The House on Fortune Street (13 page)

That evening she made what had been my father’s favorite meal: lamb chops with mint sauce, potatoes, and peas, followed by rhubarb crumble. I laid the table with proper napkins and the good cruet. Tomorrow at this time, I thought, she would be in a home and I would have my own life back; tomorrow this life would be gone. When we sat down to eat, I was suddenly choked with emotion, but she was in excellent spirits; the lamb had turned out well. As we ate she chatted about how the butcher had lost his lease.

“He and his wife are planning to move to Glasgow to be near their daughter. I thought I saw Lionel today outside the post office.”

She held out the jug of mint sauce. I took it. To my knowledge she had not spoken his name in twenty years.

“I know he’s dead,” she went on, “but I’m always pleased when he visits me around the town. Your father used to say the same thing.”

So that was why she had taken to wandering the streets. “Does he come here?” I said. “To this house?”

“Not yet.” She looked over at the chair where Lionel had used to sit. “Do you ever see him?”

“No.” I felt a pang of envy, like a stitch in my side.

“Maybe it’s because you were there that day? You saw him then so you don’t need to see him now.”

“It’s the other way round,” I said. “I need him more because I was there.” But, even as I argued, her suggestion made sense. That awful final image of Lionel, facedown in the grass, made it impossible for him to come to me.

“Well, he looks good,” my mother said. “You know what a bright smile he has.”

She cleared the plates and, when she returned with the crumble, broached a new topic. “Don’t take this amiss, Cameron,” she said, “but I worry about you. I know you have a lovely family, a good job, a nice home; still I worry there’s something wrong. You often seem a little sad.”

I looked at her high, unlined forehead, her eyes calm and kind behind her glasses. I could tell her, I thought, about that afternoon with Annabel. What safer confidante than someone who is losing her mind? If she said anything, people would just think she was mad. But I had no words. I was not a pederast, or a pedophile, or a child molester, but I was something close enough to dread the taint of those terms. “I’m a bit fed up at work,” I said. “This crumble is lovely.”

“It’s a good year for the rhubarb,” she said, and began to talk about her plans to make jam.

n spite of the doctor’s diagnosis, Fiona continued to hold a

grudge against my mother, and some of that spilled over onto me. It was our first major disagreement. Fergus could have been seriously hurt and she blamed me for being too forgiving. The fact that he wasn’t, and that my mother was ill, seemed to make no difference. Finally we agreed not to discuss the matter, but not before I had glimpsed in her a steeliness that seemed utterly alien to the girl I had met folding origami cranes.

Dara at this time was, as far as I could judge, an average eight-year- old; she liked gym and running around and her schoolwork was good. She enjoyed spelling and arithmetic, things with right and wrong answers, but her best subject was art. Fiona worked on the preliminary sketches for her murals at home and, maybe from being around her, Dara had an unusual capacity for concentration; she could work on a single picture for an hour. In addition she had two traits that I envied: kindness and emotional transparency. If anyone in the family was ill, Dara would offer juice, handkerchiefs, books, hot water bottles. She would put her small hand on your forehead and say please get well. She was also quite without guile, and found mendacity bewildering. Fiona

claimed that she was too volatile, but I was glad that my daughter was, as they say, in touch with her feelings. So often my own emotions were hidden not only from other people, but from myself. Or perhaps it was the other way round: I was hiding from them.

Dara had a gang of friends—Elspeth, Megan, Kim, Suzanne, Lucy, Evelyn—and they were constantly in and out of one another’s houses: playing games, putting on shows, roller-skating in the park, swimming at the leisure center. As a parent, I did my share of chauffeuring and running after balls, helping with zips and shoelaces, pouring juice and making meals. I learned to remember who couldn’t eat nuts and whose mother got upset if she stayed too long in the pool. Once again I heard the women murmuring approval.

But something had shaken loose. Since Fiona learned of Lionel’s existence, since my father’s death, my mother’s illness, my encounter with Dodgson’s photographs, I felt increasingly as if I were walking a tightrope: balancing between my good behavior and those occasional moments when I was aware of something else, persistent and persua-sive, trying to get my attention. One of the girls would smile or bite her lip or gaze out from behind her hair and I would have to restrain myself, not from doing anything but from thinking, thinking, thinking. I started to second-guess my actions. Should I pick up Elspeth when she fell off her bike? Should I brush Lucy’s hair back into a ponytail so it wouldn’t keep getting in her way? Should I zip up Kim’s jacket? Each time I did the proper, parental thing, but my feelings didn’t always match. I comforted myself that there was an end in sight. In a few years I would be safe. Fergus’s friends were mostly boys.

On Wednesday, 9 July 1980, at around three p.m., I walked home from work beneath cloudy skies and discovered a moving van in our street. A woman of about my age was watching four men struggle with an upright piano. I stopped and introduced myself.

“Iris Bailey,” she said, offering her hand. She had thick, curly brown

hair down to her shoulders and a warm, direct smile. “My daughters and I are moving into number eight.”

I asked how old they were, and when she said nine and fifteen, told her that Dara had just turned nine. “If there’s anything you need,” I added, “we’re at number twelve.”

Over supper Fiona and I discussed our new neighbor. She too had run into Iris on the way home. “Did she mention a Mr. Bailey?” she asked.

“Not in our two minutes. She was worrying about the piano. She said she had two girls, the younger the same age as Dara. How’s the bank going?”

A Victorian bank was being turned into a restaurant, and Fiona and her assistant were painting the ceiling with scenes from Robert Burns’s poem “Tam O’Shanter.” We had taken turns reading the poem aloud to each other and enjoyed the tale of Tam’s drunken ride home, pursued by witches and warlocks. Not only was this Fiona’s most ambitious project to date but it was also her last for the foreseeable future. That spring, after volunteering at Dara’s school for months, she had decided she wanted to be a teacher; she would be starting her training course in August.

“I was working on the horse today,” she said. “Tam’s stout gray mare. I’m still learning how to paint stuff that high up so that it’ll look okay from below.”

“I’m sure it’ll look fine,” I said. “Anyway most of the clientele will be following Tam’s example and getting smashed.”

“Are you suggesting that people need to be drunk to appreciate my painting?” she said, but she was smiling. Then, to my surprise, she added that I’d seemed in low spirits recently. I used the excuse I’d given my mother: I was having a hard time at work. “Twice in the last month I’ve nearly made a serious mistake.”

“Is there something else you’d like to do?”

I shook my head. “I don’t have any particular talents. I make good minestrone soup. I like going for walks, playing with Dara and Fergus, pottering in the garden. Nothing I like doing would earn me tuppence ha’penny.”

“What about photography?” She gestured to the wall behind me, where I’d hung some of my pictures.“People are always asking who did these. Maybe you could photograph children? Even if the parents didn’t pay there’d be the pleasure of using your talents.”

She gazed at me earnestly. “I’m glad we’re talking about this,” she said. “Sometimes with all the coming and going we forget to talk about ourselves. I want you to be happy. You’ve been so supportive of my work even when I was spending more on paint than I was getting paid. In a couple of years I should have a regular salary, even if it’s not a very large one.”

We made love that night, closing the door against interruptions and giving ourselves over to each other with abandon. I felt, once again, the good fortune that had guided me to this woman, and this life.

e didn’t see our new neighbors until after we returned

from our summer holidays, a fortnight in the Lake District with Fiona’s sister and her family. The following week I was at home with Dara and Fergus after school when the doorbell rang. I went to answer and found Iris. Beside her stood a slender girl, wearing a crim-son top. Her dark blond hair was pulled back into a ponytail, and her skin, beneath our hall light, had a golden sheen. Her eyes, staring up at me, were a grayish green, like that stone called peridot, which means lost. Later I would see that they were flecked with brown. Her full lips were pale.

“I’m sorry to bother you,” said Iris. “I was hoping your wife was home.”

“She will be shortly. Would you like to come in and wait? The kettle’s just boiled.” I held out my hand to the girl.“Hello, I’m Cameron. I have a daughter about your age.”

“I’m Ingrid,” said the girl, still looking up at me gravely and ignoring my hand. “Is she home?”

I stepped back and opened the living room door. Dara and Fergus were lying on the floor watching television. “Dara, Fergus,” I said, “this is our new neighbor, Ingrid. And her mother, Iris.”

“Hello,” said Iris.

“Are you watching The Secret Seven?” said Ingrid.

“Yes,” said Dara. “They’re about to go down to the cellar.”

As she spoke, Ingrid crossed the room and lay down on the floor beside her. I stepped back, taking Iris with me, and closed the door on the three children.

“This is their favorite show,” I said.

“Ingrid’s too,” said Iris. She seemed to forget about waiting for Fio-na’s return, and asked if I would mind watching Ingrid for an hour. She had to go to a meeting, and Carol, her older daughter, who normally babysat, had been delayed.

“Of course,” I said. “I’m in the middle of making supper but it looks like they can entertain themselves.”

In the kitchen the onion I peeled was suddenly a miracle of design, the potatoes more shapely, the parsley exquisitely curled. Sometimes Dara laid the table, but that evening I did it myself. I didn’t dare to leave the kitchen until I heard the sound of a key in the front door. Then I went to greet Fiona, wearing my apron, holding a wooden spoon. “Ingrid Bailey is here,” I said. “Her mother asked if we could watch her until her sister gets home.”

“Did you invite her for supper?” said Fiona. She was already opening the living room door. The two girls were still sitting on the floor but now playing cards. Fergus was pushing a truck around them. “Hello, Ingrid. I’m Dara’s mum, Fiona.”

Ingrid scrambled to her feet. “Hi,” she said brightly. “Thank you for having me.”

“Fergus,” said Fiona.“What are you doing up? It’s way past your bed-time.”

Like my mother, I had forgotten about my son.

ithin a matter of weeks Dara and Ingrid were insep-

arable. She still saw her other friends, but it was Ingrid with

whom she would

play for hours, giggling over private jokes and secrets.

They both loved dressing up and inventing dramas. Sometimes Fergus tagged along—they found him useful in their games—but mostly it was just the two of them. We began to make joint arrangements with Iris about school, Brownies, ballet. The older daughter, Carol, became our main babysitter. Mr. Bailey never appeared and was never mentioned. Somehow the opportunity to ask about him came and went.

Since our conversation about my doldrums Fiona had been nudg-ing me about photography, and it was with her blessing that I started taking pictures of the two girls. Of course I was careful to also photograph Fergus and his friends, but I had only one real subject. The camera loved Ingrid. In everyday life she often fell short of what I had seen that first evening. Her skin could look sallow and she was prone to spots. She had the habit of chewing on a strand of hair that hung limply in front of her face, her teeth pushed forward—she would probably need braces—and her lips were usually chapped. But through the lens

these faults vanished or became part of some larger whole that they enhanced rather than marred.

As the girls grew more intimate our families became increasingly intertwined. Iris worked as an accountant for a large firm and was an energetic single parent. She volunteered at the primary school, she went swimming with Ingrid on Saturdays and attended Carol’s hockey matches, she became involved with the drama club. She persuaded Fiona to help with this last. Often after the weekly meeting the two women brought the girls home and then went out again to have a drink. On such nights Ingrid would stay at our house, sharing Dara’s room, and I would be responsible for getting the two excited girls into bed. There would be baths and much scampering back and forth before they settled down.

I didn’t get careless but my confidence grew. Surely there was no harm in occasionally opening the bathroom door to tell them it was time to get out. Was I to blame if I lingered for a moment, waiting to be sure they did my bidding? One night, getting out of the bath, Ingrid dropped her towel. Both girls burst out laughing. I must have stood there for five seconds, staring at her slender shoulders, her whole smooth body, before I went to fetch another towel. As she wrapped it around herself, I thought of asking her and Dara not to tell anyone, but even as I framed the request I recognized the trap: the mere conscious-ness of guilt was evidence thereof. Innocence was my best protection. Later the girls came downstairs in their pajamas to sit in front of the fire. While Dara dried Ingrid’s hair, I dried Dara’s.

On special days, days when Dodgson had, for instance, gone for a glorious picnic, the sole adult with several children, he wrote in his diary, “I mark this day with a white stone.” Over several decades he took thousands of beautiful, focused photographs, including the ones of girls “sans habillement” which were his favorites. But even in Victo-