The Pre-War House and Other Stories

Small Animals

‘Where are we?’ asked Heather, waking up, sitting forward a little in her seat to peer through the windscreen. She had fallen asleep in the last of the daylight, and now it was dark. On one side of the winding, unmarked road, there was a vertical wall of rock, and on the other, a drop. There were no pavements, no streetlights. There was no moon.

‘We’re almost there,’ said Marilyn, and as she spoke they rounded a bend and Heather saw a house built into the hillside, lit suddenly by the full beam of their headlights. Marilyn slowed and pulled onto the patch of tarmac beside the house, killing the engine, killing the lights. They sat for a moment in silence, looking at the house, at its dark windows.

‘Have we got the right night?’ said Heather. Marilyn was the one who knew Kath and who had arranged the evening, inviting Heather to join them for dinner and offering to drive. Something about it had seemed a bit odd and Heather suspected something, perhaps matchmaking — a man would be sprung on her at the last minute. This had happened before to Heather, who was unmarried, unattached, and retired now from her life as a teacher and child psychologist. There had been some uneasy dinner parties, some disastrous occasions, in her time.

Marilyn had said to Heather, ‘You must meet Kath,’ and she had described the unusual house in which Kath lived. Heather, with nothing to do on a Friday night, and struck by the image of this house set into the rocks, had accepted the invitation.

‘There’s no car here,’ said Heather. There was no space, anyway, for another car on the tarmac, and there was no garage. ‘Does that mean she’s out?’

‘She doesn’t drive,’ said Marilyn, opening the car door.

Heather, who lived in a small town, gazed out at the unlit night. She had never seen such darkness. ‘Imagine,’ she said, ‘being this far from civilization with no transport.’ But Marilyn was out of the car now and Heather was talking to herself.

Marilyn rang the doorbell. They heard it, faintly, chiming in the hallway. They waited but no light came on behind the panel of glass above the solid wooden door. Marilyn knocked, but she had her gloves on and the sound was muffled. She took them off, exposing her fingers to the icy night air, rapping her bared knuckles sharply against the door.

Heather walked around to the back of the house and saw windows which were narrow, arched at the top, coming to a point, making her think of a castle. She saw an upstairs light snap off behind drawn curtains. Returning to the porch, she mentioned this to Marilyn. She said, ‘There’s someone in.’

Marilyn reached for the door handle and turned it, finding the door unlocked. She stuck her head into the dark hallway and called, ‘Hello?’

They both heard the creak of floorboards coming from inside, upstairs. Looking up, they saw the shape of someone on the landing, but still some seconds passed before the shape moved onto the top step and the hallway light went on and there was a woman, thin and pale, descending the stairs saying, ‘Marilyn, what are you doing here?’

‘I’ve not got much in,’ said Kath, switching on the lamps. ‘Sit down.’ Taking off their coats, laying them over the arms of the sofa, they sat. Heather noted the anxiety with which Kath glanced around her living room, which looked tidy enough to Heather. ‘I’ll go and have a look in the kitchen.’

When Kath was out of the room, Heather said to Marilyn, ‘What’s going on? Has she forgotten we were coming?’

Marilyn shook her head. ‘She didn’t know.’

‘She didn’t know we were coming? We weren’t invited?’

Kath came in with a bowl of nuts. She pulled the smallest coffee table from a nest and put it in front of her guests.

‘Where’s Nina?’ asked Marilyn.

Kath, placing a doily on the table, the bowl of nuts on the doily, the nutcrackers next to the bowl, said, ‘She’s sleeping.’

‘Is she?’ said Marilyn. ‘It’s early.’ And Heather, who had not checked the time when she woke in the car in the dark and had not done so since, was surprised, when she glanced at the carriage clock on Kath’s mantelpiece, to find that it was not even six o’clock. It felt later.

Kath returned to the kitchen and Marilyn reached for the nutcrackers and a hazelnut.

‘Who’s Nina?’ asked Heather.

‘Nina,’ said Marilyn, shattering the nut’s thin shell, catching the pieces in her hand and tidying them back into the bowl, ‘is Kath’s daughter.’ She ran her eyes around the room — the walls, the sideboard, the shelves — looking, thought Heather, for a photo, but not finding one. ‘She’s five,’ said Marilyn. ‘She’s the spit of Kath.’

Kath walked back in with some Tupperware, handing Marilyn a fridge-cold tub of little sandwiches with the crusts cut off. She gave Heather a plate of iced cakes.

‘Do you want coffee?’ asked Kath. ‘Or water?’

Coffee, they said.

‘It’s instant,’ said Kath, going off down the hallway again.

Heather, turning to Marilyn, said, ‘What are we doing here? Why did you let me think we’d been invited for dinner, when clearly we haven’t?’

‘Kath’s been avoiding me,’ said Marilyn. ‘I’ve been trying to fix up a dinner for months but she’s been putting me off.’

‘So you drove all the way up here anyway. And what am I doing here?’

‘I wanted you to meet her.’

‘What if she’d been out?’

‘She never goes out.’

There was a rattling of teacups and teaspoons on saucers on a metal tray and the two women turned quickly and smiled at Kath as she entered the room. They cleared the coffee table so that Kath could set down the tray, and then sat with their hands full, unsure what to do with it all.

Heather was pleased at least that Marilyn wasn’t drinking, that wine had not been offered. She didn’t want this to turn into one of Marilyn’s sleepovers. The distance was not remotely walkable and there was no one she could have called, other than a taxi company. But on such occasions in the past, Marilyn had always reminded Heather that there was no one waiting up for her and nowhere she had to be in the morning, and Heather had stayed.

Marilyn said to Kath, ‘Can I pop up and see her?’

‘Better not,’ said Kath.

‘I’ll be quiet.’

‘Best not.’ She sugared Marilyn’s coffee, knowing how Marilyn took it. She sugared Heather’s without asking.

Heather could hear a quiet, persistent beeping sound. When it occurred to her that it was coming from her phone, she put down the cakes and felt around in her coat pockets until she found her phone and a missed message.

‘I’ve got a text from my mother,’ she said. ‘I’d better reply.’

‘You won’t get a signal out here,’ said Marilyn. ‘Is it urgent?’

‘It could wait until morning,’ said Heather, still holding her phone, still gazing with concern at her mother’s message.

‘It’s an unusual house,’ said Heather, offering the cakes to Kath. ‘You’re very brave.’

Kath, refusing one, said, ‘Why?’

‘Living so far from town with no transport,’ said Heather.

‘There are buses,’ said Kath.

‘They don’t run out here at night though,’ said Marilyn.

‘No,’ said Kath, ‘they don’t.’

While Kath was loading the Tupperware and crockery into the dishwasher, Marilyn said to Heather, ‘Nina’s a difficult child. She runs away. Someone always brings her home, but it’s frightening, she’s so young. Kath keeps telling her she mustn’t do it, that one day something bad will happen to her. It’s a beautiful spot — you can’t tell in the dark but in daylight there’s a breathtaking view — but it’s dangerous. There’s a steep drop down to the river, and the traffic goes so fast on the road. There was a flasher once — that was years ago, but still. And it’s only months since a local girl went missing.

‘She makes nuisance calls to strangers and taxi companies. There have been acts of vandalism. I’m astonished actually,’ she said, ‘to see nothing damaged. There’s usually a broken window or mirror or picture frame, crayon on the walls.’

So, thought Heather, Marilyn had invited her here to observe the child, to offer a professional judgement. Could she not have been told that? She might have come anyway.

‘Kath finds mice laid out on her doorstep, and other small animals, dead ones, or as good as dead.’

‘The work of a cat, surely?’ said Heather.

‘They don’t have a cat.’

‘A neighbour’s cat?’

‘They don’t have neighbours, not for miles. And besides, these mice have not been killed by a cat.’

‘Is it necessarily Nina though?’ asked Heather.

‘Well,’ said Marilyn, ‘that’s another thing. Nina says it isn’t her; she says it’s another little girl who breaks things, makes these telephone calls, kills the mice. Kath had another little girl, before Nina, but she died. Nina says it’s her.’

‘You think it’s a ghost?’

‘No,’ said Marilyn, ‘it’s definitely Nina. But she blames a ghost. She often wakes up screaming in the middle of the night.’

‘They sometimes do,’ said Heather, ‘at this age. They have night terrors.’

‘She wakes up bruised.’

Heather, standing, said to Kath, ‘May I use your bathroom?’

Kath looked at her for a moment, as Heather had once looked at schoolchildren when they raised their hands and requested the freedom of the empty corridors, before nodding.

‘Up the stairs,’ said Kath, ‘and straight ahead. Straight ahead,’ she repeated as Heather left the room, ‘when you get to the top.’

The hallway light was off again and Heather climbed the stairs in the dark. Holding her hands out in front of her, in front of her face and her chest, she found the bathroom door. She opened it, feeling for the pull cord, the light.

Looking in the mirror over the sink while washing her hands, she noticed the Rawlplug-stuffed screw holes around it, a different shade of paint, the shape of another mirror which had once hung there.

Leaving the bathroom, she saw that she was outside a room on whose door brightly coloured letters spelled out ‘NINA’. The door was slightly ajar, the light from the bathroom spilling into the room, and Heather, pushing the door further open, saw the little girl in her bed, the head of blond hair which was indeed like Kath’s. She regarded the room, a lovely one, with crayoned pictures on the walls, books on the shelves, an animal theme on the borders and curtains, and teddies by the girl’s pillow, watching over her while she slept. She realised that this was the room she had seen from outside, whose light she had seen go out.

She went in, leaving the door standing open for the illumination. She stood by Nina’s bed, looking down at this five-year-old girl who looked quite peaceful. She looked around. She could see nothing torn or broken in the room. Turning back to the bed, she lifted, very carefully, one side of the duvet, looking at the girl’s arm, which was bare beneath her cap sleeve. She inspected the other side too. She moved to the foot of the bed and peeled back the bottom of the duvet, peering at her legs, her shins. There were bruises, but children did get bruises. Heather wasn’t sure that there was anything unusual. Covering the child up again, Heather retreated to the door. Before she closed it she glanced back, her heart leaping into her throat when she saw that the girl’s eyes were wide open, that she was watching her go.

She had just returned to her place on the sofa when the front door opened. Even in the living room, they felt the cold coming in from outside. They heard a man’s voice hissing, ‘Who the fuck is here? Whose fucking car is that?’ They heard the whisper of Kath’s reply but not the words. ‘They’ve parked in my fucking space,’ said the man. ‘I’ve had to park on the fucking road. Some fucker’s going to crash into me.’

Heather turned to Marilyn. They were alone in the room but still Heather mouthed her question silently: Who’s that?

Marilyn shook her head, widened her eyes, shrugged, as the man strode into the living room and stood in front of them with a takeaway pizza box in his hands.

‘Have you had a nice evening?’ he said. ‘Have you had a nice dinner?’

He turned his head sharply away from them then, towards the door he’d just come through. Putting down his pizza box, he marched back into the unlit hallway. Heather saw the little girl crouching on the stairs in her nightie. The man put his foot on the bottom step. ‘Get up,’ he said, through his teeth, ‘the fucking stairs.’ And then they went, this man and this girl, up the stairs, observed by Heather and Marilyn.

Heather, creeping back into the hallway, saw that Kath had vanished. There was a smell of urine, which reminded her of her mother’s residential home, although they masked it there. She pictured her mother sitting alone in her bedroom, or in her armchair in the lounge, watching the local news on the television with the sound turned down, clutching the mobile phone which Heather had given her. It frightened her mother, this mobile phone. ‘But,’ Heather had said, ‘now you can text me and I’ll text you or call you right back.’

Going into the kitchen, finding Kath, she said, ‘Would you mind if I just used your phone?’ It was there on the wall between them, its tangled cord hanging down.

‘We had it disconnected,’ said Kath. And Heather recalled the mention of prank phone calls, and the taxi companies which presumably no longer bothered to come to the house.

There was heavy footfall on the stairs and the man came into the kitchen, glowering at both of them.

‘We should go,’ said Heather. ‘Then you can get your car off the road.’ She returned to the living room and said again, to Marilyn, ‘We should go.’ Usually, she would have added, ‘It’s getting late,’ but it was not.

Marilyn was already on her feet, had made a move towards the door to the hallway, but was now standing still. She seemed frozen.

‘What’s wrong?’ said Heather.

‘I’m just going to —’ said Marilyn, and she made her way into the hallway, pausing on the stairs before climbing slowly up towards the bathroom, leaving her sentence dangling.

Heather waited alone in the living room, picking up her coat and putting it on, picking up Marilyn’s coat, picking up their bags. When Marilyn came down the stairs again, Heather met her in the living room doorway, smelling again the urine in the carpet.

Marilyn spoke, but so quietly that Heather could not hear her.

‘What?’ she said. She noticed Marilyn’s pallor and wondered if she was feeling sick. She began to lead her back into the living room, to sit her down. Marilyn was resisting, opening her mouth to say more, but at that moment there came from outside the sound of an explosion of glass.

Heather hurried to the window and peered out but she had a poor view.

‘Is it his car?’ said Marilyn. ‘Has there been an accident?’

Heather, with her face close to the cold pane, looking at the broken driver’s side window and the glass on the ground, said, ‘No, it’s yours.’

She was looking for Nina, who must have got out of her bed and squeezed her skinny body through those narrow upstairs windows, shinning, she supposed, down a drainpipe or a tree so as to throw a rock through the window of Marilyn’s car. She was worried about the girl, about small, bare feet on all that broken glass. She was worried about her being so close to the dark road. She was worried about her running away in her nightie, about flashers and stories of missing girls. She could not see anyone out there.

Marilyn, still in the doorway, went not to the window but to the front door. She turned the handle but found the door locked. Heather, coming to join her, tried the locked door too.

‘It isn’t Nina,’ said Marilyn.

‘How do you know?’ She had not been able to see who it was, from the living room window, through this solid door. She did not see how Marilyn could know that.

There was a sudden din then from outside, a banging of metal on metal. Heather returned to the living room window, staring out again, seeing slashed tyres, seeing clearly now the attack on Marilyn’s car, whose bonnet was open, whose engine was being ruined.

‘It isn’t Nina,’ repeated Marilyn.

‘No,’ said Heather, coming back to stand with Marilyn at the door. ‘It’s him.’

‘I mean,’ said Marilyn, ‘the girl in Nina’s bed. It isn’t Nina.’

The dishwasher went on in the kitchen and Heather turned around. Kath was standing at the end of the hallway; and at the top of the stairs, in her bedroom doorway, was the girl who was not Nina — and Heather, in that moment, understood that the windows might be big enough to squeeze through but that they would not open.

They heard the key being turned in the front door lock.

They felt the cold night flooding in.