Tessa Hadley - The Past

By the time Alice got up to get dressed, it was often midday, or one o’clock; then in the afternoon she carried more letters upstairs from her grandmother’s bureau, or from the drawers of her grandfather’s desk in the study, and lay on top of the eiderdown to read through them. She kicked off her shoes and after a while she would slip for warmth into that consoling space between the eiderdown and the top blanket. Dear Mr Fellowes, I can’t tell you how much I was moved and excited by your new collection. It speaks to our moment with a directness and urgency like nothing else I’ve read this year.

Roland made a fire in the sitting room in the afternoons, though the chimney didn’t draw very well. Pilar sat hunched over it with her shoes slipped off and her long feet tucked under her, reading through the newspapers, or through the legal papers she had brought with her, making notes. She was determinedly cheerful. Fran and Alice agreed in lowered voices in the kitchen that she made everything worse, made them feel the dreariness of the place which they wouldn’t have minded if they’d had it to themselves. — We’re used to it being crap, Fran said. — Now I feel like I have to keep apologising for it.

— Why don’t they just go? If they’re so obviously bored to death?

— But it’s only Roland who’s bored to death: Pilar actually claims to like it. She must be mad.

— She’s needy, Alice said. — She needs something from us. I don’t know what.

Harriet went for long walks despite the weather, and came back humming to herself, then went upstairs to change her clothes and confide in her diary. She had to hang out her wet things to dry — they steamed in front of the fire, depressing Alice. The postman delivered packages of DVDs for Roland, and he and Pilar cuddled together under a duvet in the study to watch them — Roland had bought a new DVD player in town. He bought an oil-filled electric radiator too, which he plugged in wherever they were sitting. — He thinks he can purchase his way out of boredom, Fran said. — Well, of course you can purchase your way out of it. But not down here.

Then Roland had to sit on the gate at the top of the field in the rain, trying and failing to send off reviews from his phone: on the way down the hill he even slipped on the grass, getting red mud on his trousers. Preoccupied when he returned inside the house, he hurried up to Molly’s room and went in without knocking, to ask for her help — perhaps she could get a better signal on her phone. She and Kasim were sitting on her bed — upright, it’s true, and fully clothed, but disarrayed, hot-eyed, pulled hastily apart, who knew which layers untucked or buttons undone? Scalded, banging the door shut again without saying a word, Roland couldn’t forgive either Kasim, or himself for his own idiocy. How had it not occurred to him to knock? His sisters would have put two and two together, they would have been deliberately noisy, coming upstairs, they would have knocked, or not even dreamed of going into her room in the first place. Why was he missing those instincts? For the first time in his life he wished he was more ordinary.

— You know what’s going on? he said to Alice.

— Well of course I know: isn’t it sweet?

— I don’t find it sweet. I think I should step in, before things get any worse. What possessed you to bring that boy along in the first place?

— Don’t be silly, Roly. What do you mean, worse? Young love: it’s a glorious thing. You’re just jealous.

— Is it glorious? But I’m so anxious for her.

Alice qualified, more truthfully. — Well, it wasn’t exactly glorious for me. But that’s only because I was so tortured. Molly’s straightforward. I think she knows how to be happy.

Disconcerted, Roland sat down to a long session with Chopin at the old out-of-tune piano whose damper was warped. It didn’t soothe him when Pilar marvelled at his performance, because he had no illusions about his playing — in fact it struck him that if she had a cloth ear for music it could be a problem between them. Then when he went upstairs to his own room, he found Ivy and Arthur huddled up against the door to Molly’s bedroom, each with a glass tumbler pressed to the door and an ear pressed against the tumbler, listening to whatever was going on inside. Roland roared at them and they fled: even he thought this was amusing as well as alarming. Shortly afterwards, when he was on his way downstairs again, Kasim came out from Molly’s room, hands in his pockets, whistling and kicking at the skirting board with exaggerated innocence. Roland thought that the house was intolerably too small and they were all going to go mad if it didn’t brighten up soon, piled incestuously like this on top of one another.

— There’s something funny going on with those kids, Fran said when he told her about the eavesdropping. — I’ll show you what I found in their pockets.

She fetched the little folded scraps of ancient paper from where she’d buried them, perturbed, under her clothes in a drawer upstairs: she was even blushing as she handed them over. After a moment’s squinting, Roland and Alice could make out women’s body parts, faded to an unhealthy grey-pink. Alice laughed.

— Where on earth could they have got these from? Fran said. — And there’s another thing. I’ll swear there’s money going missing from Arthur’s savings. But what’s he spending it on? Not just pennies: several pounds I think. They’re never out of my sight when we’re in town. You don’t think that they’ve been buying porn?

— I know this is the country, Roland said, — but even down here no newsagent in his right mind would hand over dirty magazines to two infants clutching their pocket money.

— Anyway, these magazines are ancient, they smell of old damp.

— Oh, don’t sniff them Alice, how can you! Maybe they’re buying them from some other kid or something.

— Or from Kasim? Roland suggested. — They don’t know any other kids down here.

— Roland, that’s just an evil thing to say, Alice protested. — You can’t mean it seriously, about Kasim.

— All right, I’m not altogether serious. I suppose the children have stumbled on someone’s ancient stash, from years ago. No one looks at porn in magazines nowadays. Simon Cummins? He’s got a leering look, hasn’t he? Or Christopher?

— Christopher? Don’t be ridiculous. Whatever made you think of Christopher, of all people? He’s only even been here once or twice. And surely he’s a feminist or something. He wouldn’t look at porn.

— Only an idea. Those Lycra cycling outfits are a kind of sex perversion in themselves. And the feminists are probably the worst.

When Alice suggested she ask the children directly, Fran confessed that, to her own surprise, she’d found she couldn’t. — I don’t want them to know that I know they’ve looked at anything like this. But I’ve no idea what I’m supposed to do. And now they’re voyeurs as well! It can’t be natural.

— I’m sure it’s absolutely natural, Alice said. — Do you want me to ask them?

— Perhaps it’s best to just ignore it. Really, though, don’t you think Jeff ought to be here?

The sorry little scraps of obscenity on their softened, felty paper contaminated something, Roland thought. Those women with their bloated breasts and shaved pudenda weren’t even protected by the sheen of an unreal mannequin beauty; they looked like any housewife he might have met shopping in the streets of the little seaside town, and unsettled him more than he could acknowledge, even to himself. Something overheated and uneasy seemed to have taken possession of their whole household, under siege from the everlasting rain. His own lovemaking with Pilar was more inhibited, as if he was aware of everyone listening in, as if those children might have their glasses pressed against his door. Once or twice he even jumped up out of bed, flinging open the door onto the landing, only to find no one on the other side. Wrung out of him against his will, however, his pleasures seemed particularly acute. In the mornings at breakfast he was ashamed to think who might have been listening.