Tessa Hadley - The Past

They were almost surprised, in this altered light, that the cottage still existed: but there it was, greyly enigmatic at the turn of the path as usual, hanging out over the twiggy thin finger-ends of the treetops in the valley below, its windows on that side — the side away from the door — filmed with wet and seeming blind because they knew no one could be looking out through them. As they came past the cottage and emerged into the clearing opposite its front door, a squall of rain blew up, and Kasim suggested taking shelter inside. Couldn’t they make a fire in there or something?

— Yes, let’s make a fire, Arthur said, inspired.

Anxiously Ivy said that this wasn’t a good idea, it might be dangerous. It hadn’t occurred to her that Kas might want to come inside, because he never had before: she had planned for one of their sacrifices, Arthur had brought the last of his pound coins. It was awful to have to imagine all over again, with fresh perception, what Kasim would see if he went upstairs — those horrors would become the children’s shaming secret, sticking to them. When Kas regretted that he hadn’t got his lighter, they were stricken with the recognition that this very lighter lay in full sight on the floor in the magazine room, giving away their familiarity with the Women and with everything else. And — Ivy strained to remember — might they not have left their scissors there on the floor too, along with incriminating fragments of the cut-out pictures? Arthur had developed a knack for cutting out very neatly around the breasts. — Let’s not go in, she said.

But Kas put his shoulder to the door and heaved at it, lifting at the same time, until it yielded and opened wider than the children had ever opened it — they stumbled inside together, and he propped it open behind them with a stick. In the changed weather the tiny dim downstairs room was surprisingly dry but seemed somehow even less human, more like a burrow, hardly differentiated from the earth. Perhaps it smelled less of dead dog, but it smelled more of that same mouldy, mineral, rank underground they’d been uneasily aware of earlier, passing the torn-up tree root in the woods. Luxuriantly, obscenely, the cottage was rotting away. If only a clean wind could blow through it! The children looked anxious, as though this desolation were their responsibility.

— How long since anyone lived here? Kasim said shortly.

He poked with his foot at the packed leaves in the grate and then — as if he were looking for something — officiously pulled open and banged shut again the doors of the cupboards built in on either side of it, which the children had never touched. There was nothing inside, except one empty biscuit tin without a lid; the shelves were lined with thick paper, cut in scallops where it overhung the edges. Fatally, they knew he would try the door next which led to the bottom of the stairs — and he did, vanishing behind it. They heard his springy tread on the few steps, taking two at a time, and then crossing the first room. They didn’t look at each other, but Arthur shrugged.

Upstairs, Kasim hardly noticed the little mess of scissors and cut out bits of paper on the floor — he knocked the scissors accidentally with his foot into a corner before he saw them, and only then caught sight of the lighter. It didn’t occur to him that this was his: it was the cheap kind of disposable you could buy anywhere. He thought simply that someone else had left it, along with some loose change, which he pocketed: presumably whoever had been visiting to enjoy this ancient porn. Trying the lighter, he was surprised that it gave off a strong flame. In one disdainful glance, he spurned the dirty magazines: they mocked and affronted him, the ugly white flesh gloatingly exposed. He hadn’t even seen Molly yet without her clothes more or less on, but his knowledge of her body hidden underneath them — intricately folded on itself, taut with secrets — possessed him. He knew that all the kissing and cuddling and hiddenness at some point would not be enough, and must come to feel like failure; desire in him was bitter sometimes, his own equivocation taunted him. Then all at once this lonely place in the woods struck him as an answer to his difficulty and a vision of his fulfilment. He could bring Molly here, undress her finally and make love to her.

Looking out of the window, he could see all the way down the valley. The trees were stirring under successive waves of a light rain, the twigs in their tops springing back as spry as tuning forks. He couldn’t possibly have sex with her, proper sex, back at the house, with her father bursting in on them every minute, and the children taking an unhealthy interest, and Alice giving them knowing looks and smiles. Once they were alone in here, they needn’t be afraid of anyone. Kasim had made love to several girls already, and none of it been been either a great disaster or a great success, nor had it flowered into any relationship. He wasn’t even sure he wanted a relationship, he flinched from intimacy. But he knew that his father’s sex life had been going on, pretty much non-stop, from when he was about fifteen, and it made Kas feel that his own was insufficient and paltry. In this place, though, something different might be possible. If he just cleared out the magazines and cleaned up a bit and brought some blankets, there’d be nothing to distract them. He would have Molly to himself, the whole thing could unfold at its own speed. She wasn’t like those other girls, she was absorbent and dreamy and would let him be in charge.

Kasim opened the door into the second room and for a short moment was shocked, thinking that something was alive in there — in fact it was only strips of wet curtain, twitching in the squall at the window, which was not quite closed. This tiny dead-end room — it was more like a cupboard, nowhere near the size of his mother’s walk-in wardrobe — had advanced much farther into dereliction than the rest of the house. The wall on the window side was stained with rain and black mould, the floor was deep in dead leaves, and there was a nasty mess which looked like a dead animal in one corner, shrivelled leather collapsed onto sinisterly yellow bones, traces of reddish fur. Kas thought it must be a fox, not wanting to examine it too closely, not knowing much about wildlife. He’d have to clear all this lot out before the cottage was ready for Molly. It occurred to him that Ivy and Arthur, who’d been begging almost every day to get into the cottage, must have been upstairs and seen what he’d seen, the magazines and the fox; perhaps they hadn’t known what they were looking at. Or more likely it was their guilty little secret, he knew what kids were like. No wonder Ivy hadn’t wanted him to come inside.

Downstairs the children waited, hearing him open the second door, close it again; then his tread was noisy once more on the stairs.

— Look what I found, Kas said.

They looked obediently, in dread — but he was only holding up the red lighter. — We could make a fire after all. But I suppose there’ll be all kinds of shit stuck in the chimney.

He poked up experimentally with a stick, and a thick tumble of sooty, leafy, feathery mulch fell out gratifyingly at his feet: Arthur put his head in the grate and said he could see the sky. But when they tried, they couldn’t really get a fire started, all the wood they picked up outside was too wet.

— We’ll bring firelighters next time we come, Kas said enthusiastically. — I’m going to clean this place up. We’ll bring a shovel and a broom. We could disinfect it, fetch water from the stream. It could be cosy, don’t you think? Burn some incense, get a little fire going.

They’d never seen this boyish Kasim before, excited by his project. Catching on, Ivy suggested that after they’d made it all nice, they could bring Molly to the cottage and surprise her. Kasim was unforthcoming. His plans to bring Molly here, needless to say, did not include the children.