dream – but what made the books sell like hot cakes were Archibald and Ruby themselves. While they wrote and drew pictures relating to, for example, edible seaweed, they also – wittingly or otherwise – revealed themselves to their readers, who couldn’t get enough of them.

  Their most popular edition was entitled How to Raise a Good Girl, written during the first few tender months of Rita’s life. In later years, they had to concede – privately, at least – that their only child could not be relied on to prove the thesis of their book.

  Some of the books were still in print although their continued success was mostly down to an ironic sense of nostalgia. Still, the modest book sales were enough to sustain Rita in her current incarnation, the material demands of which, Marianne had to concede, were minimal. This dribble of income was also the reason why Rita – an artist – could refuse to sell any of her paintings on the grounds that her work would be contaminated and compromised by such a gross act of commercialism. As would she.

  Marianne sat on the edge of the bed and thought about unpacking. And she should probably have a shower. Change her clothes. Had she brushed her teeth this morning? She must have. She couldn’t remember. There was a sour taste in her mouth. She should brush her teeth. Drink some water. Instead, she allowed her body to sag sideways until her head was on the pillow, then she pulled her legs onto the bed. She was too tired to unlace her runners so she let them hang over the edge.

  She shouldn’t be tired. She hadn’t done anything today. Or any other day. Only sit and wait for the axe to fall, which it had been doing, bit by bit, since Brian left her twelve months ago.

  Sometimes, she still couldn’t believe it. How thoroughly everything had fallen apart in the end. How quickly. They’d mapped everything out, her and Brian. Their lives. Just the two of them. That would be enough. For both of them. That’s what they’d agreed. Marianne had even worked out when they would die. Not in a morbid sense. More of an actuarial equation that provided an estimate – loose, granted – based on variables such as diet, exercise, environment, genetics, etc., notwithstanding external factors such as an apocalyptic event or something more ordinary but none the less catastrophic, such as a road traffic accident or being mauled to death by a pit bull.

  Even when Brian left, Marianne had managed. She had managed to keep the house on Carling Road. It seemed imperative to keep the house. She used all her savings, buying Brian’s share. It hadn’t been enough so she’d remortgaged. Which was tight but manageable, with her salary. She was sure she would have kept on managing if she hadn’t been caught shoplifting. She hadn’t planned on doing it that day. She thought it had something to do with Brian’s news. About Helen. Expecting the babies. The twins.

  And then the shoplifting. She had done it almost without noticing. But the security guard had noticed.

  ‘It’s just … it looks bad,’ Marianne’s boss had said, after she was convicted. ‘I mean, if you’d done somet
hing else, like, I don’t know, stalking or something, it wouldn’t look so bad. You know? But an accountant who steals. It’s too hard a sell, Marianne. For our clients. I hope you understand?’

  ‘Of course I understand,’ snapped Marianne.

  No salary. No savings. It was only a matter of time before the bank started asking questions. At first, they wrote to her. Polite but firm letters, which Marianne ignored. Then the phone calls, which she didn’t answer, her voicemail box crammed with messages she didn’t listen to. She just sat in her house and waited for the axe to fall.

  She felt there should be some sense of relief, now that it had finally fallen. She had imagined that waiting for the worst to happen might be the worst bit.

  But now that the worst had happened, she realised – too late – that the waiting hadn’t been that bad. With hindsight, the waiting had been almost pleasant. Because she had waited in the comfort of her own house.

  Her home.

  She must have dozed off because the dinner gong, when it sounded, caused Marianne to jerk awake and bite her tongue, the sharp pain of which brought her back to the present moment, which in turn brought her back to the realisation that the worst had happened.

  Rita stood at the door of the dining room, pounding on the lid of a biscuit tin with a wooden spoon. Her sunglasses were perched on top of her turban, which was bright pink now. She had changed for dinner, Marianne noticed, and was wearing a ballet-length emerald-green satin dress, with a sweetheart bodice, out of which her breasts spilled, like they were jostling for position. Marianne felt cold just looking at her.

  ‘There you are, Marnie,’ Rita shouted over the noise, beaming.

  ‘Can you stop banging that thing?’ said Marianne.

  ‘What did you say, darling?’

  ‘Can you stop it!’ Marianne raised her voice just as Rita stopped whacking the tin.

  ‘There’s no need to shout,’ said Rita. She set the tin on top of a stack of self-help books on the hall table and tossed the wooden spoon inside it. ‘Now come along, everyone’s waiting for you.’

  ‘Everyone?’ Marianne’s gut twisted at the word. Even before Brian left her, they had eaten their dinner on trays balanced on their knees while watching the news. Or Nationwide, during tax return season, when they sometimes had to work later than usual. They had never formally introduced a conversation embargo during mealtimes. There had been no need.

  The dining room was still the draughtiest room in the house. This was largely due to the enormity of the tiled fireplace, out of which gushed the wind, freshly arrived from the Arctic, it seemed. It was a big room and had been elegant in its day with its high ceiling framed by an ornate margin of coving, a wide bay window across which the heavy, velvet curtains had been pulled, and the chandelier still lording it over the table, albeit grimier than Marianne remembered and missing some crystal pendants.

  ‘You finally decided to grace us with your presence.’ Aunt Pearl’s tone was as pointed as the collar of her blouse. Marianne didn’t have to look to know that she was wearing a tweed A-line skirt, thick flesh-coloured tights and sturdy brown leather lace-ups. She had been wearing only very slight variations on that outfit for as long as Marianne could remember and, when she walked, she emitted a strong smell of camphor.

  ‘Now sit down so we can eat.’ Despite the thin quality of Pearl’s voice, it had a remarkable capacity for disapproval. Even when she was just asking someone to pass the milk jug down the table. Marianne thought it had something to do with her mouth; the set, bloodless line of it.

  Pearl was a collection of rigid bones that poked through the pale blue film of her skin. Her hair, coarse and grey, was restrained in its usual bun at the nape of her neck. Six-year-old Marianne had asked her, one Halloween, if she was a witch and Aunt Pearl had never forgiven her for it.

  ‘Hello, Aunt Pearl,’ Marianne said. ‘It’s … nice to see you.’

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous, Marianne,’ snapped Aunt Pearl. ‘Nobody thinks it is nice to see me. Why on earth would they? Yet here I am, all the same. Now, can we please eat?’ She glared at Rita, who beamed as if Pearl had complimented her dress.

  ‘Certainly,’ Rita said, moving towards the door. ‘I’ll serve up now.’ She disappeared out of the room, towards the kitchen.

  ‘Hello, Marianne.’ She looked around and there was Patrick, standing and pulling a chair out for her before resuming his place beside Aunt Pearl, his bulky frame making the old woman seem even frailer. ‘It’s nice to see you,’ he said.

  Pearl glared at him, then at Marianne as if perhaps she had missed something on her initial inspection. She shook her head, then busied herself with her serviette, tucking it into the high-collared neckline of her blouse.

  ‘Hello, Patrick,’ said Marianne, sitting down. She reached for the jug of water but Patrick was already lifting it, filling her glass. Typical. He reminded Marianne of a pit bull terrier, bald and stocky, hard lengths of muscle barely contained beneath his Metallica T-shirt. Along his arms and up his neck were tattoos of animals – snakes, leopards and sharks mostly. When he spoke – which he did as seldom as possible – his voice was so soft and faint, people strained to hear him.

  Marianne met Patrick when she returned from boarding school at mid-term break. She shrugged as she always did when her mother introduced her to the children she fostered. Perhaps because she associated them with her mother’s sobriety, which seemed to Marianne, back then, fragile and transient.

  Patrick was one of those kids who had been in many foster homes, always for brief periods before being returned, like faulty goods, to State care. There were reasons, of course. There are always reasons. An addict mother, who overdosed when Patrick was seven. A drug-dealing father, who got sent to prison when Patrick was nine.

  Patrick’s social worker whispered to Rita that he was convinced the boy was a psychopath. Or a sociopath. ‘Which is the one who’s not charming?’ he wondered.

  Rita ignored him.

  Marianne didn’t see Patrick until the third day of that long mid-term, when she had completed the holiday work her teachers had set for her and was mooching about, trying simultaneously to avoid Rita and find something of interest to engage her. Instead she found Patrick, small and scrawny back then, straddling the branch of an oak tree with a slingshot and a collection of vicious stones, his eyes trained on a bird’s nest perched at the end of a slender branch above his head.

  ‘Don’t you dare,’ Marianne hissed up at him. Patrick shifted his position and stared at her. He picked up one of the stones and slotted it into the elastic band, which he pulled taut, aiming it right between her eyes. Marianne didn’t flinch. She glared at him with her hands on her hips. It was Rita, in the end, who saved them. Inadvertently, of course.

  She rang the gong for lunch. That was also new. The gong. And regular mealtimes. The worst of it was Rita’s newfound penchant for cooking. Which wouldn’t have been so bad if she wasn’t so awful at it that first year. Everything was either soggy or hard as nails. There was no middle ground. Not with Rita.

  Now, twenty-five years later, Patrick was still here, still hanging on to Rita’s every word, grateful as a pound puppy who finds his ‘forever home’.

  And Rita encouraging him. Telling him all her secrets. Seeking his counsel on every tiny thought that passed through her head.

  It drove Marianne crazy, the way the two of them went on. Like one couldn’t do without the other.

  Rita pushed a silver trolley on sputtering wheels into the dining room. ‘Everybody hungry?’ she said as she wafted her way around the table, taking the long way and unleashing her scent as she went. A cloying mix of figs and roses, Marianne thought, burying her nose in her napkin. Patrick lifted the heavy silver soup tureen from the trolley onto the table.

  ‘Thank you, my boy,’ said Rita, patting his arm. She lifted the lid of the tureen. The smell was immediate and delicious, in spite of its alarmingly bright green colour. ‘Garden peas and mint soup,’ Rita said by
way of explanation, when she clocked the distrust on Marianne’s face. She dished up and sat down.

  ‘Eat up, everyone,’ she said, sitting down. ‘It’ll get cold.’

  For a few moments, nobody spoke, not even Rita. The silence wasn’t awkward as such. And even if it was, Marianne was disinclined to do anything about it, given how much energy she was expending simply by sitting upright on a chair in a room with people other than herself in it.

  There was just the scrape of spoons against bowls, the pat-pat-pat of Pearl’s napkin against her mouth, the rattle of Rita’s bangles as she reached for a slice of rye bread. Even Patrick’s silence made a sound, a low thrumming, like a generator.

  Marianne mostly stirred the soup round the bowl with her spoon, dipped pieces of bread into it and watched as the soup stained it green.

  After a while, Rita put down her spoon and raised her glass of water and beamed at Marianne. ‘I would just like to say …’ she began.

  ‘Please don’t make a speech,’ said Marianne.

  ‘I’m not making a speech,’ said Rita. ‘I merely want to say welcome home.’

  Marianne could feel something twist in her gut at the word. Home.

  ‘And I also …’ Rita went on.

  ‘I thought you weren’t going to make a speech?’ said Aunt Pearl.

  ‘Okay, fine,’ sighed Rita, lowering her glass.

  Patrick lifted his. ‘Welcome home, Marianne,’ he said with a small smile.

  Marianne focused on the table. It was a monstrous slab of mahogany, as pockmarked as her teenage acne-riddled face had been. Rita had softened its imperfections by lighting long, slender candles down the middle of it, their flames swaying in the draught, casting yellow light in shaky circles.

  ‘Those things are a fire hazard,’ said Aunt Pearl, nodding at the candles and wrapping her shawl tighter around her thin frame. ‘I’m a stickler for health and safety but your mother takes no notice.’ She shook her head and Marianne fancied she could hear the bones in her neck chafing against each other. The list of things that Aunt Pearl was a stickler for would fill one of Marianne’s encyclopaedias but Marianne didn’t say that. She didn’t say anything.