Alison Moore - The Pre-War House and Other Stories

In England, it will be autumn. She imagines the paling sun and the purifying chill, the bare branches and the fallen leaves and the smell of decomposition, the smell of the end of the summer. She longs for short days and early nights, wanting home and hibernation.

She steps from the concrete slabs on to the iron staircase and begins the climb up. She can hardly bear the weight she is carrying, and the rising sun beats down on her.

She remembers her first sight of this place. The taxi, air-conditioned and smelling of pine trees, pulled away, leaving her standing on the slabs beside the block of flats. The paintwork was bruise-coloured and blistered. The midday heat was terrific. There was one flat on each floor, the higher storeys accessed by the iron staircase which zigzagged up the front of the building like the teeth of her mother’s pinking shears or a child’s drawing of lightning.

She climbed the four flights up to the flat in which she would be staying, carrying her suitcase in one hand and holding on to the railing with the other. Reaching the top, she wiped the sweat from her face with the palm of her hand and smelt the tang of iron on her skin. She knocked on the door and waited. She thought she could hear the baby squealing or screaming.

The door was opened by a woman wearing black, with her head shaved and her hairline low on her narrow forehead. Offering the woman a damp hand, Tina attempted one of the phrases she had practised in the back of the taxi during the long drive from the airport, even though the family’s online advertisement had said, ‘Can speak English.’

‘I’m Tina,’ she said, ‘your au pair.’

The woman stabbed at herself with her thumb and said, in her own language, ‘Grandmother.’

The shrill noise came again from inside the flat. ‘The baby?’ asked Tina.

‘No,’ said Grandmother, and beckoned her inside.

The narrow hallway into which she stepped was packed with sunshine — the wallpaper and the carpet were luridly colourful — but when the door closed, it was dark. She walked down the hallway with the violent patterns unseen beneath her feet, her hand sliding blindly down the wall, the wallpaper rough to the touch, and the screaming filled the hallway.

Climbing the two stone steps up to the kitchen behind Grandmother, she first saw the broad back of a tall man standing beneath a bare lightbulb, and then she saw the pig clamped, shrieking, between his knees. She imagined him leading the pig up the iron staircase, her trotters skidding on the metal steps, and heaving her if she would not climb. She pictured the pig stepping through the front door, on to the brightly patterned carpet, being guided down the dark hallway and up the steps into the kitchen.

Another man was silhouetted against the window. He was sitting on a chest freezer, smoking a cigarette and laughing. Grandmother pointed at him and said, ‘Father.’ A baby sat beside him in a highchair, watching the man with the pig. Tina could tell they were all family — the men and even the baby had the same narrow forehead and the same broad jaw as the woman. They too had black clothes and shaved heads.

Grandmother turned to the man with the pig and said, ‘Uncle.’ He looked at Tina, looked her in the eye, but did not smile. He returned his attention to the pig squirming between his legs, picked up a large knife, and then he smiled. He wrestled the pig out of the kitchen and across the unlit hallway into a bathroom, and closed the door. The squealing got louder, and then stopped.

All summer, every evening, she has eaten pork.

On the first night, they had chops. They ate together in the kitchen, and Father fed scraps of meat alternately to the baby and to the dog. The family talked quickly, interrupting and raising their voices over one another. The pace and the dialect and the heavy accent made it impossible for Tina to follow the conversation, and her formal phrases were like wallflowers at a wild party.

She must have been staring at Grandmother when Uncle turned to Tina and said in English, ‘There was death in the family,’ and he touched his shaved scalp to indicate that this was the custom.

‘I’m sorry,’ she said, and then, ‘So you speak English.’

‘Yes,’ he said, ‘I have a girlfriend in England. She lives in London. Where do you live?’

‘I’m from Leicester.’

Uncle pushed away his empty plate and said, ‘Tigers.’

‘Yes,’ said Tina, ‘Leicester Tigers,’ and she smiled, but he did not. Father lit a cigarette.

She was not due to start work for the family until the morning. Tired from her journey, Tina excused herself and went to bed early. In the bathroom, the shower curtain was pulled across; she did not pull it back. She washed her face and brushed her teeth quickly, went to her room and shut the door. There was a lock — a keyhole — but no key. Despite the heat, she only half-undressed, and got into bed.

She lay awake for a while, hearing the family talking loudly elsewhere in the house. When she fell asleep, they crept into her dreams — she dreamt that there was someone in her room, standing at the foot of her bed, casting a large shadow on the wall, and the pig was there. It jumped up on to the mattress and lay down, heavy and warm against her body, snorting and snuffling in the dark.

When she woke in the morning, opening her eyes to the strange ceiling, she found that she could not move her legs. She lifted her head and looked down the bed. The dog lay across her shins, nosing noisily at something between its paws. It stayed there watching her with its sad, black eyes, its sopping tongue hanging down, while she dressed, and then it followed her to the kitchen, carrying something in its wet mouth.

In the hallway, she met Uncle and he said, ‘Tigers.’ She smiled, but he did not.

Grandmother and Father were already in the kitchen when she and Uncle arrived. Tina said, ‘Good morning,’ sat in the place which had been set for her and looked at the breakfast already on her plate.

‘Pig fat,’ said Uncle, sitting down to his. ‘Eat it.’ The dog was chasing a half-eaten snout around the kitchen floor with its nose.

Father lit a cigarette, and Uncle said to Tina, ‘You have to clean the bath.’ The men left, and Grandmother cleared the table around her, and eventually Tina was alone with the baby. She leaned towards him and said, ‘Hello,’ first in English and then in his own language. She pulled faces and made animal noises and laughed awkwardly, while the unsmiling baby regarded her.

When the baby was napping in his cot in Grandmother’s room, Tina went to the bathroom with Uncle. ‘I will show you,’ he said, pulling aside the shower curtain and bending his big body down to make a white patch on the side of the cast-iron tub.

Tina, scrubbing at the pig blood and rinsing away the pink foam, with the taste of lard on her tongue and the sting of the cleaning fluid at the back of her throat, felt queasy and light-headed. She sensed Uncle standing behind her in the doorway, watching her. When she finished and straightened up, she turned around to look at him, but nobody was there.

On the third day, she unpacked. She placed her valuables — her money and her passport — in the drawer of her bedside table. She put her clean clothes in the chest of drawers and her laundry in the wicker basket.