Banishing Verona Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Zeke

  1

  2

  3

  4

  FINDING THE NON-NIECE

  5

  6

  Verona

  7

  8

  9

  Zeke

  10

  11

  12

  13

  Verona

  14

  15

  16

  17

  18

  Zeke

  19

  20

  21

  22

  Verona

  23

  Zeke

  24

  25

  26

  Verona

  27

  28

  Zeke Verona

  29

  Also by Margot Livesey

  Additional Acclaim for Banishing Verona

  Acknowledgments

  Copyright Page

  For Susan Brison

  Zeke

  1

  He had replaced five lightbulbs that day and by late afternoon could not help anticipating the soft ping of the filament flying apart whenever he reached for a switch. The third time, the fixture in the hall, the thought zigzagged across his mind that these little explosions were a sign, like the two dogs he had come across in the autumn, greyhound and bulldog, locked together on the grassy slope of the local park. He had given them a wide berth; still, he had felt responsible when on the bus next day a man turned puce and fell to the floor. By the fifth bulb, though, he had relinquished superstition and was blaming London Electricity. Some irregularity in the current, some unexpected surge, was slaughtering the bulbs. He pictured a man at head office filling his idle minutes by pulling a lever. Meanwhile, hour by hour he emptied the upstairs rooms, slipping the bulbs from bedside lights and desk lamps.

  He had just replaced the fifth bulb when the doorbell rang. Often, if he were up a ladder, Zeke didn’t bother to answer the knocks and rings of late afternoon; the owners of the house, the Barrows, were away and the callers were never for him. But now the pallor of the sky, the flashes of light and dark, the weariness of working alone, all conspired to make even the prospect of rebuffing a smartly dressed double-glazing salesman, or a disheveled collector for Oxfam, a pleasure. Last Friday, in a similar mood, he had found a boy on the doorstep, thin as a junkie, pretending to be blind. He had the dark glasses, the cane, the fluttery stuff with the hands. You’re a painter, he had said, sniffing slightly. Zeke had given him fifty pence. Later he had looked out of the window and seen the boy sitting on a wall, reading a newspaper.

  He set aside the wallpaper steamer and went to open the front door. On the doorstep a woman, minus collecting tin or clipboard, filled his vision. He hadn’t replaced the hall bulb yet, and in the dim light her features took a moment to assemble. He made out abrupt dark eyebrows above a substantial nose and plump, glistening lips—the opposite of pretty.

  Briefly, Zeke was baffled. Then he went through the steps he’d learned from the poster he’d been given at the clinic. Eyes wide, a glimpse of teeth, corners of the mouth turning up rather than down—usually these indicated a smile, which could, he knew, mean anger but often meant the opposite. Yes, she was smiling, although not necessarily for him. Her expression had clearly been prepared in advance, but he admired the way she held her face steady at the sight of him, and of his work clothes. His jeans and shirt were so paint-spattered as to be almost a separate entity.

  “Good afternoon.” She stretched out a hand and, seeing his, white with plaster, faltered, neither withdrawing nor completing the gesture.

  “Hi,” he said, hating the single stupid syllable. She was tall for a woman, his height save for the step, and dimly familiar, though not as herself. As she began to speak, he realized who she reminded him of: the bust of Beethoven on his father’s piano, something about the expansiveness of her features, the way her tawny hair sprang back from her forehead.

  “I’m the Barrows’ niece,” she said.

  In the cold air her breath streamed toward him, feathery plumes, carrying more words, perhaps an entire sentence, which Zeke lost as he took in the little beads of moisture on her upper lip. When her mouth stopped moving he said, “I’m Zeke, the painter. The Barrows are away.”

  “But they told you I was coming,” she said, with no hint of a question. He was still wondering—had they or hadn’t they?—when she stooped, and he saw that she was not alone. Before he could offer to help she swept past him, a suitcase in each hand. He turned from closing the door to find she had set the cases at the foot of the stairs and was standing in the doorway, surveying the living room. Under the influence of her attention, Zeke saw again what his work had revealed: the ragged plaster painted not a single color but in pale bands of blue and brown, gray and yellow, the work of some artist he couldn’t name. In the middle of the floor, like an ungainly prehistoric animal, squatted the furniture, piled up and draped in dust sheets.

  “Cool,” she said. “You could do a mural, hunting and fishing, golfing and shopping.”

  “I don’t think your aunt and uncle—” Then he caught himself: humor. That had always been tricky for him. Even a question about a hen crossing the road could make him pause. “I told them it was a big job. You never know what you’ll find underneath the paper. And Emmanuel, the guy who helps me, did his back in.”

  “How?” she said.

  “What?”

  “How”—she patted the small of her own back—“did he hurt his back?”

  “Reaching for a corner, he claims. Snooker, not painting.” In the bare space their voices emerged as if they were on a stage. Hers was unusually deep, warm, and melodious. It made him think of the chiming of his favorite clock. As for his, Zeke wasn’t sure. He had read that humans hear their own voices through the jaw rather than the air; every time a tooth is lost or filled, the timbre changes.

  “When are my aunt and uncle due back?”

  “This Saturday, they told me.”

  She moved her head up and down and finally took off her coat. He had noticed earlier, returning from even a quick trip to the corner shop, how the emptiness of the room made it seem as if the cold had followed him indoors; in fact, the heating was on full blast (not his bill), and the house was snug as a tea cozy. She retreated to sling her coat over the banister and advanced into the room in the same greedy way she’d entered the house, her dark-green dress swaying as she walked. In the bay she turned, and he saw, silhouetted against the window, her belly.

  “Don’t,” she said, “let me interrupt your work.”

  A sentence appeared in Zeke’s head: I’d like to tie you to the bed. How did that get there, inside his brain, about this woman? He had never done, or even considered doing, such a thing. “I won’t,” he said.

  He was no longer certain she was ugly, only that he wanted to keep looking to make sure. But in the empty room he did not dare. This must be why people had furniture, not just for comfort but, like clothing, for camouflage. While he stood rooted beside his worktable, puzzling over these aberrant thoughts, she wandered from one spot to the next, talking about the time she had painted her room.

  “I was fifteen,” she said, circling the fireplace, “when my parents agreed to let me do it. First I wrote on the wall the names of everyone I wanted to get rid of—mother, father, brother, the boy at school who didn’t like me—then I slapped on the paint, unfortunately deep purple.”

  “Did it work?” he asked, imagining all the things he could write.

  Her head, her eyes, swung toward him and he had the sense of being seen at last. “Well, it worked for the boy at school, but not”—her eyebr
ows dashed together—“for my brother.”

  She walked over to examine the little tower of empty takeaway containers he had made, precariously balanced beside his worktable. Was he collecting them, she asked and, without waiting for an answer, launched into another story. Years ago, when she’d been hitchhiking outside Oxford, a man who sold these containers had picked her up. “I remember it started to pour. The windscreen wipers were going full tilt and suddenly he said do you ever think of killing yourself? His voice was so casual, I thought I’d misunderstood.”

  Zeke’s skin prickled.

  “Then he asked if I’d read Steppenwolf. I said yes, though to be honest I wasn’t sure. It’s one of those books that for a while was in the ether. I looked over at this stout middle-aged man, and his eyes were full of tears. I think of it every day, he said. There’s always the razor and the knife.”

  Was she trying to tell him she was upset, he wondered. If so, he needed to confess that he was no good at metaphors and subtexts and other people’s problems. But already she was examining a roll of lining paper and asking its purpose. He explained about the old houses of London, how the walls were held up by wood-chip paper. When you removed it, which he’d spent the last three days doing, the only way to get a smooth finish was to put on new paper and paint over that.

  “Let me make some tea,” he concluded, backing out of the room. In the kitchen, he hovered beside the dormant kettle and, to his own stupefaction, imagined telling her the story of his breakdown. Surely she would listen to him like she had the container salesman. Don’t, he admonished. You only met her fifteen minutes ago. Even people he had known for years tended to back away when he mentioned his difficulties. As the kettle rumbled to a boil he heard a thud from the hall, followed by another. Her stockinged feet appeared in the doorway, and he understood not only the noises he’d just heard but those that came most nights through his bedroom ceiling: one shoe, two shoe.

  “Which side are you on?” he said, offering a mug of tea.

  “Roundheads or cavaliers? Arsenal or Chelsea? Flat earth or solar system?”

  “Mr. or Mrs. Barrow. Whose niece are you?”

  “Mister’s, can’t you tell?” She turned and, heels striking the floor, carried her tea upstairs.

  Alone with his own tea, Zeke thought, I am profoundly boring. He searched high and low in the rooms of his brain, checking the long front hall, the living room, the dining room, the narrow stairs, and couldn’t find a trace of disagreement.

  Normally he quit at five, but today he kept pressing spackle into even the smallest cracks until close to six-thirty. Then, in the face of an unbroken silence from above, he admitted defeat. He tidied his tools, washed his hands, and called the news of his departure, wanly, up the stairs.

  “Wait.” There she was on the landing. “Are you coming tomorrow? When?”

  Her tawny hair was sticking up like a cockatoo’s crest. “I aim for eight,” he told her. “Not to worry. I can let myself in.”

  “I need keys.” She swam down the stairs into the light, stopping on the last one, hand outstretched. He should have guessed then from the way her hazel eyes fastened on his that something was awry, either she wasn’t on good terms with her aunt and uncle or Ms. F—weren’t all fetuses female at first?—was a problematic guest, but the warmth of her breath, the lilt of her perfume, expunged rational thought. Helpless, he laid the keys in her palm.

  “Will you be up to let me in?” he said. One cheek, her left, bore the crease of a pillow.

  “Up with the lark, up with the milkman.”

  “Are you all right?” he found himself asking.

  “Probably,” she said. And then—surely all the buses of London rose an inch into the air—she leaned forward and pressed her lips, gently, to his.

  The next morning Zeke rang the bell, knocked, tried the knob. The door stayed shut, the windows dark. Feeling like a dolt, he even bent down and called through the letter box. By the end of five minutes, he was holding on to himself, a kite on a gusty day. He fished around in his pockets, his bag, and was rewarded with a vision of his mobile phone in the pocket of his other jacket. As he walked around the corner, he counted the cigarette butts in the gutter—some crushed, some not—to keep himself from floating away. Seven, eight, eleven. Twice he had to stop and retrace his steps to make sure he hadn’t missed one. Look down, he thought, not up. In the forecourt of the underground station, he saw a free phone and, trying not to think of all the hands, the mouths, that had passed this way, dialed the Barrows’ number. The answering machine clicked on with a brief nasal message. She’s stepped out for a paper, he told himself; she’s taking a bath. Walking back, he forgot about the cigarettes and placed his feet securely in the middle of each paving stone.

  At the house, nothing had changed. He knocked, rang, shouted again, before climbing in through the living room window. He had opened it the day before while using the steamer and, in the excitement of her arrival, neglected his usual security measures. Now the ease with which the sash slid up made him feel stricken. He had left her at the mercy of any passing vandal.

  Inside he began to tiptoe toward the hall; then, reconsidering, attempted his normal stride. “Hello. Anyone home?”

  He switched things on: kettle, radio, lights. Even the man at London Electricity had forgotten him. Everything worked perfectly. He made the obligatory cup of tea and set to work, but after ten minutes of sanding he couldn’t stand it. The awful possibility—she was gone—leaped into his head and ricocheted around. He laid the sandpaper aside and, wiping his powdery hands on his jeans, climbed the stairs.

  He had reconnoitered the first day he had the house to himself, as he always did, flitting through bedrooms, checking wardrobes and cupboards and the dark spaces beneath desks and tables. He wasn’t snooping for kinky underwear or exotic substances but rather—it was the way he coped with strange houses—looking for a hiding place. Sometimes, when he felt particularly shaky, he even stored provisions there: a bottle of water, a packet of biscuits. Here at the Barrows’, he’d chosen the pedestal desk in the study. With his knees drawn up, the wooden U was an almost perfect fit. Now he moved from one lightbulbless room to another. In the master bedroom the tattered floral wallpaper made his teeth ache. Then the study, his hiding place, surrounded by machines: computer, printer, fax, even a photocopier. Last, the spare room, distinguished by the boxes stacked along the wall and the miscellaneous furniture.

  Had he ever been so glad to see a suitcase? The larger of the two lay open at the foot of the bed, revealing a tumble of garments, red, purple, white, blue; the smaller, still closed, stood by the window with a red sticker proclaiming FRAGILE. Neither, unfortunately, had a label with her name. He stepped over to the bed and knelt to bury his face in the pillow. Here she was, and here.

  The scrape of a door hurled him to his feet. The last thing he wanted was to be caught mooning over a pillow. “Hello,” he called, starting down the stairs.

  She was in the hall, her cheeks glowing, her hair darker than the day before, bearing the marks of a comb. “I went to get us fried-egg sandwiches.” She flourished a paper bag.

  Us, he thought. “Thank you,” he said, and explained, though she didn’t seem concerned, that he had broken in. In the kitchen he set out plates, salt and pepper, sheets of paper towel. He had had his usual bowl of cereal only an hour ago; now, following her example, he ate ravenously. She was wearing a faded blue sweatshirt, the sleeves rolled up as if it had once belonged to someone else, the hem stretched tight over her belly. How far along was she, he wondered, trying to recall various friends. Six months, maybe seven. Watching her raise the bread to pepper the egg, he realized he had dreamed about her the night before.

  Only a fragment remained, her winching a metal bucket, brimming with water, out of a well. But before he could tell her, she was talking again. One spring, apparently, she had worked as a cleaner in an office building and had eaten a fried-egg sandwich every day. From the way she spoke, h
e understood that this was not her present occupation.

  “So what are we doing today?” she said, wiping her hands on the paper towel. “Putting up lining paper?”

  He began to stammer. He was making good progress. Besides, her aunt and uncle were paying him a fair wage.

  “But you must need help,” she said, “and I need something to take my mind off things.”

  At the time he assumed a covert reference to her pregnancy. Later, when he scrutinized her every utterance, it became one of those mysterious manhole covers, briefly raised over the dark river of secrecy. Meanwhile, before he could urge further objections—the dust, the fumes—she had spotted a pair of coveralls hanging on the back door, and the next thing he knew she had scrambled into them and was demonstrating how well they fit; her belly split the front like a chestnut its shell. “Come on,” she said. “I bet you’re paid by the job, not the hour.”

  At first he was embarrassed telling a woman, older he guessed by perhaps a decade, what to do, but she turned out to be much more biddable than Emmanuel. As they finished the sanding, he on the ladder, she on foot, she lobbed questions in his direction. Despite her careless manner, he sensed that she was in fact listening to whatever he chose to answer. Whereas the doctors, without exception, as soon as he opened his mouth, had focused on pencil sharpeners, radiators, doorknobs. They were paid—not enough, not by him—to barely feign attention, scribble a couple of notes, and finally write a prescription that would propel him, thank God, out of their offices. But this woman with her fierce brow, her chapped knuckles, for whatever reason actually seemed interested.

  “So.” She folded sandpaper onto the sanding block. “How did you become a painter? Is it the family business, or your heart’s desire?”