The House on Fortune Street Read online

  He and the secretary exchanged Christmas greetings. Then, he could scarcely wait, he handed over his pages.

  “Thank you,” said the secretary. “I’m sorry if I was a little heavy-handed during your last visit. I didn’t mean to come on like the mob with threats and contracts.” His face crinkled with the same look of concern he had worn as Valentine told the story of his fictional aunt.

  Hastily Sean reassured him. “A kick up the backside was just what I needed. I’d got so carried away by the interviews, I couldn’t see the wood for the trees. Thank you for your patience.” He would have liked to have mentioned his idea for a more extensive book but now was not the time; first he must get free of Valentine. They parted in a wave of good wishes for the new year.

  BACK AT THE HOUSE A LOUTISH BOY, SURELY A STUDENT DOING A holiday job, was ringing the doorbell. “It’s for downstairs,” he said, holding out a large brown parcel. “There’s been no one home the last couple of times I’ve tried to deliver.”

  “Thanks,” said Sean. “I’ll make sure she gets it.”

  As he carried the package into the house, he recalled that Dara was coming home today. It would be a nice, neighborly gesture to turn on the heat in her flat, buy some provisions. He was so pleased with the idea that he turned around and headed at once to the corner shop. Then, with a bag full of groceries, he picked up the parcel, retrieved her keys from the hook in the hall, and let himself into the flat.

  Inside it was cold and dark. He set the package on the table next to a stack of Christmas cards—perhaps Abigail had put them there?—and, trying to make the place more welcoming, went to open the curtains across the French doors. He adjusted the thermostat and put the groceries away, setting the apples in a bowl on the table with a note: Welcome home, Dara. Milk in fridge. Love, Sean. He was about to leave when he noticed that the bedroom door was closed and decided to check on the radiator in there too. Once again the curtains were drawn and he crossed the room to open them. Turning back to the radiator, he saw her.

  Dara was lying under the covers, her face tilted toward the door, her hair spread across the pillow. When he knelt down beside her, he saw that she was very pale. He touched her cheek—there was no need to do so; he already knew—and found her skin as cold as the sheets.

  He was moving toward the phone when he saw an envelope lying on top of the chest of drawers; Mum and Dad, read the inscription. It was unsealed. Without thinking, he looked inside and saw not a sheet of paper but many little pieces. He lifted one out. And th— Quickly he put the envelope in his pocket and continued to the phone.

  LOCHLAN CAME AND FETCHED HIM SIX DAYS LATER, THE DAY AFTER the funeral. As they drove west out of London, over the ridge of the Chilterns, Sean sobbed until Lochlan pulled off the motorway and stopped beside a country road. “There, there,” he kept saying. “Please don’t cry.” Sean could hear his words, but he felt helpless to obey. Blindly he got out of the car and started walking along the grassy verge. Through his thin-soled shoes he could feel the frozen ground. Then—he didn’t know how far he’d walked—a van rattled by, much too fast and too close. He stopped next to a stand of rushes, took his first deep breath, and blew his nose.

  “I can’t talk,” he managed to say when he got back to the car, “but I think I’ve finished crying.”

  “Good,” said Lochlan. He put on Vivaldi and started driving again. They left the motorway for the busy country roads near Whitney and, at last, turned onto the much smaller road that led to his and Cleo’s village. Their house was at the bottom of the lane next to the village church. As soon as they stepped inside, Cleo appeared in the gloom of the hall. “We’re glad you’re here,” she said, and hugged him.

  Lochlan led him up the stairs to the guest room where he’d stayed on his previous visits. The windows looked out over the garden, past the swaybacked roof of the church, to stubbled fields. Between them stood a large desk.

  “Here,” Lochlan said. “You’ll have plenty of space to work when you feel better.”

  “Thank you,” said Sean. “I think I’ll take a nap.”

  HE SPENT MUCH OF THE NEXT WEEK ASLEEP. HE ROSE LONG AFTER Lochlan had left for work, ate cereal, went for endless walks across the frozen fields, did whatever Cleo asked in the way of chores. The day after he arrived she told him that, although she was only six months’ pregnant, she had taken leave from her job as a schools’ inspector on the advice of her doctor. But there was nothing to worry about, she added quickly. Sean nodded, and allowed himself to be reassured. For a few seconds, concern for Cleo had distracted him from the images that were always right there, just behind his eyelids: Dara as he had last seen her alive, or as he had last seen her.

  After he had called the police and her parents—she had left their numbers beside the phone—he had dialed Abigail’s number. As usual he got her voice mail; she was doing two shows a day. He had left a message saying, Please call. It’s important. Then he had taken a chair from the living room and sat down beside Dara. “I am so sorry,” he had said. Being in her presence was not at all like the trauma he had described in the book; rather, what he had felt was an enormous calm. He did not know how long he sat there, watching her, before there came a knock at the door. He touched her cheek one more time, and went to let in the police.

  An hour later he was back upstairs, sitting on the sofa, when the phone rang. He answered at once, hoping for Abigail. “Super that you got your chapters in,” said Valentine. “The secretary’s passed the whole thing on to the copy editor.” He was in the neighborhood and wondered if Sean could meet for a drink at the Lord Nelson. As he walked there, Sean pictured himself telling Valentine about Dara; the two had met once, at one of Abigail’s shows. Telling her parents, he had kept to the bare facts and got off the phone as quickly as possible. Now he imagined describing the solemn beauty of his brief vigil at her bedside, the shock of realizing, from the offhand remark of a policeman, that Dara—Abigail’s friend, his neighbor—had taken her own life.

  When he stepped into the pub, Valentine waved from a corner table. “I bought you a scotch,” he said, which should have been a signal. His sleek leather jacket lay on the bench beside him. They raised their glasses, and Valentine said a few more complimentary things about Sean’s share of the book, how his perspective had deepened the material; how fascinating his interviews were. Sean, to his abiding shame, felt a flash of pleasure. He drank some more scotch. He was setting down his glass, preparing to interrupt, when Valentine said, “I’ve got something to tell you,” and popped his eyes. Then there were only the worst kinds of clichés. Sean had left him, mid-sentence, and gone back to the house to start packing. As he folded his shirts, he understood that Valentine had simply been waiting until he finished his half of the book to break the news. He had brought two suitcases and several boxes in Lochlan’s car; everything else he had left, stacked in a corner of his former study.

  WHEN HE DID EMERGE FROM HIS ROOM, LOCHLAN AND CLEO treated him like an invalid, lowering their voices and refraining from jokes. Lochlan set up his computer and offered to help him unpack; Cleo offered cups of tea and apologized for the odd Eastern music she listened to while doing yoga. Neither of them asked questions, which, mostly, he appreciated. He had not, since he left London, checked his e-mail or his voice mail. The one worldly task he managed, with Cleo’s help, was to contact the secretary. He sat at the kitchen table while she introduced herself as Mr. Wyman’s sister-in-law and explained that she was calling on his behalf to let the secretary know that Valentine would be responsible for any further work on the book. There was a pause while she cocked her head, listening. Sean noticed that her cheeks had grown plump with pregnancy.

  “I’m not at liberty to say,” she said, “but Mr. Wyman has had family difficulties…. Thank you. I will.”

  She hung up. “There, that’s done.”

  “How did he sound?”

  “Nice. He asked me to convey his sympathy. Would you like to go for a walk? It’s a lovely d
ay.”

  He had been about to retreat to his room, but something in Cleo’s voice made him agree, and even the simple act of putting on his boots lifted him an inch or two from his slough of despond. Outside the weather was unusually mild. She led the way down the lane, past the village cricket pitch, and along the disused railway line. The rails had been removed and only the sleepers were left. Should he mention her condition, he wondered, ask how she was feeling, but she was in the midst of talking about the plans for a village museum. A grant from the lottery had come through and they were turning the old forge into an exhibition space.

  “Great,” said Sean. From beneath his right foot came a tiny crack. Looking down, he discovered a snail, irrevocably flattened.

  “It’s all due to Lochlan. He wrote the application. But he’s probably going to have to resign from the committee. His boss seems to be getting ready to fire him.”

  “But that’s outrageous. He told me sales were up for the last quarter.”

  “He doesn’t want you to know,” Cleo continued. “If worse comes to worst, I’ve said he can stay at home while I go back to work but he has some old-fashioned notion about being the breadwinner.”

  As she spoke, her voice grew scratchy. Sean hurried to offer consolation: maybe his boss would relent, and if he didn’t Lochlan was sure to find a good job again soon; he had terrific qualifications. A few yards ahead a rabbit raised its head from the grass to give them a bright-eyed stare. As it hopped, in a leisurely fashion, across the tracks, he pictured Dara deftly sketching the neat paws and upright ears.

  THE NEXT MORNING HE WOKE TO THE SOUND OF LOCHLAN DRIVING away. Before he could think about what he was doing, he got out of bed and approached his computer. He turned it on, and went to make coffee. Back at his desk he checked his e-mail. The news of Lochlan’s difficulties had made him realize that he couldn’t keep hiding indefinitely. Among the rubbish and notes from friends were eight messages from Abigail, two from Valentine with the subject heading The Book, and one with the heading Apologies.

  Abigail had finally phoned while he was packing his books, F through H. “I just got out of the evening show,” she said. “We had three curtain calls. It was fantastic.”

  Earlier, before Valentine, while he sat on the sofa, he had tried to think how to tell her that her best friend had died, by her own hand, while they were playing charades. Or perhaps while they were driving back to London. Or while they were buying groceries. Or making moussaka. Or brushing their teeth. But now that the moment had arrived he uttered the simplest possible sentence, a noun and a verb. In the ensuing chaos he had eventually managed to convey two additional pieces of information: the manner of Dara’s death and that Valentine had talked to him. What had Abigail done after he hung up? He didn’t know, or care. He had seen her only once more, at the funeral; she had sat with Dara’s parents while he sat in the back row.

  Now he scrolled through the e-mails, forwarding them to her and then deleting them, the modern equivalent of sending letters back unopened. He did the same with Valentine’s. He was about to log off when he noticed among the remaining messages one from Georgina, sent the day before. Still in his mood of brisk efficiency, he opened it.

  Dear Sean,

  I keep thinking about our last conversation and wish I’d tried harder to find out why you’d decided to give up on your dissertation. I can’t help worrying that the fault may be partly mine for failing to convey sufficient enthusiasm. I am very poor at this sort of thing—I think it’s called human relations!—but if you would care to discuss the matter at any point, I am at your service.

  Belated seasonal greetings, Georgina

  Perhaps in some extreme way, Sean thought, he was finally learning what Keats had meant when he claimed that soul making was the main business of the world.

  THAT NIGHT HE FELL ASLEEP ONLY TO FIND HIMSELF, AN HOUR later, open-eyed in the glimmering dark. It was the time he most dreaded, the energy of the previous day gone and the next one still impossibly far away. He tried to focus on the outline of the nearer window, a dim rectangle, and count his breaths. At nineteen he glimpsed a movement by the bookcase—Ian, the builder, figuring out how to put his head in the oven—and at twenty-eight, here was Frank with his brain tumor. He stopped counting when he saw Bridget’s husband, Kingsley, writhing in pain beside the other window. Then he spotted Dara by the desk, her bicycle helmet in one hand, a gardening trowel in the other. He seized his dressing gown, and fled.

  Downstairs he was relieved to find a light on in the living room and Cleo on the sofa, reading. “Hello,” he said. “Couldn’t you sleep?” He sat down in an armchair.

  “No, it’s the baby. By nine at night I can scarcely keep my eyes open. Then I wake up to pee and he starts kicking and I can’t get back to sleep. I find reading gardening books helps.”

  “Dara liked gardening,” he said.

  “She was Abigail’s friend, wasn’t she?” said Cleo.

  And then he told the story the only way he could, zigzagging back and forth between what he knew of Dara’s life and his own small role in it. “She was always ready to listen to me, always ready to help. I should have guessed something was wrong the last time I saw her when she wouldn’t stay for supper. And then—it doesn’t bear thinking about—I went on and on about the euthanasia book, and how no one regretted suicide.”

  He described Dara’s questions and how he couldn’t help feeling that the conversation, and his work in general, had in some way contributed to her death; how she had left a note for her parents, torn into many pieces. “I took the envelope before I phoned the police. I didn’t think they could stand the disappointment.”

  “Do you still have it?”

  He nodded.

  Cleo was heaving herself off the sofa. “Please,” she said.

  Upstairs he retrieved the envelope from the bottom of his suitcase and, pushing his computer aside, carefully emptied the contents onto the desk. Cleo bent over the fragments and began to move the pieces of paper around: Dear Mum an—, life tog—, little girl. At last, with a sigh, she straightened. “Forgive me, Sean,” she said, “but I think you ought to send this to her parents. It shows that their daughter was trying to reach them, that she thought about them during those last hours. Maybe”—she gazed up at him—“that’s better than nothing.”

  He nodded again. Cleo was moving toward the door. On the threshold she turned, but whatever thought had waylaid her, she decided to keep to herself. She stepped out of the room and gently closed the door. He sat down at the desk and moved the lamp to shine on the fragments.

  Dear Mum an—, little girl

  Everything, he thought, he had got everything wrong. There he was with Abigail, claiming she was the love of his life, while she was screwing his old friend. There was Valentine betraying him on the page and between the sheets. There was Dara, seeming so cheerful with her useful job, her sketching and her gardening, as she walked further and further into the valley of shadow. There was the secretary, leaning out of the basket of a balloon, searching the horizon in all directions for his wife’s soul.

  Dear Cameron, he wrote, I owe you…

  2

  I MARK THIS DAY WITH A WHITE STONE

  I ALWAYS INTENDED TO LIVE AS AN UPRIGHT MAN. I REMEMBER, when I was seventeen, telling my friend Davy that I thought it was wrong to eat anything I couldn’t kill myself. “I don’t mean that I have to kill everything I eat,” I explained, “but I want to be sure that I can.”

  We were taking a break from doing our homework, leaning on the gate of one of his father’s fields, smoking. It was our new, illicit hobby. Between us, when we put our minds to it, we managed to get through a pack a week. A couple of months before, Davy and I had followed the harvester across this field, stacking the bales of straw. Now, in early November, the drab stubble was nearly buried in mud. Rain had fallen every day for a week and, on the far side of the valley, coppery clouds promised more.

  Davy had been to the barber that mor
ning, and when he turned to look at me, all his features, his light blue eyes, his full red lips, seemed larger and more naked. “With your bare hands, Cameron?” he asked, mockingly.

  I knew it was just an expression, the “bare” emphasizing the extremity of whatever the hands were doing, but I glanced down at my own hands—rather small for a boy of my age, with my father’s short, flexible thumbs—and I couldn’t imagine them clutching the neck of an animal or bringing a hammer down on a skull.

  “Of course not,” I said. “With a gun.” I’d never held a gun of any kind, other than a toy pistol, but I’d seen enough films that I could picture myself squinting down the barrel, squeezing the trigger.

  “How about one of Dad’s pigs? If you kill it, I bet he’ll let you have some of the bacon. Or there are the hens. But they’re so easy, they don’t count.”

  Davy himself killed hens on a regular basis, chopping off their heads with a little axe that the rest of the time was used for kindling. On the one occasion when I’d been present the head had fallen to the ground and the rest of the hen, a plump Rhode Island Red, had stood up, blood pulsing from its empty neck, and taken a few tipsy steps in my direction. I had come round to find myself staring at the sky, Davy’s mother wiping my face with a towel, and the bird gone. I pretended I’d missed lunch but no one was fooled.

  “Come on,” Davy said, taking a last pull of his cigarette before flicking it into a puddle. “Let’s go and choose your dinner.”

  I can’t remember which came first—working on the farm during the summer or bicycling over on Saturday afternoons to do homework with Davy and talk endlessly—but for the last year I had felt more comfortable in his house than in my own. On Saturdays his parents were usually out doing their weekly shop and his older sister, if she was around, was either in her room with friends or absorbed in a book. That particular afternoon we’d been puzzling over a passage in Horace’s Odes when Davy said, “Did you see the way Yardley was swinging his briefcase when he left school yesterday? I bet he and Stevenson had it off last night.”